Hombres enamorados

Did you miss them? We're talking about Renton, Spud, Begbie, and Sick Boy, the protagonists of Trainspotting, the novel that launched Irvine Welsh to stardom and became a literary and cinematic phenomenon. Men in Love picks up the quartet right where Trainspotting left off, after that heroin deal that ended in a brawl, with the money Renton absconds, leaving the others high and dry. It's the late 1980s, the final years of the Thatcher government and the transition from punk to dance music. With the money he stole from his cronies, Renton settles in Amsterdam, where he delves into a seedy underworld of clubs and frequents dangerous characters; Sick Boy has stayed in London, where he tries to get clean and meets Amanda, a posh girl, the daughter of a politician, who introduces him to a very different social circle; Begbie's life revolves around prison and Leith, the cursed neighborhood he can't seem to escape; Spud has also returned there and falls in love with Ali, a girl more into opiates than sex… So off go Renton, Spud, Begbie and Sick Boy trying to become men of worth… or something like that.