MOVIE REVIEW : ‘WITHNAIL AND I’ CARRY ON IN RURAL ENGLAND

There’ll always be an England as long as there are character comedies like Bruce Robinson’s “Withnail and I” (opening Wednesday at the Beverly Center Cineplex and the new Universal City Cinemas). It’s been decades since such Ealing Studio classics as “The Ladykillers,” yet the British still come up with pictures that are as deliciously witty and sophisticated as they are outrageously funny.

Richard E. Grant’s Withnail--pronounced Witn’l--and Paul McGann’s Marwood are a couple of hard-living, barely surviving young London actors who decide that what they need is to “get into the countryside and rejuvenate.” Arriving at Withnail’s landed uncle’s country estate, they find there’s no heat, no food and no electricity. They’re so helpless they’re breaking up furniture for firewood, stuffing a chicken in a teapot and alienating the decidedly taciturn locals.

For all the laughter it generates in its confrontations between city and country folk and their ways, “Withnail and I” has a decidedly dark and subtle undertow. One hilarious incident after another may keep the semiautobiographical “Withnail and I” perking along, but it is at the same time a ‘60s joy ride about to tailspin into the sobering ‘70s.

Emerging from the crosscurrents are as amusing a raft of characters as you could wish to behold. Grant’s Withnail is a gloriously seedy aristocrat, as tall and cadaverous as John Carradine, a human scarecrow in a grungy but superbly cut topcoat. Just facing 30, he’s a young man whose epic dissipations and cavalier manner and deeds hide an essential tenderness and, yes, innocence. He can come up with the most disastrously elaborate scheme to circumvent a sobriety test, and then turn down the chance to understudy Konstantin in “The Sea Gull” with a grand dismissal: “All those Russian plays with women looking out windows, whining about ducks going to Moscow.” Who but a Britisher could write such a line, who but a Britisher could toss it off with such sublime contempt? However, at the same time as you find yourself laughing at Withnail, you wonder how he’s ever going to make it into the ‘70s.

McGann’s nice-looking Marwood is a far more normal type, and thus rightly crazed by all the scrapes and predicaments into which Withnail is constantly propelling him. What gives the film its sheer deliriousness, however, is neither Withnail nor Marwood, but Richard Griffiths as Withnail’s hilarious Uncle Monty. Flushed of face and portly, Monty is a wildly obtuse and eccentric homosexual who comes on to poor Marwood like a snorting, pawing bull maddened by a matador’s red cape. Robinson’s view of Monty is so affectionate, so without a trace of homophobia, and Griffiths is so selfless and inspired an actor--he was the porcine, villainous CPA in “A Private Function”--that he is consistently a joy.

Monty spouts Baudelaire as he strides over open fields and spills over with tremulous memories of the “dear Erics” and “dear Normans” of his youth. It is not too much to say that Uncle Monty is just about the most endearingly comical uncloseted gay character the screen has ever seen.

Then there’s Ralph Brown’s zany Danny, the boys’ drug-dealer pal who’s his own best customer and who spouts cosmic nonsense in a soft working-class accent. Yet he’s together enough to perceive that, with 91 days left of the ‘60s, “London is a country coming down from its trip and is about to witness the biggest hangover the world’s ever seen.”

“Withnail and I” is as good to look at as it is to listen to. Cinematographer Peter Hannan and camera operator Bob Smith give the lush North of England countryside the moist, beautifully lit appearance of Flemish Master paintings, which sets off the amusing primitiveness of Monty’s farm. Production designer Michael Pickwoad and art director Henry Harris’ settings are so precisely right they are virtually characters in themselves. The boys’ Victorian London flat would be handsome if it weren’t such a total shambles--Withnail has every reason to suspect there’s something living in that kitchen sink overflowing with dirty dishes. Uncle Monty’s Chelsea town house glows darkly with an aristocrat’s treasure trove of fine burnished antiques, but there’s a sybaritic touch in the immense, pillow-crammed sofas; his country place is equally tasteful in its period decor but for a few campy details, such as the pair of large cherubs looming over an otherwise understated Directoire bedstead.

“Withnail and I” (rated R for adult themes and blunt language) is a knockout directorial debut for the many-faceted Robinson, who won an Oscar for his script for “The Killing Fields” and as an actor is best remembered as the dashing but transient British lieutenant who became the object of Isabelle Adjani’s mad obsession in Truffaut’s “The Story of Adele H.” Robinson claims that every incident in the film actually happened at one time or another--and “Withnail and I” leaves you eager to believe him.

Also on the bill is Chuck Workman’s dazzling Oscar-winning “Precious Images,” produced last year by the Directors Guild to celebrate its 50th anniversary. In seven minutes, it manages to flash through 469 clips from 458 American films to celebrate all the reasons why we love the movies.

‘WITHNAIL AND I’ A Cineplex Odeon Films release of a Handmade Films production. Executive producers George Harrison, Denis O’Brien. Producer Paul Heller. Writer-director Bruce Robinson. Camera Peter Hannan. Music David Dundas. Production designer Michael Pickwoad. Costumes Andrea Galer. Film editor Alan Strachan. With Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths, Ralph Brown, Michael Elphick.

Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).