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Clarence Tsui

Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story

Starring: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon,  Naomie Harris,  Kelly McDonald

Director: Michael Winterbottom

The film: Three  years ago,  people laughed along to Adaptation, Spike Jonze's  comedy with a script by Charlie Kaufman  about, well, Charlie Kaufman trying  to write a script. With Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story, Michael Winterbottom has pushed the envelope further. He's made a film about the making of a film, based  on a book about the writing of a book, with his two lead actors - and, in a cameo, a Hollywood star - playing versions of themselves.

There are two levels to A Cock  & Bull Story. Firstly, the adaptation  of Laurence Sterne's The Life  and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the bizarre 18th-century classic in which the fictional  Shandy writes about his life and  ends up frequently digressing on  other matters.

Sterne's anarchic spirit is alive and kicking here, as an adult Shandy is seen speaking to the camera while  he witnesses his own childhood (and rowing with the child actor playing him) and his own birth, and donning a wig to play his father Walter.

Winterbottom's masterstroke lies in the film's second plane - namely, the making of this film adaptation of Tristram Shandy.

Mirroring Shandy's Cervantes- like attempts at conjuring literature,  A Cock & Bull Story presents a film crew's chaotic efforts to make their project work. All this revolves around 'Steve Coogan' and 'Rob Brydon' - the two stars of this project who  play Shandy and his bumbling Uncle Toby in the film-within-a-film, and are here played by Coogan and Brydon themselves.

Coogan (left with Brydon, far left)  plays a narcissistic, womanising actor, an uncomfortably close-cutting pastiche of himself. The way  'Coogan' is forced to fend off the tabloids over a tryst with a lap dancer  plays on his real-life experience battling  exposes in the press. His ongoing rivalry with Brydon provides moments of sparkling humour.

And, far from merely playing Coogan's dimwitted sidekick, Brydon  almost steals the show, both as Toby and also as 'Brydon' in his exchanges with Gillian Anderson  (who plays Gillian Anderson, the guest star flown in to play Widow Wadham, Toby's admirer, in the 'film').

The extras: Deleted and extended scenes provide more fun-filled malarkey, but it's the interview Anthony Wilson (playing himself) conducts with Coogan - or 'Coogan' - that stands out. With  scenes from  A Cock & Bull Story, it explains the film (the one within the film, that is) and throws in a slew of slights against the actor.

The verdict: A Cock & Bull Story is anything but self-indulgent. The segments of the Tristram Shandy film - which  parodies Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract, complete with  Michael Nyman soundtrack - are inventive, while the 21st-century narrative is effective in poking fun at celebrity culture and the nature of filmmaking itself.



Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story