Oranges and Sunshine

Director Jim Loach
With Emily Watson and Hugo Weaving
Released 1 April

Ken Loach may be one of Britain's most respected directors, but to some people he's still synonymous with gloomy, far-left finger-wagging. And while that's an unfair caricature of his output, it's all too appropriate in the case of his latest film. Route Irish, which came out in March, is concerned with the misdeeds of private security forces in Iraq. Unfortunately, it's not so concerned with having an interesting plot or engaging performances.

There's a worse example of this tendency, though, in Oranges and Sunshine, a true-life story directed by Loach's son, Jim Loach. Unfair as it may be to lump him in with his famous father, Loach Jr opens his debut film by showing us a social worker (Emily Watson) visiting a high-rise council flat in Nottingham, so he can't be too surprised by the comparisons.

The social worker is Margaret Humphreys. In 1986, she's approached by an Australian woman who wants to get in touch with her British family. The woman says that when she was a young girl she was sent to Australia by boat with hundreds of other children, but few adults. Impossible, says Humphreys. But when she finally agrees to investigate the woman's claims, she uncovers a scandal. As recently as the late 1960s, children were being lifted from institutional care in the UK and shipped to the other side of the world-and, shockingly, their biological families were never informed.

Humphreys' enquiries take her to Australia, where she learns that many of the deported children were consigned to an orphanage in the desert, and mistreated by the Christian Brothers who ran it. But the Brothers have their loyal supporters, so Humphreys is soon putting herself in danger, neglecting her own family, and confronting snarling rednecks, hypocritical priests and condescending bureaucrats.

With a story like that as its basis, Oranges and Sunshine should have been an awards-laden hit. But Loach turns it into a dreary slog. The colour scheme is resolutely grey and brown, and Watson portrays Humphreys as a frumpy official who carries on with her job without any of the humour or self-doubt that might have brought her character to life. Like everyone else in the film, she doesn't talk like a human being; she explains situations to us by parroting facts and figures. It's a missed opportunity. Jim Loach hasn't done himself any favours by importing the worst faults from his dad's work, but precious few of the virtues.

Nicholas Barber