CinemaSerf

Yikes, if you thought Abigail had a noxious party, just be glad you didn't get an invitation to this one! "Janet" (Dame Kristen Scott Thomas) receives a call telling her of an important ministerial promotion in the government and some of her friends are coming round to congratulate her. Meantime, her husband (Timothy Spall) is sitting listlessly in a chair supping some wine. As the plaudits fly around the room, he casually makes an announcement that rather rains on his wife's parade. This, however, is just the start of the evening's woes as it turns out that just about everyone has some kind of secret to keep and tempers are about to flare! Spall's "Bill" is probably the most impactful of the characters. Though he actually says very little, he still manages to set the cat amongst these dysfunctional pigeons with aplomb. Thereafter, it's not the most plausible of scenarios - if only because few of these characters would ever be friends in a real scenario. Bruno Ganz delivers some ridiculous one-liners decrying just about everything the West has to offer and Cillian Murphy seems to spend most of his time looking for a flat surface. It's all perfectly toxic, but woefully undercooked and seems more contrived to force animus than to be a remotely realistic gathering of people who share the same friend - even if she is a politician. It's short and sweet, but has too much of the stage play about it and leaves too much of the story outside.