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Eyebrows were raised when the premise behind Looking for Eric was first
announced to the film trade press. A ghostly buddy movie co-starring a global
football celebrity as himself, directed by Ken Loach? Clearly Loach's Palme d'Or
for The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) must have gone to his head. And yet
the director's hand is instantly recognisable - indeed, in many respects the
film is a compilation of his favourite subjects.
Looking for Eric treats postmen such as Eric Bishop with the same sympathy as
the builders in Riff-Raff (1991) and the railwaymen in The Navigators (2001).
After Bishop comes close to a total breakdown, his colleagues stage a full-blown
therapy session that ranks alongside the football match in Kes (1969) as the
funniest scene in any Ken Loach film. An impassioned pub argument about American
financial exploitation of Manchester United recalls the collective ownership
debate in Land and Freedom (1995), and the way that naïve teenagers are
exploited by ruthless gangsters echoes Sweet Sixteen (2002), while Bishop
himself resembles Bob in Raining Stones (1993): an essentially good man out of
his depth.
But this well-trodden territory is given an unfamiliar spin when Bishop
hallucinates the appearance of football legend Eric Cantona in his bedroom.
Played, according to the credits, by 'lui-même', Cantona acts as Bishop's
guardian angel, offering him relationship advice and delivering gnomic proverbs.
It was Cantona himself who conceived the idea of acting in a Loach film, as he'd
been a keen devotee for years (Loach has always had a much bigger following in
France than in his native country). Cantona's original proposal that Loach
dramatise a real-life relationship with an obsessed fan fell through, but
screenwriter Paul Laverty devised a supernaturally-tinged alternative after
Cantona declared himself willing to send himself up.
Amusing though Cantona's appearances usually are (his wobbly trumpet
performance of 'La Marseillaise' is a particular highlight), he turns serious
when he tells Bishop that his career would have got nowhere without dedicated
teamwork. This theme, a Loach perennial, is threaded throughout the film until a
climax so visually memorable as to be almost surreal. Looking for Eric was
widely tipped to become Loach's first genuine box-office hit since Kes, but in
the event the film performed disappointingly - partly, box-office receipts
implied, because of the intense hostility to Manchester United in a number of
British cities. Clearly, teamwork can only stretch so far.
Michael Brooke
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Production stills
