THE NORTHERN soul scene has (unless you’re a 52-year-old from Wigan) remained a somewhat unexplored footnote in British pop-cultural history. Fervent music fans will know that, in the early 1970s, kids from the Potteries, wearing sports tops and pointed shoes, spun sweatily to raw records from obscure corners of the US soul scene. But the movement has spawned little literature or drama.
Shimmy Marcus's modest treatment of the subject must, therefore, be regarded as seriously overdue. The Irish director, known for H eadrush and Aidan Walsh: Master of the Universe, makes a decent fist of his brief. Working with a tiny budget, he has constructed a neat, undemanding story that fairly reeks of 1970s effluvium.
Ken Loach regular Martin Compson stars as a Stoke resident who, as the film opens, has begun to appreciate the pleasures of leaping around badly ventilated dance halls to the sounds of Detroit and Chicago.
The personal dilemmas he faces are the usual ones – will it be the nice ordinary girl (Felicity Jones) or the slightly slinkier, more sophisticated vamp (Nichola Burley)? – and the eventual solutions are as expected. But the film has enough warmth and good nature to distract from its weary conventionality.
Soulboyis worth watching for Pat Shortt's turn as a lovelorn Tom Jones fan. An irresistibly tender presence, Shortt steals every scene without even trying.
