MAYBE IT'S to do with the arrival of the season of good will. Maybe I can't help but admire a film - particularly one starring Demi Moore - that has the chutzpah to call itself Flawless. But, for whatever reason, I found myself warming to this cheesy heist drama from the director of the drippy Il Postino.
The film's framing sequence is, admittedly, a tour de force of unintentional comedy. We begin and end with a geriatric Moore (no jokes, please) telling her story to a journalist in contemporary London. To make her look like an old lady (what did I just say!), the make-up artists appear to have plastered Demi's face with desiccated coconut and emptied an ashtray on her hair. I don't expect the look to catch on.
Anyway, we soon flash back to 1960 to find a younger Ms Moore working as an executive in one of Hatton Garden's top diamond companies. By observing how her heels click mechanically down corridors and noting the confident way she brandishes a manila folder, we quickly discern that she is very good at her job.
Sadly, sexist attitudes have restrained Moore's professional advance and, as the story begins, she learns that she is set for the chop. While she is absorbing this information, nice old Michael Caine, the building's handyman, approaches her with a scheme to spirit away a few handfuls of diamonds.
The twisty plot is reasonably well structured and the firm's political machinations provide agreeable background music. But the movie is most enjoyable for its deliciously ersatz period detail - London looks suave, but it doesn't look much like London - and the sleekness of its varnished surfaces. The tunes of Dave Brubeck accompany every panicked dash. Cigarettes are constantly being snapped into crisp mouths.
Moore, who has not covered herself in glory recently, proves to be the perfect ornament for such an enjoyably empty construction. Never the warmest of actors, she relishes the opportunity to scowl, strut and bristle like a browner Tippi Hedren. Thanks to her, Flawlessemerges as one of the best bad films of the season.
