Sexy Beast the feature debut of commercials and music video director Jonathan Glazer (Guinness ‘Surfers’ and ‘Swimblack’) is to premiere at the London Film Festival on November 11th.
Sexy Beast opens on a content, podgy, ex-criminal, Eastender, Gary Dove (Ray Winstone) who is living out the Essex ex-pat dream in Spain with his ex-pornstar Mrs, Dee Dee (Amanda Redman). The couple drink, sunbathe, shop and hang out with their best friends. All is well, until Don Logan (Ben Kinglsey) turns up on the scene to persuade Gary to go back to London with him to do just one more bank job. What follows is a tense battle of wills between Dove and Logan, the houseguest from hell.
The film has received positive reviews, at the Toronto Film Festival it was hailed as "one of the best films you’ll see at this year’s festival". "If Reservoir Dogs was a heist flick that was about everything that happens after the heist, then Sexy Beast is a heist flick about what happens before," according to the National Post.
Despite the film’s positive press reception, Glazer remains dismayed by the film. "I have made an entertaining film, but I don’t think that I have crashed through barriers like I have in music videos. I suppose that the film is a lot less visually orientated than people in advertising would have expected of me, and I’ve got some great scripts being sent to me, but at the moment I’m still scarred from the experience."
In the next issue of shots magazine, Glazer will tell of his experience of making the leap from commercials to features and reveal why he and the editor Sam Sneade hi-jacked the film from the studio to re-edit it in eight days.
