[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Withnail and I (1987)

A glorious rites of passage tale about two out of luck (and booze) actors who decamp from London to a dilapidated cottage in the Lake District where they struggle to survive the weather, a local poacher, a rather randy bull and Withnail's lecherous Uncle Monty.

The film opens in a way that's almost there to put off the viewer, to turn them away - a flat festering with rodents, empty bottles and dirty underwear - deliberately seedy in fact with humour that is brutal yet also extremely clever and hard to forget before it settles down into a wonderful character study with eminently quotable dialogue, superb secondary characters (Ralph Brown and his self invented Camberwell Carrot is a film stealer never mind scene stealer), brilliant score, and come the end a touch of melancholy as the hedonistic sixties basically come to an end.

As well as the superb Richard E Grant (Withnail) and Paul McGann (I), credit definitely where it's due to writer / director Bruce Robinson who based the film on his own exploits in sixties Camden Town.