Scotland on Screen: James Price

Talented Glasgow filmmaker James Price is back with Dog Days, his soulful micro-drama about a young guy from Glasgow living rough on the streets of Dundee looking for a sliver of redemption. Price tells us about some of the films that influenced the show

Interview: Jamie Dunn

Filmography (selected): Dog Days (2023), Skint (2022), Infectious Nihilism and Small Metallic Pieces of Hope (2021), ZopaDiamonds Into Dust (2021), Spiral (2019), Boys Night (2019), Concrete & Flowers (2019), CHIBBED (2017), Dropping Off Michael (2015, writer) i: instagram.com/priceyfilms

We knew James Price was a formidable writer-director thanks to short films like Boys Night, his bittersweet drama in which a young teen escorts his drunk dad home on an odyssey across Glasgow after a wild night out, and Spiral, his spiky spin on Groundhog Day set in and around a council flat in Springburn. We didn’t quite realise, however, that his talents extended to turning the cheezy dance track Set You Free by N-Trance into a heartbreaking anthem. That’s just one of the magic tricks he pulls off in Dog Days, his hugely entertaining and deeply moving new BBC drama which will be released in two formats – a six-episode series, each running ten to 13-minutes, released on iPlayer, and a 60-minute film, which screened at Glasgow Film Festival in March and will be broadcast on BBC Scotland this summer.

The story follows Zoso (Conor McCarron), a young guy from Glasgow who’s down on his luck and sleeping rough in Dundee so he can be closer to his daughter, who’s recently moved to the city with her mother. Set over a week, the show follows Zoso on several adventures, which include becoming an accidental viral sensation while busking with a stolen guitar and beginning a tentative flirtation with Grace (Lois Chimimba), a young woman who teaches at the local college. He also spends a lot of time hanging out with various colourful characters who’re trying to make their way in hardscrabble Dundee.

It’s a cracking watch, reminiscent of the films of Peter Mullan, Alan Clarke and the early work of Martin Scorsese, but there’s also a streak of openhearted romanticism to Dog Days that su ests Nancy Meyers as much as Mean Streets. We sit down with Price to get the lowdown on a few more films that influenced Dog Days

Thief (Michael Mann, 1980)

“A big part of my love for Michael Mann is his visual aesthetic. It’s something that’s not done very often in Scotland. All my big conversations with funders here are about the themes and issues and stuff, and I’m always like, ‘OK, I’ll make you your sad, gritty movies but I want to inject them with a real American style’; I just want to make them more entertaining and more visually interesting.

“Cities in Scotland do look really cinematic, and I don’t think enough people have come close yet to capturing that. The only film I can think of recently is Alia Ghafar’s short SCUZZ Alia shot at a lot of places in Glasgow I wanted to shoot at – so I was raging, actually, when I saw it – but I thought she did an amazing job of making Glasgow look cinematic; I just think we need more of that here. We can tell local stories but we should aim to shoot them with a bit of flair, you know?”

Just a Boy’s Game (John Mackenzie, 1979)

“Just a Boy’s Game is a masterpiece. I think it might be the best film on Glasgow gang culture, and it’s really underrated. But what I love about it is it’s a Play for Today film so it’s from a time when the BBC was really taking chances and being quite gutsy. That was something that I was passionate about trying to emulate with Dog Days. So like those Play for Today films, I was trying to push the envelope and make it as authentic and uncomfortable as possible, as well as being entertaining.

“Me and my director of photography, Gavin [Hopkins], really fought for an aspect ratio that’s not been shown on the BBC before. We had loads of wanky artistic reasons for using it, but my more immature reason is that it’s really close to the aspect ratio on Play for Today films like Scum and Just a Boy’s Game. I just loved the idea of having that feel from the jump. I love the stuff the BBC does now, of course – Guilt and all that – but given this was quite low budget they gave us a chance to think outside the box, and I wanted to go back to those Play to Today films, so Dog Days, in a way, is a total love letter to Just a Boy’s Game and its writer, Peter McDougall.”

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard, 2005)

“I think The Beat That My Heart Skipped is such a striking film, and I really love its central idea of a guy being caught between worlds. He’s caught up in all these dark, shady dealings and then at the same time, he’s an amazing musical artist who wants to escape this life through his music. I didn’t want to watch Audiard’s film on the run-up to Dog Days because I was scared it would influence me too much. But I remember it being in my head quite a lot, so I was definitely pinching stuff from it from memory.

“To be honest, if they ever let us make a follow-up to Dog Days, it would go even further into being similar to The Beat That My Heart Skips in terms of it following a guy who’s caught up in a cycle of revenge.”

For more films that influenced Dog Days, read the longer version at theskinny.co.uk/film

Dog Days is streaming in episode form on BBC iPlayer and will be broadcast on BBC Scotland in feature form later in 2023

Director: Davy Chou

Starring: Park Ji-min, Oh Kwangrok, Guka Han, Kim Sun-young rrrrr

Return to Seoul centres on Freddie (Park Ji-min) – a young woman born in South Korea but adopted as an infant and raised in France – who’s travelled to Seoul to seek out her biological parents. It’s a setup that initially appears to be a simple tale of self-discovery where our protagonist reconnects with her family and comes away with a fuller sense of who she is. But Davy Chou’s film is much thornier than that.

Freddie’s initial journey gives way to a series of returns, each one occurring at a different stage in her life and accompanied by a brand-new persona: now she’s a member of an edgy underground art scene, now a highpowered businesswoman, now a hardy lone traveller. No matter how much Freddie’s appearance might change,

Park’s commanding performance ensures that the character’s soul remains intact. Freddie can’t sit still, impelled to chase down a place where she belongs and also run from it.

She mocks Korean drinking customs and baulks at her biological father’s clumsy attempts to connect with her. She picks up friends and boyfriends along the way then cuts them loose on an impulse. She flies thousands of miles on a whim. She cries, year after year, when her biological mother refuses to make contact with her. Freddie is blunt, blithe and sometimes even consciously cruel. But thanks to Park’s captivating performance and the film’s own propulsive, whirling energy, we get swept up by her just as helplessly as every other Seoul resident she comes into contact with.

[Ross McIndoe]

Released 5 May by MUBI; certificate 15

Director: Chie Hayakawa

Starring: Chieko Baisho, Hayato Isomura rrrrr

The opening of Chie Hayakawa’s debut feature – based on her 2018 short – evokes a real-life 2016 tragedy: the murder of 19 care home inhabitants and the injury of 26 more in Sagamihara, Japan, by a man who believed the residents a drain on society. In her alternate vision of present-day Japan, this scarcity mindset has been magnified to the extreme as the government launches Plan 75, a scheme encouraging the country’s elderly to end their lives to relieve the burden on the young. An easy life until this euthanasia and a hefty financial bonus to make your younger relatives’ lives easier sweeten the callous deal.

Asking your elderly to kill themselves feels extreme, and Plan 75 cannot wholly avoid emotional manipulation as it follows several interlocking stories. However, Hayakawa’s script is sensitively judged, and its horrors are kept desaturated, unsensationalised, and largely out of frame in favour of the remarkably warm performances she elicits from her actors. These moments of light and levity are a poignant and effective foil to the chilling bureaucracy driving the plot.

Perhaps the insidiousness of the extremity portrayed is a wake-up call. In an almost throwaway scene, young men cheerfully test out dividing armrests to see which would best prevent the city’s homeless population from sleeping on park benches. The moment is startling but recognisable in hostile architecture worldwide. The best speculative fiction is fact taken to its extreme conclusion. In its pointed observation, Plan 75 echoes Cuarón’s Children of Men. One hopes it proves more warning than prophecy.

[Carmen Paddock]

Released 12 May by Curzon; certificate 15

Director: Felix van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch

Starring: Luca Marinelli rrrrr

The Eight Mountains is a soaring platonic romance following the ironclad bond between city boy Pietro and montanaro Bruno, who find common ground in the stillness of Grana, Piedmont, and its surrounding mountains. Pietro spends family holidays in Bruno’s secluded village, with the teens measuring each other up and soothing their peculiar lonelinesses. After losing touch and being drawn back to one another, these boys-turned-men – now played by Martin Eden’s Luca Marinelli as narrator Pietro and Alessandro Borghi as Bruno – rekindle their sturdy, no-nonsense and accepting connection.

Committed not to repeat the mistakes of their fathers and yet tragically bound to, the two protagonists handle their connection with the utmost reverence, each not fully realising their place in the world lies in the friendship they forged many summers prior. Ruben Impens’ camera captures them chipping away at their silence in the dumbfounding vastness of the Alps, with the long pauses aptly filled by Daniel Norgren’s quiet folk ballads. Their relationship is a sacred land where there isn’t room for others. Absent dads, caring mothers, and feisty female figures are roughly sketched; peripheral characters who will never truly understand the rules of the boys’ game and those of their beloved alpine peaks. With a runtime that, at times, feels as long as an unforgiving winter, The Eight Mountains is occasionally weighed down by Marinelli’s voiceovers. Once you get to the other side, the promise of snow melting to reveal a fresh start proves to be well worth the wait. [Stefania

Sarrubba]

Released 12 May by Picturehouse; certificate 12A

The Blue Caftan

Director: Maryam Touzani

Starring: Saleh Bakri, Lubna Azabal rrrrr

With just two films under her belt, Moroccan director Maryam Touzani’s penchant for delving into the complexities of characters trapped in societal conventions is evident. Her latest, The Blue Caftan, is a poignant exploration of human emotions set within the confines of an oppressive society.

Through a powerful use of subtle glances and profound silences, Touzani convincingly portrays the repressed desire that Halim (a remarkable Saleh Bakri), a middleaged tailor, feels towards his young male apprentice, Youssef (Ayoub Missioui). While this repressed desire bubbles, Mina (a fantastic Lubna Azabal), Halim’s wife and fellow shop worker, is grappling with a serious illness. But despite Halim’s lack of desire towards Mina, their relationship is portrayed with unwavering

Touzani adeptly balances both storylines, cleverly avoiding didactic speeches and instead creates a melancholic yet authentic portrayal of the injustices in Moroccan society, free from sentimentalism. While the film may not break new ground, it’s part of a well-intentioned body of queer cinema that seeks to combat intolerance.

With a keen eye for capturing emotion and skilful performances from the cast, Touzani approaches the subject matter with sensitivity and purpose, creating a film that is crafted with care that should appeal to a wide audience. The Blue Caftan serves as a compelling indication of Touzani’s talent and vision as a filmmaker, showcasing her humanity in tackling complex themes. With bolder storytelling and less conventional narratives in the future, Touzani could emerge as a major voice in African cinema. [Fernando García]

Released 5 May by New Wave; certificate 12A