I've Been Trying to Tell You
2021
Music

I've Been Trying to Tell You
2021
Music
Plot summary
Do you look back on the optimism of the 1997-2001 era as a lost golden age, or do you see it as a period of naïvety, delusion and folly? There’s a lot of nostalgia for the nineties at the moment, especially from people too young to remember it who see the decade as a simpler, pre-internet time. Modern nostalgia often draws on corporate American-90s mall culture, but what about British culture? With I’ve Been Trying To Tell You – made to accompany the Saint Etienne album of the same name – director Alasdair McLellan evokes the era through the fog of memory. The resulting film, shot in locations from Grangemouth to Portmeirion to Southampton, is both beautiful and enveloping.
Director
Tech specs
720p.BLUMovie Reviews
Like flicking through a copy of Vice magazine from 2004
Self-indulgent mischief
As an enthusiastic St Etienne fan for both their music and their various associated film projects (concept films, documentary soundtracks, song videos etc) which are almost always worth watching and exquisitely produced, I was anticipating great things here.
But this one is pants. The album is pleasant but bland - they've done much better - and the film makes a token effort at being a road movie around scenic and industrial bits of Britain, so some nice shots and good cinematography. A few quirky bits, with an off-beat humour - for instance there's a beautifully composed bubble-blowing sequence
However the director seems to have a fascination for topless young male models, inserting several long slow-mo sequences of athletic bare-chested youths looking moody and lingeringly exhibiting their torsos for no real reason and without any connection to the music. So unless you share the director's fixation, it all becomes fairly boring and otherwise empty. Not worth seeking out..
My copy - from the limited edition CD/DVD package - did not play properly, and online forum comments elsewhere suggest this is a common experience.