Mona Lisa

 Dir: Neil Jordan/GB/1986/104 mins

LPs: Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane

In many respects, Mona Lisa could be called a love story. It's about an older man, who falls hopelessly for a younger woman. But, considering that director Neil Jordan's last film was Company of Wolves, it is no surprise that, whilst it is certainly about love, in the words of the song, it's every love but true love. 

After a stretch in prison, middle-aged cockney lad George played by Bob Hoskins (who else?) emerges into eighties London, estranged from his wife and amazed by a  world where computer technology and high-class porn are now big business. Given the job of chauffeuring a sophisticated call girl, Simone (Cathy Tyson), he comes to respect her and agrees to scour the porn-clubs of London for a young prostitute whom she knew in her early days as a streetwalker. 

The film opens light-heartedly enough, no more than a sharp satirical comedy, but this is soon enveloped in the dark, grimy backstreets of the London underworkd embodied by George's satanic employer, Mortwell, played with unexpected smoothness by Michael Caine. It  of the forties and fifteiesis a world where love is for sale and there are men eager to buy, in bitter contrast to George's romantic ideals, expressed in the songs of the forties and fifties. this is a film of both gentle comedy and harsh realism which, despite the somewhat unsavoury taste that it might leave in the mouth, is perhaps one of the Best British films made in years

ML