My crime pick:
WHITE MISCHIEF , Michael Radford, 1987
This is a perfectly nasty movie; mean and beautiful, scary and sexy.
It's about a group of ex-patriot Brits living in Kenya on the eve of WWII. They're all rich, or live as if they are, and they all exist in an area called "Happy Valley," drinking, doing drugs, wife-swapping and being bored with their empty lives.
An elderly English gentleman is married to a very young beauty, and becomes quite jealous when his young bride actually falls in love with a cad of a bon vivant that she has slept with. After agreeing amicably to separate, the young cad is discovered dead, and the older Brit put on trial for his murder.
Not that it matters, but the story is true.
As far as plot, that's about it. But this film is all about the style, the characters, the pure decadence these people are living while the rest of the world is bracing for a devastating war.
Writer/director Radford gets the casual apathy these ex-pats felt for their African hosts just right. They don't like where they are but they don't dislike it, either. They just...exist. And to help pass the time, they have sex, do heroin, and have formal paries, night after night. You can't help but see the desperation these people sweat; for the most part, we're not told why they can't go back to
England, but it is understood that they are all trapped in a sort of limbo that they cannot escape.
The cast is exemplary. Joss Ackland, Gretta Scacci and the great Charles Dance play the three principals, but the supporting cast is equally amazing: Sarah Miles, Geraldine Chaplin, John Hurt, Murray Head, John Rees, Trevor Howard, and a young Hugh Grant shimmer and shine like empty baubles and links in a gold-plated but worthless chain.
Ackland is one of those actors Americans mostly know from playing the villain in movies like Lethal Weapon 2 and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, but he is superb in the role of a man with a trophy wife who does not know what to do with his prize - or how to keep it - once he has won it.
I've never understood how someone as clearly beautiful and talented as Greta Scacci never became a big star. She is simply luminous, and one can certainly see how men could easily kill over her.
Charles Dance is also a bit of an enigma; it seemed as if his star was rising with big roles in such films as Goldeneye, Last Action Hero and Aliens 3, but except for the occasional supporting role (Gosford Park, Swimming Pool) he seems to have settle nicely into playing upper crust sorts in British television. But I always thought he had an incredible screen presence, as he does here. But it was great to see him in Game of Thrones.
The movie's look is gorgeous; cinematographer Roger Deakins expertly captures the brilliant emptiness of the Kenyan plains, making it a worthy allusion to the characters' souls.
As Alice (Sarah Miles) says upon walking outside: "Oh god, not another bloody beautiful day."
***
My picks:
Drama - Fat City
Crime - White Mischief