The transatlantic love affair between England and America is perfectly understandable. England has the weight of history behind it, while America is its most successful former colony. The language, with all its economic and cultural implications, has travelled from a green island to a wealthy mainland to the ever-expanding boundaries of outer space.
Naturally the wiser but decaying parent and the bright but brash young child are going to clash, but they still share the same essentially white, Christian values of relatives. In this case a couple of Englishmen needed some American “names” to finance their film and, by the same token, some Americans were only too pleased to add some English “class” to their product. Back in the Fifties Noël Coward understood this bit of symbiosis as well as, if not better than, anyone else.
Relative Values stars, among others, the actress Julie Andrews, but she is no longer an English actress. She is an American star who happens to come from England, as did many before her. Obviously the main credits go to the American actors, since it is their countrymen who put up the bucks. Period.
The plot is simple enough. An English aristrocrat falls for an American star on the French Riviera and his mother, the Countess of Marshwood, is worried. So is the star’s Hollywood lover. Worse, the smitten couple are on their way to visit mama at the Marshwood mansion and her personal assistant suddenly blurts out that the American star is actually her very own, very English sister. The only person who seems at all amused by all of this is the artistocrat’s cousin Peter, who, it is said with good reason, was based on Coward himself. Colin Firth as the gay, bemused toff is a pleasure to behold.
The rest of the cast almost fares as well, too. The aristocrat, played by Michael Attterton, is just a tad dull. The actress is played by Jeanne Tripplehorne, who is good as the shallow Fifties icon. The countess is played by a dignified Andrews, who one unfairly expects to burst into song and dance at the slightest provocation. The stupid but good-hearted Hollywood lover is played surprisingly well by William Baldwin.
The personal assistant is played by Sophie Thompson, sister of Emma. Her transformation from a self-deprecating mouse to a drunkenly enraged but always restrained sibling with a fake new class status is very funny indeed. And, lastly, the butler Crestwell is played by Stephen Fry, who seems more amused by the fact that he has to play a restrained role, against persona, than by all the activity as head of the star-struck underclass in the mansion.
Directed by Eric Styles, Relative Values has a wonderful title sequence and plenty of pace, but looks like those boring cinema ads for English cigarettes back in the Eighties. At one point Andrews’s countess says it’s almost as if nothing has happened. This is largely true, except that it’s all informed by the blithe spirit of Coward.