Though ambitious, Party isn’t marvellous
Quirky director’s motley crew tosses around some choice lines
British director Sally Potter likes a challenge. Her 2004 feature Yes had main characters only ever referred to as She and He. Oh, and the whole thing was written in iambic pentameter. And 2009’s Rage was supposedly shot on a cellphone (though it looked a little too sharp) and way back in 1992, Potter famously cast Tilda Swinton as a man in Orlando.
Potter’s newest, The Party, doesn’t have a simple, single hook. Among its oddities, however, are that it runs a brisk 71 minutes, was shot in black and white, and opens and closes on the same image: Kristin Scott Thomas pointing a gun at the camera.
In between are seven characters in search of an acting prize, or so it might be assumed from the intensity at which their performances are pitched. Scott Thomas portrays Janet, Britain’s newly installed health minister, who’s hosting one party to celebrate her victory within another. Her taciturn husband (Timothy Spall), in contrast, looks defeated.
The guests include Jinny and Martha (Emily Mortimer, Cherry Jones), a lesbian couple who just discovered that Jinny is carrying a trio of fetuses. There are also April and Gottfried (Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz), on the verge of separating over irreconcilable philosophical differences — he’s an idealist, she’s a cynic. (She also gets all the best lines, insisting for instance that Jinny use the term “with children,” not “with child,” to describe her condition.)
Finally we have Tom (Cillian Murphy), who shows up without his wife and proceeds to get coked up, gunned up and liquored up in quick succession. Clearly, this banker has more on his mind than actuarial tables.
Potter’s screenplay (Walter Donohue is listed as “story editor,” a credit he’s had on six of her films to date) has its work cut out for it.
Even with the rapid-fire nature of the dialogue, there’s a lot of ground to cover among seven characters who clearly have a lot of shared history. (You don’t get to dislike people this much without years of practice. “Martha, you’re a first-class lesbian and a second-rate thinker,” says April in another of her perfectly pointed barbs.)
But there are as many misses as hits among all the well-tossed bons mots. Spall’s character at first seems to be dealing with dementia, before admitting it’s something else altogether. And as a lifelong atheist he seems oddly eager to grasp at metaphysical straws. The Party can be terribly clever at times, but it’s not consistently so. Sure, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. But at just over an hour on the screen, it can’t afford any missteps either.