Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Fil Freitas
Starring: Fil Freitas, Dusty Keeney, Ricardo Freitas, Lauren Shotton, Kevin Johnson, Lisa Marie Flowers, Sergio Barba, Bronte Appleby, Robert Smith
A labour of fervent love painstakingly put together over several years, writer/director/producer/editor/craft-service/actor Fil Freitas' The Regulars is an ambitious micro-budget indie set in London's renowned Prince Charles Cinema, with the hang out narrative following an open to close day at work in the noted film house. Funny enough, for about 20 minutes I did actually work in a cinema, too. It was a chain affair though, and therefore not quite the PCC: a legendary rep theatre dedicated to midnight screenings, 35mm cult marathons and screening The Room once a month (people still find it amusing?!). I look back on that gap-period with profound affection, though. When you are that young (along with most of your co-workers) there is a noir-ish glamour about working nights; the thrill of leaving work at half-eleven and going straight out to clubs, the next morning non-existent. Gig-economy jobs always entail camaraderie, but in the cinema there was the shared interest in films too (it's not like employees in McDonalds have an enduring interest in fries or whatever), so when we weren't all watching movies en masse for free, a lot of down time was whiled away talking about cinema (or, as per the demographic, gossiping about who was sleeping with who that week...). In many ways it was the best job in the entire world.
Not that you'd guess from The Regulars, which, being filmed in appealing monochrome with real life locations and (good) amateur actors, begins firmly within the Clerks mode, and initially focusses on the surliness of its personnel juxtaposed with the projected, aggressive idiocy of the cinema's patrons. The fealty to Kevin Smith is highlighted with a close up of the erstwhile Cop-Out filmmaker's cut out face (irl the cinema has a toilet cubicle named in his honour) along with vintage background posters of stuff like Chasing Amy. Steeped in an incongruous Gen-X solipsism/nostalgia (there's even a reference to Bill Hicks), a The Regulars character states that customers should have the empathy to realise that the cinema worker at the box office, behind the concessions stand, scooping the screen doesn't always want to be there. Well, no. That's why it's called work! And they say nurses have it bad, etc... However, while the "I shouldn't even be here" approach may rankle, The Regulars' opening - both the style and tone - becomes an essential feature of Freitas' broader reflections in a film which finds its deeper purpose as it goes along.
Despite initial approbation, the lachrymose charm of The Regulars wins over, especially when Freitas gets closer to the thwarted ambitions and frustrations which thematically power his film. Via Freitas' alter-ego Fil, a boyish and likeable enough slacker (he's late because a fridge blocked his doorway, doesn't bother cleaning up a dead rat in the screen, etc), we amble through the film dipping in and out of various ongoing plot trails/sketches: an indecisive couple on a date, a drunk, a customer taking a noisy shit (in the Smith cubicle?). In real life Freitas seems a lovely fella, and you have to respect the achievement of making such a coherent and good-looking movie on a frayed Converse lace (If I had a popcorn kernel for every back in the day co-worker who said they were going to make a film, etc), and The Regulars deserves a fair review, not just a pat on the head. While it's inarguable that the film has its longueurs and the post-Clerks stuff grates, there are highly fetching aspects to The Regulars, not least of all in the lovely soundtrack (composed of songs from musical PCC members/affiliates): a standout sequence has an usher playing a piano in an empty screen (a major interest of the film is the untapped potential of its characters). The bts sequences of the day to day running of a cinema are intriguingly authentic, with the cinematography making the most of the PCC's confined interiors (this is the thing about actual London - everything is so cramped and small) and featuring a bravura tracking shot through crowds dressed and excited for a showing of The Sound of Music taking in the bar, box office and screen. An irresistible flex, but the execution is no less impressively immersive for it.
Among the wankers who work at the cinema (literally - we are treated to a boast from a co-worker who, when he was employed by a chain cinema, went into a screen and masturbated over the seats in a J.G. Ballard Cinema Paradiso rewrite surely no one could be amused by - and which probably does nothing to help the worthy and ongoing Save the Prince Charles campaign...) the most interesting is usher Dusty (Dusty Keeney), Fil's romantic interest in the film. Not only because her photogenia makes her look a bit film starry (an image helped by her amazing leopard print coat), but also for her story which involves a thwarted promotion (the bosses "pick favourites" and "have no loyalty": plus ça change...). It intrigues because it focuses the ideology of the film, reinforcing this abiding sense of being stuck in a certain context. For some people, the film hints, stagnation suits: it is the world around which is out of pocket, not their reluctance to develop along with it (The Regulars with its pedigree of Smith and Jarmusch is a throwback, a stark visualisation of this theme). Fil ignores Dusty's anxiety about the promotion, and her upset at the adverse decision, being more concerned with mocking a customer or whatever. His arc culminates when he apologises to her, a scene in which Freitas recalibrates the ramshackle humour and homage of what has come before and inculcates a bittersweet maturity. The scene is neatly punctuated by the screen lights going down, the concession lights shutting down, the foyer lights going off: a montage of strikingly melancholic cinema.
In its third act, there is a clearer sense of Freitas' push/pull relationship with his circumstance, a need to romanticise along with a growing frustration. A character remarks that the PCC is a "waiting room of ambition," a sentiment which may be uncomfortably resonant with The Regulars' intended audience, of which I am a member. Since leaving, I've been to the Odeon in Cardiff Bay precisely once in the intervening years (tempted by a double showing of Hellraiser and Hellbound), the reason for my avoidance being an irrational anxiety of seeing someone who I used to work with still there, still cleaning the screens, still working the nights, but now with Gen Z kids around them who don't even care that much about films these days, let alone his Criterion edition of There Will Be Blood. The terror that for the grace of a few good decisions and even better fortune, it could still be me. It's perhaps little wonder that The Regulars resonated so.
The Regulars is in UK cinemas from August 22nd.
