The Trouble with Jessica: dark dinner party caper brims with charm

When a dinner-party situation is introduced in film or television, we expect things to go awry. It’s an inherently theatrical set-up (think Chekhov or Albee), with its compact coteries of characters, its confinement to close quarters, and inevitable frictions simmering just below the surface. Matt Winn’s unsparing satire of the upper-middle classes, The Trouble with Jessica, starts on this familiar terrain – before dispensing with any hindrances the format entails, from a modest cast list, to a claustrophobic setting, to an emphasis on dialogue and close-knit drama rather than unexpected external plot.

Married couple Richard (Rufus Sewell) and Beth (Olivia Williams) arrive at the modish London home of Tom (Alan Tudyk) and Sarah (Shirley Henderson). They bring a third uninvited guest in tow, Jessica (Indira Varma), a wayward friend from university whose scandalising memoir has recently become a bestseller. They fritter the night away with wine and frothy conversation, talk turning to routine topics: children, work and marriage – or, more bleakly, the vapid roles they have assumed in their present lives.

Things begin to fray as we learn that architect Tom’s vanity project has been derailed by the withdrawal of an investor, landing him and Sarah on the brink of bankruptcy. Selling their palatial abode is their only chance to save their Le Creuset-laden, clafoutis-filled, spotless existence.

The revelation that Jessica has, inexplicably, taken her own life in their back garden imperils this plan. As the couples conspire to cover this up, Winn’s idiosyncratic caper lurches into uncharted territory. The filmmaker last worked within the realm of horror on The Hoarder (2015) but this film deliberately outruns such genre categorisation. Instead, there are traces of the murder mystery, touches of Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (1998), and one unexpectedly ribald scene akin to the pulpier work of Alexandre Aja. It’s disarmingly strange and freewheeling in tone, undercut by a ruthlessly dark humour.

Each of the quintet of seasoned actors at the centre holds their own as comic forces, timings anchored by Winn’s low-key but effective jazz score. Anne Reid and Sylvester Groth also make delicious cameos as a pushy neighbour and an oil lobbyist house-buyer. Less convincing is the way the film handles the emotional impact of a friend’s suicide on the characters’ lives. A grieving section inserted after the title card ‘The Trouble with Guilt’ feels somewhat hollow. Despite that, Winn’s film brims with charm, a paean to the longevity of friendship, to love, and the unwieldiness of planning ahead.

► The Trouble with Jessica is in UK cinemas now.