Reviews

This rare, hard to find, made for TV film is as fast paced, as witty, and as bewildering as anything Tom Stoppard has written. Alan Bates plays the eye of the hurricane, the perfect, understated, thoroughly British, spymaster cum civil servant. He is plagued, as is everyone in the film, by his hobbies, and must deal with the failed suicide of one of his spies, who clearly didn't get it. Can there be anything more embarrassing than a suicide note that circulates while you are living? How very, very British of Stoppard. A delightful setup, all within the first two minutes(!), expertly exploited by Stoppard's intensely rich characters. That every one of them is so fully developed in just over an hour, speaks volumes for both Stoppard and the cast. Clearly, I liked it.

This role, plus the incomparable performance in Butley define Alan Bates for me. The stage presence, commanding your attention, has always been astonishing. The ultimate proof of Bates' talent was when he played opposite Olivier the last time, and despite his own reputation and stature, purposely ceded the spotlight and did not compete. A truly excellent and underrated actor was Alan Bates.

Francis Veber is responsible for some of the most scintillating dialog in the business. Fast paced and clever are tired descriptions compared to what you actually see on the screen. I began to notice him with La Cage aux Folles and Le Placard, but he has come a huge way since. Tais-Toi and Diner des Cons are monuments to fast paced, clever, and above all outrageously funny dialogue. It gets harder and harder to find movies I actually laugh out loud in, but Veber is a guarantee for it. The performances he gets out of Depardieu and Reno are nothing short of inspired. They both reach out to astoundingly broad comedy for them, well outside their regular personas. You can see how much they themselves are enjoying this film. It is worth seeing for that alone. But mostly, it is a real pleasure and a privilege for a film lover to watch this film, and that cannot be said of 99% of releases these days.