Tomo arrives in the south Camden section of London (which gives the film its name) with a sack of clothes and four cans of lager, but he is swiftly assaulted by a triptych of local hoods. Above him, in a crammed two-bedroom apartment, Polish teen Marek (newcomer Piotr Jagiello) and his father Mariusz (Ireneusz Czop) eat a late dinner. It's not until the next day that Tomo butts into Marek's life after seeing a few black-and-white photos of a beauty named Maria (Elisa Lasowski) that Marek took.
Either charmed by or pitying Tomo, Marek agrees to feed him and let him sleep under his bed until the teen finds a proper place to stay. The film goes on to document the quick friendship that builds between the boys. A low -level entrepreneur (a very funny Perry Benson) hires them both as odd-job workers for 10 pounds a day. They both fall for Maria, a college-bound part-time waitress from France, and then bond over bottles of vino and vodka when she ditches them to return home.
Modestly but evocatively shot in black-and-white by Natasha Braier, Meadows shows unwavering, singular focus, able to utilize every second of his 70-minute runtime rather than adding on perfunctory storylines or resorting to expositional sequences. The director also keeps the flavor of the locale true, populating the film with workers, a surly café owner, and Benson's overweight Renaissance man, who eventually takes in Tomo as his personal assistant and laborer.
Somers Town may eventually become known as a minor work by Meadows but it distills many of the director's totems -- community, paternalism, and blue-collar life -- into an unhurried and smartly edited comedy without forsaking the director's hard-nosed storytelling style. In its coda, shot on grainy 16mm in color, Marek and Tomo go to visit Maria in France, eat Belgian waffles, and goof around on a carousel. But before that, the film fades to black with the boys looking out at Camden's St. Pancras Station, and there's a touching exhilaration that comes with thinking about all the places Marek, Tomo, and Meadows might go from there.
