House!

Synopsis

A tale of bingo hall rivalry set in the Welsh Valleys, House! stars Kelly Macdonald as Linda, a young bingo addict with a gift for guessing the numbers before they come up. When a new mega bingo arena under construction a mile up the valley threatens to close down her beloved Scala bingo hall, she tries to use her powers to save it, with comic results.

Jason Sutton's screenplay for the film received a reading at the Television Arts Performance Showcase in 1998 where first-time feature director Julian Kemp saw it and was immediately struck by its cinematic potential. "It was really funny and tapped into the humour of South Wales," he says. Kemp showed the script to producer Michael Kelk, with whom he had previously worked on children's television programmes, after which Kelk optioned the rights to the script. The next step was casting. Kemp says: "For Linda, we needed someone who was in their early 20s, who had real vitality and who could believably come from a small Welsh town. Surprisingly that turned out to be quite a short list and Kelly was at the top of it."

Kemp took the unusual step of recruiting Kjell Vassdal, a Norwegian director of photography to capture Wales on film. "I saw a fabulous Norwegian film called Junkmail in which the weather is very bad, but Kjell made it look spectacular. I thought if he can make Oslo look great, he can make Cardiff look great, and he did."

The film was released in the UK earlier this year.

Details

Year

2000

Type of film

Features

Director

Julian Kemp

Dir

Julian Kemp.

Exec prods

Christopher Figg, Adam Sutcliffe.

Prod

Michael Kelk.

Scr

Jason Sutton, based on an original idea by Eric Styles.

DoP

Kjell Vassdal.

Prod des

Kit Line.

Ed

Jonathan Rudd.

Mus

David Alldridge, Craig Blake-Jones, Mark Thomas.

Main cast

Kelly Macdonald, Jason Hughes, Freddie Jones, Miriam Margolyes, Mossie Smith.

Budget

Under £2m.

Funding

Pathe Distribution, Arts Council of England, British Screen, private sources.

Genre

Production status

Complete

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Last updated 4th April 2008