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LAST RESORT Send This Review to a Friend
The most unpretentious and tightly executed films are sometimes the strongest, as is the case with "Last Resort," a moving story of a Russian mother's efforts to find a home for herself and her 10-year-old son in England. In following her plight we are escorted into the realm of hapless refugees, bureaucratic red tape and life in a run-down seacoast resort, as well as a developing relationship that most likely has nowhere to go.
Writer-director Paul Pawlikowski's drama has numerous elements going for it in addition to its fine script. There is the locale, called Stonehaven but shot in Margate, rendered bleak and realistic and providing a convincing background against which the tension-filled events unfold. Actress Dina Korzun as the divorced Tanya, who, with her son, comes to England to meet her boyfriend but is left stranded at the airport. Korzun beautifully projects a combination of desperation and determination, as well as the situation of a mother struggling to do the right thing but having to compromise herself. Tanya is emotionally wounded and reluctant to open herself to further hurt, yet urgently in need of tenderness and help. Korzun gets all of this right.
As her son, Artriom Strelnikov is interesting to watch in his fine performance as he combines his street-smarts with anger. He both needs his mother and wants to protect her, but is fed up with being dragged along through the various mistakes she has made in her life. His own salvation demands that he also look out for himself. Paddy Considine as Alfie further strengthens the drama after he meets Tanya when she is sent to the coastal town to live in a seedy building housing refugees kept in limbo for too long as their applications are processed. Alfie, a former boxer, manages an amusement arcade and calls bingo games, and little by little he builds a relationship with Tanya, who comes to develop an affection for him and also trust him.
There is a heartbreaking sequence in which Tanya, struggling to survive, takes a job to be filmed for a producer of internet porn. But she can't handle such sleaze even though she feels justified in doing what she has to support herself and her boy. Involvement with the pornographer leads to further complications, both for her son and for Alfie. What's to become of the trio? The film moves stoically toward a critical point at which decisions must be made. By then you are likely to be totally involved in the characters with a stake of your own in hopes for their future. A Shooting Gallery Film Series at Loews Cineplex Entertainment release.
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