BEATS OF LOVE
171. Nuts in May VHS
MIKE LEIGH'S wonderfully improvised 1976 film finds its comedy in the open air, and, watched now, its central character feels uncannily, uncomfortably reformy.
Keith replete with dictatorial tendencies and his utterly infantile wife Candice Marie, although insular and odd, navigate the Dorset coastline as laid out in a strict itinerary. The camp-site proves harder to navigate, testing their endurance when, despite them pitching their tent first, interloper Ray, with his annoying radio, invades their sense of idyll. In reform party fashion, they move their tent.
His real problems begin with working-class Brummies Finger and Honky. First, they want to shag despite being noisily pissed up, which angers Keith, who lies in a sexless state having just refused to kiss his wife's fluffy toy cat Prudence goodnight, then Finger wants to start a fire to make breakfast. Lighting open fires is against the rules.
Rules dictate everything for Keith, who in a state of gammon faced abandonment hurls in anger the would be firewood, a tree branch, in Finger's direction, after which Keith and Candice Marie pack up and leave the campsite. Again, righteous anger without resolution is very reform.
Ironic, then, that Keith, in trying to impose the same conditions of his suburban life on his trip, blocked his rear-view mirror by overfilling his Morris Minor and attracted police attention. The police also discover his spare tyre was bald. Breaking the rules himself. Reflecting the hypocrisy of reform, who much prefer the idea of imposing rules that don't apply to their voters.
Doubly ironic is the fact that characters like Keith and Candice Marie, no matter how unwittingly reformy they behave, would never vote for such an unruly party. Finger and Honky probably would.
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