Sparkle

Rating: * * *

Verdict

:

Small but well-scripted and emotionally ntelligent film about love and betrayal.

Co-writers and co-directors Hunsinger and Hunter were responsible for the tender and elegiac multiviewpoint drama Lawless Heart which played here five years ago.

Sparkle

isn't quite as nuanced, but it is still a beautifully written and well-performed film of similar emotional intelligence and graced with a fine sense of the absurd.

Channing (looking like a mid-career Liz Taylor and sporting a creditable English accent) anchors a good ensemble as Sheila, a hardbitten businesswoman with a family set-up best described as complicated. She's not on speaking terms with her daughter, not least because she's never told her who her father is.

Into this emotional minefield blunders Sam (Evans), an ambitious northern lad, new in London with his clingy mum in tow. Sheila employs him and beds him - it all happens so fast that it's not clear in what order - and when he hooks up with Sheila's daughter Kate (Ryan), nobody in the triangle is in possession of all the facts.

You can see where this is going and where it will end, but it takes some interesting detours en route. It's the kind of film where sub-plots interweave with each other and with the main story, but the effect is never confusing: it has a cosy and intimate feel.

Channing is terrific as a woman who manages to make her own curdled self-loathing more visible the harder she tries to hide it, but there's not a single character in it who isn't interesting and believable (though Hoskins, looking eerily like that chap who sells Wendy's hamburgers, is the least satisfying).

It loses shape a little at the end - I suspect it's longer than it ought to have been - but it has some zinger lines and the wordless scene in which Kate realises what's been happening is an absolute gem. Worth a look.

- Peter Calder

Starring

: Stockard Channing, Bob Hoskins, Lesley Manville, Shaun Evans, Anthony Head, Amanda Ryan

Directors

: Tom Hunsinger, Neil Hunter

Running time

: 105 mins

Rating

: M (offensive language, sexual themes)

Screening

: Bridgeway