Mike McCahill 

NFA – review

A Memento-style puzzle underlies a cautionary tale set among Birmingham's homeless population, writes Mike McCahill
  
  

NFA
Pain and confusion … NFA Photograph: PR

The title's the acronym for No Fixed Abode, and this cautionary tale of displacement has impeccable credentials: writer-director Steve Rainbow has worked at hostels across the country, and his supporting cast are drawn from Birmingham's homeless population. A befuddled Patrick Baladi is Adam, the sometime family man who wakes up in a hostel with no memory of how he got there; his plight is framed – perhaps too conveniently – as a Memento-style puzzle, with flashbacks revealing grim truths during the trudge between makeshift shelters. It operates at a fairly low, scrappy level: there are continuity blips, and Rainbow can only assign two (representatively unsympathetic) policemen for the whole of Digbeth. Yet for once this doesn't seem inappropriate: NFA has the air of a compellingly ordinary nightmare, and its modulated conclusion brings us closer than expected to the pain and confusion of a life lived on the streets.

 

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