Review: A London Night Goes Wrong in ‘The Party’

Timothy Spall looks so defeated in “The Party” it’s a wonder he isn’t waving a white flag. His body droops and his face sags, jowls draping under a thatch of beard. He’s playing Bill, who’s somewhat of a mystery man. For a long while, all that you really know about Bill is that he’s married to Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), the woman cheerfully bustling in the kitchen. Also: He likes vinyl. Every so often, Bill miraculously manages to gather together his flaccid bits so he can put on a record. Then, with a bottle of wine by his side, he collapses back into his chair, resuming his man-of-sorrows pose.

Bill’s bearing is matched by his bleak story, which leaks out over the course of this grindingly unhappy affair. Written and directed by Sally Potter, who has made other movies worth seeing — “Thriller,” “Orlando,” “Ginger & Rosa” — “The Party” is a brittle, unfunny attempt at comedy that features some very fine actors and a lot of empty chatter. It takes place inside a few rooms on the ground-level floor of Bill and Janet’s comfortable London digs. There, they are giving a party to celebrate Janet’s recent appointment as a government functionary of the unnamed opposition party. From the way she furtively coos into her cellphone, it is clear that Janet has some secrets.

These secrets also slowly leak out over the course of a 71-minute black-and-white movie that mostly comes off like a futile filmmaking exercise in how to move bodies inside a (largely) confined space. It’s a familiar conceit: Place a group of actors inside a box and go! (Hitchcock was a master of this: “Lifeboat,” “Rope,” “Rear Window” and most of “Dial M for Murder.”) You get to know this part of Janet and Bill’s home — the kitchen, bathroom and a living room that lets out onto a courtyard — fairly intimately because Potter gives the characters plenty of reasons to move from one space to another. One snorts drugs in the bathroom, another takes weeping refuge in it, a third hurls in the toilet, while others meander here and there.

As to what happens, well, there are shards of drama and melodrama, many meant to cut and hurt. Janet’s triumph is soon dampened and eventually spoiled by her friends, most of whom prove a convenient, presumably emblematic collection of narcissists. It’s all about them, their lives and needs, which they readily share, turning the festivities into a group-therapy session. The funniest and meanest of Janet’s pals is played by Patricia Clarkson, and while you don’t believe her character for a second, the performance — Clarkson’s supple nonchalance suggests years of practiced cruelty — is enjoyable. Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Bruno Ganz and Cillian Murphy also enter and deliver lines.

Potter stirs things up, though to no identifiable end. Characters talk and talk, mostly at one another, and they bitch, argue and fight. The level of animus feels as contrived as it is narratively useful, as is often the case in the bad-party movie, itself at times a subset of the confined-space flick. (“The Party” recalls the TV version of Mike Leigh’s suburban roast “Abigail’s Party.”) Janet’s appointment and the periodic references to politics past and present — as well as to children, identity, feminism, love and its betrayal — gesture at ideas, none developed. The lack of political specificity (the characters are vaguely coded as left-leaning) dulls whatever critique Potter is after. In the end, the big point is that people are complex, though alas not nearly enough here.

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“The Party”

Rated R for adult behavior, language and a gun.

Running time: 1 hour 11 minutes.