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The trouble with Jessica by Matt Winn

A film by Matt Winn

With: Alan Tudyk, Olivia Williams, Shirley Henderson, Amber Rose Revah, Rufus Sewell, Indira Varma, Anne Reid, Alice Henley, Sylvester Groth, David Schaal

Sarah and Tom are in terrible financial trouble. On the brink of losing everything, they’ve managed to find a buyer for their stylish London home. When their best friends Richard and Beth come round for a final dinner, an uninvited old friend, Jessica, tags along. After a seemingly trivial argument, Jessica hangs herself in the garden. Tom goes to call the police when Sarah realizes if the buyer finds out, the sale will collapse, meaning definite financial ruin. The only solution – to convince Richard and Beth to take Jessica’s body to her flat and make it look like she killed herself there. If they’re clever enough about it, what could possibly go wrong?

Our rate: *(*)

It’s an over-the-top comedy with a déjà vu feel, reminiscent of a boulevard play, with actors constantly overacting. The comedy is based on situations, reminiscent of Franck Capra’s or even Alfred Hitchcock’s attempts to transpose them to a bourgeois world. If director Matt Winn has drawn his inspiration from true stories (people hanged in other people’s homes, relatives who have committed suicide), and if his writing is an exercise in catharsis, if the Dinard audience as a whole was amused by the situations, If the ensemble is slender, like the jazzy music that gives pride of place to the chorus, we found ourselves rather annoyed by the dramatic devices that aim to constantly relaunch an ubiquitous situation that is certainly gag-like, giving the whole thing a repetitive and somewhat vain air.

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