Kiss of Death (1977)

Kiss of Death is an early Mike Leigh film that I debated whether to finish (and my rule is to always finish). Call it a scrum-budget British version of Napoleon Dynamite at its best moments but mostly drier in plot and character interest than Film Geek and The Snake. (It is actually episode 147 of 310 from the 15-year BBC Birmingham TV series Play for Today, which might explain the bad audio and hard-to-catch dialects.) The lead characters are a foursome of thoroughly uninteresting working-class Brits -- frizzy-headed Trevor (David Threlfall) and nondescript best friend Ronnie (John Wheatley) plus Ronnie's round-headed girl Sandra (Angela Curran) and her average-looking friend Linda (Kay Adshead), the least cipher of the bunch. Trevor is a funeral assistant who functions best in a work setting, Ronnie is largely sullen, Sandra seems moody, and Linda is the most social. They all visibly struggle to extend their social interactions but Linda is probably the most normal. She has a habit of constantly chewing and smacking gum but takes the initiative in a hit-and-miss effort to establish a connection with Trevor. ("So do you like me? Do you think I'm pretty?") Trevor favors long periods of silence, laughs inappropriately, hides in a book in lieu of social plans and so on. The quartet's interactions are painfully awkward but that is the movie's appeal: showing us the unpolished side of the social coin. Kiss of Death is not for everyone -- I did not like it -- but it has made me think and I appreciate it more over time for that. 2.5 stars.