Thursday, 27 September 2007
Manners Mislaid: Ten Bad Dinner Parties On Film
posted @10:56 p.m. by Richard Kelly
The Dinner-Party Scene is the death of many a novel, especially those whose ‘action’ is located among the good newspaper-reading classes of North London. There’s just something about clever-clogs chatter, however tellingly evoked, that sticks in the craw. Dinner gatherings on celluloid present their own special problems. For one, everybody’s sitting down; and this is supposed to be a motion picture. But performance and camera and cutting can elevate all the talk into a real battle, however confined the space. And then there’s the whole issue of what people are wearing. And what horrors may be on the plate. And the slow-burning hatreds between guests. Oh yes, no question, it can work – like a dream, or a nightmare.
