The first thing my housemate said in response to my latest rental from Lovefilm was that it sounded just like the usual indy arty cinema crap that I am erroneously known to be fond of. I had some similar fears myself. ‘Naked’ as a title does conjure up ideas either of shock shlop or unsexy sex with too many blue filters and contortionist camera moves. However I knew that in the hands of director Mike Leigh this was sure to be more interesting than that.
I needn’t have worried; Naked is amongst the best, most surprising British films I’ve seen. David Thewlis puts in a mesmerising performance as Jonny, a quixotic tramp like Mancunian who, after a nasty sexual encounter with a woman in a subway, steels a car and goes to London to chase up his ex. In this first scene of the film it is unclear whether Jonny has committed rape or not, although his behaviour certainly seems aggressive. This initial ambiguous episode is reflected in each sexual encounter that follows. The film is preoccupied with the relationship between violence, masculinity and sex. Both Jonny and his vile yuppie counterpart, Jeremy, seem to play with violence, never quite committing to it, never quite becoming evil. Similarly whilst accompanying Jonny on his journey my emotions towards him swung from repulsion to sympathy, and back again. Jonny is one of the most beguiling characters I have ever seen on screen. As the film progresses he becomes stranger and more remote rather than more familiar, and this happens naturally, not through sudden character change or surprise.
Whereas Jonny seems to resist cliche and pull away from the celluloid that attempts to capture him, Jeremy slips a little too easily into the role of violent, newly rich arsehole. Greg Cruttwell still gives a captivating performance, being especially good at exuding an air of not quite mature sexual menace, but his character’s relative simplicity strikes the only odd note in what is otherwise a film populated with multilayered and fascinatingly plausible characters.
There are great performances from Katrin Cartlidge as Sophie, a delicate but whiny goth and Ewen Bremner, a middle aged door man who is bored to death by his job but still holds onto his dream of buying a cottage in Ireland. However, my favourite performance had to be from Lesley Sharp as Jonny’s ex girlfriend, Louise. Her character was wonderfully understated, the perfect foil to Thewlis’s manic Jonny; down to earth, a little world-weary, but tender and witty too. When watching Sharp you feel as if minute aspects of her charcter are slowly revealing themselves, but you can’t quite work out what or how. Louise was a character that percolated through the film, rather than stamping her presence and underlining it with red ink.
Its evocation of London in the early nineties is spot on. Dirty, a bit crap and a little depressing. It felt miserable but interesting. The film is brilliant and intricate in its observation of character and human relationships, but to me it had less to say about class and the political situation in the early nineties, the first years after Thatcher. Its device of downtrodden Manchester lad vs. newly rich Yuppie reveals little that is not already obvious. I think the film would perhaps be better if the stories of these two characters were given their own separate platforms and not made to say something they cannot in tandem.
However these are tiny niggles on my part. This film goes beyond what we usually expect from our characters and delivers an experience not too different from savouring brilliant poetry or prose – the joy that comes from realising that yes, they are being that clever, and yes, this is something that will deliver a different experience each time it is revisited.
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