Colours

"Your mum is an iguana" isn't the most striking line in Colours but it's close. A devised drama created with the input of inmates of an un-named Scottish Prison who then star in the work created from seven weeks of workshopping, Colours is a good film, eye-opening, but perhaps more to be commended as a project than as a work alone.

Made with the assistance of Barnardo's, at the subsequent Q&A it was made clear the filmmakers were "really proud of them all", and well they should be. The titular 'colours' are the unnatural hues of shower-gels and sports-drinks, serving as decoration in sparse cells. Used as currency, bartered and gambled for, they're part of a complex but well-illustrated power-dynamic within the wing. There's a great deal of strong language, but you can hear as much on Glasgow Queen Street's Low Level trains on a wet Friday night and it helps with the air of verité. The subtitles are a bit more problematic, incomplete transcription is fair enough as many of the fucks are not given as anything but vernacular intensifier, but italicising 'colours' seems to belabour the point.

It's a good wee film. That the 14 who started the project all participated to completion makes it more charming. The performances aren't polished, but one cannot fault them - the guard ("screw", in the words of the producer) is played by their acting coach, and so the eye being kept on them is doubly weighted.

Graham Fitzpatrick directs and wrote on the basis of the workshops, and its tonal distinctions from the genre of prison films aren't massive, but it is its genesis from within a jail that gives Colours its strength. It feels real because it's grounded in the real, and one cannot help but hope for the best for all involved.