The many ends of childhood and friendship are the main concern of Ish, the striking debut film from writer-director Imran Perretta, a story of two Asian Muslim 12-year-old best friends in Luton slowly pulled apart from one another and into some semblance of adulthood. Shaken by police harassment, an endless ambient awareness of the genocide in Gaza, antisocial behaviour provoked by skeevy older boys, and the simple matter of one’s puberty progressing faster than the other, this empathetic portrait of these boys is a gently moving and nicely shot introduction to an intriguing new British talent.
As played by newcomer Farhan Hasnat, the Ish of the title is a kid from a lower-middle class household on the outskirts of Luton whose mum has recently died, leaving him to be mostly raised by his granny (Sudha Bhuchar) and older sister (Joy Crookes) as his dad (Avin Shah) works long hours at the airport. The most important relationship in Ish’s life, though, is with Maram (Yahya Kitana), his Palestinian-descended best friend, with whom Ish shares every spare moment, from after-hours FaceTimes to adventuring through the local woods where the pair are building a sort of den.
The rupture in this ultra-close and well-drawn friendship comes when a police stop-and-search operation ‘randomly’ targets the pair. Ish, who is a young 12 and could reasonably pass as a primary school kid, manages to run away and be left alone, but Maram, who is taller and deeper-voiced and unmistakably nearly a teenager, is caught and chucked in a van for interrogation. Afterwards, in his state of anger and repressed hurt and fear, Maram starts to resent Ish for not being by his side, every further interaction loaded with a new weight as the boys take out feelings they can’t process on one another.
It’s smartly written and well-played by the young cast, which is bolstered by Maram’s four older friends, who try to include Ish but can never quite ignore his kid-ness. Code-switching between their polite ‘home’ voices and their roadman slang when they’re together, they make for a deeply believable crew, though a few moments of chaotic shoplifting and general trouble-causing feel overfamiliar in a film otherwise composed of such specific character beats. Perretta is content to never really hammer home his crescendo moments, letting the kids’ own mental state and emotional unavailability speak for themselves, an admirable choice that occasionally feels a little too restrained for its own good.
A couple of small details aside (the videogames Ish and Maram play together look woefully, hilariously fake), Ish rarely belies its status as a tiny-budget British indie, Perretta’s crisp black-and-white cinematography and evocative soundtrack giving it a much grander feeling than many of its genre stablemates. Perretta has sleek and stylish instincts while remembering to give a grounded sense of place to a location that is, let’s say, uncommon to see in film (as some rival football fans chant; ‘Luton’s a shithole and I want to go home’). Though it could have done with more heft to really move you, Ish is a polished debut that promises great things from Perretta going forward.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 