Truly Madly Deeply (1990 Dir. Anthony Minghella)
As Marmite movies go Truly Madly Deeply is hot buttered and dripping with yeast extract. Not to mention ectoplasm. If you’re male and reading this I can already hear you retching, if you’re of the female persuasion, however, you’ve probably gone weak at the knees and are gibbering like a baby whose just seen its teddy crushed under the front wheel of a steam roller.Some people - women - insist that Truly Madly Deeply is the greatest British movie of all time. A beautiful tragicomic metaphor for coping with grief.Some other people - me - think it is truly the most gut wrenching, sick inducing and conceited indictment of middle class mores of the 1990s. The fact that it was shot in Bristol but pretended to be Hamstead just happens to be another nail in its cuddly, heartwarming coffin. Directed and scripted by Anthony Minghella who knew Bristol well since his family have been serving the city delicious ice cream for generations and therefore has no excuses to pretend that the location is London. On release the film was an instant smash hit. So much so that it appeared to have been royally ripped off by Ghost, an even more successful Hollywood movie based along similar lines but better because it involved phallic pottery sessions, spectral punch ups and car chases and Whoopie Goldberg and....well, everything TMD didn’t basically. Still it does seem like one informed the other but it’s just a spooky coincidence, because both films came out the same year.Either way. TMD is a brownie point movie. Watch this with your girlfriend once or twice a year and you have a licence to put The Bill/Match Of The Day/Futurama on whenever you like. “He’s got a lovely sensitive side” she’ll tell her mates “he watched Truly Madly Deeply with me last night.” Grin and bear it. TMD plays out thus. Juliet Stevenson has recently lost her lover - as in he’s dead, not misplaced - Alan Rickman. She’s not handling this very well on her own in their crumbling Clifton, sorry Hamstead, flat, so he comes back from the grave for some jam sessions on the cello and piano. Cue long smoochy bits and tearful dialogue. Rickman, though, begins to take liberties with his living partner’s hospitality by bringing deceased mates of his back to the flat to watch Woody Allen movies in the dead of night.Meanwhile Stevenson starts to become attracted to a new man - a self consciously wacky type who wears a ‘look at me’ hat and likes to juggle - crazy. Now she’s all confused because she likes the idiot with the stupid hat but she loves her dead boyfriend and now she feels like she’s cheating on him. “He’s dead” we all scream at the screen, “what the hell?” But no, she’s got to ‘work things out’. It’s that kind of film. And did I mention there are no punch ups or Whoopie Goldberg’s. Into the mix come some builders to finally start work on the flat and sort out an infestation of rats. This is a metaphor, I think, actually it might be a simile. Who cares? Anyway, the long and short of it is that Stevenson finally realises that what with her boyfriend being a ghost and everything there are some clear physical obstacles in the bedroom department and decides to settle for the clown in the hat. Oh well. Still, at least it means the film’s over.
The Food: A plate of Ryvita and celery followed by 17 litres of Semi-melted cookies ‘n’ cream Hagan Daz.
The Drink: You might want a can of lager but 10-1 says you’ll be quaffing Lambrini.
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