Part of my morning routine these days is to have a go at the cryptic crossword in the free paper I pick up on the bus. On a good day it holds no mysteries for me, but often enough I end up stumped and end up having to resort to an online cryptic-clue buster. So this morning one of the clues which had me scratching my head was 'Powerless actor gets suspended (9)'. Any thoughts? Well, quite, so I put it into the solving programme which promptly came back with 'Alan Tudyk', the prolific voice actor and cult favourite thanks to his appearances in Firefly, Rogue One, I Robot and many more. (This was palpably the wrong answer, by the way¹.) I would just have put it down to a quirk in the software but for the fact that just last night I went to see a movie with a major live-action appearance from Tudyk, whom I hadn't given any thought to in years. And then only the next day he turned up as a programming glitch. I know my Jung and some of the science behind what's going on with these weird coincidences, but even so.

I was slightly surprised to see him turn up in The Trouble with Jessica, directed by Matt Winn (this is the film in question, by the way), anyway, as it is not necessarily the kind of thing you would expect to find a recognisable imported American star in (Tudyk nabs the 'and' slot in the cast list) – a small-scale British metropolitan comedy drama film.

Tudyk plays Tom, an architect living in a rather nice house with his wife of many years, Sarah (Shirley Henderson). They are having friends round for a dinner which is going to be a bit of a celebration – they have managed to arrange the sale of the house at its asking price, something which will apparently fend off the spectre of utter financial ruin (quite how they've got into such a serious fix is ever so slightly skated over, but this is forgivable as the premise of the film depends upon it). Their guests are old university friends, another couple – lawyer Richard (Rufus Sewell) and his wife Beth (Olivia Williams).

However, rather to Sarah's displeasure, Beth has decided to bring along Jessica (Indira Varma), one of those free spirits you can usually rely upon to wreak havoc in a refined social situation – she is a troubled creative type, a narcissist, a relentless flirt, and – as if all that wasn't enough – there's a suggestion she writes a column for the Daily Mail, too. Jessica has just published a confessional memoir which looks likely to be very successful, so there is every chance she is going to be even more unbearable than usual.

A sort of type-specimen bien-pensant London dinner party unfolds between the five of them, with quite abstract discussions of political and moral issues, and a wee bit of raking over of old beefs between the friends. There is, perhaps inevitably, a bit of a row and Jessica goes outside to cool off. It looks like major trouble has been averted until it's time for the dessert, at which point Beth attempts to fetch Jessica – only to find she has been so indelicate as to commit suicide in the garden.

The friends are shocked, naturally, but as they start to consider what to do next the hard facts of reality intrude. Jessica was a minor celebrity so her death will undoubtedly make the papers – which may very possibly make the buyer of the house skittish, potentially torpedoing the sale and condemning Sarah, Tom and their children to perpetual destitution. So what are they to do? It is Sarah who first suggests that the key fact is what Jessica has done, not where she did it – she might just have easily have killed herself in her own flat, which would be much less complicated for all concerned. So. . . why not just move the body?

Naturally the scene is set for all kinds of shenanigans, with old grievances coming to light, debts being called in, and some fairly improbable complications emerging – and Sarah's cherry-based dessert taking on an unexpected significance. The film's title inevitably recalls that of Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (a fairly minor work, all things considered), and while the two films are both broadly speaking black comedies, the most obvious point of comparison for British viewers is likely to be something else: the Fawlty Towers episode in which a guest selfishly dies in the hotel, requiring the staff to spring into action and keep word from getting out. This film isn't quite frantic enough to qualify as the same kind of full-on farce, but it generally manages to sustain a very nice pace without becoming too implausible – there are some nice incidental problems but the bulk of the story is concerned with long-forgotten fault-lines between the four protagonists suddenly yawning open and the characters showing just exactly how principled they really are in a tight spot.

At the time of writing, Wikipedia suggests this film was directed by someone who's been dead since 1949, which is a not-inconsiderable achievement if true. I suspect it's probably a different Matt Winn: probably the one who is a film hyphenate, jazz electronica saxophonist, starter of new trends, and useful provider of information about himself via his own website. Winn has done an impressive job as co-writer and director, not least in assembling a very impressive cast of familiar faces (and voices) from things like The Crown, the Harry Potter movies, and various bits of other major franchises. Here, though, they all get to act, and very good they are too – no-one finishes the story as anything like the person they were at the beginning, and the cast put the transitions up on the screen.

Underneath it all is the old idea about civilisation being only three meals away from anarchy – although here it's more the case that some of the characters might be only one failed house sale away from contemplating murder. It's a thought-provoking tale of what happens when lofty principles grind up against tough economic realities, not entirely unlike Danny Boyle's breakthrough film Shallow Grave. The film mines this for humour very effectively.

Apart from a brief excursion partway through, this is a neat little chamber piece that one could nearly imagine being done as a stage play. The problem with this sort of high-concept story idea is how you actually finish it off effectively, and this is the only place in which the film doesn't impress – it feels like it's crying out for a final twist, preferably ironic, just to cap everything. As it is, the film ends on an almost contemplative note slightly at odds with everything that has gone before it. But it remains a very funny, very smart piece of entertainment that deserves a higher profile than it currently has.

Also Showing...

. . . Sam Taylor-Johnson's Back to Black, which cleaves very closely to the standard rock-pop biopic template. In this case the subject is Amy Winehouse, who the film suggests was a victim of her own excessively romantic nature and desire for a loving family around her, rather than the fact she had a long history of addictive behaviours and was relentlessly hounded by the media. Young Amy is massively talented but a bit of a wild one, falls in with a bloke who's a genuine bad apple, spirals into drink, drugs and depression while those who care about her look on helplessly. . . and we know how it ends.

Technically this is not a bad movie, with a fine performance (both acting and vocal) from Marisa Abela at the heart of it, and the story is persuasively put across – albeit in a rather earnest and unsubtle way. The problem is that it's a story approved by the Winehouse family, who were understandably mortified by Asif Kapadia's 2015 documentary Amy, which bluntly and convincingly suggested they were at least partly culpable for what happened to the singer. There's no sign of that here, unsurprisingly; but the narrative the film constructs to replace it seems to have very little basis in the actual facts of Amy Winehouse's life – things are created or ignored to suit the film's rather sentimental thesis. This makes it a hard film to like or recommend, but the music will last forever.

Awix

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