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According to Steve Coogan, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy was "a post-modern classic written before there was any modern to be post about." Wrap your brain around that and you'll be prepared for Michael Winterbottom's deliriously entertaining film-within-a-film, which reflects the novel's playful, self-referential structure by twinning dramatised episodes from the book with the trials and tribulations of a cash-strapped crew trying to make sense of it.
Confused? You needn't be. Indeed, once you get the hang of Martin Hardy's clever script, the constant flip-flops between 'fact' and 'fiction' become utterly exhilarating. One moment Coogan is playing Tristram's father beneath a latex nose and powdered wig, the next he's in the make-up chair, bantering with presumptive co-star Rob Brydon. A conference call with Gillian Anderson segues effortlessly into an interlude from the novel, subsequently revealed to be Coogan's paranoid nightmare. And a discussion of Sterne's famous use of a black page to accompany the demise of a leading character is accompanied by - what else? - a momentary blackout.
Ingenious, hilarious and often intellectually rigorous, this spirited and anarchic comedy is a welcome return to form for Winterbottom.
