One Life Stand

Single mother Trise Clarke (Maureen Carr) takes a job doing phone tarot readings in order to support her son John Paul (John Kielty), who aspires to be a model. John Paul gets work with Leanne's dodgy agency, and is soon working as an escort.

When there's a constant stream of walk-outs from the press screening, you know that a film is not much good.

The problem with One Night Stand is not with the performances. They are convincing, but limited terribly by the confines of May Miles Thomas's inept "first draft screenplay".

The writer-director-cinematographer-editor has created characters and situations that are simply an insult to working-class people.

An absent, drunken, good-for-nothing father (played by Gary Lewis of Orphans fame) is counterbalanced by an incredibly stupid and naive over-protective mother. If that wasn't enough, domestic violence gets a look in as well, when one of Trise's clients calls again and again for emotional support, running up a huge phone bill in the process, precipitating further abuse and continuing the cycle of despair.

There's a scene in the film where John Paul lands a proper acting job, playing the role of a housebreaker. At the casting he and the film-makers exchange stereotypes: this is what they want, and this is what he'll give him. I wonder if the casting of One Life Stand went along similar lines and no actor who challenged Thomas's caricatured, offensive, characters got a look in.

Yet another excruciating entry in that long line of "realistic" (ie not middle-class) British films, One Life Stand could only appeal to those with sadistic or masochistic tendencies.

One Night Stand was the first in the UK to be produced entirely digitally. Digital may be the future direction of cinema but one desperately hopes this film is not.