The Riot Club
2014 · Directed by Lone Scherfig
Original language: English
- drama
The story
Two first-year students at Oxford University join a secret society and learn that their reputations can be made or destroyed over the course of one evening.
What it’s like
Cold, handsome daylight gives way to candlelit private dining rooms and the sodden amber of Oxford pubs, with an unhurried camera that lingers on faces, crested blazers and glasses rather than cutting for effect. The palette runs from pale stone and winter greys to flushed, overheated reds once the drinking starts, and the room itself becomes a kind of pressure cooker. Much of the film is staged in long, talky scenes, so the sound is mostly voices, clinking glass, scraping chairs and a restrained, tense score that surfaces only when the evening tips over. The vibe is stiff, privileged unease, the chill of a club where everyone is performing confidence. It suits a late evening alone when you want something sharp and uncomfortable, or a discussion-prompting watch with friends. The pacing builds steadily toward a single night's escalation, and its emotional register is cool, observational and increasingly bleak, following two young men who are drawn into a group's rituals and must decide what they are willing to become. Intensity is moderate: there is drunken cruelty, humiliation and a violent, brief but ugly climax, with no gore and little sexual content, but the unease is persistent. It is for viewers who enjoy satirical British drama about class, entitlement and peer pressure, and who can tolerate a slow-burning, unsettling ending.
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