First on this tape, a Channel 4 presentation of Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game. Which is basically the same movie as his Mona Lisa but with more terrorists and genitalia.
I’ve never watched this before. The big reveal (which surely everyone in the world knows about) was thoroughly spoiled, mainly by Jaye Davidson getting Oscar and Bafta nominations for Best Actor.
It’s a shame, because the film is beautifully told, and it must have been an amazing surprise if you came to it fresh. When you know what’s coming, you spend too much time looking for clues, and you don’t let the simple, sweet love story take you there. I had a similar experience with The Sixth Sense because I had that one spoiled for me too (by a twelve year old boy, weirdly enough).
The question should be asked, though, does the film stand up apart from its central surprise? It really does. I found the opening scenes a little jarring – Forest Whitaker’s lines in the opening scene were all overdubbed, and although his accent was OK, this extra layer of unreality was just a bit jarring.
But apart from this, it’s excellent. Stephen Rea has that hangdog lost puppy act perfected, and Jaye Davidson is very good too – definitely earning the nominations.
I particularly like the way the story moves from the IRA hostage scene into the love story and search for redemption, then only brings back the IRA plotline after you’ve almost forgotten it.
It’s nice to see a few familiar faces in the supporting cast. Miranda Richardson is scary, Adrian Dunbar is almost the nice face of terrorism, and Ralph Brown and Jim Broadbent are both well used in small parts. Plus, the Slatterywatch klaxon goes off as Tony Slattery appears as Rea’s horrible boss.
A special note for the very end, which achieves the amazing feat of using a bad joke and ‘Stand By Your Man’ and still making me cry.
TV trivia note: According to the Nokia advert in the first ad break, this is one of the first widescreen broadcasts. I’m presuming they’re referring to Channel 4’s brief experiment with PalPlus, a system that allowed an anamorphic widescreen picture to be broadcast by hiding extra picture detail in the black bars top and bottom. I have a vivid memory of being in Comet, and my friend Sean almost coming to blows with the clueless salesboy about how their widescreen PalPlus TV wasn’t displaying the picture properly.
Now, here’s a brainteaser for you. Who wrote Peter’s Friends? Kenneth Branagh? Nope, he directed it, though. Stephen Fry? Hugh Laurie? Emme Thompson? Nope, despite it being firmly about life after footlights. Must be Richard Curtis, then? Nope, he had nothing to do with it.
Answer? Rita Rudner and Martin Bergman. Rudner and Bergman were the main writers for Rudner’s TV series (which I might have somewhere in my collection) but Peter’s Friends was the only movie they ever wrote. I think they should have written more (or, as is more likely, what they probably did write should have been produced).
I like Peter’s Friends. It’s a bit of a shameless steal from Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill, but it’s filled with actors I love, and has plenty of funny lines. “Adults are just children who owe money.”
And we get to play the Slatterywatch klaxon twice in a row, for he appears here, although not as part of the footlights-esque troupe of friends, despite him actually being in the same footlights revue as Fry, Laurie and Thompson. Instead, he’s cast to type, I’m afraid, as the boorish boyfriend of Alphonsia Emmanuel.
In many ways, this film set a template for the future career of Richard Curtis – lots of friends, jukebox soundtrack, ludicrous wealth. I wonder if it was any influence at all.
Just after the film finishes, the recording stops, and underneath there’s some tennis – indoor clay court tennis featuring Andre Agassi, Goran Ivanisevic, Boris Becker and Michael Stich. The tape runs out at the start of an old film, The Mad Genius.
Adverts:
- Nokia – “You are witnessing one of the first widescreen programmes” – remember when Nokia made TVs? No, me neither.
- KFC
- Time Out (chocolate)
- Black & Decker
- Timberland
- Pulp Fiction in cinemas
- Guinness
- Yorkie
- AA Insurance
- Nissan Primera
- Shell
- Sun Alliance
- Murphy’s
- Vauxhall Astra
- Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in cinemas
- Friends Provident
- Bird’s Eye Baker’s Bistro
- organics
- Deci Dela
- Castlemaine XXXX
- trail: Waterland
- trail: Equinox: The Final Frontier
- One Plus One
- Nationwide
- Fords with Phones
- The Equitable Life
- Black and Decker
- Exchange and Mart
- Murphy’s
- trail: Fridays – including a glimpse of Paris, the little-seen Alexei Sayle sitcom from Father Ted’s Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews.
- Nurofen Cold & Flu
- Tampax
- Quality Street
- Shoe Express
- British Pork
- Volvo
- trail: Beat That Einstein – a show I never saw.
VHiStory 