Director: Michael Winterbottom, UK, 15, 95min
Stars: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawes
On general release
Winterbottom’s irreverent take on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a fabulous piece of cheek and an hilarious tour de force by Coogan. The film flips between the 18th century and the present, in which a shambolic British crew are trying to shoot Laurence Sterne’s novel. Coogan (Shandy) and his co-star Brydon (Uncle Toby) bicker endlessly about their billing, the height of their shoes and the size of their parts. “I should dominate at all times,” announces Coogan pompously. He plays no fewer than three parts, including himself. The genius is that apart from changing his wigs, he makes no effort to distinguish between any of his egomaniacs.
Brydon responds with Alan Partridge impersonations that drive his rival mad. But mostly Coogan is the author of his own glorious humiliation. A tabloid journalist chases him about a sex scandal; his wife (Kelly Macdonald) arrives with their screaming baby; he makes a clumsy pass at his personal assistant; the film’s backers threaten to pull out; and the director (Jeremy Northam) ignores all Coogan’s efforts to enlarge his role. You can’t blink without missing another fiendish Spinal Tap embarrassment.
Many an auteur has tried to play this game of mixing fiction with layers of “reality” and come pitifully unstuck. Winterbottom makes it look as natural as breathing. The shameless, improvising pleasure is Coogan. He simply cannot help his egomania; even when he isn’t in a scene he snipes from the wings. The irony is how seriously he takes his art. At one point the grumpy actor is suspended, naked, in a giant plastic uterus to deliver Tristram’s birth speech. “You want more realism?” splutters Coogan. “I’m a grown man upside down talking to you from a womb.”
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In terms of broad and knowing entertainment, there is little out there to top this vintage bull.
Pure pleasure.
JAMES CHRISTOPHER