Kevin Allen's debut feature Twin Town, in competition at Berlin, has already provoked another of those furious spats about censorship that seem to bedevil any remotely
controversial film slated for UK release.
In what now appears a well-rehearsed ritual, politicians and right-wing commentators have queued up
to denounce the film. Liberal Democrat MP David Alton said it "sounds sordid and squalid, plunging new depths of depravity", while a psychiatrist who advises the Home Office is on record complaining about its possible effect on impressionable "male adolescents". As usual, most of the critics haven't seen the film and, as usual, their real spleen is reserved not for the filmmakers but for the British Board Of Film Censors (BBFC), who passed it uncut.
Allen himself refused to be drawn into what he believes is a specious debate. "It's just political scaremongering. It's a typical case of a rent-a-quote MP
interfering when he clearly hasn't seen the film. It's laughable. I hope it will go away once the film is actually released."
However, other observers are less sanguine about the implications of yet another concerted assault on the BBFC in the wake of the row about David Cronenberg's Crash, yet to be awarded a certificate, and Peter Greenaway's The Baby Of Macon, which was reported to Scotland Yard after its first British TV screening last month. "It seems likely that a re-elected Conservative Government would abolish the BBFC altogether and replace it with a statutory body," suggested Nick James, deputy editor of Sight and Sound. Such a body will presumably operate behind closed doors. A better idea, James argued, would be for films to be dealt with under the Obscene Publications Act. "At least then the debate would be out in the open." Geoffrey Macnab
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