Rave reviewer TIM MILFULL chats with director, MALCOLM VENVILLE about his new film, 44 INCH CHEST, and finds out whether screenwriters, Louis Mellis and David Scinto managed to top their expletive tally from Sexy Beast.

44 Inch Chest is Malcolm Venville’s first feature film in a career of stills photography and television commercials. The project meant a prodigal’s return for the British director, who had built a firm reputation in LA. “I think in a way, you know, I’d reached that age in life where I’d had my heart broken a few times, and I’d lived a little – 44 Inch Chest just felt like the kind of material I was at home with; I felt attracted to the texture, the feeling, the atmosphere and the confinement, and the mania, and the humour – the black humour.”

And it’s not a case of simple black humour – on the surface, Venville’s film feels like very masculine territory. The truth is that this story of one man’s mates helping him deal with a devastating break-up is not as blokey and misogynistic as it might first seem. “Growing up in England, there is a black comic humour to everyday life. It just felt very easy for me to grasp that dark humour that I love so much. There was a lot of talk during pre-production of the film about the misogyny of the script, but for me the movie was about a big man brought to his knees by a woman – in a way, it was almost the power of the woman that inflicts so much damage on the character played by Ray Winstone, who’s totally broken by her.”

Venville worked with screenwriting team, Louis Mellis and David Scinto, whose film Sexy Beast saw Winstone, Ian McShane, and Ben Kingsley bring new meaning to the idea of venting. “Yeah, I mean they’re two seasoned writers who have a great tradition in theatre – and obviously, Sexy Beast was such a great film. They write dialogue better than anyone I’ve ever been with. You know, it’s all very well to have a script that tells a story, but the dialogue is very often weak – these guys certainly know how to find power-end humour and wit. So I was really blown away by these guys’ ability to put words in people’s mouths.”

“... I felt attracted to the texture, the feeling, the atmosphere and the confinement, and the mania, and the humour – the black humour.”

And what foul words they are … I quote Venville’s producer, Richard Brown, specifically his assertion that using an expletive once in a sentence is bad language, whereas using it ten times can create poetry. “You know, it’s an historical, Old English word – this word [cunt] has been in use since Chaucer and before. I’m actually surprised at some of the reaction, because for me, the language is quite authentic, really.”

Venville also strove for authenticity, moving Winstone’s Colin Diamond from the very ordered world of his suburban home, to the chaos and decay of the Victorian East End. “We designed the set that way to reflect the inability of the characters to change and adapt. They were so set in their ways, you know – subterranean, and biblical – I wanted to smell the decay, and the decay was, in a way, grief as well.”

I tell Venville I think Colin Diamond and his inflexible mates – from McShane’s charming gay sociopath, Meredith, to John Hurt’s prehistoric absolutist, Old Man Peanut – offer a multi-faceted image of Colin’s own psyche. “I remember watching Sideways by Alexander Payne; it’s about two guys about to go on a holiday. One of them is a womanising kind of guy, while the other is this bookish fellow who’s heartbroken because his wife has left him. I realised while I was watching the movie that it was two different sides of the one man. We all have these qualities; in a way, in 44 … I realised that all of these aspects could be the aspects of one man’s soul.”

So 44 Inch Chest is really more than the sum of its parts; more than a loose collection of invective, it’s a film about a big and small-minded men, and one woman who threatens to bring them all down.

44 INCH CHEST opens in cinemas Thursday Apr 29, rated [MA15+]. Check out the review here and enter the movie ticket give away here. For more information check out www.44inchchestfilm.com

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