WONDERLAND (1999)

This London is a city of crowded impersonal streets and pubs; skinny, claustrophobic, unglamorous flats.

Director Michael Winterbottom will always hold a special place in my heart as the creator of two of the most squirm-inducing films I have ever seen: Jude (with Christopher Eccelston and Kate Winslet) and Butterfly Kiss (with Amanda Plummer and Saskia Reeves). Can you say "bleak"? I'm so haunted by his films that I always point accusingly at them in video stores and announce loudly to no one in particular, "You see that movie? That movie is so wrong!!!", startling anyone within hearing range.

In Wonderland, Winterbottom continues the trend of showing us depressed, lonely, and often hateful people... which I honestly say starts to wear me down after, oh, 20 minutes or so. I don't think my life is so bad, but his characters are usually so realistic that you can't help but identify a little bit of yourself and your friends/family in them. And not in a feel-good way. At least in this film he tries to tack on a little bit of Mike Leigh-esque humor, but too little too late.

The movie mainly follows the everyday lives of three sisters in modern London: single-but-searching Nadia (Gina McKee), single mom Debbie (Shirley Henderson) and pregnant Molly (Molly Parker). We also see into the lives of people around them, including their parents (who are particularly painful to watch, since their marriage had deteriorated into miserable silences and bitter accusations), various boyfriends/ex's, and Debbie's young son, Jack.

There is a grainy, shaky-camera immediacy to the movie, almost as though it were a documentary. We follow Nadia on some blind dates, and to a particularly uncomfortable-to-watch one-night stand (I writhed in my seat—seeing her hopefully ask the guy if she could call him the next day, the expression on her face bracing for rejection). Molly, ready to give birth any minute, has a fall-out with her partner Eddie when he loses his job, so he disappears just when she needs him most. Young Jack ends up wandering the street when his deadbeat dad (Ian Hart) is passed out drunk after a night's carousing.

The acting, overall, is first-rate... no complaints there. Even Canadian actress Molly Parker blends in seamlessly (to my ears) with her faux Brit accent. Also, this is probably the most "real" London I've ever seen on film—crowded impersonal streets and pubs; skinny, claustrophobic, unglamorous flats; and the characters don't miraculously appear in front of the neon of Piccadilly Circus during important scenes.

However, I think Winterbottom was perhaps trying to do too much in too little time. There was a side story of an estranged brother and his girlfriend, who weren't even acknowledged or explained until almost the final act. By then you didn't really care who those people were. There also was no main plot or point to tie things together throughout the film, which sometimes is fine, but in this case just made everything seem haphazard.

I could recommend this film for the acting alone, since there are a lot of fine up-and-coming British actors in this film, such as the always-excellent Gina McKee and Ian Hart. But otherwise, avoid Wonderland. I think it would try the patience of the average viewer.