They’re not in polite company
Independent director Sally Potter’s satire delves into the issue of healthcare.
The characters debate British politics and more in Sally Potter’s “The Party.”
LONDON — Sally Potter’s office is tucked away in East London, encompassing several floors in an old building where the British filmmaker lives and works. Removed from the corporate media landscape of central London, it’s a logical setting for such a resolutely independent film director.
The building also hosts Adventure Films, Potter and Christopher Sheppard’s production company, which formed in 1990. It’s been responsible for all of the director’s work since 1992’s “Orlando.”
Potter’s latest is “The Party,” a 71-minute, blackand-white satirical comedy. It’s a contained, fast-paced and carefully wrought piece that unearths essential conversations about healthcare rights, social politics, friendship, motherhood and love.
The idea came to her during Britain’s 2015 general election, pitting Conservative leader David Cameron against Labor leader Ed Miliband, when both took notably centrist stances.
“Everything became spin,” Potter remembers, sitting in a room filled, floor to ceiling, with books and filing cabinets. “People were no longer saying what they really felt or thought, but what they thought would be the vote catcher.
“That felt like it was storing up massive problems ... about the inability to speak the truth. I got this notion that I could write a comedy wrapped around a tragedy and that it could be about the politics of health and the health of ill-politics.”
Potter initially wrote “The Party” as a short story, then adapted it into a screenplay. Kristin Scott Thomas plays Janet, a politician who throws a dinner party to celebrate being named the new shadow minster of health. Her political affiliation is never named (though her devotion to Britain’s National Health Service suggests she may be left-leaning).
A group of her friends, played by Cillian Murphy, Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, Cherry Jones and Bruno Ganz, join Janet and her husband Bill (Timothy Spall) in their London home. Over the course of the evening, which unfurls in real time, all hell breaks loose.
“It needed confining,” Potter says of the story. “It’s like a pressure cooker and everything builds up. That’s really useful, dramatically. And then there’s the challenge of how to create movement, variety and momentum within that space and within apparent real time. That was kind of exciting, actually, and created a focused, concentrated and freeing atmosphere.”
The film is a true ensemble piece. No one has top billing, and Potter ensured that everyone was paid the same, including herself. Each character has a deep specificity, with well-defined attributes and opinions.
Because of that, the debates feel real. “My main thing is trying to compassionately creep into the shoes of others, people who are not like me,” she notes.
Each character lives in a moral gray area. As details are revealed, it becomes evident that each is just as flawed as the next.
“I like doing portraits of people who are more than one thing,” Potter says. “Most people in reality have qualities coexisting in them, contradictions and pulls in different directions. I tried to make each character have an arc of change, so that ... by the end you’re completely reevaluating who and what they were.”
The actors met with Potter individually at her office to discuss their characters and then gathered as a group for a few days of rehearsal. But there wasn’t time to linger over anything due to scheduling and budget constraints. The entire film was shot over just two weeks on a soundstage in the West London Film Studios in June of 2016.
Halfway through production, the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. The Brexit vote sent shockwaves through the cast and crew, jolting the sense of strife in Potter’s script.
“Everyone came in weeping,” the director remembers. “For most people it was a disaster. It was a very, very international crew — like I usually work with. That feeling of people from different nations and even different languages working creatively and happily together was massively important for everybody. And, of course, it was a mixed cast as well. So this was going the complete opposite direction.”
Still, the camaraderie was strong among the cast. Clarkson calls the experience “one in a million,” partly because of the caliber of the other actors and partly because of Potter’s intense attention to detail.
The director doesn’t have a chair on set, preferring to stay close to the actors and be as physically present as possible, always moving.
“We all had these individual journeys,” Clarkson says. “And that's, I think, the beauty of this film. We’re true to the array of characters. It’s a cacophony, but you can hear the separate sounds. I think that’s a tribute to Sally and just how well-written each character is.” She adds, “It taught me as an actor to be fearless.”
Although “The Party” was conceived over three years ago, there is a striking relevance in its discussion of healthcare. In Britain, the NHS is revered for ensuring that every resident receives healthcare without insurance or extra fees.
The film doesn’t take a particular stance on whether the NHS is working (President Trump came under fire for disparaging the system), but it does pose questions. The discussion of the NHS and universal healthcare doesn’t exclude American viewers. It makes the film even more timely.
“I’m aware that healthcare is a massive issue for everyone in the States,” Potter says. “It shapes itself slightly differently, but in a way it’s the same argument: Healthcare as a right vs. healthcare for money. I knew it was a risk to make something so specific and local to the U.K. But I also knew that the more specific and local you can make something the more universal it becomes.”
“The Party” is also a risky endeavor in that it’s black and white, free of special effects and ends on a surprisingly violent note. It emphasizes language over action, and in its 71 minutes much of our reality is questioned. It’s a movie that lingers, which for Potter is the power of independent cinema.
“What an independent film can do is engage the viewer in a more collaborative way and a more active way and perhaps a more respectful way and certainly in a more intimate way,” she says. “But then I’ve never been offered to direct a James Bond or a Star Wars.
“Nobody was going to give me the job offer. I’ve created my own cinema. Its failures are my own. There’s something to be said for that.”