The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Geoffrey Rush is utterly extraordinary in this potted biopic of Peter Sellers, the comedian whose genius was never in question but his sanity certainly was. Opening with Sellers making up one third of the Goon Show, along with Harry Secombe (Steve Pemberton) and Spike Milligan (Edward Tudor-Pole), the picture charts his meteoric rise in Hollywood as well as his turbulent and oft bizarre private life. Although married to Anne (Emily Watson) with two young children, Sellers eagerly pursued his leading ladies, among them Sophie Loren (Sonia Aquino). As his career accelerated to working with the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Sellers muddled his way through life, a bag of neurosis, which, it is hinted at here, was compounded by his consuming relationship with his overbearing mother (the excellent Miriam Margolyes).

Since Sellers was, by all accounts, a mess of contradictions and a man with little discernible personality of his own, any biopic is liable to be riddled with inconsistencies and problems with perspective. Yet the loose-limbed The Life and Death of Peter Sellers readily embraces the paradoxes in the comedian and entertainingly uses them as a clever narrative device. The mind-boggling decision not to release the film theatrically in the United States means that Rush can't be considered for the Oscars next year. It's a shame as he inhabits the role so vividly that at times you forget it's an actor portraying Sellers.