Belatedly . . .
Couldn’t get as excited (or distracted, or even patronising) as some over the authenticity of the language. Of course WA isn’t going to speak ‘London’ like a native; the writer writes and someone is recruited (as was, say, Julian Fellowes for Altman) to ‘dialect it’ – WA would be wholly reliant on whoever was recruited in that role.
So, to the film; the BBC approach WA, he says yep, and so we have a film written and directed by WA that could have played anywhere, but is set variously around London, and deals with themes not unfamiliar to WA regulars - it’s his usual 6-ish hander, lots of interiors with upper-income types holding drinks, small talking and weaving subtext.
It seemed to have three sections; the set-up, the transformation and the thriller-with-a-twist; the conventional story about a social-climber and who he meets worked well enough. Daughter’s infatuation was fine, even if Mother and Father’s involvement seemed a little mechanical.
I particularly liked the final third though, even if it felt at times like Woody was throwing kitchen sinks and the plumbing at the screen The ghosts of the dead must have been Dostoesvsky references (‘Crime and Punishment’ ?), there were issues of morality, conscience and remorse – or lack of it in this case, there were surely references to Hitch, plus luck, fate existentialism and abstraction. There was even a smattering of wry humour.
But . . . the transformation scenes seemed to drag. Perhaps that’s harsh, it was probably me. Sure, WA had some ground to cover: The irresistible American Goddess became a pregnant shop assistant without means; a loose cannon ranting on the pavement outside his marital home. Contemporaneously, wifey metamorphosis’s from a demanding, boorish and broody nag, to a loving, caring frightfully rich mother-to-be.
Faced with this changing landscape, our hero develops some character (literally) and, during a three-week non-holiday, decides a U-turn (away from Ms America) is in his best interests – taking, all in all, not a few scenes. It was somewhere amongst that lot that my attention drifted.
Enjoyed the contrasts; amorality to abject immorality, from being driven by filthy lust to be driven by filthy lucre, from a level-headed gad to a cold-blooded double/treble-murderer (killing a kindly old lady as well as his lover, and his baby), the time-dependent plot, even the Detective Duo - hints of Hitchcock-esque humour, even. Anyway, all good knockabout stuff, especially the cynical, sentimental-free ending. I’d see it again in order to dig deeper – if it wasn’t for that middle section.
It’ll stand up well in Film Class.
Won't it ?
