Slideshow
LOOKING FOR ERIC
U.K., France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, 2009
Directed by Ken Loach
Written by Paul Laverty
With Steve Evets, Eric Cantona, Stephanie Bishop
Approx. 116 mins. 35mm print courtesy British Film Institute.
“Poor Eric Bishop is in a right state. He is twice divorced, and stuck with looking after the errant stepchildren from his second failed marriage. The grownup daughter from his first has just made him a grandad and it is only when he agrees to mind the baby every afternoon before handing it over to his first wife Lily, played by Stephanie Bishop, that he realises he is still in love with her. This is a man in dire need of life-coaching. A visit from Sir Alex Ferguson, with his “hairdryer” pep-talks, might have been too harsh. Fortunately, he is advised by a man with a finer and more sympathetic sense of philosophy, manhood and l’amour. King Eric Cantona therapeutically listens to Eric’s troubles and dishes out advice and plenty of those extraordinary pensées. He even gets Eric to stop sipping lager and try a little wine.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Reviews
“Here now is a most unexpected comedy appealing to world soccer fans, and based on a common enough daydream: A man's sports hero appears in his life and carries on friendly conversations with him. I call it a fantasy but Loach approaches it as if it were quite real. He uses Eric Cantona, a famed star of Manchester United, and places him right there in the room with Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) a Manchester postal worker badly in need of encouragement.”
– Roger Ebert
“The winning power of LOOKING FOR ERIC lies in this meeting of the magic and the mundane. It’s mainly a film about men — men who fail themselves, like Eric, and men who fail society, like the hoodlums we see tempting Eric’s sons into crime in the film’s less successful climactic storyline, which involves angry dogs, kidnapping, YouTube and gunplay, and feels a little out of place after the film’s quiet tête-à-tête. But then Loach and his writer Paul Laverty are nostalgists for lost causes, and this is their chance to grieve again for the changing world of work.”
– Dave Calhoun, Time Out