DVD
Top Spot

Starring: Elizabeth Crawford, Laura Curnick, Kate Foster-Barnes and Helen Laker
Tartan DVD
RRP: £19.99
TVD 3538
Certificate: 15
Available 24 April 2006


Five dysfunctional girls grow up in Margate; through a mishmash of shots we follow the girls through some extreme experiences, including rape and suicide...

Top Spot (2004) is a film by Tracey Emin. The title refers to both a nightclub, where apparently you could get fingered, and the act of a man's penis hitting the womb during coitus - an unedifying little piece of knowledge that is provided by Emin at the start of the film.

One of the problems with the film is Emin's participation as narrator and off screen interviewer. Regardless of what you make of her as an artist she has little talent as an actress, making a lot of the dialogue at the beginning dull and flat. But then this is the whole point of the film, Emin's work revolves around an obsessional desire to display every fact of her life in her art. This is her story split between the five girls. The film contains no real discernible plot being more of a montage of the girls' dysfunctional lives. Although the film is shot on fairly cheap equipment it is unclear whether this was for budgetary reason or to give the film a more personal up close feel.

The five actresses spend most of the time looking positively embarrassed to be involved in the project. Whilst their performances are naturalistic, it is a form that works well in a documentary, but not so in a drama. Even when the girl's friend kills herself they are more interested in painting their nails than experiencing any emotion. What little emotion the film has is portrayed in the soundtrack - as if the girls require this external expression of emotion as they are ultimately dead inside.

Whilst the film is interesting, it feels more like one of Tracey's instillations that should be hanging on a wall in a gallery. With little in the way of plot or character development this work is best thought of as a series of vignettes rather than a coherent whole. Even when one of the girls kills herself we don't really care, as we never really get to know the girls outside their obsession with the seedier side of life. To be fair to the film, which was designed to appeal to teenage girls rather than craggy reviewers, I played it to one. No, I didn't just drag one off the street I sired one of my own. Her impression was that the music was great and that the girls were a bunch of uninteresting mingers. Can't argue about the music as a film this makes a good compilation album.

I presume that the film has been cut. When it was first released it gained an eighteen certificate, due mostly to the suicide scene. This incensed Emin so much that she withdrew it from circulation. I say cut as I really can't see why in its current form it would have got an eighteen.

Sound is stereo and the picture quality is variable. The film has subtitles for the hard of hearing. What redeems the DVD is the extras. Emin provides a commentary which goes a long way to making the film a lot more interesting, in fact as the girls say so little the film is preferable to watch with the commentary on. You also get another short film called Riding for a Fall which is really more home movie footage. There's a little piece on costumes which is fifty-four seconds long. Next up is I'm a Believer which has more home movie shots to the Monkees song, and a 2003 interview with Tracey - it's not really an interview as she refuses to answer the questions that her interviewer obviously wanted to ask and goes off on one about her own life.

It's hard to call Top Spot a coherent film, but it is something that might grab the interest of anyone who is as interested in Emin's life as she apparently is.

Charles Packer

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£18.74 (Amazon.co.uk)
   
£17.99 (Blahdvd.com)
   
£16.69 (Thehut.com)
   
£14.99 (Moviemail-online.co.uk)

All prices correct at time of going to press.