Deep into the latest allusive diversion from Steven Soderbergh, Tom Burke, as the slippery agent Freddie Smalls, gets to deliver a variation on the famous tagline to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “You are cordially invited to an evening of fun and games at George and Kathryn’s,” he quips.
George, played by a boiled-dry Michael Fassbender, and Kathryn, regally embodied as Cate Blanchett, have no time for the histrionics Richard Burton (another George) and Elizabeth Taylor (then Martha) so relished in the 1966 film. They merely raise eyebrows. But at what? Are the characters recognising the reference or does that phrase not exist in this parallel universe?
No doubt Soderbergh, here working from a taut script by David Koepp, would be delighted to know the question had been asked. He now rarely makes fleshed-out standalone films. Like the same team’s scary Presence, released just a few weeks ago, this spy flick is another exercise in genre deconstruction.
No influence is here stronger than that of Len Deighton. Early on, echoing early scenes in the 1965 adaptation of that author’s The Ipcress File, George is seen being notably handy in the kitchen.
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The camera’s almost fetishistic interest in his spectacles – the horn rims polished to the sheen of black onyx – leaves us in little doubt that Michael Caine, star of that earlier classic, is always to the front of the current film’s mind. The cat-and-mouse games between husband and wife, both security operatives, further recall those in Deighton’s Game, Set and Match series.
With such a lineage, the plot defies easy summary. Everyone at the office, not least the blustery boss played by Pierce Brosnan, is concerned that a potentially apocalyptic software McGuffin may have been leaked to the Russians.
As is always the case (in movies and, as I understand it, real life), there is a mole near the top of the service. After discovering a few anomalies between what Kathryn has been up to and what she says she has been up to, George begins to suspect she might be the double agent. Or does he? The film sells us the notion that the couple’s undemonstrativeness may conceal the iciest of non-negotiable passions.
Those going in expectation of action will meet disappointment. Even by the sedate standards of Deighton and John le Carré, Black Bag is notable for shunning the biff and the bang. I believe just one gun is discharged. There is an explosion, but it happens perfunctorily, with the sound muted. Forget the vulgar running up and down escalators we expect from Slow Horses.
The greater body of this sleek, beautifully dressed production – as ever, shot by the director – comprises tense, swirly conversations in elevators, in rowing boats, in analyst’s offices, around dinner tables.
That reference to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? points us towards Edward Albee, that play’s author, but Harold Pinter (like Caine, a famously horn-rimmed personality) is at least as much an influence. Everyone speaks in terse, aggressive sentences laced with slow-acting poison.
More generally, Black Bag addresses Soderbergh’s unending addiction to the pop iconography of the 1960s. The technology, the architecture and the clothes are very much of the moment. But this class of conversational cruelty has never been so in fashion as it was in that odd postwar renaissance.
Is that altogether a good thing? No doubt the unrelenting archness will annoy many. But, honed to an economic 93 minutes, Black Bag beats all the current worthless streaming thrillers for wit, pace, style and commitment to the bit. Keep it up with a sequel, please.
In cinemas from Friday, March 14th
