A Room for Romeo Brass

Shane Meadows: 'The idea for this film began when I was visiting my granddad in the last few months of his life and we started talking about my childhood. At the time I was writing a genre screenplay, to get away from the films I previously made, but my grandfather reminded me about the beautiful and extraordinary friendship I shared with my co-writer Paul Fraser. When I actually remembered how I viewed the world as a child, I realised how much I had forgotten.' The second feature by the young British director Shane Meadows (after TwentyForSeven, screened in 1998 in Rotterdam) is a humorous, frightening and eventually gentle film in which Meadows - now working in colour - has found a tone all of his own and which is characterised by the energetic and natural performance by the actors and a great sense of visual dynamics. Two boys aged 12, Romeo Brass and Gavin 'Knocks' Woolley, have lived next-door to each other for years in a harsh and poverty- ridden city and are best friends. They share an adventurous attitude and their sense of humour. When they meet Morell, a not- very-successful fantasist, he becomes their hero, certainly after he saves them in a street brawl. They swear together to couple Morell to Romeo's sister Ladine. She agrees reluctantly to a date, but that only has undesirable consequences.