Play for Today: Nuts in May (1976)'s comments

Do you want to let us know what you think? Just login, after which you will be redirected back here and you can leave your comments.

joachimt

In one part:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pxN2BADHwk

6 years ago

Alison Steadman and Roger Sloman in Nuts in May might be the first "Mike Leigh characters" in his canon of work, which is to say slightly dim, somewhat tedious, ordinary people whose eccentricities push them into the realm of comic pathos. A couple on a camping trip, Keith is a walking guidebook and self-righteous nature lover who seems to stifle the guileless, whiny Candice Marie who nevertheless has bought 100% into his conception of the world. They are quickly irritated by other campers, but are irritating themselves, and the film plays with themes of how a certain thing, in a slightly different context, is objectionable or not to them. It's ultimately quite charming, though it could have used a tighter ending. But while this Play for Today has a different tone from Leigh's previous Hard Labour, it still has an observational style and we just happen to watch during that part of the holiday and leave when our time is up. I guess it's the fact that the original program called them "plays", but watching these, I like to imagine them staged in a theater, and that activates my theatrical brain cells. In this case, we'd lose the Dorset locations, but I think it would still work. After all, Keith is always telling us what we're looking at. He's that guy.

1 year 3 months ago

MMDan

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x55y5q_nuts-in-may-part-1-of-5_shortfilms

7 years 9 months ago