Filled with rows, romance and sexual adventure, this story of an uproarious celebration in 80s west London is an audacious, euphoric experience
A monsoon of musical and sexual rapture bursts overhead in this film from director Steve McQueen, leaving condensation-sweat running down the walls and my cinematic pleasure going through the roof. It is co-scripted by McQueen with the writer and musician Courttia Newland, superbly designed by Helen Scott and gorgeously shot by Shabier Kirchner: a novella-sized feature that is part of an interrelating five-film series by McQueen called Small Axe for the BBC.
Lovers Rock is an amazing, real-time urban pastoral, set in Ladbroke Grove, west London, over a single evening at a house party in 1980. Young people of first- and second-generation West Indian background show up – handing over a 50p entry fee on the door, paying extra for food and drink from the kitchen, lining up on the stairs for the lavatory, hanging out on the sofas dragged out into the back garden for intimate interludes, and dancing for hours in a rammed front room to the sound system’s sternum-shuddering lover’s rock, soul and reggae.
