Michael Winterbottom loves a challenge. This British director has jumped from genre to genre throughout his career; creating imaginative, idiosyncratic films with remarkable speed and ingenuity. However, an adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s famously ‘unfilmable’ 18th century novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was surely even beyond his capabilities. This book - in which the title character attempts to tell his life story but, through a series of digressions and tangents never even gets around to describing his own birth - is an amorphous blend of bawdy humour and non-consecutive storytelling which seems the least promising material for a movie. Nevertheless, Winterbottom has taken a novel approach to tackling this material and the result is one of his most accomplished and entertaining films.
A Cock and Bull Story is not exactly a straightforward adaptation of the source material. Instead, Winterbottom elects to make a film about the making of a Tristram Shandy movie. So we have a number of actors playing themselves as well as characters in the story, and scenes from the book are mixed with sequences depicting the action behind the scenes. In truth, it’s the most logical approach to take when faced with such intimidating material and in Winterbottom’s hands it pays dividends.
The film is smartly structured. After an opening scene where Steve Coogan and co-star Rob Brydon discuss the colour of Brydon’s teeth, the film spends much of the opening twenty minutes recreating sequences from the novel in suitably playful and self-referential fashion. The scenes here mostly focus on the trials and tribulations surrounding Tristram’s birth and they are cleverly handled with Winterbottom creating an energetic and chaotic atmosphere, but the film really comes to life when it concentrates on the various occurrences taking place off the set.
Most of the film revolves around Coogan and he provides a generous and unflattering portrait of himself. Coogan has his girlfriend (Kelly MacDonald) and their young son in tow but he struggles to resist the charms of his flirtatious assistant (Naomie Harris); and he also has to deal with a tabloid reporter (Kieran O’Brien) armed with a steamy ‘kiss and tell’ story, which he’ll drop for an exclusive interview. There is a running gag about Coogan’s inability to drop his Alan Partridge persona and the overall depiction of him is as a pompous, egotistical and vain fool; which Coogan delivers with a funny and natural performance.
The rest of the cast are just as good. Rob Brydon also plays himself, as well as the character of Uncle Toby, and he gives a hilarious, scene-stealing turn. Coogan and Brydon have worked together a number of times before and their effortless repartee produces some priceless moments, notably the comparison of Al Pacino impressions or the debate over the height of Coogan’s shoes. It seems almost every British comedian has found their way into this cast list and further comic highlights are provided by Mark Williams, Dylan Moran and David Walliams in brief appearances.
A Cock and Bull Story manages to pack quite a lot of incident into its lean running time, with a lot of the film focusing on the troubles that can afflict a low-budget film. There is much debate with the financiers over the need for the battle scenes to be included and, when they are shot, they are something of a disaster (Coogan: “I think I saw a Roman Centurion at one point”). As a result, the script is hastily rewritten to include the Widow Wadman sequences from the book which leads to the hiring of Gillian Anderson (a brief but funny cameo) in the role. All of this could be in grave danger of sliding into irritating self-indulgence, but Winterbottom manages to keep things light and witty throughout, putting a smart spin on every scene and moving the film forward at such a pace that it never outstays its welcome.
A Cock and Bull Story isn’t a perfect film with some of the humour inevitably falling into the ‘hit and miss’ category and it’s hardly a film that’s going to live in the memory for long, but it’s still a funny, surprising and irreverent treat. Winterbottom continues to defy expectation and his refusal to be pigeonholed marks him as the most interesting and exciting talent in British cinema. Few would have expected much from an adaptation of Tristram Shandy, but by avoiding the pitfalls of making a straight page-to-film adaptation A Cock and Bull Story has exceeded those expectations and stands as an admirable achievement. In fact, by taking this post-modern approach and making such an anarchic, transgressive and self-conscious piece of work; they’ve actually captured the spirit of Tristram Shandy better than any ‘straight’ adaptation could possibly have managed.
