Bypass
classified 15Please note: This was screened in April 2015
Duane Hopkins’ long-anticipated follow up to his 2008 debut Better Things proves well worth the wait. This is British social melodrama made uniquely personal through the prism of Hopkins’ ravishing photographic eye – its fractured, poetic narrative the perfect form for the story it delivers. Told simply, Bypass documents the breaking point in the life of Tim, a young man too physically weedy and soft-hearted to cope with the extreme demands of his life on a council estate, with a terminally ill single mother, an absent father and brother, and a wayward younger sister to care for. As Tim’s health declines and a net of troubles close around him, Hopkins’ film becomes peopled with phantoms and shadows.