Bedrooms and Hallways
UK/France/Germany 1998
Reviewed by Liese Spencer
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
London, the present. At his birthday party, Leo remembers the chain of events linking his guests together.
Some months earlier: gay Leo is looking for a new relationship. His flatmate Darren and neighbour Angie encourage him to meet more people, so when his friend Adam suggests he come to a men's group, Leo agrees. There, Leo confesses he fancies Brendan, a fellow member. Darren is conducting an affair with Jeremy, an estate agent who likes to have sex in the properties he's selling. Leo embarks on an affair with Brendan, who is splitting up with his partner Sally. But Sally traces one of Brendan's calls, rings the number and speaks to Angie. Assuming Brendan is sleeping with her, Sally goes to the flat to confront Angie but meets her childhood sweetheart - Leo. After helping Sally move out of the flat she and Brendan are selling, Leo kisses her, then leaves confused. Leo goes to the café where Brendan and Sally work to confront Brendan. He tells Sally about the affair. She leaves, pursued by Brendan.
Back at the party. Leo talks to Sally and says he is over Brendan. Jeremy and Darren leave to have sex at Angie's. The rest of the party pair off, leaving Leo and Sally alone. When Darren returns he finds Leo and Sally asleep together on the sofa.
Review
Five years after making a splash with her $15,000-budget black-and-white debut Go Fish, US-born director Rose Troche returns with a colourful sex comedy set in London. A more expensive and technically accomplished movie, Bedrooms and Hallways shares with Go Fish a glib good humour, though it may lack some of the latter's unaffected emotional power. If Go Fish offered an audaciously angst-free lesbian love story, Bedrooms goes one step further, escaping the ghetto of 80s identity politics to investigate the mutability of sexual identity. So while Leo's romance with Brendan initially appears to be at the heart of Robert Farrar's screenplay, Troche's multi-stranded narrative smoothly develops into a pansexual ronde which blurs the boundaries between gay and straight. And as with Go Fish, Troche avoids the pitfalls of political correctness by approaching polymorphous perversity not as an ideal but as a given. Characters here may agonise about jumping into bed with one another, but they are defined not so much by whom they sleep with as by what they feel about it. The implicit ethos seems to be that everyone is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, wherever one happens to find it.
Played with endearing earnestness by Kevin McKidd, Leo does not conform to the usual gay 'clone' stereotype. Dressed in chunky-knit jumpers and jeans, Leo just wants to find a nice man and settle down. But by the end of the film, even that nesting goal has shifted, as Leo cuddles up chastely with his childhood sweetheart Sally on the couch. Thanks to Troche's fluid direction and the ensemble cast's warm, layered performances, it is only when you see this heterosexual ending dismissed by Darren as a "passing phase" that you realise just how effortlessly 'queer' the film really is.
For all that, this is a fun-loving rather than a profound film. And it's certainly not flawless. Robert Farrar apparently wrote the script in 1993, and despite the relish with which Harriet Walter and Simon Callow play their Hampstead gurus (arguing about who gets to the "truth stone" and so on), the gags about New Age self-discovery groups feel decidedly dated. Moreover, in the time it's taken to shoot the movie in 1997 and procure its UK release, such multi-charactered, interlocking-narrative films as This Year's Love and Playing by Heart have come along. After Leo and Brendan's romance ends the film loses momentum, but it remains a pleasure to watch thanks to its zippy visual style. Tactically placed dream sequences punctuate the narrative and in one scene Troche has fun lampooning Jane Austen costume dramas. Intercutting Darren and Jeremy's torrid affair with the rest of the narrative, Troche puts titles across the bottom of the screen to spell out the name, address and price of the properties they're defiling. Much of the film's humour is sparked by this pair. At one point the camera cranes down to focus on a swimming pool in which Darren is floating face down, naked but for a pair of pink waterwings. When Jeremy slaps his bottom and swims away, he asks plaintively: "Do you think our relationship has too much emphasis on the physical?" As Darren, Tom Hollander steals the picture. Whether gamely flouncing about in platform trainers and a leopardskin hat, or being caught handcuffed on a stranger's bed and pretending to be an "S&M-ogram", Hollander is hilarious, displaying fantastic comic timing and a truly camp understanding that too much is never enough.
Credits
- Producers
- Ceci Dempsey
- Dorothy Berwin
- Screenplay
- Robert Farrar
- Director of Photography
- Ashley Rowe
- Editor
- Christopher Blunden
- Production Designer
- Richard Bridgland
- Music/Music Arrangers
- Alfredo D. Troche
- Ian MacPherson
- ©Berwin & Dempsey Productions
- Production Companies
- Pandora Cinema presents in association with ARP/Pandora Film and BBC Films a Berwin and Dempsey production
- Line Producer
- Liz Bunton
- Production Co-ordinator
- Ruta Ozols
- Location Manager
- Pat Karam
- Researcher
- Polly Richards
- Assistant Directors
- Max Keene
- Trevor Kaye
- Dan McGrath
- Additional Crew:
- Andrew Woodhead
- Diane Wood
- Liam O'Donnell
- Script Supervisor
- Jayne Spooner
- Casting
- Director:
- Gail Stevens
- Additional:
- Emma Style
- Additional Photography
- Daf Hobson
- Steadicam Operator
- Vincent McGahon
- Modelmakers
- Jeanne Valentine Viannay
- Claire Johnston
- Signwriter
- Tony Statham
- Art Director
- Steve Carter
- Set Decorator
- Penny Crawford
- Scenic Artists
- Sue Lawson Dick
- Julian Saxton
- Sculptor
- Abbo
- Costume Designer
- Annie Symons
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Carla Pope
- Make-up
- Chief Designer:
- Ann Buchanan
- Additional Crew:
- Jill Hornby
- Hairdressers
- Graham Pownall
- Additional Crew:
- Christine Driver
- Titles Design
- Pauline Hume
- Titles/Opticals
- General Screen Enterprises
- Music Conductor
- Ian MacPherson
- Music Supervisor
- Music & Musicians Unlimited:
- Chris Gradwell
- Music Mixer
- Cameron McBride
- Soundtrack
- "Love Plus One" by Nick Heyward, performed by Haircut 100
- Sound Mixer
- Ian Voigt
- Sound Recordist
- Additional Crew:
- David Allen
- Re-recording Mixer
- Peter Maxwell
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Colin Chapman
- Dialogue Editor
- Michael Redbourn
- ADR
- Mixers:
- John Bateman
- Bob Deschaine
- Foley
- Artists:
- Paula Boram
- Ruth Sullivan
- Mixer:
- Ted Swanscott
- Editor:
- Peter Elliott
- Cast
- Kevin McKidd
- Leo
- Hugo Weaving
- Jeremy Downey
- James Purefoy
- Brendan
- Tom Hollander
- Darren
- Christopher Fulford
- Adam
- Julie Graham
- Angie
- Con O'Neill
- Terry
- Paul Higgins
- John
- Jennifer Ehle
- Sally
- Harriet Walter
- Sybil
- Simon Callow
- Keith
- Merelina Kendall
- lady homeowner 1
- Victoria Williams
- lady homeowner 2
- Simon Green
- gentleman homeowner 2
- Nicola McAuliffe
- lady homeowner 3
- Rowland Ogden
- gentleman homeowner 3
- Richard Biazyca
- Helena Drake
- Donna Ewin
- Andrew Kanias
- Michael Kanias
- David Lye
- Andrew Spurr
- Ashley Simmonds
- Robyn Williams
- Nigel Young
- party guests
- Jane Garioni
- Joe Geary
- estate agents
- Sophie Ashton
- Stacey Ashton
- homeowner 2's children
- Wendy Adams
- Philip Appleton
- Glyn Brown
- Chris Connor
- Ian Easton
- Hainsley Guthrie
- Mark Healy
- Aiden Lean
- Helen Lewis-Fernand
- Marc Raymond
- Bruce Wang
- café customers
- Steve Adams
- Paula Becvar
- Julie Casey
- Barry Gay
- David Huntley
- Graham Lewis
- Karl Mitchel
- Neil Morphew
- Amy Redler
- Chris Whalley
- Dean Wopling
- pub customers
- Paul Augarde
- Joe Geary
- 'Jane Austen' scene movers
- Bruce Wang
- Chinese takeaway waiter
- Max Keene
- burglar
- Robert Farrar
- man at bus stop
- Gavin Hale
- Tatiana Hale
- couple in park
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Alliance Releasing (UK)
- 8,654 feet
- 96 minutes 9 seconds
- Dolby
- Colour by
- Rank Film Laboratories