Withnail & I

Two out-of-work actors in London decide to spend a few days in a cottage in the country. The cottage is cold, there is no food, and nobody wants them there. The comedy comes out of failure and works almost entirely on lines, but something hard sits underneath, because it is clear from the start that one of these two will get out of this life and the other will not. That is why the final scene turns suddenly heavy. Bruce Robinson wrote and directed it from his own youth. It is Richard E. Grant's first film. Before watching: it runs on continuous drinking and drug use and is full of references to Britain at the end of the nineteen-sixties. Some jokes will pass viewers without that context.