With all respect to Craig Roberts’ great performance as Oliver, Jordana (Yasmin Paige) may be the best thing about Submarine. Submarine follows two subplots: Oliver’s quest to win and keep Jordana (and lose his virginity), and his fear that his parents’ marriage is falling apart. There’s a strong whiff of Holden Caulfield around Oliver, so it comes as no surprise when he suggests that his girlfriend, Jordana, reads Catcher in the Rye and Nietzsche, “So that we can have some things in common.” Jordana replies, witheringly, “What makes you think I’d want to be like you?” Oliver lacks insight into just how annoying his pretentiousness can be. Early in the film, to brace himself for a day of school, he fantasizes how crushed the entire community – in fact, the entire country of Wales – would be if he were to die. Oliver is an unpopular kid and he knows it, but that may be in part because he can’t control his long, digressive speeches – even in class – and he is, very much, the star of his own imagined movie. He’s not exceptionally handsome – has, instead, a certain puckish look to his features matched with eyes that look like he could use a good, long rest. Submarine is a coming-of-age film set in Wales and starring a remarkable young actor named Craig Roberts as a high schooler named Oliver. Maybe Wes Anderson owes some things to Hal Ashby, but whatever the lineage behind Submarine, it’s sad, funny, just weird enough, a little precious, and has Sally Hawkins, to boot. Then again, I saw a reviewer compare Submarine to Harold and Maude, and that feels just right. I love Wes Anderson films, so even if it feels a bit stylistically derivative, I’m a sucker for Submarine. Above all, the grandiose teenage boy at the center of Submarine is as Wesandersonesque a figure as you can get. The wistful pop songs, the eccentric characters, the title cards, the montages, the depressive-comic tone, even the uniforms (the two central characters are almost always dressed in overcoats – one red, one blue). It was impossible to watch Richard Ayoade’s Submarine without thinking of Wes Anderson films.
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