Shallow Grave

Doctor Juliet (Kerry Fox), accountant David (Christopher Eccleston), and journalist Alex (Ewan McGregor) share a gorgeous Edinburgh New Town flat and are in the process of interrogating potential fourth tenants. They have high standards which only Hugo (Keith Allen), a sophisticated, enigmatic, reticent individual can meet. He quickly moves in and promptly dies of a drug overdose, leaving a suitcase full of cash under the bed. Opinionated Alex and sardonic Juliet persuade frigid David that the money should be kept and Hugo's body disposed of.

Shallow Grave has been hailed as a black comedy in the vein of the Coen Brothers Blood Simple, or John Dahl's Red Rock West or The Last Seduction. It won best film and best acting at the Dinard Festivai and Best Script at the Europen festival; not bad for a first time producer/director/writer partnership. But the core of the film is the excellent role-playing by the three leads; Eccleston especially gives a brilliant portayal of a man discovering an unknown capacity for violence within himself and going insane as a result. In other actors' hands the characters of David, Alex and Juliet could have become intensely irritating. Apart from this the film is poor. The script is too crammed with dialogue, contains important unanswered questions (why is a man brutally murdered at a cashpoint machine? how do the thugs find Hugo's address?), and ends up in predictable territory (you know who is going to draw the short straw, you know the cash has been switched when Juliet leaves with it). The direction by Danny Boyle (who made the odd episode of Inspector Morse) is trashy and overly stylish. This, you suspect, was a film that got its funding by being traipsed round the right parties rather than on its own merits. Because it has none.

Review by Stephen Cox
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96