THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA
UK, 2023, 89 minutes, Colour.
Shirley Henderson, Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams, Alan Tudyk, Indira Varma, Sylvester Groth, Anne Reid.
Directed by Matt Winn.
There has always been trouble with Jessica. She is a novelist, sometimes reclusive, manipulative, tantalising in her relationships, and has just published a novel with references to her friends. She has turned up at a dinner at Sarah and Tom’s house, not entirely welcome. Sarah and Tom are also hosting a couple who have been long-time friends, Richard and Beth.
At first, this seems to be a variation on the Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf kind of gathering, some surface pleasantries, then difficulties emerging, criticism, insults, tantrums. But, after 15 minutes, looking for Jessica, they find she has hanged herself in the garden.
While the angry interchanges of the Virginia Woolf kind continue throughout the film, The Trouble with Jessica then becomes a variation on the theme: how do you conceal, then get rid of the body. This idea was popular in some of the small budget comedy thrillers of the 1930s. However, it became a significant theme when Alfred Hitchcock made The Trouble with Harry, 1955. In fact, Agatha Christie use the theme in The Spider’s Web. And, at the end of the 1980s, there was the American comedy, Weekend at Bernie’s. What to do with the body? How to conceal it?
The two couples are middle-aged, have known each other since they were young. After the shock of Jessica’s suicide, Sarah, who had had an altercation with her, takes charge, wanting to conceal the death, with a plan for the body to be transferred to Jessica’s house and set up as a suicide there. Tom more or less goes along with this plan. One of the reasons for the plan is that they are in financial difficulties, need to sell the house, have an eager client who wants to buy and they don’t want a body to be in the house when they come to inspect.
Richard is a practising lawyer, defence lawyer, quoting legal practice but somehow rather persuaded to join in the plan by Sarah threatening to reveal some dubious actions in the past. Beth, on the other hand, want to immediately go to the police, dials 911, the police turning up, pleasant exchanges, one of them discovering the desert, one of his favourites! And, a neighbour comes to the door eager to meet the writer and to get her to autograph a book.
With a lot of interchanges and recriminations, exposures of each of the characters, Richard having had an affair with Jessica and Beth’s wanting a divorce, Sarah being dominating, Tom acquiescing. The prospective buyer turns up to look at the house, the concealing the body under the stairs, the visitor wanting to look inside the cupboard, their getting the body upstairs, his leaving.
The atmosphere license, Sarah standing guard, they get the body into the car, drive to her flat, a police car pulling up beside them at a red light, a couple in the corridor, but they get the body into the room and the set up.
On the return, the prospective buyer, an affluent German businessman, returns, elicits the secret from them, wants to settle the sale immediately and, with some moments of hesitation, there is agreement. Sarah and Tom is saved but Sarah suddenly changes her attitude, wants to call the police. This is all to do with a reference in Jessica’s book and Tom, while the audience obscene flashbacks, admits an occasion with Jessica before they met. Richard then confesses that he has had the affair but, by this time, Beth has somewhat calm down after participating in the setting up of the suicide.
The film has a top cast, Shirley Henderson top lining the film as Sarah, with American Alan Dudek is her husband. Rufus saw and Olivia Williams are the other couple. And the cameo scene of the neighbour wanting the autograph – and it was an angry when the car with the body is about to leave and she is upset that the author will not come out of the car – played by Anne Reid.
There is one barrier that many commentators have noted – the proliferation of swearing throughout the film, judge it excessive, and many surprised at this group of actors, including Anne Reid, prepared to mouth such constant coarse language.
