The Riot Club

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Movie
German title The Riot Club
Original title The Riot Club
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 2014
length 107 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director Lone Scherfig
script Laura Wade
production Graham Broadbent ,
Peter Czernin ,
Ben Knight
music Kasper Winding
camera Sebastian Blenkov
cut Jake Roberts
occupation

The Riot Club is a 2014 British film directed by Lone Scherfig . It is based on the play Posh by Laura Wade , who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Max Irons and Sam Claflin can be seen in the leading roles .

action

The film opens in 18th century Oxford . A young student who calls himself Lord Riot falls victim to his dissolute lifestyle: he is caught and stabbed by her husband while having sex with a married woman. His friends then founded the Riot Club , to which only the brightest and best students of Oxford should be accepted, and swore to indulge the lifestyle of their deceased friend within this club. Then the real action of the film sets in in today's Oxford.

The two upper-class offspring Alistair and Miles begin their studies in Oxford. Miles quickly connects and begins a relationship with Lauren, who is also new to Oxford and comes from a lower social class. The shy-looking Alistair is initially more of a loner. Their joint tutorial often ends in wild discussions and arguments, as Alistair is politically conservative , while Miles thinks more left-wing.

Both are targeted by the Riot Club, which with eight members counts two too few. Miles is recruited by the homosexual Hugo, who is attracted by Miles' appearance, Alistair is recruited by Harry when he finds out that Alistair's brother is Sebastian Ryle, who was president of the Riot Club for many years. Both pass the entrance exams, which consist of different alcohol consumption with a subsequent knowledge test and public self-pouring with a bottle of port wine . When their rooms are finally completely devastated as an introductory ritual, they are officially members of the elite circle.

Soon after, the Riot Club's annual extravagant dinner is due. A separate room in a pub outside Oxford was rented for this purpose . When all members are in attendance, the excessive drinking and decadent eating begins . In another initiation rite, Miles defeats Alistair, whose mood drops drastically as a result. When Miles sits down on a separate sofa for a short time, Alistair writes a text message to Lauren in Miles' name with his cell phone to come and rescue him.

Harry has meanwhile organized a prostitute named Charlie, who is initially thrown out by the owner of the pub, but who still gets access to the event through the back entrance. However, she refuses to orally satisfy the whole group under the table , as she sees this as beneath her dignity, and leaves the dinner indignant, which causes displeasure among some members. This is further increased when it is found that the ten agreed types of poultry that were served with the meal are missing the guinea fowl .

In the lounge of the pub, the other guests are becoming increasingly annoyed by the noise of the Riot Club event and the slow service of the pub, which is mainly hogged by the Riot Club. When the landlord at the Riot Club complains that guests are leaving his pub, Dimitri quickly pays him for the damage.

Now Lauren arrives. Miles is surprised that he doesn't know anything about the text message to her. He offers her to call a taxi for the return trip. However, Harry asks her to stay and offers her £ 300 to perform the oral services Charlie declined. Dimitri sees this amount as an insult and increases the offer to £ 27,000. When Miles says it's her decision, she leaves the pub angry and disappointed.

Due to the increasing alcohol consumption, the evening escalates more and more. Alistair in particular is becoming increasingly angry at the lower social classes, personified by Charlie, who refused to have oral sex, and the landlord, who broke the agreements with the lack of guinea fowl and then complained about the noise. The members begin to completely devastate the room. Only Miles just sits in his chair during this time. When the landlord enters the room and refuses to be paid for the damage incurred without further consequences, Alistair begins to beat him up. Except for Hugo and Miles, all members participate. Finally, Alistair knocks the landlord unconscious with a cricket bat. This brings the other members back to their senses and Miles calls the ambulance. The members of the Riot Club are arrested.

The next day they are released on bail. Since the host cannot remember who exactly hit him, they decide to sacrifice a member in order to minimize their own damage. Miles was chosen as he was the last to be recruited for the club. However, after Alistair's skin particles were found under the host's fingernails, he was arrested and the only one expelled from college. When Miles is invited to another meeting of the Riot Club, he refuses. Alistair soon receives a job offer from Harry's uncle, MP Jeremy Villiers.

background

Reviews

Overall, the film was received positively. Rotten Tomatoes scores 79 percent positive from 33 reviews.

“Despite a somewhat simple polarization between ordinary people and status kings, the Danish Lone Scherfig [...] convincingly takes the terms gentleman and elite ad absurdum, but also shows the undiminished potency of a self-protecting system. The film, which has many interesting and competent British newcomers, ultimately only knows characters in the three notable female characters (student, landlord's daughter, escort girl) and an impotent innkeeper who earn the audience's sympathy with strength and morals. The club itself is a human jungle that you only want to enter with a machete in hand. "

- Kino.de

“The Dane Lone Scherfig, who once experienced her breakthrough as a dogma disciple with Italian for beginners , has meanwhile moved her work to the British island and is now an integral part of the cinematic establishment there. After the Oscar-nominated An Education and Two in One Day , her latest work The Riot Club is also set in England, but this time in the present. However, this return to the present day is far from reflecting on the unpolished, immediate dogma style; rather, through the dialog-rich upper-class drama, the constant breath of a supposedly long-lost epoch of limitless decadence and arrogance blows - which is also the Scherfigs problem The following is outlined in the film: It shows us a bunch of unsympaths (to put it very politely) who consider themselves the masters of the world as a matter of course. And when the nasty hustle and bustle in the second half gets a sometimes gripping dynamic, interest in the characters bursting with narrow-mindedness is almost waned. "

- Carsten Baumgardt : Filmstarts.de

“Again and again one catches one's breath when the next in the group reveals their abysmal malice or cowardice, there are no saving ambivalences - and because no rich asshole is ever adequately punished in life, the pigs get away with a black eye here too. In other words - this is a flawless, ancient and quite effective propaganda film: we down there, those up there. Good and bad, black and white. "

- Tobias Kniebe : Süddeutsche Zeitung

“The Riot Club takes the subject harder. But then not so hard that Scherfig couldn't bring a dozen faces onto the screen that are significantly more attractive than those of the real 'Bullingdon Club'. And the film is also good enough to use Max's lover, a student from the working class, as the moral mouthpiece of the working and middle class - shown consistently in this film as impeccable and down-to-earth. Sometimes, however, especially when non-members of the circle have to pay bitterly for being different, the class melodrama gets under your skin. Then the seismographic sensitivity of this not large-scale and rather conventionally filmed production becomes apparent: It becomes a universally readable study of a group that is split off from its environment and, as an increasingly powerless caste with a high claim to power, still puts its contempt for human beings into practice. "

- Marion Douglas : The time

Web links

Awards and nominations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Approval for The Riot Club . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2014 (PDF; test number: 147 174 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for The Riot Club . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ Film review at Kino.de
  4. ↑ Film review at Filmstarts.de
  5. ^ Film review
  6. ^ Film review