A Merry War, Dance With A Stranger
reviewed Wed, 10 Mar 1999 00:32:32 EST
Thanks to the snow, I had a very successful mini British film
festival
this afternoon. First up was A MERRY WAR, a charming
little
movie starring Richard E. Grant as a struggling poet who quits his job
to become "a free man" and Helena Bonham-Carter as his long-suffering
girlfriend.
Both actors do a terrific job; Grant is perhaps a little too convincing
as the self-obsessed poet who thinks the working classes are the only
honest
and good people (which reminds me of a former co-worker who had the
same
unsubstantiated opinion; his favorite rant was, "I'd rather be cleaning
toilets at Lorton prison!" which begged the question of why he wasn't).
Anyway, it's a very witty and satisfying film. Except for the very
end---the
movie is set in the early part of this century, yet as the closing
credits
begin, a horrible, sappy, easy-listening ballad starts to play---what a
crime!
Then it was on to DANCE WITH A STRANGER, which I
rented
chiefly because it stars Rupert Everett (my doctor looks like Rupert
Everett---aren't
I the lucky girl!). Actually, it's quite good---a nicely tragic
counterpoint
to A Merry War. Everett does a fine job, looking terribly
young,
but co-stars Miranda Richardson, looking startlingly Marilyn, and Ian
Holm,
looking very dejected, are even better. The movie's about passion and
longing,
and each of the three leads in this love triangle wrenchingly convey
different
kinds of yearning. It's not a film that makes you feel very hopeful
about
love, but then when did I ever? (Even less cheering is finding out it's
based on a true story about the last woman to be executed in Britain.)
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