A Little Soccer, a Bit of Romance and a Lot of Spirit

“My Name Is Joe” is a romance that pulsates with the disturbances both large and small of the hard-knock life. A tough, fearless piece of work that cares desperately about its people--and respects them too much to provide an easy way out--”Joe” is yet another terribly moving and eloquent film from the old master of British cinema, Ken Loach.

A director who’s been close to canonized by his peers for efforts like “Cathy Come Home,” “Kes,” “Raining Stones” and “Land and Freedom” created over a 30-year career, Loach is without equal when it comes to combining acute social commentary with a warm sympathy for the humanity of his characters. His gaze doesn’t flinch as he focuses on life on the fly, and though we frequently find ourselves laughing, it’s never at anyone’s expense.

In all his decades of work, Loach may never have had as handsome and charismatic a leading man as Peter Mullan, a ringer for a young Paul Newman, who plays the Joe Kavanagh of the title. With a compelling naturalness that makes his character someone we take to at once, Mullan not only won the best actor award at Cannes but also delighted the audience by accepting it in a kilt.

“Joe” is set in one of Glasgow’s poorest neighborhoods, a place where humor is critical because life is not easy. One of the things Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty insist on is a thoroughgoing authenticity in matters of speech: “There’s so much humor and richness in the rhythms of the way people talk; their whole history is in their language,” the director explained at Cannes.

What that means for American audiences is that distributor Artisan Entertainment has taken the unusual but necessary step of subtitling the dialogue to make it easier to understand. The language and the slang would make “Joe” a challenge to decipher without this kind of help, and the subtitles don’t distract any more than they would in a foreign language film.

Anyone familiar with AA meetings can guess that “My name is Joe” is the first part of a sentence that ends with “and I’m an alcoholic.” “Joe” starts with Kavanagh detailing his drinking history in a Glasgow meeting, proud of his year of sobriety and hoping to continue to make more of his life.

Though, like almost everyone else he knows, Joe is on public assistance, he’s not idle. He spends much of his time coaching a ragtag soccer squad, the city’s worst, a group he is as involved with as if they were his flesh and blood. He especially cares about his nephew Liam (David McKay) and Liam’s wife, Sabine (Anne-Marie Kennedy), young parents who are shakily coming back from a drug-addicted past.

It’s because of Liam and Sabine that Joe meets Sarah Downey (Louise Goodall), a public health worker so intent on getting to their house for an appointment that her car nearly crashes into his van.

Emotionally self-sufficient and gainfully employed, Sarah is not looking for a relationship. Neither, for that matter, is Joe, who’d like to be on firmer psychological footing before getting seriously involved with anyone.

But it is one of the pleasures of “Joe” that we feel how impossible it is for these two to resist each other. Joe is attracted to Sarah’s straight-forwardness, to the way she “doesn’t mess about,” and Sarah is attracted, as we are as well, to Joe’s breathtaking honesty, profane sense of humor and visible appetite for life.

Yet we, as well as Sarah, also see the difficulties in this relationship. Joe’s vital energy has a history of turning into a terrifying temper, and though Sarah has the gift of seeing the best in him, both these people have an understandable wariness about committing to a relationship with someone so different from themselves.

Laverty’s script is not afraid to make use of melodrama and contrivance, from doors that lock people out when they least expect it to the ominous presence of a local crime boss named McGowan (David Hayman) and his strong-arm hooligans.

It’s a grounding in reality that makes these conventions acceptable, plus the irresistible vigor of Mullan’s performance. Added to that is Loach’s impeccable empathy as a director, and his unspoken insistence that society’s inequalities are the underlying cause of its citizen’s troubles. Combining all these divergent strains is what Loach does best, and “My Name Is Joe” is one of his most appealing works.

* MPAA rating: R for pervasive language and some violence, sexuality and drug use. Times guidelines: frank examination of lives on the skids, including beatings and a hanging.

‘My Name Is Joe’

Peter Mullan: Joe

Louise Goodall: Sarah

Gary Lewis: Shanks

Lorraine McIntosh: Maggie

David McKay: Liam

Anne-Marie Kennedy: Sabine

A Parallax (Joe) and Road Movies Vierte production, released by Artisan Entertainment. Director Ken Loach. Producer Rebecca O’Brien. Executive producer Ulrich Felsberg. Screenplay Paul Laverty. Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd. Editor Jonathan Morris. Costumes Rhona Russell. Music George Fenton. Production design Martin Johnson. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.