Taglines: Bella has decided to take out a few men.
Dirty Weekend movie storyline. Set in the coastal town of Brighton, England, Dirty Weekend follows the story of Bella (Lia Williams), a mild-mannered secretary who works from home in a basement flat. Soon, she finds herself the victim of Tim (Rufus Sewell), a voyeur who watches her through her windows and plagues her with obscene phone calls in which he threatens to assault and rape her. After the police refuse to offer any assistance, Bella visits Nimrod (Ian Richardson), an Iranian clairvoyant who suggests that she take matters into her own hands.
That night, Bella breaks into Tim’s flat while he is sleeping and batters him to death with a claw hammer. Empowered, Bella embarks on a dirty weekend in which she slaughters six more men by a variety of methods. Ultimately, she evades capture by the authorities and prepares to carry on her murderous rampage in the large, faceless city of London.
Dirty Weekend is a British film directed by Michael Winner, based on the novel of the same name by Helen Zahavi. Starring are Lia Williams, Rufus Sewell, Michael Cule, David McCallum, Christopher Ryan, Sean Pertwee, Nicholas Hewetson, Jack Galloway, Christopher Adamson and Ian Richardson. It was banned from video release for two years by the BBFC for its violent and sexual content.
Filming took place in the Notting Hill and Kensington areas of London and also in Brighton. However, the Internet Movie Database lists other locations. The gun shop scenes were filmed at Park Street Guns near St. Albans, Hertfordshire; the country pub (now demolished) was the Grenville Lodge, East Burnham (Burnham Beeches) Buckinghamshire; and the dentist scenes were shot at a real dental practice in Twickenham, Greater London.
Film Review for Dirty Weekend
Having been spied on and harassed by a local pervert, Bella finally has enough. She transforms herself in to an avenging angel equipped with a hammer, eradicating the world of problem men.
Justly vilified on release as a piece of asinine exploitation trumped up as a feminist tract, this is an ugly movie indeed. Helen Zahavi’s novel had already stirred furious debate as to whether it is simply a vile piece of wish fulfilment or a genuine exploration of female predicament in a world fraught with male-orientated peril.
That it was picked up by controversial director Michael Winner, best known for his own series of vigilante operas, the Death Wish films, and derided as a filmmaker of little subtlety and, often, grave misjudgement, was never going to end well. He made of this deranged tale of a victimised woman’s violent revenge amongst the low-lit streets of Brighton, a horrible, lurid film made all the more indigestible by its pretence at relevance.
If you were going to try and disinter some meaning from its procession of nasty images, you could assemble an argument that Bella (played with befuddled intent by Lia Williams) tormented by Rufus Sewell’s vile peeper, and his hideous intentions, is on an extreme form of feminist retribution — to castrate all men and leave the world a better place. But, in Winner’s hands, there feels little difference in the behaviour of the men and her rebirth as a vigilante.
The film is incapable of shifts in tone, everything feels equally as grubby and indistinct, just rubbing our faces in the indecency of human nature. Where does Winner get off? Is he daring to expose us to feelings we don’t want to admit to, or is he titillated by his own outrageousness? Bella’s empowerment is to transform herself into the equivalent of the hungry, pathetic, dangerous men who cross her path. How is that any kind of betterment? The film, with its bitter examination of depravity, is a depressing event.
A coterie of good actors seem willing to humiliate themselves, including Michael Coles as a fat professor ridiculed for his premature ejaculation until he turns on Bella and David McCallum as a dentist who forces her to give him a blowjob. Both are dealt with, their sordid behaviour answered. Winner, however, is merely juggling the book’s jagged idea, shooting in a flat, unappealing light, so that even stylistically the film can’t even flare into the deliberate ghastliness of a horror film. He fails — or is that refuses? — to engage with the shock value of this liberation fantasy, to test its boundaries, only shoving it roughly into your face.
Dirty Weekend (1993)
Directed by: Michael Winner
Starring: Lia Williams, Rufus Sewell, Michael Cule, David McCallum, Christopher Ryan, Sean Pertwee, Nicholas Hewetson, Jack Galloway, Christopher Adamson, Ian Richardson
Screenplay by: Michael Winner, Helen Zahavi
Production Design by: Crispian Sallis
Cinematography by: Alan Jones
Film Editing by: Michael Winner
Makeup Department: Christine Allsopp, Alan Boyle
Music by: David Fanshawe
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: October 29, 1993
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