From despair to hope

At first glance, Ken Loach and Eric Cantona make an unlikley pairing. Yet Loach is a football lover and Cantona, who has always been a peculiar footballer and has re-invented himself as actor/painter/photographer/poet, says he admires the British film-maker.

I am not a football watcher but ironically I watched Looking for Eric at the end of the week that saw Barcelona beat Manchester United. To all the MU supporters I say, go and watch Loach's movie you may recover from grief.

In Cannes Ken Loach said "at the game you go from despair to hope to triumph to sadness to elation within an hour and three quarters. If a film could achieve that, it'd be some film". So Looking for Eric may have more to do with cinema than with footbal, fan attitude or Eric Cantona at the end of the day. It is said that Cantona himself ordered it. He wanted a film to pay a tribute to a former fan of his, a postman from Manchester. Loach obliged but he somehow managed to make a film that isn't that far from his usual world.

Our main protagonist is called Eric Bishop, a postman, a good man who has very little self-esteem left, whose whole life is a mess. The first scene shows him driving like a mad man, backwards around the same roundabout, over and over, ready to end his misery and himself. In one scene later, Eric reveals he screwed up his life a long time ago and has been pretending for years. Eric is lost; his friends/colleagues are worried, they think he needs laughter. But he is not alone and he's going to find himself again eventually. From despair to hope indeed. Meanwhile the audience will be entertained and will even laugh.

Yes Looking for Eric is an enjoyable moment, a comedy rather than a tragedy, and for once in Ken Loach's work there's a good amount of light — in every sense of the word–despite some dark powerful moments, but it isn't just a feel-good movie and the Trotskyist film maker doesn't forget his social preoccupations and his political statements.

Yes Cantona has charisma and provides many smiles thanks to all the "cantonaisms"(those aphorisms he became famous for) Paul Laverty wrote for him. It's a lot of fun to watch him play with his public image, uttering "his proverbs and fucking philosophy" as Eric Bishop says – asking his revered hero to stop that bullshit for he already needed years to recover from the bloody seagulls!– and, in the end, laugh of himself. By the way the seagulls stuff– which is showed at the end of the film during the credits– wasn't that cryptic, the metaphor was quite obvious, it's the moment that felt quirky and made it sound like a nonsense. Cantona suddenly became a character from Lewis Carroll.

Movie-buff people make reference to Capra, but I guess that Ken Loach may have thought of Alice when he made the film because, following the unusual fantasy road, he takes both Eric Bishop and us for a "through the looking-glass" journey, backwards-style, in Cantonaland, with Eric Cantona showing up in Eric's room to become his existential guru. There's a Cheshire cat in that Eric!

Don't worry Ken Loach hasn't been damaged by the Twilight fever, he didn't swap social realism for fantastic; the trick is explained early enough at the beginning of the film when one of Eric's mates, who's fond of psychological and self-coaching books, suggests a group session. Everyone is supposed to think of an imaginary mirror and must focus on someone who loves them before looking at themselves through the eyes of someone they love and admire above all. For Eric Bishop it's Cantona!
Later, as Eric is smoking a joint and having a solitary self-pity session, the life-sized poster of Eric The King starts working as said mirror...and there he appears, bigger than life, the genie from the pot!

The film has flaws, the pace isn't perfect, some scenes lack subtlety, and the key metaphor of "the pass" being more important than the goal is a bit heavy, but I like the idea of the mirror, its mischievousness, and the dummy move it represents. The Cantona/Bishop scenes are basically an inner dialogue, Eric borrowing his idol's appearance to deal with everything he goes through, but there's more. Behind the ghost-idol who plays the charismatic and convenient life coach, there's Lily, Eric's first wife, the one whom he left but never stopped loving, the one who loved him more than anything and whom he hasn't faced for years despite their having a daughter.

The film is about love, about family, about solidarity, about trusting your partners, your team mates. Of course Loach can't help delivering a few kicks at football market, sponsors and fucking Murdoch, pointing out that postmen can't afford tickets and can only watch games on tv, but this isn't really a film about football per se.

The film surpises because it seems like a parenthèse ensoleillée in Loach's career, but I think it is nothing that the reverse side of the same coin. Heads or tails, the Death kept asking in the Coens' movie, No Country for Old Men, and once only the toss allowed a happy ending. Most of the time, it's hopeless and ends tragically because of the forces of F (Fate or Free Market), but this time, despite the personal pains and the general crisis (perhaps thanks to it actually), for once, it came down smiling heads for Ken Loach's characters. I won't blame him for indulging in a moment of optimism. Even the most realist ones among us need it from time to time.

In Loach's previous film, the brilliant and depressing It's A Free World – clearly not as uplifting but a better film than Looking for Eric– Ken Loach exposed a system based on the triumph of individualism, on the poor exploiting the poorer, leaving the audience with only their eyes to cry; here he celebrates the collective which makes the most vulnerable suddenly stronger. The "Operation Cantona" scene, besides being very funny("I will find you...because I'm a postman!"), says it all. Eric had to wear a mask before he could find himself again and put his blue shoes on; safety is possible provided that you're stay together; true glory is revealed in taking the risk of supporting the others; victory comes from the pass; brotherhood may overcome; salvation lies in the collective; lost love can be found again.

Looks like that, despite his ability to face this free world and tell it as he sees it, Ken Loach is hopeful yet.