Jessica Brown Findlay: ‘Posh’

First Stills of Max Irons, Sam Claflin, Holliday Grainger and More in Lone Scherfig’s ‘Posh’

Posted by Linda Ge

The privileged young men of Lone Scherfig’s “Posh” line up for a group photo in the first official stills released from the big screen adaptation of Laura Wade’s controversial 2010 play, unveiled today by Empire Online. Max Irons and Sam Claflin have the lead roles and are front and center here, while a second still has them conversing with Holliday Grainger, who plays a classmate.

Irons and Claflin play Miles and Allister, first year students (kinda pushing it there) who are desperate to join the Riot Club, the most exclusive and powerful club on campus. It’s fictitious, but largely based on the real life Bullingdon Club, an exclusive society at Oxford University to which such prominent British figures as Prime Minister David Cameron belonged. The action takes place over the course of one fateful night at the Bull’s Head pub. Sam Reid, Freddie Fox, Olly Alexander and Douglas Booth are part of the club, while Jessica Brown Findlay plays the female lead of Rachel, a waitress who has the misfortune of waiting on the boys, and Natalie Dormer is also in for a supporting role.

Needless to say, tons of rising stars in this one, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on it. “Posh” already has a September 19th release date in the UK, but no US distribution just yet.

Plot

Ten members of "The Riot Club", an exclusive Oxford University dining club, have rented out a country pub's dining room for their termly dinner. Their president, James, who is about to leave university, is falling out of love with the club and promises the suspicious landlord Chris and his waitress daughter Rachel that he will keep things under control. While James avoids his presidential duties, others vie for his position. Inspired by his godfather Jeremy, a former Riot Club member and now a Tory MP, Guy tries to impress the boys with a "ten bird roast'. Others are less restrained; one has hired Charlie the prostitute. When Charlie arrives she refuses to get under the table and perform oral sex on the boys; they are surprised at her scruples.
As the members get more drunk and rowdy their bullying of each other and of Chris and Rachel gets worse. They try to force Rachel to kiss them all; she runs out and they wreck the room. Chris bursts in outraged and the members assault him, knocking him out. Horrified, they panic and bar the door, despite the landlord being seriously hurt. Eventually they all agree to pin the blame on Alistair, who has consistently riled them throughout the night. They agree that, as they will all end up being successful, they will look after Alistair after university and make sure they 'see him right'. They open the door to the distraught Rachel and allow her to call an ambulance.
Weeks later Alistair meets with Jeremy, who has successfully managed to weaken the charge against Alistair and effectively get him off the hook. Intrigued by Alistair's politics, Jeremy promises Alistair that he will be keeping a close eye on Alistair in future and that he has high hopes for him.

REVIEW

There are only two women in the cast: one is Rachel, the waitressing (but also university-educated) daughter of the inn’s landlord, the other is Charlie, an escort hired for the night by one of the boys. A second-wave feminist play might have drawn a different gender line, taking the woman’s part and refocusing on women as the verbally and physically harassed victims of the boys’ misogynist behaviour. But Wade’s women eschew the victim role and stand their ground. Charlie refuses to accede to the boys’ request that she service all of their group ‘members’, while Rachel shuns their attempts to make her the sex substitute for Charlie. There came a point, as the drunken boys gathered riotously around Rachel, when I felt the drama was on the knife-edge of a rape scene, though Wade cannily shifts the escalating violence away from Rachel, leaving the father as the hapless target of the boys’ drunken aggression.