25/08/2023 - While it draws heavily on the “big bag of British film clichés”, Janis Pugh’s musical still manages to be an audience-pleasing winner

There’s a certain amount of familiarity one feels when approaching Janis Pugh’s Chuck Chuck Baby [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which recently had its world premiere at the “one-off” edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (see the news). A regional British setting (in this case North Wales) that has shades of The Full Monty or Billy Elliot; an unrequited love story focusing on a timid and mousy lead that evokes memories of Little Voice; musical interludes that resonate with the likes of Sunshine on Leith [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Yes, even those with just a cursory knowledge of the past few decades of British cinema will find themselves anticipating all of the narrative beats that hit with an unsurprising thud. But even if the tune – or a variation of it – has been sung many, many times before, it still can’t help but make you want to dance with glee.

Helen (Louise Brealey) is a timid woman, living under the same roof as her estranged husband, Gary (Celyn Jones), his girlfriend and the baby that the latter two have had together. Also, there is the frail Gwen (Sorcha Cusack), a mother figure for Helen and one of the few people who take an interest in her life.

At night, Helen works a shift at the chicken factory – the name of which lends the film its title – and despite a gaggle of supportive friends, a life of monotony and disappointment ensues. Enter Joanne (Annabel Scholey), Helen’s former neighbour, who has returned to clear the house following her father’s death. The two are reunited, and soon, passions that were felt two decades previously are rekindled and Helen begins to experience life anew. But with Joanne beginning to feel the same suffocating bigotry that caused her to leave in the first place, is her and Helen’s happiness at risk?

There’s a constant push and pull throughout the film between stultifying reality, and the magical realisation of hopes and dreams. The tropes of social realism – all run-down council estates and slate-grey skies – are juxtaposed with musical sequences that are energetic, colourful and free, but still grounded with their own anchor of realism as the music flits between diegetic and non-diegetic, and the characters sing along to existing tracks, rather than bursting into their own songs spontaneously. The performances are excellent, with Brealey in particular embodying such a sympathetic tone that you can’t help but root for her throughout.

Whilst the story told is well worn, its female-centred nature gives it a freshness and impetus in a genre that can sometimes be unforgiving to such characters. With Gary being the only prominent male character (he’s mostly a garish boor, but the movie affords him a certain amount of sympathy), the film is partly a paean to female friendship and togetherness, and partly an exploration of LGBQT relationships that is handled with subtlety yet a sense of gravitas.

Chuck Chuck Baby engenders an enormous amount of goodwill thanks to its winning performances and Pugh’s eye for adding the magical to the dourness of the real world. After its Edinburgh bow, the film will screen at Toronto, and it might have some theatrical traction on an international basis and find some festival success (especially at LGBQT+ gatherings).

Chuck Chuck Baby was produced by UK-based Artemisia Films, with sales handled by The Yellow Affair.