Been So Long review: A very likeable affair

The Camden-set musical has a sentimental and contrived plot line

Michaela Coel and Arinze Kene convince us of the intensity and sincerity of their feelings

Dir: Tinge Krishnan; Starring: Michaela Coel, Arinze Kene, George MacKay. Cert 15, 100 mins

One of the main achievements of Camden-set musical Been So Long (which plays in selected cinemas as well as on Netflix) is to have made its dingy north London settings seem so alluring. As in Jacques Demy films like The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg and The Young Girls Of Rochefort, pastel colours and music are used to transform often grim everyday reality. This is a very likeable affair, albeit one with a plot line so sentimental and contrived that it evokes memories of the most manipulative Victorian tearjerkers.

Michaela Coel stars as Simone, a single mum with a disabled daughter. She is living an austere life, keeping men well at bay. “If I want a transcending experience, I will go to a church,” she protests but is still lured out for a night on the town by the wildly hedonistic Yvonne (Ronke Adekoluejo), who tells her (in typically raunchy language) “you need to get your piece wet”. By chance, she meets the soulful, good looking Raymond (Arinze Kene), who is fresh out of prison and living with his mother. They bond over a game of draughts in a north London pub but their path towards romance is fraught. He is working as a street cleaner, trying to rebuild his life. She still carries the scars of a previous relationship and has a very low view of men in general.

Director Tinge Krishnan is helped immeasurably by her two leads. Coel (a Bafta winner for TV series Chewing Gum) is a powerful screen presence who performs the sometimes trite songs with passion and conviction. Her intensity is complemented by Kene’s laidback charm as Raymond, the amiable and buff ex-con, trying to rebuild his life. He is from way out west… he grew up in Kilburn. They joke that his electronic ankle tag is a fashion item.

As the couple’s courtship stutters, Raymond is stalked by the wild-eyed Gil (George MacKay), a delinquent who holds him responsible for the calamities in his own love life and now wants to carve him up.

The musical routines are hit and miss. “This woman has got me in a tail spin and I am not able to pull out” or “there’s a fire deep inside me and I don’t want to put out the flames,” characters will sing as we see dancers half-heartedly performing in the background. On the evidence here, Krishnan is no Stanley Donen when it comes to choreographing chorus scenes and set-pieces. Where the film does register strongly is in the inventive and lyrical use of the London locations. Whether it’s the canals, council flats, cafes or clubs or the streets themselves, every setting here is given a surprisingly romantic sheen. For once, the filmmakers aren’t interested in the cliches of social realism. Krishnan shows plenty of chutzpah in using a down-at-heel kebab shop as the setting for one of the most ambitious musical routines.

As in soap operas, the centre of community and conspiracy is the local pub. Bar Arizona, presided over by the phlegmatic Barney (Luke Norris), has seen better days. Barney is behind on his council tax payments and the business is threatened with re-possession but he’ll still let Simone drink champagne on the house and will always listen when she or Yvonne want to talk about the problems in their lives.

Some sequences here drift into extreme mawkishness. The pool hall scene, in which the men bare their souls between shots as they play the truth game with Simone’s wheelchair-bound daughter, is manipulative in the extreme. Most of the plot twists are entirely predictable. Thankfully, Been So Long also has a leavening strain of gentle and ironic humour. North London at dawn or dusk is made to look like a magical world, in spite of the rubbish-strewn streets. Coel and Kene somehow convince us of the intensity and complete sincerity of their feelings, even if they are lost in a world of Camden kitsch.