THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

The Arts: Curly tale of a Jewish boy in finding his roots
HUGO DAVENPORT

IT IS an old saw in the entertainment business that escapist comedy will do brisk business during the times of recession. And there are now indisputable signs that the British talent for making funny films, long sunk in the depressive doldrums, is undergoing a much-needed renaissance.

During the past year or so, we have seen Hear My Song, Peter’s Friends and Soft Top, Hard Shoulder – British films which have brought a degree of pleasure to audiences out of all proportion to their modest budgets. This week sees the release of what is, for my money, the funniest yet: the crazy eccentric Leon the Pig Farmer.

This loony film, at once demented comedy of manners and blithe excursion into home-grown surrealism, was made for #150,000 – a pittance even by British standards. A top-notch cast and crew agreed to work for nothing after the joint director-producers, first-timers Gary Sinyor and Vadim Jean, were turned down flat by the BFI, British Screen and Channel 4. All three should now be kicking themselves.

Leon Geller (Mark Frankel), a nice Jewish boy from north London with a good job as an estate agent, discovers by accident that his real father is not, after all, the net-curtain manufacturing king Sidney Geller (David De Keyser). Thanks to an error by the artificial insemination clinic which once treated his mother, Judith (Janet Suzman), he is actually the son and heir of Yorkshire pig farmer Brian Chadwick (Brian Glover).

Dumped by his old flame, Lisa (Gina Bellman), and then by his gorgeous non-Jewish girlfriend, Madeleine (Maryam D’Abo) – she likes Jewish men for their intensity, not to mention their aptness as subjects for her crucifixion sketches – Leon heads north to find his real father. Before long Brian and his wife, Yvonne (Connie Booth), are adopting Jewish customs to make him feel at home while Leon reluctantly learns the art of artificially inseminating pigs.

The film has a ripe, seaside-postcard naughtiness. It extracts much comic mileage from kosher custom and from the device of having total strangers, inexplicably knowledgeable about Leon’s private affairs, butt in constantly with finger-wagging advice like some paranoic Greek chorus. And the pitch of absurdity is gleefully raised throughout.

Leon has his own cross-breeding accident with a pig and a sheep; when the two sets of parents meet, the Chadwicks act Jewish, while the Gellers assume lah-di-dah county accents. The mockery is very funny and disarmingly even-handed; at once affectionate and satirical towards Jewishness. An off-the-wall – off the wailing wall, in fact – delight.