Film of the Week: Submarine

It's a dark coming-of-age comedy about a lovelorn teenage boy in 1980s Swansea, written and directed by Ayoade, adapted from a novel by Joe Dunthorne, and executive produced by Ben Stiller, who appears in a subliminal cameo. Ayoade's film has absorbed the influences of Wes Anderson and Michel Gondry in its deadpan ironies and block capital sans-serif titles, but it's still really personal and confident. For sheer technique, Ayoade can hardly be faulted, though introducing characters in freezeframe/voiceover is getting to be a cliche. His film is shaped with flair, coolly allowing us to enjoy its unrealities and to savour the suspicion that a thirtysomething's sophistication and cinephilia have been sneakily backdated into a teenager's life to offset his emotional vulnerability: a protective nostalgia.

Watch it, it's beautiful and a hidden gem if you ask me.