Thatcher: Puccini or Sylvie Krin?

It’s always fascinating but unsettling to see living people walking around on the big screen — Stephen Frears’ masterful portrait of The Queen springs to mind.

It’s disturbing to think that the person concerned, along with their nearest and dearest, must be watching this.

I gather the Thatcher clan sat this one out, wisely I think, but they may have sneaked a few peeks through the cracks between their fingers.

This is non-political non-historical Thatcher; indeed all that is missing is music by Signor Puccini to accompany the verismo libretto of “Signora Thatcher e Denis”. The curtain rises to discover our heroine in a Pooter-Chic apartment full of pictures of herself, the sort ordinary people would have to had to Photoshop, mulling over her glory years. Age has wearied her, and the years condemn. June, a maid, hovers cheerfully in the background, whilst her slightly dog-eared daughter Carol performs the functions of a faintly exasperated maid. Meanwhile, 6,000 miles away, the adored Boy Mark drifts on, heedless.

The other principal in the tale, is the shade of Denis, who is not entirely buffo. He flits in and out between arias with kindly but piquant saloon-bar comment.

There goes the Falklands war, and in a furioso aria, La Thatcher tongue-lashes an Argentine dictator, a US Secretary of State, and her own lily-livered crew.

As the aria fades, Denis slides gently onto the sofa behind MT and says something like “well, that saved your bacon, didn’t it old girl.”

You get the idea.

At heart la Thatcher is an ordinary human being with a penchant for occasional Churchillian verbal spasms. Early on she stages an epic breakout, and gets as far as the paper shop where she discovers, horrore! milk is now 49p a pint. This treatment is kindly to the point of patronising, a kindness for those of us still traumatised by her Spitting Image. It’s free with the facts but that could be its greatest strength.

What about Thatcherism, though?

Well what about it? Nothing to it, really. That could be why, in real life, her foundation went bust a few years ago.

Mrs Thatcher’s lifetime achievement turns out to have been holding on tight to the memory of a much-admired father, and living up to his instincts and slogans courageously through an escalating variety of challenges — a thoroughly decent thing to do, but hardly the basis for a new kind of world government.

In 1964 Geoffrey Barraclough observed

contemporary history can only justify its claim to be a serious intellectual discipline and more than a desultory and superficial review of the contemporary scene, if it sets out to clarify the basic structural changes which have shaped the modern world. These changes are fundamental because they fix the skeleton or framework within which political action takes place.

This film is no work of contemporary history. It does not clarify the structural changes that have shaped the modern world. As  various chickens come home to roost, sending the wheels flying off the whole neo-liberal free market panjandrum Mrs Thatcher and her friends honestly believed in and represented, perhaps the same can be said of “Thatcherism” itself. But that’s a judgement for historians a few years hence. For now, just enjoy the show.

Meryl Streep's performance is as amazing as everybody says, and if your taste runs to opera verismo in a Barret Home, Signora Thatcher e Denis could well be the production of a lifetime.

as dying, yet behold, we live!

Xavier Beauvoir’s Of Gods and Men is a beautiful, extraordinary achievement. Understated at all times, highly sophisticated and understanding of its subject, beautifully scripted, it explores the life and death of the Tibhirine Trappist community in Algeria in 1996, during the civil war. The monks live a simple, self-sustaining life of prayer, kindness and service. As the political situation deteriorates, they find themselves caught in a shooting war, driven by Islamist fundamentalists. The army offers protection of a sort, but this raises other questions for the monks - questions of calling and integrity as well as a basic issue about whether life in an armed camp is actually compatible with what they believe their community should be. Do they stay or do they go?

Shrewdly, kindly observed and impeccably acted, this is a tale of tragedy and hope way beyond the scope of Hollywood blockbusters. Very few films about religion reveal as deep an understanding of their subjects as this.. Given our distribution system that gives fifteen screen multiplexes with the same film playing in 10 of them, you are unlikely now to catch the film at a proper cinema, but when it comes out on DVD in May you would be insane not to get it. Five out of five stars.
A couple of additional pieces for reflection. As he contemplated what may happen, the real Brother Christian composed in 1994 a letter to his family in case the worst should happen, that is worthy of careful reflection. Excuse my schoolboy French off the soundttrack album, but here goes:
If a day should come, and it could be today, to fall victim to the terrorism that seems to be engulfing foreigners in this country today, I would love my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and this country and also that the sole Giver of all life was no stranger to such a brutal ending. They should also associate my taking off with so many other equally violent but anonymous deaths. My life is no more valuable than any other, nor less. Anyway, it lacks the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I myself am part of the evil which, sadly, seems to prevail in the world, even the evil that could suddenly befall me. I could not seek such a death, and I could not die happy to see these people, whom I love, indiscriminately blamed for my death. That would be too high a price to pay for what could be called the grace of martyrdom by an Algerian, whoever he may be, above all if he is motivated by what he may believe Islam to be. I know the contempt in which natives of this country are already held around the world. I also know caricatures of the kind of Islam that encourages Islamism. For me this country, and Islam, are something very different. They are body and soul. This is what I have always said publicly, as I believe it and have known and seen this theme in the gospel I learnt in my first Church, at my mother's knee. This I have practised in Algeria, and always from the start in respecting Muslim believers. My death could, plainly, give substance to the arguments of those who think I am just naive, or a starry-eyed idealist. But they need to know that this will finally liberate my most ardent curiosity, in that I may be able, God willing,to submerge my vision in that of the Father, in order to see his Muslim children just as he sees them. In this thank you letter, which says everything about my llife from now on, I want to include you all, friends of yesterday and today, and even you too, friend of my last moments, who will not understand what you are doing. Yes, even for you, I genuinely want to thank you and bid this Adieu, commendation to God, May we one day meet again, in Paradise, as happy thieves, if it pleases God, Father of us both. Amen.

Finally for contemplation, a summary of the teaching of St Paul from Richard Rohr: “Brothers and sisters, remember that your life situation will not last. It is only that which you fall through so that you can fall into your actual Life, and that Big Life ironically includes death (which is the falling).”

The Haplessness of King George

It is said that the late Roy Castle once sang, danced, trumpeted and juggled at the old Glasgow Empire, famous for its heckling. In the unaccustomed silence between segments 3 and 4 of his act, a reverential wee voice piped up “Is there no end to this man’s talents?” Thus I salute Colin Firth’s latest outing.

After a masterful, beautiful, extraordinary performance as a 1962 Gay professor in A Single Man, he has now scaled most triumphantly the toff end of the Repressed Brit spectrum with The King’s Speech, an everyday tale of 1930’s Palace Folk. It contains of galaxy of UK character actors playing historic personages they don’t actually look like, but do it so well you don’t notice. Timothy Spall’s Churchill shines out particularly, but Stanley Baldwin or Cosmo Gordon Lang fans will also be impressed. Helena Bonham-Carter’s Young Queen Mum (before she hit the betting shops and gin) is amazing. This is the character list as it should have looked, not as it did. Why even Westminster Abbey looks like Ely Cathedral. However it is faultlessly acted, carried off in real style, and atmospherically rendered with the kind of production values associated with the old Merchant Ivory brand.

Here’s the skinny. George is the overbearing “Spit it out, boy!” Emperor King, the only character in the film who does look like the original. His two sons are embarrassingly different. David has charisma, but some unfortunate bedtime habits, a selfish nature and a thin fascist streak. Bertie is profoundly honourable with the will and talent to represent and serve his people, a pretty useful life skill in a man who would be king.

However Bertie also projects zero charisma, largely because of his disabling stutter. For a 1920’s naval officer this was manageable, indeed in an age when most signalling was conducted by Morse code, it could even have been an advantage. With wireless in the home, however, it is not enough to look like a king. You have to sound like one in people’s living rooms. An embarrassing own-goal at Wembley reveals that making love to a microphone is something Bertie could sooner get pregnant than reliably manage to do.

Enter Mr, not Dr, Lionel Logue, an Australian self-taught speech therapist with no qualifications but some world war one experiences and a ton of breezy antipodean freshness. This enables him to address the real Bertie directly, and unlock his voice through the transformative medium of friendship.

At the heart of every legendary working partnership is honest friendship based on equality, even, nay especially, if one partner is the King. King and Commoner work at it together. On the big day Bertie scores a bulls eye and really earns a chaste but sincere peck on the cheek from his Mrs. Civilisation is saved. What’s not to like? I defy anyone to leave the cinema without a heart full of warm cockles.

Acting is spot on, execution and cinematography is extraordinary, story is strong, even though everyone knows how it’s gong to end. Commercially minded execs may point out there’s not much scope for a “King’s Speech 2” unless some jaded studio hack comes up with a storyline where Hitler develops a speech defect and personally sends the schmutzigedutzend to kidnap Mr Logue. This would yield more action, perhaps, but less human interest. Fervent republicans may simply dislike the subject matter, perhaps, which certainly belongs to another age. What you see is what you get. However this film is a wonderful achievement, and manifestly deserves a chestful of gongs, ribbons, gold rope, and silver elephants on chains every bit as impressive as his majesty’s. 4.99 out of 5.

Onward to Potterdämmerung

Potter world is now going to hell in a handcart. It really is. The benign old buffers who used to scoff custard creams in the Ministry of Magic have lost it, and Dumbledore’s body lies a mould’ring in the grave — actually it doesn’t moulder, it kinda glows, obviously. Things are falling apart, the centre cannot hold. On the streets there's a purge of mudbloods. The Dark Mark fills the horizon, Black wispy Satanic candyfloss on speed zaps through darkened skies. It smokes like the rear end of my Morris 1100 used to when the big ends were going. Death Eaters loiter around the mouth of the Dartford Tunnel splatting owls.

Through the pallid dystopia created by Lord Voldemort and his dark chums trek Harry, Hermione and Ron like hobbits who wandered onto the wrong set. They camp out in a wee Canvas tent like my old dad had in the scouts, seeking Horcruxes to zap. That’s pretty much it, apart from assorted bangs and whistles, a few snakes snapping away like angry crocs, and a hooligan gang modeled on Adam and the ants. Dobby the House Elf provides the only emotional relief, blasted at the end.

I doubt that this particular movie will turn out to be many people’s Pick of the Potters. Not quite enough happens, and as the characters age, the school adventure fun has gone. The plot is all characterisation, setting up the characters for the final showdown. It’s really only starters for a main course to be served up next year — Deathly Hallows part 2.

It may be the final countdown, but that’s only a warm-up act for a rumble in the jungle that will make Armageddon look like a Sunday School outing. The elderly should bring earplugs. The young should clutch transitional objects and therapy buddies. Everyone, pack spare underwear. Forget Ali/ Frazier — this is Potter/ Voldemort, and the Dark Lord is already mooching around, his slitty little nose twitching at the smell of blood... Harry Potter is coming of age. And not just Harry. The New York Daily News tells us, in the real world, that Emma Watson kisses like an animal. “What kind of animal?” we may wonder, indiscreetly. An Anteater? A Slow Loris? a Manatee? Watch this space. 4 stars out of 5.

Another Year: Crack in teacup opens...

The British kitchen sink which first hit our screens in a Taste of Honey (1961) and the L-Shaped Room (1962) has come of age. All the angry young things have grown up and got their bus passes. Mike Leigh’s Another Year is a beautiful film, rich and compasionate. It has a sometimes painfully sharp eye for detail (with the texture of German films like Heimat), brought to liffe by extraordinary acting captured from a richly compassionate, ultimately life-affirming point of view. The plotline would go on a postage stamp, but I was so drawn into the poinant and sometimes funny characters lives that it didn’t matter. There's as much richness wondring what might happen next with these people as a normal film wold give from reflecting on what did.

So it has no Robocop Godzilla plot, and is woefully bereft, some will find, of cheeky rib-ticklers, but it’s a real connoisseur’s treat if you appreciate British arthouse characterisation and are willing to reflect on the meaning of love, kindness, friendship and happiness as it may be found in ordinary things.

Tom and Gerri (“it’s taken us years to get over that one”) are a warm and wise couple of the Philemon ’n Baucis tendency, he an engineer, she a counsellor, both of them sharing an allotment. They are not experts on life, and their son‘s eventual landing of an ideal mate surprises them as much as anyone. They are, basically honest and compassionate people, and their home is a magnet for needy people especially Mary, whose life has stacked up and continues to stack up as a massive disappointment with only Chardonnay to grease the wheels. Gerri cares for Mary, but only, as Mary discovers near the end, in a professinally bounded way. Family is different. There is no preachy message or overarching consoling philosophy, but in the background lurks a hunch that life, largely what people make of it, can and should be good in the end. The crack in the tea-cup opens, if you remember Auden, a lane to the land of the dead. All the loose ends are by no means tied up, though.

This is not one to watch on a flight, because of its lack of Robocop Godzilla plot, and because the beautiful cinematography and lighting, the sure eye for the right shot, and amazing acting which often feels improvised in the best sense, all call for a proper viewing on a big screen, if not HD and Blu-Ray. 5 out of 5 stars.

New Model Titan: Geek and Supergeek

Facebook has led the social media revolution of our age. It began with four undergraduate friends six years ago and today boasts over 500 million members, who spend more than 700 Billion minutes using it every month. A new movie, The Social Network, tells the not-so-heroic story of its inception. It’s largely about Harvard Undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg who, understandably, was not script consultant to this biopic or the book, The Accidental Billionaires, upon which it was based.

This filmic Mr Zuckerberg, however, drives a surprisingly compelling tale. A geek, twenty hours a day in front of the computer, with low social skills but a bright idea whose time has come, accidentally inherits the earth. This is no simple story of genius come good. Any heroism is deeply flawed and almost entirely veiled by social gaucheness.

The race goeth not to the swift, like Ty and Cameron Winklevoss, Ivy League twins so privileged, self-assured and naturally entitled that there must be times they wonder which was which. No, the only race that counts goes to Zuckerberg, spotty nocturnalist whose coding skill, determination and almost autistic inability to focus on human beings triumphs over every darn thing.

Given its subject, David Fincher’s film is masterful, absorbing, sharp and skilful. It lacks a strong emotional core but this seems inevitable because so do all its principal characters, and their lack of emotional groundedness doesn’t stop them getting cross or upset, just achieving undestanding or maturity. It’s a fearfully authentic portrayal, we fear. What the real Mark Zuckerberg makes of it all we do not know, and probably does not matter. The instinct that powered the Rockefellers is alive and well, and residing in a Harvard dorm. Perhaps it always was. Nowadays, however, what took JD thirty years to build by the sweat of his brow can just happen in six months. That’s the difference.

At the centre of this great film is a paradox — we use social media because we basically like other people and instinctively want to connect, but the means we use to achieve this are entirely impersonal. You don’t have to a computer geek, or indeed have any interest in the contemporary media revolution, to follow the story.

And, damn it all all, these things happened only six years ago. If that fact in itself isn’t enough to convince you of the pace of change and the dramatic way it augments some aspects of human personality whilst squishing others, you might just have a glimmer of the crazy killer-geek instinct necessary to hatch the next big idea that will enable you to take over your own particular universe some day.

The Machine Shop that Rocked

Made in Dagenham is a great big steaming mug of works canteen tea with six sugars in it. Some will find parts of it over-sugared — Bob ’Oskins singing “my old man said follow the van,” for example. That got me queasy, but great acting drew me in, and won through twee, formulaic characterisation.

First Class honours go to Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Geraldine James and, particularly, Miranda Richardson reprising her Blackadder role as the dyspeptic Virgin Queen, reincarnated as Barbara Castle. Whatever will they think of next? John Sessions as Harold Wilson. But it all just worked.

Rita works in the Machine shop at Ford’s Dagenham plant. The management have re-graded her work as unskilled, notwithstanding the fact that most of us would be hard pushed to make a car seat cover with no more than a pair of scissors and a sewing machine. More to the point, Ford has been in the habit of paying its women a mere fraction of what it pays workers with XY Chromosomes. Aided and abbetted by her mates, she does an Erin Brockovich and forms a rainbow alliance — including a lovable Union Rep, Secretary of State Barbara Castle, and even Posh Lisa who gets teated like a cocktail waitress by her old man, notwithstanding her double first from Cambridge.

The money shot is the point at which Rita’s hubby Eddie experiences epiphany. She points out to him that his decency in not getting drunk, knocking her about, or dumping the kids on her, is not some Star Turn qualifying for a double dose of droit de seigneur, but simply the way things should normally be between two human beings who respect each other.

It's a matter of morals — basic right and wrong. As indeed gender equality is for the vast majority of the population. The Church claims moral leadership, but they are amazed to find much of it in the guard’s van, kicking and screaming about what seems to them a primary moral law, somehow kidding itself it’s in the driver’s cab. How crazy is that?

Anyway, the Equal Pay Act passed in 1970. The Equalities Act came into effect last week. That’s good news for people whose hearts are warmed by the Dagenham story. The bad news is that UK women, forty years on, still earn an average of 16·4% less per hour than men. 40 years of good intentions, foot-dragging, appeasing hypocrisy and hoping it will all go away has not yet delivered the goods...

How the Swiss conquered the world...

...without anyone noticing. Design education for all! Had it come from Bristol not Basel it would have been called Helvetical, indeed it probably has been, but since 1957 Helvetica has become the Lingua Franca of print. And now it has its own Movie.

Helvetica is the finest design education documentary I have seen. It tells the tale of how the West was won — by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’ Schriftgiesserei in the Swiss village of Münchenstein (Basel).

The boys were trying to produce a clean modern interpretation of Akzidenz Grotesk, a classic Victorian Sanserif, for the Swiss market. Three years of development produced Neue Haas Grotesk, at around the time clean design was all the rage. Reflecting on the success of Univers, Artur Ritzel of Stempel picked up NHG, reworked and renamed it, cleaning up its characteristic horizontal endings. Enter Monotype and variants in variants in Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, and Vietnamese and hey presto! the boys soon conquered the world, in a characteristically understated Swiss way, without anyone noticing.
This wonderful film, which is nothing like as boring as I probably make it sound, shows how Helvetica fills the earth, from the NY subway to sports shirts, TV titles, Brass plates, prostitutes’ calling cards, Church bulletins, commercial logos, road signs...

It is the glory, and perhaps, curse, of type to be almost entirely implicit. Little things make all the difference. It works by not drawing attention to itself.

This film stars the John, Paul, George and Ringo of type design (Massimo Vignelli, Matthew Carter, Erik Spiekermann, and Wim Crouwell — and where’s Lars Müller? you ask). My eyes were opened to such things by Spiekermann’s fabulous book Stop Stealing Sheep, and hairs rose on the back of my neck as the Great Man, resplendent in bottle-thick glasses, held forth in a thick Teutonic accent:

Other people look at bottles of wine or girls’ bottoms. I look at type. It’s a very nerdish thing to do, but I am very much a work person, I think.

Go Erik! Modernism. That‘s the rub. Helvetica is characteristic of Modernism — clean, open, minimalistic. If you don’t like Modernism, you probably don’t like Helvetica. This film is not entirely reverential. However one look back at the tawdry, fudged up design of a fiftes Magazine was enough to convince me that 50 years of Helvetica is worth celebrating. If only it was as easy to clean up every other aspect of the New York Subway system!

The Second Death: Porg-y and Best

There’s Black humour, and there’s real Black Black Humour. Neil LaBute’s remake of Dean Craig’s Death at a Funeral (2007) recycles an English original with Chris Rock, Danny Glover, and a large dysfunctional black clan gathering for a send-off of their paterfamilias. The schmalzy American Way of Death provides an excellent counterpoint to exuberant repartee oft associated with Mr Rock, and I think I will opt for the US version by a whisker, although some will prefer the more understated UK original.

Recasting a necro-tastic Charley’s Aunt farrago in a city with three columns of Jesus Christs in the phone book is no bad thing. It somehow increases the hit from a relentless succession of hellzapoppin gags involving caskets, funeral directors, mislabelled medication, wrongful identity, and family secrets and lies. There’s an excellent team of actors, and the director manages deftly to keep us abreast of exactly who is in which room with whom and why they shouldn’t be there — a basic skill for Farce. The tale’s crowning glory is the revelation of a gay dwarf (Person of Restricted Growth?) with a penchant for blackmail. You don’t want to be seen dead with one of those, not even in a Presidential casket. Perhaps I’ve said too much.

I am not proud to admit it but I, accompanied by a hundred or so good citizens and true of High Wycombe, had a rollicking good time chortling through this lot. The toilet joke was genuinely disgusting, though. Death at a Funeral ain’t no King Lear, but we liked it. There is something cathartic about laughing in the face of family and social hypocrisy, even, nay especially, about death.

I can recommend Cathartic Chortling to fans of the Tasteless Unspeakable, including, I suspect, a large number of medics, undertakers and vicars on their days off. The recently bereaved, Amish Uncles, and the Earnest would be better to pass on the experience. Plot slightly weak but gags good — four out of five.

Four Lions: Urban Village Idiots

Before saying anything about Chris Morris’ new film, Four Lions, we have to get our heads round a basic question, “Is Al-Qaeda supposed to be funny?” If there really is a war against terror on, surely it could be, however disturbing the humour. Nobody walked out of Will Hay’s The Goose Steps Out (1942) because there was a war on — quite the reverse. However if you can’t or won’t see the funny side of Jihadism, this film is, frankly, not for you. Whether it should have been funny or not, thirty punters in Wycombe on Friday found it hilarious, with a steady stream of chuckles, and a belly laugh every twenty minutes or so.

Four Lions tells of the everyday lives and activities of four dim Jihadists, as they bungle and bomb their way around South Yorkshire, confusing themselves and occasionally foxing the neighbours. The surrreal humour is pure Spike Milligan. Our heroes’ Jihad is internal, mainly against their own stupidity.

It culminates in a tacky and mainly incompetent bid for immortality in London. Nothing in the Al-Qaeda lexicon is sacrosanct — martyrdom videos, training camps in Pakistan, explosions in public places.

It is necessary to suspend disbelief about the characters, who are very much cardboard cutouts; but then this is not a sympathetic exploration of the psychology of martyrdom so much as a rollicking send-up. As a matter of public policy, is this a fit subject for parody? Well, as a matter of public experience, what did for Mrs Thatcher was Spitting Image, not Michael Foot. Any young man joining Al-Qaeda after Four Lions is bound to take the rehtorical world of the organisation with a pinch of salt, and to feel that bit sillier and more exposed. It might even put him off. It’s a very different approach from the Government’s all-too earnest Violent Extremism programme, but probably more effective.

And anyone who can induce a couple of paroxysms of helpless mirth in three dozen of their fellow citizens about a thing like this on a Friday night in Wycombe can’t be all bad. Four and a half out of Five stars.

The Joneses: Life in a material world

Since the fifties, the key to suburban living has been keeping up with the Joneses. But just who, exactly, are the Joneses? I can’t say without giving the game away, so look away if you want to be surprised by the plot.

The Joneses are, in fact, way ahead of anything you will ever be. Mrs Jones is Demi Moore, heading up an ideal designer family along with David Duchovny, retired car salesman and failed golf pro, her “’enery the eighth” style ’usband.

Are they too good to be true? You betcha. These real people are living profoundly fake lives — but is it catching? The Joneses are in fact a marketing “unit,” seeded into the poshest of the ’burbs to live out a perfect life style, sowing envy and triggering sales left right and centre. As they work their way through their community’s various sociological subgroups like a toxic computer worm, they are monitored by a sinister Blonde Controller played with coonsummate believability by Catherine Dyer.

The family that gels together sells together. As the good times roll, suburban living becomes a manic Tupperware party on Steroids, saes stats mount on wings of eagles. Human nature will out, however, including the propensity of youngsters, and others, to place their affections where true joys cannot be found. Will the real people win through in the end?

The butt of the joke, which is wry than bellylaugh, is materialism. As the Truman Show and Pleasantville did before it, Derrick Borte’s film deconstructs a whole lifestyle, and raises the most basic question of all — “who’s fooling who?” The wrong aspirations lead to one of the most visually stunning lethal swimming pool shots since the opening of Sunset Boulevard.

Not everything clicks 100% all the time, but enough clicks enough of the time to keep ann audience logged on, and make this a very good, if not a great film. It works on pretty much all levels, narrative, character, place and pace. The Joneses is a great discussion starter that may not make you drop everything and get thee to a nunnery, but if it saves you entirely maxing out your Visa on Louis Vuitton bags and Audis, you’ll be glad you saw it. Four out of five.

Cemetery Junction: Gravely Flawed

I really wanted to like this film. I carefully excluded from my mind local knowledge from having lived in and around Reading for twenty years, and resolved to enjoy one of the first nostalgic portrayals of the eighties. I had an idea that Ricky Gervais, master at drawing comedy out of banality, would pull off a major coup applying inside knowledge to the town of his birth. I was disappointed by a Curate’s Egg of a film. Superb acting, with flashes of comic genius in the script, was entirely let down by some big structural weaknesses.

Let’s unpack that statement. Acting was wonderful. I believed in and liked everybody, personally. The threesome at the centre of the action all did a superb job, individually and together. Felicity Jones’ performance was wonderfully engaging, utterly superb in achieving a “Gregory’s Girl” balance of intelligence, wit and naivity. Ralph Fiennes made a masterful Bourgeois Voldemort. The props were fine, and the script showed some promise. One scene involving Ricky Gervais’ character and his mother in law had some sparks of real Johnny Speight class, and actually wrung a couple of wry chuckles from the audience.

However, the bonfire never ignited, not in our cinema. The problem with this film is far more fundamental than acting ability. At the first pub lunch of the project some basic questions needed sorting – is this Reading? If it is, how do we make it seventies? If it isn’t how do we weave a credible place together? Is it about the place or the firm, or the family or the girl? Who are these people? How and why do they matter and know each other and what are the implications? Sadly a lot of these basic questions were not answered, or answered ineptly, and the result is to sabotage the whole film.

The actors’ best efforts are wasted on a sloppy, inept, half-baked script which is perilously short on laughs for a conception with no consistent sense of character or place to redeem itself. Whoever picked some of the locations needs to be shot — but if they didn’t know what they were looking for anyway, you can hardly blame them for not finding it. Reading is a very average place. It did a passable imitation of fifties Croydon in Let Him Have it (1991), and anyone in doubt about the culture of the place at the time has only to watch Paul Watson’s groundbreaking 1974 BBC documentary The Family.

So, Locations shouldn’t be a problem, but they are. You walk out of a tiny three cell lock up, with its two rural policemen exhibiting an extraordinary tolerance of being beaten up by youths. You find yourslf in what is obviously Woodstock, a Cotswold Stone village built around an eighteenth century palace. It might just make Middlemarch. Over on the left is a large urban night club, just like the Top Rank Suite that any Reading resident of the seventies would recognise. But what is it doing in the middle of a Cotswold Village? and so on and so on. Look, the whole story hinges on the damned place. Therefore it matters desperately that the originators had no coherent sense of place, or didn’t know how to string locations together convincingly to produce one. They either have to sell us the set in the way Woody Allen sells Manhattan, or at least make it a believable enough crap town for us to understand why people have to get out of it. Confusion about place is a fatal flaw in this particular story.

Add to this prime basic weakness the occasionally half-baked depiction of character. What 12 year old doesn’t know his girlfriend’s father’s job? Is the nicely drawn Insurance Bash the reward of hottest salesmen, or a geriatric dinner dance? What man from the Pru wouldn’t know if one his clients had just died and claimed on a policy? and so on, and so on. The writers would have done well to follow the advice of one of their own characters — “if nothing happens to you when you’re walking down the road, keep it to yourself.”

Last obvious nail in the coffin is the occasional failure of the script to follow the most basic rule of all drama — don’t tell them, show them. Nobody actually says in a job interview “You went to a low-grade State Secondary School typical of the poorest parts of Southern England that produces people who are not ever expected to make anything of their lives. I know. I went there too.” Who is the character actually talking to anyway? You need to establish character and place early on, granted, but not in such a crass and obvious way — and you can use pictures to do so. That’s the whole point of film.

This film’s basic structure just hasn’t been clearly thought out enough for excellent, nay stellar, character performances to redeem the mess. Brilliant actors wasted on a muddled, half baked script lead to a tragically naff result. I liked the characters, though, and I’d love to see this lot in a properly thought out film. Two out of five.