You have to remember that before Steve McQueen became a 'film' director of features like "Hunger", "Shame" and "12 Years A Slave" he was a Turner Prize-winning video artist and "Lover's Rock", the second of his five "Small Axe" films, seems less of a traditional film as it is a fully immersive video installation in which his camera is continually moving around a series of dancing bodies while the extraordinary soundtrack turns this into an almost continuous and utterly sublime music video. Of course, if that's all "Lover's Rock" was it might perhaps merit a special mention somewhere down the line but McQueen is much more than just a great visual artist. As his earlier features have shown, he is one of the great social chroniclers of life in the UK, (see "Hunger") and of the Black experience, (see "12 Years A Slave" and these "Small Axe" films).
"Lover's Rock" takes place at a house party in West London over the course of one night and in just seventy minutes of screen time McQueen opens up the lives of these party-goers in just a few short, sharp scenes while never deviating from the music. This is one of the great musicals that isn't strictly a 'musical' and anyone who's ever been to a house-party will know the euphoria on the screen first-hand. Magnificently acted by a cast who are not really acting at all, brilliantly photographed by Shabier Kirchner and superbly directed this is among the best seventy minutes of film I have seen this year.
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