Pictured: Those who love me take a scooter. Yas (Vivian Oparah) and Dom (David Jonsson) part for the shortest time while outside Peckham Rye station in a scene from the South London-set romantic comedy, 'Rye Lane', written by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia and directed by Raine Allen-Miller. Still courtesy of Fox Searchlight / Buena Vista International (UK)
I grew up in Peckham in South London in the 1970s. It was not a place where romance blossomed. If I was late for my paper round, the newsagent would hit me. On my early morning delivery, two boys walking towards me would think nothing of beating me up. On a separate occasion, in Peckham Park Road, less than 300 yards from my house, I was forced to the ground and kicked whilst passers-by ignored the casual violence. I recall the bruised face of a local shopkeeper after a particular vicious assault as he served customers the next day. Peckham is home to large housing estates and, when I was growing up, very little entertainment, apart from, of course, you guessed it. Still, the tips I received at Christmas counted as danger money.
Peckham had streets where you walked head down, averting your gaze from others. My wife complains that I walk too fast. My pace was set by my need to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ as quickly as possible, avoiding notice. I watched movies in the Elephant and Castle, a thirty-six-minute walk away (I timed it). My friends lived in other parts of South London. The idea of romanticising Peckham is absurd to me. Evidently not to the makers of Rye Lane, in which the characters – second or third generation Afro Caribbean – exhibit an internalised gentrification, completely oblivious to the neighbourhood’s violent past.
Making no claim to be social realist, Rye Lane, the debut feature of commercials director Raine Allen-Miller, working from a script by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia, is a brisk romantic comedy that actually spends very little of its running time in Peckham’s clogged artery of a shopping street, where I used to get my (frequently broken) National Health glasses replaced at Bateman’s the Opticians. It quickly decamps to Brixton, while the finale takes place by the river Thames. It omits entirely Peckham Rye Park, which I think is a good thing – I avoided it too – and at one point a character holds a box of popcorn she could have only purchased in East Dulwich, a mile away.
The film has proved a huge draw at the neighbourhood’s only cinema, the Peckhamplex – Peckham Odeon was demolished in the 1980s and replaced by a benefits office. Alas, elsewhere, it has only lasted more than a week in arthouses. Black British romantic comedies are rare. For all the queasiness I feel about it, Rye Lane is something to be celebrated.
It begins in a bank of unisex toilets where very little passing of liquids or stools takes place. Allen-Miller’s camera tracks over a series of mini-dramas before descending on the cubicle of lovelorn Dom (David Jonsson), weeping over his mobile phone. He is thinking of his ex, who left him for his best mate. How did he know his friend was intimate with her? Dom later explains that he saw his penis in a mobile phone photograph and knows that member anywhere. Cut to the teenage Dom and his pal urinating together, the toilet equivalent of circle jerks - not part of my South London upbringing. Hearing his distress from an adjacent cubicle is Yas (Vivian Oparah). Talking to his shoes because the face isn’t available, she asks after his welfare. Both are visiting an art gallery, where one of Dom’s friends is displaying a set of photographs of people’s mouths. Recognising Dom in the gallery space from his Converse footwear, Yas quickly attaches herself to him. The photographer, Nathan (Simon Manyonda) persuades Dom to buy a print to stimulate sales – somewhat improbably, he leaves with it. Whatever happened to red dots next to sold items? Yas cannot stop speaking to Dom, even as he heads to a rendezvous meal with his ex-girlfriend, Gia (Karene Peter) and his aforementioned ex-best friend, Eric (Benjamin Sarpong-Broni) in Blenheim Grove, formerly home to one of Peckham’s two Department of Health and Social Security offices – the other was in Bournemouth Road.
The pair have broken relationships in common – and not much else. She has the ambition of being a costume designer in films and, we discover, has a reason to divert her attention to Dom. Not an especially plausible reason – not wanting to attend an interview – but a reason, nevertheless. Dom abandoned a life in fast food service to become an accountant. In one way, the film is about the co-dependence of art and commence. They go together whether one approves of the relationship or not. Having been ejected from the flat he shared with Gia, Dom is back living with his mum, who feeds him a steady diet of soft-boiled eggs – quite literally, a running joke. The film makes a positive representational point that Black British youth aspire to be more than nail technicians (strange term) or DJs, although with a good accountant at your side, your nail bar could be kicking.
Having left the gallery, Yas and Dom continue their get-to-know-you, first in Rye Lane’s covered market, an uncle (Levi Roots) acknowledging Yas, then in a nearby children’s playground. So far, so geographically accurate, though I’m not sure how Yas ended up with a Picture House popcorn punnet in her hand – crass product placement or poor work by the prop department? When they re-enter Rye Lane, they are at the wrong end. They should have been closer to Peckham High Street, which by the way has fewer shops than Rye Lane but boasts a bus garage and the Pomp, a library-arts centre built after I left the area in the 1990s. The film only kicks into life when Dom says goodbye to Yas to attend his ‘clear the air’ meal with Gia and Eric, only for Yas to gate crash it.
Pictured: Yas (Vivian Oparah) raises depressed Dom (David Jonsson) up in the South London-set romantic comedy, 'Rye Lane', written by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia and directed by Raine Allen-Miller. Still courtesy of Fox Searchlight / Buena Vista International (UK)
Some romantic comedies are based around two people who initially rub each other up the wrong way but then fall in love. The writers and director understand that in real life two people who irritate each other on first meeting generally don’t have a second date. Critics have compared Rye Lane to Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, though the Los Angeles-set In Search of a Midnight Kiss is also a good reference point. After Yas’ display of showing Gia what she’s missing – her effect is partly based on Eric being a rather simple and easily manipulated soul – Dom helps Yas achieve her objective, to retrieve an album, ‘The Low-End Theory’ by A Tribe Called Quest, from her ex-boyfriend’s flat. This requires obtaining a key, which in turn has Dom rifling through an underwear drawer in a family friend’s house. If the host looked upon Dom with suspicion before this incident – ‘have any drink you like, but don’t touch the Wray and Nephew’ – then disapproval is elevated to eleven.
The trip to Brixton market and the outlet ‘Guac’ Actually’ features a surprise cameo from a very grumpy Oscar winner. The star is associated with a romantic comedy series of the sort in which two people initially rub each other up the wrong way. Eventually, Dom who claims to Gia that he met Yas whilst at a Karaoke event – ‘you, karaoke?’ – is required to sing for a key and, as the joke goes, is off-key until Yas saves him.
The ending of the film is signposted by the following observation by Yas. ‘The world is divided between those who wave at people on boats and those who don’t’, with Yas’ ex being the latter. Before then, the pair end up retrieving the disc and encountering Yas’ ex, with his (white) girlfriend in tow, inadvertently damaging the pretentious artwork.
Pictured: The shutters may be down but the heart is open. Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah) in a scene from the South London-set romantic comedy, 'Rye Lane', written by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia and directed by Raine Allen-Miller. Still courtesy of Fox Searchlight / Buena Vista International (UK)
Why Yas would own a twelve-inch vinyl copy of ‘The Low-End Theory’ and not a CD is a moot point, but the record is simply a McGuffin. The coda takes place at another art gallery (Tate Modern) where Dom is looking at photographs of people’s backsides – ‘people know more about Jupiter than they do about their arses’, says the photographer, though you think he might mention Uranus. Dom receives a phone call, necessitating a frantic dash across the Millennium Bridge – romantic comedies always require running shoes – and some vigorous waving.
The portrayal of black British life is abundantly positive, albeit drawn in broad strokes. Dom is welcomed at the party and given generous servings of the aforementioned Wray and Nephew rum. Yas is loaned a scooter. It is a completely uncynical piece of filmmaking. Allen-Miller directs the film with a confidence that comes from focussing on the performances whilst letting the camera and art department weave their magic. The colours are bright. The cultural references specific, extending to the restaurant where Gia and Eric meet Yas; Nando’s doesn’t get a look in. The film also pays tribute to the small business, thriving from word of mouth, rather than brand names associated with black culture. In my day, young people proudly wore Gallini t-shirts, without knowing what the word meant in English (‘chicken’). The absence of social realism does work against the film. Did it need to be so much like a cartoon, straining credibility, to attract a large audience? One thing the film doesn’t have is sex appeal. Bodies are not on display; Allen-Miller did not require the services of an intimacy co-ordinator. Both leads give appealing performances, though Oparah, as chief disrupter, has the showier role.
It is a good sign that British comedies are becoming more multi-cultural, and women given the opportunities to direct them. However, I would have welcomed a film with a few more edges, rather like the local brands that Rye Lane champions.
Reviewed at Cineworld Leicester Square, Screen Five, Central London, Tuesday 21 March 2023, 18:45 screening
