Radio On

Radio On

(Plexifilm)

England's dreaming, 1979. The line between punk and New Wave is where director Christopher Petit finds the Radio On, with co-producer Wim Wenders and cinematographer Martin Schäfer as the illuminating black-and-white lens. Through it we see late-Seventies Britain, bleak and static, from the buildings and the streets to its citizens. Combine that with the story of a stoic London DJ on a trip to Bristol to sort out his brother's suicide, plus sparse dialogue, and Radio On isn't the most engaging film. The saving grace is its soundtrack, opening with Bowie's "Heroes" (which, halfway through, begins in German) as it plops us in a gloomy apartment. Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity" drives us around endlessly winding highways and half-finished buildings, while Robert Fripp's "Urban Landscape" dots the skyline of another anonymous city, and Wreckless Eric's "Whole Wide World" spins the news of murder and pornography rackets spewed from every radio. The additional "remix" finds Petit revisiting the sites nearly 30 years later and wondering if we're all still dreaming.