The party (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Sally Potter
	Actors: Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Cilian Murphy, Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall
	Country: GB
	Genre: Drama, Black Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 19.06.2017, Schauburg, Sneak Preview, English with German subtitle
Synopsis: April (Clarkson) is the best friend of Janet (Thomas). Gottfried (Ganz) is the German life-coach and husband of April. Martha (Jones) is the best political supporter of Janet. Jinny (Mortimer) is the newly pregnant girlfriend of Martha. Tom (Murphy) is the banker boyfriend of Janet's most precious colleague Marianne. Bill (Spall) is the husband of Janet. Janet just got promoted to be minister for health.
Review: The story is a long introduction of the characters, as if we were at this party. Some sequences are full of morbid and black humour, what I liked, but many are quite flat. Even if a kind of suspense is built by the banker Tom having a gun in his pocket. But this looks poorly credible because of the acting and because of the situation. Maybe this was supposed to be humorous. Then the revelation of the lethal illness of Tom is really funny because of the reaction of the guests and also mine. Is he joking, trying to catch some attention now that his wife is in focus, or is he serious? Then comes more revelations and the reactions are again very funny. But I would have liked that the dialogues would be in the same range of humour and subtlety and this was unfortunately not the case.  The acting is actually good, apart from Cilian Murphy's scenes with his gun! By luck Bruno Ganz, Kristin Scott Thomas and Timothy Spall kept high the quality of acting, even if their roles did not have good dialogues (except Bruno Ganz). Their expressions (body and face) matched perfectly the role. Spall was already great in Denial. The movie is shot in black and white, giving an old film noir touch. The photography was very clean, creative, a bit like the old Russian school taking great care for the lights and shadows.
Rating: 5 /10