Unlanced Boil

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING

Directed and Written by Bruce Robinson

Take that title literally. Under pressure to come up with an advertising campaign for a new pimple cream, hard-charging Dennis Bagley (Richard E. Grant) develops a nasty little boil on his neck. Ah, yes, a psychosomatic symptom, bound to happen to anyone with a conscience who is trying to sell patent medicine. The viewer settles back comfortably, prepared for some nice English silliness about a chap trying to muddle through a trying situation.

But, no. When the boil comes to a head, it is a head. It has eyes, nose and a foul, funnily flapping mouth -- Bagley's id made manifest and shouting down his superego like some corporate raider ragging management at a stockholders meeting. Goodbye, Ealing Studios. Hello, Kafka. And for a while, pretty good Kafka. As he showed in Withnail and I, director Bruce Robinson has a truly weird sensibility, and Grant is his kind of guy, an actor morosely and ferociously resistant to normalcy and good cheer. In a story in which his wife (a spiritless Rachel Ward), his boss and medical science tell him all he needs to be cured is rest and a more optimistic outlook, Grant's is a presence to be treasured.

But Robinson is after more than black humor. He wants us to see this tormented body as a metaphor for a tormented body politic; the wildly successful British advertising business may be to the Thatcherian age what imperialism was to the Victorian. But here Robinson sets down his hot satirical lance and slaps a soppy poultice of preachment onto the end of his movie. It proves to be a 19th century home remedy for an ailment he has convinced us may be curable only by more up-to-date and radical means.