The first of eleven formally headed chapters that make up Ian Niles’ Con Job is entitled ‘The Reunion’. For having spent ten years abroad in Thailand, Tim (Dean Edwards) is back to be best man at the wedding of his friend Chris (director and co-writer Niles, in a gamely unflattering rôle) to Chloe, even though Tim knows that this will also mean being reunited with his estranged brother Angus (Menuhin Hart), who a decade earlier slept with Tim’s wife Felicia, driving Tim into despair and exile. Yet the first to arrive at Chris’ house – actually Chris’ late grandmother’s house, full of old belongings that he is gradually selling online – is not Angus but Chris’ supplement-swallowing, coked-up personal trainer Jordan (Aaron Berg), and it is only in the second chapter (‘The Actual Reunion’) that self-serving, insincere Angus will finally arrive.
That distinction, established early, between appearance and actuality propels this film. In reality Chris’ fiancée Chloe does not exist. Chris is going out with Ambre (Mila Besson), but cheats on her regularly with other women, and has no intention of marrying anyone. The wedding is a mere ruse, concocted by Angus and Chris, to lure Tim back, so that they can intoxicate him and get corrupt notary Jordan to witness him ‘signing’ (while unconscious) the paperwork that will grant Angus powers to sell their late father’s house to a development company for a massive profit.
This is the ‘con job’ of the title – Angus’ betrayal of a brother whom he has already betrayed once before. Therein lies the problem: not only are Chris and Angus utterly unscrupulous and ruled by their greedy appetites, but they are also just not very good at this game – as is economically demonstrated when Chris cannot resist having sex with the food deliverer Sarah (Julia Claire Schweitzer) in her car only to realise too late that she in fact is the one who has taken advantage of him, and tricked them all out of a very expensive meal. The film’s first con job is perpetrated not by, but against, this pair of swindlers – and what will follow is a series of mishaps brought about by dumb luck, their own incompetence and the unhinged behaviour of others.
From the start, the impression is that if Angus had simply asked Tim, himself cash-strapped, to sign away the family home, he would happily have done so. Instead, Angus and Chris’ over-elaborate, entirely unnecessary scheme quickly spirals out of control. When Jordan proves incapable of witnessing anything, Angus and Chris try to replace him as notary with Chris’ more honest neighbour Rhonda Monroe (Carolyn Sciff), and recruit Jeff (T.L. Flint), the immensely moronic, gleefully evil-embracing collector for Chris’ bookie, to impersonate the still sleeping Tim. All this deception soon comes with a body count, so that the titles of later chapters just serve as brief obituary notices for the film’s multiple casualties.
Con Job is a chaotic, Coën-esque clusterfuck on a budget. It unfolds, like a farce, mostly in a single location over just one day and night, although its coda is set six months later and in another location. Fortunately the cleverness of the script (co-written by Niles and his Guy Harry) is inversely proportionate to the stupidity of the (male) characters, who are all carefully individuated and each seem to imagine themselves the heroes of their own dumb-assed drama (the female characters, including Crystal Ward’s policewoman Officer Mitchell or Canning Robb’s tele-receptionist Madison, are similarly idiosyncratic but come off much smarter).
The ensuing collision of violently clashing intentions is comedy gold, greatly helped by a jaunty piano score that perfectly sets the wry tone, and some original songs whose lyrics (e.g. “I am so fucking fucked. I need better friends” or “who would want to kill me? I am such a nice guy”) provide hilarious choral commentary for all the on-screen antics. Meanwhile this is a study in generational decline, as two men liquidate all the valuables and property that their ancestors worked hard to acquire, yet still end up, by the ironically titled Chapter 11, with nothing to show for their efforts but their own idiocy and ill-fated, self-inflicted trajectory. After all, as Chris’ francophone, soon-to-be ex would know, con is also the French for ‘stupid jerk’, and in this film there is an ensemble of those on the job.
strap: Co(ë)n job: Ian Niles’ swindling farce makes dark comedy of fraternal treachery and generational decline
© Anton Bitel
