REVIEW: The Party puts a great cast to grating use with a miserable sense of occasion

REVIEW: Is The Party a frustratingly oblique drama with something to hide, or nothing to say? Whatever the answer, you will be questioning where your time went finding out.

THE PARTY (MA15+)

Rating: two stars (2 out of 5)

Director: Sally Potter (The Tango Lesson)

Starring : Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cillian Murphy.

Enough to have you RSVPeeved

The more you lean forward towards The Party - filmed entirely in black-and-white, for no apparent reason - the more you can sense it backing away.

Is it that this frustratingly oblique drama has something to hide, or nothing to say? Whatever the answer, you will be questioning the wisdom of squandering your time to find out.

What does initially pique interest is the exemplary cast assembled to tell the short, ill-tempered tale of a gathering going off the rails.

Kristin Scott Thomas in a scene from The Party (2017). a Madman Films release.

Kristin Scott Thomas is the hostess of the occasion, Janet, an ambitious British politician wanting to celebrate a long-awaited Cabinet appointment.

Timothy Spall is Bill, her emotionally remote (and heavily inebriated) husband. Doesn’t seem that chuffed by word of the new gig for the missus. Spends most of the night glued to his chair, talking in riddles.

Patricia Clarkson is April, Janet’s snarky American BFF. April is arguably the most clear-speaking and rational of this pretentious bunch, but even her truthful interjections grate on the nerves after a while.

Cillian Murphy is Tom, an Irish banker who has brought along some cocaine and a loaded pistol in the hope of livening up proceedings (spoiler alert : he doesn’t).

This enigmatically entitled entourage is joined by some other self-obsessives to claw away at one another until the closing credits. Despite the incessant scratching, barely a mark is left anywhere.

Misery doesn’t love your company in this typical scene from The Party (2017). a Madman Films release.

With so little going right for The Party, it is hard to narrow down why so much is going wrong in spite of the obvious talent involved before and behind the cameras (writer-director Sally Potter has been a deserved darling of the festival circuit for three decades).

If anything, The Party is a movie that should never have been a movie at all : with its unyielding reliance on stony silences and startling outbursts, it should have been a radio play.

Originally published as REVIEW: The Party puts a great cast to grating use with a miserable sense of occasion