Brian and Charles | Little White Lies

Bri­an and Charles

07 Jul 2022

Words by Laura Venning

Directed by Jim Archer

Starring Chris Hayward, David Earl, and Louise Brealey

Man in cold weather gear, holding a mannequin, surrounded by rocky terrain and hills.
Man in cold weather gear, holding a mannequin, surrounded by rocky terrain and hills.
3

Anticipation.

This went down well at Sundance but might be too kooky for its own good.

3

Enjoyment.

Slight but sweet and often laugh-out-loud funny.

3

In Retrospect.

Doesn’t quite justify feature length but it’s hard to resist a seven foot tall robot in a hula skirt.

Jim Archer expands on his 2017 short film about an eccen­tric Welsh inven­tor and his robot com­pan­ion with a fea­ture-length adaptation.

A crowd-pleas­er at the 2022 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, Bri­an and Charles will per­haps test the patience of any­one with an aller­gy to all things twee. Harold and Maude meets Wal­lace and Gromit star­ring a robot who loves cab­bages might sound unbear­ably quirky, but there’s much to enjoy in this fun­ny, small-scale fable about self-dis­cov­ery and let­ting go. 

Bri­an (David Earl), an affa­ble and odd ama­teur inven­tor, is holed up in a cot­tage in the win­try Welsh coun­try­side. Ini­tial­ly, direc­tor Jim Archer employs a mock­u­men­tary style as Bri­an demon­strates his eccen­tric cre­ations direct to cam­era, such as a belt to store hard boiled eggs and a regret­tably flam­ma­ble fly­ing cuck­oo clock.

To stave off lone­li­ness, Bri­an con­structs Charles Petres­cu’, a sev­en feet tall robot voiced and oper­at­ed by a won­der­ful­ly dead­pan Chris Hay­ward. He looks like Albert Ein­stein strug­gling to digest a wash­ing machine: a curly grey wig and glass­es are perched on a shop dummy’s head which itself sits on an enor­mous boxy chest. He’s remark­ably expres­sive, with every shuf­fle and head swiv­el exquis­ite­ly timed.

At first, Charles is depen­dent on his cre­ator who fuss­es over him like an over­pro­tec­tive par­ent, but even­tu­al­ly dreams of adven­tures beyond his Welsh hill­side home. Writ­ers Archer, Earl and Hay­ward cer­tain­ly mine the humor­ous poten­tial of a robot­ic voice say­ing unlike­ly phras­es, and it unde­ni­ably works as Charles matures from child to adult via ado­les­cent stroppiness.

It’s hard to resist Charles call­ing his creator/​surrogate father a bossy­boots” and insist­ing that he gets to sit in the front of Brian’s car. There’s also a won­der­ful Mon­ty Python-esque touch to Charles’ flat line deliv­ery (though per­haps that’s just because he repeats the name Bri­an endlessly).

Two men seated, one with a beard and glasses, the other appears to be a mannequin wearing a bow tie and jacket. Behind them, a framed fish illustration and a patterned wallpaper.

The film is expand­ed from a 2017 short, and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, it shows as the mechan­ics of the plot don’t quite work. Brian’s bud­ding romance with anoth­er local odd­ball played by Sherlock’s Louise Brealey is con­ve­nient­ly cutesy, and the final third creaks as the village’s local bul­ly (notably the only char­ac­ter
with a Welsh accent in a Welsh vil­lage) becomes an uncon­vinc­ing antagonist. 

The mock­u­men­tary form, car­ried over from the short, is also redun­dant after the first ten min­utes or so, and seems like an after­thought rather than a con­scious choice. And yet, despite its occa­sion­al trea­cli­ness, the film does have a melan­cholic under­tone. Come­di­an David Earl, long­time Ricky Ger­vais col­lab­o­ra­tor, has been per­form­ing as dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Bri­an for years. Here, Bri­an is clear­ly a deeply sad and des­per­ate recluse, though we are not privy to any backstory.

The loca­tion is beau­ti­ful but bleak, and the fact that it was shot in Decem­ber 2020 acts as a stark reminder to those peo­ple who may have been left behind by the iso­la­tion of the pan­dem­ic. Rather like its robot­ic pro­tag­o­nist, Bri­an and Charles is bolt­ed togeth­er from mis­shapen parts that don’t con­sti­tute an alto­geth­er suc­cess­ful whole. But, anchored by a strong but under­stat­ed per­for­mance from Earl, it’s awk­ward but ulti­mate­ly endear­ing, and hope­ful­ly this isn’t the last we see of Charles Petrescu.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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