Married couple Sarah (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (Alan Tudyk) are struggling financially because of Tom’s poor business decisions. They need to sell their house within the next week or they will be ruined. They invite their oldest friends, Richard (Rufus Sewell) and his wife Beth (Olivia Williams) to a dinner party with their mutual friend, the troubled Jessica (Indira Varma) inviting herself. When Jessica kills herself, Sarah thinks their buyer will pull out, so she persuades the others to cover things up.
This is a very black comedy from director Matt Winn who also co wrote it with James Handel. It is reminiscent of both A Weekend at Bernie’s as the group have to move the corpse a number of times and Sally Potter’s The Party as the cracks in the friendships start to appear.
It mostly works thanks to some acerbic lines in the screenplay well delivered by the talented cast. Henderson is particularly good as the brittle Sarah and Sewell is excellent as a lawyer who fears for his professional future. It is also good to see the wonderful Anne Reid who pops up as a nosy neighbour with the single funniest line.
There are a couple of glaring plot holes that are not addressed, and an intermittent but annoying discordant jazzy score by Winn and Matt Cooper, but this is a mostly successful British comedy.
Rating: 7 out of 10