Film

Absolute Beginners

Name: Absolute Beginners
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Released: 1986
Cast: Eddie O'Connell, Patsy Kensit, James Fox, David Bowie, Ray Davies

Musical

Julien Temple's 1986 musical adaptation of Colin MacInnes' novel about a teenage photographer navigating late-1950s London—its fashion world, music scene, and racial undercurrents. It's visually sumptuous, frequently strange, fuelled by an outstanding soundtrack. For anyone drawn to period detail, ambitious pop cinema, or the particular glamour of postwar London.

TMDb rating

2.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love stylised, song-driven London romances where the look and the music carry more weight than the plot, and you don't mind a film that is messy but has real ambition.

Skip it if you want a tight, plot-led story, since this one drifts between its romance, its pop hustle and its wider social backdrop, and its tone often feels unsure of itself.

What it asks of you: Think of it as a loose, dreamlike ride of just under two hours that keeps breaking into song and stylised set-pieces, so you need to surrender to mood over strict plotting.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Quadrophenia1979

A similarly youthful, music-driven portrait of a specific London subculture in a specific era. Frank Roddam's film has the same eye for period texture and the same conviction that youth culture matters as art and history.

But It's grimmer in tone and longer—two and a half hours—and the Mod world can feel insular if you're not already invested in the mythology.

Singin' in the Rain1952

The gold standard for musicals that integrate song into storytelling rather than stopping the plot for spectacle. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen understood that movement and music together can say things dialogue cannot.

But The register is pure joy and optimism, which won't scratch the itch if you're looking for the raw social edge Absolute Beginners attempts.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence1983

Nagisa Oshima's hybrid of narrative and music, featuring David Bowie in a non-singing role that explores desire and cultural collision. A film of genuine strangeness and beauty with Bowie's presence at its emotional core.

But It's set in a Japanese POW camp and deals with brutal subject matter. The pacing is deliberate and the tone is nothing like Absolute Beginners' energy.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Absolute Beginners

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

La Haine1995

Both films centre youth culture and social fracture in a specific city, but La Haine asks what happens when the musical fantasy collapses into reality.

Mathieu Kassovitz's black-and-white portrait of three young men in a Paris housing estate mirrors Absolute Beginners' engagement with race, class, and youthful energy in a specific place. But where Temple goes pop and musical, Kassovitz goes raw, confrontational, and tragic.

But It's uncompromising about racism and police brutality. The energy is tense rather than exhilarating, and it ends darkly.

Performance.1970

Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's hallucinogenic collision of rock excess and crime. It has Temple's love of visual excess and musical texture, plus Mick Jagger's singular screen presence.

But It's genuinely transgressive and difficult, built on ellipsis and suggestion. If you want plot clarity, this isn't for you.

Tommy1975

Ken Russell's Who adaptation is audacious rock-opera cinema—maximalist, visually wild, unapologetic about its ambitions. Pure artistic reach, even when it misses.

But It's grotesque in places and structurally bizarre. The reverence people have for it can feel mystifying on first viewing.

The Wiz1978

Sidney Lumet's film of the Broadway musical relocates Oz to 1970s urban America with astonishing production design and genuine magic. A reminder that musicals can be joyful and socially grounded at once.

But It's nearly two and a half hours, and some of the staging feels theatrical rather than cinematic, which breaks the spell for some viewers.

Pennies from Heaven1981

Herbert Ross's film about Depression-era hopelessness redeemed by song and fantasy. Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters are luminous, and it finds genuine pathos in the clash between reality and musical dream.

But It's melancholic and American rather than buoyant and London-focused. The tone is elegiac rather than youthful.

Shock Treatment1981

Jim Sharman's follow-up to Rocky Horror, set in a media-obsessed small town where television is everything. It's peculiar and visually inventive, with a genuine satirical bite about celebrity and spectacle.

But It's far more obscure than Rocky Horror, and the songs are less memorable. The satire can feel dated or opaque.

Liquid Sky1982

Slava Tsukerman's low-budget indie about a UFO drawn to the endorphins released during heroin use and orgasm in 1980s Manhattan. Genuinely original, visually audacious, with an extraordinary electronic score.

But The budget shows, the performances are unconventional, and the plot is deliberately oblique. It's an acquired taste, and easy to dismiss on first viewing.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both films use the culture industry—fashion, music, film—as a stage for exploring how identity gets constructed and consumed, but Lynch is interested in pathology where Temple is interested in style.

David Lynch's three-hour essay on Hollywood ambition, identity, and performance features two actresses trying to crack the system, much like Suzette in Absolute Beginners. It's similarly fascinated by surfaces and artifice, but treats them as symptoms of deeper psychological fragmentation.

But It's slow, fragmented, and deliberately enigmatic. If you need narrative clarity, this will frustrate you intensely.