A quality cast elevates The Trouble with Jessica despite its essential oddness
“Can we stop going on about this fucking clafouti?”
The trouble with The Trouble with Jessica is that once Jessica causes the trouble in an audacious early twist, the film doesn’t feel entirely sure what tone it wants to take. Major spoiler alert (in case you want to go in blind) but after crashing the dinner party of some old university friends in their luxurious Hampstead home, Jessica nips out to the garden and hangs herself from a tree.
Should tragedy follow? Or farce? Perhaps psychological thriller? Writers James Handel and Matt Winn don’t necessarily feel quite sure as they flirt with as many genres as Jessica does married men over dinner. Hosts Sarah and Tom want to move the body because they’re broke and need the imminent house sale to go through; guests Beth and Richard are appalled but manipulated into helping; and then Anne Reid’s pesky neighbour knocks on the door….
As repeated shenanigans go on with hiding the body (despite the late hour, the prospective house buyers also pop by, as do the police), things feel like they’re going to tip into all-out farce, but without ever really making us laugh. And as tensions rise with blackmail and betrayals simmering under these old friendships, the stakes should rise with them but again, there’s not quite the follow-through to really grip us as we watch.
What the film does have going for it is a crack cast. Shirley Henderson is simmering brilliance as the increasingly controlling Sarah, dragging Alan Tudyk’s hapless Tom along with her to save their family. Olivia Williams and Rufus Sewell are good fun as an obnoxious liberal and a hypocritical celebrity barrister respectively and Indira Varma is vividly effective as the troublesome Jessica. The running joke about the clafoutis (the yummiest of French puddings) is bizarre though.
