(Ben Wheatley/2018/UK)
Ben Wheatley continues to move
away from his esoteric roots in folk horror with what on the surface looks like
a family drama centered on a new year’s party and the return of a prodigal son.
But for me this is a comedy and falls in line with previous efforts in TV
series Ideal, Sightseers and his last film, Free Fire.
It is however comedy of the deadpan British wit variety and very much based on
character observation. We are definitely supposed to be laughing at these
people, from the gothish, grime techno dancing daughter to the beautiful,
slightly mysterious German girlfriend, the characters start out being very real
and believable but spend the rest of the movie inching towards parodies of
themselves. The central character, Colin Burstead, played with sufficient
bubbling tension by Neil Maskell, arcs from laddish, in control family man to
jittering, existentially dread filled mid life crisis quite brilliantly. His
proclamation toward the extended family of “Fuck them all” is a summation of
the films subversion of family drama tropes.
Wheatley and Amy Jump, his wife
and long-time script writer, have presented the age old tale of a family at
war, people who are obliged to be in each other’s company no matter their
differences and animosities. The cliché of finding shared emotional ground and
moving past those grievances is turned on its head when the main character is ostracized from the special moment only to continue his angst in a narrative
that doesn’t really end. The film is snapshot of sorts with a myriad of players
allowing it to flit between scenes and subplots and build a montage of smaller
Polaroid moments into an overall picture of ordinary folk in their funny,
ordinary lives. An understated but quite affecting film is the result.
(3/5)
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