Tilda Swinton gives us the inside track on Young Adam.

“Who me?” Tilda Swinton looks genuinely surprised, her eyebrows arching as a smile spreads across her iconic face. I’ve just asked if she related to the outsider stance, lived out in life and art like an addiction by the Scots beat writer, pornographer, junkie and literary outcast, Alexander Trocchi. Given that Swinton has committed the last two decades to acting in “outsider” film projects, from Derek Jarman’s work to Orlando to The Deep End, and now the adaptation of Trocchi’s first book Young Adam, the suggestion doesn’t seem too far fetched. “Well I don’t feel like an addict,” she says definitely.

Young Adam, an erotic existentialist thriller set in Glasgow’s barge community in the 40s, is Swinton’s first UK-based project in a while. She describes it as “a different kind of cinema which is familiar to me because it’s akin to the films we were making in the 80s. There would just be no pressure to make a dent in the national consciousness. It was not for sale, as it were.”

Opposite Ewan McGregor as Joe, Trocchi’s alter ego and answer to Camus’ L’etranger, Tilda plays hatchet-faced barge woman Ella who becomes the object of Joe’s desire. “I’m not an outsider, because in my world I am very included,” she continues. “But I’ve known [alienation] so it does ring a bell in me. I was never addicted in the same way as Joe. I was never a masochist, frankly. For example, in Joe’s relationship with Ella she’s the one who starts to talk about it which of course is the biggest turn off ever. She ruins it and he just allows himself to fall into being alienated again. That I do believe is masochistic.”

The core of the film, as she sees it, is loneliness: “a very important subject at the moment. It’s no mean coincidence that it’s about a post-war moment. Young Adam is about the crisis of the alienated intellectual and it’s about the whole question of spiritual loneliness.” Her voice rises. “These are our themes now. We’re living in another beat time. That’s why it’s important to talk about loneliness and alienation because it’s everybody’s deal.”

Tilda Swinton then. Not a masochist, certainly not an addict, but perhaps a little bit of an outsider… just like everybody else. Skye Sherwin 26 September 03

Young Adam, on national release 26 September 03.

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