Mike Leigh's 1993 film NAKED is a drama on sexual relations -- how men hurt women, how some women accept that hurt out of low self-esteem and a desire to be wanted or supported. It is distinguished by its remarkably lifelike characters. Most of the film was worked out in improvisations for several months before shooting began. Leigh wanted his actors to create elaborate back stories for their characters, fully living inside of them so that when the cameras started rolling they would be completely convincing.
As the film opens, Johnny (David Thewlis) has to flee Manchester after a sexual encounter with a married woman turns into rape and she threatens to set her husband after him. Stealing a car, he heads to London to crash at his ex-girlfriend Louise (Lesley Sharp), gets involved with her flatmate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), and spends a couple of nights homeless in London. Interspliced with this are scenes of Jeremy, a rich real estate broker whose sexual conquests serve as an upper-class counterpart to Johnny's own. Naturally the viewer is led to wonder what will happen when these two men meet.
Something is wrong with Johnny, he answers anything said to him with a rambling torrent of words, a logorrhea that is a form of intellectual bullying; this deeply wounded man seems to feel the best defense against the cruelties of the world is a good offense. Only 27, Johnny is so wasted that he is taken for much older. In this, Thewlis's performance is one of the masterful screen portrayals of an eccentric or mentally ill person, like Dustin Hoffmann in RAIN MAN or Peter Sellers in BEING THERE.
But all of the characters here are memorable, and my thoughts have often gone back to them in the time since I saw this film. I do have reservations about the plot, inasmuch as the last scenes of the film (which were decided only late in the filmmaking process) too suddenly change the tone and may seem anticlimactic. Nonetheless, I would recommend this film and believe it a great one in spite of its undeniable flaws.
**Unpleasant and uncomfortable, often highly appreciated by critics, it is understandably forgotten by the public.**
Mike Leigh directs with skill and intelligence a film that is far from pleasing everyone and that doesn't mind being uncomfortable: it tells the story of a man who hides in an ex-girlfriend's house to avoid being prosecuted for rape, and which we will follow through various adventures and dialogues that oscillate between nihilism, the “nonsense” and the deeply philosophical. He's an unpleasant man with somewhat sadistic touches, but the film is full of unpleasant characters in a dark story. The film was a considerable success among critics, winning major awards at Cannes and being nominated for a BAFTA, but it is one of those films that is so philosophical and perverse that I can understand why it is so forgotten.
The film's greatest strength, for me, is the enormous performance of David Thewlis, one of the most competent and consistent British actors, a veteran with a career worthy of envy and who has already shone in a multitude of projects, but who has not been particularly noted or esteemed as he deserves. I don't dare say this is his best film, but it's clearly in his top five. The remaining cast, in which we can positively highlight the efforts of Lesley Sharp and Greg Cruttwell, is much less interesting, but manages to give us good moments and good characters.
Technically, the film presents a very well-crafted cinematography which emphasizes shadows, half-light, and indirect lighting. This could not be more appropriate for the environment that the director wanted to create, and ends up being the great technical point of honor: the sets and costumes are well done, but without merit notes, and the effects and soundtrack are so discreet that it are limited to the essentials.
Moving through the dark, misty and dense environment of the London underworld, there is nothing particularly friendly, cheerful or flowery. There is an effort to expose with a certain rawness the moral nakedness and dark weaknesses of each character. In between, there are several sex and nudity scenes, including an explicit frontal nude of the protagonist. However, there is no intention of beauty, sensuality or eroticism here. This is a grotesque, ugly and clumsy nudity that bothers us. It is, therefore, not a film that I plan to revisit one day or that I can say that I liked, even though I recognize its merits and quality ratings.
Yikes, but this is a depressingly bleak story. David Thewlis is a rather dissolute and violent Mancunian who arrives in London with nowhere to stay. "Johnny" makes his way to the home of his ex "Louise" (Lesley Sharp). They briefly hook up again, but he soon tires of what he can get on a plate and sets off back onto the streets for a series of encounters with the nocturnal types who inhabit the city and provide us with a series of quirky short stories. Whilst "Johnny" is out philandering, "Louise" and her flatmate "Sophie" (Catrin Cartlidge) are being bullied by their landlord - the sadistic "Jeremy" (Greg Crutwell) who takes sexual brutality to an whole new level. In the end, the streets take their revenge on "Johnny" and he must return to her home where things finally come to some sort of an head. It's got something of the observational documentary to it this. The style of photography allies well with the angry (and ripe) but sometimes quite potent dialogue to create a cast of characters that vacillate between the obnoxious and the needy, the violent and even the loving - in a perverse sort of fashion. Thewlis is on great form, as is the rather unpleasant Cruttwell who spends much of the film in his underpants exuding a menace that ought not work so well - he's a small and underwhelming man - but it does. Lesley Sharp also works well, though quite what she'd ever have seen in the scrawny and odious "Johnny" is anyone's guess. That's ultimately maybe what makes this film rise above the grottiness of it's grittiness. It's not a nice film to watch, nor do I think it has any profound or telling underlying message to impart - but it is worth a watch.
