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FREE,THREE AND
FREE,THREE AND
Women power gets a
boost in Cotswold W
based Crush
riter-director John McKay describes it as “a comedy about how badly people can behave towards each other.” He’s talking about Crush,
F***ers Club (the film’s provocative working title) who meet regularly over gin, chocolate and cigarettes to bemoan their non-existent love lives.
But when McDowell suddenly acquires an ex-pupil (newcomer Kenny Doughty) as a lover who’s half her age, the previously tight- knit trio is thrown into chaos. It now becomes a matter of increasingly misguided principle that Staunton and Chancellor must try and save their friend from herself.
Scots-born McKay, who with fellow National Film & TV School graduate producer Lee Thomas previously made award-winning shorts like Doom And Gloom and Wet And Dry, once wrote a play which had the same basic ingredients.
Says McKay: “Most plays have such a limited life span, seen by a few
hundred people at the theatre over a number of weeks, so I decided to revisit the story.
“As I began to develop the screen- play I found myself more interested in the relationship between the friends: what if the friends had a way of cop- ing with their lives, meeting up to eat, drink and smoke too much. What if one of them embarks on an exciting affair? How do the others react?”
McKay very deliberately chose to set Crush in the very heart of England, with gentle rolling hills and pretty vil- lages filled with mellow stone cottages.
“Part of the trap the women are in is that they live somewhere very beautiful but very dull. I come from a small community in Scotland so I understand that life better than life in a city – even though I’ve lived in London for 15 years!
his funny, irreverent and at times deli- ciously raunchy feature debut which gives the lie to that old saw they don’t write good roles for women any more.
Principally set in glorious rolling Cotswold country, Crush – reminiscent in flavour and also cast of Four Weddings And A Funeral - features not just one but three almost equally juicy mature female roles for Andie McDowell, Imelda Staunton and Anna Chancellor.
McDowell, as the local head- mistress, Staunton, the police chief, and Chancellor, a doctor, are founder (and only) members of The Sad
Photos top left: Andie McDowell and Crush Director John McKay; main l-r: Anna Chancellor, Andie McDowell and Imelda Staunton
EXPOSURE • 26 & 27