THE STORY – Two upper-middle-class British couples find themselves having to hide a dead body in order to protect the value of the property that is about to be sold.
THE CAST – Shirley Henderson, Alan Tudyk, Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams & Indira Varma
THE TEAM – Matt Winn (Director/Writer) & James Handel (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 89 Minutes
Entertaining guests can be a chore. You have to prepare a meal considering everyone’s dietary needs, clean your house like a visiting monarch is on their way, and be sure to have plenty of stimulating yet non-controversial conversation topics at the ready. Well, that’s nothing compared to the dinner party in the new film “The Trouble with Jessica.” The title is an obvious play on Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Trouble with Harry,” and, like that film, this also centers around an unexpected and inconvenient corpse. But that’s not the only problem facing these seemingly well-off Brits. As the film unfolds, confessions are dredged up, and lies are uncovered. And as the deliverers of these revelations, the extremely talented ensemble is reason enough to RSVP in the affirmative to this affair.
The couple hosting the dinner are Sarah (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (Alan Tudyk). Before the guests even arrive, Sarah is antsy. She gulps down wine in preparation for the arrival of Jessica (Indira Varma) – their gregarious but unfiltered acquaintance. She’s the semi-unexpected, technically uninvited plus-one of married couple Richard (Rufus Sewell) and Beth (Olivia Williams). This quintet all attended university together back in the day, and as a result, bring with them decades of joy and connection along with (even more so) tension and unresolved conflict. But for once, Jessica has something positive happening in her turbulent life: She’s recently released a hit memoir detailing her occasional ups and many downs. Upon her arrival, she immediately takes to flirting with Tom, which seems to be a habit of hers whenever she encounters a married man. Everyone picks up on this, and Sarah isn’t afraid to call Jessica out for her uncouth behavior. As the night goes on, one of the party attendees does something beyond shocking that rattles everyone and forcibly changes the menu for the evening.
This is a story, driven mainly by dialogue and performance, that could have easily been told on stage. The location changes are minimal, and the cast is small – it’s mostly just the main party of five, with occasional interruptions from doorbell ringers. As such, the burden of keeping the film entertaining and compelling mostly falls on the cast. Luckily for the filmmakers (Matt Winn provides non-flashy but tonally focused direction, complementing the chatty screenplay written by him and James Handel), all five of the performers are more than capable of holding viewers’ attention. Henderson is exceptional as the frazzled housewife who’s often the only one comfortable calling others out for their hypocrisies and untruths. It’s not entirely clear if this is generally Sarah’s personality or if the unexpectedly raised stakes of the evening, coupled with the liters of wine she’s consumed, have brought out dominating qualities in her, but Henderson makes for a captivating central character. Her distinctive voice draws the audience in (most will know her best as the appropriately named Moaning Myrtle from the “Harry Potter” films), and it pairs well with her rattled performance. She’s somehow both the commander of the operation and the most erratic of the bunch, and she plays this near-paradox well. At times, she feels like the audience surrogate, and at other moments, she makes unpredictable, impulsive decisions. Her character’s switches in intention and opinion make the film feel occasionally fickle for little clear reason. Of course, humans act in erratic ways all the time, but some of Sarah’s choices feel unlikely based on what information we’ve been given about her. But still, Henderson’s characterization makes it easy to overlook this. She’s so riveting that it’s hard to look away, even when it’s difficult to comprehend why she’s doing what she’s doing.
As her husband, Tudyk is reliably affable. It’s necessary that someone as charismatic as Tudyk play him, as Tom’s actions that eventually come to light could make him so unappealing that audiences might not want to follow him if he were portrayed by a less competent actor. Sewell and Williams make for an equally fascinating secondary couple. Sewell’s character is a bit one-note, but the actor is talented enough to manage to unearth variance in his line deliveries and actions that may not be obvious on the script’s page. And Williams is fantastic as his frazzled wife. She operates with hair-trigger emotions, and Williams is unafraid to really go there with her venomous statements and exclamations. Varma plays Jessica as exactly the type of fascinating but difficult person that nearly everyone has in their friend group. Because of her sympathetic but crude performance, it’s easy to understand why the group keeps her around despite how challenging Jessica is to handle.
Director Matt Winn keeps the general pace up, which is helped by the jazzy score he’s co-written with Matt Cooper. The brash music brings a propulsive, upbeat energy to even the film’s more upsetting moments, which keeps things from getting too bogged down in a way that would spoil the darkly comic tone. But smartly, Winn is comfortable with giving some dramatic occurrences later in the film an appropriately grounded feeling, making them even more impactful because of the previous comedic proceedings.
Despite some repetitive conversations that make the short film feel slightly stretched out, “The Trouble with Jessica” is an entertaining, grimly funny affair. The cast is undoubtedly the main course of this dinner, serving up deliciously catty and gasp-inducing drama. There is no need for dessert here; their fully developed characters and hilarious performances are sure to leave you satisfied.
