Submarine

Submarine understands the embarrassment of being young and convinced that nobody else has thought quite so hard about being alive. Richard Ayoade’s adaptation of Joe Dunthorne’s novel is a funny, affectionate film, and we recommend it with one reservation: some of its visual jokes distract from the performances. Oliver Tate has decided that his first romance and his parents’ marriage require his intervention. Craig Roberts makes that confidence recognisably adolescent, with just enough doubt behind it to stop Oliver becoming a collection of jokes about a precocious boy.

The voice-over matters because Oliver can explain himself much more fluently than he can deal with anybody else. The kiss under the bridge made us wince in recognition. Oliver’s elaborate self-explanations have done little to prepare him for being close to Jordana Bevan. Yasmin Paige gives Jordana enough independence to make his account of their relationship seem incomplete, and the romance benefits from that difference between them.

Erik Wilson photographs that bridge kiss with the care Oliver would want for a defining romantic occasion. The comedy survives because the young people inside the picture are still awkward. Gary Williamson’s production design gives the 1980s setting a believable everyday scale, helping the family scenes stay close to ordinary domestic life. That helps when Oliver’s imagination starts making his problems seem larger than they are.

Editors Nick Fenton and Chris Dickens keep the narration and fantasy sequences brisk enough to suggest a mind racing ahead of its experience. The changes in pace are funny, though the film sometimes seems reluctant to leave a scene alone once its point is clear. The music by Andrew Hewitt and Alex Turner allows some tenderness into Oliver’s relentless assessment of his progress. The soundtrack lets a feeling linger after we have understood the joke.

The parents benefit from being played by Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins, who make Lloyd Tate and Jill Tate seem to have lives Oliver cannot read. He approaches their marriage as if knowing that something is wrong qualifies him to put it right. The adult performances keep that assumption from becoming the film’s own. Their scenes are touching because the uncertainty is allowed to belong to the parents, too, rather than existing solely to complicate their son’s growing up.

Richard Ayoade is sometimes as pleased with a comic idea as Oliver is with a theory. We can still be thinking about a visual joke when we should be listening to an awkward conversation. Among coming-of-age comedies, this is unusually alert to the vanity of the clever outsider, though it sometimes rewards him too readily for being amusing. We would welcome a little less invention and a little more time with the actors. Watch it with someone who knew you at fifteen, if relations are still cordial.