Sundance Part Six: In The Loop

Sundance Part Six: In The Loop

Posted on Tuesday January 20, 2009, 15:41 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar

I'll declare a shocking secret here and admit that I've never seen his TV series The Thick Of It, but Armando Iannucci's hilarious film debut immediately makes me want to. It's not terribly cinematic but the writing and the acting are both superb, which is more important to me. After seeing it, I had the bad luck to see Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, a choppy story of a woman's disillusionment with men that tried so hard to be visual and different it absolutely bored the hell out of me, since no clear narrative was ever established. In The Loop (pictured), though, is just perfectly constructed and astonishingly sustained. If you like your comedy puerile and stupid but very, very clever, you're in for a treat.

The film it most reminded me of is the Ealing comedy The Man In The White Suit, in that it's about man who's under fire from every quarter. Tom Hollander, an actor I've never really been bothered about before, is just great as Simon Foster, the UK's Cabinet Minister For International Development. Foster is a well-meaning but self-important gimp, and during an otherwise innocuous radio interview he is put on the spot and asked if he thinks that a recently discussed war in the Middle East is close to becoming a reality. Foster says the war is “unforeseeable”, which outrages the PM's brilliant but sadistic spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), who wants him to remain neutral on the issue. To make things right, Foster gives an interview in the street, telling a camera crew that he's not necessarily against the war and that sometimes a country has to “climb the mountain of conflict”. Foster thinks that's the end of the matter, but it's not. During a fact-finding mission to Washington, both of these comments come to the attention of government peacenik Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) and military hawk Linton Barwick (David Rasche), both intent on using Foster as a pawn in their attempts to stop and start the war respectively.

In the middle of this mess, Foster bobs hopelessly, aided by his bumbling assistant Toby (Chris Addison) and pursued relentlessly by Tucker. But although the satirical elements are especially strong, particularly an apparently pointless subplot about a garden wall that unexpectedly brings the film to its climax, it's the interaction of characters that makes this such a fabulous comedy. We'll be quoting lines from this modern class for years, whether it's “Difficult, difficult, lemon difficult” or the more punchy “Fuckity bye”. It's the Spinal Tap of New Labour, and as such I must insist you see it.