Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
The Rachel Papers (1989)
Director: Damian Harris
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Despite certain changes - it is updated from the early '70s to the late '80s, for instance - Martin Amis' clever, shallow first novel, the tale of teenager Charles Highway, eager to sleep with an older woman before he is 20, is rendered with some fidelity. The book's first person narrative finds a clumsy correlative in the brat's direct to camera confessions; and the humour is as smug, adolescent and misogynist as it was in the novel. The flaws lie less in the performances (Fletcher's Highway and Skye's Rachel, primary object of his self-serving affections, are both insubstantial, overshadowed by Pryce's crowd-pleasing cameo as Highway's irreverent hippy brother-in-law) than in the direction. Working from his own script, Harris shows no sense of detail; characters barely develop, London becomes a topographical mess, and each time the plot falters, we get long '60s-style interludes with no dialogue, cut to bland pop. The result is without dramatic or moral weight, despite Highway's contrived comeuppance, and it's impossible to care about the characters.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Damian Harris
Producer: Andy Karsch
Cast: Dexter Fletcher, Ione Skye, Jonathan Pryce, James Spader, Bill Paterson, Shirley Anne Field, Michael Gambon, Lesley Sharp full cast
Duration: 95 mins
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now