Someone Else Col Spector UK 2006
Stephen Mangan has been playing the same arsehole for a few years now, made famous by his turn as Swiss anaesthetist Guy Secretan in Channel Four’s comedy show Green Wing. The archetype he plays so well is dependent on having someone else to bounce off. Not necessarily a traditional straight guy. Julian Rhind-Tutt in Green Wing for example, was funny in his own-sarcastic-right and one of the highlights of that show was the barbed surreal banter between the pair presiding above the gaping cavities of a patient in theatre.
Later in Festival, Mangan played an amalgam of the egocentric celebrity comic (possibly based on Steve Coogan who ably satiricised himself in A Cock and Bull Story a little later) but here too was an ensemble available to provide some sort of sympathy to a very funny but very unlikable character. Confetti the recent wedding comedy, ditto.
Someone Else, by casting Stephen Mangan centre stage as the lead without the help of a straight man or at least a diversion, really asks whether he can carry a film on his own, and swiftly answers this with the disappointing appraisal - not quite.
Col Spector’s feature debut is a thirty-something emotional piece all about relationships full of awkwardness and fleeting hope. Mangan’s character David, a photographer, dumps his long-standing girlfriend Lisa in favour of a new girlfriend Nina who promptly dispenses with him too. David then spends the rest of the film pining about the situation he has created for himself.
Mangan’s persona is suitably aligned to play this kind of relationship privateer but Mangan as yet lacks the necessary empathy required to take an audience with a character, who is frankly a bastard, through the emotional mill and back out the other side or at least to some place other than ‘HA! Serves you right’. The scene where David finds out he has nobody after leaving Lisa captures the brazen sense of injustice of the situation perfectly, but the rest of the film then struggles to flesh out the following no-man’s land of the post going-out with somebody aftermath. A period where former intimacy is still tangible but attempts are made to move on. It is arguable of course that Mangan completely nails the part and anyone watching just has difficulty relating.
Spector certainly backs him up though, with a suitably autumnal feel to the film shown in frequent angsty trips to some London park. He also layers the story with a variety of characters in various relationship states with a strong cast comprising Shaun Dingwall, Susan Lynch and Lara Belmont.
It’s funny in part also, but nothing too strenuous.
