Brief Encounter in Balham - The Waiting Room

I'm due to see Ralf Little's new film The Waiting Room really soon. Very much looking forward to it as it's the first film I've seen him in (he's normally mainly in TV like The Royle Family or online stuff like Kate Modern). It also involves trains and apparently you get to see him naked. Or rather as the Channel 4 review so nicely says "you do get to see Ralf Little's knob (as he's taking a leak, actually), but sideways on."

Ralf plays a care assistant/nurse who follows one of his elderly charges (played by Frank Finlay) down to a South London train station where he meets Anna (Anne-Marie Duff) in the waiting room. There the two of them listen to the old man rattle on about love, and share a "James Blunt - You're Beautiful" moment. They don't swap numbers, or even names, but are both hooked from that moment on.

An obsessedwithfilm interviewer asks Ralf: "Have you ever had a life-changing moment in a waiting room .... or even on any bit of public transport?"

Ralf replies "Not on public transport but I've had 'the moment' of going 'wow, that is the girl I'm going to marry'. Didn't work out! (Laughs) But I've definitely felt it, I'm sure, and I'm sure I'll feel it again ... But talk to me again when I'm single and childless!"


You can see from the video above that a lot of the film was was shot around Wandsworth Common railway station and Balham rail & London Underground station. The film didn't have a big enough budget to rent the whole stations and this was apparently the only very small 'problem'. Ralf says:

"there were scenes with people getting on and off trains and normally in big budget films they hire a train and so on, but we couldn't do that on our budget. So you had this incredible thing where there's this whole film crew on a platform all ready with the actors poised, guessing where the doors might stop, then as the train comes in then the doors open and 'ACTION' and you'd have to leap on the train, pause for a moment, then walk off casually. Brilliant.."

So if you're a South Londoner, or like me, sometimes travel on trains into Waterloo, you'll see many familiar locations in the film. The train travelling past Battersea Power station being the most familiar.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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