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f i l m The Grotesque 1995, UK Gentlemen Don't Eat Poets 1997, US (Video: Grave Indiscretion (1998) REVIEW By JANET MASLIN March 7, 1997, © The New York Times Combining a lordly country setting and a grisly imagination, the dark comedy "Gentlemen Don't Eat Poets" tries quite literally to skewer the British upper classes. One character winds up a vegetable, and another actually becomes dinner in this uneven satire adapted by Patrick McGrath from his novel "The Grotesque." It does live up to that title. As directed by John-Paul Davidson in the kind of comically peaceful setting that features geese waddling across the screen in long shot, the film pits the heartily peculiar Sir Hugo Coal (Alan Bates, in a good, spirited performance) against various threats to his dominion. Especially threatening in their quietly sinister way are the new butler, Fledge (Sting), and his watchful, mousy wife (Trudie Styler). Fledge can be terribly correct in ways that make the household tingle. "...Bates, the only leading player here to show real zest..." It doesn't take long for Fledge to size up the sexual predilections of the gentry and begin bringing out the decadence in everyone. He attaches himself so firmly to Lady Harriet Coal (Theresa Russell), the wife who does not share Sir Hugo's fascination with dead animals, that she is graphically transformed from matron to vamp. Sting endlessly shows off his insinuating smile, but he doesn't breathe much variety into this role. He is able to spend the latter part of the film provoking the Coals by wearing either impertinently aristocratic clothing (to irk Sir Hugo) or nothing at all. Meanwhile, Ms. Russell underscores the uncertainness of the film's acting with an absurd great-lady performance that wouldn't pass muster in a high school play. But Bates, the only leading player here to show real zest, brings some humor to Sir Hugo's eccentricities. His hobby of collecting bones begins to seem most unfortunate once the story has encompassed cannibalism and has police inspectors looking for spare parts. The film also involves toads, poison and the vanishing of a young poet who had the effrontery to propose marriage to Sir Hugo's beloved daughter. This film's mood of strained sauciness is a reminder of "Cold Comfort Farm," which brought a much lighter touch to its comparably mischievous view of declining British aristocracy. That film held more surprises than this one, which has delivered all its worthwhile barbs long before a group of monstrous patricians sits down to enjoy a strange, gamy ham for dinner. While not exactly wondering where the poet has disappeared to, the audience will have plenty of spare time to appreciate playful actors like Jim Carter (as a butcher) and Anna Massey (the missing man's devoted mother) in smallish supporting roles. Production notes: Alan Bates (Sir Hugo Coal), Theresa Russell (Lady Harriet Coal), Trudie Styler (Doris Fledge), Sting (Fledge), Jim Carter (George) and Anna Massey (Mrs. Giblet). Directed by John-Paul Davidson; written by Patrick McGrath, based on his novel "The Grotesque"; director of photography, Andrew Dunn; edited by Tariq Anwar; music by Anne Dudley; production designer, Jan Roelfs; produced by Trudie Styler; released by Live Entertainment.m. From the Italian ... AltaVista offers translations from several languages to - approximately - English. Here, for your pleasure, is an Italian review of Gentlemen Don't Eat Poets [The Grotesque] by Alessandra Levantesi, La Stampa, 18.vi.97). "What can have induced Trudie Styler to produce Grotesque? Because if the idea were that one to offer to a role from protagonist to the husband Sting, it would have been opportune to spend a little more and to realize one film of less television print. As far as the vicissitude, in order to use the words of Patrick McGRATH, author of the published original novel in the '88 and of relative the smoky scenario, "it is one mixture of kinds", one " black comedy" with gotiche venature and some ambition of political allegoria. We are in the '49 in a fatiscente English castle of property of the land nobleman Sir Hugo Coal (Alan Bates): an eccentric who passes entire days locked up in the granary transformed in laboratory to study the dinosauri, in the attempt to demonstrate one new dared scientific theory. So that the beautiful moglie American Harriet (Theresa Russell), than between the other with its dollars supplies economically to hold in feet the shack, suffers from solitudine and gladly Sting abandons itself to the sin between the arms of Fledge butler . "...the Bates/Russell brace would have deserved an other film..." Vero deus former machina of the history, similar in this to the mysterious intruder of the pasoliniano " Theorem", the alarming personage destroys the precario equilibrium of the family seducendo with to Lady Harriet the fiancee of she the daughter, than /then to scompare in order to come found again in the swamp reduced to a bone bag spolpate from the pigs. And it is not ended here... The ambiguous servitore will be only stopped when it succeeds to turn over the situation trasformandosi in landladies absolute. That to say? On the plan of the class parabola, with "an inspector in Birling house", already in far away the '46, the great John B. Priestley had said all and in dear way; and on the plan of the direction, John was better of the documentarista tv Paul Davidson. Of the interpreters, Sting plays on an expression, the Styler has ritagliata a maid part ubriacona and the Bates/Russell brace would have deserved an other film."

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