Like a soap bubble, writer-director Sally Potter’s arch sendup of the English intelligentsia (plus the odd coked-up banker) is brief, diverting, and laden with impending doom from its very first moments. (We open on a distraught and undone Kristin Scott Thomas, filmed in delicious black and white, opening her front door and raising a gun at her visitor.) Unlike a soap bubble, it is likely to leave you feeling just a bit dirtier than before you encountered it. The titular party is behing held in celebration of Thomas’ rising from the ranks of the rational, public-minded Opposition to become a Minister of Health, so of course the evening will include loopy mysticism, private privilege, and terminal illness. Goodhearted, right-thinking liberals will be unveiled as grasping, frightened primitives. Everyone is accomplished but awful, nothing is sacred, and apparently the great privilege of being privileged is that you get to dispense with anything resembling polite conversation. Potter’s writing hand is heavy, but her fantastic cast — Timothy Spall, Bruno Ganz, Patricia Clarkson, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, and Cillian Murphy — manages to lend the script a conversational lightness. Aleksei Rodionov’s camera work helps as well, lending an almost comedic air to the dire goings-on. (2017) — Matthew Lickona
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