A shambolic merry-go-round of film-within-a-film quandaries, cine-quotations and Steve Coogan in a giant womb, Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is dastardly entertaining. CATHERINE BISLEY watches the chaos unfold.


MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM’s Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is framed by a pair of teeth, those of actor Rob Brydon. Teeth corroded by soft drink abuse, and even worse, discoloured. In the superficial world of actors that the film presents, bad teeth are a major flaw: “I saw the colour last time I looked... it registered” swipes fellow actor Steve Coogan, before some hilarious adjectival use of the Dulux colour chart. When the final credits roll around, we learn from a smiling Brydon that he has had his teeth whitened and polished.

Prudes beware! This adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s 18th Century novel is bawdy. The cock of the subtitle is not a rooster; Brydon’s teeth and the male organ are a thematic duo. Making an early on screen appearance, the unfortunate penis of young Tristram has a run in with a de-weighted sash window: “I was circumcised like many men, manly men.” says the older egotistical Shandy, while he watches the earlier scene unfold. Brydon’s character was also hit in the same unfortunate place during a battle, and subsequently “knows nothing of women”. He spends his entire life recreating an impressive model of the fatal battlefield: “I will show you exactly where I was hit, you can put your finger on it”. Later the penis plunges into the subtext as stick man Coogan lusts after many a lady. He also chastises a friend with seven children, quoting Groucho Marx “I like my cigar too, but I take it out once in a while.” The female sexual organ is not ignored. If you’re at all claustrophobic, you will find the scene in which Coogan is lowered by winch into a tight fitting womb hard to handle.

Overbrimming with the finest comedic talent Britain has to offer, such as Extra’s Ashley Jensen and Little Britain’s David Walliams, the laughs are many. Stephen Fry, who I adore, appears all too briefly. Dylan Moran’s Dr Slop, and his antics with a melon and a pair of forceps, will have you screeching in horror and delight, as will Coogan’s virtuoso “hot chestnut in the pants” skit. Actors play both themselves and the characters from the novel, sending up the film world with its egotistical rivalries, weeping wardrobe ladies, boredom and drinking, sour financial backers, intense assistants who like Fassbinder and Bresson (maybe it’s the sibilance), and sycophantic journalists (for a Japanese, low-budget student take on filmmaking check out Who is Camus Anyway?)

Musical, textual and visual quotations of other films abound. Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon is one of the more obvious – film geeks will no doubt have a field day spotting the innumerable others. Ah the intertext. “The post modern classic before there was any modern to be post about.” Just as the novel digresses to the point of never being written, so too does the film: “I am ahead of myself, I am not yet born”. As Tristram Shandy is a film about the making of a film of a book which is not filmable, it does not begin or follow any conventional narrative structure. All the digressions would give an anal scriptwriting book following writer hemmaroids if not an aneurism. Where is the third act climax!!!! Winterbotton clearly needs remedial Film 101. Coogan and Brydon’s rivalry does provide narrative drive.

(One cavil: while the film brims with witty lines and lustrous performances, its digressive approach occasionally peters out. Coogan’s persona may be inflated, but it’s hard to keep it up for 94 minutes. “I see the review... Tristram Shandy, 2 stars” says a woeful writer. I’d give it 4)