Young Adam movie review & film summary (2004) | Roger Ebert

Two men and a woman on a barge. No one who has seen Jean Vigo's famous film "L'Atalante" (1934) can watch "Young Adam" without feeling its resonance. There cannot be peace unless the woman or one of the men leaves. In the Vigo film, newlyweds make the barge their occupation and home, and the bride feels pushed aside by the crusty old deckhand (the immortal Michel Simon). In "Young Adam," the chemistry is more lethal. The barge is owned by Ella Gault (Tilda Swinton), who has a loveless marriage with her husband Les (Peter Mullan), and has hired the young and cocky Joe Taylor (Ewan McGregor), who fancies himself a writer. It is a foregone conclusion that Joe will eventually have sex with Ella, as the barge Atlantic Eve trades on the dank canals between Glasgow and Edinburgh, circa 1960. But that's really not the movie's subject, even though it provides rich opportunities for Mullan, that intense and inward Scotsman, to underplay his rage and suppress his feelings. (At one point, as Les a

Two men and a woman on a barge. No one who has seen Jean Vigo's famous film "L'Atalante" (1934) can watch "Young Adam" without feeling its resonance. There cannot be peace unless the woman or one of the men leaves. In the Vigo film, newlyweds make the barge their occupation and home, and the bride feels pushed aside by the crusty old deckhand (the immortal Michel Simon). In "Young Adam," the chemistry is more lethal. The barge is owned by Ella Gault (Tilda Swinton), who has a loveless marriage with her husband Les (Peter Mullan), and has hired the young and cocky Joe Taylor (Ewan McGregor), wh