Sex and desire in British films of the 2000s

Love in a damp climate

Nigel Mather

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781526139238
• eBook ISBN: 9781526139252
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

This book explores how British filmmakers of the 2000s engaged with the themes of love, sex and desire in a wide variety of movies. It ranges from powerful contemporary dramas such as Kidulthood, Closer and Disobedience to the lighter mood of the Bridget Jones series. It also analyses how the lives, loves and traumas of historical figures such as Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath and Iris Murdoch were dramatised on film. The book will appeal to literature enthusiasts, film students and readers interested in exploring how we may currently live out our hopes, fears and dreams in relation to sexual matters and affairs of the heart.

1

Introduction: Relationships and intimacy in British films of the 2000s

To say ‘I love you’ to someone is always, inevitably, to be citing a well-known and well-worn phrase.¹ Thus, when speakers may want to be most authentic and personal, speaking deeply from the heart, they end up having to quote an unoriginal formulation of words, what Terry Eagleton has described as having to speak ‘other people’s lines’.² As the lovelorn Danny (Douglas Henshall) observes in This Year’s Love (David Kane, 1999), the concept of ‘love’ contains ‘Too many things in it for just one word.’ In such circumstances, presumably what counts is having found someone to whom this phrase can be uttered deeply and sincerely. In Alfie (Lewis Gilbert, 1966), Gilda (Julia Foster), one of Alfie’s many girlfriends, asks him if he loves her. ‘Shall we say, I like you a lot,’ replies Alfie, choosing his words very carefully so as to convey the precise nature of his feelings (and to avoid giving Gilda the impression that he might be willing to settle down into a monogamous relationship with her). Later, he observes in one of his asides to the film’s audience (with a seemingly genuine air of confusion), ‘I don’t know what love is, the way you birds talk about it.’³ When asked if he was in love with his bride-to-be as his wedding drew closer, Prince Charles famously – and somewhat notoriously – replied that he was in love, ‘whatever that may mean’,⁴ an observation some have seen as indicating that his imminent marriage to Diana Spencer was built on shaky foundations and unlikely to last. The remark can, however, be read as evidence of Charles’s recognition that the term ‘love’ in philosophical, emotional and linguistic terms was not one which could be unambiguously or definitively defined for all times, people or occasions. The novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch described the act of falling with love with someone as a ‘violent process’, involving lovers becoming aware ‘of an entirely separate reality’,⁵ creating a world which suddenly seems more enchanting and hopeful than it did previously. The term ‘falling’, however, does suggest that this can be a somewhat disorienting process, which may result in a painful ‘landing’ or an uncertain ending. The writer Laurie Penny, in her study Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution (2014), argues that ‘romance’ provides a welcome diversion from what she evocatively and memorably termed ‘the grim, meat-hook reality of work and death’.⁶ From such a perspective, the prospect of finding love and sexual fulfilment with one or numerous partners can be viewed as offering hope for new and optimistic stories to emerge in people’s lives, creating appealing alternatives to what may otherwise seem to be depressing, uninspiring and unmemorable situations and ways of living.

The journalist Dolly Alderton’s memoir Everything I Know about Love (2018) stresses the importance of approaching matters of relationships and sexuality in a positive manner, but the author is aware that the drive towards sexual happiness is not necessarily or straightforwardly satisfied by being directed at just one partner. Thus, she suggests (a little wryly) that ‘It is important to have a lot of sex with a lot of people but probably no more than ten,’ adding, ‘It’s a good idea to get married a bit later in life.’⁷ Alderton is also conscious that no relationship can be viewed as exempt from a sudden and possibly unwelcome alteration leading to its demise: ‘Everything will change. And it could happen any morning.’⁸ Loved ones can suddenly develop a feeling of passion and desire for someone else, so that what seemed permanent may turn out to have been only temporary and provisional (and even the most loving of relationships are destined to end in the deaths of both partners).

Problems around finding and staying in work, earning money or partners who hold radically differing religious/cultural/political values can all create tensions within relationships, possibly resulting in lovers heading off in separate directions and never seeing each other again. In his study After Theory (2003), Terry Eagleton makes a distinction between what he terms the ‘impersonal’ sensually oriented ‘ravages of desire’ (‘a monster at the heart of the self’), involving urges which are fundamentally self-regarding and self-seeking, and the more generous nature of unselfish and unconditional ‘love’ as a spiritual and material force which seeks to create the conditions for others to ‘flourish’ and prosper in a state of emotional and psychological well-being. Eagleton feels that the ideals associated with such forms of love also offer a ‘model’ of how ‘a just society’ might be organised and constructed in political and economic terms.⁹ Sexual desire and unconditional love, the self and society might find themselves at odds in certain key ways when considered from such perspectives. Eagleton’s intriguing formulations and distinctions will be important guiding lights when exploring the depictions and representations of sex, love, desire and society within a British cinematic and cultural context in this book. Eagleton’s mentor at Cambridge University, Raymond Williams, once wrote of D.H. Lawrence being torn between ‘thinking of the flame of life that can be kindled in a loving relationship’ and a feeling that it was necessary to break ‘away, from people and from society’ in order to find true peace of mind and contentment. Williams concluded that Lawrence ‘never really made up his mind about this final issue … he kept trying to get it clear and right’.¹⁰ One can similarly note that many of the characters in the films discussed in this study are similarly torn and troubled by doubts about to whom and to what they should pledge their true allegiance and commitment.

With regard to the medium of film and the significance of its particular depictions of love and desire, Thomas Wartenberg, in his book Unlikely Couples: Movie Romance as Social Criticism (1999), argues that films based around gay partnerships or couples whose liaisons meet with opposition from the society in which they unfold (for reasons pertaining to issues of class, race or culture) are capable of raising vital and important questions concerning love, sexuality and society in human relationships. What he designates ‘unlikely’ or untypical couples in films offer the possibility for assumptions about what is deemed natural, normal or desirable in characters’ sexual and romantic behaviour within particular communities to be questioned, challenged and thoughtfully examined. Wartenberg suggests that the ‘unlikely couple, by contravening a principle of hierarchy, portends social chaos and must be either be prevented … or sanctioned in some way’.¹¹ Such narratives are therefore inherently dramatic and encourage audiences to reflect on the validity of arguments put forward by the ‘unlikely’ lovers for their relationship to prosper and also by characters who oppose or disapprove of the union in question. As a result, according to Wartenberg, spectators are encouraged to think more deeply about the role played by love, desire and sexuality in their own everyday experiences and aspirations, making the cinema both a valuable form of entertainment and a source of potential enlightenment and understanding.

In Military Wives (Peter Cattaneo, 2019), Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas) suggests to the assembled partners of army personnel present at a coffee morning event that they might convert the base’s regular film night screenings into organised film seasons, where, as she puts it, they examine ‘the body of an auteur’. Lisa (Sharon Horgan) speaks up for many of the women present by declaring that ‘when we watch films, usually we like them to be fun’. Sex and desire in British films of the 2000s: Love in a damp climate will seek to illustrate that promising film writers and directors did emerge in British cinema during the 2000s, and that many of the films exploring romantic and sexual themes during this period might well appeal to Lisa and the women on the base as films which succeed in being both ‘fun’ and worthy of study and analysis. A thesis of the book is that the new millennium witnessed the release of a wide range of British movies capable of engaging in imaginative and creative ways with issues pertaining to sexuality,¹² desire,¹³ society,¹⁴ and the formation of romantic partnerships in a British context. Laurie Penny’s Unspeakable Things calls for the ‘creation of new narratives’ exploring the subjects of love, desire, sex and relationships.¹⁵ The 2000s in British film-making, indeed, witnessed treatments of these themes and topics in a range of generic forms, including the biographical/historical/literary picture, romantic comedy dramas, sexually oriented comedies, socially concerned narratives and adaptations of novels and plays, all of which will be explored in this book. Where possible, film-makers operating within these various generic forms and modes of address also sought to draw inspiration from and expand upon significant previous engagements with the subjects of sex, love and desire in British films from earlier decades and periods (which the book will briefly consider in order to see how treatments of these themes in modern British cinema have developed and changed over time).

The writer, director and actor Noel Clarke emerged as a potential ‘auteur’ during the 2000s when he created and formulated an impressive trilogy of films about young people and their (often destructive or disruptive) drives and desires. Kidulthood (Menhaj Huda, 2006), Adulthood (Noel Clarke, 2008) and Brotherhood (Noel Clarke, 2016) engaged with the emotional and sexual interactions between British teenagers in a frank and fearless fashion. Alan Franks, writing in The Times, went so far as to compare the first film in the series, Kidulthood, with Romeo and Juliet (1597) for the stylised way in which it hurtles inexorably towards a series of tragedies, while engaging with such timeless and topical subjects as ‘love, sex, pregnancy, jealousy, drug abuse, violence’ and ‘revenge’.¹⁶

If the ‘hood’ trilogy was fast paced, drawing upon the iconography of pop music videos and ‘grime’ culture, featuring characters who did not believe in repressing or restraining any of their desires for immediate physical gratification of a sexual or violent nature, Unrelated (2007), Archipelago (2010) and The Souvenir (2019) focused on very different kinds of characters and narrative events. In writer-director Joanna Hogg’s exquisite film portraits, articulate, but rather unhappy men and women struggled to find the right words to express the emotions building up inside them, sometimes in the context of settings abroad (two of the films were set outside Britain and one features a deathly and uneasy trip to Venice). David Sexton, writing about Hogg’s films in the Evening Standard, claimed that they offered ‘a new way of seeing’ in British film-making and succeeded in grappling with such themes as ‘the power of family, the significance of childlessness’ and the ‘awkwardness of goodness’.¹⁷ Both Noel Clarke and Joanna Hogg create portraits of difficult and intense relationships within diametrically opposed settings, situations and scenarios, making their depictions of modern manners and culture important in a study of relationships in British cinema of the 2000s.

The 2000s saw the release of impressive and moving accounts of complicated and complex relationships between male and female characters taking place in differing decades of British social history, the 1960s and the 1990s: On Chesil Beach (Dominic Cooke, 2018), An Education (2009) and One Day (2011), the latter two both directed by Lone Scherfig; and films exploring the pleasures and pains of same-sex attractions: Imagine Me & You (Ol Parker, 2005); Pride (Matthew Warchus, 2014); Weekend (Andrew Haigh, 2011) and God’s Own Country (Francis Lee, 2017).

There were serious and uncompromising narratives depicting the ways in which religious beliefs, values and customs may create serious problems and obstacles for lovers and ‘unlikely couples’ who devoutly wish to be together: Ae Fond Kiss… (Ken Loach, 2004), My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2004) and Disobedience (Sebastián Lelio, 2017). Notes on a Scandal (Richard Eyre, 2006) depicted the ‘scandalous’ sexual relationship of a couple who legally should not be together (a fifteen-year-old boy and his female art teacher, Sheba Hart), alongside the study o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of plates
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Relationships and intimacy in British films of the 2000s
• 2 From The Happy Prince to ‘Lady Lazarus’ and Iris: A Memoir: Writers in British society and tales of their private lives and personal affairs
• 3 ‘Diary of a somebody’: Bridget Jones’s journey from the ‘edge of reason’ to marriage and motherhood
• Plates
• 4 ‘No sex, please – we’re British?’: Sex, sensibility and British cinema
• 5 ‘The way we live now’: Narratives exploring relationships in modern British society
• Afterword: ‘We must love one another or/and die?’
• Select Bibliography
• Index