What to Watch Verdict
With nods to vintage Hitchcock and a fabulous cast, The Trouble with Jessica delivers delicious black comedy and up-to-date social satire.
Pros
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A winning mix of sharp satire and macabre comedy
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Wickedly funny situations and lines
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Brilliant ensemble cast
Cons
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Viewers may find the characters too unsympathetic
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The fruity language might be too ripe for some tastes
Four privileged Londoners are put through the wringer by a troublesome corpse in the sardonic black comedy The Trouble with Jessica, a darkly enjoyable film that combines the intricate plotting of a well-oiled farce with fangs-bared social satire.
The body in question belongs to the eponymous Jessica (Indira Varma), who has tagged along, uninvited, to a dinner party being thrown in their plush North London home by long-marrieds Tom (Alan Tudyk) and Sarah (Shirley Henderson) for their old friends Richard (Rufus Sewell) and Beth (Olivia Williams). Jessica is an old friend, too, but she is single, reckless, dangerously flirty, and has just published a best-selling book - “a kind of memoir of my misspent life” - in which a teasingly anonymous Mr. X makes a significant appearance.
Loose-cannon Jessica is difficult enough to deal with when she is alive, but she proves even more of a handful in death after she furtively hangs herself in the garden before the pudding course - Tom’s legendary, mouth-watering clafoutis - has been served. The quartet now finds themselves stuck on the horns of a series of agonizing moral and practical dilemmas. The obvious thing to do is contact the authorities right away. The four are wholly innocent, after all. Unfortunately, hosts Tom and Sarah are facing financial ruin unless the imminent sale of their lovely home goes through - and the new buyers might be a bit chary if they learn of Jessica’s untimely demise on the premises…
With The Trouble with Jessica, director and co-writer Matt Winn has aimed to create, in his own words, “a satirical ‘state of the nation’ piece”. His characters are not bad people, but their flaws and failings - and a few potential cracks in their marriages - become horribly exposed as they grapple with the problem of what to do with the body, and how to hide it amidst the unwelcome arrivals of a nosy neighbor (Anne Reid), an even more inquisitive pair of policemen (Jonathan Livingstone and David Schaal), and the prospective buyers (Sylvester Groth and Amber Rose Revah).
As things become increasingly panicky, desperate, and spectacularly sweary, Winn’s excellent cast really let rip. Tudyk’s Tom proves a mix of queasiness and unexpected steel, while Henderson’s Sarah, the only one of the four not to come from a posh background, reveals reserves of ruthlessness that would impress Lady Macbeth. Sewell’s Richard, an Old Bailey barrister who specializes in defending rapists, is all swagger and ease at the start of the evening, but progressively loses his cool as events unfold. Meanwhile, Williams’ po-faced do-gooder Beth discovers the limits of her pinched probity.
As his film’s title makes clear, Winn has taken inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 film The Trouble with Harry, a little-known dark comedy in which a quartet of New Englanders - like the characters here - find themselves lumbered with the problem of disposing of an inconvenient corpse. Shirley MacLaine made her film debut as the dead man’s unruffled young widow. The Trouble with Jessica is much too savage to share the gentle charm of Hitchcock’s film, but whereas its predecessor leaves the eponymous figure of Harry a cipher, Varma’s Jessica makes such a vibrant impression that her personality remains vividly present throughout the action.
Winn would like viewers to recognize themselves in his film’s flawed, compromised personae - although some will find them far too well-heeled and unsympathetic to identify with.
Whatever your attitude, there’s no denying that Winn gives his actors some really stinging lines of dialogue to deliver and choreographs their characters’ ever more farcical plight with macabre precision.
The soundtrack, a mix of ersatz baroque strings and slightly atonal jazz (co-composed by sometime musician Winn himself with his frequent collaborator, jazz pianist Matt Cooper), supplies appropriate notes of intrigue and jeopardy, while Tom’s drooled-over clafoutis (‘everyone loves clafoutis’) provides a tasty running joke.
The Trouble with Jessica arrives in UK and Irish cinemas from Friday, April 5 2024.
