As I've said before, I'm not a massive fan of the Twee Wes Anderson School of Filmmaking, I can take it or leave it (minus The Royal Tenenbaums, that, I'll take every time) and Richard Ayoade's Submarine could quite easily fall into that bracket. But there's something a little bit different about this Coming of Age comedy-drama. It's not so preoccupied with its own art direction and manages to avoid the self-conscious, or even self-absorbed nature of Ayoade's American counterpart's filmography. The malaise and gawkiness comes single-handedly from Oliver Tate, the 15 year-old protagonist, who successfully steers the film away from insipidity by channelling a certain realism on teen love - awkward and honest.
