Dir.
Richard Eyre, 2006, UK, 92 mins
Cast: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy
Review by Mike Bartlett
It’s February again and time to wheel
out Dame Judi for another chance to win the Oscar. And yet
again the vehicle is one of those homegrown, superficially
controversial but ultimately very cuddly and middlebrow dramas
so beloved of British film producers (cf. Mrs Henderson Presents,
Iris, Last of the Blonde Bombshells, etc, etc). Everything
is correct and in its place – a contemporary subject
taken from a modern novel, a stellar cast of top-notch performers
very consciously “Acting” for all their worth,
and a witty, literate script which lingers just this side
of being genuinely acid and subversive. Watching it, I couldn’t
help being reminded of Nick James's article about our national
cinema in the January issue of Sight and Sound. He began
by announcing a renaissance of great films and up-and-coming
directors, then summing up the problems facing them, and
then conceding that none of what they were producing was
that good in the first place. Oh, dear.
It’s a shame because there’s an impressive array
of talent on offer here. Zoe Heller’s original novel – about
the affair between an art teacher and an underage boy in
her class and the way it is observed by a lonely older teacher
uncomfortably obsessed with her young colleague – cleverly
co-mingled fiction with journalistic reportage, the details
of the case being modelled on a real incident. And Patrick
Marber (of Closer fame) is the perfect choice to adapt it
to the screen. He revels in the wicked asides of Judi Dench's
character, using the drip-drip contempt of her lonely, old
spinster as a mask from behind which he can inveigh against
the crass Trisha-culture of modern Britain and its ramshackle
education system. His screenplay spits out gobbets of truth,
skewering the self-interest of the tabloid press in its hysteria
over paedophilia and the way that moral uproar allows it,
not so much freedom, but a tyranny over its victims. The
script also opens up glaring but often conveniently ignored
questions – if sex with a 15-year-old is so utterly
evil, how come, in five month’s time for instance,
on the event of a 16th birthday, it becomes legally acceptable?
And do we feel as disgusted by a female paedophile as a male
one? It's an interesting and controversial area. Can it be
said that if most men at the age of 15 had been given this
choice that they would not have found themselves saying, “Yes,
please, Miss”?
However, the film is at its best in
the portrayal of loneliness. Few films tackle this last
cultural taboo of our society – it
doesn’t make for snappy dialogue or great action. Marber,
however, pinpoints its excruciating pain without sentiment
or censure. He creates vignettes of dead time and little
moments of euphoria, when the older teacher's worth, or even
mere existence, is finally recognised by an acquaintance.
Eyre complements these sections with cruel portraits of Dench
slumped in the bath or burying her beloved cat – all
in muted, daggy colours.
Ultimately, though, the script sets
up this complex portrait only to betray it in the final
reel. At first, her bitter antagonism to the world at large
acts as a challenge to the audience, but the ending brings
her into line with popular viewpoints, dismissing her as
a harmless crank with psychological problems. This is the
pattern for the whole film, to plane off the sharp edges
so it can ultimately be accommodated at the local Multiplex
and the Academy’s gong show.
A glance at IMDB shows it has received the R rating in America
for “aberrant sexual content”, a surprising description
of a film with little nudity and which lacks the courage
to flesh out its sex scenes and relay the full extent of
their pleasure. Why isn’t Marber allowed to be as biting
as he was on TV? Why is his attack curtailed so much by cautious
producers that the end product feels like yet another script
by committee? And why, oh why, is ex-theatre director Eyre
still let loose on film – a man whose approach is so
pedestrian that to describe it as “point-and-shoot” would
be far too complimentary?
Just think what Claude Chabrol would
have done with this material. And with these actresses!
Judi Dench is, of course, marvellous, relishing the bile
of her bitter, cantankerous hag, but Blanchett matches
her in a more difficult role, both less sympathetic and
somewhat underwritten. Her cool, intelligent demeanour
nicely offsets Dench’s powerhouse
performance and Nighy’s bizarrely over-the-top one.
Yes, there’s a good film waiting to get out here, but
the ambition of its makers is not up to that of the story.
The clumsy caravan of British cinema
trundles on… |
