Parties and social gatherings are fertile ground for drama. When you get a group of people with differing views and opinions together in a room and give them alcohol, anything could happen. Who's going to say something inappropriate that'll offend? Who'll get drunk and divulge a juicy secret? This scenario is the set-up to The Party, written and directed by Sally Potter (Orlando, Yes)
When Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) is promoted to Shadow Minister for Health, she organises a dinner party to celebrate. What starts out as a joyous occasion spirals into chaos as announcements of pregnancy, relationship break-ups, terminal illness, and infidelity fill the air. The evening starts with champagne and ends with blood on the carpet as the guests deal with their unravelling relationships.
What a wasted opportunity The Party is. A stellar cast- Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall, Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, and Cillian Murphy- do the best with what they've got but what they've got is, in places, not worth having. And that fault lies squarely with Potter's script.
Clarkson gets the best lines as the acerbic cynical April, about to dump her life coach boyfriend Gottfried (Ganz, sadly lumbered with an irritatingly pretentious character) and slinging out zingers with every sentence. The rest don't fare so well, dealing less with characters than stereotypes: Tom the banker (Murphy) snorts coke in the bathroom because of course he does (because that's what all bankers do).
Mortimer gets hamstrung as the pregnant Masterchef winner whose older partner (Jones) is having second thoughts about the children. There could have been some real drama, some real pathos, in this strand but it's diluted down to posturing with no substance behind. Spall looks like he's stoned, with a wide-eyed far-off gaze and barely given much to do but be a punching bag (literally and metaphorically) whilst Scott Thomas- usually such a reliable and decent actress- is stymied with an unsympathetic role.
I found it difficult to care about any of the characters or their dilemmas and, as more and more secrets come out and the list of issues gets longer, it lost my attention. Which, considering the running length of the film, is not a good sign. The film is a mere 71 minutes long (which, given the price of cinema tickets these days is a bit of an insult), and it could easily have been edited to be around an hour to be shown on TV instead. It's filmed in black and white for no other reason that I can fathom other than it looks nice. It also ends with no real resolution which is frustrating in the extreme.
There should be a perverse joy in watching the evening unravel. A room full of liberals looking to tear one another apart could have been a real delight. Instead, it's come out a half-baked recipe for disaster. This is one party that you'd be well advised to avoid.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Tez
No comments:
Post a Comment