I left the cinema feeling quite dirty, disgusted and slightly unsettled after watching The Riot Club, based on Laura Wade’s acclaimed theatre production Posh, and directed by Lone Scherfig. Nonetheless it was a brilliant piece of cinema that was upheld by great performances by the boys, especially Sam Claflin, whose character Alistair Ryle, frankly, I absolutely despised by the end of the movie. Set on the grounds of the elite university of Oxford, The Riot Club focuses on an exclusive, all-male society consisting of 10 members hand-picked from amongst the 20,000 or so students. According to Wade The Riot Club is a fictionalised version of Oxford’s unofficial Bullingdon Club founded approximately 1780, which included past members David Cameron, Boris Johnson, and George Osborne.
Shy of the 10-member criteria the club needs to survive, they conduct “Operation Grasshopper” to recruit two new members, the most best and the brightest from the best and brightest. Although it does help to follow the unspoken, unknown number one rule: don’t ask to be in The Riot Club, which one unfortunate wannabe does when he asks George Balfour (Jack Farthing), an existing member of the Riot, at the beginning of the movie.To join the society, nominees Miles Richards (Max Irons) and Alistair Ryle must undergo a series of initiation rounds: drinking a glass of Chateau Pretrus with a combination of a cigarette butt, a bogey, a hawking of saliva, a small tube of (what I’m pretty sure is) urine, and live maggots, quite a gagging moment to watch; drinking a sack of alcohol from a pierced condom while being read a series of questions which they have to memorise and answer after running a lap around campus; and their accommodation being trashed. Living by the rule of hedonism and debauchery, the club indulges in excessive feasting and drinking. At the same time as the young men revel in celebrating their wealthy position they also abuse it, as their ostentatious behaviour and lack of civility and respect for those lower in the financial food chain only serves to create a strong dislike from the audience towards the represented rich. The film involves everything you’d expect from a group of over-excited, over-privileged undergraduate boys, but with a darker, slimy element lurking underneath their prim-and-proper facades. Due to being banned from the local restaurants, the boys have to compromise and downgrade their dinner services when the club dinner is hosted at an isolated pub. Owned by a single father, him and his daughter of early-20’s struggle to get by. With his daughter’s student fees debt accumulating, her father reluctantly agrees to host The Riot’s event. The scene around the dinner table becomes the main focus of the film, showing just what happens when there is too much testosterone and ego in one room. With only a spark needed to ignite the mob mentality of the club, Alistair proves to be the manipulative and sly member who eggs on various despicable moments, involving the hooliganism attitude towards “poor people”, the sexual assault of Miles’s not-so-affluent girlfriend Lauren, and the brutal beating of the landlord. Arguably his behaviour derives from his desperation to impress the existing members of the club and to break away from his brother’s “legendary” shadow and cast his own. The film highlights the many issues within modern society, most notably the British class system but also the attitudes towards gender and sexuality. Victimising those who are not so fortunate, the boys believe their reprehensible acts can be redeemed by bribery; the most repugnant act I found to be was the offering of £27,000 to pay for Lauren’s student fees in exchange for oral sex on each Riot member. Pressured and overshadowed by reputable families The Riot Club becomes the outlet of wildness, anger, frustration, and sheer boredom for the boys as they struggle to create their own identity. However there is also the desirous connections the club creates amongst one another’s family. This proves successful for Alistair, as being the one to take the blame for the assault of the landlord, his acquaintance with Jeremy (the uncle of Riot member Harry) opens up a promising prospect of walking away a free man and a clean record. The film provides an insight of how a fragment of the spoilt rotten and filthy rich live and behave, drawing the conclusion that the line between the ordinary, working-class and the over-privileged is very much blurred. The only difference, apart from money, is the other has a posh accent.
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