The settings are suitably grim and grimy. Most of the cast are oddly antisocial enough to fit neatly into the Kaurismaki vision of sixties' London bleakness. Jean-Pierre Leaud is morbidly deadpan in a truly Finnish way. Kenneth Colley is a wistful hit-man par excellence. The stifling dullness of the Orwellian ministry and the heartstopping nature of abrupt redundancy are beautifully drawn. The only thing that drags this movie down from Kaurismaki's usual lofty heights of cruel farce is the awful wooden performance by Margi Clarke as the "love" interest.
I have no idea why she was chosen ahead of the other 3 billion women on the planet to play the role, but she stinks up the place something rotten. She is so grimly unconvincing that I was grinding my teeth within ten minutes of her introduction. What should have been a brilliant dark comedy was turned into a dire soap episode by an artless performance of hitherto unimaginable ineptitude. It would appear that sublime irony is not her strongpoint. Nor is holding onto a single convincing accent for the duration. From Liverpool to Roedean in an hour. Hello nosebleed.
I've seen her play her usual gobby scouser part in innumerable "gritty" TV dramas, and found her bearable at worst. But here, she kills the atmosphere stone dead with her awful timing and dismal delivery. If only her performance was a joke of the "so bad it's good variety", but it isn't. It's just lame. I'm assuming that Aki cast her on the strength of Letter to Brezhnev or his brother's Helsinki-Napoli, but rarely has anyone been so wretchedly miscast in any of his movies. Even Joe Strummer comes out smelling of roses(and beer and cigs).
A real shame, because the mood of the movie is fantastic. The props and locations are homages to a London long since redeveloped. The giant Corona bottle in the pub is a particularly neat touch. As is the fact that everyone's smoking Players and Capstans. Worth a remake with a decent actress who has some understanding of irony and understatement.
I have no idea why she was chosen ahead of the other 3 billion women on the planet to play the role, but she stinks up the place something rotten. She is so grimly unconvincing that I was grinding my teeth within ten minutes of her introduction. What should have been a brilliant dark comedy was turned into a dire soap episode by an artless performance of hitherto unimaginable ineptitude. It would appear that sublime irony is not her strongpoint. Nor is holding onto a single convincing accent for the duration. From Liverpool to Roedean in an hour. Hello nosebleed.
I've seen her play her usual gobby scouser part in innumerable "gritty" TV dramas, and found her bearable at worst. But here, she kills the atmosphere stone dead with her awful timing and dismal delivery. If only her performance was a joke of the "so bad it's good variety", but it isn't. It's just lame. I'm assuming that Aki cast her on the strength of Letter to Brezhnev or his brother's Helsinki-Napoli, but rarely has anyone been so wretchedly miscast in any of his movies. Even Joe Strummer comes out smelling of roses(and beer and cigs).
A real shame, because the mood of the movie is fantastic. The props and locations are homages to a London long since redeveloped. The giant Corona bottle in the pub is a particularly neat touch. As is the fact that everyone's smoking Players and Capstans. Worth a remake with a decent actress who has some understanding of irony and understatement.