Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) has shown up on the big screen in innumerable incarnations before we are introduced to him in the opening moments of Richard Ayoade's very promising debut, Submarine. Growing up in 1970s Wales, Tate is staggeringly intelligent, well read, well watched, sufficiently odd and doused in a bath of neuroses; he is not, as it turns out, the most popular 15-year-old at his high school. This is, more or less, the same character that we've seen as recently as Jesse Eisenberg's James from Adventureland, or most of Michael Cera's characters to date. Like those not-quite misanthropes, his charm lies in how purely and seriously he believes in his intellect, and how highly he treasures his abilities to reason, deduce, and solve. His favorite mystery is the case of the light dimmer, which lies in his parents' bedroom and is a surefire sign of whether or not they are getting busy on a regular basis. His conclusion is that it has been months; thus, when Mom's (Sally Hawkins) high-school sweetheart (Paddy Considine, looking like a member of A Flock of Seagulls) moves into town with his new-age ninja religion, little Oliver's rampant voiceover redlines. The only thing he seems to be able to think about, besides his parents having a proper shag, is Jordana (Yasmin Paige), a legitimately strange classmate with a feigned distaste for romanticism, a bright-red winter coat, and a barely noticeable case of eczema, exasperated by an untreated dog allergy.
All of this, compounded with Oliver's father's (Noah Taylor) job as a marine biologist, may seem like we're entering yet another post-Wes-Anderson pageant of quirks, but Ayoade marks his own territory in the coming-of-age game, beginning with the admirable lack of nostalgia he exhibits. Sure, there are Jean-Pierre Melville posters and a drawing of Woody Allen on Oliver's walls, not to mention a scene where he listens to French pop records alone in his room, but there are no musical cues from The Velvet Underground or The Kinks, and when Jordana walks out of a local screening of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, she does not look like a philistine; in fact, she sounds reasonable and becomes perhaps even more appealing. Indeed, Arctic Monkeys' frontman Alex Turner's lonesome songs written for the film make for a welcome alternative to the usual mélange of 1970s hits and misses.
Needlessly broken up into three chapters, not including a prologue and epilogue, Submarine doesn't have much of a plot to speak of, opting to instead luxuriate in the borderline-unsettling self-seriousness with which Oliver takes his two major tasks: 1.) To ensure his parents don't split up; and 2.) Get Jordana in the sack. Seeing as the latter goal is reached before the film even hits the halfway mark, the relationship between Oliver and his parents begins to take greater precedence, which is a good thing. If Jordana proves an outlet for Oliver's dour seriousness, his parents offer contrasting images of how that seriousness can fester and even hurt people, making Considine's gaudy, color-power preacher look far more appetizing than life at home with a depressed scientist and a stiff son.
What Ayoade, who adapted the screenplay from Joe Dunthorne's novel of the same name, lacks in focus, he makes up for with sincerity and an unflinching loyalty to and love for the unpleasant realities of how teenagers think. As a director, Ayoade possesses a nimble, unpredictable style that not only mirrors the rapid-fire thought process of a male teenager, but also how quickly their perspectives and moods can change. Oliver may see only the positive in writing a dirty note to his mother under the guise of his father, but Ayoade also picks up the dark implications and perversity of such acts (something one wishes the film's producer, Ben Stiller, would embrace more often as an actor). To be fair, however, Submarine does end on a familiar emotional note of hope. But at the very least, Ayoade doesn't blow the trumpet too loudly and the final, admittedly cute moment feels somewhat earned. If the film isn't exactly a game-changer in the mold of, say, Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End, it at least makes an old story feel vibrantly new for a little while.
