It’s All Gone Pete Tong
| Year: | 2004 |
| Production Co: | True West Films |
| Director: | Michael Dowse |
| Writer: | Michael Dowse |
| Cast: | Paul Kaye |
An absolutely brilliant film, with what must be the most natural performance and the best casting of the last few years. Paul Kaye as DJ Frankie Wilde is exactly how you'd imagine an expat Brit DJ in Ibiza to look, sound and act.
With elements of mockumentary and fiction, it tells the story of a hard-living DJ enjoying all life in the Spanish party isles has to offer; women, drugs, superstar clubbing gigs and hedonism.
It all goes Pete Tong (rhyming slang for 'wrong', for those not from the UK or Australia) when Frankie starts to have trouble with his hearing. Within months he goes completely and utterly stone deaf, losing his agent, gigs, trophy wife and most other things he holds dear.
After hitting rock bottom in some disturbing and funny sequences, Frankie finds a strength to come back to life he (and the audience) never would have credited him with. Together with the sign teacher who teaches him to communicate again and with whom he falls in love, it becomes a Rocky -like struggle to succeed.
Unlike Rocky and its myriad progeny however, there's not a shade of heavy-handedness in Frankie's journey of determination. With all the heart and hope but none of the sledgehammer lack of tact of an American movie, it somehow retains (paradoxically) both a dispassionate air that maintains the realism and a whole lot of feeling as you start to identify with and root for a character that essentially started out as a loser.
Faultless in almost every sense.
With elements of mockumentary and fiction, it tells the story of a hard-living DJ enjoying all life in the Spanish party isles has to offer; women, drugs, superstar clubbing gigs and hedonism.
It all goes Pete Tong (rhyming slang for 'wrong', for those not from the UK or Australia) when Frankie starts to have trouble with his hearing. Within months he goes completely and utterly stone deaf, losing his agent, gigs, trophy wife and most other things he holds dear.
After hitting rock bottom in some disturbing and funny sequences, Frankie finds a strength to come back to life he (and the audience) never would have credited him with. Together with the sign teacher who teaches him to communicate again and with whom he falls in love, it becomes a Rocky -like struggle to succeed.
Unlike Rocky and its myriad progeny however, there's not a shade of heavy-handedness in Frankie's journey of determination. With all the heart and hope but none of the sledgehammer lack of tact of an American movie, it somehow retains (paradoxically) both a dispassionate air that maintains the realism and a whole lot of feeling as you start to identify with and root for a character that essentially started out as a loser.
Faultless in almost every sense.