7 Miles Out: Carol Morley's Punk-Adjacent Youth, Framed in Stockport

Carol Morley's 7 Miles Out turns her own autobiographical novel into a self-portrait of the artist as a young woman — rich, tender, and, in the critic's word, "terribly funny and sad."

The film is based on Morley's novel of the same title, a once-upon-a-time-in-Stockport story centered on Ann. Lucy Halliday plays the teenage Ann with charm and zing; Amelie Hughes plays her as a sweetly innocent young girl. Ann's elder brother Scott, a would-be rock journalist already plugged into the post-punk and new wave scene, is played by Kasper Hilton-Hille.

What is the film actually about?

At its core, 7 Miles Out studies what the source review calls "the ordeal of having to invent and reinvent your own teenage sense of self" — and it does so while everything Ann thought permanent collapses around her, including, in the review's phrasing, "the background stability of your poor old mum and dad."

It's a triptych: childhood, girlhood, youth. The review notes "daring touches of Terence Davies" in the construction. And it carries a second argument: the untold, unacknowledged story of sadness behind the angry blaze of punk and new wave. The grief under the noise, in other words.

How does the young Ann's world take shape?

The 1970s detail is precise. Young Ann pretends to make a radio programme with her cassette recorder, the way countless children did that decade. She hero-worships Scott — a character based on Morley's real brother, the writer Paul Morley.

The review's critic admits the film unlocked something personal: hearing Buzzcocks' Sixteen again, he recalled his own feelings at 17 and wondered, "Could it be, I thought, that I'm already sad about not being 16?" The lyric he quotes: "I wish I was 16 again / Then things would be such fun."

What's the verdict?

Daring, rich, funny — and steeped in punk's melancholy underside.