White Mischief

CinemaSerf6/10

Nov 2, 2023

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"Alice" (Sarah Miles) moves to colonial Kenya with her elderly husband "Jock" (Joss Ackland) and soon she is enjoying the social whirl that is their unfettered lifestyle. She falls in easily with the great and the good - even befriending the all-but-mute "Colvile" (John Hurt) but it's not that dalliance that worries her husband, though. It's one with the debonaire Earl of Erroll (Charles Dance) and soon a rather embarrassing/cuckolding menage à trois gradually emerges. When the latter man is found brutally slaughtered, a court case ensues but will it convict the culprit? It's speculatively based on real events and the photography is stunning, as is the general aesthetic of the drama. The film itself, though, is all rather underwhelming. A solid cast of British stage and screen actors cannot turn the really pedestrian screenplay into anything that remotely depicts the complex, hedonistic and entitled lives these people lived amidst the abject poverty of the local population. I reckon Joss Ackland is the only one who emerges with any credit here - and that's largely because he has probably the better part, especially as the plot thickens - but as for the rest of this, it's all just a disappointing critique on spoiled people, drug abuse and over-indulgence that I found a bit too sterile.

"White Mischief" provides an account of what the vapid British elite did when the Luftwaffe began the blitz on London - they simply packed up their stiff upper lips and ran away to Kenya to continue indulging in the obscene and debauched life of privilege which they had become accustomed to. A life which was no doubt an accident of birth instead of an admirable and triumphant rise out of the oppressive and unforgiving depths of poverty through sheer determination and an ambition to succeed. Unfortunately such people hold no fascination or have any true relevance to the way hard working ordinary people live their lives, so it really comes as something of a surprise this film should hold any interest at all outside the circles of the well-to-do and those with aspirations to be just like them. However, this keen sense of fascination is indeed fleeting and ultimately there is very little to relieve the unremitting and tiresome monotony of it all.