for Tribune: Ben Wheatley’s SIGHTSEERS [8/10]

Sightseers
Director: Ben Wheatley

Michael Haneke’s Amour – currently in our cinemas -may have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes back in May, but the film that may well have been the finest at the whole festival wasn’t in Competition, nor was it even up for any prizes in the sidebar where it did feature. The third picture from Brighton’s Ben Wheatley – after Down Terrace (2009) and Kill List (2011) – Sightseers is a deliriously enjoyable, exhilaratingly clever road-movie / comedy / romance / horror hybrid which plays like some dream collaboration between Mike Leigh and John Waters, combining acute social embarrassment with increasingly berserk bloodshed.

Premiering as a “special screening” in the Directors’ Fortnight section of Cannes, Sightseers didn’t actually leave the Croisette empty-handed, as an international jury of critics awarded it the Palme Dog for best canine performance – previous winners having included the animated Dug from Up and last year’s scene-stealing Jack Russell from The Artist, Uggie. Following in such illustrious pawprints, terrier ‘Smurf’ essays the double role as ‘Poppy’ and ‘Banjo’ – in what may or may not be a homage to Vertigo, the two fictional white-haired pooches are seemingly not related, but one may or may not be the reincarnation of the other.

To go any further into this aspect of the plot would constitute an unfair ‘spoiler’, but suffice to say that the main thrust of the narrative concerns Berghaus-clad thirtysomethings Tina (Alice Lowe) and Chris (Steve Oram), unlikely love-birds from the somewhat obscure Worcestershire town of Redditch. Against the wishes of her fretful, controllingly passive-aggressive mother Carol (Eileen Davies) the mousily virginal Tina decides to accept Chris’s offer of going on a caravan tour around the industrial heritage of Midlands and northern Britain – first stop Crich Tramway Village in Derbyshire. But it isn’t long before Chris’s easy-going demeanour cracks to reveal a homicidally bad temper – and by the time the pair have reached their destination, Ribblehead Viaduct in North Yorkshire, the picture’s body-count rivals that of genre predecessors such as The Honeymoon Killers, Badlands, Gun Crazy and Detour (to name a few).

The idea of lovers/murderers-on-the-road has inspired film-makers for decades, and several have managed to put their own particular twist on the basic concept (most recently David Twohy with his criminally underrated A Perfect Getaway). Wheatley’s achievement is to maintain the comedy at an oft-hysterical pitch without tipping over into grotesquerie or silliness, keeping a tight control over tone and pace even as the protagonists’ actions spiral into wild sociopathic psychosis (“We don’t care about being fair, do we? We just care about being happy.”)

If Sightseers marks a significant advance beyond Wheatley’s first (very fine) two outings – both of them combining comedy with much darker material with confidence and persuasive audacity – then much credit must go to Lowe and Oram. Their drum-tight screenplay (“it’s not just an erotic odyssey we’re on”) is the result of their having honed the characters and situations on stage over a period of years, the film’s choice of real-life locations and backdrops now adding extra layers of ironic juxtaposition and acerbic wit to what are by any measure outstanding, carefully nuanced performances (Davies, meanwhile, works sly wonders with much more limited screen-time).

And while the picture may not exactly be tourist-board material, Sightseers joins classics like The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General as horror-inflected, unnerving explorations of Britain’s wilder, more remote landscapes, lending an ominous cast to even the most picturesque of spots. Pretty august company for what is ostensibly just a daft midnight-movie romp of a picture – but to bring such verve and audacity to well-worn genre material is a rare achievement these days. Wheatley, whose fourth feature A Field In England is already in the can, has in three years shown himself to be a freakish, prolific and uncompromised talent, one which UK cinema can ill-afford to overlook, take for granted, or lose.

Neil Young
20th November 2012
written for Tribune magazine