Review: The Arbor (15)****

There were those who viewed Andrea Dunbar's work with a degree of scepticism. It was, they said, so utterly bleak that it was scarcely believable. In other words, you couldn't make it up.

Dunbar, the "playwright from the slums" who died 20 years ago at 29, didn't make any of it up. Her work, picked up by the Royal Court when she was just a teenager and later filmed by Alan Clarke, was raw, brutal and wholly authentic.

It caused a furore in the 1980s when Clarke's film adaptation of Rita, Sue and Bob Too! was released with a tagline that bellowed "Thatcher's Britain with her knickers down". It wasn't the sort of portrait anyone wanted to see of modern life in the UK.

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In Bradford, where Dunbar was born and raised, and where the story was set, there were howls of righteous outrage.

The Arbor considers Dunbar's short and tragic life through the prism of an audio commentary by those who knew her best, but with the vocal reminiscences performed by actors. In among the memories are readings from her plays with The Arbor being the most powerful.

This is both a filmed biography and an absorbing memoir, and it restores to life a young woman whose life was marked by deprivation and abuse.

Writer/director Clio Barnard has created a remarkable tribute that takes Dunbar's story full circle. Focusing as much on her children's experiences as their mother's, it re-traces a complex tale of woe with the brief triumph of Dunbar's fleeting literary accomplishments at its core.

Barnard's gritty portrait is unflinching.

On limited release

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