4 February 2021

Fyzal Boulifa's Lynn + Lucy (2020)

 

This film concerns two young women – Lynn (Roxanne Scrimshaw) and Lucy (Nichola Burley) – who live in Harlow, Essex, and have been friends since they were very young: at school there were suggestions made that they were lesbians. They now live oppoosite each other on a new housing estate. 

They are opposites in a number of ways – Lynn is introverted, wears dull clothing, and married young with a daughter Lola (Tia Nelson); Lucy is the partying kind, wears her hair blue and usually has a silver Puffa jacket. Lucy lives with her boyfriend Clark (Samson Cox-Vinell), and doesn't seem too happy to be the mother of baby boy Harrison.

Lynn sweeps the floor and makes tea for the customers in a hairdresser's, although her loyalty to Lucy will soon be severely tested when Harrison (actually her godson) is shaken to death: Clark or Lucy? Locals paint their opinion of the couple in huge letters – on Clark and Lucy's front door: 'FUCK OFF', on their car: 'SEE YOU IN HELL'. The hairdresser gives Lynn her first opportunity to cut someone's hair when Lucy walks in the salon: she hacks it off, and the shorn Lucy goes home to kill herself.

A startlingly realistic film of a working-class community, which is Fyzal Boutifa's first feature.

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