| White Mischief [1987] | | |
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 A masterpiece of untold bluntness September 10, 2006
Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
Kenya in 1940 while London is being crushed by German bombs into a mount of rubbles. There the English are leading the most paradisiacal life, so they say, in fact a life that knows no limits, no restraint, no rules, particularly at the sexual level. But an aging aristocrat arrives with his very young and extremely attractive wife. What was to happen happens and all the men who are deprived of a permanent wife want her and she falls in the trap. The rest is aristocratic melodrama with one murder, one trial, two suicides, and a few other unsavoury facts. The interest of the film is in the escapee - and refugee - state of mind of these English that are staying as far away from the war as possible. They are rich and enjoy it. They cannot accept the slightest deception or disappointment. They want everything to go their way without any resistance. They are also totally unaware of and blind to the reality around them. They use pineapples to train their shooting in the most wasteful way. They give financial lessons to their valets, and what lessons: "The banks are ready to lend you an umbrella when the sun is shining but as soon as the rain starts they want it back." This social ombilical egoticism is shown with such precision that it becomes a denunciation of it without any sharp words or hard sentences: just small successive touches in the best British delicate style. The very negative judgment on the British trial of the accused murderer of the lady's first lover is built up with such little details strung one after another without even leading you to any rejection, far from it. The film even builds some feeling of relief when the non-guilty verdict is read, though we know, but forget, that it is not right; just as if to be murdered is a normal and standard risk one man runs and accepts when he tries to seduce the wife of another man. The next interest of the film is of course that we can see this society dying in front of our eyes. One year later it will have to come to an end because the war will demand to be taken care of. Hence we feel the vision is decadent, this society is crumbling and these people are sadly pathetic. The constant nuances introduced in every single scene make this film an extremely enjoyable trip not to paradise but down into hell.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne
 a great film December 10, 2006
Terry Manning (UK)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Im afraid I cant compete with Dr. Coulardeau's exemplary review!! However this IS a terrific film with fine performances from Charles Dance, Gretta Scacchi and in particular Joss Ackland. DVD buyers beware : if you purchase the Dutch version (which seems to be the only one readily available at present) although the dialogue is the original English, there are subtitles in Dutch all the way through the film which cannot be turned off. I found this EXTREMELY annoying, but if that doesnt bother you BUY IT NOW!!! The 4 stars are for the DVD - the film is a definate 5 stars.
Chequered Lives In The White Hills March 18, 2008
ianrmillard
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Having known a lady who was in Kenya from 1943 (3 years after the events on which this film is based) and having an English wife born in British East Africa a dozen years later, White Mischief was of huge interest to me quite apart from its intrinsic merit.
Jock Delves-Broughton (Joss Ackland) is in financial trouble and has left 1940 England with creditors pressing (not surprising: he spent up to 120,000 annually, equivalent to perhaps 5 million or even 10 million today!). He buys a place near Nairobi and settles with his much younger and very beautiful (especially but not only when unclothed) wife Diana (Greta Scacchi). She has been "bought" by him in return for an allowance of 80,000 annually, for 7 years. She, however, falls in love with the dissolute local landowner and part-time (it seems!) officer Errol (Earl of) (Charles Dance). They wish to marry. Jock pretends to agree, then suddently, Errol is found shot in the head on a country road. Delves-Broughton is tried for murder and acquitted. The plot reaches its denouement from there.
There is too much of an attempt to mix this story with the admittedly connected tale of the wifeswappers of "Happy Valley", a set based in a glen in the Aberdare Mountains, where fornication, adultery, drinking and some drug-taking took place in the 1930's and early 1940's. Although the middle and upper ranks of white settler society did contain a higher proportion of louche characters (remittance-men, the idle rich, war-evaders, more or less available women etc) than might have been the case back in England, the Happy Valley set was always a small minority.
Although not mentioned in the film, the Earl of Carnarvon (cf. No Regrets and Ermine Tales) sent a famous telegram to Delves-Broughton after the trial, using racing terminology: "Won by a neck, cleverly." ! That signal is now framed in the bar of White's Club in St. James', London.
I can recommend this film to anyone. Greatly entertaining, never boring and, if the ending is slightly anti-climactic, well...that is true to history. Like the society it shows, the film slightly peters out, but is not much the worse for that. The locations are great, the acting perfect.
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