The Party

This is an odd little film, but I did enjoy it. For starters, it's only 71 minutes long, essentially the length of a typical streaming weekly drama offering. Additionally, it's shot (very nicely) in black and white, features a total cast of just seven actors (including a handful of very recognizable faces), and takes place wholly in one house using only about four shooting locations there.

This black comedy revolves around a joyful government promotion announcement and the unusual cast of characters that arrive at a small private gathering to celebrate. Conflicts abound and the very smart dialogue runs from politics to pregnancy to life coaching, much of it snarky, droll, and dripping with sarcasm (not all these people like each other; we soon learn why).

It was a quick and entertaining film. Had it gone much longer, it might have become tedious, but it didn't get there. If you're a fan of smart adult banter and personal interaction and intrigue, you'll probably like this. The great cast helps.

A 71-minute movie in black-and-white seems a rather poor return on the price of a cinema ticket these days. The Party is a theatrical comedy - it would have to be half of a double bill on stage or perhaps better suited to a TV play. It's like a middle-class upgrading of THE ROYLE FAMILY relocated to somewhere like Hampstead or Swiss Cottage.

MP Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) is hosting a drinks do to celebrate becoming a Shadow Minister (from sarcasm at Thatcher's expense we can safely infer that she is Labour). Her husband Bill (Timothy Spall) is weirded out after some bad news at the hospital. First guests to arrive are their best friend Patricia Clarkson (in uber-bitch overdrive) and partner Bruno Ganz, then a lesbian couple, then manic coke-snorting Cillian Murphy (at his dishiest), whose wife – though we never see her – provides all the drama. Infidelity (off-screen)is super-abundant and provides most of the humour.

They're (meant to be) a bunch of unlikeable phoneys, given some snappy dialogue by writer/director Sally Potter (who gave us ORLANDO in 1992 – now there was a weird movie). Unavoidable echoes of Mike Leigh's ABIGAIL'S PARTY (1977), which was much more more hysterical than Janet's celebration here. Slight and intermittently funny. Not very good value.

At first I did not like this little film but it grew on me. It's in black and white, sometimes harshly lit. The characters seem self-absorbed and not terribly interesting. And then Spall's character drops a bombshell that changes everything. There were quite a few laughs. Patricia Clarkson was especially good. Nice twist at the end. At just over an hour, it's a tight little diversion worth the small investment of time.

Shot in black and white and clocking in at just over an hour, it is one of the more original movies coming out of the Berlinale. Several elements stand out, like the production design by Carlos Conti (37°2 le matin) with its odd, detached feeling bringing to the movie, but also the daring cinematography by Aleksei Rodionov (Idi I smotri, Orlando!) combined with good editing makes the movie work.

So nice work in all sectors, but basically it is the actors who have to carry through in this dark comedy, somewhat difficult to define: Third screwball, third Woody Allen, and a third Britcom but definitely with a style of its own.

Potter herself gave the best synopsis by calling it a movie about ideals and convictions getting tested in a crisis situation. The really good script lines are dispersed among the excellent cast, although I do have a weakness for the role of Timothy Spall, such a great and modest actor, gripping the movie from the start onwards.

Why not rate this higher? I think it lacks a really great ambition, it is a nice ensemble piece, but despite the good things feels somewhat empty, more entertainment than art. The sum of the parts just doesn't add up enough for me, which often means the difference between OK and excellent.

The middle-class dinner party in which the thin veneer of polite society is ripped away to expose the dog-eat-dog savagery underneath has provided ample fodder for playwrights since probably the birth of theatre, but films in which such a gathering is the sole focus are rarer. So step forward British auteur Sally Potter.

Having been appointed Shadow Minister for Health, Janet (Kristen Scott Thomas) and her husband Bill (Timothy Spall) throw a celebratory dinner party for their friends: the acerbic April (Patricia Clarkson) and (played by Bruno Ganz) her new age partner Gottfried ("prick an aromatherapist and you'll find a fascist" says April); lesbian professor Martha and her 'Masterchef' runner-up partner Jinny (Emily Mortimer), who is carrying their purchased foetuses ("babies are born every day, in large numbers - large enough to put our planet at risk" is April's unsentimental but accurate comment). Banker Tom (Cillian Murphy) arrives with his wife's apologies: she will be along later. Thus the stage is set, but when a champagne cork shatters a window it is an omen that this will be a dinner party none of the attendees will soon forget.

Trendy lefties who spend too much time thinking are an open goal when it comes to comedy, with their talk of 'post-post-feminism' and their professorships in Utopian Americanism, and Potter does not miss the target in her - I suspect affectionate - mickey-taking. There is nothing original in this - not even the 'twist' at the end - but the film is so entertaining that does not matter (with one exception: when banker Tom heads to the bathroom to snort cocaine I rolled my eyes - just once I would like to see a fictional young banker who *does not* have a coke habit: don't any of them simply put the kettle on?)

There is good acting all around: Clarkson gets all the best lines - albeit at the expense of depth of character - but that merely makes the others work harder with the lines they have been given. Thomas, whose character is the most fully-formed, is noteworthy.

At just over seventy minutes this is rather a short film. Quite why Potter decided to make it in black-and-white I do not know - extra filmsnob points I suppose. But it is hugely entertaining and I look forward to seeing it again. (After all, any film which lists in the credits 'production dog' *must* be good!)