"You look nasty," the barely-teenaged runaway Joanne (Georgia Groome) tells her protector Kelly (Lorraine Stanley) in the opening scenes of London to Brighton, Paul Andrew Williams' sordid tale of two abused women on the run. Joanne is right: Kelly's ripped sweater is stained with sweat and spit, her hair is dirty, her lips are caked with blood and her left eye swollen shut with a fresh bruise that has yet to turn any colors.
"Nasty" is also a good word to describe London to Brighton itself. As we learn through a series of flashbacks, Joanne and Kelly are on the train to the coast to escape from Kelly's pimp Derek (Johnny Harris), who had arranged for Joanne to sleep with a rich client (Alexander Morton.) Gruesome murder ensues, and now the client's son (Sam Spruell) is cutting people's legs with a razor blade to find the girl. From there, things get a lot worse.
I wish I could tell you what moved Williams to make London to Brighton, but the truth is that I don't have the slightest idea. The film masquerades as grim social realism but contains too many genre beats to convince. For all the horrors on display, there aren't any of the illicit pleasures of a real slasher film.
In Christian Mungiu's 4 Months , 3 Weeks , and 2 Days, the heroines' torturous journey serves to illuminate a time and a place, and it does it with grace and humanity. London to Brighton contents itself with showing women suffer. Nasty.
***
London to Brighton (2008): Opens February 8, 2008 in limited release; 1 hr. 23 min, Not Rated.
