A group of British film people travel to Acapulco for a film festival, accompanied by a British cultural attache. They’re promoting the latest movie by whizz-kid director Nicholas Jeff, a movie that is also intended to launch actress Terry Grant into stardom.
Naturally they spend most of their time bed-hopping, bitching about each other and plotting. The manipulator of the title is Jeff. He loves to manipulate people both emotionally and professionally. He’s planning to stab his producer, an American named Bronson, in the back. He also plans to break up the relationship between his screenwriter Holden and his girlfriend Alfrida and to interfere in the marriage between Scandinavian beauty (and part-time prostitute) Ebba and poor fisherman Juan.
He doesn’t really have much to gain by these manoeuvrings. He just enjoys playing games with other people’s lives. Maybe it gives him as much pleasure as he gets from manipulating the actions of the characters in his movies. Maybe secretly he knows he’s not a very good director. His latest movie is just a concoction of ideas he’s stolen from other people’s movies.
Of course all this manipulating is likely to end disastrously, but disastrously for whom?
You get the feeling that Cilento was pretty cynical about the film industry. Of course she was trying to write an entertaining and amusing satirical novel but you also get the feeling that she’s not exaggerating the foibles of film people all that much. As she portrays it the world of movies is a world of backbiting, intrigue, jealousies, opportunism, sexual adventurism and decadence.
The closest thing to a sympathetic character is Ebba. Being a whore she’s a bit more honest and realistic about sex than movie people. But she does a certain amount of scheming as well.
There’s no graphic sex but there’s certainly an atmosphere of sleaze and decadence. People with too much money and too much ego who are too accustomed to seeing other people in terms of what they can get out of them.
None of these people care very much about movies. They care about making deals and making money, or they care about fame and reputation.
Cilento is quite an amusing writer and while her characters are appalling excuses for human beings they’re very entertaining.
I know nothing about her second novel Hybrid so I can’t tell you if it’s along similar lines or not.
The Manipulator is long out of print but used copies are not too difficult to find, without paying an arm and a leg.
If you’re into stories about sex and sin in the movie world there’s plenty here to enjoy and the fact that it’s the British film industry rather than Hollywood makes it just a bit different. Recommended for those who enjoy this sort of thing.
Of course all this manipulating is likely to end disastrously, but disastrously for whom?
You get the feeling that Cilento was pretty cynical about the film industry. Of course she was trying to write an entertaining and amusing satirical novel but you also get the feeling that she’s not exaggerating the foibles of film people all that much. As she portrays it the world of movies is a world of backbiting, intrigue, jealousies, opportunism, sexual adventurism and decadence.
The closest thing to a sympathetic character is Ebba. Being a whore she’s a bit more honest and realistic about sex than movie people. But she does a certain amount of scheming as well.
There’s no graphic sex but there’s certainly an atmosphere of sleaze and decadence. People with too much money and too much ego who are too accustomed to seeing other people in terms of what they can get out of them.
None of these people care very much about movies. They care about making deals and making money, or they care about fame and reputation.
Cilento is quite an amusing writer and while her characters are appalling excuses for human beings they’re very entertaining.
I know nothing about her second novel Hybrid so I can’t tell you if it’s along similar lines or not.
The Manipulator is long out of print but used copies are not too difficult to find, without paying an arm and a leg.
If you’re into stories about sex and sin in the movie world there’s plenty here to enjoy and the fact that it’s the British film industry rather than Hollywood makes it just a bit different. Recommended for those who enjoy this sort of thing.
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