52 Films by Women Vol 2. 51. THE PARTY (Director: Sally Potter)
Making a difference – what does it mean? It could be a
random act of kindness, or else an intervention to stop a person making a
terrible mistake that would otherwise hurt themselves or others. It could be
throwing oneself in front of a bullet that might otherwise hit someone else. It
could be using your skills to help people.
However you define it, making a difference is active, taking
a decision that affects people in the real world.
Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), the protagonist of
writer-director Sally Potter’s new film, The Party, is a politician who has
been promoted to Shadow Minister of Health in the official opposition to the
British Government. She is told by her friends that, at last, she can make a
difference. It is inferred that, up until this point, she has been a passionate
campaigner.
Reality check: if she joins the opposition front benches, she can basically do the following:
Table an Early Day Motion
Deliver the second speech in a debate about health legislation
Write to the Secretary of State for Health to complain about cuts in the Health Service or the non-availability of certain treatments
Vote against the Government in an attempt to stop it doing something very bad
Any Member of Parliament can already do three out of four of
these things. Making the second speech after a piece of legislation is proposed
does not really amount to much. In any case, it is not what you would
automatically define as making a difference.
Still, Janet’s friends are pleased for her - so pleased that
they are coming to her house to eat her food in celebration.
If I wanted to congratulate my friend, I would invite him
for a drink (my treat). I would not prevail upon him to do the cooking.
The Britain depicted in Potter’s film isn’t one that
corresponds to reality. Worse, Janet has prepared vol au vents. I do not know
anyone who still serves vol au vents unless they are being ironic (‘how very
1970s; I thought vol au vent was a resort in the South of France’; ‘you mean
cul de sac’; ‘no, fruits de la mer’).
But that’s not the only thing. Janet doesn’t notice that her
husband, Bill (Timothy Spall) is being solitary, listening to music and
drinking too much. He’s an academic so I suppose that gives him a licence. You
would expect Janet to cancel the soiree and divine through a mixture of
interrogation and standing in front of the record player the source of Bill’s
distemper. In any case, in front of his wife’s friends, he makes an
announcement.
We know that Janet’s party will not end well. We see her at
the start of the film answering the door and pointing a gun. That’s no way to
treat the pizza delivery man! Clearly, she has placed her senses in cryogenic
storage.
The beginning of a phrase comes to mind: ‘with friends like
these...’ Janet’s friends are a misfit troupe, a repertory company unsuited to
drama. There is Janet’s best friend, April (Patricia Clarkson) whose two basic
modes are withering and sarcastic. April is a belittler and American to boot.
She is married to or in a relationship with Gottfried (Bruno Ganz). I don’t
know any Gottfrieds, except for Gottfried von Einem, the composer of the opera,
Danton’s Death; Gilbert Gottfried the
comedian does not count. Gottfried, one imagines, is the only German who could
eat vol au vents without irony, but he still makes a mess. Gottfried is
described as a life coach. I have never really understood that title. A life
couch makes much more sense – that is a settee with a lifetime guarantee that
it would never sag or else make off with the amount of lost coins that it has
secreted in its many folds (or manifolds). Life coaches basically advocate
transcendental meditation, or as I call it, falling asleep in front of the telly.
They encourage you to find your oasis of calm, to live in that centre and
breathe, breathe slowly... Slowly... Slowly... - time’s up, I’ll see you next
week. Let myself out, yeah? I’ll take that two hundred off the mantelpiece. You
paid by direct debit? Loser!
When Potter says ‘life coach’, she means unreconstructed
hippie.
I understand why April thinks her partner is self-centred –
it’s in the job description. Gottfried has also developed emotional armour to
withstand her withering asides, although a set of headphones would be just as
good.
Janet’s other friends are the same sex couple, American Martha
and Brit Jinny (Cherry Jones and Emily Mortimer). To have one American in your
acquaintance might be seen as a misfortune, to have two is just lazy casting.
You are more likely to work with an Asian or a Scot. Jinny is expecting the
couple’s first child, also their second child and their third. Triplets – talk
about putting all your eggs in one basket. The couple isn’t completely ready
for same sex parenthood times three. Should there be one bedroom or several? Who
gets the top bunk? Jinny is very moody, but not as moody as the fifth guest,
Tom (Cillian Murphy) who no sooner than he arrives, carrying a gun, than he
snorts a line of cocaine. Tom’s wife is running late. Even so, if you are in a
relationship and are making your way to a party, you don’t arrive separately,
unless one of you is a doctor on call or else you derive sadistic pleasure in
leaving her to her zipper, something I do not advocate, especially in the
current climate.
If you know your late Nineteenth Century Nordic literature,
you’ll know that a gun introduced in Act One really ought not to be kept in a
writing desk (see Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler).
It will also go off in Act Three. In some productions of Hedda Gabler, the pistol is replaced with a hunting rifle and the
writing desk with a settee. (‘Take a seat‘ – bang!) So it is with Potter’s gun.
Tom tries to hide it in the recycling, but he put it in the wrong bin - not
with the glass and plastics, silly. Naturally, Janet makes an unexpected
discovery.
The Party is a
miserly seventy-one minutes in duration. At times, it feels like a drama set in
1971. It is photographed in black and white, as a riposte to heady modernism.
Although it is a throwback, it feels like it should have been thrown out, so
creaky, casual and clumsy is the drama. It is the polar opposite of (so-called)
kitchen sink realism. I can see why Potter would have thought that monochrome
was a shrewd commercial move; 50 Shades
of Grey is absurdly popular.
The events are plain weird. Throughout the first part, Janet
receives phone calls from an admirer. She is pleased to receive them and
blushes a shade of off-white. Then there is a revelation and she expresses her
anger physically. Do we side with her or think she is a hypocrite? Events all build to a punch line.
The amazing thing about The
Party is that Tom owns a gun. In the United Kingdom, we have restrictive
firearms laws that prevent people from acquiring weapons for anything other
than killing animals – lobster shooting is a popular sport. It is a dramatic
contrivance in a film filled with them. The most logical response to The Party is to sigh deeply and remark,
‘really?’
Yet there is purpose in Potter’s unreality. She is not known
for naturalism, rather dramatic leaps. Her most critically acclaimed film is an
adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando,
in which the titular protagonist (played by Tilda Swinton) lives for two
hundred years and changes gender. Potter took the leading role in her film The Tango Lesson, in which she plays a
blocked filmmaker who travels to Argentina to learn that famous dance - if
anyone is a natural contestant for Strictly
Come Dancing or Dancing with
Experimental Filmmakers as it is known in the States, it is she. Her 2004
film, Yes, was spoken in verse/though
I confess/I have not seen it. Her film Rage
about the fashion industry was a series of direct addresses to camera. Potter
likes to zero in on the conventions of visual storytelling and play with them.
I don’t think she has a radical agenda, more a couple of footnotes.
Scott Thomas’ vivid central performance elevates The Party to something approaching
drama. She plays it straight, which, if you have to say ‘I have vol au vents in
the oven’ takes some doing. I didn’t believe in the supporting cast, but I
understand that Potter wants to normalise same sex relationships (hurrah for
her) and life coaches (hiss). At best, The
Party is an amusing diversion that doesn’t outstay its welcome. The real
time storytelling maintains the viewer’s attention. You want to know what
happens next, even if the jokes are creaky and you don’t believe in it.
Reviewed at Cineworld
Fulham Road, Screen Three, Central London, Friday 20 October 2017, 18:30
showing
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