Conceived by the Dave Clark Five as an answer to the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, Catch Us If You Can is both an expression of the spirit of Swinging London in the 1960s and a prescient critique of its inevitable commodification. The story tells of a famous young model (Barbara Ferris, in a part designed for Marianne Faithfull) who flees the set of a television commercial with a stuntman. Their subsequent road trip in a white Jaguar leads to encounters with beatniks, military training exercises and a costume ball, all the while being chased by henchmen from the ad agency. The film’s style blends New Wave playfulness with the analytic coolness that underpins much of Boorman’s work. “We drew a portrait of a shallow, materialistic society, controlled and manipulated by advertising where youth was a commodity. It was a bleak picture, but expressed as comedy.” – JB