Sexy Beast (2000) Opening Analysis

The film ‘Sexy Beast’ is evidently trying to engage the audience immediately of the main character’s personality and behaviour.  The common target audience is middle aged men as they can relate to what they wish their life was like and the lifestyle they wish to live.

The scene first starts with a non-diegetic voice over which makes the character speaking sound arrogant, carless and rude, because we cannot see his face this forces the audience to focus on what he has to say. There is also diegetic cricket sound effects behind the voice over, this leads the audience to believe that the character is in a deserted location in the middle of nowhere, perhaps on holiday. This creates enigma codes so the audience questions what is the characters reasoning for being at this location.

A high angle bird’s eye shot of a man lying on a sunbed in a swimming costume comes into view, the audience can now confirm that this man is in a luxury holiday environment. This shot shows us that this is this man speaking in the voice over and his appearance and body language suits his egotistic voice over. It also reveals that this man carries very little around with him and all for his own pleasure, this suggests that the man is carefree and has nothing else to worry about. The shots mainly used in the opening sequence are unflattering angles of the main character , such as, medium side shots and low angle close ups which helps the audience see that although this man may have wealth his personality is ugly and is ironic to the title. Non-diegetic music is played along with these shots as it’s symbolic to the humour in his character. From this we get the impression the man is most likely conceited and very self-confident. This helps us predict the theme of the film as being focused around wealth and riches.

The titles used in the opening sequence do not contrast well with the image behind. The bright pink font looks cheap and doesn’t look like much thought has gone into them. However, they do stand out as they look like they’re not supposed to be there, there’s too much happening in the imagery so it forces the audience to acknowledge the titles. They link with the narrative to propose the humour sense of the film as they seem fun and bright, which relates to the man by the pools lifestyle of being completely careless and relaxed. The shots are slow paced and which implies nothing dramatic or significant is about to happen, which rules out the option of the genre being action, but doesn’t give us too much information on the actual genre of the film.