Cranleigh Film Club is showing Lean On Pete (15) on Friday 13 December starting at 7.30pm; doors open at 7.00pm. As usual our film will be shown in the Band Room, GU6 8AF, there is ample parking in the Village Way car park.
Refreshments are available.
Lean On Pete (15)
“If there’s a model for Lean on Pete,” said British director, Andrew Haigh, “it’s Ken Loach’s Kes, a kindred story of a boy down-on-his-luck finding solace with an animal. ‘Kes is not about a bird,’ he said, ‘it’s about what the boy has been going through, and how the only thing he has left is the bird’. The film got 11 award wins and 14 nominations.
Charley, a teenager living with his father, a promising student and athlete with an unstable background, finds work caring for an ageing racehorse named Lean On Pete. He learns that Pete is booked for slaughter, and embarks on an odyssey across America in search of a long-lost aunt, a place to call home. The screenplay was co-written with Willy Vlautin, on whose 2013 novel the film is based. Charlie Plummer (b1999 New York State) plays the lead. He felt a deep desire to play the role, writing to Haigh expressing his passion for the project. The film was premièred at the Venice International Film Festival where his performance received critical acclaim; he was awarded the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best emerging actor. Steve Buscemi plays Del, the horse trainer.
Mark Kermode, Observer, reviewed the film: “there’s an unsentimental tenderness at the centre of Haigh’s movie – a counterpoint to the grim realities of life from which our young hero flees. Haigh paints sympathetic portraits of all the characters, the good, the bad and the ugly. Ray may not be an ideal father, but there’s tenderness in the scenes with his son and a sense of closeness even during his frequent absences. Del, the horse dealer, is a chancer who dopes, exploits and dumps his horses, yet there’s a gruff paternal affection in his advice to Charley to ‘do something else before there’s nothing else you can do’. While the narrative may be read as a coming-of-age story, there’s something more elementary in Charley’s search for a beloved aunt, who comes to represent his idealised yearning for a lost family life. In Lean on Pete, this rising star proves his mettle in a role for which he is simply perfect.” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, called it a “sad and lovely film. Plummer gives an excellent performance: watchful, sensitive, delicate and yet possessed of a survivor’s impassive quality.”
Come and join us!
Membership costs £30 per year, covering all 12 films. To join please email your details to the Membership Secretary, Sara Lock, at . We make a £5 charge for guests at each film. Do come along and enjoy the atmosphere!
