It�s hard to give a star rating for a film that will divide so many people. It is not a film anybody really enjoys watching - the fact of the matter is that Abigail�s Party is all about parochial, irritating tedium. The film is the absolute epitome of that 1970s combination of kitsch, pretension and lower-middle class suburban dreariness. If it all weren�t so hideous, you�d be laughing.
As Sue has to get out of the house to make way for the rowdy party her teenage daughter Abigail is having, her neighbour and acquaintance Beverly decides to hold a little do of her own for the neighbours. Abigail�s party itself never appears; just the knowledge of a good time being had by trendy young things provides a mental backdrop for the death-would-be-better experience in Beverly�s house.
Alison Steadman should go to heaven for her performance as the overbearing, vowel-chewing, tasteless and bullying Beverly. Her spats with her equally pretentious husband impede an otherwise just-bearable evening, attended by a couple from down the road and the downtrodden Sue. The sound of Demis Roussos accompanies Beverly�s streamrollering social technique and as the tensions rise, the tone suddenly changes, giving the now-familiar ironic style a fairly icy end.
As the film that immortalised cheese and pineapple on sticks, I think it solidly deserves its place in the British film canon, and for contemporary viewers, suits very well our over-developed taste for the ironic and retrospective. As it is also a play, it makes lean visual fare in the big screen, but this only serves to heighten the static irritation and drama that Leigh is so goadingly trying to produce. His famed improvised writing technique has here brought us its finest product. |
