It's A Free World
Aroview: Sleeper from dir. Loach sees an unemployed single mother take advantage of a recent influx of Polish immigrants in her neighbourhood by setting up a recruitment business that she runs from her kitchen.
Britain's most socially-conscious director turns his usual oppressed-victim formula on its head with his multi-faceted protagonist Angie (Wareing, terrific), who plays oppressor to the various immigrants shuffling in and out of her grubby kitchen, at once a scruffy charmer and monstrous dictator. Angie's decline into corruption is a wonderful way to illuminate the wicked cycle beyond Loach’s tried-and-tested portrait of the 'poor' working class, and (worryingly?) an indication that the director still has a lot more to teach us yet.
NZ International Film Festival 2008
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