In a small Yorkshire town in 1947, a pig is being illicitly reared to provide meat for a forthcoming banquet of local dignitaries celebrating the marriage of Princess Elizabeth. That is, until a timid chiropodist (Michael Palin) pig-naps the animal, urged on by his grasping wife (Maggie Smith), who sees it as a possible ticket out of their glumly austere lives and up the social ladder.
So begins A Private Function (1984), originally titled Pork Royale, Alan Bennett’s first script for cinema. With finely rendered performances from Palin, Smith – who is hilariously sour as what Time Out called “a Lady Macbeth of the aspidistras” – and a host of British talent (Denholm Elliott, Richard Griffiths, Bill Paterson, Liz Smith, Alison Steadman), the film’s tone teeters on the brink of unwholesomeness without ever quite tipping over.
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