New Film "THE BUSINESS" set in Costa del Sol

An evocative new British film takes Jason Solomons back to the early Eighties and the forgotten youth cult of the 'casual', who obsessed over brand-name sportswear, football - and Wham! Curiously, the film isn't set in London but on the Costa del Sol, the stretch of coast from Malaga to Gibraltar with Puerto Banus as its shimmering centrepiece. Fleeing a botched bank job, a south London gang escape to Marbella where they set up operations - running a nightclub and running drugs from Morocco.

It's a bit Sexy Beast, a bit Goodfellas and a little bit Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - the swearing and violence will offend some - but where it carves out a singular niche in British cinema is in its detailed reverence for the clothes and music of the hitherto little-examined eighties 'casual' subculture.

Other directors have, of course, used clothes and music to recreate a precise era. Anthony Minghella's expert use of jazz and Fifties threads was pivotal to The Talented Mr Ripley, with Matt Damon's starchy Tom Ripley desperate to inhabit the easy tailoring of Jude Law's Dickie Greenleaf; Mike Leigh's Vera Drake was superb in summoning up its post-war London milieu through meticulous use of props and costumes; while Todd Haynes's clever detailing of glam rock's sounds and outfits in Velvet Goldmine was by far the film's most successful element and earned him an unusual Special Award at Cannes.

Nick Love's previous films, Goodbye Charlie Bright and last year's The Football Factory, have developed a cult following, with fans including Noel Gallagher and Harvey Weinstein. 'You can only develop a cult if your details are bang on,' says Love. 'And I kill to get the details right. Films should say something about a time and place so that these become as important as the lead characters. If I see a guy in the wrong jeans or hear the wrong song on the soundtrack, the whole thing's ruined for me. The film's spell just disappears.'

I must declare a personal interest here. Casual was my era, my music, and Marbella was also my playground. I spent Augusts in the early Eighties drinking Malibu and pineapple in dodgy Puerto Banus nightclubs, listening to Simple Minds, Wham! and Shalamar. The place has changed and the time has passed, of course, but The Business recreates it lovingly, wittily and faithfully. When the film has its UK premiere at the closing night of the Edinburgh Film Festival on August 27, the cinema may well look like Banus's legendary Sinatra's bar or, indeed, the Wimbledon changing rooms circa 1982 as guests sport specially designed Tacchini sweatbands and tracksuit tops. Personally, I'm looking for the right shorts and have just been outbid for a pair of navy Fila BJs on eBay. You cannot be serious... '

Casual has never undergone the cultural reassessment afforded fashion trends such as punk, but it had a more democratic and far-reaching influence, and it certainly lasted longer, resurfacing every now and then in slightly altered forms in cultures such as acid house (Happy Mondays), Britpop (Oasis) and the current 'chav' (Stone Island, Burberry). 'That's because it was always associated with football,' says Terry Farley, DJ, owner of Junior Boy's Own record label and renowned former casual. 'We were called football casuals and these were the days of hooligan firms and terrace violence. You were very likely to find a Stanley knife in the pocket of a Fila tracksuit, and the establishment wanted rid of us all.'
According to Farley, casuals also lacked a particular music scene. 'In the south, casuals listened to soul music and went to the Caister Soul Weekenders to hear Fatback and Luther Vandross,' he says. 'Up north, they listened to more of a white music sound. But it was really about turning up at football and looking good.'
In his recently published fashion memoir, The Way We Wore, journalist and broadcaster Robert Elms claims that casual provoked a style war, where what you wore was a weapon. He recalls a Saturday afternoon with his QPR crew seeing off a horde from Coventry by merely singing: 'My dog sleeps on Fila, my dog sleeps on Fila, La la la la, La la la la.' Elms writes: 'Some of Coventry's top boys were sporting Fila, which had been the business but had gone out of fashion in London at least a month before. Instead of launching ourselves at them, we were lambasting them for such gauche sartorial tardiness. As it dawned on them they'd been outdone in the style stakes, you could see their will for the contest wane. They'd been beaten and they knew it.'
Casual, it is generally agreed, started in Liverpool when the Anfield team ruled the domestic and European scene. Liverpool fans supporting their team in the European Cup would travel to towns in Italy, Spain, Belgium or Switzerland and pick up classy Euro sportswear as trinkets. Trainers, ski wear, track suits were all lifted from quiet backwater sports shops. The practice was known as 'steaming' - there wasn't much a shopkeeper could do against 400 tourists piling into his shop and, locust-like, denuding it of luxurious tops.
It wasn't long before people were descending on sport stores with a razorblade to slice off the Lacoste crocodile and sew it on their own cheap three-button polo shirt from the local market. 'Taxing' became an epidemic, sparking moral panic stories in the Daily Express and Daily Mail, as kids were regularly relieved of their trainers, done over in the park for their Diadora Borg Elites or Adidas Trim Trabs.
For others, including myself, the seminal casual moment came at the Hammersmith Odeon, when George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley on the Wham!' debut Club Fantastic tour tormented their teen audience by putting shuttlecocks down their tight Fila shorts before batting them into the crowd. Wham! were the first band to sport the casual look, although their shiny, Marbella-tan style was deemed too 'poncey' for them to be taken truly seriously on the terraces. But, as Nick Love points out, casual was a fashion taken up by both working- and middle-class youth. 'The two main icons were Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe,' he says. 'This was a fashion that had its main shop window on the green lawns of Wimbledon, and you don't get more middle class than that.
Borg in particular, with his icy demeanour and humourless determination, is a strange fashion icon for such a lad-based culture, but he dominated the Marbella scene. In The Business, his poster and tracksuits are everywhere, and I recall a trip to the exclusive Puente Romano resort, where he was the club pro, to watch the great man give an exhibition match.
In the film, the lead character, played with winning vulnerability by Danny Dyer, steps out into Marbella society sporting his Fila shorts after a scene set in a boutique stocked with classic casual gear. 'I bought it all up myself,' says Love proudly. 'I was on eBay, bidding like mad because you just can't get the vintage gear any more.' Casual items on the site are now changing hands for up to £400, suggesting the revival is fully upon us. Sergio Tacchini, celebrating its 40th anniversary next year, has just agreed a high street tie-in across the UK's Burton stores.
According to Love, he struck a chord unwittingly. 'I just wanted to make a film about a subculture and get it right. It seems to be chiming with people. If you make Gosford Park, how many people in the audience will know if you're using the right teapot or dinner jacket? Not many. But if you recreate the 1980s, you'd better get it right or people in their mid-thirties will come and bawl at you. Clobber, music, Porsches - people were mad into this stuff and you can't mess with their memories."

The Business is the closing night premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival, 27 August. It is released nationwide on 2 September