Underrated little gem of the 80s

bjacob

Spectacular balancing act between fact and fiction, public and private, greedy, ambitious Thatcherites and vacuous upper class specimen of the gauche caviar. The "Ploughman's lunch" is extremely tightly narrated and manages to make the spectator interested in the sorts of a bunch of not really likeable characters and their struggles for love, sex and power.
This is "Wall Street" in European and ultra-minor key version and a formidable depiction of the Eighties and their political and social contradictions.

Hope I haven't made it sound boring, because it isn't -- it's wryly, dryly funny, without even so much of a wink to the spectator, and dissects his protagonists with surgical precision.

score 9/10

bjacob 25 December 2017

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4013363/