Warning: Mild spoilers
"Charlie Bubbles" is a curiously appealing film where very little happens but all that does is more than enough for the lead character. Finney plays a wealthy successful writer whose implied literary observational skills have declined into a kind of passive voyeurism. Not just sexual, although Finney's jaded response to his student secretary Liza Minnelli's seduction creates about the most passionless encounter you will see on screen, but Finney's ennui extends to series of encounters with friends, employees, his son and his ex-wife. The 'bubble' motif extends throughout the movie, as Charlie's life plays out behind the window glass of his Rolls, in a private box at a soccer match or gazing dispassionately at the TV screens of his home security system. The movie creates a moving portrait of a man who 'has it all' and yet has nothing real anymore, and the performances by all the actors are uniformly excellent and completely convincing, revealing more layers of complexity than usual. The movie is as British as a song by The Jam, and a viewer having a good knowledge of the post-war decline of England, the North-South divide, and the perennial class struggle will get more out of it.
"Charlie Bubbles" is a curiously appealing film where very little happens but all that does is more than enough for the lead character. Finney plays a wealthy successful writer whose implied literary observational skills have declined into a kind of passive voyeurism. Not just sexual, although Finney's jaded response to his student secretary Liza Minnelli's seduction creates about the most passionless encounter you will see on screen, but Finney's ennui extends to series of encounters with friends, employees, his son and his ex-wife. The 'bubble' motif extends throughout the movie, as Charlie's life plays out behind the window glass of his Rolls, in a private box at a soccer match or gazing dispassionately at the TV screens of his home security system. The movie creates a moving portrait of a man who 'has it all' and yet has nothing real anymore, and the performances by all the actors are uniformly excellent and completely convincing, revealing more layers of complexity than usual. The movie is as British as a song by The Jam, and a viewer having a good knowledge of the post-war decline of England, the North-South divide, and the perennial class struggle will get more out of it.