Submarine (Richard Ayoade, 2010)

Ayoade's assured directorial debut gives us the insular 15-year-old Oliver growing up in a vaguely '80s South Wales, preoccupied with all the usual problems: school bullying, his worryingly divergent parents, finding a girlfriend.
Although the film is based on Joe Dunthorne's novel, it's hard not to see streaks of Ayoade's public image (by which I mean the rare appearances from behind the mask of Moss in The IT Crowd) in Oliver: cerebral, bookish, geekish, withdrawn and also caustically witty. Either way, Oliver is a great character, played with a wide-eyed disbelief at the state of things around him by Craig Roberts. The supporting cast is excellent too; Sally Hawkins terrifyingly intrusive as his mother and Noah Taylor a study in beigeness as the mousy father.
Submarine's great strength is that it works equally well as comedy as it does as poignant drama. The soundtrack is supporting rather than crutch-like, and unexpected flashes of camera trickery or divergence into unreality are not intrusive but just serve to heighten the sentiment of the moment. The end result is one of the finest British films in years.

8/10