There is a phone booth in the English countryside that has become a place of pilgrimage. It took him a little while. At first the walkers were unaware that it was from this aedicule that the sad heroes of Withnail and I called London during a calamitous stay in the countryside. Badly distributed, badly promoted, the first feature film by Bruce Robinson, which offered his first role to Richard E. Grant, had been ignored when it was released on January 1, 1987. In 1999, the British Film Institute placed it at number twenty- ranked ninth in the best British films. Meanwhile, Withnail and I (“Withnail and I”) had gathered a cohort of admirers, fascinated by the realism and the dark humor of this portrait of a couple of friends, apprentice actors in London, at the end of the 1960s.

In an unimaginably filthy Camden Town apartment, Withnail (Richard E. Grant), a handsome young man of aristocratic appearance who uses all his talents to serve his alcoholism, coexists with “I” (Paul McGann, whose character will remain anonymous until the end credits), pretty provincial who hopes to find in London, if not glory, at least some panouilles.

Bruce Robinson, who wrote the screenplay based on his own (unpublished) novel, brings to the screen, two decades later, the dark side of Swinging London: the artistic overcrowding, the progress of addictions, the despair that start winning. None of this is explicitly stated. We discern it during the winter strolls of the two friends, from pub to pub. A feeling of claustrophobia quickly emerges.

charismatic and helpless

Withnail’s friend is aware of this, who persuades him to get the keys to Uncle Monty’s cottage (Richard Griffiths, future Uncle Dursley in Harry Potter). Ecstatic at the sight of his nephew’s friend, Uncle Monty agrees, and the pair set off for the countryside in a crumbling Jaguar. There, the vanity of their bucolic aspirations immediately dawns on them, while a surprise visit from Monty turns into a nightmare for “I”.

Robinson says he was inspired by his memories as a young actor, including the advances made to him by Italian director Franco Zeffirelli on the set of Romeo and Juliet (this mentioned in order to explain what could pass for homophobia without the thanks to Richard Griffiths’ interpretation). Most of this autobiographical material is elsewhere, in the description of the moment when one wakes up from the dream of youth, when reality asserts its rights.

Each of the incidents (a scandal in a small town tearoom, a haggle with neighboring farmers for some food, then, back in London, another business negotiation, this time with a drug dealer) draw the gap between Withnail and “I”. Charismatic and powerless, the character of Richard E. Grant imposes his grip on the film. Withnail also appears as a satirical version of the reclusive rockstar in a London squat played by Mick Jagger in Performance, by Nicolas Roeg (1969). It took decades for the actor to find a role of this magnitude, in The Forgers of Manhattan (2018), by Marielle Heller (available on Disney).