THE RIOT CLUB is a profoundly political film that has about as much subtlety as the title of the play upon which it was based, Laura Wade's POSH. Both play and film seek to show us the casual cruelty, entitlement and vacuity of Britain's ruling elite and the vulnerability but ultimate incorruptibility of the working classes who happen to cross their path. The lens through which Wade attempts to tell her rather simplistic tale is that of an Oxford dining society, here called The Riot Club, but clearly based on the Bullingdon Club - perhaps the most elite of Oxford's many dining societies, boasting the current Prime Minister (and I suspect the film's producer - heir to the de Walden estate) as one of its members. In Wade's eyes these clubs are bastions of private-school educated male privilege, where spoiled rich kids get drunk, abuse the locals, and show their general contempt for anyone who isn't in their tribe. Most particularly, she asserts that the system is self-protecting - that their grossness will be paid off, bought off, leaving them to emerge into glittering careers unscathed by any "naughtiness".
