Michael Caton-Jones directs John Hurt, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer and Bridget Fonda in this British dramatisation of The Profumo Affair where a British MP and possible Russian spy were revealed to be sleeping with the same model.

This made a big impact on release when I was young. Like most mainstream movies that dabble in sex it couldn’t possible live up to its horny reputation. Sure, there are a dozen nude extras and unconvincing body doubles but it is hardly Showgirls. What the movie does get right is the seedy atmosphere of underground London circa the early Sixties. A world where the rich and powerful indulge their illicit whims behind closed doors and in their secluded country houses. You can tell the establishment is due for a nasty shock, their hypocritical apple cart is ripe to be upturned. Yet the two key characters caught at the centre of the eventual storm, Hurt’s Stephen Ward and Whalley-Kilmer’s Keeler, remain enigmatic. You never know what their true motivations are. Making their decisions, appetites and martyrdom a little inert over three acts. Blaming the whole tabloid furore that brought down a government on them is unfair. But the injustice never really kicks in to life. It all feels a bit procedural… and very sad.

5

Perfect Double Bill: The Look Of Love (2013)

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