Last Orders (aka The Good Son?)

Let's get back to Jonathan Glazer, shall we?

"Last Orders", from 1998, is one of Glazer's best-known and most celebrated adverts (the tussle for the top spot is effectively between this, "Surfer" and "Swim Black"). It formed part of Stella Artois' "Reassuringly Expensive" campaign, a collection of ads set in rural France that were purposely designed to recall the work of French film-maker Claude Berri - an influence loudly proclaimed through its reappropriation of the score to Berri's 1986 film Jean de Florette. (For all the campaign's French preoccupations, we'd do well to remember that Stella Artois is of Belgian origin, and from the Dutch-speaking Flemish region.)

The slogan "Reassuringly Expensive" had been used in print ads since 1982, but gained fresh momentum in 1991 when the Berri-inspired television campaign got underway with the ad "Jacques de Florette", directed by New Zealander Michael Seresin, best renowned for his work as a cinematographer on several Alan Parker features. Seresin also helmed the earlier entries of the "Papa and Nicole" series, which debuted that same year; both campaigns took place in the south of France, with Seresin's cinematic eye bringing out the beauty and the vividness of the scenery in each, although tonally the two were cut from very different cloths. "Papa and Nicole" focussed on evoking the chicness and glamour of modern France, the kind went down well with British holidaymakers, while "Reassuringly Expensive" transported us to the more distant world of French peasants in the early 20th century. The two also took very different approaches in getting around the fact that their characters weren't English speakers; whereas the "Papa and Nicole" ads were mostly non-verbal, with dialogue restricted to a scant number of proper nouns, the "Reassuringly Expensive" spots were wordier pieces, and the absence of subtitles was certainly a bold move for a campaign targetted at UK audiences. In practice, the language barrier was all part of the appeal - the stories they told were straightforward enough that a grasp of the French language was not necessary in order to follow what was happening, but they had a certain mystique, prestige and larger than life-ness that left them feeling less like promos designed to make beer look sexy and more like bite-sized morsels of arthouse cinema. They were gorgeously-shot, narrative-driven and stocked with vibrant, well-defined characters who had us immediately invested in where their misadventures were headed. Each installment offered its own delectable set of twists and turns; the results were humorous but typically marked by a sinister undercurrent, a fascination with the slippery nature of human morality and how the entry of a certain sought-after liquid into the equation could tip even the best intentions out of whack.

The original "Jacques de Florette" ad was not itself a particularly sinister affair. It focussed on a cash-strapped flower salesman who convinces a barman to let him pay for his lunch by trading some of his wares. He at first hands over only a couple of bunches, but when he realises that the barman is pouring him a pint of Stella Artois, he ends up decking out the entire building exterior in red carnations. A running theme that would become more salient in later entries is worked in only implicitly here - that the booze in question is so valued and so coveted it brings out the dishonorable bastard in us all, the insinuation that the barman deliberately fixes Jacques a pint of Stella Artois in order to extract more flowers from him being a fairly low-key example. A later ad, "Good Samaritan", saw a group of locals offering a free drink to a mysterious traveller, a Christ-like figure who'd previously helped them out of various jams, only to balk when he requested a Stella Artois (and subsequently deny him back-up when he's called upon to fix a leaking roof). Later still we had Glazer's contribution, which finds an elderly man at death's door, as his son endeavours to fulfil his dying wishes. There are limits as to how far even the most dutiful son is willing to go to appease his poppa, however, as the father discovers when he makes the audacious demand for one last swig of Stella Artois before he expires.

"Last Orders" is an exemplary entry into the "Reassuringly Expensive" campaign. It has everything - bold cinematic visuals (we open with a murder of crows, ever the bad omen, encircling a somewhat dilapidated house), a vivid cast of characters and a simple, elegantly-crafted narrative building up to a dynamite punchline. The story is one of corruption, of the good son who learns to be a conniving bastard. Ostensibly, the glass of Stella Artois he's tasked with carrying back to his ailing pop is the serpent in his proverbial garden, although the final reveal potentially flips all of that on its head.

The corruption has the clout it does because the ad takes the time to first establish its protagonist as someone who is ordinarily inclined toward honor. The son (played by French actor Denis Lavant, who would work with Glazer again in the music video to Unkle's "Rabbit In Your Headlights") is depicted as a selfless and devoted man who's willing to scale the treetops to find the rare and precious flower his father's nostrils are craving, and to dip his hand into a hive of bees to retrieve a slab of the honey for which he hungers. But still his father hasn't yet had his full share of earthly delights. When he requests a Stella Artois, he tests the fidelities of his entire family, who convey the aggravation typical to anyone in a "Reassuringly Expensive" spot forced to accommodate someone else's hankering for said beer. They put all that aside, however, and manage to cobble together enough francs to purchase him a glass. The real challenge arises when Lavant's character must trek to the nearest pub (which is clearly a great distance away) and back again with the beverage in hand. On the return journey he passes some hunters firing their guns, startling him and causing him to spill a small quantity of the beer onto his sleeve. Reflexively, he licks it off and unwittingly passes the point of no return. Now, it's a done deal. He's sampled indulgence, and the rest of that liquid has zero chance of making it back to his family's house within the glass and out of his digestive system (the sense that he's a prisoner to his mounting temptation is reinforced with the imagery of the caged poultry behind him). His shameless consumption of the beer intended for his father is not, however, the point where he demonstrates his gut-churning plunge into depravity. That much is sealed when he reaches the house and is met by a priest who's come to give the last rites. The protagonist shows the priest inside and tricks him into carrying the empty glass into the bedroom. So, naturally, when he walks in on the family, they assume he's the culprit who downed the Stella (a deception the protagonist, now a full-on rotten egg, furthers by making the drinky-drinky motion behind the priest's back). This leads into the final twist in the narrative - the father, shocked by this outcome, bolts vigorously upright, exposing a dirty little secret of his own. He's not dying at all. No, this was all just a cunning ruse to secure himself a glass of the coveted beer. Tsk tsk. The lengths these "Reassuringly Expensive" characters will go to just to down a flaming Stella.

Although let's face it, this particular revelation doesn't come as a massive shock to us. We probably had an inkling as to what the father was up to earlier on in the ad, when the flash of pure, twinkling greed in his eyes as he delivered his bombshell request for Stella Artois was pretty unmistakable. The ad visual punchline proves as satisfying as it does not because it surprises, but because it drolly confirms that the apple might not have fallen far from the tree. It wasn't necessarily the drink that wrecked our hero's integrity, but what was already latent in his genetics; the Stella Artois simply helped him to acknowledge and come to terms with this true nature. Having discovered who he really is on his epic journey, he's receiving his proper homecoming, greeted by a reflection of his own character in the form of his father's duplicity. And the reality is, we're rooting for him for make that fall. It's clear that his obedience to his father isn't getting him anywhere, other than covered in bruises and beestings. His father's "last" requests keep coming, and he keeps getting put through the hassle. The only thing for it is to learn how to play his dad at his own deceitful game. (Meanwhile the priest, the character who stands for virtue, gets the shortest end of the stick, in being used as a pawn in the father and son's respective schemes and falsely paraded as a thief and a lush.)

"Last Orders" made such a stirring impression that Glazer would return to direct two further ads for Stella Artois: "Whip Around" and "Devil's Island".

The ad exists in two versions. There's the full 90 second version and a shorter 60 second edit that omits a few details, including the ominous corvids and the moment where the hunters' gunfire causes the protagonist to first spill and taste the beer. In this version proximity to the beer alone is enough to tip him over the edge.