Naked

Naked (1993) follows a man who runs from Manchester to London. Johnny has read a great deal, talks endlessly, and takes apart everyone he meets with words. He takes shelter at his ex-girlfriend's flat, then goes out and spends a night walking the city talking to strangers. That is the whole plot. Mike Leigh's method explains how it was written. He does not write a screenplay in advance; he develops the characters' backgrounds and traits through long improvised rehearsals with the cast. The actors interact in character and the dialogue is turned into a script afterwards, over a minimal outline. David Thewlis plays Johnny and prepared by reading Voltaire's Candide, Buddhist texts and James Gleick's Chaos. It won two awards at Cannes in 1993: Best Actor for Thewlis and Best Director for Leigh. The main criticism concerns the women. Suzanne Moore wrote that it is not realistic to take a misogynist and surround him with such passive women, and that the film justifies his behaviour. Lesley Sharp, who is in it, disagreed, saying the film honestly reflected real social problems and the traumatic relationships many people live through. It stayed small commercially: 326,693 pounds in Britain and 1.77 million dollars in North America. It runs 131 minutes. Good for: British social realism, performance built on language, and David Thewlis. Less good for: the film contains sexual violence and those scenes are heavy. Johnny is relentlessly cruel and two hours with him is wearing. The narrative does not advance; the film deliberately offers no way out.