Now playing in limited release is a touching, bittersweet new film from veteran British director Ken Loach. Looking for Eric focuses on one beaten-down and disappointed Mancunian – Eric Bishop (Steve Evets), a hapless postman whose failures at marriage and parenthood have left him at a dead-end.
We first meet Eric driving the wrong way at a roundabout in a half-hearted attempt at suicide. When he comes home from the hospital after the inevitable crash, we discover why: he’d just seen his one true love again for the first time in years. The woman in questions is Lily, his first wife. Nearly 30 years ago they fell desperately in love, Lily got pregnant and Eric was determined to do right by her – house, family, everything. But the prospect of real responsibility suddenly overtook him. He bolted, leaving Lily on her own with the baby. It was the first of many panic attacks. Like the one on the roundabout.
After Lily, Eric remarried. His new wife Chrissie brought two sons from different relationships to the house, and when she left Eric soon after she left them there. He vowed to look after the boys, Ryan and Jess, which was fine when they were little. Now they’re teenagers and they treat Eric like a doormat, when they notice him at all. The house is a pit. Eric’s a skivvy. And to make matters worse, Ryan is falling in with some very bad company indeed, which Eric is powerless to stop.
In desperate times it takes a spliff – pilfered from Ryan – and a special friend to help a lost postman find his way, so Eric turns to his hero: footballing genius, philosopher and poster boy, Eric Cantona.
As a certain Frenchman says “He who is afraid to throw the dice, will never throw a six.”
And Eric is not without real friends, either. His fellow posties try help, thanks mainly to the efforts of ‘Meatballs’, their self-styled leader, played superbly by John Henshaw. With a little help from his friends, and Cantona (who, of course, nobody else can see), Eric plucks up the courage to approach Lily again, and over a few weeks they begin to build a relationship again.
But darker clouds are on the horizon. Ryan is getting in to trouble. Zac, a local thug, is controlling him, and just when it looks as if Eric and Lily might be getting somewhere Eric is forced to lie to her to protect Ryan. What little trust she has in him dissolves. Eric is ashamed and isolated. Eric needs to get Zac to leave Ryan alone, and to get Lily to believe in him again. But he can only do that, Cantona suggests, by trusting in his teammates and asking for help. Meatballs and the boys hatch a plan to hit Zac where it hurts: Operation Cantona. The result is a funny and touching scene where all the loose ends get tied up and our hero finds redemption.
Looking for Eric is not the greatest work in Ken Loach’s long body of work, but it’s a richly satisfying one nonethless. Even if you don’t like Man. Utd. Or even football.
Looking for Eric, IFC Films. Directed by Ken Loach.
Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes
Playing: At Laemmle’s Sunset 5, West Hollywood, and Monica 4-Plex, Santa Monica
