The Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club is beginning
to worry me!! The conversation that took place following this week’s movie
involved a discussion that centred on whether all the killings in the film were
valid, and the funny part about it was that this intelligent adult audience
agreed that all of them were .… except maybe the lone jogger? So if mysterious
dead bodies start appearing across Dumfries and Galloway I would suggest that
the police start their investigations questioning those that attended the Film
Club screening of the British black comedy Sightseers (2012)!!!!!!
Ben Wheatley’s third feature film following Down Terrace (2009) and Kill List (2011)
was hosted by Rachel Findlay who had really done her homework on both Wheatley
and the two main actors/writers Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who played Tina and
Chris, and I make no apology for reproducing her introduction in full as
follows:
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| Evil has a knitted jumper! |
Ben Wheatley's route to success in filmmaking is pretty interesting. Initially
he made short films and animations, which he would send off in the usual way to
film festivals. Then he started putting his work onto his own website, and
concentrated on animations at this point in time, mainly because this was
easier to control, coordinate and complete as it involved only him and his own
time.
He then started to get involved with various online communities, and in
particular found a web forum called beta. He started posting pieces of his work
on the forum, which gave him instant feedback, and helped him to develop his
current projects. Around this time he created a movie of his friend appearing
to jump over a moving car, which went viral on YouTube with over 10 million
views. Large media companies started to
contact him to get him involved in commercial projects and in 2006 he won a
Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival for a viral marketing campaign for a
video gaming company. From this, he went on to work on several television
comedy shows, including BBC3's comedy The Wrong Door. It was on this show that
he originally worked with the two stars of this week’s film, Alice Lowe and
Steve Oram.
Alice and Steve are both from the Midlands, and when they first met and worked
together, mainly on TV comedies, they discovered a shared childhood love of
camping holidays. Partly from this they developed the characters Tina and Chris
who grew into a stand-up comedy act. They made a short film to pitch this idea
to TV companies, but struggled to get any interest. At some point, the pitch
was put to Ben Wheatley, and he took the project on. The final screenplay for
the movie was written by Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, but with additional
material from Amy Jump, who is also Wheatley's wife.[1]
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| Chris and Tina. |
Tina is thirty
something, living with her over powering crippled mother who will not forgive
her for the death of there beloved pooch Poppy, who accidently got caught up
with Tina’s knitting. When her new boyfriend Chris offers to take the brow
beaten spinster on a caravan holiday Tina readily accepts even if her neurotic
mother is dead against it, who announces to Chris on their departure that she
does not like him (mothering laws eh!). Setting off on their caravan travelogue
the idea is to visit places of interest that the rather domineering Chris has
planned out for them. But the journey gets a little more complex when they
visit the Crich Tramway Village in Derbyshire and Chris backs the caravan over
a lout for dropping litter and kills him. Instead of Tina being appalled by
this incident she seems to be turned on by it and gradually becomes the more assertive
partner. Continuing on their road trip they encounter one or two other obnoxious
folk and a giant pencil!
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| A visit to the Pencil Museum. |
Howls of
laughter accompanied the viewing of the movie followed by suggestions that
parts of this brummie accented Tarantinoesque film should be used in a Caravan
Club of Great Britain promotion or in an anti-litter campaign? Wheatley’s
been very clever in that the killing spree seems completely normal and the
lengthy development of the two main characters and the normality of the detail
in the film has given us two totally believably, rounded individuals whom
strangely enough you cannot fail to like. The film brings to mind Mike Leigh’s 1976
BBC Play for Today Nuts in May, which
also involves a couple on a camping trip, Withnail
and I (1987) where two young ‘gentlemen’ leave the big city for a trip to
the countryside and Natural Born Killers
(1994) a Tarantino story about a couple, both victims of a traumatic childhood,
who become lovers and mass murderers but none of these influences are allowed
to encroach on this splendid British comedy.
I could not leave this blog without mentioning the wonderful cinematography
that underlines the beautiful English countryside and for once a soundtrack
that actually enhances the movie. Can’t wait for the Sightseers sequel to see how Tina, on her return from her eventful
holiday, deals with her mother?
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| The End. |
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