The London International Film Festival Review

WHITE ANGEL - CENTREPIECE FILM LFF
White Angel heralds the arrival of two young, talented filmmakers: producer Genevieve Jolliffe and director Chris Jones. More a film about serial killing than about a serial killer, White Angel offers a novel and very British view, whilst dealing with the complex (subtle?) differences between manslaughter and murder.

Leslie Steckler (Peter Firth) is a soft-spoken dentist who rents a room in Ellen Carter’s (Harriet Robinson) house. She is a successful writer on criminal psychology who is being hounded by the police in connection with her husband’s disappearance. Meanwhile, London is in the grips of a serial killer, ‘the White Angel’, and the dentist and the writer become entangled in a dangerous game of blackmail.

The plot is full of surprises, twists and turns (all best left untold) that keep you on the edge of your seat, relying on powerful psychological devices and avoiding unnecessary gore. In many ways it’s a first in its chilling (fictional) portrait of a very British way of serial killing. Mesmerizingly good, and a triumph of British independent production.
Rosa Bosch

Instead of moaning about the state of the industry, two young film-makers went out and raised money for their new thriller themselves. They talk to David Gritten

GIVEN the gloomy state of our film industry it is more than a little noteworthy that White Angel, a small low-budget movie about a serial killer made by two young debutant British film-makers, opens on Friday in 15 cinemas, three of them in London. But there’s more: producer Genevieve Jolliffe, 24, and director Chris Jones, 26, who also wrote White Angel, financed it wholly through private investors, without major distributors’ backing. To seek comparisons for such an underdog triumph one must think in terms of Stalybridge Celtic winning the FA Cup. How often do we hear that the British film industry is dead? Yesterday David Puttnam said that if Hollywood was like the Coca-Cola Corporation then European attempts to make films were like "the home-made lemonade business" Perhaps, but there is an astonishing amount of fizz left in the British lemon bottle and young film-makers on this side of the pond have proved time and again that a little ingenuity goes a long way.

British films have been financed privately before, but one of two things usually happens. Either the producers’ mothers and fathers lose all their money and the film never makes it into cinemas, or a major film distributor steps in to save the film’s tottering finances and assumes control of its destiny.

White Angel, astonishingly, has avoided both traps. "We’ve already told our investors they’ll get their money back," says Jones, "and we’ve done it without any help from a big film company. We’ve kept control all the way." He and Jolliffe persuaded some 50 people, most of whom had never invested in a film before ,to put sums ranging from £50 to £ 30,000 into White Angel. "We said to people ‘Don’t mortgage your house. Treat this like a flutter on the Grand National- with the knowledge that we have some inside info."’

Making White Angel was a long, hard slog which started two years ago. Cast and crew worked for deferred fees, among them Peter Firth (currently in Shadowlands) as the mass killer with a distinctive way of dispatching his victims, and Don Henderson (from TV’s The Paradise Club). Instead of having a script to show potential investors, Jolliffe and Jones scraped together enough money to get the film shot in 19 days. "Then we edited a lot of scenes together to show some new investors what it was about," says Jolliffe. "They put money in. And some of the original investors saw what we had and tripled or quadrupled their investment." Eventually they made a distribution deal with a small company called Pilgrim.

But Jolliffe and Jones are vague about the exact finances of White Angel. They say it cost "under a million pounds" but their sheepish smiles’ suggest the real sum was far less. "When you sell a film," Jones admits, "the buyers look at its cost. They won’t pay a lot for something that wasn’t expensive to make." Already the couple have secured deals in the US, Germany and the Pacific rim.

All of this is good news to their investors, who include Alan Smith, publisher of video and camcorder magazines. He first met Jones and Jollffe three years ago when his What Video? awarded them a prize for their short film The Thing from Beneath the Bed. "When they came back and said they were setting up White Angel," Smith recalls, "I was pleased to invest. I was just backing a hunch." He is the major investor, with a 30 per cent stake. As a tribute, Jolliffe and Jones named a gangster character in the film after him. "From a low base, they’ve made this film and got a national release," Smith says. "I think they’re remarkable."

Equally remarkable is their demeanour. They are down-to-earth, polite, enthusiastic, and confident with-out being arrogant. Jones, thick-set with a wispy beard, seems even younger than his years; he and Jolliffe, a vivacious young woman with cascading red hair, finish each other’s sentences.

They started five years ago, borrowing £5,000 from Prince Charles’s Youth Business Trust. They bought some office equipment and a year later received a further £ 2,000 expansion loan from the Trust. Thus their company, Living Spirit Pictures, was born. At first they made Gloucestershire their base, but recently have moved to Brighthampton, a village near Oxford.

"In London we’d be small fish in a big pond," says Jones. "Anyway, people there spend their time talking about it, not doing it." "And there are too many long lunches," adds Jolliffe. Jones caught the film bug while studying for A-levels. He made a Super 8 film for £50 and showed it at his college in the lunch hour, charging 10p admission. "The whole college turned out and I got a standing ovation."

Jones, who hails from Wigan, met Jolliffe, from the Isle of Wight, at Bournemouth Film School. She left after six months, and he fell foul of the school’s attitude that movies should be politi-cally correct and socially redeeming. After Bournemouth he applied to the National Film School but was rejected as being immature. "They said most of their applicants were 27 or 28," he remembers. "So I’m still not old enough to be there - yet I’ve made a fea-ture film."

Now they’re anxiously awaiting reviews of the film. They had a shock a few weeks ago when it emerged they they had shot a few scenes only a mile away from Gloucester’s Cromwell Street, site of a real serial killer’s exploits. Given that a character in White Angel boards up a body inside a house, this was uncomfortably close to art imitating life.

If the film is a success, Jones and Jolliffe say they will not be tempted to follow other bright young things to Hollywood. ’One doesn’t live to make films, one lives and makes films," Jones says. They have no plans even to leave Brighthampton. Two more films are in the pipeline, and they aim to develop their relationship with investors. "We’re anxious not to get too big too quick," says Jones, "because that way lies disaster."