Set on a barge, circa 1960, cruising slowly back and forth on the river Clyde between Glasgow and Edinburgh, 'Young Adam' opens with the discovery of the floating corpse of a young woman. The bargemen pull her in - Les Gault (Peter Mullan) and Joe Taylor (Ewan McGregor), his cocky young helper, but it quickly becomes apparent that Joe has some prior connection with the dearly departed – he seems far more interested in the details surrounding the unknown woman than he should. While Joe’s relationship to the dead woman gradually unfolds through flashback snippets, an affair between Joe and Les’s wife Ella, played by a decidedly haunted looking Tilda Swinton, quickly develops below deck and escalates. The affair is almost beside the point, though – it serves more as a device to introduce Joe’s character, which as the film progresses seems a curious combination of both predatory and passive.

We see Joe’s interaction with other women, including the deceased and a profile of his character begins to emerge. McGregor plays Joe with his usual intensity, as a loner and drifter, aggressive at certain moments but with a sort of apathy - as if helpless before the events swirling around him while at the same time, initiating them. During an investigation into the death of the drowned woman, it becomes known that she was pregnant and that she had a boyfriend, a plumber, who has been accused of her murder. Joe becomes almost obsessed with following the investigation and subsequent trial while remaining remote and detached at the same time. This sets up a wonderful tension as the events spin towards their conclusion while Joe is like the proverbial deer in the headlights, frozen and unable (or unwilling) to move.

The director, David MacKenzie, has given his film a very gritty look, from the anthracite hard coal mounds to the nearby dockside pubs to the claustrophobic living arrangements on the barge. There are a couple of scenes below deck where the characters are literally inches from each other and you can almost feel the emotional heat radiating from one to the other. There are also soft dreamlike sequences that subtly work themselves in – some shot under water showing cast-off objects on the bottom, as if to convey the sense that nothing can really be gotten rid of and will at some point come back to accuse the living. MacKenzie also gives us a feel of the hard urban landscape of Glasgow and Edinburgh in the same way Lynne Ramsay did with, ‘The Ratcatcher’ and Ken Loach with, ‘Sweet Sixteen’. The cast is also tops here: Peter Mullan, acting veteran of ‘Trainspotting,’ ‘My Name is Joe,’ and writer/director of ‘The Magdalene Sisters,’ Tilda Swinton recently of ‘Vanilla Sky’ and the quirky ‘Adaptation’ and of course, McGregor, who manages to bring a complexity to the emotionally bankrupt Joe.

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in Alexander Trocchi, who until now has been more of an obscure cult figure. From what is known of his personality, it seems like the character of Joe Taylor could have been vaguely autobiographical; a later work of his, ‘Cain’s Book,’ is a memoir and Trocchi, the narrator could’ve almost been the prototype for Joe. I’ve been fascinated by Trocchi, considering him alongside contemporaries like Burroughs and Bukowski, and have to admire director MacKenzie and the cast of ‘Young Adam’ for taking on such a non-commercial project and remaining true to the spirit of the book.