Movie review: ‘Looking for Eric’

“Looking for Eric,” the wonderfully wry new film from British director Ken Loach, is a melancholy comedy about wins and losses in soccer, life and love, and the power of a few pals, a few pints and the esoteric musings of a French footballing superstar to carry you through.

Set in working-class Manchester where the accents are so thick you may long for subtitles, there are two Erics that circumstance has backed into the same contemplative corner — soccer sensation Eric Cantona playing a ruminating, newly retired version of himself, and Eric Bishop (Steve Evets), a 50ish postal worker in a wallow so deep that he sees no way out.

A failed suicide attempt by Evets’ Eric, a joke-telling intervention staged by his work mates and a group visualization exercise led by a pudgy, New Age-y postal worker named Meatballs (an excellent John Henshaw), get things rolling.

It is in the group session, so unexpectedly droll that it’s worth the price of admission alone, that Eric first conjures up Cantona as the one guy he would emulate if he could. This is no random choice. Eric’s bedroom is a fanatic’s shrine to the provocative player’s career: a life-size poster from his hot streak with the Manchester United team, framed clippings from his press conferences, to say nothing of Eric’s stockpile of memories, which play through the movie like a Cantona highlight reel.

When Cantona shows up in the flesh just as Eric is talking over a problem with the Cantona poster, somehow it doesn’t seem delusional at all — you just want to hang around to see where the conversation will lead.

This being comedy sifted through Loach’s mind and screenwriter Paul Laverty’s pen, the conversation meanders through issues of class, philosophy and self-esteem. The frequent collaborators, who last teamed on “The Wind That Shakes the Barley’s” searing examination of the 1920s-era Irish rebellion, Loach and Laverty are again concerned with the way events shape and reshape relationships, just with a slightly lighter touch.

Eric’s halfhearted attempt to end his halfhearted life, triggered by a glimpse of his first wife, Lily (Stephanie Bishop), 30 years after he deserted her, sets the film’s black tone. Then, with Cantona’s help, the sorting-through of Eric’s failures begins in earnest — the second wife who left, the constant sniping with the two stepsons who stayed, the disappointments stacking up along with the dirty dishes and dirty laundry.

Soon, life for Eric is a train running on two tracks — the real world, and his debates with the soccer star. The humor here is mostly situational, rooted in everyday places and people, real and otherwise. Loach keeps kicking the comedy between Cantona and the mates, a sort of “Full Monty” motley crew of fumbling cohorts willing to take things to ridiculous extremes when necessary, with the drama doing its best to disrupt the boys at play.

In Eric’s darker moments, money is tight, the guilt is heavy and the stepsons are running with the wrong crowd, to disastrous effect. Relief, when it comes, is in watching soccer matches over a few pints with his pals or in his free-floating heart-to-hearts with Cantona. Redemption, which he is seeking, is tentative and tender as he tries to reconnect with Lily and the life he ran away from all those years ago.

Drama is used to lay out the universal problems, the comedy is responsible for how to cope, but Loach and Laverty have packed so many storylines and social themes into the film that the point is sometimes lost in all the complications. The filmmakers play around so much with the Cantona mystique, it’s not a deal breaker if you know nothing about him, but it’s a better film if you do. The cast, though, is nearly pitch-perfect. Cantona, whose five-year run with United ended with his unexpected retirement in 1997, plays himself with a self-deprecating charm that is hard to resist, and Evets, a hardscrabble actor who’s knocked around for years, is unforgettable shrugging on disappointment like an old coat.

The archival game footage — Cantona on the field, the roaring crowds — infuses the film with that high-spirited sense of hope and heart that only a brilliant play when a game is on the line can deliver. Loach, a brilliant player at his own game, delivers the rest.

betsy.sharkey@latimes.com

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