Riff-Raff is a comedy/drama with a ferocious social conscience. As seen through the eyes of a Scottish working class stiff biding time on a London construction crew, life is a dead end in which dreams can never be anything but elusive. With the system not about to give him a break, Stevie does what he can to get by: he squats in an abandoned apartment and occasionally steals something from the work site to make ends meet. (Previously, he served time for theft, which necessitates an assumed name in order to get work.) Although it’s his social status that prevents him from realizing a better life, Stevie is apolitical, unlike his gregarious co-worker, Larry. Undoubtedly, Larry is director Loach’s mouthpiece — he rails against the capitalist tyranny of Thatcherism, decries the unsafe working conditions in which he and his mates must work, and criticizes a system in which the rank and file are always under someone’s thumb. Like the angry-young-man films of the late Fifties and early Sixties, Riff-Raff doesn’t sugarcoat its working class antiheroes. They’re likable enough, but you wouldn’t necessarily trust some of them. Unlike those seminal films of the British cinema, however, the domestic drama in Riff-Raff is shrill and unmoving. Stevie’s relationship with a would-be singer, Susan, is documented as little more than a series of shouting matches. Maybe these confrontations mean to show that their relationship can never go anywhere; even so, they are progressively difficult to watch. In contrast, it is the sociopolitical bent of Riff-Raff, leavened by humor at the construction site, which is the film’s strength. By the time the movie ends in an act of vengeance against the Establishment, it’s not clear if there are any winners, but there’s no question who the losers are… and always will be. (Note: the film is subtitled, in recognition of the many ways in which to speak the Queen’s English.)
This article appears in April 23 • 1993 (Cover).
