On the badness of British Movies: 1

Basic Instinct 2

Of course in some alternative universe where all the films that stalled at pre-production or were never more than an idle rumour actually made it to the big screen,David Cronenberg's version of Basic Instinct 2 is a regular midnight movie at your local arthouse cinema (in rotation with Bertolucci's 1970s adaptation of Hammett's Red Harvest starring Jack Nicholson in his prime and Nic Roeg's gorgeous, perverse take on Flash Gordon).
As it is, in the real world we're stuck with the Michael Caton Jones version, which isn't quite as appetising. Given his cold blue vision of sexuality in Crash Cronenberg might have offered an intriguing alternative to the ridiculous blood-hot sex scenes in the original Paul Verhoeven movie. Instead we get Caton-Jones who seems if anything a little embarrassed about the whole thing.



He's not the only one. Why is it when good British actors appear in trashy movies they are always so terrible? Are they just unwilling to go with the flow and enjoy themselves unless there's an arthouse director onset?
Here David's Morrissey and Thewlis, admittedly saddled admittedly with a silly script by Leora Barish and Henry Bean (both of whom had very creditable screen credits to their name; Desperately Seeking Susan in Barish's case, Internal Affairs and the underappreciated Deep Cover in Bean's), both look hugely uncomfortable. It's a stupid movie that makes Verhoeven's silly, overheated original - a 99p Shop take on Vertigo, sort of - look ever so slightly better because at least it had some kind of conviction to it (ludicrous though that conviction might have been.)
Still, watching this the other night for the first time I was rather taken by the surface gloss of the thing. Hungarian cinematographer Gyula Pados does make London look rather sleek and cold, Caton-Jones gets to shoot in the Swiss Re Tower and you can at least see the moneyed sheen onscreen.



This was most obvious in the opening sequence in which Sharon Stone and Stan Colleymore careen through a suspiciously empty city in a very flash car while indulging in a bout of mutual masturbation (auto-erotica at its most basic). If we can overlook the brain-frazzling combination of Sharon and Stan, the sequence has a grubby kind of glamour to it, a fashion magazine slickness.
Of course it's the stuff of a million film openings. But usually they are films shot in New York, LA or Hong Kong. Not in the UK, where we do seem to acquiese to social realist notions that Britain can't look smart and glitzy. London looks glitzy in Basic Instinct 2. And yes, like Sharon's perky bosom, we know it's not real. But if we're going to make trash it should at least look good. And Basic Instinct 2 does. It's not much of a claim but it's the best the film can muster.
Oh I've just found this fine archive blog entry from K-Punk which is much more positive than I am about the movie suggesting it aspires to the "ridiculous sublime" (after Zizek). I think it's way too kind but it's flushed with a kind of pervy joy in the movie's hyper-real chrome plating that you want to like the movie more having read it.