It seems there are Good Boys everywhere at the moment. Not to be mistaken for the dog-led horror that has recently taken the world by storm and prompted a call for animals to receive acting nominations at the Oscars, Jan Komasa’s Good Boy is a very different type of chilling, a strange and relatively insane dark comedy gem about the unlikeliest of families.
We meet uncontrollable and volatile party animal Tommy (Anson Boon) on a night out, a real bender in which in the space of mere hours he slaps a bodyguard, takes every drug under the sun and cheats on his girlfriend in front of her. As Good Boy flashes on the screen and Tommy stumbles into the street on the verge of unconsciousness, he is seemingly abducted. Quiet Macedonian immigrant Rina (Monika Frajczyk) meanwhile takes up a role with Chris (Stephen Graham), a methodical yet gentle man looking for some extra help around the house. On her first day, the tour of his secluded countryside house include introductions to Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), his strange and muted wife who hovers like a ghost, and his overexcitable son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen), who looks like he needs a friend that aren’t his parents. Down in the cellar, there is also Tommy, chained to the ceiling by his neck.
With Good Boy, Bartek Bartosik and co-writer Naqqash Khalid have created something truly authentic in a world dictated by repetitions and version of. This is a rehabilitation film that pushes the theme to its very limits – with Tommy chained up, Chris can begin, calmly, minutely to show him the error of his ways despite his captive’s threats. It is to be a long process, one in which we as a viewer are uncertain who is at fault here. The young adult who is wasting his life away bullying children and crashing cars on TikTok, or the psychotic yet gentle and loving family who chain him up in an attempt to teach him better? There are some inadequacies in the script here at times, as Chris’ actions sometimes contradict the messaging that seems to permeate the film and his character’s intentions. Nevertheless, Graham plays strange to a tee, with his seventies serial killer glasses and toupee – there is a sense of danger about him, of a snap at any moment. And yet, he is also a loyal husband and father (a performance that sits somewhat askew with his role in Adolescence), doing his very best to run a house stuck in time by grief. Here as well, there is perhaps something slightly amiss, a missing note that might have wrapped the culminating act up more smoothly. But as Good Boy shows, rarely are families’ journeys smooth.
As Tommy, Boon is the real standout here, an amalgam of uncontrollable rage and powerful vulnerability: his spat, virulent insults and viciousness resonate just as much as his inability to sit through Ken Loach’s Kes without shedding a tear. It is clear, in the outlines of his face and eyes, that Tommy is a broken boy, and one whose background is cleverly etched into the film at the exact right moments. As he begins to loosen up, so too does his “adoptive” family – he bonds with the young Jonathan, and reads the books that Kathryn gives him. Komasa allows for a great deal of empathy to emerge here – Tommy’s neck-chain is so absurd that it becomes funny, and said absurdity is in turn lost to heartfelt and genuine connection. There are bumps in the road, some much larger than others – at times, it is unclear whether Chris and Kathryn are simply an atypical couple, or whether there is something much darker lurking underneath the surface, evident in their punishments for the children they raise. Here are the times in Good Boy in which the balance is thrown off, in which the happy dysfunctionality is suspended, and the chain once again comes to light. Through this lens, Good Boy explores the limits of education and punishment, the space in which the boundary becomes blurry. The desperately lonely and troubled come together in this reconstructed family, yet the question still remains – how much is too much? And what is the cost of and sacrifices that must be made for a family that truly, deeply loves and cherishes you?
Good Boy screened at the London Film Festival.
