Rating: NR
Genre:
Comedy
Release Date: 06/29/2004
Dubbed: English
Distributor/Studio: Water Bearer Films
Keith (
Roger Sloman) and
Candice Marie (
Alison Steadman) take a trip to a campsite in the English countryside. They're
folk-singing vegetarian types, but
Keith is very controlling, and
Candice Marie is manipulative as well, in her own childlike way.
Keith is also very anal, taking down every expenditure in a ledger, using his various guidebooks to lead them through every attraction, and refusing to diverge from his detailed plan for their trip. "What's the point of having a schedule if you don't stick to it?" he asks. He rushes ahead of
Candice Marie, and she struggles to keep pace. The couple spends a good deal of time trying to find a dairy farm that will sell them unpasteurized milk. Their idyll, such as it is, is interrupted by the arrival of
Ray (
Anthony O'Donnell), a geology student, who disturbs the couple by playing his radio.
Candice Marie goads
Keith into confronting
Ray, but
Ray refuses to turn off his radio, so the couple move to a new location a bit further away. Returning home from one of their day trips in the rain, the couple stops to offer a ride to a pedestrian who turns out to be
Ray.
Keith refuses to speak to him, but
Candice Marie makes polite conversation, and soon decides that
Ray is "nice."
Candice Marie's attempts to be social infuriate the quietly jealous
Keith. But he goes along when she invites
Ray over for tea, and the couple bullies
Ray into joining them in a little singalong. But things are shaken up again when a couple of young bikers,
Finger (
Stephen Bill) and
Honky (
Sheila Kelley), show up flouting the "country code."
Nuts in May was written and directed (or "devised and directed") by
Mike Leigh for the
BBC program,
Play for Today.
~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Mike Leigh is in top form in
Nuts in May, among the more straightforwardly enjoyable of the acclaimed British filmmaker's early works. While
Nuts in May offers the psychologically complex characterizations that are a hallmark of
Leigh's television oeuvre, its relatively quick pace and surfeit of humor point the way forward to his later feature films,
High Hopes and
Life Is Sweet.
Nuts in May is a funny and trenchant look at a hippie-like couple's ill-fated trip to the countryside.
Roger Sloman as
Keith and
Alison Steadman as
Candice Marie convey a lack of self-awareness that is, by turns, amusing and disturbing. These are full-bodied performances, making the characters fully believable even when their behavior seems absurd.
Leigh builds the comic tension beautifully, as
Keith and
Candice Marie deal first with each other, then with
Ray (
Anthony O'Donnell), who
Keith has a great deal of trouble with despite his relative harmlessness, and then with cheerfully unruly bikers
Finger (
Stephen Bill) and
Honky (
Sheila Kelley), who drive
Keith to the point of a breakdown as he tries to get them to adhere to the campground rules and the "country code."
Ray and
Candice Marie's fierce defense of order and propriety flies in the face of everything they believe themselves to be, an irony that eludes the hapless couple. Their passive-aggressive relationship with each other is at the heart of the film, and it's a tremendous credit to all involved that they're simultaneously richly drawn, three-dimensional humans, and wonderfully comic figures.
~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
