London fest closes with flash of ‘Stan & Ollie’ comic genius
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British-Iranian helmer Riggi shows no ‘Mercy’ in offbeat debut
LONDON, Oct 22, (RTRS): Laurel and Hardy, perhaps the greatest comedy double act in cinema history, returned to London on Sunday, twiddling their bowler hats to a delighted West End crowd as they arrived for the world premiere of the biopic “Stan & Ollie”.
The closing film of the London Film Festival covers the twilight years of a couple who made more than 100 films spanning the silent and talkie era, with John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy, the lovably oafish Southern gent, and Steve Coogan playing the idiot-savant Stan Laurel.
“It’s a labour of love, this whole movie,” Reilly told Reuters on the red carpet with Coogan in Leicester Square.
Almost a century after they started making movies together, Laurel and Hardy’s comedy retains a freshness and universality, even if younger generations may not have seen them.
“Our overall mission, other than people enjoying our film, is to reintroduce them to the beautiful work of Stan and Ollie,” Reilly said, adding that the duo had “figured out the secret formula for comedy”.
The movie opens with Laurel and Hardy strolling across a busy Hollywood lot to a studio to film the classic dance scene outside a saloon bar in “Way Out West”.
It is 1937 and they are box office gold, but complain about being poorly paid and exploited by producer Hal Roach, to whom they are both under contract.
Cut to 16 years later, their star has waned, audiences have moved on to a younger double act, Abbott and Costello, and the ageing Stan and Ollie have little choice but to embark on a gruelling tour of half-full vaudeville theatres in dingy post-war Britain, the country of Laurel’s birth.
Through flashbacks, we learn that their declining fortunes are also in part due to a rift caused when Hardy, still under contract to Roach, made a movie with someone else in what would have been Laurel’s part, something Stan harbours as a grudge.
Portrayals
“Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly give great portrayals of Laurel and Hardy,” wrote Peter Bradshaw in “The Guardian”.
“… these are brilliant impersonations, the kind that can only be achieved by exceptionally intelligent actors; the superb technique of both is matched by their obvious love for the originals.”
When the matriarch of a British-Iranian family goes missing in London, her loved ones find themselves on an offbeat spiritual journey to track her down, setting their old world traditions on a collision course with their new world surroundings.
Inspired by her own Iranian roots, “Mercy” is the feature debut of British-Iranian director Mandi Riggi. Andrew Eaton (“The Crown”) will executive produce, with a cast that includes F. Murray Abraham, Hiam Abbass, Emun Elliott, Sarah Snook and Yasmin Paige. The film was selected for MIA’s co-production market and pitching forum.
“Mercy” draws on Riggi’s upbringing in the UK, where she lived until the age of 14, after her parents left Iran in the wake of the 1979 revolution. Though they arrived “with hope in their eyes” and plans for a better life, the director said the bittersweet decision weighed on them long afterward.
“These are immigrants who can never go back to their own country,” Riggi said. “So I grew up with the kind of parents who are always looking back. There was a lot of nostalgia for a life that they could never have.”
Growing up, Riggi saw glimpses of Iranian life in the colorful diaspora community around her. As she later matured into an accomplished scripter and playwright, though, she avoided writing about her family life, and her relationship to her roots. “I never wanted to be typecast as that Iranian person who writes about Iranian things,” she said.
It wasn’t until her father became terminally ill that she decided to write a “love letter to my parents, and to their country of origin.” It was a difficult task. “I wrote it as a way to deal with the grief in advance,” she said. “It was like a cleansing to me.”
Riggi and producer Kevin Comer, of Psychonaut Films, have been in Rome looking to close more financing and meet with distributors. World sales are being handled by NY-based Visit Films.
Talks with a potential DoP are underway. Riggi said “Mercy” will be shot in the energetic vein of Pedro Almodovar, who the director said “does a lovely job combining comedy and tragedy.” She added that it would be a natural fit for her movie.
“Persian people…are larger than life characters,” she said. “They’re very boisterous. They wear their hearts on their sleeves.”
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