Boogie Woogie is about art, and the London art scene. How droll that the main character, a wonderfully charming dealer, is called Art. All the characters, Art (and Art) included, are caricatures rather than characters, though the film is none the worse for that. In fact, it is a rather good laugh, although what you would make of it if you cared neither for nor about art I cannot imagine. And that’s its central problem. How big an audience is there for all the jokes? For the loving gift of a Damien Hirst Teratoma? For the whole Fuck Nose bust sequence? 1

Unbelievably, I don’t remember any real bust jokes. A couple of titters. Oh no, I’m getting carried away. Anyway, the central image in the whole movie is one of Mondrian’s Boogie Woogie series. The Squeeze -- and she should know -- swears that the version we see on the wall is not the same as the version we see in the transparency that various people hold to the light in whistling admiration. Alas, IMDB does not record this particular blooper.

[Rating:3/5]


  1. Much, much funnier than the film, at some level, is the British Board of Film Censors description of it, which I stumbled on trying to discover the truth about that bust.  

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