Cinema
Decadence (18, selected cinemas) Bhaji on the Beach (15, selected cinemas)
Inspiration in awfulness
Mark Steyn
Icould live without the British film industry, but I'd sure miss the Evening Standard British Film Awards — the only occasion you get to see Hollywood glam- ourpusses like Ann-Margret hand out prizes to grumpy, grouchy British Lefties whose movies cost less than her dress.
The general awfulness of Britain seems to be the only subject that inspires our film-makers. The best moment in Gurinder Chadha's Bhaji on the Beach, for example, is when a posse of Black Country lads moon out of their Ford Cortina at some Asian ladies in a mini-bus. The attention to detail puts Merchant-Ivory to shame: there's none of your Michael Douglas sun- lamp specials; each wan, pimply buttock has been expertly cast. A category of Best Moon Shot would bestow important recog- nition on this distinctively British skill.
Maybe, in deference to the British Film Industry's obsession with awfulness, they should simply re-name the Best Film, the Most Awful Film. So far this year, writer/director/actor Steven Berkoff's Decadence looks like the best bet. It's the usual savage indictment: as in Berkoff's Hamlet, Berkoff's Salome, etc., a lot of minor Drones Club types mooch about in the old soup and fish for hours on end. We're supposed to be revolted by the excesses of Thatcherite sybarites and sybarite Thatcherites, but Berkoff's enjoy- ing himself so much, a-cussin' and a-vom- itin', why shouldn't we? En route to the Ivy, his cab driver hits a homeless person, bounces him across the bonnet and washes the blood off with the windscreen wipers. You do idly wonder why Berkoff didn't drape an intestine or two off the wing mir- ror, but your social conscience isn't pricked.
Soon, Berkoff's social prick is barely con- scious, a stuffed stiff bloated on the ban- quette, his farts wafting past Joan Collins. Moments later, the sudden expulsions of wind propel him across the restaurant like a burst balloon. I like to think this scene a haphazard ricochet, driven by farts — is a metaphor for the entire British film indus- try. But probably it's only an amplification of his central theme: Britain is riven by class; also, there's a lot of homosexuality in public schools. Well, I never.
But what puts Berkoff head and shoul- ders above others is that the whole remorseless two hours is in rhyming cou- plets: 'Your cock slides between my bum,' purrs Miss Collins. 'Like a hot dog nestled in a bun,' snorts Berkoff. Versifying, partic- ularly in a movie, depends on precision, the rhymes sliding as neatly together as, um, Berkoff's cock between Miss Collins' bum — if, that is, you can slide anything between a singular.
Where Decadence skips plot completely, Bhaji on the Beach is a variation on one you've seen a million times: a group day out, by the end of which the various prob- lems are resolved much as you'd expect. It's the first British film directed by an Asian woman, and, if you say that often enough, it sounds like a Bafta category. It's also a low- key charmer, but its ethnic novelty doesn't excuse the hand-me-down story. Last year's Wild West, a box-office dud, concerned an Asian country hand in West London, this one takes as its signature song Cliff Richard's Summer Holiday sung in Punjabi. Both symbolise how British Asian films defer to western models, but on balance it makes more sense to re-work American country music than a British film musical. With the latter, the best you can hope for is a good imitation of a poor imitation.
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