Irina Palm

Rating:

* *

Verdict:

Oddball comedy is too downbeat to raise a laugh.

It's entirely possible that this very odd film was intended as a comedy; certainly a couple of the trade papers greeted it as such when it first screened at the Berlin Film Festival. But the glum lighting, downbeat tone and Faithfull's one-note performance leave it pretty short on laughs.

A film about sex featuring the woman who memorably wore full leathers and nothing else in

Girl on a Motorcycle

40 years ago, may have some sort of self-referential irony. But the problem is that the brilliantly gravel-throated singer isn't enough of an actress to achieve the level of nuance and ambiguity the role demands.

She plays Maggie, a widow devoted to her grandson who is suffering from an unspecified serious illness for which a new treatment is available only in Australia. Her son Tom (Bishop) and daughter-in-law Sarah (Hewlett) haven't a hope of raising the fares so Maggie, improbably, takes a job in a Soho sex club. The work, to put it as delicately as can be managed, involves servicing clients through a hole in the wall: she proves so proficient that she becomes something of a star - even taking on the stage name of the title - not to mention a good earner.

The potential for a bittersweet comedy that elegantly sidesteps sentimentality and cliche is plain but director Gabarski, a German, and writer Philippe Blasband, a Frenchman, both making their first English-language film, get the tone all wrong. Faithfull's Maggie seems entirely without affect: her lived-in face never lets slip how she feels about anything and as a result we don't know whether to wince, laugh or cry. Everything seems so muffled and muted that when Tom discovers what Mum's been up to and hits the roof, it has the impact of a nuclear explosion.

The most interesting characters are around the edges of the story: Gryllus as Maggie's immigrant workmate, Manojlovic as her boss, an anorexic Agutter as her purse-lipped snob of a neighbour. But it's hard to avoid thinking about how this might have worked in the hands of Mike Leigh with Brenda Blethyn in the main role.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Marianne Faithfull, Miki Manojlovic, Kevin Bishop, Siobhan Hewlett, Dorka Gryllus, Jenny Agutter

Director:

Sam Gabarski

Running time:

103 mins

Rating:

R16 (offensive language, sex scenes)

Screening:

Academy