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White Mischief, 1987
Based on a true story, this film follows the exploits of a crew of wealthy aristocrats living in Happy Valley in Kenya during World War 2. Drugs, drinking, and infidelity are everyday occurrences, and that’s all well and good until Diana (Greta Scacchi) and her older husband, Jock (Joss Ackland), roll into town. Diana is immediately smitten with local playboy Erroll (Charles Dance), a man who is the side-piece of practically every woman in the region. Tensions rise and rise until a deadly incident occurs and everyone is left questioning who pulled the trigger.
A so-so whodunnit, this one gets very little traction out of its portrayal of beautiful people behaving badly.
There’s a basic boundary that a movie--or any story--has to pass in order to go over well, and that’s that you need to actually care about something that’s happening on screen. This one never got past that hurdle for me, and it made pretty much everything that happened a bit of a slog.
Bad people being bad can be interesting, but there has to be some hook. In this case, I don’t know why we’re meant to care. Perhaps we’re supposed to be more appalled by the fact that these people are living a carefree and decadent life while others are engaged in a deadly battle for the future of the world? Perhaps I was meant to be swept up in the romances and sexy glances between the characters?
Really the problem here is a lack of character development. Diana is kind of a nothing character. She arrives, all the other women are like “Ooh, you’re sexy! And he’s sexy! You’ll be sexy together!” and then that’s what happened. Likewise Dance’s lothario totally fails to make an impact. Yes, Scacchi and Dance look nice in the buff, and there’s a certain degree of artistry to the way that one of their encounters is filmed, but I didn’t find myself rooting for them, caught up in their back-and-forth about how serious their fling is, or even caring all that much when someone catches a bullet.
The two best characters are probably Ackland’s Jock and Alice (Sarah Miles), one of Erroll’s lovers and a woman who has a very unique manner of mourning her lost love. Both of these characters experience the anguish of watching someone they love fall for someone else, and in the maddening context of a social setting where no one gives a hoot if your lover or spouse is flaunting their unfaithfulness in your face. There is at least some recognizable angst and anger to these characters. Frankly I found everyone so off-putting that just having a character to say “You are all awful!” made me identify with them.
The setting of the film is quite beautiful, though the way that the local people are portrayed feels a bit off. It’s not exactly that they are shown in a disrespectful manner, but more that they are treated like background furniture and set dressing. While you expect this attitude from the characters, it’s kind of crunchy to see the film itself do it. I think that this is part of the problem of the way that the characters don’t really distinguish themselves---every ten minutes or so there’s the need to put something on the screen that reminds you that they are in Kenya.
None of the pieces of this movie worked for me. The decadence wasn’t memorable enough; the mystery wasn’t mysterious enough; and the drama wasn’t dramatic enough. Not a bad film, necessarily, merely a weak one.
White Mischief, 1987
Based on a true story, this film follows the exploits of a crew of wealthy aristocrats living in Happy Valley in Kenya during World War 2. Drugs, drinking, and infidelity are everyday occurrences, and that’s all well and good until Diana (Greta Scacchi) and her older husband, Jock (Joss Ackland), roll into town. Diana is immediately smitten with local playboy Erroll (Charles Dance), a man who is the side-piece of practically every woman in the region. Tensions rise and rise until a deadly incident occurs and everyone is left questioning who pulled the trigger.
A so-so whodunnit, this one gets very little traction out of its portrayal of beautiful people behaving badly.
There’s a basic boundary that a movie--or any story--has to pass in order to go over well, and that’s that you need to actually care about something that’s happening on screen. This one never got past that hurdle for me, and it made pretty much everything that happened a bit of a slog.
Bad people being bad can be interesting, but there has to be some hook. In this case, I don’t know why we’re meant to care. Perhaps we’re supposed to be more appalled by the fact that these people are living a carefree and decadent life while others are engaged in a deadly battle for the future of the world? Perhaps I was meant to be swept up in the romances and sexy glances between the characters?
Really the problem here is a lack of character development. Diana is kind of a nothing character. She arrives, all the other women are like “Ooh, you’re sexy! And he’s sexy! You’ll be sexy together!” and then that’s what happened. Likewise Dance’s lothario totally fails to make an impact. Yes, Scacchi and Dance look nice in the buff, and there’s a certain degree of artistry to the way that one of their encounters is filmed, but I didn’t find myself rooting for them, caught up in their back-and-forth about how serious their fling is, or even caring all that much when someone catches a bullet.
The two best characters are probably Ackland’s Jock and Alice (Sarah Miles), one of Erroll’s lovers and a woman who has a very unique manner of mourning her lost love. Both of these characters experience the anguish of watching someone they love fall for someone else, and in the maddening context of a social setting where no one gives a hoot if your lover or spouse is flaunting their unfaithfulness in your face. There is at least some recognizable angst and anger to these characters. Frankly I found everyone so off-putting that just having a character to say “You are all awful!” made me identify with them.
The setting of the film is quite beautiful, though the way that the local people are portrayed feels a bit off. It’s not exactly that they are shown in a disrespectful manner, but more that they are treated like background furniture and set dressing. While you expect this attitude from the characters, it’s kind of crunchy to see the film itself do it. I think that this is part of the problem of the way that the characters don’t really distinguish themselves---every ten minutes or so there’s the need to put something on the screen that reminds you that they are in Kenya.
None of the pieces of this movie worked for me. The decadence wasn’t memorable enough; the mystery wasn’t mysterious enough; and the drama wasn’t dramatic enough. Not a bad film, necessarily, merely a weak one.