Bureau of stage services – Newspaper Kommersant No. 61 (7506) dated 04/08/2023

The Portable Door, directed by Australian director Geoffrey Walker, is a screen version of the first book in a series of fantasy novels by British writer Tom Holt. Tells Yulia Shagelman.

Even before the film’s opening credits roll, text in small print appears on the screen, which, of course, the audience does not have time to read. At the end of this text, the “Agree” and “Disagree” buttons flash, familiar to everyone from a variety of websites, from online stores to government services. However, the Bureau of Magical Services is not an interactive movie, so it is not really interested in your consent to watch it. The “Agree” button lights up by itself, and the next time both the authors and the audience will remember about this strange short prologue, when more than half of the film is left behind.

In the meantime, we meet a young Londoner, Paul Carpenter (Patrick Gibson), yesterday’s student who is clearly not going through the best day of his life. The alarm clock is broken, the toaster is on fire, the shoelaces are torn, there is a stain on the pants – and now Paul, who hastily rushed out of the house, is late for an interview. And it would be in a hurry: he hopes to get a job as just a waiter in a cafe, but there is a whole line of such applicants. Before Paul has time to get into it, he is distracted by a conversation by a strange man who claims to be his teacher, despite the fact that the young man does not recognize him at all, and then a dog running past steals Paul’s scarf. Because of all this fuss, he misses a place in line and, accordingly, a job.

However, as you know, if a window slams shut in one place, then a door will certainly open in another. It is the open door with the inscription “For Job Seekers” that Paul finds in the alley where he wanders in search of a scarf. Entering it at random, he gets an interview at JW Wells & Co. It goes very strangely and rather resembles an absurdist play, but the CEO of the company, Mr. Humphrey Wells (Christoph Waltz), is clearly imbued with sympathy for the young man, which, however, his colleagues do not share at all. Despite this, Paul is still hired, although he never manages to find out what the company does.

British lawyer and writer Tom Holt composes the so-called humorous fantasy, thanks to which, of course, he is compared with Terry Pratchett and JK Rowling. Parallels with “Harry Potter” – the first thing that comes to mind when viewing the “Magical Services Bureau”. Paul Carpenter is older than the boy who survived, instead of the witching school Hogwarts here is a witching office in the City of London, and the humor is not at all childish, but it will also be about how an unremarkable boy acquires the ability to transform the world, and with it – faith into yourself.

Very soon, Paul will discover that JW Wells & Co is a family firm of magicians (Thomas Holt borrowed this idea from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Enchanter) that organizes imaginary “accidents” through which people find love, find a dream job, or, for example, regaining long-lost relatives. Particularly good at this is the same as him, a novice employee Sophie (Sophie Wilde), the local “Hermione”. Paul himself first falls under the command of the irritable Mr. Tanner (Sam Neill), who loads him with meaningless work, but then receives a responsible task from Mr. Wells himself – to find some kind of mobile door that he lost (the literary source and the film in the original are named after her ). In the process, the hero, of course, will discover a lot of unusual things besides this door itself, and the audience will finally understand what the “contract” hinted at in the first frames of the picture.

The main thing that keeps the “Bureau …” is the ensemble of actors, in which, of course, Christoph Waltz and Sam Neill are the soloists, but young performers are not lost against their background. In addition, on the screen is a completely convincing world in which magical elements are organically woven into everyday city life and corporate routine, sometimes reeking of almost Kafkaesque madness. Of course, this film is unlikely to be able to compete with Harry Potter and its worldwide fame (although there are seven books in the JW Wells & Co cycle, it is unlikely to receive a sequel), but for two hours in the walls of an office behind a magic door, at least don’t get bored.