Falling into the subgenre of dinner parties gone disastrously wrong, THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA, an astringent black comedy of ethics, finds five people who have been friends since their university days being forced by one of them to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about themselves and each other. By the end of what will turn into a very bad evening, the only thing unchanged about these affluent Londoners will be their steadfast devotion to the clafoutis for which one of them is legendary.
Our hosts are Tom, a cockeyed optimist of a developer, and his chirpily pragmatic wife, Sarah (Alan Tudyk and Shirley Henderson), a couple who have fallen on hard times that force them to sell their home in North London. Having found a buyer that will stave off financial disaster, they invite Richard (Rufus Sewell), a lawyer specializing in defending rapists, and Beth (Olivia Wiliams), a social worker with profound disdain for Richard’s line of work but not the lifestyle it affords her, to help them say farewell to their home with a final meal topped off with the ci-mentioned clafoutis. Unfortunately, Richard and Beth bring along Jessica (Indira Varma), the author of a new bestseller in which she uses fiction to discuss how she made friends with her depression and had an affair with a married man. What should have been a quiet evening with good friends instead becomes a series of calamitous events spiraling out of control with rampant gusto, starting with Jessica’s barbed comments and ending with her going into the garden and hanging herself before the clafoutis can be served.
Structured like the classic bedroom farce, the intrepid, and increasingly desperate couples turn philosophical as well as frantic as Jessica’s death goes from being inconvenient to life-altering for the survivors as they scramble to keep the news from breaking before the house can be sold. As bonhomie turns to recriminations among the quartet, the question of what to do with the body is complicated by a neighbor wanting Jessica to autograph her book, two police officers (Jonathan Livingstone and David Schaal), who love clafoutis and hate mysteries, and the potential buyer (Sylvester Growth), a dour German who drops in at the worst possible moment. The dialogue has a biting wit that leaves a scar, abetted by a suitably spritely, jittery score and sleekly directed with an eye for style and absurdity.
Director/co-writer Matt Winn doesn’t skimp on the comedy but has created genuine emotional stakes for all these characters, with Richard, his polished demeanor becoming more ragged by the moment, bemoaning the fact that he has to defend rapists because he is so good at it, Sarah turning Machiavellian to get her way, Beth demonstrating how flexible her moral compass can be while spewing vitriol that belies her claims of universal compassion, and Tom, with the demeanor of a befuddled puppy, trying to keep the peace between them all, at least until the issue of Jessica’s mortal remains has been resolved.
The superb cast plays the comedy in the tragedy with an expert balance, equally believable when one of them is at one moment revolted by having to touch the corpse and at another breaking down in helpless tears over it. There is a poignant humanity to these imperfect beings that resonates with the audience, and the sort of near-misses and close-calls about being discovered that makes for a taut thriller played out for our amusement, and perhaps even for a dash of edification.
THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA is an exhilarating look at smart people who are painfully out of their depth forced to make quick decisions to avoid monumental consequences. And then worrying about the morality of what they’ve done and what they will have to do next to avoid even more monumental consequences, legal and moral. Literate, deadpan, and wildly funny, it’s a, ahem, monumental adrenalin rush that will make you squirm and crave a clafoutis.
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