Me You Madness

A petty thief takes a room at a Malibu villa, only to discover his landlady is a serial killer who speaks in marketing slogans. It’s meant to be a comedy. 

Basic instincts: Ed Westwick and Louise Linton

Some punctuation might help. On its own, the title of the film doesn’t say a whole lot. Try this: “Me? You? Madness!” That is, he and she, together, really wouldn’t work as a couple. Catherine Black, a self-serving, materialistic, narcissistic, homicidal sociopath (her words), thinks she is too good for the attentions of Tyler (Ed Westwick). a petty, albeit hunky, thief. Catherine, a cross between Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct and the disgraced publishing tycoon Conrad Black, is quite a creation. She is the brainchild of the Scottish actress Louise Linton who, like Sylvester Stallone, has written a screenplay to showcase her thespian abilities. Unlike Stallone, though, she is not a good writer, and an even worse performer.

If one thought Sly was a mumbler, try and decipher the opening voice-over delivered by Ms Linton. With an imaginary accent plucked from somewhere between Belgravia and Chipping Norton, and competing against The Pointer Sisters' ‘Jump (For My Love)’ on the soundtrack, Ms Linton hasn’t a chance to make herself clear. And this is the set-up of her character. Any other actress might have cause to sue her director, only Ms Linton also occupies the director’s chair, along with that of the producer’s. There are vanity projects and there are vanity projects.

Here, Linton plays a billionairess who is apparently irresistible to men, owner of her own hedge fund business and occupant of a Malibu property (and a fleet of high-end cars) that would make Donald Trump envious. Catherine is also a condescending bi-curious polymath who gets her kicks from money, molly and murder, while Linton orders her camera to capture her in a variety of revealing ensembles as she works out, makes out and passes out. When she opens her eyes again, she tells us, “I’m happy when I wake up because I remember I am me.”

Me You Madness is a spoof that recycles a number of jokes, repeatedly breaks the fourth wall and rattles along to the accompaniment of pop standards that would be passé in a Debenhams’ ad. Linton – id est Catherine – spices up the dialogue with designer brand names and more pop cultural allusions than she can shake her shtick at. There is also a preponderance of the ‘f’ word which she uses less as punctuation as a stutter. When she produces a gun, she lists a catalogue of films that feature guns, starting from Dirty Harry onwards. Is this funny? Clever? Catherine keeps on reminding the viewer how smart she is, yet in a questionnaire with her manicurist, she answers his poser, “Which Renaissance artist was strong enough to bend metal with his hands?”, with “Da Vinci.” If she was so smart, she should know that Da Vinci actually means “from Vinci”, a town in Tuscany that served as the birthplace of a very strong painter known as Leonardo.

The film is a mess, and a tedious one. More interesting is the fact that Linton landed her first on-screen part in the horror film The Echo (2008), because her then-husband bribed the director. Her current hubby is Steven Mnuchin, who served for four years as the Secretary of the Treasury for Donald Trump. Mnuchin previously worked as a hedge fund manager and as a film producer, but that’s another story.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Louise Linton, Ed Westwick, Shuya Chang, Jimmy Dinh, Tyler Barnes, Gwen Van Dam, Joel Michaely.

Dir Louise Linton, Pro Louise Linton and Kristen Ruhlin, Screenplay Louise Linton, Ph Reinhart 'Rayteam' Peschke and Boa Simon, Pro Des Alura Johnson and Travis Zariwny, Ed Samuel Means, Music Max Aruj, Costumes Camille Jumelle.

Stormchaser Films/Highland Film Group-Screenbound Pictures.
94 mins. USA. 2021. Rel: 19 April 2021. Available on iTunes/Apple TV/Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Sky Store/Sony/TalkTalk/Virgin/Rakuten. Cert. 15.