Naked Film by Mike Leigh WIDELY critically acclaimed - a 'milestone in the British film industry' and a 'masterly excursion into the heaven and hell of our existance' -Leigh's new Cannes award winner is a relentlessly bleak, hateful and misogynist film.
It attempts to comment on the cynicism and self-centred values of 90s Britain and their effect on relationships between men and women by following unemployed Mancunian, Johnny (David Thewlis), on a three day visit to London.
Johnny lurches through the film spewing forth his boring "philosophical' rantings about the impending apocalypse akin to those of an angry sixth-form grammar school boy.
It is beyond belief that the people he encounters just let him into their lives and suffer his abuse for so long without protest.
During this visit to 72 hours of misery and hate we witness Johnny having a series of violent emotional and sometimes sexual encounters with cardboard women characters united in their powerlessness and masochism.
Whilst some reviews in the bourgeois press have commented on the misogyny by saying they don't want to get into the 'should you portray it or not' debate, they miss the point.
Leigh seeks to attribute all the male characters' misogyny to the the last 14 years of Tory rule.
But male hatred of wemen is not new, nor the sole perogative of men socialised during the Thatcher years (whether at the margins of society or at the peak of success in the city).
And it has only a tenuous link to the decay and decline of a society and a lack of hope.
Many of the '60s 'angry young men' displayed the same degree of loathing for women at a time of increasing affluence, hope and opportunity.
Mike Leigh has in the past provided insight and thougthful comment on working class life in Britain - not any more.
This is a voyeuristic film. It fails in its attempt to show alienation in British society and its impact on men and women.
As a chance for the curious to 'experience' the lives of the marginalised 'underclass' and their exploiters, with some brutal sex thrown in for good measure, it susceeds.
One character in the film says to Johnny 'don't waste your life'. Unless you fancy a night out full of hate, listening to a boring quasi-religious rant peppered with unerotic sex that leaves you angry and frustrated, don't waste your money! to be 'a feminist role.! It is certainly unusual for this type of film to have the narration, where there is any seen through the eyes of Arquette's character.
However in this film as before what goes completely unchallenged is the racism of his characters.
Whilst it is obvious American society is rife with racism is it really sufficient to simply therefore include it for the sake of reality in each film and fail to comment upon it?
In fact in "True Romance" we are presented with Dennis Hopper as Slater's father 'heroically' using racism to goad a mafia don, Christopher Walken, into killing him rather than inform the mob the whereabouts of his son.
Bad taste
These two characters are memorable, not least for Hopper appearing to send himself up by playing the only 'normal' character in the whole film but the outburst simply left a very bad taste in the mouth.
As a whole this film is worth seeing, being crafted by one of the US's best independent talents, and someone who by all accounts wishes to stay that way.
His world of films is not the everyday life of everyone but is probably closer to the mark than earlier attempts to portray the segment of life that interests him.
The only question remaining is why does Christian Slater always pretend to be Jack Nicholson in whatever role he is playing?