Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17981 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-07-13
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: Enhanced, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Running time: 76 minutes

Review
After being allotted millions of dollars for the curiously ineffectual Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle The Beach, director Danny Boyle decided to cut the fat and shoot two featurettes for the BBC, both shot on inexpensive digital video and written by playwright Jim Cartwright. Of the two, Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise is the more strained effort, but for its first half at least, the film's hyper-real take on youthful ennui versus old-school capitalism is genuinely entertaining. Think of it as Death of a Salesman on speed, or perhaps Glengarry Glen Ross for the fish-and-chips DJ set. As the histrionic appliance salesman whose slovenly way of life is about to catch up with him, Timothy Spall has never been as animated. Freed from the sad-sack demeanor he's adopted in most of Mike Leigh's work, he's like a walking, talking boil waiting to pop. Unfortunately, after 30 minutes, Spall's spittle-spewing dialogue gets to be a little too much to take, and supporting salesman Michael Begley is a little too meek to counterbalance the weight -- both literal and figurative -- of Spall's performance. Still, the film is made with enough scruff and ingenuity to succeed as a gritty slice-of-a-pathetic-life satire. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

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Synopsis
British filmmaker Danny Boyle offers a darkly comic glimpse of life in Britain in this short feature (shot on digital video equipment) produced for the BBC. Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise concerns Tommy Rag (Timothy Spall), a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman whose passion for salesmanship firmly outstrips his scruples. Tommy's new partner on his route is Pete (Michael Begley), a younger man who has dreams of working in the music industry. Pete's girlfriend, however, demands that he get a steady job, and has decided to withhold sex until Pete starts bringing home a steady paycheck. Tommy coaches Pete in his ruthless and shameless sales techniques, and together they start selling an impressive number of vacuums; Tommy thinks they may both be up for Salesman of the Year, but then Pete has to consider what could be a better offer. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Astonishingly hysterical performance by Timothy Spall!
I'll always have fond memories of this movie. I first saw it at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival, just 3 days after 9/11. You won't find a much tougher crowd for a comedic movie to premiere to than the one assembled for this particular screening, but such is the power of this film's dark humor that it was able to evoke convulsive laughter even from an audience this somber.

Danny Boyle, who soared with the British films SHALLOW GRAVE and TRAINSPOTTING, then fell on his face with the Hollywood duds A LIFE LESS ORDINARY and THE BEACH, got back in form with this effort, reborn of the freedom that digital technology affords today's daring (and invariably under-financed) filmmakers. He's obviously fascinated with the limitless possibilities for camera placement that the technology affords, embedding miniature cameras all over the sets to permit individual scenes to be viewed from a rapid-fire succession of perspectives. His editing and music skills, combined with stellar camerawork by noted dogme cameraman Anthony Dodd Mantle, results in a raw, exciting new `dogme-MTV' type of look ... a look that Boyle put to good use in his subsequent hit, 28 DAYS LATER.

But `look' alone cannot make a movie. You still need a script to work with, and Boyle is blessed here with an outstanding one from Jim Cartwright. The story is nothing less than a bold and brilliant comedic re-conceptualization of Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN for the digital age. And unlike Miller, Cartwright doesn't play coy with what the salesman is actually peddling -- you know right from the start that it's vacuum cleaners.

The `surrogate' character in this film is a likeable young slacker named Pete (Michael Begley) who loves dance music and has some mixing talent, but hasn't been able to carve out any kind of career in the music biz. His girlfriend has to perform strip-o-grams in order for them to make ends meet, and they both want out of this situation in the worst way. The girlfriend's plight gets especially humiliating one night when she performs at a retirement party for a vacuum cleaner salesman, and on a suggestion, Pete decides to pursue a career in this profession as a way out for both of them.

Enter the most blazing, mesmerizing, maniacal lead performance by an actor in many a moon. Pete is made an apprentice to star salesman Tommy Rag, played with incredible over-the-top intensity by veteran Timothy Spall. If there was an ABSOLUTE `best actor' award for the BEST performance, period, in a given year, Spall would have been my hands-down choice for 2001. He makes EVERY ruthless salesman in movie history (Kurt Russell in USED CARS, the gang from THE BOILER ROOM, etc.) look strictly `soft sell' by comparison. This is truly a performance for the ages ... ONE THAT NOBODY WITH A SALES JOB SHOULD MISS!

You may think that you've seen the `rookie paired with vet' thing done to death in the movies, both in dramatic and comedic contexts, but I can assure you that you've never seen anything even close to the `eye or the hurricane' variant that Boyle has come up with here. What he's managed to pack into little more than an hour's running time is astounding ... a fully realized comic tragedy of Shakespearean proportions that manages to be relentlessly and mercilessly funny.