Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

"Chaos, control. Chaos, control. You like, you like?"

“And your father IS?…”

It’s Sidney Poitier weekend on Luke Honey’s WEEKEND FLICKS. Cinema for Grown Ups. First up is Six Degrees of Separation (1993). Sidney Poitier’s not exactly in it, but he’s a sort of raison d’etre. It’s another one of those ‘intruder’ films I like so much. When something (or somebody) unsettling enters a civilised, organised and rather self-contained, if shallow, even smug, set-up to rock the apple cart. Think Charles (Rex Harrison) and his thatched Regency villa in Blithe Spirit (1945), Tony (James Fox) and his smart London townhouse in The Servant (1963); Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier) and his Cluedobeathan Manor House in Sleuth (1972); or trendy, bearded architect Evan (Keanu Reeves) and his Modernist box in Knock Knock (2015)— a film, incidentally, which co-stars She Who Can Do No Wrong Ana de Armas. In all these films, the house becomes the star. 

In the case of Six Degrees of Separation, it's an upmarket flat on the Upper East Side (as it's America, we should probably call it an 'apartment') in one of those luxury blocks on Fifth Avenue with a decent view of people being mugged in Central Park. And it's marvellously 90s 'country house'— when red seemed to dominate the pages of House & Garden, The World of Interiors and Architectural Digest— peppered with desirable paintings by the likes of Raoul Dufy and Berthe Morisot, Shahsavan Kilims, reproduction Louis XVI wall-lights in brass, tapestry cushions and clashing pink curtains (against the red), which by today's standards might seem a trifle disturbing. And a double-whammy Kandinsky, painted on both sides, actually based on two genuine Kandinskys: Painting with Red Spot (1916) and Several Circles (1924): "what makes it exceptional is that Kandinsky painted it on either side of the canvas, in two radically different styles, one wild and vivid, the other sombre and geometric... we flip it around for variety...”

“The Kandinsky is painted on both sides…”