Billie Piper’s character, Mandy, deals with some awful men in Rare Beasts, the directorial debut from the popstar-turned-actor-now-director. There’s the sleazy, manspreading boss (‘You have terrible energy, but you’re so pretty’). There’s her shambolic, heavy-drinking father, brilliantly played by David Thewlis. Then there’s Pete (Leo Bill), who tells her on a first date that she’ll probably be terrible at blowjobs because ‘You’ve got too many teeth.’
But Mandy finds Pete’s unfiltered misogyny oddly attractive, perhaps because he articulates out loud her inner monologue of self-hatred. ‘We’ve all met men like Pete,’ Billie told Grazia at a screening of the film this week, adding she wants it to ‘challenge modern feminism.’
‘I started writing the screenplay after my second son was born, when I was 30,’ she explained. ‘The world was telling us that we could have it all, but all I could see around me was female crisis.’
The intensely unnerving film is an anti-romantic comedy, in which every character (including nihilistic single mum Mandy) is unapologetically difficult. Most women will feel thorny recognition at the inebriated girls’ night in, where frank conversations about sex are punctuated by pauses to listen for the baby upstairs, and the skewering of anti-anxiety self-help trends like tapping.
Lily James has a brilliant cameo as a new bride who embraces every element of love, honour and obey. ‘I’m a post-post-post feminist. That’s our gift as women – we can see through all that arrogance and rage,’ she grins happily, before taking part in the most surreal and cathartic first dance ever.
Meanwhile, Mandy’s parents represent the tail end of romantic relationships. ‘You were such a ray of light when I met you,’ says Mandy’s dad to her mum, in a rare moment of self-awareness, ‘and I stole that from you every day.’ ‘Well,’ replies her mother (Kerry Fox), ‘that’s marriage.’
There is no doubt that Rare Beasts will have its critics, not least because Billie Piper is a young woman who has made a film that one reviewer at the Venice Film Festival described as ‘brazenly combative.’
Like Pete and Mandy, Rare Beasts is blunt, raw, and doesn’t care if it makes you feel uncomfortable. And that’s why you won’t be able to stop thinking about it.
Rare Beasts will screen at the BFI London Film Festival{
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