Bodywork

Synopsis

Seven very different people are gathered in a brightly lit but sparsely furnished white room. The only thing they have in common is Virgil Guppy. Virgil isn't there having just been flattened by a ten ton truck. Virgil's odyssey unfolds as the seven wait in the white room.





Virgil Guppy is going to buy a car. Not just any car but a luxury car. This is more than a simple deal. Virgil is not just buying a car, he is buying the last piece of the jigsaw that, with the flat, the job, the wardrobe, even the girlfriend, fit together to make up what Virgil hopes is his identity.





Virgil buys the Jaguar, low mileage but slightly damaged bodywork, from David Leer and his son Buddy, two clearly dodgy dealers. Sure enough within four miles the car dies quite spectacularly. Virgil fails to claim his money through the courts and, worse still, his car came with the optional extra of a dead body hidden in the boot.





Virgil is arrested for murder and an impressive array of circumstantial evidence is presented by witnesses as varied as Sydney Greengrass, a retired accountant, who has the unnerving habit of hitching his curiously shaped trousers up way past the nipple line and Poppy Fields, a middle-aged Prostitute fast reaching her sell-by date. Virgil is convinced he has been framed by David Leer, but David Leer seems to have disappeared.





Once out on bail, Virgil's jigsaw starts to fall apart . . .

Details

Year

1999

Type of film

Features

Running Time

116 mins

Format

35mm Kodak

Director

Gareth Rhys Jones

Producer

Simon Decker

Executive Producer

Simon Decker

Director of Photography

Thomas Wuthrich

Principal Cast

Hans Matheson, Charlotte Coleman, Beth Winslet, Peter Ferdinando, Lynda Bellingham, Clive Russell

Screen Writer

Gareth Rhys Jones

Genre

Production status

Complete

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Last updated 26th November 2005