Watched: Sightseers
Observations:
- This is not for everyone. I mean that in the sense that it’s blackly comic, and doesn’t give you clear signposts to the laughs. There’s plenty to find funny, but you need to accept its premise, and a lot of people will fall at that hurdle.
- This film does maudlin really well. Alice Lowe and Steve Oram are fascinating to watch, just to see how they can make some truly horrific acts (another thing: the gore levels in this film are, surprisingly, off the charts) seem utterly banal. There’s this wonderful tension where it’s as if they’re trying to see how far they can push the viewer, and it teeters on the precipice more or less throughout.
- Some of the brilliant parts were more along the lines of background detail (examples: crotchless knitted underwear, the Carapod, Lowe attempting to write with a three-foot pencil from the Keswick Pencil Museum). This feels like a product of love, just because of how absurd each everyday detail is made.
- Unfortunately, for me, it falls a little flat, but I’m not nearly as sensitive to black comedy as I used to be. Apparently Withnail and I was a major influence on this film, and it doesn’t measure up to that standard by a long shot; all that said, it’s still curious enough to merit viewing.