A Cock and Bull Story
(2005)
★ 6.1 IMDb · 156 votes
Year: 2005
Runtime: 94 мин
Country: United Kingdom
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Стив Куган, Роб Брайдон, Кили Хоуз, Ширли Хендерсон, Рэймонд Варинг, Conal Murphy, Joe Williams, Paul Kynman, Mark Tandy, Дилан Моран
Plot
Steve Coogan, an arrogant actor with low self-esteem and a complicated love life, is playing the eponymous role in an adaptation of "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" being filmed at a stately home. He constantly spars with actor Rob Brydon, who is playing Uncle Toby and believes his role to be of equal importance to Coogan's.
Two actors, as their make up is applied, talk about the size of their parts. Then into the film: Laurence Sterne's unfilmable novel, Tristram Shandy, a fictive autobiography wherein the narrator, interrupted constantly, takes the entire story to be born. The film tracks between "Shandy" and behind the scenes. Size matters: parts, egos, shoes, noses. The lead's girlfriend, with their infant son, is up from London for the night, wanting sex; interruptions are constant. Scenes are shot, re-shot, and discarded. The purpose of the project is elusive. Fathers and sons; men and women; cocks and bulls. Life is amorphous, too full and too rich to be captured in one narrative.