Film Notes: The Limey

The Limey (1999) film notes by Tova Gannana for the L.A. Noir: Shadows in Paradise series, presented by Greg Olson Productions. The series runs through November 2025 at SIFF Cinema Uptown. 

In The Limey (1999), Wilson (Terence Stamp) travels light. He has come to LA for his daughter Jenny (Melissa George), not to visit – she’s dead – but to avenge her death. What weighs him down are his memories of being her father: In a happy memory, young Jenny is at the beach, a straw hat hanging off her shoulders, cord around her neck, smiling. She looks to Wilson for reassurance, offering him a rock. In a sad memory, Jenny looks at him from a doorway, the door half open. She knows what she’s seeing is something she’s seen before. She knows what will come after. She knows her father – a thief – will be caught and sent away.

The Limey plays with audio over a repetition of images; like a seance, the film conjures meaning through memories, the first line spoken over a black screen: “Tell me, tell me what happened to Jenny.” The way The Limey is told, Wilson is in flight for much of the film, 35,000 feet above sea level. Because the film flickers between moments, Wilson is in a constant state of arrival and departure. The sound of an airplane taking off and the sound of waves hitting the beach reverberate like markers on a highway, telling the miles gone and the miles left to go. Wilson is performing the last rites for his daughter.

When Jenny arrives in LA, she goes to the beach. “She was 21 when she came to me. Straight from leaving you,” Elaine (Lesley Ann Warren), Jenny’s best friend and voice coach tells Wilson, as they sit facing each other in a red vinyl booth. They banter sharply about Jenny, “Security like that can’t be bought. It must be more comforting than having a daughter to greet you,” Elaine tells him before walking away, though later she’ll let him come into her apartment, then walk with him by the water; Wilson grows on her. Through Wilson, Elaine is close to Jenny again.

Wilson is in LA not to explore or expand, or make love. He has come for one reason. He’s a seeker: He wants to know what happened. He knows it was bad, because that’s the kind of relationship he and Jenny had. In a suit and tie, Wilson smokes, knows how to read and work a room; his dimples – once a youthful mark – now mix with his wrinkles and charm. Jenny was a powerful being. She touched other people with her strength. She wasn’t afraid. The worst had happened to her in childhood: abandonment, loneliness, shame. For her stability didn’t mean money, but rather living an honest life.

While dead Jenny shows up in the film only as a memory and in a photograph, she’s the reason for the story: It’s her hand directing her father and her boyfriend Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda); like marionettes, she conducts their movements. When they come face to face – both draw blood – it’s Jenny who’s between them. “Tell me, tell me about Jenny,” Wilson demands breathlessly of Terry.

The Limey is filled with quiet, introspective moments, characters looking at one another, not needing to speak because their expressions do the telling. “He’s King Midas in Reverse” by the Hollies plays as a montage introduces us to Valentine: gazing in the mirror checking his teeth, sucking at a drink, smoking on a porch, laughing carefree in a car with the top down, all that California wind and sun making it look like he’s always making his money good. Valentine has money, whereas Wilson never did. But Valentine hires muscle for his deals, whereas Wilson is his own barracuda.

“Who done it then? Snuffed her?” Wilson asks Eduardo at a picnic table in his backyard. “Look. There was an investigation, OK? The car was totalled. Jenny was...her neck was broken, they said...on impact. Those streets up them hills, man you got to be careful, you got to keep your eye on the ball. Two o’clock in the morning, it’s dark, your minds a little agitated, driving a little too fast, those curves don’t kid around. It could’ve happened to anybody. I didn’t know Jenny to be reckless, but you know,” Eduardo tells Wilson, his two fists on the table. “No. Not my girl. Self control she had. It was a point of pride,” Wilson replies. An invisible cord runs between Jenny and her father, all feeling and memory; she’s the fine sand forever on his fingertips.

“A couple of weeks before Jenny died, she asked me to drive her downtown. She said she wanted to talk to her boyfriend, Valentine. I think she was looking for him,” Eduardo tells Wilson. “Trying to catch him with another bird?” Wilson asks. First stop: Get a gun. Eduardo facilitates. Wilson isn’t a trans-Atlantic traveler, but rather a time traveler, stuck on lather, rinse, repeat.

In LA, Jenny wasn’t alone. She found people to become close with, a makeshift family. Eduardo she’s met in an acting class. He looked out for her like an older brother; Elaine, like a big sister; Terry, whom she loved and had high hopes for the two of them, which is why when he let her down, she got so mad. Valentine said that Jenny had never spoken of her father to him, so Wilson came to LA to speak up for Jenny. Wilson kills most of the men involved in Jenny’s murder coverup, but he doesn’t kill Valentine, who’s responsible for her death. Wilson leaves Valentine alone, crumpled and defeated on the beach. It’s now Valentine who will be awash with memories of Jenny.

The end of the film has a memory without Jenny; just a young Wilson and his wife. He sings to her sweetly, he’s smiling. It’s as if in leaving LA, he found in his memory bank an old new beginning.