By 1988, Mike Leigh had written and directed one movie. Bleak Moments (1971), 19 plays and 11 TV films before returning to the big screen. High Hopes ('by far the best, most serious, most original new film to open here so far this year.'- Vincent Canby, The New York Times) marked the beginning of Leigh's most successful vocation and was followed a few years later by Life is Sweet. In 1993, Leigh made Naked, a bleak, funny tale of Johnny (David Thewlis), an intelligent Mancunian drifter who after a violent rape down a back alley, steals a car and travels to London.

He heads for the home of old girlfriend Louise (Lesley Sharp), but is instead let in by Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), her goth flatmate.

What develops is very little. Johnny gets it on with Sophie then leaves both her and Louise and takes to the streets. He meets a couple of Scots drifters (one of whom is played by Trainspotting's Spud, aka Ewen Bremner), is let into a business block by Brian (Peter Wight) a lonely security guard lusting after an ageing woman (Deborah Maclaren) who lives across the street.

Back at the flat, Sophie is raped by her landlord (Greg Cruttwell, later to star in Two Days in the Valley).

Johnny meets a shy cafe worker (Gina McKee) housesitting for some gay friends. Just when he thinks he is in for the night, she goes mental and turns him out on the streets again.

And so it goes. No great shakes in the plot department, but Naked is not a film with a taut storyline. It's an examination of loneliness, inner city decay, the difference between men and women, and the flip side of the Thatcher years. Forget films such as Dealers (the Paul McGann Wall Street clone from the late Eighties). This is the less commercial but far more honest portrayal of inner city life in the early Nineties.

Leigh's script, mostly improvised by the actors, remains one of the most intelligent, stark and quotable in film history.

It was first shown at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14 and landed an Award for David Thewlis as Best Actor. Hollywood fell over themselves to hire Thewlis, although he has largely been miscast in movies such as The Island of Dr Moreau, Restoration, Dragonheart and Seven Years in Tibet. He recently marked a return to form with Divorcing Jack.

Leigh went on to make the Oscar-nominated Secrets and Lies and the much criticised Career Girls. He is currently working on a Gilbert and Sullivan biopic.

The entire Naked screenplay is available from faber (isbn 0-571-17386-1). A good buy as it also contains the scripts for High Hopes and Life is Sweet as well as an interview with Leigh. And no, I don't work for either Leigh or Faber but, as you've probably guessed, I do love Naked.

Why?

I saw it in the winter of 93 at Leeds' Hyde Park Cinema (a fine old flea pit which is well worth a look if it's still standing). Life was far from rosy at the time, and, not that anyone's too interested but for the record, work was about as bad as it gets and I hadn't had a night out in years. I hadn't even left the remote town of Howden (nice place to visit on a Sunday but you wouldn't want to live there unless you're retired) in East Yorkshire for weeks. Naked was like being mugged and few films since have had the same sort of effect. However, it's a strange picker upper, for despite the bleak tone, it does make you realise that no matter how bad things are, at least they're not as bad for you as they are for Johhny.

Here are some of the more quotable moments. Obviously they lose a lot in translation from screen to page but do reveal the sort of quick-witted brilliance of both Thewlis and Leigh. With Johnny's belief that the world will end in 1999, there's an added topicality this year...

Johnny: I know it's a bit cheeky but, er, I'm a cheeky young monkey!

Johnny: Well, Brian, congratulations! You've succeeded in convincin' me that you do 'ave the most tedious fuckin' job in England.

Johnny: And what is it what goes on in this postmodern gas chamber?

Brian: Nothing. It's empty.

Johnny: So what is it you guard, then?

Brian: Space.

Johnny: You're guarding space? That's stupid, isn't it? Because someone could break in there and steal all the fuckin' space and you wouldn't know it's gone, would you?

Brian: Good point.

Brian: Waste not, want not. Johnny: And other cliches. Brian: But a cliche is full of truth, otherwise it wouldn't be a cliche. Johnny: Which is itself a cliche.

Louise: Sometimes I wish I was back in Manchester. Sophie: What for? Louise: People talk to you. Sophie: I talk to you. Louise: Yeah, but you talk a pail of shit.

Johnny: Oh, "Jane Austen" by Emma. That's one of me favorite books.

The scene: Louise's flat is part of a Victorian Neo-Gothic house. Early evening and Louise has just got in from work to find Johnny and Sophie on the sofa...

Louise: I can't believe you're 'ere.

Johnny: I'm not 'ere. I tell you what, it's a crackin' place you got love.

Louise: Good. I'm glad you like it.

Johnny: No, I was being sarcastic.

Louise: Why didn't you tell me you were comin'? I would a' met you off the train.

Johnny: I didn't come on the fuckin' train.

Louise: Off the bus then.

Johnny: I didn't come on the bus either.

Louise: So 'ow did you get 'ere then?

Johnny: Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.

Later...

Louise: Were you bored in Manchester.

Johnny: Was I bored? No I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody - you're all so bored. You've 'ad nature explained to you and you're bored with it. You've 'ad the living body explained to you and you're bored with it. You've 'ad the universe explained to you and you're bored with it. So now you just want cheap thrills and like plenty of 'em and it dun't matter 'ow tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it's new, as long as it's new, as long as it flashes and fuckin' beeps in forty fuckin' different colours. Well whatever else you can say about me, I'm not fuckin' bored.

Louise: Yeah, all right.

Johnny: So, 'ow's it goin' for you?

Louise: It's a bit borin' actually.

Scene: Sophie's bedroom. Just she and Johnny are present.

Johnny: You know what frightens me about the human body?

Sophie: What?

Johnny: Well, it's like the, er, most sophisticated mechanism in the entire universe, and yet it's so fuckin' quiet, isn't it? Know what I mean?

Sophie: Dunno. Mine makes enough noise.

Johnny: It's like this, er, wet, pink factory. What the fuck are they makin' in there ? I mean what's the product? You never see no delivery trucks comin' and goin', do you? (He browses through a medical book). I could've been a doctor.

Sophie: Do you wanna examine me?

Johnny: You don't believe me do you?

Sophie: I believe everythink you say.

Johnny: I've got A-level psychology.

Sophie: You 'aven't!

Johnny: 'Resolve is never stronger than in the morning after it was never weaker.'

Johnny: You think you can recapture your youth by fucking it? You don't want to fuck me. You'll catch something cruel.

Johnny: No matter how many books you read, there is something in this world that you never ever ever ever ever fucking understand.

Johnny: You can't make an omelette without cracking a few eggs. And humanity is just a cracked egg. And the omelette stinks.

Sophie: What is a "proper relationship"?

Louise: Living with someone who talks to you after they banged you.

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