REVIEW - FILTH

Don't you tell me what Filth is. Jon S. Baird's film is a tasteful attempt at tastelessness, defiantly un-arty (which actually is not a good thing), instead pompous and self-conscious. It's filth for people who already think it's filth, and think that you've gone far enough in just telling them about it, explaining it. No. That's a perversion, in fact, and a convention too, blurring any distinctions between those concepts. Baird doesn't even ask why not to elaborate, why not to show all that he's telling. The question never ought to be 'Why should I show this?', it ought to be 'Why should I conceal this? Do I have any good reason to be so censorious?' But alas, he is most comfortable just to tell, to gently jostle the common person, secure in society's opinion of what's right and what's wrong because they don't have the conviction to develop their own. But I won't commit the same, I'll give it to you straight: quite where is the filth in a film unwilling to display full-frontal nudity, but willing to display photocopies of it? That's pushing an envelope that shouldn't even exist, the brisk, liberating realities of life cloistered within. Fuck the genteel sensibility of that common person who would readily brandish any transgression of modern moral codes as, indeed, filth, lest they be challenged to confront their opinions (or, of course, society's opinions!). When your film is brimful of vigorous sex scenes, don't keep the framing so chaste! James McAvoy is too mannered as Scotland's dirtiest police officer, but he's perfect as Bruce can no longer control the repercussions of his shameful activities, and they begin to eat away at him. He goes at it full throttle, in a film that hasn't even considered to join him.