Everything film review

certificate_18

EVERYTHING

The advent of digital technology has allowed the film-making process to become more democratic: now it seems that anyone with access to a camera and a computer editing suite can become a director. While this is undoubtedly to be welcomed, it also means that any system of checks and balances that might be afforded in a studio go largely ignored. Unsuspecting viewers, keen to find the next low-budget auteur, can easily spend pound after pound only to watch grainy, poorly shot and frankly dull films, that barely merit being shown on the big screen. Richard Dawkins' Everything is about as good an example of this as it gets: a murky, meandering and frankly pointless tale that reeks of self-importance.

Ray Winstone plays Richard (the film is written and directed by Dawkins), who turns up at the room of a Soho prostitute named Naomi (Jan Graveson). But Richard doesn't want the usual fare: instead he is happy to pay Naomi to talk. He wants to find out all about her. The film is largely a succession of dialogues between the two, intermittently broken up by events such as Richard hiding in the wardrobe to watch Naomi at work, or a backstory involving his wife and daughter, which gradually becomes more and more important.

The improvised feel of the dialogue and the claustrophobic feel of the piece will either lure viewers in or, more likely, switch them off, as this is indeed a very dull relationship. The two talk, and talk, and sometimes play cards, but there is little real about either their characters or situation. The point of it all is obscure and muddled.

Despite giving their best shot, Winstone and Graveson are treading water here with a script that seems barely written. At best it feels like a stageplay, and at worst much longer than its 91 minutes running time. While Dawkins does capture Naomi's milieu quite convincingly, he shows his directorial immaturity with some heavy-handed cuts and repeated zooming which is both unsettling and irritating. There's also a subplot about another immigrant prostitute which seems to have been crowbarred in, possibly to eke out the film's running time.

According to the press release, the film was shot for £47,500 in nine days %u2018to find out whether it was possible to make a genuinely compelling film in the face of such daunting logistics'. The answer, in this case, is a resounding no. If there's little in the way of a decent script or premise then it's hard to see how a film is meant to engage or succeed.