As a New Yorker in my teens, when I scoped this movie at the used bin, I admit I had only some foggy interest in Martin Amis's book, this film was supposed to be from. This was a beeline for me, to sixties folkie Donovan Leitch's actress-daughter Ione Skye, who was getting eyes the same year, as John Cusack's trophy interest in Say Anything (1989). In that show, Skye played the glowing "Class Brain" that Cusack has to clever and charm his way, to get to. In this movie, the situation is actually flipped in spite of starting out kind of similarly.
On appearances it looks like Skye, who has the titular role, is an honor student and society princess being groomed for the good life, that our annoying Ferris Bueller wannabe Charles (Fletcher, of Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels) is beyond his brand for. Even the name Rachel, it turns out, means purity of a female sheep. But that impression is shattered with smutty (and painfully insincere) purpose by director Harris when, after Charles manages to purloin Rachel from her Oxford-bound boyfriend DeForest (Spader) during a cafe date, he discovers her ambitions aren't for the city of dreaming spires, but a modeling agency in LA. To put it fast and terribly, all of Charles's maneuvering with books (despite proving out to be, unbelievably, an Oxfordian in disguise like the novelist Amis) to impress Rachel, is really to put his dream girl of poetry, on a dodgy pedestal. It's a pedestal where she's dressed (in Charles, and director Harris's mind) as an illiterate French maid. And, well, Rachel doesn't struggle either when DeForest spots her sprawled across his living room floor, with Charles, who manages to hack her social file-tree easily (Charles's files on his Amiga are data entries about his social gets). So they're both liars, having bested Britain's best, at his starchy game. Dexter Fletcher, plays precocious Charles (actually Fletcher was 30-years old looking 17), mugging the camera with his teeth, inviting all antisocial techies in the late 1980s, to arm themselves with Commodore Amigas, Rambo style (Amis's social hacker tale gets an upgrade with the puters). He lives with his sister, funded probably by her hippie thief boyfriend, played by young Jonathan Pryce (Brazil) as the story's true social gatecrasher, Norman. Norman's crime is to torment Charles's pretend art-loving absentee father at a dinner party, with PDA (Public Display Of Alcoholism) that also welcomes Rachel front and center, to the Thatcher joke, that's actually in with the Thatchers. Moral of this story is no harm done, when done to a good soundtrack, and all parties are effectively unchallenged at the end. For honest people who care, there's inborn weird Aubrey Morris, in a small part, and Michael Gambon. And lots of Ione Skye Leitch, in a nude makeup remover commercial.
On appearances it looks like Skye, who has the titular role, is an honor student and society princess being groomed for the good life, that our annoying Ferris Bueller wannabe Charles (Fletcher, of Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels) is beyond his brand for. Even the name Rachel, it turns out, means purity of a female sheep. But that impression is shattered with smutty (and painfully insincere) purpose by director Harris when, after Charles manages to purloin Rachel from her Oxford-bound boyfriend DeForest (Spader) during a cafe date, he discovers her ambitions aren't for the city of dreaming spires, but a modeling agency in LA. To put it fast and terribly, all of Charles's maneuvering with books (despite proving out to be, unbelievably, an Oxfordian in disguise like the novelist Amis) to impress Rachel, is really to put his dream girl of poetry, on a dodgy pedestal. It's a pedestal where she's dressed (in Charles, and director Harris's mind) as an illiterate French maid. And, well, Rachel doesn't struggle either when DeForest spots her sprawled across his living room floor, with Charles, who manages to hack her social file-tree easily (Charles's files on his Amiga are data entries about his social gets). So they're both liars, having bested Britain's best, at his starchy game. Dexter Fletcher, plays precocious Charles (actually Fletcher was 30-years old looking 17), mugging the camera with his teeth, inviting all antisocial techies in the late 1980s, to arm themselves with Commodore Amigas, Rambo style (Amis's social hacker tale gets an upgrade with the puters). He lives with his sister, funded probably by her hippie thief boyfriend, played by young Jonathan Pryce (Brazil) as the story's true social gatecrasher, Norman. Norman's crime is to torment Charles's pretend art-loving absentee father at a dinner party, with PDA (Public Display Of Alcoholism) that also welcomes Rachel front and center, to the Thatcher joke, that's actually in with the Thatchers. Moral of this story is no harm done, when done to a good soundtrack, and all parties are effectively unchallenged at the end. For honest people who care, there's inborn weird Aubrey Morris, in a small part, and Michael Gambon. And lots of Ione Skye Leitch, in a nude makeup remover commercial.