Bodywork
UK 1998
Reviewed by Andy Richards
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
London's East End, the present. Virgil Guppy buys a Jaguar from car dealers David Leer and his son Buddy. Soon after, the car's engine explodes. Virgil wins damages against the Leers who go into hiding to avoid the bailiffs. The police then find a murdered prostitute in the car's boot. The evidence points to Virgil who is arrested. Virgil is convinced that David Leer has framed him. Released on bail, he loses his job, while his girlfriend Fiona leaves him for his charismatic friend Alex.
Virgil is knocked down by a stolen car driven by Tiffany Shades, who takes him home and tends to him. Tiffany has an incurable illness and is making a nest egg for her 10-year-old son Dolittle. Virgil helps Tiffany steal a car which, it turns out, the Leers have just bought. After David Leer is shot dead by an unseen assailant, Buddy Leer tracks down Virgil, whom he believes is his father's killer. Virgil pleads his innocence and Buddy gives him two days to clear his name. Virgil and Tiffany, who have become lovers, locate the Jaguar's original owner, but she is murdered before Virgil can speak to her. Virgil recognises a lighter left by the murderer as Alex's. Confronting Alex with a gun, Virgil can't bring himself to shoot him. Virgil flees, stealing Alex's car as he goes.
Tiffany dies, and Virgil shoots her corpse with Alex's gun before hiding her body in the back of Alex's car. The police discover the body and Alex is arrested. Released on bail, Alex has a final showdown with Virgil in a scrapyard. Struggling together, Virgil and Alex are run over by a truck. Virgil later recovers in hospital.
Review
While both the UK broadcasters and the Arts Council - which administers lottery funds - have backed a fair number of misfires in the last few years, there is, at least, a sense that greenlighted scripts have to undergo some critical scrutiny before production gets under way. The impression you have watching debut director Gareth Rhys Jones' car-thriller Bodywork, which was financed from private investment, is that his script would have benefited substantially from a major overhaul and a brand new engine. As it is, the movie makes a series of misjudgements so damaging it's a virtual write-off.
As a whodunit - the plot hinges on Virgil's attempts to discover who framed him for a murder - Bodywork is a manifest failure. The villain of the piece is immediately apparent, and Jones' attempt to throw the viewer off the scent (dodgy car dealer David Leer's pledge that he will send someone to "take care of" Virgil, to whom he sold a Jaguar) hinges on a clumsy sleight of hand. Hans Matheson as Virgil passes muster as a Hitchcockian innocent on the run, but he can't support the script's hints about his character's darker side. Yet Virgil's yuppie aspirations and and his girlfriend Fiona's fickle corruptibility (crassly signalled by the VD she contracts from Virgil's friend Alex) hardly endear them to us. As a foil to Fiona's shallow passivity, we get wacky car thief Tiffany Shades, a mawkish creation enveloped in the worst kind of clichéd romanticism.
If the film is too lightweight to work as a psychological thriller, its flashes of broad comedy (an elderly court witness has trousers pulled up to his chest) and witty character turns (Oxo mum Lynda Bellingham as a dignified prostitute) sit uneasily with its more distasteful elements. The film's most memorable scene is also its biggest miscalculation: the grotesquely violent murder of a witness who dies by having a pair of cotton-wool swabs banged through her ears, the soundtrack suddenly cutting off with a sickening pop. In another context, this scene might have been praised for its inventiveness; here, it is so gratuitous as almost to beggar belief. Fitting then, perhaps, that Bodywork's finale should take place in a scrapyard.
Credits
- Director
- Gareth Rhys Jones
- Producer
- Richard McGill
- Screenplay
- Gareth Rhys Jones
- Director of Photography
- Thomas Wuthrich
- Editor
- Susan Spivey
- Production Designer
- Jeremy Bear
- Music
- Srdjan Kurpjel
- Black Tooth
- ©Wolfmoon Film
- Production Company
- Wolfmoon Film presents
- Executive Producer
- Simon Decker
- Production Supervisor
- Ed Harper
- Production Co-ordinator
- Lesley Keane
- Unit Manager
- Patrick Stuart
- Locations Manager
- Andrew MacDonald Brown
- Assistant Directors
- Cindy Irving
- Martin Dorey
- Stephanie Westrate
- Script Supervisor
- Linda Gibson
- Casting Director
- Sarah Bird
- Special Effects Supervisor
- Alan Whibley
- Associate Editor
- Tariq Anwar
- Art Director
- Linda Stefansdottir
- Furniture Designer
- Ilka Schaumberg
- Storyboard Artist
- Ian Sciacaluga
- Sculptor
- Alan Martin
- Costume Designers
- Diane Holmes
- Jayne Gregory
- Wardrobe Mistress
- Debbie Brown
- Make-up/Hair Designer
- Tara Smith
- Title Design/Opticals
- Peter Govey Film Opticals
- Musicians
- Kurpjel
- Black Tooth
- Hazel Brooks
- Corrina Greyson
- Gota Yashiki 'Groove Activator'
- Music Supervisors
- Karen Elliott
- Matt Biffa
- Original Score Producers/ Mixers
- Ser'g Kurpjel
- Black Tooth
- Mastered by
- Tony Cousins
- Soundtrack
- "Hamfist" - Morgan Nicholls; "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" - Albert King; "Can't Keep Living This Way", "Rootloose"; "Mother Sky" - Can; "Chase Me"; "Remember Me" - Blue Boy; "Over and Over" -Morcheeba; "Boogie Man"; "Humpty Dumpty", Here We Go round the Mulberry Bush"; "Love Is the Law" - The Seahorses; "Traffic"
- Sound Recordists
- Barry Reed
- Clive Copeland
- Re-recording Mixers
- Craig Irving
- Mark Lafbery
- Aad Wirtz
- John Falcini
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Nick Adams
- Twydor Davis
- Dialogue Editor
- Jonathan Cronin
- Effects Editor
- Sam Southwick
- ADR Engineers
- Peter Gleaves
- Mick Boggis
- Ted Swanscott
- Foley
- Artists:
- Dianne Greaves
- Patricia Greaves
- Mixer:
- Ted Swanscott
- Editor:
- Paul Wrightson
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Glen Marks
- Armourer
- Paul Stentiford
- Cast
- Hans Matheson
- Virgil Guppy
- Charlotte Coleman
- Tiffany Shades
- Peter Ferdinando
- Alex Gordon
- Beth Winslet
- Fiona Money
- Lynda Bellingham
- Poppy Fields
- Clive Russell
- Billy Hunch
- Michael Attwell
- David Leer
- Peter Moreton
- Buddy Leer
- Simon Gregor
- Legal
- Jordan Maxwell
- Dolittle Shades
- Grahame Fox
- Danny Sparks
- Jeremy Clyde
- Boss
- Frank Mills
- Sydney Greengrass
- Velibor Topic
- Rudi Scoot
- Rachel Colover
- Pamela Anwar
- Tanya Luternauer
- Jo Jo Jones
- Newton Boothe
- Bruno
- Clive Kneller
- Squeaky Clean
- Wayne Norman
- Ratso
- Stewart Harwood
- fat man
- Jane Bertish
- solicitor
- Willie Ross
- homeless man
- Roger Frost
- bailiff
- Roger Brierley
- district judge
- Wendy Cooper
- prostitute
- Artemis Manias Arnold
- Sally
- Simon Robson
- prosecutor
- James Vaughan
- pathologist
- Dexter Moscow
- surgeon
- Sue Derrick
- gynaecologist
- Nat Lerner
- skinhead
- Alan Jones
- store manager
- Jerome Blake
- Heavy Harry
- Jonathan Emmett
- heavy
- Jonathan Stratt
- taxi driver
- P.J. Bickford
- Simon Hunt
- policemen
- June Romaine
- phone woman
- Howard Whitson
- buyer
- Lucie Pemberton
- Legs
- Glen Marks
- truck driver
- Chris Green
- Adrian Wolfson
- policemen
- Paul Berry
- stenographer
- Jill Spurrier
- dock officer
- Guy Winfield
- court usher
- Gordon Herbert
- lawyer
- Simon Fraser
- client
- Patricia Kendall John
- punter
- Maureen Hecht
- bored knitter
- Danny Da Costa
- reporter
- Jerome Blake
- commentator
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Guerilla Films
- 8,343 feet
- 92 minutes 42 seconds
- Dolby Digital
- In Colour