The Trouble with Jessica

1hr 29mins (15)

Satire of London liberals ★★★

“There are echoes of Carnage and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in this satire of north London liberals,” said Cath Clarke in The Guardian. Set almost entirely in one location – “a big fancy house in Hampstead” – it stars Shirley Henderson and Alan Tudyk as Sarah and Tom, a couple in their 50s who have been forced to put “said fancy Hampstead house” on the market, because Tom’s latest architecture project has flopped. They decide to throw “one last dinner party” in the house, however, and they invite their best mates: Beth (Olivia Williams) and her husband Richard (Rufus Sewell), who brings along another old pal called Jessica (Indira Varma). Jessica, who has just published a bestselling memoir, “flirts outrageously” with Tom, then hangs herself in the garden. Henderson is “terrific” as “brittle, nervy” Sarah, whose “layers of liberal decency” gradually peel away: she decides that the death must be kept secret, lest it jeopardise the house sale. The concept is “original”, but unfortunately, the “farce that follows the suicide is mostly strained and unfunny”.

The film “feels like a stage play”, and its “classy” cast ensures it’s always watchable, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. “But director and co-writer Matt Winn can’t decide whether he’s made a farce or a domestic drama or, indeed, why we should go and see it in the cinema.” The Trouble with Jessica is a “cruel film”, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent; and that’s “fine, because it’s been smartly populated with all the archetypes of insufferableness”. It’s just a pity that it “shifts into sincerity by its end. A more daring film wouldn’t have allowed us a reminder that they’re all human.”