Sightseers
Directed by Ben Wheatley
Written by Steve Oram and Alice Lowe
with Steve Oram, Alice Lowe, Eileen Davies
2012
A gruesome black comedy following a caravan holiday that develops into a string of murders. Writers Steve Oram and Alice Lowe star as Chris and Tina, a couple setting off on their first holiday together, a camping trip around the sights of northern England. When Chris begins to display a short temper liable to erupt into violence, their journey takes on a more fugitive aspect, and, for Tina, becomes one of self-discovery.
There are hints of social commentary in Sightseers; it’s very much a cut-price, recession-era holiday that Chris and Tina have embarked on, and the former’s frustrations seem to be directed mainly against the middle classes and people he feels are damaging the country in some way. What the film is more than anything else, though, perhaps even more than it’s a comedy, is a surprisingly intricate character piece. Both the main characters, though by no means antisocial, are a bit awkward, and it’s watching the awkwardness peeling back to reveal the insanity that’s actually the most fun thing about the film. While both leads are great, Lowe especially delivers a fairly brilliant and subtle portrayal of madness. You get far more of a view into her background than you do with Chris, whose troubles are hinted at but who remains a bit of a mystery: she’s clearly very lonely, and is emotionally abused by a crazy, domineering mother, and is also openly excited by finally meeting a match. At first frumpy and sweet, her deepening situation with Chris is accompanied by increasingly frequent twitching and weird cadence of speech; it’s a pretty fantastic performance, with moments where you can’t decide whether you’re amused or unsettled.
Ben Wheatley is a director with a rare ability to seamlessly weave the mundane and gritty with the hallucinogenic, without it seeming like running-time filler. This turns out to work incredibly well for a dark comedy, and particularly in this case, where it sets off the inherent dullness of a caravan holiday around Yorkshire against the oddness of the main characters and, quite frankly, the inherent oddness of a caravan holiday around Yorkshire. Sightseers is funny and weirdly thoughtful. Its influences are pretty obvious, but the way it uses them is imaginative and it feels like its own film with its own voice. And it still manages to have an unexpected ending that’s completely in line with the tone of the rest.
Tom
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