Boy Meets Girl

Dir: Ray Brady

1994

****

When I first saw Ray Brady’s now infamous Boy Meets Girl I remember thinking it was a somewhat cheap independent movie that had a few good ideas but didn’t quite live up to them. On a recent rewatch I believe the teenage me missed the point entirely. Natural Born Killers was the talk of 1994, so a film like Boy Meets Girl was duly overlooked, even though it became notorious as being one of the only films of the 90s to be banned by the BBFC – for eight whole years no less. It’s no ‘Video nasty’ though, quite the opposite. The film was banned due to the implications and suggestion of sexual torture, rather than because of brutal sex or gore. Boy Meets Girl is far more intelligent than that, which kind of makes it far darker. The premise is simple, a man meets a woman at a bar and they hit it off, after a few drinks the man goes back to the woman’s flat and they watch naughty films together. Thinking he’s on to a winner, the man happily drinks his drink and prepares himself for a night of passion. Instead, he passes out due to being drugged and wakes up strapped to a dentist chair. He is then duly tortured by the woman for the rest of the film. The poor quality film is a reflection of the film’s small budget and the battered old camera that was used, but somehow it gives the film a gritty edge, makes it realistic and somehow more sordid, like it’s an amateur snuff video or something. However, the fairly dreadful acting keeps the film firming within the low budget independent film category. It is the look, the dialogue and the idea that make Boy Meets Girl a unique success. It’s really not easy to watch, and even though the acting isn’t great, some of the reactions are quite blood-curdling. When filming in a council flat location in south London, Georgina Whitbourne was so convincing in her portrayal as a hysterically screaming victim that two vans loads of policemen arrived and stormed the set to save her, bringing filming to a halt. Quite a few films have pinched elements of the main idea for themselves but no other film has yet matched its unique style of psychological horror. I suspect the film isn’t exactly what it seems, and I suspect this is more a case of Pier Paolo Pasolini style symbolism, a metaphor, much like Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, for fascism. If you read up about serial killers, egotists, megalomaniac etc, the characters in the film fit the descriptions perfectly, but this is more than just a film about a serial killer. It explores the torturer and the tortured, the relationship and characteristics that could lead two people to this sort of situation. It could be a little bit if serendipity but I don’t think so, I think Boy Meets Girl is one of the most subtle but complex horror/thrillers that the world has never seen. Well, I say the world but there are quite a few successful film directors who have clearly seen it, and I’ll leave it at that.