The Party

An upmarket dinner party erupts into ugliness in Sally Potter's magnificently vicious comedy of manners. Kristin Scott Thomas's newly announced Shadow Health Secretary gathers friends to toast the appointment, but her husband (Timothy Spall) has a strange look in his eyes as he cranks up the music and chugs the wine. As accusations fly, the film fluctuates between farce and tragedy. If the monochrome palette feels suitably gloomy, the lively camerawork belies its domestic setting; cinematographer Alexei Rodionov amps up the intensity and echoes the inebriation. The cast spar splendidly, with Patricia Clarkson on spectacularly withering form ("Tickle an aromatherapist and you find a fascist," she quips smugly when her much-loathed German husband raises his hand to her). A sense of futility pervades as the arrogant intellectuals espouse ludicrous personal philosophy, bring everything back to politics and then try to analyse their way out of their misery. In The Party, Potter peers into the soul of a divided, bile-spewing, forlorn Britain and is horrified by what she sees. And, at a mere 71-minutes, there's a sense she is just getting started.