“Coup!” is a black comedy set during the pandemic. (No, not that one.)
Filmmakers bring acidic historical satire to Wisconsin Film Festival
(Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment)
There were several movies made during the COVID-19 lockdown about being in lockdown, like “Together” and “The End of Us.” They were fine at the time, but I can’t imagine ever wanting to revisit those movies and that time.
But the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic? Hard to say that it’s “too soon.”
Writer-director Austin Stark and Joseph Schulman’s delightfully nasty dark comedy “Coup!” takes the chaos we remember from four years ago – businesses shut down, people sequestered at home, a President downplaying the seriousness of the virus – and spins the Wayback Machine back a century.
The filmmakers brought the film to Madison to the Wisconsin Film Festival on Friday night.
While contemporary references abound, “Coup!” really uses pandemic fears as a backdrop for more eternal themes about class and wealth. National emergencies like pandemics might make us all think that “We’re all in this together,” until the 1 percent regains its footing and reminds us that we’re actually not.
Peter Sarsgaard is dangerously charming as Floyd Monk, who arrives at the island mansion of the Horton family, who are quarantining in luxury as the Spanish flu rages in nearby New York City. Monk purports to be the new cook, but we’ve seen that he’s taken on the identity of the real cook, last seen with a bullet in his brain.
The oblivious Hortons welcome Floyd into the fold. Jay Horton is a muckraking journalist in the Upton Sinclair tradition, although Jay prefers to rake the muck from afar, pretending to be covering the unrest in the streets while he relaxes in his wealthy manse. He’s a vegan and a pacifist, and a self-regarded “man of the people,” which means he still has servants, but calls them “staff.”
(Jeff Smith, left, interview Austin Stark, center, and Joseph Schulman, right, following the screening of their film “Coup!” at the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 5, 2024.)
Monk likes what he sees of Jay’s life, and sets about to take it from him. He leads the other servants (sorry, staff) in a working-class revolt against the rules of the Horton house, and charms Jay’s kids and wife Julie (Sarah Gadon) into trusting and liking him. One big strength of “Coup!” is that Julie isn’t just a prize for the two men to fight over, but a fully-realized character whose repressed wild-child nature is reawakened by the rogueish Floyd.
Physically, the buff Magnussen, last seen as the bad guy in the “Road House” remake, seems like a strange choice to play an effete liberal newspaper columnist. But he’s hilarious and pathetic, as Jay sputters ineffectually, hopelessly outmatched against the canny Floyd. While Floyd is cheerfully amoral as a con artist, Jay has to keep his subterfuges hidden for the sake of respectability, which is a fatal weakness.
The plot will remind some of the recent “Saltburn,” with its story of a working-class fox in the gilded henhouse. But I actually liked “Coup!” better – it moves faster at just 97 minutes, is funnier, and the class combat is more entertaining to watch.
The other film that “Coup!” really reminded me of is one I saw at the 2022 Wisconsin Film Festival – Joseph Losey’s 1960 drama “The Servant,” another tale of a twisted power struggle between servant and master. It’s almost enough to make rich people do the laundry themselves.
“Coup!” premiered last fall at the Venice International Film Festival and has been touring festivals, although no theatrical release date has been announced yet.