Club Le Monde (2002) Online

Club Le Monde is a very rare film indeed: a completely independent British film with the quality, charm and good-humour to deserve massive commercial success. Whether it achieves this remains to be seen, but it certainly should.

Set in a seedy nightclub in 1993, the film follows a large ensemble cast as they spend the night drinking, dancing, trying to have sex, taking drugs and piercing parts of their bodies. What could have been a confusing melee of characters - some of whom appear and disappear within a few minutes - is, in fact, an easy-to-follow and downright hilarious story of a bunch of strangers simply having a good time.

Such is the quality of the script that the whole experience of watching Club Le Monde feels much like a night out in a club in its own right. Things start slowly; people come and go; things start to heat up; you start to recognise some of the people around the place; and by the end, the audience is left feeling exhausted, that they've had an exciting, if relatively harmless and meaningless, time.

Simon Rumley has enjoyed enormous critical, if not commercial, success in his films to date. This one leaves his previous work far behind, inasmuch as it is a fully-rounded masterwork from someone who truly seems to understand his peers and the English language.

An affectionate tongue in cheek look at an early nineties club, when rave culture had just moved from open air events to indoor clubs. It comprises some 30 or so fairly dippy characters and paints them with an amusingly broad brush. I went to see it with three other people – one of them howled with laughter every few minutes, as I did. One person laughed once in the whole film (in the wrong place). The fourth person either was not in the habit of giving vent to laughter when presented with such fare or had politely fallen asleep so as not to disturb our enjoyment. If you haven't had any flirtation with the club scene, recreational drugs, getting off your face, and waving your arms about to repetitive music, then you need broad powers of empathy to enjoy this movie to the fullest. It's not a documentary, but the hapless characters are convincing enough to be really funny and memorable. This isn't to say rave culture is dominated by such losers, but there is a fair share of them and the proportion was probably higher then than it is now. All in all, Club le Monde is far more insightful than other attempts to transfer the panoply of club culture lifestyle to the screen than other films that have attempted the same thing.

The film Club le Monde is above all, a highly accurate portrayal of the acid house explosion of the early nineties. The explicit reference to drugs are remaining true to the club era at that time, and although may not be to every audience's tastes, brings the clubbing scene to the cinema in its truest and grizzliest form. The multi-layered plot is an engaging format to watch and has found much success in many other independent British films, such as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and reflects the diversity and uniqueness of the characters in the club.

The music naturally, is an integral part of the movie, and again maintains the ultra-accurate representation of Britain in 1993, with the top clubbing tunes played in the film, by pioneering DJs of acid house such as Brandon Block. The use of pathetic fallacy in the film, with regards to the music is excellent in its subtlety, as well as its effect.

The film's persistent use of coarse language, some may deem unnecessary, as it could detract from the thoroughly humorous dialogue.

Blimey! Bit of a shock to see 1993 presented as nostalgia, but Club Le Monde captured the mood back then perfectly. A little rough round the edges maybe, but this only added to the realism of a night at a dingy club. The music was spot-on - can't wait for the soundtrack - after the film we left the cinema literally bouncing and if it hadn't been for work the next day (this is a film for students and the unemployed) we'd have found a club there and then.

I was dragged along by a film-buff who has to see all things British and I was pleasantly surprised that this comedy didn't take the clubbing scene too seriously - seen a few too many of them. It compares favourably with Human Traffic, far more characters to get your head wrapped round and a more lovable bunch.

The characters were horribly realistic too, loved the Essex girls in the loo and the confused bouncer and who doesn't remember the idiot in the sunglasses?

Came away feeling liked I'd had fun!!

The entertaining independent British comedy depicts the interactions of a variety of characters in a typical nightclub. Much of the script and many of the performances are hilarious - notably the off-his-face raver Mr Sunglasses, and the charmingly innocent public schoolboy Anthony (for whom this new-found world of sex, drugs and alcohol is a fascinating revelation).

On the minus side, the film lacks polish. No doubt due to the low budget, the lack of variety of location and the limited photography give it a static feel. Though there is progression of storyline in individual threads, the film comes across somewhat as a series of sketches rather than a coherent whole - reminiscent in this respect of the Comic Strip TV films of the 1980's.

Overall though it makes for an entertaining enough evening, particularly for a British audience (I'm not sure how many of the characters and jokes would travel).