I’ve been to a marvellous party!
Writer/director Sally Potter’s acerbic comedy THE PARTY is black humour flecked with nuclear winter laughs. There’s a gun from the get go pointed at the audience and you’re under arrest for the duration. It takes 71 minutes to find out who gets the bullet and the tension is palpable.
THE PARTY is a comedy wrapped around a tragedy, in which a celebratory gathering of friends goes violently, spectacularly wrong in a very short space of time. A week may be a long time in politics, but a few minutes can be a long time in a relationship. When under extreme pressure, in a confined environment – and any house that once felt like a sanctuary can quickly feel like a jail – everything hidden can come hurtling to the surface.
Morally right and politically left, best intentions bite the bullet as the back stabbings are revealed in a swirl of terminal turmoil.
THE PARTY is a bare-bones, skeletons in the closet film turning confinement of place and the constraints of real-time into a virtue. In a black and white cinematic world without elaborate special effects or multiple changes of location, apparently simple elements do the work of storytelling. Everything is exposed in a crisis that develops as the truth bleaches the lies and betrayals out of the fabric of friendship and allegiances.
Confrontation and conflict distilled into a little over an hour. Think Polanski’s Carnage.
THE PARTY begins with a gathering at the London town-house of a married couple: Bill and Janet. She works in politics and has just been promoted to being Shadow Minister for Health in the party in opposition, which is unnamed. He is an academic who has given up some opportunities in his working life in order to support hers. And with that decision has come some disappointments and frustrations.
Timothy Spall and Kristin Scott Thomas play the power couple hosting a celebration that descends from the salubrious to the uncivil in seventy minutes flat. The assembled guests are made up of factions from either side of the matrimonial pair.
From Janet’s side there is April, and old friend, and her on-off partner Gottfried, a life-coach she appears to hold utter contempt for. April is portrayed by Patricia Clarkson in an acid tongued, singularly cynical characterisation. In an inspired bit of casting, Potter paired Clarkson with the legendary German actor Bruno Ganz as Gottfried, the platitudinous pacifier picking his way through a moral minefield.
On Bill’s side there’s academic colleague, Martha, played by Cherry Jones and her lover, Jinny, pregnant with twins, played by Emily Mortimer.
Wild card guest is merchant banker, Tom, played with feverish pitch by Cillian Murphy who is supposed to be accompanied by his mysteriously detained wife.
Disarming and dark, THE PARTY is a furious folly of false allegiances. I couldn’t have liked it more.
I agree with your review apart from the pathetic, uninspired performance of Timothy Spall.
The poor fellow should rerun to acting school to hone his minimal skills.
If only he had been replaced by an actor of substance, the film would have been most memorable!