It's a fairly well established device. Gather some friends who have known each other for years, all with a couple of secrets. Let them settle in among each other. And then have one of them drop a bombshell, and see what results.
Sally Potter's film benefits hugely from a top-of-their game cast - her script is reasonable but perhaps a little familiar, and some of the jokes feel a little over-written and probably wouldn't survive less expert handling. But with performers like Patricia Clarkson, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Bruno Ganz, Cillian Murphy, Emily Mortimer, Cherry Jones and Timothy Spall, this remains pretty damn gripping. The black-and-white photography gives this a speical kind of beauty, even as the people in the film are behaving worse and worse towards each other and the disasters are piling up. And I don't know that this really is anything more than an amusing diversion for those of an educated bent. But it does its job, it's short, tight and amusing.
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