Themes: Eccentric Families, Class Differences, Culture Clash
Main Cast: Peter Ustinov, Prunella Scales, Georgina Cates, Samuel West, Sean Pertwee
Release Year: 1997
Country: UK
Run Time: 94 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
This 5.7-million-dollar British comedy from writer/director Gary Sinyor satirizes the now-familiar Merchant-Ivory style of period dramas. So no one will miss the joke, the central setting is Ivory Hall, the Ivory family mansion in rural England. In 1908, young twit Edward Ivory (Samuel West) plans to match his bookwormish friend Cedric (Robert Portal) with his 22-year-old sister, Emily (Georgina Cates), and introduces the two at Ivory Hall. However, Emily is instead attracted to gamekeeper George (Sean Pertwee), the son of a peasant (Brian Glover). Emily's aunt Agnes Ivory (Prunella Scales), in favor of Cedric, suggests an Enchanted April-type excursion to Italy with George along as a servant. Eventually, Emily and George become a couple, but class differences are a barrier. When Aunt Agnes becomes bored with Italy and yearns to go "somewhere more English," the vacation party is off to India, where Agnes has her own romantic encounter with lecherous tea-planter Horace (Peter Ustinov). Other short satirical send-ups recall Chariots of Fire, Brideshead Revisited, Upstairs, Downstairs, The Shining, and Gandhi, while humorous references also are heard in the soundtrack of classical excerpts. Stiff Upper Lips was shown at the 1997 London Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
Review
It's easy to see why Stiff Upper Lips was not a bigger hit. Traditional parody movie fans would gravitate toward broader target genres -- action movies, mob movies -- rather than Merchant-Ivory fare, and ardent fans of British period pieces may not naturally enjoy seeing their sacred cows lampooned. But Gary Sinyor's film contains some very witty observations about the stuffed shirts who populate films like A Room With a View and Howards End -- and, implicitly, the screenwriters who create such characters. It's not possible to recommend it without reservation, as the film does suffer from inconsistent quality. Fortunately, the best parts are better than the dull patches are dull. Even though Peter Ustinov gets top billing, and it's great to see him take his turn at comedy, Robert Portal steals the show. Portal plays a suitor who's so stodgy that he goes swimming in a full suit, likens the most mundane happenings to Homer's poetry, and prefers to communicate in Latin or hieroglyphics to demonstrate his erudition. Although not everything works, the most consistently funny material involves the perennial misuse of servants. One servant (Sean Pertwee) is compelled to carry a box of English turf on his back throughout Italy and India, unrolling it whenever the aristocrats desire to have tea, while another (Frank Finlay) is so fearful of impropriety that he consults a primer on permissible facial expressions for butlers. Because Stiff Upper Lips is not constructed as a series of exact spoofs of classic scenes from the genre, it actually runs the risk of being too subtle. But that fits well with a target audience that's generally disinclined toward slapstick. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
Brian Glover - Eric; Frank Finlay - Hudson Jr.; Robert Portal - Cedric Trilling; Richard Braine - Mr. Tweeb; David Ashton - Dr. Henry; Mac McDonald - American; Kate Harper - American
Credit
Francesco Chianese - Art Director, Aradhana Seth - Art Director, Moving Jim - Art Director, Marcus Wookey - Art Director, Ricky Posner - Associate Producer, Keith Richardson - Co-producer, Bobby Bedi - Co-producer, Stephanie Collie - Costume Designer, Richard Lingard - First Assistant Director, Gary Sinyor - Director, Peter Hollywood - Editor, Sarah Thomas - Editor, Stephen Margolis - Executive Producer, Nigel Savage - Executive Producer, Babs Thomas - Executive Producer, Andrew Cohen - Executive Producer, John Murphy - Composer (Music Score), David A. Hughes - Composer (Music Score), Mike Grant - Production Designer, Simon Archer - Cinematographer, Jeremy Bolt - Producer, Gary Sinyor - Producer, Danny Hambrook - Sound/Sound Designer, Paul Simpkin - Screen Story, Stephen Deitch - Screenwriter, Paul Simpkin - Screenwriter, Gary Sinyor - Screenwriter, Richard Sparks - Screenwriter
Stiff Upper Lips (1998) is a broad parody of British period films, especially the lavish Merchant-Ivory productions of the 'eighties and early 'nineties. Although it specifically targets A Room with a View, Chariots of Fire, Maurice, A Passage to India, and many other films, in a more general way Stiff Upper Lips satirises popular perceptions of certain Edwardian traits: propriety, sexual repression, xenophobia, and class snobbery.
England, 1908: Emily Ivory (Cates) is a wealthy young woman who lives with her Aunt Agnes (Scales) at Ivory's End, a large country house. At 22, as her aunt constantly reminds her, she is verging on spinsterhood. She meets her brother's best friend, Cedric Trilling (Portal), when the two come home from university. Aunt Agnes wants the two to fall in love: Cedric, however, is a pompous bore who is overly fond of quoting Homer on all sorts of not-quite-appropriate occasions; also, he's a repressed homosexual. When Emily's aunt sees the sparks failing to fly, she whisks everyone off to Italy, then India, hoping the romantic locations will bring on love.
Emily's eye, however, soon wanders to the family's new manservant, George (Pertwee), a sturdy peasant who, earlier in the film, had the effrontery to fling off all his clothes and save her life when she was drowning in a pond. Now, Emily can't seem to forget his tall, manly frame and his "ripping set of unmentionables." (George, a sort of Heathcliff/Gamekeeper/Working Class Hero hybrid, has a peculiar way of entering a room; he rushes in, slides to a stop in the middle of the floor with eyes blazing and one shoulder forward, and tosses his cap aside).
With George, Emily achieves carnal fulfillment, true love, and, eventually, motherhood and marriage. Although the upper-class characters disapprove of the alliance, nobody is more scandalised than George's father, who keeps reminding his son that he's "the scum of the earth." When Emily becomes pregnant, she suggests giving the child to George's father; George, appalled, begs her to sell it to pirates, abandon it on a mountain, or let it be raised by wolves instead.
Cedric, too, finds love with Edward (West), Emily's handsome, cheerful twit of a brother. In that era, it was "the love that dare not speak its name"; however, during Emily's wedding scene, Edward takes Cedric's arm and shouts "WE LOVE EACH OTHER!!!" in church. Even Aunt Agnes meets someone special - an expatriate Englishman (Ustinov) who owns a tea plantation in India. At the end of the film, despite class differences, sexual taboos, and age prejudice, everyone seems likely to lead happy, sexually fulfilled lives ever after.
Critical reception
Stiff Upper Lips received mixed reviews. Alexander Walker of the Evening Standard called it "A Spot of Spiffing Spoofery" while the Time Out reviewer said "it is beautifully acted and consistently spot on". Stephen Holden of the New York Times, however, lamented "If only it were funnier".
Cast notes
Samuel West is Prunella Scales' son. Both also appeared in Merchant-Ivory's film adaptation of Howard's End, although they had no scenes together.
