Fleapit revisited:Rye Lane.

I know Rye Lane in Peckham very well. It's about a mile and a half's walk from my flat. I walk along it several times a week. I visit the shops there, I visit pubs and restaurants there, I buy vegan sausage rolls from Greggs on Rye Lane. I pop in the Wetherspoons at the end of it to use the toilet without buying a drink.

So when I heard there was a film out called Rye Lane (the debut feature from young British director Raine Allen-Miller) my interest was piqued. When I heard positive feedback both from professional reviewers and friends I knew I had to get along to see it. It didn't disappoint.

We start in the unisex toilets of a modern art gallery that is showing an exhibition of large close up photographs of mouths and teeth. Dom (Industry's David Jonsson) is crying in a toilet cubicle. Yas (Vivian Oparah) is peeing in the next one and hear's him crying. Which is a meet cute and a half. When Yas asks if Dom's okay he replies "this is private". Her reply:- "it's not that private".

Later they meet again in the exhibition and then start hanging out around Peckham. Yas comes across as cool, confident, and happy-go-lucky. Dom seems more guarded, serious minded, and concerned about missing the last bus home. The way they interact reminded me a bit of Ethan Hawke's Jesse and Julie Delphy's Celine in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, the first of his Before trilogy of films.

The way they seem to just get on, the way they find themselves opening up to each other, and the way they seem to bring the best out of each other. It's not long before they're zipping around on a scooter, heading to Brixton for food, and somehow managing to break in to Yas's ex's house to retrieve her copy of A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory.

The ex, Jules (Malcolm Atobrah), and his new partner Tabby (Alice Hewkin) loom larger in Yas's life than she initially lets on. She tells Dom she dumped him because he refused to wave back at people on boats (fair enough I say) but there's more to it than that and some of it involves pubic hair matted with chick peas.

Dom's far more honest about his ex, Gia (Karene Peter). It was her he was crying about in the toilets at the start. Gia left Dom for his best friend Eric (Benjamin Sarprong-Broni) and the way Dom found out about it, a rather unfortunate - if hilarious - video call, was about as bad as it gets.

I don't know why but I was expecting more rom than com from this rom-com but, to begin with certainly, it's heavily weighted in favour of the comedy - and the comedy is good too. I laughed out loud several times but as things developed with Dom and Yas, not least at a hip-hop karaoke night hosted by Mona (It's A Sin's Omari Douglas) where they sing Salt'n'Pepa's Shoop, I found I started to care about them both. I wanted them to make a go of it.

There are some great set pieces (Yas being caught trying someone else's knickers on, Dom's terrible music taste being exposed at a bbq), some great music (Stormzy, Roy Davis Jr's garage classic Gabriel, and a wonderful take on Terence Trent D'Arby's Sign Your Name), and wonderful performances from everyone involved (both Levi Roots and Colin Firth crop up for cameos). Although Simon Manyonda plays artist Nathan as an almost straight out hipster comedic creation. It's hardly a surprise there's someone riding round on a hoverboard at his opening night.

Then there are those oh so familiar locations. Khan's Bargains, Jenny's, the Persepolis Persian grocery store, Tate Modern, Morley's (of course, this is South London), and Brockwell Park. A crucial scene, where Yas destroys Gia and Eric in front of a shocked and impressed Dom, is filmed in the lovely, and hugely underrated, Il Giardino Italian restaurant on Blenheim Grove by Peckham Rye station. They even manage to get the fading Bovril signage on Windrush Square, near the Brixton Ritzy, in the picture. Almost a love letter to my little corner of South East London.

That all made it feel very real and though the film used lots of surreal, and even borderline slapstick, touches, the characters felt very believable and, mostly, likeable, from start to finish. I'd been holed up at home, more or less, with gout for more than a week and getting down to the Peckhamplex (on Rye Lane) to see Rye Lane was just the tonic. Hell, the Peckhamplex even featured in the film which is surely the first time I've sat in a cinema watching a scene from a film in that very same building. Looking forward to seeing what Raine Allen-Miller comes out with next.