My Zinc Bed

A quiet but tense piece, definitely not for those who hope for blatant excitement, being more a study of characters, each in his/her own privately nightmarish situation. Essentially a three-hander between Pryce, Considine and Thurman, all of whom turn in excellent performances of a solid script with many well observed turns of phrase and personality. Main weakness is how it dwells, for around 70 minutes, on alcoholic addiction to the exclusion of most else; but, if you know that going in, maybe you can handle it. Conversion from stage to screen works okay.

FWIW, the end credits show it as co-production of BBC and HBO.

I just want to state that I could not take my eyes off the screen until the very end of this fine drama. I had a vague recollection of having seen it before but fortunately no clear memory of how it ended. The ending actually is somewhat anti-climactic given the intensity of the previous scenes.

Dialogue is quick: more often seen in a theatrical production than in a feature film. But this is not surprising given the source material.

A true gem that took me out of time for just over an hour.

Gee, I am short of the minimum ten lines ... So what else can be said?

Well, Uma Thurman's accent was a bit odd but not enough to spoil the drama.

I watched My Zinc Bed last night on BBC2. I had high hopes for this one-off drama but quite frankly it was a truly awful piece of Television. It was clearly made for American TV. Everything about it felt fake: the over the top acting, the shots and the music. It was a adapted from a play, but why? It was boring.

The story focuses on an alcoholic poet (Paddy Considine) who starts working for a millionaire businessman (Jonathan Pryce) after they meet for an interview. The poet then meets his wife (Uma Thurman) and the pair fall in love.

Every conversation was about the same thing. Being addicted to drink. The characters just kept winding each other up, which led to me being wound up and wanting to stop watching it. It tried to be so clever and intelligent but it was just dull. I think it failed because it went for the "less is more" strategy: one conversation between Uma Thurman (what attracted her to this TV movie in the first place?) and Paddy Considine led to them kissing and then being in love. And the only way that the audience knew that was through the weak narration.

Surely the BBC can do better in future.

Packed in a tight 75 + minutes, 'My Zinc Bed' follows a pretty simple structure. The film is mostly a chambre piece that is told through a series of conversations between three people: a recovering alcoholic poet, a businessman and his trophy wife. The director tackles the themes of alcoholism and desire through complicated relationships between the three characters. The tension is mostly built through dialogue. Paddy Considine, Jonathan Pryce and Uma Thurman deliver excellent performances as they get under the skin of the characters. Had lesser actors been cast, this would have been a borefest. Even though I find 75 minutes to be too short a time for a film's duration, I liked that the writer stays focused on the main story and its principle characters. Due to the complex themes, 'My Zinc Bed' may not be everybody's cup of tea and it has been an interesting and involving watch.

"If you were cured, you would be cured of the desire, and who wants to be cured of desire?"

That one line from the movie, uttered by Jonathan Pryce, succinctly and brilliantly sums up why people with addictions keep falling of the wagon, and may make you wonder if it's possible that the addicted among us are in fact the ones who truly live and feel, to the point that it almost destroys them and those close to them.

It's a tight, compact little movie, with solid, believable performances, especially from Paddy Considine and Jonathan Pryce. Uma Thurman puts in a good performance but seems to struggle with her European accent in parts, and holding her own against Considine's effortlessly convincing portrayal, thereby subtracting slightly from the overall impact of her efforts.

Drugs and alcohol are the usual, but not the only addictions - Uma Thurman's character appears to be dependent on both alcohol and love. In spite of the slight inconsistencies of her performance, the weaknesses and struggles of her character spoke to me and left me in tears.

Watch this if you've ever wondered about people who just can't say "No".