Looking for Eric

Eric Bishop is looking for something. In the first sequence of the film, we can see him turn and turn again in the wrong way around a roundabout. The crazy run ends at the hospital; nothing serious is happened but we can feel the despair and the loneliness of this man. No one manages to make him laugh, not even his postmen colleagues. Eric has a love injury, which threatens to open up again at any time. Further more, he has to take care of his two adolescent stepchildren since their mother has been sent in jail.
When Eric’s best friend tries a self-coaching session, Eric decides to change his life according precepts of his idol, Eric Cantona. The Manchester star himself comes into his room, giving advice to Eric and especially his famous proverbs.

Between fan film and social chronicle, Looking for Eric is both different and similar to the other films of Ken Loach. First, his title is two-way meaning and this ambiguity is very interesting because it uses the confusion between Eric the idol and Eric the fan. So Eric (Bishop) is looking for Eric (Cantona), but above all he is looking for himself, via Cantona’s help.
Then, Cantona is more than a simple narrative pretext; his character allows Ken Loach to talk about the world of football and the fan phenomenon around it. For example, the game archives are used to show to Eric that Cantona’s best action wasn’t a goal… “It was a pass”. It’s a pretty metaphor about life and sharing – what Eric is going to apply with his sons and his first love.

Ken Loach diversifies his work and is interested by comedy in his last films, but doesn’t abandon social drama for all that. The secondary plot of the movie is very captivating, and the gathering of the two stories the opportunity of the most hilarious scene of Looking for Eric; in the end, all the Manchester supporters costume themselves with Cantona masks to destroy the house of a bad guy who blackmailed Eric’s family! The tragic affair is transformed into a funny carnival through the mythical figure of Cantona.
We can’t forget also the unbelievable sentences pronounced by Cantona in an inimitable English with the Marseilles accent : “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it s because I think the sardines will be thrown into the sea…”

Looking for Eric by Ken Loach, with Eric Cantona and Steve Evets. 2009.

I’m not a man. I AM Cantona!

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