The Low Down: a self-indulgent paean to Cool Britannia

Few organisations within the British film industry have done more to establish themselves as part of the cinematic landscape than Film4, thanks in large part to four decades of impressively consistent branding (the company must now be entitled to take ownership, Yves Klein-style, of their preferred shade of red).

This month, it releases a slew of titles from its back catalogue on iTunes and Amazon and – perhaps recognising that iconic brands are built on more than just their hits – they’re not all canonical classics. Take 2001’s The Low Down, the largely forgotten feature debut of British director Jamie Thraves. Made around the turn of the millennium, the film was one of a rash of Blair-era paeans to the lives, loves and drinking habits of the kinds of young Londoners whose biggest problem was deciding how to kit out the Camden loft they could afford to buy with their part-time jobs “in the media”. So entirely of its era is it that it’s now something of a mesmerising time capsule.

Kate Ashfield and Aidan Gillen play mumbling lovebirds Ruby and Frank, who navigate love in the time of Loaded and affordable lager with a listless self-assurance that betrays The Low Down’s central assumption: that its audience want nothing more than to jump through the screen and join the ranks of its boho protagonists. That may have been true in 2000, but now that such characters are more likely to be written off as deluded members of a metropolitan elite, it’s a surreal sight to behold. Held up against contemporaneous outings such as Human Traffic and Late Night Shopping, The Low Down is undoubtedly a nuanced piece of work — one that nimbly treads the same low-key, emotionally complex ground that the US mumblecore movement would later colonise. Like so many of that movement’s key films, however, it’s also screamingly self-indulgent.

Made by, for and about London “creatives”, the film is most striking as a document of the British film industry’s capacity for unchecked self-regard. What are we to make, for instance, of an extended cameo from comedy duo (and latter-day national treasures) Adam and Joe? Neither looks especially comfortable playing himself, and though the film seems chuffed to have bagged them, it’s hard to imagine their presence struck too resonant a chord at the film’s various international festival berths. Now, though, with 16 years of hindsight and a cinematic landscape unrecognisable from the one in which it was created, just try to tear your eyes away from it.