Dancing on the Edge

The trouble with Poliakoff dramas these days is that they're so over-hyped as 'Event Television' that they're almost bound to disappoint.  'Friends and Crocodiles', 'Joe's Palace', 'Gideon's Daughter' and 'Capturing Mary' blend into one mannered, pretentious and seemingly pointless mess which wasted hours of our lives.  Like many established talents, Poliakoff attracts starry names and seemingly no editors with the gumption to question the great man's decisions.

There are recurring obsessions in the recent work: the war, the aristocracy vs new money, photographs, secret pasts, shadowy and reclusive millionaires, the chaos and clashes of the 20th Century and a great slab of a house which often seems to put in an appearance (Mr P's own perhaps?).  It looks like most if not all of these themes will turn up in 'Dancing on the Edge', a tale of a black jazz band, a jobbing music journalist and some English gentry in a very stylish and stylised 1930s London and Home Counties.  The romances are signposted, the cliches are present and correct (the very last singer to audition blows them away...!  A Prince takes a shine to the band at a garden party!)  Of-course it all looks sumptuous, with everyone and almost everything looking glamorous and polished - if not always quite authentically 1930s - and the cast are good enough to beg forgiveness for the funereal pace, even if Joanna Vanderham doesn't quite convince as sophisticated socialite Pamela and some of the band's American accents are shaky.  Janet Montgomery, as the contrasting brunette Sarah, is meant to be bohemian but isn't very, and incidentally bears a striking resemblance to Poliakoff's last muse, Ruth Wilson. 

It's not bad overall (the going-nowhere-on-a-train interlude and the histrionics by a band member in an upmarket hotel excepted) but... we're reminded of what David Hare said about Bertolucci's epic 'The Last Emperor': "no-one says a single interesting thing."  What do you know, but the idle, decadent rich were rather liberal in their last hurrah, and paved the way for acceptance of black musicians this side of the pond!  And there were we thinking that Duke Ellington had gone down a storm with the everyday folk as well as the Windsors at the Palladium in 1933.  It's not subtle, and people ruminate endlessly as they do in all Poliakoff dramas.  "One never knows what goes on in people's private lives, does one?" etc.  This is said about John Goodman's reclusive Croesus, Mr Masterson, who has trashed a luxury suite and assaulted a young woman.

It's difficult to know whether there will be a worthwhile payoff.  'Shooting the Past' delivered, as did 'Perfect Strangers', 'She's Been Away' and the superb 'Caught on a Train', but the most recent of these was over a decade ago.  The opening scene shows musician Louis (Chiwetel Ejiofor) appearing caped and hatted out of the shadows like an extra from 'Ripper Street', on the run and calling on his music journalist friend Stanley (Matthew Goode).  The action then slips back 18 months.  We hope the next 4 hours aren't wasted.

W.E.

No, it's not on TV, so no need for panic.  This isn't about to become a film blog, but it's rare that two films on simultaneous release receive such polar-opposite reviews.  We speak of-course of 'The Artist' and 'W.E.'


The former is sublime and deserving of its praise.  Crafted with love and intelligence, it plays with the medium of film and the dubious morality behind Hollywood's dream factory.  It's rare that a film really tries something different and pulls it off with crowd-pleasing aplomb.


So, does 'W.E.' equally deserve the derision it has received from the critics?  To date we haven't seen a single favourable review (Mr Bamigboye in the Daily Mail was more of a sales pitch), so we went with low expectations.  We've seen 'Cassandra's Dream' so we know what a bad film looks like and that's an apt jumping off point.  Would this have attracted such bad notices if the director had been A.N.Other?  Well no... but probably because it wouldn't have been made.  Reading the reviews could make you feel sorry for Madonna, but with her funds, connections and history, it's unlikely she cares much about the negative critical reception.


To start with the positives: Andrea Riseborough is just fine as Wallis, in fact fabulous.  She gets the best deal, screenwise, although it's an undeniable shame that her performance in a better vehicle may well have earned her serious award nominations.  The remainder of the cast are solid in support, and all credit to the casting directors in providing one of the film's saving graces.  It also looks beautiful.  Madonna's background in masterminding several of her own pop videos serves her well in this respect, but just as the film highlights her abilities in wallpaper porn, it also shows up her obsession with appearances and the superficial.


So, what's wrong with it?

• The modern-day storyline set in New York.  It's just weak, doesn't add anything in its supposed parallel to the W.E. thread and is wildly implausible.  Wally is clearly neurotic, her husband is almost a pantomime villain (modelled on Mr. Ritchie, perchance?) and as for the Russian security-guard-cum-intellectual with his spacious apartment, expensive watch and grand-piano-playing abilities... they're "a dime a dozen"?  Come on!  Sotheby's  also apparently have the worst security of any auction house in history.
• The dialogue.    Lots of exposition along the "Welcome to the first day of the auction of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's estate here at Sotheby's" and "but he's my brother!" lines.  The rest was either trite, pretentious or just plain dull.
• Wallis and Edward.  Theirs may be a larger-than-life tale of the 20th Century, able to be pored over from many angles, but it has already been the subject of countless dramas, documentaries, books etc. and they make regular cameo appearances in works about that time ('Any Human Heart' being a recent case in point).  In addition, there just isn't the material to sustain a two-hour film, which is where TV costume dramas have won out.  The minutiae of the relationship translate to a small screen far more convincingly than they do to a bigger picture experience, obviating the need for the uninteresting modern storyline.  The other sticking point about the pair is their unsavoury reputations.  Even Wallis's biographers don't seem to like her much, despite thinking her chic and rather formidable.  This film continually dismisses or downplays the Nazi angle and depicts the late Queen Mother in a particularly nasty light (nothing new, we admit).  Tellingly, what's also omitted is Wallis's well-documented viciousness towards her, nicknaming her 'Cookie' and so on.  Here, she's portrayed only as the victim of the royal family's snobbish rejection of her.  We could go on in the same vein but here is a woman who needs a revisionist history no more or less than the QM, and like her is unable to comment on her own behalf.
• The talked-about Sex Pistols dance sequence.  Just plain odd.  (It didn't work for Sophia Coppola either, Madge, if that's any consolation.)  Like the whole Wally strand, it added sod all, and that goes double for the inclusion of Mohammed Al Fayed.  Are the modern rich, famous and powerful so insecure that they must draw comparisons to the glamorous - if 'pretty vacant' - dead?

So, yes it's their money and they can do what they want with it, and who is anyone to say that anyone else shouldn't branch out and try to create something new?  But... it's galling as ever that clout opens the doors that remain closed to talent.  Worst film ever?  No, but critics can rest easy that they are taken at their word: there were three other people in the cinema with us.