5. Oliver Tate (Submarine)
Having won the affections of Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige), the girl of his dreams, fifteen-year-old Oliver's (Craig Roberts) next endeavour is to lose his virginity before his next birthday. His methods of seduction range from the perfunctory , such as preparing a candlelit dinner, to the outright predatory: he writes the following on his hand and then shows her: "Possible reasons to have sex. 1) You've fallen in love with me, 2). Best to do it before it's legal, 3). Bound to be disappointing so why wait?" It's this mixture of self-deprecation and overblown confidence that makes Oliver such a curious central figure in this coming-of-age story. You can sense an aspired kinship with the French New Wave; from both Oliver and director Richard Ayaode, as the former has posters for
Le Samourai and
Le Circle Rouge on his bedroom wall- as though their iconic, cooler-than-thou attitudes will permeate his brain as he sleeps. He reads the dictionary and points out his word of the day to the audience. He takes notes on his parents' increasingly irregular sex life. He even fantasises on how people would react to the news of his death. In short, yes, he's a pretentious little sod who thinks far too highly of himself. But damn it if he doesn't win us over...