The only Riot Club review you need to read

Sickening stereotypes and brutish behaviour – Lucy Clarke tells all


Ignoring social commentary, how good is the film?

Upon hearing that I would be seeing The Riot Club, a friend of mine expressed the hope that it wouldn’t ‘sickeningly misrepresent’ Oxford University. A misrepresentation? Perhaps. A sickening film? Certainly.

The Riot Club isn’t a film I would say I enjoyed watching. I certainly couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen. It’s brutal even as it’s beautiful, gorgeous young men in tailcoats lounging about in cloisters plotting vile betrayals, priceless glasses being smashed against wooden panelling, perfectly orchestrated debauchery set to a well-timed soundtrack.

It’s a classily put together affair, well shot, with the sort of indie soundtrack that could be used by BBC soundboarders – Alt-J’s Breezeblocks accompanies a classic shot of Oxford from the rooftops – and some excellent transitional shots between the antics of the Club and the rest of society. Laura Wade’s script is deft, constructing a set of characters that are both believable and unimaginably repellent, while Lone Scherfig’s direction conveys the despicable nature of the “Riot Club”.

que bulla bulla

But the film’s real achievement is its tone. At first, I feared it would stray too far into glamour. Hugo (Sebastian Reid) gives a grand speech, apparently gargling through a mouthful of glass, about the poetry of the club, while a shot of Harry (Douglas Booth) receiving a post-fencing match blowjob from a girl who could have stepped off the pages of Country Life was almost too ridiculous to bear.

But it is to Wade and Scherfig’s credit that the film doesn’t veer that way. Indeed, the tone shifts into something deeply unsettling as we see the ridiculous public school boys who laugh inanely at the prospect of hiring prostitutes and throw up all over Lamborghinis fail to realise there’s anything wrong with their behaviour.

It is pitched perfectly, the dinner that has Claflin ranting about his hatred of poor people (too well-acted to seem anything but serious) while his drunken peers eat trifle with their hands, percussive snorts of cocaine punctuating his words, and escalates into destruction, misogyny and violence truly horrifying. It’s difficult to watch, well-timed cuts between the idiotic behaviour of the Club and members of the public providing a disgusting contrast. There’s no glamour here, only cold horror.

It’s compelling viewing, the film a masterpiece in playing despicable characters: Claflin’s Ryle is an anti-NHS twerp who only says please as he’s having his face ground into the kerb by muggers. The boys of the Club are well-played, the dead-eyed stares of boys playing at a bacchanal making your skin crawl.

Their behaviour is clearly depicted as idiotic, and far from harmless, the Club’s disproportionate ire over their demands not being fully met at their dinner one of the scariest things I’ve seen in the cinema in a long time.

“who cares, at least they’re hot”

The political dimension of the film is a continual (if somewhat clumsy) presence, from the opening scene’s reminder that the original ‘Lord Riot’ would have been a Justice of the Peace, to Hugo’s soft statement (as Miles tries on his tails for size) that these boys will be ‘behind important desks’. It’s not subtle, but it’s effective, and timely. And indeed, it’s chilling, the slavish expression on Freddie Fox’s face as he gazes up at Claflin’s diatribe against the poor unsettling the quietest cinema audience I’ve ever been a part of.

There are shortcomings. The scenery porn is unrelenting, while the decision to give Lauren (Holliday Grainger), the rather less well-off and socially liberal girlfriend of Miles, a strong regional accent in comparison to the cut glass tones of the Club’s future-Tory members, grated a little. Moments that are clear setups for later disaster are clearly pointed out to the audience, slightly too heavy-handed for a script that is otherwise perfectly pitched.

But overall, The Riot Club is a stylish film that perpetuates Oxford stereotypes of glamourous debauchery even while undercutting them with the brutish truth. As an accurate portrayal of Oxford, it fails, but as a damning critique of the men who grow up to be our politicians – “people like us don’t make mistakes”, remarks the slimy Uncle Jez, a former member of the Club who now “runs the country” – The Riot Club cuts, coldly, to the bone.