Nothing Like a Dame

Four actors gather at a country house: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins and their host Joan Plowright. All four have been on stage for more than sixty years and have known each other since they were young. The camera turns on and they talk: first Shakespeare roles, bad reviews, husbands, ageing and death. The subject is not careers but how merciless people who have done the same job this long can be with each other. There is no flattery; they mock each other's old performances, interrupt, and nobody lets anyone off. All the pleasure of the film is there. The form is deliberately loose. The director asks his questions from off camera and the women occasionally turn on him too; the editing has kept those passages. Old theatre and television footage is cut in between. The fact underneath the production is this: Joan Plowright had largely lost her sight by then and was no longer acting. The film does not present it as tragedy, and she raises the subject herself as a joke. Roger Michell directs. Who it is for: viewers who like British theatre and actors talking. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a structured documentary; the film does not try to be more than a recorded conversation.