STELLA DOES TRICKS

SYNOPSIS:
Stella (MacDonald) lives with several other girls in a low-rent B&B belonging to her pimp, Mr Peters (Bolam) who treats her with an unpredictable mixture of kindness and cruelty. She goes from one low rent client to another, haunted by childhood memories of her stand up comedian father McGuire (Stewart) and strict Auntie Aileen (Joyce Henderson) in Glasgow. When her best friend Belle (Faulkner) is attacked by a local drug dealer, Fitz (Serkis), Stella sets out to take revenge, accompanied by her new-found hustler boyfriend, Eddie (Matheson). Peters gets wind of her exploit and offers her a choice: clean up her act and stay – or leave. She leaves, but Peters makes a cruel example of her. Distraught, Stella shacks up with Eddie, and drags him to Glasgow with her, where she seeks revenge.

"The cinematic devices used in this saddening film are effective and valid, a mixture of flash-back and fantasy, evoking both past events and present imaginings. This is metaphorically appropriate, since the dramatic touch-points of the relationship between the teenage Stella and her older man pimp/controller rely on their disparate and desperate needs for ‘dreams’. Nick Bicat’s evocative score for soul-o guitar (insistently reminiscent of Neil Young’s work for Jim Jarmusch’s memorable, Dead Man) is stirring. However, despite these blessings and the stand out performances, the film ultimately falls short of delivering us out of the darkness, partly because of its obfuscating ending, a case perhaps of trying too hard. The ugliness surrounding Stella, her unfortunate start in life and unlucky progress through it, make for downbeat viewing, but with no real sense of a journey to make it worthwhile. Of course it has relevance by the bucketful, its Glaswegian bleakness thrust at the screen with drug-loaded carelessness. But that – indeed, all of that – is not always enough to create a film that masters its subject, giving us a new insight into the human condition. I’ve already seen what there is in Stella Does Tricks, and I don’t mean to be a smart-arse cynic; it’s just that in Stella’s story, I find nothing that teaches me more than I already know. It does not fire my imagination. I feel sad for her – but that is not the point."
Andrew L. Urban