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| From Notting Hill to Hampstead: why do directors get London so wrong? | From Notting Hill to Hampstead: why do directors get London so wrong? |
| (12 days later) | |
| “Portobello Road! Portobello Road! / Street where the riches of ages are stowed / Anything but anything a chap can unload / Is sold off the barrow of Portobello Road / You can find what you want in the Pooooortobelllllllo Road!” | “Portobello Road! Portobello Road! / Street where the riches of ages are stowed / Anything but anything a chap can unload / Is sold off the barrow of Portobello Road / You can find what you want in the Pooooortobelllllllo Road!” |
| Until I moved to London from New York that song, performed in the 1971 Disney classic Bedknobs and Broomsticks, formed the entire basis of my idea of the city. As a kid I was obsessed with this movie, in which three children are sent out of London during the second world war, only to go back into the city with their new guardian – who happens to be a witch, and even more excitingly happens to be Angela Lansbury – to find a book of spells which will end the war. So they head, yes, to Portobello Road. | Until I moved to London from New York that song, performed in the 1971 Disney classic Bedknobs and Broomsticks, formed the entire basis of my idea of the city. As a kid I was obsessed with this movie, in which three children are sent out of London during the second world war, only to go back into the city with their new guardian – who happens to be a witch, and even more excitingly happens to be Angela Lansbury – to find a book of spells which will end the war. So they head, yes, to Portobello Road. |
| Modern movie representations of London have about as good a reputation among Londoners as Dick van Dyke’s cockney accent. And with fair reason. I think one of the biggest differences between London and New York is that whereas New York really does look in real life like it does in the movies, the movie versions of London are so wildly detached from the reality they may as well be set on a different planet. | Modern movie representations of London have about as good a reputation among Londoners as Dick van Dyke’s cockney accent. And with fair reason. I think one of the biggest differences between London and New York is that whereas New York really does look in real life like it does in the movies, the movie versions of London are so wildly detached from the reality they may as well be set on a different planet. |
| Thus, when I arrived in London and moved not far from the actual Portobello Road, I fully expected it to be an exciting land where rubber-faced cockney men do impromptu dance routines, and women shout “’oo do you fink you are, the queen of Sheba?” at little girls. Imagine how my heart broke when I found it to be a street of Sloaney girls in hotpants buying overpriced slips and American tourists looking for the pub in which Bill Clinton once drank a Guinness. | Thus, when I arrived in London and moved not far from the actual Portobello Road, I fully expected it to be an exciting land where rubber-faced cockney men do impromptu dance routines, and women shout “’oo do you fink you are, the queen of Sheba?” at little girls. Imagine how my heart broke when I found it to be a street of Sloaney girls in hotpants buying overpriced slips and American tourists looking for the pub in which Bill Clinton once drank a Guinness. |
| Which brings us to Hampstead, the most recent Hollywood vision of London and, after Notting Hill and Wimbledon, the latest to be named after a neighbourhood. It’s like Hollywood is inspired solely by the areas of the city that have flagship Boden and White Stuff stores. We all have to find our muses where we can. | Which brings us to Hampstead, the most recent Hollywood vision of London and, after Notting Hill and Wimbledon, the latest to be named after a neighbourhood. It’s like Hollywood is inspired solely by the areas of the city that have flagship Boden and White Stuff stores. We all have to find our muses where we can. |
| The story of a lonely American widow, Emily (Diane Keaton), who becomes obsessed with a cranky Heath dwelling itinerant called Donald with anger issues (Brendan Gleeson), Hampstead isn’t, amazingly, a horror movie. Rather, just like Notting Hill and Wimbledon, it aspires to be a romcom in which a quirky American gal helps to unbutton a buttoned-up chap she meets in London, because that’s what American women are here to do. Hell, Richard Curtis built an entire movie empire based on this idea (Four Weddings, Notting Hill, Love Actually, About Time.) | The story of a lonely American widow, Emily (Diane Keaton), who becomes obsessed with a cranky Heath dwelling itinerant called Donald with anger issues (Brendan Gleeson), Hampstead isn’t, amazingly, a horror movie. Rather, just like Notting Hill and Wimbledon, it aspires to be a romcom in which a quirky American gal helps to unbutton a buttoned-up chap she meets in London, because that’s what American women are here to do. Hell, Richard Curtis built an entire movie empire based on this idea (Four Weddings, Notting Hill, Love Actually, About Time.) |
| So picturesque is this magical London that even the homeless are Instagrammable | So picturesque is this magical London that even the homeless are Instagrammable |
| There is a lot about Hampstead to discuss, not least why no one once says to Emily, “You know, you dress exactly like Annie Hall.” But the depiction of London is certainly more amusing than any of the movie’s rom, let alone its com. Hampstead is shown to be solely a quaint land of cute cobbled streets where you can buy coffee from a handsome barista in an old phone box. So picturesque is this magical London pocket that even the homeless are Instagrammable: Donald’s homemade shack is so chic that when a lawyer turns up to evict him I assumed at first he was a Foxtons estate agent suggesting he price it at £1.5m. | |
| There used to be an obvious distinction between movies that were set in London and had actual British people involved in making them and those that did not. But this is no longer true: now movies set in London are either terrifyingly apocalyptic (Attack the Block, Dirty Pretty Things, 28 Days Later) or, more commonly, make the city twinkle like a Werther’s Originals advert with Simon Callow lurking around every corner. (He pops up in Hampstead because it would be illegal for him not to.) | There used to be an obvious distinction between movies that were set in London and had actual British people involved in making them and those that did not. But this is no longer true: now movies set in London are either terrifyingly apocalyptic (Attack the Block, Dirty Pretty Things, 28 Days Later) or, more commonly, make the city twinkle like a Werther’s Originals advert with Simon Callow lurking around every corner. (He pops up in Hampstead because it would be illegal for him not to.) |
| Now, I love all of Richard Curtis’s pre-Love Actually work, but he is clearly the source of this latter shift. His American-tourist-friendly portrayals of London proved, unsurprisingly, so much more appealing to international audiences than, say, Mike Leigh’s cobble-free take on the city in 1993’s Naked. Curtis’ success then unleashed a deluge of movies, made even by British film-makers, which make 1964’s Mary Poppins look grittily realistic, such as Bridget Jones’s Diary and Sliding Doors. | |
| The director of Hampstead, Joel Hopkins, is, as it happens, from London and there is no doubt his movie loves its idea of Hampstead – and London in general. What it does not love, however, is actual Londoners: every single English person in this movie is terrible. Emily’s accountant is a lech, her friends are openly acknowledged to be hateful and even her adult son makes her cry for no reason in Yo! Sushi. The English women who live in Emily’s apartment block are all desperate for developers to buy up the original buildings around them and turn them into fancy developments which will block their view of the Heath, because everyone knows Londoners love it when that happens. | The director of Hampstead, Joel Hopkins, is, as it happens, from London and there is no doubt his movie loves its idea of Hampstead – and London in general. What it does not love, however, is actual Londoners: every single English person in this movie is terrible. Emily’s accountant is a lech, her friends are openly acknowledged to be hateful and even her adult son makes her cry for no reason in Yo! Sushi. The English women who live in Emily’s apartment block are all desperate for developers to buy up the original buildings around them and turn them into fancy developments which will block their view of the Heath, because everyone knows Londoners love it when that happens. |
| This is one of the problems with movie depictions of London. It’s not so much that they don’t capture the whole: given London’s size and variety, how could they? It’s that they are so disdainful of the locals. Curtis’ white-out of Notting Hill was much mocked in its time and a similar thing happens here. But this isn’t entirely about race: it’s the weirdly limited social lives of the characters. Post Four Weddings, London movies invariably suggest Londoners mix in smug, cold coteries made up only of their oldest friends and almost never talk to anyone else. Which is strange because that is the opposite of most Londoners’ lives. | This is one of the problems with movie depictions of London. It’s not so much that they don’t capture the whole: given London’s size and variety, how could they? It’s that they are so disdainful of the locals. Curtis’ white-out of Notting Hill was much mocked in its time and a similar thing happens here. But this isn’t entirely about race: it’s the weirdly limited social lives of the characters. Post Four Weddings, London movies invariably suggest Londoners mix in smug, cold coteries made up only of their oldest friends and almost never talk to anyone else. Which is strange because that is the opposite of most Londoners’ lives. |
| One of the charms of London is how closely the shabby rubs up against the glamorous, and modern movies refuse to acknowledge this. Instead, there is a sharp divide between the chocolate box and the gutter, and never the twain shall mix. There isn’t even a bin for dog poo in Hampstead’s Hampstead Heath, for heaven’s sake. Withnail and I, by contrast, totally got this quirk of the city and, in the character of Withnail, encapsulated the shabby and glamorous in human form. But my favourite London movie remains the 1991 John Goodman comedy King Ralph, because it shows how near Buckingham Palace sits next to Soho sleaze and council tower blocks, and how much benefit derives from the mixing between them. As messages go, that seems a lot truer to London. | One of the charms of London is how closely the shabby rubs up against the glamorous, and modern movies refuse to acknowledge this. Instead, there is a sharp divide between the chocolate box and the gutter, and never the twain shall mix. There isn’t even a bin for dog poo in Hampstead’s Hampstead Heath, for heaven’s sake. Withnail and I, by contrast, totally got this quirk of the city and, in the character of Withnail, encapsulated the shabby and glamorous in human form. But my favourite London movie remains the 1991 John Goodman comedy King Ralph, because it shows how near Buckingham Palace sits next to Soho sleaze and council tower blocks, and how much benefit derives from the mixing between them. As messages go, that seems a lot truer to London. |
| • This article was amended on 3 July 2017. An earlier version mistakenly said Mary Poppins was released in 1968. This has been changed to 1964. |
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