Maybe he was kidding, but director Clio Barnard recently described "Ali & Ava" as his chance to make a "social realist musical." The phrase, which escaped me during a BFI London Film Festival interview, struck me as something of an oxymoron at first: How is it that a harsh, realistic portrayal of a struggling working-class English couple coexists with the most surreal of film genres? But in light of the end result, Barnard's ambition makes perfect sense. The film's two main characters don't burst into song out of nowhere, but instead listen to music as an escape from their everyday stresses. It is the force that unites them.
Equal parts weariness and good cheer for British Pakistani actor Adeel Akhtar ("Four Lions"), Ali is a Yorkshire-based ex-radio DJ who gravitates toward dance and electronic music. An Irish transplant to the region, Ava (Claire Rushbrook) is more of an old-school folk and country fanatic. The two characters are separated by an age difference, a class divide, a difference in cultures, and their incompatible taste in music, and yet love crosses all those barriers.
Stars: Adeel Akhtar, Claire Rushbrook, Ellora Torchia
At the end, they each listen to each other's favorite songs, a gradual coming together that reminded me of the gesture that made Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" so effective. There, John Cusack played a music snob who goes from giving her crush a mix tape full of her favorite songs to making one full of tracks he knows she'll love. That step shows that he has matured enough to put himself in his place. Similarly, the beauty of the small but charming “Ali & Ava” comes from seeing these two souls lean towards each other, evolving for the better in the process.
A native of Northern England, Barnard has been making films in and around the city of Bradford since her stunning 2010 debut, "The Arbor," a high-concept documentary portrait of local playwright Andrea Dunbar. That movie acknowledged the toughness of the community as it hovered over it, putting a stylized distance between the audience and the world it represented. In his three subsequent narrative features, however, Barnard embraced real-life grungy naturalism, following in the tradition of England's great kitchen sink playwrights (Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Ken Loach, etc.) and it is this format the one she is looking for. to expand with the still established "Ali & Ava".
Like "The Arbor" and Barnard's equally great "The Selfish Giant," this latest film takes place in Bradford, where we find Ali climbing on the roof of her car and dancing her frustrations out in the fog. Ali is a Pakistani immigrant still living with future ex-wife Runa (Ellora Torchia), as neither of them quite know how to break the news to their parents that the relationship is over. The couple wanted to be parents, but they lost the baby, and now the house they share feels like the loneliest place in England.
Strong but sensitive, and a five-time grandmother, Ava works as a classroom assistant at a Bradford primary school. Her husband died a year earlier, and despite regular interactions with her children, including needy adult son Callum (Shaun Thomas), she has never felt more isolated. For those who recognize Rushbrook (the actor who plays Ava) as the daughter of Brenda Blethyn in Mike Leigh's "Secrets & Lies" a quarter of a century ago, there is the satisfying suggestion that here she has grown up and become the maternal role: a mother whose children cannot seem to understand that her personal life might contain some dimension beyond them.
Ali and Ava meet on a typical day after school. She's picking up the girl who lives in the apartment she rents from hers, her immigrant parents, Ava is waiting with her in the rain, and in a spontaneous act of kindness, Ali offers Ava a ride. Her home is across Bradford in Holme Wood, a council estate where taxis refuse to go, as residents are notorious for throwing rocks at strangers' cars. The first memorable use of music in the film comes when her car is being bombed. Ali puts on a song by MC Innes, the neighborhood favorite, and suddenly the hostiles have dropped their rocks and are dancing.
The next time Ali and Ava meet, he has her headphones on and she has people playing on her headphones. With just a little ingenuity, they find a way to enjoy their conflicting musical preferences in each other's company.