| 88; 4.5 stars; A | dir. Mike Leigh | English | 131 min | R21 |
Johnny, a drifter, moves in with his ex-girlfriend, Louise, and befriends her flatmate Sophie. His overwhelming loneliness leads him on a nighttime odyssey across working-class London.
Bleak, claustrophobic, and depressing, Mike Leigh’s ‘Naked’ offers an uncompromising look at modern society. Our introduction to Johnny (David Thewlis) – and the movie’s opening – sees him having sex with a woman, which she subsequently calls out as rape. Johnny steals a car, flees town, and lands on Louise’s (Lesley Sharp) doorstep. Later at night, he wanders around the suburb, engaging a Scottish youth (Ewan McGregor) and a security guard, among others, in nihilistic, existential debate.
The flatmates too are engaged – their task of avoiding their landlord and sexual predator proves less appealing and rather comical (that is, until his sleazy behaviour crosses the line). A third flatmate is on holiday and later returns to witness an appalling state of household affairs.
It seems that ‘Naked’ doesn’t really have a purpose beyond wallowing in its antihero’s rampant misery. That is to miss the point: Leigh gives his characters free rein, using improvisatory dialogues to channel an evolving social disconnect and resentment. Unemployment and alcoholism, frigidity and apocalyptic conspiracy; Thewlis, who plays Professor Lupin in ‘Harry Potter’, assumes the role of a charming motor-mouth with off-putting misogyny and disdain as convincingly as it gets. (He later bagged Best Actor at Cannes.)
The film bears heavy resemblance to Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ in its witty yet vengeful cynicism; both Johnny and Kubrick’s Alex are reflective individuals who are constantly able to justify their actions, immoral or not. Johnny, however, has no fear of the State; no one is out for him. He is paralysed with insignificance. This makes his intellectual and bleak aphorisms all the more heartbreaking.