‘Put on lots of perfume, Miss Smith! Everywhere! I like it!’ Sellers comes up trumps as the titular sad case businessman trapping secretary Sinead Cusack into a claustrophobic weekend of dinner, shopping, sinister play-acting, unconsummated lust and all-round creepiness. Yes, Pe’er’s playing a character with more than trace overtones of his own screwed-up personality here, but at least here there’s no shying away from the inherent nastiness, unlike, say, the loveably asexual Stan Laurelesque manchild in Being There. Having said that, it almost blows everything in a crummy cop-out ending where Cusack leaves felonious fiancee Jeremy ‘You can’t come streaking through ‘ere!’ Bulloch for a life of domestic, er, ‘bliss’ and piano lessons with the cadaverous Sellers.
