There are, it seems, two diametrically opposed audience responses to a viewing of The Trouble with Jessica, the darkly comic new British film about everyone’s worst-case-scenario chattering-classes dinner party — and generally, people find themselves having both at the same time.
Response One is: dear Lord — how dissolute those people are! How empty, how self-involved, how morally bankrupt, how terribly, terribly lost; how damning a reflection they offer on, well us, the endlessly, pathetically aspiring middle-aged middle classes, the kind so caught up in our tenuous, fluctuating sense of status, the desirability of our catchment zones and the elegance of our interiors, we barely notice when one of our own kills themself in our midst (oh sorry: spoiler alert!).
Response Two, is: how great do they make it look? How cool, how chic, and OMG I wonder where they got all their stuff? I want it. All of it. And their clothes. And one or both of the husbands (Richard and Tom, played by Rufus Sewell and Alan Tudyk respectively) because even though they’re blatantly horrendous, they’ve got, like, phenomenal hair? And the way Rufus Sewell’s crewneck T-shirt sits under his blazer? And the rigidity of his indigo jeans? Delish!
Of course, it’s confusing to feel two violently conflicting things at the same time. But don’t worry, because (if you’re anything like me at least) Response One (disgust and shame by association) will pretty much fade out, so that Response Two (covetousness) might truly bed in.
This, admittedly, entirely misses the point of the film. Unless it doubles down on it? Hmm. It’s a satire of the country’s most reviled social set, you see, the one Priti Patel called the “north London metropolitan, liberal elite” and Liz Truss branded as the people who “take taxis from north London townhouses to the BBC”. This is the north London that’s ground zero for Suella Braverman’s “tofu-eating wokerati” and home to Keir Starmer, almost certainly our next PM.
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You know the type. Farrow-&-Ball-literate moral vacuums, heads filled with fleetingly fashionable opinions and paper-thin justifications for (eg) how little they pay the help. All endlessly, easily distracted from Things That Actually Matter (like people unexpectedly dying in your home because that’s how miserable they were but you hadn’t noticed/cared) by Things That Really Do Not (But Look Great). I’d be consumed by loathing for them, eaten alive by it, really I would — if only I could stop thinking about the pendant lights that dangle in elegantly conceived clutches above the kitchen island in The Trouble with Jessica (NB we’re still very much doing kitchen islands, not least because we had to get the floor reinforced to support ours), and also the dinner table. As well they might — dangle in clutches, I mean. No one has just one lone pendant light, even though they generally cost about a grand a pop, because … well, they just don’t.
And about that dinner table! That table! A rough hewn hunk of … something or other exhaustively researched on the internet; at once soulfully artisanal and clearly hugely expensive — but: fine. It’s so worth it. Because it’s, like, Scandi? But subtly? Subtle Scandi is very Right For Now; Overt Scandi really isn’t. We’ve all watched The Bridge, love, move along! And the way the whole thing is pulled together with the Big Orange Le Creuset pot (already got that, only in blue. Note to self: get the orange too next time I’m in Peter Jones), which serves, you might say, as the pumping, bubbling aesthetic heart of the tableau? Oh, how that precise orange — burnt by use, almost to the point of an ombré — is repeated, over and over, in delicate little hints hither and thither: on the pepper grinder (want that), on the wooden spoon receptacle (want that), and so on (want that. Whatever it is).
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And does anyone have any idea where they sourced their glassware? Those oversized wine glasses with the long, slender stems, so elegant and tenuous and capacious and dramatic and just asking to be filled unwisely full, ergo, they’re almost certainly metaphors. And I know damn well that’s a Robin Day chair (£440 or thereabouts, bargain) at the back of the living room, just down from the candlesticks; wooden back, leather seat, very nice — been eyeing something similar in the Conran Shop for yonks. Pretty sure the candlesticks are Soho Home btw — Gigi, £135 a pair — and how I yearn for the granite pestle and mortar set in which I would grind absolutely nothing, obviously, unless: maybe a little turmeric? Or perhaps some pine nuts? You know: for show?
And, oh no! I got the wrong Alessi kettle! Should have gone for the Il Conico (£210), as this lot clearly did (got the 9093 instead, what a fool I am). Also, shh, but: feeling a bit gauche for buying the matching toaster (£310), because as far as I can see, they did not, and no one wants to look trop matchy-matchy, do they?
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As for the fashion, I’m calling it on Jessica’s coat: deffo Charlotte Simone, suede with a faux fur trim, perfect for that teetering-on-the-brink Hot Mess vibe because it’s got top notes of the one Angelina Jolie wore in Girl, Interrupted. Played by Indira Varma, Jessica has a look that is stylistically (beautifully) juxtaposed against the strategic non-glamour of Sarah (Shirley Henderson) and Beth (Olivia Williams), both of whom are giving consummate Frazzled English Woman here (the TikTok-identified trend which recalls Kate Winslet in The Holiday and Bridget Jones in her earliest incarnations): flushed cheeks, undone hair, cardis a-go-go. A moment also for Jessica’s vape, a blatant signifier of middle-class woman coming apart at the seams if ever there was one. Vapes: the hastily snuffled line of cocaine of 2024 (as you’re well aware).
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And I wonder who knocked-through for them? Because it’s so hard to get a reliable builder after Brexit, don’t you find? Which is why half of us are still in litigation with that ghastly chap who was meant to finish our kitchen two years ago. And who was the carpenter on the panelling? Did he also put up those book shelves crammed with picturesque cookery books literally none of them has ever so much as opened? And so on.
The state of us, though. God, aren’t we awful?
And gorgeous?
That north London look
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• Victorian double-fronted house
• Range Rover, black
• Expansive open-plan kitchen with Crittall-type windows leading to the garden
• In the hall:
• Brompton bike (for the commute)
• On the table:
• Tap water never bottled (for the eco points)
• Olives and Spanish cheeses (from Brindisa) on huge wooden boards
• Homemade clafoutis for pudding
• Big Riedel-type wine glasses
• David Mellor cutlery
• Hot food served directly from a Netherton pan placed on the table as a centrepiece
• Walls still painted in Elephant’s Breath
• Snug-type room/corner painted in a blue so dark it might as well be black
• Black and white tiled hall floor
• Stripy stair runner
• Original staircase painted black
• Modern art (no frames)
• Modular sofas, yellow or green
• Wood-burning stove and log pile in middle of kitchen/diner
• Status musical instrument
