The Cement Garden

Issue laden films don't come much more weighed-down than this complex and unsettling domestic drama - a 1992 adaptation of Ian McEwan's award winning, controversial novel The Cement Garden.

Jack (Andrew Robertson) is post-puberty but pre-girlfriend - a very frustrating time. He lives with his brother Tom, and sisters Julie and Sue, in a monolithic concrete monstrosity somewhere in England's suburban wilderness. It turns out that the house in which they live is metaphorically representative of their father: stoic, impassive, cold. Nevermind, he dies fairly early on, suffering a heart attack whilst pouring cement in their largely barren garden. His children care little for his passing; neither does his wife. Nevermind, as she also dies fairly soon after. Fearing that they will be carted off to care homes, eldest sister Julie and Jack conspire to keep their mother's death a secret from the authorities, and bury her body in a locker in the cellar which they fill with cement for good measure. The film then takes on the feel of a micro-analysis of the dysfunctional siblings in the absence of any parental figure.

Jack is, to put it crudely, horny. Early on he is shown masturbating in front of a mirror - whilst, incidentally, his dad is in the back garden croaking it. He also goes to a deserted and demolished ruin of a house to masturbate with a 'dirty' mag. And then there's the small matter of incest - a theme amongst many that runs throughout the film. An entirely jovial play fight on a bed between Jack and his sister Julie in formative scenes takes on overtly sexual overtones when she begins moaning and thrashing her groin about. Sexual undertones are in evidence when at a subdued birthday party for Jack in the room of their dying mother, Julie does a handstand and seductively parts her legs. Of course to the rest of the family it seems like nothing more than a handstand, but to us, aware of the earlier bed 'thrashing', it has a much more disturbing significance - Julie is leading her brother on.

Against the sexual friction of Jack and Julie is played the confused sexuality of younger brother Tom. Before their mother dies, there is a somewhat poignant scene in which he tells his sisters how he'd rather be a girl, because girls don't get bullied like he does. After their mother dies, Julie and Sue playfully truss Tom up in a dress and blonde wig (he looks like an eight year old hooker) to which he takes a particular penchant. Tom's best friend also takes a fondness to his new effeminate guise - in one scene, the two young boys are shown curled up together, asleep as if a couple. Tom's confused sexuality is almost certainly the most sensitively handled issue in the film - both believable and involving.

Julie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) begins a relationship with a considerably older, generous business man - Derek. It is the only connection any of them seems to make with an adult in the world outside of their concrete walls - though you have to wonder what his interest is in a young, shabbily attired girl. Rather bafflingly in later scenes when Derek confronts the siblings about his suspicion that their mother is dead and rotting in the basement, their story that it is in fact their dead dog - an obvious lie - is enough to prevent him getting any of the authorities involved. He's clearly got problems of his own - least of all that his character adds little to the film.

And then there's poor younger sister Sue, who seems to have been largely overlooked when it came to handing out 'issues' to contend with - unless you count sitting in the basement writing letters to her mother who lies dead and encased in cement a few feet from her an 'issue'.