Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton give a stunning preformance in this stirring drama.

Joe (McGregor), a young novelist working on a barge, is tormented by guilt and lust. Floating through life ad midst a cloud of self inflicted misery, he reluctantly finds himself in a relationship with his boss' wife, Ella (Swinton). Plagued by the memories of his recently deceased lover, he struggles with his own conscience during the course of the trial moving to convict an innocent man for her murder. Unable to practice self control, he throws himself into the embrace of woman after woman while the face of his past haunts him. Joe runs from his secrets while essentially wounding every good person that he encounters.

This film had a dark and chilling look. I didn't exactly find myself sympathizing with the main character, nor do I think that was the point of the film. I enjoyed the movie and I would recommend it to a friend as a dark drama.

The main theme working throughout this film is the idea of giving into sin, into temptation to do things that will rip apart bonds and destroy others as well as ourselves.
The anti-hero, Joe, could be compared to “Alfie”, but is much darker, grittier, explicit. There is a lot of sex and nudity in this, but the sex is painfully non-erotic, distanced and cold. It is desperate and Joe is using and abusing his penis as a weapon to hurt women whom he conquers easily and abandons the same. There is a horrible rape scene.
Joe is a failed writer who does not have the self-disciple, or character, to stick with it. He looks for happiness and acceptance but does not have the boldness to be free and clear and ends up with less than nothing. If freedom is the chance to become better, Joe is a slave. If it means nothing left to loose, like in Buddhism, it does not mean one does not suffer, is not tormented by what one has irrevocably lost, like Joe.
Hauling coal on a barge, drabness is a large part of the environment, but there is a lush greenness too that seems like inaccessible beauty…beauty in the canals, the distant green Scottish countryside, the beautiful rocky seashores. Beauty is discarded by Joe, and beauty as one of the three eternal Greek verities (Beauty, Truth, Goodness) so are the other two discarded by him.
Much of the narrative is relayed through the character’s behavior and nuances of the study of their facial ticks. Unlike in literature (this is based on the novel by Scottish junky genius Alexander Trocchi ) which, as good literature is, may be enigmatic and ambiguous, but still takes us into the minds of the characters--- here we are left to guess a lot, and many will walk away thinking “what the hell”. Things on the surface are not what they are inside. Images are a vital part of the narrative and the meaning. But if we look closely at the facial expressions, body language, what the characters are doing…like in the last scene with Joe at the waterfront...we see that this is about the first sinnerman, which in some form represents all of us. It begs the question “Am I really that different? “ (Jeez, I hope so!! lol)
For all his sexual couplings, Joe has little pleasure, and no joy in his life. By rejecting the only thing that could redeem him, he condemns himself to a meaningless existence of alienation and angst...his own personal hell.