Elena C. Lario | Nigel the Plonker / 1999

fool for love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Elena C. Lario (screenwriter and director) Nigel the Plonker / 1999

 

Featuring Paul Coldrick, Karl Ryan, and Sara Jane Feldman, British director Elena C. Laio creates in Nigel the Plonker a work that might have existed in 1920 without our remembering it.

     A gentleman, Arthur (Ryan), is out for a Sunday stroll in the park with his girlfriend, Charlotte (Feldman) when a man, Nigel (Coldrick), rushes up to them, handing Arthur a bouquet of flowers and grabbing the hands of the lady, while pleading in this silent film via subtitles, “Please, please, I want my love back.” Arthur hands the bouquet to Charlotte who hands it back to Nigel, as the heterosexual pair, heads in the air, march off, clearly offended.

     But in the very next glen there again is Nigel, arms open, calling out “Sweetie!” Charlotte grabs Arthur’s hand and pulls him in the other direction. As they walk along, they comment on his “revolting trousers.” They sit down on a bench to continue their conversation, but almost immediately Nigel creeps up behind them, staring in joy at his “lover,” Arthur’s face. The couple hurry off.

     As the couple play peek-a-book around a tree and Arthur cuts a heart upon its bark, they look up to see Nigel nicely embraced by its upper branches. This time Charlotte does not even wait for Arthur to run off, disgusted with the constant interruptions in their innocent love-making. Nigel falls rather clumsily to the ground, but even then, finding a posy in the grass, calls out “Oh, mon amour!” 

      Arthur goes after Charlotte and faces her for a final showdown, immediately going off to the side to drag Nigel out of the bushes, now ready to beat him up.   

     Charlotte, however, intrudes, standing between them to prevent a fight. She grabs one of the hands of each and, smiling with all the sarcasm she can manage, places their hands together in a holding position. Gradually, they wind them round one another, come together with an expression of “ah joy, what rapture!,” while swinging their hands together while walking off. Charlotte shrugs her shoulders and walks away. Having them permission for the love they clearly prefer, she must now go in search a man more appropriate for her.

      This is a lovely little tribute to what almost happens in early films when the other is in drag, and might have happened in some of the films if only the directors had been given a little push.

     In Cockney, a plonker is an idiot; but in this case Nigel seems to be a wise fool, calculating just how much it will take to make Charlotte give him back his man, although he may still be a fool for wanting him back.

 

Los Angeles, August 5, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).