Twenty-One

Patsy Kensit gives a bullseye performance as a young woman who can't seem to get her men and her life to merge. Often hilarious and just as often dramatic, this true examination of today's modern woman is a sleeper that everyone should wake up to.

Interesting film. Patsy Kensit plays Katie, who speaks directly to the audience at times. Katie is narcissistic and slutty, and like most young women, makes appalling choices when it comes to men. I have long been a big fan of Kensit's, but to anyone else, Katie is probably intensely unlikeable. However, that seems to be one of the points of the film. Refreshing to see a foreign film sometimes and be free of the Hollywood conventions. Imagine Meg Ryan as Katie and you'll know what I mean. They would change this into an entirely different movie.

From her new life in New York, Katie talks openly about her experiences in men. The film follows her memories back to London and the men in her life from a teenager through to today. Her father, her drug using boyfriend and her experiences with married men as she tries to find happiness.

This starts brightly enough with Katie talking directly to the camera in the first of many to-camera monologues. She is frank and open and it feels like it has energy even if it's a little rough round the edges. This energy is in the background for most of the film however as more serious relationship dramas are brought to the fore. This turns the film from a Bridget Jones type affair into a slightly failed and mismatched drama. The frank talk feels like it is meant to shock us into thinking we're watching something racy or clever when really we're not at all.

The direction doesn't help much. The handheld style doesn't add to the feeling of being in a personal conversation, instead it makes it feel a little rough and ready and slightly unprofessional. Kensit does OK as Katie and helps to make the film better than it probably is. Some of her frankness does feel forced but some of her emotional scenes shows that she can act when she has to. Sadly for her the frank coarse humour doesn't sit well with the deeper emotional issues she is supposed to have. The support cast are OK if all you're looking for is caricatures (lecherous older man, drug user etc), Sewell, Ryecart etc all do OK despite the material.

Overall this is passable as a sort of sub-par Bridget Jones. The characters don't really work and neither the frank talk or the deeper relationships don't quite hang together. A nice try with a little bit of energy but overall the flaws slowly overwhelm whatever promise this jaded effort may have originally shown.

This film was horrible. It was supposed to be a story about a modern, liberated woman, but the woman in question is pathetic. She wastes her affections on a junky that can not even satisfy her sexually. She has an affair with an unattractive married man. Is this a liberated woman? This film was painful to watch.