“Irina Palm,” a sentimental film with a raunchy premise, uses the world’s oldest profession as a hook to generate interest in some equally venerable movie conventions.
Genially preposterous and pleasantly diverting, it balances calculation against humanity and generally comes out on top.
A key reason for “Irina’s” success is the actress who plays the title role. That would be the British singer and performer Marianne Faithfull, more than 40 years past her pop-chart debut with the classic “As Tears Go By,” who against some odds has found something involving in this role.
The odds are great because Faithfull’s life, including a much-publicized relationship with Mick Jagger, has been eventful enough to inspire two memoirs. And she is called on to play an Englishwoman who starts out as dowdiness and timidity personified.
Seven years a widow and a self-described “middle-aged frump,” Maggie is introduced as someone who has so focused her life around her seriously ill grandson, going so far as selling her suburban house to help pay for his treatment, that she’s unnerved her son Tom, the boy’s father (Kevin Bishop), and alienated the young lad’s mother (Siobhan Hewlett).
When it turns out that the only thing that might save her grandson is a new treatment available only in Australia, Maggie is determined to raise the money for that as well.
A trip to nearby London to seek employment is so disheartening that Maggie hardly knows what she’s doing when she stumbles into an establishment with a “Hostess Wanted” sign pasted on the window.
That establishment turns out to be Sexy World and the job, as explained by urbane, cosmopolitan owner Miki (veteran Yugoslavian actor Miki Manojlovic), is decidedly more hands-on than clearing away tea cups.
“Men come here to be touched by women,” Miki tells her — and, wouldn’t you know it, Maggie has just the kind of soft hands that drive men wild.
Of course, it takes more than one chat with Miki to turn dowdy Maggie into Irina Palm, “the best right hand in London.”
Faithfull is earnestness herself as a woman who so applies herself to the task that she develops a bad case of what’s described as “penis elbow.”
“Irina” never shows us anything untoward. We see the room Maggie works in, as well as the wall with its strategically placed opening that keeps her from having to look her customers in the eye, but that’s as far as it goes.
That level of shrewdness is characteristic of a film that has no problem at all with contrivances and can’t resist taking easy potshots at the conventional hypocrites who people Maggie’s world. If that makes “Irina” somewhat of a setup job, Marianne Faithfull’s performance pulls us back and helps us believe.
“Irina Palm”
R for strong sexual content, nudity and language. 1 hour, 43 minutes. Directed by Sam Garbarski; written by Garbarski, Philippe Blasband and Martin Herron; starring Marianne Faithfull, Miki Manojlovic, Kevin Bishop and Siobhan Hewlett. Opens today at Starz FilmCenter.
