A Bloody Good Tale of Suspense

WETHERBY'S MYSTERY IS NOT "Whodunit?" but "Why did he do it here?"--a bloody good practical joke. A young man shows up at a small dinner party and is graciously assumed to be someone's guest as he mixes with the unctuous ease of an unreconstructed Yuppie. The next day he enters his hostess' warm kitchen, sits, chats ... and shoots his brains onto the stucco wall.

Shocking all right, but writer and first-time director David Hare lets loose not just the beginnings of a gripping psychological thriller but also a chorus of mysteries, passions, and disturbed and disturbing emotions.

Before John Morgan's (Tim McInnerney) bloody mess demands any attention, the brewing uncertainty and turbulence here remains neatly capped beneath the calm British exteriors. Jean Travers (Vanessa Redgrave) is a well-liked schoolteacher who has a number of close friends and a lovely Yorkshire cottage. There certainly are hints of loneliness beneath the cheerfulness, but it takes Morgan's suicide to knock loose her stifled memories.

From that moment, the film fragments and divides into three plots: the past (in which a young twenty-ish Jean--played by Redgrave's daughter Joely Richardson--soars through her first and most powerful romance); dinner-party flashbacks that might lead to some explanation of Morgan's mess; and the present--we see Jean coming to grips with why he "did it" to her as well as some impressively incisive glimpses into the lives of several of Jean's new acquaintances.

REDGRAVE PLAYS the incredibly sensitive schoolteacher with tremendous persuasion and sympathy; there's the hope that she'll take on another modern role--it's been at least a decade since her last one--because this performance is such a revelation. The depth Redgrave gives her character makes every move convincing, as when Jean risks making a similar "mistake" by letting another stranger into her life, this time a girl named Karen with whom Morgan had become obsessed. Suzanna Hamilton plays this variably vacant, furious, and wise creature with uncanny control. The police officer (Stuart Wilson) gets the best lines in Wetherby as consolation for losing his girlfriend to her ex-husband ("He's an awful man...the kind that keeps sheep.") "Peripheral" characters get their say in the world; all the subplots are consistently involving and well-crafted. Despite these various life- and story-lines, the film is no burden to follow.

With Wetherby, David Hare, a reknowned playwright in England, an experienced stage director of his own works, and author of Plenty, has entered the realm of movies with ease: his direction always illuminates his script. Never slow, the screenplay delivers equal amounts of disdain and understanding for the overexposed minds of Hare's compatriots. Hare's jabs, though, are the most fun, as they make for thrilling moments of silly bickering and academic idiocy--one invited dinner guest keeps insisting "Define your terms!" His characters are appealing--when they aren't incensed suicides--no matter how Hare intends otherwise. Some stern beliefs guide his vision and Hare doesn't care to disguise them--like the perhaps blind faith in education for its own sake and the fact that, as Jean states so simply, "Life is dangerous...And sometimes there's nothing you can do." In much of his writing, Hare catches and ponders all the disturbing signs, the unfocused anger of English life. But thankfully he doesn't really try to explain the enigma of John Morgan when he's actually much better at capturing these other lives, the less literally bloody lives containing repressed sensibilities, inarticulated needs or, yes, measured contentment and hope.

While a rather thick shroud hangs over Wetherby--the Yorkshire town as well as the film--Hare unsettles the surface, bringing to light strange events and disturbing dreams from below.