Treacle Jr. Review

If Mike Leigh’s Naked had been made by a less misanthropic director, the results might look something like Jamie Thraves’ self-funded third film. For undisclosed reasons, Tom (Tom Fisher) walks out on his family and heads to London, where he runs into the slow-witted but eternally optimistic Aidan (Aidan Gillen), whose unshakeable joie de vivre is difficult to resist. Gillen, who starred in Thraves’ similarly improvisational first feature The Low Down, shines so brightly as the effervescent Aidan that Fisher and Riann Steele (as Aidan’s feisty flatmate) have trouble keeping up. But like Aidan, the film has a big heart, and a refreshingly uncondescending attitude to one of society’s misfits.