An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

The PD James book An Unsuitable Job for a Woman was turned into an ITV series in the late 1990s. Before then it had been a low budget feature film. Cordelia Gray (Pippa Guard) takes over the detective agency she was working for after her boss kills himself. Her first job is to find out the circumstances of why a young man Mark Calendar hanged himself. Mark was the son of a wealthy constructor James Calendar (Paul Freeman.) Elizabeth Leaming (Billie Whitelaw) is the stern housekeeper who approaches the detective agency. Cordelia becomes obsessed with Mark. He was estranged from his father. Cordelia discovers that Mark had been wearing women's clothes when he killed himself. Someone changed his clothes and cleaned the makeup off his face afterwards. She later doubts if Mark actually did commit suicide. This is an unsatisfactory movie for the viewer. An arty murder mystery. It is shot like a film noir. Director Christopher Petit wanted this to be like a ghost story that unearths hidden family secrets. He did not succeed. The characters are so thinly sketched, actors such as Freeman and Whitelaw are left struggling. Pippa Guard is underwhelming as Cordelia Gray. The scene when she nearly hangs herself is risible. Even the ending is underpowered.

The director did a good job of creating the atmosphere. Houses are characters as well as humans. The main actress does a good job. She was older in real life, but she conveys a much younger sensibility. This is a movie for people who appreciate moviemaking.

I don't know anything about the P D James source material, but Chris Petit's film of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman has a dark and unexpected take on its catchy title. As the detective doing the unsuitable job - engaged by a rich man to find out why his son hanged himself - Pippa Guard's Cordelia Gray unearths clues and follows leads as capably as any man probably would, and has sufficient physical agility and determination to escape at her major moment of peril. But she embodies little of the classic authority of the investigating protagonist: she expresses herself untidily and allows herself to identify too much with the dead man (to the point of almost accidentally replicating his suicide), and she's much more watched upon than she is the watcher - the fact that the dead man was found dressed as a woman contributes to the sense of destabilization. When she finds her way to the truth, it yields little sense of actual or figurative light - the denouement takes place in darkness and in near-silence, as the culmination of a long-standing familial fracture. The fracture isn't just that though - it's that of an England in which the stability of the grand houses and the bucolic cottages and the very proper accents is rotting from within, eaten away by avarice and evasion and hypocrisy (the solution to the mystery lies, literally, in the blood). Petit's minimizing of narrative in favour of mood and intuition has elements both of diagnosis and potential cure - given the movie's period, it's hard not to think of Margaret Thatcher as the overwhelming national reference point for any assessment of unsuitability, and for considering how that assessment might or might not correlate with gender identity. Certainly Thatcher's public persona was largely built on denying the intuitive, often - so to speak- un-Guarded openness that characterizes Gray here.

The real mystery is why this film was ever made. Goldcrest financed this and came a cropper. The film is so slow and leaden paced it is difficult to maintain any interest in what is going on. For this a large portion of the blame must attach to the director.

The director did a good job of creating the atmosphere. Houses are characters as well as humans. The main actress does a good job. She was older in real life, but she conveys a much younger sensibility. This is a movie for people who appreciate moviemaking.

The PD James book An Unsuitable Job for a Woman was turned into an ITV series in the late 1990s. Before then it had been a low budget feature film. Cordelia Gray (Pippa Guard) takes over the detective agency she was working for after her boss kills himself. Her first job is to find out the circumstances of why a young man Mark Calendar hanged himself. Mark was the son of a wealthy constructor James Calendar (Paul Freeman.) Elizabeth Leaming (Billie Whitelaw) is the stern housekeeper who approaches the detective agency. Cordelia becomes obsessed with Mark. He was estranged from his father. Cordelia discovers that Mark had been wearing women's clothes when he killed himself. Someone changed his clothes and cleaned the makeup off his face afterwards. She later doubts if Mark actually did commit suicide. This is an unsatisfactory movie for the viewer. An arty murder mystery. It is shot like a film noir. Director Christopher Petit wanted this to be like a ghost story that unearths hidden family secrets. He did not succeed. The characters are so thinly sketched, actors such as Freeman and Whitelaw are left struggling. Pippa Guard is underwhelming as Cordelia Gray. The scene when she nearly hangs herself is risible. Even the ending is underpowered.

I don't know anything about the P D James source material, but Chris Petit's film of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman has a dark and unexpected take on its catchy title. As the detective doing the unsuitable job - engaged by a rich man to find out why his son hanged himself - Pippa Guard's Cordelia Gray unearths clues and follows leads as capably as any man probably would, and has sufficient physical agility and determination to escape at her major moment of peril. But she embodies little of the classic authority of the investigating protagonist: she expresses herself untidily and allows herself to identify too much with the dead man (to the point of almost accidentally replicating his suicide), and she's much more watched upon than she is the watcher - the fact that the dead man was found dressed as a woman contributes to the sense of destabilization. When she finds her way to the truth, it yields little sense of actual or figurative light - the denouement takes place in darkness and in near-silence, as the culmination of a long-standing familial fracture. The fracture isn't just that though - it's that of an England in which the stability of the grand houses and the bucolic cottages and the very proper accents is rotting from within, eaten away by avarice and evasion and hypocrisy (the solution to the mystery lies, literally, in the blood). Petit's minimizing of narrative in favour of mood and intuition has elements both of diagnosis and potential cure - given the movie's period, it's hard not to think of Margaret Thatcher as the overwhelming national reference point for any assessment of unsuitability, and for considering how that assessment might or might not correlate with gender identity. Certainly Thatcher's public persona was largely built on denying the intuitive, often - so to speak- un-Guarded openness that characterizes Gray here.

The real mystery is why this film was ever made. Goldcrest financed this and came a cropper. The film is so slow and leaden paced it is difficult to maintain any interest in what is going on. For this a large portion of the blame must attach to the director.