Friends & Crocodiles

I can usually appreciate a good Poliakoff TV drama, but this one left me cold and even disinterested. I normally enjoy Damian Lewis's work as well, but his rather detached Paul left me not caring at all about what became of him; the quirky and enigmatic smile became irritating and more importantly, conveyed nothing at all. I felt that Jodhi May held the whole thing together; she seemed to have been written as the point-of-view character through whose eyes we see the ebb and flow of Paul's life, whilst at the same time we observe her rise and rise in the business world, something the self-sabotaging Paul could only envy.

Poliakoff generally sets his stories against a backdrop of historical social and political change. In 'Friends & Crocodiles' the social change covers the time from the hedonistic 1980's to the bursting of the dot com bubble. For me, I felt somewhat irrelevant as a viewer as the narrative dipped in and out of events in time. I believe that Poliakoff was too ambitious in attempting to create a cohesive story covering this time span in only 110 minutes of screen time. The reasons for the shortness of story-telling time may well have been financial - or whatever - but for me, this movie just didn't work, and in the end I didn't care what happened to any of the characters.

I really, really love Stephen Poliakoff's work, but I hope 'Friends & Crocodiles' remains the sole exception.

One of Stephen Poliakoff's most interesting films, I was very glad to catch up with it recently (via Netflix DVD).

He manages to not only present a most unusual variation on screen love stories, this one about a deep but platonic relationship among co-workers but also encapsulates the key societal changes in recent decades in novel fashion.

Most impressive to me was how Poliakoff zeroed in on technological changes on society and the strange but made understandable social trends of late. The hippy era thinking that has since been replaced by right-wing emphasis on selfishness/materialism is beautifully shown in many of the characters, principally Damian Lewis's anarchic business whiz. The current turmoil of "creative destruction" and how it affects one's job security is brilliantly analyzed.

Even technological progress and fads are cleverly shown, as in the Shark Tank styled pitch session for "electric books", pre-Kindle. All that's missing in the auteur's prognostication is the smart-phone mania that has set in just a few years after shooting in 2004.

One side note is how Damian Lewis's madman in business character presages his current starring role in TV's "Billions" -quite a different character, yet this BBC TV Movie certainly could have served as his audition for the later role.

This film starts off with a great flourish, with Damian Lewis doing a perfectly tuned & on-target portrayal of a calm cool feral madman entrepreneur of the 1960s or 1970s, Paul Reynolds, surrounded by a collection of pretentious sycophants whose archetypes range back to the early Roman era. They party & posture amid Paul's palatial estate when Lizzie strolls in. Straight & serious Lizzie, for whom Paul develops an inexplicable attraction that ultimately leads to his & the film's doom. Lizzie, fresh from secretarial school, is hired by Paul as his personal assistant, although she never displays any sign of business or political aptitude. Given the task of organizing Paul's large collection of notes & papers into some kind of accessibility, she proudly shows him her accomplishment: everything's been prettily packaged & shelved in four color groups of boxes, no labels in sight, apparently interpreting her duties to be interior decoration.

As played by Jodhi May, Lizzie splits her emotive energies between the coy tilted head smirks teenage girls give dad when they want $80 for new jeans and hysterical outbursts that make you wonder if this takes place in an alternate universe without the benefits of psychotherapy.

There are other problems in placing this film in a known universe, although it tries hard to represent specific points in time. Early on, Paul dreamily says to Lizzie, "Computers, you should get into computers, that's where the future is. Women used to prevail in the field of computers but now the the guys are taking over." Oh yeah?

The film becomes increasingly choppy & episodic as it proceeds. I began to feel as though I were watching a version of "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead" (sans Shakespeare or Stoppard) as done by Ed Wood, i.e. all the real action taking place in another universe.

Vague generalizations substitute for plot movement, grand statements about corporations being hippos & the future of business being in telecommunications & the internet, not vacuum cleaners. Unh hunh. No mention of laptops or cell phones.

Too bad. The first 20 minutes on Paul's estate & the ideas driving Friends & Crocodiles had a lot of promise. Great title, too. But the title's explanation, like the rest of the movie, are a terrible letdown.

I enjoyed Friends and Crocodiles and strongly suggest viewing it more than once. More nuances are then perceptible which fleshes out the story line that otherwise is convoluted and can be confusing. Both Paul and Lizzie demonstrate an extreme level of self control, although each of a different nature and each exhibited in vastly different ways. Lewis and May are exceptionally well suited for those two roles and do an excellent job of keeping the viewer focused on their personalities and the theme, rather than have attention wander off on other characters or subplots. The interplay between the two of them can easily be viewed as signifying human interaction in areas other than the business world.

I honestly thought that this was one of the greatest films I have ever had the pleasure of watching. Is it just me or are the general public getting less intelligent as I get older? It is true that in this film not everything is handed on a plate to the viewer, however, for me, this is what makes it a complete breath of fresh air. I'm quite bored with having every intricate detail of stories and characters in modern films served up to me as if I was completely mindless. This film leaves the viewer to do some thinking for a change and as part of the process it challenges their perspectives and values. We are then left with questions not only of the film but also of ourselves, which is exactly where we are supposed to be. It is is original, thought provoking and takes us back to the old art of story telling at its best.

Adam