Sally Potter's comedy-drama The Party is an enjoyably misanthropic affair boosted by some very fine performances and a screenplay almost as caustic as that of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Over its brisk 71 minute running time, all its characters reveal their darker sides. They're affluent and privileged types who appear to have the world at their fingertips but we quickly discover their capacity for backbiting as well as some of some of their most intimate and incriminating secrets.

The hostess, first seen in slow motion, close up and brandishing a gun, is politician Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas). She has just been made a government minister and is celebrating with some of her oldest, closest friends. Thatcher-like, she wants to show off her ability to hold high office but still attend to the catering. Her husband (a very gaunt looking Timothy Spall) sits listening to blues and jazz while she busies herself in her apron in the kitchen. The first guests to arrive are Janet's old friend April (Patricia Clarkson) and her infuriating partner, lifestyle guru Gottfried (Bruno Ganz), who speaks only in New Age clichés. The other guests are lesbian academic Martha (Cherry Jones) and her dungaree-wearing lover Jinny (Emily Mortimer), who has just discovered she is pregnant with triplets. Also present is city slicker Tom (Cillian Murphy). He brings a gun and cocaine into the house but arrives without his wife Marianne (who works for Janet and who, even in her absence, plays a pivotal role in the plot).

Aleksei Rodionov's black and white cinematography gives the characters a sheen of elegance but their behaviour grows ever more barbaric. Potter's screenplay slowly reveals their bad faith and duplicity. They've been having affairs with each other. Illness, addiction and betrayal are clouding their lives. The fates are against them.

This is a chamber piece, clearly shot quickly and on a relatively modest budget. There is pathos as well as humour in the way what should be a celebratory evening so quickly unravels. Potter includes slapstick elements (a champagne cork shattering a pane of glass, Tom's attempts to hide his gun in the dustbin) but these sit aside moments of real bleakness. Amid the mounting mayhem, the writer-director finds the opportunity to throw in references to the creaking National Health Service, to feminism, class and workplace politics.

Potter strikes a very swift tempo. At times, the film grows as manic as Cillian Murphy's increasingly strung out Tom who needs a line of coke to help him cope with every social challenge the party poses him. One moment Kristin Scott Thomas's Janet is worrying about her hair and texting her lover. The next she is in a state of extreme angst and is declaring her undying love for her husband. In its mixture of jauntiness and despair, her performance here recalls the one she gave in Anthony Minghella's film version of Samuel Beckett's Play. Spall is morose in the extreme while Ganz's equanimity in the face of every new misfortune becomes ever more irritating.

At times, The Party becomes a little glib. The hidden connections between the characters are easy to spot and we can predict precisely who's at the door at the film's delirious endpoint. This, though, is lively and invigorating filmmaking with an energy that belies its own pessimism.

The Party review

I have a lot of respect for those who can make a feature film from a very self-contained environment, but The Party is not quite feature length.

The Party sees Sally Potter return with an entertainingly caustic farce about politics, idealism and shifting gender roles in modern Britain. Set around a dinner party to celebrate left-wing politician Janet's (Kristin Scott Thomas) recent promotion to shadow health minister, what follows as her guests arrive has shades of Abigail's Party and all the harmony of an Edward Albee-scripted get-together as secrets and lies are exposed, drugs are consumed and vol-au-vents burn in the kitchen. Shooting in crisp black-and-white, Potter makes great use of her pressure-cooker setting to pit her characters - despondent husband Timothy Spall, sardonic friend Patricia Clarkson, coked-up banker Cillian Murphy, cliché-spouting life-coach Bruno Ganz, radical feminist Cherry Jones and newly pregnant ex-Master Chef contestant Emily Mortimer - against one another. Filmed in the midst of Brexit, The Party doesn't directly reference that calamitous event, but beneath all the barbed comments, cutting put-downs and feverish revelations it does expose how quickly old certainties and decades of partnership can be upended when matters of the heart get out of control.

The Party -- 71 minutes of fun, flickers of seriousness

Family, infidelity and politics are the chief themes of Sally Potter's film.

Video: Kristin Scott Thomas: 'I am good at being mean'

Actress Kristin Scott Thomas has admitted she is good at playing "mean and fierce" roles, after starring as a demanding Patricia Maxwell in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

"It doesn't make you feel very good being mean and fierce, it is much nicer playing people who are kind and sweet," she told BBC Breakfast.

The actress also revealed she has just returned from shooting a new film with Ryan Gosling in Thailand.

A naïve vicar (Rowan Atkinson) is blissfully unaware that his wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) is falling for her golf instructor (Patrick Swayze) and that his children are up to no good. Fortunately a housekeeper (Maggie Smith) arrives to spring-clean the family in her own special way. Fun British comedy.

The ghost of Joe Orton looms large over this spirited black comedy from White Noise scriptwriter Niall Johnson. A dark British farce, it boasts a delicious performance by ]Maggie Smith as an elderly housekeeper with a deadly way of resolving domestic unrest. Hired to look after the family of Rowan Atkinson's nerdy country vicar, she quietly sets about tackling their individual problems - from his son being bullied at school to his teen daughter's nymphomania.

While her resulting Serial Mom-style solutions are often predictable, they're no less entertaining, benefiting from some neat gallows humour and an edgy sense of fun. In fact, Smith outshines all the cast with her immaculate comic timing, despite strong competition from Patrick Swayze as a sleazy US golf instructor who's romancing Atkinson's wife, Kristin Scott Thomas.

Surprisingly, the only real downside is Atkinson, whose customary bumbling schtick feels forced and twee in an otherwise boisterous affair.

A would-be black comedy in a rural British setting, this sees vicar Walter Goodfellow (Rowan Atkinson, of course) employing a housekeeper, Grace (Maggie Smith), who just happens to be a released murderer. Equally unimaginative casting comes in the form of Kristin Scott Thomas as a foul-mouthed, frustrated wife and Patrick Swayze as a pervy American golf pro who gets the village ladies in a spin.

Grace sets about solving the Rev Goodfellow's family problems in her own unique style while the family engage in farcical sitcom banter (sometimes funny, sometimes not). It's like dumping a serial killer into a very, very long episode of The Vicar of Dibley and expecting it to work: there's no artful black comedy here, just an uncomfortable clash between broad provincial humour and a murder plotline.

The central cast are up to the job: Smith deadpans delightfully when she can, and Atkinson upgrades his bumbling Four Weddings and a Funeral performance to mildly amusing effect. But despite its genial characters, Keeping Mum is an undisciplined, ultimately unsuccessful experiment in British black comedy.