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"A raid on the inarticulate," Eliot calls his own work, here Mike Leigh ventures from stage into cinema to plumb the depths of awkward silence. Leafless trees line an overcast London, a pallor extending to the characters pinned to dour domestic backgrounds. The secretary (Anne Raitt) is lovely yet coiffed as severely as a Brontë brooder, she looks after her mentally handicapped sister (Sarah Stephenson) and sips from a concealed bottle of sherry. The nosy colleague (Joolia Cappleman) has mum trouble, the suitor (Eric Allan) is a prig whose idea of romance is to quote Marshall McLuhan. "I don't know what train I'm on," croons the bashful hippie in the garage (Mike Bradwell), everybody's story. The excruciating comedy of human communication (cf. Penn's The Miracle Worker), "conversational gambits" over tea and nuts. Practically a Camden Town portraiturist (Harold Gilman interiors and figures are prevalent), Leigh is alert to the medium's ability to expand the proscenium—Raitt on a couch in a darkened living room becomes a floating visage of mischievous desire, off-screen street sounds permeate a most fraught interlude at the office. The centerpiece is the remarkably sustained nightmare of a bad date, from pick-up at home to deserted Chinese restaurant (irritated waiter muttering at the penny-pinching order, single other customer staring from the corner) to coffee afterward, Elaine May herself couldn't have done it better. "Words, words, words," sighs the beau like Percy Shelley cursing at stones, physical contact is the ultimate mystery. (A mild kiss is a trembling feat, but pull the sister's hair and get a punch to the chest.) Bergman returns the compliment in Autumn Sonata. With Liz Smith, Malcolm Smith, Donald Sumpter, and Stephen Churchett.
--- Fernando F. Croce |