Sunday Bloody Sunday

The only good thing I could say about today was that while I was feeling sort of sick (noodle knees, headache and cold and all) I sat through Penelope Gilliatt’s screenplay of Sunday Bloody Sunday. The film directed by John Schlesinger was about love in London, circa 1971 and had as a backdrop London’s union strikes. I don’t know what it is about British films, but they always have strikes of some sort. Off the top of my head, I can think of Brass Off and even Full Monty.

Like what the blurb said, Sunday Bloody Sunday was “about 3 decent people. They will break your heart.” It was about “love in London,” and yes, they totally broke my heart. I fully expected a bloodbath or at least some action, as the film title promised that. Alas, there was no violence, and the characters were too polite and unconfrontational for their own good, I wanted to clobber them all on the head to save me from falling into a coma.

The characters in question, the young divorcee Alex and the handsome forty-something doctor Daniel had never met each other. But they did share one common interest, 25-year-old Bob Elkin. That alone pushed me to give this book a chance. A love triangle! Involving good looking Londoners with presumably good teeth! Afternoon delight it was not. So Bob was having an affair with both Alex and Daniel, and everyone seems to know about it.

Alex and Bob were friends with a couple of academics out to spend a weekend out of town and could they please look over their brood? Their baby sitting skills were tested when the kids started smoking pot, and the kids ask them back: "Are you bourgeois?" Then the little revelation that the kids watched mum and pop take a bath together. Alex hinted that their hippie couple friends wanted her and Bob to get married, Bob got bored and left Alex so he could join Daniel. Everyone goes about avoiding each other. It’s really a problem of whether Bob could continue living like this and have them both.

The solution was for Bob to be such an ass and just leave everyone hanging on air. He left for America when he couldn’t stand it anymore. Forcing both parties to sulk and get sullen. But Daniel and Alex did get to meet each other in the end, as it turned out that Daniel was also friends with the hippie couple. It was this really awkward moment where they shook each other’s hand and said, “We haven’t really met, but I do know who you are.”

The only interesting character here, and the only one who gets some real action, was the girl from the answering service. Apparently, in 1971, there were no automatic answering machines. There’s something like an operator to whom you can leave and retrieve messages. Message Girl knew all along that Bob Elkin kept two lovers. It’s the sort of vicarious living pager operators must have had. At one point, Alex calls Bob and there was no answer. She was getting really frustrated and Message Girl suggests they call Dr. Hirsch’s number, as Bob was almost always there. One could imagine the cattiness in her voice. Naturally, Alex declined.

Sunday Bloody Sunday was a misnomer. The film might have been better but I wouldn’t know. I only had the screenplay to judge it by. And oh, there's a very nosy "Aunt Astrid" in the movie. But still. So there you go, Book # 4 was a bust.