She’s also an unattached thirtysomething, with a similar sense of fun behind the professional exterior of a community health worker. Opening scenes of Joe carousing with his pals have an easy, laddish atmosphere that soon disappears when, by chance, he meets Sarah (Louise Goodall). Liam’s partner, Sabine (Annemarie Kennedy), is a junkie who’s trying to raise their small son, Scott. Unemployed, he whiles away his time doing odd jobs for cash and trying to run a chaotic, no-hope soccer team, among whose players is Liam (David McKay), who owes a tidy sum to local hood McGowan ( David Hayman). Joe Kavanagh (Peter Mullan) is a reformed alcoholic, 10 months off the sauce, who’s first seen addressing an AA meeting. Result is a multifaceted portrait of one of Glasgow’s toughest and most deprived neighborhoods, Ruchill, seasoned with a love story between two mature people and spiced with a small number of secondary characters who reflect aspects of the metropolis’ social tapestry. The film was directly inspired by the first half of “Carla’s Song,” also set in Scotland’s biggest city and with a script by Paul Laverty, a former lawyer. Though some of the material here is among the best work Loach has done to date, pic is heavily handicapped for Anglo markets by a soundtrack that makes no concessions in its thick Scottish accents, which render a major part of the dialogue well nigh incomprehensible to North American ears and even a tough ride for Brits south of the border.