Naked

15 yrs 126 minutes • 1993 • 7.7

What started with consent ended with rape in a dark alley in Manchester. The perpetrator Johnny steels a car and flees to the infamous neighborhoods in east London. Hidden away with his old girlfriend, Johnny tries to straighten out his life, but his skewed self-image makes it harder than expected. He considers himself to be intellectually superior to all he meets – a trait that turns out to have a bad fit with a big city like London. Naked is an honest display of the megalomania that a manic depression can bring, was Mike Leigh’s first major festival success, awarded both Best Actor and Best Director at the Cannes Film festival. Martin Vårdstedt, of Dagens Nyheter, writes that the film is a “striking portrayal of an empty life and its consequences”.