California Schemin’ review: James McAvoy’s' cautionary tale, done with real panache'

California Schemin’ (15) ****

The Drama (15) ****

Father Mother Sister Brother (15) ****

Seamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley in California Schemin'

The Stranger (15) ***

Marking the directorial debut of James McAvoy, California Schemin’ turns the true story of a pair of aspiring Scottish rappers’ misbegotten efforts to expose the hypocrisy of the music industry into a sly, funny and poignant exploration of friendship, identity and artistic integrity.

Based on the memoir of the same name by Gavin Bain (played here by newcomer Séamus McLean Ross), the film follows him and his former best friend Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley) as they reinvent themselves as an obnoxious California rap duo called Silibil N’ Brains after their efforts to break into the music industry using their own accents are met with indifference and humiliation.

Though McAvoy wastes no time getting us on their side by presenting Gavin and Billy as a couple of high-rise dwelling outsiders who use music and humour to escape the drudgery of their call-centre day jobs in Dundee, their us-against-the-world bravado – reinforced by the presence of Billy’s sarcastic, no-nonsense girlfriend Mary (the excellent Lucy Halliday) – quickly crumbles when they’re derisively compared to The Proclaimers at a talent showcase in London in the early 2000s. That’s the catalyst for their outlandish scheme to expose the industry for its perceived bigotry.

Indya Moore in Father Mother Sister Brother

But what starts as a lark quickly turns dark when a record company offers their American alter-egos a deal and the lure of success, not to mention the burden of lying 24/7, starts chipping away at their relationships, their psyches and whatever point it is they’re trying to make.

It’s a story full of irony and McAvoy – who casts himself as the blowhard Scottish owner of the (fictional) record company that signs them – never falls into the trap of turning it into a simplistic sticking-it-to-the-man caper film.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t crowd-pleasing moments (literally in the case of a rousing Barrowland gig). But he’s also tapping into something a little deeper. A mural depicting Ewan McGregor’s “It’s shite being Scottish” rant from Trainspotting becomes a sly motif for Gavin’s more pronounced inferiority complex, and the film navigates the complex racial dynamics of the industry in a light touch way via boys’ relationship with Tess (Rebekah Murrell), the talent scout who vouches for them and finds her own career compromised as a result. It’s a cautionary tale, done with real panache.

Frustratingly not screened for critics in Scotland last week, alleged controversy magnet The Drama turns out to be a spiky satirical rom-com that uses a hot-button issue as a Trojan horse to attack the conventions of coupledom in a social media age where perfect-seeming lives can be easily derailed by uncomfortable truths.

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play Emma and Charlie, an affluent young couple whose imminent nuptials are disrupted by the revelations that come out in a drunken game of “What’s the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done?” Though Charlie and their married friends Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim) cheerfully confess to some ill-advised behaviour that actually impacted other people’s lives, they’re collectively shocked by a confession from Emma about something she didn’t actually go through with as a teenager, but did get pretty far into planning.

This unacceptable thought crime – it’s too much of a spoiler to reveal in a review – immediately recasts her in a disturbing new light, forcing her and Charlie into a downward spiral of doubt, paranoia, hypocrisy and terrible behaviour as the performative fairytale of their upcoming wedding starts to unravel. Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario), the end result is sharp, funny and excruciating in equal measure.

Veteran indie auteur Jim Jarmusch delivers another deadpan delight with Father Mother Sister Brother. A triptych of tales interlinked by a desire to explore the awkward relationship between parents and their grown-up children, it starts in upstate New York with Jarmusch regular Tom Waits as a deceptively ramshackle father being visited by his straight-laced son and daughter (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik). Then it’s over to Dublin, where Charlotte Rampling’s veteran novelist is having her dreaded annual visit from her grown-up daughters (Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps). Next is Paris, where Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat play twins coming to terms with the recent death of their boho parents. In each segment the children turn out to be more conventional than their enigmatic elders – a joke Jarmusch has a lot of fun with while surreptitiously building to a more profound understanding of the sometimes ephemeral nature of family.

The Stranger sees the mercurial and prolific François Ozon return with an adaptation of Albert Camus’ existential novella about a killer (Benjamin Voisin) indifferent to everything around him.

Set in 1930s’ Algeria, Ozon filters Camus’ text through a more modern understanding of colonialism so his protagonist’s outlook can now be read as a proxy for France’s frosty relationship with its former colony. That makes for a similarly frosty viewing experience, albeit one enhanced by Manuel Dacosse’s stark monochrome cinematography.

California Schemin', Father Mother Sister Brother, The Stranger and The Drama are all in cinemas now​