Drama Archives - Page 2 of 2

Martin Scorsese: An Alternative Top Five

Martin Scorsese: An Alternative Top Five

To celebrate the release of Martin Scorsese’s new film, SILENCE and the BFI’s current Retrospective, ALex Barrett explores some of the director’s lesser-known past gems.

It seems safe to say, without fear of hyperbole or exaggeration, that Martin Scorsese is widely considered to be one of cinema’s greatest directors. And yet, at least in the wider public consciousness, it seems that myths and misunderstandings endure: he still remains known primarily as the maker of sweary, violent gangster films. If The Wolf of Wall Street swaps the violence for comedy, it certainly retains the swearing. The film tells the tale of stockbroker Jordan Belfort, from his days as a wide-eyed novice to drug-addled leader of a ‘wolf-pack’ of traders who work enough deals on the wrong side of the law to catch the attention of the FBI. In this, the film contains a rise and fall arc that closely mirrors those found in GoodFellas and Casino, meaning that Wolf slides unproblematically into the popular conception of Scorsese’s oeuvre – for what are stockbrokers, if not the crooks and money-launderers of today?

If the description outlined above does, unarguably, fit the filmmaker, it’s also true that he is so much more: his oeuvre, one can’t help but feel, is often not given the credit it deserves for the diversity it contains. Even with Wolf, some are calling comedy a new area for Scorsese, thus overlooking his previous foray into the genre with the low-budget cult curio After Hours (1985). Indeed, the lack of wider recognition for the ‘smaller’ pictures means that it now seems possible to posit an ‘alternative’ top five films – those that are loved by some, overlooked by many, and whose greatness, at times, even eclipses that found in the more readily-recognisable work.

There are, undoubtedly, recurring themes that run throughout Scorsese’s work, and these themes offer a bridge from his gangster pictures to the work discussed below. Two themes seem especially prevalent: religion and relationships – relationships not only between men and women, but also between friends and family, man and society, and man and money. The latter of these, of course, is the primary concern of Wolf, though it’s also true that, as in GoodFellas et al., there’s a strong exploration into marital relations. More specifically, these films show the strain of relating to someone who wishes to succeed professionally above all else – and this leads us to a third key theme: reflexivity. Scorsese’s films are nothing if not steeped in cinema, and it’s possible to read almost all of his work as being, in some way, about his own obsessive need to create. Looked at in this way, the excess of Wolf becomes readable as autobiography – Scorsese’s past drug use, and his resulting collapse, has been well documented. Is Jordan Belfort’s addiction to money and the market really so different from Scorsese’s addiction to filmmaking?

In Life Lessons (1989), Scorsese has Nick Nolte’s character verbally express this idea: ‘you make art because you have to – because you have no choice’. But the line is also (surely) a reference to a key exchange between Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) and Victoria (Moira Shearer) in Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes (1948):

Lermontov: Why do you want to dance?

Victoria: Why do you want to live?

Lermontov: Well I don’t know exactly why, but I must.

Victoria: That’s my answer too.

As we shall see, this obsession, and its expression in The Red Shoes, would go on to have a profound impact upon Scorsese’s own work.

5. The Color of Money (1986)

If Scorsese’s career can be understood as operating within a ‘one for me, one for them’ framework, The Color of Money belongs firmly in the ‘one for them’ camp. And yet, despite this, it’s important to remember that Scorsese himself had a strong hand in the construction of the screenplay. His first major Hollywood film, Color came at an uncertain time in the director’s career: following the success of Raging Bull (1980), the 80s had consisted of a high-profile flop (The King of Comedy, 1983) and a failed attempt to make a long-cherished personal project (The Last Temptation of Christ, eventually realised in 1988) – both of which had taken a toll on Scorsese. Dealing as it does with an ageing pool player struggling to stay in the game, it’s hard not to read Color as a reflection upon the mental state the director was in. Scorsese could see that the Hollywood of the 1980s was becoming an increasingly commercial landscape, and that personal auteur cinema was on its way to becoming a thing of the past – something else reflected in the very fabric of Color, through the casting of its two leads: Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. In a sense, the film is about the resistance of one generation in giving way to the next: and this is as true for Scorsese as it is for Newman’s character. Together with After Hours, Color revived Scorsese from the depths of despair and its success allowed him – finally – to get The Last Temptation of Christ made. For that alone, the film would be worthwhile, but there’s much else to enjoy in this sadly neglected masterwork. If only all directors could make films this rich, and this personal, when working for ‘them’.

4. Kundun (1997)

If, in Color, Scorsese hints that ‘pride causes suffering’, in Kundun, the idea is expressed verbally. A film about the early life of the 14th Dalai Lama, Kundun is, along with The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese’s most explicitly spiritual work – and like Scorsese’s Christ, his Dalai Lama must renounce the comforts of secular society in favour of religious calling. In Kundun, this conflict erupts onto the level of politics: how can religion combat communism, and how can violence be reconciled with religious belief? If Scorsese’s gangster pictures can be understood as being, in part, examinations into the ‘problem’ of violence, then so too can Kundun: it is a study of the flipside – the act of nonviolence. It seems almost as if Scorsese is exploring Buddhism, searching for answers to questions raised in his earlier work. Perhaps, Kundun seems to say, if Scorsese’s protagonists are their own worst enemies, Buddhism can offer them salvation.

3. The Age of Innocence (1993)

Where Kundun deals with the repression of violence, The Age of Innocence deals with the repression of feeling. Like both the Dalai Lama and Christ, Age‘s protagonist Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) must sacrifice a life of pleasure for something higher – though this time, the ‘something higher’ is societal, not spiritual: Archer is engaged to May Welland (Winona Ryder), and the moral standards of 1870s New York force him to honour his commitment to her, despite his love for the smouldering Countess Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). Where May represents ‘all that is best’ in Archer’s world, Olenska is all that is fun – at one point, she strides into an evening’s entertainment in a flaming red dress, all the better to set Archer’s world alight amongst the black and white formal wear of the world around him. Emotionally complex and deeply moving, Age allowed Scorsese to expand his stylistic palette and expose a new facet within his on-going explorations into New York life and codified societies (the laws of 1870s society are not so different, it would seem, from those of the 1970s mafia). With its use of voiceover narration and its detailed recreation of the minutiae of a by-gone age, The Age of Innocence surely ranks alongside Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon as one of the greatest literary adaptations ever filmed.

2. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

A long-cherished personal project for Scorsese, The Last Temptation of Christ is perhaps the purest expression of an idea that runs throughout his entire oeuvre: the battle between the ‘spirit’ and the ‘flesh’. Indeed, those very words appear on screen at the beginning of Christ, embedded within a scrolling quote that posits the soul as the ‘arena’ in which ‘these two armies have clashed’ in ‘merciless battle’. The quote is from Nikos Kazantzakis’ source novel The Last Temptation, but one feels as though it could have been written by Scorsese himself – indeed, alongside the famous opening words of 1973’s Mean Streets (‘You don’t make up for your sins in church – you do it in the streets‘) it’s possible it provides the key to understanding almost all of Scorsese’s tortured antiheroes. A blistering work of religious and spiritual angst, The Last Temptation courted huge controversy upon release, seemingly for daring to humanise Christ – but it’s this very humanisation that makes the film such a powerful retelling of Christ’s story. If Christ is not human, if he does not share our longings and desires, then his death is no great sacrifice. But even more than this, by exploring Christ’s deep sense of existential conflict, Scorsese allows us to identify with his plight, and to feel his pain – just like we do all of Scorsese’s protagonists.

1. New York, New York (1977)

The gripping story of a saxophonist torn between his love for music and his love for his wife, New York, New York relocates Christ’s dichotomy of spirit versus flesh into a secular setting – this time, our protagonist must choose between family life and his obsessional desire to succeed in his musical career. Seen in this way – as a film about someone whose personal life is torn apart by their love of a performing art – NYNY becomes understandable as The Red Shoes replayed. The Red Shoes, let’s not forget, is the story of a woman whose obsession for ballet leads her away from her husband and towards death – and this self-destructive streak is there tenfold in NYNY’s saxophonist Jimmy Doyle.

In portraying Doyle, Robert De Niro gives arguably a career-best performance: one minute he’s exchanging the zingiest one-liners in Scorsese’s entire oeuvre, the next he’s a terrifying ball of rage. But despite all this, the film was a huge flop, and Scorsese collapsed into depression and drug addiction. It was De Niro that saved him, by persuading him to make Raging Bull – a film readable as the story of a man whose personal life falls apart due to his obsessional desire to succeed in a performance sport. Sound familiar? There’s certainly an argument to be made that Scorsese subconsciously reworked his flopped musical project within a genre then more in vogue. But perhaps it was simply a return to The Red Shoes, the film that so fascinated Scorsese as a child (lest we forget, it was Michael Powell himself that suggested Scorsese shoot Raging Bull in black and white). Indeed, even now, with Wolf, it seems Scorsese has not left the shadows of Lermontov and Victoria behind – for Belfort, too, is a performer, and he too is his own worst enemy. Like Jimmy Doyle and Jake LaMotta before him, it is ultimately his own obsessive addiction that leads him down a spiral of (self) destruction. ALEX BARRETT

SILENCE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 JANUARY 2017 | THE SCORSESE SEASON AT THE BFI CONTINUES THROUGH JANUARY 2017

Irreplaceable (2016)

Doctor turned screenwriter Thomas Lilti has finally found his groove with a couple of well-made and watchable medical dramas using classic French stars. Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor was the first, with Reda Kateb as a hospital clinician working in Paris. The latest, IRREPLACEABLE, is set in the farmlands of Ile de France where Intouchables star François Cluzet is a doctor diagnosed with a life-changing condition that forces him to recruit a colleague in his small country practice.

Jean-Pierre Werner (Cluzet) is rather a tetchy single father in his fifties who prides himself in his personal approach to his patients, spending his days on home visits in the rural community, often beyond the call of duty. But when he is told to cut down on his workload due to a tumour, he grudgingly interviews Dr Nathalie Delezia (Marianne Denincourt/Hippocrates) who has come late to the professional, in her forties, but has loads of experience as a nurse in casualty. After giving her rather a hard time, the two start work together, Nathalie feeling her way forward cautiously with a caseload of tricky patients and a crusty colleague into the bargain.

Lilti cleverly brings reality to the film – not just in his medical knowledge – but in his maturity of experience in dealing with patients and the profession as a whole. And this makes such a difference to a film which could so easily have been just another implausible medical procedural. Combining quality acting talent with a pithy script, he brings integrity to the film, making it enjoyable but also entirely natural. Theres’s a feisty tension between Werner and Delezia that brings a welcome relief to the more serious medical narrative dealing with real issues facing the profession in France.

This is a restrained and nuanced character drama which makes great used of its lovely rural setting in the Val-d’Oise and the towns of Omerville and Magny as Lilti creates tension and cleverly balances the three narrative strands: the relationship between the two doctors; Werner’s uncertain medical future and the social politics of the patients themselves, and their life and death issues. Thomas Lilti is certainly a talent worth looking out for where quality French drama in concerned. MT

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 13 JANUARY 2017 | A special preview with Q&A ON 10 JANUARY TICKETS HERE

Manchester by the Sea (2016) BBC iPlayer

Dir.: Kenneth Lonergan Cast: Casey Afflick, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, Gretchen Moll; USA 2016, 135 min.

Director/writer Kenneth Lonergan sprawling, near epic tableau of a man caught in his guilt, is set in the idyllic Massachusetts seaside town of Manchester: the sheer beauty of the environment colliding with the pain and anger of a past, when a man’s whole life disintegrates.

We meet Lee Chandler (Afflick) working as a janitor in Boston: he is efficient, but on a collision course with nearly everyone he meets, clients or fellow drinkers in a bar. The first one he insults, the second he beats up. He lives in a basement studio, a cell, without much light. This place is as neglected as the man himself, and we want to know more about him. A phone call from Manchester-on-Sea has him rushing to the local hospital – but he is too late, his brother Joe (Chandler) has died of a heart attack. In his will he has stipulated that Lee will be the guardian for his 16 year-old son Patrick (Hedges). We watch flashbacks from a decade ago when the three are happily fishing on Joe’s boat. Slowly more emerges about Lee and his problems in Manchester. Patrick does not want to leave town: he is a member of the school’s ice-hockey team, and successfully two-times his girl-friend. In denial of his father’s death, not uncommon in his age group. His mother Elise (Moll) was alcohol dependent and left the family, the re-union between mother and son is strained. Lee continues where he left off in Boston: bar fights and arguments. When he meets his former wife Randi (Williams) the grim truth eventually comes out about the loss of his three children.

Any parent losing a child will never really recover, but to lose three children and live with the guilt of your own negligence is impossible. After the accident, interviewed by the police, Lee tried to kill himself, snatching a revolver from an officer – only for it to jam. It would have been more human on Lee if he could have succeeded, because he really is empty inside, reliving his nightmare daily. His aggression is just a bait: he wants to be punished, at least physically. He might just be functioning in Boston, but Manchester is a step too far. Lonergan shows that Patrick is just a Lee in the making: he, like many males, is only interested in sex, booze and sport, the latter active or on TV. It is no accident that Patrick and Lee communicate best, when they play with a tennis ball. Most women and men live a near segregated life in the small community: divided very much on emotional lines, which determine their activities. There is a seemingly total absent of culture in Manchester, the provinces are left to rot intellectually. All this is chronicled without any resort to sentimentality.

Despite some flaws, DoP Jody Lee Lipes (Marta, Marcy, May, Marlene) catches the outside beauty with stunning panoramic shots in primary colours, in contrast to the dim interior landscape . Affleck is good, but not great, the ensemble cast helps underline the emotional helplessness between the genders. At well over two hours running time, Lonergan keeps this intense drama absorbing, emerging as a sort of East Coast Tennessee Williams.AS

Now on BBC IPLAYER

Carol for Another Christmas (1964)

Prod|Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz | Writer: Rod Serling | Cast: Sterling Hayden, Ben Gazzara, Peter Sellers, Eva Marie Saint, Steve Lawrence, Pat Hingle, Robert Shaw, James Shigeta, Barbara Ann Teer, Percy Rodriguez, Britt Ekland.

USA / Drama / 84min

This ambitious pacifist reworking of ‘A Christmas Carol’ with echoes of H.G.Wells’s ‘Things to Come’, commissioned by the United Nations, is one of those creations more interesting for the fact of its existence than for what it actually achieves. The only TV production ever directed by Joseph Mankiewicz (who was still feeling ashamed at himself for making Cleopatra), it was written by Rod Serling, and resembles a feature length episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ at its most earnest. As liberal America breathed a sigh of relief at having just dodged the bullet of a Goldwater presidency, it probably already felt dated the very evening it was transmitted without commercials on ABC on 28 December 1964, when it attracted a lively debate; followed by a silence that lasted nearly half a century. There was a one-off screening at the National Film Theatre on London’s South Bank in 1977, but for decades all that survived of CAROL FOR ANOTHER CHRISTMAS was its haunting theme by Henry Mancini. Not until 48 years later, on 16 December 2012, was it finally re-screened on TCM. A month ago it was posted on YouTube, so now we can all finally see it.

Made at a time when the world was still shaking from the twin traumas of the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy, it ironically now seems in retrospect a relic from a gentler age, before Vietnam and Kent State. The elephant in the room of CAROL FOR ANOTHER CHRISTMAS was an escalating Asian ‘police action’ which had already swelled the number of US military personnel in Vietnam from several hundred to over 10,000 by the time the 25 January 1963 edition of LIFE magazine carried a cover article entitled ‘We Wade Deeper into Jungle War’. The obsession with The Bomb and the almost comforting abstraction of Mutually Assured Destruction displayed by DR STRANGELOVE and CAROL FOR ANOTHER CHRISTMAS would soon be replaced by the messier and more immediate shambles of the Vietnam War and the emergence of hippie culture which swiftly rendered CAROL FOR ANOTHER CHRISTMAS irrelevant and unrepeatable.

Sterling Hayden (playing what was probably his final lead) is Daniel Grudge, who has never got over the death of his son Marley on Christmas Eve 1944 (seen in a portrait and fleetingly as a ghost played by an uncredited Peter Fonda) and has withdrawn from the outside world. Having shunned his young nephew Ben Gazzara’s pleadings to support world unity, Grudge is shortly afterwards spirited away to a WWI troopship loaded with coffins where the Ghost of Christmas Past introduces himself in the form of a loquacious American doughboy from 1918 (Steve Lawrence) who talks (and talks) like a hip 60’s peacenik. Like most of the characters, Christmas Past has made his point long before his lecture ends, and when criticising the world community for inaction in the face of Nazi expansionism whitewashes the role of Hitler’s then ally into a neutral bystander through the extraordinary claim that “Russia kept the phone off the hook while Poland was destroyed” (Katyn anyone?). The fact that the film’s concern is with atomic rather than conventional warfare is underlined by Drudge’s next visit (with Eva Marie Saint), back to Hiroshima in 1945; after which Pat Hingle as Christmas Present is shown stuffing his face while others go hungry. (Drudge’s distaste at his display of Western indifference to the hardship of others is more implicit than apparent in Hayden’s monotonous performance, as his expression changes little through this or what follows).

Christmas Future in the form of a bearded Robert Shaw then introduces Grudge to a post-Apocalyptic nightmare reminiscent of ‘Things to Come’, and presided over by Hayden’s DR STRANGELOVE co-star Peter Sellers. Making his first acting appearance since his near-fatal heart attack the previous spring, Sellers is visibly a changed man. Leaner and with a manic gleam in his eye (it is hard to tell whether it is simply acting or the result of his recent near-death experience), he makes the flesh crawl as a demagogue rejoicing in the name ‘Imperial Me’. He wears a pilgrim suit and ten gallon hat bearing the moniker ‘ME’, and as he expounds the New Order of self-centred pig ignorance and rouses his ragged followers in a frenzied chant of “ME! ME!! ME!!!”, the possibility occurs that after 52 years of obsolescence, maybe CAROL FOR ANOTHER CHRISTMAS‘s time has finally come. RICHARD CHATTEN

AVAILABLE TO BUY ON AMAZON.CO.UK OR VIEW ON YOUTUBE

The Man Between (1953) Home Ent release

Dir.: Carol Reed; Cast: James Mason, Claire Bloom, Hildegard Knef, Geoffrey Tone, Ernst Schroeder, Aribert Waescher; UK1953, 100 min.

Often compared (wrongly) to Carol Reed’s classic The Third Man, the director’s Berlin version of the Cold War, as shown in The Man Between, is very much a British affair played out in post-war Berlin. Whilst Reed could not shoot in East Berlin – were much of the second part of the film is set, he and DoP Desmond Dickinson (Hamlet), filmed at the border between East and West Sector, providing atmospheric highlights, which compensate for a sometimes erratic narrative.

Susanne Mallison (Bloom), a headstrong young British woman, visits her brother Martin (Tone) in West Berlin, where the ex-officer is married to a German, Bettina (Knef). Susanne soon finds out, that Bettina is harbouring a secret from her husband: there are too many unexplained incidents, like a young boy on a bike, who seems to follow Susanne. On an excursion to the east of the city, Bettina introduces Susanne to the sinister Ivo Kern (Mason), a dubious character, who seems to have a hold over Bettina. As it turns out, Kern is not only a spy for the east German racketeer Halundar (Waescher), but also Bettina’s ex-husband, who went missing during the last year of the war. Since his very existence invalidates Bettina’s marriage to Martin, Bettina tries to please Kern and helps him with his schemes, which mainly consists of kidnapping West Berlin citizens to the east. Australian ex-soldier Olaf Kastner (Schroeder), who helps East Germans to escape to the West, muddles the water even more. Finally, Susanne is kidnapped by Halundar’s strongmen by mistake, and Kern has to make decision.

Reed’s Berlin locations are very evocative, the images of the defeated capital of the former master race, show the former rulers of Europe living (still) in
ruins. But there is a sort of progress too: at a visit to the ‘Resi’ restaurant, Susanne discovers a very American atmosphere, were every table has a telephone, used mainly by agents and black-market dealers. Bloom is very convincing as the romantic English woman, whilst Knef is a little over the top, raising her voice too often. Mason is very much like the central character in Reed’s Odd Man Out: permanently fleeing from troubles, caused by dishonesty in the past. Based on the novel ‘Susanne in Berlin’, by the German author Walter Schuler (aka Walter Ebert), Hollywood veteran writer Harry Kurnitz delivered a disappointing script. After the location shooting in Berlin was finished, Reed returned to London for the studio scenes, and asked Graham for help, before hiring a script doctor to save as much as possible. Nevertheless, Dickson’s grainy black-and-white images create a post-war noir world, in which the past is often stronger than the present. AS

BRAND NEW 2k RESTORATION AVAILABLE ON BLURAY | DVD | EST COURTESY OF STUDIO CANAL | 2 JANUARY 2017

Why Him? (2016)

Dir.: John Hamburg; Cast: James Franco, Zoey Deutsch, Bryan Cranston, Mengan Mullally, Keegan-Michal Kelly, Griffin Gluck; USA 2016, 111 min.

WHY HIM? is just another chapter in the Meet the Parents saga, and director/co-writer John Hamburg tries very hard to succeed, forgetting that the success of any Rom-Com is measured by its light touch. But instead of a soufflé up comes a stodgy brew of clichés and didactic, overlong scenes, ramming home his points, afraid that the audience needs permanent reminders when to laugh.

From the sticks of their Ohio home the three Flemings – father Ned (Cranston), mother Barb (Mullally) and teenage son Scottie (Gluck) – set out to visit daughter Stephanie (Deutsch) in California for Christmas, where they hope, that the future son-in-law Laird (Franco), will make a better impression in person than in their introductory, rather disastrous Skype session. But Laird is even worse in person: a rich young man, worth all of 193 million bucks, he runs a high-tech labour in his futuristic house, where he insists on a strict New Age lifestyle, including a paper free environment, including the bathrooms. Since he is also fond of including at least two swear words in one sentence, a combative confrontation with Ned is guaranteed: apart from the normal Electra obsession with his sex-loving daughter, his printing business in Ohio is going bankrupt. Laird’s side-kick, Gustav, speaking with a very fake German accent, attacks his master violently at will, keeping him alert to any danger; prompting Ned to compare their relationship with the one between Closeau and Cato in the Pink Panther films – a symbol for Hamburg’s heavy-handed approach. Needless to say, the two males – mistaking their diverse obnoxiousness for candour – will end up in a brawl themselves, shattering the glass case in which an elk is preserved in his own urine, in the process. But fear not, the landing is very safe indeed.

Trying hard in every aspect –wanting to be funny, daring and original – WHY HIM somehow manages to be neither. To start with, Deutsch’ character is dreadfully under-developed. She is just an object for the men to fight over, and even though Stephanie rebels initially, she eventually finds her place in a united family business, featuring orgasm-inducing toilet water works, instead of ordinary loo paper. Her mother Barb is just an appendix to her husband, reminiscing about the past and moaning about a lack of sex. Yes, there are some funny ideas, but even the best suffer from Hamburg’s inclination not to cut any scene, before it has run its length – and more. The result is a near two-hour running time, including a rather sad appearance of two members of Mom’s and Pop’s favourite band Kiss, and Barb’s equally misplaced attempt of rivalling her daughter, when admitting to a ”hand-job for Ned” after the young couple had attended a concert of their favourite quartet. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM BOXING DAY 2016

Jet Trash (2016)

Director: Charles Henri Belleville

Cast: Sofia Boutella, Joelle Koissi, Robert Sheehan

Drama (2016) 80mins UK/India

JET TRASH isn’t exactly trash: the title refers to the aimless young drifters who arrive in India to ‘find themselves’, often finding themselves in more dubious circumstances, as they do here in Scottish filmmaker Charles Henri Belleville’s second roadie title – his debut one was The Inheritance. Gorgeously lurid and party-loving is how the billing describes this stylishly psychaedelic back-packer thriller that’s schematically plotted but well performed by a promising cast of British actors, amongst them the mesmerising Robert Sheehan. The takeaway is Belleville’s stunning ability to re-package quite ordinary material into something glamorously hedonistic and fun, albeit rather glib.

Aimed at the ‘millennial’ crowd and based on his book ‘Go’, Simon Lewis co-scripts with Dan M Brown to evoke the contempo zeitgeist where brash and privileged Brits ease themselves into adulthood not by hard work and entrepreneurial endeavour but by an infinitely more unimaginative and streetwise mix of drug-dealing and marrying for money (of the passport variety). The result is an under-scripted affair that leads its impressive cast on a predictable dance rather than an exciting journey.

Waking up on Christmas Day on a palm-fringed caster sugar beach was always going to be preferable to a wet one-bedder in Harlesden or some inner city tower block. And this is where our unappetising lead duo find themselves, after a dip and ‘one off the wrist’ in the crystal waters of Goa. Lee (Sheehan) and Sol (Osy Ikhile) have fetched up here courtesy of Sol trousering £17,000 in a dodgy marriage deal – to one Adeze (Adedayo), all pimped by the venal villain Marlowe (Craig Parkinson) who has knocked up his girlfriend Vix (Sofia Boutella) to keep her under control. Sadly, a sacred cow gets involved and, being India, the fallout is pivotal to the storyline of a sassy thriller that never takes itself too seriously and is all style over substance, but strangely none the worse for it.

By all accounts the cast and crew had a lovely time filming JET TRASH and it looks stunning too thanks to Maja Zamojda’s sumptuous cinematography and Laura Ellis Cricks’ vibrant set design. JET TRASH is just that: See it as a bit of a knees up and you won’t come away disappointed. MT

JET TRASH PREMIERED AT EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 2016 AND IS NOW ON RELEASE AT VUE CINEMAS

The Black Hen (2015) | Kalo Pothi

Dir.: Min Bahadur Bham | Cast: Sukra Ray Rokoya, Khadk Raj Nepali, Benisha Hamal/Nepal/France/Switzerland/Germany | Drama | 90 min.

First time director Min Bahadur Bham explores an intense story of friendship in the midst of a civil war: The Black Hen is set in 2001, during the Maoist insurgency in Nepal from 1996-2006. The conflict cost over 13 000 lives – over twelve per cent were children who had to join the Maoist forces, often against their will.

Prakash (Nepali) and Kiran (Rokoya) are school friends at their primary school, divided by classes: Prakash’s father is a poor peasant, whilst Kiran’s belongs to the wealthy ruling class. The boys are nevertheless the best of friends. One day, Prakash’s sister Bejuli (Hamal) gives her little brother a white hen as a present. Soon afterwards she will be married, but runs off fighting with the Maoist soldiers. Prakkash’s father sells the hen – called Karishima, after a Nepalese film star – to Tenziny, whose daughter is pregnant and needs nourishment from the bird’s eggs. But Prakash and Kiran don’t give up easily: they steal the hen, and colour it black. Prakash pretends he has bought it for a good price with the money his sister left him, and his father lets him keep it. But soon the hen disappears, and the two boys stumble into a deadly battle between forces of the Nepalese Army and the Maoists, supported by China. They nearly fall out with each other, having to play dead to save their lives – but back at home, a surprise awaits them.

THE BLACK HEN is told without sentimentality, this story of friendship conquering class divides and a brutal war, is moving and full of deeply felt humanism. Prakesh and Kiran are anything but goody-two-shoes boys – they are truants who steal money for cinema tickets, and are not above picking a fight with anyone. But the hen is the symbol of their friendship, they fight for it with idealism, untainted by adult opportunism. DoP Aziz Zhambakiev excels particularly in the dream sequences, when Prakash imagines the big city, where Nepalese monks and Maoists fight their battle on the streets. Whilst the colours here are dreamy and soft, his images of the hilly countryside seem bleached out of all light, the action occurring at always dusk or dawn. Amidst the harsh reality of war, THE BLACK HEN is imbued with a childlike magic, deservedly winning the Critic’s Week Prize at Venice Film Festival 2015.AS

ON RELEASE FROM 9 DECEMBER 2016 | CURZON CINEMAS

Krisha (2015)

Director: Trey Edward Shults | Krisha Fairchild, Trey Edward Shults, Alex Dobrenko, Robyn Fairchild, Billie Fairchild | US | Drama | 83min

Trey Edward Shults’ debut makes a Thanksgiving get-together the setting for this brilliantly played, unsettling character drama that exposes deep rifts within a conventional family – if there is such a thing. This is a stylish film made watchable by an dynamic central performance by Krisha Fairchild (the director’s aunt) whose return to the bosom of her family after an absence leads us to believe that something tragic and momentous has preceded it. Winner of the grand jury dramatic prize at SXSW, KRISHA also had a showing at Cannes and LFF 2015, but it paints the older generation rather uncharitably at a time where they need all the support they can get in our ageist society.

Arriving on the doorstep with some heavy emotional baggage, Krisha is a woman who has tumultuous issues to face and has already covered some difficult ground, and her family is clearly not without blame either in this highly charged dynamic. From the outset, it’s unclear why this 60 year old woman is tiptoeing around apologetically on her best behaviour; she should be a respected elder member of the clan at this special family day, rather than the naughty child who attracts our sympathy for reasons we are not quite certain should be honourable.

But this is not her own home but that of her sister Robyn (Robyn Fairchild), and their elderly mother (Billie Fairchild), in clearly still affectionately regarded as ‘the queen bee’, capable of a nasty sting. Krisha’s relationship with her son seems to be the most fragile and strained: Trey (who also directs) is not going to meet her halfway in her attempts to build bridges. It gradually emerges through small behavioural patterns – she locks certain meds away in a case – and in a confrontational scene where her sister brings the issue to a head – that Krisha is an addict and a tightly wound spring. She has struggled painfully to contain her weakness but any trigger could unleash the destructive force within her and take everyone else with it. Shults’ clever script still wants us to see things from her perspective.

Set in the director’s family home in Texas this is very much a chamber piece whose mounting tension is cleverly ramped up by Brian McOmber’s string score and some clever camerawork that conveys an increasing claustrophobia (with changing aspect ratios) that we have all experienced before at family reunions, especially where alcohol and forced jollity enters the arena of managed expectations. Somehow we are rooting for Krisha – against the odds – but our compassion will be tested to the core in a coruscating climax of this gripping domestic thriller. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9 DECEMBER 2016 | EVERYMAN

https://youtu.be/wJXVjHpKSJE

The Ardennes (2016)

Robin Pront proves that blood is thicker than water, but that love doesn’t conquer all in his feature debut, a hard-edged ‘Flemish noir’ that explores the rift that develops between two petty criminal brothers whose relationship is put under strain after a burglary goes wrong.

The verdant rolling hills of the title give way to the rainy urban setting of Antwerp where their family echoes that of Bullhead – close-knit and protective of their own but always open to internecine resentment and small-mindedness. In fact the films share the same producer Burt Van Langendonck. But the only pâté made here is a by-product of violent head-butting and brutal violence between the males.

After an intriguing opening scene where a man struggles out of a domestic swimming pool, fully clothed and gasping for air through his stockinged hood, it turns out this is Dave (Jeroen Perceval/Bullhead), escaping from the scene of the crime but his accomplice brother Kenny (Kevin Janssens) ends up in the clink serving seven years for burglary. Once in prison, Kenny’s resistance to grass on his brother ends in a poke in the eye when Dave promptly runs off with his trailer trash ex-druggie girlfriend Sylvie (Veerle Baetens), who has aided and abetted the pair’s criminal career.

Kenny is less than pleased, on parole four years later, to discover that Sylvie is pregnant and shacked up with Dave, and it later transpires his former gang have gone straight and teetotal, and his only future lies in manual work. Clearly, these men are meatheads, and even their mother looks like she has had her fair share of punch-ups. THE ARDENNES spends a great deal of time painting a portrait we can already well imagine: grimy sink estates, violent outbursts of machismo, Sylvie vomiting and smoking riffs, and general cries of ‘Gott Verdomt’ but this sordid and repetitive detail adds nothing to a the tension of a narrative whose central thrust is: when is Dave going to spill the beans to Kenny about Sylvie.

The climax eventually comes when Kenny loses his cool and kills the owner of their local, giving Dave the leverage he needs – assisting with the disposal of the evidence. And this all takes place in the isolated trailer home of Kenny’s old prison roomie Stef (a slimy Jan Bijvoet), deep in the Ardennes countryside where Stef’s transvestite boyfriend cooks up a mean fry- up while Pront gets rounds to delivering the denouement we’ve all been waiting for. This is a decent thriller that could have been a bit tighter in the first two acts but all’s well that ends well, or doesn’t, in this arthouse tragedy that will make you re-think that walking trip to the gentle pleasures of Belgium’s Ardennes. MT

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 9 DECEMBER 2016 courtesy of STUDIOCANAL at CINE LUMIERE AND THE ICA AND CHAPTER CARDIFF FROM 16 DECEMBER 2016

Heritage of Love (2016) Geroy | Russian Film Week 2016)

Dir.: Yuriy Vasilev | Cast: Dima Bilan, Swetlana Ivanova, Jurgita Jurkuta, Alexandr Baluev | Russia | 96 min.

Some films are difficult to take seriously – and Yuriy Vasilev’s Heritage of Love, starring the Eurovision Song Contest winner Dima Bilan, falls into this category. A hotchpotch of advertising show reels make up the narrative – by Natalya Doroshjevic and Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina – so phony, that even Leni Riefenstahl would have asked for a re-write, probably resulting in a turgid melodrama.

Set a hundred years apart, this ‘eternal’ love story plays out between Andrey (Bilan) and Vera (Ivanova) in 20th century and the present day. We first meet the doomed couple near St. Petersburg in 1914, when princess Vera hangs out in a tree near the royal palace, chided first by her sister – for jumping out of the tree; then later by her mother, who wipes a speck of grass from her face, calling her “dirty as a street urchin”. The little tear-away is very much Daddy’s darling, and her father has just bought a new car, a Russo-Bolt, which will feature again in the film’s contemporary setting of Paris. After some officers re-enact the William-Tell scene with a hapless private on the estate of the Royals, captain Kulikov arrives just in time to admire Vera dancing happily in the water fountains and hear about the outbreak of the First World War.

Later, when the war seems to be lost, and the October Revolution is around the corner, the perfidious Tershenko (Baluev), a suspicious merchant, upsets the aristocrats (Vera is working as a nurse in a very clean field hospital), with talks of their deserved doom. He is in love with Vera’s sister Irina (Jurkute), but she looks down on the “shopkeeper”, who confesses ”you are the meaning of my life”. This meets with derision with Irina’s response “I hate you” – leaving him rather on the spot.

Meanwhile, Andrey has joined the White Army fighting the Reds, were he succumbs to a bullet, sacrificing himself for a superior. Those still interested (and able to tolerate the creaky performances) should know that the evil Tershenko-look-a-like bribes Andrey, and sends the him to contemporary Paris in order to swindle a Russian duchess (sic) out of a Russo-Bolt, which is priceless. Andrey meets Vera, when the she causes a flowerpot to drop from her balcony onto his head….

Heritage of Love was shown at the Marche du Film at Cannes this year. We learn from press releases that “industry professionals warmly received the film; some wept whilst watching”. We are also informed, that Dima Bilan “arrived in Cannes for the theme party on board a yacht”. He cheerfully greeted those attending the ‘premiere’ aboard the yacht, which was designed in the style of the movie: characters’ costumes (incl. blue Bilan’s uniform, memorable from the movie) and seamen’s caps sporting the words “The Heritage Of Love” (this is the international name of the picture), as songs of Dima Bilan ringing out through the festivities, accompanied by French wines – the reception was a success!” Shame about the film. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 2 DECEMBER 2016 | RUSSIAN FILM WEEK UNTIL 4 DECEMBER 2016

https://vimeo.com/182021665

The Unknown Girl (2016) | La Fille Inconnue | Cannes Film Festival | In competition 2016

Directors: The Dardennes Brothers

Cast: Adèle Hanael | Jeremie Renier | Olivier Gourmet | Fabrizio Rongione |

117min | Belgium | Drama

One wonders if the Dardennes brothers are still living in the real world with this low-key Belgian crime drama which feels stuck in the 1970s. It follows the daily life of a young GP who makes round the clock personal visits to her patients and harshly admonishes her practice intern for his lack of emotional detachment before reacting with guilt and tearful outbursts when a total stranger calls at the surgery after hours, and subsequently winds up dead.

The Dardennes’ 10th feature is a slow-burning procedural drama set in modern Liège where a solid cast perform a dreary tale of social realism amid unremitting gloom. This is not the Belgian city of frothy chocolate drinks and buttery waffles, but one of drugs and the dejected.

Hanael plays the bossy and humourless Jenny who takes great care of her patients but comes up against her intern Julien who decides to leave the medical world for good after a mild contretemps with Adèle Hanael’s good doctor. Matters take a turn for the worst when the police arrive to investigate the death of a young black girl who attempted to gain access to the surgery, just as it is closing (we feel her pain). Jenny is fraught with guilt at the incident and turns passive aggressive on several of her patients as she begins a freelance investigation into the possible murder.

For the first part of the two hour running time the film unspools in intimate close-up shots in the confines of the surgery and various domestic locations – as Jenny attempts to juggle her worthy medical activities (examining her patients’ seeping wounds, foot ulcers, stools and vomiting)- but eventually the ‘murder investigation’ takes complete hold of her and widens out into the environs of a wintery Liège where she is unable to let go of the stranger’s destiny for a predictable conclusion in the Dardennes’ trademark elliptical style.

The Dardennes Brothers have a legendary history of social realist filmmaking with successes at Cannes Film Festival winning the Palme D’Or for The Child and Rosetta and gongs for The Kid with a Bike, The Silence of Lorna amongst others. This is their least enjoyable film to date, but will no doubt appeal to ardent fans of their particular pared-down brand of realism. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 | IN COMPETITION

http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/web-tv/trailer/la-fille-inconnue#vid=1112

Chi-Raq (2016)

Dir.: Spike Lee | Cast: Teyonah Parris, Nick Cannon, Wesley Snipes, Angela Basset, John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson | USA | 127 min.

Director/co-writer Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing) seems to be getting more and more angry as he gets older. Whilst the reasons are obvious, and we did not need a triumphant Trump for proof, Lee’s method of translating his rage in Chi-Raq (as in may of his other films) is hardly helping a reasonable discussion about the social woes of the United States. Chi-Raq (the first major production of Amazon Studios) is an overblown numbers revue, a re-setting of Aristophanes Lysistrata in Chicago’s notorious Southside and a sort of hip-hop musical.

Lysistrata (Parris) is living with her lover Demetrius Dupree alias Chi-Raq (an amalgamation of Chicago and Iraq), the gang leader of the purple clad Spartans, in Chicago’s Englewood district. Their sworn enemies are the Trojans, led by Wesley Snipes (with an eye patch) as Cyclos. As in reality, the gang warfare has claimed more victims in Chicago than the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts combined. After the death of a baby-girl called Patti in a shoot-out between the gangs (most perpetrators and victims are black), Lysistrata, with the help of her wise neighbour Miss Helen (Basset) and her many sexy girl friends, organises a sex boycott: the men of both gangs have to give up their weapons, to gain access to their bedrooms again. With the help of preacher Mike Corridan (Cusack), Lygistrata organises the withdrawal action (No peace, no pussy), supported by a big chorus and Dolmedes (Jackson), who comments the action like a ringmaster.

Chi-Raq immediately sets the tone with its opening number “Pray 4 My City”, a raucous chorus. From then on, Lee hammers home his message, borrowing shamelessly from West Side Story, Patton and Dr. Strangelove, among others. Yes, this is supposed to be satire, but the numbers are so overblown, that they are more caricature than critique. Particularly the contrived ending underlines that form has overtaken content to a degree that the aesthetics have swamped the critical aspect of the film. Furthermore, Lee, like many others, does not seem to recognise the obvious: that the free availability of weapons and the billion Dollar profits of the industry are the true reasons for the killings. With its running time of more than two hours and its uneven narrative, Chi-Raq loses the audience at the end, when one gag after another tries to outdo its predecessor. DoP Matthew Libatique images dominate the proceedings, his choreography is truly marvellous – but help to suffocate the message. The cast, obviously having fun, is brilliant, particularly Teyonah Parris, who dominates the proceedings. What a shame that script and structure let everyone down. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM

https://vimeo.com/144523728

The Light Between Oceans {2016) | Venice Film Festival 2016

DIR: Derek Cianfrance

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbinder, Rachel Weisz

Based on the 2012 novel by M.L. Stedman, director/writer Derek Cianfrance picks up where he had left off with Blue Valentine: a relationship spoilt by circumstances, fate and human fragility. The epic format, rare today, suits the subject well: spanning decades, the emotions are played out in full, leaving the audience exhausted by the end of the sweepingly romantic tragedy.

Tom Sherbourne (Fassbinder), a British soldier in WWI, seeks refuge as a light keeper on an isolated rock called Janus, off the coast in Western Australia. Emotionally and physically spent, he just seeks solitude; the bloodbath in France has opened his eyes to the endless possibilities of human cruelty. Just before he leaves for his post, he falls in love on the mainland with the young and headstrong Isabel Graysmark (Vikander), who later agrees to marry him. The two live – for a time – happily in the wilderness, before two miscarriages drive Isabel into a manifest depression. When Tom rescues a rowing boat, the couple find a dead man, and a baby girl very much alive. Isabel talks the very reluctant Tom into keeping the baby, pretending it was their own and setting in motion untold drama of colossal proportions.

The Light between Oceans is somehow a meeting between Henry James/Thomas Hardy and David Lean. The emotional hurt inflicted on their protagonists by the two authors, match well with Lean’s strong sense for the epic battle in hostile surroundings. The wild, beautiful landscape is the perfect background for this drama of guilt, savage suffering and motherly yearning seen through this visceral human need to procreate. DoP Adam Arkapaw’s magnificent visuals match both the human obsessions in the intense close-ups, and the dramatic remoteness of the environment in panoramic shots. Vikander and Fassbinder, a couple in real life, play their hearts out; Vikander’s strong but elegant poise (she is a trained ballet dancer), is well opposed to Fassbinder’s tortured movement and demeanor. Weisz’ Hannah, in spite of her turmoil, being the detached chess player, setting a trap for Isabel. This might be traditional cinema, but it is emotional and aesthetically powerful, well crafted on all levels, and truly moving thanks to Alexandre Desplat’s operatic score. AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS VUE, ODEON, CURZON FROM 2 DECEMBER 2016 | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2016 REVIEW

The Dreamed Ones (2016) | DIE GETRÄUMTEN

Director: Ruth Beckermann

Cast: Anja Plaschg, Laurence Rupp; Austria 2016, 89 min.

Vienna born director Ruth Beckermann (East of War), explores the relationship between the Romanian born Jewish poet and author Paul Celan and the Austrian poet and writer Ingeborg Bachmann and the unsurmountable emotional conflicts brought about by different parental influences. Celan was a Jew whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust and Bachmann was the child of a committed Nazi.

Beckermann has chosen an interesting structure: two actors read the letters between the couple, dating from 1948 to 1967; including the ones from Bachmann which she never posted. Between the readings, the actors Anja Plaschg (Bachmann) and Laurence Rupp (Celan) talk and smoke and wander around in Vienna’s “Funkhaus” (Broadcasting House) listening to concert rehearsals and dining in the cafeteria. Their discussions are earnest and give the impression of genuine conflict resolution.

Celan and Bachmann only spent a few months living together in the late 1940s, but they were obsessed with each other. Bachmann had great difficulty committing to any long-term relationships, and Celan’s hesitant nature was no help. But the main stumbling block was their rivalry as poets and writers. Both were writing in German, and as members of the literature circle “Gruppe 47” they were fierce competitors. Celan had written the Holocaust poem ‘Death Fuge’ (Todesfuge) in 1945, which was published in 1948. In 1953 Bachmann won the “Gruppe 47” award for ‘Die gestundete Zeit” (The extended hours), while just a handful voted for Celan’s ‘Death Fuge’. As Celan put it: just six people remembered my name. To make matters worse, Böckler, a critic of the West Berlin paper “The Tagesspiegel”, criticized Celan’s “dead language” and insinuated the poet “ gets away with it, because of his race”. This sort of reaction was not uncommon in West Germany after the war where the majority of Germans, including intellectuals, felt sorry for themselves, and transferred their repressed guilt for the Holocaust into attacks on Jews.

Both Bachmann and Celan had two major relationships during their involvement and avid exchange of letters: Celan was married to the French aristocrat Gisèle de Lestrange, with whom he had a child. Bachmann lived with the Swiss writer Max Frisch in Zurich and Italy. Dominated by hatred and self-hatred, their obsession with each other was to end in tragedy: Celan committed suicide in 1970 drowning in the Seine. Bachmann, addicted to Barbiturates, literally set herself alight with a cigarette in bed, and died three weeks later in Rome.

Their mainly unfulfilled love was typically for the decades after the end of WWII, when the emotional chasm between the victims (or their children) of the Holocaust and the Nazis (and their children) was simply too much of a hurdle to overcome, however strong their feelings for each other. Celan and Bachmann simply stood no chance: history overcoming their love .

DOP Johannes Hammel creates loving close-ups of the ‘couple’, and his matter-of-fact shots of the “Funkhaus”, where broadcasting history has been made for the last 90 years or so, is a reminder that these ordinary-looking places have witnessed a violent and changing history. THE DREAMED ONES is a chronicle of despondency and unfulfilled desires in a time over-shadowed with a past which not only lead to the death of millions, but also poisoned the lives of innocent survivors like Celan and Bachmann. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS COURTESY OF CONTEMPORARY FILMS | 2 DECEMBER 2017

Blue Velvet (1986)

Dir|Writer: David Lynch | Cast: Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Dean Stockwell, Hope Lange, Priscilla Pointer | US | Fantasy thriller | 120min

In the recent eponymous documentary The Artlife, David Lynch talks about unsettling events that took place during his childhood in a small-town American setting, similar to Lumberton where BLUE VELVET takes place (although this feels like a larger city given its river and industrial wasteland). One of these incidents involved a naked woman outside his neighbour Dickie’s house. Sitting on a curb, she was crying and bleeding from the mouth – is this Dorothy? Those pivotal moments seem to have sparked a dark introspective quality in Lynch that he can’t talk about, but that later found its way into his films: Eraserhead, BLUE VELVET and Mulholland Drive.

BLUE VELVET is a noirish fantasy thriller flecked with irony, and a convincing rites of passage love story. Lynch could easily be Jeffrey Beaumont, the pleasant college boy who returns to the fictitious town of Lumberton to run the family hardware shop, while his father recovers in hospital from an incident involving the garden hose. The discovery of a severed human ear then takes Jeffrey to the local police chief, Detective John Williams, whose daughter Sandy will become Jeffrey’s accomplice in an adventure that leads to sexual awakening – although not with Sandy, at least not in the beginning.

Clearly, both Lynch and Jeffrey Beaumont come from similar loving families, but they also strive for adventure and, particularly, the darker side of life. Not content with running the local hardware store, student Jeffrey turns detective, hatching a plan that dices with danger, based on Sandy’s inside information on the police inquiry. And this involves gaining access to the home of nigh-club singer Dorothy Vallens (Rossellini) who is linked to the case and lives nearby. What Jeffrey discovers next involves a sordid criminal underworld that excites and appals him. Gradually he is drawn into a nefarious web of sexual deviancy, deceit and murder that runs contrary to his simple life in the lumber town where the most dangerous threat is being hit by a falling tree. A place where “a woodchuck actually knows how much wood he can chop” according to the local radio station.

BLUE VELVET is full of contrasts: red roses and white picket fences jossle with a severed human ear and a kidnapped child. Tonally, Lynch lurches successfully from sinister noir to light romance, and dissonant irony, and the dissonance is what makes it all so compelling. Jeffrey and Sandy are squeaky clean (how does the raunchy red décapotable fit in?) – sanitised even, in contrast to Dennis Hopper’s snarlingly vicious sadist and Isabella Rossellini’s battered bunny boiler. The motley crew that hang around in Rossellini’s private life – when she is not crooning on the dance floor of The Slow Club – are truly are a weird mix of depraved old biddies and over the hill hill billies, one of whom is also a convincing crooner in the style of Elvis (Dean Stockwell) . These are surely snatches from a Lynchian teenage dream, and over the years he has successfully channelled this dream life into the world of film.

Back in the day BLUE VELVET was quite shocking – the scissor scene is seared to the memory; 30 years later the bizarre and ironic elements come to fore – the opening scene with the garden spray and dog and the final one with the model bird – and it feels almost quaint and Eighties. The score is magnetic and memorable but without the florid colour BLUE VELVET could actually be a Forties film Noir, complete with its functioning factories, Deco diners and even a smaltzy night club. The power of great cinema is its ability to re-invent itself across the generations. MT

CELEBRATING ITS 30 ANNIVERSARY BLUE VELVET is RE-RELEASED COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS on 2 DECEMBER, OPENING AT BFI SOUTHBANK AND SELECTED VENUES NATIONWIDE

Mum’s List (2016)

To-do lists and highly personal catchphrases are the legacy Kate Greene (Emilia Fox) left a likeable husband and well-behaved kids in Niall Johnson’s soppy but thoughtful tear-jerker depicting her final months before succumbing to cancer, aged 38, in the idyllic coastal town of Clevedon, Somerset. It would be churlish to criticise this efficient film based on the bestseller by husband and teenage sweetheart St John Greene (Singe), an appealing Rafe Spall. The story flips between the couple’s whirlwind romance as gooey-eyed teens, and the weeks before and after Kate’s tragic death. Don’t expect much backstory on the family’s real life: this is a tribute to Kate’s never-ending dignity. Tissues at the ready. MT

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES FROM 25 NOVEMBER 2016

A United Kingdom (2016)

Dir.: Amma Asante; Cast: Rosamund Pike, David Oyelowo, Laura Carmichael, Tom Felton, Jessica Oyelowo, Jack Davenport, Terry Pheto, Vusi Kunene; UK/US/Czech Republic 2016, 105 min.

Director Amma Asante’s moving portrait of the love story between English secretary Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama, Prince of Bechuanaland, offers political clichés instead of analysis but stays just the right side of a good melodrama held up by its convincing lead performances. With her scripter Guy Hibbert, Asante dusts down with a certain aplomb this fascinating episode from England’s post war history and Pike and Oyelowo share a natural onscreen chemistry that feels both genuine and appealing.

Clearly, it was love at first sight when Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) met Prince Seretse Khama (D. Oyelowo) at a London dance in 1947 organised by the Missionary Society – of which her sister Muriel (Carmichael) was an avid member. Prince Seretse had come here to study Law and one year after their ‘coup de foudre’ the couple married at Kensington Registry Office, since the Bishop of London, William Wand, would only allow a church wedding if the government gave its consent. Needless to say, this did not happen and the couple are treated rather shabbily by the powers that be. And also by their own families: Ruth’s father George disowns her and things don’t get better for the couple in Bechuanaland (Botsawana) – at the time a British Protectorate: Seretse’s uncle Tshekedi (Kunene), who wants his nephew to succeed him as a ruler, but only on condition of Seretse marrying a black woman. The Prince’s sister Naledi (Pheto) offers the couple her reluctant support.

Back in London, Prime Minister Attlee is in league with the South African government, who has just introduced Apartheid. Since South Africa cannot stomach a multi-racial couple governing in a neighbouring country, Attlee agrees that the prince should be exiled from his own country for five years. After Ruth gives birth to their first child, she and her husband put all hope in Winston Churchill, who had promised Khama’s return to his homeland. But once in power, Churchill just expands the exile for the whole lifespan of Khama (“being in opposition is one thing, the reality of governing is another one”}. Meanwhile, in the future state of Botswana, Alistair Canning (a sneering Davenport), and his wife (Jessica Oyelowo), try their best to persuade Ruth to give up her marriage, and Alistair even puts on the garish uniform of a Viceroy, to impress the locals. But with the help of Tony Benn (the grateful couple would name one of their sons after him) and petitions by the population of his native country, Ruth and Seretse are allowed back to Bechuanaland in 1956, after living five years in Croydon. Seretse Khama would later modernise the country as the first President of an independent Botswana.

The scenes in London are realistic but the Bechuanalanders are shown as being rather naive and very romanticised, the newly independent Botswana was, at the time, the third-poorest country in the world, despite fantastic mineral reserves. Pike and David Oyelowo really hold it all together and one can really believe their boundless love, which started with their common passion for Jazz. The political machinations are the weakest part of A UNITED KINGDOM: the characters involved in these scenes are not only shown as manipulative, but also downright unappealing: merely satirical cardboard cuttings. DoP Sam McCurdy succeeds in great panoramic images in Africa, and a foggy, subdued post-war London, still staggering on its knees from the war. Whilst this is certainly a story which needs to be told, Asante and writer Guy Hibbert, often simplify the political aspects, using the protagonists as ‘talking heads’. When all said and done, A UNITED KINGDOM has great universal appeal as being a real and enduring romance between Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama, lasting until his death in 1980. AS

SCREENING from 25 NOVEMBER AT THE TRICYCLE CINEMA, ODEON, PICTUREHOUSES AND VUE

In the Blood (2016) | I Blodet | 5th Nordic Baltic Film Festival

Writer/Director: Rasmus Heisterberg | 104min | Denmark | Drama

Award-winning of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and A Royal Affair Rasmas Heisterberg gets behind the camera for his directorial debut IN THE BLOOD with some success, although his scathing critique of Copenhagen’s student medical elite fails to reach a satisfying conclusion, feeling more like a freewheeling mood piece capturing the zeitgeist of Summer in Nørrebro, in an alcoholic haze.

His film follows medic in the making Simon (Kristoffer Bech), a brilliant but compulsive student who breezes through exams and spends the evenings partying before heading to the Amazon for a study year with his best friend Knud (Elliott Crosset Hove), an introspective softie whose longtime girlfriend, Mia (Lea Gregersen) leaves him in the opening scenes.

Heisterberg captures the dreamy days of summer and really gets inside the characters concerned. Intimate and even claustrophobic, in a good way – it’s a superb portrait of young middle class privilege where self-centredness and blasé ennui takes centre stage. Knud is the most likeable character and Heisterberg conveys his emotional vulnerability in a role earnestly captured by Elliott Crosset Hove. Simon is less appealing: When caught stealing medical equipment he thinks only of his trip rather than showing any remorse, then becomes obsessed with bar worker Emilie but rather messes her around. This is a soulful and resonating drama that explores its characters effectively without becoming melodramatic or intense. MT

THE NORDIC BALTIC FILM FESTIVAL 1-11 DECEMBER 2016

https://youtu.be/VrAbIMhsEPU

In the Heat of the Night (1967) Sidney Poitier tribute

Dir: Norman Jewison | Cast: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates | US | Crime Drama | 109min

Directed by Norman Jewison (Rollerball), and scripted by Stirling Silliphant from the novel by John Ball – In the Heat of the Night was shot during the height of the Civil Rights movement and the Anti-Vietnam war protests, in the openly racist Southern state of Mississippi. It was the year before Bobby Kennedy’s murder and Richard Nixon’s victory in the Presidential elections: this was not only a topical, but also a brave undertaking, considering the violent climate in politics which spilled over into the streets.

In the little town of Sparta, Philadelphia homicide detective Virgil Tibbs (Poitier) waits at the railway station for the next train, taking him on to Memphis. Tibbs is arrested, without reason by the sheriff’s deputy, Sam Wood (Oates) – just because he is black. For Wood and his boss, sheriff Gillespie (Steiger), Tibbs is a godsend: he is the fall guy for the murder of industrialist Colbert who has been killed on the streets of the sleepy town the night before. After Tibbs shows Gillespie his police shield, the sheriff checks his identity with his home precinct, then asks Tibbs to help him clear up the murder, since he has already imprisoned the second wrongly accused man. Against his better judgement, Tibbs takes on the task: his main suspect is the cotton farmer Endicott (Grates), who had a motive to kill Colbert. Endicott slaps Tibbs, who retaliates, making the stunned Endicott cry out “my grandfather would have shot you for this”. In spite of being chased by a deadly quartet of racist killers, Tibbs solves the case, winning finally Gillespie’s respect.

This is not really a whodunit but a portrait of Southern society still living in the days of the Confederation whose flag can not only be found on cars and buildings in this film, but still proudly raised above the Governmental Mansions (and many ordinary houses) in some southern States today. Tibbs is permanently taunted being called “boy”. Meanwhile other black people in Sparta can’t get their minds round how a fellow black man could be a police officer.

Institutional racism is the order of the day and even the local café waiter ignores him. Verbal and physical threats poison the atmosphere – Tibbs is made to feel like a second-class citizen. The Voting Act of the 60s helped to restore some lawful semblance of order – at least at the polls, but the Supreme Court abolished it before this year’s election – making voter suppression in the South of the USA rife again.

The cast is stunning, but DoP Haskell Wexler is the real star (One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Mulholland Falls) is the real star: his images reflect the simmering heat and violence, the evil lurking in the shadows and in broad daylight. His confrontational close-ups of Tibbs and Gillespie show restrained anger confronting bullying prejudice. The seediness of the little town where Wood lurks voyeuristically, looking at naked white women, is symptomatic of the era’s repressed sexuality. Edited by director-to-be Hal Ashby, Jewison has created not only an aesthetically supreme film, but a political document, that is still resonant today, nearly 50 years later. AS

NOW On MGM with Prime Video Channels

Dreams | (1990) | Criterion UK Bluray release

Dir: Akira Kurosawa | Cast: Martin Scorsese, Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baisho, Mitsunori Isaki, Toshie Negishi, Mieko Harada | Japan | Fantasy Drama | 119min

Akira Kurasawa trained as a artist, in common with David Lynch and Abbas Kiarostami, and this is a filmed realisation of eight of the director’s recurring dreams, presented as a series of interconnecting shorts incandescently rendered in a magic realist style presented by Kurosawa for the first time as sole writer.

The vignettes explore with sumptuous imagery his nightime imagination that is often linked to episodes of Japanese folklore featuring tragic events and fairytales: a young boy wandering through woods discovers a fox wedding; a soldier confronts the macabre spectre of the war dead who were once his companions; a radioactive leak from a power plants spills over to contaminate the local countryside; and Martin Scorsese appears as Vincent van Gogh in a glowing tribute to the artist. DREAMS is a deeply personal and ravishing jewel box of tantalising tricks showcasing Kurosawa’s talents to edify, entertain and mesmerise his audience. MT

AVAILABLE FROM CRITERION UK FROM 21 NOVEMBER 2016

Punch-Drunk Love (2002) | Criterion UK release

Writer|Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Don McManus, Luis Guzman

95min | Comedy Drama | UK

Adam Sandler is the star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s febrile and jittery black comedy romance in which he plays Barry, an emotionally buttoned-up novelty supplier in thrall to an after hours telephone chat line, suddenly emboldened and redeemed when he falls in love.

After the confident dramas Boogie Nights and Magnolia, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE feels like a cinematic volt face for Anderson, almost as if he has wandered into the realms of Northern European arthouse cinema of the 90s and decided to change his style, specially when the love interest here is Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves).

Drenched in its cold detached aesthetic, the film drifts into some unsettling themes and feels strangely prescient of a future where chatlines provide a subliminal twilight zone where men can get their rocks off while outwardly seeming as macho and in control and they ever were, in between random psychotic outbursts, which Sandler conveys in a deft performance of comic complexity.

Here in a cavernous warehouse somewhere in California, Barry is overworked and underpaid but has discovered a scam where he can earn a fabulous amount of air miles simply by purchasing a type of canned pudding in the local supermarket. And his family offers no sanctuary. Teased by his overbearing sisters, who taunt him with a story of how he once broke a window pane with a hammer, he confesses to his brother in law that his life is in emotional turmoil and he suffers from anger issues (preparing him for his role in Peter Segal’s comedy Anger Management).

On a date with Emily Watson’s empathetic but slightly predatory Lena Leonard (a friend of his sister), he gets so hot under the collar that he escapes to let off steam by trashing the restaurant lavatories, returning calmly to face the restaurant manager. This pent up and tortured scene finally ends with him surrendering and kissing Lena. But in a weird subplot, he is then bundled into a truck and attacked by extortion thugs, controlled by Philip Seymour’s bullishly livid businessman,

Emily Watson is well cast here as she comes across as slightly unhinged but also placid and conciliatory as Lena. After the kissing scene, Barry desperately calls directory inquiries for her number (cue psychotic outburst) before loudly interrogating her (“do you have a boyfriend, well when did you last have a boyfriend?”) from a telephone box on a noisy street full of passers-by.

Turns out she already fancied him from a family photo. So when he follows her on business to Hawaii everything goes swimmingly until they end up in bed, when calmly confesses to “wanting to smash her face up with a sledgehammer” as they quietly make love. But there are more sinister events that slowly unfold in this sinuously disturbing and bracingly refreshing comic film about latent male aggression and dysfunctional romance, brilliantly set to Jon Brion’s flighty and discordance score. MT

AVAILABLE ON BLURAY COURTESY OF CRITERION UK FROM 21 NOVEMBER 2016.

Celine – Louis Ferdinand-Celine (2016) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2016

CÉLINE (LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE)

Dir.: Emmanuel Bourdieu | Cast: Denis Lavant, Geraldine Pailhas, Philip Desmeules | France | 97 min.

Director/writer Emmanuel Bourdieu (Intrusions) is best known outside France for his work as scriptwriter for Arnaud Desplechin (Esther Kahn, My Sex Life, or how I got into an Argument). With Céline, he steps out of the shadow of his famous compatriot, painting an honest portrait of the giant of French literature – who was so viciously anti-Semitic that the Germans avoided publishing most of his violent rants, during the occupation in Vichy France, because they deemed the extremism as counter-productive.

The title promises a bio-pic, but Bourdieu tackles just a few months in the life of the disgraced writer and physician: during his exile in the Danish town of Korsor in 1948, Céline is visited by the American scholar Milton Hindus (1916-1988), who happened to be Jewish, but was so star struck by Céline’s pre-war writings (Journey to the End of the Night and Death on Credit) that he is entrusted with the author’s world-wide rehabilitation, to allow him a return to France. Céline (Lavant) and his wife Lucette (Pailhas), living in a small cottage in the woods, eagerly await Hindus’ (Desmeules) arrival – whilst both are very much aware of Celine Anti-Semitism, they both hope he might be their ticket back to France – because he is Jewish. At first, Hindus walks voluntarily into the trap set for him by the devious couple: Lucette fawns over him, whilst the author supresses his contempt for Hindus, whom he just sees as a useful dilettante. Hindus has just come to talk literature, but Céline is only interested in discussing how Hindus can help him to persuade the French Government to allow the collaborator’s return. Slowly it dawns on Hindus that he is merely a pawn, and when he learns that a Danish doctor did not find the steel-plate in Céine’s skull, which the author claimed was a result of a wound from WWI, he withdraws slowly. During a drunken night spent by the trio outdoors, Céline and his wife lose their self-control under the influence of alcohol.

Bourdieu shows Céline not as a mad genius, but a rather small-minded little man who has to be right at all costs, offending others at will, unable to take any criticism himself. He is a wild little bourgeois, who happened to have talent as a writer. Céline is scheming, but when his patience snaps, he is only too proud to admit to his fascist beliefs: “Aryan culture came to an end at the battle of Stalingrad”. At the same time, Céline and other ‘intellectuals’ in Europe were not taken in by Hitler; whom they despised but used the power the Nazis gave them to persecute Jews. As for Hindus, on whose book The Crippled Giant, the film is based, his rude awakening helped him to value his Jewish identity for the first time in his life. Céline and his wife, alas, returned to France in 1951 after being pardoned, where the auhor went on writing and espousing his unrelenting racism.

DoP Marie Spencer skillfully conveys this prison-like atmosphere of Céline’s Danish exile: at night the musty brown Autumnal shadows see him again and again grabbing a pitch fork to defend himself against imagined intruders. Suicidal, Lucette is forced to take his revolver away as the two engage in a morbid web of deceit from which Hindus has to de-entangle himself. The only real light occurs at the end of the film, when Hindus is sitting in a bus to Copenhagen, fleeing the malign influence of his manipulators. Lavant and Pailhas are brilliant, but Desmeules is not given much identity, his Hindus seems too reserved to be a match for Céline. Far from being a story from yesterday, Céline asks the audience to re-examine questions about art and politics, and the role of the author in society as a whole. AS

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FESTIVAL NATIONWIDE UNTIL

I, Olga HEPNAROVÁ (2016)

Writer/Dir: Petr Kazda, Tomas Weinreb | Cast: Michalina Olszanska, Martin Pechlat, Klara Meliskova, Marika Soposka, Juraj Nvota

Glowing in Adam Sikora’s luminous black and white photography, I, OLGA HEPNAROVÁ is a stylised debut drama telling the true story of a mentally unstable teenager who became a cold-blooded killer in 1970s Czechoslovakia.

Olga Hepnarová was born in Prague in the early 1950s. An unhappy and alienated childhood made her reject her family and after an attempted suicide lead to a spell in a psychiatric institution, her career as a manual worked was brought to an abrupt end when she drove an HGV into a crowd of people at a tram stop in the city centre.

The subject matter is grim enough, but Tomas Weinreb’s spartan linear narrative gives this moody and at times explicitly sexual gay-themed character piece a detached and clinical feel so that it almost feels like a caricature of Eastern Bloc stricture. This acetic treatment feels too emotionally chilly and insubstantial to spark any mainstream interest outside the LGBT or arthouse crown who will be intrigued by Michalina Olszanska who plays the perverse and glowering chain-smoker with poise and an almost wilful insouciance.

The life of a mass murderer is surely rich in dramatic potential yet I, OLGA HEPNAROVA is completely devoid of drama. It initially feels as if Weinreb has failed to get under the skin of his anti-heroine, who remains a cypher throughout, not really appearing to care about being bullied at school, or ostracised in the mental home. The only time she shows emotion is during sex. And yet, in some ways, this is the perfect portrayal of a psychopath, who feels absolutely nothing for others, yet demonstrates a well concealed but seething narcissistic rage when ignored or thwarted, which is exactly how Olszanska plays Olga. It certainly explains Hepnarova’s anger which later erupts as revenge on the society that has failed to recognise her worth and potential. The final bathetic denouement has absolutely no impact in dramatic terms, coming without any warning or build up and almost seeming like an irrelevance until the police arrive, when we realise what exactly has happened – blink and you almost miss it.

Klara Meliskova is subtle and quietly affecting as Olga’s disappointed yet restrained mother but this is Olszanska’s film and she dominates it with a powerful sense of entitlement and denial. The final scene is a masterpiece in stiff upper lippery. MT

OUT at SELECTED VENUES ON 18 NOVEMBER 2016 BEFORE THE FILM LAUNCHES ON MUBI LATER IN THE MONTH.

Indignation (2016)

Script|Director: James Schamus Writers: Philip Roth

Cast: Sarah Gadon, Logan Lerman, Linda Emond, Ben Rosenfield, Tracy Letts, Margo Kazaryan

110min | Drama | US

Best known for his successful writing collaborations with Ang Lee, James Schamus adapts a Philip Roth novel for his directorial debut INDIGNATION.

Themes of love and religious commitment play out in this impressively mounted and gently affecting drama with dynamite performances from Logan Lerman, Tracy Letts and Sarah Gadon. Lerman plays Marcus Messner, an aspirational A student from a strict Jewish background who dreams of becoming a lawyer in the Supreme Court and avoids conscription to the Korean war by winning a scholarship to Winesburg College Ohio during the close-minded society of 1950s America.

Despite identifying as an atheist, Messner finds himself sharing a room with several disruptive Jewish boys (Philip Ettinger and Ben Rosenfield) who are desperate to involve him in their Fraternity. Against his better judegement, he then falls for the charms of fellow student Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon) who is sexually experienced and emotionally unstable despite her respectable background.

Consumed by passion and finding it difficult to fit in, Marcus is transferred to a single room but not without the intervention of his college rector, Dean Caudwell, who debates the pivotal issue with him at length in a coruscating battle of wills and one of the best scenes of this intelligent drama. Schamus focuses on the intellectual and cultural aspects of the narrative rather than delving deeply into its romantic ideals: the love affair is there to serve the story rather than the other way round, and what transpires in the aftermath involves a deal with his mother (a superb Linda Edmond) who reads the riot act as only Jewish mothers can.

INDIGNATION is an absorbing and accomplished literary adaptation for James Schamus and a storming start to his filmmaking career. MT

IN SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES FROM 18 NOVEMBER 2016

El Rey Del Once | The Tenth Man | UK Jewish Film Festival

Director: Daniel Burman | Cast: Alan Sabbah, Julieta

70min | Drama | Argentina

In Daniel Burman’s upbeat rites of passage drama EL REY DEL ONCE, Alan Sabbagh plays a typical put-upon Jewish softie returning home to Buenos Aires in the hope of reconnecting with his ageing father. Ariel emigrated to New York and in the intervening years his father Usher has founded a charity foundation in Once, the city’s Jewish district where Ariel spent his youth. But Ariel’s dreams of a father son reunion are drowned in the cacophony of demanding duties that Usher ropes him into while keeping a distinctly low profile himself.

Burman’s film brilliantly conjurs up the close and often stifling nature of the orthodox Jewish community and Once looks very much like old districts of Tel Aviv. The friendly openness of the people and their paranoia and hypochondria seeps through the narrative but also their endless support of one another. In Buenos Aires, everyone is talking and no one’s listening and Ariel feels desperate for a real connection. He’s drawn to Eva, a charity volunteer who also feels cut off from her family. Eva’s strength lies in her silent radiance. An orthodox girl, she nurtures Ariel with home cooking and the precious gift of listening while he reflects on his troubled soul and slowly, unwittingly, he falls in love.

With endless phonecalls from his girlfriend back home creating an oppressive claustrophobia, Ariel re-examines his life. Eva becomes jealous and after submerging herself in the mikveh, (a purifying bath often taken after a period) the two end up in bed and conversation flows for the first time. EL REY DEL ONCE is told as a straightforward narrative; the final act brings a happy ending but not a surprising one as Ariel volunteers to sit shivah as the tenth, vital man at a local funeral.

This is Daniel Burman’s third film at Berlinale where he once more explores the father son dynamic with a lightness of touch that is occasionally moving. As Ariel moves from darkness to light towards his inner strength, he finds himself at the centre of a community where he rightly belongs. Burman’s previous films at Berlin were El abrazo Partido (in Competition in 2004) and Derecho de familia (in Panorama in 2006). MT

SCREENING DURING THE UKJFF AT ODEON SWISS COTTAGE 17 NOVEMBER 2016 | BERLINALE 2016

Dong-ju : The Portrait of a Poet (2015) | London Korean Film Festival 2016

Much of Korea’s historical cinema harks back to the Colonial era as blockbuster director Lee Joon-ik teams up here with arthouse auteur Shin Yeon-sik (The Russian Novel) for a stylish black and white indie biopic of Yun Dong-ju, an early 20th century poet (sensitively played by Kang Ha-neuf) whose voice conveyed the sentiment of an entire generation in Korea when the country was under Japanese rule.

Lee’s delicately romantic and often humorous treatment is underpinned by Shin’s potent script that successfully evokes the artistic subject matter, exploring Yun’s lyrical poems that led to his imprisonment by the Japanese authorities who tortured and emotionally abused him, along with his friend and resistance activist Mong-kyu, during the Second World War.

The tone is light but serious in a narrative that explores the young mens’ burgeoning creative talents and the difficult relationship with their traditional parents – who try to force them into more solid professional careers – as they hone their craft in preparation for university. Deeply affected by Japanese Imperialism, the education system comes under pressure as Japan’s try to submerge Korean heritage and force its own culture on the country through the educational establishments.

Young ‘matinee idol’ stars Kang Ha-neul and Park Jung-min are well cast and supported by more established performers. This is a film that will possibly have more appeal to young audiences than the more diehard arthouse connoisseurs but offers thoughtful insight into an interlude of Korea’s creative past. MT

THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES UNTIL 27 NOVEMBER 2016

United States of Love | Zjednoczone Stany Miłosci| Silver Bear | Best Script | Berlinale 2016

Director: Tomasz Wasilewski (Floating Skyscrapers)

Cast: Julia Kijowska, Magdalena Cielecka, Dorota Kolak, Marta Nieradkiewicz, Łukasz Simlat, Andrzej Chyra, Tomek Tyndyk

Drama | Poland / Sweden

After the festival success of 2013s Floating Skyscrapers, Tomasz Wasilewski returns with UNITED STATES OF LOVE; which had its world premiere at the 66th Berlinalé. Mining similar themes that include a pessimistic representation of emotional entrapment and the effects of such situations.

The film opens in Poland, 1990. The huge changes are brewing and percolating. The first euphoric year of freedom, but hovering is the idea of the unknown. An attempt to create a state of the nation micro epic, Wasilewski focuses on four women of different ages who ponder the central premise of existential action to please themselves. Agata is a young mother, trapped in an unhappy marriage, who seeks refuge in another, impossible relationship with a young priest. Renata is an older teacher fascinated with her neighbor Marzena – a lonely former local beauty queen, whose husband works in Germany. Marzena’s sister Iza is a headmistress in love with the father of one of her students.

The four stories overlap and intersect at various points but none strikes an emotionally fulfilling enterprise. The film seems a collection of much mocked eastern European art house tropes which we have seen before and been better handled by superior filmmakers. Expertly shot (by ace Romanian DoP Oleg Mutu) and with very strong performances by the four central actresses, you are very much left with the idea that the film is not the sum of its parts.

It is obvious that Wasilewski is attempting to move the big table of Polish art house greats but one comes away thinking that all he has been successful in is strip mining visual iconography and thematic questions and answers of a specific time and place. In all the qualities the film presents the female perspective is the most startling and welcome but again one feels that these female characters are laid naked (both metaphorically and literally) but ultimately for cynical and self-serving reasons.

In the role of Renata (expertly played by Dorota Kolak) we are faced with the one time in the film that Wasilewski gets to a point that passes his rigid distancing devices but typically he manages to drop the ball with an act of doubling that he probably thinks is a coup de cinema but only comes across as yet another international art trope that he hasn’t deserved to present.

UNITED STATES OF LOVE is not a lost cause and for that matter neither is the director. There is plenty here to interest; whether that be an all-encompassing melancholia or the stellar female performances. In retrospect he needs to lose the affluence of influence and head for pastures new that will enhance his obvious talents. D M Mault.

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES | 18 November 2016

https://youtu.be/4LAQgzlb6YQ

The Last Princess | London Korean Film Festival 2016

Dir: Hur Jin-ho | Biopic Drama | 127min | South Korea

Hur Jin-ho gives full rein to romantic melodrama in his sumptuous retelling of the unhappy life in exile of Princess Yi Deok-hye, who was the last member of Korea’s Joseon Royal Dynasty. Based on Kwon Bi-young’s novel of the same title, it chronicles her life from a tiny child in the Changdeok palace in Seoul, until her capture by the Japanese authorities who transported her to Japan where she lived a cloistered existence until the last years of her life in her beloved country. Interwoven into the period narrative is a strand that takes place in 1960s Seoul that offers romantic and historical resonance to the central story that deals with the princess’s tragic life.

Son Ye-jin is leads with a performance of regal dignity tinged with discrete emotional interludes in this illuminating study that exposes not only the cruelty of the Japanese but also the treachery of the Koreans who betrayed their own people by kowtowing to Japanese imperialism, many ending up in positions of power after the Japanese annexation ended in 1945.

This is a more sombre offering than Park Chan-wook’s recent drama The Handmaiden although it deals with another historical interlude in the history of the Korean occupation. Hur, Lee Han-eol, and Seo Yoo-min begin their narrative a decade into Japanese occupation with King Gojong (Baek Yun-sik) still acting as the leader of his country and doting on his youngest child Deok-hye. Her confidence in her father’s love instills an unshakeable self-belief in the little princess who is seen in floods of tears in a touching scene where he father is dies after drinking a poisoned persimmon cocktail. Later she defies the Japanese authorities by refusing to wear a kimono and asserting her authority with graceful detachment as an inspiration leader for her people, although in private she is miserable and desperate to return home. In Toyko she is reunited with Kim Jang-han (Park Hae-il), to whom she was betrothed in childhood, and who is now high up in the Imperial Japanese Army and working alongside Deok-hye’s nephew Prince Yi Woo (Go Soo) for the underground resistance movement. He hatches several plans to get her and her brother Crown Prince Yi Eun (Park Soo-young), to safety in Shanghai but the wicked Japanese Chief of Staff always manages to rumble them. This no-win stalemate for Deok-hye climaxes in a torrid night in a hut with Jang-han followed by a momentous meltdown on a white sandy beach where, once again, an escape plot is foiled by the arch-villian, arriving on the boat she thought would take her to freedom. Although the THE LAST PRINCESS is a well-crafted historical drama that feels like a Hollywood epic with its rousing orchestral score and grippingly eventful storyline. MT

THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 27 NOVEMBER 2016 NATIONWIDE

https://youtu.be/f1eBsKNRGo4

EVOLUTION Mallorca International Film Festival 2016 | 3 -12 November 2016

EL DESTIERRO | THE EXILE ( 2015) Dir.: Arturo Ruiz Serrano; Cast: Joan Carlos Suau, Monika Kowalska, Eric Frances | Drama | Spain | 88 min.

Arturo Ruiz Serrano’s directorial debit is an uneasy and sometimes unsettling film set during the Spanish Civil War. It features – literally – a ménage-à-trois between two Fascist soldiers and a young Polish woman fighting for the International Brigades.

Theo (Suau) and Silverio (Frances) have the arduous and gruelling job of guarding an isolated mountain outpost in a remote, primitive stone hut. One day, Silverio, a burly macho, finds Zoska an injured Polish woman in the mountains and brings her back into the hut where it emerges that she is fighting for the Republicans. After saving her life by stopping her bleeding to death from a gunshot wound, Silverio then tries to rape her – but is prevented when Theo’s intervenes. But Zoska eventually sleeps with Silverio, but somehow falls in love with Theo, whose virginity appeals to her desire to be sexually in control. After Zoska succeeds in seducing the earnest young man (while Severio is asleep), the trio settles down to a peaceful co-existence. This tranquil state of affairs is interrupted when one of the soldiers, delivering food parcels, spots Theo and Zoska half-naked. Jealous, he verbally abuses her whereupon Theo intervenes. Silverio more or less stands by, his macho image brought into question: he would have allowed her rape but he somehow finds this violent confrontation unacceptable.

Serrano’s study of soldiers away from the battlefield provides an inventive moral counterpoint to the usual subject of wartime. Watchable enough, it is hard to find EL DESTIERRO credible: there are too many over-simplifications that stem from the male characters: Theo and Silverio clearly represent polar opposites on the moral compass, but they feel like caricatures. And Zoska’s only function is to be with the men and do the washing, in a poorly underwritten female characterisation. One suspects that Serrano wanted to show that loves conquers all, even in the time of war, but he has failed miserably: his debut is implausible, and sometimes downright sordid. DoP Nicolas Pinzon creates an evocative romantic mountain idyll, but the narrative lets him down.

EL DESTIERRO | OPENING NIGHT GALA | THE 5TH MALLORCA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 3 – 12 NOVEMBER 2016

Rachid Djaidani’s buddy road movie feels like an attempt to wave an Olive Branch in a France very much divided by recent terrorist unrest. And Gerard Depardieu has gamely volunteered to give the project credibility as the central character Serge, a raddled and mildly cantankerous widower who honours his dead wife with a painting trip round the Gallic coast, tracing the steps of her favourite artist, the maritime painter Joseph Vernet. His voluble chauffeur on this freewheeling creative odyssey is French-born Arab musician Far’hook (Sadek), and a cheesy but nourishing friendship blossoms between the pair that ultimately has Serge rooting for the rapper in the final redemptive scene that takes place at Far’hook’s hip hip event in Marseilles.

Once on the road, Far’hook is far from the angry hoodlum he would us believe in his punchy hip-hop lyrics. More of a puppy dog than a rottweiler, he emerges a metaphor for the marginalised youth of France, documenting the seaside séjour on his mobile and striking up a flirty friendship with a girl they meet along the way (Louise Grinberg). Meanwhile, painting serves as both a tribute to his wife and therapy for the ‘loss’ of his own son ‘Bilal’ (Nicolas Marétheu) who left home to become a Muslim and found his way into music.

TOUR DE FRANCE however corny, is a cheerful tale of racial diversity. Very much about the healing and unifying power of music, it serves as a well-intentioned balm to pour over his country’s troubled times.

TOUR DE FRANCE | CLOSING NIGH GALA | THE 5TH MALLORCA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | NOVEMBER 3-12 2016

NARRATIVE FEATURE COMPETITION
Luca Tanzt Leise, Director: Philipp Eichholtz (Germany)
After years of depression Luca reinvents herself with the help of new friends.

Nirgendwo, Director: Matthias Starte (Germany)
A stranger in his own life, Danny reluctantly returns to his childhood home after his father’s sudden passing. He rediscovers his hometown as a summery paradise.

Anna’s Life, Director: Nino Basilia (Georgia)
Anna a single mom is forced to take four jobs to support herself and her autistic son, she decides to leave Georgia but it’s easier said than done. Director will be in attendance.

A Heavy Heart, Director: Thomas Stuber (Germany)
A former East German boxing champion working as a bouncer and debt collector reflects on life when he is diagnosed with ALS.

Pura Vida (After Words), Director: Juan Feldman (US)
A librarian facing a mid-life crisis travels to Costa Rica in search of enjoying life to the fullest.

Kiss Me Kill Me, Director: Casper Andreas (US)
While confronting his unfaithful boyfriend, Dusty blacks-out. When he comes to, his boyfriend has been murdered and he’s the prime suspect. Director will be in attendance.

Parasol, Director: Valéry Rosier (Belgium)
Holiday time, a Mediterranean island. The determination, no matter the cost, to make things change. Nostalgia for a past that never existed.

Bittersweet Days, Director: Marga Melià (Spain)
Julia rents a room to Luuk. Their cohabitation will make them rethink their lives: are they living the way they really want to? Director will be in attendance.

Where to Miss?, Director: Manuela Bastian (Germany)
We follow Devki’s story, as it tell us why Indian women find it difficult to free themselves from their traditional roles.

Dusky Paradise, Director: Gregory Kirchhoff, (Germany – Made in Baleares)
After the death of his parents a young man travels to Mallorca to live in their house and look after their turtle.
Director in attendance.

Autumn Fall, Director: Jan Vardøen (Norway)
Ingvld entangles herself with two men, it is a very dangerous journey.

Buddymoon, Director: Alex Simmons (US)
Jilted groom David is convinced by his best man Flula to continue with his planned honeymoon. Lead actress Lilith Stangenberg in attendance.

Hotel Problemski, Director: Manu Riche (Belgium)
For the refugees of the multinational residential centre somewhere in Europe, this black comedy reveals their daily stuggles and laughs.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION

Oasis: Supersonic, Director: Mat Whitecross (UK)
An in-depth look at the life and music of Manchester-based rock band, Oasis <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?

The Karamazoffs (A walk on the SoHo years), Director: Juan Gamero (Spain)
In the 1960s, New York’s SoHo was occupied by artists from around the world, The Karamazoffs, a group of Barcelona artists relive their experience during those wild years in SoHo.

In Europe’s shadow, Director: Florian Schnell (Germany)
Human rights activist Elias Bierdel commentates throughout the film and meets refugees from different countries and activists.

De Lola à Laila, Director: Milena Bochet (Spain)
From mother to daughter the film shifts to a reflection about female emancipation, fight, movement and cinema.

The Key to Dalí, Director: David Fernández (Spain)
Tomeu L’Amo, a Majorcan scientist and artist bought an unknown painting in an antique shop 25 years later, he tries everything to get it certified as a real Dalí. Cast&Crew will be in attendance.

THE MALLORCA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 3-12 NOVEMBER 2016

Tour de France (2016) | Mallorca International Film Festival 2016

The Darkest Universe (2016)

Dir.: Tom Kingsley, Will Sharp; Cast: Will Sharp, Tiani Ghosh, Joe Thomas, Sophie Di Martino, Chris Langham | Comedy Drama | UK 2016, 86 min.

In a bid to be original Tom Kingsley and Will Sharp (Black Pond) deliver a hotchptoch of clichés in an indie drama which is inaccessible and sometimes hilarious – for all the wrong reasons.

Financial trader Zac (Sharp) is looking for his sister Alice (also co-writer) who has disappeared on a boat moored at Camden Lock, along with her boyfriend Toby (Thomas). Random flashbacks tell the story of the missing couple, who have both been unable to communicate properly with friends and family. But soon Zac’s story of “finding himself” takes over: Rejected by his girl friend Eva (De Martino), he cuts off his hair, produces maddening videos, which hardly help to find the missing couple, and visits Toby’s father Alan (Langham), in a country house where Toby grew up. There Zac discovers Toby’s cartoon story by entitled ‘The darkest Universe’, written for his sick mother, when he was little. Zac sinks deeper and deeper into a depression, blaming himself for Alice’ disappearance, having promised their dead mother, that he would look after Alice. The solution to their disappearance is about as nonsensical as the film itself.

DoP Will Hanke’s dreamy images of floating clouds are wasted on this amateurish production, which pretends to be enigmatic, and the actors try in vain not to sink to the level of script and direction – for which they are, at least partly, responsible. AS

ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE VENUES FROM 4 NOVEMBER 2016

Nocturnal Animals (2016) | Venice 2016 | Grand Jury Prize

Dir: Tom Ford | Cast: Jake Gyllenhal, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Michael Sheen

116min | drama | US

Like his handmade suits or ballgowns, Tom Ford’s films are always beautiful and well-crafted and his Venice competition hopeful NOCTURNAL ANIMALS adds some inventive and surprising detailing to its exciting plot: there are shades of David Lynch, Nicholas Winding Refn and even Paul Verhoeven to this darkly louche and occasionally sordid thriller that takes you to unexpected places, even if it takes its time in getting there.

This is his most intriguing film so far and also feels like his most confident and sure-footed with its well chosen cast, fabulous locations and the sheer swaggering boldness of its aesthetic, complemented by Abel Korzeniowski’s sinister and suggestive score, marking Ford out to be an accomplished storyteller as well as a accomplished couturier to the rich and famous. Suave and intoxicating, the narrative interweaves three strands that visit the present and past reality, and depart into a darkly imagined cul de sac that serves as a timely retribution for its heroine’s mispent romantic past.

As with A Single Man, Ford has adapted his script, this time from American novelist Austin Wright’s 1993 Tony and Susan, and the film’s title comes from the book within that novel. As the piece plays out it emerges that nocturnal animal was the name given to the heroine (Amy Adams) by her author and now ex-husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) on account of her inability to sleep.

The film opens as Adams’ Susan is a successful gallery owner living in a sumptuous modernist lakeside home in LA and married to an attractive husband (Armie Hammer) who sleeps around. While he is away in New York one weekend, she receives a manuscript of her ex husband’s book and reading it she is drawn into its shady and provocative storyline that appears to shadow their former life together – 20 years ago – in ways that are both louche and disturbing, leaving her emotionally shaken up and stirred.

Although outwardly a consummate professional, Adams’ vulnerability smoulders under her impeccable tailoring (Gucci?) and after a telling phonecall with her husband, she drifts off into a reverie of her past love life while she reads Edward’s manuscript. It tells how Tony (Gyllenhaal again), is driving in West Texas with his wife Laura (Isla Fisher) and their precocious daughter India (Ellie Bamber) when their car is ramrodded by a trio of menacing hoodlums (one is Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the saga does not end well. Susan is transfixed by the novel through the small hours as flashbacks of her former life remerge to taunt and shame her. Gripped by its sordid storyline she reads on: enter Michael Shannon’s seedy sheriff Bobby Andes who is determined to track down the perps and – in an unexpected twist – not afraid to serve mean justice on them due to his terminal cancer. Back in her bedroom Susan realises the error of her ways reflecting on how she left Edward because he lacked the backbone to follow his dreams.

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS is packed with fabulous performances from Laurie Linney in cameo as Susan’s patrician mother, Michael Sheen as a gay man married to her best friend , Jena Malone as a gallery assistant, and Shannon as the quinessential hard bitten chain-smoking cop and the narrative strands cleverly dovetail into the satisfying finale that combines a gritty sun-drenched Western with the steely glamour of frigid LA.

Apart from the Seamus McGarvey’s brilliant visuals there is plenty of amusing texture to keep you on your toes in the meticulous masterpiece – from twinking nightscapes to witty interludes and Adams is luminuous as Susan in her second appearance here at Venice Film Festival. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER| IN COMPETITION

My Feral Heart | EAST END Film Fest 2016

MY FERAL HEART

Dir.: Jane Gull; Cast: Steven Brandon, Eileen Pollock, Sarah Swash, Will Rastall, Pixie Le Knot | UK 2016 | 83 min.

Steven Brandon makes an impressive screen debut in Jane Gull’s heartfelt care home drama MY FERAL HEART. He plays Luke, an empathetic young man with mild Down’s Syndrome who, despite his own heath concerns, becomes a positive asset to the inmates of Blossom House care home where he is transferred after the death his bedridden mother (Pollock), whom he cared for with great tenderness. Struggling to come to terms with his new environment, Luke befriends teenager Pete (Rastall), a gardener with a troubled past and a feral girl (Le Knot), who has been caught in an animal trap, nursing her back to health. Brandon carries the film with his understated performance, best shown in his scenes with Peter, which are a tribute to those suffering from borderline mental and physical impairment. Although Gull’s care home appears to be idyllic, she directs Duncan Paveling’s script with sensitivity and maximum emotional impact, Gull avoiding all sentimentality. DoP Susanne Salavati, also shooting her first feature, flips seamlessly between realism in the care home and the natural beauty of the surround countryside making MY FERAL HEART humanistic and engaging in its consideration for vulnerabilities on many different levels. AS/MT

SCREENING DURING THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL ON 28 JUNE 2016

London Korean Film Festival 2016 | 3-27 November 2016

The LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL (LKFF) celebrates its 11th year running with an extended run from 3 – 27 November at accessible state of the art venues around London.

Opening with the UK Premiere of female director Lee Kyoung-mi’s The Truth Beneath at Picturehouse Central, in keeping with this year’s edition which has a ‘Special Focus on Women’. Hong Sang-soo’s San Sebastian Best Director winner Yourself and Yours, (left) is one of the titles worth seeing. So often called the “Woody Allen of Korean cinema”, his films are full of dry wit and probing characterisations. His 18th feature is the closing gala at Regent Street Cinema on 27 November.

The Focus on Women strand will screen 11 key works. Worth looking out for will be a rare screening of Nam-ok Park’s 1955 drama The Widow (Mimangin), (image below) the first film to be directed by a Korean woman. The festival also explores Korea’s New Wave before presenting UK premieres of the latest Korean outings: Jin-ho Hur’s The Last Princess (2016) a biographical drama set during the Korean struggle for Independence under Japanese rule. Two documentary features join the programme in the shape of Wind on the Moon, a charming documentary that explores the life of a mother and her deaf mute child and Keeping the Vision Alive (2001), Yim Soon-rye’s study that explores the journey of Korea’s women filmmakers.

Young-joo Byun’s tense mystery thriller Helpless (Hoa-cha) (2012) and for those that like their cinema dark and vengeful there is Woo Min-hun’s Inside Men (2016) featuring Korean star turn Lee Byung-hun as a wronged political henchman; the European premiere of Asura: City of Madness, Kim Sung-soo’s impressively over-the-top and violent gangster thriller, where a shady gets caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. And flying the flag for the country’s animated talent is Seoul Station (2016) a prequel to the breakout zombie hit of the summer Train to Busan. MT

LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 3-27 NOVEMBER 2016

After Love | l’Economie du Couple (2016)

Dir: Joachim Lafosse

Cast: Berenice Bejo, Cedric Kahn, Marthe Keller, Jade Soentjens, Margaux Soentjens

100min | Belgium | Drama

Berenice Bejo stars in another tale of marital discord this time partnering with Cedric Kahn in Joachim Lafosse’s slick but uneven exploration of emotional unravelling.

In The Past (2014), she played the sequestered wife of an Iranian business man, while Childhood of a Leader (2016) saw her trapped in the home of Liam Cunningham’s fascist politician. Belgian auteur Lafosse is himself no stranger to the theme of claustrophobia which engulfs the characters in Private Property (2006), Private Lessons (2008) and Our Children (2012).

As the camera follows the couple through their elegant one floor living quarters AFTER LOVE touches on a few raw nerves but mostly highlights the sheer desperation of wanting to move on from a situation that has run its term. Only the very wealthy can just ‘up sticks and run’, and Lafosse and his co-writers home in on this stifling aftermath when the ties that bind uncomfortably start to strangle the past and, crucially, suffocate the future, as one party refuses to let go.

The set-up is all too familiar: Marie (Bejo) is happily living in the flat with her twin girls (Jade and Margaux Soentjens), but wants rid of their father, Boris (Kahn), who is firmly staying put until he gets his share of the equity for a sale that simply isn’t happening. An architect and designer, he’s added value to the place. And now he is unemployed. Frustration, humiliation and barely concealing anger follows in spades as he becomes the elephant in the room in several scenes, particularly during a dinner party.

The relationship breakdown has also broken Marie and Boris, whose characters are slowly imploding with the sheer stress of it all. And this is not helped by Marie’s mother (Martha Keller) who contributes to her psychological pain, that tracks back to the past in uncomfortable ways. Most effective in its early scenes, AFTER LOVE shows how the flat becomes a toxic prison in a storyline riddled with slow-burning tension, that gradually dissipates in the final scenes that resorts to legalese. A must see if you’ve experienced marital breakdown. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 28 OCTOBER 2016 | CANNES REVIEW

Pool of London (1951) | BLACK STAR SEASON | BFI

Dir: Basil Dearden | Writers: Jack Whittingham, John Eldridge

Cast: Bonar Colleano, Susan Shaw, Renee Asherson, Earl Cameron, Moira Lister, James Robertson Justice, Leslie Philips

82min | UK | Crime Thriller

Showcasing London’s docklands in the 1950s, Basil Dearden’s gritty film noir was one of Ealing’s darker titles intrepidly dipping its toe into the avangarde theme of interracial romance in a diamond smuggling story performed by a sterling British cast.

On a sunny Friday afternoon, merchant Navy sailors Dan MacDonald (Bonar Colleano/Dance Hall) and Johnny Lambert (Earl Cameron) arrive on board the freighter Dunbar which docks near Tower Bridge on the Thames. As Customs board the ship, the sailors eagerly squirrel away nylons for their girls, and bottles of whisky, amongst other more valuable goods. MacDonald is a glib chain-smoking American. Lambert hails from Jamaica on his last tour of duty. The polite and open-faced Jamaican has no idea why he is met with contempt by an usher at the theatre were he ends up after meeting Pat (a luminous Susan Shaw who also starred in the Ealing production It Always Rains on Sunday). But this is just the first of many things that will go wrong when he is drawn in a heist with MacDonald.

Pool of London features sparkling black and white footage of the working docks, up and running again after the end of the Second World War and with St Pauls and the City in the distance; a milkman delivering milk in a barrow (a bottle of which becomes the Maguffin in the heist), and the jazz dancing clubs that became a popular way for men coming out of the forces to meet young women. Jamaican immigrants had started to arrive in the capital with the promise of a new life.

Whittingham and Eldridge’s tight scripting is underpinned by amusing turns from Robertson Justice and Philips. New Yorker Colleano adds a briskness to the English cast (he was killed a car accident a few years later, but not before marrying Shaw, who never got over his death, dying prematurely of liver failure in 1978). But the tone changes from cheerful optimism to dark and seedy despair as the narrative sails on.

Filmed in 35mm, Gordon Dines’ brilliant camerawork captures the familiar with a sinister noirish feel; here is an amazing stunt where Max Adrian’s crim Charlie Vernon jumps from one building to the next. In fact, Pool of London‘s tense storyline is nearly eclipsed by the stunning backdrop of these 1950s images, with London’s iconic landscapes and buildings adding texture and verve. MT

OUT ON 24 OCTOBER IN A 2K BLURAY RESOTRATION COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL AND ALSO IN CELEBRATION OF THE BFI’S BLACK STAR SEASON | Q&A WITH EARL CAMERON CBE ON 23 OCTOBER 2016

https://youtu.be/Gewc3Maw0Z0

I, Daniel Blake (2016) | Cannes Film Festival | Palme d’Or Winner | 2016

Director: Ken Loach. Writer: Brian Laverty DoP: Robbie Ryan

Cast: Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Briana Shann, Dylan Philip Mckiernan

100mins | Drama | UK

It seems appropriate that a British auteur with his own particular brand of social realism should still return at 80, to a Film Festival that, at 69, still prides itself with being about the art of film rather than just the money. THE CANNES COMPETITION line-up is still gloriously auteur-driven; but you may never get to see these arthouse films at your local cinema- apart from the Palme d’Or winner, naturellement. That’s why Woody Allen, a treasured regular at Cannes still brings Red Carpet glitz and the big crowds. His festival opener Cafe Society (out of Competition) is a romantic comedy and social satire of America in the 1930s, will definitely be coming to a cinema near you.

But back to Ken Loach and this latest film that arrives a decade after he won the Palme d’Or for The Wind That Shakes the Barley and two years after he brought Jimmy’s Hall to Cannes. This is a story about an decent man, another auteur, but this time one who crafts wood, and suddenly finds himself in his fifties having to fall back on the Welfare State due to a heart attack, after years of self-employment as a joiner. His life of using his hands comes to an abrupt halt – “I can build you a house, but I can’t use a computer” – and he feels demoralised and smoulders with quiet desperation at having to deal with the social services and a grim breed of people called ‘medical professionals’ and’ decision-makers’ instead of his regular normal customers in his Newcastle home.

Loach works with his regular co-writer Paul Laverty in this bleak but trenchant indictment of the British Welfare System where Daniel Blake, a Geordie, is played by stand-up comedian Dave Johns. The only score is that stalwart of ‘on-hold phone lines – The Four Seasons – but the dialogue is humorous and fraught with Geordie expressions.

Blake is a self-reliant bloke but soon he is smouldering with resentment at the humiliating situation of having to sign on for benefits having been warned by his doctor about retuning to work. Loach often offers a didactic approach which is occasionally moving and sparked with fierce humour, although the support characters often feel typecast into the nasty government types versus the compassionate underdogs. When Daniel sees a young mother (Hayley Squires) of two being denied basic support for missing her appointment slot, an unlikely friendship develops and he offers to help with the kids and odds jobs around her council flat. Although the mother’s story occasionally veers into the realms of mawkish melodrama, Daniel emerges as the hero, a truly likeable bloke mourning the death of his wife as he deals with the Kafkaesque absurdity of form-filling red tape that most of us will thoroughly identify with. Although the finale feels rather uncharacteristic in the light of Daniel’s previous sensible attitude it will certainly appeal to those who have reached the end of their tether with bureaucracy or share Loach’s signature political affiliations. It will no doubt be Jeremy Corbyn’s film of the year.

So six months down the line, after a revisit, I’m still with Robbie Collin on his Daily Telegraph review: “the award (Palme d’Or) sat awkwardly with a few critics, including myself, who felt the film’s determination to more or less frogmarch its audience around to its way of thinking felt less like the stuff of great cinema than the party political broadcast – although doubtlessly Loach and his long-time collaborator, the screenwriter Paul Laverty, would respond that right now, explicitly partisan left-wing politics is exactly what cinema needs.” MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 | Winner Palme d’Or

In celebration of Ken Loach’s 80th Birthday in June 2016, Dogwoof and the BFI support a film by British documentarian Louise Osmund: VERSUS: The Life and Films of Ken Loach |

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) | Glasgow Film Festival 2023

Director: Robert Wise | Screenplay: Abraham Polonsky, Nelson Gidding; | Cast: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame | USA / Crime drama / 95mins

Based on a novel by William P. McGivern, it comes as no surprise to learn that Jean-Pierre Melville owned a copy of the film, and watched it more than eighty times.

A downbeat heist film in the vein of The Asphalt Jungle, Rififi, The Killing and Melville’s own Bob le Flambeur, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW follows three desperate losers scratching a precarious living bumping along the lower depths of American society, to whom embittered ex-cop Ed Begley pitches a seemingly simple bank robbery that in Begley’s words will “let us live again”.

One of the gang has to be black in order to impersonate a black delivery boy; and therein lies the heist’s fatal flaw. Harry Belafonte reluctantly agrees to take on the job because he owes a loan shark $7,500. The third gang member is Robert Ryan in all-out bigoted psycho mode as a Southern racist from Oklahoma who’s done time for assault with a deadly weapon and manslaughter, is incapable of holding down a job owing to his quick temper, and is now suffering the indignity of being supported by his sad, put-upon girlfriend Shelley Winters. When Begley pitches his plan to him, he initially rejects it because “You didn’t say nuttin’ ’bout the third man being a nigger.” (His words, not mine!) But, like Belafonte, it’s his only chance of escaping the hole he’s in. (It’s plain that Ryan just can’t get along with people, and his problem with blacks is just one facet of a much bigger problem. We learn that he lost one of his jobs because of a bust up with “a Polack foreman in the auto works”. Nor has Belafonte much time either for whitey, and he chides his ex-wife for attempting to fit in: “It’s their world and we’re just living in it”). Ryan – possibly the greatest film actor never to win an Academy Award – is as usual superb; but Begley – no slouch at playing angry bigots himself – is if anything even better in the less showy part of the heist’s avuncular mastermind perplexed by Ryan’s attitude to Belafonte and forced to keep the two off each other like kids scrapping in a school playground. But the real star is cameraman Joseph Brun.

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is often claimed to be one of the last of the film noirs, but too much of this takes place in realistically filmed broad daylight to properly qualify as a canonical noir. (Only in the movies, though, could the neighbour needing a babysitter be played by the unique Gloria Grahame, who wants to hear from Ryan “How did it feel when you killed that man?”) And what daylight! Those skies! It’s the best looking black & white film ever made; and Joseph Brun’s photography a masterclass in what the cinema lost when it abandoned black & white (along with stylish title design like the bizarre opening credits in which the novelist John Oliver Killens originally served as a front for the blacklisted Hollywood scriptwriter Abraham Polonsky). Much of Odds Against Tomorrow takes place in bitingly cold winter sunshine in New York; and the combination of glacial deep focus and the skilful, unobtrusive use of zooms renders the film’s locations and interiors so tangibly real you feel as if you’re actually there. It’s like watching 3D, especially in the final gut-wrenching nighttime robbery sequence (shot in Hudson in upstate NY), which packs in enough noir atmosphere to more than make up for lost time. Robert Wise also took the opportunity to do something that “I’d been wanting to do in some pictures but hadn’t had the chance”, and used infra-red film in some sequences, such as the opening shot of Robert Ryan in the street. Aided by John Lewis’s silky jazz score played by the Modern Jazz Quartet, the mood and look of Odds Against Tomorrow anticipates the similarly baleful atmosphere of Alan Pakula’s Klute. @Richard Chatten.

NOW playing in GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL as part of a Gloria Grahame Season

Day for Night (1972-3) | La Nuit Americaine

Dir.: Francois Truffaut; Cast: Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Jean-Pierre Aumont) Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Laud, Francois Truffaut, Natalie Baye; France 1972/3, 116 min.

With DAY FOR NIGHT, his fourteenth feature film, Truffaut wanted to make a break from his earlier work: “I am a French filmmaker, and I have to make another thirty films”. Unfortunately, he would only direct another eight, due to his untimely death at the age of fifty-two in 1984.

DAY FOR NIGHT refers to a technical term in film making, where night scenes are shot at daytime, with dark lenses creating the illusion of darkness. The director Ferrand (played by Truffaut), shoots the film within a film in Nice. There (fictional) shoot proves to be problematic: the director clashes with the producer, the star Alphonse (Léaud) falls in love with the fragile leading lady Julie Baker (Bisset), who calls her husband/analyst to sort things out. Another leading man called Alexandre, (Aumont) dies. Fiction and reality continuously overlap: Harassed by Alphonse, Julie exclaims: “I want to live alone”, only to find the same sentence written by the director in her script for next day’s shooting. Wearing a hearing aid in reference to Luis Buñuel, Ferrand/Truffaut shows himself above crew and cast: he tries to be disinterested, being only in love with cinema itself, and wanting to be loved back by the audience as the only reward. DAY FOR NIGHT is a love letter to filmmaking, traditional and uncontroversial.

The film was used by Jean-Luc Godard and Truffaut to bring their personal relationship to a bitter end: Truffaut even calling his ex-collaborator a “shit”. After all, they had directed Une Histoire D’Eau (1958) together, and Truffaut gave Godard the script to direct “A Bout de Souffle”. Godard started the argument, calling Truffaut a liar, since Ferrand/Truffaut in DAY FOR NIGHT rises above all emotional complications. The real Truffaut liked to sleep with his leading ladies – in common with Godard. As usual, financing was an issue: but this was more about where the two directors were standing in filmmaking terms: Truffaut was going backwards, making exactly the same movies “of qualities and psychology” which he had panned as a film critic; whilst Godard was well on his way to ‘re-inventing’ cinema. When Ferrand/Truffaut comments after the death of Alexandre in DAY FOR NIGHT: “With him we lose a whole epoch of filmmaking. From now on, the studios will be dying, films will only be shot on the streets, without proper scripts”, he echoes Melville’s critic of Godard, whom he once defended against the older filmmaker. In an interview with Suzanne Schiffman, Truffaut’s collaborator for decades, she told me, that “if Truffaut would have lived, he would have only shot in studios, the only place he felt secure”. Interviewed by the German Film journalist Michel Ladiges in February 1974, Ladiges asks Truffaut about his relationship with Truffaut. There seem to be not so much hard feeling, just puzzlement: “I don’t know [about the directions taken by the directors of the Nouvelle Vague], but with Godard, you have to be very careful. He has finished a certain period in his work. Today, he is very much in favour of video, because he believes, this is the future of filmmaking. But he can change his opinion any time, and will return to filmmaking. One can be never sure with him”.

Which proved to be true: Godard would return to directing films in 1975 with Numéro Deux – but comparing this radical portrait of a family with Truffaut’s L’Histoire d’Adèle H., shot in the same year, one has the answer for the spat: it was not so much about jealousy and money, but a parting of the ways: Godard created his own universe, whilst Truffaut, a true romantic at heart, went on trying to please a mass audience. AS

OUT ON BLURAY COURTESY OF CRITERION UK COLLECTION ON 24 OCTOBER 2016

Au nom de ma fille (2016)

Vincent Garenq’s suberb French legal procedural drama follows a father’s lengthy fight for justice grappling with international border complexities and the breakdown of his marriage.

Ably scripted by Julien Repeneau, it stars a dynamite Daniel Auteuil as a loving family man and tender husband whose wife falls for the doctor in charge of their recuperation from a road accident while they are living in Morocco. Relocating the family swiftly back to France, he tries to save his marriage but clearly his wife is smitten by Sebastian Koch’s suave German doctor Dieter Krombach, and she leaves to live in Germany, where Kalinka’s suspicious death occurs 8 years later during a holiday there.

Based on the true Kalinka Bamberski case, Au nom de ma fille spans Andre Bamberksi’s 30-year court battle to convict Dr Krombach of her murder and provides us with a stunning array of European of locations from seaside Archachon in South West France to Munich in Bavaria. Vincent Garenq masterfully manages the various timeframes in an intelligent narrative that takes into consideration the audience’s interest in knowing when and where the crucial events occur, as a peripatetic story unfolds from 1974 until 2011. The hard-hitting film takes on noirish proportions as it seamlessly transits from family drama to legal procedural and through to a sinister crime thriller, Garenq’ straddling tonal changes with the dexterity of a high-wire trapeze artist. Meanwhile Auteil is absolutely first class as Bamberski, nipping at Krombach’s tail with the perseverance and doggedness of a terrier, never giving in ’til his bitter struggle is through.The story alone makes for a gripping thriller and thanks to tight scripting the hatred between Andre and Krombach feels hard-edged and plausible. Naturally Auteuil has to age considerably but this all looks totally natural and even the cars are authentic, the Peugeots here are the very same models I travelled through France in during the 70s.

Auteuil and Koch bring a touch of sophisticated allure to the proceedings and this is carried through in soigné interiors and Nicolas Errèra’s sexy score. Auteuil’s sensitivity captures moments of tearful emotion and boiling anger and we feel his pain and desperation in the pivotal plotlines of a fast-paced narrative that weighs heavily on his fight for justice. Koch is also impressive as a man whose subtle charisma slowly turns malign. Solid entertainment. MT

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE AT THE CINE LUMIERE

You are My Sunday | Tu Hai Mera Sunday (2016) | LFF 2016

Advertising exec turned filmmaker Milind Dhaimade offers up a feelgood snapshot of modern Mumbai in this lively and watchable comedy drama that interlaces the lives of five ordinary young men who just want to be happy and play football at the weekends on Juhu Beach. At least, that’s the plan.

According to Dhaimade, not all modern Indians are striving, high-powered yuppies, and YOU ARE MY SUNDAY certainly proves his point. The humour here ranges from witty to hilariously dark and even raucous as Dhaimade hopes to show a new world of Indian independent cinema, with a charm and honesty that is truly representative of the urban youth – Speaking in a mixture of English and Hindu – they all still live with their families, apart from one who lives with some rats.

The story kicks off during one Sunday. The group are playing a freewheeling game of footie, when a senile old man called (Appa) joins in and accidentally kicks the ball into a nearby political rally. As a penalty, the five friends are banned from their Sunday routine game and their growing frustration gradually seeps into their private lives, even seriously disrupting their close friendship. All this all unravels in a light-hearted way thanks to some dry situational humour that confirms Dhaimade has his finger firmly on the international pulse.

Taking pity on Appa, one of the guys takes the old man home where he meets his forthright daughter (Shashana Goswami) and the attraction is instant. Being shy of her sparky intelligence, he then back-peddles until a tentative romance is kindled on a glorious beach where the mood turns dreamy and introspective, as he soulfully admits:”the problem with city life is there’s no place to enjoy the little things”. But suddenly having cold feet, he deep-sixes their dalliance and the action moves on, much to her disappointment. Meanwhile, another guy is having problems with his mother who keeps harping on about his single status – nothing new there – but he urges her to “relax”. YOU ARE MY SUNDAY works best in the scenes were Dhaimade’s wicked sense of humour runs free. One involves a ridiculous incident underlining misogyny in the workplace where one of the guys is forced to defend his co-worker when she is given the sack, her boss trying to blame her for his own internet porn habit.

Well-performed and intelligently scripted, TU HAI MERA SUNDAY could benefit from tightening its slightly saggy middle section. That said, film’s optimism and sheer joie-de-vivre, helped along by some really catchy musical choices, makes this a thoroughly enjoyable ride through the domestic life of contemporary Mumbai. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016 |

https://youtu.be/uePEHK7EOpQ

Kate plays Christine (2016) | DVD release with Actress

Dir.: Robert Greene; Cast: Kate Lyn Sheil; USA 2016, 112 min.

Director/writer/editor Robert Greene (Actress) tries to answer more than one question with his documentary style psycho thriller KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE: he uses the 1974 on-air suicide of US TV newscaster Christine Chubbuck not as an isolated tragedy, but to highlight and explore questions of gender, gun control, news media and the reality of acting.

The documentary part of KATE consists of Sheil trying to retrace the steps of Chubbuck, whilst the re-enacted scenes are purposefully tacky and unsettling, stylistically close to the 70s aesthetics. Central to the film is lead actress Kate Lyn Sheil (You’re Next) who becomes obsessed with the life and death of the tragic newscaster, who seems to have faded from the public memory, dying just short of her 30th birthday. Reading up on the sparse literature which exists on Chubbuck, Kate travels to Florida where Chubbuck lived and worked. Sheil buys a spooky brunette wig, brown contact lenses and uses spray tan to get into character. In Sarasota, always a town of transients and tourists, hardly anyone remembers the dead woman. In an interesting contrast, we see Sheil buying a gun from the same dealer as Chubbuck in the re-enactment. The shop owner admits freely to Kate that everyone answering a few simple questions can acquire a gun “even if he is mad – after all, I am no psychologist”. Sheil also buys fluffy animals, it emerges that Chubbuck’s bedroom resembled more that of a nine year-old girl than a woman of 29.

Greene wants to avoid explaining Chubbuck’s suicide, depression is far too complex an illness to be explained in two hours. Instead he concentrates “on showing the gap between the ‘real’ self and the ‘staged’ one”, a gap, which Chubbuck savagely obliterated. The irony is that her on-screen suicide was a protest against the sensational packaging of news, which is run by men, and Chubbuck’s depression and loneliness was used as an excuse for her objective criticism of the male dominated TV news. The recent events at Fox TV, where millions of dollars were paid to female newscasters for sexual harassment by their male bosses, are proof that the tradition has survived. Chubbuck put all of her energies into her work and to be passed over for promotion by a boss who favoured her male colleague, who then landed the prize job taking with him her best friend at work, was just the last straw.

As for Kate Lyn Sheil, who is as much a collaborator as an actor, the experience of playing Christine Chubbuck has left her convinced that acting is much more than re-creating a person: “What I care about most is trying to give a voice to the lonely and unusual. Empathy is what matters to me. I hope that people watching the movie will feel as bewildered, infuriated and ultimately heartbroken as I did”.

When approaching the re-staging of the suicide, both director and actor came to a solution which does justice to Chubbuck. DoP Sean Price Williams excels with his colour schemes: the cool, cold Sarasota of today is shot in arctic blue, the TV studio is a mass of colours, fighting which each other, the close-ups reveal masks, not real people.
Greene struggles sometimes to keep a unity of the different styles, but Sheil always keeps everything together: unlike Network or the most recent Christine, Kate plays Christine asks question, and lets the audience answer them. An unique undertaking, worth watching as an example for its critical approach of the medium it represents. AS

KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE comes to DVD 14 November to buy. The DVD release will feature a bonus DVD of Greene’s 2014 cult film ACTRESS as well as incredible extras including: alternative opening, nine deleted scenes and the theatrical trailer.

The Bait (Tope) | LFF 2016

Dir: Buddhadeb Dasgupta

Cast: Sudipto Chatterjee, Kajal Kumari, Ananya Chatterjee, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Paoli Dam

88min | Fantasy Drama | India | Bengal

Putting the art into arthouse, Bengali director Buddhadeb Dasgupta takes Bandyopadhyay’s short story and creates a gorgeously vivid and surreal melodrama shot through with touches of magic realism and whimsy and set in the lush and languid landscapes of rural Bengal. This often poetic literary adaptation is evocatively steeped in sensuous imagery and cultural references, conjuring up its ancient folklore with dreamlike sultriness and gentle comedy.

Lost in the past, Sudipto Chaterjee plays a fierce and arrogant Raja living in faded splendour in a palace deep in the jungle, whilst his plumb lover Rekha (Ananya Chatterjee) feasts on bananas and dreams of escaping; clearly a dissillusioned romantic. Meanwhile the Raja has pretensions to greatness and spends his days dancing fiestily around the exotic palace and its extensive grounds, chanting and generally trying to impress anyone with his wild ambition to kill the local tiger. His nose is rather put out of joint when a Kolkata film crew arrives to make a documentary about the tiger. This seems to upset his feudal sensibilities and he reacts with pompous hostility to the well-intentioned filmmakers. Meanwhile there are two other strands to the storyline: a colourfully clad low caste girl dances on a tightrope through the fish-filled river beds, and a mad former postman Goja (Chandan Roy Sanyal) chants jibberish from the branches of a tree, strewn with his postbags full of mail.

The denouement is sudden, startling, and open to interpretation as the narrative plotlines come elegantly together. THE BAIT is a beguiling and bewitching film full of rich colours, seductive warmth and exotic mysticism. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

Planetarium (2016) | LFF 2016

Rebecca Zlotowski follows her nuclear-power-based love story Grand Central with a drama that is more about psychics than physics. PLANETARIUM is of the ether and floats sumptuously and delicately through a pre-war story of supernatural powers possessed by two gorgeous sisters who arrive in Paris from New York to perform seances, connecting the living with the dead. Zlotowski has written the script herself in an meandering and impressionist style-narrative that gracefully conjures up the febrile state of Europe in the late 1930s, capturing a magical moment in time that is both starstruck and doomed. The girls’ whimsical story is firmly anchored by a powerful racist subplot involving its lead male character André Korben, a wealthy Polish Jew.

Natalie Portman is the brightest star of PLANETARIUM as Laura Barlow, but she is surrounded by a galaxy of sparkling performances from Lily Rose Depp, who comes into her own as the younger and more ethereal sister Kate; Emmanuel Salinger as Korben, a film producer who part-finances and accommodates the girls in his elegant Art Deco home; and Alexandre Zloto who plays a silver-tongued René-Lucien Chomette (aka René Clair best known for his work with silent film in the 1930s and titles such as A Nous la Liberté and Le Million). Seeing that times are hard seance-wise in the run up to the war, Korben seizes on the potential of a supernatural-themed film harnessing the skills of The Barlow Sisters, as a potential career in acting beckons for Laura. Sadly despite a fascinating detour into cinematic methods of the era, this film within a film burns a financial hole into Korben’s production company and the story ends as a tragedy after his Jewish roots are exposed and he is sent ‘East’ (to the gas chambers). But not before the champagne flows and a seriously soigné time is had by all. So even if Zlotowski’s storyline often blinds you with its science and the odd plothole, it does so in such a fabulously enjoyable and inventive way with stunning costumes, glamorous locations and starry encounters, by the end it’s all been a blast. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016 | VENICE REVIEW

American Honey (2016) | Cannes Film Festival | Jury Prize 2016

Director: Andrea Arnold

Cast: Sasha Lane, Shia LaBoeuf, Arielle Holmes, Corey McCaul Lombardi

142mins | drama | US

Andrea Arnold’s US debut is a runaway road movie that follows fiesty newcomer Sasha Lane across America’s Midwest with a crowd of defiant drifters trying to sell something that nobody really wants on a journey that never comes to much but rambles enjoyably on its way. Drawing parallels with Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park there are also echoes here of Larry Clark’s loose brand of sexuality in the partying and free-wheeling fun that goes on as the band bond with Shia LaBeouf adding his own brand of charisma. Although there are some magical moments with Jake (Shia LaBeouf), adding his own brand of charisma to the road show as head of sales in a drama that drifts along dreamily often in a drunken haze.

This is fun for the first hour but only two other characters stand out: surfer dude Corey (McCaul Lombardi), and ditzy Pagan (Arielle Holmes in a similar role to her character in Heaven Knows What). The tone is upbeat and rebellious in this melange of meandering and amorphously linked encounters, but for its scant three hour running time it lacks dramatic torque for the most part working best as a euphoric mood piece where the romance between Star and LeBoeuf is the slow peddling driving force.

The visuals are vibrant and sensual whether on the widescreen or in the more intimate spaces of the van and motel rooms and Arnold never judges her characters letting them glide on in the glory and occasionally more soberly in this (for them) memorable story with its eclectic musical moments from Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dream Baby Dream’, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s “Careless Love,”. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016

Private Property (1960) | LFF 2016

DIR/Writer: Leslie Stevens | Cast: Kate Manx, Corey Allen, Warren Oates, Robert Ward, Jerome Cowan | Drama | 79min

PRIVATE PROPERTY was an independent production marking the directorial debut for his own company Daystar of the Broadway playwright and screenwriter Leslie Stevens (1924-1998). Immediately condemned by the Legion of Decency when it opened in New York in April 1960, the Production Code Administration denied the film a code seal; making Private Property the first U.S. feature film to be released without code approval since Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm five years earlier.

Seen today – without giving away too much of the plot – it’s pretty clear that what appalled the censors about Private Property at the time was less the looming threat of violence throughout than the raw sweaty concupiscence driving the three main characters – two unkempt young drifters played by Corey Allen and Warren Oates (in his first major screen role) who first spy upon, then invade the plush home of a frustrated housewife played by Stevens’s then-wife Kate Manx; later described by Andrew Sarris after her suicide in 1964 as of “hauntingly stupid blonde beauty”. (The title Private Property plainly refers to both Ms Manx and her Beverly Hills home). Filmed in just ten days in the summer of 1959 for under $60,000 in Stevens & Manx’s own Hollywood Hills home; Stevens had the great good fortune to be able to call upon the skills of the veteran Hollywood cameraman Ted McCord – known in equal measure for his extreme cantankerousness mitigated by his great resourcefulness on location while filming classics like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and East of Eden – whose long tenure at Warner Brothers had recently come to an end and was available for a fraction of his usual fee. Under McCord’s seasoned tutelage the newly restored film looks sensational.

Although it’s lack of MPAA approval had discouraged any major distributors from picking up Private Property for a commercial release, its scandalous reputation brought it a successful run in art cinemas across Europe, and it eventually grossed over $2 million before quietly dropping off the radar for nearly fifty years (it has never been included in any of Leonard Maltin’s film guides, for example), and it would have left an even worse taste in the mouth if it had still been in circulation at the time of the Tate-LaBianca murders of August 1969. It left a lasting impression on those who saw it, however. The late Dave Godin wrote in 1999 that “Very few people seem to have heard of, let alone seen, this bizarre and strange film, but it is ripe for re-discovery as a precursor of the harsher realism that American movies were able to explore once censorship restrictions were lifted.” Finally a print was discovered at UCLA, who screened their restoration of it last year as part of its 2015 Festival of Preservation.

Sarris dismissed Stevens’s next feature, Hero’s Island (1962) – an 18th Century historical adventure in Technicolor again featuring Manx and Oates and starring James Mason – as “best left to the more esoteric film historians”; while Stevens surpassed himself with the even more esoteric Incubus (1966), a horror film starring William Shatner with dialogue entirely in Esperanto. His company Daystar had in the meantime moved into TV production, where Stevens created his biggest splash as the creator of the evergreen cult series The Outer Limits; and went on to enjoy a long and busy career in television while also pursuing an enthusiasm for New Age philosophy. Richard Chatten

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2016 until 16 OCTOBER

Mirzya (2016) | LFF 2016

null

Dir: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra | Cast: Harshvardhan Kapoor, Siyami Kher, Om Puri, Art Malik, K K Raina, Anjali Patil | 130min | India

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s latest Hindi drama is an ambitiously mounted and dazzling lyrical epic that interweaves the legendary Punjabi love story between Mirzya and Sahiban “If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt – only love”. The traditional version opens in the magnificent desert fortresses of Rajasthan and tantalizingly precedes each episode of the reimagining of a modern day Romeo and Juliet, where school friends Monish and Suchitra found first love in modern Delhi as children and then unite as adults in the 21st century. However, Monish (Harshvardhan Kapoor) now works for a prince, to whom Suchitra (Saiyemi Kher) is engaged to be married.

What makes MIRZYA so appealing to watch is the dynamic performances of newcomers Harshvardhan Kapoor and Saiyami Kher who are glamorously gorgeous both as a modern couple and as their mythical counterparts. A tunefully rhythmic soundtrack by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy sets the extravaganza off on its way, and minimal CGI effects depict an exotic bird involved in the narrative, zooming exuberantly into the sky in a metaphor for the feelings of the lovebirds themselves.

MIRZYA has brave intentions and plenty of chutzpah, but much of the story gets confused as it flips backwards and forwards and the result is an over melodramatic affair that often feels implausible and over-excited in the contemporary context, despite the convincing onscreen chemistry of the leads. MIRZYA is certainly spectacular to look at and entertaining to watch, but the narrative fails to be convincing despite the director’s best intentions. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016

Voir du Pays (Stopover) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Delphine Coulin, Muriel Coulin: Cast: Ariane Labed, Soko, Ginger Romain; France/Greece 2016, 102 min.

Sisters Delpine and Muriel Coulin (17 Girls) surprise us with a tense yet reflective portrait of French women, fighting in the army alongside men. As one would expect, misogyny, in all forms, from verbal to violent, is at the centre of this captivating film that stars Ariane Labed and Soko.

Set on the island of Cyprus in the autumn of 2012, just before newly elected President Hollande would withdraw French troops from the Afghan war, STOPOVER follows a battalion of French soldiers returning from a tour of Afghanistan. Before they go back to their families, the army has set up a demob camp in a luxury hotel as an antidote to PTSD.

For two close friends, Aurore (Labed) and Marine (Soko), who grew up together in Lorient, and joined the army together these three days will decide their future (“Lorient is an army town, what else was there to do?”). Together their debate the aftermath of conflict: “What the hell was I doing in Afghanistan” – but they will both reach differing conclusions by the end. After their arrival in the hotel, they are annoyed to have to share their room with a third person Fanny (Romain), but soon the daily remedial sessions – with help of virtual reality simulations – take over. All the soldiers have reacted differently to the hostilities, most of them are traumatised by the loss of their friends. It is that the three days merely scratch at the surface, the whole exercise is just a placebo. The men are sexually frustrated, at first voicing their repressed anger at the women soldiers, then, after the trio drives off with some local men, the violence explodes. Two of the women get off with Cypriots, and after the French soldiers follow them to a local restaurant, there is talk about “taking our women and our wine”. Knives are drawn, before the French soldiers drive off. On the way to the hotel, they kill a goat and one of the soldiers tries to rape Aurore “I show you that I have balls, but you don’t”. Marine just comes in time to save her friend. On the flight to France, Aurore asks Marine why she is fighting – Marine’s answer “defending France, Europe”, which is not enough for Aurore any more.

The French title Voir du Pays means “see the world”, a slogan the Army uses to seduce recruits to join. Aurore and Marine have seen little outside Lorient before they embarked on their army careers. But the directors make it clear that women experience fighting on a different level: Marine can’t get the image of her dead compatriot out of her head. “It goes round like a loop”, she tells Aurore. On the other hand, some of the male soldiers are thirsty for more battle. Aurore’s statement regarding her male fellow soldiers: “They need an enemy”.

DoP Jean Louis Vialard creates a fake world in the hotel in stark contrast to what have happened in Afghanistan. Once again leads Ariane Labed and Soko are impressively convincing in this watchable and resonant war drama which won Best Script in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes 2016. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

All of a Sudden | Auf Einmal (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Azli Özge; Cast: Sebastian Hülk, Julia Jentsch, Hanns Zischler, Sascha A. Gersak, Luise Heyer; Germany/Netherlands 2016, 112 min.

German/Turkish filmmaker Asli Özge (Lifelong) has developed a well-constructed narrative about young bourgeois Germans, who seem on the outside to be unlike their infamous Nazi grandparents, but, as it turns out, have more in common than first appears.

Karsten (Hülk), in his mid-twenties, works in a bank and has steady relationship with Laura (Jentsch). When she is away on a business Karsten decides to give a party, and soon finds himself alone with Anna, celebrating her birthday with some flirtatious fun. One thing leads to another and suddenly we see Karsten running to a nearby hospital, which is closed. He returns, and eventually phones an ambulance – but it’s too late, Anna is dead. It transpires the young woman was German, but lived in Russia for a while where she was married with a daughter. Questioned by police, Karsten has no answer as to why he he didn’t phone for an ambulance immediately. And to make matters worse, he has hidden Anna’s underclothing, which Laura finds on her return. The autopsy result shows that Anna took medication for asthma; the alcohol she consumed was contraindicative, and led to a cardiac arrhythmia. She more or less suffocated. At home with his parents, Karsten compares himself to his racist father Klaus (Zischler), who has offered the Russian family a financial settlement, which they have refused. “I am like you”, Karsten exclaims, “ I just want to look superior”. Nevertheless, he soon changes his mind, and visits Andrej (Gersark), Anna’s husband, but manages to upset him too with some high-handed behaviour. Later he is cleared in court, and starts to take revenge on his superiors at the bank (who had demoted him during the case) and on his former girlfriend Judith (Heyer), whom he now blames for his relationship breakdown with Laura.

Unfortunately, All of a Sudden runs into difficulties early on: Özge aims for enigma but her direction is often clumsy and overlaboured: images and words overlapping, stretching the threadbare chronicle to the maximum. Despite a competent performance, Hülk is never able to show the slightest menace, leaving us in doubt about his involvement with Anna and what emerges at the end is rhetorical rather than meaningful. Emre Erkmen’s superb camerawork supports the rather limp realism, but makes evocative use the small Rhineland town of Altena with memorable results. AS.

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

CallBack (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir: Carles Torras | Cast: Martin Bacigalupo, Lilli Stein, Larry Fessenden, Timothy Gibbs | Thriller | Spain | 80min

Catalan director Carles Torras makes his English language debut a watchable and darkly drole character study of a small time New York actor who gradually reveals his psychopathic nature in this lean and stylish thriller.

Slick and slightly sepia-tinted, CALLBACK stealthily follows Larry de Cecco (a sardonic Martin Bacigalupo) as he goes about his business playing bit roles for adverts that deal with the ennui of city life and keeping up with the American Dream (‘Drink megaboost, and you’ll be fine). At first Larry seems to rub along with this rather humdrum existence, at least that how it all appears. He clearly doesn’t have the chops to grab the headlines performance-wise, so he works in removals as a sideline, and often helps himself to things belonging to the people he moves, to the irritation of his weary boss (Larry Fessenden). By night, Larry is a peeping Tom to his latest tenant Alexandra (Lilli Stein) who also has aspirations to act, and amongst his other behavioural issues, he has a tendency for temper tantrums for which he attends the sessions of of a local religious pastor, purporting to be a ‘born again’ Christian..

But there’s something unpleasantly creepy about Larry who would certainly freak you out if you spent time with him at home. And flatmate Alexandra (Lilli Stein) is clearly either naive or far too polite to make anything of the way Larry talks in American clichés: ‘here’s some fresh towels’; ‘I’m a very driven person” and ‘thank you for sharing this with me’ or the way he plays Tchaikovsky classics at full volumn his car (is there a US equivalent to classic fm?). Musical choices add bathos to this delicious drama with Jimmy Fontana’s sixties love song “Il Mondo,” suggesting that Larry’s schizoid personality is fully conversant with a romantic life that he is unable to fulfil.

And soon enough Alexandra gains confidence in the de Cecco household, eventually falling foul of Larry’s romantic sensibilities over dinner one night. The result is shockingly grim. But Bacigalupo is simply dynamite in his creation of Larry (his voice even sounds like Vincent Price at one point) which dovetails with Lilli Stein’s foxy turn as Alexandra, making this compact and understated psycho thriller eventually worth its weight in gold. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

Under the Shadow (2016)

Writer|Dir.: Babak Anvari

Cast: Narges Rashid, Bubby Naderi, Avin Manshadi

84min | Iran/Jordan/Qatar/UK.

Writer filmmaker Babak Anvari grew up in Tehran in the 1980s, before moving to the UK. His debut is this harrowing portrait of family life during the last phase of the Iraq/Iran war in 1988 using elements of the horror genre to show the effects of war and the Islamic Revolution on the mind of an emancipated mother during the bombing raids in Tehran.

We first meet university administrator Shideh (Rashid) after she has been expelled from the medical faculty for her left-wing activities after the Islamic takeover of 1979. She had hoped to be re-instated, but the stern bureaucrat rejects her application, asking her to look for another goal in life. Her doctor husband Iraj (Naderi), who has stayed out of politics tells her “it may be all for the best”. He later further undermines her skills as a mother to daughter Dorsa (Manshadi) and claims that she only wants to be a doctor because it was her late mother’s dream – to which Shideh caustically replies “the dead don’t dream”. Stuck at home all day, she spends her time dancing to a Jane Fonda video and listening to the BBC.

As the bombardment of Tehran intensifies, the family are forced into the cellar of the apartment block with their neighbours. Iraj is called up to do his annual medical service; this time in a district near the front of the fighting and advises Shideh to leave the city and live with his parents in the countryside, but she refuses. When a (dud) bomb hits the apartment above Shideh’s flat, cracks appear in the ceiling, and Dorsa puts it down to evil spirits of ‘djinn’. Shideh laughs this off at first but soon jump scares, violent sound effects and moving objects frighten her out of the house. In wild panic, she is caught on the street by police who arrest her for not wearing a hijab: “A woman should fear nothing as much as being exposed” she is told, and gets lucky, with only one night in jail. But when Dorsa’s favourite doll disappears, the tone darkens further. With all the neighbours having moved out, Shideh must make a decision.

Under the Shadow is an inversion of A Girl walks home alone at Night: this time the female main protagonist is not in charge, but is invaded by external manifestations provoked by emotional turmoil. Shideh is isolated and abandoned by her husband, in more than one way, and has no friends to turn to. Whilst the djinn – medieval spirits – do not exist, Shideh and her daughter need an explanation for their plight, and the terror of the bombings drives her into a fantasy world of terror. Under the Shadow uses symbols and metaphors to create a specific feminist horror scenario. DoP Kit Fraser turns living rooms, hallways and staircases into nightmare alleys, the lighting is expressionist and evocative. Narges Rashid is brilliant in this tour-de-force of emotions, and her interactions with Manshadi’s Dorsa are near telepathic. Babak Anvari has created something of a contradiction: a meaningful horror film. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 30 SEPTEMBER 2016

King Cobra (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir: Justin Kelly | Cast| James Franco, Christian Slater, Garrett Clayton | 87min | Drama

The ubiquitous James Franco was once a name to be conjured with: Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, 127 Hours and even Pineapple Express showed initial promise for his sterling efforts and energetic talents as an actor, director and writer. But Interior Leather Bar set him off down another track and Every Thing Will Be Fine followed. In KING COBRA he is back on form, once here again teaming up with Justin Kelly (I Am Michael) and lending a certain charisma to his supporting role in this rather seedy gay porn outing, based on the true story of the early career of the soi-disant ‘Brent Corrigan’ (aka Sean Paul Lockhart) played by Garrett Clayton, who we first meet, aged 17, auditioning for Cobra Video, an amateur gay porn company set up by King Cobra himself, Stephen (Christian Slater).

From the get go, audiences will smell a rat when they see Stephen salivating at the discovery of his nascent porn starlet while still purporting to be straight: when his sister offers to set him up on a blind date, he protests: “I can manage my own love life”. You bet he can, and it all originates from the privacy of his own home.

At first Stephen appears to be a relatively low key nonce. He is sadly aware that his ageing looks are a hindrance in bedding desirable under-age men. Although Sean claims to be 18. But delusion is his only bedfellow, and while he kids himself that Lockhart and he are lovers, the blond boy-star has other plans. Far too cute to fall in with Stephen, he swiftly leverages his burgeoning potential by demanding more money from the slippery entrepreneur. And soon enough, perky porn producer Joe (Franco) comes sniffing along and smartly involves Lockhart his boss a ‘ménage à quatre’ with his easygoing partner Harlow ( Keegan Allen) and thus the ‘Viper Boys’ are born, servicing their physical and financial lives. But Joe is clearly also a profligate narcissist with a penchant for fiery temper tantrums when he is thwarted.

KING COBRA’s narrative plays out as a fascinating character study between the four men and their sexual interplay with some decent performances in scenes of an often graphic nature that will go down well if gay sex or gay porn is your schtick. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5 -16 OCTOBER 2016

Smoke and Mirrors (2016) Silver Shell Winner | San Sebastian 2016

Dir: Alberto Rodriguez | Cast: Eduard Fernandez, Carlos Santos, Jose Coronado, Marta Etura | 135min | Thriller | Spain

After his atmospheric thriller Marshland, SMOKE AND MIRRORS (El Hombre de las mil Caras) is an ambitious but soulless affair enlivened by San Sebastian Silver Shell winner Eduard Fernandez who plays Spanish government spy Francisco Paesa in this true story, based on a book by Manuel Cerdan.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS often feels like a parody of classic international spy thrillers with its constant wanderings from world capital to capital taking in the sights of Paris, Madrid, London, Singapore and Geneva to mention a few. But despite Alex Catalan’s impressive visual wizardry and intense performances from leads Jose Coronado and Eduard Fernandez, the film leaves us feeling increasingly detached from its often complex narrative which fails on characterisation in an attempt to concertina the detailed meanderings that play out before our eyes in a slick docudrama format that smoulders enticingly but never really catches fire and eventually outstays its welcome,

The thriller explores the intriguing adventures of Paesa who was interviewed by Cerdan after faking his own death in 1998 after fleeing Spain and his loveless marriage to Gloria (Mireia Portas) during the 1980s . Paesa was never paid for his efforts to secure government defence against the Basque terror faction ETA and wreaked revenge on the authorities by helping arch criminal Police Head Luis Roldan (Carlos Santos) to launder his ill-gotten gains squirrelled from the public purse. But Roldan fails to pull off his plan, ending up in hiding in a squalid Parisian mansard – the ones with the tiny oval windows. Reports of his disappearance throng international news channels and impressively Rodriquez has garnered footage of BBC 80s News Reports to give these scenes added authenticity. Where he falls down is in making the story feel too episodic and eventually rather tedious as it flits around trying to cover the whole truth in an exhausting saga that goes on for 135 minutes and ultimately feels repetitive.

That said, Fernandez makes for a sleazy and convincing antihero who manages to be all things to all men, and women, for that matter, with his reptilian gaze and glib excuses. As Roldan, Santos is less successful, rocking an ill-advised bald pate that makes him look weirdly inhuman, it’s difficult for us to take his character seriously and detracts from his performance. His wife Nieves (Marta Etura) remains largely a cypher in an underwritten role. The most compelling performance comes from Paesa’s sidekick Jesus Camoes (Jose Coronado), who is both devilish and appealing in this watchable but unsatisfactory Spanish spy caper. MT

SAN SEBASTIAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 25 SEPTEMBER 2016

L’Hermine (2015) | Courted

Director: Christian Vincent

Cast: Sidse Babett Knudsen, Fabrice Luchini, Marie Riviere, Miss Ming

98 min | Drama | France

United with Fabrice Luchini, the star of his 1990 film La Discrète, director Christian Vincent’s drama COURTED observes the goings on in a courthouse in Saint-Omer, north-west France, where the trial of a presumed child murderer is taking place.

Judge Racine (Luchini) is presiding over the trial, he is not very much liked, his frigid manner and punitive nature earned him the nickname “Double-Figures” because of his severe sentences. The defendant, a young man is not very helpful, he simply repeats that he did not kick the four-year-old Mélanie to death. Racine, who is in the process of divorcing and lives in a hotel, comes down with a heavy flu at the beginning of the trial, which does not improve his mood. But soon enough, Racine mellows, when he finds out that one of the jurors, Ditte Lorensen-Coteret (Knudsen), is the anaesthetist he fell in love with in the hospital where she treated him after an accident. Suddenly, Racine becomes human and allows the defendant to go free, since it is clear, that he covered up for his girl friend, who was expecting another child at the time of the crime.

The meetings in a restaurant with Ditte show another side of Racine: he is a lonely man, only too willing to impress Ditte, even trying not to show his annoyance at her internet-obsessed daughter, who hijacks the rendeszvous of her mother. The visuals cleverly convey the two levels of this film: medium and wide shots dominate the court scenes, close-ups the restaurant scenes. Vibrant colours suffuse the romantic meetings, whilst in the court the light is harsh with all protagonists being more or less colourless ciphers. Vincent does not try to tell a story: L’Hermine is episodical and fragmented, only held together by Luchini’s personality, and it carries it well and very competently. There is a masterful dramatic tension here that leaves the audience always wanting to know more. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 30 SEPTEMBER | VENICE 2015 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW | WINNER BEST SCRIPT AND BEST ACTOR

The Fencer (2016)

Cast: Mart Avandi, Liisa Koppel, Joonas Koff, Ursula Ratasepp, Hendrik Toompere

Director: Klaus Haro Writer: Anna Heinamaa

Cinematographer: Tuomo Hutri

Klaus Haro’s drama THE FENCER is a smalltown old-fashioned drama with universal appeal making it ideal as the country’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. Set in Estonia during the Soviet regime, it lacks the dramatic heft or character development for really engrossing viewing, veering towards clunkiness in its overly didactic approach. A rather stolid and pedestrian experience then, despite being impeccably filmed and impressively mounted.

It follows the story of Endel Nelis (Mart Avandi) who we first meet in 1952 when he arrives in the small town of Haapsalu in Estonia, which was under the Stalinist rule. Athletic and entrepreneurial, he starts up a fencing club which is soon the talk of the town where he meets young Marta (Liisa Koppel) and Jaan (Joonas Koff) and soon falls for Kadri (Ursula Ratasepp). But the fly in the ointment is the stern head master (Hendrik Toompere), who takes a dim view of his sporting activities simply because swords are involved. Coming up against the locals, the frustrated head master decides to undermine Niels’ popularity and begins digging for dirt on his rival, aided and abetted by a hostile political climate that is open to any kind of controversy and always ,ready to pursue negative claims against individuals.

And it does appear that Niels has something to hide in Estoni, but he is drawn between sporting heroism for the nation in an upcoming fencing tournament, and risking his own life by playing into Moscow’s hands. Kadri supports him with romantic gusto as the two lead their fellow Estonians into battle against the superior Russian team, a metaphor for Communism in its purest form. This is a rousing if rather reductive drama based on imagined events; a codicil confirms that the real Niels lived through the reign of terror finally dying in the 1930s but is still remembered for his fencing club. MT

Norfolk (2015)

Dir.: Martin Radich

Cast: Denis Menochet, Bary Keoghan, Goada Letkauskaite, Eileen Davis, Sean Buckley

UK 2015, 83 min. Thriller

In the bucolic stillness of the Norfolk countryside, director Martin Radich (Crack Willow) shows a post-apocalyptic set up, were rival military gangs fight for survival.

NORFOLK explores the ever popular father/son relationship, which is, like the whole film, very opaque, not to say enigmatic; the characters don’t even have names. The father (Denis Menochet) is menacing and most of the time armed, like all the warriors in their various camps. His son (Keoghan) is a dreamer who looks in bewilderment at the world. Father and son have an array of old TVs in their decrepit house, where different programmes from the time “before” are playing. But when the father gets a call from his leader: his task is to take out a rival group of ageing mercenaries without showing any mercy. This extermination project disrupts the father and son dynamic and when a random girl (Letkauskaite) enters the plot, the boy falls in love with her. The girl is subjected to violence by the soldiers and runs away. Somehow the trio comes together again, father and son shooting at the old TVs, which they have lined up in the garden.

The lack of narrative makes it often difficult to understand what is going on here, one has to literally fight for any information. Nevertheless, the haunting atmosphere is just enough to hold our interest and the impressive actors, who seemed to be in the dark, as much as we are, glide by, like ships in the night. DOP Tim Sidell’s images carry the film embuing it with a nightmarish, glowering Norfolk. Nature is not pleasant here, but threatening just like the humans, who stalk each other. Overall, a strong paranoia perverts all interaction, and death seems like a welcome solution for most concerned. Norfolk is not for everyone, but it has a gloomy attraction. AS

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS | REVIEWED AT EAST END FILM FEST 2015

Dare to be Wild (2015)

Director.: Vivienne De Courcy

Cast: Greenwell, Tom Hughes, Christine Marzano, Brendan Somers

100 min | Drama | ROI

First time writer/director Vivienne De Courcy makes an ambitious attempt to connect the highly organised Chelsea Flower Show with the adjective “wild” – personified in this case by the real life Irish garden designer Mary Reynolds, who won a Gold Medal there in 2002. Somehow, the filmmaker brings these contradictions together, even though the strain sometimes shows.

Mary Reynolds (Greenwell) grows up in the Irish countryside as a wild child, falling in love with nature. A headstrong young woman, she then moves to Dublin to try her luck as a landscape designer. But her first employer, Charlotte “Shah” (Marzano) steals her design book, and sells the designs as her own – before firing Mary, after marrying a rich Englishman. Luckily for Mary, she also falls in love – with Christy Collard – the leader of a band called The Green Angels, who lives in Cork and has a highly competitive relationship with his father Mike (Somers) who has a New Age group. Mary needs the help of these men for her project at the Chelsea Flower show, where she wants to re-create a nature garden – not forgetting the £250 000, which are needed to enter the competition. But Christy, although very much in love with Mary, goes back to Ethiopia, where he leads a campaign for re-forestation, telling Mary that this project is much worthier than her Chelsea project and putting their love on the back burner.

De Courcy does her best to create a very lively drama, with Mary travelling the world, but never losing sight of her target: winning at Chelsea. Greenwell is vey apt at portraying the young woman as a mixture of stubborn, adventurous and naïve. She carries the film singlehandedly, and lets the audience forget the many contradictions and implausibilities of the storyline. Gorgeous to look at, Cathal Watters sumptuous visuals paint a glorious background, and particularly the African environment is shown impressively. The Chelsea settings are a also brilliantly re-constructed, complete with an actor impersonating Prince Charles having a word with Mary. In reality, he helped her create her own garden project at Kew Gardens, the first designer for 250 years to be honoured this way.

Somehow DARE TO BE WILD is true to Reynolds’ spirit of preservation and protection, the desire to return to our naturalistic gardens and to the simple beauty of the environment, rather than the manicured phoniness of many of the showcased contemporary gardens where props have taken over from reality. AS

THE CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW 25 – 29 MAY 2016 | DARE TO BE WILD IS ON RELEASE FROM 23 SEPTEMBER 2016

El Sur (1983) BFI Southbank

Dir: Victor Erice, DoP: José Luis Alcaine | Cast: Iciar Bollain, Sonsoles Aranguren, Omero Antonutti, Aurore Clement, Lola Cordona, Rafaela Aparicio, Francisco Merino, and Maria Caro | 97min | Drama | Spain

Enigmatic and soulful, El Sur reveals its slow-burning narrative as tentatively as sunrise on a winter’s day. In the opening scenes, a young girl gradually awakens in the penumbral darkness of her room to realise that her life has changed forever, as the film unspools, the memories of her childhood play out and gently crystallise into this moment of wistful sadness when all that has gone before suddenly become clear in the exquisite metaphoric dawn. This is a rare and subtly nuanced study of a father daughter relationship.

Victor Erice’s painterly depiction of Spain in the 1950s expresses the conflict of Civil War through a domestic tragedy that takes place in the family’s ‘chalet’ in the Logrono countryside near Madrid. The South and Seville is imagined as a sultry El Dorado of movie stars and exotica. It is also the birthplace of young Estrella’s father (Omero Antonutti) who in turn dreams of a glamorous starlet Irene Rios (Aurore Clement) whose name Estrella finds scribbled in his bookcase in the sequestered antic of their home.

Estrella, played as a child by Sonsoles Aranguren and a teenager ny Icíar Bollaín, tries to understand the adult world around her which is fiercely traditional one held under the of General Franco’s rule, where women stay timidly in denial at home and men got on with being men. “I grew up more or less like everyone else, getting used to being alone and not thinking too much about happiness.” But Estrella forms a charismatic bond with her father, feeling more compatible with him than her straight-laced mother, and the two share a rich interior life of reverie against the backcloth of their dank and dismal provincial life.

Victor Erice’s EL Sur is an elegantly understated drama about childhood that actually benefits from its modest running time of 97 minutes although the director had hoped to create a lengthier film envisioned a lengthier venture and got the Stroheim treatment, the half that remains is nevertheless exquisitely lucid and tender about childhood’s shifting emotional spaces. The drama is soberly shot in burnt ocres and muddy browns synonymous with Franco’s grim regime and the starkness of Northern Spanish winters Erice but spices up this cold terrain with sensuous moments: cognac and cigars in the Gran Hotel, a pasa doble plays at a wedding; and Film Noir posters in the local cinema that capture the imagination and beckon Estrella to a life beyond her lonely childhood. MT

VICTOR ERICE AT THE BFI SOUTHBANK | JULY 2023

Questi Giorni (2016) | These Days | Venice 2016 | In Competition

Dir: Giuseppe Piccioni | Drama | Italy | 119min

Festival head Alberto Barbera openly lamented the lack of strong Italian titles at this year’s Venice festival and this piece of contemporary social realism certainly confirms his views. An everyday story of cardboard characters it has the luminous presence of Margherita Buy but not even she can save it from the banality of a plot and script that is vapid in the extreme.

Four young women decide to go to Belgrade: you could pick the characters off the shelf: one has cancer; another is a lesbian, the third is pregnant and the fourth has a bad boyfriend. Nothing stands out in their colourless performances and they all appear interchangeable in their personalities. Then there is Professor Mariani (a greying middle-aged man) who tries to be funny in a vain attempt to get off with one of them who must be half his age, and his pupil into the bargain. Meanwhile Margherita Buy’s character, a single mother, flits around desperately trying to gain acceptance by the younger girls, one if whom is her daughter who treats her with utter contempt.

THESE DAYS is reductive, poorly thought out and derisory to women in general and is hopefully not coming to a cinema near you. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Paradise | Rai (2016) | Best Director | Venice 2016

Fir: Andrei Konchalovsky | 130min | Drama | Russia, Germany

Russian veteran Andrei Konchalovsky has been making films for fifty years and bringing them to Venice where he first won the Volpi Cup in 1966 with his debut Pervvy Uchitel. His élatest Golden Lion hopeful PARADISE interweaves three tragic lives during the Second World War – Olga, a Russian countess and member of the French Resistance; Jules, a French collaborator; and Helmut, an aristocratic German SS officer.

PARADISE is a dense and romantically complex piece that provides an intense experience for those who have the stamina for its complicated episodic structure, despite superb performances and outstanding cinematography from Russian DoP and regular collaborator Alexander Simonov (Postman’s White Nights) who also worked with the sadly missed Alexei Balabanov (Brat, Cargo 200). The velvety black and white visuals and combination of 35mm and 16mm perfectly conjure up the war years from 1942-44 and there is sumptuous and intimate attention to detail and lighting throughout the film’s graceful interiors and more grisly scenes in claustrophobic concentration camps evoke a keen sense of confinement. The only scene where freedom is felt is in flashback to the pre-war years where Olga and Helmut frolic on a rooftop (main picture).

Olga is played by the sinuously elegant Russian actress Julia Vysotskay who we first meet after her imprisonment for having taken two Jewish children under her wing in occupied Paris. In the offices of genial police interrogator Jules (Christian Duquesne) she is écross-examined and deftly turns the table on him by seductively opening her legs. In exchange for a Grand Cru classé (1919) she agrees to meet him the following day. But the rendezvous is never to be as Jules is later assassinated while in the woods with his son Emile.

Olga is then sent to a concentration camp but again siezes her chance for freedom when the camp’s rambunctious chargé d’affaires is caught for cooking the books, by Olga’s willowly ex-lover Helmut (Christian Clauss) who hires her as his very personal maid, and as the Nazi’s luck runs out the pair plot their escape via Switzerland until tragedy intervenes.

Scripted by Konchalovsky and Elena Kiseleva, the story unspools via sketchy face-on interviews with Jules, Olga and Helmut dressed in prison garb. These are interlaced with the action scenes and where the film requires intense concentration, making it difficult to engage with the characters and their story. Viktor Sukhorukov’s cameo as Heinrich Himmler is a fascinating interlude but is voiced by another actor in Russian and German, with some technical glitches.

And so PARADISE – an attempt by the Nazis to create a perfect Aerian world – becomes Paradise Lost. Despite the rather complicated mise-en-scene this is nevertheless an achingly beautiful and resonating picture of wartime from one of Russia’s most outstanding filmmakers. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

White Sun (2016) | Venice 2016

Dir: Deepak Rauniyar | Drama | Nepal | 94min

Deepak Rauniyar brings the only Nepalese film to Venice 2016. A delicately drawn and poignant paean to peace after a decade of civil war between Maoists and royalists (1996-2006), it takes place in the foothills of the Himalayas where nearly all the adult males have been wiped out leaving the only the weakened elders.

This is not a political film but a subtle and often intimate intergenerational cinéma vérité style parable where politics often rears its ugly head disrupting the characters’ relationships. Co-written by Rauniyar and David Barker, it takes place in the village of Nepaltra where the sudden death of the former mayor Chitra (Prakash Ghimire), poses a tricky problem: how to remove his body from the house to start the tortuous process towards the riverside where it is to be cremated according to strict traditions governing who can come into contact with the cadaver. There are no strong men to help.

Luckily, Durga (Asha Magrati) is a clever and strong-minded villager who appeals to ex-husband Chandra to make the journey from Katmandu to give his assistance, along with his brother. The long-standing rivalry between Chandra (Dayahang Rai – a famous star in his native Nepal) and his brother Suraj (Rabindra Singh Baniva) adds grist to the dramatic mill along with the fact that Durga’s young daughter Pooja (Sumi Malla) is neither his biological daughter, not that of his sibling. The subsequent journey downhill gives rise to some magnificent local views, all shot on the widescreen, as we get know the colourful local characters amongst whom is 10-year-old porter Badri (Amrit Pariyar), who has known nothing but war, and Deepak Chhetri’s priest who is the feisty star of the film, determined at any price to to resist change, in this thoughtful and deeply resonant arthouse drama. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Tabl (2016) | Drum | Venice Settimana della Critica 2016

Dir.: Keywan Karimi, Cast: Amirezza Naderi, Sara Gholizade; France/Iran 2016, 95 min.

First time feature film scriptwriter/director Keywan Karimi crafts a disturbingly bleak and noirish picture of life in contemporary Tehran – the city’s name being the only concrete reference to its reality. The narrative is opaque, but everyone can decypher the code used. In October 2015 Karimi was sentenced to one year in prison and 223 lashes for defying the laws of Iran. He is still in a state of limbo, waiting to start his imprisonment.

The film opens as a lawyer (Naderi) is visited by a limping man who dumps a parcel on his desk and disappears. Soon afterwards, the lawyer’s flat is searched, and gets a visit from a man threatening with grave consequences if he does not give up the parcel. The harassment continues, and the lawyer is forced to oeave his flat, sleeping rough or taking a room in a hotel where he meets his girlfriend (Gholizade). The only other person he trusts is his best friend, who happens to be a drug addict. Tragedy eventually forces the lawyer starts to wreak revenge.

DRUM is a Kafkaesque nightmare with images worthy of any Bela Tarr film. Whilst the audience is made well aware of the enemy, the main protagonist is stubborn enough not give in to “them”. Tehran is very much a character here, portrayed as a nightmarish vision of never-ending staircases and vertiginous apartment blocks spelling danger, even in the modern hotel where the lawyer meets his girlfriend. Nothing is safe: the bleakness of the day is just a shade lighter than the nighttime, where most of the action is set. DoP Amin Jaferi evokes a world of shadows and doom where interiors are sparsely lit prison cells. Words do not help: they are either threats or enigma, the Farsi language has lost much of its meaning. Without naming the authorities in Iran, Karimi holds up a mirror to them: they have created a world of fear and hopelessness. What remains is individual resistance, the only way to bring light into the madness created by religious fanatics.

This is not the first time that a filmmaker has been threatened by authorities at home, whilst his film is being shown at a film festival abroad. DRUM is a promising debut. Let’s hope Keywan Karimi’s reprieve follows as soon as possible. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Theo and Hugo (2016)

Directors: Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineu

Cast: Geoffrey Couet, Frqncois Nambot

97min | drama | France

This ‘boy meets boy’ drama deftly handles tonal shifts ranging from euphoria to anxiety to offer a slightly flawed but engaging experience of gay coupledom. What starts out as an 18 minute unbridled orgy in a Parisian sex dive (severely testing viewers’ attention spans), leads to a breezily romantic nighttime bike ride for Theo and Hugo (newcomers Couet and Nambot) who then make the angst ridden discovery that they have had unprotected sex and this leads to a blow by blow procedural of their medical treatment.

Capturing the freshness realisation of new love this drama will be a winner with the LGBT crowd or those drawn to bold filmmaking. MT

OIT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9 SEPTEMBER 2016 | BERLINALE REVIEW

Sámi Blod | Sami Blood (2016| Venice Film Festival

Writer| Dir. Amanda Kernell

Cast: Lene Cecilia Sparrok, Mia Erika Sparrok, Maj Doris Rimpi, Julius Fleischandrl, Olle Sarri, Hanna Alström, Malin Crépin, Andreas Kundler, Ylva Gustafsson

110min | Sweden/Denmark/Norway.

Amanda Kernell brings her Sámi heritage to this impressive feature debut, a fresh and painterly portrait of Sweden’s little known history of racism and colonial domination, set during the 1930s and seen through the eyes of a fiercely precocious teenager who is determined to make a future for herself away from the Lapp reindeer-herding community of her childhood.

Kernell’s masterly command of framing, cinematography, script and tone is laudable and her ability to evoke powerful emotions through her central characters sets her out as a real talent in the making. SAME BLOOD also raises the profile of the Sami community and their fight for a future which very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

The girl in question, Ella Marja is played by newcomer Lene Cecilia Sparrok as a young teen, and Maj Doris Rimpi as an elderly woman (based on the director’s own grandmother) who we first meet in the opening scenes where she has renounced her rheindeer hearding community, an event which sparks off her memories of the past which unspool gradually forming the central narrative. From the beginning Ella Marja is different from her school friends who are all happy to wear the Sami national dress in their local school.

After humiliation during a visit from Swedish scientists when she is forced to strip naked for the collection of genetic data she runs home and is set upon by a group of local Lapp louts. Deciding to call herself Christina, she then runs away to Uppsala where she reconnects with a wealthy Swedish boy she danced with at a party. The two develop a chemistry of sorts and she later turns up at his home in the mistaken belief that Swedish hospitality is as welcoming as that of her native culture. But his parents are clearly suspicious of his intentions and urge him to get rid of her, fearing she may get pregnant or become dependent on him. After attempting to join an expensive local boarding school, she finds her way back to his birthday party one night, and is cajoled into singing a traditional Sami yodelling song, as they look on condescendingly as if she if some circus clown.

Kernell makes great use of the magnificent skyscapes of Lapland and the elegance of Uppsala’s buildings and ‘beautiful people’ with impeccable attention to period detail, sumptuous fashions and glorious Scandinavian interiors . SAME BLOOD is one of the gems of the festival so far. MT

GIORNATI DEGLI AUTORI | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Anthropoid (2016)

Writer\Director.: Sean Ellis

Cast: Jamie Dornan, Cillian Murphy, Charlotte Le Bon, Anna Geislerova, Toby Jones, Jiri Semek

120min | Czech Republic/France/UK, 120 min.

Three years after success with his multi-award winning thriller Metro Manila. Sean Ellis turns his focus back on Europe with an ambitious WWII thriller ANTHROPOID, based on the assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, acting Reichs Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. His death has been planned by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, and was carried out by two Czechoslovakian soldiers, trained by British SOE Forces in London, on May 27th 1942 in Prague and was a turning point in WWII. The event has been the subject of several feature films, notably the Czech production of The Assassination, and Operation Daybreak. HHhH (Himmler’s Brain is called Heydrich), based on the novel by Laurent Binet, directed by Cedric Jiminez to be released later this year.

Heydrich, chief organiser of the Final solution at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942, was soon to be ordered back to Berlin by Hitler, to be promoted to run all occupied countries, setting him up as The Führer’s heir. Heydrich was by far the most intellectually competent member of the Nazi leadership, which he proved in his position in Prague, carrying out his reign with stick (nearly completely liquidating the Czech resistance movement), and carrot, paying the Czechoslovakian workforce decent wages to raise their productivity in the factories – unlike his compatriots, who literally starved to death the foreign workers in the countries under their control.

Sean Ellis acts as his own DoP, as well as writing, directing and producing and has chosen the name of the operation, Anthropoid, for his version of the campaign. A hand-held camera retains a gritty, indie feel to the piece which is shot in intimate close-ups and on the widescreen, offering magnificent vistas of Prague. The assassination endeavour was riddled by bad planning, hampering the progress at nearly every stage. When Jan Kubis (Dornan), Josef Gubcik (Murphy) and Karel Kurda (Semek) parachute into the Czech countryside, Jan and Josef are separated from Karel. The two are injured and have lost their equipment but soon have to deal with two traitors, before they even set out for Prague. There the underground agents, led by Jan Zelanka-Hajsky (Jones), are aghast at the proposal to kill Heydrich. They are aware that a successful attempt would bring revenge from the Germans – as it happened, over five thousand Czechoslovakian citizens lost their lives in the Germans reprisals, among the nearly the whole village of Lidice. But Kubis and Gubcik are adamant, and finally Zelanka gives in and supports the trio, Kurda having joined them after a visit to his family. Jan falls in love with Maria, Josef with Lenka (Geislerova). The women are very different: Maria emotional and full of histrionic outburst, trying to deny the danger they are in; Lenka, the daughter of an officer, has no illusions about the outcome as is calm and controlled.

The scenes in the countryside are feels like a noir-western: darkness prevails, the environment is as hostile as the human opponents. Prague is magnificent, full of twilight and foggy mystery; human relationships are fragile, but again, it never really gets light, shadows linger everywhere. The grandiose finale in the church is again a return to the western motive: the Alamo, were the brave outlast the enemy, superior only in numbers, for an eternity, before darkness falls. Performance-wise Cillian Murphy as Josef is the standout: strong and full of integrity while retaining his vulnerability in the scenes with Lenka. Toby Jones makes a believable and utterly sober, always reinventing himself as her with a fine portrait of Uncle Hajsky, and Hana Frejkova makes an appealing Mrs Lukesova, who shelters the pair while they plan their mission. Ellis crafts his central characters carefully and appealingly in the early domestic-based scenes and we invest in them enough to care what happens at the denouement. ANTHROPOID is an exercise in resistance: the human spirit triumphs over all obstacles, as in Lang’s Hangmen also Die, the tyrant is caught by fate as much as human struggle. AS/MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7 SEPTEMBER 2016

Cafe Society (2016) | Cannes 2016

Director|Writer: Woody Allen

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, Jesse Eisenberg, Kelly Rohrbach, Anna Camp, Steve Carrell, Parker Posey, Corey Stoll, Judy Davis, Paul Schneider, Ken Stott

96min | Comedy Drama | US

CAFE SOCIETY satirises showbiz and gangsterland America during the 1930s, all wrapped up in a bittersweet romantic love story for a young New Yorker seeking his fortune in Hollywood.

The tone is upbeat and the musical choices spot on as Woody Allen’s latest film opens the 69th Cannes Film Festival with a clever cocktail of razzmatazz and auteur-driven artistry. Sunlit and softly-focused, CAFE SOCIETY blends the hilarious humour of Small Time Crooks, the gorgeous sunsets of Manhattan, the wittiness of Annie Hall and romantic tenderness Husbands and Wives and whizzes it all into a 5-star cocktail where Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart spark like dynamite as young lovers Vonnie and Bobby who meet when the naive Jewish ingenue arrives at the offices of his uncle Phil, a big studio executive in Hollywood, where he fetches up jobless and friendless after leaving New York.

After Bobby turns down the advances of a first time hooker, also in Hollywood to make her name, a tender romance blossoms when Uncle Phil asks Vonnie to show Bobby the sights. It slowly emerges that Uncle Phil also has his finger in this romantic pie, promising to leave his wife Karen for the young brunette, in an on off affair that is celebrated when Vonnie, star struck by Phil’s power play, gives him a signed letter from Valentino for their one year paper anniversary. Meanwhile in New York, Allen plays up the other side of America where Bobby’s classic Jewish mother (a perfectly tart Shae D’Iyn) is keeping the homefires burning, in bitter disgruntlement with her loser of a husband (Ken Stott) “you don’t even have a Jewish head”, and her other son Ben (Corey Stoll), a financially dodgy nightclub owner who deep-sixes his rivals in liquid cement.

Splicing this tender but tragic love story with swipes at the Hollywood machine – “you wouldn’t know me – I’m a writer”, and his beloved Jewish roots – “when a Jew cooks something it’s always over-done to get rid of the bacteria” – CAFE SOCIETY also offers some sublime musical choices from the vintage jazz world (often performed live) in what is Woody’s wittiest and most incisive film in a long time. Lensed by the thrice Oscar winning DoP Vittorio Storaro, this is a gorgeous film to look at as well as an enjoyable one to watch and the ups and downs of the romantic underpull keep things nicely taut in its modest running time. Jesse Eisenberg comes into his own as Allen’s alter ego, morphing seemlessly from a tentative “deer in the headlights” to a shrewd businessman but decent and disillusioned lover and Kristen Stewart is both vulnerable and alluring as the cunning love interest with her eye to the main chance. Steve Carrell is commanding as the power-punching megalith weakened by the lure of love. At 80 Woody Allen offers a happy ending in a story where the bad get their comeuppance, successful men make the best lovers, and clever women know the difference between the two. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016

Chick Lit (2016)

Dir: Tony Britten | Cast: John Hurt, Niamk Cusack, James Wilby, Dame Eileen Atkins | Comedy | 90min | UK

Writer/director Tony Britten’s (In Love with Alma Cogan, Benjamin Britten: Peace and Conflict) latest feature provides some welcome humour this summer with its stellar British cast of John Hurt; Niamh Cusack, Caroline Katz, Cathy Tyson, James Wilby and Dame Eileen Atkins to name but an impressive few.

Set in a north Norfolk village where an upmarket mixture of Brexiteers and eclectic London ‘ex-pats’ have found a quieter existence, the story follows their collective bright idea of using an erotic (aka ‘mummy porn’) novel in the style of “50 Shades of Grey” as a vehicle to raise funds to prevent their local pub from closing its doors on this recherché community.

The ensuing caper is amusingly scripted by Oliver Britten lampooning a series of caricatures (the sexy barrister; the sardonic literary agent; the gay booksellers, the aspiring novelist and the TV exec) all played wittily by a fabulous cast, who gently send each other up. The slightly bumbling chaps get together in the pub one night and agree to each pen several pages of purple prose together to form the book which is then delivered to said literary agent (Eileen Atkins in classic form) where it is snapped up. However, there is a catch, the interested publisher (John Hurt) stipulates a female author – and not four middle class blokes – to spearhead the book’s publicity campaign. Keeping their involvement a secret, they engage an out of work actress to ‘role play’ the part of the author but the tables are turned on the guys when she takes control.

Combining TV and film talent CHICK LIT is an enjoyable comedy drama of the kind you might enjoy on BBC1: it’s amusingly written, attractively filmed and impeccably performed by the best of British acting talent, and best of of all – it doesn’t take itself seriously. MT

In UK cinemas from September 2nd courtesy of Capriol Films and VOD Trinity | VoD from September 12th with a US release planned for Autumn 2016

Equity (2016)

Dir.: Meera Menon

Cast: Anna Gunn, Sarah Megan Thomas, James Purefoy, Lee Tergesen, Alysia Reiner, Samuel Roukin

110min | USA 2016 | Drama

Director Meera Menon’s second feature, written by Amy Fox and co-produced by two of the leading stars, Sarah Megan Thomas and Alysia Reiner, sees Wall Street as a shabby place of deceit and back-stabbing, but, unlike the Wolf of Wall Street (where women were just trophies), there is no hedonism involved – and the only substance abuse is a pregnant woman drinking a glass of wine. Women in the City are too busy fighting male discrimination to have time for self-indulgence and displays of grandeur. Whether they are better than the money men, is left open.

Senior investment banker Naomi Bishop (Anna Gunn) is preparing a new IPO for her company: Cachet. The brainchild of Ed (Roukin), the new social media site is bigger and much more secure than Facebook. But Naomi is suffering from the failure of her last IPO, and her boss Randall (Tergesen), is more interested in playing with his Jenga tower than the details of the operations. That said, he does not let forget her failure. In a place were innuendos and rumours are often more powerful than figures, the comment “Naomi brushed up the clients of her last deal the wrong way” is just code for “she is not flirty enough”.

But forty something home boxing fan Naomi is no lightweight, but bloody good at her job. It’s the company she keeps that contributes to her downfall: her part time lover, hedge-fund broker Michael Connor (Purefoy) seems to more interested in the Cachet deal than making love to Naomi. And – beware of deputies – Naomi’s second-in-command, Erin Manning (Thomas), feels wronged by her boss who denied her a promotion, and will do everything to get her revenge. Erin sees her pregnancy and wimpy boyfriend as a hindrance in her quest for success. Still, Naomi needs Erin to be nice to Randall, after a source revealed that Cachet might not be so secure as advertised. The third women involved is an old friend of Naomi’s, Samantha. Joggling a lesbian lover and twins in her spare time, she works for the Justice Department, earning a fraction of the remuneration paid in banking. After bagging a trader, Samantha is soon convinced that Michael is also involved in manipulating the opening price of the Cachet IPO. Naomi’s future – to take over the global leadership of the bank – is tied to the success of her IPO, which is in the hands of Erin and Samantha.

There are some entertaining scenes in Equity: when Naomi is stressed during a meeting, she sees another man munching the same cookies as she is – but his have more chocolate chips – she explodes, making him count the chips! And when hedge-fund broker Michael passes on a tip about Cachet to a dealer, the information is hidden in a toy hedgehog. Equity offers a new perspective on the world of high finance, but does not follow the rules of the classic finance thriller. Manipulation and treachery are just as rife amongst the She-Wolfs of Wall Street as with their male colleges. The ensemble acting is admirable, with Gunn stealing the show. DoP Eric Lin images creates a hard-edged and cold-hearted environment overloaded with tacky art bought as an investment rather than an adornment. Naomi’s catch-phrase is ‘Money is not a dirty word.’ AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 SEPTEMBER 2016

L’Avenir (2016) | Things to Come

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve Cast: Isabelle Huppert, André Marcon, Roman Kolinka, Edith Scob,Sarah Le Picard

100min | Drama | France Italy

Nathalie is a philosophy teacher in Paris. Happily married to another intellectual, she has a full life with two kids and a possessive mother to take care of. But gradually, in her sixties, her life starts to unravel.

French auteur Mia Hansen-Love’s fifth feature could almost be mistaken for a film by Eric Rohmer with its themes of philosophy, ménage à trois and the infinite cycle of love and life. Appropriately she casts Isabelle Huppert in the leading role which she plays with her usual elegance and panache. Taking life in her stride she encourages her pupils in provocative thought, whisks up a delicious family lunch and rushes to her petulant mother’s bedside to dole out tisanes and sympathy at 5 in the morning.

In all this she suddenly finds herself alone when her husband Heinz (Andre Marcon) announces his departure to leave their airy Parisian apartment to live with a younger woman. Crucially she keeps on going nonchalently; a towering figure of strength and compassion in a world where she is needed but not always valued. Insightfully, Hansen-Love spots she important things she will miss: her husband’s family seaside home where she loves to swim and relax, surrounded by books and beautiful sunsets, but she is still grounded in her Paris home; a salient fact that Hansen Love flags up – a woman’s home is more important to her than an outworn relationship. Nathalie’s ageing mother, Yvette (the immensely attractive, Edith Scob) finally agrees to move to an expensive nursing home and Heinz is seen walking in town with his girlfriend. The tone is upbeat and matter of fact: Hansen-Love and Huppert treat this all with a light-hearted derision.

Sex and romance take a back seat in L’AVENIR and this is the only criticism of the film: to assume that a woman in her early sixties is content to be absorbed into her children and grandchildren at such a young age, is simplistic and questionable but this dimension is glossed over here. Although Nathalie recoils from an approach from a young would-be suitor in the cinema one night; further exploration of her emotional (and sexual) needs, beyond the intellectual ones, could have added further texture to bring this drama into the 21st century. Cleverly Huppert identifies herself as an empowered woman, open to choices, allowing herself moments of grief and laughter at the absurdity of it all. Vulnerability is not dealt with here, although it may be locked away somewhere in her character’s psyche.

If Nathalie’s does have some emotional life it’s will with a good-looking and younger pupil, Fabien (Roman Kolinka), who offers to look after Yvette’s cat whom she visits in the a communal mountainside chalet in the Grenoble countryside. This episode is a clever vehicle for examining alternative ways of surviving financially for those whose passion is to be creative. But those hoping for a sex-fuelled spring /winter romance will be disappointed, and rightly so, this realist and well-crafted vision if about a woman taking control; empowered by force of circumstance, to re-invent herself once her biological imperative ceases to count. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 SEPTEMBER 2016 | BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY 2016 | IN COMPETITION

Black (2015)

Writer|Directors: Adil El Arbi, Bilahh Fallah

Cast: Sanaa Alaoui, Martha Canga Antonio, Aboubakr Bensaihi, Sanaa Bourasse

95min | Thriller | Belgian

BLACK is true to its title; a dark and sassy thriller with a poetic twist that follows two vying gangs of disenfranchised Black teens through one of the most dangerous quartiers of Brussels wreaking destruction in their wake as they murder, pillage and thieve their way to Hell. Based on Dirk Bracke’s novels Back/Black, this timely drama brings to mind City of God, West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet, and is the feature debut of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah whose only fault is the reinforcing of societal misogyny through camerawork that focuses much more on the female form during acts of violence than that of the male, and this is particularly evidenced during during Mavela’s rape.

Calling themselves The Black Bronx and the Moroccan boys, the two gangs are vehemently at loggerheads and composed of non-professional actors who add a touch of reality and bite to proceedings. When a love affair develops between rival gang members Mavela (Martha Canga Antonio) from the Bronx gang, and Marwan (Aboubakr Bensaihi) from the Moroccans, it brings out the best in the young North African and a chance for redemption that continually seems to slip through his fingers as luck is never on his side: ‘you can take a gangster out of the ‘hood, but you can’t take the hood out of a gangster’. Meanwhile, Mavela must choose between love and loyalty. There are other strands to the narrative that keep the action moving and the tension nicely tight in an intelligently scripted and grittily authentic urban drama that never outstays its welcome and modest 95 minute running time. MT

BLACK is released in UK cinemas & on VOD from Friday 19th August.

El Clan (2015) | Best Director| Argentinian Film Festival

Director: Pablo Trapero

Cast: Antonia Bengoechea, Gaston Cocchiarale, Guillermo Francella, Stefania Koessl

110min Crime Drama | Argentina

Pablo Trapero’s heightened melodrama chronicling the true story of the Puccio Clan, a family who kidnapped and killed people in 80s Buenos Aires, will have little interest for those outside Argentina. Though as a study of family psychopathy, it zips along in undeniably gripping although at times uneven style.

It emerges that the Puccio family were hardly on the breadline. The scion, Arquimedes Puccio, is father to five kids who live in reasonable comfort together with wife Epifania (Lili Popovich), a teacher; while making a living kidnapping those who clearly had a few bob more than themselves. Guillermo Francella (The Secrets of Their Eyes) plays the hard-eyed cool operator with a smug obsequious conceit that is both irritating and deeply unsettling; his fiery rugger bugger son, Alex (Peter Lanzini), is a more appealing character and the two vy with each other throughout making this an absorbing father|son portrait as much as it is a noirish seventies-set crime thriller.

EL CLAN opens with a brief political sketch of the Argentinian scene in the early eighties when the country was attempting to return to democracy after years of dictatorship. As in most Latin countries, well-heeled Arquimedes is closely connected to the right people in business and government. He also expects to rule his family with a rod of iron, maintaining a close grip on family affairs and engaging the children as accomplices in his skulduggery – whether they like it or not. Alex resents his father using him to facilitate the kidnap of a rugby club contact – even though he gets to set up a diving shop with a cut of the dosh – but is horrified when the victim is kept chained to a radiator in one of their bedrooms. Kidnappings pile up often ending in the victims being killed after the ransom is collected.

There’s nothing particularly stylish or inventive about the brass-tinted aesthetic of Sebastian Orgambide’s production design or Julian Apeztquia’s camerawork: this is a bog standard genre thriller that slips down nicely as a straightforward narrative – if you happen to drop off for twenty minutes – you can rejoin the action without really missing a trick, although you’ll be hard-pressed to get much rest with Sebastian Escofet’s pounding soundtrack. Particularly macho and misogynist is the scene where Alex’s girlfriend’s cries of ecstasy are matched with those of a distressed kidnap victim.

All and all, this is stolid, run-of-the mill stuff. Decently scripted by Trapero and his sidekicks Esteban Student and Julian Loyola this will appeal to men who like a good kidnapping story or Trapero’s style. Quite why it won Best Director at Venice Film Festival remains as much of a mystery as the activities of the strangely banal yet clearly lethally dysfunctional Puccio family. MT

ARGENTINIAN FILM FESTIVAL | CURZON LONDON on 18 August 2016 | REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2 -12 SEPTEMBER 2015

The Wave (2015)

Director: Roar Uthaug

Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Thomas Bo Larsen, Ane Dahl Torp

104min | Norway | Drama

Norway’s mountains and fjords provide a magnificent setting for the country’s first natural disaster film and the Norwegian Academy Awards 2016 Foreign Language hopeful.

Starring Kristoffer Joner and Ane Dahl Torp, THE WAVE is based on the probability of a massive rockslide and resulting tsunami destroying the fjord’s shoreline community. There are echoes here of The Poseidon Adventure and The Impossible as director Roar Uthaug takes a visual cue from the ice-bound landscapes of his homeland for a well made but rather stolid affair whose tonal watchwords are restrained panic rather than the unbridled hysteria or even heightened melodrama which characterised its Hollywood predecessors.

With a modest €6 million budget (part-financed by Danish funds) THE WAVE still manages to be a thrilling rollercoaster employing every cliché in the book with a large chunk of ‘Jarlsberg’ chessiness to deliver a tale that takes place in the small community of Geiranger. Geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) is responsible for reporting rockslide changes with his prefessional crew. The previous slide happened in 1905, but disaster is always imminent in this perilous but impressive location; the sound of klaxons giving the community ten minutes to flee to higher ground.

Kristian and his highly capable wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) are on verge of moving to Oslo for an oil company – Statoil?. The kids are not altogether pleased with the change as teenage son Sondre (Jonas Oftebro) – unusually for a boy his age – likes the peace and safety of the location: little does he know how exciting his life is about to become.

The screenplay adopts the classic three-act form: Uthaug takes time to familiarise audiences with the set-up in this traditional provincial town where the family are wrapping things up for the move ‘to pastures new’. Kristian senses that all is not well, however, and a last visit to the early warning centre has him fearing the worst. His warnings to ex-colleagues that evacuation may be prudent all fall on deaf ears as the season will shortly be in full swing. Meanwhile, Idun goes on duty in the chintzy local tourist hotel, while Kristian takes Julie for a last night at their old home as disaster lies only hours away. Dozing over a late nightcap of whisky on the rocks, as heavier rocks head towards him, and these are not going to just chill his drink. D.P. John Cristian Rosenlund’s superb widescreen visuals bare witness to the village’s rude awakening and his hand-held camera judders through the fleeing footfall as a thundering avalanche of boulders cascade into the fjord throwing up a tsunami of ash-filled breakers as the sky turns obsidian black.

Joner and Dahl Torp gives performances of surprising strength and complexity for a film of this genre. Dahl Torp comes out on top, very much the Nordic heroine of the piece, leading the men with icy determination and laudable calm, given the circumstances. For a hotel receptionist, she appears to have a thorough grounding in physics, casualty-level resuscitation techniques, not to mention the lungs of a whale.

Despite its clichés and practical implausibilities, there’s a great deal to enjoy here although it’s somehow doubtful that Norway will be coming home with the Oscar. Let’s just hope that if disaster does strike, a woman like Idun will be around to save the day. MT

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

Valley of Love (2016) |

Dir.: Guillaume Nicloux

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Gerard Depardieu

France/Belgium 2015, 91 min.

Several decades after after appearing together in Maurice Pialat’s Loulou, Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu are reunited in Guilluame Nicloux’s VALLEY OF LOVE, where they play a long divorced middle-aged couple, trying to come to terms with the death of their adult son Michael, who committed suicide.

Whilst Huppert and Depardieu have gone from strength to strength in their careers, not only in France, the director has struggled since his debut with Les Enfants Volant in 1991. Guillaume Nicloux’s twelve feature films – among them a remake of Rivette’s La Religieuse, also starring Isabelle Huppert – vary in style and content, but always seem to fall short; never fulfilling the director’s great potential. With VALLEY OF LOVE Nicloux has finally realised his ambitions as scriptwriter and director: a contemporary parable of spirituality, very much in the way of Robert Bresson.

A long tracking shot of Isabelle (Huppert) opens the films, the camera follows her patiently through a resort in the Eastern Californian desert. Later she meets Gerard (Depardieu), who turns out to be her long divorced ex-husband. Both are uneasy, after all, they have come here for a ‘meeting’ with their son Michael, who committed suicide a few months previously, but who has written letters to both his parents agreeing to meet them – albeit briefly – in one of seven spots in Death Valley, as described in the letters. The two have not been very attentive parents: sending him to boarding school at a very young age, and after his 18th birthday have lost contact more or less altogether – Isabelle even missing his funeral. Michael was gay, and his mother is more concerned whether he had Aids, than the reason for his suicide.

Wiry, passive-aggressive Isabelle is seemingly the total opposite of her saggy-bodied ex-spouse, who is fond of banal small-talk and avoidance. But somehow, they not only end up in bed together, but find a common language, their old emotional bonds surfacing – even though they have nothing in common anymore. But they visit the Death Valley rendezvous, as instructed, Gerard suffering particularly in the overbearing heat. They mourn their own lives more than the loss of their son: new partners and children have obviously not satisfied them any more than their own relationship: Isabelle is separating from her husband, and Gerard is distraught about his fragmented life, having been diagnosed with cancer of the bladder. He wants to see a consultant for a second opinion, leaving a day earlier than asked for by Michael – something Isabelle fights vigorously. There is a spooky nighttime scene on the tennis court, when Gerard is visited by a ghost – David Lynch would have been proud of it. But the way Nicloux introduces some spiritual healing for this dreadfully ordinary and self-obsessed couple, is truly amazing.

DoP Christophe Offenstein creates serene widescreen images, dwarfing the main protagonists in the desert and towering mountains. Charles Ives’ mournful, a-tonal music underlining the couple’s struggle to come to terms with their own lives as well as the loss of their son. Huppert and Depardieu are always caustic to the point: she answers his statement “I got fat” with a dismissive “Whatever makes you happy”. The ethereal paradise they can’t grasp at first, finally allows them a view beyond the boxed-in existence they call reality and Nicloux ends with a glimmer of hope – like with Bresson, you don’t have to be exceptional to be chosen. AS.

Up for Love | Un Homme a la Hauteur (2016)

Dir.: Laurence Tirard

Cast: Jean Dujradin, Virginie Efira, Cedric Kahn, Stephanie Papanian, Cesar Dombuy;

France 2016, 95 min | Romantic drama

French director’s Laurence Tirard’s straight remake of the Argentinian film Corazon de Leon by writer/director’s Marcos Carnevale (2013), seems to have gained little from its change of location to the Cote d’Azur. The frothy love story between tiny Diane and architect Alexandre, who finds her mobile, is simply too glossy to have an real emotional impact.

Diane (Efira) leaves her ‘phone in a restaurant, after yet another row with her ex-husband Bruno (Kahn) largely sparked by their shared legal practice. Later, a charming voice belonging to Alexandre (Dujardin) invites her to dinner to hand over the phone. Diane is taken back when she sees Alexandre in the flesh and soon forgets her reservations when he invites her to parachute – certainly a novelty for a first date. Meanwhile, at the office, Bruno stills makes life difficult for his ex-wife, sleeping with judges and clients, to help his course. The office secretary Colarie (Papinian) is a sort of referee for the fighting lawyers, changing her support frequently. Alexandre, whose grown-up son Benji (Domboy) lives with him, has a running battle with the indolent femme-de-menage, and a St. Bernard’s dog, who loves nothing more than flattening his beloved master. When Diane introduces her parents to Alexandre, the first cracks appear, and Bruno’s jealousy is not very helpful either. Whilst Alexandre is aiming for full cohabitation, Diane is getting cold feet.

It would have helped had Tirard (Moliere) chosen less opulent settings: the sun always shines, illuminating the couples’ wealthy dwellings – particularly Alexandre’s, who is a star architect, and always hops over to Liege, where his designs for the rebuilding of the opera house are realised. Apart from the parachuting, he always finds new, exotic pleasures to impress Diane with, whilst showing his more insecure side to his son.

Then there are the speeches, Colarie, in particular, is always ready to launch into one; at one point accusing Diane of being an emotional fascist because she cannot get over the fact that her friends, family and the public will always baulk at the height difference btween the two of them. Needless to say, the resolution is as much over-the-top as the build up. DOP’s Jerome Almeras’ images would be better suited to glossy commercials: the lighting is always perfect, showing off a luxurious environment, where opulence dominates, stifling the protagonists: UP FOR LOVE feels like a competition where Alexandre tries to woe Diane with more and more extravagant surprises, to make up for his missing inches. When Diane tells him he is so special, we cannot recall a single emotional quality: he is just a stage manager, coming up with new sets to impress Diane. As frothy as candyfloss and as sweetly insubstantial.

ON RELEASE FROM 5 AUGUST 2016

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Director: Stanley Kubrick Screenplay: Kubrick Novel: The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.

Cast: Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter, Gay Hamilton, Marie Keen, Hardy Kruger, Philip Stone, Murray Melvin, Leon Vitali, Andre Morell

183min | Drama History Adventure | UK US

BARRY LYNDON is certainly Stanley Kubrick’s most underrated film. A UK and US production, it was shot in 1975 after a trio of international sensations: Dr Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) it received indifferent reviews on its release (possibly due to Irish sympathies, Kubrick received death threats from the IRA) but has since grown to become one of the most lauded historical dramas.

Based on William Makepeace Thakeray’s 1844 rags to riches story about a feckless Irish adventurer (Redmond Barry) who lacks integrity or judgement who nevertheless enjoys an illustrious and eventful career before ending life with nothing to show for himself but tragedy. Barry Lyndon’s emotional lassitude is possibly key to his popularity as an appealing antihero who we initially admire but eventually grow to dislike, and provides Kubrick with the requisite unhappy ending for his ambivalent but colourful character. And although he remains detached and emotionally distant from his protagonist, the film exudes a sweeping romanticism that makes it all the more effective as a tragedy. Kubrick’s trademark attention to detail, exquisite framing, narrative rigour, musical choices and peerless performances, elicited from an eclectic international cast, all go to make this film an enduring masterpiece that can be revisited and savoured time and time again.

After losing his childhood sweetheart to a wealthy English soldier (Leonard Rossiter in one of his most idiosyncratic turns), Barry leaves home and becomes a British deserter in the Seven Years’ War, soon switching sides to become a Prussian conscript, and then an itinerant gambler thanks to his suave Irish mentor, the dapper Chevalier du Balibari (a resonant Patrick Magee). The mood turns more sombre in the second half of the film that explores Barry’s attempts unsuccessfully to become an aristocrat, via the vicarious ambitions of his mother (a wonderfully crafty Marie Keen) through his marriage to the elegant Lady Honoria Lyndon (Marisa Berenson in a performance of discrete charm) but his insensitivity and lack of judgement eventually make his wife and stepson despise him and he is disdained by their friends and courtiers before he ends his days in a comparative squalor.

Made all the more enjoyable by Michael Hordern’s sonorious but mellow narration, the tone is sober throughout the 183 minutes and Ryan O’Neal brings a brooding often mournful intensity to his role as a self-seeking empty vessel who acts but never feels: his only love is for his young son Brian, but even as a parent he is morally loose and indisciplined. Marisa Berenson triumphs in a portrait of poignant and elegant disappointment as she goes from a respectable but sexless marriage à la mode (to Frank Middlemass’ crusty but amiably appealing Lord Lyndon) to one where she is completely demeaned after her brief love affair with Barry.

Murray Melvin and Philip Stone (the only actor to appear in all of Kubrick’s films) are memorable as the Lyndons’ advisors and Leon Vitali manages to play the part of a pasty-faced but well-intentioned Lord Bullingdon without losing credibility. The film won four Oscars, most notably for John Alcott who used the well-known NASA lens (f/0.7) to convey the glowing candlelit scenes and those that ethereally capture the lushly rolling England landscapes with a soft incandescence. BARRY LYNDON can be a simple story or a highly complex study of psychopathy and social history: whichever you desire. Relax and be enveloped by 19th century life, as the slow movement of Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat major and Handel’s sinister Sarabande in D Minor gently sears itself into your memory for the rest of time. MT

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 29 JULY 2016

The Commune (2016) | Berlinale 2016 | Silver Bear Award

Director: Thomas Vinterberg Writers: Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm

Cast: Trine Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen, Helene Reingaard Neumann, Martha Sofie Wallstrom Hansen, Julie Agnete Vang, Fares Fares

114min Drama Denmark

Growing up in a commune in Denmark, Thomas Vinterberg brings his experience to bear on this long-awaited but rather disappointing and occasionally vapid drama set in Seventies Copenhagen. Inspired by Vinterberg’s own childhood spent in a similar set up, he roundly dismisses the idea that commune living is the be all and end all but not in a way that’s altogether convincing, despite this collaboration with well-known and reliable scripter Tobias Lindholm. Refreshingly, he pitches his story from a middle-aged angle with the premise that commune living might be the answer to jaded marriages rather than offering unbridled sex for the twenty something brigade. But what emerges is quite surprising and often emotionally cruel: that said, it is a more cheerfully playful film than its more interesting bedfellows Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and Lucas Moodysson’s Together.

Talk of communes immediately conjurs up the subject of drug-fuelled evenings by the camp fire but there are more provocative issues stoking the flames in this ’70s household that was once the exclusive family home of its altruistic owners, Ulrich Thomsen’s well-off middle-aged architect Erik and Trine Dyrholm’s newscaster Anna, whose marriage is ticking along nicely but needs some tuning up as it approaches the final hurdle. And as women often are, Anna is the one to suggest that commune living might be the answer to spicing things up in the bedroom and elsewhere.

The idea here is that Erik and Anna will open their spacious home in an upmarket suburb of Copenhagen to friends and acquaintances with the hope of creating an interesting new dynamic in their domestic arrangements. Clearly extroverts – the pair of them – but even then, this facile idea predictably falls flat when, surprise surprise, blond bombshell Emma comes along in the shape of Helene Reingaard Neumann. To be fair, she emerges via Erik’s office as a young architect keen to cosy up to his superior design skills and a bit of extracurricular activity. Emma makes all the running initially but Erik is soon smitten and the two begin a torrid affair. Initially gobsmacked, Anna takes it all in the spirit of openmindedness but pretty soon cracks begins to appear in the facade of false bonhomie. The saying “Out of sight, out of mind” couldn’t be more apt here as things take a turn for the worst. Had Anna had a chance to tackle Erik from a position of strength and silence, all might have turned out reasonably; the affair burning itself out naturally due to living arrangements not being up to standard (he is an architect, remember). But having the affair played out in front of her in the confines of her family home – with Erik enjoying the marital bedroom and still having access to her whenever he needs, the dynamic takes a toxic turn for the worst.

The Commune is a watchable drama – even if, by the end, you’re watching it while grimacing or slowly dying inside. But there’s a trite glibness to the story that feels overly misogynist and mean. Characterisations are superficial and flimsy, with every part underwritten except for Anna’s. And here Dyrholm gives a moving and intensely knowing performance for which she won a Silver Bear. The Commune has the quality of a soap opera rather than a serious drama and there is nothing to tether it to the ’70s setting apart from its fashions and hairdos and the odd reference to Vietnam, making it feel insubstantial, immature and tonally bland in the competition line-up. One feels sorry for Anna, but Vinterberg keeps on turning the knife, almost as if he had a personal axe to grind with the cruelty unremitting until the bitter end – in a similar vein to his previous Berlinale 2012 outing The Hunt.

Vinterberg and cinematographer Jesper Toffner go back to Dogme days with their dizzying handheld cameras and the colour palette of pastels adds to the feeling of glibness: duck-egg blues and caramel creams. It’s all a bit beige and unchallenging but the undertone is rapier sharp and raw.MT

BERLINALE 11-22 FEBRUARY 2016 | IN COMPETITION | ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 29 July 2016

Chevalier (2015) | Best Film Award | London Film Festival 2015

Director: Athina Rachel Tsangari

99min | Comedy Drama | Greek with subtitles

If you didn’t get the humour in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s first Weird Wave outing Attenberg, you’re unlikely to appreciate the subtlety of her indie follow-up, CHEVALIER, voted Best Film at the London Film Festival this year, by a jury whose president, Pawel Pawlikowski, took the trophy last year for IDA, and won the foreign language Oscar.

A tribute to male competitiveness, CHEVALIER is a sparky and sophisticated affair that takes place on a wintry out-of-season yacht trip where six well-off men attempt to get ‘one up’ on each other over a pivotal few days on the Aegean. The one-upmanship revolves around a game. And the game is called ‘Chevalier’, named after the signet ring worn by French noblemen. By the end of the voyage, the winner of the game will get to wear the so-called Chevalier ring on his little finger, although the narrative gradually sails into more eclectic waters.

Tsangari’s usual collaborator Yorgos Lanthimos was away making The Lobster, but she works again with their co-writer Efthimis Filippou in a narrative that concentrates on male dominance rather than female submission, as was the case in Attenberg. The men on board all vary in age, attractiveness and kudos. ‘The Doctor” (Yorgos Kentros) is clearly the most distinguished and urbane of the motley crew, he is also the owner of the critical ring. The youngest and least bankable is the pudgy Dimitris (Makis Papdimitriou) who has been brought along by his older brother, Yannis (Yorgos Pirpassopoulos) who threatens to reveal his fear of sleeping alone if he misbehaves. Yannis also happens to be the Doctor’s son-in-law, so is on his best behaviour; the suave Christos (Sakis Rouvas) is the best looking. Josef Nikolaou (Vangelis Mourikis) and Yorgos (Panos Koronis, from Before Midnight) are long-term colleagues.

Once holed-up ‘at leisure’ in the yacht with diving trips and boozy lunches to enjoy, certain patterns of behaviour start to emerge in the name of the game. The men spar and vy for superiority indulging in playful and, at times, more more ribald banter that occasionally verges on the hilarious, particularly when Dimitris does an on-deck rendition of Minnie Ripperton’s “Lovin You`’ complete with girlie high-pitched voice. The ultimate aim here is to establish who is the best at everything rather than in one thing in particular – ‘primus inter pares’ style. Challenges also include who is the ‘most loved’ on the home front – requiring the men to engage in hands-free phone calls in front of the others. There is even an ‘erection contest’ in this male-bonding (aka competitiveness) routine. The winner is thankfully never revealed.

For a film that takes place by the sea, the colour palette is refreshingly devoid of azure blues and dazzling turquoise: instead Tsangari has chosen a chic taupe, teal and gunmetal aesthetic which compliments this recherché masculine set-to. D.oP Thimios Bakatatakis does his best to frame and photograph within the claustrophobic confines of tight spaces to great effect, given the equally tight budget. And in the end, the individual tasks are not taken that seriously; they are simply representative of the male ego and what it is prepared to undergo and tolerate within the parameters of the game, however outlandish or absurd. At times, there are echoes here of Eddie Waring’s “It’s a Knockout”. Spot Greece’s answer to Keith Chegwin and you’ll enter the spirit of this clever satire. MT

CHEVALIER WON A SPECIAL MENTION BY THE JURY AT SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Papusza (2013) | DVD release Kinoteka 2014

Director/Writers: Joanna Kos, Krzysztof Krauze

Main Actors: Jowita Miondlikowska, Joanna Niemirska, Antoni Pawlicki

131 minutes Polish and Romany Origin: Poland Documentary

Picture: Black and White

Though ostensibly a biopic of the Polish-Romani poet and singer Bronisława Wajs (aka the eponymous Papusza), Joanna Kos and Krzysztof Krauze’s Papusza seems to concern itself just as much with the life and history of the Romani people in 20th Century Poland as it does with Papusza herself. In telling Papusza’s story, the film jumps back and forth over a sprawling timeline, encompassing both World Wars and, perhaps equally significantly for the Romani community, a government decree aiming to end their nomadic roaming. This, then, is as much a story about the effect of external politics upon a community as it is a story about one woman’s struggle with the ideological confines of that same community.

In a sense, though, it’s also external politics that exacerbate Papusza’s situation. On the run and in hiding in the post-war years, poet and ex-resistance fighter Jerzy Ficowski takes refuge with the Romani, entering a world where people believe in spells and justify stealing animals by claiming that they are God given and owned by all. Here, he meets Papusza who, unusually for a Romani, has learnt to read – much to the disgust of her fellow travellers. At one point, when Papusza is still just a girl, the Romani camp is attacked and burnt. Papusza believes the attack to be her fault, simply because she has learnt to read. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that Papusza is hesitant about her literary gifts – gifts noticed and encouraged by Ficowski, who will later translate and publish Papusza’s poems in Polish newspapers, bringing Papusza both wider fame and banishment from the Romani world. She is accused of betraying their honour and their secrets, and therefore of breaking the rules of their insular community.

When Papusza states that she would have been happy if she hadn’t learn to read, it’s hard not to read in wider issues of social and sexual politics, both within and beyond the Romani community – and yet, the continual focus on the community at large prevents Papusza from becoming a ‘woman’s film’, or from ever giving us a central protagonist with which to truly identify. As a whole, the film may be very well made and strikingly shot, but it’s also long and a little too leisurely, given the lack of tight engagement. Still, as a detailed portrait of an outsider community, the film leaves a textured imprint which won’t be soon forgotten. Alex Barrett

PAPUSZA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED VENUES

Men & Chicken (2015)

Writer| Director: Anders Thomas Jensen

Cast: David Dencik, Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kass, Søren Malling, Nicolas Bro,

Fantasy | Comedy | Horror

Anders Thomas Jensen is best known for strong storytelling and screenwriting both in his native Denmark (Brothers | In a Better World) and the UK (The Duchess | Love is All You Need). His latest film is almost impossible to define: a lyrical blend of tragicomedy, fantasy and horror with dynamic performances from the best of Denmark’s acting talent all go to make this film an unforgettable experience in tonal weirdness. CHICKEN & MEN is best described as a grotesque Danish version of the BBC’s League of Gentlemen with undertones of Cold Comfort Farm.

Family dysfunction is at the core of a story set in the glorious island seascapes of Ork (the Danish isle of Fyn) where three retarded and cleft-paletted half-brothers (Franz (Soren Malling), Gregor (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Josef (Nicolas Bro) occupy the rambling stately ruins of a manor house (Beelitz, Brandenburg Germany) overrun with a range of hybrid farm animals (some alive, some preserved in formaldehyde) adding a twist of quirkiness to its Gothic splendour. The film opens as two other ‘brothers’ Elias and Gabriel (Mikkelsen and Dencik) arrive on the estate having found out from their dying adoptive father, that their birth father, an eccentric scientist, is still living in the stately pile.

From this bizarre narrative, a strangely philosophical parable emerges which is by turns hilarious, macabre, romantic and even tender in its fairytale pretensions. Mads Mikkelsen swaps his signature sexual allure for one of sad sexual disfunction in a role that is gruesome and at times even demeaning: rocking brassy curls and a lopsided grin, his strange affliction forces him to wank involuntarily every time he comes into contact with a woman. The ‘maguffin’ here is a well-used role of loo paper. Each character gives a nunaced interpretation of madness and physical deformity that keeps us entertained and intrigued in disbelief and horror. At the end Gabriel is the brain behind the brothers delivering the philosophical thread that weaves the story together giving it a meaningful integrity. Bak and Kaas’ sweepingly romantic score elevates the film in a poetic way and combined with Sebastian Blenkov’s wildly bucolic cinematography MEN & CHICKEN is both entertaining and memorable whether you buy into its grotesque humour or not.MT

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 – 18 OCTOBER 2015

Hide and Seek (2014)

Director: Joanna Coates

Cast: Hannah Arterton, Joe Banks, Daniel Metz, Rea Mole, Josh O’Connor

82min Drama US/UK

In the depths of an English summer, four loosely connected friends from London move into a remote country cottage with the aims of creating an environment free from social conventions including those of sexuality. Living in this intimate setting they hope to drift into a state of harmony where there are no boundaries and they will discover the missing element in their lives.

Joanna Coates first feature is an elegant and visually inventive art house affair. Evoking a suspenseful sense of intrigue from the opening, with an eclectic choice of music and her clever casting: a slightly neurotic Leah (Rea Mole), a relaxed and playful Charlotte (Hannah Arterton), ) an assured and assertive Max, (Josh O’Connor) and a placid American (Jack), Daniel Metz). This radical approach works well at the start especially as the foursome seem mutually attracted to one another. But it also feels slightly hopeful on the sexual front. That they are all going to casually sleep together on an ongoing basis seems naive and presumptuous. However, Joanna Coates’ well-paced drama makes this an enjoyable voyage of discovery, leaving us to guess how things will eventually work out with some spirit of faith. The characters are enigmatic yet plausible even though the physical side of their relationships gets considerably more exposure than the emotional and intellectual one. Although it often feels as if events and scenarios are being forced unnaturally by some outside party, somehow this works. The arrival of another male friend (Simon, Joe Banks) changes the dynamics abruptly. His inquisitive line of questioning and perceptive comments seems quite natural, in the scheme of things, and yet seem intrusive to the quiet cohesion of the existing group, which has reached a state of suspended nirvana.

But the psychological parlour games start to destabilise his equilibrium and when one of the girls attempts to force a fantasy scenario on him he makes a desperate attempt to inject a spirit of reality into the proceedings. Afterwards, it’s clear that the utopia has been challenged but also that an unwanted element of their former lives has been purged. A thought-provoking and engaging debut that explores the state of modern society, xenophobia, nuclear relationships the fear of loneliness. MT

Winner of the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film at the Edinburgh Film festival 2014, HIDE AND SEEK, opens in selected cinemas across the country on Friday July

Waves | Fale (2016) | Karlovy Vary Film Festival 1 – 9 July 2016

Dir: Grzegorz Zariczny;

Cast: Anna Kesek, Katazyna Kopec, Tomasz Schimscheiner, Jolanta Olzewska, Edyta Torhan

Drama | Poland 2016 | 71 min

Grzegorz Zariczny revives contemporary Polish cinema with this feature debut WAVES which draws on his experience as a documentarian and is based on the experiences of one of the lead actors. In its brevity and non-polemic style, WAVES has something in common with the early work of Krzysztof Kieslowski who also started his career in documentaries, producing through the Munk Studio, as Zariczny has done.

Teenagers Ania (Kesek) and Kasia (Kopec) dream of being successful hairdressers and are apprenticed in a salon run by the bitter, disillusioned Mrs Szefowa (Torhan), who is also an unpleasant boss. To be fair, Ania has no natural talent, and despite her friend Kasia’s encouragement, she tries to blame her distant mother and alcoholic father (Schimscheiner) for her ineptitude in her chosen career. Kasia’s parents are loving in comparison and she is close to her mother. Ania hopes for the best when her mother announces a reunion, getting the family together for a dinner.

There are some strong performances here but this resonant slice of social realism is really brought to life by DoP Weronica Bilska whose evocative camerawork brilliantly evokes the grim post-industrial cityscape of Krakow’s Nova Huta district; the former industrial hub of this great Southern city now lies empty and neglected, the streets lined with shabby housing and high rise blocks. But strangely enough Ania’s father, a painter and decorator, has managed to cobble together a decent modern flat with furniture that Ania despises: “it’s too new and too clean” she tells Kasia, who, in turn, starts sleeping over more and more often, preferring it to the run-down hovel she lives in with her parents.

Zariczny pictures this corner of modern Poland almost on its knees; the old are nostalgic for the Stalinist past (which was no better than the present) and frozen in a static grip of negativity, whilst the young are disenchanted. What emerges is a country that has failed to reinvigorate its previously thriving industry, with the talented and ambitious seeking their fortunes abroad or in the large cities. AS

WAVES has its WORLD PREMIERE at KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 1-9 JULY 2016

The Wait (2015) | L’Attesa

Director: Piero Messina

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Razor Rizzotti, Lou de Laâge, Domenico Diele

100min Drama France | Italy

In an villa in Sicily a woman is waiting in the dark. Something terrible has happened and this mystery feels as ancient and as dark at the one between mothers and their sons. THE WAIT is Piero Messina’s directorial debut and it feels a very Italian film with is echoes of Christ’s death underpinning the narrative and linking it to the deep sense of loss and pain that one mother feels in the aftermath to a tragedy that unravels during Eastertide in her family home.

Clearly taking cues from his mentor Paolo Sorrentino, Messina has made a highly stylised and haunting drama with another tour de force performance from Juliette Binoche in the role of Anna. A French woman who married a Sicilian several decades previously, she is now divorced but still lives in the age-old villa at the foothills of Mount Etna.

This is a slow-burning drama that has divided audiences here at Venice Film Festival, where it has its premiere. Lou de Laâe plays a madonna-like young woman who has been invited to the villa to share the Easter holidays with her boyfriend Giuseppe, Anna’s son. But Anna, devastated by the death of her brother, is caught of guard by this arrival and simply cannot communicate, what appears to be another absence, that of her son Giuseppe.

This very simple storyline allows Messina to craft a seductively atmospheric two-hander in which two woman dance a tentative tango while each attempts to scope out the other. As Anna, Binoche is captivating. While being drawn to Jeanne – who is also French and a welcome guest from the ‘outside’ world – she craves her company but also keeps her at arms’ length from the awful circumstances of her sudden loss. This is a clever ploy but also a deeply selfish act, for which she is chided by the old retainer, Pietro (Giorgio Colangeli). Claiming she is waiting for the ‘right time’ to tell Jeanne, she continues to luxuriate in the girl’s bewilderment and she quizzes her on the relationship with her son; playing a power- game while she teases out information from the younger woman.

Clearly, something is not right. Jeanne has not heard from Giuseppe for several days and cannot raise him on his mobile phone. Deeply in love with him, she waits patiently while politely playing houseguest to Anna. At the same time, Giuseppe’s whereabouts remain a mystery: is he injured, dead or simply gone away without letting anyone know? Messina builds up such a magical ambiance, luxuriating in the glorious heat of this Sicilian springtime, that somehow we are content to let the enigma play out, clutching at straws and letting our own imaginations wander as we wonder where he is.

Deeply ambiguous, yet imbued with ancient symbolism, the film ends without even revealing the truth behind this everlasting mystery: that of the relationship between a mother and her precious son. For Catholics, this is especially resonant: the Virgin woman conceiving and giving birth to a boy single-handedly, she continues through life to exert a special and enigmatic control over him until the end. And to re-enforce the sacred mystery: we never meet Giuseppe in THE WAIT. And for many mothers, this is the only power they have over their sons when the boys grow into men. Jealously guarded them and keeping other women away for as long as they possibly can. When their sons do fall in love, the women will always regarded with suspicion and occasionally atavistic hatred and mistrust, by their mothers.

Essentially a two-hander, inspired by the Pirandello’s play: “The Life I Gave You” from Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author”), THE WAIT may be prove too long a wait for many. But savour its atmosphere while you can. Messina is a new voice and a stylish one. And Italian cinema is desperately in need of one. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 12 SEPTEMBER 2015

The Neon Demon (2016) prime

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn | Cast: Elle Fanning, Keanu Reeves, Alessandro Nivola, Christina Hendriks, Jena Malone, Karl Glusman | 110min | Thriller | US

Nicolas Winding Refn’s coruscating takedown of the LA fashion industry epitomises the competitive resentment women feel for one another in this cat eat cat world.

Its subject matter clearly indicates that this is not a thriller about wallflowers or the faint-hearted. A phenomenal central performance from Elle Fanning leads a cast of international acting talent categorised by punchy female characters with two standout male roles for Alessandro Nivola and Keanu Reeves. Scripted by Winding Refn and co-writers Mary Laws and Polly Stenham, this mannered often bitchy exposé is driven forward by its blindingly magnetic visual style and a pounding electronic soundtrack from Cliff Martinez (Drive).

When 16 year old Jessie (Elle Fanning) arrives in LA from her native Georgia she cuts a seemingly demure and homespun figure amid the blare and bright lights of LA’s modelling fraternity. Jessie is no strinking violet, but up against the hard-bitten competition she has a ‘deer in the headlights’ quality which is much sought-after by the agency heads and photographers and soon catches the eye of Alessandro Nivola’s cliquey fashion designer wannabe actor. Beauty isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. You’ve got something that other women would kill for – natural beauty”. His words will eventually bear poisonous fruit although Refn fails to delivery a satisfyingly convincing outcome for his underwritten heroine.

There are scenes in this shocking often erotic thriller that audiences will find objectionable. Elle Fanning carries through her character’s naive personality with a subtlety that connects us to the hard-edged world where most sink in the mire. The themes of vampirism and cannibalism at times feel far-fetched and outlandish but make this fantasy somehow plausible in this fake community where evil lurks in every character, a manifestation of fear of failing and losing face – quite literally.

Refn’s visionary visual style that aligns him with Jonathan Glazer in Under the Skin where unspoken scenes project us into the realms of mystery and even terror and once again, he is driven by the power of electronic sound which tinkles and throbs by turns. This is an LA inhabited by real and metaphorical vampires who ‘feed off’ their victims with a creepy and hateful fascination showcased by Klaus Kinski in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and Gary Oldman’s Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).

There are some impressive performances from Christina Hendricks’ model booker and , Jena Malone’s lesbian make-up artist Ruby. Jesse’s rivals Sarah (Abbey Lee) and Gigi (Bella Heathcote) seethe with poorly disguised malice in some of the most viturperative lines their vacuous characters have ever uttered, spitting venom on Jesse’s meteoric rise to acceptance amongst the male designers and photographers. Alessandro Nivola is stunningly persuasive as a cruelly narcissistic fashion designer who has models parade in front of him in their underwear before callously dismissing them. The only character who plays it straight is Jesse’s decent boyfriend (Karl Glusman) who is cast aside when he cramps her style. As despite her lack of redemption, Fanning is nonetheless our conduit into this sunny world of lost souls floundering on the dark side that Refn conjures up with conviction and aplomb leaving us without a Hollywood happy ending in the true style of Polanski. MT

| NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

The Wicker Man (1973) | 50th Anniversary

Dir: Robin Hardy | Wri: Anthony Shaffer | Cast: Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Ingrid Pitt, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland | UK Cult/Mystery Thriller, 88′

THE WICKER MAN is not actually a horror film, more an occult drama of brooding malevolence with a total lack of blood and gore. Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) purposely set out to script a film that was devoid of carnage, yet one that succeeds in provoking an unsettling feeling and a palpable sense of dread from the opening sequences when Edward Woodward, as Sergeant Howie, arrives in the small and remote Scottish fishing community. A man alone in an unknown and hostile place, a missing child, a secret couched in suspicion and folklore are the simple elements that slowly coalesce to fuel our atavistic fears. Hardy weaves a web of uncertainty and unfamiliarity, sending messages of alarm and shivers of discomfort as we are drawn in to this dread-filled drama which went on to win the Saturn Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror in 1979. Even that has a sense of weirdness to it.

Of course, no one will forget the eerie soundtrack of haunting tunes written and performed by Paul Giovanni or Britt Ekland as Willow, the coyly seductive daughter of the publican. Music plays an important role in the film, often leading the narrative forward as when Willow dances naked in her bedroom. Edward Woodward goes from a confident and commanding police officer to a whimpering, doubt-ridden wreck and Christopher Lee is masterful as the flamboyant and powerful Lord Summerlisle, head of the pantheistic pagan clan.

The story is plausible. Woodward arrives to investigate a missing girl and, being a stalwart Christian bloke, has no truck with the locals and their flimsy suspicions and Druid and Celtic Gods. But then there’s the sexual twist. Couples make love openly in the street and Ekland offers herself to Woodward without any sense of shame and posing winsomely in ‘Baby Dolls’. The investigation turns tricky, hampered by lack of information and anybody in the village admitting the girl’s actual existence.

Naturally, we take the Policeman’s side although he’s not altogether an appealing character – or an endearing one, for that matter. The religious zeal of the locals gives this a sinister twist: their values are crucial to their daily existence and these people will go to any lengths for their beliefs. And that, as recent history has shown us, is ultimately the most frightening element at play.

The final shocking scenes will remain seared to the memory. But more than that, the film raises existential questions linking us to our distant past and to our future in a way that’s resonant, unnerving and relevant to all our lives today.

Interviewed by Sue Lawley for BBC’s Desert Island Discs Christopher Lee claimed the film they all made was nothing like the final release, much of the wittiness and texture having ended up on the cutting room floor.

Our critic Richard Chatten adds: ‘Although as the director Robin Hardy gets much of the credit for ‘The Wicker Man’ the main title actually reads “Anthony Shaffer’s The Wicker Man”.

Anyone wishing to understand the British would be well advised to watch a double bill of ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’ and ‘The Wicker Man’. Not for nothing the personal favourite of Sir Christopher Lee – for whom it was specifically written with him in mind – the latter film (originally released fifty years ago on 6 December) in depicting a cosy little community which just happens to practise paganism – and in which schoolchildren are matter of factly taught the phallic significance of the maypole – demonstrates that this island race have a centuries old pagan tradition, made implicit at the conclusion when Lord Summerisle leads his flock in a rousing chorus of “Summer is a comin’ in”; a moment that lays bare the significance of a tune that seems simply quaint when performed at school but here is revealed in all its final glory”.

CELEBRATING ITS 50th ANNIVERSARY | THE WICKER MAN IS NOW OUT ON BLURAY

THE WICKER MAN: Final Cut was released in UK cinemas with accompanying 50^th Anniversary event footage on June 21^st: the Summer Solstice.

THE WICKER MAN (all 3 versions) was then be released in an exclusive Collector’s Edition and on 4k UHD for the first time on September 4^th

The Deer Hunter (1978) | Tribute to Michael Cinimo

Dir.: Michael Cimino

Cast: Robert De Niro, John Cazale, John Savage, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep

USA1978, 182 min.

Michael Cimino only directed seven feature films, yet he can claim to have put a maximal impact on film history – even if not always for the right reasons. His third feature HEAVEN’S GATE (1980) bankrupted the production company United Artists, but he will be even more remembered for THE DEER HUNTER. Only his second film is nevertheless caused a world wide political storm – and garnered five “Oscars”, including “Best Director” and “Best Film” in 1979.

Whilst THE DEER HUNTER was premiered on 8.12.1978 in New York, the film had its international coming out at the Berlin Film Festival in February/March 1979. Even before the screening, the Soviet delegation protested about the film and wanted it withdrawn. After very mixed reviews, the Soviet delegation withdrew all their films and walked out, followed by Cuba and the rest of the East European countries, including the jury members Vera Chytilova (Czechoslovakia) and Pal Gabor (Hungary); a third, Julie Christie, left well before the end of the festival. (Ironically, nine years earlier, the festival was abandoned, after the Jury president, the American director George Stevens walked out in protest against the Anti-Vietnam war film “o.k.” by the West-German director Michael Verhoeven, shown in competition).

Seeing THE DEER HUNTER thirty-five years later after the great scandal (festival director Wolf Donner was pushed to resign), it surprises how quaint the first third of the production is: the scenes in the little Russian-orthodox enclave near Pittsburgh, with the steel mill and the church as centre points, are overly idyllic and the male protagonists acting out the rituals of arrested development, with the occasional casual violence against women thrown in. Frank Capra would have loved this version of small town America. But therefore, the shock of the bestial North-Vietnamese torturers in the middle part is far greater, as if the movie would have started with this segment. The chaos of the last war years is again shown out of the perspective of the American soldiers: victims to the end. Part three, back home, trying to put the broken lives together, seems to be more sober, until the very end, the rendering of “God Bless America” by the survivors (plus Meryl Streep’s Linda, the token woman of the narrative) shows patriotism as it worst.

Peter Biskind (“Vanity Fair”) wrote in 1978: “..that the political agenda of THE DEER HUNTER was something of a mystery. It may have been more a by-product of Hollywood myopia, the demands of the war-film genre, American parochialism and simple ignorance than it was the pre-meditated right-wing road map it seemed to many”. Pauline Kael argued: “The impression a viewer gets is that if we did some bad things there we did them ruthlessly but impersonally; the Vietcong were cruel and sadistic”. And John Simon in the “New York Magazine” summed it up for all: “This film is only an extension of the old Hollywood war movie lie. The enemy is still bestial and stupid, and no match for our purity and heroism; only we no longer wipe up the floor with him – rather, we litter it with his guts”. Today, after Iraq and Afghanistan, we might point to THE DEER HUNTER more with sadness than anger. AS

MICHAEL CIMINO 1939 – 2016

The Mafia only Kills in Summer (2013)

Director: Pierfrancesco Diliberto “Pif”

Writer: Michele Astori

Cast: Cristiana Capotondi, Alex Bisconti, Ginevra Antona, Pif, Barbara Tabita

90min Italian Comedy

An appealing rom-com that races irreverently and at breakneck speed through the director’s imagined family story, growing up in a sixties Palermo as Arturo. But beneath its sunny exterior lies a dark indictment of Mafia violence throughout Sicily. THE MAFIA KILLS ONLY IN SUMMER is the big screen debut of popular Italian household name, Pierfrancesco Diliberto or “Pif” as he’s best known to his fans. He also wrote and produced the title which won the audience award at Turin Film Festival in 2014.

According to the story, told mostly in flashback, Diliberto’s birth coincides with the election of a famous anti-Mafia mayor, Vito Ciancimino and a mass execution by the legendary clan. Played cheekily as a young boy by Alex Bisconti, and later by the director himself, Arturo develops a keen interest in Mafia-linked PM Giulio Andreotti, obsessing over his biopic (Il DIVO by Paolo Sorrentino) and even going as the PM to a kid’s fancy dress party. During this time, he also develops a shine for his a little girl called Flora (Ginevra Antona).

His childhood it full of chance meetings with anti-Mafia heroes in Italian society who all end up victims of the deadly organisation – magistrates Giovanni Falcome and Paolo Borsellino and General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa. Eventually in his twenties, Arturo wises up to the corrupt criminal underbelly in his hometown of Palermo and his drama ends on a triumphant note in tribute to all those who have lost their lives as innocent victims of the Mafia’s treachery. Deftly intertwining fact and fiction by a skilful blending of archive footage and actual staging: the upshot is an entertaining if slightly slapstick story with the same cheerful charisma as Roberto Benigni’s LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.

Significantly Diliberto has declined to pay protection taxes to the Mafia, in line with the Addiopizzo policy adopted by a group of Italian businesses. Let’s hope he’s stays around to bring more of this kind of cinema to arthouse audiences.

OUT ON RELEASE IN LIMITED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 1 JULY 2016

Queen of Earth (2015) Mubi Retro

Director/Writer: Alex Ross Perry | Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Patrick Fugit, Katherine Waterson, Kate Lyn Shiel | 90mins Drama Thriller US

One of America’s best loved indie directors takes a dramatic left turn with this entrancing thriller. He broke onto the scene with his low budget road trip comedy The Colour Wheel in 2011 and won over audiences with the wonderfully narcissistic Listen Up Philip, but Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of the Earth is a different fish entirely. Boasting yet another scenery-devouring central performance from Elisabeth Moss, QUEEN OF THE EARTH is a film of passive aggression, crumbling friendships and psychological trauma in an idyllic wooden cabin in the outskirts of New York.

We’re introduced to Catherine (Elisabeth Moss) in unforgiving close-up. Her boyfriend is breaking up with her. She’s in a bit of a mess. She wants to get away from it all, so decides to take a trip to her friend Jinny’s family cabin. We learn that the women have been friends for years but flashbacks to previous summers suggest it’s a relationship in free-fall decline.

It becomes apparent that neither Catherine nor Jinny have had such a difficult ride and, as blows are exchanged about their respective upbringings, a rotting passive aggressive atmosphere grows. When a local guy called Rich (Almost Famous’ Patrick Fugit, all grown up) is thrown into the mix things reach critical levels of toxicity. Nerves are shot; eggshells get trampled; Catherine soon loses her marbles.

The female ‘force-of-nature’ angle that Perry’s title suggests is never quite fully realized, but Moss has plenty of fun with it anyway. The Mad Men star gives a terrific central performance, stretching and contorting Catherine’s psyche into various degrees of mental disrepair. Katherine Waterston, hot on the heels of her Inherent Vice breakthrough, offers a fitting foil in the supporting role.

Fans of Listen Up Philip will be pleased to see Sean Price Williams back behind the camera and his lightweight grainy handheld photography is just as beautiful here, fitting surprisingly well into the psychological horror mold. The change of pace from Perry’s earlier outings might seem alarming and yet, with Mumblecore/gore head honcho Joe Swanberg among the producers; perhaps it shouldn’t come as such a surprise. Indeed, Queen of the Earth might seem a long way away from Jason Schwartzman’s troubled author and yet it does sort of fit in with the director’s fascination with narcissism in extremis. Whatever the case, it’s terrifically uncomfortable stuff and, for Perry’s catalogue, a finely navigated diversion. Rory O’Connor

ALEX ROSS PERRY SEASON | NOW AT MUBI | BERLINALE REVIEW 2015

Abluka | Frenzy (2015) |

Writer|Director: Emin Alper

Cast: Mehmet Ozgur, Berkay Ates, Tülin Özen, Ozan Akbaba

Drama Turkish with subtitles

Mehmet Ozgur played the central role in writer|director Emin Alper’s stunning debut Beyond the Hill. Here he is again as the eldest brother in a family struggling to survive political violence in a dystopian Istanbul. Menacing by the same brooding tone of his first feature, FRENZY (Abluka) is a study in paranoia that transport the threat experienced in the mountains of Beyond the Hill‘s Karaman, to an urban setting in the capital. Here the authorities here are losing control, and to achieve a semblance of order, Kadir and his brother Ahmet (Berkey Ates) are working to establish a reasonable living environment by clearing away undesirable elements: stray dogs are mercilessly shot and rubbish is collected and disposed of on a daily basis. But despite these methods of civil control, disorder rears its ugly head.

As in all Turkish films, the family is crucial to the storyline: and the family is usually divisive in some way. Here, the violent city environment – nightly bomb blasts from ‘terrorism’ and an aggressive police presence, are having a de-stabilising effect on Kadir’s relationship with Ahmet. Ahmet’s wife has left with their children. The middle brother Ali has disappeared. Kadir has served time in prison and is now working out his parol in a community-based rubbish clearance project which includes ‘bomb’ disposal. The stray dogs appear as a metaphor for the universal theme immigration. As a clever corollary to this, when Ahmet discovers an injured dog in his street, he takes him in but treats him badly.

Ahmet is clearly at odds with Kadir and resents his constant visits which turn into menacing intrusions with Kadir practically banging down the door and ringing his ‘phone incessantly. Ahmet retreats into himself as an act of defiance and fear. The two are clearly not communicating: another modern predicament that is skillfully woven in the storyline. Kadir’s boss (Mufit Mayacan) starts to question his overly diligent report-writing (Mufit Kayacan). The projection here is evident. But in the absence of any real threats or tangible facts in this febrile and suspicious environment, one starts to tire of the enigmatic thriller and its suberb but deafening electronic score (Cevdet Erek also scored SIVAS). That said, this is a well-crafted affair set both on the widescreen and in intimate domestic scenes that successful evokes how daily paranoia can seep into the fabric of our everyday lives threaten our ability to communicate successfully and healthily. Alper has built a menacing thriller that conveys this paranoia with dramatic affect. While it has it downsides, he is a director worth following. MT

JURY PRIZE WINNER | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2015

The Violators (2015)

Director: Helen Walsh

Cast: Lauren McQueen, Brogan Ellis, Stephen Lord, Liam Aisnworth, Derek Barr, Challum King Chadwick

97min | drama | UK .

Helen Walsh is a novelist turned filmmaker Helen Walsh whose debut feature takes place in the grim post-industrial landscape of Birkenhead’s council estates in Cheshire. Ultrarealistic in tone and supremely acted by the two female teenagers, Walsh’ script plays with underlying sexual motives, before a dramatic final rush destroys much of the intricacies that preceed.

In their rundown council flat, sixteen year-old Lauren (McQueen) has to look after her two brothers: the adult, near catatonic Andy (Barr) and the schoolboy Jerome (Chadwick). Lauren befriends Rachel (Ellis), who lives in a posh gated complex. It is unclear why Rachel showers Lauren with gifts as their relationship seems impenetrable and enigmatic. When Lauren learns that their violent father will soon be released from prison, she panics and has asks middle-aged pawnbroker/debt collector Mikey (Lord) for help. The would-be sugar-daddy exploits her sexually, but when Laura discovers that their father is to remain incarcerated, she turns to the her neighbour, the friendly army cadet Kieran (Ainsworth). With the audience still wondering about the Lauren/Rachel relationship, Walsh decides to deny all the malevolence, which has festered throughout the film, opting for a sudden and dramatic finale.

Despite this botched ending, THE VIOLATORS suffers from its ambiguous storyline where too many questions remain unanswered. Eerie images by first time DoP Tobin Jones always promise much more than the narrative delivers. A shroud of tension hovers over the proceedings, but the atmosphere of decay and alienation is by far the strongest part of this promising first feature – apart from the teenage leads, who are impressive in acting out the subtle nuances of their individual emotional issues. Perversely, the novelist in Walsh actually lets down the filmmaker with her script, creating dark, forlorn images which fail to be matched by convincing dramatic arc. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 JUNE 2016

Suburra (2016) |

Directior: Stefano Sollima

Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Elio Germano, Claudio Amendola, Alessandro Borghi, Greta Scarano, Manfredi Dionisi;

130min | Italy/France 2015 | Action Drama.

After his standout first feature film ACAB – All Cops are Bastards, director Stefano Sollima directed two hugely successful crime series for TV, Romanzo Criminale and Gomorra (both were remade as features), before returning to the cinema with SUBURRA, an apocalyptic, anarchic and violent operatic saga of greed and decadence.Based on the novel by journalist Carlo Bonino and crime writer Giancarlo De Cataldo, the film takes its name from a district in ancient Rome, known as a Red-Light area, but nevertheless is the birth place of no lesser than Julius Caesar. This connection, linking Upper Class crime executed by professional criminals, links the action in SUBURRA.

In early November 2011, Rome two momentous events: torrential rainfall and the abdication of Pope Benedict XV. Sollima shows the week leading up to what he calls an apocalypse (an end of the world scenario) which leaves Rome in danger of being submerged in the floods. Filippo Malgradi (Favino) is an MP in the Lower House of the Italian Parliament and a well-known fixer with good connections to the underworld. After trying to sponsor a bill allowing the costal region of Ostia to be transformed into an Italian Las Vegas, with huge kickbacks for lawmakers and property developers, he spends the evening with two prostitutes, one under-aged. One girl dies of an overdose, and Malgradi leaves the other woman, Viola (Scarano), to get rid of the corpse. This way Malgradi sets in motion a violent circle of revenge killings, whilst he tries to get the Planning Bill through parliament.

A small-time pimp, Sebastiano (Germano), falls into the hands of the vicious Gypsy gang leader Manfredi Anacleti (Dionisi), after his father, a one-time powerful gang boss, commits suicide, leaving huge debts with Anacleti, who takes his anger out on Sebastino, taking away his villa and car. Meanwhile, Numero 8 (Borghi), Viola’s on-off boyfriend, a loose cannon, murders the man who helped Viola to dump the corpse of the girl in the sea. Unfortunately for Numero 8, his victim is Anacleti’s son Spadino.

Anacleti senior is unable to control his family; his sons are playing football in the living room, and the he goes into overdrive: he tries to kill Numero 8 and Viola, whilst kidnapping Malgradi’s son. All this chaos is anathema to the Samurai (Amendola), an ex-right wing terrorist, now in charge of the property deal in Ostia. Whilst he literally cleans up the loose ends, he underestimates Viola. And as the rain engulfs Rome, Malgradi, Anacleti and The Samurai get a very different, but deserved punishment.

DOP Paolo Carnera’s images of near eternal night and torrential rain together with an equally overpowering, electronic soundtrack by the French duo M83, make SUBURRA an emotional overpowering tour-de-force. It’s a contemporary Dante’s Inferno; a cesspit of soulless characters who are so regressed, they are almost antediluvian. Their bungling and lust for violence is astonishing, as is their capacity for self-glorification and deceit. Whilst the narrative is hardly original, it just about enough for this opera of wild decadence and engrossing sadism. SUBURRA is a B-picture with the aesthetics of Visconti’s La Caduta degli Dei. AS

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 24 June 2016

Ma ma (2015)

Director: Julio Medem

Cast: Penelope Cruz, Asier Etxeandia, Teo Planell, Luis Tosar, Alex Brendemuhl;

111min | Drama | Spain/France.

Best known for his drama Lovers of the Arctic Circle, Spanish director Julio Medem has always built his films around great love and equally overwhelming loss. In Ma ma he manages to go over the top, even by his own hyper excessive standards.

Ma Ma is produced and driven forward by a passionate performance from Penelope Cruz who plays Magda, a teacher who loses her job in Madrid and her husband Raul (Brundemuhl). After being diagnosed with breast cancer by Julián (Etxeandia), her gynaecologist, she meets Arturo a Real Madrid scout, while watching her son Dani (Planell) play football. His daughter is killed in a car accident, and his wife is in a coma, shortly to die. Magda and Arturo are thrown together in the turmoil only for Magda’s cancer to resurface.

This is Cruz’s film and she carries Ma ma– just – by the force of her personality and acting skills but the outlandish narrative stretches the imagination often to breaking point, relieved only by occasional poetic interludes, which make up for the absurd plotlines. Julián has all the time in the world for Magda largely due to his own unhappy relationship which comes under pressure when he and his wife want to adopt Natasha, a little girl from Siberia. Magda’s life revolves around the image of a frail little girl in the arctic cold, calling her Natasha. And this girl accompanies Magda as a side reality during her last months; and she christens her unborn daughter Natasha.

Surprisingly, Magda seems to have no women friends (apart from a friendly nurse at the hospital), and is surrounded by three adoring men, including Raúl, who begs – in one of many cringe-worthy scenes – for her forgiveness. Cruz’s Magda sails through everything with great spirit, never losing her optimism. One has to admire her, but in spite of DoP’s Kiko de la Rica’s poetic images of Natasha, and his pristine close-ups of Cruz, Medem’s script often tends towards kitsch. The subject matter really deserved a more realistic, less grandiloquent approach. AS

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 24 JUNE 2016

Tale of Tales (2015)

Director: Matteo Garrone

Cast: Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek, Toby Jones, John C Reilly, Shirley Henderson

125min Fantasy Drama Italy

Matteo Garrone’s TALE OF TALES is an orgiastic fairytale romp in sumptuous costumes far away from the real world. Based on the fables of the 16th-century Neapolitan poet and scholar Giambattista Basile, this splendid offering is an imaginative blend that echoes Beauty and the Beast, The Singing Ringing Tree, Immoral Tales, Dante’s Divine Comedia and every other trip to fantasy that literature has offered since the beginning of time. To watch it is to surrender to a mythical realm of the senses steeped in madness, magnificence and medieval bodily fluids – a dark and sinuously sensual world of pain and wicked pleasure.

Three fables intertwine from neighbouring imagined kingdoms drawn from the Pentamerone, a 17th-century book of Neapolitan folk stories compiled by the Italian poet Giambattista Basile: In Selvascura (Dark Wood) Selma Hayek and John C Reilly play a troubled King and Queen desperate for royal offspring. Their efforts to procreate lead them to a soothsayer who offers a remedy that results in ghastly albino twins.

Meanwhile, in Roccaforte (Strong Wood), a aptly-cast Vincent Cassel plays a corrupt and sex-obsessed King who has slept with all the available maidens in his pleasure-filled kingdom. When he becomes bewitched by the singing of a old woman, who he imagines to be a sexy nubile girl, he goes in hot pursuit of his prey. When she finally agrees to entertain him during the hours of darkness, Dora (played successively by Hayley Carmichael and Stacy Martin) emerges in her full glory, to his utter horror.

In the third Kingdom, Altomonte (Top of the Mountain) a tearful and cheerful Toby Jones plays a deranged King who decides to challenge his daughter Viola’s suitors with a bizarre test involving a giant flea the size of a cinquecento, reared tenderly in his palace. You can’t imagine the horrific outcome here.

Despite this extraordinary spectacle of grotesque black comedy – some of which is quite outlandish – the tone of TALE OF TALES is completely serious and dead pan and there are clearly stark moral lessons to be learnt from the wise Basile’s writings: Selma Hayek has the ridiculous task of devouring a giant bleeding heart, with utter dedication rather than horror. And Toby Jones is simply wonderful as the detached and mournful King, offering his daughter in marriage to the man who guesses the identity of a bizarre animal hide. Peter Suschitzky’s inventive cinematography sets this fantasy world on fire and Dimitri Capuani’s set design conjures up jewel-like contrasts from glowing candlelit interiors to sun-filled set pieces where Massimo Cantini Parrini’s gorgeous cossies glow vibrantly in gem-like crimson and indigo against pristine white and woodland green. A sumptuous treat. MT

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE \ CANNES REVIEW 2015

A Serious Game (2016) Netflix

Director: Pernilla August

114min Drama Sweden

Pernilla August fails to convey the passion of her unrequited lovers in this Swedish answer to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

Adapted by Lone Scherfig from the 1912 novel by Hjalmar Soderberg, A SERIOUS GAME is another costume melodrama exploring the potent chemistry of sexual desire and longing in a story of sexual obsession. The couple in question, Arvid Stjarnblom (Sverrir Gudnason) and Lydia Stille (Karin Franz Korlof), never quite captivate our attention throughout this initially steamy bodice-ripper but August’s efforts are to laudable in her second feature.

Arvid is a young writer and proofreader for Stockholm’s main newspaper when he meets the daughter of one of Sweden’s most noted landscape painters, Anders Stille (Goran Ragnerstam): “I painted a completely blue canvas once, it’s in the National Gallery”.

This is the third screen adaptation of the story that follows the amorous exploits of starstruck lovers whose enduring ardour for each other is fated never to end in marriage, de-stabilising and upsetting everyone in their wake. Initially engaging, it eventually becomes tedious (along with its monotonous score) but offers a fascinating snapshot of early 20th century life in Swedish publishing and literary circles.

The couple first set eyes on each other at Lydia’s father’s summer cabin on an island near Stockholm. Lydia offering her beau one of her father’s paintings inscribed with the words: “Away. I long to get away.” Sadly Papa is to die leaving her without an inheritance and, without any means of supporting herself Lydia is forced to marry the wealthy, older Roslin (Sven Nordin). The lovers meet again years later when they are both married parents: Arvid has settled for an attractive and wealthy blond (gracefully played by Liv Moines).

This rather drably photographed romantic drama then goes backward and forward as the two make each other, and everyone else, unhappy with their illicit affair; hot-headed Lydia doesn’t quite think things through, deciding to leave her husband to return to the cabin and a rather passive Arvid, who shilly shallys all the way home. With neither character convincing beyond their vapid victim status, the narrative slowly unravels to a disappointing conclusion.

The more interesting characters here are seriously underwritten: Michael Nyqvist, as the charismatic newspaper publisher and Mikkel Boe Folsgaard (A Royal Affair) as the much maligned Lidner, the paper’s froeign correspondent, who Lydia truculently casts aside.

A SERIOUS GAME is indeed serious and rather depressing, the only fire coming from a initial spark of sexual ardour rapidly extinguished by a narrative whose central characters fails to exude any appeal for the audience. They can be forgiven, in part, for being young and aimless, but youth alone does not make for exciting viewing. MT

NETFLIX | REVIEWED AT BERLINALE FEBRUARY 2016

Long Way North (2016) Tout Au Haut du Monde

Director: Remi Chaye; Animation; France/Denmark 2015, 81 min.

In this animated big screen debut Remi Chaye incorporates elements of Mulan in a 19th century snowbound adventure that follows teenage Russian aristrocrat Sasha to the North Pole in a bid to reclaim the family honour and find the ship of her grandfather Oloukine, an intrepid explorer.

This delicatately rendered 2D animation opens in St. Petersburg where Sasha is mourning the loss of her grandfather Oloukine who was lost after setting out with his ship Daiva to find a passage to the North Pole. Her father, Count Chernetsov, is only interested in his diplomatic career, hoping to become the Russian ambassador in Rome. But the new scientific adviser to the Tsar, Prince Vladimir Tomsky, the nephew of the Imperial ruler, tries to discredit Oloukine and his mission. At a ball, Sasha challenges the Prince, who calls her grandfather a megalomaniac. Tomsky is only too happy to be insulted, and leaves in a huff: Chetnetsov can say goodbye to his post in Rome.

Sasha flees her home and sets out to find the Daiva, a supposedly unsinkable vessel that cost the State a fortune. She has to work for months in restaurant near the Arctic circle before she finds a ship which takes her near the Pole, where the frozen corpse of Oloukine is discovered. After a gruelling mission in the icy wasteland hampered by a fierce bear, the exhausted crew finally track down the Daiva and sail back to St. Petersburg, where Sasha’s parents, all forgiving, await her.

LONG WAY NORTH seems to be two films rolled into one. The action only gets going halfway through, when Sasha climbs on board to start her journey to the Pole after a lengthy and didactic preamble explores the changes Sasha goes through in her quest to raise money to finance her trip. The hand-coloured images are highly original using a bleached out pastel palette. Young audiences might have difficulty sitting through the adult-orientated narrative of the first half in St. Petersburg. Still, when Sasha finally makes it to the world of mountainous icebergs and growling polar bears, their attention will be rewarded. AS

OUT ON 17 JUNE 2017

The Girl King (2015)

Director: Mike Kaurismaki, Writer: Michel Marc Bouchard

Cast: Malin Buska, Sarah Gadon, Michael Nyqvist, Laura Birn, Hippolyte Girardot, Lucas Bryant

106min | Drama | Finland Sweden

Finnish director Mika Kaurismaki (Road North) and writer Michel Marc Bouchard (Tom at the Farm) join forces for this impressively-mounted historical biopic that focuses on an interesting era in Swedish history. Queen Kristina, who ruled Sweden in the middle of the 17th century, was an enterprising feminist in many ways similar to our own Queen Elizabeth I, Previously played most notably by the legendary Greta Garbo in Rouben Mamoulian’s 1933 classic Queen Christina; what makes this version special is Kaurismaki’s full throttle slant on Kristina’s lesbian tendencies, where previous adaptations have just pussy footed round the subject.

That Kristina was a fully-fledged lesbian is a bold premise but sadly the film fails to live up to this intended ideal and ends up being just another period drama, albeit a watchable and beautifully-crafted one. This English language production has newcomer Malin Buska as Kristina, and Martina Gedeck as the mother of the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolf (Samuli Edelmann). Tomboyish Kristina becomes Queen as a tiny girl and starts to reign when she is just 18. In masterful form, Michael Nyqvist plays her chief political consultant, Chancellor Axel Von Oxenstierna, advising her on the peace talks during Europe’s religious Thirty Years’ War. We discover how Kristina was an ardent and respected patron of the arts and engaged with Europe’s finest artists and philosophers of the era, such as Rene Descartes (Patrick Bauchau) who is invited to stay at the Royal Palace. But her lesbian love affair with a beautiful young countess Ebba Sparre (Sarah Gadon) and her Catholic leanings (in Protestant Sweden) were the factors that made her unpopular when the going got tough.

Queen Kristina’s is a riveting story of bodice-ripping raunchiness and rich historical intrigue yet Kaurismaki and Bouchard’s offering is tepid in comparison with the real life deal; it is a drama that lacks dramatic heft and we care little for the protagonists or their tragic plights. Much of the problem lies with Bouchard’s script which was clunkily translated into English from its French original and then given to a cast of non-native speakers who do their best despite some real corkers on the dialogue front. Some of the performances are uneven and leave a great deal to be desired including the seduction scene between Kristina and Ebba.

That said THE GIRL KING is a sumptuously crafted historical romp set in some gloriously evocative snowy landscapes, featuring amongst others Turku Castle in Finland and Eschenlohe in Bavaria, but the tone too often veers towards the melodramatic rather than the politically and emotionally resonant. MT

SCREENING IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 17 JUNE 2016

Gang Bang (A Modern Love Story) 2016

Director: Eva Husson

Cast: Finnegan Oldfield, Marylin Lima, Daisy Broom, Fred Houtier, Lorenzo Lefebvre;

France 2015, 98 min.

When Larry Clark exploded onto the film scene in 1995 with Kids, the schlock-value barometer seemed to go into the stratosphere. Further outings allowed Clark to gain cult-status – but first time writer-director Eva Husson’s equally provocative Bang Gang is just pure soft porn, lacking any narrative and providing a bland amateur version of Clark’s film, which was after all an exercise in socio-political reflections.

Set in trendy Biarritz, George (Lima) is the blond bombshell of her class while her best friend Laetitia (Broom) is rather shy. When George conquers Alex (Oldfield), who lives alone in a big house, his mother being in Morocco, all seems to go to plan. But Laetitia, for once, gains the upper hand leaving George fuming. Alex’s creepy friend Nikita (Hotier), helps to come up with the not very original idea of group sex and George has ample time to sleep with every adoring male. But she still has time to fall in love with Gabriel (Lefebvre), a composer of some sort. Soon the party dwellers are infected with syphilis, parental control takes over, Alex goes to live with his mother, but George and Gabriel elope to Paris, where we can see them frolic naked in the kitchen.

This is a pure excuse for a film. It is not so much the voyeuristic nudity which makes Bang Gang so unbearable, but the absence of any narrative or plot. Shot like a commercial by DoP Matthias Troelstrup, the images overwhelmingly depict (half) naked teenagers snorting, smoking and copulating. Even the good old-fashioned slow motion is back with the protagonists roller skating or driving their Vespas through the gorgeous landscape – only to be disturbed by an annoying voiceover, explaining the obvious. Bang Gang is a wasteful exercise in banal superficiality. AS

OUT ON 17 JUNE 2016

Cemetery of Splendour (2015)

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Cast: Banlop Lomnoi, Jenjira Pongpas, Jarinpattra Rueangram

102min Drama Thailand

Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d’Or in 2010 with his strangely-titled piece of poetic reverie Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Cemetery of Splendour premiered at Un Certain Regard in 2015. Taking up the fashionable theme of psychogeography, it is a blissful and serenely spiritual study of a group of soldiers who have fallen ill with sleeping sickness while working on a government building project. Their convalescence is overseen in the tropical surroundings of a “laying in” hospital by the calming presence of elderly volunteer, Jenjira, and a local medium, Keng, who is uses her spiritual powers to heal the soldiers. The women are also visited by the spirits of two Laotian princesses who appear naturally and calmly: dressed as mortal women.

Cemetery works as a clever allegory of the suffering of the Thai people. The twist is that this ground was once the site of an ancient Royal Palace. The spirits of past royals (who also represent the unquiet ghosts of the corrupt Thai nation) are drawing on the energy of the soldiers and using it to fight their own continued battles, causing a generalised sleeping sickness amongst the veterans.

Weerasethakul’s film is beautifully-framed in a series of long and medium shots. On a spiritual level, it serves as a meditation that contemplates the value of harsh western medicine in contrast to the curative powers of touch and silence that assist healing. An atmospheric soundtrack of ambient insect sounds and cicadas lull us into a deep sense of calm, making this an affecting and deeply restorative experience. MT

THE TATE MODERN is currently running a film installation entitled PRIMITIVE 2009

CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR is on general release from 17 JUNE 2016

When Marnie Was There (2016)

Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi;

Anime voices of Sara Takatsuki, Kusumi Arimura

Japan 2014, 103 min.

If this is really the last film of Studio Ghibli as rumoured, Hirosama Yonebayashi’s adaption of Joan G. Robinson’s 1967 YA novel, is a worthy epitaph to a series of breathtaking re-inventions of the Animation genre that have given us all a break from the onslaught of bombastic CGI Mega blockbusters.

Successfully adapted and transferred from the original Norfolk setting to Japan, by a writing team incluing the director and David Freedman (The Magic Snowflake), When Marnie was There is a poignant study of teenage alienation and displacement. Anna (Takatsuki), a withdrawn tomboy, lives in Sapporo with her foster parents. Having found out that her guardians receive state money to look after here, she becomes even more introspective, confessing that she hates herself. Anna suffers from asthma and she is sent to the island of Hokkaido in North Japan to live her foster mother’s grandparents during the summer holidays. But even in these peaceful surroundings, Anna cannot settle down and when an overweight woman comments on her blue eyes (a rarity in Japan), Anna angrily calls her a “fat cow”.

Then during a painting trip in the countryside, she stumbles upon an old villa at the shore of a lake, where a young blond girl, Marnie (Arimura) lives. Only a few ears older than Anna, Marnie seems to be nocturnal enjoying the time when her parents give sumptuous parties, which Anna watches in amazement. At first we believe that Marnie is an imaginary friend, conjured up by Anna to combat her loneliness, but rather traumatic scenes in a nearby haunted windmill slowly lead to revelations which explain Anna’s life before her adoption.

The old-fashioned, but delicate rendered images give the film a timeless appeal. The girls’ friendship is never cloying because their interactions and long conversations are the bond of their mutual affection. As we will find out, their displacements are interwoven in the past. The emotional world of the narrative feels very feminine (all males characters are peripheral) and is faithful to the novel, where dream world and reality have to be balanced but not without a long, introspective struggle where identity is found in the past. This approach is hardly surprising, since Ghibli’s famous star, director Isao Takahata, created an animated version of yet another YA classic, Anne of Green Gables (written by L.M. Montgomery) in 1981. A wonderfully light, but nevertheless elegiac piano soundtrack by Takatsugu Muramatsu underlines the haunting and mysterious longing of a narrative, which creates a dream world of nostalgia, wonder and allure. If When Marnie was There, is really the last Ghibli production, the loss would be irreplaceable. AS

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 10 JUNE 2016

Love & Friendship (2016)

Writer|Director: Whit Stillman Novella: Jane Austen

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny, Xavier Samuel, Emma Greenwell, Justin Edwards, Tom Bennett, Morfydd Clark, Jemma Redgrave, James Fleet, Stephen Fry, Conor Lambert, Jenn Murray

92min | Drama | US

Kate Beckinsale plays the quintessential English coquette in Whit Stillman’s witty screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan. Tripping lightly and astringently through this little-known and long-unpublished epistolary novella, Beckinsale is joined by a caustic cast of sterling British acting talent in the shape of Stephen Fry, Jemma Redgrave and Tom Bennett with transatlantic twists from Chloë Sevigny and Emma Greenwell.

And this is no staid period drama but a spritely, often hilarious, comedy of manners that follows the newly widowed machiavellian adventurist, Lady Susan Vernon, through a risqué game of shrewd social ritual to redemption in the arms of a malleable replacement suitor. With his well-known comedies Last Days of Disco and Metropolitan, Stillman has proved to be a dab hand at distilling delicious drama from urbane society. And Kate Beckinsale is at her best yet, back in a literary role that she handles with delicious aplomb (occasionally echoing the TV mannerisms of Nigella Lawson) and hopefully ushering in a return to a genre she does best.

The story opens with Lady Susan on the verge of leaving the household of “a divinely attractive” but irritatingly married Lord Manwaring, introduced by caption but ever to remain silent on screen, glowering with lustful intent in a walk-on part. In order to clear the path for her indiscretions in the homes of suitable friends and connections, Susan has despatched her daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark) to finishing school in London, while she plots her next incursion into her late husband’s family, alighting on the coltish charms of a young in-law, Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel).

Her partner in crime in these adventures is one Alicia Johnson (a discreet Chloe Sevigny, her sidekick from Last Days) who is married to Stephen Fry’s staid statesman who is, inconveniently, also the guardian of Lord Manwaring’s wittering wife Lady Lucy (Jenn Murray).

The enjoyable thing about LOVE & FRIENDSHIP is that it leaves you wanting more of its delightful wit and charm. From the main performances to the small cameos – particularly that of Tom Bennett as the hilarious Sir James Martin, in the jaunty style of a dumbed-down Robert Peston. Lady Susan is the ultimate ‘mistress of the put-down’ who cunningly moves between Xavier Samuel’s tousled toyboy DeCourcy and the subtle stability of Sir James with the consummate skill of Molière’s Célimène or Choderlos de Laclos’ Marquise de Merteuil – with lines like “Facts are horrid things” showing that she is woman who won’t ever countenance defeat in this tightly-plotted marvel and wittiest drama of the year – so far. MT

OUT ON FRIDAY 27 MAY 2016

M by Fritz Lang (1931) | bluray release

Dir.: Fritz Lang;

Cast: Peter Lorre, Gustaf Gründgens, Friedrich Gnass, Theo Lingen, Otto Wernicke, Theodor Loos

Germany 1931, 111 min.

Even though M is Lang’s first film with sound, there are still silent scenes, like those in the streets or the courtyards. But after the great epics Nibelungen or Spinnen, this time the focus is on an individual: Peter Lorre, in his debut, as the serial killer Hans Beckert. M starts with a parable: seven children in a circle, a girl speaking a macabre counting rhyme: “Wait, wait for a while, then Haarmann will come to you too, and with his little chopper, he will make mincemeat out of you, one, two three and out are you”. The reference is to Fritz Haarmann, the serial-killer of Hannover, who murdered 27 boys, and was executed in 1925.

In M, the odd one out is seven-year-old Elsie Beckmann, another victim of the Berlin killer whose victims are all little children. The Police and the criminals of the underworld in Berlin all unite in the hunt for Beckert. Obviously, the Police are doing their duty, but their constant raids are disrupting the activities of “ordinary” criminals like burglars and safe breakers, so ironically the gangsters join in the search. Led by the most successful criminals, these organized gangs get to Beckert first. They set up a kangaroo court, where the chief safe breaker (Gründgens) is acting as the prosecutor. In his long leather coat, he looks (and talks) like a member of the future SS: declaring that Beckert is unworthy to live, a vermin, to be exterminated. The police ‘intervene’ just in time. Interestingly, Gustav Gründgens became a good friend of the Nazis after 1933, and Göring made him artistic director of all Berlin theatres. He was interned after the war and Klaus Mann’s roman-a-clef, featuring Gründgens interactions with the Mann family, was filmed as Mephisto by Istvan Szabo.

There were some imminent German actors at the time, but Lorre, who was acting on stage in the Brecht play “Man is Man” in the evening, whilst filming M during the day, managed to carry the film with his magnetic persona. His high-pitched voice, and strangely ungainly figure, he is an outcast from the beginning. His portrait of a driven soul is perfect: “Sometimes it seems, that I am running after myself… I want to run away…run away from myself…then I stand in front of a wanted poster, reading what I have done, I am reading, reading…did I really do that?” In spite of his many Hollywood roles, Lorre would never be so convincing again, apart perhaps from The Lost One (1951), a film noir, where he plays a doctor in a displacement camp, his only work as a director, shot on his return to West Germany in 1951. The lack of success broke him and he ran back to Hollywood.

Fritz Arno Wagner’s camera work creates the perfect climate for a mass psychosis: everyone is suspecting their neighbours, friends and family members, and this gives rises to continuous denunciations as well as public and private fracases. It is the portrait of a people who trust neither themselves nor their countrymen: somehow the time is rife for a cataclysm. And it took less than two years to arrive. AS

[youtube id=”nsVproWjN6c” width=”600″ height=”350″]

A BFI Film Classics book, M, by Anton Kaes, first published in 2000, is out now through Palgrave Macmillan.

Other People (2016)

Writer/Director: Chris Kelly

Cast: Molly Shannon, Jesse Plemons, Bradley Whitford, June Squibb, Paul Dooley

90min | Comedy Drama | US

Molly Shannon and Jesse Plemons are the standouts in this comic but often uneven portrait of a family united by terminal illness. Chris Kelly’s directorial debut lays its cards on the table early on as Plemons’ gay writer David returns from New York to be with his mother in her final months in Sacramento, California. Undergoing chemo naturally brings out the worst physically and mentally for Joanne who is happily married to Norman (Bradley Whitford) a father who perversely refuses to accept his son’s sexuality. Sometimes the nature of Shannon’s suffering verges on embarrassing moments that fail to be funny and would be better off left in the dark. But Plemons and Shannon hold the comedy together as do her often hilarious parents played by June Squibb and Paul Dooley. The other characters are merely window-dressing in this often overfamiliar treatment of terminal illness, that follows in the footsteps of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in an approach that often lacks dignity.

The opening scene is vaguely comic in describing other peoples’ crass and often inappropriate handling of death and dread disease but whether this is a subject for comic treatment is debatable. From that momen the film flashes back to the previous year marking the bittersweet homecoming of 29 year old David who is suffering a break-up and a rejection in his writing career. Joanne decides to give up chemo after some fairly explicit scenes of trauma and the two become closer in their shared tragedy. At one point there is a crude dance scene from a gay kid (J J Totah from Glee) who is totally at home with his sexuality as compared to David who is painfully shy and withdrawn about his.

Kelly’s well-crafted debut is based on his own experiences and manages some moments of authernticity and poignance amid the horror of bodily meltdown that will resonate with anyone who has experienced a life-changing condition. MT

SUNDANCE LONDON | PROGRAMME HERE

Goat (2016)

Director: Andrew Neel Writers: David Gordon Green et al

Cast: Virginia Gardner, Nick Jonas, Ben Schnetzer, Danny Flaherty, Jake Pickering, Austin Lyon

96min | US | DRAMA

US director Andrew Neel’s men only testosterone-fuelled fraternity tale is, as you’d expect, long on bolshy male-bonding and short on characterisation. Rather more in the mould of The Riot Club than 22 Jump Street, it follows teenager Brad (Ben Schetzer) on the first year at Cincinnati’s Brookman College after a vicious mugging has left him under par and psychologically scarred during the summer vacation. Although his elder brother Brett (Nick Jonas) is there to watch over him this proves to be offer consolation once he arrives in the macho environment where he undergoes a violent initiation routine of hazing.

This film offers a trenchant and unflinching look at all-male environments where uncotrolled aggression and bullying go unchecked while posing as brotherhood and eventually reach outlandish proportions and tragic consequences. Although Neel makes us feel the blunt force of this relentless brutality he gives us little in the way of backstory or textural context to make us care about any of the individuals cooped up in a macho web of tribal warfare, based on Brad Land’s 2004 memoirs and scripted by David Gordon Green.

Ben Schnetzer gives a resonating performance as the young man determined not to let his masculinity crumble in the force of circumstances; his whole college persona and social life and seems to hang on a successful outcome in the initiation war. For many GOAT may prove almost unwatchable at times but Neel keeps the tension taut and the undertone lyrical with a few Latin phrases and occasional moments of introspection amid the stark realism and Ethan Palmer’s handheld camerawork in an around the Ohio countryside. Arjan Miranda’s atmospheric score punctuates the action in an arresting indie drama. MT

SUNDANCE LONDON | FULL PROGRAMME

Rams | Hrutar | Home Ent release

Writer\Director: Grímur Hákonarson

Cast: Sigurour Sigurjonsson, Theodor Juliusson, Charlotte Boving,

90min Iceland Docu-Drama

The startling minimalist splendour of Iceland is the setting for this dour but touching tale exploring how blood is thicker than water in a remote farming community where the largely male inhabitants strive for self-sufficiency. Summerland director Grimur Hakonarson’s RAMS has echoes of the recent Of Horses And Men and Village at the End of the World. Two estranged but neighbouring brothers, Gummi and Kiddi, each own a flock of sheep but have not spoken for nearly forty years. Gummi is a reserved but decent man who prides himself in his animal husbandry and expert care of his flock on the snowy foothills of central Iceland. Occasionally, his brother takes a drunken pot shot at his farmhouse, particularly during the annual competition where their prize rams compete for a trophy.

Hakonarson brings his extensive documentary experience to this windswept story that pictures these bearded and weatherbeaten old men toughing in out in the hostile terrain and their hand-knitted, fairisle jumpers. Clinging to past traditions with his beloved family of sheep and faithful shepherd dog, Somi (Panda); Gummi proudly eats his Christmas dinner alone in candlelight with Christian hymns playing softly in the background. But his brother becomes a liability when his winning ram is found to be suffering from ‘Scrapie’, a dread disease that spreads like the plague and requires the slaughtering all the local flocks. Whilst compensation is due from the authorities, this is the last straw from many of the islanders, so Gummi decides to take matters into his own hands to secure his livelihood.

Despite its sombre tone and windswept landscapes, RAMS is full of wry humour especially in the scene where Gummi scoops Kiddi’s drunken body out of the snow and drops him from a fork lift truck outside Casualty at the local hospital. Sigurjonsson gives a heartfelt performance as Gummi, and Atli Orvarsson’s muted accordion score adds a touch of local charm to this melancholy but heart-warming story of brotherly conflict in a community struggling for survival. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 13 -24 May 2015 | UN CERTAIN REGARD | GOLDEN TOWER WINNER AT PALIC FESTIVAL | GOLDEN EYE WINNER AT ZURICH

[youtube id=”Mgc-VU7wn-c” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Holding the Man (2015)

Director: Neil Armfield Script: Tommy Murphy Autobiography: Timothy Conigrave

Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Ryan Corr, Craig Scott, Anthony LaPaglia, Guy Pearce, Kerry Fox, Camilla Ah Kin

127min | Drama | Australia 2015,

Neil Armfield (Candy) screen adaptation of Tommy Murphy’s script, based on a true story of forbidden gay love in the ’70s and ’80s Australia plays out like a heightened melodrama in tonal oddity HOLDING THE MAN.

In Melbourne 1976, at the prestigious Xavier Catholic College, Tim Conigrave (Corr) falls for his classmate, the Australian Football player John Caleo (Scott). The sixteen year-old boys try to hide their mutual passion, but a love letter mistakenly falls into the hands of the teachers exposing their strictly illicit liaison in a society whose penchant was for tradition and masculinity. Where Tim’s parents Mary (Fox) and Dick (Pearce) simply try to deny their son’s wrongdoing; John’s father Bob (LaPaglia) hits the roof, refusing to let the relationship develop. Tim is meanwhile keen to develop his acting skills and is having difficulty expressing the sadness required for his part as Romeo. His drama teacher gives him a hard time over this: “You lost your fiancée, not your bus pass”. Tim later moves to Sydney to attend Drama School, where his teacher (a masterful Geoffrey Rush) again criticizes his performance, this time in his performance as a monkey: “There is not much work for effeminate monkeys”. John meanwhile is training to become a chiropractor but gradually the relationship breaks down – Tim enjoying the gay life of the capital. A reconciliation leads to tragic news for both men as the drama morphs into ultra realism, before a rather poetic ending on the Italian island of Lipari.

The main drawback of Holding the Man (a term from Australian Rules Football) is the poorly-drawn characterisation of this rather vacuous pair of men: they seem to lack any kind of moral fibre lack, particularly John, who is portrayed as a fluffy, simpering pushover, just waiting for Tim to tell him what to do – and without him, he seems to have no life on his own. John at least has a selfish streak, but not much more. This is billed as being a great, passionate love story, but the characters are so devoid of any real traits, that their homosexuality seems to be their only exceptional quality – hardly the impact Conigrave would have wished for when penning his memoir. The rather the top ‘ 70s aesthetics and cliché ridden images of DoP Germain McMicking give the film a strange retro feel, without adding anything substantial. And while the leads Corr and Scott are mostly convincing despite their poor material, their portrayal of 16 year old boys suffers from a rather too obvious age gap. Overall, HOLDING THE MAN is a missed opportunity to give voice to what clearly may have been a meaningful experience in challenging times, making it difficult for the audience to invest emotionally or feel sympathy for their struggle. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 3 JUNE 2016

The Measure of a Man (Le Loi du Marche) |

Writer|Director: Stephane Brizé

Cast: Vincent Lindon

93mins | Drama | France

Le Loi de Marche is a trenchant slice of social realism. It comes from Stephane Brizé, and is France’s equivalent of the Dardennes brother’s The Unknown Girl that polarised critics in this year’s festival, and a rather better British equivalent of this year’s Palme d’Or winner I, Daniel Blake. Although not well-known outside France, Vincent Lindon has over 67 films under his belt and once dated Caroline de Monaco. He gets down and dirty here with that well-known elephant in the room: unemployment after 50.

In a sustained and sombre character piece, Lindon carries the film as Thierry Tagourdeau, a man in his early fifites struggling to make ends meet with his wife and disabled son, after being controversially sacked from a blue-collar job. Cleary there are legal ramifications here but Thierry sensibly has decided not to pursue an emotionally draining legal fight for compenation – and we can all feel his pain and empathise from the get go. Being unemployed as a student is one thing, but when there is a mortgage to pay and a social lifestyle to maintain, it is probably the most demoralising aspect of getting older. An emotionally charged opening scene is cleverly-balanced with rather a ridiculous one where Thierry and his wife are learning to dance. Whether this was supposed to leaven proceedings is unclear, but it has an almost derisory quality to it. Laudably, Thierry he knuckles down to his job search, including an embarassing ‘skype’ interview, every nerve and sinew is focused on self-improvement and self-justification – whilst a growing sense of dread and anger quietly takes hold.

Those who can’t appreciate Thierry’s predicament should count themselves lucky. Suffice to say Lindon gives the role his best shot; aided and abetted by his supportive wife as they trying to sell a second rate mobile home and deal with their son’s education issues. In one particular scene, where Thierry is undergoing a character assassination by fellow job-seekers during a presentation skills session, Lindon’s expression gradually wilts from calm acceptance of criticism to a sort of vacant hopelessness: so subtle is this facial transformation that it’s almost imperceptible: but nevertheless it’s one of the joys of this otherwise quite dour social drama. When Thierry does find work in supermarket security, a further twist presents him with a moral dilemma that finally breaks the camel’s back. As his perseverance finally lets him down, Thierry makes a hot-tempered decision that may have a negative impact on his family. Brize leaves us with the question: is it right to do something we are morally apposed to, for the sake of our family’s welfare?

This is perhaps not the stuff for a cheery night out, but as social realism goes, it’s well-crafted and bang on the button performance-wise with Lyndon giving it all he’s got in a role that feels real. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 3 JUNE 2016 | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL Winner Best Actor 2015

The Price of Desire (2015)

Director: Mary McGuckian

Cast: Orla Brady, Francesco Scianna, Vincent Perez, Alanis Morisette, Adrianna Randall

Drama | France | 104 min.

Writer/director Mary McGuckian (Best) has done the avant-gardist designer and architect Eileen Gray (1878-1976), no favours as the main focus of her feature bio-pic The Price of Desire: a turgidly slow and Kitsch affair, it also manages to be a pretentious melodrama of the worst kind, colliding frontally with Gray’s cool artistic output and her self determined personal life.

Born into an aristocratic family in Enniscortly, Ireland, Eileen Gray attended the Slade School of Fine Arts, before moving to Paris and the South of France, where she spent the last 70 years of her life. Famous for her work with lacquer, which was used in Chinese and Japanese art, she also designed the Bibendum chair between 1917 and 1921.

McGuckian seems not to care much for Gray’s artistic output, but quickly dives into her relationship with the singer Marie-Louise Damia (Morisette); sex in slow motion is all we see of the couple. After meeting the Rumanian architect Jean Badovici (Scianna), Gray then begins a torrid relationship with the womaniser – again, his sexual escapades with Charlotte Perriand (Randall) are documented in great detail. Gray’s clashes with Le Corbursier (Perez) a friend of Badovici, who “defiles” Gray’s architectural masterpiece the Villa E 1027 in Cap-Martin near Monaco with his nudist murals, takes up the latter part of The Price of Desire, Perez’ Le Corbusier emerging the pantomime villain. Instead of attacking the architect for his ties with the Fascists during the German occupation, or his support for eugenics, the filmmaker again personalizes the professional conflict between Gray and Le Corbusier. A dreadful deathbed scene with Badovici could not have been worse.

The scenes shot by DoP Stefan von Bjorn in the renovated Villa E 1o27 are the highlight – at least we see, in detail, Gray’s – then revolutionary – approach, to make the border between furniture and architecture indistinct. The rest are of the images are on a par with the narrative: grandstanding, pompous and utterly unimaginative. Just the opposite of what Eileen Gray stood for. AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 27 MAY 2016

The Daughter | (2015)

Dir.: Simon Stone; Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Ewen Leslie, Miranda Otto, Odessa Young, Sam Neill, Anna Torv, Paul Schneider; Australia 2015, 96 min.

Established Australian actor and theatre director Simon Stone has assembled a talented cast for his directorial debut based on Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck but his cliche-ridden script derails this predicable family drama.

In a small logging town in Australia, the feudal reign of Henry Neilson (Rush) is drawing to an end with the sale of his timber company, the mainstay of the community for many years. Apart from offering employment, Neilson s to have cut a swathe through the womenfolk of the small town and has even traded up his wife for a younger ‘model’ in Anna (Torv). Their upcoming nuptials coincide with mass redundancies hitting the local work force and their families. Neilson’s son Christian (Schneider), is also a nasty piece of work who returns reluctantly from the USA to join the celebrations but can’t forgive his father for his mother’s suicide. Blue colour worker Oliver Finch is disgruntled by rumours that Neilson also bedded his wife Charlotte, another long term employee, and possibly even sired their daughter Hedvig, a rumour shamelessly spread by the spiteful Christian.

Geoffrey Rush and Sam Neil carry the film with with their usual sterling efforts but the problem here is a lack of inventiveness and style in a narrative that leaves nothing to the imagination: all is revealed by wise old Grandfather Walter. DOP Andrew Commis’ images are bland, one-to-one naturalism underlining the anaemic impact of the film. And Mark Bradshaw’s score fails to lift this mundane drama out of the outback. AS

REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | now ON GENERAL RELEASE

The Last Command (1928) | Blu-ray release

Director: Joseph von Sternberg

Cast: Emil Jannings, William Powell, Evelyn Brent

88 min., (Silent) drama | US

Joseph von Sternberg’s career spanned from 1925 to 1957, his 35 films include the silent era classic Underworld, Der Blaue Engel (1930) and Shanghai Express (1932). Emil Jannings, the German actor who later sold himself to the Nazis, starred in the former, winning the first ever Oscar for Best Actor for The Last Command and The Way of the Flesh (1927), even though later research showed that Jannings was only runner-up to Rin-Tin-Tin, the German Shepherd Dog and canine star of popular film: The Academy did not want to give their first Oscar to a dog so chose Jannings as the leading human of the field.

Sergius Alexander (Jannings), a Russian ex-Duke and cousin of the late Tsar, lives in a cheap boarding house in LA and works as an extra for the Hollywood Studios. One day he gets a phone call ordering him on set the next day for the shooting of a WWI film set in Russia, directed by another Russian emigrant, Leo Andreyev (Powell). When Alexander arrives at the studio, beset by a permanent nervous tic making his head shake, the extras make fun of him. We cut to Tsarist Russia in 1917, where Duke Alexander is a leader in a military campaign. He meets the alluring Natalie Dabrova (Brent) and her partner Leo Andreyev, both revolutionaries pretending to be actors. Alexander strikes the obstinate Andreyev with his riding crop. Alexander and Dabrova then fall in love: despite her Bolshevik ideals she is drawn to his compassion. Tragedy ensues and Alexander finds himself back in the studio as an extra. On the salt covered studio floor, intended to look like an icy desert, Alexander takes his role so seriously that he collapses, dying in the arms of the now repentant director Andreyev, a former revolutionary.

The theme of betrayal and somehow redemption, which we will meet again in Der Blaue Engel, is clear. All the main characters are ambivalent; acting quiet the opposite to their chosen identity. Like Professor Unrat in Der Blaue Engel, Jannings again is punished for falling in love with an unsuitable woman. But this time, she does not betray him, and his loss is therefore much greater than Unrat’s. Andreyev, slipping seamlessly from revolutionary to Hollywood director, gets a certain redemption in forgiving Alexander the beating calling the dead general a “great man”. Von Sternberg’s humanism, which set him apart from other great directors of his time, is always moving without ever being sentimental.

Images come courtesy of the DoP Bert Glennon (Stagecoach, Rio Grande), who shot 143 films in his long career lasting from 1916 to 1962. With his moody, softly lit and sensitive close-ups and magnificent set pieces, he shows the studio not just as a place of great art, but of many minions toiling for the glory of the director and the stars. The queue in front of the studio gate in the early morning is full of bitter men and women, fighting for a day’s work which might, literally, save their lives. THE LAST COMMAND is outstanding in its emotional intensity and feels contemporary and relevant even today. AS

OUT ON DUAL FORMAT DVD \ BLU COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA | 16 MAY 2016

Streetdance Family (2016)

Director: Debbie Shuter, Adam Tysoe

87min | Documentary | Germany/Italy.

When fourteen year old Ethan, the son of filmmakers Debbie Shuter and Adam Tysoe, joined the ‘Entity Allstars’, an Under-16 Street Dance crew of twenty Hip-Hop dancers in Barking, his parents decided to film the journey without realising that it would take them from their home in Barking via Luton and Rimini (Italy) to Bochum (Germany). Here in September 2014 they were the first British team to take on the World Champions of the IDO (International Dance Organisation) in the Junior Streetdance category.

The directors called this a “passion project” – and quite rightly so. The young dancers, their parents, the choreographer, the juries and even the IDO president of the British section all infuse Streetdance Family with a spirited emotional impact on a level with the competition itself. To start with, Tashan Muir, a big burly man and the crew’s dance coach, saw himself “like a re-incarnation of Noah”. Helped on by Pater Adjaye, the religious undercurrent was very clear, and Muir certainly had all the qualities of a religious leader. Unfortunately, some of the dancers’ parents could not always keep their emotions under control, and made life for their children difficult. Petty quarrels erupted, some parents being not very good role models when it came to conflict resolution. It led to one of the main dancers missing the Bochum finals. To make matters more difficult Derek Povey, the President of the British Section of IDO, walked around the competition places, seemingly unhelpful to the course of Entity. Still, Muir held the group together and when they reached the final of the competition, he instilled an “us-against-the-world” underdog feeling in his troupe.

Being his own cinematographer helped Tysoe to capture the spontaneity and often also the chaos of the events. The rollercoaster ride is pure cinema-verite, recalling Jean Rouch documentaries about tribal rituals: with Entity coach Muir acting as the chieftain, putting his dancers into a trance-like attitude where they believed they could overcome all obstacles. The filmmakers tried not to be judgemental when it came to parental misbehaviour – resulting in early cuts when tempers flew. Overall, Streetdance Family retains a gritty indie feel, either by accident or design, and in the process achieves a hyper-realistic intensity, and an affectionate tenderness for the young dancers. AS

OUT NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 27 May 2016

Silent Storm (2014) |

Director/Writer: Corinna McFarlane

Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Damian Lewis, Ross Anderson

98min UK Drama

Damian Lewis is the driving force in Corinna McFarlane’s debut drama exquisitely set on a picturesque Scottish island during the 1930s. With a second world war looming, the local community is leaving the island to move to the mainland and the delights of Glasgow’s Willow tearooms amongst others. Hardly surprising, also, when their much revered pastor is a raving lunatic with unscrupulous Victorian morals and a mercurial temper to boot. Preaching in the local ‘kirk’ with his jet black robes and flaring eyes, Lewis evokes a devilish Dracula figure with the best Scottish accent since Dr Snoddy hit the airwaves in Dr Finlay’s casebook. Clearly, he is a force to be reckoned with and another example of religious fervour masking more deep-seated mental issues. The film opens with his wife, Aislin (Andrea Riseborough) writhing in childbirth: the consequent death of this child, his first born, further erodes his ability to engage with parishioners in a sympathetic and supportive way: his confessional style is one of ‘fire and brimstone’ rather than ‘care in the community’. As a husband, Balor is harsh, truculent and unloving.

In contrast Riseborough’s Aislin is gentleness personified, but with no child or work to keep her occupied she feels rather underwritten as the Vicar’s wife. Until, that is, the arrival of a young delinquent (Ross Anderson) who is delivered to their care and guidance from a local remand home. From the moment he sets foot in the remote Vicarage on the edge of the cliffs, Aislin has one thing on her mind. Andrea Risborough brings a delicate subtlety to her performance and, although she sounds more French than Scottish in some of the scenes, her soft submissiveness is tempered with a new hope radiating and a luminous serenity that transform her completely. Sadly, Ross Anderson makes for neither a believable rogue nor a simmering love interest as the bad boy looking for redemption. Clearly a deep and thoughtful thinker who has suffered a misguided past and enjoys literature; with his tousled curls and soft features, he is more cherubic that Byronic. For this love triangle to really succeed dramatically, the part clearly needed a brooding Colin Farrell type who could add ballast to Damian Lewis’ pugnacious fury as Balor, but the budget had been spent on the others. When Balor leaves for the mainland with a mission to transfer the kirch, the young pair grow closer, as Aislin feels his supportive presence. They are pictured frolicking in the local woods in an ill-advised vignette that is neither convincing nor well-staged with garishly bright lensing making the forest glow a sickly incandescent green. However, Aislin and the lad are clearly enjoying themselves and there is hell to pay in a predictable denouement when Balor finally hits the croft on his return.

Silent Storm is a visually ravishing affair that makes wonderful use of its lush island setting with Ed Rutherford’s superb camerawork. It works best dramatically in the scenes where Damian Lewis’s Balor injects his ebullient, masculine presence: strutting around the island as the bitter and frustrated priest, he is vehemence personified and makes this otherwise tepid story worthy of a watch. MT

SILENT STORM HAS ITS WORLD PREMIER SCREENING DURING THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Pericles the Black (2016) | Un Certain Regard 2016

Director: Stefano Mordini

Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Marina Fois, Valentina Acca

104min | Thriller | Italy

Stefano Mordini’s noirish thriller has Riccardo Scamarcio as a hard-bitten hitman on the run from the Camorra in Belgium. Based on the ’90s novel by Giuseppe Ferrandino and adapted for the screen by Francesca Marciano this is the one of the best crime dramas showing in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes this year.

It probes the seething underworld of the ultra-violent Belgian branch of the Camorra where a low-life from the coalface of the organisation comes up against his boss and is forced to leave his Brussels home and flee to Calais to avoid death.

And nobody seethes like Bari-born Riccardo Scamarcio in a role that suits his brooding sensuality and superb acting chops – he switches from seedy serial killer to suave seducer in the flick of a bag of coins – his preferred method of coshing his victims. Narrated in a voice-over by Pericle (Scamarcio), who is under the control of Don Luigi Pizza (Gigio Morra) a small-time gangster who transferred his operation from Naples to Brussels in the aim of taking over pizzerias for as little as he can, Mordini’s film feels alienating and melancholy. Any resistance from the pizzeria owners leads to a bash over the head from Pericle. But when Don Luigi falls out with a local priest, Pericle – sent is punish him – finds he has a witness in the shape of a female camorra boss, Signorinella, and in order to cover up his attack on the priest he has to kill her.

In Scamarcio’s hands Pericle is a likeable rogue who is adept at avoiding danger and skilled at getting on with strangers. Homeless and friendless when he gets to Calais he charms a sales assistant (Marina Fois) into offering him bed and board in a slightly meaningless subplot. But soon it’s time to move on and meet his destiny as the tension builds for the cold-blooded finale. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY | UN CERTAIN REGARD

Ma’ Rosa (2016) | Cannes Film Festival 2016 | In Competition

Director/Writer: Brillante Mendoza

Cast: Jaclyn Jones, Julio Diaz | 110min | Drama | Philippines

The Filipino director Brillante Mendoza returns to the social unease of midtown Manila that was so flagrantly protrayed in his 2009 drama Kinatay as a world of police corruption, dissociative violence and hopelessness where ordinary people labour under the authority of the powers that be. Ma’Rosa (Jaclyn Jones) is a shopkeeper and mother of four with her husband Nestor (Julio Diaz) who also runs a sideline in drugs to make ends meet – although they hardly ever do – in this stark slice of social realism told in the style of a docu-drama.

Eventually the police arrive and arrest the couple demanding to know their substance supplier and to pay a heavy fine or go to prison as drug traffickers. Ma’Rosa is forced to go back to the drawing board and her kids out on the street to beg, steal or borrow the money to keep the voracious cops at bay. This is a desperate drama that plays out as a gritty study of resourcefulness and instinct for survival in the crowded streets of the capital as the kids come up with demoralising ways to save their parents with the knowledge that their only future is just more of the same.

Ma’Rosa is a lucid and well-crafted piece of cinema that nevertheless fails to engage with the hearts and minds of its characters, keeping us alienated but in no doubt as to their plight at the end of the day. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 | IN COMPETITION

Money Monster (2016) | Cannes Film Festival 2016

Director: Jodie Foster

Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O’Connell

98min | Thriller | US

There is no point in being serious about Jodie Foster’s latest film Money Monster which plays at Cannes – out of competition. It comes under the genre of ‘silly thriller’ and for its 98 minutes running time provides a blast of vacuous energy that will sell some popcorn and a few laughs.

Julia Roberts plays a stressed out TV producer who has to manage her frolicsome financial presenter: Lee Gates, played by George Clooney, as he delivers a TV show called Money Monster intended as a dumbed down commentary on the stock market trends. Fired by cheap charisma and wearing the sort of hat you might see on St Patrick’s Day he delivers the financial news as if he has kissed the blarney stone.

But the news he brings on the day in question refers to a company Lee hot-tipped as being worth investing in. This financial derivatives trading company has just recorded losses of $800 million and taken down the savings of the kind of people who trusted Lee’s glib advice, including a truck driver called Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) who appears on set holding Lee at gunpoint. Kyle wants as apology and forced Lee to wear a Semtex vest until he can get to the bottom of this Wall Street crisis.

Hardly the thriller to ruffle most peoples’ feathers this may delivers a few bolts of mild tension to the faint-hearted or infirm. In short, MONEY MONSTER delivers nothing new and does so in a crass way that feels as if it its slipped into the wrong decade where the far superior Broadcast News or even Margin Call were screening. Worse still, the film fails in its attempt to address or even challenge the financial system.

George Clooney brings solid star quality to Lee who ends up being a good guy and one of surprising integrity given his headwear and along with Julia Robert’s reliable turn as the authentic professional character. MONEY MONSTER is fun and throwaway and just the right film for a throwaway night out with popcorn. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 | OUT OF COMPETITION | NATIONWIDE FROM 27 May

Paterson (2016) |

Writer/Director: Jim Jarmusch

Cast: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani | Drama | US | 118min

Jim Jarmusch’s Palme d’Or Cannes competition entry could be described as ‘cuddly and serene’. PATERSON has Adam Driver as the eponymous New Jersey bus conductor who cherishes pretensions as a poet. The tone is upbeat, the pacing languid in a film that plays out as a meditation on untapped creative potential.

Unremarkably, Paterson lives an ordinary and cosseted existence in a town called Paterson with his pleasant Iranian-American wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and his daily duties involve walking his English bulldog, Marvin, and taking a leisurely beer at a bar while he shoots the breeze with the locals. Does he write those musings for the London Underground, one may ask? Potentially he might, for he treasures his notebook where he scribbles down lines of poignant poetry (they are, in fact, the work of the 73-year-old Oklahoma-born poet Ron Padgett.) but he quails away from publishing them as, for Paterson, these words are a private diary. Many secret writers often blog away on the internet all day with no conscious realisation that their words could potentially go viral, read by millions, but imagine they are tucking thoughts away in the ‘soi-disant’ anonymity of the web. In some ways Jarmusch has found another way of linking his narrative to contempo audiences through through this cosy tale that is influenced by 1950s pre-counterculture.

Jarmusch pictures Paterson and Laura’s life as idyllic and stress-free. Laura is a homemaker with artistic qualities that involve plastering the interior of their place in geometric patterns.The story follows the course of one week where events are slowly repeated in a pleasant clockwork routine in this simple linear narrative that mimics a well-scanned piece of poetry. A paean to a peaceful existence, this is a film that dwells in the ordinary and in the agreeable symmetry of a life well-lived but one that never pushes the boundaries. And in our rushed and aspirational society there is a great deal to be said for both. MT

PATERSON NOW ON RELEASE AT THE GATE CINEMA AND PICTUREHOUSES

REVIEWED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 May 2016

Loving (2016) | Cannes Film Festival | Competition 2016

Writer/Director: Jeff Nichols

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga

121min | biopic drama | US

Hot on the heels of his mystery drama Midnight Special Jeff Nichols was back at Cannes Film Festival this year with a superbly crafted biopic of the interacial couple who rocked the headlines in 1950s Virginia for marrying against state laws.

Richard Perry Loving is played by a very white Joel Edgerton (his hair dyed blond) and Mildred Perry by the Irish Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga (Iona) in a classicly told linear narrative where Nichols rapidly skteches out the genesis of their early courtship, Mildred’s pregnancy and their subsequent nuptuals. This is all, of course, against highly illegal and after spending a night in prison Mildred is bailed out by her father.

Nichols adopts a candid sombre approach to his re-telling as the couple are advised by their lawyer to leave the state for 25 years or risk further imprisonment. Images of close family and security are the keynotes in this painterly picture which makes atmospheric use of the lush surrounding scenery that glows with fifties wholesomeness and a regularly occuring leitmotif of a wheelbarrow full of cement leaves us replete with the cheesy earthyness of their worthy plight. Many may muse over the perceived awfulness of having to move with your loved up spouse and growing pregnancy to a reasonable flat in DC. But the fact remains that they are fighting a cause that feels unjust and inhuman.

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil Rights movement, the couple’s love story plays out as a convincing one – Edgerton plays Perry as mildly pugnacious and insular, Mildred the more visonary of the two, is a subtle turn for Negga which she plays with sunny dignity. A couple of clever young Jewish lawyers work hard for them ‘pro bono’ taking the case to the supreme court through thick and thin. Although the stakes are high, Nichols never gives an impression that they are villified or pressurised in any way as they move to a picturesque wooden house in the middle of wheat fields with their three growing children and Mildred plays the (outwardly) contented housewife. A little more strife and an undercurrent of pain and desperation would have served the story better as the course of justice is portrayed as pretty much of a breeze from start to finish -which clearly it was not – leaving little tension or moving moments in a drama totally devoid of any drama. A worthy and important biopic that fails to make us feel the couple’s undeniable pain. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016

Un Homme et Une Femme (1966) | Cannes Film Festival Classics 2016

Dir.: Claude Lelouch; Cast: Anouk Aimee, Jean-Louis Trintignant

France 1966 | 102 min | drama

Claude Lelouch (*1937) has so far 59 credits as a director. But before and after Un Homme et une Femme, his sixth film, he has never accomplished an outstanding work; even the sequel, A Man and a Woman: 20 years Later, was a disappointment.

Lelouch will be always measured against this seemingly one hit wonder – even though his oeuvre cannot be totally overlooked. All his life, he was the proxy for Hollywood films; the anti-thesis to the Nouvelle Vague and critics and filmmakers (with the exception of François Truffaut) in his own country never forgave him for this.

At a boarding school in Deauville, two parents, both widowed, meet: Anne Gauthier (Aimée), mother of seven year-old Françoise mourns the loss of her husband, a stuntman, who had a fatal accident on set. The racing driver Jean-Louis Duroc (Trintignant), whose son Antoine is abut the same age as Françoise, lost his wife when she committed suicide, after an accident at Le Mans left him in a coma. Both adults agree that their relationship is a friendship but they gradually lose their obsessions with their dead spouses, Anne after much hesitation, and, encouraged by their children find a way to reconcile their past with a future together.

Un Homme et Une Femme is that simple. Without frills and hardly any budget: after one month of pre-production; shot with only three weeks of principal photography followed by three weeks in the editing suite, Lelouch had to rely on the emotional impact of his leading couple, and, being his own DoP, his astonishing images: a mix of 8, 16 and 35 mm cameras, and an equally originally combination of black-and-white, colour and sepia-tinged colour grading. The result is a dazzling intimacy where the rowling camera translates the rollercoaster feelings of the lovers, against their will, into a spectacular obsessive romantic pictorial broadsheet. Carried by the music of Francis Lai, Un Homme et Une femme is the ultimate romantic obsession: images, like the one of the couple meeting in the station, are part of film’s potent chemistry and history.

But Lelouch’s masterpiece has still some detractors, mainly male ones, who call it – unjustly – kitsch. The lines between the genders are drawn: after a private screening for President De Gaulle and his wife Simone, she was left in tears, whilst the general wanted to know the breed of the dog on the beach. AS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016

Chicken (2015)

Director: Joe Stephenson

Cast: Scott Chambers, Yasmin Paige, Morgan Watkins

UK | Drama | 86 min.

First time feature film director Joe Stephenson, who has a track record of TV films, has set this drama CHICKEN in the countryside, creating an eerie, enigmatic atmosphere, but failing to fashion a believable narrative from Chris New’s script, based on the play by Freddie Machin. If that sounds familiar, it is a criticism levelled at many UK productions in recent years that look fabulous and feature strong performances, but fall apart on the narrative front.

Fifteen your old Richard (Chambers) suffers from impaired fine motor skills and severe learning difficulties which make schooling impossible. So he is living with his borderline psychotic brother Polly (Watkins) in a dilapidated caravan. Richard’s main interest in life is his chicken Fiona, and all his love is lavished on this feathered friend. When a couple of new landowners with their daughter Annabelle (Paige) move into the nearby country house, they cut off the electricity to the caravan, hoping the unwanted squatters will move on. Polly, who earns a meagre living as a casual labourer, takes the hint as is only too glad of the opportunity to leave his brother behind – with disastrous consequences for all concerned.

Sadly CHICKEN doesn’t appear to live in the modern world. There are too many plotholes and contradictions in the narrative. Nowadays, two brothers with such inadequate survival skills would have certainly being taken care of by Social Security. But, even more crucially, an intelligent and attractive teenager like Annabelle would hardly pair up with pubescent boy suffering from Richard’s severe impairments. Finally, given Annabelle’s poor relationship with her mother, it is unlikely that her mother would offer to accommodate such a problematic teenager such as Richard, into the bargain. The botched ending, however poetic, leaves the audience even more puzzled. When choosing social realism as a genre, one simply cannot disregard the simplest psychological and social facts. Chambers performance is impressive, his real age of twenty-five makes the narrative even more unrealistic, since he looks exactly the same age as his brother (Watkins.) DoP Eben Bolter does a great job in creating a haunting atmosphere, but his efforts are wasted on this infuriating incomprehensible feature. AS

AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEAS FROM MAY 20 2016

The Dancer (2016) | Cannes Film Festival 2016 | Un Certain Regard

Wirter|Director: Stephanie Di Giusto

Cast: Soko, Gaspard Ulliel, Lily-Rose Depp, Francois Damiens, William Houston, Melanie Thierry

108min | Drama Biopic | France

THE DANCER is the story of Belle Epoque dancer Loie Fuller (1892-1928) who rose to fame at the Folies Bergères and became the protégé and rival of the more famous Isadora Duncan. The debut feature of filmmaker writer Stephanie Di Giusto, the film plays in the Un Certain Regard side-bar of the Cannes this year, more for its distinctively auteurish look and feel (as the strand suggests) than for the rigour of its narrative or performances. Don’t expect to find out more about either of these famous women as the focus here is on atmosphere, visual allure (dreamily lensed by Irreversible and Enter the Void’s Benöit Debie) and turn of the century styling and costumes.

Told as a linear narrative, it stars composer Soko – in the central role of Marie-Louise Fuller, who we first meet during a rodeo where he father Ruben (Denis Menochet) is a professional rider who is killed off early on in the proceedings. Fuller’s artistic leanings are illustrated in her sketch pad drawings and secretly rehearsals of Salome. She has a mane of dark hair but is stocky and rather gauche until, that is, she sets sail for her mother’s home in the Temperance Hostel for Women in Brooklyn and auditions for a part in a play, where she uses her ill-fitting skirt to her advantage during a sartorial mishap and ends up inventing her stock in trade – a strange swirling dance requiring metres of fabirc (not unlike that of the Whirling Dervishes). Yes, this dance catches on when she turns up at the Folies Bergères for audition, and snaffles none other than soigné French aristocrat Louis Dorsay (Gaspard Ulliel) who appears to be looking for a strong and emotionally unavailable woman, having just divorced his wife. And Louis Dorsay is a gift horse of the highest order who not only allows Loie the run of his fabulous villa and estate to rehearse her own team of dancers, but also appears to fall deeply in love and dotes on her every whim, despite their obvious physical incompatibility.

When Isadora Duncan arrives from San Francisco, in the shape of the comely but ultimately bland Lily Rose Depp, whose dancing scenes are deftly edited to make it look as if she’s dancing – it’s actually a stand-in. Things take a momentary turn for the worse, as Duncan appears to adore Loie to her face, but behind the scenes emerges as a manipulative minx with a few tricks up her tutu. Although Soko manages an affecting performance in the final scenes, THE DANCER is enjoyable while it lasts, but ultimately as forgettable as candyfloss. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 12 -22 MAY 2016

Rester Vertical (2016) | Cannes 2016 Competition

Director|Writer: Alain Guiraudie

Cast: Damien Bonnard, Christian Bouillette, Laure Calamy, India Hair, Raphael Thierry

100min | Drama | France

After winning Best Director in Cannes Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar in 2013, for his intriguing thriller Stranger By the Lake, Alain Guiraudie is back in the main competition line-up with another eventful drama entitled STAYING VERTICAL which is set in the wild and wolf-inhabited plateaux of the Southern Massif Central and shares the same dark and absurdist humour as his 2009 outing The King of Escape.

STAYING VERTICAL is also similarly charming and queer oddity, in bost senses of the word that follows its dorkish but likeable hero Leo (Damien Bonnard) an itinerant screenwriter who chances upon a single-mother and shepherd Marie (India Hair), while researching his writing. What starts as a bucolic love story in the farm she shares with her father, the rough-handed ogre-like Jean-Louis (Raphael Thiry), leads to the two fathering a child but Marie soon leaves for pastures new when she realises Leo has no future, leaving her with the baby.

Leo feels fulfilled with this outcome but Guiraudie has more quirky surprises in store for us in the shape of a strange local couple, Yoan (Basile Meilleurat) who he tries to invite for an audition on account of his wolfish looks – and a crabby old man, Marcel (Christian Bouillette), who seems obsessed with talking about anal sex. There’s a feeling that Leo is bisexual but this seems an option he’s prepared to explore rather than a serious predilection. However, he does draw the line when approached by Marie’s father more from the associative perspective rather than the sexual one. And this power of suggestion seeps through Guiraudie’s narrative for most of the film’s modest running time providing both a rich and seductive vein of dark humour and a ruminative meditation for the audience. As in The King of Hearts, all the male characters here share an amorphous sexuality which is both appealing and freaky due to their associative and binding ties, as they are all fathers or father figures.

As the title STAYING VERTICAL suggests, this is a film about coping with what life throws in your direction and particularly in this remote part of France, it explores a poor community who is forced to get along and make the best of things in often challenging circumstances. Once again it also flags up the narrative of sexuality being a fluid and moveable feast where comfort and support is often more imperative than erotic desire and the often graffic sex that takes place is functional rather than glamorised.

Despite its tonal uneveness, Guiraudie’s film contains some powerful political and societal themes. There are moments of wild beauty in the winding roads and bleak hillsides of this unexplored part of France and to reflect this remoteness, Guiraudie occasionally wanders into poetic scenes where Leo visits an alternative healer (Laure Calamy) and shocking ones where he is robbed by the same homeless people who he has helped during his visit to a nearby port. The theme of wolves recurs again and again throughout the film. At first, they ravage the sheep including Marie’s treasured sheepdog and they appear again at the end of the film bringing a satisfying feeling of closure and a chance for redemption for Leo, who up to now emerges as somewhat of a loser, albeit a kind-hearted one, representing a feeling that men are the lost lambs of contempo society: in their quest to be connected with their emotions, they have ceased to fulfill their expectations as the strong protectors of the fold. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016

Sieranevada (2016) | Cannes Competition 2016

Writer|Director: Cristi Puiu

Cast: Mimi Branescu, Mirela Apostu, Eugenia Bosanceanu, Ana Ciontea, Ilona Brezoianu

123min | Drama | Romania | France | Bosnia

Almost all of Romanian director Cristi Puiu’s films belong to slow cinema and a New Wave movement called meta cinema: and SIERANEVADA, his Palme D’Or hopeful here at the 69th Edition of Cannes Film Festival is no different. In a similar vein to The Death of Mr Lazarescu, this is a rich and rewarding drama that plays out as its protagonists take each moment as it comes during the lengthy pre-prandial preceedings. Intimate in scale yet far-reaching in its implications, the director’s fifth feature explores differing opinions during a family get together to commemorate the death of a patriarch (his father) which occurred the previous year. In Bucharest Lary (Branescu) is at the peak of his professional career as a neurologist, just home from a business trip to deal with the assembled family and the arrival of the priest.

Lary’s mother sexagenarian Nasu Mirica (Dana Dogaru) invites the extended family to the small apartment which she shared with her late husband, Emil. The event starts with the usual smalltalk and bickering and the dialogue is sharp and dilatory, in common with other Romanian New Wave filmmakers such as Corneliu Porumboiu, Radu Jude and Razvan Radulescu (the latter also co-wrote Mr Lazarescu).

This is a meal that never gets started as the narrative grows more complex as a philandering husband (Sorin Medelini) arrives in a cloud of shame followed by Cami (Ilona Brezoianu) with a friend who is already drunk and ten or so members of the clan. Discussions run from the 9/11 conspiracy theories to Communism with Lary and Laura making us feel very much part of the scene thanks to cinematographer Barbu Balasoiu’s eye level camerawork that glides and darts from face to face and room to room of the crampted apartment as political, moral or religious views are tailored and compromised depending on which family group they belong to and has ultimately forged their identity from birth. It’s an occasion where Lary learn a great deal about himself and changing attitudes and perceptions of him from all concerned.

Amusing, complicated and opaque, SIERANEVADA develops Mr Lazarescu further but most of the characters and their backstories are not fully explored – despite its generous running time. Enjoyable though if you fancy a afternoon of Romanian cultural enlightenment in the company of one of the best Romanian New Wave directors currently on the scene. MT

Umberto D (1952) | BLURAY RELEASE

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Script: Cesare Zavattini, Vittoria De Sica

Cast: Cesare Battisti, Maria Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari

89min Drama Italian with subtitles

[youtube id=”afUmSV0PIy8″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Umberto D is one of the most famous films of the Italian neorealist movement and successful in its mission to show true life after the second World War, happening to ordinary people suffering from its effects and protesting against poverty and Government cuts in the open streets, where they are unceremoniously moved on by the police.

From a story written and scripted by Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica directed this touching and deeply moving film that was claimed to be his favourite. And I can see why. Conforming to neo-realist tenets of using non professional actors and outdoor settings, he casts a non-actor Carlo Battisti in the role of Umberto, a decent old man trying to keep his home in a small room amid desperate poverty of Rome. He is pestered by his landlady (Lina Gennari) for the meagre rent. His only friends are his little dog, Flick, and a young housemaid Maria (Maria-Pia Cailio). Filmed out and about in Rome and in the dingy flat he occupies, it is made all the more sombre by composer Alessandro Cicognini’s orchestral score and a stark black and white setting.

The Rome of the early fifties appears dour and worn down with no exciting cafe society or sparkle of the ‘Dolce Vita’ that was to come with the sixties, most of the buildings look dirty and worn down. It’s a scene of unremitting gloom with the only brief lightness coming from the sunny park scene where Umberto offers to give Flick away to a young girl hoping to find him a good home because he can no longer feed him, or himself. There’s no sentimentality attached to Flick: the camera does not dwell on his tricks or his charm, just on the fact that he is devoted to his master and his master to him. This is a sad story told without melodrama or judgement: the only person we judge is his possibly his landlady, who would rather offer his room to cheating couples than allow him refuge.

Considering he has no training as an actor Carlo Battisti, then in his seventies, gives a convincing performance as a self-respecting and well-turned-out pensioner in hat and overcoat, who puts his best foot forward despite his difficulties and never resorts to anger, resentment or self-pity. His facial expressions echo the sorrowful dignity and personal torture of a gentleman brought to his knees by poverty and loss but still preserving with decency and hope. The only time he complains is when, after a long day trudging the streets in search of Flick, who goes missing while he’s in hospital, he returns to the persion and simply says to Maria: “I’m tired”. And that simple comment and his quiet resignation, speaks volumes. At one point there’s an extraordinary scene where he’s on the verge of begging in the street for L2,000 to pay his landlady, and puts his palm out to see if he can beg. Just as a passer-by is about to give him money, he turns it over, as if testing for rain. the timing of this is quite brilliant and, seen out of context, could almost raise a laugh. The other suburb scene is towards the end when, out of desperation, he jumps in front of a passing train.

Somehow the relationship with his dog allows him to express the deep emotions he feels that could not be expressed with a fellow human being and that is the key to the success of the film: De Sica shows how tenderly love us and never judge us; always love us and it’s Flick, the dog, who ultimately redeems his master, allowing us to connect to the pain and suffering of one man and the here the true vulnerability of the human soul is allowed to shine through in this simplest and purist of tragedies. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD | Bluray

Our Kind of Traitor (2016)

Director: Susanna White Script: Hossein Amini

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Naomi Harris, Stellan Skarsgard, Damian Lewis, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Jeremy Northam

UK 2016, 107 min. Thriller

British director Susanna White cut her teeth at the BBC with Bleak House and Jane Eyre, before her big screen debut Nanny McPhee Returns. Here she turns her camera to the spy thriller genre with John Le Carré’s OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, superbly adapted from the original page by Hossein and featuring a fine British cast.

English couple Perry Makepeace (McGregor) and barrister Gail (Harris) are holidaying in a fancy hotel in Marrakech in a bid to repair their ailing marriage. Perry, a university poetry lecturer has slept with a student and Gail seems not to have forgiven him. They argue, and while Gail takes a conference call, Perry falls into conversation with Dima (Skarsgard), a Russian Mafioso who is afraid that his new boss ‘the prince’ (Dobrygin) is out to kill him and his family. Dima’s fear is reasonable, since we have seen the prince having his henchman execute another ‘treasurer’ and his family in Russia. The two men meet again the next day over a game of tennis, and Gail gets to know Dima’s wife Tamara (Saskia Reeves) and family. But soon it becomes clear that Dima has an ulterior motive, that of asking Perry’s help to negotiate his escape from the Russian mob, with the help of the British Government. In leverage, Dima is able to provide hard proof that a British MP (Jeremy Northam) is in cahoots with the Russians and abusing his influence to help them launder ill-gotten financial gains.

At Heathrow airport, Gail and Perry then meet MI6 handler Hector Meredith (Damien Lewis), who appears a little too keen to help, aided and abetted by spy sidekicks Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner) and Mark Gatiss (Sherlock). Soon Gail gets involved in helping to smuggle Dima, his wife and three children from Bern into Britain. On the run, they hide in a hut in the French Alps, where Dima’s daughter Natasha gives away their hideout inadvertently, phoning her lover on her mobile. Whilst the group survives the onslaught of the Prince gang, tragedy strikes when Dima travels by heleicopter to London, trying to convince Hector of the validity of his information.

There are some classical Le Carré constellations: the innocent couple abroad; the traitor within; and the “believer” who has to prove the guilt of the establishment traitor against the odds, whilst running a department of three. This being the 21st century, ideologies have vanished and it is all about money and nothing else. Skarsgard is the star, the classical anti-hero, with his long hair and even longer memories of the times of Stalinism. DoP Anthony Dod Mantle has caught the two domineering worlds of this drama: the ruthless pursuit of money and the desperate getaway, all filmed in shadowy grey. The establishment, meanwhile – in Russia and Britain – bathes in the glittering lights of parties, theatre and football events ostentatiously showing off, while selling and buying alliances for the best price available: a stockmarket of commodities. Lewis’ Hector is the modern Smiley: in his case, it is not his errant wife, who trobles him, but his son, imprisoned for drug dealing. Hector suffers with the same dignity as Smiley, and tries to nail Longrigg with the same perseverance. OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is very well-crafted entertainment with some social criticism: enjoyable but not too taxing. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 MAY 2016

Mustang (2015) **** On Mubi

Dir: Deniz Gamze Erguven | Cast: Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeyneb Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu, Elit Iscan, Ilayda Akdogan; Nihal G. Kolda, Ayberk Pekcan | 97min | Drama | France/ Turkey/Germany/Qatar.

Turkish director Deniz Gamze Erguven has won international awards for her short films. Her feature debut is an emotional and ideological tour-de-force exploring how five sisters fight repression in a small Turkish village: Mustang is a vehement political statement and a great example of female solidarity.

On the last day of school, five orphaned teenage girls have a harmless water fight on the beach with their male friends. After watching them, a sneaky neighbour informs their grandmother (Koldas) and uncle Erol (Pekcan) complaining of “sexual perversion”. The girls are literally barricading into their home, their grandmother dragging the three older girls off for a “virginity test” in hospital. But the draconian behaviour doesn’t end there -‘phones, mobiles, computers and TVs are confiscated, as the girls are forced into frumpy clothes, their grandmother insisting on cooking classes to keep them ‘suitably’ busy, prepare them for marriage and making the house into a “wife factory.

Mustang feels like a story from medieval times but this is rural Turkey in the 21th century Turkey. What makes it so enjoyable is the girls’ ingenuity in the face of discipline. Sonay (Akdogan), the oldest, at least gets the husband she wants: her long-term boyfriend Ekin. But Selma (Sunguroglu) ends up with the clumsy Osman, whom she hardly knows. Ece (Iscan) tries to fatten herself up by eating sweats non-stop to put her future – unloved husband off – but commits suicide in the end. But grandmother and uncle go on regardless: finding a husband for Nur (Doguslu). The two grown-ups share a guilty secret: uncle Erol is has been abusing Nur sexually for quite a while. The youngest Lale (Sensoy), the most spirited of the quintet, finally takes over: whilst the wedding party is outside, waiting for the bride to emerge, Lale and Nur are barricades themselves into the house, before trying to escape to Istanbul.

Shot in the Inebolu, in the North-East of Turkey, with an all-Turkish cast, MUSTANG nevertheless has a West-European aesthetic since Erguven grew up in France. Sexual politics are in the forefront: whilst the girls discuss their bourgeoning sexuality openly with each other, for the grown-ups this topic is a taboo.The grandmother leaves a ’50s “guide for girls” on the kitchen table. And when Selma’s hymen does not rupture during the couple’s first intercourse after the wedding, the enraged parents drag her to a hospital, where the understanding doctor can calm them down. The old woman’s complicity with her son over his abuse of Nur, is unfortunately not only a problem encountered in Muslim countries. Which leads us to the wider implications: the excuse that forced marriages are necessary for social peace in Islam societies (as voiced by the grandmother and her son) is just a scam: Men very much participate in all the “vices” of modern Western culture, they just do not want to give up their privileges: since the repression of women forced to live in the medieval times in 21st century.

DOPs Ersin Gok and David Chizallet evoke a perfect ‘huis clos’ atmosphere in the house: the gloomy images give a feeling of lock-down, with the ugly clothes as prison garbs. And whenever Lale escapes to learn to drive, meeting the friendly Yasin (Yigit) – who teaches her – alas with no success – the sobriety recedes and the colours become bright and joyful. Even the mention of ‘Istanbul’, a heaven of freedom, brightens up the atmosphere in the house. The ensemble cast are outstanding with a dynamite turn from debutant Sensoy: her Lale is so full of vitality, resistance and ingenuity, that in spite of her age, she pioneers the fight for freedom. MUSTANG is not perfect, there are over-melodramatic moments in the football stadium with the girls celebrating in an all-female crowd – but the powerfully passionate, stringent offensive approach Erguven choses, is impressive. AS

MUSTANG IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 MAY 2016

La Quinzaine des Realisateurs| Directors’ Fortnight 2016 | Latest World Premieres

The Directors’ Fortnight is a Cannes side-bar with a focus on auteur driven drama and documentary features that runs in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. It was started in 1969 by the French Directors Guild after the events of May 1968 resulted in cancellation of the Cannes festival as an act of solidarity with striking workers.

The Directors’ Fortnight showcases a programme of shorts and feature films and documentaries worldwide.

Divines (2016) | Drama | France | World Premiere

Uda Benyamina comes to Cannes with her debut feature, a drama exploring themes of power and success through the story of a young girl who sets off on a religious pilgrimage but meets love along the way.

Dog Eat Dog (2016) | Crime Drama | US |

Carved from a lifetime of experiences that runs the gamut from incarceration to liberation, Paul Schrader’s Dog Eat Dog is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by American crime writer Edward Bunker (Runaway Train) who also started a criminal career before making it big in the movies. This Ohio set action drama stars Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe and Christopher Matthew Cook as recidivists who need to hit one more jackpot before they retire.

Berenice Bejo (The Artist) and Valerio Mastandrea star in Marco Bellocchio’s latest drama based on Massimo Gramellini’s 2012 Best Seller exploring a man’s emotional insecurity brought on by his mother’s early death. With award-winning cinematographer Daniele Cipri on board this promises to be a visual treat.

L’Economie du Couple (2016) | Drama | France Belgium | World Premiere

Joachim Lafosse (Our Children) returns to Cannes with this Brussels-set contempo drama that stars Berenice Bejo and Cedric Kahn as a separating couple with kids, forced to cohabit their beloved marital home due to financial difficulties.

Fiore (2016) | Flower | Drama | Italy | World Premiere

Daphne is in a juvenile detention centre, serving time for robbery, when she falls for another inmate Josh. Their love feeds on exchanged glances and snatched conversations in Claudio Giovannesi’s drama about forbidden love and a strength of feeling that threatens to violate the law.

SEQ 21, J4, Cours de natation Samir et Agathe

The final feature of France Icelandic writer and documentarian Solveig Anspach (who sadly died of cancer in 2015). No stranger to Cannes, her film Stormy Weather was screened in the Un Certain Regard section in 2003, and she won the Piazza Grande Award at Locarno for Back Soon in 2008. The Aquatic Effect is a drama that has Samir Guesmi and Florence Loiret Caille.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi joins Paolo Virzi for their second collaboration, a comedy, in which she plays mental patient who strikes up a friendship with a woman from a completely different background (Michaela Ramazzotti) while being treated in a Tuscan mental home during the Summer holidays (right).

Les Vies de Thérèse | Documentary | France | World Premiere

Filmed here at her own request by director Sebastian Lifschitz, are the final days in the life of militant feministe, actress and lesbian Therese Clerc, who died in February 2016. She also took part in his 2012 documentary Les Invisibles, which explored the lives and difficulties of older lesbians and gays in French society.

Ma Vie de Courgette | My Life as a Courgette (2016) | Animation | World Premiere

Based on Gilles Paris’ book on the same name, this gorgeously animated family drama is scripted by Girlhood director Celine Sciamma and set in the French Alps.

Mean Dreams (2016) | Thriller | Canada | World Premiere

Canadian filmmaker Nathan Morlando (Gangster) makes his Cannes debut with a thriller set in Northern Ontario and starring Sophie Nelisse and Josh Wiggins.

Mercenaire (2016) | Drama | France | World Premiere

In his coming of age directorial debut, Sacha Wolff stars alongside newcomer Toki Pilioko, when they take off to play rugby in a big city on the other side of the World, and discover that manhood comes without compromises.

Neruda (2016) | Biopic Drama | Arg, Chile, Spain | World Premiere

Gael Garcia Bernal and Alfredo Castro again join forces with Pablo Larrain and his scripter Guillermo Calderon (No) in a biopic that explores the Nobel-prize winning poet’s time as a political fugitive in Chile during the 1940s.

Poesia sin Fin | Endless Poetry (2016) | Fantasy Drama | Chile | World Premiere

Chilean Maverick Alejandro Jodowovsky is back in Cannes with another fabulous family affair. Endless Poetry stars his sons Brontis and Adan and is filmed by multi-award winning DoP Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love).

Raman Raghav (2015) | Thriller | India | World Premiere

Vicky Kaushal was the star turn of last year’s Un Certain Regard romantic drama Massan. He returns to Cannes in Anurag Kashyap’s thriller that follows the exploits of the notorious 1960s Bombay serial killer Raman Raghav, played by Bollywood star Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Siddiqui also starred in Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) an epic drama charting the deadly inter-generational blood feuds that once took place in the city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

Risk (2016) | Documentary | Germany | US

Writer, director and activist Julian Assange has certainly captured the imagination of journalists and filmmakers with his political antics; Alex Gibney –We Steal Secrets – being one of them. Here he forms the subject of American filmmaker Laura Poitras’ latest documentary Risk that takes place in Britain (left).

Tour de France (2016) | Drama | France | World Premiere

An unlikely friendship develops between an ageing art lover Serge (Gérard Depardieu) and young rapper Far’Hook, when they are forced together on a coastal journey from Northern France to Marseilles on the trail of 18th Century maritime painter Joseph Vernet, in this usual comedy drama from French director Rachid Djaidani.

Two Lovers and a Bear (2016) | Drama | Canada | World Premiere

Kim Nguyen’s romantic drama has Dane DeHaan (Life) and Tatiana Maslany as lovers who form a spiritual bond in the remote town of Nunavut, in the Canadian North Pole (below left).

Wolf and Sheep (2016) | Drama | Denmark | World Premiere

With a cast of newcomers, Shahbanoo Sadat tells a tale about a mountain farming community in northern Cashmire and their belief in a legendary wolf with the soul of a woman.

LA QUINZAINE | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT | TAKES PLACE DURING THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 12 – 22 MAY 2016

Evolution (2015)

Dir.: Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Cast: Max Brebant, Roxanne Duran, Julie-Marie Parmentier

France/Belgium/Spain 2015, 81 min.

It is nearly eleven years since Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s memorable debut feature Innocence, which dealt with a teenage girl in a boarding school. EVOLUTION centres this time on a group of boys on the crest of adolescence. Living a frigid existence with their insipid-looking mothers by an eerie seashore, there are no adult males to be seen. Hadzihalilovic presents a joyless antiseptic world where even the meals of strained seaweed broth appear medicinal rather than satisfying. Cinematographer Manuel Dacosses’s spare and pristine interior visuals give the impression of a wide-scale marine laboratory where a sci-fi experiment is underway and the boys are the victims.

Young Nicolas (Brebant) and his mother (Parmentier) live in a dreary community: their spartan lifestyle is marked by robotic rituals: dinner is always followed by the intake of an inky medicine, which appears to be therapeutic. Somehow Nicolas suspects that something is going on beyond the surface of enforced rigour: he follows his mother to the beach at night, where he observes her writhe in ecstacy with other women. Before he can unravel the mysterious plan, he is sent to a dilapidated early 20th century hospital, where some of his friends are also patients. Weird experiments are carried out and one boy disappears completely. Nicolas is befriended by one of the nurses, Stella (Duran), who supplies him with material for his drawings. When the dreadful secret emerges, Stella tries to help Nicolas to escape.

The boys in EVOLUTION have no rights over their bodies, but what emerges is that they are the unwitting victims of some kind of freaky, gender-reversal surgery. The dreamlike atmosphere evokes a past we can not see, but the boys’ dreams suggest that they have been taken away from their real families to take part in a medical experiment destined to help mankind’s survival. But dreams and reality are indistinguishable: the underwater scenes suggest that more sinister plans are underway: perhaps mankind has to become amphibious to survive. The ghastly hospitals are horror institutions located underground and under the control of the sullen – all female – doctors and nurses. Syringes and scalpels take on a sadistic undertone creating a frightening parallel with medical experiments in Nazi concentration camps.

EVOLUTION haunts and beguiles for just over an hour. Hadzihalilovic and her co-scripter Alante Kavaite (Summer of Sangaile) cleverly keep the tension taught requiring the audience to invest a great deal in the narrative before any salient clues emerge – but even then much remains unexplained and enigmatic; not that EVOLUTION wants to be understood. Part of its allure is this inaccessibility, unsettlingly evoking a world far apart from any genre, it is esoteric and anguished in its unique otherworldliness. Too many films feature repetitive images and schematic self-indulgent narratives: how refreshing to find an true original which opens a totally new world in just 81 minutes.

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | EVOLUTION |

Truman (2015)

Director: Cesc Gay Writer: Cesc Gay, Tomas Aragay

Cast: Ricardo Darin, Javier Camara, Dolores Fonzi, Troilo (the dog)

108min | Comedy Drama | Spain

This warm-hearted and sensitive ‘buddy movie’ is told with a gentle humour and frankness that will resonate with those familiar with final days of friends or parents who have reached the end of their time together. TRUMAN is a character driven arthouse drama which features two strong performances from Ricardo Darin as Julian, a slightly passive aggressive Spanish actor who is on his way out, and his laid back and supportive friend Tomas who makes a surprise visit from Canada, to be with him. Essentially a two-hander, TRUMAN enjoyably sidesteps sentimentality opting for an honest and deadpan approach but it also deals with the thorny themes that can surface when life and friendship reaches the end of the road.

In Madrid, Julian (Ricardo Darin) is dying of lung cancer and has decided to put his affairs in order, gradually saying his goodbyes as honestly as he can to his friends and colleagues. On the suggestion of his sister Paula (Dolores Fonzi) his best friend Tomas (Javier Camara) pays him a surprise visit from his home in Canada but rather than wallowing in self-pity, Tomas finds his old pal engaging in displacement activities, and more concerned with the re-homing and emotional welfare of his dog Truman (Troilo) than with his with own chemo treatment, which he has decided to terminate.

The two settle into an agreeable rhythm where Tomas accompanies Julian to his old haunts as he ties up loose ends. It’s not all plain sailing here as ructions do develop but are swiftly smoothed over in the best of humour. In one such scene, Julian approaches a couple of colleagues he sees in a local restaurant, pretending not to notice him – clearly they feel unsure and uncomfortable with the Julian’s situation – and Julian flags this up with dignity and aplomb. And it is these kind of touches that make the film feel authentic and genuine engaging rather than mawkish or morbid.

Insightfully written and beautifully acted by its accomplished Spanish cast, what really makes TRUMAN special is the impressively subtle take from Ricardo Darin, who breezes through every scene with a wry and self-effacing candidness that is perfect for a film that seeks to avoid emotionalism but ends up with some incredibly moving moments accompanied by soulfully scenic visuals of Madrid and Amsterdam (where they visit Julian’s son), and a suitably atmospheric score that somehow feels just right.

The only character that feels out of context and is that of Paula, who’s has an awkward rapport with Tomas from a past involvement and puts a spanner in the works in the final scenes that feels forced and inappropriate in the scheme of it all.

Full of philosophy, TRUMAN explores the suffering behind bereavement with a dark humour that makes this drama enjoyable and full of subtle charm.

OUT ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 6 May 2016

The Arabian Nights III | As Mil e Uma Nottes | The Enchanted One

Director: Miguel Gomes | Cast: Christa Alfaiate, Chico Chapas, Americo Silva; Portugal/France/Ger/Switz |125 min.

In part of three of his trilogy The Arabian Nights, entitled The Enchanted One, Portuguese writer and director Miguel Gomes finally moves Scheherazade (Alfaiate) into the centre of this modern retelling of A Thousand and One Nights, set in a a contemporary Portugal haunted by economic decline. Part III consists of three fables that are more interconnected than in the previous section – The Desolate One.

Scheherazade’s own story is told in the outrageously sumptuous Chateau d’If (against the background of high-rise blocks in working class Marseille). The magnificent setting is further enhanced by DoP Mukdeeprom’s resplendent visuals that picture a costume drama that feels more of a f’ilm-in-a-film’ than the previous segments. Scheherazade’s father, the Grand Vizier (Silva) is kitted out in full Ali Baba regalia complete with bulbous headgear. Frightened that his daughter will run out of stories and finally lose her life, he is also lost in nostalgia for his much-loved wife, now dead; and the images of the two women intermingle in his mind. This clearly artificial and theatrical episode echoes Gomes’ Murnau take in Tabu, but it lacks focus, failing somehow to fit into the whole canon.

Leading to the second segment ‘Baghdad Archipelago’, where Scheherazade meets the paddle man (Charloto), who has 200 children, and Elvis, a robber cum street dancer, Gomes suddenly switches to a Godard mode, where multiple texts overload the attention capacity of the audience, particularly the section with subtitles. Inserts like: “From the wishes and fears of men, stories are born” seem clever, but do not add much value. Most of The Enchanted One is taken up by the 80 minute final segment “Chorus of the Chaffiniches” (shot by Lisa Persson), starring again Chico Chapas (Simao in Part II), as a birdsong expert and bird trapper. These bird trappers are mostly unemployed men, and when we one caught in a net meant for the birds, the symbolism is clear. The story of a Chinese girl, told in voice-over, who came to Portugal at the time of the depression, adds a further layer of melancholia to the trilogy’s ending. Still shrouded in enigma and inconclusive, The Enchanted One somehow loses his way, subtracting rather than adding to the whole trilogy.

The structure of Arabian Nights is obviously the main attraction; the narrative, however inventive at times, would not have carried 381 minutes. Gomes has fused Buñuel’s satire, Brechtian allegories and phantasy elements not unlike Fernando Birri in his South American poetic realism. The stylistic variations, sometimes disperse and are often overwhelming, but Mukdeeprom’s images give the Arabian Nights its unique look, and a visual coherence. Whilst the opulence of Arabian Nights is obviously part of its strength, Gomes might have overreached himself a little. He is strongest in the ethnographic chapters, when he shows serous interest in the lives of real people. His choice of popular music, from Rod Stewart to Lionel Ritchie, underlines this argument: his journey between Italian Neorealism and South American Poetic Realism is strongest, when he chooses a pictorial approach. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE IN SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 6 MAY 2016

Knight of Cups (2015)

Director|Writer: Terrence Malick

Cast: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto

118min | Drama | US

There is still a great deal to admire here in this saccharine series of simpering stories, largely thanks to Emmanuel Lubezki visual wizardry. But Malick’s style, which scratched the edges of mannerism in To The Wonder, has now broken fully into the confines of cliché in a drama whose intention is to evoke the tinseltown tedium of the Big City seen through the existential crisis and subsequent epiphany of its self-regarding central character, a writer, played by Christian Bale.

Terrence Malick succeeds in offering up another empty experience, ushered in by a pompous voiceover with John Gielgud reading from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and leading to a similarly swirling set of images and thoughts that shaped To The Wonder. emanating from a Hallmark Greetings style storyboard, and ultimately feeling meaningless to the thrust of the narrative. LA’s beautiful people float and tease to a backdrop of glittering sunsets and show-house interiors. Lovers smooch and flirt as they dance into the sea, fully clothed, or run their fingers sensuously through the limpid waters of infinity swimming pools, in luxury locations.

Rick (Bale) is good-looking, narcissistic and – we are led to believe – successful, but his marriage to his medical director wife Nancy (a shimmering Cate Blanchett) has faltered, and so has his relationship with his father (Brian Dennehy) and brother (Wes Bentley). And the tragedy of his trashed apartment, turned over by robbers, is treated with the same dreamlike delicacy of touch as the moments where gorgeous girls trip lightly behind him in their filigree frocks. Despite this seemingly minor setback, Rick continues to caruse and cajole with his coy admirers in a series of glitzy hotels and parties, occasionally contemplating his life in the desolation of the desert or showing his spiritual side by consulting a Tarot reader for guidance.

According to Tarot legend, the Knight of Cups is a charmingly emotional youth who is willing to please, but naive as a puppy. And the problem with Rick is that, by the end of the story, rather than evolving into a real person, he still appears to have the emotional depth and integrity of a new born despite Malick’s desperate attempts to have us believe otherwise, by association with his folie de grandeur lifestyle and literary success. MT

BERLINALE 2015 REVIEW | NOW OUT ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES from 6 May 2016

Johnny Guitar (1954) Blu-ray release

Director: Nicholas Ray Writer: Philip Jordan. Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ward Bond, Ernest Borgnine, Royal Dano, John Carradine, Ben Coope | 110min | Western | US

Nicholas Ray saw Johnny Guitar as a first step to independence. Little did he know he would be engulfed in a battle for control of the film with its star, Joan Crawford. She literally had the script re-written during the shoot to please her ego, and to denigrate co-star Mercedes McCambridge who was married to one of Crawford’s former lovers.

Vienna (Crawford), a saloon owner, is nearly bankrupt but she is waiting for the planned railroad to boost her profits. But the townspeople, led by Emma (McCambridge) want her to move on, suspecting her of the murder of Emma’s brother. With her four friends she terrorises the town with a gang led by Dancing Kid (Brady). When Kid’s gang holds up a stagecoach and kills a man, Emma wants to hang Vienna. But she is rescued by her former lover, Johnny Guitar (Hayden), and erstwhile famous gunslinger Johnny Logan. Emma burns the saloon down and after a long chase, Vienna gets her revenge.

The shooting of this cult film with its outstanding colour images by the legendary DOP Harry Stradling (Guys and Dolls) and Peggy Lee’s title song could not have been more problematic. Johnny Guitar was a project for four clients of the Lew Wasserman agency: Roy Chanslor, who wrote the novel of the same name, published in 1953, was the first. He dedicated the book to Joan Crawford, who had just finished her comeback film Mildred Pierce. Script writer Philip Jordan was a front for many blacklisted writers, particularly Ben Maddow, who wrote the The Naked Jungle and Men in War under Jordan’s name. “Just like Wasserman sold film packages, Jordan sold script packages with a guarantee of quality”. Jordan worked with Ray during 1953 in Hollywood, their script run up to 200 pages, Ray depositing thirty pages with Cinematheque Francaise. Shooting started in mid October 1953 at Sedona, Arizona, where Republic had a Western Street, a permanent set. McCambridge, who played the villain, recalled in her memories “I felt I had a certain edge because a gentleman with whom [Crawford] had had some association, to the degree that she has given him gold-cuff-links, was now my husband”.

When Ray was filming McCambridge in the scene where she addresses the posse to hunt Vienna down, he sent Crawford back to camp. But after he finished the scene, he saw Miss Crawford sitting up on the hill watching. “I should have known some hell was going to break loose”. That night, Crawford asked for “five more scenes”, having strewn McCambridge’s clothes all over the road. As Jordan said, “They were on location, and Joan Crawford decided she wasn’t going to make the picture. They were shooting about 2 weeks without her. So Wasserman called me up and he flew out here.”

According to Ray, Crawford “got some crazy ideas. she said she wanted the man’s role.” Crawford commented: “I’m [like] Clark Gable, [but] it’s Vienna who has the leading part”. She threatened to leave for good, and the picture would have been finished. In this case, Republic might have gone bankrupt because they were used to making films for $50 000 and Johnny had budget of $2.5m.

Jordan had to rewrite the way Crawford wanted it: neither the novel nor the script mentioned that Johnny and Vienna had known each other before. And this way added much more weight to their relationship in the completedfkm. Jordan decided to let Hayden play Crawford’s part with her having the shoot-out at the end, killing Emma/ McCambridge. The 44 shooting days were very traumatic for Ray and as he was directing his next film, Run for Cover, he wrote to his actress friend Hanna Axmann: “The atrocity of Johnny Guitar is finished and released to dreadful reviews and great financial success. Nausea was my reward, and I am glad you were not there to share the suffering”. But there was no pleasing Crawford, in her autobiography she wrote, blaming McCambdrige and lashing out at Ray: “The responsibility lies with an actress who hadn’t worked for ten years [McCambridge had won an Oscar two years earlier]. There is no excuse for making such a bad film”. AS

ON BLURAY FROM 20 SEPTEMBER 2021 | MASTERS OF CINEMA

Son of Saul (Saul Fia) 2015 |Grand Prix | FIPRESCI Award| Oscar Best Foreign Language Film 2016

Director: László Nemes

Cast: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnar, Urs Rechn, Todd Charmont, Sandor Zsoter.

107min Wartime Drama Hungary

László Nemes learnt his craft under the legendary Hungarian director, Bela Tarr. His feature debut is a shocking and claustrophobic thriller exploring the little known lives of the Sonderkommando, Jews who were forced, under pain of death, to clean up the gas chambers during the final days of Auschwitz in 1944.

Clearly, Nemes is an inventive talent in the making. His restless camera tells a secret and conspiratorial story in pin-sharp close-up while in the background, out-of-focus atrocities are seen unfolding in the Nazi concentration camp and its surroundings. The action focuses on Saul (Géza Röhrig), a man whose mission is to herd his own people into massive ovens and lock them in as their pitiful cries and raging emerges.

One boy survives the onslaught, but is subsequently suffocated by a German officer. Saul appears to recognise him as his own son and sets off in desperation to find a Rabbi to say prayers and bury him according to the Jewish faith. A constant whispering and bartering in going on before our eyes, and while Saul is bribing his fellow inmates with golden and precious personal effects (from the dead) jewellery, an escape plan is also brewing.

But unlike his master of slow-motion, Nemes offers up a fast-moving and disorientating action thriller. Sometimes the camera is behind his shoulder focusing on the chattering and internal conspiracy between the inmates, others it focuses on the background, where German officers bait and bully the Sonderkommandos. Dead bodies are dragged by and thrown onto trucks in blurry, soft-focus. In one scene, at entire battle is going on in the hazy distance, where prisoners are being shot and forced into open burial pits as fires rage and gunfire rings out. It feels as it Nemes is running two contemporaneous film sets; one in the foreground and one of horrific slaughter and anihilation in the near distance. There is a remarkable single take, in pristine focus, where Saul carries the body of his “son” into a river and swims to the other side.

This is a work of supreme craftsmanship but also a harrowing and devastating tribute to the Sonderkommandos, who knew their lives would also end in slaughter, when their job was done and Géza Röhrig’s performance rings of both subtle defiance and acceptance. The final scene seems to allow a chink of light and hope into this dreadful darkness, as his face lights up into a gradual smile in the middle of a verdant forest.

Son of Saul serves as a positive revival of the Holocaust with other recent films such as Night Will Fall and Shoah. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE | OSCAR WINNER FOR BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM 2016 | FIPRESCI PRIZE WINNER CANNES 2016 | FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW | CANNES 2015

Heavens Knows What (2015)

Directors: Benny and Josh Safdie Screenplay: Ronald Bronstein | Josh Safdi | Writer: Arielle Holmes (book)

Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Arielle Holmes, Buddy Duress, Ron Braunstein, Eleonor Hendricks

94min | Drama | US

It takes one to know one, and former junkie Arielle Holmes has been there and survived to tell the story. HEAVENS KNOWS WHAT evocatively re–creates the drug-adled world of her past in a ‘fucked-up’ and fuzzy portrait of the dark side of addiction in her native New York.

This tension-fuelled cinéma vérité mood piece submerges us in the squallid subculture of flaky friends and foul-mouthed existence. Even love is sordid and brutally raw as pictured here by brothers Benny and Josh Safdie. But HEAVENS is also poetic and tragically moving seen through Sean Price Williams’ soulful city panoramas and Isao Tomita’s trance-like and explosive original music.

The film opens with Holmes’ character Harley and her sociopathic lover Ilya Caled Landry Jones kissing each other on the tarmac before he shuts down emotionally and viciously rejects her without explanation. Clearly out of control, Ilya’s only comfort lies on the moral high ground where he hunkers down with a soiled blanket. Harley’s subsequent suicide attempt leads to her seeking refuge with an older woman and she while attempts to re-connect with Ilya, she joins her other junkie mates shooting the breeze, shooting up and throwing up..

Despite its slender plot and sketchy characterisation of these lost lowlifes, who mostly need a stiff kick up the backside rather than a stiff drink, this is a film that wallows in the angst-ridden atmosphere it successfully creates. Clever acting effortlessly conveys this milieu and you don’t want to go there.MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 29 APRIL

Florence Foster Jenkins (2015)

Director: Stephen Frears Writer: Nicholas Martin

Cast: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Helberg, David Haig

110min | Drama | UK

Meryl Streep plays celebrity croaker Florence Foster Jenkins in this chipper tragicomedy about an heiress who financed herself to operatic stardom in 1940s New York.

In common with its real life diva, Stephen Frears’ sentimental celebration of amateur light operatics hits a few bum notes but mostly stays in tune with its central characters; a circle of ageing aficionados, wannabes and has-beens who thrived on puff and tea parties in New York, while ordinary people were fighting the Second World War. Ridiculed for her lack of rhythm, poor pitch and tone deafness, Meryl Streep’s Florence is also bald and riddled with tertiary syphilis thanks to her first husband Dr Jenkins, whom she describes as an alley-cat.

The film opens in her opulent apartment in 1944, with Florence in the happier days of her dotage fawned over by an adoring second husband and manager, failed actor St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), living secretly with his lover (Rebecca Ferguson) in a nearby Brooklyn Brownstone, paid for by his wife. So everything about Foster’s life was fake and yet, naively or narcissistically (and it feels very much like the former with Streep’s sincere treatment) she constructed her own romantic fantasy, perpetuated by disillusion or delusion, and funded by her vast inheritance. Frears’ film is very much an intimate and stagey chamber piece with the occasional foray into the locale (Victorian Liverpool and London). Clever use is made of special effects to achieve the Manhattan backdrop of Carnegie Hall and The Verdi Club, where Florence’s wealthy musical aficionados and luminaries- including Arturo Toscanini – gathered for their tea dances and soirées.

A light-hearted French version of the story Marguerite, transposed her story to 1920s Paris but lacks the emotional arc of Frears’ drama which feels convincing and surprisingly moving with its world class performances from Hugh Grant and Meryl Streep and an eloquently witty script by Nicholas Martin, a writer best known for his prodigious TV work.

So protected from the coal face of criticism courtesy of Bayfield, Florence decides to venture out into the public domain, hiring a talented young pianist Cosmé McMoon (The Big Bang Theory regular Simon Helberg) as her accompanist. After hearing a rousing tribute on the radio, she dedicates the concert to U.S. soldiers recently returned from the war and offers them free tickets. But despite support from her regular fans, and the sympathetic soldiers, press reaction is derisory and ultimately detrimental and Florence sadly suffers a setback.

With her unflattering wig and portly padding – Meryl Streep is a dead ringer for Tintin’s Madame Castefiore. Judiciously, we don’t hear her sing until the second act – allowing Frears and Martin to set the scene and develop the emotional dynamic between the central characters. Although this is a light-hearted role for Streep she delivers it with affection and aplomb managing to be vulnerable and ridiculous at the same time. Hugh Grant is impressive in his first ‘senior’ role swinging into his suave persona with spectacular ease in every scene and evoking a genuinely- felt affection for his wife in each loving gesture while masterfully managing her detractors – he even takes to the dancefloor. But the film’s real discovery is Simon Helberg, whose intricate facial gestures echo every subtle nuance of its tortured inner monologue from anxiety to rank disbelief, while verbally remaining delicately aloof and discrete. Florence Foster Jenkins is an enjoyable romp rather than an elaborate exposé of its eccentric heroine. The film will certainly go down well with the mainstream crowd but may be lost on younger audiences or the more aspiring arthouse crowd. MT

OUT NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Demolition (2015)

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée Writer: Bryan Sipe

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper, Judah Lewis

101min | Drama | Canada

Québecois director Jean-Marc Vallée has a lively take on deconstructing bereavement in this quirky family saga sewn together by an inspired central performance from Jake Gyllenhaal, as a Wall Street banker and lateral thinker who loses his wife in a car accident that changes his life and adds intensity and insight to the harrowing and often surprising experience of human mourning.

While those around him are falling part, Davis (Gyllenhaal) fronts up well to this personal tragedy until cracks gradually appear in the facade of his outwardly shiny former existence – a fabulous house, wealth and a happy marriage to Julia (Heather Lind)- to reveal that his stoicism actually conceals a secret relief. DEMOLITION opens as a potentially depressing tale of loss that slowly morphs into a darkly humorous and enjoyable journey that transports him from death to destruction, then redemption and eventually emotional freedom. Despite a rather meandering middle section, there is tremendous energy and spirit here that carries the film through to its affecting denouement.

DEMOLITION also features gutsy performances from Chris Cooper, a slightly underwritten Naomi Watts and feisty newcomer Judah Lewis. Jean Marc Vallée always brings some something fresh and frisky spirituality to his filmmaking, as we saw in Cafe de Flore, C.R.A.Z.Y and Dallas Buyers Club. As such, Vallée has an appealing knack of connecting with his audiences through characters whose trials and tribulations bring them to a better place of greater awareness, in stories that inspire and often resonate with his audiences.

The theme of DEMOLITION is a case in point. Scripter Bryan Sipe tackles the thorny issues of disbelief, anger, sorrow and finally acceptance that accompany bereavement with some inventive touches: Davis’ grief is processed ‘out of the box’ and in unexpected and often inappropriate displacement activities; when his boss and father-in-law (Chris Cooper) suggests that Davis take his life apart in order to rebuild it without Julia he responds by dismantling his office computer and destroying his furniture. Instead of tears and tantrums with his friends and family, he destroys furniture and reaches out to complete strangers – an episode with a hospital vending machine ten minutes after his wife’s death leads to a lengthy correspondence with Karen, a customer service adviser (Watts) who ends up becoming part of his life and very much involved in his emotional healing.

DEMOLITION follows a linear narrative but regular DoP Yves Belanger cleverly uses jumpcuts and rapid flashbacks to fill in a backstory that initially leads us to believe that Davis is some kind of sociopath or, at least, suffering from Asperger’s syndrome; clearly he avoids ruminating on his inner demons with a series of personal techniques that keep him in a safe place emotionally – which his family interprets as a lack of feeling for Julia. But the finale seems to bring him to his senses – or even better, and plausibly – a place where his brain is healed so that he is able to feel and react ‘appropriately’ in a finale that is both moving and uplifting. Another tragedy that Davis discovers in the final scenes also brings him emotional peace through a relationship he develops with Karen’s 12-year-old son, Chris (Lewis) – it’s a meeting of minds that cuts both ways in bringing both their characters finally to safety. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Arabian Nights II : The Desolate One (2015)

Director.: Miguel Gomes | Cast: Christa Alfaiate, Chico Chapas, Luisa Cruz

132min |Drama | Portugal/France/Germany/Switzerland

Writer/director Gomes continues on his path of re-writing Scheherazade’s classical stories of Thousand and One Nights with the second part of his trilogy: The Desolate One. After the overwhelming opening salvo of the first part, The Desolate One is perhaps the most audience friendly of the trio: full of humour, self-irony, satire and much less hectoring, the streamlined second part consists of three fables outlining the disgruntlement of Portuguese workers during the financial austerity in the early 21st century, and connecting the present with the past.

Told with subtle irony by Scheherazade (Alfaiate), sometimes residing on a Ferris Wheel, the first tale Chronicle of the Escape of Simao – ‘Without Bowels’ is a gem. Simao (Chapas), an ageing farm worker, who earned his nickname for his life long anorexia, has murdered four women, among them his wife and daughters, and is on the run. In his hideout in the wilderness, he dreams about prostitutes and great banquets. But in spite of his crimes, he becomes a local hero for his Robin Hood style redistribution from rich to poor. Scheherazade blames his crimes on capitalism: “Evil is only a severe tendency of selfishness”.

The second story, titled “The Tears of the Judge” is a burlesque courtroom romp, where the severe judge(Luisa Cruz) presides over a case which starts out with the theft of 13 cows and continues, taking in a series of Chinese mail-order brides, a genie and a machete-wielding human lie detector. The stern judge, who almost loses it due to the complexity and buck-passing of the various witnesses and scenes involving her daughter, who has recently lost her virginity to a man selected by her mother, assuming a guise of domestic servitude which she then relegates her duties. This seems to be a metaphor for continuing misogyny and racial stereotyping in contempo Europe (yet it’s even worse in continents such as Africa, South America and India).

And, if matters aren’t complicated enough, this is the segment that won the ‘Palme Dog’ at Cannes 2015 for Dixie, the Maltese poodle, who here is passed on from one tenant to the next in a housing estate, where even the human residents have difficulties feeding themselves. Somehow there are shades of Chekov in this episode: the eviction notices spread a collective outpouring of melancholia.

Again, DoP’s Mukdeeprom’s sun-dried images are the highlight, producing serenity and beauty in spite of the poverty. Shot on 16mm and 35 mm, his work proves that our eyes, like the film stock, work on an analogue basis. The depth of these images is impossible to recreate with digital, however brilliant the HD. Gomes always tries to change, double and exchange the perspectives: This happens on the levels of images and sound, the mixing of documentation and fiction, the (sometimes overdone) multi-lingual components (which make this part particularly challenging for non-Portuguese-speaking audiences) and finally, in the episodic structure of the whole trilogy, where the actors participate in different episodes underlining the concept of total exchange. The Desolate One is made of legends: yesterday’s and today’s are finding a common platform where Gomes’ poetic realism steers his often unwieldy project to safe shore. AS

THE SECOND PART OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS IS ON RELEASE FROM 29 APRIL 2016 at SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

Arabian Nights (2015) | As Mil E Uma Noites | Part 1 The Restless One

Director/Writer: Miguel Gomes

Cast: Christa Alfaiate, Dinarte Branco, Miguel Gomes, Carlotta Cotta, Adriano Luz

Portugal/France/Germany/Switzerland 2015,125 min.

Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes’ three-part epic aims to seduce us with a sorry tale of his native land in crisis due to the economic downtown of the last five years. Is it possible to make a derogatory film beguiling? With ARABIAN NIGHTS not only has he tried to re-invent “political cinema” but also to assimilate a new body of film language where genres are playfully mixed, and the audience is often left gasping in delight, but not always in comprehension.

Inspired by the classic Arabian Nights, Part One is an enigmatic string of stories that aim to encapsulate this time of austerity with an absurdist style embracing socialism realism and surrealism. If you’re hoping for something akin to Tabu (2012) or even Our Beloved Month of August (2008) you will likely be disappointed as this is much more sombre and recalcitrant fare where fables and documentary realism coalesce as often strange bedfellows, infused with the filmmaker’s own anger and sadness peeping through a narrative that gradually makes more sense but still, for the most part, mystifies.

The Restless One begins at a shipyard were the failures of the Portuguese government are apparent at the Viana do Castelo shipyard in Minho: the workers are on strike and a voice-over recounts a past where full employment offered job satisfaction and a meaningful life. As the shipbuilders clash with the anti-strike brigade, the mood turns sombre. At the same time Gomes appears, ruminating on how hornets are destroying the local bee population. Is this a metaphor for the Government and the people?. As if by magic, we are introduced to Scheherazade (Alfaiate), the princess who saved her life each night by telling a tale to make her Sultan wish for another night with her. She is introduced to the sounds of “Perdfidia” (Buñuel), telling three stories to Gomes and his strikers, who listen in rapt attention. The first one is about three bankers who wish for never-ending hard-ons in response to their erectile dysfunction, and end up getting more than they bargained for. The next is about a rooster who nearly comes to a sticky end by crowing at inappropriate moments. The rooster himself then tells a sad story about a love-triangle. Finally, we return to one of the strikers who literally feels sick when trying to tell unhappy tales about his fellow workers. It gradually becomes clear that these wild and disparate stories are all vehicles to describe Portugal’s demise. Gomes tries to re-invent the workers as modern-day crusaders in a fight to save their beloved Portugal. But they are not at all heroic but more melancholic in the style of Kafka – metaphors straight out of ‘The Trial’. Gomes wants the World to view Portugal as a prisoner of capitalism: the stories, old and new, are told to liberate the nation, or least to put off its fate until another day.

In the end, The Restless One has an attractive, experimental charm. Gomes’ choice of DoP, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (who shot Apichatpong Weerasethkul’s Uncle Boonmee), is appropriate for his drama: Mukdeeprom has an eye for details, his sumptuous images creating a unique cosmos of poetic realism. The colour palette ranges from the outrageous to the spooky. The Restless One attempts perhaps too much, but is never dull. It is a fairy tale for our times: often as puzzling, incomplete, enigmatic and contradictory as contemporary life. AS/MT

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | ICA | Curzon Bloomsbury

Walkover (1965) Walkower | Bergamo Film Meeting 2021

Dir|Wri: Jerzy Skolimowski | Cast: Aleksandra Zawieruszanka, Andrzej Leszczyc, Krzysztof Chamiec | 77min Drama Polish with subtitles

During the 1960s writer and director Jerzy Skolimowski focused on films exploring the ironic aspects and moral dilemmas affecting everyday life in post-Stalinist Poland. His films were the ‘Impressionists’ of an era dominated by the sweeping epics of the Polish Film School.

A debut feature, Rysopsis (Identification Marks: None) 1965 was closely followed by WALKOVER another drama set in his home town of Lodz (and also starring his off-screen partner Elzbieta Czyzewska in the opening scenes).

As Andrzej Leszczy, he represents a ‘New Wave’ hero, a raffish outsider with a certain appeal to the opposite sex. Drifting around the locale, having left the army and about to embark on engineering studies, he is taking part in a local boxing match when he meets Teresa (Aleksandra Zawieruszanka), a government engineer who has arrived in the city to work on a new factory scheme. Under Teresa’s spell (Zawieruszanka looks like a Polish equivalent of Angie Dickinson) goes to the wrong ring for the tournament. And as he sits on the train with Teresa, we see his boxing opponent following on a motorbike, viewed in a superb continuous shot from the rear of the carriage. Turning up later, Andrzej wins the contest in a “walkover” as his rival fails to turn up.

As a metaphor for individuality WALKOVER was a very personal second feature for Skolimowski, who aside from his filmmaking activities enjoyed boxing and poetry, some of which is recited in voiceover in several scenes. The film opens with the face of a woman who will later jump under Andrzej and Teresa’s train, but rather than develop this plotline, Skolimowski’s film segues unconventionally into Andrzej’s story using the furore from the accident as an enticing background introduction to the central story about the couple’s brief romance.

The tragedy of the girl under the train adds additional texture, but remains an undeveloped strand. Perhaps his intention was to use her suicide as a cry for help from the thousands of Poles who felt washed up, directionless and cynical after years of fighting a cause; rather like the troubled characters in Tadeusz Konwicki’s Last Day of Summer. It was certainly his intention to explore unconventional ways of telling a story.

Skolimowski’s drama also seems to suggest the importance of standing up against the tide of change and power. Both Andrzej and Teresa go on to fight their individual battles in WALKOVER. Andrzej perseveres with his boxing and Teresa argues with the factory chief but they both rebel against the tide of industrial Lodz. Although the couple enjoy a night together they remain detached in the scheme of things, alienated further by the stark industrial landscape of Sixties Lodz.

The occasional modernist building sparks interest, such as in the pure lines of the outdoor restaurant scene (title photo), emphasising the pristine black and white cinematography of Antoni Nurzynski. The film also features a meandering, improvised jazzy score by Andrzej Trzaskowski (Night Train). MT

WALKOVER IS SCREENING DURING BERGAMO FILM MEETING’S RETRO OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

Identification Marks: None (1965) Mubi

Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski | Cast: Jerzy Skolimowski, Elzbieta Czyzweska, Tadeusz Minc, Andrzej Zarnecki, Jacek Szczek | 73min | Drama | Poland

Jerzy Skolimowski’s debut sparked off two sequels (Walkover and Hands Up!); he also plays the leading role of an aimless college dropout kicking through the final traces of freedom before being drafted into the army for military service. Ever the outsider, rather like his compatriot Polanski, Skolimowski explores the motives of his recalcitrant character Andrzej Leszczye who is living with his wife but keeping his options open with a series of other women, hanging around Lódz with his dog (who has contracted rabies, and has to be put down) before jumping on train with his other friends who have been conscripted to the army.

Only 23 at the time, the young filmmaker flexes his artistic muscles with tricks and creative flourishes honed during his final days at Lódz, and the result is here in pristine black and white. Well-made and beautifully edited by one-time feature editor Halina Szalinska, Identification Marks has a lively unstructured score by Krzysztof Sadowski and captures the footloose ennui of Poland’s postwar generation, pictured to perfection in this carefree chronicle of this final day of youth epitomising the Polish New Wave. Skolimowski incorporates some of the footage shot during film school, using stock provided and the skills of his college contemporaries at Lódz. Now, nearly sixty years later his latest EO is running for an Oscar. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Autumn Almanac | ÖSZI ALMANACH (1984)

Director.: Bela Tarr

Cast: Hedi Temessy, Erika Bodnar, Miklos B. Szekely, Janos Derzsi, Pal Hetenyi

119min | Drama | Hungary

Autumn Almanac is a unique film in Tarr’s oeuvre: it falls between the end of his ‘Social Realism’ phase (The Prefab People, 1982) and the first masterpiece of his black and white epics such a Damnation 1988. Exceptionally for Tarr, it is also shot in colour.

A Pushkin quote in the opening credits sets the tone for Autumn Almanac: “Even if you kill me I see no trace/This land is unknown/The devil is probably leading/Going round and round in circles”. Set entirely in a dilapidated villa, this melancholic ‘Kammerspiel’ traces the lives of five very despondent people who have given up contact with the outside world and are going round viciously in a circle of deceit and self deceit. The owner of the house is the matriarch Hedi (Temessy), a sick, lonely woman who is frightened that remaining four residents are only after her money. Initially, we may believe this to be a paranoid phantasy, but we soon start to join her in these negative thoughts. The nurse Anna ((Bodnar) – her carer, and her lover Miklos (Szekely) certainly look out for themselves and the couple’s sex life deteriorates throughout the film because of the increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere at home. Hedi’ son Janos (Derzsi) is too weak to admit that all he really wants is for his mother to die so he can inherit. And the old teacher Tibor (Hetenyi), just wants to steal enough from everyone to drink himself to death. Amid constant eavesdropping, the rooms have become sealed fortresses which are defended desperately. The five protagonists are full of self-glorification, believing their schemes will succeed because their attitudes are justified. After an easy victim is found at the end; and somebody asks innocently and without any irony: “If we lost trust in everyone, what would life be?” we know, that the Devil from the Pushkin quote has taken all, while the remainder of the residents in the house will go on in never-ending circles.

Shot by Buda Gulyas, Sandor Kardos and Ferenc Pap in expressionistic colours (which are literally unleashed on the audience), and different camera angles, Autumn Almanac is Tarr’s first ‘formalistic’ film. The rigour of later films; the long takes and the use of grainy b/w images are still a step away. Here, Tarr treats the residents like fish in a tank: he tries every possible angle to observe them with voyeuristic pleasure: at first, the camera peers subjectively through doors and windows, making the most ordinary actions look subversive. Then he changes, and uses crane shots, making everything distant and removed. Finally, he shoots from underneath the floorboards, creating distorted images that poke fun at all concerned. It feels as if Tarr can’t find enough ways to show the imminent decay. Yet it all ends in a glorious white light: somehow suggesting the newness of life in which the cycle will start all over again.
Autumn Almanac is also the first of Tarr’s increasing pessimistic films, showing units of society – here, the family – completely out of synch; everything cruelly revealed in soulless, nihilistic and endlessly repeating circles. AS

NOW OUT ON DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY DVD COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA | EUREKA

Louder Than Bombs (2015)

Director: Joachim Trier Writers: Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne, Amy Ryan, David Strathairn

105min Drama

Anyone who has experienced a sudden and controversial family death will identify with the father and two sons in LOUDER THAN BOMBS, a drama exploring bereavement.

The Norwegian director is known for his previous character-driven dramas Reprise and Oslo and August 31st but this is his first film in English, with regular scripter, Eskil Vogt (Blind). He subtly explores the aftermath of the death of a dedicated photographer Isabelle Reed (Huppert), who has spent her career in war zones, shuttling back and forward on the brink of danger. Huppert brings a loving yet detached feel to her part as mother and wife. Clearly though there were cracks in the marital facade before she died, and Gabriel Byrne, as her placid and appreciative widower, Gene, picks these up with tearful concern and he grapples with a trucculent teenager and an academic son, who is out of his depth emotionally with the recent birth of his first child.

This story unravels slowly as Trier gradually fleshes out characters who genuinely feel like people you feel you know. It emerges that Gene gave up his career to support the boys before the tragedy and is now sensitively treading his way through a minefield of feelings as events continually surface to challenge his perceptions of this constantly shirting emotional scenery. Byrne plays him as an appealing, gentle man. Clearly lonely, he is at odds with both his sons and yet desperately tries to reach out in to both of them, while he also tries to find his way into a new relationship with a woman who happens to be his son’s teacher. Although Trier uses some images and techniques to explore the bereavement reveries of his characters, these feel unnecessary and out of place, as he has already proved that he can craft imaginative and authentic types who hold our attention, without resorting to gimmicks.

Huppert’s character threads through the fractured narrative, appearing as dedicated, yet also opportunistic in her need for emotional fulfillment during her overseas career. She also appears ignorant of the effects that her professional life has had on the rest of her family while she has been away, as her focus has been self-absorbed by her need to carve out her own professional niche, very much in common with the character Juliet Binoche played in Haneke’s recent outing A Thousand Times Good Night.

The story turns on the suspenseful news that her ex-colleague Richard Weissman (David Strathairn), is writing a piece in the local paper in tribute to her life, to coincide with a posthumous retrospective of her photos. He has warned Gene (Gabriel Byrne), that the piece is likely to reveal some personal details of their trips together and this causes Gene to reflect on his marriage and put his sulky teenage son, Conrad (Devin Druid) in the picture. As the older son, Jesse Eisenberg, plays his usual neurotic role as Johan, who is academically gifted yet emotionally much less mature that we first imagine. Although there are clearly some misjudged moments, this is an absorbing and at times affecting piece that shows the Norwegian director gradually developing his craft in promising ways. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES

Europa, Europa (1990) Mubi

Dir.: Agnieszka Holland | Cast: Marco Hofschneider, Julie Delpy, Andre Wilms, Delphine Forest; Germany, France, Poland | 112 min | Drama | Germany France Poland

Polish director Agnieszka Holland follows her mentor Andrzej Wajda from Poland to France for this true story of Solomon Perel. Based on his memoirs, it focuses on his extraordinary escape from Nazis Germany and his successful time in the Hitler Youth.

Young Solomon (‘Solly’) (Hofschneider) loses his sister on the eve of his Bar Mitzvah at the Kristall Nacht Pogrom. After the family emigrates to Poland, Solomon flees with his brother to the USSR at the outbreak of the War, but the siblings are separated. In the USSR he fetches up in an orphanage falling in love with the attractive teacher Inna (Delphine Forest). After the Nazi army overruns his village, he burns his identity papers and calls himself Joseph Peters, claiming to be of German blood. The German soldiers take to him, and use him as a translator. In this capacity he helps to interrogate Yakov Dzhugashvilli, Stalin’s son. He witnesses the atrocities of the Germans against the Russian population, but has to stay quiet, since he is now the mascot of his division, under the nickname of ‘Jupp’ given by his protector Hauptmann Kellermann (Wilms). The soldiers deem that ‘Jupp’ should have a good education in Germany, where he joins the Hitler Youth Academy – but not before being seduced by a middle-aged Nazi functionary, Rosemary, who climaxes with an ecstatic “Heil Hitler”.

At the Elite School, ‘Jupp’ then falls for Leni, a member of the “Bund Deutscher Mädchen“ (the female equivalent of the Hitler Jugend). After a particularly vicious anti-Jewish outburst, Jupp abandons Leni, who soon falls pregnant by Jupp’s best friend Gerd. Leni’s mother, well aware that Jupp is Jewish, does not give him away. When the Russians occupy Germany, Jupp is saved by his brother Isaac, as the Russians (rightly) do not believe that a Jew could be a member of the Hitler Youth. Finally Solomon Perel emigrates to Palestine, where he does not have to hide his Jewish identity any more – he can be Solly again..

Jacek Petrycki’s visuals underline the epic narrative with long panning shots and panoramic views of the fighting scenes; the images often reminiscent of Soviet realism. Hofschneider is utterly believable as the naïve boy who has to fight throughout the whole film to keep his circumcised penis from view. Holland directs with great sensibility, struggling to control the rather sensationalist plot. This is not her fault: most feature films about the Holocaust are by nature melodramatic but this should never submerge the tragic events. Often unavoidably cliché-ridden, Europa Europa, is a good example of why – after Lanzman’s Shoah – feature films, how ever well meant, rarely offer new information on the crimes against humanity, and very often detract from the real events by unintended trivialisation. AS

NOW ON MUBI UK

Our Little Sister (2015) Umimachi Diary

Dir.: Hirokazu Koreeda

Cast: Haruka Ayase, Masami Ngasawa, Kaho, Suzu Hirose

Japan 2015, 128 min.

In his forth film, director Hirokazu Koreeda (Like Father, like Son), has changed his approach: so far he has tackled emotional issues head-on, Our little Sister is a melancholic, elegant and very intimate portrait of a family who bury conflicts behind a deceptively tranquil façade. Our Little Sister has echoes of Kon Ichikawa’s The Makioka Sisters and also happens to be set in Kamakura, a seaside town near Tokyo, were the great Yasujiro Ozu lived and is buried.

The slow-burning story follows three sisters in their twenties living in an sprawling old mansion: The eldest Sachi (Ayase) is a bossy nurse in the local hospital and dominates her younger siblings Yoshino (Nagasawa) and Chika (Kaho). Fifteen years go, the three were abandoned by their parents when their father left for another woman and their distraught mother also disappeared to start a new life. The stress of bringing up her younger sisters has taken its toll on Sachi. Bank worker Yoshino has a string of unsuitable partners, and Chika is in love with her rather immature, eccentric boss, the owner of a sports equipment shop. Sachi is having an affair with a married lecturer whose wife is suffering from depression. But when their father dies suddenly, they are forced to acknowledge his long term carer who is also their teenage half-sister Suzu (Hirose). Sachi immediately takes to the girl but inviting her to live with them as a family, but in doing so further submerges her own needs as a woman and fails to address the natural grieving process of the existing trio who still harbour resentment for Suzu “taking the father away from them”. Suzu herself expresses her guilt and also her feelings of being unwelcome in her new home. All these conflicts finally surface when their estranged mother turns up, wanting to sell the family home.

Less cinematically rigorous than Ozu, Koreeda’s patient approach – showing the conflict arising from the calm exterior of the characters and their traumatic wounds – Our Little Sister is very much in keeping with the master’s style of slow-burning tension. DOP Mikiya Takimoto’s pastel colours and gliding camera movements show nature as the primary healing force for human trauma evoking a wonderful portrait of deceptively peaceful life in the little seaside town. All the performances here are impressive but Ayase is the standout with her often forced Zen-like equanimity hiding a disturbing personality, with strong masochistic tendencies. Koreeda avoids fireworks, keeping the tone gentle and good-natured. Our little Sister is an insightful and moving story of four adult children forced to clear up the emotional legacy of their own terrible parenting. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 15 April 2016 at CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

The Anatomy of Evil | Anatomia Zla (2015) | Kinoteka 2016

Director |Writer.: Jacek Bromski

Cast: Krisztof Stroinski, Marcin Kowalczyk, Michalina Olszanska

117min | Poland 2015 | Action Thriller

In his latest action thriller, Jacek Bromski (One Way Ticket to the Moon) paints a grim portrait of contemporary Poland. After the fall the of authoritarian Stalinist regime, which wanted to control all aspects of life in the country, Capitalism has brought liberation – but over the years, a new elite has developed – as it did during Communism – and those selected few live a rarified existence simply because of their financial means, connected to a global network of incredible wealth.

Professional killer Karol Lulek (Stroinski), has been released from prison on parole but is asked by his former boss, now the Attorney General, to do the classic ‘one last job’ for the authorities who put him away in the first place. This involves collecting 100 000 Dollar and a new passport before he kills the Head of the Central investigation Bureau – who has become an obstacle in a multi-million deal involving American money.

Lulek reluctantly agrees but finds out that his sight is since impaired, making it impossible for him to competently undertake the mission. Instead, he finds a surrogate, the young sniper Stasiek (Kowalczyk) hounded down by a local journalist after he mistakenly killed an innocent citizen in Afghanistan. Lulek retrieves his hidden cash from a hut in the countryside, killing the woman who guarded his belongings. He then murders the journalist, hoping to get an emotional hold on Stasiek for his loyalty and trouble. Stasiek meanwhile, falls for a prostitute Halina (Olszanska) who works in a luxury hotel whence he plans to shoots the CBS boss, while he visits his Opera-singing mistress in the adjoining hotel. Naturally, the plan goes awry with disastrous consequences.

Bromski’s contempo Poland is a divided society where community and solidarity have given way to crass materialism, ‘get rich quick’ schemes and deteriorating human relationships. Values have deteriorated and led to indifference in a society ruled by invisible forces and subdued palette steel grey and brown; from the harshly lit scenes in the luxury hotel to the soulless streets where everything seems to be for sale. Lulek and Stasiek are grasping victims and perpetrators at the same time: each man for himself. Krzysztof Stoinski gives an award-winning performance as Stasiek: his naïve love for Halina giving him humanity and purpose. Bromski masterful direction concentrates on the interaction and motives of the characters; avoiding sensationalism. A sober and subtlely-nuanced study of a country fighting for a new identity. AS

KINOTEKA RUNS FROM 7 – 27 APRIL 2016

Deep End (1970) | Kinoteka 2016

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Cast: Jane Asher, John Moulder-Brown, Karl Michael Vogler, Diana Dors, Christopher Sandford

88min | Drama | UK/Germany 1970

Jerzy Skolimowski left Poland after his 1966 film Barrier to direct three German co-productions: The Departure, The Adventures of Gerard and the rather quaint Deep End which was set in London but was mostly shot in Munich, Germany.

In this prescient view of ‘modern’ London, Skolimowski explores the burgeoning power of youth in contrast to age through a mishmash of interconnecting sexual and emotional encounters. Mike (Moulder-Brown), a naive and fresh-faced public school-leaver takes a job in the local public baths. He falls for his colleague Susan (a gamine Jane Asher), who is already involved with an obnoxious fiancé (Sanford) and her old teacher (Vogler), who seduced her when she was underage. Meanwhile, Mike is being harassed by a busty blond client (Dors) who fantasises about George Best while she molests him. When Susan loses a diamond ring given to her by her fiancé, Mike’s hormones are in overdrive as he tries to help her find it and their putative romance has a messy ending.

The Sixties are over in DEEP END and London is anything but swinging: the sleet grey streets a symbol for a down-trodden capital. Despite this, Skolimowski’s dialogue feels fresh and authentic and the detail spot on: Jane Asher rocks white lace-up boots and a yellow plastic midi mac and Moulder Brown, a sports jacket and white sneakers (he cleans the bath with ‘Vim’). Existential angst dominates these characters, each bleaker than the other but the tone is chipper rather than downbeat, often accompanied by the musical strains of The Can and Cat Stevens.

Mistreated by her teacher, Susan uses her fiancé to get even with her next love interest; she is a classic ‘victim turned abused’. Mike is very much the naïve bystander and the work environment alien to him; he is also a victim and, in the end, an abuser out of control. Susan’s teacher and her fiancé are both insecure, preying on Susan and her co-dependence. Diana Dors’ client is a throwback to an era (nearly half a century ago) where many people had no bathroom and were forced to wash in the public baths. Her obsession with football is also significant: long before the sport became a middle class hobby, football and its heroes represented a way out for the working classes, compensating for their dreary life: A visit to the match was a live chance to worship their heroes. Sex Education posters state: “What if a Man could get pregnant” underlining the emotional alienation between the sexes, despite the advent of sexual liberation and the Pill, DEEP END is still marooned in a world Of Victorian values, quite the opposite of the rosy vision of the ‘swinging sixties’, Jane Asher carries the film, a figure of feminine vulnerability fighting her corner in a sea of emotional turmoil that ends in surprising tragedy. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 7 -28 APRIL 2016

Novecento |1900 (1976)

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Cast: Robert de Niro, Gerald Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Werner Bruhns, Laura Betti, Donald Sutherland, Burt Lancaster, Stefania Sandrelli, Sterling Hayden, Alida Valli, Romolo Valli, Anna Henkel, Maria Monti

317min | Drama | Italy/France/West Germany

Bertolucci’s epic, combining the personal and political during the first 45 years of the 20th century, is set in the Italian province of Emilia-Romagna, were the featureless landscape and the ancient city of Parma are the background for the ongoing rivalry between families: the landowning Berlingheri and their peasant workers, the Dalcò. It is a melodrama featuring moments of extraordinary beauty – Oscar-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s sumptuous visuals glow with the resplendent luminosity of an Impressionist painting by Manet or Manet. But there is also outrageous cruelty and savage brutality and the performances, particularly by the female characters are often suffused by histrionic outbursts giving this the quality of a Greek tragedy, underpinned by Ennio Morricone’s often doom-laden orchestral score.

In 1901, the year that local composer Giuseppe Verdi died, two boys are born on the estate of the Berlingheri: Alfredo, who will inherit from his father Giovanni (R. Valli) and grandfather (Lancaster), and Olmo, son of Leo (Sterling Hayden) and Rosa Dalcò (Monti). After Alfredo’s grandfather commits suicide in the cowshed, his father dictates a false testament to the local priest, making sure that he inherits most of the estate, giving only an allowance to his brother Ottavio, a playboy, who travels around Italy. The two boys become friends, in spite of their different upbringing, Alfredo hiding from his father, whom he hates.

After Olmo (a softly-spoken Depardieu) returns from the Great War, he is greeted with open arms by Alfredo (a sultry de Niro), who wants to continue their friendship. But everything has changed and his father has since employed Attila (Sutherland), one of Mussolini’s fascists, as a foreman. Olmo warns Alfredo about the danger Attila represents, but Alfredo is only in hedonistic pleasures. After Mussolini takes power in 1922, strengthening Attila’s position, Olmo and Alfredo travel to Parma where they meet Ottavio (Bruhns), Alfredo’s uncle, and his beautiful companion Ada (a gracefully hypotic Dominique Sanda) and the two fall madly in love. Olmo’s partner and fellow socialist, the teacher Anita (Sandrelli), gives birth to their daughter Anita , but tragically dies in childbirth. Devastated by his friend’s loss, which seems to spur Alfredo on to marry Ada. At the magnificent wedding celebration, Attila and Regina (Betti), Alfredo’s cousin, feels jilted and madly jealous, as she hoped to be his bride. In a fit of angry displaced lust, Regina embraces Attila who, in a sexual rage, savagely murders a little boy and tries to pin the blame on Olmo. Alfredo does not stop the fascist mob trying to lynch Olmo, but a deranged young man, confessing wrongly to the murder, saves Olmo’s life. Ottavio, who had brought a white horse named ‘Cocaine’ as a wedding present for Ada, is disgusted and swears never to return to his brother’s house. Attila commits more and more gruesome murders, including a particularly horrendous one of the widow Pioppi (Alida Valli), to secure her home for himself and Regina. The relationship between Ada and Alfredo deteriorates and she finally leaves him, just before April 1945. Italy is liberated and Olmo, who has become a partisan, shoots Attila, celebrating their liberation from Alfredo, the ‘Padrone’, with his daughter Anita (Henkel) and the other peasants. Olmo declares the death of the ‘Master’, but keeps Alfredo alive, “so we all know forever that the Master is dead”. Alone with Olmo, Alfredo states very realistically, “the Master is very much alive.”

NOVECENTO is Bertolucci’s most ‘Viscontian’ film, premiered in the year of the older director’s death. Using a cast, many of whom had worked with Visconti (Alida Valli, Romolo Valli, Burt Lancaster), Bertolucci also explores one of Visconti’s central themes: the sexuality of fascism, here demonstrated in the murderous relationship between Attila and Regina. But in spite of history and politics, 1900 belongs to DoP, Vittorio Storaro (Strategia del Rago, Il Conformista). The childhood scenes of the first part are shot like summer: the colours are drenched, in dream nostalgia. Heavy clouds and torrential rain threaten the early stage of Fascism. The wedding is an icy winter picture, cold, harsh hues echo the deterioration of the relationships between Ada and Alfredo. Liberation brings spring’s acid primary tints; the lighting growing increasingly bright and celebratory. The mass scenes in Parma, during the socialist demonstration, are framed with impressive intricacy. The camera moves, swoops and glides in harmony with Ennio Morricone’s majestic, moving sound track, maintaining Novecento’s status as one of the great epics of film history. AS

NOVECENTO IS FULLY RESTORED ON BLU-RAY COURTESY OF EUREKA FILM AND VIDEO FROM 18 APRIL 2016

Barrier (1966) | Kinoteka 2016

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Cast: Jan Nowicki, Joanna Szczerbic, Taddeus Lomnicki

Poland 1966, 84 min.

After finishing BARRIER in 1966, Skolimowski left Poland to shoot the German co-production The Departure with Jean-Pierre Leaud. He returned to his homeland in 1967 to finish his Andrzej Leszezyce trilogy (that started with Identifying Marks and Walkover) with Hands Up, banned shortly after the director locked the final edit. Skolimowski returned to Poland in 1981 and showed Hands Up with a new prologue of 25 minutes. On the surface, the hero of BARRIER seems to have much in common with Andrzej but the comedy drama is aesthetically very different; the dream scenes here are very much reminiscent of early Buñuel – without being as cruel as the Spaniard.

The opening shot is symbolic: we see a half-naked male figure leaning forward on a table, trying to get to a matchbox about 80 cm below him. The man in question tries to gobble up the matchbox with his mouth, then has to get back into his original position, without falling flat on his face. What seems like a scene from a South American torture film, is a student’s prank: The future doctors are trying to find a winner for the petty cash they have collected during the year: the first one to be successful in the matchbox endeavour will get the whole stash. The students chanting in Latin makes everything even more sinister.

Skolimowski was not allowed to play the male lead role like he did in Identifying Marks and Walkover. Jan Nowicki replaced him as the medical student, a dreamer who loves jazz and girls – anything but his studies. “I have sold myself to the state for a scholarship”, he exclaims with humorous self-criticism. In his dreams, society appears as an altered state: not totally different from reality, but with a childlike eye for perfect solutions to ordinary questions. But the horror of the first scene returns and while the students in their dormitory stride along the white corridors, we hear terrible screaming. Suspecting the worst, it soon emerges that there is a dental practice next door to the Hall of Residence. When our hero meets a girl (Szczerbic) working as a tram conductor, two worlds collide: she is hyper realistic and sees life as a scheme where progress is made in little steps. But both have one philosophy in common: their contempt for the older generation (rather like in Deep End), stuck in the past – giving the film its title. Again, Jazz and poetry underline the mosaic narrative: “In this cynical and un-idealistic generation romantic impulses manifest themselves”.

But there is no romanticism, however bitter or twisted – the polemic is too fierce and the surrealism is sometimes so absurd if seems as if Skolimowski wants to escape from an unbearable situation. DoP Jan Laskowski (Night Train), creates dark, sinister images of life in a cul-de-sac contrasting sharply with the bland images of everyday life. BARRIER is Skolimowski’s most complex and abstract work so far. AS

KINOTEKA 7 – 28 APRIL 2016

Strange Heaven (2015)

Director: Dariusz Gajewski

Cast: Agnieszka Grochowska, Bartlomiej Topa, Barbara Kubiak

107min | Drama | Poland Sweden

Dariusz Gajewski’s STRANGE HEAVEN (Obce niebo) delicately tackles the thorny themes of the nanny state and immigration. Agnieszka Grochowska and Batłomej Topa play Basia and Marek, a Polish couple who havee to Sweden with their nine-year-old daughter Ula (Barbara Kubiak). Following very much in the footsteps of Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt it works on an emotional level where basic human rights and dignity (in the real sense of the word) are taken over by the most extreme form of political correctness, masquerading as the law, ignores the needs, wellbeing and wishes of both parent and child.

Ursula is having trouble adjusting to her new school and language (Polish to Swedish is a tall order) and has even been given a new nickname “Ula”. Basia and Marek are also finding life tough in a new country and their relationship is clearly under pressure. A social worker (Ewa Fröling) with time on her hands questions Ula and has come to the conclusion that the girl would be better off with foster parents, forcing her parents into the invidious and painful task of trying to get their daughter back from the vice-like grip of the almost passive aggressive legal system in Sweden.

STRANGE HEAVEN makes for gripping viewing but of the kind that will have your stomach in knots as you work through your own feelings about Health and Safety and the loss of normal social interaction in today’s world. It may appear as if the premise is absurb and far-fetched yet Gajewski is tapping into a growing malaise in our public authorities and welfare system that often beggars belief albeit with a narrative that occasionally overplays its hand to underline the seriousness and implications of where, as a society we are heading. Ism also very perceptive in here in delving into relationships and showing how the dynamics of a healthy family (with often rambunctious ways of resolving and alleviating conflict could easily manifest as unhealthy to the outside world, heaven forbid the beady over-protective domain of the average social workers who are either covering their own backs or ‘learning lessons’.

Grochowska and Topa are a convincing couple, their volatility and harsh words dissolving into loving embraces or laughter (perfectly illustrated in an early scene where Grochowska literally bursts out laughing behind the social worker). As their tragedy dawns on them they are authentic. Topa calmly analytical, while Grochowska indignance in completely understandable, winning her Best Actress at this year’s Gydnia Festival. And Barbara Kubiak – is just right as a little girl who is well-mannered and, like most kids, surprisingly flexible, settling down in her new home and mustering the language – much to the anguish and distress of her parents who are naturally less fluent, at this stage. STRANGE HEAVEN may occasionally veer on the melodramatic but it’s a moving and intense film that resonates for a long time afterwards. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 2016 | 7 APRIL

The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015)

Writer| Director Matt Brown,

Cast: Jeremy Irons, Dev Patel, Toby Jones, Stephen Fry, Kevin McNally, Enzo Cilenti, Devika Bhise

108min | Biopic | UK

Jeremy Irons and Jeremy Irons are screen dynamite in this earnest but intensely moving biopic of pioneering mathematicians G H Hardy and Srinavasa Ramanujan.

The Man Who Knew Infinity attempts to make maths as exciting as the discovery of a new plant species or the cure to cancer in this lush and impressively-mounted turn of the century drama. Blinding us with numbers and equations scrawled in chalk across a blackboard, the maths geniuses slave over desks replete with crumpled formula-filled papers and burn the midnight oil to prove their theories in the hallowed rooms of Trinity College of Cambridge, mesmerising us with this arcane subject matter but leaving us none the wiser as to their tangible achievements by the time the credits roll – there is a banal footnote about black holes in the final scene – but how could maths be so emotionally involving and melodramatic as it is portrayed here? The answer is in the personal story of an man who came from obscurity to share the academic limelight with the ‘luminaries’ of the early 20th century – the only one that stands out to most people will be Bertrand Russell.

In Matt Brown’s exquisitely-crafted sophomore drama, Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons are engaging and imminently watchable as intellectual sparring partners: beautifully attired in their hand-tailored tweed and starched collars, they make a formidable and mildly fascinating couple of spiritually-edged geeks. And there is the cherubic Toby Jones looking genuinely benign as another leading light of figures, John Edensor Littlewood. Matt Brown’s script, appropriately for the era and context, contains lashings of racialism and prejudice towards the Indian 25-year-old prodigy who sprung from the backstreets of 1913 Madras with his ground-breaking theories on continued fractions and pure maths to struggle to the heights of English academia – a spiritual vegetarian in a college where the ‘loads of grub’ largely consisted of meat. The Man Who Knew Infinity is certainly appealing for mainstream audiences who enjoy intelligent dramas but those looking for a biopic of greater ingenuity in its specialised subject, might find this a trifle unsatisfying – if so – the indie title ‘Ramanujan’ is likely to have more appeal.

Adapted from Robert Kanigel’s 1991 biography, this is certainly an entertaining story with its blend of exotic Madras settings counterpoised with the ethereal backdrop of pre-war Cambridge. The young self-taught Sri dedicates himself to the study of maths forsaking his job as a clerk; his overbearing mother (aptly named Arundhati Nag) and his newly married wife Janaki (Devika Bhise), to beat a path towards England where, hoping to be published, he writes a letter to Professor Hardy who immediately seizes on his brilliance, offering him tutoring at Trinity, despite the open hostility and racial prejudice of the crusty old dons – amongst the most cantankerous being Professor Howard (Anthony Calf). There, in a cramped single room, he eschews nutritional and emotional support (his mother intercepts his wife’s letters) to tirelessly expound his theories which, he claims, are instinctively enlightened and spiritually inspired by his Hindu religion. Hardy is a hard-nosed academic who has no time for love or religion and is more interested in form and discipline than inspiration and free thought, while the generous-spirited Bertrand Russell (a fine Jeremy Northam) urges Hardy to “let him fly”. That said, Irons plays Hardy as a tremendously empathetic and supportive character and not in the least dry or leaning towards Asperger’s, as one might be tempted to expect. Patel brings an energetic sensitivity to his role, with the delicate elegance of an exotic fawn, he is also feisty and diligent.

But as Ramanujan’s health deteriorates with tuberculosis, the mawkish flashes to Janaki pining on the beaches and temples of Madras start a downward spiral in the dramatic tension. The final scenes of this memorable biopic are deeply affecting: not so much because of Ramanujan’s ailing health, but because of the astonishing impact he steadily makes on his intransigent ageing peers in their ivory towers. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 8 APRIL 2016 NATIONWIDE.

These Daughters of Mine (2015) | Kinoteka 2016

Writer| Director: Kinga Debska

Cast: Agata Kulesza, Gabriela Muskala, Marian Dziedziel, Malgorzata Niermirska

88min | Drama | Poland

Agata Kulesza (Ida) is the star turn of this Warsaw set family drama that never feels downbeat despite its tragic subject matter. She plays Marta, the middle-aged daughter of a woman who suffers a stroke, in the opening scenes, and is admitted to hospital with a touch and go chance of survival. At odds with her sister Kasia (Gabriela Muskala) who initially falls apart, she also has to contend with their overbearing father (Marian Dziedziel) who is not a well man himself.

There’s a faint whiff of humour to Kinga Debska’s graciously crafted dirrectorial debut that gravitates towards the more endearing aspects of ageing parents and hospital life. And luckily Marta never takes herself or her family ailments too seriously. And this ironic treatment lightens the more serious issues that arise when the father, recuperating from an emergency brain operation, becomes obstreperous and difficult to handle, escaping from his hospital ward, not far from his comotose wife, to buy alcohol.

Clearly Debska has experience of family bereavement and she brings this insight and subtlety to a film that never trivialises the difficult business of survival and the mental anguish for all concerned as family dynamics shift in surprising and ultimately deeply moving ways. Both the sisters have their unique coping mechanisms, Marta, the most outwardly robust and irreverent (not dissimilar to her character in Ida), debates with the doctors and smokes dope when the going gets tough. Kasia is more flighty and sensitive – passive aggressive even – praying in church and calling her mother soppy names, much to Marta’s disdain.

Andrzej Wojciechowski’s cinematography makes this family portrait all the more enjoyable with its softly bleached aesthetic and occasional widescreen visuals of the capital and surrounding countryside that take a welcome break from the hospital routine in an impressive drama that clearly marks Debska as a talent in the making. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 7 – 28 APRIL 2016

Dheepan (2015)

Director: Jacques Audiard | 109mins Drama France

Jacques Audiard’s searing social realism has won him much acclaim with hits such as A Prophet and Rust and Bone, With Dheepan he delivers another fraught drama about an immigrant family who bring their fierce loyalties to one another, and their religious convictions into the grim context of a strife-ridden community of outsiders who have recently arrived in Paris.

Shock and austerity greet them in a place thousands of miles from the soft jungles of Sri Lanka where the Tamil Tigers have taught them how to fight tooth and nail for their beliefs. But the struggle in their new home requires a more subtle form of combat. Suffused with images of the Hindu God Ganesh and sacred Indian elephants, who protect them during the night, daytime sees them facing a sombre scenario of inter-racial strife.

Audiard sets the scene in wartorn Sri Lanka where corpses are being burned after another incursion in Dheepan’s local village. Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan) and his friend Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan manage to flee by proceeding passports from three of the dead and arrive with an orphaned child, Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), having passed through immigration, . an interpreter reinventing their unconvincing story so that the two can gain employment as caretakers in a block of council houses. There they meet Youssouf (Marc Zinga) who shows them the ropes of how to get by in their new environment, but their language skills are non-existent. Working as cleaners for another immigrant who is crippled and mostly bedridden, they settle in gradually. Illayaal is allotted a place in a special needs class at school, along with other immigrant children still learning French, but young kids always manage to cope better than the adults.

Using a cast of newcomers, Audiard paints his humanistic study of everyday migration with a colourful palette of vibrant colours redolent of the exotic spice island back home. With the support of regular co-writer Thomas Bidegain, and cinematographer Eponime Menonceau, he also injects a vibe of simmering social unrest to this outwardly cohesive picture of a dislocated community. Despite their surface cooperation and acceptance of the situation, trouble is clearly brewing as racial conflicts emerge, and the mesmerising finale unspools in a way that we could never have anticipated.

Once again, Audiard handles his subject-matter with the dexterity of a seasoned filmmaker evoking his central character as a man of pure instinct, trained as a soldier and operating from a professional point view, while also being an insecure and, clearly, disorientated human being away from home.

Antonythasan Jesuthasan brings a freshness and authenticity to his debut role, and we feel for him. Worth noting is the fact that he is also a real life writer and activist who has been personally been involved with the Tamil Tigers. There’s nothing particularly new or noteworthy about Dheepan, it’s consistent, well-made and watchable, but why it won the Palme D’Or in a competition which boasted memorable features such as Carol, The Lobster, Son of Saul and Youth – while this is almost forgotten – still remains a mystery. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Goodbye, See you Tomorrow (1960) | Kinoteka 2016

Director: Janusz Morgenstern Writer: Zbigniew Cybulski

Cast: Zbigniew Cybulski, Teresa Tuszynska, Grzyna Muszyynska, Barbara Baranowska, Wlodzimierz Bielicki

88min | Drama | Poland

Infectiously light-hearted and expertly-crafted New Wave ‘Dolce Vita’ drama Goodbye, See you Tomorrow embraces the best elements of Polish New Wave cinema including its burgeoning talent: a breezy score by Krzysztof Komeda; pristine visuals of DoP Jan Laskowski, and a dazzling cast including Roman Polanski and Zbigniew Cybulski who also co-wrote the script (the two other writers: Bogumil Kobiela and Wilhelm Mach, along with Komeda would all die tragically by the end of the decade). Perhaps more than anything else, the film epitomises the restless optimism, tinged with doubt, of the younger generation after the war.

Boy – in the shape of Zbigniew Cybulski – meets girl (Teresa Tuszynska), the gamine daughter of a French diplomat. She taunts and teases him in the bars and streets of Gdansk and the beaches of Sopot. They walk, talk, debate politics and laugh during their carefree, free-wheeling flirtation that never really gets off the ground, but paints a buoyant black and white picture of the era. Fun and light-hearted Goodbye, See you Tomorrow captures a moment in time where Polish filmmaking talent flourishes and everything seems possible. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 7 APRIL – 28 APRIL 2016

The Absent One (2014)

Director: Mikkel Norgaard Writers: Nikolaj Arcel | Rasmus Heisterberg

Cast: Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Fares Fares, Pilou Asbaek, David Dencik, Danica Curcic, Johanne Louise Schmidt

119min | Crime Thriller | Denmark

Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Angels & Demons) and Fares Fares (Zero Dark Thirty) are just the pair for this gritty noirish thriller that is as stylishly dark as its dirty dealings, and another another criminal case for Danish Department Q, again directed by Mikkel Norgaard. This is a nasty affair involving a double murder of twin siblings in the ’90s which is reinvestigated by the Copenhagen cold-case duo after the teenagers’ father commits suicide in the bath. If you enjoyed The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013) then this should go down well as the second adaptation of a Jussi Adler-Olsen novel in the Department Q series.

Kaas plays Carl Morck the taciturn detective with a permanent scowl, Fares is Assad, his pleasantly open-faced colleague who is rather chuffed to be hitting it off with their latest secretary, a spunky red-head called Rose (Johanne Louise Schmidt); Kaas is not amused “we can’t keep changing secretaries”.

After a brief visit to the country setting of the teenagers’ illustrious public school, we meet the man who served 3 years for their murder, a drug-taking share dealer with a penchant for restoring old Maseratis. Back in the day he confessed to the murders and then somehow got Denmark’s best lawyer (Hans Henrik Clemensen) to defend him. The detectives’ only starting point in the case is a call made by a terrified girl (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), possibly a schoolfriend of the twins, though she seems to have disappeared now without a trace.

Scripters by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg have chosen a fractured narrative that flips back and forward, giving us clues about the past, while following the chronological police investigation and the violent activities of the Danish hoods – all tightly edited to ramp up the tension while keeping us on our toes. We don’t warm to the young teenagers, although their bouts of bonking in the leafy boarding school surrounds do give light relief from the dim interiors which, apart from a dash of dark humour, make the THE ABSENT ONE feel rather glum and buttoned down at times, particularly when Rose threatens to throw in the towel after a particularly brutal scene involving a mummified corpse: ” I’m not cut out for this” says she. But who is, in their right minds? And this is Nordic Noir.

But THE ABSENT ONE is watchable largely due to its well-oiled parts, and particularly for Kaas and award-winning Fares who are used to working together and manage to inject a flourish of charisma into these sordid Nordic goings-on. Pilou Asbaeck and David Dencik (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) are also strongly cast as suave but lethal Danish criminals of the upmarket kind. Well-crafted, if not a trifle formulaic, ABSENT‘s plotlines all coalesce to offer a slick and absorbing watch despite throwing its toys out of the pram at the end. MT

SHOWING AT PICTUREHOUSES AND SELECTED SCREENS FROM 8 APRIL 2016

Black Mountain Poets (2015)

Director: Jamie Adams

Cast: Alice Lowe, Dolly Wells, Tom Cullen, Rosa Robson, Richard Elis, Laura Patch

85min | Comedy Drama | UK 2016.

It looks like Jamie Adams (A Wonderful Christmas), had co-scripter Alice Lowe’s Sightseers performance in mind when he cast her as a scatter-brained would-be-poet in this feeble ‘Five Go Mad in Dorset’ style comedy. Black Mountain Poets sadly lacks cohesion but – more importantly – real humour.

The film opens with sisters Lisa (Love) and Claire Walker (Dolls) forcing their way into a camp site with wire cutters. Their bungling effort is spotted by a security guard who uses his mobile to photograph the pair and their get-away car. The car soon breaks down due to lack of petrol, and the sisters then steal a car belonging to the Wilding Sisters, Alys and Terry, who are on their way to a poetry festival. Finding their invitation in the car, Lisa and Clair immediately decide to impersonate the duo and are welcomed by the organisers and five competitors. Richard (Cullen) and Louise (Robson) have been a couple, but Richard, who has not written a poem for seven years, is jealously in awe of Louise, and soon deserts her for Lisa and Claire, giving them his tent, then sharing it with the sisters after a feeble attempts to erect it. Joined by Gareth (Elis) and Stacey (Patch), two not very well sketched out personas; the poets wander through the woods while the Wilding Sisters try to reach the Festival on foot.

In trying to show all the poets as dilettantes in more ways than one, BLACK MOUNTAIN POETS succumbs to an all-out bumbling approach of its own. The poems are dire and so are the pseudo-philosophical interludes: in one example Claire looks up into the sky, confessing disappointment with her life thus far. Instead of laughing, the audience actually feels sorry for Claire and Lisa, who Adams seems to be denounce and vilify – making them the butt of the humour rather than the generators of wit and repartee.

Visually Black Mountain Poets is flat, repetitive and unimaginative. The actors hector their lines, and even Lowe cannot escape the dour tedium. Bring back Carry-On Camping – at least it raised a real laugh. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 1 APRIL 2016

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015) | BFI FLARE 2016

Director.: Stephen Cone

Cast: Cole Doman, Pat Healey, Elizabeth Laidlaw, Nina Ganet, Melanie Neilan, Daniel Kyri, Joe Keery, Patrick Andreas

87min | Drama | USA

Stephen Cone made his name with multi-awarded breakout drama The Wise Kids. Still only 35, his 7th feature is a coming-out story that revolves around a family swimming pool party in upmarket Chicago where the aponymous Henry is celebrating his 17th birthday.

In this die-hard Christian community, Henry’s parents and the huge majority of guests and friends are born again Christians, their lives guided by (often ostentatious) thankfulness to the Lord – or so it seems. We meet Henry (Doman) for the first time on the eve of his birthday, in bed with his best friend Gabe (Keery). The boys masturbate, Gabe enthusiastically enumerating the sexual high points if he could seduce the class-beauty – but it soon becomes clear that Henry’s sex object is lying next to him. The next day’s birthday party starts off on a dull note; the adults gossiping about goings-on in the church, where Henry’s father Bob (Healy) is a pastor. But the tempo soon changes when stunning beauty Christine (Neilan) arrives, the boys hanging on her every word, and it’s clearly not Gospel. Meanwhile, Henry’s sister Autumn (Ganet), is still coming to terms with the big wide world outside the God-fearing community, after her first year at college – she is also angry with her boyfriend who had somehow talked her into losing her virginity. Then there is Henry’s friend Ricky (Andreas) who had “got aroused under the showers when seeing the bodies of his mates”. He later tried to commit suicide, and at Henry’s party he locks himself in the bathroom and disfigures his face with a razor. Finally, it emerges that Henry’s parents also have a skeleton in the cupboard: his mother Kat (Laidlaw) had an affair with a popular church leader (now dead) his widow Bob in reminiscing about his ‘great character’. Although Bob has forgiven Kat, she wants to move on, but being the sole family member in on her son’s sexual orientation, she asks her husband to give Henry his blessing.

In this rambunctious drama Cone impressively captures Henry’s hypocritical family background, but tries to involve too so many sub-narratives that Henry’s story submerges below the water line. What floats on the surface is his shyness, verging on blandness, and it’s never clear whether Doman, choses to plays him meek and mild or whether he truly is an emotionless cypher. While everyone else is rising to the bait, Henry seems un-engaged, almost distant. Cinematographer Jason Chiu echoes this mood with some insipid visuals, bringing a suitably voyeuristic feel to the underwater scenes. While empathetic to Henry’s feelings, Cone never really delves into wider implications of the issue, preferring to sketch out a story involving a series of social stereotypes. At such HENRY GAMBLE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY works better as a treatise on life in a devoutly Christian community, than as an involving drama of sexual awakening. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE | UNTIL 27 MARCH 2016

Spirits of the Dead (1968) | Blu-ray release

Directors: Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim

Cast: Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon, Terence Stamp, James Robertson Justice, Salvo Randone, Peter Fonda

121min | Fantasy Horror | US | Italy | France

The Sixties was a vintage decade for film and TV adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe. There were over 35 productions. Yet in 1969 a remarkable Poe film came and went with very little recognition. SPIRITS OF THE DEAD is a portmanteau piece directed by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini. Allowing directors of other nationalities to adapt American Horror Gothic is fascinating. So what did two Frenchmen and an Italian bring to Poe? Not complete fidelity to the text but undoubtedly intrigue and atmosphere.

The first film Metzengerstein concerns the rivalry between two families and a brief meeting between Fréderique (Jane Fonda) and her brother Wilhelm (Peter Fonda). When Fréderique fails to seduce her brother Wilhelm, she orders his stables to be burnt down. Wilhelm is killed in the fire and his spirit self-incarnates into a wild black stallion. This sounds dramatically promising. Unfortunately Vadim’s direction is so perfunctory that development is ditched for style. He is more eager to show off his actors wearing skimpy ‘period’ costumes (Jane Fonda’s wardrobe used as a trailer for his next Fonda film Barbarella). Only Claude Renoir’s fine photography redeems Metzengerstein, with a magnificently shot sequence of the stables ablaze.

Next is William Wilson. In contrast to Vadim, Malle’s direction is strong and pointed. The film re-works the theme of the doppelganger/alter-ego. Alain Delon is well cast as Wilson, a sadistic army officer. In confession with a priest, Wilson talks about being pursued by a man of his own image and name. Though the film’s chase scenes are gripping, the strongest sequence is the card game between Alain Delon and Giuseppina (Brigitte Bardot wearing a black wig!). Here Malle employs a manner of suspense, comparable to his first film Lift to the Scaffold. This has little to do with the original story but manages to convey, as does the film’s ending, Poe’s perplexing and morbid anxieties.

Finally we have Fellini’s episode, Toby Dammit. This is a genuine exercise in horror. Toby Dammit (Terence Stamp, at his best) is a famous movie actor disillusioned by his work, drugs, drink and the brittle celebrity bubble he lives in. The devil, in the shape of a young girl in a white dress bouncing a luminous ball, keeps following him. All Toby Dammit cares about is when he’ll receive his producer’s present of a Ferrari. However once the car arrives, the devil intervenes. Fellini creates situations both sinister and funny (the film’s full of jokes about cinema and philosophy) engagingly balanced against the set design horror of a broken Dantesque looking bridge and a victim’s blood dripping on a wire. Toby Dammit is a ‘horror of manners’ that is amongst Fellini’s best films.

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD is uneven: Period drama with a psychedelic edge that flounders, gains its balance and then disconcertingly swings forward to black contemporary satire that is unpredictable, humorous, shocking and occasional visual brilliant. These are not obvious Poe adaptations. I think old Edgar Allan would have approved of their spirit. ALAN PRICE

NOW AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY COURTESY OF AMAZON.CO.UK

Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (1960) | Dvd | Blu ray

Director: Luchino Visconti

Cast: Alain Delon, Annie Girardot, Renato Salvatori, Katina Paxinou, Claudia Cardinale, Spiras Focas, Max Cartier

Italy 1960, 180 min.

After La Terra Trema (1948), Visconti returned to neo-realism and films exploring the cultural divide between the North and South of Italy as featured, twelve years later, in his operatic length feature: ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS: an acerbic criticism of Italian social reality, “where the split between South and North was never so harsh, the prejudice of the North never so never fundamental, even though it was the era of the Italian economic miracle”.

Based on works by Giovanni Verga, Antonio Gramsci and Carlo Levi (Christ Stopped at Eboli), Visconti asked a team of writers to develop a script which would show “that people from the South who moved to the North for economic reasons would never be treated like brothers, but as strangers and intruders, who would have to do the most dirty work”. As usual with Visconti, the original script team was dismissed and Suso Cecchi d’Amico,Visconti’s favourite script writer, whose story was the basis of Rocco, finished the work with Visconti. As it happens, the split between the two geographical parts of Italy is still virulent today with the “Liga Nord”, a main political party, whose main focus is the separation between North and The Meridione still well-supported even now.

Before shooting began Visconti fell out with his regular producer Franco Christaldi who refused to cast Annie Girardot; instead, for reasons of box-office, he proposed Brigitte Bardot or Pascale Petit – “just fit to be engaged as manicurists”- according to Visconti. Goffredo Lombardo of ‘Titanus’ took over production, after having reluctantly agreed to cast Girardot.

When Rosaria Parondi (Paxinou) arrives with her three grown-ups sons Rocco (Delon), Simone (Salvatori), Ciro (Cartier) and their kid brother Luca in Milan, they meet the in-laws of their oldest brothers Vincenco (Focas), engaged to Ginetta (Cardinale). Vincenco has integrated well, but his newly arrived family is viewed with suspicion by the Milanese family of Ginetta. Vincence, who had been a boxer, secures fights for his brothers Rocco and Simone, but cannot do anything about the harsh living conditions his newly arrived family encounters. But Rosaria, a tough and dominant matriarch, solves this problem, and the family move into one of the high rise blocks on the outskrits of Milan. Simone falls in love with the prostitute Nadia, who lives two flights up. He neglects his boxing, and is beaten up brutally by an opponent. Rocco, on the other hand, takes his responsibilities seriously, even though he hates boxing, he achieves much more than Simone, who is a street fighter by nature. Having surpassed Simone in the ring, Rocco soon takes Nadia away from Simone, who reacts brutally, raping Nadia, even though Rocco has left her, asking her to return to Simone: “You are all he has”. But Simone only wants revenge. Visconti wanted to shoot he now famous murder scene in Milan’s ‘Idrobasa’, but the city council gave him no permission. They accused Visconti of showing no gratitude to the city of his birth. Finally, the scene was shot near lake Fogliano, near Lattina. (In real life, Salvatori married Giradout, the couple had a daughter).

After winning the Grand Jury Prix at Venice in 1960, ROCCO was censored and could not be shown at all in certain parts of Italy. Visconti replied with a long letter to the Italian Minister of Culture, accusing him of “wanting to repress the showing of the film altogether – only the media, the public and the parties of the Left have made it possible to be shown in this censored version”.

DOP Giuseppe Rotunno’s wide screen black-and-white images of the desolate suburb the Parondis inhabit belong to the most impressive portraits of Italian neo-realism and he went to shoot The Leopard for Visconti. His fighting scenes in the ring are equally outstanding, never shrinking away from the brutality of this “sport”, particularly when featuring Rocco, who hates violence and uses the fights to punish himself. Delon is the fallen angel, not sure of his gender orientation, he compensates in taking on responsibility for his family; trying to make up for Simone’s crimes, he even returns to the ring for good at the end. Salvatori finally is the coward, masquerading as the bully. When the police come after him he hides, begging for his mother. Girardout’s Nadia is very much in the ‘Carmen’ mould, sensuous and so full of life, a victim of male brutality. This is one of Italy’s finest films, full of intensity and rich complexity; like the Italians themselves. AS

NOW OUT ON BLU-Ray DUAL FORMAT | COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA, EUREKA

Women He’s Undressed (2016)

Dir: Gillian Armstrong | Doc 95’

Gillian Armstrong is no newcomer to exploring the lives of fascinating but lesser-known, niche designers: her biopic on Florence Broadhurst – another Australian designer (famous for her exquisite hand-printed wallpaper), and her ongoing documentary experiment with three Australian teenagers (now grown women) such as Smokes and Lollies, Fourteen’s Good and Eighteen’s Better, have received critical acclaim.

Her latest, a documentary WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSED is as much a portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s as it is an exploration of the life of Oscar winning Australian costume designer Orry-Kelly. WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSED plays out as part theatrical chamber piece, making good use of its stylish archival material, photographs and interviews with well known talking heads sharing pithy and gossipy insights.

There are some stylishly imagined scenes performed by actors (Deborah Kennedy plays Florence Kelly and Lara Cox, Ginger Rogers) that take the lid off the fashion side of Hollywood film industry, giving the documentary an entertaining dramatic twist. Despite being largely unknown in his own country, we learn that Orry-Kelly was a prodigious talent who dressed stars in over 280 films during his lifetime including such legends as Baby Face, Casablanca, Some Like it Hot and 42nd Street. He literally transformed actresses like Barbara Stanwyck (in The Lady Gambles) and Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca) creating a range of iconic costumes and stylish rigouts.

Clearly Orry-Kelly was gay, yet little emerges here of the costumier’s private life despite his candid efforts to be true to his ideals and authentic to the last: after marrying Randolph Scott, unlike many Hollywood characters, he made no attempt to cover up his sexuality by marrying a woman (unlike Cary Grant, Rock Hudson and so many others). Although not exhaustive, this is a watchable and welcome insight into Orry-Kelly’s life nonetheless. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Disorder (2015)

Director: Alice Winocour

Cast. Matthias Schoenaerts, Diane Kruger

100min. Belgian/France. Thriller

Alice Winocour’s follow-up to Augustine is a mesmerising mood piece lushly set in the Southern French villa of its name, where Matthias Schoenaerts’ ex-soldier Vincent Loreau arrives to guard the wife of a shady Lebanese businessman. Fraught with tension and generating the kind of potent on screen chemistry experienced in cult classic Body Heat and Chinatown between its central characters, the enigmatic narrative is driven forward by a pounding atmospheric score involving no less than nine sound technicians.

Diane Kruger plays the stone-faced wife Jessie, who enjoys this luxury villa lifestyle with her tiny son Ali. But luxury comes at a price and it only emerges later that her wealthy husband is a crooked arms dealer, who gradually disappears leaving her prey to a continuous onslaught of hooded intruders, whom Schoenaerts sends packing. A tight and minimalist script is piqued with the odd dry comment, briefly lightening the suspenseful if rather schematic plotline, whose strength lies chiefly in a powerfully physical performance by Schoenaerts, who gradually brings a smile to Kruger’s tight-lipped Jessie, as their relationship deepens. DISORDER plays its secrets close to its musclebound chest as it unfurls towards an impressive but unsurprising finale. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | REVIEWED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL May 2015 | MARYLAND

The Club | SILVER BEAR winner Berlinale

Director: Pablo Larraín

Cast: Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zeggers, Marcelo Alonso, Roberto Farias

98mins Thriller Chile

Chilean director Pablo Larraín is well-known for exploring the dark corners of his homeland to ferret out a few skeleton’s from the nation’s history. THE CLUB is such a story. There is always a place for his regular collaborator Alfredo Castro in these dark and often gloomy dramas. In this one, Castro (From Afar) gets a leading role hiding out in a windswept coastal backwater as a crusty old paedophile priest, Padre Vidal. And he’s not alone, sharing his grim beachhouse are four other priests, serving time for a variety of sexual misdemeanours in the name of God. Victoria Zeggers is Sister Monica, the young woman who keeps house for these miserable old men whose only pleasure in life is their obsession with a jointly- owned greyhound they race at competitive meets.

Sergio Armstrong’s cinematography captures the wide open emptiness of gloomy seascapes beaten by winds and endlessly suffused by a dank and dreary fog. The old buggers (quite literally) are on their last legs, rationed in their movements and deprived of any kind of physical enjoyment with limited contact with the outside world. It’s a sobering regime but a bearable one, until one night a troubled fisherman Sandokan (Roberto Farías) fetches up in the front garden hurling an unsavoury humiliating accusations at the one of the priests. His gripe, it appears, results from being repeatedly sexual abused in childhood by one of the priests. This toe-curling outpouring is unspeakably filthy and the men of God are mortified by this public take-down that is met the follow day by the arrival of Father García (Marcelo Alonso) with a mission to close down this cosy little seaside set-up. Father García is rather sultry and inappropriately attractive for the job in hand, leaving us wondering about his own motives in the scandalous affair.

THE CLUB is a sinister and suspenseful piece of filmmaking. A palpable tension hovers over proceedings like heavy fog drifting in from the sea; continually threatening but always managing to contain is subversive undercurrents. Guillermo Calderón and Daniel Villalobos contribute to a screenplay that villifies the characters but never completely demonises them, leaving much wit and wisdom for all to enjoy in the devilish den of iniquity. “I am the king of the repressed,” says Father Vidal (Castro). Darrain’s El Club is not an edifying story but an fascinating one. Meredith J Taylor.

ON RELEASE FROM 25 MARCH 2016 | REVIEWED AT BERLINALE 2015

Court (2014)

Writer|Director: Chaitanya Tamhane

Cast: Vira Sathidar, Vivek Gomber, Geetanjali Kulharni, Pradeep Joshi

116min | Drama | India 2014

COURT is a mature and analytical debut for first time director Chaitanya Tamhane, and won him the Orrizonti Prize at Venice Film Festival (2014): Not only does it deal with the disturbingly inefficient court system in India, but also the confrontation of different social classes, cultures and generations.

In Mumbai, in the state of Maharashtra, a folksinger and political activist Narayan Kamble (Sathidar) is accused of causing the death by suicide of a sewer worker: allegedly, one of his songs called for “all sewer workers to commit suicide”. His lawyer, an upper class Gujurati, Vinay Vora (Vivek Gomber, who also produced the film), tries to convince judge Sadavarte (Joshi), that his client is innocent since there is no proof of suicide. But prosecutor Nutan (Kulharni) is adamant about Kamble’s guilt: she uses colonial laws from Victorian times and all sorts of prejudice to convince the judge, asking for no less than twenty years imprisonment for the accused. And although Kamble is a native of Maharashtra, the folk singer is also a lower-caste Marathi. But Mumbai is a huge cosmopolitan city; home to people whose heritage is from other states, at both ends of the social scale. Nutan’s ideology is that of a petite bourgeoise, disliking Kamble for the simple fact that he is a Dalit (Untouchable), whether guilty or not, and she is afraid of any subversive activity (how ever far-fetched) the singer might engage in.

After the widow of the dead sewer worker testifies that her husband never talked about suicide, but was suffering from the sulphur gases of the sewage system, Vora at least gets bail for his client, paying the 100 000 Rupees himself, with no hope of seeing any of the money. But Kamble returns from prison to publish his poetry and is arrested again for breaking the rule of his bail conditions. With a whole month of court holidays coming, Vora tries to save the 65 year-old singer from another prison stretch.

Courtroom dramas are usually full of emotional confrontations and dramatic incidents, but COURT showcases the rather pedestrian system where postponements and archaic laws dominate proceedings. Tamhane claims the idea came about: “When I attended a non-descript lower court in suburban Mumbai, the sheer lack of drama, and the casualness with which life and death decisions were being made, sparked my imagination”. But COURT is much more than a matter of how the law is applied: Vora is clearly a member of the new upper-class, and whilst his parents are traditional and only interested in grandchildren, their son loves his bachelor life. In contrast, prosecutor Nutan is an ordinary, middle class mother who cooks for her family and talks non-stop about groceries.

COURT is an immersive and engaging film: DoP Mrinal Desai’s widescreen images are precise: in the courtroom scenes he uses a static camera, showing the rigid system in all its ponderings. On the outside, everything is lively and fluid, in contrast the courtroom sessions, with their biased rules and incompetent procedures, take up most of the day. Tamhane never forces the tempo, letting everything unravel gradually, including the well-drawn personalities who are full of contradictions arising from a society where the pre-colonial world view and the modern, enlightened but crass materialistic society collide. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES FROM 25 MARCH 2016
Winner: Orizzonti Award for Best Film and Lion of the Future – Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Debut Film, Venice Film Festival 2014 | More info: www.day-for-night.org/court-film

Nasty Baby (2015)

Director|Writer: Sebastian Silva

Cast: Kristen Wiig, Sebastian Silva, Tunde Adebimpe, Reg. E. Cathey, Mark Margolis

100min USA/Chile Drama

Sebastian Silva (Crystal Fairy, The Maid) treats us to a feel-good-movie about a gay couple trying to become parents with the help of their female friend – or does he? Set in Brooklyn’s gentrified community of hipsters and would-be artists, Silva’s comedy of manners turns into a nightmare.

Mo (Adebimpe) and Freddy (Silva) would like a baby. Their best female friend Polly (Wiig) is only too willing to help out as her biological clock is ticking overtime. But Freddy’s sperm count is too low and Mo is at first reluctant to produce the sperm, driving the others crazy with his procrastination. Freddy is a would-be artist – like many in the neighbourhood – and tries to produce a performance act for a show, organised by a gallery; his contribution is called ‘Nasty Baby’, where Freddy and his friends take on the roles of babies – Silva lets no doubt arise about how embarrassing his ‘art’ is. When the trio travels to visit Mo’s parents outside New York, the friction between the hipsters from Brooklyn and the traditional lifestyle of Mo’s family becomes apparent in a repressed way – even though it spurns Mo on, to take the plunge. In a hilarious scene we witness the use of the full set of paraphernalia needed for artificial insemination. Whilst focussing on the would-be-parents, we may have overlooked a mentally disturbed character “The Bishop” (Cathey), who harasses people on the street; is clearly homophobic (attacking Polly for visiting the gay couple) and wakes the men up every morning at seven, using his noisy leaf blower – even though there are no leaves left. A friendly neighbour (Margolis) tries to mediate, but something in Freddy snaps, setting in motion a night in which he drags all his friends into a true Shakespearean drama.

Yes, in hindsight, there’s more than one sign of things to come – but hey, our trio is so lovable, that the audience is rooting for them unreservedly. Here we have the ultimate dream protagonists: a mixed race gay couple (with Mo being the peace-loving black teddy bear), a caring health worker (Polly) and lots of funny artist friends who might not do very much, but are so cool. What Silva is asking the audience to do is look behind the easy-go lucky facades presented to us: “It’s just an elitist group that can do and live a life like that. Most people in the world have to do a real job to make money, but in New York you have people doing the most whimsical things”. And he goes even further: “The film looks at how people are being displaced from their original homes, and displaced by rich kids buying everything. This film is a fable and lesson for these hipsters”.

Shot mainly with a handheld camera, DOP’s Sergio Armstrong’s images are truly chaotic, just like the lives of the protagonists. Everyone races around; permanent mobility is seen as a replacement for focus – the only exception is the Abyssinian cat who is more manhandled than petted by Freddy and, exceptionally for her species, not afraid of water – hence the cute scene in the bathroom), . The acting ensemble is impressive, particularly Wiig who tries not to show her vulnerability and emerges as a sort of “Alice in a (as it turns out) very troubled Wonderland”. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8 APRIL 2016 | NASTY BABY WON THE TEDDY AWARD AT BERLINALE 2015

Girls Lost (2015) |Pojkarna | BFI Flare 2016

Director.: Alexandra-Therese Keining

Cast: Tuva Jagell, Louise Nyvall, Wilma Holmen, Mandus Berg

106min | Sweden | Fantasy Drama.

GIRLS LOST is Swedish writer/director Alexandra-Therese Keining (Kiss Me) screen adaptation of Jessica Schliefauer’s prize-winning novel about three teenage girls who escape constant bullying at school courtesy of a magic drink. Keining uses slick ’80s retro styling and ‘CSI’ type computer graphics to portray the body-transfer scenes which are underpinned by a complex narrative exploring the true nature of sexual orientation.

In a macho school environment, three angst-ridden teenagers Kim (Jagell), Momo (Nyvall) and Bella (Holmen) cling together in a climate of sexual bullying from the boys, and a total lack of protection from their blasé teachers. One evening, Bella finds a mysterious seed that quickly sprouts a flower. After a night of fancy-dress partying (with masks straight out of Eyes Wide Shut), the trio imbibe the flower’s sap in a trance-like gender switching sequence where male actors take over their roles. Bella and Momo experience a boost of confidence when they morph back into their female identities during the daytime, but Kim is happier when she’s a boy. When the ‘male’ trio get invited to a football game Kim meets Tony (Berg), a tough guy from a nearby the estate. The two of them go on a burglary spree; Kim falling for Tony, whose harsh persona belies uncertainty about his own sexual orientation. Emboldened by the magic elixir, the girls seem better equipped to fight off male aggression at school: Kim is the only one addicted to the sap and Momo discovers her feelings for the male Kim, but the sap cannot last forever.

What starts as an adolescent-bonding movie soon develops into a serious discourse about the finer points of sexual orientation. Kim is much more at home in male body than a female one. At the same time, he is drawn to boys, and rejects the female Momo, who has fallen in love with his male identity. What looked like at first as semi-lesbian trio, turns out into something entirely different: The female Momo is clearly attracted to boys (but not the one of the macho-variety she encounters at school), Bella is extremely shy and reticent, and has yet to discover her sexual identity, whilst the male Kim is prone to the male violence his female Alter-Ego hated so much. A big question mark hangs over female Kim’s future.

Keining’s direction is faultless but her script and particularly her dialogue is often trite and over-didactic. That said, GIRLS LOST is a daring and original fantasy drama made watchable by the visual impact of Ragna Jorming’s stunning cinematography. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE 2016

Welcome to Me (2014)

Director: Shira Piven Writer: Eliot Laurence

Cast: Kristen Wiig, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Robbins, Wes Bentley, Joan Cusack

87min | Comedy | US

In Shira Piven’s WELCOME TO ME, a mentally unstable woman becomes an unlikely TV personality. Alice Klieg is what is politely called ditzy: but her borderline bipolar personality disorder goes full throttle when she quits her meds on winning the Mega-Millions lottery. Narcissistic tendencies to the fore, Alice (Kirsten Wiig) buys a 15 million dollar TV Vanity slot: a programme entirely dedicated to herself.

Eliot Laurence’s script perfectly portrays the ‘me me’ generation in this amusing, kooky and off the wall comedy that won’t suit everyone. But if you’re a fan of Wiig and her bizarre antics then WELCOME TO ME will certainly appeal. There’s a strange fascination to her portrait of mental illness that somehow reminds us of many people we actually know. Tim Robbins’ psychoanalyst Dr Daryl Moffet brings his own dry wit to the party taking the edge off Alice’s endlessly cloying self belief in an understated comedy performance of his own. Robbins’ is a welcome addition to the cast and a calm and balanced foil to the ongoing silliness, which includes a scene where Alice floats into her show on a boat and shares her deepest sexual longings. Wiig’s Alice is both vulnerable and attention-seeking with her food fads, putative spirituality and nymphomaniac behaviour. But when Alice steps into her Vet’s scrubs to operate on dogs during the live show there’s a distinct feeling amongst animal lovers that this is a bridge too far.

James Marsden plays the head of the TV station who cow-tows to Alice’s whims hoping her money will finance his ailing TV station while his study director (Joan Cusack) is just appalled and strung out by having to tolerate the endless drivel. Occasionally wince-worthy, endlessly bizarre and sometimes funny: WELCOME TO ME will go down well if you’re looking for light-hearted relief over the Easter break. Mental health is no laughing matter and, out of respect, Piven’s narrative always teeters on the brink of tragedy in this clever portrait of mainstream madness MT

WELCOME TO ME IS ON GENERAL RELEASE and EXCLUSIVE TO TO Sky Store on March 25.

Sworn Virgin (2015) | BFI Flare 2016

Director: Laura Bispuri Writer: Elviria Dones

Cast: Alba Ruhrwacher, Flonja Kodheli, Lars Eidinger, Emily Ferratello, Luan Jaha

90mins Italy/Albania Drama

‘Swearing Virginity’ is an ancient practice that still exists today in remote areas of Albania. Young women sacrifice their physical and emotional freedom in order to enjoy the privileges and rights only accorded to men, who enjoy complete independence and command the respect of the womenfolk in their community .

In Laura Bispuri’s sensitive feature debut, the sworn virgin in question is Hana Doda, played convincingly here by well-known Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher (Best Actress at Venice last year for HUNGRY HEARTS). As ‘Mark’ Doda, she eventually decides to leave her mountain home and seek refuge and a new life with her sister Lila (Flonja Kodheli) in Italy, after spending a decade of deprivation in a mountain village.

In Milan life feels very different for ‘Mark’, as she gradually adjusts to the modern world and a future of freedom, while constantly revisiting her painful past, seen in flashback. Feeling awkward and alienated by these new surroundings, it is never full explained why she continues to use her male name and dress as a man after arrival in their home. Teenage niece (Emily Ferratello) realises that things are not normal, despite her mother’s protestations to the contrary, and appears understandably hostile and questioning. Lila’s husband also seems to treat ‘Mark’ with a certain degree of frostiness, particularly when he sees the sisters experimenting with a new bra. It is only when she meets a life guard (Lars Eidinger) at the local swimming pool that Hana’s female longings start to awaken and her femininity blossoms.

Laura Bispuri adopts a less is more approach to her slow-burning narrative: dialogue is minimal, both in Italian and Albanian, and a stark steely blue aesthetic lends an aura of sombre frigidity to the narrative, keeping the tension simmering while details slowly emerge as the film unspools. SWORN VIRGIN is Based on a novel by Albanian writer Elvira Dones, the medieval practice stills survives today in backward mountain areas where brides are taken fully veiled by their husbands so they are unable to find their way back home. A bullet is included in their dowry by the bride’s father, just in case they fail to please their intended spouses. MT

Now SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE FESTIVAL until 27 MARCH 2016

ERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015 – ALL OUR COVERAGE IN UNDER BERLINALE 2015

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2015)

Director: Kirk Jones

Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, Andrea Martin, Elena Kampouris

94min | USA | Comedy Drama.

British director Kirk Jones made his name with a string of watchable comedy dramas such as Nanny McPhee and Everybody’s Fine. In MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2, he joins forces with writer Nia Vardalos, who carries the story forward from the original film, directed by Joel Zwick. With the same verve and the same cast as Part One, Kirk again conjures up the ebulliently loving and often overbearing nature of these family-oriented Mediterraneans.

Not much has changed for Toula (Vardalos) since she got married to Ian (Corbett) – if possible, things have got worse. Not only is she trying to motivate their 17-year old daughter Paris (Kampouris) to study at NW University in Chicago, so she can keep her at home; but her parents Gus (Constantine) and Maria (Kazan) have found out that they were not technically married in the first place and now want to be marry for real – in a big way. Toula and Ian’s marriage is on life support, as they rarely see each other: poor Toula is still slogging it out at her parent’s restaurant ‘Dancing Zorba’s’. All generations of the Portocalos clan live in three houses next to each other. Privacy is impossible and apart from everyone living on top of each other, hordes of relatives are likely descend at any moment on their unsuspecting in-laws. This status quo is fine for most of the elder generation, but Toula and Ian’s love life is often conducted in their own driveway – with the whole family as inadvertent voyeurs. Aunt Voula (Martin) always knows best and wants to be in charge of the wedding preparations but Toula does all the real work while her grandmother blithely bets the family finances away on her mobile. Gus torments everybody with his purported blood line to Alexander the Great and Gus and Maria’s wedding plans continually threaten to go off the rails.

Portocalos’ family is shown larger than life: faults and idiosyncrasies are highlighted, nobody is spared. The men in the family (apart from a weak Ian) are shown as overgrown babies, relying on their wives to get them trough life. But Vardalos never denounces her characters, showing them simply as frightened emigrants, trying to recreate the lifestyle they left behind in their beloved homeland. Emotions may be cloying at times, but they are enduring; relationships are not discarded in the face of difficulty. DoP Jim Denault expresses the histrionics in bold primary colours using long panning shots to show the circus atmosphere of family life, where clowns often run the show. Vardolos is impressive as the heroine, tragic and comic by turns, and there is valiant support from a sterling support, particularly John Corbett as her husband, Ian. Although My big fat Greek Wedding 2 lacks the spontaneity of the original, it still stands as a humane exploration of old world values colliding with contemporary life in the USA. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Flare is 30! | LGBT Film Festival 2016 | 17-27 March 2016

FLARE is 30! And to celebrate, the BFI is offering a chance to see the latest films from a flirty selection – appealing to the arthouse crowd and gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender cineastes alike.

Kicking off, quite literally, with the World premiere of THE PASS, Ben A Williams footy-themed drama, stars Russell Tovey and Arinze Kene as Club lovers, in both senses of the word, who come together during an away match thousands of miles from home. And to close, SUMMERTIME [La Belle Saison], Catherine Corsini’s passionate portrayal of Paris during the ’70s where Cecile de France and Izïa Higelin star as two very different women who fall in love against the feminist street protests in the French capital.

This year screenings benefit from the EASTER BREAK and will continue on the day after this Closing Gala (Easter Sunday 27 March) with a Second Chance Sunday devoted to 2016 Festival best-sellers and a selection of LGBT archive gems from the Festivals’ history. Every ticket on Second Chance Sunday will be offered at the discounted price of £8. As a highlight of the day, the BFI will show the film that tops a brand new critics’ and programmers’ poll of the top 10 global LGBT films of the last 30 years. The result of this BFI poll and all the films screening on Second Chance Sunday will be announced soon.

Between 17 – 27 March most screenings will be accompanied by Q&As and a chance to meet and debate with visiting talent including Silas Howard, the first trans director on Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Transparent, who will be in London to regale us with his experiences. Special Presentations include Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, an in-depth and uncompromising portrait of the life and work of the legendary photographer Robert Mapplethorpe by award-winning World of Wonder duo Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (Inside Deep Throat); Rebel Dykes, a work-in-progress screening event of Harri Shanahan and Sian Williams’ documentary which explores the forgotten ‘herstory’ of lesbian punk London in the 1980s. Jacques Martineau and Olivier Ducastel (Jeanne and the Perfect Guy, Drôle de Félix) will also be there in the wake of their Berlinale world prem Theo & Hugo, a finely crafted and provocative French drama.

Of the 50 features screenings, be sure not to miss the following Gala Specials, and highlights from the festival strands HEARTS, MINDS and BODIES.

DEPARTURE British director Andrew Stegall’s touching debut about a mother (Juliet Stephenson) and son Alex Lawther (The Imitation Game) struggling with their relationship. Barak and Tomer Heymann’s touching drama WHO’S GONNA LOVE ME NOW? fresh from Berlinale, which explores the family dysfunction of an HIV positive Israeli finding an adoptive second home in London as a member of London Gay Men’s Chorus. And from the Cult Classic strand CALAMITY JANE at the BFI IMAX will celebrate everyone’s favourite cowboy/girl Doris Day with this dazzling new digital restoration presented on the biggest screen in Britain.

H E A R T S includes films about love, romance and friendship.

FROM AFAR – Lorenzo Vigas’ Golden Lion 2015 winner at Venice Film Festival;

THE GIRL KING – Mika Kaurismäki’s 17th century lesbian costume drama, set at the court of Queen Christina; CAROL Toddy Haynes’ masterful lesbian screen version of Patricia Highsmith’s novel stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara; DESERT HEARTS a cult classic lesbian ’80s love story as vibrant as ever, the only lesbian film shown at the 1986 edition; WHOSE GONNA LOVE ME NOW a gay Jewish man’s journey to find acceptance and stability amid the perils of hard drugs and HIV

B O D I E S features stories of sex, identity and transformation.

THE CHAMBERMAID LYNN – Ingo Haeb’s disturbing German story of a hotel-cleaner who becomes a fetish sexworker; NASTY BABY a Brooklyn-set adoption story with a tragic twist; SWORN VIRGIN – Laura Bispuri’s startling drama stars Alba Rohrwacher as an Albanian whose transition to living as a man involves complex cultural traditions..

M I N D S features reflections on art, politics and community

THE TRIAL OF SIR ROGER CASEMENT a chance to catch a rare screening starring Peter Wyngarde as a man executed for treason in the ’60s; WELCOME TO THIS HOUSE Barbara Hammer explores the life of Pulitzer prize-winning author and lesbian Elizabeth Bishop; WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSEED a genius Hollywood costumier’s life is told through the stars he dressed and undressed: Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe; KA BODYSCAPES Jayan Cherian’s sophomore drama explores themes of oppression and rebellion in the southern Indian province of Kerala, through the adventures of a young bohemian artist on the cusp of fame

While films and film cultural are at the heart of the BFI, the atmosphere at Southbank brings people from far and wide. This year the hugely popular BFI Flare Club Nights return (Fri 18, Sat 19, Thu 24, Fri 25 and Sat 26) at Benugo Lounge and Riverfront with our favourite DJs and newfound friends including Pitch Slap!, Sadie Lee and Jonathan Kemp, Pink Glove, Club Kali, and for Closing Night Bad Bitches and Unskinny Bop.

www.bfi.org.uk/flare

Marguerite (2015) | Competition | Venice Film Festival 2015

Director: Xavier Giannoli

Cast: Catherine Frot, Andre Marcon, Denis Mpunga

France, Czech Republic, Belgium 2015, 127 min.

Xavier Giannoli’s portrait of the Roaring Twenties in Paris is neither a satire nor a celebration of the artistic life of the era; best described as a study of lonliness and self-delusion – even Catherine Frot’s stirring performance as the eponymous chanteuse cannot save this ill-advised and overlong drama from descending into tedium.

Frot, who has seen much better days in films like La Tourneuse de Pages, has to sing her heart out to keep the film alive. Her character is obviously a terrible singer, paying her way on the concert platform with her own enormous wealth. Her unsupportive husband George (Marcon) usually arrives too late at her concerts – his sports car always ‘giving up the ghost’ at the same spot – a running gag used too often. But then, repetition is the main curse of MARGUERITE: her black valet Madelbos (Mpunga) tries again and again to con her audience and journalists with bribes to attend these embarrassing soirees, the singer flirts with younger men, and the flower arrangements to mark the ‘greatness’ of her performances grow to monstrous proportions. Instead of emotion, we get pantomime; instead of characters we have caricatures and, worst of all, every move is telegraphed.

The opulent production design makes one one wonder how costs could have been spent more wisely and the dreadfully contrived ending sends everyone rushing home before the final credits have rolled – just to escape this unspeakably noisy, over-bearing and unimaginative caricature of a film where the only laughs are involuntary, directed at the majority of unfortunate collaborators. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 September 2015

Three Farmers and a Son (2016) | Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film, Graz | 8-13 March 2016

Director: Sigmund Steiner | Austria | Documentary | 72 min

Sigmund Steiner is the son of a farmer — and he wants us all to know it. Barely a moment into his feature-length debut THREE FARMERS AND A SON, he tells us in a quiet, reflective voice-over of his father’s trade and of his own bemusement at the longstanding notion that, for a farmer, tending to one’s land takes priority over one’s family. In the hope of coming to a better understanding of what is to him such a disconcerting idea, Steiner turns an inquisitive and attentive eye to the separate toils of three autonomous agricultural workers. Receiving its world premiere at the Diagonale, Austria’s national film festival held each year in Graz, Steiner’s finely poised essay-doc is a triptych of intimate portraits on the one hand, and a richly rendered landscape film on the other.

We establish each of Steiner’s three protagonists through a series of observational scenes. Matthias tends to a field of potatoes, shrugging a philosophical lament at his own son Dominik’s apathetic view of agriculture (Dominik shuffles next to him, hands in pockets, while double-chinned Matthias points to the flat expanse of earth behind them with his thumb). Fellow farmer Martin fells spruce trees: mammoth trunks land with dull thuds on a forest floor. Herbert, meanwhile, stands over a lamb as if its pending slaughter is a sacrifice to the heavens more than a routine task of economic necessity. “Thank you,” he calmly mutters seconds before shooting a bolt gun into the animal’s skull and slicing its throat. (Just another authentic slaughter scene on the arthouse circuit, but at least Steiner gets that inevitability out of the way early.)

Steiner intersperses such scenes with more contemplative, postcard vistas (sunrays cutting through clouds, the outlines of treed hills intersecting one another). All three farmers also give their time as interviewees, answering the filmmaker’s questions about their work, the extent to which it continues family customs and their concerns over what happens next, in the hands of an increasingly indifferent younger generation. Herbert in particular is nothing if not grateful for the down-through-the-generations traditions he’s had passed onto him, and dedicates himself to the task with an almost religious commitment. In one touching scene, we see him topless, silver-stubbled and sweaty-browed from the midday sun (head causing shadows on his own chest), as he reminisces about his own dad and about the one shared father-son moment that he remembers.

Born in the Upper Styrian town of Judenburg in 1978, Steiner studied under Wolfgang Glück and Michael Haneke at the Vienna Film Academy, and counts fiction shorts as well as experimental non-fiction in his wide-ranging portfolio. The steady framing of this impressively visual documentary most recalls his work as the cinematographer of Barbara Kaufmann’s shorts, such as 23 WINDOWS TO THE COURTYARD (2011). Like that 25-minute citywide ode to quieter, semi-private pockets of Vienna, THREE FARMERS evokes a vivid, even dramatic sense of place through shifts in natural light and a sensitivity to local sound. Look out for sun-kissed flies buzzing aglow against soil-brown pastures in one late-afternoon shot.

THREE FARMERS’ German-language title is HOLZ ERDE FLEISCH — literal translation, “Wood Earth Meat.” Bare necessities abound: it’s all earthen browns and olive greens here. Shooting in CinemaScope, Steiner demonstrates a sharp instinct for composition throughout: the opening image, of three distant (and distinct) hills at dusk, neatly cues the narrative’s tripartite structure. Later, silhouette figures on a horizon foregrounded by an avocado-coloured baize help reflect the filmmaker’s obvious appreciation for such earth-bound, year-round labour and for the topographical character of the space that defines such ritualistic patterns: its tones, its timbres, its colours. Indeed, but for the opening voice-over, one might have guessed from this evidence that Steiner was, in fact, the son of a painter. MICHAEL PATTISON

REVIEWED AT DIAGONALE | Festival of Austrian Film| March 8–13, 2016, Graz, Austria

Next to Her (2016)

Director: Asaf Korman Writer: Liron Ben-Shlush

Cast: Liron Ben-Shlush, Dana Ivgy, Yaakov Dniel Zada

90min | Psychological drama | Israel 2014.

NEXT TO HER is a startlingly honest first hand account of one woman’s experience caring for her mentally handicapped sister. In her screenwriting debut Israeli actress Liron Ben-Shlush avoids sentimentality and voyeurism to offer a candid and often moving drama exploring the coal face caring for the physically challenged.

Apart from her day job as a site manager for a school, Chelli (Ben-Shlush) has cut herself off from the world to be her sister Gabby (Ivgy) primary carer. The two of them live in a small, desolate flat where they share everything, including a bed: they even bath together. Gabby has the mental age of a two year old, and needs permanent supervision. When Chelli’ mother visits, Gabby plays up, and head butts her. It seems that only Chelli is able to contain Gabby’s unruly behaviour. But the social worker is not happy that Gabby is left alone for many hours a day, and arranges a place in a day-care centre for her. Chelli is slightly miffed when she discovers Gabby likes the centre and has bonded well with Sveta, a leading member of the staff. Suddenly, with more time on her hands, Chelli arranges a date with Zohar (Zada), the PE substitute teacher at her school, who still lives with his mother at the age of 34. Chelli is keen on sex and irritated that Zohar gets on well with Gabby. After Zohar moves into the cramped apartment, Chelli’s jealousy gets worse when she finds out Gabby is pregnant and throws Zohar out, without even looking for an alternative scenario.

Every relationship in a caring capacity, professional or private, is defined by the interdependency between carer and patient. This goes particularly for relationships of this kind between family members where boundaries are even more easily transgressed. Although she lacks freedom, Chelli is very much in control of the relationship and Gabby is dependent on her for everything. It is only too human for Chelli to feel superior – and to enjoy this feeling. When first Sveta, then Zohar show that they have an emotional input with Gabby, Chelli feels challenged. Without giving Zohar a chance, she abruptly reduces the relationship with her sister to the status quo, where she has total control of her symbiotic bond. Zohar has a similar interdependent relationship with his mother, mirroring Chelli’s relationship with Gabby. After Zohar moves in, the space seems to shrink even more, and Chelli has a job on her hands trying to in vain to get Gabby used to sleeping alone.

DOP Amit Yasour Ron Zikno evokes the claustrophobic oppression of this domestic set-up with dark, brownish hues that lighten up when the action moves out to the roof terrace of the block of flats or the school grounds. Directed by her real life husband, Asaf Korman, Ben-Slush and Ivgy interact impressively, the latter having made an in depth study of the mentally handicapped to prepare for her part which she pulls off impressively. Korman directs with instinctive sensitivity, trying successfully to keep the middle ground between film action and the real life events they are based on. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 March 2016

The Witch (2015) | LFF 2015 | Best First Feature

Writer|Director: Robert Eggers

Cast: Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Harvey Scrimshaw

90mins | Horror | US Canada

THE WITCH is a genuine horror story set in the Puritan heartlands of New England in the early part of the 17th century. Sumptuously-mounted with meticulous attention to detail and atmosphere, Robert Eggers’ rigorously-scripted indie debut successfully tells a tale of witchcraft suggested by the prevailing climate of religious hysteria and folkloric belief, that touches a family of devout Christian settlers.

In this indie curio, which scratches at the edges of mainstream horror, writer-director Eggers orchestrates the atmospheric setting, unnerving score, morose tone and fervent performances to create a film that is more laudable and impressive than particularly errifying or surprising. Precision framing and gorgeous period costumes also go to give THE WITCH serious arthouse appeal although it is unlikely to shock the usual horror crowd.

The story is set about fifty years before the Salem Witch Trails. It concerns a family who have been exiled from the mainstream Puritan church and close community over some religious difference of opinion. Vowing to make a go of things with a small farm deep in the forest, the father (Ralph Ineson) nevertheless seems ill-prepared for the task ahead with the birth of their latest child keeping the slightly histrionic mother (Kate Dickie) preoccupied with her small twins Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson). Meanwhile young son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) is capable of looking after the livestock with the help of his teenage sister, the open-faced and pleasant Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy). But the baby suddenly disappears during a full moon, seemingly carried off by a red-cloaked stooping figure who is later seen anointing her decrepit naked body in blood and gore.

To put these events in context, the 17th century was still a dangerous time to live outside established community settlements. Native Indians roamed New England and folklore created a climate of suspicion and fear. Infant mortality was extremely high, but the mother is unable to overcome her grief as it spills over affecting the wellbeing of the family. Their situation deteriorates as household items go missing, the goat sickens and the weather turns inclement and food supplies dwindle. To help the disconsolate father, Caleb and Kate venture into the forest to look for food with the rifle. All they find is a strange rabbit who evades their bullets. The pair become separated and Caleb finds himself outside a cottage where a tousled hair siren beckons him in. At this point the narrative swerves away from the witches and focuses on the family as it starts to implode. Threats of violence are bandied about and the mother starts to point the finger of blame at Thomasin, accusing her of witchcraft.

Eggers’ script has plenty of old English personal pronouns flying around and the religious fervour steadily ignites with some remarkable outbursts from a superb cast who embrace the tragic events with escalating hysteria in scenes of mounting melodrama. To to his credit, Eggers keep things plausible :THE WITCH could serve as a timely metaphor for the state of the family in the 21st century. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

Per Amor Vostro (2015) | Anna | CINEMA MADE IN ITALY WEEKEND

Direct0r: Giuseppe M. Gaudino

Cast: Valeria Golino, Massimiliano Gallo, Adriano Giannini, Elisabetta Mirra, Daria d’Isanto, Eduardo Cro

109 min | Italy France | Drama

Director and co-writer Giuseppe M. Gaudino (Round the Moon between Earth and Sea) delivers a typically Italian tale of woe and a sensitive character piece for Valeria Golino, one of Italy’s best loved actresses. Anna is a mother of three, a martyr to her family who is clearly depressed. Overloading the already confusing narrative with various subplots, Gaudino chooses a mannered style which oscillates between moody black and white images and colourful phantasy sequences, leaving Golino to struggle with her subtly nuanced performance amid a fog of artistic experimentation.

In Naples, Anna is in her forties and lives with her teenage children Santina (Mirra), Cinzia (D’Isanto) and Arturo (Cro), the latter being deaf, and her violent out of work husband Gigi (Gallo), a failed singer, whose has previously led his family to near ruin. But a criminal streak run throughout the whole family: Anna served time in a juvenile prison to cover up for an adult relative, who would have had to spent ten years behind bars. Now working in a TV studio, she writes dialogue prompts for the amateurish cast of a TV soap opera that stars another Italian favourite Adriano Giannini (as Michele). In a brief spell of euphoria the two become lovers but gradually black clouds drift in (literally and metaphorically) when a friend, whom she replaced at work, is murdered. But that’s not all: her family is again plunged into financial trauma affecting the lives of her neighbours.

Valeria Golino moves elegantly through this drama with impressive grace and serenity despite her purported mental instability and Matteo Cocco’s appalling black and white images and freeze frames which lend and air of artificiality to the whole undertaking: they lack any crispness because they have been probably shot originally in colour. In an attempt to evoke feelings of helplessness, her bus becomes flooded with water. Other artful gimmicks include clouds of ink which gather whenever Anna looks out of her window into the Bay of Naples. Obviously, Gaudino is trying to convey Anna’s mental illness in these symbolic sequences but the results are often overbearing and provide no real insight into her troubled mind. An often repeated kitsch-colour scene shows her as an angelic child, having to ‘fly’ from her window down to the yard on a secured rope. But despite her unhappiness she feels a responsibility to her kids, despite Santina’s turning against her on the grounds of her lack of enterprise in acquiesing to her difficult past. Valeria Golino won the Silver Lion for Best Actress at last year’s Venice Film Festival for her portrayal. She is the only reason to watch this over-ambitious, but flawed drama. And, of course, Adriano Giannini who is superb as the quintessential Latin Lover, with his raffish charm and come to bed eyes. AS

SCREENING DURING CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | 10 – 14 MARCH 2016 |

Hail, Caesar (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Directors | Writer | Producer

107min | Drama | US

The Coen brothers’ HAIL, CAESAR is the starry Berlinale 2016 opener, bringing a touch of FiftiesHollywood glamour to this year’s festival and starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and Channing Tatum and Alden Ehrenreich.

Underneath its all-singing, all-dancing comedy pretensions and Busby Barclay showstoppers Channing Tatum Does a Comme des Garcons style vignette) lies the real-life story of a saintly studio ‘fixer’ Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), whose days are dedicated to serving the studio’s interest in an era where the studio controlled the actors, writers et al. Mannix is a decent man who does good by everyone he works with; not unlike the worthy Larry Gopnik in the Coens’ much undervalued A Serious Man. Hail is a mainstream commercial caper and Mannix is a suaver operator, that said. A devout Catholic with zealous confessional habits: his worst sin is nicking a few ciggies – he’s trying to stop smoking; his job is to ‘physically’ produce a picture called Hail, Caesar! aka A Tale of The Christ which has the studio’s man of the moment Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) starring in the lead as a Roman aristocrat who roots for Jesus, so impressed is he by ‘seeing the light’.

Dealing with his daily dose of prima donnas (male and female) Mannix copes with good grace and calm control thanks to the services of his hyper efficient PA who always manages to help him find a happy Hollywood ending. Apart from Hail, Caesar! He’s managing Scarlett Johanssen’s accidental pregnancy as the ballerina star of a pool-based musical and Ralph Fiennes in a Noel Coward turn as the director (Laurence Laurentz) of a dainty drawing room drama. Although Fiennes is slightly underused here, his owning leading man Hobi is a vehicle for the talents of Alden Ehlenreich who is dynamite as a Western star with a spectacular sideline in lassoing, and who also ends up saving the studio with his streetwise charm.

The butt of the Coen’s Jewish-style humour here is Catholism and although it manages not to offend, it doesn’t quite get it either – perhaps it’s easier to make a comedy out of a religion that’s closer to your heart and they should leave the Catholics to the likes of John Michael McDonagh or his brother Martin. Despite that, the script is whipsmart and thanks to some deft editing keeps on firing like a kalishnakov with some really entertaining moments, particularly when Frances McDormand’s editor gets her scarf caught in the editing machine.

But Mannix’s biggest problem is that Baird Whitlock has vanished, kidnapped by Hollywood communists. These old, disgruntled writers hold their captive at a grand Malibu beach house where they ruminate over tea and cakes as to why their scripts never made them rich.- another underlylimg Coen theme. But as they await a $100,000 ransom payment, these salon Marxists try to enveigle Baird into their way of thinking. As Baird, Clooney gets a dorkish role which gives him plenty of opportunity to show off his thighs and his clever comedy skills while still being every inch a star (and clearly not just a pretty face).

Star power also comes in the shape of Tilda Swinton who plays identical twin sister gossip columnists who compete to dish the Hollywood dirt. But Eddie has his hand on the pulse as he beavers round cleverly manoevring Hobie into dating his co-star Carlotta Valdez (Veronica Osorio), providing another glittering sideshow. Mannix is also toying with a temptingly lucrative offer that would allow him more ‘family time’ but clearly less work satisfaction – another evergreen theme.

In the end, the Coens manage to deliver a film that Frank Capra would be proud of, premise wise. The hotch potch doesn’t quite coalesce but it’s an entertaining charmer that sprinkles stardust and glamour on its more weighty themes to deliver that classic Hollywood tenet the ‘happy ending’.

Mannix is the eternal everyman; the good shepherd leading his flocks and bringing them to safety each night. The man everyone wants as their friend or partner when the champagne glasses are put away. And Josh Brolin plays him well in a role that puts him firmly up there as a seasoned star in the Hollywood firmament. MT

BERLINALE 11 – 21 FEBRUARY 16

Goodnight Mommy (2014) | Ich Seh, Ich Seh

Director: Veronika Franz/Severin Fiala Producer: Ulrich Seidl

Cast: Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz, Susanne Wuest

99min Austria (German with subtitles)

The Austrians are very good at taking ordinary life and turning into horror at Venice this year. In the same vein as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), Ulrich Seidl’s (Im Keller) wife and collaborator, Veronika Franz, makes her directorial debut with, along with Seidl’s nephew, Severin Fiala, in this vicious and expertly-crafted arthouse piece full of malevolence and wicked twists, set in a slick modern house buried in the Austrian countryside.

In the heat of summer, nine-year-old Elias is enjoying the school hols with his twin brother Lukas (played superbly by debut actors of the same name). They appear normal boys: swimming, exploring the woods, and keeping giant cockroaches as pets. But in the pristine lakeside home, their TV exec mother has made some draconian changes. After a relationship breakdown, she is recovering from facial surgery and bandaged up literally like a ‘mummy’, in a draconian new regime (to assist healing) she has banned all friends from visiting the house while her recuperation takes place in total privacy. Nothing wrong with that, but the boys misinterpret her behaviour as a sinister sign that things domestic are going downhill and start to wonder whether this is an imposter or really their mother. The more they question her for re-assurance, the more fractious and distant, though strangely vulnerable and scary, she becomes. Reacting against her instinctively, the boys become convinced that their former warm and affectionate parent is a strange intruder, and decide to take control of the situation with a series of unpleasant and downright vicious tests.

Franz and Fiala create an atmosphere of mounting suspense with clever editing, minimal dialogue and the use of innocent techniques that appear more sinister and unsettling when taken out of context: window blinds that appear to signal morse code; a bloodshot eye in the bathroom eye; crunchy biscuits that sounds like cockroaches – all harmless in themselves yet unsettling and this startling paean to unbequemlichkeit, in this context. Martin Gschlacht’s cinematography switches between lush landscapes, sterile interiors and suggestive modern art to inculcate a sense of bewilderment and unease. Susanne Wuest is perfectly cast as the icy, skeletal blond matriarch with menace. The use of several characters to enforce local religious traditions and sensibilities help to ramp up tension and subversive humour: the overweight Red Cross couple, the sinister Sexton and a Catholic priest. The innocent boys transform into everyday psychopaths due to their lack of early maternal love or support, bring to mind those terrible kids from The Shining, The Innocents and even Cronenburg’s The Brood. With the complex manipulation of sound and music, this is a very clever film which contrasts images of visceral revulsion with those of serene beauty, as reality and fantasy start to blur. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | REVIEWED AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014

Best Foreign Language Oscar Winner 2016 | Son of Saul (2015)

MUSTANG, SON OF SAUL, A WAR, THEEB and EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT were the five contenders for the Academy Award 2016, BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM. All concern the evergreen theme of conflict: Three are poignant stories told against a backdrop of War. SON OF SAUL: the memories of a Hungarian Jew forced to end the lives of his compatriots during the Second Word War: A WAR is the story of a normal family man caught up in a war thousands of miles from home and THEEB, Jordan’s first ever Oscar contender, a ravishing desert drama that takes place during the First World War. MUSTANG looks at an ongoing war of another kind and follows a group of Turkish girls who stand up against male subjugation in a male dominated society. Finally EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT is a black and white fantasy adventure that straddles two different generations of a journey exploring lost traditions and cultures, touched by the horrors of Colonialism. And the winner is SON OF SAUL.

MUSTANG | France | 2016 | 97mins | Drama

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT | Colombia | 2015 | 125mins | Drama

SON OF SAUL | Hungary | 2015 | 107min | Drama

A WAR | Denmark | 2015| 115min | Drama

THEEB | Jordan | 2015 | 100min | Drama

King Jack (2015)

Director| Writer: Felix Thompson

Cast: Charlie Plummer, Cory Nichols, Christian Madsen

98mins. Drama. US

Slim yet watchable and charismatically captured by writer director Felix Thompson in a feature debut that won Festival Audience Award at Tribeca this year KING JACK takes place one low-key summer in leafy New York state.

Charlie Plummer plays the Jack in question, the put-upon youngest son of a working class one parent family, who must fight or fall between the cracks, in this poignantly-painted social realist drama.

A visit from his younger cousin Ben (Cory Nichols) gives Jack a chance to pull rank and turn the tables on the little boy in a charmingly protective way never extended to him by his tough older brother or his over-worked depressive mother. This arthouse pleaser is authentically told, the touch is light, fresh and honest, the tone gently playful without ever resorting to sombre sentimentality or hard-edged intent; although the occasional bursts of violence are sharp and short-lived. Not a great deal happens that we haven’t seen before: childhood boyish pranks jostle with pubescent longings and ‘i’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ gameplay, as the boys get to know the local more mature girls. But it’s a winning formula that will keep teenage audiences on tenterhooks and the arthouse crowd immersed in its soft-peddle dramatic tension and its rites of passage storyline.

Plummer gives it his all as a free-wheeling, sensitive 15 year old boy perpetually harried by his brother Tom (Christian Madsen, clearly the son of Michael) with his mother an absent figure in most of his days. He is also bullied by a local mob led by a bolshy Shane and his mates. Keen on a local girl Robyn, (Scarlet Lizbeth) he’s persuaded to take a picture of his penis, which puts him in the line of fire for more humiliation when Shane and his gang attempt to get the better of him once and for all.

KING JACK was supported by The Sundance Institute, and its moody camera work and dreamlike framing, by DoP Brandon Roots, gives the piece the sultry feel of a summer softened by the warmth and verdant background of its Hudson Valley setting. Bryan Senti’s occasional guitar-led score is often softer than the action it accompanies. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 29 FEBRUARY 2016| REVIEWED DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

The Benefactor (2016)

Writer|Director: Andrew Renzi

Cast: Richard Gere, Dakota Fanning, Theo James, Clarke Peters

90min | Drama | US

Richard Gere is back as the richest swinger in town. A kind of ageing Bill Gates, the successful batchelor iss using his millions to help sick children in Philadelphia together with best buddies Bobby (Dylan Baker) and Mia (Cheryl Hines). But tragedy leaves him the sole survivor of a car crash while the three are out driving and suddenly all he has left is their teenage daughter Olivia (Dakota Fanning), who blames him for the accident.

Fast forward five years and he’s morphed into a jovial bohemian who now looks like a cross between Gandolph and Karl Lagerfeld. Olivia is back in the story, pregnant and partnered with a pleasant young doctor, Luke (Theo James) and keen to reconnect with an old guy who was close to her parents. One hair cut later and some exquisite tailoring and Franny (Gere) is leading the band at the hospital opening shindig where James is now working as the latest doctor on the team. Never one to be stingy, Franny is buying the couple Olivia’s childhood home as a present. But when the trio swing up to the empty property in Franny’s vintage Mercedes, the young couple are distinctly shocked and strangely underwhelmed. Olivia accuses him of being too dramatic. And it’s true: Franny is a character desperately wanting to be loved but without really loving. Gere plays him as an ebullient maverick who drinks too much and loves to play the slightly cheesy fool. Fanning plays her usual intense and enigmatic blond, looking limpidly into the distance, often on the verge of tears. James is sardonic, in his usual standoffish way. In trying to create the same chemistry he had with Olivia’s parents, Franny makes himself unpopular, forcing his unwelcome fatherly condescendence on them and feeling utterly unauthentic in the process. The rather sketchily-drawn support characters do their best but it all feels quite threadbare and hollow. Gere’s character is the only one that’s fully fleshed out: a cleverly-disguised control freak who hides his abusive narcissistic neediness behind a flashy cloak of bravado. Controlling the couple by a series of never-ending gifts and largesse, he holds them in the palm of his hand. Gere is hopelessly miscast here, but an actor like Robin Williams would have been just right.

Things get worse as the films plays out, with Fanning, a capable and strong actress, literally being faded out of thr storyline, as the remaining mismatched gruesome twosome of Gere and James finding themselves lost in a drama that just becomes tedious. Despite Renzi’s best intentions THE BENEFACTOR slowly disintegrates, its promising elements overtaken by Gere’s antics as an unconvincing antihero in a drama that has lost its way. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 FEBRUARY 2016

Stranger (2015) | Asia House Film Festival 2016

Writer|Director: Ermek Tursunov

Mikhail Karpov, Roza Kharyrullina, Erzhan Nurymbet

Drama | Kazakhstan |

STRANGER is Kazakhstan’s Oscar hopeful, a sweeping historical and folkloric parable that sees a fearless outlaw retreating to the hills during the country’s Soviet occupation. Set to a lively mix of folk and electronic music, STRANGER is also strong on visual impact but Murat Aliyev’s magnificent widescreen cinematography of the country’s snowbound mountains and sun-baked scenery cannot sustain the film’s lack of momentum or narrative vigour and its rather vapid, underwritten central characters remain unconvincing.

In a similar vein to Turkish director Reha Erdem’s 2013 feature JîN, that followed the exploits of a young Kurdish guerilla (Deniz Hasguler), Kazakh writer and director Yermek Tursunov explores the travails of a resistance warrior Ilyas (Yerzhan Nurymbet) who decamps from his childhood village after losing his parents during the 1930s Soviet hostilities, and settles for a precarious, nomadic and spiritual life in a mountain retreat where his only companions are the local animals and wildlife. But Ilyas is gradually to fall from grace for refusing to join the cause at the outbreak of the Second World War.

This is a worthy and watchable portrayal of a slice of Kazakhstan’s past. That said, the historical background of STRANGER is quite patchy. It appears that Kazakhstan was traditionally home to nomadic tribes who had lived under their own traditions and mores for centuries until the Russian Empire claimed the territory at the turn of the 20th century and subsumed it into the Soviet Union during the 1920s. During Stalinist collectivization in the late 1920s and 30s, the Kazakh’s nomadic life was threatened as farms were forced into collectives to provide food for the burgeoning industrial cities of the motherland, resulting in the death from poverty and starvation of millions of locals. Dissidents deported from Russia, fetched up in the region where they lived also lived a bleak and rootless existence, as seen in the character of Roza Khairullina. But the main fault with STRANGER is a our lack of empathy for any of these characters who appear so faceless and sketchily drawn that by the final showdown we couldn’t care tuppence for any of them. MT

SCREENING DURING ASIA HOUSE FILM FESTIVAL | STRANGER IS KAZAKSTAN’S 2016 OSCAR HOPEFUL

NUNCA VAS A ESTAR (YOU’LL NEVER BE ALONE) | Teddy Award |Berlinale 2016

Director: Alex Anwandter; Cast: Sergio Hernandez, Andrew Bergsted, Gabriela Hernandez, Jaime Leiva; Chile 2016, 82 min.

A tribute to Daniel Zamudio, a Chilean gay man who was brutally murdered in 2012 by neo-Nazis, musician Alex Andwandter’s directorial debut is a tight and claustrophobic study in grief, loneliness and betrayal.

It follows Pablo (Bergsted) a young man still living with his father Juan (S. Hernandez), who manages a mannequin factory. The two have little in common and a poor emotional rapport since Pablo “showed a limp wrist”, indicating a lack of manliness in a society dominated by macho-values and masculine role models.

Whilst his father works long hours, Pablo takes ballet lessons and hangs out with his longterm friend Felix (Leiva) and Lucy (G. Hernandez), who has a crush on him. When Pablo and Lucy are chased by two homophobic young men, who, with the help of Felix, corner Pablo and beat him so severely, that he falls into a coma his father is naturally distraught, but worse is to follow: due to a glitch the health insurance is declared partly invalid. Then an old “friend of the family” admits she asked Felix and the men who beat Pablo up, “to be nice to the gay man, because he is different from you”. Juan loses it and confronts Felix, who denies any wrong doing. Juan, having raised Pablo single-handedly from a boy, can’t take any more. Having been lonely for most his life – after his much younger wife left him – he decides he has to change his cautious way of life.

Far from being an over-excited melodrama, YOU’ll NEVER BE ALONE is a concise, ruminative and claustrophobic study in grief, betrayal and loneliness. Darkness (literally and contents wise) dominates: in a world of semi-daekness, and all the interiors feel oppressively, particularly the ghostly shop window mannequins factory, which seems to be underground. Juan has retreated into an inner world; his house is neglected, and Pablo’s room, is more like a prison cell. The hospital corridors, where Juan meets a helpful nurse, are more like a morgue than a place for the living. DOP Matias Illanes captures at atmosphere of tension which plays like the endgame of a relentless chess match where the players are slowly and tortuously extinguished. Sergio Hernandez carries himself like an old fashioned hero from a ’40s film noir: beaten already, before the first blows rain down on his son. This harrowing, mournful and forlorn debut is relentless and leaves the audience heartbroken. Far from being an melodramatic meltdown, YOU’LL NEVER BE ALONE is ruminative and dark in tone and texture, locked down in a world of negativity and isolation. AS

BERLINALE RUNS 11 -21 FEBRUARY 2016 | FORUM SECTION | MORE COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

Des nouvelles de la planète Mars (News from planet Mars) | Berlinale | Out of Competition

Director: Dominik Moll (Lemming, Harry, He’s Here to Help)

Cast: François Damiens, Vincent Macaigne, Veerle Baetens, Jeanne Guittet, Tom Rivoire

France | Belgian | Drama | World premiere – Out of competiton

When Francois Damiens floats in from Space to his comfortable flat in Brussels, we immediately warm to his laid-back character: a philosophical, divorced dad and the star turn of Dominik Moll’s latest (but not weirdest) comedy feature.

As Philippe Mars he makes the best of his tedious life fathering two insolent kids and ocassionally watching his anchorwoman ex wife on the television. Good-natured in the extreme he’s the sort of guy who picks up the dogpoo left by wayward pooches and makes light of it. And when his work colleague accidentally chops his ear off with a meat cleaver, he’s also the sort who lets this colleague overstay his welcome in the spare room, after he breaks out of his mental hospital on the auspices of feeling uncomfortable amongst the other weirdos. But gradually it takes this sort of psychotic psychopath to bring Mars to his senses and say goodbye to his mediocre existence and realise: there’s more to life than this.

Sharply scripted by co-writer Gilles Marchand to highlight today’s more irritating aspects, this surreal and seriously hilarious Belgian French affair will go down well with audiences everywhere. Some poetic realist touches (his dead mum and dad are often beamed up in miniature, offering warm parental advice), and dream sequences where he floats in a spacesuit add to upbeat absurdity of it all and show that Mars’ life is spiralling seriously out of control, as he rapidly becomes a doormat to all and sundry; including his sister and his unwelcome guest’s new girlfriend Chloe (Baetens), an animal activist who joins in the rampant abuse of his kindness.

Practically everyone in his Mars’ life has personality disorders, but Mars just tolerates them all good-naturedly, allowing them to exploit him at every turn: his precocious daughter Sarah (Jeanne Guittet) tells him to ‘get a life’, his son Gregoire (Tom Rivoire) turns vegetarian and barely congratulates him on his 49th birthday, his sister drops her dog off against his wishes and his boss (Julien Sibre) knows Philippe asks him to share his office with troubled misfit Jerome (Vincent Macaigne/Eden), which leads to the ear incident (he carries the meat cleaver to ‘calm him’ but clearly this fails to work.). And as a final indignity he’s forced to pussyfoot around the courting couple of Peta-style activists in his own home. But when these animal lovers announce they are planning to blow up a nearby poultry-processing plant, Mars puts his foot down.

Moll’s dramady soon descends into a delicious dark comedy with cartoonish moments as the entire crew, including the downstairs neighbour (who used to be Valerie Giscard d’Estaing’s chauffeur), head off to boycott the new factory. NEWS FROM THE PLANET MARS is a cheery crowd-pleaser loud that is all about a decent man retrieving his rightful place as head of his family. MT

BERLINALE 11-21 February 2016 | follow our coverage under BERLINALE 2016

Smrt u Sarajevu / Death in Sarajevo (2016) Bergamo Film Meeting

Dir: Danis Tanović | ‘Cast: Jacques Weber, Snežana Vidović, Izudin Bajrović, Vedrana Seksan, Muhamed Hadžović, Faketa Salihbegović-Avdagić, Edin Avdagić | Drama | France / Bosnia Herzegovina, 85’

In DEATH IN SARAJEVO Danis Tanovic returns to his roots to pick the festering scab of Bosnia’s bloody past with a film that will have little appeal to those beyond its boundaries, unless devotees of Balkan history.

Punchy and to the point, the Oscar winning director wastes no time in getting down and dirty with a rather dusty and dog-eared snapshot of history taking place on the centenary of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, the death that catapulted Europe into the First World War. In a ‘luxury’ debt-ridden hotel, built for the 1984 Olympics but now looking rather tired and hasbeen, the manager Omer (Izudin Bajrovic) is avidly preparing for a VIP dinner. Always on the move, his efficient head receptionist Lamija (Jennifer Lopez-a-like Snezana Vidovic) is strutting around in high heels making sure everything goes to plan, while downstairs her rotund mother Hatidza (Faketa Salihbegovic-Avdagic) rouses colleagues into strike action over unpaid wages.

Loosely adapted from Hotel Europe, a play by Bernard-Henri Levy that was recently performed in Sarajevo by Jacques Weber, the man himself returns as a version of himself, to address the assembled dignitaries. On his arrival, Omer assures the Frenchman of the hotel’s gold plated credentials and illustrious former guests such as Bill Clinton and Angelina Jolie, before the French retires to polish up his oratory. The hotel’s less public areas also harbour a collection of brutal Bosnian gangsters, who are doing their drug-related stuff in basement corridors while upstairs Omer tries to maintain a brave face on impending doom. On a rooftop location, Robert Paxton-style news reporter Vedrana (Vedrana Seksan) is debating Sarajevo’s war-torn history with a Serb nationalist (Muhamed Hadzovic) who oddly has the same name as Ferdinand’s assassion, Gavrilo Princip, but is infact a distant relative. Naturally, Princip was a divisive figure in Bosnian politics and Vedrana lays into the young Serb in a vituperative onslaught. He too is bitter and the pair wrangle, making their scenes together feel like a preachy lecture where sparks fly but attempts to clarify history remain mired in anger and reproach.

Despite the director’s best efforts, this potential noir thriller feels overly didactic, lacking the subtle nuance that could have made it the slow-burning psychological thriller suggested by its edgy posterwork. All the elements are there: intrigue, gangsters, suggestive locations and a sexually predatory lead, but it lacks the dramatic torque to make it really gripping and suspenseful. In the event, it feels tediously confusing rather than satisfyingly complex, seeking to raise a gritty debate without bringing anything new to the table. If you hoped for clarification – none is offered; if you hoped for entertainment – you get a punch on the nose. DEATH IN SARAJEVO entices us to a party but the bouncers send us briskly home. MT

BERGAMO FILM MEETING 2022 | EUROPE, NOW DENIS TANOVIC SPOTLIGHT

The Here After | Efterskalv (2015)

Director: Magnus von Horn

Cast: Ulrik Munther, Mats Blomgren, Alexander Nordgren, Loa Ek, Wieslaw Komasa

100min | Drama | Sweden | Poland | France

It’s not easy to forget or forgive the past as a young man discovers in Magnus von Horn’s haunting Scandinavian Polish debut THE HERE AFTER. Lodz graduate von Horn clearly learnt his stuff in the legendary film school. The strength of his psychological drama is that we have no idea what has happened when John (Munther) is picked up by his father Martin (Blomgren) after serving time in a state institution. Clearly John has a violent past and Martin is a control freak. But John also shows signs of infantile regression when he is with his much younger brother Filip (Nordgren) who seems to be emotionally more mature than his older brother. When John goes back to school, we get an inkling of what might have happened: nearly all his mates are extremely hostile to and the teachers have no success in their arbitration. Then half way through the film, after John is attacked by a middle-aged woman in a supermarket, the audience start to get a clearer picture.

Secretly visiting the house of his victim, John meets Malin (Ek), who joined the school when John was away, and does not know much about the case. Surprisingly, John opens up to her: “They say I was like in trance, but I remember everything about it”. John seems to have had a special relationship with his grandfather (Komasa), but the old man is hardly talking any more and shoots the family dog, instead of calling a vet. When some of the boys throw stones through the windows of the John’s family house, he attacks them, and is brutally beaten up. Losing Malin’s trust after arguing with her, he confronts the victim’s mother in her home.

Instead of showing us the well-known world of Swedish conflict solution by talking and understanding, this is an extremely hateful and unforgiving environment, where only the teachers are ready to preach tolerance. The huge majority of students and their parents want John gone from the moment he returns. As for John, rehabilitation is near impossible: he lives alone with his guilt – his father just wanting to prove a point in having his son back at home, without really loving or even understanding him. His little brother Filip is torn between pity and fear that the shadow of guilt may fall on him too.

Malin is curious at first, but when the pressure of her peers gets too strong, she too abandons him as her ambivalent feelings are not strong enough to sustain a relationship under the circumstances. Using a palette of washed out hues, IDA cinematographer Lukasz Zal works his magic on the Swedish countryside that looks and cold and unwelcoming as the environment John finds at home and at school. The harsh lighting is a metaphor for the malice-ridden narrative. Munther, a pop star, is powerful in his understatement, and frightening when he loses his temper. THE HERE AFTER is a chilling and immersive account of crime and punishment. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Deadweight (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director: Axel Koenzen Writers: Axel Koenzen, Boris Doran, Horst Markgrave

Cast: Tommi Korpela, Ema Vetean, Manuelito Acido, Archie Alemania, Jeanne Balibar, Frank Lammers

78min Finland | Drama

Axel Koenzen’s debut feature sets sail on the high seas where a Finnish Master steers his cargo vessel into the stormy waters of a crisis.

This realist drama has echoes of two recent marine-based films: Fidelio: Alice’s Journey and Mauro Herce’s documentary Dead Slow Ahead bringing us bang up to date with the harsh realities of life in the commercial shipping industry where time is the essence when meeting cargo delivery deadlines. Tommi Korpela plays the poker-faced captain in this paradoxically straightforward set of events that slowly draws us under its spell. Koentzen has also cast revered French arthouse actor Jeanne Balibar as a medical officer who joins the ship to investigate an accident at sea whose ripples will have increasingly far-reaching ettects in this voyage from Savannah (US) to Rotterdam.

We first meet the hooded Ahti Ikonen as he slinks into view and lingers suspiciously before boarding the vessel, in a scene that cast aspersions on the nature of his intentions. But he soon takes professional charge and we are swept into the daily rigours of life on board: the intricacies of machinery, stock-checking and general workings of this vast vessel. The predominantly Filipino crew are keen to get home and are ready to do overtime to finance their growing family responsibilities. Relaxed; they chat, play draughts and watch TV but it soon emerges that there has been an accident during lashing the large containers on board. This is a task primarily reserved, under union rules, for trained dockers rather than crew, but to make up time and get the vessel to Rotterdam for her deadline, it appears that union rules have been flouted with crew members undertaking the onerous job with and that one of them has suffered a blow to his head. All this emerges in a matter of fact way and low key way and James (Manuelito Acido), the man in question, is calm and lucid but expresses an angry desire to rest. He is later found dead. Judging by his disgruntlement with his wife – expressed in idle conversation in the locker room – it’s assumed this is a suicide rather than an accident but Koentzen leaves it open.

Whether Ikonen is being coldly professional or merely ambivalent is a question that plays on our minds throughout this taught but alienating feature. James’ death will have serious consequences for Ikonen and his second officer Martinescu (Ema Vetean), who initially bear up stoically but are gradually haunted by regret during a boozy evening of karaoke with the other crew members.

Cinematographer Alexander Gheorghiu’s sparkling images play around creatively with some inventive touches including occasional blackouts which serve to further alienate us and ramp up the tension in this slightly unnerving yet remarkable debut. MT

BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY 2016 | FORUM | BERLINALE 2016

Mahana | The Patriarch (2016) | Berlinale 2016 | In Competition

Director: Lee Tamahori Writer: John Collee

Cast: Temuera Morrison, Akuhata Keefe, Nancy Brunning, Jim Moriaty, Regan Taylor, Maria Walker

90mins | Drama | New Zealand

Lee Tamahori’s impressively-crafted Golden Bear hopeful is set in the lush landscapes of 1960s New Zealand. This tale of feuding sheep-farming families, the Mahanas and the Poatas, plays out like Little House on the Prairie meets the Maoris. As worthy as the hills, its theme of tribal justice, family honour and honest toil are as evergreen as the verdant forests of its east island location.

Based on the book by Witi Ihimaera, Once Were Warriors star Temuera Morrison leads the healthy-looking cast as Grandfather Mahana, a fierce bully who frightens everyone but his teenage grandson and heir in the pipeline, Simeon (Akahuta Keefe). The youngster, a keen film buff, must prove himself; and he will, and bring the two families together.

Scripted by John Collee, this is a drama entirely without drama or tension; a saga that rolls on smoothly to its unsurprisingly comfy conclusion; neither frightening the horses, nor delivering any tears of sadness on the way. There is a vaguely twisty plotline but nothing suspenceful or unsuitable for all the family to enjoy. Rather like caramel blancmange on a sunday afternoon, THE PATRIARCH is a film bathed in burnished goodness, extolling the virtues of decent family life until the narrative torpor eventually chugs home to its rightful and cosy climax with lines such as “she’s sixty, how can she be in love?” of Mrs Mahana who is married to Grandfather Mahana. THE PATRIARCH manages to peddle an agenda seeking racial equality while riding roughshod over the sensibilities of every woman over the age of thirty and some men too. A real Hallmark treat. MT

BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY | ALL THE COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

Remember (2015) |

Director: Atom Egoyan

Cast: Christopher Plummer, Bruno Ganz, Dean Norris, Martin Landau,

95min Thriller History

Atom Egoyan still has the power to pull an emotional punch, and even though REMEMBER doesn’t quite hit the highs of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter it is a classy war-themed thriller with a relevant twist to its tightly scripted tale of revenge.

Christopher Plummer’s towering performance transforms this rather stolid affair into an emotional tour de force as Auschwitz survivor Zev Guttman who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and confined to a home after the death of his second wife Ruth. With time on his hands and the help of his fellow inmate Max (Landau) he hatches a plan to hunt down a former concentration camp guard Rudy Kurlander who lives under an assumed name in the USA. Rudy’s journey takes him from Canada to Ohio, then Idaho where he finds out that the Kurlander in question has already died. But his son (Norris), a state trooper, is an ardent Nazi like his father. who just a cook in the SS. Finally, in California, where Zev’s son Charles (Czerny) catches up with his father, henseems to have found the right man – but his name is not Kurlander.

REMEMBER’s rather formal structure is given an inventive, surprise-ending and Plummer holds our attention with his utterly believable turn as a dementia-ridden family man with a killer instinct, clearly homed during his war experiences and although Egoyan’s strict linear narrative takes some of the suspense away, he transforms little details into meaningful images: observations of the modern consumer world seen through the eyes of a septuagenarian make this feel real and even humorous, breaking up the sombre subject-matter. REMEMBER is old-fashioned but engaging – just the right film to see with the whole family on a Sunday afternoon. AF

ON RELEASE FROM 19 FEBRUARY 2016 |REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | now SHOWING AT LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Nakom (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director: T.W. Pittman, Kelly Daniela Norris

Cast; Jacob Ayanaba, Grace Ayariga, Abdul Aziz; Ghana/USA, 90 min.

NAKOM is the first feature film from Ghana ever to screen in Berlinale and a very worthwhile contribution is it too. Co-director Pittman spent two years collaborating with the US Peace Corp in the village that gave the film its title.

Iddrisu (Ayanaba) is enjoying his medical studies in the big city: his work is promising and he is happy with his girlfriend. But then, out of the blue, he finds out his father has been killed in a motorcycle accident, and being the oldest son of the family, has to return home. A mountain of family debt emerges when going through his father’s affairs and the family farm is run down. Confronted by the old, traditional set-up, Iddrisu finds life at home very problematic. His uncle suggests toughly: ‘I can marry your mother and throw you out of the house, if I want to’. Iddrisu is appalled to see how young women are treated in the village; and he feels himself regressing: he is a newcomer, who is out of touch. Gender roles and a strict hierarchy mean that Iddrisu has to make a big decision.

NAKOM was a challenging film to make. The four month shooting was made extremely difficult for various reasons: firstly, the Kusaal language, spoken in Nakom, has no written equivalent. It meant that the co-producer had to work with the non-professional actors, relying the script orally. Also there was no electricity in the village, so the producers considered moving the set to the nearby town of Pusiga, but finally, the production remained in Nakom, using a generator, which had to be buried underground because of its noise. Casting was a problem due to the scarcity of local actors and the onset of the rainy season which meant that the narrative had to be shot in reverse when the landscape was lush and green.

Cinematographer Robert Geile creates a magnificent sense of the place: the serene, picturesque countryside provides refreshing contrast from the hustle and bustle of the city life, evoking a visual story of Iddrisu’s transit from the modern world to that of deep-seated traditions and old-fashioned customs. The spontaneity of the performances is infectious making NAKOM a fresh-feeling and absorbing testament to neo-real tradition. AS

BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY 2016 | MORE COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

Muito Romantico (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director: Melissa Dullius, Gustavo Jahn | Cast: Melisa Dullius, Gustavo Jahn, Lilja Löffler

72min Drama | Brazil| Germany

Melissa (Dullius) and Gustavo (Jahn) are sailing on a cargo ship in the South Seas, travelling from Brazil to Berlin, Germany, to start a new life. In Berlin, they visit flats in Wedding, Neukölln and Mitte, letting the audience know the exact rent and the payment for gas electricity. These data are the only realistic ones in this filmic collage that sees film and reality merging before a portal to the universe opens from which the main protagonists will merge with the cosmos.

Muito Romantico’s opening lines are quoted from a long text by the German transcendental writer Maria Luise Kaschnitz from 1963, titled “Wohin denn ich” (Where to for me) from 1963. Kaschnitz, who travelled widely with her archeologist husband, was a rarity in the post-war literature scene of the Federal Republic as her work was considered very “un-German” for the time, and had very much in common with the poetic realism of South America, where she spent a great deal of her life.

Melissa and Gustavo meet Veronica (Löffler) in Berlin for the first time having corresponded during their long voyage. As the couple get to know Berlin; Gustavo on a bicycle, Melissa, who gets lost, on foot, they related the changes that have taken place in the city since unification, mentioning a slogan which was painted in the ruins of the old ‘Anhalter Station’: “People who build bunkers, also build bombs”. But soon they disappear into each other losing interest in the city, and expressing their creativity in painting and decorating their flat. They come across a Japanese woman and a male painter, who asks Gustavo “to forget parties and alcohol, and concentrate on art”. Later Gustavo reads loud from a book, “declaring that the end of Romanticism has come, and people have to accept it”. A black cat sits on their bed, looking very aloof. The use of red is a motif that occurs throughout this dreamlike piece: in furnishings or objects: Gustavo suggests “all materials have memories”. Towards the end, the screen is totally black for a while, afterwards Melissa crawls through a hole in the wall into their bed. Images, reminding us of Rorschach tests appear, before the couple escapes into another world.

MUITO ROMANTICO is a poetic collage that deals with memory and space, history and art, longing and alienation; predominantly shot by DOP Viile Piippo on 16 mm or Super 8, with the number of frames per minute changing frequently, and a lighting which lends a surreal and very painterly feel. Symbolism is used but in a very playful way that adds to the enjoyment of this rather vague but unique and innovative experiment. AS

BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY 2016 | MORE COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

Chronic (2015) | Winner Best Screenplay | Cannes 2015

Director: Michel Franco

Cast: Tim Roth

92mins. Drama. France

With loneliness and life expectancy increasing, Michel Franco’s third feature – a thriller entitled CHRONIC, seems entirely relevant but has deeply worrying implications. Don’t be put off by the subject-matter, the reason to see this slick psycho-drama is Tim Roth’s entrancing turn as a serial care-giver working in America. Set in an upmarket suburb of some West Coast town, Franco evokes an unsettling vibe from the opening scene where Roth, as David, appears to be watching a house from the privacy of his parked car. Franco holds this scene for just long enough for us to realise that this is not normal, bringing to mind Michael Haneke’s Hidden. David is looking after a terminally ill AIDS sufferer called Susan and this is where she lives. We first meet him, caring for her every need with an assisted shower. Smiling and serenely tolerant, David is the sort of nurse that anyone would wish for. He even attends Susan’s funeral shortly afterwards, but crucially seems evasive when her niece invites him to have coffee, claiming coldly that it wouldn’t be “appropriate”. Chatting to some strangers in a bar he tells them about the recent death of his wife ‘Susan’ from AIDS. David has other patients, each one gives his undivided attention often staying over and relieving other carers during their shifts. Totally dedicated to their wellbeing, it then emerges that he has his own apparently tragic backstory.

To reveal anymore about David would ruin this deliciously-paced, well-mounted drama with its stylish visuals and tightly-scripted plotline, for which it won Best Screenplay at Cannes this year. Despite a rather unsatisfactory finale, CHRONIC mulls over is a minefield of thorny and complex moral dilemmas that Franco weaves into his plotline leaving us to draw our own conclusions about David, his patients and the pitfalls of all aspects of the contempo care system. CHRONIC is spine-chilling in the most subtle way possible. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 2015 | Best screenplay winner | Cannes 2015 | NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19 FEBRUARY 2016

The Second Mother | DVD RELEASE (2015)

Dir.: Anna Muylaert

Cast: Regina Case, Karine Teles, Camila Mardila, Lourenco Mutarelli, Michel Joelsas

Brazil 2015, 114 min.

The tranquil life of an upper middle class family in Sao Paulo is turned upside down, when the daughter of the housekeeper Val (Case) comes to stay. As it turns out, Val is the lynchpin of the family, and nothing will ever be the same again after Jessica arrives. Writer/director Anna Muylaert (Collect Call) tackles themes of class, family, education and wealth in a narrative driven drama, carried by the brilliant central performance of Regina Case.

Val left her village and her baby Jessica behind when she went to work for Dr. Carlos (Mutarelli) and his wife Barbara (Teles) in Sao Paulo. A decent salary meant Val could afford a good school for Jessica. Now she has come to Sao Paulo, to sit an entrance examination at the very competitive architecture exams at the prestigious FAU. Fabinho (Joelsas), the son of the house, is the same age as her daughter, but the opposite of the success-driven Jessica: he idles his time away with friends and still goes for nightly cuddles with Val, who more or less raised him, feeling much closer to her than to his careerist mother. Dr, Carlos is a decadent ex-painter who has given up on life, and spends much of the day in bed, even proposing to Jessica. Fabinho too falls for Jessica, who successfully ‘upgrades’ her lodgings from a mattress in her mother’s small room, to the much bigger guest room. Jessica does not follow her mother’s orders of subservience to her host family (‘you say ‘no’ when they offer you something, because they expect you to decline’). She even asks for the “better” brand of ice cream, reserved for family members, whilst Val and her helper Edna have their own, cheaper brand. Dona Barbara (as she likes to be called by Val) finally snaps: after Jessica has a swim in the pool with Fabinho and a friend, she orders the water to be drained and replaced from the pool, making a lame excuse of having spotted a rat. It’s clear that life will never be the same again now that Jessica has made her presence known in this rigid class-based society.

Apart from Case, the ensemble performance is very strong, particularly Teles’ Barbara, who acts the part of the “modern”, successful woman, giving interviews about progress in society, despite being able to cope with the fact that her cleaner’s daughter is more successful than her pampered son. Her husband, having inherited wealth from his hard working father, is remote from his family, only interested in lusting after Jessica. In spite of his utter laziness, Fabinho is the most sympathetic member of the family, his good-bye to Val is heart-wrenching. But Val and Jessica are not just victims of the system but women who make their own decisions, will ultimately shape their lives. With an English title that is much more pertinent than the original “When will she come back?; ex-film critic Muylaert delivers a serious critique of inequality in contemporary Brazil in this fast-paced, subtle and amusing tour-de-force. AS

NOW ON DVD

The First, the Last (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director: Bouli Lammers

Cast: Bouli Lanners, Albert Dupontel, Michael Lonsdale, Suzanne Clement, Philippe Rebbot

97min Drama Belgium

Under glowering skies in Flanders, two hired bounty hunters, Gilou (Bouli Lanners) and Cochise (Albert Dupontel) set off into a wintry widescreen wilderness on a ‘secret mission’ to track down a mobile phone containg some kind of explosive. More madcap Western, than gritty thriller Bouli Lanners’ fourth feature sets off as a miserable, monosyllabic mission that meanders into gloomy backwaters at the arse-end of progress somehow find redemption through its crisis-ridden yet humane craziness as the argumentative duo brush up against a selection of weirdos and ne’dowells: a deranged young couple (who come imto possession of the mobile unaware of its significance) mendacious cleaners and a crippled carefaker and evangelist priest (a kindly Philippe Rebbot),make strange bedfellows in this cinematically spectacular outing where the tone is slightly tougue in cheek, and the dialogue as off the beaten track as its characters.

But their brazen attempt at being gangsters soon falls by the wayside as Gilou abandons the mission with a dicky heart and takes up refuge with the kindly, crippled caretaker (a suitable soulful Michael Lonsdale). Clara (Suzanne Clement) comes to the Cochise’s rescue offering him sparkling sexual chemistry and a shred of domestic normality in her farmhouse. Meanwhile the deranged young couple also seek a safe berth with Clara, hotly pursued by another bunch of hoodlums who are also looking in for the phone. Esther (Aurore Broutin) and Willy (David Murgia). It emerges represent Adam and Eve

A metaphor for our loss of faith in society, in each other and with ourselves in general, The First, The Last is a dark and often doom laden affair suffused with welcome bone dry humour. Bouli Lammers finds the he answer in love: love for ouselves, for each other and for the world that we have been given. With the twanging score of original guitar music by Pascal Humbert, Bouli Lanners’ characters all experience their crisis-fuelled epiphanies in this God-forsaken landscape that somehow finds the light at the end of the tunnel reminding us that God is out there somewhere if we look hard enough and keep our sense of humour. MT

SCREENING DURING BERLINALE 2016 | PANORAMA SECTION

The Finest Hours (2016)

Dir: Craig Gillespie; Cast: Chris Pine, Casey Afflick, Holliday Granger, Eric Bana, Ben Foster

118 min. Drama USA

Set off the coast near the town of Chatham, Massachusetts in February 1952, THE FINEST HOURS tells the story of the “most daring sea rescue operation in history.” Whilst director Craig Gillespie (Fright Night) has come with some stunning images, the script somehow fails to bind the three main narrative strains together.

After a not particularly exciting courtship, Bernie Webber (Pine), a member of the Chatham Coastal Guard, is asked by Miriam (Granger) to marry her. The young man stutters to say no, but soon agrees to a wedding in April. But on February 18th two oil tankers break up near Cap Cod and Webber leads a small rescue boat with a crew of three, among them his mate Richard Livesey (Foster), to rescue the thirty odd seamen of the SS Pendleton, since all the other coast guard boots were helping the SS Fort Mercer.

The action shifts from the rescuers to the men on board of the Pendleton. Miriam accuses the strict Chief Warrant Officer of the Coast Guard, Daniel Cluff (Bana), of scarifying her future husband and his crew in a suicide mission. Indeed, some of Webber’s friends suggest that he should not leave the harbours, telling Cluff that he would not be equipped to overcome the 25 metre high storm waves. But Webber has none of it and reaches the Pendleton more by luck than judgement. After the majority of the survivors are on board the small rescue boat, one of the crew suggests to Webber to leave and come back for the rest of the seamen later. But Webber stays strong and what follows nect is nothing short of a miracle. “We are all going to die or to live”.

THE FINEST HOURS works best during the battle on board the Pendleton. Ray Sybert (Afflick), runs the ship to ground, against the will of some the men who want to use the life boat. The inside of the split tanker looks like a scene from Dante’s inferno, with the men working hard to keep the ship afloat. Miriam encounters some resentment from other citizen’s of Chatham, regarding a failed rescue mission of the past. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the small rescue boat is enhanced with dramatic effects. Overall, the CGIs help to make some memorable images: DOP Xavier Aguirresarobe captures the chaos and despair on the Pendleton with mesmerising panorama shots, creating a hell on the five levels of the ship cut in half. But the script lacks any coherence, with wooden acting reducing THE FINEST HOURS to an old-fashioned ‘boys own’ adventure yarn without any properly explored characters. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19 FEBRUARY 2016

Orthodox (2015)

Dir.: David Leon | Cast: Stephen Graham, Michael Smiley, Giacomo Mancini, Rebecca Callard, Christopher Fairbank, Oliver Woollford | 93min l UK 2015 |

David Leon’s debut feature film debut ORTHODOX is really about the struggle of a Jewish man to keep his identity and make a living, whilst personal choices threaten to derail him. It has the same main cast as his 30 minute short film of the same title in 2012.

ORTHODOX has “Jewish Identity drama” written all over it: a young man secretly craves the approval of his father and the community, but his temperament is set against any compromises: he is a fighter, not only with his fists, but due to his determination to find his own way in life which is always undermined by his lack of judgement, leading him to pay for his guilt by keeping by committing criminal acts to keep himself in business.

Growing up as a orthodox Jew in North London, young Benjamin (Woollford) is teased and beaten by his school mates and takes up boxing to defend himself. This brings him into confrontation with his religious father, who disowns him, after his son insists on taking up the sport as a profession. The adult Benjamin (Graham) is over-compensating for his refusal by running his father’s butcher shop, which is running at a loss and that also alienates him from the Jewish community. Even though his wife Alice (Callard) hates Benjamin’s boxing in illegal fights to make ends meet, he is driven by self-destruction. Benjamin also totally misjudges the motives of the callous Shannon (Smiley) who is employed by the leaders of the Jewish community (among them Goldberg (Fairbank), to do the dirty jobs relating to tenant issues. Shannon simply delegates the harassment of the tenants to Benjamin – but after he burns down supposedly empty house, he finds himself in jail for the murder of a family. Shannon, who denounces him anonymously to the police, lusts after Alice and starts to threaten her. Together with Alice he is the victim of a systematic betrayal by the religious establishment, preaching humanity but persuading their profit-orientated activities with cold-blooded criminal means. When Benjamin returns from prison, he relies on more dirty jobs from Shannon, whom he still trusts. But when Benjamin meets young Daniel (Mancini), he also seems to be repeating all Benjamin’s mistake working for Shannon.

DOP Si Bell create a landscape of darkness, every location is imbued with gloom: the dilapidated estates, Benjamin’s home, the meeting place of the Jewish Elders and the boxing school where Benjamin picks up Daniel are all doomed, places of transition, soon to be abolished. The only light is in the flashbacks with young Benjamin: even though he gets beaten up, he stands up and fights back. Later on, all his strength has been sucked out of him, mainly by Smiley’s Shannon, a towering example of sheer creepy beastliness, reaching a level of Shakespearian proportions. Orthodox is a raw, uncompromising peace of drama featuring the destruction of man by a hypocritical religious establishment. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19 FEBRUARY 2016 \ REVIEWED DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 7 – 22 NOVEMBER 2015

Rotterdam Film Festival | Award Winners 2016

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL kicked off on 27th January in the Dutch major shipping port. Of the 250 features on offer, over 100 were world or international premieres. We’d like to point you in the direction of some worth watching out for in the 10-day jamboree and the coming year. All the winners are here

5 OCTOBER Polish director and photographer Martin Kollár’s cinematography is the reason to see this impressive documentary debut. What unfolds in this silent story of a man preparing for life-changing surgery is an absolutely captivating journey across Europe shot with great verve, tenderness and humour. 5 OCTOBER features the director’s 52-year-old brother Ján in centre frame with a moving narration comprised only of postcards, mementos and the relentless count-down that rises up unimpeded from his journal. With a “flip of the coin” probability of surviving a necessary but very complicated surgery, Ján embarks on his own Easy Rider momento mori odyssey as we slowly discover what he’s running away from.

ALBA is an extraordinary debut from Ecuadorian director Ana Cristina Barragan. Macarena Arias is the standout here as a pre-teenage girl who goes to live with her solitary father while her mother is in hospital. Barragan tackles themes of bullying, relationships and shyness as Alba (Arias) is forced to bear the humiliation of frequent nosebleeds and wearing a corset to straighten her crooked spine. With minimal dialogue, a tentative bond slowly develops between daughter and father as Alba blossoms cautiously. This strikingly mature and poignant debut comes from a country that until the beginning of this century had only made one film a year. Young leading actress Macarena Arias is one to keep an eye on. She manages to bring a rare intensity to this tender coming of age tale.

BELLA E PERDUTA A paean to Italy’s faded glory, this poetic imagined drama and essayist documentary is set in magical Carditello Palace, once owned by the Bourbon dynasty. The fictional clown Pulcinella comes across the real-life Tommaso, self-appointed guardian angel of the palace. Evokes the decaying splendour of Italy’s rich and magnetic past.

The Palace is in decay and has been stripped clean by plunderers. The local farmer Tommaso earned his nickname ‘Angel of Carditello’ by guarding the estate and restoring it out of his own pocket. Documentary maker Pietro Marcello saw here the start of a journey through the provinces of Italy in which he would examine the state of his country: stunningly beautiful yet in decay. But when Tommaso suddenly dies, this true-life fairytale comes to an abrupt end, pushing Marcello in a new direction. He introduces the crazy Pulcinella, a figure from 17th-century commedia dell’arte, anglicised as Punch. A journey that is smaller in scale yet greater in effect than the journey Marcello first wanted to make.

Serbian director Bakur Bakuradze grew up in Georgia and studied in Russia. In BROTHER DEJAN He bases his central character loosely on the Bosnian-Serbian General Ratko Mladic, but sidesteps important issues of politics in order to explore those such as good and evil. Much more important in this sober and observing story is the question: Can a man like Stanic really start to understand in his last years of life? BROTHER DEJAN explores several months from the life of Dejan Stanic, a general wanted for war crimes during the Yugoslavian Civil War. At first managing to stay out of the hands of justice, he flees to neighbouring Slovenia with the help of his old compatriots, due to political changes. With his heavy beard and slovenly appearance, no one recognises Dejan Stanic as the one-time war hero/criminal. A simple excuse is enough for him to be able to move around an isolated mountain village in relative peace; he pretends to be an old friend of one of the inhabitants, Slavko, whom he supposedly met many years ago at a health resort. Slavko’s house is his last hiding place before Dejan finally leaves the country. The loneliness forces him to start thinking, for the very first time, about his own past.

21 NIGHTS WITH PATTIE is an intriguing title for a film that blends black comedy with fantasy and magic realism. Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu’s provocatively entitled Vingt et Une Nuits Avec Pattie certainly rolls off the tongue better in French, but this is a tricky tale to digest in any language, and after two longs hours and a final act that lets it all hang out, you may well come away wishing the brothers had left it at that: a boozy French drama with a touch of ‘Midsomer Murders’ and a dash of discretion.

Plunging into the bosky hillsides of Languedoc Rousillion, Caroline (Isabelle Carré) arrives at her mother’s bohemian retreat on a blazing hot August day. The two were not close in real life and her mother is now lying ‘in wake’ in the cool stone cottage, and Caroline must arrange her funeral. Despite this morbid event, the tone is light-hearted; almost jubilant and even more so when she meets Pattie (Karin Viard) the caretaker and best described as ‘une femme mûre’, who regales her with explicit tales of her recent sexual conquests with various local lads. Later on the corpse of her mother disappears, leading to a police investigation that drifts into a Savannah-style ghost story and an erotic awakening for the bewildered Parisienne.

Best described as a suspense thriller, 11 MINUTES explores themes of fate and paranoia. Set in the sweeping urban spaces of contemporary Warsaw, it could also be entitled Crossover, dealing, as it does, with eleven minutes in the lives of a random bunch of characters whose lives collide in the centre of the capital. Wildly frenetic and octane-fuelled, the action unfurls chaotically with moments of surreal beauty and hard-edged passion. Invasion of privacy insinuates the narrative in the shape of security cameras, webcams and mobile phones which track the protagonists during this frenzied few minutes of precision filmmaking.

Thrilling, bewildering and at times quite exhausting to take in, Skolimowski’s dramatic storyline is not the most involving or satisfying of experiences. Like a vintage wine, this is a multi-layered tour de force whose infinite subtleties will emerge with each viewing. The mesmerising set-pieces are brilliantly crafted and certainly amongst the most extraordinary action sequences ever committed to film. The final moments are simply breath-taking and mark out Jerzy Skolimowski as a director who, after 50 years, is still quite clearly at the top of his game. MT

Locarno FIPRESCI winner SUITE ARMORICAINE sees directori Pascale Breton returning to her birthplace in Rennes, Britanny where her main character Françoise (Valérie Dréville) intends to teach at the university. Evoking memories of her lively time as a student by clever use of flashbacks and archive footage, Breton lengthy narrative explores the relationship between Francoise and a student Ion (Kaou Langoët), who, for less nostalgic reasons, is there forget his troubled childhood. But teacher and student turn out to have more in common than expected. Stunningly set in the the heavily forested Breton landscape, Breton’s story switching between the two protagonists and it slowly becomes clear how much they are linked together. Key moments are shown twice, from the perspective of the teacher and of the student. This results in a personal and nostalgic story with avant-garde elements. A dreamy constellation in which Pascale Breton muses and reflects on the time when mobile phones had not yet been invented. MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 27 JANUARY UNTIL 7 FEBRUARY 2015

Sheba, Baby (1975) | DVD blu-ray release

Writer| Director: William Girdler Cast: Pam Grier, Austin Stoker, D’urville Martin

Postergirl for Blaxploitation Pam Grier (Jackie Brown) was crowned its unquestioned Queen during the 1970s for bringing a feline, charismatic energy to cinema albeit of the low-budget variety – such as that of American International Pictures (who were also involved with Roger Corman’s horror outings). In 1975 alone she starred in Bucktown and Friday Foster along with this breezy cult classic. SHEBA, BABY was written and directed by William Girdler who – had he not died tragically in a helicopter crash at the age of 30 – may have gone on to a successful career and this valiant if amateurish drama brings an (almost) all black cast (Austin Stoker and D’urville Martin) to an upbeat story of crime on the streets of Chicago. Carried along by the graceful sensuality of Grier, who is both strong and compellingly sexy as ex cop Sheba Shayne with lines like: “Don’t give me that ‘back in town’ shit”, as she forcefully knees one of her male victims into a headlock. Apart from its glimpses of seventies Chicago: known for edgy architecture and urban design (we get to glimpse some of the many fountains, the famous Police Headquarters, Dulles Airport and Lake Michigan), SHEBA, BABY has a catchy soundtrack – not as suave as Shaft but along those lines. Grier also enjoys some lovin’ moments with her sinuous co-star Austin Stoker adding spice to this also-ran but iconically seventies crime caper. MT

THIS IS AVAILABLE FROM 8 FEBRUARY 2016 COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS AND VIDEO

Noble (2014)

Dir.: Stephen Bradley

Cast: Deirdre O’Kane, Sarah Greene, Nhu Quynh Nguyen, Gloria Cramer Curtis

100 min.| Drama

Irish humanist and aid-worker Christina Noble founded children orphanages for more than 700 000 victims of war in Vietnam. Writer/director Stephen Bradley’s tribute to her efforts is worthy in tone, but hampered by a clumsy script and an unconvincing realisation. It doesn’t do any justice to an extraordinary woman.

Told in linear narrative form, Bradley reveals how Christina Noble (an ebullient Cramer Curtis) loses her mother when she is ten. Her father, an alcoholic, neglects the family and the children are separated and put into orphanages where they have to work. During the late fifties, teenage Christina (Greene) is living rough in Dublin and is gang-raped. A Catholic, she is tricked into giving her baby away in the local home. Moving to Birmingham with a friend, she marries Mario, a Greek Cypriot bar owner. They have three children, but Mario is unfaithful and beats Christina up. Forced to leave and bring up her children alone. Having had ‘visions’ about Vietnam in Birmingham, she travels there as a middle-aged woman (O’Kane), and with the help of Madame Linh (Nguyen), starts to lay the foundations for her orphanages, after meeting two young, abandoned girls in the street.

It is understandable why Bradley chose to do this biopic of Noble; her life story literally cries out to be filmed. But Bradley’s schematic structure accumulates all the clichés possible during its three sections, which lack any continuity, making it difficult for the audience to appreciate fully the extent of Noble’s heroism. There are some attempts at humour: we see Noble talking to God in an very argumentative way, and attempting to imitate her own heroine Doris Day. DOP Trevor Forrest’s visual are uninspired, particularly in Vietnam, where he oscillates between postcard idyll and shocking realism. Overall, this is a simplistic hagiography, leaving the audience often un-engaged, in spite of the emotional input by the three actresses portraying Christina in the three stages of her life. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE from 12 FEBRUARY 2016

The Survivalist (2015)

Writer|Director: Stephen Fingleton

Cast: Mia Goth, Martin McCann, Douglas Russel, Olwen Fouere

104min Fantasy thriller UK

Stephen Fingleton’s monsyllabic fantasy thriller imagines an hostile, post-apocalyptic future where mentally fragile survivors are forced to forage and fend for themselves in the fertile wilderness. Trusting no one they grimly barter food, lodgings and even sexual favours as they eek out a grim existence.

Martin McCann plays an unattractive, unyielding man who allows a woman and her teenage companion to share his meagre smallholding on condtion the younger sleeps with him. But its an unhappy household where the women gradually plot against him as an atmosphere of uneasy hostility stealthily permeates their silvine tranquility. A judicious use of silence allows the ambient sounds of nature to make their presence felt: running water; rustling leaves; bated breath; stifled screams all add to an unnerving sense of doom and edgy anticipation in a world where ferility still holds the trump card from a female perpective. Elegantly framed and suberbly crafted THE SURVIVALIST is a triumph of ‘less is more’ filmmaking. In one scene, Damien Elliott’s camera hovers above the verdant woodland evoking an almost unworldy sense of forboding as eventually the three are forced to close ranks in another battle for survival when the threat from an encroaching enemy brings tragedy in its wake. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 12 FEBRUARY 2016

Trumbo (2015) | LFF 2015

Dir.: Jay Roach

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Louis C.K., Elle Fanning, John Goodman, David James Elliot

USA 2015, 124 min.

Jay Roach (Game Change) has filmed the battle of Hollywood script writer legend Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976) against the fanatical witch hunt of the ‘House of Un-American Activities Committee’ (HUAC), which cost him and other members of the filmmaking fraternity their jobs, and, together with other victims in the teaching professions, civil service and the military, in many cases their lives.

Roach tries not to portray Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) as a martyr – which seems about right, after all, he got his career (and his two Oscars) back; his family, thanks to his wife Cleo Beth Fincher, stayed together – but many victims of Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade were not so lucky.

We meet Trumbo in the mid forties at his ranch house north of LA, ostentatiously living the good life with his wife and three children – he was after all one of the best scriptwriters in Hollywood, earning close to a million dollars a year. This lifestyle did not collide with his political beliefs, he was a member of the Communist Party of the USA between 1943 and 1949; like many of his fellow intellectuals he was drawn to communism, since the pre-war USA government supported the fascist regimes in Hungary and Spain, whilst turning a blind eye to the “German American Bund”, a Nazi organisation in the USA, supported among others by Walt Disney. Trumbo became one of the “Hollywood Ten”, who did not reveal names in front of the ‘HUAC’ hearings in 1947, and served eleven months in prison in 1950 for “contempt of Congress”. (In the correctional facility in Ashland, Kentucky, he met Parnell Thomas, one of the members of the HUAC committee, who served time for fraud embezzlement).

After his release, Trumbo had to sell his house, since he was blacklisted with countless others. He moved with his family to Mexico; on his return to LA in 1954 his neighbours made him feel very unwelcome, throwing garbage into his pool. By then Trumbo had not only re-started his scriptwriting career, using the names of others as front, but had also helped fellow victims to do the same. Sure, their salaries were meagre, but they still did good work: Trumbo was responsible for the cult classic Gun Crazy (1950) produced by Frank King (John Goodman), who swings his baseball at an agent, who wants him to stop Trumbo and others writing for him. Trumbo himself worked like possessed, and his family life suffered enormously – he would not even attend the birthday celebrations for his daughter Nikola (Fanning). His wife Cleo (Lane) had to put up with a rather dictatorial husband, who took to alcohol and Benzedrine.

Trumbo, whose scripts for Roman Holiday (1953) and The Brave One (1956) had won Oscars (which were collected by front writers), tried to fight the blacklist with others but one of his main foes was the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Mirren), a vicious anti-Semitic campaigner, who blackmailed the, mainly-Jewish, bosses into keeping the blacklist alive. Only in 1960, Otto Preminger (Exodus) and Kirk Douglas (the co-producer of Spartacus) finally killed the blacklist, supported among others by the powerful “American Legion”: Trumbo’s name was on the credits for both films; a year later President Kennedy walked through the picket lines of “American Legion” supporters, to watch Spartacus. In 1993, Dalton Trumbo received the Oscar for The Brave One in person, his wife Cleo collected the one her late husband won for Roman Holiday in 2011.

Roach’s TRUMBO is often funny, particularly in the middle part when he is writing with other blacklisted writers in a factory style process, to make ends meet. Mirren is fantastic as a vicious Hopper, her over the top performance, again, draws some laughs so does David James Elliot’s John Wayne who, attacking Trumbo, is reminded by him that he spent the war on beaches filming, shooting just blanks. But the fate of Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.), who suffered many years whilst fighting lung cancer through the 50s, is portrayed with great sensibility. Overall, a populist approach (which still is informative) to Trumbo and the ‘Blacklist’, is an clever option, because it will attract a new and younger audiences who might not be drawn primarily by the story, but the stars of the film. This way, they will learn about a very important chapter in film history. And that is worth a few slapstick moments – purists will anyhow have seen the 2007 documentary TRUMBO. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | REVIEWED DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 18 OCTOBER 2015

Sundance Film Festival | Prizes Announced

The first major international festival of the independent film world: SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2016 has wrapped with another “great step forward for independent film,” according to the festival director John Cooper. For ten days in January the snow-bound hub of Park City, Utah screened 120 features, 98 of which are world premieres and include a romantic drama about Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date; a two hander about a drifter who befriends a dead body and the first film to focus on the women of Wall Street.

So what’s new trendwise in 2016? Well, according to director of programming Trevor Groth: Everyone’s understanding craft so much better. There’s a changing face to what a documentary is and what it can do in the end. People are experimenting in genre in really interesting ways, so festival-goers should expect a “wild range of tones and styles” in the World Cinema dramatic competition. “Independent filmmakers are doing what they’ve always done best: connecting the dots of human existence with a deeply charged emotional current.” We look at the ones that screened during this year’s festival and the PRIZE WINNERS to look out for in the coming months.

US DRAMATIC COMPETITION winner THE BIRTH OF A NATION (US)

US DIRECTING AWARD DRAMATIC winner SWISS ARMY MAN (US)

US DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION winner WEINER

US DIRECTING AWARD DOCUMENTARY winner LIFE, ANIMATED (US)

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION winner SAND STORM (ISRAEL)

WORLD CINEMA DIRECTING AWARD DRAMATIC winner BELGICA (BELGIUM)

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION winner SONITA (IRAN)

WORLD CINEMA DIRECTING AWARD DOCUMENTARY winner ALL THESE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS (POLAND)

ALFRED P SLOAN FEATURE FILM PRIZE winner EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (MEXICO)

WORLD CINEMA AWARD FOR UNIQUE VISION AND DESIGN winner THE LURE (POLAND)

NEXT -AUDIENCE AWARD winner THE FIRST GIRL I LOVED (cutting edge equivalent of Cannes “Un Certain Regard”)

W O R L D P R E M I E R E S

A showcase of world premieres of some of the most highly anticipated narrative films of the coming year.

AGNUS DEI / France, Poland (Director: Anne Fontaine, Screenwriters: Sabrina N. Karine, Alice Vial, Pascal Bonitzer) — 1945 Poland: Mathilde, a young French doctor, is on a mission to help World War II survivors. When a nun seeks her assistance in helping several pregnant nuns in hiding, who are unable to reconcile their faith with their pregnancies, Mathilde becomes their only hope. Cast: Lou de Laâge, Agata Kulesza, Agata Buzek, Vincent Macaigne, Joanna Kulig, Katarzyna Dabrowska. World Premiere

ALI AND NINO / United Kingdom (Director: Asif Kapadia, Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton) — Muslim prince Ali and Georgian aristocrat Nino have grown up in the Russian province of Azerbaijan. Their tragic love story sees the outbreak of the First World War and the world’s struggle for Baku’s oil. Ultimately they must choose to fight for their country’s independence or for each other. Cast: Adam Bakri, Maria Valverde, Mandy Patinkin, Connie Nielsen, Riccardo Scamarcio, Homayoun Ershadi. World Premiere

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matt Ross) — Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a father devoted to raising his six kids with a rigorous physical and intellectual education is forced to leave his paradise and re-enter society, beginning a journey that challenges his idea of what it means to be a parent. Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Frank Langella, George MacKay, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Ann Dowd. World Premiere

CERTAIN WOMEN / U.S.A. (Director: Kelly Reichardt, Screenwriter: Kelly Reichardt based on stories by Maile Meloy) — The lives of three woman intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail. Cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, James Le Gros, Jared Harris, Lily Gladstone. World Premiere

COMPLETE UNKNOWN / U.S.A. (Director: Joshua Marston, Screenwriters: Joshua Marston, Julian Sheppard) — When Tom and his wife host a dinner party to celebrate his birthday, one of their friends brings a date named Alice. Tom is convinced he knows her, but she’s going by a different name and a different biography—and she’s not acknowledging that she knows him. Cast: Rachel Weisz, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates, Danny Glover. World Premiere

FRANK AND LOLA / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matthew Ross) — A psychosexual noir love story—set in Las Vegas and Paris—about love, obsession, sex, betrayal, revenge and, ultimately, the search for redemption. Cast: Michael Shannon, Imogen Poots, Michael Nyqvist, Justin Long, Emmanuelle Devos, Rosanna Arquette. World Premiere

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CARING / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Rob Burnett) — Having suffered a tragedy, Ben becomes a caregiver to earn money. His first client, Trevor, is a hilarious 18-year-old with muscular dystrophy. One paralyzed emotionally, one paralyzed physically, Ben and Trevor hit the road, finding hope, friendship, and Dot in this funny and touching inspirational tale. Cast: Paul Rudd, Craig Roberts, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Ehle, Megan Ferguson, Frederick Weller. World Premiere. CLOSING NIGHT FILM

THE HOLLARS / U.S.A. (Director: John Krasinski, Screenwriter: Jim Strouse) — Aspiring New York City artist John Hollar returns to his Middle America hometown on the eve of his mother’s brain surgery. Joined by his girlfriend, eight months pregnant with their first child, John is forced to navigate the crazy world he left behind. Cast: John Krasinski, Anna Kendrick, Margo Martindale, Richard Jenkins, Sharlto Copley, Charlie Day. World Premiere

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE / New Zealand (Director and screenwriter: Taika Waititi) — Ricky is a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his cantankerous foster uncle in the wild New Zealand bush. A national manhunt ensues, and the two are forced to put aside their differences and work together to survive in this heartwarming adventure comedy. Cast: Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley. World Premiere

INDIGNATION / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: James Schamus) — It’s 1951, and among the new arrivals at Winesburg College in Ohio are the son of a kosher butcher from New Jersey and the beautiful, brilliant daughter of a prominent alum. For a brief moment, their lives converge in this emotionally soaring film based on the novel by Philip Roth. Cast: Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon, Tracy Letts, Linda Emond, Danny Burstein, Ben Rosenfield. World Premiere

LITTLE MEN / U.S.A. (Director: Ira Sachs, Screenwriter: Mauricio Zacharias) — When 13-year-old Jake’s grandfather dies, his family moves back into their old Brooklyn home. There, Jake befriends Tony, whose single Chilean mother runs the shop downstairs. As their friendship deepens, however, their families are driven apart by a battle over rent, and the boys respond with a vow of silence. Cast: Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Ehle, Paulina Garcia, Theo Taplitz, Michael Barbieri. World Premiere

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP / Ireland, France, Netherlands (Director and screenwriter: Whit Stillman) — From Jane Austen’s novella, the beautiful and cunning Lady Susan Vernon visits the estate of her in-laws to wait out colorful rumors of her dalliances and to find husbands for herself and her daughter. Two young men, handsome Reginald DeCourcy and wealthy Sir James Martin, severely complicate her plans. Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny, Xavier Samuel, Emma Greenwell, Tom Bennett, Stephen Fry. World Premiere

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kenneth Lonergan) — After his older brother passes away, Lee Chandler is forced to return home to care for his 16-year-old nephew. There he is compelled to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his family and the community where he was born and raised. Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges, Kyle Chandler. World Premiere

MR PIG / Mexico (Director: Diego Luna, Screenwriters: Augusto Mendoza, Diego Luna) — On a mission to sell his last remaining prize hog and reunite with old friends, an aging farmer abandons his foreclosed farm and journeys to Mexico. After smuggling in the hog, his estranged daughter shows up, forcing them to face their past and embark on an adventurous road trip together. Cast: Danny Glover, Maya Rudolph, José María Yazpik, Joel Murray, Angélica Aragón, Gabriela Araujo. World Premiere

SING STREET / Ireland (Director and screenwriter: John Carney) — A boy growing up in Dublin during the ’80s escapes his strained family life and tough new school by starting a band to win the heart of a beautiful and mysterious girl. Cast: Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Jack Reynor, Aidan Gillen, Mark McKenna. World Premiere

SOPHIE AND THE RISING SUN / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Maggie Greenwald) — In a small Southern town in the autumn of 1941, Sophie’s lonely life is transformed when an Asian man arrives under mysterious circumstances. Their love affair becomes the lightning rod for long-buried conflicts that erupt in bigotry and violence with the outbreak of World War ll. Cast: Julianne Nicholson, Margo Martindale, Lorraine Toussaint, Takashi Yamaguchi, Diane Ladd, Joel Murray. World Premiere. SALT LAKE CITY GALA FILM

WIENER DOG / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Todd Solondz) — This film tells several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading comfort and joy. Cast: Greta Gerwig, Kieran Culkin, Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn, Julie Delpy, Zosia Mamet. World Premiere

D O C U M E N T A R Y P R E M I E R E S
Renowned filmmakers and films about far-reaching subjects comprise this section highlighting our ongoing commitment to documentaries.

EAT THAT QUESTION—Frank Zappa in His Own Words / France, Germany (Director: Thorsten Schütte) — This entertaining encounter with the premier of sonic avant-garde is acidic, fun-poking, and full of rich and rare archival footage. This documentary bashes favorite Zappa targets and dashes a few myths about the man himself. World Premiere

FILM HAWK / U.S.A. (Directors: JJ Garvine, Tai Parquet) — Trace Bob Hawk’s early years as the young gay child of a Methodist minister to his current career as a consultant on some of the most influential independent films of our time. World Premiere

LO AND BEHOLD, Reveries of the Connected World / U.S.A. (Director: Werner Herzog) — Does the internet dream of itself? Explore the horizons of the connected world. World Premiere

MAPPLETHORPE – LOOK AT THE PICTURES / U.S.A. (Directors: Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato) — This examination of Robert Mapplethorpe’s outrageous life is led by the artist himself, speaking with brutal honesty in a series of rediscovered interviews about his passions. Intimate revelations from friends, family, and lovers shed new light on this scandalous artist who ignited a culture war that still rages on. World Premiere

MAYA ANGELOU – AND STILL I RISE / U.S.A. (Directors: Bob Hercules, Rita Coburn Whack) — The remarkable story of Maya Angelou — iconic writer, poet, actress and activist whose life has intersected some of the most profound moments in recent American history. World Premiere

MICHAEL JACKSON’S JOURNEY FROM MOTOWN TO OFF THE WALL / U.S.A. (Director: Spike Lee) — Catapulted by the success of his first major solo project, Off the Wall, Michael Jackson went from child star to King of Pop. This film explores the seminal album, with rare archival footage and interviews from those who were there and those whose lives its success and legacy impacted. World Premiere

NORMAN LEAR – Just Another Version of You / U.S.A. (Directors: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady) — How did a poor Jewish kid from Connecticut bring us Archie Bunker and become one of the most successful television producers ever? Norman Lear brought provocative subjects like war, poverty, and prejudice into 120 million homes every week. He proved that social change was possible through an unlikely prism: laughter. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM

NOTHING LEFT UNSAID: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper / U.S.A. (Director: Liz Garbus) — Gloria Vanderbilt and her son Anderson Cooper each tell the story of their past and present, their loves and losses, and reveal how some family stories have the tendency to repeat themselves in the most unexpected ways. World Premiere

RESILIENCE / U.S.A. (Director: James Redford) — This film chronicles the birth of a new movement among pediatricians, therapists, educators, and communities using cutting-edge brain science to disrupt cycles of violence, addiction, and disease. These professionals help break the cycles of adversity by daring to talk about the effects of divorce, abuse, and neglect. World Premiere

RICHARD LINKLATER—dream is destiny / U.S.A. (Directors: Louis Black, Karen Bernstein) — This is an unconventional look at a fiercely independent style of filmmaking that arose in the 1990s from Austin, Texas, outside the studio system. The film blends rare archival footage with journals, exclusive interviews with Linklater on and off set, and clips from Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, and more. World Premiere

UNDER THE GUN / U.S.A. (Director: Stephanie Soechtig) — The Sandy Hook massacre was considered a watershed moment in the national debate on gun control, but the body count at the hands of gun violence has only increased. Through the lens of the victims’ families, as well as pro-gun advocates, we examine why our politicians have failed to act. World Premiere

UNLOCKING THE CAGE / U.S.A. (Directors: Chris Hegedus, Donn Alan Pennebaker) — Follow animal rights lawyer Steven Wise in his unprecedented challenge to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans. By filing the first lawsuit of its kind, Wise seeks to transform a chimpanzee from a “thing” with no rights to a “person” with basic legal protection. World Premiere

U. S . D R A M A T I C C O M P E T I T I O N

The 16 films in this section are world premieres and, unless otherwise noted, are from the U.S.

AS YOU ARE (Director: Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Screenwriters: Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Madison Harrison) — The telling and retelling of a relationship between three teenagers as it traces the course of their friendship through a construction of disparate memories prompted by a police investigation. Cast: Owen Campbell, Charlie Heaton, Amandla Stenberg, John Scurti, Scott Cohen, Mary Stuart Masterson.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION (Director and screenwriter: Nate Parker) — Set against the antebellum South, this story follows Nat Turner, a literate slave and preacher, whose financially strained owner, Samuel Turner, accepts an offer to use Nat’s preaching to subdue unruly slaves. After witnessing countless atrocities against fellow slaves, Nat devises a plan to lead his people to freedom. Cast: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Jackie Earle Haley, Gabrielle Union, Mark Boone Jr.

CHRISTINE (Director: Antonio Campos, Screenwriter: Craig Shilowich) — In 1974, a female TV news reporter aims for high standards in life and love in Sarasota, Fla. Missing her mark is not an option. This story is based on true events. Cast: Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, Maria Dizzia, Tracy Letts, J. Smith-Cameron.

EQUITY (Director: Meera Menon, Screenwriter: Amy Fox) — A female investment banker, fighting to get a promotion at her competitive Wall Street firm, leads a controversial tech IPO in the post-financial-crisis world, where regulations are tight but pressure to bring in big money remains high. Cast: Anna Gunn, James Purefoy, Sarah Megan Thomas, Alysia Reiner.

THE FREE WORLD (Director and screenwriter: Jason Lew) — Following his release from a brutal stretch in prison for crimes he didn’t commit, Mo is struggling to adapt to life on the outside. When his world collides with Doris, a mysterious woman with a violent past, he decides to risk his newfound freedom to keep her in his life. Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Elisabeth Moss, Octavia Spencer, Sung Kang, Waleed Zuaiter.

GOAT (Director: Andrew Neel, Screenwriters: David Gordon Green, Andrew Neel, Michael Roberts) — Reeling from a terrifying assault, a 19-year-old boy pledges his brother’s fraternity in an attempt to prove his manhood. What happens there, in the name of “brotherhood,” tests both the boys and their relationship in brutal ways. Cast: Nick Jonas, Ben Schnetzer, Virginia Gardner, Danny Flaherty, Austin Lyon.

THE INTERVENTION (Director and screenwriter: Clea DuVall) — A weekend getaway for four couples takes a sharp turn when one of the couples discovers the entire trip was orchestrated to host an intervention on their marriage. Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Cobie Smulders, Alia Shawkat, Clea DuVall, Natasha Lyonne, Ben Schwartz.

JOSHY(Director and screenwriter: Jeff Baena) — Josh treats what would have been his bachelor party as an opportunity to reconnect with his friends. Cast: Thomas Middleditch, Adam Pally, Alex Ross Perry, Nick Kroll, Brett Gelman, Jenny Slate.

LOVESONG (Director: So Yong Kim, Screenwriters: So Yong Kim, Bradley Rust Gray) — Neglected by her husband, Sarah embarks on an impromptu road trip with her young daughter and her best friend, Mindy. Along the way, the dynamic between the two friends intensifies before circumstances force them apart. Years later, Sarah attempts to rebuild their intimate connection in the days before Mindy’s wedding. Cast: Jena Malone, Riley Keough, Brooklyn Decker, Amy Seimetz, Ryan Eggold, Rosanna Arquette.

MORRIS FROM AMERICA (U.S.-Germany / Director and screenwriter: Chad Hartigan) — Thirteen-year-old Morris, a hip-hop-loving American, moves to Heidelberg, Germany, with his father. In this completely foreign land, he falls in love with a local girl, befriends his German tutor-turned-confidant, and attempts to navigate the unique trials and tribulations of adolescence. Cast: Markees Christmas, Craig Robinson, Carla Juri, Lina Keller, Jakub Gierszal, Levin Henning.

OTHER PEOPLE (Director and screenwriter: Chris Kelly) — A struggling comedy writer, fresh from breaking up with his boyfriend, moves to Sacramento to help his sick mother. Living with his conservative father and younger sisters, David feels like a stranger in his childhood home. As his mother worsens, he tries to convince everyone (including himself) he’s “doing OK.” Cast: Jesse Plemons, Molly Shannon, Bradley Whitford, Maude Apatow, Zach Woods, June Squibb. (Day One film)

SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU (Director and screenwriter: Richard Tanne) — A chronicle of the summer afternoon in 1989 when the future president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, wooed his future First Lady on an epic first date across Chicago’s South Side. Cast: Tika Sumpter, Parker Sawyers, Vanessa Bell Calloway.

SPA NIGHT (Director and screenwriter: Andrew Ahn) — A young Korean-American man works to reconcile his obligations to his struggling immigrant family with his burgeoning sexual desires in the underground world of gay hookups at Korean spas in Los Angeles. Cast: Joe Seo, Haerry Kim, Youn Ho Cho, Tae Song, Ho Young Chung, Linda Han.

SWISS ARMY MAN (Directors and screenwriters: Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan) — Hank, a hopeless man stranded in the wild, discovers a mysterious dead body. Together the two embark on an epic journey to get home. As Hank realizes the body is the key to his survival, this once-suicidal man is forced to convince a dead body that life is worth living. Cast: Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

TALLULAH (Director and screenwriter: Sian Heder) — A rootless young woman takes a toddler from a wealthy, negligent mother and passes the baby off as her own in an effort to protect her. This decision connects and transforms the lives of three very different women. Cast: Ellen Page, Allison Janney, Tammy Blanchard, Evan Jonigkeit, Uzo Aduba.

WHITE GIRL (Director and screenwriter: Elizabeth Wood) — Summer, New York City: A college student goes to extremes to get her drug-dealer boyfriend out of jail. Cast: Morgan Saylor, Brian “Sene” Marc, Justin Bartha, Chris Noth, India Menuez, Adrian Martinez.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

The 16 films in this section are world premieres and, unless otherwise noted, are from the U.S.

AUDRIE AND DAISY (Directors: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk) — After two high-school girls in different towns are sexually assaulted by boys they consider friends, online bullying leads each girl to attempt suicide. Tragically, one dies. Assault in the social media age is explored from the perspectives of the girls and boys involved, as well as their torn-apart communities.

AUTHOR : The JT LeRoy Story” (Director: Jeff Feuerzeig) — As the definitive look inside the mysterious case of 16-year-old literary sensation JT LeRoy — a creature so perfect for his time that if he didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him — this is the strangest story about story ever told.

THE BAD KIDS (Directors: Keith Fulton, Lou Pepe) — At a remote Mojave Desert high school, extraordinary educators believe that empathy and life skills, more than academics, give at-risk students command of their own futures. This coming-of-age story watches education combat the crippling effects of poverty in the lives of these so-called “bad kids.”

GLEASON (Director: Clay Tweel) — At the age of 34, Steve Gleason, former NFL defensive back and New Orleans hero, was diagnosed with ALS. Doctors gave him two to five years to live. So that is what Steve chose to do: Live — both for his wife and newborn son and to help others with this disease.

HOLY HELL (Director: undisclosed) — Just out of college, a young filmmaker joins a loving, secretive, spiritual community led by a charismatic teacher in 1980s West Hollywood. Twenty years later, the group is shockingly torn apart. Told through hundreds of hours of accumulated footage, this is their story.

HOW TO LET GO OF THE WORLD (and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change)” (Director: Josh Fox) — Do we have a chance to stop the most destructive consequences of climate change, or is it too late? Academy Award-nominated director Josh Fox (“Gasland”) travels to 12 countries on six continents to explore what we have to let go of — and all of the things that climate can’t change.

JIM (Director: Brian Oakes) — The public execution of American conflict journalist James Foley captured the world’s attention, but he was more than just a man in an orange jumpsuit. Seen through the lens of his close childhood friend, “Jim” moves from adrenaline-fueled front lines and devastated neighborhoods of Syria into the hands of ISIS.

KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE (Director: Robert Greene) — This psychological thriller follows actor Kate Lyn Sheil as she prepares to play the role of Christine Chubbuck, a Florida television host who committed suicide on air in 1974. Christine’s tragic death was the inspiration for “Network,” and the mysteries surrounding her final act haunt Kate and the production.

KIKI (U.S.-Sweden / Director: Sara Jordeno) — Through a strikingly intimate and visually daring lens, “Kiki” offers insight into a safe space created and governed by LGBTQ youths of color, who are demanding happiness and political power. A coming-of-age story about agency, resilience, and the transformative art form of voguing.

LIFE, ANIMATED (Director: Roger Ross Williams) — Owen Suskind, an autistic boy who could not speak for years, slowly emerged from his isolation by immersing himself in Disney animated movies. Using these films as a roadmap, he reconnects with his loving family and the wider world in this emotional coming-of-age story.

NEWTOWN (Director: Kim A. Snyder) — After joining the ranks of a growing club no one wants to belong to, the people of Newtown, Conn., weave an intimate story of resilience. This film traces the aftermath of the worst mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history as the traumatized community finds a new sense of purpose.

NUTS! (Director: Penny Lane) left — The mostly true story of Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, an eccentric genius who built an empire with his goat-testicle impotence cure and a million-watt radio station. Animated re-enactments, interviews, archival footage, and one seriously unreliable narrator trace his rise from poverty to celebrity and influence in 1920s America.

SUITED (Director: Jason Benjamin) — Bindle & Keep, a Brooklyn tailoring company, makes custom suits for a growing legion of gender-nonconforming clients.

TRAPPED (Director: Dawn Porter) — American abortion clinics are in a fight for survival. Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws are increasingly being passed by states that maintain they ensure women’s safety and health, but as clinics continue to shut their doors, opponents believe the real purpose of these laws is to outlaw abortion.

UNCLE HOWARD” (U.S.-U.K. / Director: Aaron Brookner) — Howard Brookner’s first film, “Burroughs: The Movie,”captured the cultural revolution of downtown New York City in the early ’80s. Twenty-five years after his promising career was cut short by AIDS, his nephew sets out to discover Howard’s never-before-seen films to create a cinematic elegy about his childhood idol.

WEINER (Directors: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg) — With unrestricted access to Anthony Weiner’s New York City mayoral campaign, this film reveals how a high-profile political scandal unfolds behind the scenes, and it offers an unfiltered look at how much today’s politics are driven by an appetite for spectacle.

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION

The 12 films in this section are world premieres unless otherwise specified.

BELGICA right (Belgium-France-Netherlands / Director: Felix van Groeningen, Screenwriters: Felix van Groeningen, Arne Sierens) — In the midst of Belgium’s nightlife scene, two brothers start a bar and get swept up in its success. Cast: Stef Aerts, Tom Vermeir, Charlotte Vandermeersch, Helene De Vos. (Day One film)

BETWEEN SEA AND LAND (Colombia / Directors: Manolo Cruz, Carlos del Castillo, Screenwriter: Manolo Cruz) — Alberto, who suffers from an illness that binds him into a body that doesn’t obey him, lives with his loving mom, who dedicates her life to him. His sickness impedes him from achieving his greatest dream of knowing the sea, despite one being located just across the street. Cast: Manolo Cruz, Vicky Hernandez, Viviana Serna, Jorge Cao, Mile Vergara, Javier Saenz.

BRAHMAN NAHMAN (U.K.-India / Director: Q, Screenwriter: S. Ramachandran) — When Bangalore U.’s misfit quiz team manages to get into the national championships, they make an alcohol-fueled, cross-country journey to the competition, determined to defeat their archrivals from Calcutta while all desperately trying to lose their virginity. Cast: Shashank Arora, Tanmay Dhanania, Chaitanya Varad, Vaiswath Shankar, Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy, Sid Mallya.

A GOOD WIFE (Serbia-Bosnia-Croatia / Director: Mirjana Karanovic, Screenwriters: Mirjana Karanovic, Stevan Filipovic, Darko Lungulov) — When 50-year-old Milena finds out about the terrible past of her seemingly ideal husband, while simultaneously learning of her own cancer diagnosis, she begins an awakening from the suburban paradise she has been living in. Cast: Mirjana Karanovic, Boris Isakovic, Jasna Djuricic, Bojan Navojec, Hristina Popovic, Ksenija Marinkovic.

HALAL LOVE (AND SEX) (Lebanon-Germany-United Arab Emirates / Director and screenwriter: Assad Fouladkar) — Four tragic yet comic interconnected stories come together in this film, which follows devout Muslim men and women as they try to manage their love lives and desires without breaking any of their religion’s rules. Cast: Darine Hamze, Rodrigue Sleiman, Zeinab Khadra, Hussein Mokadem, Mirna Moukarzel, Ali Sammoury. (International premiere)

THE LURE (main photo) (Poland / Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska, Screenwriter: Robert Bolesto) — Two mermaid sisters, who end up performing at a nightclub, face cruel and bloody choices when one of them falls in love with a beautiful young man. Cast: Marta Mazurek, Michalina Olszanska, Jakub Gierszal, Kinga Preis, Andrzej Konopka, Zygmunt Malanowicz. (International premiere)

MALE JOY, FEMALE LOVE right (China / Director and screenwriter: Yao Huang) — Portrays an unlimited cycle of love stories. Cast: Nand Yu, Daizhen Ying, Xiaodong Guo, Yi Sun.

MAMMAL (Ireland-Luxembourg-Netherlands / Director: Rebecca Daly, Screenwriters: Rebecca Daly, Glenn Montgomery) — After Margaret, a divorcee living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her exhusband’s grieving rage. Cast: Rachel Griffiths, Barry Keoghan, Michael McElhatton.

MI AMIGA DEL PARQUE (Argentina-Uruguay / Director: Ana Katz, Screenwriters: Ana Katz, Ines Bortagaray) — Running away from a bar without paying the bill is just the first adventure for Liz (mother to newborn Nicanor) and Rosa (supposed mother to newborn Clarisa). This budding friendship between nursing mothers starts with the promise of liberation but soon ends up being a dangerous business. Cast: Julieta Zylberberg, Ana Katz, Maricel Alvarez, Mirella Pascual, Malena Figo, Daniel Hendler. (International premiere)

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (Chile / Director: Alejandro Fernandez, Screenwriters: Alejandro Fernandez, Jeronimo Rodriguez) — An upper-class kid gets in trouble with the one percent. Cast: Agustin Silva, Alejandro Goic, Luis Gnecco, Paulina Garcia, Daniel Alcaino, Augusto Schuster.

SAND STORM (Israel / Director and screenwriter: Elite Zexer) — When their entire lives are shattered, two Bedouin women struggle to change the unchangeable rules, each in her own individual way. Cast: Lamis Ammar, Ruba BlalAsfour, Hitham Omari, Khadija Alakel, Jalal Masrwa.

WILD (Germany / Director and screenwriter: Nicolette Krebitz) — An anarchist young woman breaks the tacit contract with civilization and fearlessly decides on a life without hypocrisy or an obligatory safety net. Cast: Lilith Stangenberg, Georg Friedrich.

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

The 11 films in this section are world premieres unless otherwise specified. A 12th film will be announced in the weeks ahead.

ALL THESE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS (LEFT) (Poland / Director: Michal Marczak) — What does it mean to be truly awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep? Christopher and Michal push their experiences in life and love to the breaking point as they restlessly roam the streets of Warsaw in search for answers.

A FLAG WITHOUT A COUNTRY (Iraq / Director: Bahman Ghobadi) — This documentary follows the very separate paths of singer Helly Luv and pilot Nariman Anwar from Kurdistan, both in pursuit of progress, freedom, and solidarity. Both individuals are a source of strength to their society, which perpetually deals with the harsh conditions of life, war, and ISIS attacks. (North American premiere)

HOOLIGAN SPARROW – right (China-U.S. / Director: Nanfu Wang) — Traversing southern China, a group of activists led by Ye Haiyan, aka Hooligan Sparrow, protest a scandalous incident in which a school principal and a government official allegedly raped six students. Sparrow becomes an enemy of the state, but detentions, interrogations and evictions can’t stop her protest from going viral.

THE LAND OF THE ENLIGHTENED (Belgium / Director: Pieter-Jan De Pue) — A group of Kuchi children in Afghanistan dig out old Soviet mines and sell the explosives to child workers in a lapis lazuli mine. When not dreaming of an Afghanistan after the American withdrawal, Gholam Nasir and his gang control the mountains where caravans are smuggling the blue gemstones.

THE LOVERS AND THE DESPOT (U.K. / Directors: Robert Cannan, Ross Adam) — Following the collapse of their glamorous romance, a celebrity director and his actress ex-wife are kidnapped by movie-obsessed dictator Kim Jong-il. Forced to make films in extraordinary circumstances, they get a second chance at love — but only one chance at escape.

PLAZA DE LA SOLEDAD (Mexico / Director: Maya Goded) — For more than 20 years, photographer Maya Goded has intimately documented the lives of a close community of prostitutes in Mexico City. With dignity and humor, these women now strive for a better life — and the possibility of true love.

THE SETTLERS (France-Canada-Israel-Germany / Director: Shimon Dotan) — The first film of its kind to offer a comprehensive view of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, “The Settlers” is a historical overview, geopolitical study, and intimate look at the people at the core of the most daunting challenge facing Israel and the international community today.

SKY LADDER: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang” (Director: Kevin Macdonald) — Having reached the pinnacle of the global art world with his signature explosion events and gunpowder drawings, world-famous Chinese contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang is still seeking more. We trace his rise from childhood in Mao’s China and his journey to attempt to realize his lifelong obsession, Sky Ladder. (Day One film)

SONITA (Germany-Iran-Switzerland / Director: Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami) — If 18yearold Sonita had a say, Michael Jackson and Rihanna would be her parents and she’d be a rapper who tells the story of Afghan women and their fate as child brides. She finds out that her family plans to sell her to an unknown husband for $9,000. (North American premiere)

WE ARE X / (U.K.-U.S.-Japan / Director: Stephen Kijak) — As glam rock’s most flamboyant survivors, X Japan ignited a musical revolution in Japan during the late ’80s with their melodic metal. Twenty years after their tragic dissolution, X Japan’s leader, Yoshiki, battles with physical and spiritual demons alongside prejudices of the West to bring their music to the world.

WHEN TWO WORLDS COLLIDE right (Peru / Directors: Heidi Brandenburg, Mathew Orzel) — An indigenous leader resists the environmental ruin of Amazonian lands by big business. As he is forced into exile and faces 20 years in prison, his quest reveals conflicting visions that shape the fate of the Amazon and the climate future of our world. World Premiere

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | UTAH 21 – 31 JANUARY 2015 |

Youth (La Giovinezza) |(2015) Prime Video

Director: Paolo Sorrentino | Cast: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Ed Stoppard | 118 Drama Italy

Sorrentino’s second film in English, YOUTH, opens with the Sicilian director’s signature razzmatazz and rhythm: a girl singing on a revolving bandstand in a luxurious Swiss mountainside Hotel, possibly Davos. This is where Michael Caine, as retired conductor Fred Ballinger, is meditating the future – missing his wife, but not his music. Joined by his film director friend, Mick (Harvey Keitel) their contemplate life and their married kids, Lena and Julian, (Wiesz and Stoppard).

YOUTH is a leisurely-paced drama that feels like a languorous troll down memory lane punctuated by explosions of dramatic choreography and entertaining vignettes from Jane Fonda, who plays an actress friend of the men; a voluptuous prostitute who services the male guests, and a couple who sit in silence at dinner, and an obese footballer who can barely breathe.

This riff on the pleasures of physical and emotional love has a three-stranded narrative that explores Lena’s sudden break-up with Julian, who has supposedly found a better lover (she spends the rest of the film talking about her own bedroom skills to anyone who’ll listen). Mick is meanwhile putting the finishing touches to a film script with the ‘legendary’ Brenda Morel (Fonda). Paul Dano, plays another filmmaker guest and stooge for Fred as the two shoot the breeze on the subject of fame and being type-cast for one’s previous successes.

YOUTH works best in the scenes involving Keitel and Caine who create some touching emotional moments and pleasant comedy. Caine is especially good as the staid yet sensitive ageing conductor – he’s similar in some ways to Toni Servillo’s Tito di Girolamo in Consequences of Love, Sorrentino’s first and most satisfying film to date.

Very much a case of style over substance, Youth occasionally feels like a series of interesting moments strung together rather than a satisfying whole. That said, it looks fabulous, Luca Bigazzi continues to wow us with some dazzling camerawork including a magnificent sequence of St Marks Square, and Venice sinking into the sea. There is plenty to enjoy performance-wise thanks to the sterling talents of Keitel, Caine and the rest of the starry cast, Youth is great while it lasts but instantly forgettable once the credits have rolled. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO | CANNES 2015 PREMIERE

The Last Diamond (2014) | Le Dernier Diamant

Writer & Director: Eric Barbier

Cast: Yvan Attal, Berenice Bejo

108min. Drama. France l Luxembourg

Place Vendôme (1998) was the last memorable Antwerp-set diamond-themed heist thriller – it starred Catherine Deneuve as the wife of a wealthy dealer, played by Jean Pierre Bacri. Eric Barbier updates the genre with this slick and shiny vehicle starring Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) as another glamorous business woman; in control of the world’s most famous diamond.

THE LAST DIAMOND (Le Dernier Diamant), has been hiding its light from UK audiences since its release last year and is now making a sparkling appearance courtesy of Frank Mannion’s distribution company Swipe Films. Yvan Attal (The Serpent) and Bérénice Bejo (The Artist), make for a pleasing pairing in the classically crafted crime caper which provides solid entertainment right up to its final dénouement and is best described as a Gallic Thomas Crown Affair.

While on parole from prison, suave professional safecracker, Simon (Attal) gets dragged into a spot of extracurricular crime with his sidekick Albert (Jean-Francois Stevenin). His goal is the theft of the famous Florentine diamond – purported to be worth €40 million (the real gem disappeared during the Second World War) – he uses his sophisticated charms gain the trust of the wealthy young heiress Julia (Bejo), who has put the diamond up for auction, following the mysterious death of her mother.

Barbier’s first two acts revolve around well-laid preparations for the heist, as the lead couple’s on screen chemistry builds to a sizzling climax, convincingly creating a subtley nuanced romantic sideshow to the crime caper, as Julia falls for Simon’s cunning dexterity in finding his way first into her boudoir and then into her heart. Meanwhile, the robbery takes place just as Julia is discovering Simon’s duplicity while the plotline twists into unexpected territory providing some tense final scenes. There’s nothing particularly new or daring about THE LAST DIAMOND: what ultimately carries it all along is the piquant romance between Julia and Simon, who, against his better judgement, steadily finds himself involved in a love affair he didn’t quite bargain for. Attal is spectacular as the sociopathic swindler, blending boyish vulnerability with bouts of brutal violence, his cigarette ‘schtick’ adding a certain loucheness to his urbane swagger – Attal is somewhat maligned as an actor despite his excellent chops; (as seen in Leaving, Rapt and Regrets and The Serpent) and he carries the film here providing sterling entertainment but never over-playing his touch, even when things go awry. Off-screen he’s also captured the heart of Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Cinematographer Denis Rouden’s classy visuals take us on a joyride through the Benelux countries with a sophisticated spin round Antwerp’s upmarket diamond district, thrumming to Renaud Barbier’s upbeat original score. This is a punchy thriller with plenty of heart and soul despite the glib twinkle in its eye. MT

OUT ON RELEASE at SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 29 January 2016.

Bande À Part |Band of Outsiders | (1964) | BFI Retrospective

Cast: Anna Karina, Sami Frey, Claude Brasseur, Louisa Colpeyn | 95 min | Drama | France

BANDE À PART, shot in 25 days and based on the pulp novel “Fool’s Gold” by Dolores Hitchins, was project that Godard embarked on to support his marriage with Anna Karina. The pair hadn’t worked together since Vivre sa vie. Godard called his production company “Anouchka”, his pet name for Karina, and he gave the character she played Odile, after his late mother.

At an English language school in Paris, two petty swindlers, Franz (Frey) and Arthur (Brasseur) fall in love with Odile (Karina). Arthur lives with the enigmatic Madame Victoria (Colpeyn) in the suburbs, where a mostly absent Mr. Stolz has a huge amount of cash hidden in his cupboard. Franz and Arthur want nothing more than to bed with Odile – apart from stealing the money. Their clumsy plan backfires, they kill Madame Victoria, and while Franz and Odile escape to South America to start a new life, Arthur and his uncle kill each other in Madame Victoria’s garden before the money, now hidden in a dog’s kennel, is stolen by surprise.

Godard had run out of producers and had asked Columbia, Paramount and UA to give him 100.000 $ to make a picture. All questioned the high figure Godard was asking for and when he explained that this was for the whole production, only Columbia agreed to take him up on the project. Godard gave them a choice of three topics: the first about a woman leftie, the second about a writer and the final topic about the Hitchins crime novel: they obviously picked the latter. With such a small budget,, the studio did not even bother about a script.

The director’s poetic voice-over re-tells the story from the emotional point of view of the three main protagonists, in a narrative full of quotations, references and in-jokes. But instead of being all-knowing, the voice-over soon loses the plot – the characters are coming into their own. It gives the impression that Godard was filming in perpetual motion. Everything and everybody moves in silence: in a scene at the ‘Café Madison’, there is no sound for a minute, followed by the now famous dance scene of the trio, a polonaise copied by many, amongst them Hal Hartley and Quentin Tarantino. The film is symbolised by the three of them racing through the Louvre. The images are rush by: money, pistols, death, Odile’s stockings as masks, Shakespeare and always the leafless trees, set against a dark November sky. Raoul Coutard’s images literally shot on the run, like he had done during the Indochina war.

Again, Godard was in opposition to everything – even though the film turned out to be very much a neo-classical in style: “This movie was made as a reaction against anything that wasn’t done. It was almost pathological and systematic. A wide-angle lens is not normally used for close-ups? Then let’s use it. A handheld camera isn’t normally used for tracking shots? Then let’s try it. It went along with my desire to show that nothing was off limits.” For once, film and reality coincided: during the shooting, Karina and Godard got back together again, moving into a new apartment in the Latin Quarter, Karina admitting “It’s true: the film saved my life. I had no more desire to live. I was doing very, very badly. This film saved my life”.

Watching Bande À Part the for the first time in 1965, as first year students – we all admired the sequences when the actors read colportage stories from newspapers – we thought that it was vey cool. According to Raoul Coutard “there was no real script. Jean-Luc would show up with whatever he had written for the day. We’ve end up filming that. If he hadn’t written anything, we would not have filmed anything.” The newspaper stories, as it turned out, were just paddings, when the master had not written enough…. AS

SCREENING DURING THE GODARD SEASON AT THE BFI FROM JANUARY – MARCH 2016

SILVERED WATER, SYRIA SELF-PORTRAIT (MA’A AL-FIDDA) | DVD release

BEST DOCUMENTARY | BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

Dir.: Ossama Mohammed, Wiam Simav Bedirxan; Documentary; Syria/France 2014, 92 min.

Imagine you were a filmmaker talking to a friend on a street about opening a film club in the neighbourhood – minutes later your friend is shot dead. Or you, the filmmaker, lend your camera to another friend to film a demonstration and he is shot dead moments later. Unimaginable? Not so for the Syrian filmmaker Ossama Mohammed who was driven into exile before he could finish his documentary about the cruel slaughter in his homeland. He arrived in Cannes in May 2011, without a film, but to bear witness. He now lives in Paris, looking at the images from his homeland on YouTube.

One day, a young Kurdish filmmaker, Simav Bedirxan, asks him for advice on what to shoot. (Simav means “Silvered Water”, from the Kurdish). The dialogue about the images Mohammed receives in Paris forms the centre of this “documentary” – not quite the right word here for these images of torture and death. The tales of “1001 Nights” are mentioned, but the nightmare we witness has nothing in common with bedtime stories. Protesters are stripped and sodomised with sadistic precision by soldiers of the Assad regime. We see casket after casket full of dead babies; cats are limping (burnt but just alive) around war-torn streets, so heavily bombarded that few outlines are visible. Bedirxan films herself after she has been shot, luckily it is only a flesh wound. She concentrates on the children in the playground are inured to the snipers targeting them from rooftops. She even locates a school in Homs and teaches in a cellar, before Muslim fundamentalists forbid her activity, due to her inadequate head-covering. The filmmaker flees trough a long tunnel out of Homs, a traumatic journey, every shot could be her last.

These raw images; the sound so often distorted that we seem to hear the shots as a permanent echo. The film is catalogued in chapters: burning cities, bloody snow and the photos of Bashar al-Assad dominating, interrupted aby the cutting of the umbilical cords of babies, who we see next in their caskets. SILVERED WATER is a testament of shame, a review of raw violence; the vision of a manmade hell becoming reality, replayed day after day. Nobody who has seen this documentary knows how and when it will end. And it’s still happening right now. AS

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD

Vivre sa Vie (1962)

Dir.: Jean-Luc Godard

Cast: Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot, Andre S. Labarthe, Brice Parain

France 1962, 85 min.

VIVRE SA VIE is a decisive step in the development of film aesthetics – but it is also the result of the emotional turmoil between its director Jean Luc Godard and the film’s star, Anna Karina, whose marriage had been very much on the rocks when filming started in February 1962 in Paris.

Karina, ten years younger than Godard, had met the actor Jacques Perrin whilst filming Le Soleil Dans l’oeil on Corsica in September 1961, where she celebrated her 21st birthday. During the shoot, Karina decided to leave her husband, Godard, for Perrin: “I admire Jean-Luc very much. But he’s of another generation. Whereas Jacques is my double”. On the night of November 21s Godard destroyed all their belongings in the flat they shared and left her. Karina, who reportedly had taken barbiturates, was taken to hospital. Godard and Perrin met for a duel with dice, then settled for poker, but when journalists crowded their table, nothing was decided. Whilst the papers reported over the Christmas period that Karina would marry Perrin, Godard and Karina got back together in January 1962 and he announced that he would direct her in VIVRE SA VIE – with Godard deciding that Karina didn’t need to be paid as they were living together (!).

Godard was a great admirer of Berthold Brecht (Cahiers had run a special edition dedicated to him), and VIVRE SA VIE was to be a tableau of 13 chapters, with the master of ceremony introducing every one. Godard obviously had Brecht’s ‘Three Penny Opera’ in mind” and wanted “to shoot only on location, but without making a film of reportage”. But the director abandoned not only the master of ceremony idea (replaced by inserts about the chapter contents), but also changed the ending: instead of a sardonic ending – Nana becoming a rich luxury prostitute -, she is killed at the end of chapter 12, now the last one. Needless to say, that Karina was furious, the shooting was halted to for a few days.

After the camera lingers for a long time on her back, Nana (easily deciphered as an anagram of Anna) tells Paul (Labarthe), the husband she had left, leaving her child behind “I want to die”. She has dreamed for a long time of becoming a film star and tells everyone that she has acted in a film with Eddie Constantine: Karina, Godard and Constantine acted un-credited in Varda’s Cleo. She shouts at Paul: “If we get back together, I will betray you again.”

Nana, who works in a record shop, is always broke, unable to pay her rent and humiliated by the concierge and her assistant. She sinks into prostitution, first as an amateur then, after meeting the pimp Raoul (Rebbot), as a professional. Her lonely and dreary existence is shown as heart-breaking; whilst waiting in street for a customer in Port Mailliot she is standing under a shop hoarding called Hans-Lucas (Jean-Luc in translation). Meeting a philosopher (Parain) in a café, Nana is told the story of Porthos, who was murdered. After meeting a young artist engrossed in a book by Edgar Allen Poe, (voiced-over by Godard) Nana falls in love and wants to start a new life, but is literally sold by Raoul to another pimp in a street.

Raoul Coutard’s triste black and white images and long takes, mostly over three minutes, evoke what Godard had in mind: “I was thinking – like a painter in a way, of confronting my characters head-on – as in the paintings of Matisse or Braque”. Godard seems to circle his environment, like a researcher, but he always returns to Karina: from the back, the front, the side and even in parts. She is his universe, but he can’t decipher her. Still, the search alone seems to make him happy. In an experiment in language, Nana is trying to intonate a sentence in different ways; Godard shows that there is no absolute truth in our words, and he always returns to her vulnerable face with the Louise Brooks haircut.
VIVRE SA VIE won the Special Jury Price and the Critic’s Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1962. AS

ON LONG RELEASE AS PART OF THE JEAN LUC GODARD RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI UNTIL MARCH 2016

The 33 (2016)

Dir.: Patricia Riggen;

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Juliette Binoche, Rodrigo Santoro, Juan Pablo Raba, Laurence Golborne, Gabriel Byrne, Bob Gunton, James Brolin;

Chile/USA 2015, 127 min.

Mexican director Patricia Riggen’s account of the dramatic rescue in 2010 of 33 miners trapped for several months in Chile’s Atacama gold and copper mine is – like the cast – a mixed affair. The decision to shoot in English somehow robs the film of authenticity, and the strictly linear narrative does not help much either, since the outcome is already common knowledge.

Before the 33 miners go down on that fateful day, some of them are superficially introduced in their hometown of Copiapo: There is the expectant father who argues with his wife about the gender of the baby (born just in time for his rescue); the philanderer, whose wife quarrels openly with his mistress before he sets off and there is the troubled Dario Segovia (Raba), who sleeps on a park bench while his sister Maria (Binoche) sells the best empanadas in town. The explosion in the mine is impressive, the men running for their lives very realistic. But we return soon to stereotypes and clichés: overground, the Chilean Mining Minister (Golborne) is moved by Maria’s outburst and sets the rescue operation in action (shown as a selfless act, not a publicity stunt for his upcoming candidature in the 2013 presidential election), helped by mining experts Andre Sougarret (Byrne) and Hart (Brolin) and pushed by President Sebastian Pinero (Gunton). At least underground, where Banderas’ “Super Mario Sepulvoda” is taking over, rationing food and keeping the peace, heterogeneity is assured, even though the interaction is too often predictable. The joyous ending is played triumphantly to the full, but again we are left wondering why Maria and her brother cannot connect at first under such uplifting circumstances.

One wonders if Riggen should not have taken more risks, as in the scene when the starving miners, in a dream sequence filmed to Bellini’s “Norma”, imagine being served their favourite food by their beloved women. This breaks the predictability of the action and emphasises the strongest point of The 33: DOP Checco Varese’s images. But the script (written by a committee of five) and the international cast undermine any attempt at realism, let alone tackling the media circus in the “Camp Hope” set up at the entrance to the mine. As the final credits acknowledge, the miners were never paid compensation and the company was cleared (against all evidence) of criminal negligence, so one would have expected a little more input on these topics and less on grandstanding. And finally, it is really disappointing to see the worst clichés of yesterday’s macho world repeated in a film directed by a woman. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 29 JANUARY 2016

A Touch of Zen (1970) | DVD blu-ray release

The Daddy of all martial arts films, King Hu’s impressive A TOUCH OF ZEN has been sparklingly restored to its full glory in this Ming Dynasty masterpiece. Perhaps the most influential wuxia outing, it showcases the genre’s golden age and its magnificent set pieces and thrilling fight sequences incorporating Peking Opera wizardry and traditional characters without feeling dated, thanks to King Hu’s clever staging. What starts in the realms of fantasy slowly becomes a political thriller and finally a mystical drama featuring a Zen Buddhist monk called Hui-Yuan. Absolutely breathtaking. MT

AVAILABLE IN A LIMITED EDITION (2000 UNITS) THREE-DISC DUAL FORMAT EDITION FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE UK ON 25 JANUARY 2016 courtesy of MASTERS OF CINEMA EUREKA

Taxi Tehran (2015) | Berlinale 2015| GOLDEN BEAR 2015

Director: Jafar Panahi | With: Jafar Panahi

82mins Drama Iran

The third film to be released by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, since being placed under house arrest, plays out like a living, breathing video essay on the director and his work. But it also manages to capture so much about Iranian filmmaking, and cinema as a whole. Panahi takes us on a dense, multi-layered cab ride through the streets of the capitol; a thought provoking journey, packed with warmth and humor, and dotted with the sort of fleeting moments- some chance, some not; that make Iranian film so sublime.

Filmed entirely from small portable cameras in a Tehran taxicab, Panahi plays it all quasi-documentary as an undercover cab driver. On his 90-minute spin around the city’s streets, the director picks up a motley crew of passengers, many of whom offer little winks to the director’s past work.

The first argument about justice, we’re told, is taken from CRIMSON GOLD. Then there’s a blood covered man who must be rushed to hospital; a man with a bag of counterfeit DVDs; two old ladies in a rush with some goldfish; and the director’s niece trying to make a “distributable” film herself. The soft-spoken Panahi just sits and takes their confessions.

Through these conversations, the film throws up a number of questions about the role of the filmmaker, and whether or not it is right to follow any sort of moral code. When his niece enters the cab she recites the cultural ministry’s statute of what makes a film “distributable”. Then, just moments later, the girl attempts to direct the events of a little street-side drama so that her film will follow the code. The next passenger in the cab is a lawyer who has defended cultural dissidents, and Panahi has her show up with a giant bouquet of roses. It’s clear where his allegiances lie.

With Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, now both living in exile, the director is one of the last remaining lights of that old guard to stay home. And TAXI has retained many of the fine elements that made those directors’ New Wave films so great. The idea of automobiles as a center for conversation; the lightning in a bottle effect of filming children who seem oblivious to the lens; and the belief in cinema as a transcendental medium and one which can connect us, no matter how varied our situations are.

By putting himself in front of the camera, as well as behind it, is the film a touch too narcissistic? Perhaps. That said, Mr. Panahi has been collecting major plaudits since his house arrest took effect, and TAXI might just be the best of the lot. Rory O’Connor

REVIEWED AT BERLINALE 2015 | 30 OCTOBER 2015 NATIONWIDE

The Assassin (2015) | Best Director Award | Cannes 2015

Director: Hsiao-hsien Hou

Cast: Qi Shu, Chen Chang, Satoshi Tsumabuki

12omin Taiwanese Drama

Taiwanese director Hsiao-hsien Hou has brought a Palme d’Or probable to the Croisette with his stunning drama THE ASSASSIN. This is a serious and sumptuously composed masterpiece – in the true sense of the word. Hou brings a sense of uncompromising formal brilliance to the wuxia material. THE ASSASSIN is a work of spiritual resonance and historical importance, it is also visually orgasmic.

Set during the Tang dynasty, the story opens as a young girl played by Shu Qi undergoes training to be an assassin. But her female sympathies stand in the way of her killing instinct and after failing an important mission, she is sent back to her hometown. Some time later, she is again tasked with killing an important governor (played by Chang Chen) who is questioning the Emperor’s authority. The task involves a moral twist: not only is the governor her cousin, but also her first love.

Mark Lee Ping-Bing’s stunning visuals create a sparkling jewel box in every frame. The magnificent landscape showcase lush forests, mist-filled mountains and precipitous gorges in this remote and the often hostile terrain. But this is not the classic martial arts slasher movie and the killing sprees are spare and discrete. This is the domain of the highly disciplined and spiritually-trained Grandmasters, experienced recently through the work of Wang Ka Wai. But Hou’s martial arts sequences have their own brutal and breathtaking beauty and are nonetheless powerful for their distinct lack of gratuitous blood-letting. There is a serene and graceful delicacy to this filmmaking which is both tear-wellingly beautifully and satisfying austere. A sequence involving black magic is particularly sinister, making THE ASSASSIN a captivating masterpiece in elegance and restraint, holding his head proudly in the starry firmament of Taiwanese filmmaking. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 24 MAY 2015 | IN COMPETITION | CANNES 2015

Legend (2015) | Netflix

As Reggie Kray, Tom Hardy essays the classic bad boy rise and fall narrative of genre familiarity. As Ronnie Kray, Hardy bears an uncanny resemblance to Patrick Marber. Unfortunately the filmmakers didn’t have the foresight to get Marber to do a rewrite of the screenplay.

Real life is messy, though arguably more dramatic. Working Title, who excel in chocolate box exports of the Union Jack, truncate and clean up the timeline of the brothers, and Reggie’s relationship with Frances, to a neat conventional structure, taking liberties with documented facts for the sake of a reductive and restorative three act structure.

Narrated from beyond the grave by Frances, as a sort of cockney sparrow cousin of Bridget Jones, all with a garish sense of retro-knowingness and provincial cool and a script full of some real exclamatory corkers “It was time for the Krays to enter gangster legend”. Its soundtrack, a wholly predictable mix of Green Onions, In the Mood and Hermans Hermits, literally illustrating, for those opening weekend punters who can’t be bothered, the wedding scene with Chapel of Love, the relationship turning sour with Helen Sharpiros Lonely Last Night, and her suicide with Make The World Go Away (a new version by Duffy, who may be the only authentic thing in the film).

No subtlety is allowed here. Ronnie’s schizophrenia is too complex for the flat white mainstream to handle, so instead they ramp up his madness way past 11, an absurdist idiot savant pitched somewhere between Tommy Cooper and Derek & Clive, complete with liberal and comedic use of the c-word. Spanking a Y-fronted young teen with a carpet beater, his sexuality is also far too abstruse a subject for its audience – better to grab some laughs with carry on up the camping instead. “Barbara Windsor was in here the other night”, Reggie tells Frances, as he seduces her with the nightlife. And at a Hackney orgy, John Sessions, as Lord Boothboy the perverted peer, enquires of a young lad “Do you like it down the hatch?”

Chazz Palminteri, a proper American actor who has played proper American gangsters with Robert DeNiro and Woody Allen, is brought in to please the studio and as an attempt to give weight to two brief cameo scenes of wretched expositional dialogue, apparently as Sicilian Mafioso Angelo Bruno, who comes out with clunkers such “London is going to be the Las Vegas of Europe”, then warning Reggie that Ronnie’s a loose cannon and “we need you to do something about Ron”, leading to Hardy’s very EastEnd reply “I can’t do that – he’s my bruvva”. Dum, dum, dum…

The Krays (1990) an earlier film with the Spandau brothers Kemp, a Buñuelian masterpiece by comparison, dealt largely with their mother Violet, played by Bille Whitelaw, and her unconditional love of her little monsters. Violet gets little screen time here, save for a scene where she berates Frances for making a bad cup of tea. Instead, Tara Fitzgerald is lumped with the thankless mother in law role. Elsewhere, other facts are inexplicably sexed up into bad movie scenes – Jack the Hat McVitie is shown having a doorstep scuffle with the accountant (David Thewlis) in a botched attempt to kill him – in reality his wife answered and said that he wasn’t in, so McVitie just pocketed the money and went home. Further licences are taken with scenes that are so dramatically convenient its laughable to believe they happened like that.

LEGEND, beyond the gimmick of Hardy’s doubletake, and though he does have some tender moments as Reggie, is nonetheless a simplistic 4th form Jekyll and Hyde sketch, with the soap opera plotline of a man, an alpha male, trying and failing to be saved to the straight and narrow by the love of a good little dolly bird, who he ultimately destroys, and who in turn inevitably destroys him. Apparently no CGI was utilised, instead using stand-ins and old fashioned angles for Hardy’s dual role, though one would have thought the 30 million budget would have afforded the blurring out of double glazing in Stoke Newington’s Cedar Court. @Robert Chilcott

LEGEND IS NOW ON NETFLIX

Beauty and the Beast (2014) Prime Video

Director: Christophe Gans | Cast: Vincent Cassel, Lea Seydoux, Andre Dessollier | 99min. Fantasy Drama. Germany, France

Jean Cocteau’s original was a pioneering piece of magic made when he turned his hand to filmmaking during WWII. With very limited resources, the result was enchanting and eerie. Even with a large budget (and filmed in Babelsberg where Metropolis and The Blue Angel were shot) this latest version of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST doesn’t conjure up the same mystique, but is a lavishly-imagined if over-the-top frolic from Christophe Gans that spans both Renaissance and Napoleonic eras. It has Lea Seydoux as a gentle Belle and Vincent Cassel as her fiercely masculine Beau yet elegantly pathetic Beast – essentially an asshole who turns into a nice guy. Andre Dessollier is magnetically impressive as the kindly father. Because all the leads were versed in mime and method acting the piece really benefits from their acting chops and makes the production a success, if you can overlook the overzealous CGI. Narrative-wise Gans has developed Cocteau’s original here, with co-writer Sandra Vo-Anh adhering faithfully to Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s book to explore the origins of the Prince’s curse and its connections with the forces of nature. The result is more a children’s fairytale than Cocteau’s enchanting and subversive outing but there are some dark moments too. You can compare the two now on international platforms. MT. 111min.

ON PRIME VIDEO

The Hateful Eight (2015)

Director/Writer: Quentin Tarantino

Cast: Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern, Samuel L Jackson

187min. Drama. US

Quentin Tarantino’s HATEFUL EIGHT is ushered in by an ominous overture from Ennio Morricone rendered by the famous Czech National Orchestra and serves to warn us that tragedy is to follow, in more way than one. In the snowy wilds of post-Civil War Wyoming, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is hand-cuffed to his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), taking her to Red Rock to face her just deserves for murder. From their stagecoach they jossle with a handful of other bounty hunters on the way, including Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson). The film is noteworthy largely because it may be the final film to be photographed on archaic 7omm film stock. Ben Hur and other epics used this medium for its panoramic potential but here the width allows Tarantino an estate agent-style perspective of Minnie’s Haberdashery where the chamber piece will unspool its tedious, over-talky 187 minutes’ running time spliced by an intermission.

Tarantino has always championed the underdogs of genre, technique and society and this makes his latest offering a particular let down. A garish, self-indulgent parlour piece so bloated with boring sollioquiys and longuers that it never lives up to what could have been an intriguing and punchy 90 minute whodunnit. Known for his screenplays, the one he delivers here is neither wry nor witty although Tim Roth does his best with a Mr Micawber style turn.

Highlights are the cinematography by Robert Richardson and the snowy wilds are similar to that of an infinitely superior film called The Revenant. But the widescreen wonderland soon narrows down to a claustrophobic closet where our eight hateful characters gradually grind each other down. When the charming cuffed together duo arrive at Minnie’s with the Major and a confederate soldier played by Walton Goggins, they discover another party has already taken up residence at the hostelry cum store in the shape of veteran Confederate general (Bruce Dern); an English hangman (Tim Roth; a raddled, blue-eyed cowboy (Michael Madsen); and a mysterious muchacho named Mexican Bob (Demian Bichir).

While Minnie’s whereabouts occupy the Major’s time, Ruth is mainly concerned with getting his bounty in RedRock and getting shot of his grotesquely-gurning prisoner. The viewer’s primary concern is why Tarantino is wasting the potential of 70mm on this stuffily verbose filmed play.

There’s plenty of woman-bashing and nigger-taunting which accurately reflects an era when misogyny and racialism was rife but at least Mel Brooks made it amusing in Blazing Saddles. Tarantino also does his best to window-dress his drama with a touch of historical background to betoken a cultural underpinning but this HATEFUL is otherwise a trivial caper. Dern is quietly powerful as the daintily vehement veteran. The others deliver performances straight out of the stock Western closet. The tone is crass, caustic and candid. After the intermission, the mass slaughter kicks off in earnest; the initial tension of the steely whodunnit blowing out with the wintry wind. Those out for gore will appreciate this loathsome rivers of blood climax which is delivered with glee and gusto as limbs fly and bodily fluids splatter as our characters monotonously spout forth their bloated bluster while we cease to care who did the dastardly deed. Gradually all is lost as a vomit of filthy teeth, futile posturing and blood-drenched faces fill the screen in this Quality Street without the quality. You’ll be glad when it’s all over and make a mental note to avoid those ‘bottomless’ coffee pots in future. MT

The HATEFUL EIGHT IS ON GENERAL RELEASE.

Le Mépris (1963) | Cannes Classics 2023

Dir: Jean-Luc Godard | Cast: Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Georgia Moll, Fritz Lang, Jean-Luc Godard | France/Italy 1963, 103 min.

For JL Godard LE MÉPRIS was just ”a film without mystery, an Aristotelian film, freed from appearances [it] proves in 149 shots, that in cinema, just like real life, there is nothing secret…there is nothing to do but live – and film”.

Godard’s producers, among them Carlo Ponti and Joseph E. Levine, must have been quite shocked by the austere outcome; they insisted on an additional scene, showcasing Brigitte Bardot’s beauty, only to be outmanoeuvred by the director himself.

Based on Alberto Moravia’s novel “Il Disprezzo’ (The Ghost at Noon), this film about filmmaking starts with the basics: a dolly on rails follows Georgia Moll’s Francesca Vanini who walks towards the camera. Her husband Paul (Piccoli), was supposed to entice a mass audience. But Godard simply subverted the call for any form of eroticism, letting Camille ask Paul which parts of her anatomy he loves the most – the obvious answer is everything. Meanwhile she lies unruffled and statuesque as he lists her body parts. Strangely, these are the only happy moments Camille and Paul will have enjoy during the whole film. When Paul, a scriptwriter, later meets the American producer Prokosh (Palance) in Rome’s Cinecitta, Camille feels her husband is pimping her out to the arrogant, misogynist and dictatorial producer who exclaims: “I like Gods, I know exactly how they feel”. In addition, he is treating his well-educated assistant and translator Francesca Vanini (Moll) like a slave.

In a preview theatre with Fritz Lang – as himself, Paul and Camille bear witness to Prokosh going off on one. He is unhappy about Lang’s rushes, so he reacts by kicking the film rolls around the room and then has Vanini bend over so he can write a cheque for Paul on her back while shouting: “When the Nazis heard the word culture, they drew a revolver; I am only writing a cheque”, Prokosh hands Paul the cheque: ten thousand dollars to pay the mortgage for Camille and Paul’s flat in Rome. When Paul grudgingly accepts the cheque, he loses his wife.

In a breath-taking 34 minute sequence in the couple’s flat, Godard follows the unravelling of their relationship with tracking shots which show the growing distance between the couple. These finally unravel in one frame in two different rooms, divided by a wall. Paul slaps Camille i, she hits him back, he retreats, but it is too late: Camille shouts angrily: “When you were writing crime novels, we were broke, but that was fine with me”.

The love next where they conducted their relationship, has soon become a millstone round their necks. Paul still believes he can save his marriage but seems to have learned nothing: when the film crew moves on to Capri, Paul again leaves Camille, against her will, alone with Prokosh, who obviously fancies her. This time Camille retaliates: she kisses the producer in full view of Paul. Then she packs her bags and leaves for Rome, Paul terminating his contract with Prokosh. To humiliate Paul even further, Camille allows Prokosh to drive her to Rome. Their journey ends in a fatal crash, which is not shown, Godard makes fun of mainstream movies by showing the dead bodies all mangled in grotesque positions, with the last words of Camille’s good-bye letter to Paul superimposed: “Take Care. Adieu. Camille”.

LE MÉPRIS ends with a beautifully serene shoot in Capri, where Godard acts as Lang’s assistant in capturing the scene when Odysseus returns to Ithaca. As Godard pointed out “the film is shot entirely in real locations, both exteriors and interiors, honest and authentic”. One of them is the gorgeous villa of the Italian author Curzio Malaparte on Capri, designed by Alberto Libera, it sits like a space ship in the sun. In the panorama shots, the film crew with their equipment look entirely out of place. Movie posters of Hitchcock’s Psycho and Nicholas Ray’s Bigger than Life among others, decorate Paul and Camille’s flat; but the main honour goes to Roberto Rossellini: Apart from the poster of his 1961 film Vanina Vanini (sic!), the group visits a cinema to hear a singer perform. We notice that Paul and Camille are sitting on the edge of their respective aisles, and after they all leave the cinema, we see Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia advertised in big letters on the cinema front.

Raoul Coutard’s scope camera produces three different sets of colours: in the opening sequence of the couple in bed, soft, warm colours dominate. Then everything changes to cold, icy mages. Lang’s film takes, which he shoots as an actor, are dominated by classic colours, appropriate to the content of the film. Godard employed no less than five future directors for the project: Suzanne Schiffman (Script Supervisor), Charles L. Bitsch (Assistant director), Bertrand Tavernier (Publicity), Luc Moulett, whose book on Fritz Lang Camille reads in the bath and Jacques Rozier, who shot a documentary about the making of LE MÉPRIS.

But there is also a very personal moments for Godard: Camille buys herself a black wig making her look just like Anna Karina (Godard’s first choice to play Camille) two years later as Natacha von Braun in the car with Eddie Constantine’s Lemmy Caution at the end of Alphaville: only then it was the beginning of a love story, this is the end. George Delerue’s plangent music, which accompanies this scene, offers a haunting memory in this story of money versus art. The film is proof that even though Godard’s films frequently ended in a cul-de-sac. He would become one of the most important directors of the second half of the 20th century. AS

CANNES CLASSICS 2023 | ON 4K UHD, BLU-RAY, DVD & DIGITAL ON JUNE 26

Sunset Boulevard (1950) | blu-ray release

Director: Billy Wilder Writer: Charles Brackett

Cast: Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson

11omin | Drama | US

SUNSET BOULEVARD is one of those rare films that you can review without need for a spoiler alert: its protagonist starts the film dead and is still resolutely dead at the end of the picture. We know who shot him: Discovering why is what matters.

A down on his luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) is introduced to us as a corpse in the swimming pool of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). In a long extended flashback, Gillis’s off screen narration accompanies his journey to the pool. Gillis’s deathly form of existence (being paid to doctor up a terrible Salome script) and Desmond’s attempt to resurrect her acting career are ghoulishly riveting in this supreme horror comedy.

SUNSET BOULEVARD is satire of the highest order. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett’s script is full of trenchant observations of character, time and place. Hollywood’s a cruel world ruthlessly disposing of its talents and non-talents; where deluded assertions of self-worth thrive. When Gillis talks of a ‘comeback’ Desmond strongly rebukes him. “I hate that word. It’s a return to the millions of people who have never forgotten me for deserting the screen.”

Wilder’s film equally glistens as a film-noir. Joseph F. Seitz’ camerawork showcases the shadowy ‘old dark house’ feel, juxtaposed with the shine of the real fifties Paramount Pictures studio lot that deepens the power of the story as much as its witty screenplay. Gloria Swanson was fifty when SUNSET BOULEVARD was produced. Wilder wanted Seitz’s photography and the make-up department to have her look slightly older to show that her glamour was past its peak.
Near the end of the film, Desmond wants to enter Gillis’s room to ‘comfort’ him (we are made to assume that he’s now her reluctant lover) but pauses to look in a mirror. For me Swanson’s raising of her hands and mesmerised look, as he stares at her image, echoes James Whales’s The Bride of Frankenstein. Slight jerks of the head and preparedness appear Elsa Lanchester-like; the bride looking for small signs of re-created beauty to attract the ‘groom’ (William Holden – often in bought old-fashioned evening dress) and Desmond’s former audience (that Cecil B. De Mille generation when Salome projects were once all the rage.

SUNSET BOULEVARD is a very black film. Yet for all its grotesquery it never topples into camp nonsense. It’s too seriously bitter to ever allow that. Wilder and Bracket cleverly balance BOULEVARD’s light and dark. For the ‘normal’ scenes of Gillis with Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), a reader at the studio who falls in love with Gillis, are genuinely touching and tender interludes that relieve, but never soften, an abnormal tale. William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Nancy Olson and Erich Von Stroheim (Max, the creepy butler) give brilliantly sympathetic performances. All perfect casting in a film about the vanity of acting out of roles and the writing of stories to maybe please some head of a studio, but never its washed-out Salomes. ALAN PRICE

NOW OUT ON BLU-RAY

Love (2015) l Cannes Midnight special 2015 | Blu-ray release

Dir.: Gaspar Noé

Cast: Aomi Muyock, Karl Glusman, Klara Kristin, Vincent Maraval

France/Belgium 2015, 134 min.

Eagerly awaited by his fans, the latest film from Argentinian-born director Gaspar Noé, enfant-terrible of the French film industry, was supposed to be his most daring, but the rumours of pornography are false, and the near total absence of violence – coupled with his usual aesthetically brilliance – make LOVE his most mature film. It may lose him some of his hard core base, but the lack of the kind of shock tactics used in Seul Contre Tous and Irreversible, will gain him new admirers, simply for his panache and technical audacity.

Shot in 3D Scope, LOVE is a melancholy love story where the anti-hero Murphy (Glusman) mourns the loss of his former girl-friend Electra (Muyock) on New Year’s morning in the Parisian flat of Omi (Kristin), with whom he has a two year old son Gaspar (sic). His regret is heightened by the fact that the three adults once had a sexually charged ménage-à-trois. Murphy’s Law motto, super-imposed in big letters on the screen “If anything can go wrong, it will”, becomes only too true.

As always, Noé avoids a linear narrative and we learn about Murphy’s relationship with Electra, more or less in reverse order. When they meet, he studies film, she painting. Both are very naïve, and we never see them actually working on their respective craft. Instead, they have sex, clinging together for dear life. The sex lasts for about half the film. In the intermissions, they try to figure out how not to lose each other, but Murphy betrays Electra with the seventeen-year old Omi after the couple had invited her to spice up their sex life with a threesome. When Murphy visits Omi on a weekend when Electra is away, their lovemaking is interrupted when a condom breaks, and in a cut later we learn that Omi is pregnant, something Murphy is not very happy about. Murphy is very possessive of Electra, hitting her former lover, a gallery owner, over the head with a bottle of cognac. At the police station he meets friendly cop (Vincent Maraval), who tries to pacify him. They meet in a kinky sex-club, were Murphy again flips when Electra wants to sleep with another man, whilst he has at least two casual flings with women – all are Electra look-a-likes. A sad voice-mail from Electra’s mother lets Murphy fear that she has committed suicide. Interestingly, he pulls away from sex with a tranny in a scene that could have been truly groundbreaking but is the only sex interlude that is cut abruptly short, with Murphy bailing out; unable to carry things through.

Aesthetically LOVE is a tour-de-force, making up for a rather limp but honest storyline: most young people are having relationships because of the sexual element – they not so concerned with philosophy or exchanging stories of the past as these are very limited experiences for them. Murphy and Electra also use drugs making their behaviour more irresponsible. Their long rant in a taxi is memorable, although rather trite, the actors are well suited to anything that places them in extra-ordinary situations. But again, this is realism. In many French films even teenagers quote Verlaine and Genet fluently, exactly in the manner written by the 30+ scriptwriters.

In Murphy’s room posters of Salo, Birth of a Nation and Taxi Driver give away Noe’s idols and he really has a go at Electra for not having seen Kubrick’s 2001. But Noé this time refrains from using space-travel metaphysics or vagina cam-shots (apart from one brief shot of a penis from the POV of the cervix. Instead we get a penis ejaculating in 3D at the audience. DOP Benoit Debie has choreographed the ménage-à-trois between the trio like a Busby Berkeley ballet: shot from the ceiling in elegant ellipses. This scene alone is worth watching all 134 minutes, and is proof that LOVE is art and not pornography. We get a feast of conflicting and constrasting lighting, bodies shot not as objects but as passionate explorers. In some way, LOVE is autobiographical: Noé’s way of apologising to some of his ex-girlfriends and is perhaps also an apology for the violence which sometimes marred his former films. This is his bid to make a film where sex and love come together, both actually and narratively-speaking. It’s a success. AS

NOW ON DVD |blu-ray FROM 11 JANUARY

Veronika Voss (1982) |DVD release | Rainer Werner Fassbinder

VERONIKA VOSS (DIE SEHNSUCHT DER VERONIKA VOSS)

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Cast: Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Cornelia Froboess, Annemarie Duringer, Johanna Hofer, Rudolf Platte, Eric Schumann

West Germany 1981; 104 min.

Fassbinder’s penultimate film was also part of his “West German” Trilogy, of which Veronika Voss is the middle part, bookended by Lola and The Marriage of Maria Braun. In these films Fassbinder was critical about the Federal Republic of Gemany: he saw – rightly – that the Nazis were still a force to be reckoned with, particularly in the education of the young, and that the winners – the newly created class of profiteers of the so called “Economic Miracle” – were working hand in hand with them. For the victims of the Nazis there was, literally, no future in post-war Germany.

The sports journalist Robert Krohn (Thate) meets the actress Veronika Voss (Zech) at a tram stop near the Geiselgasteig film studios in Munich. She seems disturbed and disorientated, but Krohn falls in love with her. Voss, had been an UFA star between 1933 and 1945, and is rumoured to have had an affair with Dr. Goebbels. But now, she finds it impossible to get work. Krohn’s wife Henriette, (Froboess) is well aware that Voss has a drug problem and she visits Voss’ psychiatrist, Dr. Katz (Duringer), who exploits her patients by prescribing morphine for exorbitant prices. One of Katz victims is an old Jewish couple (Hofer, Platte), who have survived Treblinka. After they commit suicide, Henriette finds out that Dr. Edel (Schumann), a corrupt health official, is helping Dr. Katz, but before she can talk to her husband she is murdered in a car accident.

DOP Xaver Schwarzenberger plays with light and shadows in his imaginative b/w images: part noir, part a reference to the old UFA films Voss was part of. Fassbinder directs with rare subtlety, the camera gliding along murky streets and ruins – one can still feel the war. Based on the real story of the actress Sybille Schmitz, who committed suicide in 1955 (the year Veronika Voss was set in), the film shows little empathy with its protagonists – apart from Henriette. Voss is not shown as a victim but, like many Germans, as an opportunist, who enjoyed the good times with Nazis, and was enraged when these times came to an end. Dr. Katz and Dr. Edel are the new ‘winners’: their profit motive is part of the newly introduced capitalism where murder is part of the game. Krohn is seen as naïve and weak, he is no match for Edel and Katz and in the end he is just a bystander, not willing to take on his wife’s killers.

VERONIKA VOSS won the Golden Bear at Berlinale 1982 and Fassbinder commented “Our democracy in the western zones was given to us by the Aliies, we did not fight for it. Old political foes had a chance to fill the vacuum, not openly with the “Swastika”, but more subtlely with the old educational methods of repression. I am astonished how quick this country came to re-arm itself: The revolting youth were rather touching. I also wanted to show, how the 50s formed the people in the 60s The collision of the new establishment with the engaged fighters [who came from the student movement], led to the latter being pushed into illegality.” AS

NOW OUT ON DVD

https://youtu.be/XQXjeaKkbVE

Babai | Father (2015)| Foreign Language Oscars 2016

Director|Wrtier: Visar Morina

Cast: Val Maloku, Astrit Kabashi, Adriana Matoshi, Enver Petrovci, Xhevdet Jashari

104min Drama Albania

Visar Morina’s debut feature BABAI has had a successful summer winning him Best Director at Karlovy Vary and three awards at Munich Film Festival. The rites of passage road movie, set in 1990s Kosovo and seen through the eyes of a young boy, is also Albania’s hopeful for the Foreign Language Oscars 2016. 10-year-old Nori (Val Maloku) is a likeable and strong-willed kid, who sets out to join his father in Germany, with high hopes of a better life.

Naive in the extreme and sombre in tone, BABAI is nevertheless an absorbing coming of age tale that feels fresh in capturing the zeitgeist of its 21st century migration theme, despite a rather lacklustre cast who sadly fail to engage our sympathy but sometimes provide zesty, local humour – as seen during a Kosovar wedding.

It’s clear from the opening scene that Nori is determined to go to Germany. Hiding inside the boot of a car that’s taking his father Gesim (Astrit Kabashi), to the Serbian border, it establishes early on the desperation of the immigrant trail and also the love of this boy for his kind father, who clearly finds it difficult to be harsh on his wife or his little son, but needs to give them a better life. Throwing himself in the path of a bus, Nori ends up in hospital but his father is undeterred, leaving him with close family.

The war in Kosovo has not yet happened but the journey across Europe is still illegal and dangerous. Young Nori shows some guts, stealing money from his uncle and then setting out alone, once he’s better, cadging a lift from Valentina (Adriana Matoshi), a woman also planning to join her husband in Germany. Despite best intentions, it soon emerges that they both have their eye to the main chance, as is often the case, rather than working as a team.

Morino’s only fault in BABAI is a tendency for repetition and didacticism in his narrative that does his protagonists no favours. Everyone has witnessed the difficulties for poor European countries, but empathy needs to be engaged not with a wagging finger but by building rich characterisation and evoking strong performances from the leads. Val Maloku gives a feisty turn as Nori doing his best with a rather underwritten part in a drama that offers little room for reflection; everything focusing on the anger and determination of the journey.

Matteo Cocco’s stark, handheld camera echos the bleakness, sometimes featuring documentary-style shots that aims to add authenticity to the endeavour. But the ending comes a surprise that somehow feels unplanned and out of place, despite the considerable journey in getting there. MT

BABAI is ALBANIA’S FOREIGN LANGUAGE OSCAR ENTRY 2016 | REVIEWED AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Partisan (2015)

Director: Ariel Kleiman Writers: Sarah Cyngler | Kleiman

Cast: Vincent Cassel, Jeremy Chabriel, Florence Mezzara, Katalin Hegedus

94min Thriller

Preening with narcissistic self-righteousness is how Vincent Cassel plays Gregori, the cultish pater familias of a child orphanage somewhere in a hillside town. 30 year-old Ariel Kleiman’s debut feature is an enigmatic thriller inspired by a article on child assassins in Colombia. For a director who has made his name from a string of award-winning shorts, this is a feature film with gravitas and aesthetic style – a kind of stylised realism.

The story unravels from the point of view of young Alexander (Jeremy Chabriel) who lives with his single mother Susanna (Florence Mezzara) in a subdued compound with eight or so other nubile women and their offspring who appear to be the protegées of the mesmerising Gregori. Cassel makes for a chilling and masterful leader – and although outwardly casting a concerned and kindly eye over his underlings, he is not a character to be crossed or challenged – and this is keenly felt when one of the kids stands up to him, and Gregori reacts with brutal authority. Sending them out on daily errands from their closed community in the rocky hillside, he appears to be fostering a den of iniquity of which he is the supreme leader, servicing his women folk – or so it’s implied.

The children are the focus of this strange story that feels alienating but somehow familiar. Cassel commands absolute authority in a narrative where he himself is morally questionable – a coiled spring waiting to pounce from a position of restrained yet magnetic menace – he gradually exudes antipathy and mistrust. You grow to hate him. It’s a superb portrayal of slow-burning and carefully concealed evil, cleverly directed and tightly scripted by Kleiman and his collaborator Sarah Cyngler. MT

PARTISAN is a metaphor for a kind of smalltime fascist dictatorship with Cassel carrying the film as its repugnant overlord. It’s a shame therefore that the pace is narcoleptic and – in the end – the piece too ambiguous to sustain or satisfy its narrative pretensions. That said, PARTISAN meticulously paints a picture of how easily children can be detrimentally influenced by their carers and the heavy burden of responsibility adults have for the young people in their charge. MT

[youtube id=”jJgW3VrY5fY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8TH JANUARY 2016 AND THEREAFTER ON DVD VOD

Lolita (1962) DVD release | Kubrick’s early classics

Director.:Stanley Kubrick Vladimir Nabokov- novel

Cast: James Mason, Sue Lyon, Shelley Winters;

UK/USA 1962, 152 min.

Vladimir Nabokov’s novel ‘Lolita’ was first published in France in 1955. Stanley Kubrick adapted it for the screen in 1962 but, and produced it independently in England but he commented later: “If I had realised how severe the censorship limitations were going to be, I would probably would never have made the film”.

But part of the sometimes underwhelming outcome can be found in the script written by Kubrick and James Harris (both un-credited), after Kubrick chose not to use Nabokov’s own script, for which the novelist was still credited and praised Kubrick during a private screening before the film premiered. Kubrick left out Professor Humbert Humbert’s obsession with ‘nymphets’ long before meeting Lolita, which started with the death of his childhood friend Annabel, a love affair he could not consummate. When coming to Ramsdale, Humbert had originally planned to stay with the McCoos’ and their 12 year old daughter, with whom he was in love, but the McCoos house burned down. This way, Kubrick tried to portray Humbert’s affair into some sort of ‘forbidden love’ drama, whilst the professor was really just obsessed with childlike women.

Lolita starts with a murder: Humbert (James Mason) shoots the Chopin-playing Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers), after an absurd opening line: “Are you Spartacus coming to free the slaves?” asks Quilty of his soon-to-be assassin. Flashback to Ramsdale, New Hampshire in the early 50s: it is summer, and Professor Humbert is looking for accommodation, before commencing his lectures at Beardsley College, Ohio. The landlady, Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), soon falls for Humbert, but he is love with her twelve year-old daughter Dolores (Lyon) whom he calls Lolita. Charlotte, who wants Humbert to herself, takes her daughter to a summer camp, writing a letter to Humbert stating that his presence in the house on her return will confirm his love for her. Humbert does stay, but leaves his diary in the open so that Charlotte can read the truth for herself and the rest, as they say, is history.

Kubrick originally wanted Catherine Demongeot for the role of the coquettish Lolita, but she was still filming Zazie with Louis Malle, so after auditioning 800 girls for the part he settled for Sue Lyon whom he chose for the size of her breasts despite her being only just fifteen when the shooting ended, and almost sixteen when the film was premiered and too young to attend the screening. It was also the first of Kubrick’s films to include a shot of a bathroom lavatory – which was to become his trademark, appearing in almost every film until his death. Score-wise Kubrick chose Nelson Riddle after Bernard Hermann had turned the project down, and Riddle achieves a frisky upbeat mood. Oswald Morris’ frigidly crisp but impressive b/w images are the highlight of Lolita, with Sellers’ multi-persona antics the low-point. Obviously, the physical encounters between the couple have to be more or less imagined by the audience, but this is not the reason for a somewhat unsubtle overall impression despite the film’s box office success, due in part to its controversial subject matter which had led to an MP losing his job. Adrian Lyne’s 1997 version clung closer to the page but was a commercial and critical failure – perhaps Lolita lives in the realms of the imagination rather than on the screen. AS/MT

NOW OUT ON DVD AND AMAZON

https://youtu.be/dY0LrmKXsB8

Turkey of 2015 | Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

Director: Sam Taylor Wood Writers: Kelly Marcel, E L James (novel)

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle, Eloise Mumford, Marcia Gay Harden

125min Drama

The long-awaited screen adaptation of the E L James popular novel has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons in what is clearly one of the biggest hypes of recent cinema history – if you choose to read the Daily Mail. FIFTY SHADES OF GREY emerges as fluffy and flirty as a freshly-groomed poodle. And as Ms Taylor Wood races to the bank, her classic romcom, a softcore porno outing suitable for teenagers (who are all on pornhub anyway), has captured the imagination of vast swathes of the mainstream cinema-going public.

This saccharine ‘erotic’ fare was scripted by Kelly Marcel, whose previous credits include Mary Poppins drama SAVING MR BANKS. But the tasteful and rather sanitised SHADES is possibly the most innocuous and respectable LGBT outing in cinema history. There were certainly more salacious and revealing adventures happening in Greenaway’s EISENSTEIN IN GUANTAJAUTO premiere which screened earlier in the day during Berlinale 2015.

But don’t be disheartened. There is plenty to enjoy about Taylor Wood’s film. The bland and baby-faced Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and has come up smelling of expensive aftershave since being born to a crack addict who disappeared shortly afterwards. Adopted by the respectable Dr Grey (a delightful Marcia Gay Harden), he then morphs into a billionnaire (aged 27) with swanky offices in downtown Seattle: a successful career he puts down to his ‘people skills’. But this is more likely due to his being a dispassionate psychopath.

Christian Grey has plenty of time on his hands to interview college literature grad, Anastasia Steele (Melanie Griffith’s daughter, Dakota Johnson) about his business acumen. Taking a shine to Ms Steele, he then showers her with gifts and ‘love bombs’ her into his squeaky clean life of emotional denial and repression, assuring her that he will “fuck her hard”. It transpires that the sweet and sassy Anastasia is a virgin. Any young student with little experience of the male species would naturally fall head over heels for a gent who is solvent, be-suited and sweeps her off in a helicopter promising a good time between the sheets, even if he is a little ‘bossy’. But sexy he ain’t – rest assured – and the chemistry between these nubile lovers is sadly as flat as yesterday’s champagne.

After giving her a reasonable initiation ceremony into his sexual style: a bit of bondage, sexual role play and control freakery – but sleeping together; nights out for dinner and intelligent conversation are only up for negotiation by written contract. He doesn’t do romance but he does do expensive gifts, and the usual reverse psychology ensues – as it does in most early relationships – where the couple jockeys for position and the woman flirts and plays hard to get. And just as Mr Grey is falling hard for Ms Steele, her four-times married mother (a glowing and simpering Jennifer Ehle) has the best advice for her daughter: “I wish I could tell you that things get better – they don’t, you just get to know yourself”. Meredith J Taylor

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 FEBRUARY 2015 – REVIEWED AT BERLINALE 2015

Polish Masterpieces | Part II | Kinoteka 2015

Andre Simonoveisz looks at Polish Cinema in the 70s and 80s in the second part of our Kinoteka 2015 series curated by Scorses | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS | POLISH MASTERPIECES

SANATORIUM POD KLEPSYDRA (THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM) 1973 | directed by Wojciech Haas nine years after The Saragossa Manuscript is even more playful and anarchic. Josef (Jan Nowocki) arrives in the sanatorium of the title, only to meet his father Jacob, who has died a while ago. Looking out of the window, he watches himself arriving earlier, but by very different means. When he meets his mother, who is just eight years old, Josef starts to comprehend that time is of different nature in this sanatorium. His life rolls along a different timetable, his innermost hopes and fearful nightmares mingle. Haas never tries to rationalise the narrative, and it seems only logic, that Josef will be a captured creature for the rest of his life. The film features the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo re-enacted by an army of clockwork manikins, as well villagers dressed as exotic birds – Josef is always the spectator, but since his inner time-clock is shot, he sees the narrative as a dream, he is travelling from event to event without him (or the audience) being aware how he got there. Josef’s loss of retrograde memory seems to be opening his brain for any events, however startling. Haas direction is flawless and the production design is stunning. HOURGLASS SANATORIUM is as exhausting as original, the avant-garde film of Polish cinema of its era.

ILLUMINACJA (ILLUMINATION, 1972) is Krzysztof Zanussi’s most autobiographical film. At the beginning we listen to a tedious lecture by a professor, explaining the moment of ‘illumination’ when the brain sees the truth directly, thus make it possible for the person to attain wisdom. Cut to Frantizek Retman (Stanislaw Latallo), a physicist student at the university of Warsaw, whose vital statistics and cognitive prowess, are measured by a team of research scientists. Retman is drawn to this particular science, because he believes in universal laws und predictable phenomena. But his analytical and logical approach to live is tested, when he falls in love with a beautiful woman, but is rejected. Frantizek is obsessed with this loss, and (like the hero in Zanusssi’s “Camouflage”) takes to mountain climbing. He meets Agnieszka, with whom he falls in love, but who is already pregnant. She convinces Frantizek to marry her. They move into a mall apartment, where, to make ends meet, Frantizek volunteers for behavioural research. But he is overwhelmed by his responsibilities and interrupts his studies to find a full-time job. After a friend from the research clinic dies, Frantizek falls into a deep depression. It is not only his relationship with Agnieszka and the death of his friend, which lead to Frantizeks downfall. He looses his belief in physics as a ‘neutral’ science, when he argues with another student about the responsibility of scientists. Retman declares “that I am not responsible for the A-Bomb, because I did not participate in the research”. But the fellow student exposes Retman’s self delusion “But the inventors were physicists too”.

ILLUMINATION shows Zanussi at the height of his aesthetic brilliance: he has constructed ILLUMINATION like a kaleidoscope, where mosaics meet and form a new content. Like in one scene, when Retman interrupts his contemplation of the cosmos to have his palm read. His motive is very devious: he just wants to know how far off the palm reader is. Her answer, that Retman does not like himself; hits home, since it is anathema to Retman, who is very self satisfied. ILLUMINATION is an idiosyncratic and insightful contemplation on the relationships between science and art, precision and creativity, intellect and emotion – and a reflection on the human need for a personal balance of the above. For our full review

SALTO (JUMP, 1972) is perhaps the most important film of Tadeusz Konwicki (1926-2015), best known as a novelist and script-writer of Mother Joan of the Angels. The film is set immediately after the end of WWII, when a young man (Zbienew Cybulski) – calling himself either Kowalski or Malinowski, later identified as Carol – jumps of a train and runs through the fields. For a moment one is not sure if this the sequel to Ashes and Diamonds, since Cybulski seems not to have changed, wearing the same sun glasses as in Wajda’s film and running wildly through the sparsely populated countryside. Finally he reaches a nameless town, where, so he claims, he has spent the war, in hiding. Nodbody seems to remember him, but then, nobody else seems to be very sure who they are themselves. Everyone’s identity is called into question – one starts to believe that they are all ghosts, which one character declares to be the truth. Carol makes the most outrageous claims, but always modifies his stories of the past when he is confronted with somebody who had witnessed the specific act. Carol claims that “he is chaste”, making himself out to beatific Christ-like figure. He even seems to cure two ill children, but the camera glides away at the last moment, so we miss the crucial death. Finally, the whole town is coming together at a dance celebration – the atmosphere reminds of Wajda’s Wesele (title image). The “Salto” dance, when all the town’s folk are locked together, is an affirmation of Polish identity, whilst the presence of a “chochol” (polish derogative for a Cossack soldier) might be a subtle hint of the political reality of the day.
The camerawork is fluid, graceful, the jump cuts between the scenes are disorientating, which gives the film a dreamlike flow. Finally, Cybulski jumping off the train at the beginning, seems now very disconcerting, since he was killed jumping on a train at a railway station in real life. AS

AUSTERIA (THE INN, 1983) is set in the Galician (now Polish) border with Russia in the first days of World War I. Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s film of the novel of the same name by Julian Stryjkowki (who also co-wrote the script) is controversial because of its description of Jewish pacifism, which led to the slaughter by Russian soldiers, and its parallels to the Holocaust. AUSTERIA is symptomatic for the difficulties Polish filmmakers had after World II in dealing with the lack of Polish resistance to the Holocaust committed in their country, and the fact, that more than thousand Jews, many of them survivors of the concentration camps, were murdered after 1944 in Poland. In the film, a Jewish innkeeper Tag (Franciszek Pieczka) is trying to keep some sort of order during the first hectic days of the war. Austrian troops manning the border, are on the retreat, Hassidic Jews from an nearby village arrive, panic stricken. An Austrian baroness and her family seem to have nothing else to do than settling private scores; and a Hungarian hussar, who has lost contact with his regiment, is more interested in sexual escapades than finding his way back to his troops. A young Jewish village girl is killed, and the rituals of her funeral are causing difficulties. The Hassidic Jews discuss Talmudic questions, before being slaughtered by the advancing Russian soldiers in a nearby lake. Whilst the film is a realistic portrait of the chaos and viciousness of the emerging war, its underlying ideology that Jews were slaughtered because they did not put up resistance is apologetic – centuries of pogroms in Poland are proof of a violent anti-Semitism.

AKTORZY PROWINCJONALNI (PROVINCIAL ACTORS, 1978) is Agnieszka Holland’s debut film. Set in a small town in contemporary Poland, a Warsaw filmmaker (Burski) comes to direct a small touring theatre troupe in Wyspianski’s ‘Liberation’, a patriotic Polish classic. The main actor, Krzystzof, wants to make a name for himself, and tries to influence Burski to stick religiously to the text. But Burski has other ideas: he wants to change the play into a sensational avant-garde version, cutting the text down to the bone. Krzystzof fights the director all the way, but after the premiere, he gives in, making peace with Burski, to save his career. But his marriage to Anka, a puppeteer, is on the rocks. Anka leaves her husband. She too, has come to realise through experience, that advancement in society comes with a loss of innocence. Whilst Holland’s actors as not particularly sympathetic – the usual gossip about which actress sleeps with the director, a gay outsider and an alcoholic – society is blamed as much as the individual. Anka is shown as an idealistic dreamer, who still reads Heidegger, and is ridiculed by her husband. Krzysztof starts using great words like “homeland, human fate and freedom” from the play, to make himself look different from the rest, but he is only too ready to fall in with Burski’s interpretation. His attempted suicide is just an act, he then runs to Anna (whom he had just condemned as naïve), like a little boy to his mother. Contrary to some western perception, PROVINCIAL ACTORS, which won the ‘FIPRESCI’ prize in Cannes, is not a thesis film, Holland declaring”I don’t know how far I have been successful, but in ‘Provincial Actors‘ I was less concerned with showing the mechanism of manipulation, and more with presenting human fate, in all its embroilment and entanglement. That is, I tried to highlight the existential aspect rather than a journalistic one. I didn’t want a film with a thesis, though I have sometimes been accused of this”.

WESELE (THE WEDDING, 1972) is one of Wajda’s most complex films. Based on a play by Stanislaw Wyspiansky written in 1900, THE WEDDING is an hallucination in the mist of the countryside, where guests at the party are visited by figures from Poland’s past. Set at a time when no Polish state existed, the groom, a journalist from Krakow, is a member of the intelligentsia, and marrying the daughter of a peasant. During the five-and-a-half minute opening-credit sequence, we follow the cortege with bride and groom going from the church through the countryside, with menacing soldiers lurking everywhere, to the house where the celebrations will be held. By now darkness has fallen and fog encloses everything. At the ceremony, the guests participate not so much in a party, but a comedy of manners, where everybody seems to chasing everybody else. Arguments ensue, and the free-for-all atmosphere degenerates into bitter fighting: the intelligentsia versus the peasantry; Poles against Jews; town’s people versus the rural population, the educated complain about the uneducated and, last but not least, women and men fight with great rancour. What follows are apparitions of Polish historical figures, who engage with the wedding guests in discussions about the way forward to Polish unity and statehood. Scenes from battles are replayed: the peasant army attacking the Russian troops in the successful battle of 1795, the same peasantry being slaughtered in the rebellion of 1846. None of the participating groups is shown in a favourable light: most of them prefer drink and day-dreaming to action, men seem to cheat permanently on their women, the artists are decadent and nobody seems to care much about the social inequalities. In the end, symbolically, the ghost of Wernyhora, an ancient Polish leader, presents the wedding party with a golden horn, to start the battle for independence. But soon, the horn is lost by the marching men outside, amidst the all-engulfing fog. A dreamlike journey through Polish history, told in poetic and expressionistic images, a picturesque yet nightmarish feast.

KINOTEKA 2015 | POLISH MASTERPIECES |MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS 8 APRIL – 29 MAY

Meet the Patels (2014)

Director: Geeta and Ravi Patel

88min Documentary US

Ravi Patel is an American via Gujurati and at nearly 30 he still hasnt met ‘the (Indian) one’. So with the help of his sister Geeta’s camera skills and his matchmaking parents, MEET THE PATELS documents his search for a bride.

Combining rough comic sketches, cartoons and interviews with family and friends, MEET THE PATELS is upbeat, fly-on-the-wall and fun. The first step involves compiling a ‘biodata” – a form of biography that includes family info and a personal CV. To be a Patel is to be a part of the biggest family in the world, so Ravi is sure there should be plenty of choice. And men are still the hunters, so how difficult can it be for an intelligent well-qualified decent looking actor to find a decent bride? Far from being fraught with setbacks this stab at home-movie-making is hilarious and poignant.

Ravi’s family may be traditional and old-fashioned but they are loving and reasonable, but he hasn’t told them about his his girlfriend of two years, Audrey, a flame-haired all American girl. And although the relationship recently ended, it’s clear that Ravi is not over her. What impresses here is Ravi’s close and remarkably mature relationship with his parents which is a refreshing change from the usual dysfunctional family stories that so often feature in drama. Also impressive is Ravi’s openness to experiment but not afraid to trust his heart. The idea of an Indian bride excites him and he begins the gruelling process that includes the usual internet dating and a traditional matchmaking incentive by his mother, Champa. Ravi sets off on the family’s reguarl family vocation with intention, this time, of finding a wife.

The style here is for the most part fresh and insightful; the handheld camera helping to keep things authentic and quirkily engaging. Ravi is an amusing guy who comes across as decent, approachable and well-intentioned – certainly any girl would be happy with him as a husband. The Patel girls are cute and comely and certainly no fools. But is Ravi really ready to move on?. An engaging and enjoyable documentary that explores themes of internet dating, matchmaking and ethnic heritage and ultimately reaches a surprising conclusion. MT

SCREENING FROM 26 DECEMBER 2015 AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE AND SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

At Any Price (2012)

Writer|Director: Ramin Bahrani

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Zac Efron, Kim Dickens, Heather Graham

105min Drama US

A father and son come into conflict in Ramin Bahrani’s well-made, pithy and absorbing MidWest drama AT ANY PRICE. that explores how country life has been made increasingly fraught by modern farming methods, as rural communities strive for commercial success.

Dennis Quaid is the main attraction here as the central character Henry Whipple: a morally ambiguous middle-aged family who exudes a bullish masculinity tempered by a finely-tuned understanding of human psychology that sometimes masks his unscrupulousness. As a craggy pater familias he rubs up against his more brooding, laid back son Dean (Zac Efron) who prefers to play things more honestly and is clearly frustrated with his small town existence. Whilst Quaid’s character occasionally echoes Kramer out of Seinfeld, his wife Irene (Kim Dickens) is attractive, calm and sincere despite his unfaithfulness with her rival Meredith (Heather Graham).

But this is Southern Iowa where women still take a backseat role. It’s a traditional world all round but seed farming is becoming increasingly more geared towards GM cropping and Henry Whipple (Quaid) is continually ambitious for his farming business seeking to acquire new land even if this involves swooping in on local landowners’ funerals where he makes ill-judged but often successful takeover bids to grieving families only too glad to sell their inherited farmland.

Meanwhile Dean is a keen petrolhead and has no interest in going into farming. A talented stock car racer, he dreams of making it to NASCAR, but a professional tragedy on the circuit curtails his budding career as storm clouds also gather over the future of the family farm.

The still beauty of the lush Iowa countryside collides with the brashness of the racetrack in scenes that stand as a metaphor for the conflict between father and son and grandfather, and things turn even darker when Henry’s seed-sales operation is placed under investigation. But when Dean to intervenes unwisely to protect his father’s business, the family is forced to reassess the future in the ever shifting sands of contemporary American morality.

Cinematographer Michael Simmonds captures the limpid beauty of the local landscapes with a clarity that feels calming against the overtones of of domestic strife and Dickon Hinchliffe’s melancholy occasional score echoes this with a sombre undercurent. MT

OUT ON 1 JANUARY 2016 nationwide.

Trapeze (1956)

Dir.: Carol Reed

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Gina Lollobrigida, Katy Jurado;

USA 1956, 105 min.

Based on the novel The Killing Frost by Max Catto, TRAPEZE is one of Carol Reed’s meeker films although the scene direction is highly sophisticated and saw his re-uniting with his DOP of The Third Man, Robert Krasker. The circus romance was very much pulp material to start with, and has aged quite badly, into the bargain.

Trapeze artist Mike Ribble (Lancaster), who was one of only six men who completed the triple Salto, has been crippled since a fall, and works at the Circus Bouglione in Paris as a tent rigger. Enter the young American Tino Orsini (Curtis), who tries to talk Ribble into teaching him to do the famous triple. After Ribble agrees, getting himself fit to be part of the act, the trampoline artist Lola (Lollobrigida) is pushed to join the trapeze act by the owner of the circus, even though she is not very talented. Lola seems to fall for Tino, but it turns out, that she really loves Mike. This leads to a split between Mike and Tino, which threatens the lives of the trio whilst they train for Tino to perform the triple.

Beautifully shot in the famous Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, TRAPEZE‘s storyline is pure Mills & Boon. When Lola tells Mike that she loves him, but does not want to hurt Tino’s Ego, it raises some involuntarily laughter. Improbability rules, and the acting – apart from Lancaster, who, as a former circus artist, did most of the stunts himself -, is rather over-the-top. That said, Gina Lollobrigida is seductive and skillful, stealing many of the scenes from her co-stars who were at the top of their game. Whilst a success at the box office, TRAPEZE‘s artistic merits are sadly lacking: you would never guess that TRAPEZE and The Third Man shared the the same director. AS

SCREENING AT THE BARBICAN IN CELEBRATION OF THE 40th ANNIVERSARY OF THE LONDON INTERNATIONAL MIME FESTIVAL | JANUARY 2016

In the Heart of the Sea (2015)

Director: Ron Howard Writer: Charles Leavitt (screenplay), Rick Jaff and Amanda Silver.

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Whishaw,

A vengeful killer whale; swashbuckling heroes; exotic islands and the legend of the Moby Dick:.Sounds like the perfect Christmas film, doesn’t it? But despite sterling efforts on all fronts, Ron Howard’s epic adventure IN THE HEART OF THE SEA manages to be curiously devoid of tension or even drama, doggie paddling its way to a deep and dark demise. This impressively mounted affair, taken from a real-life survival story that served as one of the key inspirations for Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”, sets sail with the best of intentions and a starry cast. Yet from the point where the good ship Essex embarks from Nantucket on a whaling mission with its trusty crew, you couldn’t care tuppence if any of them returned to tell their gruelling tale.

Despite the magnificence of the Nantucket whaling ship, built like a cathedral to withstand the ocean’s onslaught, the story feels strangely less horrific that of the simple sailing boat that met its fate in JAWS. According to legend, the vessel was initially laid low by tumultuous seas and later destroyed by a mammoth sperm whale in 1820. Flatly adapted from Nathaniel Philbrick’s non-fiction book by a solid crew of accomplished writers, the film attempts to rekindle man’s epic struggle against the laws of nature which ultimately reign victorious.

The film opens as Herman Melville (played by Ben Whishaw), arrives at the Nantucket home of old sea salt Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson complete with an unsuccessful ‘Grecian 200o’ makeover), a former ‘Essex’ boat hand who has who lived to tell the tale, but didn’t – as we discover from his humourless wife .Buttoned-up emotionally since the harrowing tragedy, Nickerson is a broken man, but Melville demands a de-brief in exchange for a fist full of dollars. Flashing back to 1820, we meet the young Nickerson (Tom Holland) as he begins his apprenticeship on the 21-crew whaler. Mission: to bring back as much whale oil as possible – a vital source of domestic energy before the discovery of West Texas Intermediate and fracking.

On board, the young patrician captain George Pollard Jr. (Benjamin Walker), comes into conflict immediately with his brassy first mate, Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth). Hemsworth (Avengers) cuts an experienced and confident dash here but his hybrid accent is practically unintelligible and he is as unlikeable as his supercilious boss. Matters are not helped by second mate Matthew Joy (Cillian Murphy), a rather seedy close buddy of Chase but lacking both on the moral fibre and stsmina front. Pollard’s inexperience is blamed for most of the setbacks that occur on the fateful voyage.

Doing his best to evoke the salty seafaring sortie to those of us sitting in the cinema, Howard and his dp Anthony Dod Mantle send us ducking and diving among the waves, often from a bird’s eye view and sliding along the deck, to the point of queasiness, as we attempt to focus on the action as Chase leads his dingy party as they savagely harpoon the exuberantly playful and defenceless whale colonies. The sight of blood and gore hitting the decks is reminiscent of Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s visceral documentary LEVIATHAN (2012). At this point Nickerson is forced to enter the body of the moribund whale in a nauseous bid to salvage the best quality oil.

But it’s only when the ship enters remote waters of South America that the crew comes face to face with the real monster – a battle-scarred white whale as big as the boat itself, impressively crafted in all its CGI splendour. From then on, the venture becomes a harrowingly pitiful blow by blow account of 90 days stranded at sea – apart from a brief sojourn on a desert island – where we care even less as these ciphers’ bodies disintegrate. But while weird excrescences and straggly beards appear on their faces, they fail to achieve any redemption or moral epiphany; weirdly, Chase sports designer stubble whereas Pollard grows a full Afro hairdo as they score points off one another and indulge in the fine art of cannibalism.

Meanwhile back at base, Melville is fading as he tediously attempts to extract his best-selling tome from Nickerson’s bleeding heart revelations and we are forced uncomfortably to countenance his wife’s declarations of unconditional love.

The final scenes deal with the unscrupulousness of the business brains behind the shipping industry as Pollard’s elders attempt to stifle the real story, for fear of losing out financially. And it is their tight-lipped, starchy rectitude that embodies IN THE HEART OF THE SEA. Unappealing and unsatisfying as a drama, it has all of the right elements in place but, through a strange quirk of alchemy, falls entirely flat as an experience. MT

OUT ON BOXING DAY 2015

[youtube id=”JMq9cwR6PSw” width=”600″ height=”350″]

The Man Without a Past | VAILLA MENEISSYYTTA (2002)

Dir\Writer: Aki Kaurismaki:

Cast: Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Sakari Kuosmanen;

Finland/France/Germany 2002; 97 min.

Like many auteurs of his generation, Aki Kaurismaki is entirely self-taught. After a working life spent as a postman and film critics among other things, he turned his hand to film-making in the eighties and has been incredibly successful in his endeavour, producing his own films and distributing them through his own company Alphaville, and showing them at his arthouse cinemas in Finland. Often working with his elder brother Mika, they have shaped the face of Finnish cinema crafting one-fifth of the total output of the Finnish film industry since 1981.

In love with the past and of Finland’s lugubrious hard-drinking working classes, often down on their luck – anything post 1980 does not interest him visually, here he has created another anti-hero for THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST, this time the director could not even bother to give him a name, in the credits he is just ‘M’.

M (his beloved Markku Peltola) arrives one Spring evening in Helsinki with a small suitcase. Resting on a park bench he nods off and is attacked by three young men, who leave him for dead. Coming round in a rain-soaked stupor, he gets some treatment and then stumbles out of hospital with retrograde amnesia and ends up on a container site, used by the homeless. Here he makes friends, and rents a container from Antilla (Kuosmanen), who does not actually own it but finds a way of exploiting those down on their luck. His ‘fierce’ dog Hannibal turns out to be a submissive female, and soon snuggles up with M on his bed. All this is shot through with Kaurismaki’s trademark blend of eccentric situational humour which is light on dialogue and heavy on innuendo.

M can’t remember a thing about his life but spots a couple of metal workers down near the port and gets a strange inkling that he was possibly a welder. Turning to the Samaritans for help, he falls in love with Irma (Outinen), who looks after him. He turns the Samaritan’s musicians into a swing band and after finding job as a welder, he gets caught up in a bank robbery and is locked in the vault with the bank teller. The involvement with the police leads to his identification: he was married, but his wife divorced him due to him gambling. When M travels back to his home town by train he finds her living in their former marital dwelling with a boyfriend, and M is only to relieved that he does not have to fight it out with his rival, returning back to Irma in Helsinki and eventual revenge.

Kaurismaki’s classic absurdist humour is an acquired taste and THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST is the one of best examples. When M cooks dinner for Irma in his container, she asks politely “Are you sure, I can’t help”, to which he answers dead-pan: “I think it’s ruined already”. And after an electrician has helped him connect the power line to his container, M asks how he could return the favour. The man answers matter of factly: “If you see me lying in the gutter face down, turn me on my back”. And finally, when locked in the vault with the teller by the robber, he asks her “Do you mind, if I smoke?”, her cool but enigmatic answer is “Does a tree mourn its fallen leaves?”.

Whilst Kaurismaki is best compared with Preston Sturges and his comedies of the 30s; his heroes like M, are like the actors Buster Keaton preferred, “they can’t raise their voice, their only reaction are furrowed brows”. DOP Timo Salminen, who shot nearly all of Kaurismaki’s films, shows Finland as a grim country of suicides, poverty, hunger and alcoholism and this is borne, according to the director “out of the change in society from a mainly agricultural country, to an industrialised society – many feel rootless and alienated in their own country where high rise blocks and unemployment kill the soul. ” This is a common thread that also runs through

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST won the Grand Prix at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Kati Outinen best actress. AS

REVIEWED DURING THE UCLSSEES SEASON AT THE BLOOMSBURY STUDIO W1 | OCTOBER – DECEMBER 2015

7 Sami Stories | 4th Nordic Film Festival 2015

Seven young Sami directors, representing the culture of Lapland, directed the same film team in the Norwegian village of Kautokeino. Their short films all share an eerie quality, something not seen before. One might not identify this quality immediately, but all films have in common a spiritual awareness, a deep-seated reference to the past, unspoken enigmas and a dreamlike aspect. Featuring nightmares or poetic, lyrical day-dreams: seven very unique examples of a marginalised culture being very much alive.

SAMI BOGA, directed by Elle Sofe Henriksen, is the story of Mikkel, a teenage boy, who has the responsibility for he reindeer herd of his family, but whilst he is able to look after the animals, he has the most violent nightmares in his head. The snow driven landscape is more than a background: this young man is possessed by demons, possible from the past, and he is unable to distinguish between reality and his visions.

O.M.G. –OH, MAIGON GIRL by Marja Bal Nango features to bored teenage girls, Maigon and Anne-Sire, who attempt to go to a party in Sweden, but in the end walk home frustrated, after the young men they want to travel with, have turned out either violent or disinterested. Drinking Vademecum, an oral health care product, with a minimal alcoholic content, they fall out with each other, with the boys and with the whole world. They teeter at the brink of being victims of male violence and at the end, one is only too happy for them, when they walk home together: just not ready for the world they dream of. An often flippant, but very serious portrait of the pains of growing up.

LONG LIVE SAPMI directed by Per Josef Idivuoma is a slapstick comedy, which has its roots in ancient Sami history. Klemet is the hero, who fights foreigners, trying to occupy his country. But soon his attention is not so much focused on the foundation of the first Sami parliament, but a young woman, with whom he has wild sex in his tent. Always over-the-top, Long live Sapmi is a wild take on Sami independence and the importance of a good love life.

Majjen, the heroine in BURNING SUN by Elle Marja Eira, is wearing a special hat, a traditional Sami outfit, like all women in her village. But the Christian missionaries forbid the women to wear these particular hat, because it’s form reminds them of the horns of the devil. Up and down the country, the women are chased, and Majjen is warned by a woman firend to be careful. Nevertheless, she falls in the hands of the missionaries, and is taken away by boat. After a struggle, she chooses to drown, rather than give up her hat. With beautiful underwater image, Burning Sun, is a dark poetic parable, which portraits the fight for identity of the Sami women.

EDITH & ALJOSJA are the main protagonists in Ann Holmgren’s (happy) variation on Tristan and Isolde. The two live in different worlds: Edith in an old fashioned Sami tent, Aljosja in a modern house.They are separated by a river, the man seems able to walk on the water. But the woman has to swim trough the dangerous current, nearly drowning, before she reach Aljosha. This is a beautifully shot allegory on love conquering different cultural backgrounds, with a white halo settling at the end on the house of united couple.

AILE AND GRANDMOTHER by Silja Somby, is told like a fable story: Aile, a young girl has her first period, and is asked by her grandmother, why she did not tell her mother. But Aile is much closer to the old woman than her ‘modern’ mother. The grandmother, who cures illnesses with herbal remedies, talks about giving Aile her healing powers. When Aile finds her dead, she runs to her mother, who does not believe her, since the grandmother passed away long ago, when Aile was a baby. Simple, but not simplistic, Somby shows in a lyrical way, how traditions are passed on – even from the dead to the living.

THE AFFLCITED ANIMAL, directed by Egil Petersen is the most impressive contribution. It is the portrait of a dysfunctional family: Leif, the father, tries to deny the mental illness if his wife Agnes, who stays unresponsive in bed, whilst their young daughter Ida is very much aware of the fact that Leif wants a way out. When one of their dogs gets ill, Ida phones Eva, the vet, who has been Leif’s girl friend before he met Agnes. Seeing Eva, Leif wants to see her again the same evening, and lies to his daughter, but she is not fooled, with whom Leif is going to spend his evening with. Ida is a very delicate child: she sees her father searching for a way out, wanting him to stay on the one hand, but another part of her wants him to be happy with Eva. A dark, very complex relationship story, centred around a young girl whose desires split her in two. AS

SCREENING DURING THE 4TH NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL | ON TOUR NATIONWIDE IN NOTTINGHAM | MANCHESTER |

AS ****

Aferim! (2015) | Berlinale 2015| SILVER BEAR | DVD BLU

Director: Radu Jude
Writer: Radu Jude, Florin Lazarescu
Cast: Teodor Corban, Mihai Comanoiu, Cuzin Toma

Romania / Bulgaria / Czech Republic Historical Drama 108 min

MIDNIGHT RUN meets THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADAS ESTRADA in Radu Jude’s third feature AFERIM!—an unlikely pairing by which to describe a road movie set in 1830s Romania. From its opening credits sequence (lively music and foregrounded cacti) to its crisply shot rural vistas, though, there’s more than a touch of the western about this talky and occasionally very funny film, which bowed in competition this week at the Berlin Film Festival.

While a Ford or a Hawks may have felt compelled to have their protagonist transcend the moral restrictions of his time, Jude doesn’t afford his central figure such a luxury. Gendarme Costadin (Teodor Corban) is employed by a local boyor (high ranking aristocrat) to hunt down Carfin (Cuzin Toma), a gypsy who has run away following accusations of an affair with his owner’s wife. Accompanied by his son and protégé Ionita (Mihai Comanoiu), Costadin travels on horseback across the racial hotbed of feudalist Wallachia in search of his bounty, encountering various people of impoverished or inferior stations—gypsies and women chief among them.

Women and gypsies get the brunt of it in Jude and fellow writer Florin Lazarescu’s script (which, as a long list of historical texts indicates at the very end of the film, in addition to the beautiful production design and costume design by Augustina Stanciu and Dana Paparuz respectively, is the work of impressive research). Costadin refers to one woman he comes upon early in the film as a hag. Others are referred to as crows and filthy whores. Not that our protagonist is especially tyrannical. Though he claims to be “as harsh as a hot pepper, born of Father Garlic and Mother Onion”, Costadin goes about his daily routine with palpable ambivalence, making ends meet with an unquestioning deference for the prevailing status quo while admitting, in those moments of downtime he enjoys with Ionita, that “this is a dog’s life: we sweat like beasts for a piece of bread.” Later, a chemistry almost forms between the policeman and his quarry, as Costadin agrees to put a word in for Carfin upon returning him to his master—though he doesn’t quite extend such sympathy enough to free him, upon Ionita’s suggestion.

The casual, accepted misogyny that pervades the film is exemplified best by the puppet show that Costadin observes among many other onlookers, in which a male marionette beats his wife to death. Young viewers begin to inspect the motionless puppet, convinced that it’s real. Up to this point, the film has been free of explicit violence, though the darker impulses revealed in dialogue (“gypsies: are they people, or Satan’s spawn?”) prepare us for an outcome that denies a happy resolution. True to recent traditions in Romanian cinema, AFERIM! is an effectively frustrating look at how the unequal power relations of any historical period absurdly go unchallenged by those who benefit from them most.

“This world will stay on as it is,” Costadin tells his son. “You can’t change it, try as you might.” But we know different. Though inequalities still exist, the situation in Eastern Europe has changed dramatically. While it’s refreshing to see a Romanian director turning to a more remote point in his nation’s history (as opposed to, say, its search for a post-communist identity), the film speaks to the present juncture—not least of all in its authentic depiction of how gypsies were treated in the 1830s. Just as the movement for freeing gypsies (then regarded as slaves) began to gather momentum in the mid-19th century—resulting finally in the 1856 bill declaring their emancipation—we find much solace in the systematic changes that have unfolded since, and in those that are still to come. MICHAEL PATTISON

ROMANIA’S OSCAR 2016 ENTRY | REVIEWED AT BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015 | FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2015 | DVD BLU RELEASE

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Dir.: Rob Reiner

Cast: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby

USA 1989, 96 min.

Often described as “Woody Allen light”, Rob Reiner’s WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, has aged well and cements its place as a quintessential feel-good romantic comedy of the late 80s. This is mainly due to the the chemistry between the leads Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, but even more so because of Nora Ephron’s script, which was the result of interviews between her and Reiner as well as producer Andy Scheinmann between 1984 and 1988.

What emerges fro the interviews was that Reiner was permanently depressed, his sardonic humour saving him from becoming morbid. When Billy Crystal (who was at that time Reiner’s best friend) joined the production, he witnessed Reiner’s despair after his divorce from the actress/filmmaker Penny Marshall. The Sally identity was a mix of Ephron’s own relationship experiences and the ones of her girl friends.

The nods to Allen are clear: there is the use of the split-screen (when Harry and Sally phone in bed, watching their TV sets), and the Manhattan references are clearly visible. During the pre-production time, Ephron would interview people who worked for the company about their relationships, these interviews were shown in stylised interludes in the film. Regarding the end, Ephron and Reiner realised that the most realistic outcome would be the permanent status quo of friendship between the couple, but they chose a more optimistic finale.

Harry (Crystal) and Sally (Ryan) meet after graduation on the campus of Chicago University in 1977, to drive off together to New York, where he starts his career as political adviser, she as a journalist. Having witnessed Harry’s long, passionate goodbye from her friend Amanda, Sally is annoyed that he immediately makes a pass at her. They argue, non-stop, and Sally is relieved to see the last of Harry, when they arrive in NY, even though he is the only person she knows in the whole city. Five years later, they meet by accident in an NY airport, both having relationships, their rather frosty relationship continues. In 1987 they bump into each other in a bookshop, both their relationships have ended, and they start a sort of friendship, even though Harry still insists that a platonic friendship between a woman and a man is impossible, because the man’s craving for sex would interfere. At the famous scene in Katz’ Deli in Manhattan, Sally stimulates an orgasm, to prove a point to the still rather misogynist Harry. After meeting with their respective best friends, Marie (Fisher) and Jess (Kirby), to end their single status, Harry and Sally watch, as the two run off together, blissful in love. After a one-night stand with Harry, when Sally breaks down after her ex-boyfriend marries another woman, the couple have a vicious argument at Marie’s and Jess’ wedding reception.

Reiner recalls, that at a test screening, all the women in the audience laughed at the Deli scene, whilst the men were dead silent. The director’s mother, Estelle, had a small part in the film, as the woman sitting next to Sally in Katz’, ordering “the same as she had” from the waiter. Even today, there is still a sign above the famous table, saying “where Harry met Sally…hope you have what she had.”
Twenty-six years later two elements stand out: there is the shock to see a world without mobiles, as well as a very basic, noisy computer, and the emotional intensity of the couple, which still reverberates today, in spite of the rather light weight narrative. AS

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE IN A SPARKLING NEW RE=MASTERING COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS

The Forbidden Room (2015) |Berlinale 2015

Directors: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson

Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Geraldine Chaplin, Maria de Medeiros, Charlotte Rampling, Ariane Labed, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey

130min | Fantasy Drama | Canada

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM is the latest feature from Canadian auteur Maddin, whose credits include The Saddest Music in the World and Keyhole which has Isabella Rossellini This dreamlike and desultory concoction plays out as an ode to the forgotten films of the silent era pursuing progressive ideas on love, eroticism and life through the interweaving tales of a mysterious woodland bandit who appears on a submarine trapped under water, a group of child soldiers and a famous surgeon coming to rescue a damsel in distress.

Maddin melds genres, stocks and cinematic tropes (Expressionism, Hollywood glamour, faux Noir) in this magical melodramatic experiment whose upbeat and whimsical narrative sails off into absurdist backwaters that include a dreaming volcano erupting, a man obsessed with Janus, a musing moribund moustache and a psychiatrist’s stealthy seduction on board the night train from Berlin to Bogotá. Gorgeously mesmerising, occasionally humorous and sublimely beautiful it has some offbeat performances from Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling and Geraldine Chaplin but is an acquired taste for cineastes who enjoy his work. Otherwise go along for the blissful and bewildering ride and let the enigmatic original score, with echoes of Wagner and Jules Massenet’s Elegie, waft you away to distant memories. MT

REVIEWED AT BERLINALE 2015

[youtube id=”XHPid6AC6tM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Armi Alive | Armi elää! (2015)

Director: Jörn Donner | Cast: Minna Haapkylä, Laura Birn, Hannu Pekka, Robert Enkei | 84min | Biopic | Finland

Jörn Donner (1933-2020) is so far the only Finn to win an Oscar, for producing Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman’s film about two siblings in 1900s Sweden. Donner went on to make his swan song The Memory of Ingmar Bergman shortly before he died in 2020.

Armi Alive is a biopic drama about Armi Ratia, the elegant Finnish textile entrepreneur behind the iconic Marimekko brand. Donner’s focus here is on the most productive years of Armi’s career, her late thirties and forties, where she sets up and grows the fashion business that would become an international design brand during the 1950s and ’60s. Marimekko is still going strong today with its iconic designs that spoke to a postwar generation of women in Scandinavia.

@Nordic Art

Ratia is played by Minna Haapkylä as a stylish and driven and risk-taking creative force who is emotionally wrapped up in her and family but still has ample time for romance, and this side of her personality takes centre stage when she falls in love with an Englishman.

In his ‘play within a film’ Donner creates a very sophisticated visual aesthetic to match his stylish subject matter, giving the Marimekko depicted in his narrative a strong feeling of continuity that carries it forward to the present day where is still feels as fresh and contemporary today as it did in those early ground-breaking years of Scandinavian design. At the same time, there’s a sense that Haapkylä is discovering the enigmatic character of the cutting edge designer “Maria” (the name of Armi’s character in the film) while actually playing her in a highly individual performance. When asked what was special about Armi’s life, she declares ‘not much’. Yet she’s had an extraordinary time: losing three brothers during the war, and then twin children, and struggling against her husband’s traditional family and the banks for financing.

Back the 1950s when Armi’s created Marimekko she hoped it would epitomise a modern woman who was ‘free, natural and international’. “Uniforms for the intellectual” is how she describes her designs. Donner give her free reign showing her very much as an individual and maverick who somehow captured the imagination of a jaded population looking for new design ideas and inspiration and showing that Marimekko could be all things to all people, just as Armi Ratia intended. MT

Hector (2015)

Dir. Jake Gavin

Cast: Peter Mullan, Keith Allen, Natalie Gavin, Sarah Solemi, Gina McKee

UK 2015, 98 min.

First time writer/director Jake Gavin portrays homelessness as an everyday reality and a lifestyle choice for HECTOR played here by Peter Mullan who carries this entertaining British indie with gusto and style.

We meet Hector for the first time in a Glaswegian hospital in the run up to Christmas where he is being told to come back after the holidays for a non-specified operation. This might or might not be related to the fact that he walks laboriously on crutches. His travelling companion Jimbo (Keith Allen, sardonic and true to type) is a veteran of the roads, along with 18 year old Hazel (N. Gavin). They split up, planning to meet in London for Christmas, whilst Hector visits his (not particulary sympathetic) brother-in-law, a manager in a car showroom, to get into contact with his sister Lizzie (McKee), with whom he had no contact, after leaving their home abruptly fifteen years ago. Rebuffed by her, Hector makes his way down to London to meet the rest of the trio, but it comes as no surprise that Christmas doesn’t go according to plan.

Gavin’s narrative, full of well-observed details, is told in a detached, candid typically English way: nobody complains, the travellers know better than to make a fuss; life is seen as inherently difficult at this level and dealt with as matter of fact: sometimes Hector gets lucky (when he arrives too late for the Christmas shelter, but is saved by Sara), sometimes he is literally kicked down by a couple of hooligans, who want to steal his bag – but a bat-swinging Indian shop owner fights the attackers off. The reason why Hector leaves his middle-class life never properly emerges although there are a few clues there are only a few clues: Hector blaming himself for the death of two children in a road accident, which he believes, he could have prevented. The guilt drove him out into the streets, but his self-loathing and –punishment are only part of the story – perhaps he just wanted out.

DOP David Raedeker’s avoids full-on hyper-realism, using long panning shots, framing the protagonists in carefully constructed frames. The audience gets used to the roads were Hector and his friends hitchhike – mainly on the motorways – and are finally seen as sort of stations. Everything is low-kew. Mullan is brilliant, but the ensemble acting is equally inspired. HECTOR is labour of love, a welcome variation on the narrative-less British films which seem to dominate today with either gangland violence or insipid scoial dramas. AS

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE

Grandma (2015)

Dir. Paul Weitz

Cast: Lili Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer, Sam Elliott

USA 2015, 79 min.

Serious themes of abortion and lesbianism are tossed around playfully in this derivative Hollywood Screwball comedy. Paul Weitz (ABOUT A BOY) trivialises a family’s conflicts, falling far short of Hawks or Cukor.

Elle (Tomlin), college lecturer and poet, has just split up with her much younger girlfriend Olivia (Greer), on the rebound from her longterm partner, Violet, who has recently died. Blaming Olivia (unjustly) for the split, Elle is in a foul mood, when her grand daughter Sage (Garner) appears in her flat, wanting money for an abortion. Elle, having just cut up all her credit cards, using the snippets for a creative mobile, tries in vain to borrow money from Karl (Elliott), an ex-boyfriend; the two women trying to avoid to involving Sage’s mum, the straightforward business executive Judy (Harden), who lives exclusively in the real world, and is equally exasperated by her ‘fly by night’ daughter and mother.

GRANDMA is a vehicle for Lili Tomlin to show off her considerable acting skills. Dominating the film, the cast are merely punchbags for her anger. There are some impressive scenes, like the one in front of the abortion clinic, where a vicious Pro-life lobbyist uses a little girl to argue her point; but mainly it is all about the frustrated Elle, having failed as a poet and is now lonely in old age. Worst of all is Weitz’ banal approach in trying to milk really serious situations for cheap laughter. Whilst Tomlin has a field day, the same cannot be said for the audience. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

[youtube id=”JrB3Uj51zgM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

The Lesson (2015) Urok | LUX FILM AWARDS

Dir.: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov

Cast: Margita Gosheva, Ivan Savov, Ivan Barnev, Stefan Denolyubov;

Bulgaria/Greece/Germany 2014, 105 min.

First time directors/writers Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov have created a film about newfound poverty in post-communist countries, very much on the lines of the impressive Kreditis Limiti (Credit Limits) by the Georgian director Salome Alexi. In both cases the central protagonist is a woman, fighting for the survival of her family, caught in the clutches of scrupulous moneylenders.

Set in small town Bulgaria, Nadezhda (Gosheva), a middle-aged teacher at a secondary school, finds out about the theft of a purse in her class. She gives the thief amble time to come forward, but in vain. We find out, that Nadeszhda (Nade) is a fanatical believer in righteousness, a belief that will be tested continually during the film. Her troubles start when she finds out that her husband Mladen (Barnev), an alcoholic, has bought a gearbox for a decrepit camper van he wants the sell for profit – with the money which was meant for the mortgage. The bank initiates a foreclosure, and Nadezhda has three days to save her family home. She goes to her wealthy, estranged father (Savov) who, having been widowed only three years ago, lives with a new partner, the skimpily dressed Galya, nearly 20 years younger than herself. Nade cannot conceal her dislike of her father’s partner, insulting the young woman on several occasions. So as a last resort, Nade goes to a moneylender to borrow the funds to save her home, but it emerges that he is a crooked letch and Nade but get her own back somehow.

Ideology-wise, THE LESSON is very much in the style of Lorna’s Silence by the Dardenne Brothers, demonstrating that poverty and homelessness is always just round the corner and always closer than we think – or hope. Nade is a very prim person, a dutiful teacher and good mother to her daughter Andrea. But her husband’s greed and incompetence lands her in a in a situation beyond help. At one point, she is racing against time to pay in the money from the lender to the bank. On the way to the bank, her car brakes down, she has to run, catch a bus, only to find out that the thief in her class has stolen her last penny and the piece is heads for a Kafkaesque denouement as we identify with her desperate predicament.

Gosheva is brilliant as the hassled woman, and DOP’s Krum Rodriguez’s images are very close to Pasqualino de Santis’ images in Bresson’s L’Argent. THE LESSON, which won the “New Director’s Award” in San Sebastian, is an outstanding portrait of a conscientious woman, who, without any fault of her own, suddenly has the rug pulled from beneath her feet. AS

REVIEWED DURING THE CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL 3 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2015

Sunset Song (2015) | Viennale 2021

Wri/Director: Terence Davies Novel: Lewis Grassic Gibbon (novel)Cast: Peter Mullan, Agyness Deyn, Kevin Guthrie, Ian Pirie, Jack Greenlees, Douglas Rankine, Neil Greign Fulton | 135min | Drama | UK

Terence Davies follows The Deep Blue Sea with another English literary adaptation, SUNSET SONG, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classc tale of womanhood in transition at the turn of the 20th century. Emotionally prurient and brimful with Scottish traditions from the North East, it stars Agyness Deyn in a full-bodied turn that embraces stoicism and tenderness, as the main character Chris Guthrie.

Michael McDonough’s lushly burnished visuals set the scene: a remote Aberdeenshire coastal community on the cusp of the first World War, where blue-stocking Chris is the only girl in a farming family of three boys, her trampled mother Jean and disciplinarian father (Peter Mullan in fine form) doing their best in fraught circumstances, made worse when Jean falls pregnant with twins.

There is a strict religious undertone of vehement Calvinism for this Patriarchal family: in the dour and spartan home the women’s work is never done and they are but slaves to the father’s requirements with regular beatings for elder son Will, and intercourse on demand for poor Jean, whether she likes it or not. Eventually after a bloody, difficult birth, she takes her own life, with the twins and it falls to Chris to look after the family.

Slow-burning, and often ponderous, Terence Davies balances movement with stillness to achieve graceful dramatic tension as the narrative unfolds with unexpected, even positive, twists and turns. Although occasionally SONG strikes a questionable note with his tone and scripting. There are bright moments, echoed through the glorious sun rising through lace curtains, or on the endless billowing cornfields, blue sky overhead. The post War episode feels slightly and underwritten, with no real explanation for the rapid decline into mental illness of Chris’s young husband. Musical choices veer towards the folksy and hymnal; some may argue this misjudges narrative and tone. Davies evokes happiness without being sentimental and his mastery of staging and visual compositions are superb. Bitterness, rancour and bliss, all embodied in one pivotal decade in the magnificent Scottish landscape where Chris discovers life and love as it really is. MT

SCREENING DURING THE TERENCE DAVIES RETROSPECTIVE | VIENNALE 2021

In Your Arms | I Dine Haeder (2015) | Nordic Film Festival 4 -13 December 2015

Dir.: Samanou Acheche Sahlstrom

Cast: Lisa Carlehed, Peter Plaugborg, Johanna Wokalek

Denmark 2015, 88 min.

French born writer/director Samanou Acheche Sahlstrom’s feature debut is an intense and emotional affair carried by a superb first performance from Lisa Carlehed as Maria, a nurse taking a patient from Copenhagen to Switzerland where he intends to undergo voluntary euthansia.

This could have been cringeworthy or mawkish but Shalstrom’s narrative takes a very rational approach to the topic of end-of-life care but also weaves in themes of patient/carer relationships. To start with neither Maria, in her mid-thirties, nor Niels (Plaugborg), her patient suffering from progressive MS, are in any way idolised – on the contrary, Niels is shown as a bitter, twisted and egocentric young man whose character traits were very obvious before he fell ill. His mother and brother are witness to this and Maria is also often the target of his aggressive, provocative and self-pitying behaviour.

Maria does not like herself; minor but self-inflicted injuries are the symptoms of her sex life which boarders on the masochistic. She needs to punish herself permanently in small ways and Niels obliges only too willingly. Even though his family and Maria are conscious of Niels’ nastiness, they do not want to help him make use of assisted-suicide in Switzerland, despite the approval of a panel of doctors. When Niels gets particularly unpleasant with Maria, she changes her mind and they set off for Switzerland. On a stop-over in Hamburg, where Niels insists on visiting a strip club on the Reeperbahn, Maria learns that he has a five year old son, his mother Julia (Wokalek) refusing to let him see his son. The final scenes in Switzerland are handled with great sensitivity and humanity.

IN YOUR ARMS is analytical, without being didactic. Sahlstrom’s characters are suffering in their different ways and there is no league-table for unhappiness here. Maria’s misery – she does not want to accept (never mind love) herself – is rooted in her lack of self-confidence, for which she over-compensates with being too nice to everyone – apart from herself. But her demons are spoiling her life and she can therefore identify with Niels, who wants to kill himself because he too is suffering from self-hate, unrelated to his illness. Two people, “unworthy” in their own eyes, are taking the journey to Switzerland and the outcome for Maria depends on her learning a lesson from Niels’ life, which was in a way wasted before the illness. Whilst Niels ruined his own life with his arrogance and egoism, Maria is his mirror image: she is on the way to ruin her own life by a self-inflicted loneliness which alienates her from everyone, even the patients she is helping.

DOP Brian Curt Petersen has chosen a documentary approach, avoiding clichés, particularly in the hospital scenes and in Switzerland. Carlehed and Plaugborg feed off each other, showing how much they need their “mirror”. Sahlstrom’s direction keeps a cool Brecht-like distance, without understating the emotional impact of this superb debut. AS

SCREENING AS PART OF THE NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL | THE FESTIVAL STARTS IN LONDON ON 4 DECEMBER AND GOES NATIONWIDE UNTIL JANUARY 2016 | BRISTOL | GLASGOW | NOTTINGHAM

The Honourable Rebel (2015)

Dir.: Mike Fraser

Cast: Dorothea Myer-Bennett, Montserrat Roig de Puig, Martin Wimbush, Christopher Rozycki

UK 2015, 97 min.

TV director/producer Mike Fraser makes his feature debut with a biopic drama of the aristocrat and socialite Elizabeth Montagu (1909-2002) that has the style of a 1950s Miss Marple movie, or Foyle’s War without the talents of Michael Kitchen.

Born on the estate of Beaulieu in Hampshire, she would have succeeded her father, the Third Baron Montagu to the title, if he would not have fathered her half-brother with his second wife, after the death of Elizabeth’s mother. Called “little fellow” by her father who clearly wanted a boy, Elizabeth (Myer-Bennett) rebelled early on and became an able car mechanic, replacing the broken fan belt in her father’s car successfully with one of her stockings. Later she went to RADA and played in Reps in Newcastle, before having a stage career in London’s Westend. She joined the Army in WWII as an ambulance driver in France, cleverly evading the Nazis to Switzerland, where she worked for Alan Dulles’ OSS. As a cover, she worked in the music and theatre scene, writing the libretto for Liebermann’s opera “School for Wives”. After her return to England, she worked for Alexander Korda (Christopher Rozycki), met Graham Greene and Carol Reed participating in the production of THE THIRD MAN’. After marrying Colonel Arthur Varley (Martin Wimbush), she returned to Beaulieu.Montagu was clearly was a talented woman who turned her hand to a variety of endeavours and excelled in them due to her confidence and considerable enterprise. An accomplished pianist, she enjoyed a long affair with the professional pianist and teacher Renata Borgatti (Roig de Puig).

Dorothea Myer-Bennett in only her third film appearance, lacks (like Fraser) the experience to portray Montagu; she also lacks her elegance, judging from photos and plays the “rebel” as a middle-aged, rather stuffy woman – uninspiring to say the least. The dialogue is excruciating, lines like “the symphony goes on, but the movement has ended”, when Elizabeth meets an ex-lover after being separated during the war years, are only too typical. Diana Rigg’s voice-over of lines from Montagu’s autobiography are read in the manner of a schoolgirl reciting the catechism. There is also another talking head in the shape of a Montague family member. All these narrative imputs make the production feel fussy and unprofessional. Montague’s is story that has everything going for it: wartime intrigue, romance, espionage and aristocratic cache – with a decent script and great performances Farr could have made this a knockout wartime drama.

Filmed entirely in the UK, scenes set in France and Switzerland lack any authenticity and the action scenes are clumsily executed. DOP Pete Edwards’ visuals flesh out the second-hand nature of this amateur production. THE HONOURABLE REBEL is a missed opportunity: Elizabeth Montagu might not have been as successful as she hoped, but unlike most of the cast and crew of this film, she at least had some guts and style. AS/MT

ON RELEASE FROM 4 DECEMBER 2015

The Gift (2015) | DVD VOD release

Wirter|Director: Joel Edgerton

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Jason Bateman, Joel Edgerton, David Denman, Busy Philipps

108min Thriller

Australian writer-director Joel Edgerton stars in his own thriller debut that draws comparisons with Dominik Moll’s indie Harry He’s Here to Help (2000). He plays a strange character called ‘Gordo’ who re-aquaints himself with a couple who have moved into the neighbourhood to start a new life. Pacific Heights and Unlawful Entry also spring to mind here but The Gift takes things a stage further adding a creepy additional twist to this threesome thriller that will keep you guessing with its chilly touches of cognitive dissonance and briskly-paced, plausible storyline.

Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall are well-cast as the couple – Simon and Robyn- who quickly settle in a stylish house in leafy Los Angeles. But while Simon slots in seamlessly to the corporate culture – he’s a masterful decision-maker who ‘cuts to the chase’ and offers masculine stability to his emotionally frail wife – Robyn stands out in the cosy culture of stay-at-home mums called Duffy and Lucy, having just lost her own child. Shopping for cushions – wouldn’t you know – they run into Gordo, who turns out to be a friend from school days and after a socially awkward impromptu supper, Gordo swings by the following morning with a wee gifty; and starts to make a habit of it.

Alarm bells would ring for most women at this stage in the game. But strangely Simon seems to be the only one to find the ginger-haired misfit a bit of a ‘weirdo’ – in his own words. Talking in cliches, Gordo has nothing to show for his past but is anxious to ingratiate himself with these morning visits to deliver well-wrapped but inappropriate thank-you presents, including koi carp for the ornamental pond. Instead of telling Gordo to get lost, Robyn seems unruffled by his gauche air of vulnerable quirkiness and even starts telling him her woes. Clearly Robyn feels comfortable on some level with Gordo, and Edgerton’s script shrewdly taps into her feelings of insecurity at not having kids or absorbing work to keep her occupied. But Robyn even gives Gordo the benefit of the doubt when he proves to be a pathological liar and peeping tom. To give him his credit, Simon keep her involved in his new job and encourages her to think positively towards their future. But when a letter arrives from Gordo claiming his desire to “Let bygones, be bygones” Robyn inquisitiveness gets the better of her with disastrous consequences for all concerned.

Edgerton’s characterisation is a tad traditional, focusing on the classic narrative of a deteriorating husband and wife relationship, where the man is powerful and the woman is weak and neurotic. That said, they are a plausible pair, and the dialogue feels real as they interact seamlessly as Edgerton twists in the tale in anther direction. Whereas it might have been more inventive to flesh out the creepier dynamic between Gordo and Simon – offering rich pickings on the male bonding front – Edgerton reduces the mens’ quarrel to pure physical violence rather than rhetoric, blurring the lines between victim and villain by making us feel a misplaced sympathy for Gordo one minute and for Simon the next, but also cleverly providing two contrasting portraits of father/son abuse.

Stylistically, Edgerton’s film is also classic of the genre: the pet dog (Mr Bojangles) disappears mysteriously; the camera creeps through empty corridors spying upon the characters at night and in misty shower scenes, with an unsettling score. The Gift is tonally consistent: there is no melodramatic shift or bloody climax, just a chilling realisation that leads us to our own conclusions. In the end, Edgerton offers pathos rather than pure horror. A clever and unsettling thriller and one of the most enjoyable out this summer. MT.

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD \ BLU\ VOD

Dr Zhivago (1965)| BFI LOVE Season | Restoration

Director: David Lean

Cast; Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Courtenay, Alec Guinness, Rod Steiger, Ralph Richardson, Siobhan McKenna, Rita Tushingham

USA/UK/Italy 1965, 193 min.

David Lean read Boris Pasternak’s novel Dr. Zhivago in April 1963 on an ocean liner, crossing the Atlantic. His first reaction to the 500+ pages long novel was “Oh God”. But he soon got engrossed in it, and finished it two nights later. “Sitting up in my bed, with a box of Kleenex, wiping the tears away. I was so touched by it, and I thought that if I can be touched like this, sitting in a liner, reading a book, I must be able to make a good, touching film of it. As soon as I landed, I contacted my agent and said ‘Yes, I’ll do Doctor Zhivago’ ”. Two other directors, Stanley Kubrick and Fellini had been considered, but David Lean got the job.

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) had begun writing Dr. Zhivago in the 1920, but did not complete it before 1956. The Stalinist censors immediately banned the book (it was only published in the USSR in the Glasnost years in the late 80ies), but the manuscript was smuggled to the West, and published in 1957 by the Italian Feltrinelli publishing house. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958, but told by the Soviet authorities that he would not be allowed back into the country, if he accepted the prize. Pasternak stayed and died two years later.

Since the screen rights to the novel were owned by the Italian producer Carlo Ponti, David Lean was suspicious that Ponti might insist on Sophia Loren, his wife, to be cast as Lara. But unlike Sam Spiegel, Lean’s producer on Lawrence of Arabia, Ponti kept his distance from the production process. Yvette Mimieux was mentioned to play Lara, than Jane Fonda, who was favoured by Lean, but he had concerns about her American accent. Lean proposed Sarah Miles, but screenwriter Robert Bolt “called her a Northern slut” – he later changed his mind and married her twice. They settled finally on Julie Christie, who had impressed both Lean and Robert Bolt with her performance in Schlesinger’s Billy Liar. Christie, the darling of the British New Wave, went to screen tests in Spain, taking it as a paid holiday, not a serious undertaking. But Lean, who was “like a kind but authoritarian father” to her, fell, like the whole crew under her spell.

From the beginning, Lean wanted to cast Peter O’Toole in the title role after working together on Lawrence but the actor declined, after reading one of the first versions for the script, and was anyhow under contract to Sam Spiegel, who was not in the mood of giving a helping hand to Lean after their falling out. Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster and Max von Sydow were mentioned, but Lean went for Omar Sharif, whom he had already casted as Pasha Antipov/Strelnikoff, Tom Courtenay getting the part of the young revolutionary in the end. The director would have preferred Marlon Brando for the role of the shifty Komarovsky, but Rod Steiger was chosen and gave a masterful performance in the final film. When 19 year old Geraldine Chaplin landed in Spain for screen tests, she looked sixteen. Lean was concerned, since Chaplin was playing a mother of two in the film, but was reassured, when the daughter of Charles Spencer Chaplin and Oona O’Neill, showed some of the acting skills of her parents. She is enchanting and perfect as Tonya.

Robert Bolt was a slow writer (and in the middle of a divorce from his first wife Celia Ann Roberts), and Ponti had to be patient. Bolt had envisaged the film as a political drama, but Lean, like Bolt an old-fashioned misogynist (the director’s marriage to Leila was going through a rocky period due to Lean neglecting her for his work), was more interested in the romantic and carnal aspects of the novel. Ponti wanted to shoot in Yugoslavia, mainly for cost-cutting reasons, the USSR was also mentioned, but the authorities there were keen on the foreign currency, but not so much on the film itself. Production designer John Box spent nearly a whole winter in Yugoslavia, and was convinced that nobody could function properly in the near arctic conditions. Finally, the team settled on Spain, where Box rebuild Moscow “on a rubbish dump at Canillejas, outside Madrid”, where construction started on 3.8.64, whilst the scenes requiring snow would be shot near the CEA studios, in the north eastern city of Soria, four thousand feet above sea level. But it turned out that during the 232 day shoot, lasting from 28.121964 to 7.10.1965. the winter was extremely mild in and around Soria, so that many snow scenes had to be shot in Finland. Another sequence of scenes – the Zhivago family travelling to Yuriatin – was filmed in Canada. The bookends of Dr. Zhivago, were shot at a dam on the border of Spain and Portugal.

Dr Zhivago is essentially an intricate spy story but the tale of love dominates not least due to the chemistry of Sharif and Christie. The total production costs run up 85 M$ in today’s money, but the film has now grossed by now over 200 M$ – and counting and is considered in the Top Ten of the Britain’s foremost romantic dramas. After its premiere, the film was harshly treated by some of critics in December 1965, and MGM was paying the cinema to keep the film in rather empty cinemas. But after four weeks, box office picked up after ‘word or mouth’ and Zhivago was sold out for every performance. At the Oscar’s in April 1966, Dr. Zhivago was nominated for ten awards, winning five. Whilst David Lean did not receive his third Oscar – William Wyler had warned him that “they never give it to you three times in a row” – Julie Christie won Best Actress – for her role in Darling by John Schlesinger. AS

AS PART OF THE BFI LOVE: FILMS TO FALL IN LOVE WITH | BACK ON THE BIG SCREEN IN A 4 K DIGITAL RESTORATION IN ITS 50TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR | ON LONG RELEASE FROM 27 NOVEMBER 2015 NATIONWIDE

Dawn (2015) | Tallinn Black Nights Festival | 13 -29 November 2015

Director/Writer: Laila Pakalniņa

Cast: Vilis Daudziņš, Andris Keišs, Wiktor Zborowski

Latvia/Estonia/Poland | Drama/Comedy | 90 min

Folklore meets modernity in DAWN, a gorgeously choreographed glide through an old soviet propaganda tale of life on a collective farm under stalinism. It is the fifth fiction feature by Latvian auteur Laila Pakalniņa, whose work also includes some 20-odd documentaries and shorts. Debuting on the 97th anniversary of Latvia’s independence, with a knowingly cheeky nod to Vladimir Putin among its credited inspirations, this consistently assured and occasionally mesmerising work premiered in the main competition of this year’s Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn.

Known to run 15-20 km every morning, Pakalniņa announced the date of DAWN’s world-premiere while running the Tallinn Marathon in September, and the film itself sustains high levels of energy through a dynamic formal balance and an oddly infectious persistence. At once intimate and epic, this period tragedy, about a young boy named Janis (Antons Georgs Grauds) who informs on his anti-soviet father (Vilis Daudziņš) to the secret police and who incurs the vengeful wrath of his own family because of it, is also at times an idiosyncratic, joltingly complex comedy. Its rapidfire context demands our active participation to keep apace of events — one ostensibly nonsensical reference to someone “living with the polar bears” is an allusion to the mass deportations to Siberian that thousands of Latvians suffered under Stalin. The ways in which it eludes a full commitment to any particular tonal register — in-jokes, throwaway gags, formal experimentation — means that for foreign audiences at least, the film is an invigorating intellectual exercise more than an emotionally moving drama.

Nothing wrong with that especially: though it lists soviet filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Rzheshevsky (as well as ‘Our Childhood’) alongside Putin as its sources of stimulation, this monochrome film prompts valid comparisons to Alexei German’s recent swansong, HARD TO BE A GOD. Like that work, DAWN demonstrates a masterful command of complicated sequence shots from Pakalniņa and her Polish cinematographer Wojciech Staroń. Much of the action unfolds across multiple planes, as the camera pans lushly through cluttered sets designed in such a way as to create a vivid, believable chaos. The usual farmhouse cacophonies — floorboard creaks, flustered animals, crying babies and off-screen conversational arguments — give the work an impressively immersive quality, a kind of warming maximalism, which is deliberately undercut by intermittent moments of chilly absurdity, when our narrator breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly into Staroń’s camera.

DAWN opens with a close-up, of a tree-hugging snail foregrounded against the animated flap of a hen’s wings. In the background, we see children running through the frame, oblivious to the unperceivable drifts of time — and the political ramifications that cut through it. Throughout her film, Pakalniņa returns to this strategy, of juxtaposing between the abstract and the particular, between the plush pastures of the Latvian countryside and the almost microscopic detail of life within it. A bee lands on a human head of hair. We see a dead fly stuck to someone’s glass of water. A beautiful, birds-eye view of a dead boy in a field continues with the camera mechanically moving to earth, concluding with an extreme close-up of his vacant eyes. Like the giant star one villager is painting on the side of a building, it’s difficult to form a fuller picture of things, here — deliberately so. The central tragedy (“If a son betrays his father, kill him as a dog”) rests upon the twisted loyalties that form when an understandably impressionable boy takes a state’s insidious word as gospel. MICHAEL PATTISON

TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL | 13 -29 NOVEMBER 2015 | TALLINN ESTONIA

Bridge of Spies (2015) Netflix

Dir.: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda, Austin Stowell, Will Rogers, Eve Hewson | 145 min | Spy Thriller | US

The Cold War dragged on from the late 1940s to 1989, creating a new genre: the Spy film. Many of these films were purely propaganda vehicles, or portayed a romantic or nostalgic world devoid of reality. Bridge of Spies focuses on an attempted exchange of two famous captured spies at the height of the Cold War, just after the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and before the Cuba crisis. With Bridge of Spies Steven Spielberg captures a realistic snapshot of an era where angst dominated day-to-day living on both sides. And who better to transmit this feeling of dread and make it compelling and entertaining but Mark Rylance and Tom Hanks in the leads, supported by a sinister Sebastian Koch, an incendiary John Rue and a smirking Alan Alda.

In February 1962, Rudolf Abel (Rylance), a Soviet Spy sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in New York, and the US pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), who had been shot down over the USSR. The film gets its name from the Glienicker Bridge in Berlin where exchanges took place during the era. This bridge connected West Berlin to the GDR, the borderline between two systems being the mid-point of the bridge.

Spielberg’s real hero is insurance lawyer James B.Donovan (Hanks) who is tasked with defending Abel and saving him from the death penalty, but his success is somewhat of a poisoned chalice as it makes the Irishman unpopular with both his boss and the American people. Most lawyers experienced in this kind of work had declined to act as Abel’s defence attorney, so Donavan was more or less pressganged by his boss Thomas Watters (a gritty Alan Alda) into accepting the role. But Donovan and Abel (the latter a dedicated painter, and we see his daubing a few canvases in the cutaways), for all their opposed political views, somehow find common ground: and a mutual respect.

Shunned at work, Donovan’s family home is attacked by enraged citizens: his teenage daughter Carol (Hewson) nearly killed in hail of bullets, shot through the window of the family house. In the commuter train, with his photo in the newspapers, Donovan feels the probing stars of his fellow passengers. But this all changes when the CIA suddenly needs Donovan’s powers of negotiation for the exchange. As Donovan had cleverly predicted, sentencing Abel to death would have meant that an American spy, caught in the USSR, would have suffered the same fate. Now, Francis Gary Power, pilot of a secret spy plane, which was was downed over the USSR, was the pawn in the hand of the Soviet negotiators in Berlin, who wanted their man Abel back as badly as the USA wanted Powers. Donovan went to Berlin to start negotiating, making his mission even harder when he insists on having a young American student, Frederic Pryor (Rogers), who was arrested by the GDR authorities, released into the bargain – whilst the CIA and the KGB simply wanted a straight forward exchange between Abel and Powers.

Mark Rylance is the right choice for the role of the enigmatic and likeable spy, Rudolf Abel (the name of a friend in the USSR who died). Born William August Fisher 1903 in Newcastle upon Tyne, Abel was the son of ethnic Germans, who were revolutionaries in Tsarist Russia, Fisher’s father had agitated with Lenin in St. Petersburg. Later the family emigrated to the UK, before returning to the USSR in 1921. Fisher, who was fluent in six languages, became a radio-operator for the secret service (OGPU) in 1927, but was sacked in 1938 during the Great Purge, his brother being a follower of Trotsky. In 1946 Fisher was working again as a radio-operator, re-joining the security organisation, now called KGB. In 1948 he was sent to the USA to build up spy networks.

Obviously Spielberg has build up Donovan’s hero status: his insistence on having Pryor released too does not seem to have been the gamble the film makes it out. The young student, having written a thesis on economics in a socialist country, was in the hands of the Stasi, the East German security services. But the power over all aspects of life in the GDR really lay in the hands of the USSR. Since the KGB was not interested in Pryor at all, but wanted the Abel/Powers exchange to go ahead, one phone call from them was enough to release Pryor. And Spielberg certainly got it wrong when he has Donovan travelling to East Berlin, using the Friedrichs Strasse Control Point. All members of the four Allies powers crossed to the East Sector via Check Point Charlie. Showing East Berlin as a city of ruins and roaming gangs is in the first place an exaggeration, and simply wrong regarding the youths, who robbed Donovan of his coat: the East German police was extremely repressive: gangs, of which ever kind, were simply not tolerated.

But apart from these small details, Bridge of Spies captures the angst of the Cold War era when American children were shown films about nuclear bombs at school, and were asked to learn superfluous precautions for the time after an explosion. Little Roger, Donovan’s son fills the bathtub in his home with water in case he has no time after the attack to store the drinking water. And the wild shots, fired into his daughter’s room, are proof (both sides) could not tolerate sympathy with the enemy – even if it was, like in Donovan’s case, purely imagined.

DOP James Kaminski (War Horse, Lincoln) conjures up many worlds with his images: there is Donovan’s family home, the typical backdrop, where Donovan can relax after his adventures behind the Iron Curtain. Then there is the work environment, in the office (dimly-lit like an English Gentlemen’s Club). The courtroom for Abel’s trial feels undignified, rather like a Roman arena. The presiding Judge is antagonistic towards Donovan, the public gallery wants his head, after Abel is awaits his sentence in an atmosphere that thirsts for blood.

Mark Rylance’s Abel somehow dominating the scenes with his subtle intensity, even though Hanks is nominal the hero and more present on screen: Rylance is resigned, only interested in his painting, having experienced Stalinist terror in the first place, he knows he may be put against a wall on his return, or be celebrated as a hero. Hanks’ Donovan is like a kindly bear, loving the good fight, whoever the opponent; he would later negotiate very successfully with Fidel Castro to release hostages after the invasion of The Bay of Pigs.

Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies is a triumph; an epic about two men caught in a time of mistrust, violence and overriding paranoia on both sides. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX

My Skinny Sister (2015) |

MY SKINNY SISTER (MIN LILLA SYSTER)

Dir.: Sanna Lenken

Cast: Rebecka Josephson, Amy Deasismont, Annika Halin, Henrik Norlan, Maxim Mehmet

Sweden 2015, 105 min.

In her first feature film, writer/director Sanna Lenken delves into the life of a middle class Swedish family without sentiment yet with deep understanding of the subject matter. Her focus on the sibling rivalry between the two sisters is realistic and intense: their mode of warfare oscillating between blackmail and bribery.

Stella (Josephson) is going through the difficult time of puberty. And her physical and emotional changes are made all the more unbearable by her slightly older sister Katja (Deasismont) who has lost her puppy fat and transformed into a slim and budding skating star. Naturally, parents Karin and Lasse dote on their older daughter, spoiling her rotten, whilst Stella feels more like an afterthought in the family dynamics. Stella develops a crush on her sister’s English coach Jacob (Mehmet), finally testing him with a kiss to find out if he really is a paedophile, like her big sister teasingly suggests.

The dynamics between the sisters change when Stella discovers that her sister is bulimic. Since Katja knows that Stella has taken to reading suggestive poetry, she has the upper hand, making her promise never to tell the parents her secret. But when Katja’s condition deteriorates – she is unable to train any more – Stella finds it hard to keep quiet. She develops destructive tendancies and slowly her emotional conditional starts to become an issue with both at school and at home. Her parents, particularly the mother, are overworked and under pressure; helpless and out of touch with this emotional rollercoaster that has derailed their daughter. It’s up to Stella to save her, but before she makes calls for an ambulance, she makes it abundantly clear to her sister just how much she hates her. Hardly surprising, since Katja has now totally monopolised her parents. Judiciously, Lenken avoids a happy ending, leaving the audience with some insightful reflections.

Josephson and Deasismont as the warring sisters are brilliant, the younger actress is particularly convincing. Both show vulnerability and deep-felt aggression, hurt and neglect and convey this with stunning imagination. Their parents are a mediocre couple, who are helpless when things start to go wrong with their treasured ‘little darlings’. The camera stays mostly at a distance, but the few close-ups speak volumes. Lenken tells her story as a straightforward narrative without any detours, concentrating on the relationship of the youngsters, who, in different ways, are left to themselves with no real guidance from their doting parents to rely on. MY SKINNY SISTER is an outstanding debut, superbly casted and sensitive in its crafting. AS

BERLINALE RUNS FROM 5-15 FEBRUARY. COVERAGE CAN BE FOUND UNDER BERLINALE 2015

LECCE FESTIVAL OF EUROPEAN CINEMA | FIPRESCI WINNER

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

The Nutcracker (1986) | Christmas re-release | DVD

Dir.: Carroll Ballard; Cast: Hugh Bigney, Vanessa Sharp, Wade Walthall;

Music: Peter I. Tchaikovsky; LSO conducted by Charles Maccerass; North West Ballet;

USA 1986, 89 min.

Carroll Ballard (The Black Stallion) has tried to give Tchaikovksy’s ballet based on ETA Hoffmann’s story, a more child friendly appeal. He has engaged the children’s book author Maurice Sendak (Where The Wild Things Are) to co-script and have a hand with the design.

The opening sequence shows an illustrator sketching sets and characters of the story. But that is as far it gets innovation-wise: the rest is a very respectable version, choreographed by Northern Ballet’s artistic director Kent Stowell. Somehow acting and dancing never manage to feek ‘live’, this is an saccharine-laced sugarplum: too sweet and too much culture with a capital C. And, in spite of aerial shots and some interesting tricks – like the dream dancers on the bed sheets with the girl’s face towering over them – one hardly forgets that this is a (very well) staged ballet.

Ballard’s successes as a director, particularly with Never Cry Wolf depended on great outdoors settings. They were lyrical epics about men in the wilderness. But he never breaks trough the demarcation lines of the stage: his trickery (like the fourth wall in some of the scenes) just underlines the fact, that he is showing a “Guckkasten” production. Strangely enough, one of the most impressive scenes is the fat tiger, having to function as a maypole for the dancing children – most certainly an idea of Maurice Sendhak.

THE NUTCRACKER is a prime example for the impossibility of filmed ballet: it is in a way a contradiction in itself, because ballet is somehow transitory – the dancers glide, their physical presence feel replaced by their image. Charles Maccerrass’ interpretation of Tchaikovsky is ponderous, giving it too much ‘schmaltz’ and failing on the tempi – after all, this is supposed to be a ghost story – for children – but nevertheless, the music never reflects the eeriness of the story.

Only when Sendak’s sinister figures appear do we finally see something out of the ordinary. But these moments are rare and they feel alien in the context of the whole, rather mediocre, enterprise. The dancing is somehow lost, whilst the dancers are obviously better dancers than actors, the camera concentrates most of the time on their secondary skills. Too often cuts interrupt the action, taking away the fluidity one associates with ballet; only near the end, during the Nutcracker Suite, we are treated too a long, uninterrupted dancing sequence. The result is still an admirable effort, perhaps the collaboration of Maurice Sendak set the bar of expectations too high.AS

NOW AVAILALBLE ON DVD

Gaumont | The Birthplace of French Film | UK French Film Festival 2015

This Autumn’s UK French Film Festival (nationwide until 13th December) brings into focus the powerhouse of French Cinema GAUMONT. Originally founded to produce articles for the photographic industry, Gaumont started making short films in 1897. As Leon Gaumont’s secretary, Alice Guy-Blache became the first female film director with her debut La Fée aux Choux in 1896, perhaps the first narrative film in the history of cinema.

Later she became the head of the Gaumont Film’s production company from 1896-1906, with the studios at La Villette in Paris 19th arondissement, at the time the largest studio in Europe. After Alice Guy-Blache went to Hollywood with her husband, Louis Feulliade became head of production at Gaumont. The company branched out to Britain, acquiring a cinema chain under the name Gaumont British, also producing early Hitchcock films, among them The Thirty Nine Steps (1935).

In 1937 film production stopped, due to Hollywood’s products swamping the French market. The production arm of the company was bought up in the same year by Havas, and renamed Société Nouvelle des Éstablissements Gaumont. Huge losses were made again between 1943 and 1947, but with the birth of Nouvelle Vague, the fortunes of the company changed again. Gaumont distributed one of the fore-runners of the Nouvelle Vague features, Robert Bresson’s Un Condamné à mort s’est echappé(1956). Later Gaumont would acquire the rights to the first two Chabrol films, Le Beau Serge (1958) and Les Cousins (1959). Rohmer (The Marquise of O), Godard’s (Histoire(s) du Cinéma) and Truffaut’s La Femme d’à Côté) were also in the Gaumont catalogue, together with Tarkovsky’s Nostalgie, Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander and Fassbinder’s Querelle during its golden era.

In celebration of this tribute, let’s have a look at some of Gaumont cult classic successes:

L’ASSASSIN HABITE AU 21 | THE MURDERER LIVES AT 21

Dir.: Henry-George Clouzot; Cast: Pierre Fresnay, Suzy Delair; France 1942, 83 min.

Made during Gaumont’s loss-making period, this Noirish comedy thriller was a success with French audiences. Inspector Wencslas Vorobechnik (Fresnay) – Wens for short – is hunting a serial killer, Mr. Durand, who leaves a calling crad after his seemingly unconnected murders. Together with his girl friend Mila Milou (Delair), an aspiring actress, he chases the murderer down to a boarding house, were the number of suspects is large – everybody seems to have something to hide. After arresting the wrong person, Wens finally solves the case with the help of Mila.

Whilst Clouzot’s first film as a director might be classified as a text-book ‘who-done-it’ in the Agatha Christie mould, there are many typical moments of Clouzot’s misanthropic nature: whilst the hunt for the murderer is going on, the chief of police phones his assistant, and threatens him with the sack, if success is not imminent. The man’s reaction is to pick up the phone and threatens his underling with unemployment – and so on, until poor Wens, the last in the long row, gets his phone call. In another scene, Clouzot cleverly arranges the sequence involving a policeman lighting his cigarette, giving the effect of the prisoner inadvertently giving the ‘Hitler greeting’ with his arm. Clouzot’s humour is very black throughout here, showing early signs of his love for sadism.

LE SILENCE DE LA MER | THE SILENCE OF THE SEA

Dir.: Jean-Pierre Melville; Cast: Howard Vernon, Nicole Stephane, Jean-Marie Robain; France 1949, 88 min.

Melville’s first film as a director, shot immediately after his release from the Resistance, is based on the novel by Jean Bruller, this being the first of three Melville films about the Resistance, followed by Leon, Morin, Prêtre and L’Armée des Ombres. LE SILENCE is a ‘chamber-piece’, set in the house which an unnamed Frenchman (Robain) and his niece (Stephane are forced to co-habit with a German officer, Von Ebbrenac (Vernon). The German officer, even though polite and obviously cultured, is cold-shouldered by the two French who treat him with an icy silence –after all, he is occupying their house as a member of the German army. The voice over cleverly echoes their feelings, known to the audience, whilst the German tries hard to break through to them with mounting pressure. LE SILENCE is a cold film, Henri Decae’s camera showing the trio like fish swimming round an aquarium: the b/w images create a claustrophobic prison for Von Ebbrenac, only duty on the Eastern Front can release him. A relentless, obsessive masterpiece.

LE GRAND BLEU

Dir.: Luc Besson; Cast: Rosanna Arquette, Jean Marc Barr, Jean Reno; France 1988, 168 min.

Besson wanted to break free of the excessive intellectualising in French cinema. LE GRAND BLEU was his escape bid – focusing on the visual quality of cinema, it showcased the advent of his ‘Cinema du Look’ approach. It explores the rivalry that overshadows the longtime frienship of two divers. Jacques Mayol (Barr) falls in love with the insurance broker Johana (Arquette), who follows him and Enzo Maiorca (Reno) to all their competitions. Co-written by Mayol (whose real life rivalry with Maiorca was actual, even though both survived), the story is told in vibrantly romantic images, the Sea being much more attractive than the Earth. But despite its magnificent visuals, LE GRAND BLEU is still only a variation on the ’Buddy-Movie’, where men’s friendship supercedes their relationships with women; the sea representing the emotional element. Ironically the film was the favourite Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic. AS

THE UK FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES NATIONWIDE UNTIL 13 DECEMBER 2015

Betty Blue (1986) | BFI LOVE SEASON DVD/Blu Deluxe

Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix Writers: Philippe Dijan and Jean Jacques Beineix

Jean-Hugues Anglade, Beatrice Dalle, Gerard Damon, Consuelo De Haviland, Clementine Celarie

180min French with English subtitles Romantic Drama

A romantic drama in the true sense of the word, Betty Blue is everything you’d expect a French love story to be: obsessive, sensual and completely off the rails; but deliciously so, transporting you back to holiday romances and torrid summers on the sunbaked beaches of Southern France. Drenched in its vibrant eighties aesthetic it also epitomises the ‘Cinema du look’ movement that focused on spectacle over narrative, recently re-visited by Leos Carax with Holy Motors (2012).

Essentially a two-hander, Betty Blue has the erotically-charged presence of Jean-Hugues Anglade as Zorg, a wannabe writer and handy man who falls for the earthy charms of mad-cap waitress Betty (Beatrice Dalle), a gap-toothed bundle of unpredictability and effervescent charm. She’s the type of woman who will burn your house down if thwarted and she does just this to force Zorg from his humdrum existence decorating beach-huts for his creepy boss, Eddy (Gerard Darmon). Believing in Zorg’s untapped writing talents, she whisks him away to more madness as his muse. It all ends in tears, after an exhausting but worthwhile three hours (here in this director’s cut DVD deluxe edition). Intoxicating and watchable as long as you suspend your disbelief and buy into its ‘amour fou’ wackiness with a decent glass of vin de pays – this is a feel-good cult classic that will ward off the winter blues. MT

[youtube id=”YydulEgsTOE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

SCREENING AS PART OF BFI LOVE SEASON UNTIL DECEMBER 2015

SECOND SIGHT brings both the director’s cut and original theatrical version to Blu-ray and DVD for the first time, along with some fantastic bonus material in a stunning two-disc set

Un Homme Idéal | A Perfect Man (2015)

Director: Yann Gozlan

Cast: Pierre Niney, Ana Girardot, André Marcon, Valéria Cavalli, Marc Barbé

104min | French | Thriller

with the feel of Hitchcock and Chabrol (remember that scene in Le Boucher when blood drips through the celling?). Yann Goslan’s terrically tense thriller is a delicious treat sumptuously set in the summer heat of a villa in Var. It stars Pierre Niney as a struggling writer, driven to extremes by his desire to produce a decent novel., or at least any novel at all.

Mathieu Vasseur (Niney) first manuscript, The Man From Behind, has been rejected by publishers. Working parttime as a cleaner in the local College near his Parisian bedsit, Vasseur stumbles into a lecture being given by a young woman, Alice (Ana Girardot), on the topic of scent and memory. When he’s hired to clear out the home of a dead man who has no living relatives, Vasseur finds a leather bound tome recounting the man’s experiences in the Algerian war. Vasseur has the brainwave to pass this off as his own work, and before he can say Highsmith, he’s written his perfect ‘debut’ novel. Soon he’s mixing in the same circles as Alice and when the pair become engaged, they head off to her parent’s gorgeous Villa near Dijon, armed with an advance to work on his second novel.

But Vasseur is somewhat of a slacker And his publisher is breathing down his neck for a few sentences. Meanwhile a friend of the original author also gets in touch and not just for a chat over a cafe creme – he also means business and tries to blackmail Vasseur. then One of Alice’s exes, Stanislas (Thibault Vincon), arrives at the villa and senses the the edgy tension in Vasseur.

Niney is perfect as the highly-strung, feline Vasseur, in this follow-up to his role as Yves Saint Laurent. With his sensitive masculinity he makes Vasseur a compelling character both sensual and vulnerable and his chemistry with Ana Girardot is perfectly believable. Vasseur’s nerves of steel make him similar to the famed Mr. Ripley character of Patricia Highsmith, novel. Gozlan’s crafts a portrait of an intellectual con man who allows his desperation for success to go against his better judgement. Sadly the background of the Algerian war is hardly mentioned and could have provided a rich counterpoint to the narrative that descends into blackmail and eventually murder and a really tragic denouement.

Still, the absolutely brilliant noirish score by Cyrille Aufort (A Royal Affair) and Antoine Roch’s gorgeous cinematography make this a gripping and watchable thriller for a Saturday night at the movies – or any other night of this week for that matter. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 20 NOVEMBER 2015 COURTESY OF STUDIO CANAL

The Dressmaker (2015)

Dir.: Jocelyn Moorhouse

Cast: Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth, Judy Davis, Hugo Weaving, Sahne Bourne, Alison White, Rory Potter; Australia/USA 2015, 118 min.

THE DRESSMAKER, Jocelyn Moorhouse’s first feature film as a director for 18 years, is based on the novel by Rosalie Ham. Very much an Australian variation on Friedrich Durrenmatt’s revenge play “Der Besuch der alten Dame”, which has been adapted for the screen – on three continents – more than eight times since 1964, Moorhouse has put literally everything into this: murder, mayhem and cross dressing, all served up in farcical slapstick way.

Set in the early fifties in the small Australian town of Dungatar, the woman seeking revenge is Myrtle ‘Tilly’ Dunnage (Winslet), who was thrown out of the town at the age of ten, after allegedly killing classmate Stewart Pettyman. Having made a career in haute couture in Paris, she returns to Dungatar to get her own back on the backward and hypocritical lot. Her mother Molly (Davis) is no great help, not only is she an alcoholic, bakes wonderful weed cakes for pain relieve – but most importantly, she does not believe in Tilly’s innocence. On the opposite end, hunky Teddy (Hemsworth), believes very much that Tilly has not killed young Stewart (Potter) – but the budding romance is cut short, when Teddy jumps into a grain silo and suffocates. Tilly’s best friend is now Sergeant Farrat (Weaving), a cross dressing police sergeant, who delivers the proof of Tilly’s innocence. When uptight councillor Evan Pettyman (Bourne) is identified as Tilly’s father, his long-suffering wife Marigold (White) kills him. But Tilly is not finished with the lot: her dresses may make the female hyenas of the town presentable, but for an amateur stage competition the dressmaker crosses the ladies of Dungatar: her designs for their rival’s outfits are much superior. Finally, she gives a new meaning to the term ‘tabula rasa’ – ingeniously managing finally to do herself proud.

There are many – perhaps too many – narrative strains in THE DRESSMAKER. Moorhouse unravels the whole history of the town in two hours with many flashbacks and amazing ideas. They are often hilarious as, for example when Tilly, Teddy and Molly watch Wilders’ Sunset Boulevard in the cinema, Molly shouting “Run, run” when William Holden is kissing Gloria Swanson. But sometimes, the execution is over the top, like in the case of Sergeant Farrat’s cross-dressing. There are so many surprises and twists and one has the feeling towards the end, that less might have been more. But the overall impact is sometimes stunning, particularly Donald McAlpine’s camera work: his sepia-coloured passages in the flash-backs are not romantic, but rather mud and tears. Winslet and Davis are playing perfectly off each other, and Weaving’s gender bent copper is a marvel to watch. Purists may recoil sometimes, but THE DRESSMAKER is a tour-de-force, an exhausting emotional rollercoaster. AS

OUT ON 20 NOVEMBER 2015

True Romance (1993)

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer. Brad Pitt, Michael Rapaport

USA 1993, 118 min.

TRUE ROMANCE is certainly the best Quentin Tarintino film ever. Yes, Tony Scott is the nominal director, but apart from changing a sober ending into a happy one, he made really no significant contributions to Tarantino’s script – how could the maker of bombastic, simplistic films like Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop II, come up with a lyrical parable, told in the style of a fairy story but shot in the style of a cartoon?

Talking of cartoons, TRUE ROMANCE hero Clarence (Slater) works in a shop selling them – just like Tarantino worked in a video rental shop before his film career took off. Clarence is in love with martial arts movies and Elvis (the latter, played by Val Kilmer, often turns up to reassure Clarence that all will end will). Clarence’ idea of a birthday treat is a Martial Arts treble bill at his local cinema. There he meets Alabama (Arquette), a call-girl, as she insists, but only for four days, equalling four customers. Clarence’ boss has hired her, to give his employee a treat. The two naïve dreamer fall in love, and Clarence kills Alabama’s vicious pimp (Oldman, in leotards), but mistake the suitcase with drugs worth 5M$ for the one with his sweat heart’s (in true fashion they get married a day after meeting) belongings. As a good son, Clarence introduces his wife to his ex-cop father Clifford (Hopper), before the couple sets off to LA to make their fortune. Clifford will pay for this visit with a grisly death at the hands of Vicenzo Cocotti, Christopher Walken at his psychotic best.

In Los Angeles (=Hollywood), we get so many stand-out performance, that a few will have to do: like James Gandolfini’s vicious killer Virgil, beaten to pulp by his intended victim Alabama, Brad Pitt’s lodger, who is always so high, that he gives away the couple’ hideout to all visitors asking for them, and they are many, as the bloody mass-shootout in the end proofs. In Tarantino’s version, Clarence is one of the victims, but Scott “fell so much in love with the two main characters”, that he lets the hero survive, closing the film five years later at a beach in Mexico, where the couple frolics with their son Elvis. Tarantino later gave his blessing to Scott’s version, and few will disagree.

Apart from DOP Jeffrey L. Kimball’s (Windtalkers) candy-coloured images, Hans Zimmer’s main theme – based on Orff’s ‘Gassenhauer’ – is most memorable, a haunting, torturous tune, just right for this grim, violent tale, very much an adult variation of Alice in Wonderland. AS

BACK ON THE BIG SCREEN FROM 20 NOVEMBER 2015

Summer of Sangaile (2015) | Seville European Film Festival 2015

Director/Writer: Alantė Kavaïtė

Cast: Julija Steponaityte, Asitė Diržiūtė

Drama | Lithuania/France/Holland | 88 min

The rapturous swoon of adolescent love is the primary focus of THE SUMMER OF SANGAILĖ, the fleeting portrait of a same-sex romantic fling between two teenage girls in rural Lithuania. Having premiered in Sundance, where it won Alantė Kavaïtė a Best Direction award in the World Cinema category, this easygoing, sensitively handled drama has already enjoyed deserved longevity on the festival circuit and screened in the ‘New Waves’ section of the 12th Seville European Film Festival.

As Lithuania’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, THE SUMMER OF SANGAILĖ is refreshingly swift and cheery in comparison to the country’s more celebrated but openly pessimistic fare. And though it might lack the steadfast political preponderance of, say, a Sarūnas Bartaš picture, it’s a commendably audience-oriented feature that taps into an increasingly mainstream market longing for portrayals of gender and sexuality that veer beyond the routine and well-trodden—a market that already included Palme d’Or winner BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR and which is now fronted by Todd Haynes’s plushly designed Oscar contender CAROL.

The eponymous protagonist of THE SUMMER OF SANGAILĖ is a lanky, slightly withdrawn 17-year-old (played with adroit minimalism by Julija Steponaitytė) who’s staying with her parents at their chic-shack holiday villa. She first encounters infectiously convivial Auste (Asitė Diržiūtė) when the latter sells her a raffle ticket at a local airshow. Though she begins to hang out with her new pal, Sangailė’s initial interest is in one of Auste’s boy friends, though the time the two girls share alone gradually blossoms into a sexual draw. Approximating the exponential way in which love can engulf us, the film intensifies its scope: for long sequences here, every other character seems to fade away, as Sangailė and Auste indulge in gambolling fashion shows, sunkissed photography sessions and, inevitably, atmospherically lit lovemaking.

Kavaïtė, working on only her second feature—her first, ECOUTE LE TEMPS, was made more than seven years ago—is perhaps well positioned to frame Sangailė as an outsider, having herself lived in France for the last 17 years. Indeed, the writer-director does well to encapsulate the unpredictable ways in which chemistries form and attractions develop. Here, the characters’ needs shift according to a complex arrangement of circumstantial factors: intimacy, trust, confidence, feelings of alienation, and so on. Bored by parental pressure to decide upon a lifelong profession (she embarrasses her mam and dad by saying, when asked, that she wants to grow up to be a whore in front of their friends), Sangailė really wants to be a pilot, watching on with equal fascination and fear as propeller planes perform daredevil flips in the film’s opening credits sequence.

It’s a fitting metaphor. Not only does it establish at the outset that Sangailė has a passion specific enough to mark her as an atypical teen (and thus, an archetypal outsider in several ways), it also helps to characterise the topsy-turvy nature of teenage love. In this, the film is helped immeasurably by a swelling strings score by Jean-Benoît Dunckel, an otherwise rousingly overdone soundtrack that here perfectly compliments Sangailė’s scorching spirals of self-discovery. MICHAEL PATTISON

THE 12TH SEVILLE EUROPEAN FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 6 -14 NOVEMBER 2015

Sunset on the Sarbin River (1967) | LKFF 2015

Director: Chung Chang Wha

Cast: Shin Young-Kyun, Kim Hye-Jung, Nam Goong Won, Yoon Il-Bong

12omin Action Drama Korea

Filmed in black and white, this ambitious if overlong pro-Korean anti-imperialist action drama blends humour, romance and brutality in the melancholy story of an earnest Korean student, his name japanised as Musumoto, who feels compelled to join the Japanese Imperial Army and do his bit for the War. Doing rather well, he is promoted to officer in charge and transferred to Burma where his platoon is visited by the famous “teishintai” or ‘comfort’ women. On the way to the front the troops are betrayed to the guerillas of the new independence army by a solitary single mother with whom Musumoto reluctantly falls in love. But when her child is accidently killed during manoeuvres by troops under his command, her guerilla husband swears revenge on the hapless officer who, despite his valiant efforts, remains the miserable and thwarted Korean hero of the piece. Chung Chang Wha crafts an intelligent, emotional and perceptively humorous tribute to Korea’s fierce national pride at being subjected to Japanese Imperialism during the Second World War. MT

LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2 -14 NOVEMBER 2015

The Lady in the Van (2015) | LFF 2015

Dir.: Nicholas Hytner

Cast: Maggie Smith, Alex Jennings, Frances de La Tour, Jim Broadbent; UK 2015, 104 min.

Nicholas Hytner (The Madness of King George) directs the film version of Alan Bennett’s play, which he staged at the National Theatre. Maggie reprises her title role of the bag lady who lived in her battered van in Bennett’s drive way in Gloucester Crescent, Camden for fifteen years.

Miss Shepherd moved with her van into Bennett’s driveway in NW1 during 1974 and stayed there until her death in 1989. Only then did Bennett find out that M.T. Shepherd was once a concert pianist, having been taught by Alfred Cortot, whose extreme right-wing political leanings she shared. Her relationship with Bennett (Jennings) – played by two Alan’s, the writer and his alter Ego the man, who discuss and argue permanently – is one of strife and confrontations, mainly about her hygiene. On occasions she used Bennett’s toilet, and we see the writer cleaning endlessly after her. The neighbours “liberals, slightly guilty intellectuals”, among them Frances de La Tour’s Ursula Vaughn Williams, are glad that Shepherd has landed on Bennett’s property: the main reason being that she did not like the music of the children in the house she had used as parking space before. Shepherd once killed a young man on a motorcycle, whilst driving her car, and even though the accident was caused by the victim, it traumatised the woman , whose mental frailness had been increased during a stay in a nunnery.

The second “woman” in Bennett’s life is his mother, who drifts into Alzheimer’s, ironically after telling his son that Ms Shepherd will need to go to a home. Bennett’s relationship with his mother is, like with nearly everyone (including his alter Ego): full of guilt and regret. Whilst Maggie Smith is only too happy to have confrontations with everyone crossing her path, Bennett muses and reflects about his place in life, all his relationships troubled by inertia. There could not have been a more different ‘couple’ sharing a property: the shy, left wing writer and the load mouthed right-winger, who once wrote “to someone in charge of Argentina” that she was the real “Iron Lady”, and not Margaret Thatcher.

Even though the film travels outside London, when Bennett visits his mother in a care home in Weston-Super-Mere, or talks to Ms Shepherd’s brother, most of it feels like a play, the scenes shot at the original places. This makes THE LADY IN THE VAN into a reflection about art and life: how easy it is to slip once too often and loose the balance needed to cope with everyday life.

Maggie Smith is brilliant, always able to liven proceedings up, and showing a spirit – in spite of her mental illness – that is much stronger than Bennett’s careful life hidden behind words. Jennings ‘two Bennetts’ do need each other, to make a whole, which can survive. Hytner has re-created a London, which has long gone, its weird gentleness replaced by crass materialism and property speculation. LADY IN THE VAN is a sad goodbye to an era which allowed opposing personalities, how ever damaged, to live together. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 NOVEMBER 2015

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) | Blu-ray release

Director: John Ford | Writers Nunnally Johnson | John Steinbeck (novel)

Cast: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin, Doris Bowden

129min | Drama | US

John Ford’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940) achieved iconic status by being one of the first films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Does this film, now 75 years old, deserve that accolade? Yes, it certainly does says Alan Price.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH is not a revered ‘museum piece’ but a living and visceral classic of social realism whose concerns about poverty, displacement and exploitation still strikes a chord and 1930’s Depression America continually haunts us today.

The film records the journey of the Joad family. They’ve suffered the trauma of the dustbowl on their farm in Oklahoma and their home has been seized by the bank and they are forced to load up their possessions on a truck and head West where California appears to be offering fruit picking work. On the road they encounter hardships, scorn, resistance and the death of their grandparents, accompanied by small acts of kindness from ordinary folk.

Accompanying them is their paroled son Tom (Henry Fonda). Tom is the one who will eventually answer back to a repressive authority and become the film’s social conscience. Whilst the mother, Jane Darwell, stoically epitomises the spirit of the family and the people, Ford movingly employs their voices as a ‘rhetorical’ commentator as they journey to the humble ‘Eden’ of a decent better paid job and stable home. Some have viewed this as socialist propaganda. What saves their words from being sentimental or preachy is the heartfelt sincerity of the performances. Ford coaxes such magnificent acting out of Darwell and Fonda. Ford, who was often a right-wing sympathiser, ended up making a film sharply critical of American capitalism, which, at the time, was a very daring move.

Despite Ma Joad’s famous affirmation (“We are the people. And you can’t beat the people. We just keep on a’goin”) the film remains unsettled and rootless. For THE GRAPES OF WRATH now appears as an unlikely pre-curser of the contemporary road movie, emerging out of a family drama, causing traditional roles to be reversed on the highway and creating hard consequences. Film critic Andrew Sarris once said ”What is actually happening is nothing less than the transformation of the Joad family from a patriarchy rooted in the earth to a matriarchy uprooted on the road.”

Ford’s authorative direction and his assured placement of camera – from Ma Joad’s expression, in a mirror, as she tries on old earrings just before leaving home – to Ford’s truck-view tracking shots upon entering a work-camp; Gregg Toland’s photography (just prior to him working on Citizen Kane) contains so many expressive night shots whose poetic eloquence never draws attention to itself. All these elements coalesce seamlessly in THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Consider also the early candle lit scenes with a displaced neighbour: They evoke a nightmarish scenario where home has been destroyed and dignity and sanity unsettled.

Nunnally Johnson’s script is an exemplary adaptation of Steinbeck’s novel. Whilst the courage of Daryl F.Zanuck to have produced such a film is quite remarkable. Essential viewing. AP

NOW AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

The Red and the White (1967) | Csillagosok, katonak | UCLSSEES Centenary

Director: Miklos Jancso Writer: Gyula Hernadi

Cast: Jozsef Madaras, Tibor Molnar, Andras Kozak, Jacint Juhasz, Tatyana Konyukhova, Nikita Mikhalkov

90min Drama War | Hungary/USSR

Miklos Jancso (1921-2014) was not only the leading Hungarian director of his generation – if not the greatest Hungarian director of all times (as Bela Tarr claims) – his films, which spanned over seven decades from 1958 to 2010, influenced European Art House cinema particularly in the 60s and 70s. and he went on to win the Director’s Prize at Cannes in 1972 for Red Psalm and the Golden Lion at Venice in 1990.

Most of his films rely on long takes; a choreography of movement which is vey much like a ballet and rural settings where horses often dominate humans in their impact and a very allegorical approach. Whilst he was accused of formalism and Nationalism under Stalinism, he was always very critical of his fellow countrymen, whom he accused of having chosen a brutal and radical path in their history, coupled with abuse of power. Scathing about the younger generation of post-Stalinist Hungary, he makes fun of their crass materialism in Lord’s Lantern in Budapest (1999).

The original title of THE RED AND THE WHITE, which reads in translation as “The Stars on their Caps”, expresses Jancso’s intention much more so than the English title. A co-production between the USSR and Hungary, the drama was supposed to be a triumphant celebration of the October Revolution of 1917. How anybody could expect Jancso to fulfil these expectations is astonishing – and the result was anything but a revolutionary triumph: Jancso set the film in 1919 during the Russian Civil War, when Hungarian volunteers served in the Red Army.

Set around a landscape near the Volga, the film starts with White Guards taking Red Army soldiers prisoner in a dilapidated palace full of Greek columns and featuring an orthodox church: representing a past era, which is gone forever. The Whites are not only satisfied with simply killing their prisoners, but they make a game of power of it: the prisoners have 15 minutes to escape, before the soldiers on horseback will chase them. The outcome is obvious, the first mass slaughter of The Red and the White reminds very much of The Hunger Games and other contemporary productions, were mass killings take the form of a pastime.

Women are the obvious victims of male violence: a young peasant women only just escapes being raped by a White Soldier. Later the nurses in a field hospital have to identify wounded communist soldiers to the Whites under duress. Violence is everywhere: the Red army soldiers are only marginally better off, they too have a lust for violence; killing not so much out of revolutionary fervour, but because they can. As usual, Jancso is not interested in individual psychological motivations, he paints a colossal picture of mass hysteria culminating in more and more revenge killings: the War is not the culprit here, but human nature. Whilst the fortunes of the fighters change, their only goal seems to be revenge once they are in control of the situation. THE RED AND THE WHITE is simply not an anti-war film, but a documentation of human failure: they crave power only to express themselves in violent behaviour.

Aesthetically Jancso creates the opposite of realism: the world shown is very much a beautiful nightmare, in which soldiers and horses run in and out the frame, sometimes even entering it from behind the camera. The long takes are choreographed like ballet scenes. We often see certain actions, but from somewhere else voices tell a different story, and there is the ambient sound hear of different fights. There is an elegiac, enigmatic atmosphere of a nether-world, particularly in gentle scenes which end with senseless violence: the officers of the White Guard ask the nurses to dance with them in the delicate rhythm of a beech wood – for a moment human relations are civilised again. This mystic scene in the middle of Hieronymus Bosch-like on-goings, shows for a moment the human soul. AS

[youtube id=”2DzCL4kKb0Q” width=”600″ height=”350″]

SCREENED TO CELEBRATE THE 100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE SCHOOL OF SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES | UCL | LONDON

Sunrise (2014)

Director: Partho Sen-Gupta

Cast: Adil Hussain, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Gulpaz Ansari, Komal Gupta

85min Fantasy Thriller India

Exploring the evergreen theme of child abduction and violence towards women, Partho Sen-Gupta’s third feature SUNRISE is a noirish psychological thriller with a tour de force from Adil Hussain as a social services inspector wracked with guilt over his own daughter’s disappearance, as 60,000 children go missing in India every year.

This richly sepia-tinted arthouse mood piece relies on sound as much as lighting and atmosphere to evoke the feelings of anguish, longing and menace Adil feels as he trawls the rain-soaked streets of Mumbai. During his tireless investigation that visits a lap-dancing club and underage brothels in his search for little Aruna, he shifts between reality and fantasy, although the line between the two is as mysterious and muddled as the labyrinthine streets he searches in the course of his duty.

As Lakshman Joshi he is preoccupied with researching the case of a battered 16-year-old boy, Babu (Chinmay Kambli) and a little girl who has gone missing. Meanwhile his wife, Leela (Tannishtha Chatterjee), appears to be expecting another child and is deeply traumatised by their missing daughter. He soon comes across, 12-year-old Naina (Esha Amlani) and her protector Komal (Gulnaaz Ansari), who is confined to the club’s living quarters with other underage girlss. at one point he appears to be in the exotic dancing venue, having found his daughter, but this is clearly a dream sequence and he nervously awakes.

Spare on dialogue but long of soulful sighs and wailing, SUNRISE is embued with a vibrant palpable dramatic tension. It is a strangely magnetic, dreamlike drama deeply evoking India’s social problems with sumptuous cinematography and a standout turn from Hussain who holds it all together as a perplexed and bewildered man on the edge of desperation. A delight for cineastes and the arthouse crowd.

REVIEWED DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Morire Gratis (1968)| Die Free | UK Premiere

Writer|Director: Sandro Franchina

Cast: Karen Blanguernon, Franco Angeli, Isabel D’Avila, Adriano Amidei Migliano

87mins Drama Italy

Winner of the Prix Max Ophuls for the best new director on its first appearance in 1968 but soon forgotten and never released in Britain, MORIRE GRATIS finally received its UK premiere as the concluding attraction in the ICA’s recent season devoted to Italian experimental cinema of the 60s and 70s. The only feature directed by Sandro Franchina, who died in Paris in 1998 at the age of 58, his film resembles Antonioni with jokes. The Italian art cinema having tired by the 1960s of neorealist examinations of the plight of the dispossessed, it instead turned its attention to the ennui of the affluent but discontented; represented in MORIRE GRATIS by Enzo (Franco Angeli), an arrogant young sculptor who stroppily consents to serve as a drug mule. His ‘cargo’ concealed within the belly of his latest work – a Capitoline Wolf with a tape recorder inside it – his drive from Rome to Paris proves eventful.

Clearly inspired by Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso (1962), and also recalling John Schlesinger’s Darling (1965) in the graceless self-centredness of its principal characters; the bulk of MORIRE GRATIS concerns itself with Enzo’s time on the road with a leggy, kohl-eyed French sixties chick (Karen Blanguernon) who he picks up along the way. We never learn anything about her and neither engages our sympathy; and the predictably nihilistic ending demonstrates that the director shares our feelings about them. The film’s working title had been Il Sole all’Ombra (Sun in the Shadow), and although the general shiftlessness of its main characters and bleak take on humanity anticipates the countless interminable road movies that followed during the seventies and eighties, MORIRE GRATIS moves along as swiftly as the restless anti-hero’s sometimes careless driving (there’s even a car chase at one point), the scenery is attractive – including a pretty little churchyard where Enzo moves the headstones about for a prank – and clocks in at a brisk 83 minutes. The audience at the ICA enjoyed it. RICHARD CHATTEN

MORIRE GRATIS was presented in 35mm with subtitles especially created for the screening as part of the ICA & Tate Modern film season IF ARTE POVERA WAS POP: ARTISTS’ AND EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA IN ITALY 1960s-70s.

Ode to My Father (2014) | Gukjesijang | LKFF 2015 2 -14 November

Dir.: J K Joun | Cast: Jeong-min Hwang, Yunjin Kim | South Korea 2014, 126 min.

A full-blooded epic, ODE TO MY FATHER spans over fifty years of Korean history. Full of overwhelming images from the chaos of the war; the danger of the mining, to the brutal war in Vietnam: all this is more enough for one film. Unfortunately, J K Joun too often drifts off into sentimentality, the action is tragic enough to impress without going over the top. Impressive performances and Byung-woo Lee’s powerful score save the drama offering a fascinating a overview of 20th Century Korean history from the personal perspective of one man.

We first meet our hero Yoon duk, as a boy in 1950 in North Korea, fleeing with his family from the Chinese army. An American warship takes some of the refugees, but during the chaotic scrambles to get on the ship, Yoon looses his sister Maksoon. His father tries to find the little girl, but is never seen again. The grown-up Yoon (Hwang) will mourn the loss of his sister for the rest of his life: he cannot overcome his guilt. The family settles in Busan, where they work for Yoon’s aunt Kkotbun in her grocery shop, which Yoon will inherit one day.

In West Germany in the Sixties, he works in a mine near Duisburg, just escaping an accident with his life, he falls in love with the South Korean nurse Youngj (Kim). The two marry and have children, but Yoon again goes abroad to fight against the Vietcong in the Vietnam War. A TV-show tries to re-unite families who lost each other during the turbulent Korean history, and Maksoon, who has been adopted by American parents, sees her family again, just before her mother dies. Yoon, who stubbornly does not want to sell his shop (which is being demolished to make space for a modern shopping centre), finally agrees to sell – for the first time in his adult life, he accepts defeat. AS

ODE TO MY FATHER IS THE GALA OPENING OF THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2015 | 2 -14 OCTOBER

Those People (2015) l UKJFF 2015 | 7 – 26 November

Writer|Director: Joey Kuhn

Cast: Jonathan Gordon, Jason Ralph, Haaz Sleiman, Britt Lower, Meghann Fahy

89min | Drama | US

Writer director Joey Kuhn’s impressive, if at times melodramatic, debut exudes the highly polished charisma of its educated, preppy Manhattanites. Well-groomed and articulate, they sip cocktails and Pinot Noir in sophisticated jazz bars on the Upper East Side, sing Gilbert & Sullivan songs and, at Rosh Hashanah, their schuls are full of white roses and beautifully-dressed women. Gay sensibilities are worn romantically on the hand-tailored sleeves of these debonair types who have names like Sebastian and Ursula, and they say things like: “You came out of the womb with a Masters in queer theory” – what ever that may be.

Jonathon Gordon plays Charlie, a painter completing his MFA, who is close to his wealthy school friend Sebastian (Jason Ralph)—so close, he even paints a large portrait of him, insinuating that relationship is more that purely platonic. Sebastian is obsessed with his financier father, a Wall Street criminal (“the most hated man in New York”) who is serving time in an open prison.

Neither is short of male admirers and although Charlie has feelings for Sebastian he soon attracts the attention of the more emotionally mature Lebanese concert pianist Tim (Hanz Sleiman) whose suspects Charlie’s emotional involvement with Sebastian and constantly quizzes and baits him: “does he play Chopin as well as I do”. The two grow close as they tumble through the early days (and seductive nights) of a classically-scored love affair. Their cleverly-lit embraces and highly romanticised sex scenes have an ethereal quality to them that focuses on kissing and pillowtalk rather than raw passion.

Sumptuously crafted, sensitive and contemplative, Kuhn’s narrative hints at the fear of intimacy amongst these young men haunted by the ghosts of their fathers. They have close women friends too who serve as a counterpoint to their emotional barometers, and provide interest for arthouse audiences, beyond just the LGBT crowd.

Performances feel genuine and heartfelt and Hanz Sleiman is particularly convincing in a softly-spoken role that is beautifully pitched and soulful. The storyline is slim and ultimately rather unsatisfying but well-scripted with some perky dialogue and Adam Crystal’s brilliantly evocative original score that elevates this into something special. Joey Kuhn is a young director worth watching. MT

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2015 | 7 – 22 NOVEMBER | NATIONWIDE

Closer to the Moon (2015) | UKJFF 2015

Director: Nae Caranfil

Cast: Mark Strong, Vera Farmiga, Harry Lloyd, Christian McKay

Drama | Romania | 112min

Truth is always stranger than fiction. And Nae Caranfil stretches this maxim to maximum in his black comedy about a group of convicted Jewish bank robbers effectively forced to re-enact their crime for a propaganda film in postwar Romania.

Caranfil has made several features as part of the Romanian New Wave but this attempt to go international and more commercial by having an anglophone cast, with Mark Strong and Vera Farmiga, fails to ring true largely because the leads are really supposed to be Romanian. This, along with establishing the group’s motives for committing a crime that would ultimately lead to their own deaths, is the main stumbling block of this otherwise upbeat and innocuous wartime caper, that effectively brings the early promise of the Romanian New Wave to a grinding halt.

The film opens with the crime caper which they pass off by pretending to be shooting a film. The five friends have all been resistance fighters during the Second World War and later, high ranking Communists. But after the hostilities are over, Mark Strong’s senior police officer Max Rosenthal and political scientist Alice (Vera Farmiga) find themselves in reduced circumstances both financially and socially. Rather than continue their lacklustre postwar lives in penury and ‘social purdah’, they decide to rob a bank and either go out in a blaze of glory, or live their lives with at least a few bob.

CLOSER TO THE MOON works best during the flashbacks of the Ioanid Gang with Strong masterful as the leader of the group, and Farmiga impressive and feisty as the woman trailblazer. But the fake romance that she develops with Virgil feels tonally out of place against the black comedy of the re-enactments and so does the sad interlude where Alice’s son suddenly turns up during the robbery. That said, CLOSER TO THE MOON is an impressively-mounted and good-looking film that offers reasonable entertainment as a wartime recreation of a true event. MT

Under Milk Wood (2015)

Writer| Director: Kevin Allen

Cast: Rhys Ifans, Charlotte Church, Steffan Rhodri, Aneirin Hughes

87min | Drama | UK

When highly-coloured bits of plastic detritus bob along a fake sea bed in the opening titles to UNDER MILK WOOD you start to wonder if you’ve slipped into a screening of a Tellytubbies feature length drama. But the lilting Welsh voiceover is unmistakably the powerfully potent 1954 ‘play for voices’ by Dylan Thomas.

Kevin Allen’s ultimately pointless screen adaptation is a ghastly twee romp through a Welsh village. It is also the UK’s Foreign Language hopeful at the 2016 Academy Awards. And to top it all, it stars Charlotte Church (as the buxom Polly Garter). The whole point of this gorgeous play is to listen and imagine it, ringing out in richly evocative tones, as the lushness of its sumptuous imagery gradually unfolds in the subconscious to evoke a whimsical Welsh wonderland.

Take a paltry budget (hence the plastic) and some largely unknown actors (doing their best but cast simply through being Welsh) and you have a second rate production bristling with picture postcard lewdness that totally downgrades and denigrates one of Britain’s most wonderful and highly-regarded 20th century plays. What was Kevin Allen (Twin Town) thinking of?

The saving grace here is naturally the narration by Rhys Ifans, who can always carry a production with his exuberance and style. Starring as Captain Cat, one of the characters who dwells in the coastal village of Llareggub on whose musings the piece is based, he brings the drama to life with his sparky enthusiasm.

But the gently erotic immaginings of a Welsh seaside town become crude and tasteless under Allen’s direction. Instead of being the central focus and raison d’etre of Thomas’s creation, the velvety soft and sonorous sounds drift to the background as the dildo-shaped candles and bulging buttocks loom large. Shut your eyes if you want to enjoy this. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 OCTOBER 2015 | REVIEWED AT EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Black Souls (2014) Anime Nere

Director: Francesco Munzi

Writer: Francesco Munzi, Fabrizio Ruggirello

Cast: Marco Leonardi, Peppino Mazzotta, Fabrizio Ferracane, Anna Ferruzzo, Barbora Bobulova

Drama, Italy, France, 103 mins

Dubbed as the new Gomorrah in some circles, Francesco Munzi’s mafia family drama purrs with tension, taking the brutal Mafioso world to the rustic villages of the Calabrian foothills at the southern tip of Italy.

This is the heartland of the ‘ndrangheta, the biggest and furthest-reaching mafia group in Italy, far stronger than the Comorrah and the Sicilian mafia, but more secretive and rarely infiltrated by outsiders. It’s because the group is made up of family units that the ‘ndrangheta are so tight, but it also means that entrance to the group for descendants is tacitly obligatory. If you don’t want ‘in’, you’re asking for trouble.

That’s the case with Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane), a farmer whose brothers are long-standing members of the Carbone clan; he instead tends to his farmland of goats on the slopes of the Apennine Mountains. His son Leo (Giuseppe Fumo), however, is eager to join a group where he’ll gain respect, and in an age where Italian youngsters are frequently downtrodden by unemployment, this is something he is eager to commit to. His uncle Luigi (Marco Leonardi), a drug dealer who travels Europe, takes Leo under his wing, but after an altercation between Leo and a rival clan, events spiral to take the apparently peaceful town to gang war.

This is a slower, more composed film than Gomorrah, and doesn’t have that film’s electric socio-political edge. Instead, it works as a family drama that simmers with personal tragedy and works up to a powerful, gripping finale. Sumptuously filmed in the village of Africo, often said to be the home of the ‘ndrangheta, and with the peninsula’s craggy dialect, it convinces as a place where the state, the police, and perhaps conventional morality have trouble accessing. Among a cast of non-actors and professionals, Fumo, plucked from hundreds of local kids, is remarkable in his debut role as Leo, saying little but carrying a primordial terror with every retort at his disillusioned father.

Munzi’s script, co-written with Fabrizio Ruggirello, starts the film in Amsterdam and Milan, and perhaps could have done with setting the film more tightly in the insular ‘ndrangheta communities. Here it feels like there’s no escape, where every aspect of life is dominated by the mafia. The organisation helps local politicians gain election, bars and shops have to obtain ‘protection’ by one of the clans, and respect to members is non-negotiable. But that blinkered view of the world is also this family’s downfall, as the cracks in the foundations make the whole house fall down. Ed Frankl.

REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2014 | NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 OCTOBER 2015

[youtube id=”rV9i_6CJOTk” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Portrait of a Serial Monogamist (2015) | UKJFF 7 – 22 November 2015

Director: John Mitchell | Christina Zeidler

Cast: Carolyn Taylor, Diane Flacks, Grace Lynn Kung, Robin Duke, Raoul Bhaneja

90min Drama Canada

An upbeat sparky romcom about a Jewish woman looking for love in her 40s. Making great use of its downtown Toronto setting, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL MONOGAMIST has Diane Flacks as Elsie, an extremely likeable but restless soul at odds with her traditional mother and unsatisfied with her long-term relationship with Robin (Carolyn Taylor). But things don’t improve when she leaves Robin to pursue a new girlfriend (Grace Lynn Kung). Elsie starts to realize that perhaps she has thrown away the love of her life.

Mitchell and Zeidler get the best out of a talented cast and a whipsmart script laced with some fine Jewish sarcasm that makes this observational comedy fun and entertaining, despite its minor flaws. Elsie eventually becomes the narrator in her hilarious deteriorating situation where she acknowledges the pain of moving on to find true love, with wit and wisecracking humour. What emerges is that love and relationships are the same irrespective of our sexual orientation. MT

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 7 -22 NOVEMBER 2015

Memories of Murder (2003) | Salinui Chueok | LKFF 2015 | 2-14 November

Dir.: Bong Joon-ho; Cast: Song Kang-ho, Kim sang-gyeong); | Crime Drama | South Korea 2003 | 132 min.

Bong Joon-ho (Snowpiercer) constructs a terrifying drama around the unsolved mystery of South Korea’s first serial killer who raped and murdered ten women between 1986 and 1991 in Gyeong-gi, a provincial town south of Seoul. The victims were between thirteen and seventy-one years old; the murders remains unsolved.

Local cop Park (Kang-ho) tries to pin the murder on the local half-wit Baek, but when the more sophisticated officer Seo (Kim) arrives from Seoul, he finds another favourite suspect: a factory worker. Whilst the DNA data is sent to the United States, it is now Seo who snaps: he wants to kill the worker, and Park has great difficulty in stopping him. The two cops have learned to hate each other, and the hunt for the murderer is secondary to each of them: they simply want to be right. But the DNA results do not give any proof and the case remains unsolved. Park is seen at the end of the film looking into a small tunnel, where the second victim had been found. The only real ‘witness’ is a little girl who asks him what he is looking for. It emerges that she has seen another man a few weeks ago, looking into the same tunnel. Park, who is now a business man, tries in vain to get any identification from the girl: “he looked normal” is her answer.

MEMORIES OF MURDER is an absurdist variation of a cop movie. Far from being interested in solving the case, Park and Seo fight with each other, their brutality illustrating how the fine line between their own violent intent and that of the man they are chasing. Park’s family life shows him to be a domestic tyrant and Seo, who tries to be sophisticated, is nothing but an insecure and fragile man. Original and haunting. AS

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2015 | 2 -14 NOVEMBER

Seconds (1966) | Dual Format release

Director: John Frankenheimer Writer: John Carlino | David Ely (Novel)

Cast: Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, John Randolph, Will Geer

106min | Sci-fi Drama | US

Seconds tick away in the hopelessly fragile, trivial life of an unhappy suburban middle-aged banker but when he agrees to an elaborate procedure that will fake his death and grant him a new life, there is naturally a price to pay. The title sequence alone to Sci-fi thriller SECONDS must have seemed highly original and unsettling at the time, with its eerie masks that were surely to influence Tobe Hooper in his Texas Chain Saw Massacre that was to follow eight years later. There is an febrile alienation to SECONDS’ opening scene where the camera tracks Arthur Hamilton’s sweating face as stares distractedly through the train window on his way home to Scarsdale station but when he arrives, his wife is there to meet him with her calming if rather formal banter about rose pruning and events of the previous evening. Later they are seen embracing in a way that acknowledges that strain and tedium has obliterated their physical relationship.

The third in John Frankenheimer’s unofficial “Paranoia Trilogy” after The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964), SECONDS (1966) is a subtle, unsettling ‘JG Ballardesque’ Sci-fi thriller that takes the paranoia-laden premise of the first two outings further to suggest that ultimately, the individual is his own worst enemy: or more explicitly: the ‘soul’ or ‘essential nature’ is an atavistic force that cannot be suppressed no matter how hard we try. So Nature will always triumph over Nurture.

After undergoing the procedure to become a “Second”, Hamilton turns into Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson) a younger, more vigorous (and let’s face it, a better looking) man who is given a new life as an artist in a hedonistic California beach community where he also has a butler (who sounds mysteriously like Joe Turkel in The Shining). But there’s something strange about this new neighbourhood and the reason is that all his local friends are also ‘seconds’. One of them, Nora Marcus (Salome Jens), has also left her unsatisfactory life (“I had a new house with a microwave oven”) until she left 4 years to become a second.

Rock Hudson has hidden depths as Tony Wilson, a disappointed, tortured soul who doesn’t seem that delighted to have been reincarnated or to have met the exuberantly unhinged yet ravishingly attractive Nora, although after spending a day at a strange pagan-feeling wine festival during which ‘What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor’ is played in a minor key) the two become an item. But things take a sinister turn soon after when Tony’s mental state starts to unravel.

Celebrated cinematographer James Wong Howe’s camera angles, fragmented editing and Jerry Goldsmith’s sinister classical organ score is a enough to have you rushing to Harley Street for session on the couch with a…calming psychotherapist.

RELEASED ON DUAL FORMAT DVD BLU-RAY | 26 OCTOBER 2015 | COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA

The Liar (2014) Geo-Jiu-Mal | LKFF 2015 | 2 -14 November

Dir.: Dong-myung Kim; Cast: Kim Kkobbi, Chun Sin-hwan; South Korea 2014, 95 min.

In this scathing critique of the effects of Korean materialism, Dong-myung Kim creates an often bizarre portrait of Ah Young (Kkobbi), a young beautician who is a compulsive liar and fantasist. Ah Young’s fiancé, Tae-ho (Sin-hwan), is very much in love with her but Ah dreams only of a world where luxury is hers by right rather than through the hard work necessary to achieve success. A profligate by nature, she steals luxury goods, invites her colleagues for meals she cannot really afford, and finally manages to gain fraudulent control of an expensive apartment.

In reality, her life is one one of comparative drudgery: sharing a small flat with her sister, who is often drunk, her violent husband makes her life a misery. Her mother, who abandoned the family, prefers her lover to her daughters and Ah’s father is missing, having run up a mountain of debt. But she treats the only person who loves her (Tae-ho) with contempt, even inventing a richer fiancé for her workmates, until one fateful night when her world implodes.

Kim Kkobbi is brilliant as the fragile Ah Young, she seems to swim through life in a dream, delicately evoked in DOP Sun-young Lee’s saturated pastel colour palette. Drifting alone in her fake world, Ah Young always looks the same, her bewildered eyes unable to trust reality, lost in an absurd and an empty universe of her own making, that gradually threatens to engulf her. In chasing materialism she creates a world where reality seems, quite literally, beyond the pale. AS

SCREENING DURING THE LKFF 2015 | 2 -14 NOVEMBER 2015

Dragon Inn (1967) | Dual format Blu-ray DVD

Writer|Director: King Hu

Chun Shih, Lingfeng Shangguan, Chien Tsao, Feng Hsu

111min | Wuxia Adventure | Taiwan

This cult classic action masterpiece, that finally comes to dual format blu-ray this Autumn, is the dazzling daddy of all the martial arts adventures combining as it does some magnificent set pieces and some of the most startling and gracefully performed action sequences ever committed to film, embodying the exotic essence of Taiwanese Wuxia and establishing the genre’s archetypes such as the Eunuch and The Swordswoman.

Director King Hu, was born in Beijing but left China for Hong King in 1949 where started his film career during the fifties, first as an actor and then as a writer and director. In 1967 he started his own studio in Taiwan where DRAGON INN was film and later selected, along with A Touch of Zen, as one of the 10 Best Chinese Motion Pictures of all time. It was later remade by Tsui Hark who cast Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love) and Tony Ka Fai Leung in the leads.

After the violent death of General Yu at the hands of his political rival Tsaio, the Emperors’s first eunuch, his two children flee to the western border where Tsaio’s secret police lie in wait to ambush them at the remote Dragon Gate Inn. But grandmaster Hsaio (Chun Shih) turns up at the inn to meet the owner Wu Ning, who emerges as one of the general’s lieutenants, and who has summoned Hsaio to help the children escape, aided and abetted by a brother and sister team of highly skilled martial-artists.

There is a rich painterly quality to this visually sumptuous affair that is both beguiling and gripping with its tense and elegantly-staged action sequences enhanced by a teasingly atmospheric original score by Award-winning composer Lan-Ping Chow (Come Drink With Me). The quality of the acting is also unusually sensitive and subtle for an action adventure outing and Hui-Ying Hua’s widescreen photography absolutely breath-taking. MT

OUT ON 26 OCTOBER 2015 | DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY DVD COURTESY OF EUREKA | MASTERS OF CINEMA.

Sherlock Holmes (1916) | LFF 2015

Director: Arthur Berthelet

Cast: William Gillette, Ernest Maupin, Marjorie Kay, Edward Fielding

108mins | Drama | UK

Sherlock Holmes’ first film appearance was in Sherlock Holmes Baffled in 1900 and he has been a regular fixture on cinema screens ever since. In 1899 the American matinee idol William Gillette (1853-1937) had starred in a stage version of the great detective’s exploits written by himself with Conan Doyle’s approval with phenomenal success (he appeared worldwide in the role about 1,300 times) and virtually made a career of the role – as celebrated in his day as Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett would later be – which he was still performing on stage as late as 1932. The play was very loosely reworked for Rathbone in 1939 as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Gillette himself made a film version for Charlie Chaplin’s company, Essanay, in 1916. Long tantalisingly thought lost, this precious record of Gillette’s performance was recently rediscovered at the Cinémathèque Française and nearly a hundred years after its original appearance lived again at this year’s London Film Festival.

Apparently a faithful adaptation of the original play, the film version negotiates the problem of making a silent version of a stage production by using the titles to describe the action and the motivations of the characters (often before you actually see them for yourself) rather than simply transcribing the dialogue; much of which is left to lipreaders to decipher. The film itself is watchable, but the story itself – concerning incriminating letters with a scowling Moriarty (Ernest Maupin) later brought in to liven up the proceedings – is uninvolving, and Gillette’s Holmes is given little opportunity to display the quick-wittedness and deductive genius that makes the literary Holmes so fascinating to this day. The conventions of the screen Holmes had not yet been firmly established by 1916, so to modern audiences anomalies include the marginal nature of Dr Watson’s role in the proceedings – as played by a genial Edward Fielding, (who resembles the late Guy Middleton), he disappears for most of the first two-thirds of the film after being introduced early on and seems less in awe of Holmes that is customary – and the suburban street with grass verges and trees purporting to be Holmes’ address (Watson lives elsewhere).

The feature film was still relatively new in 1916, but a hundred years on SHERLOCK HOLMES holds up satisfactorily. The action mostly takes place indoors, the camera very occasionally pans and tracks laterally to follow the action, but closeups are rare and the occasional use of interesting camera angles serves to remind one that most of the action is staged in medium shot as seen from a proscenium.The editing is pretty basic, and although a silent film there are no irises in or out. The most unusual stylistic ‘tic’ shown by director Arthur Berthelet is the use of swift dissolves to give us a closer look at moments of particular drama rather than straight cuts. The acting is pretty natural, and Gillette if anything underplays the part of Holmes. He was in his sixties by the time he made the film version and despite being deprived of his speaking voice certainly looks the part, strongly resembling a somewhat elderly Clive Brook (who himself took on the role on screen in 1932).

The version found in the Cinémathèque Française had been expanded in 1920 for release as a serial, so the running time above is unfortunately longer than it would have been in 1916. RICHARD CHATTEN

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7-18 OCTOBER 2015

The Surface (2015) GFEST 2015

Director: Michael J. Saul

Cast: Harry Haines, Michael Redford, Nicholas McDonald

USA 2015, 81 min.

The line between art and caricature is a usually a fine one, but Michael J. Saul (Crush) has managed to cross the line with this wrong-footed romantic drama THE SURFACE.

Set in contemporary California, where the sun always shines, two high school students, Evan (Haines) and Chris (McDonald) live together, their beautiful bodies permanently on show, director Michael J. Saul doubling up as DoP. Chris is rich, and Evan is an orphan, always on the search for his identity. One day, he buys a 8mm camera from an old man. When he returns to see the man, his son Peter (Redford) tells him that his father has died. Peter gives Evan old home movies, shot by his father, and Evan re-edits them for a school film festival. He falls in love with Peter, and moves in with him. But said search for his identity starts to muddy the waters…

The only value of THE SURFACE is as a vey badly-acted soft porn movie. Dissolves and slow-motion are reminders, and not by chance, of the bad taste of some 1970s films. But it is the dialogue which takes first prize for sheer awfulness . When Peter philosophically states “people leave your life or they don’t”, Evan answers soulfully “I think that is sad”. Evan’s musings are equally deeply felt: “I don’t even know what happiness is, but it is not so important as people think”. And finally, he leaves us with another gem: “Some people find themselves when they are young, some, like me, take a lifetime”.

To say that THE SURFACE is an amateur production, is a slap in the face to amateurs. AS

The Surface screens at ArtHouse Crouch End on Tuesday 17 November as part of the LGBT ARTS FESTIVAL | GFEST FROM 9 NOVEMBER – 21 NOVEMBER 2015 | LONDON UK

Right Now Wrong Then (2015) | Locarno

Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo’s makes slow-burning, sensitively-observed films about the intricacies of relationships between men and women, often meeting for the first time. There is plemty of dialogue embued with Korean humour, which is often similar to that of the English: situational, offbeat, dryly comic as with In Another Country.

His latest – which won the stars Jung Jae-young and Kim Minhee as a film director and budding artist who meet up and spend a day together, on two simlar occasions. With In Another Country, Isabelle Huppert played three different versions of a French woman called Anne, engaging with one man, Here the two central characters play the same people and the narrative unfolds in two parts, roughly an hour each for the same meeting that varies subtly each time. As a piece of cinema, this is both unique and fascinating as we experience the inner workings of each with their different nuances in the subconscious attitudes of the pair.

The film’s first half is called Right Then, Wrong Now and we meet the indie director Ham Chunsu (Jung Jae-young) who has arrived in a town near Seoul to take part in a Q&A disccusion after a screening of his film. Due to scheduling issues, he gets there early and meets Yoon Heejung (Kim Minhee) who describes herself as “someone who paints” – in one of the town’s landmarks. After coffee and media-style banter, the pair become more intimate emotionally and Heejung admits she’s actually not a big film-goer and has never actually seen his work but knows his face and but has heard good things about hiim. At this point he expresses a desire to get to know her better. They drift into meeting some of her friends in a bar and after a great deal of drinking, she disappears for a nap and he joins her, only to be told by her to leave. She heads home and her mother berates her for srinking too much. This section ends hilariously as he turns up hungover for the Q&A and ends up going over the top, taking offence at a remark from the moderator who he later calls a “prick” when he meets her again in Part Two (actually called Right Now, Wrong Then, like the actual film).

The day starts again but with some differences – rather lke a replay of In Another Country (except with the same charactes ) or Our Sunhi, where perceptions of the characters are skewed. In the second half, we see that subtle differences can alter the dynamic between the couple and how their reactions differ as a result. In part two, it emerges. that she has given up smoking and feels stressed as a result. His amorous advances also come for a different reason this time around and demonstrates how subtle nuances can make big changes in our perceptions in meeting people.

Cinematophgraphy here is bland and unremarkable and a very simple score occasionally punctures the scenes which are framed often with the two sitting together and then the camera focusing on each one individually before zooming out again.

Whether the pair will go on to be together all depends, as in real life, on their ego concerns and what they are looking for in a prospective partner. Hangsang Soo shows how chemistry and attraction is only just a part of the relationship and how it proceeds and developes. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7-18 OCTOBER 2015

Office (2015) | HUA LI SHANG BAN ZU | LFF 2015

OFFICE (HUA LI SHANG BAN ZU)

Director: Johnnie To;

Cast: Wang Ziyi, Lang Yueting, Sylvia Chang, Chow Yun-Fat, Eason Chan, Tang Wei

Hong Kong/China 2015, 117 min.

Johnnie To’s stock in trade has been violent gangster movies and recently those gangsters have been capitalists in suits as in: Life Without Principle (2011), Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (2011) and its sequel (2014), deal with life at the upper end of the corporate world.

Set in the premises of the Chinese company Jones & Sunn before and after the world wide financial crisis, started by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, OFFICE is a musical – but very much nearer to Brecht than any Hollywood musical. Shot in cinemascope and 3D with rather eclectic lyrics, production designer William Chang has created a corporate structure of black, white and grey, with a central clock (shades of John Farrow’s Big Clock from 1948) reminding all protagonists that their time is running out. Jones & Sunn are going public on the stock market and are preparing their IPO’s. One of the leading men is Lee Xiang (Ziyi), who sems to be omnipotent to a degree that we sometimes believe that he is pure satire.

Lee works in tandem with a female employee, in this case the somehow overqualified Kat (Yueting), who appears to be a plant. At the top, the leading couple of CEO Winnie Chang (Sylvia Chang, who adapted her own play ‘Design for Living’ for the screen), is a real low-life, well suited to having an affair with chairman Ho Chung-Ping (Yun-fat), who creeps in and out of the hospital room where his comatose wife is fighting for her life. But the most reckless character is the chief executive David Wang (Chan), who cooks the books mercilessly, or tries to seduce another major player like Sophie (Wei). When Lee and Kat perform a love duet, the “fake it till you succeed” mood of the film is highlighted.

Overall though, the musical numbers are not particularly impressive, certainly no catchy rhythms to sing along to; perhaps the high-pitched chorus playing over the opening and final credits could qualify for a signature tune. OFFICE is always ready to parody: when the highly-charged employers stream to the elevators, all eyes glued to their smartphones, their lockstep recalls Chinese films of the past, when crowds walked the same way in Odes to chairman Mao. The parallels go further: just as Mao did destroy his erstwhile followers in the Cultural Revolution, so does the capitalist system does away with the men and women, who created it.

In spite of all the achievements of all departments and the actors, notably DOP Siu-Keung Cheng, who created a look of constrained chaos, OFFICE is much less than its particular parts. All elements in themselves are near brilliant, but there is no cohesion. To’s detached style doe not help: it is like watching a procession of single units, but somehow the unity is missing. Which is a shame, because Office cannot be faulted in any way – it is just like an elaborate,wonderful charade without any emotive power holding it together. AS

OFFICE | LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Wedding Doll (2015) | LFF 2015

WEDDING DOLL (CHATONA MENIYAR)

Dir.: Nitzan Gilady

Cast: Moran Rosenblatt, Asi Levi, Roy Assaf; Israel 2015, 82 min.

Niitzan Gilady made her name a documentary filmmaker. Her debut feature, WEDDING DOLL shows all the qualities of her former work: the tempo gives time for all the protagonists to be properly introduced, whilst the third act sees a rapid rise in pace.

Set in a small town the Negev desert, we meet Hagit (Rosenblatt) who suffered a brain injury as a child, leading to a slightly unbalanced emotional and regressed intellectual development. Working in a family-owned loo paper factory, Hagit is in love with boss’ son Omri (Assaf). She is very creative and constructs wedding dolls from the paper. The strongest person in the trio is her mother Sara (Levi), a divorcée who is (over)protecting Hagit who hopes to marry Omri, and, after the factory goes out of business, gets a job as a seamstress. Hagit resents her over-protective mother and does her best to avoid contact with her. But Omri’s feelings are as strong as Hagit’s – and his friends are mostly porn-watching losers, but decent and helpful ones. Omri always puts his family and friends before Hagit who is a romantic idealist, living through her wonderful creations, always beaming with an infectious smile. Sadly, the story leads to a rather stomach-turning denouement.

DOP Roi Rot chooses to photograph Hagit in bright primary colours, her mother in a drab brown of varying shades, symbolic for their differences: Hagit all dreams, Sara (often tired) all reality. The greatest achievement is that Gilady avoids showing Hagit as the victim; her otherworldliness is always just the other side of normality. WEDDING DOLL is a small film with some great performances by Rosenblatt and Levi in the leads. It shows that the line between conventionality and mental imbalance is often fluctuating and fine. AS

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 18 OCTOBER 2015

3000 Nights (2015) | LFF 2015

Director.: Mai Masri

Cast: Maisa Abd Elhadi, Abeer Haddad, Laura Hawa, Radia Adon;

103min. | drama | Palestine/France/Jordan/Lebanon/UAE/Qatar

Mai Masri’s debut feature is an imagined drama based on “one story of many” to come out of Neblus. It is a rather polemic prison saga that concerns a Palestinian teacher who is incarcerated in Neblus for 3000 nights, accused of helping a terrorist.

Layla (Elhadi) is arrested in the occupied West Bank by Israeli military police for giving a lift to a young man, who may – or not – have helped a terrorist attempt. Not taking the easy way out, she refuses to say that the young man forced his way with a knife into the car. In the segregated prison, Layla, is thrown at first into a cell with Israeli prisoners, who are load mouthed, aggressive and virulently anti-Islamic. Later, she is transferred to a cell with Palestinian women, who are the total opposite of their Israeli counterparts: pure heroines in the struggle for liberation. Layla, looking extremely composed and well-kempt throughout the whole film, soon finds out that she is pregnant. Later she gives birth to Nour, a baby-boy – shackled to the bed by arms and feet. Her son is taken away from her as a reprisal for helping a prison strike. The prison authorities, lead by the vile head warden (Abeer Haddad), try to bribe Layla (and others) to gain favours for spying on their fellow prisoners, but apart from one case the women remain stand fast. But events take a turn for the worse when a woman prisoner is shot dead by a guard.

Whilst nobody can deny the existence of political prisoners in Israel, 3000 Nights is extremely unhelpful in the ongoing conflict today, because it idealises all Palestinians and vilifies all Jews – apart from Layla’s lawyer. The film is set between 1980 and 1988, a time when Palestinian suicide bombers, often children, targeted bus stations and other public places in Israel. The head warden is an evil caricature, and the cry “they are gassing us” is just inflammatory, since tear gas is used. If one would argue on the lines of the filmmakers, one would ask them why they suddenly deviate from their usual holocaust-denials.

The covered and open war between Israel and Palestine is soon entering its seventh decade, and one would hope, that films like 3000 Nights, though well-crafted and performed, would refrain from the simplistic hero/villain line – also used in Israeli cinema, when blond, blue-eyed Jews are attacked by dark skinned Islamic villains – but this does not give any side the right, to go on with the vilification of the “enemy”. AS

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

Night Shift (2015) | Warsaw Film Festival 2015

Director: Niki Karimi | Writers: Niki Karimi, Ali Asghari

Cast: Leyla Zareh, Mohammad Reza, Amir Hossein Arman

96 mins | Drama | Iran

For middle-class Tehrani housewife Nahid (Leyla Zareh), nothing is what it seems. Asked by her GP—a personal friend—to pay a visit, Nahid’s first concern is understandably for her own health, but when it turns out that it’s her husband Farzad (Mohammad Reza Foroutan) for whom she should worry, her hitherto comfortable existence begins to unravel. Farzad, who works with Nahid’s friend’s own husband, has been acting strangely of late: despondent, adrift, and even suicidal. “I wish all of us would die,” he’s purported to have said, and has also invested in a gun with which to resolve his predicament. This is all news to Nahid, for whom there’s been scant trace of domestic discontentment—and it’s only the first of many mysteries to engulf her life. Discoveries of rat repellent, firearms, redundancy, loansharks and decapitated pet rabbits soon follow.

NIGHT SHIFT is the fifth feature-length work by Iranian filmmaker Niki Karimi. Best known in her homeland as the award-winning star of films such as SARA (1992), THE HIDDEN HALF (2000) and TWO WOMEN (2007), Karimi here confronts the pan-social, transglobal financial crisis through the local prism of a drama set in the petty bourgeois echelons of present-day Tehran. The film won awards for its script (co-written by Karimi with Ali Asghari) and direction at Iran’s Fajr Film Festival, prior to screening in competition at the 31st Warsaw Film Festival.

Karimi opens her film with a point-of-view shot of Farzad arriving home late one evening. From whose perspective we’re watching Farzad remains unclear, though off-screen voices imply gossipy voyeurism, as two unseen characters speculate about his recent behaviour. Though there’s no way for the anonymous spies to follow Farzad into his own apartment, Karimi continues the handheld aesthetic established in this first scene into subsequent sequences, instilling a kind of shorthand jittery tension upon domestic interiors that is offset by a piano and strings score that could be lifted verbatim from an old suspense film.

Indeed, NIGHT SHIFT’s increasingly melodramatic edge, which entails Nahid following her husband around Tehran like James Stewart does Kim Novak in VERTIGO, risks bloating initial mysteries into risible fluff. Karimi manages to keep a lid on things for the most part, though it’s difficult to say whether this is due to directorial restraint or the limitations of her performers. Zareh plays Nahid like a lost waif on the one hand and a resourceful detective on the other, though there are several instances where her acting is suspect. One such scene involves her hiding in her own wardrobe to elude suspicion from Farzad, as the latter hides a pellet-rifle atop the kitchen units; another sees her cornered by Rahim (Amir Aghaei), a cartoonishly bald-but-bearded loanshark who charms Zareh with threats and a smashed vase. In both scenes, Zareh plays to camera rather than the moment.

But NIGHT SHIFT’s real disappointment is how underworked Farzad’s characterisation is. No one can doubt Karimi and Asghari’s sincerity as scriptwriters here, but to sketch Nahid’s husband as an unflinchingly gloomy mope is both counterintuitive and too easy. The more rewarding challenge would have been to take his starting premise—that he’s lost his job as an accountant, and the implications this has on his personal pride and monetary situation—and to see him attempt to uphold the façade of happiness for the sake of loved ones despite an increasingly antagonistic system dragging him further into paucity.

But Foroutan plays Farzad like a man who not only doesn’t give a damn whether his obviously weird behaviour is noticed, but whose continued attractiveness for a trusting wife stretches the plausibility of the central drama. (“You can be so close to the dearest person in your life,” Nahid says with a twinkly lament, “yet so distant.”) Much of this might be down to Foroutan’s own shortcomings as an actor, but his performance isn’t helped by some harsh, ugly top- and side-lighting by cinematographer Alireza Baranzandeh, which illuminates the actor’s face in such a way as to expose the fact that he’s clearly caked in makeup, and makes his crocodile tears, in the one scene where Farzad finally opens up to Nahid, glisten rather distractingly indeed. MICHAEL PATTISON

WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL | 9-18 OCTOBER 2015 | WARSAW, POLAND

Fifty (2015) l LFF 2015

Director: Biyi Bandele

Cast: Nse Ikpe-Etim, Omoni Oboli, Ireti Doyle, Dakore Akande

With music from Femi Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Nneka and Waje

101min | Drama | Nigeria

FIFTY is Biyi Bandele’s follow-up to his screen adaptation of Half a Yellow Sun. Kicking off docu-drama style to create a fabulous sense of place on the widescreen, the camera sweeps in over Lagos’ boat-strewn harbour and the interior of a building where a religious gathering is taking place. Bandele uses this technique several times to and elevate what is essentially a rather soapy, intimate drama that revolves around a few critical days in the lives of four professional Nigerian women at the top of their careers; and there are no glass ceilings here for the super elite. Immaculately coiffed and couture clad, these female power-houses have a tight-knit support system of liveried domestic staff, work juniors and family. And although clearly well-educated, they are by no means soigné in their behaviour; kicking arse and barking orders in a way that would have staff in the UK scuttling off to industrial tribunals.

In short, this is the same upper class, glamorous society that Bandele elegantly portrayed in Half a Yellow Sun. Tola, Elizabeth, Maria and Kate are late fortysomething friends who are now taking stock of their lives in the upmarket areas of Ikoyi and Victoria Island in Lagos. Tola (Dakore Akande) is a reality TV star whose marriage to lawyer Kunle is under pressure. Elizabeth (Ireti Doyle) is a well-known fertility specialist whose penchant for younger men has estranged her from her grown-up up daughter. Forty-nine year-old Maria (Omoni Oboli) is newly pregnant from an affair with a married man and Nse Ikpe-Etim plays Kate who is battling a life-limiting illness that has turned her into a religious nutter.

What doesn’t work here is Bandele’s rather clunky dialogue: Do women really speak like this in Lagos, may be they do and we’re short-changing the Nigerian director. At one point Elizabeth says:”I’m going to give these little babies some tlc” referring to her breasts which are due for surgery. Her daughter tells her, radically “don’t ring again or I’ll block your number” yet days later the pair are civil again, albeit frostily until Elizabeth shouts: “You will respect me young lady, I am your mother” – the daughter looks at least 40. All very confrontational stuff but certainly not authentic-feeling or particularly sophisticated and this, combined with the rather trite incidental music, gives FIFTY a dated air of Desperate Housewives Lagos-style.

That said, this may attract audiences who follow the soaps and there are some entertaining moments despite the rather formulaic plotlines. Highlights include the dynamic aerial shots of the capital and original live music from Nigerian icons Femi Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Nneka and Waje. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 7-18 OCTOBER 2015

Suffragette (2015) | LFF 2015

020414SH_14522.nef

Director: Sarah Gavron

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham-Carter, Anne-Marie Duff, Natalie Press, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Whitshaw, Geoff Bell, Meryl Streep

UK/USA/ France 2015, 118 min.

All worthy themes deserve great treatment. So, whilst SUFFRAGETTE is very important in its subject matter, that doesn’t axiomatically make it the success it deserves to be.

Sarah Gavron has made a valiant attempt to convey the gruesome conditions of working women in the early 20th century. Maud Watts (Mulligan) is a laundry worker in Bethnal Green in the 1920s. She has worked part time since the age of seven, full time since she was twelve. In her early twenties, she has made it to the top of her career, as far as women are concerned in this workplace, which is closer to a workhouse than anything we know today. At home, her husband (Whitshaw) hides his weakness behind an authoritarian manner – their son has to bow to a picture of the ruling monarch Gorge V. before he goes to bed. Encouraged by her co-worker Violet (Duff), Maud joins the suffragette movement. Soon she is on police photos, which are brought to the attention of Inspector Steed (Gleeson), who tries – in vain – to make an informer of Maud. Whilst in the factory, the brutal manager Taylor (Geoff Bell), who sexually abuses women on a regular basis, threatens Maud, her husband throws her out of the house and then gives their son up for adoption – in a heart-breaking scene. Literally driven underground, Maud interacts with historical figures of the women’s movement like Edith Bessie New (Bonham-Carter), a pharmacist and bomb maker, as well as Emily Wilding Davison, who was famously fatally injured,when she threw herself in front of one of the King’s horses at the Derby in 1913. Emily’s sacrifice, witnessed by Maud, cements her will to fight.

Sarah Gavron’s aesthetic approach falls somewhere between a Hollywood blockbuster and a British kitchen-sink drama. Whilst the pace is always furious, the camera shows either panorama shots (with a few unnecessary crane-shots thrown in) or close ups, never coming to rest with medium shots, which should establish the characters. The relentless use of one-to-one images (in the name of realism) leave nothing for audiences to imagine. The characters are often too one-dimensional, because there is no time to explore their motives and history. And it is not asking for much to grant some of the protagonists some ambivalence. In the case of Taylor there is no need for this. But with Steed, a man driven by his profession rather than his knowledge about the eventual outcome of the struggle, the character deserves a more sublime approach. And Meryl Streep’s vignette as Emmeline Pankhurst, with her speech from a balcony, is surely too close to a caricature of a leader.

As far as the acting goes, a sterling British support cast generally does well. Mulligan gives a subtle performance, but not a brilliant one: the action plays out in her eyes but her screen presence is over-shadowed here by Helena Bonham-Carter and Nathalie Press, whilst Bell gets his brutal macho image absolutely right.

SUFFRAGETTE is an important film, not least for the fact that the social conditions of working women were gruelling in those days: they not only had to work from early childhood, they were sexual prey for all men: Taylor’s attitude shows that he has the right to get his way with any woman on the shop floor. And even the upper and middle class women were financially dependent on their husbands: when one of the women asks her husband to pay bail not only for her, but also for the working class women (to save them from prison), the gentlemen refuses, even though his wife reminds him that it is her money he is reliant on. SUFFRAGETTE is a timely reminder how much women were at the mercy of men: they were objects to be used, mistreated and punished like children: they were forced to turn to violence, (as women often still are today): the only language men understand, to free themselves.

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 7-18 OCTOBER 2015 AND NATIONWIDE

Desierto (2015) | LFF 2015

Director: Jonas Cuaron

Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Alondra Hidalgo

94min | Drama | Mexico

Jonas Cuaron’s starkly magnificent but rather formulaic second feature shows that migrants can be just as aggressive as those whose borders they seek to cross. DESIERTO is a newsworthy arthouse piece that arrives just as the transmigration theme is bubbling up in every corner of the world. It’s a pity then that the narrative feels so reductive and deliberately provocative with so few surprises up its dusty sleeve. The young director’s last project was Year of the Nail but he recently co-wrote Gravity with his father Alfonso and this distinctly US indie-feeling drama has the same feel of otherworldly alienation to it: barbed-wire, dangerous snakes and thorny vegetation coalesce to create a setting that is both inhospitable and strangely alluring in its pared-down beauty. Damian Garcia’s visuals capture the laser-sharp luminescence of the clinical light levels that appear to cleanse any humane quality from the surface of its sterile landscape, not altogether dissimilar to that of Space.

Essentially a two-hander, DESIERTO stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Sam, a disenchanted US loner who has a certain elegance about him suggestive of some recent fall from grace. In his well-equpped truck, he has resorted to patrolling the hostile expanses of the arid wilderness between the Mexican and US borders, armed with his rifle and his trusty dog ‘Tracker’, who is trained to kill.

The characters here are all disenfranchised and Cuaron makes no attempt to have us warm to any of them: they are merely ‘the hunter’ and ‘the hunted’ and eventually we know exactly what is going to happen. As a group of young Mexicans venture across the border terrain from a broken-down truck, Sam picks them off with his powerful rifle, one by one, or they are savaged by Tracker, until only two remain: Garcia Bernal’s Moises and a young woman, Adela (Alondra Hidalgo). Moises has been across the border before, but why he has not stayed in the US is left in the ether, although he does have a young son in the US, who he hopes to join. But Sam is not the only hard-nosed character here: when Maria is wounded, Moises leaves her by the roadside to die, callously claiming that he has a greater right to survive because of his son.

As a pounding electronic score beats down there are some deftly choreographed action scenes as this cat and mouse affair plays out in the searing heat of this sun-baked rockface, Death Valley-style (this is actually Baja California). DESIERTO leaves us meditating on the epithet ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’. But is this always the case? Economically wealthy countries appeal to those from poorer ones, seemingly offering Nirvana, but disappointment often ensues. Often life is far tougher is tougher in way that migrants hadn’t bargained for: loneliness, social isolation and other danger scan make them question whether to return to the warmth of their families in their less affluent homes where the enemy is ‘outside’ rather than ‘in’. Jonas Cuaron DESIERTO could stand is a metaphor for modern life: that it can be tough for different reasons, whichever side of the fence you inhabit. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

11 Minuty | 11 Minutes | Competition Venice 2015 | LFF 2015

Writer|Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Cast: Richard Dormer, Agata Buzek, Dawid Orgodnik, Andrzej Chyra, Piotr Glowacki, Jan Nowicki

During the sixties, writer and director Jerzy Skolimowski focused on films that explored the ironic aspects and moral dilemmas affecting ordinary individuals in post-Stalinist Poland. His films were the ‘Impressionists’ of an era dominated by the sweeping epics of the Polish Film School. After collaborating in Polanski’s Knife in the Water, his directorial debut, Rysopsis (Identification Marks: None) 1965 was closely followed by Walkower. Since then, the 77-year-old Polish auteur has written, directed and acted in works ranging from the surreal to the dramatic, as here in his first film for five years: Venice Competition entry 11 MINUTES.

Best described as a suspense thriller, 11 MINUTES explores themes of fate and paranoia. Set in the sweeping urban spaces of contemporary Warsaw, it could also be entitled Crossover, dealing, as it does, with eleven minutes in the lives of a random bunch of characters whose lives collide in the centre of the capital. Wildly frenetic and octane-fuelled, the action unfurls chaotically with moments of surreal beauty and hard-edged passion. Invasion of privacy insinuates the narrative in the shape of security cameras, webcams and mobile phones which track the protagonists during this frenzied few minutes of precision filmmaking.

Tracking the various strands of the story, it’s easy to miss out on the pyrotechnics and wizardry of the expert camerawork and cutting-edge visual effects involving a crew of eight specialists lead by cinematographer Mikolaj Lebowski. There is a tacky film director (Richard Dormer) putting a newly married actress (Paulina Chapko) through her auditioning paces in a sleek hotel penthouse, her jealous husband (Wojciech Mecwaldowski) heads towards the building in hot pursuit, sporting a black eye (they argued earlier). Nearby, an ex-con hot dog vendor (Andrzej Chyra | In the Name Of) makes a point of remembering his customers’ orders to the letter and takes pride in serving a group of nuns and a young girl (Ifi Ude) with a dog. A window cleaner slips in from the high-rise block for a spot of home movie watching with his girlfriend, who joins him in one of the luxury bedrooms. A student thief (Lukasz Sikora) makes a abortive attempt at a robbery; and perhaps the most exciting – a motorcycle courier (Dawid Ogrodnik) visits his lover and almost gets caught ‘in flagrante’ by her high-powered husband on his return home to their villa in leafy luxury nearby. A group of ambulance paramedics try to take a heavily pregnant woman (Grazyna Blecka-Kolska) and a dying man (Janusz Chabior) to hospital from the highest floor of a mansion block. And last, but not least, veteran actor Jan Nowicki makes an appearance as a water-colourist painting quietly by the banks of the Vistula river.

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2 -12 SEPTEMBER 2015 | LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

[youtube id=”-y8B2UKvs3k?t=21s” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Very Big Shot (2015) | LFF 2015

Writer-Director : Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya

Cast: Alain Saadeh, Fouad Yammie, Marcel Ghanem.

107min Lebanon Qatar Crime Satire

Beirut-born director Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya’s first feature is a hard-hitting and original crime drama that embodies the grit and explosive feistiness of the Middle Eastern Arabs it portrays, and their situational sense of humour.

Satirical in its social commentary Very Big Shot has echoes of the Hollywood outing Argo and even Woody Allen’s classic Small Time Crooks. Here, two small time drug-dealing brothers, Ziad (Alain Saadeh) and Joe (Tarek Yaacoub), decide to extend their illegal activities from a small family bakery into a more ambitious concern. They discover that they can disguise international exports in film canisters, which can bypass x-ray scanners in airports – but first they have to make a convincing film.

The brothers hire a film director named Charbel (Fouad Yammine) who enters into the spirit of the enterprise with great gusto, although he is unaware that the movie is a hoax. The storyline is a forbidden romance akin to Shakespeare’s tale of forbidden love ‘Romeo and Juliet’ transported to the streets of Beirut: a Christian girl meets a Muslim boy and they fall in love. But the film within the film starts to take on a life of its own as events spiral out of control and fiction and reality begin to coalesce in ways they never imagined, with hilarious results.

Despite some obvious flaws in tone and pacing, the clever camerawork and an amusing script shows how the film develops, gradually involving the wider community in the ongoing narrative. Bou Chaaya cleverly blend his genres in this solid, well-crafted and inventive debut. MT

SCREENING IN COMPETITION AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Take Me To the River (2015) | LFF 2015

Writer|Director: Matt Sobel

Cast: Logan Miller, Robin Weigert, Josh Hamilton

84min | Drama | USA

There is something tenderly piquant about Matt Sobel’s indie debut that makes spectacular use of its woozy bucolic landscapes and riverbeds of a summery Nebraska.

Suspicion sizzles in the ripening cornfields and there’s more than a whiff off tension is this teasingly told Mid-Western Gothic saga that holds its secret close to its chest as a brooding sense of panic sears through this Red-Neck heartland. The homespun tale opens as a family trio of Cindy Robin Weigert), her husband (Richard Schiff) and laidback teenage son Ryder (Logan Miller) are driving from California to ‘Grammas farm’ to spend afew pivotal days with her brother Keith and the Nebraskan side of the family. Her brother’s family is a conservative one, with guns in their pockets rather than mobile phones, and an unfortunate incident that occurs shortly after their arrival sets a tone of mistrust and animosity in the days that follow.

When Ryder meets his young cousin Molly, it’s clear that she is a handful used to getting her way with men, clearly honed by being the eldest daughter of four girls. Ryder, gamely rocking red minishorts and a deeply sccoped neckline, is hoping to announce his coming-out but mother Cindy advises him to keep things low-key with her rather more conservative Nebraska family. But Molly pushes the boundaries out until an accident in the haybarn causes the menfolk, and particularly Keith, to come down heavily on Ryder, blaming him what has happened. Although Ryder is scandalised, he retreats into the safety of a ramshakle outhouse, rejecting his mother’s efforts to pour balm on troubles waters all round.

Josh Hamilton gives a button-up yet mesmerising turn as Keith: masterful and masculine but totally eschewing the macho swagger normally associated with the mid West. As Ryder, Logan Miller is subtly sophisticated and superbly sullen but newcomer Ursula Parker, as nine-year-old Molly, achieves an portrait of cocquettish charm and knowing seductiveness that is remarkable for one so young. Robin Weigert’s Cindy is the only one poorly-written: instead of being the confident, educated woman who left the county to study in UCLA, she appears ingratiating and no stronger than Keith’s submissive wife Ruth (Azura Skye), particularly when all her issues from the past with Keith, threaten to re-surface.

Sobel’s storytelling deftly embraces burgeoning teenage sexuality to remarkable effect, from the permissiveness of the West Coast to the entrenched and traditional values of the South West. But despite Thomas Scott Stanton’s sumptuous visual evocation, the story never quite serves or satisfies its suberb setting; teetering forever on the edge of enigma with too many implausibilities, leaving us high and dry like a floundering fish on the bank of the North Platte River. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 18 OCTOBER 2015

A Monster With a Thousand Heads (2015) | Venice Film Festival | LFF 2015

Director: Rodrigo Pla

Cast: Jana Raluy, Sebastian Aguirre Boeda and Hugo Albores.

75min Thriller Uruguay

Political revenge thriller: A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS is adapted from the novel by Laura Santullo,. Uruguayan writer-director Rodrigo Plá delivers a South American take on Joel Schumacher’s 1993 thriller Falling Down, but this time revenge is served up piping hot by a ‘femme fatale’, quite literally.

Payback time comes to a private medical care company when they fail to deliver the care paid for by Sonia, a middle class woman with a family in upmarket Montevideo. Clearly things have got out of hand in a country where men still hold sway despite advances in a highly evolved economy and infrastructure. With the public services in disarray, those who can afford it have resorted to private medical cover, and Sonia is no different, but when the chips are down she discovers that the insurance company is unwilling to help. As in most South American countries, gun crime is prevalent and when she fails to get attention one morning for her sick husband, Sonia takes matters into her own hands.

Sober in tone, this is a fast-paced and tightly-scripted thriller whose slick camerawork and inventive framing make it a throughly enjoyable watch if not an occasionally bizarre one that nevertheless ensures laugh out loud moments – whether intentional or not – amidst those of shocking violence.

Jana Raluy gives a performance of low-level hysteria as a woman driven to extremes in a society that most of us will now identify with: mindless call centres; cheeky staff; functionaries who hide behind their screens and jobsworth merchants – not to mention high levels of corruption further up the system. If at first you don’t believe Sonia’s sheer nerve, by the end of this absorbing drama her frustration starts to feel plausible and even possible from you own perspective. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 2 -12 SEPTEMBER 2015

Lamb (2015) | LFF 2015

Writer|Director: Yared Zeleke

Cast: Rediat Amare, Kidist Siyum, Welela Assefa

94min Drama Ethiopia

In the verdant farmland of Bala region of Ethiopia, a lamb becomes the source of comfort for a small boy mourning the death of his mother and struggling to fit in with his new family, once his father leaves to work in Addis Ababa. Ephraim (Rediat Amare) clearly loves the animal but he realises that his family will slaughter ‘Chuni’ for the upcoming Feast of the Holy Cross and this adds a touch of melancholy to this exquisitely filmed, multilayered debut from Yared Zeleke.

Growing up himself in the urban slums of drought-ridden Ethiopia, Zeleke went on to study film in New York where he honed his craft before making this classically written ethnological film which will appeal to the arthouse crowd with its winning turn from endearing newcomer Amare and its fascinating insight into the tribal culture of Ethiopia.

The new family is not keen to take on another mouth to feed. Severe drought, like the one that took Ephraim’s mother, often blights the region and his aunt already has a poorly baby to look after. With a cousin Tsion (Kidist Siyum) who would rather read newspapers than find a husband, and his disciplinarian uncle Solomon (Surafel Teka) to contend with, Ephraim’s daily life is often miserable particularly when his cooking skills, passed on from his mother, are much stronger than his herding tactics, making him the butt of family jibes. His kindly grandmother holds sway in the household using a whip to exert her authority, so Ephraim looks for ways to join his father in Addis Ababa.

Jewish through his mother’s side of the family, Ephraim has a strong commercial sense and soon starts earning money making samosas to sell in the market, hoping to raise enough to afford the coach trip to the city, to save his pet and see his dad. Zeleke’s script cleverly balances dramatic tension that simmers below the surface as Chuni’s days are numbered forcing Ephraim to find ways to finance his escape. Tsion is an intelligent and feisty girl and Ephraim bonds with her when the pair find ways of keeping Chuni away from harm, securing him with a local Muslim shepherd girl for a few Burrs (the local currency). Thus Zeleke quietly paints a picture of religious harmony with Christians, Muslims and Jews living tolerantly together. The only strife for the Ethiopians comes from poverty and drought. Zeleke’s script mentions the lack of help from senior leaders, but this political strand is very much played down and is not central to the narrative. What makes the film especially enjoyable are Josée Deshaies’ (Saint Laurent) glorious visuals that tenderly and vibrantly depict the local customs and magnificent scenery.

Lamb could be part of the curriculum in junior schools, showing how kids in other countries manage with loneliness, isolation and trauma, even in the poorest communities. Lamb has echoes of Satyajit Ray’s classic: Pather Panchali (Pather’s Way), also about a boy who left his (Bengali) village to seek a better life in the city.

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 18 OCTOBER 2015

Zarafa (2014)

Directors: Remi Besançon, Jean-Christophe Lie

Script: Remi Besancon, Alexander Abela

Cast: Max Renaudin, Simon Abkarian, Francois-Xavier Demaison, Vernon Dobtcheff, Roger Dumas, Ronit Elkabetz, Deborah Francois, Thierry Fremont

Fr/Bel | 73mins | 2012 Animation

A finely wrought French animation based on the extraordinary true story of a Giraffe gifted to French royalty… although a certain dramatic licence has been taken with the ‘how it all went down’.

Told as a story within a story by grandfather sitting under the baobab tree relating it to his grandchildren, animation is absolutely the best way to put this wonderful yarn across; combining as it does the fantastical with comedy and the much darker human history of slave trade. Lawrence of Arabia meets Jules Verne meets Free Willy. Indeed, some of the more far-fetched elements of the story are infact true, as can be read in the interview with Remi. Besançon was originally sold the idea for Zarafa by his co-writer Abela, although, it being animation, it was another four years in the making once they found the finance. Indeed, Remi went off and made another live action film in the middle, while they waited for all the compositing to be completed.

Working on three levels, it’s a very well constructed and considered storyline that keeps the audience both rapt and entertained throughout its shrewd running time of 74 minutes. There’s an attention to detail and a gentle tempo, which enfolds the younger audience easily, rather in the fashion of the animations it was inspired by, coming out of that peerless Japanese powerhouse, Studio Ghibli, although it doesn’t quite hit the same level of accomplishment as the Spirited Away’s or the Princess Mononoke’s… but then, what does.

Zarafa tells the story of Maki, a young, orphaned Sudanese boy destined to be sold through the slave trade, who manages to escape his shackles. Whilst making his bid for freedom, Maki becomes the unlikely friend of a small herd of giraffe, also being hunted by Hassan, Prince of the Desert, a man intent on ensnaring a young giraffe to take to the Pasha. So the life of Maki and the young eponymous ‘Zarafa’ become irrevocably intertwined, as Maki endeavours to protect his charge and fulfil the promise he made to Zarafa’s mother.

Zarafa is really well-crafted, carefully thought-out and intelligent piece that has already demonstrated ardent support through festivals worldwide; speaking the universal language of animation and combining the exotic with just the right mix of tragedy, comedy, loopiness and larger-than-life characters to make it a winner. Tellingly, it also has enough to it that even the adults dragged along as unwilling chaperones might just find themselves enjoying it too. I predict huge DVD sales.

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8 OCTOBER 2015

The Romantic Exiles (2015) | LFF 2015

Writer|Director: Jonas Trueba

Cast: Renata Antonante, Francesco Carril, Vahina Giocante, Luis E Pares, Vito Sanz, Sigfrid Monleon, Isabelle Stoffel

70min Spain Drama

Three Spanish guys embark on a trip to Paris in a camper van, just for the hell of it in this sunny arthouse gem. THE ROMANTIC EXILES is Jonas Trueba’s follow-up to his stylish The Wishful Thinkers that garnered awards in Malaga and the US.

Luis, Francesco and Vito are romantic dreamers who like nothing better than a good philosophical chin-wag about love and the meaning of life, over a few bottles of wine, in a Parisian courtyard somewhere off the Boulevard St Germain.

Loose and laid back, this is low-budget filmaking at its best. Trueba throws in Tulsa’s music to liven things up and the dialogue and acting is fresh and genuinely amusing as the trio amble through this leisurely journey, often meeting up with others to add flavour and spice to their witty, wise and often whimsical wine-fuelled dinners – like the one where one friend annouces her impending motherhood without a baby or father in sight. Sixties theatre founder, Jim Haynes, puts in an appearance, just for good measure.

Vito (Vito Sanz) is the driver and the most low-key of the trio, Vahina (Vahina Giocante) is his spirited girlfriend. Francesco (Francesco Carril) speaks fluent Italian most of the time with his friend Renata (Renata Antonante); Luis (Luis E. Pares), a film buff, would like to get back with his (girl) friend Isabelle (Isabelle Stoffel, who also appears in The Wishful Thinkers).

Pointless but often poignant: the tone here is light-hearted but the themes serious: work, friendship, the end of youth, adult responsibilities, and women having the upper hand. Colours are acid bright: rich coral, turquoise and emerald fizzles with vibrant April freshness. Several romance languages are spoken making it all feel very Mediterranean – French, Italian, Spanish. References to 21st century art and literature make up a bohemian brew with a distinct feel of Eric Rohmer to it: you almost expect Louis Garrel to saunter onto the set complete with beret, and baguette under his arm. And at 70 minutes Trueba can get away with a lack of real narrative, as the discussions carry a certain charismatic enjoyment punctuated by trips in the van and the tuneful score that is always major in key. MT

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

The Immortal Story (1968) | Orson Welles | Centenary

Director: Orson Welles Writer: Karen Blixen (story) Louise de Vilmorin Cinematography: Willy Kurant

Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Roger Coggio, Orson Welles, Norman Eshley

60min Drama French/US

The shortest of Welles’ features is a French film, made for television, and starring Jeanne Moreau. Based on a short story by the Danish writer Karen Blixen, Welles’ direction evokes a very feminine and sensuous atmosphere where a successful 19th century Macao merchant (Welles) hires a virile young sailor to sleep with his female companion (Moreau) and avail himself of a child and heir. A cougar-like, forty-year-old, Jeanne Moreau cannot believe her eyes when Norman Eshley’s strikingly sexy salt comes into view – he was just 23 at the time and a tanned 6.3″ – and as the two writhe in discreet ecstasy behind the gauzy drapes of the four-poster, Welles is seen glowering, hot and heavy, peeping tom-style, at the bedroom door. Erik Satie’s lush score, rich colours and smouldering shadows create a perfect ambiance for this tale of a towering ego who cannot bring himself to seduce the woman of his dreams despite his healthy bank balance.MT

ORSON WELLES CENTENERY | THE IMMORTAL STORY IS RELEASED COURTESY OF MR BONGO FILMS on DVD | 2 NOVEMBER 2015

The Naked Prey (1965) | DVD release

Director: Cornel Wilde | Writers: Clint Johnsion | Don Peters

Cast: Cornel Wilde,, Gert Van Der Berg, Ken Gampu, Patrick Mynhardt, Bella Randels

94min US Action Thriller

THE NAKED PREY is a difficult film to watch by today’s politically correct standards and makes you realise just how far we’ve come on the human and animal rights road to freedom. Crass in the extreme with its wide-scale animal cruelty and vicious human slaughter that starts shortly after the two hunters – Cornel Wilde (a professional tracker) and Gert Van Der Berg (the Safari financier)- embark on their ill-starred safari in Botswana and Zimbabwe for a killing spree with ivory as their prize. Having argued and almost fallen out over the giving of gifts to the local tribespeople – advised by Wilde as the correct protocol – they start shooting elephants. But soon become the victims of their own cruelly-intentioned Low Velt outing.

This is certainly gruesome stuff complete with a score of native drums and the full tribal regalia including spears, and leather loin cloths. After the local tribe turn nasty, Cornel Wilde’s experienced tracker breaks lose -Tarzan-style, and makes his getaway across an arid and scrubby landscape peppered with savage beasts, and that’s just the natives. There are chameleons, snakes and scorpions to name but a few perils, fauna-wise. This is the ultimate boy’s own adventure and, archaic though it may seem to our 21st century eyes, it is outrageously entertaining and at times even exhilarating. Naturally, being the director, producer and star, Wilde gets to do his macho stuff: having rid himself of pesky natives and their spears, he’s seen tapping sap from a nearby bush, and tracking cheetah, baboon and even the odd fowl – the latter unsuccessfully. The locals are more savvy when it comes to hunting and do get their prey: a beautiful young impala, which they carry off silhouetted into the sunset.

Interspersed with these thrilling action sequences which continue into the more vibrant setting of the High Velt, there are shots of lions eating antelope, and snakes a plenty. THE NAKED PREY, put simply, is a metaphor for how easy it is for man to sink into the lowest form of life, given the correct conditions: you can take a man out of the wild, but you can’t take the wild out of the man. And no one can extract an apology from Mr Wilde for his political incorrectness in making this thrilling adventure; he’s long gone, to that ‘jungle’ in the sky. The movie was even nominated for an Oscar in the 1965 Academy Awards. How times have changed!.

OUT ON DVD COURTESY OF EUREKA | MASTERS OF CINEMA SERIES | 19 OCTOBER 2015

Paula (2015) |LFF 2015

Director: Eugenio Canevari

Cast: Denise Labbate, Estefania Blaiotta, Bernardo Calabia

64min Drama Argentina

Eugenio Canevari creates an atmospheric mood piece that transcends the well-worn indie film theme of domestic service in South America’s contemporary affluent homes. In her screen debut, Denise Labatte plays the young maid of the title who is forced into an abortion by her callous ex-boyfriend Berna (Bernardo Calabia). As ever, in this Catholic household, the matriarch holds sway and Estefi (Estefania Blaiotta) focuses on herself than her three children and cleaner, refusing to offer any help.

Lounging poolside in a lush suburb of Buenos Aires, enjoying al fresco meals and managing their extensive estancias, Estefi is emblematic of today’s well-healed South American housewife whether in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay or Chile. Canevari allows his audience to engage and be present in his drama that relies on an impressionist style of exchanged glances, palpable atmosphere and pregnant pauses to convey and carry the narrative, rather than extensive dialogue, making this an enjoyable and easy-going film for cineastes and the arthouse crowd to enjoy, whatever language they speak. Canivari’s film epitomises the over-used but effective phrase: ‘less is more’ and Matias Castillo’s glorious visuals make great use of the sunny and verdant setting both around the house in Buenos Aires and further afield in the Pampas. Canevari disregards running time – just 64 minutes: He tells his story and doesn’t try to add unnecessary embellishment, showing a masterful confidence in both material and execution and making him a talent worth watching in the future. Recommended.

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Beasts of No Nation (2015)| Venice Film Festival |LFF 2015

Director: Cary Fukunaga

Cast: Idris Elba, Ama K Abebrese, Abraham Attah

133min War drama US

Dir.: Cary Fukunaga;Cast: Idris Elba, Abraham Attah, Grace Nortey; USA 2015, 136 min.

Based on the experiences of Agu, a child soldier fighting in the civil war of an unnamed African country.

Cary Fukunaga who has directed such diverse productions as Jane Eyre (2011) and True Detective (2014) turns his hand here to another literary work with this screen version of Uzodimna Iweala’s novel of the same name.

Set in a unspecified country in East Africa, it tells the harrowing story of young Agu (Attah) who is caught up in the harrowing civil war which ravages his country that not only destroys his childhood but traumatises him for life. We meet him first as a fun-loving boy who plays pranks on everybody particularly his older brother. Once a teacher, Agu’s father, now helps the Nigerian peacekeeping force acting as a buffer between the two warring fractions. Agu’s life seems complete, but one day, government forces overrun the village, killing Agu’s whole family apart from his mother who manages to escape to the capital. When soldiers kill his best friend, he wanders into the woods before being picked up by an army of rebels commanded by an pompous and violent warlord (Elba). In love with violence, the sadistic killler soon teaches Agu to kill and sexually abuses him whilst pretending to protect him as a surrogate father.

Shooting mostly outside in Ghana, Fukunaga paints an unredeeming picture of the inhumanity in this compelling and convincingly dramatised war movie that witnesses the corrupting of a young boy. This is not a war between ideological forces, but simply a fight between two gangster armies, fought without rules and killing the neutral population of the country in far greater number than the enemies. But after the victory of the rebel army, the same leaders become statesmen over night, doing away with their brutal elements like the colonel. Meanwhile, Agu phantasises about his mother again in the capital, before becoming violent on his ow accord. His voice-over tells us that he has lost faith in God, and that he will never play kids games again. Questioned by a young woman working for the UN, he feels like an old man, talking to a young girl.

Idris Elba gives a dynamite performance full of layered subtlety and charisma and Abraham Attah is simply astonishing as the boy. Fukunaga spares no gruesome details and Agu’s journey through hell is told without sentimentality from an observer’s point of view.The images of war and destruction are so realistic that occasionally one has to look away. Running at over two hours the length and a forced happy-end are the only elements that detract from this otherwise harrowing tour-de-force. AS

REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

Fidelio: Alice’s Journey (2014)

Director: Lucie Borleteau

Cast: Ariane Labed, Melvil Poupard, Anders Danielsen Lie

97min Drama France

A female engineer on a container vessel manages to have a man ‘in every port’ in this drama that navigates emotional, sexual and romantic waters on the high seas.

Fidelio: Alice’s Journey (Fidelio: L’odyssee d’Alice), is an absorbing and gripping drama that won Ariane Labed Best Actress at Locarno Film Festival 2014 for her characterful performance in the lead and at the helm of the ship. It’s also the feature debut of writer director Lucie Borleteau who manages to enfuse the masculine world of international shipping with female sensuality and a certain finesse.

There is never a dull moment on board the good ship Fidelio, once known as the Eclipse when Alice (Labed) first sailed on her, below decks. After a lusty scene on a beach with her land-based lover Felix (Anders Danielsen Lie), Alice discovers, when she re-joins the ship to replace the deceased Patrick, that her old sea-going flame Gael (Melvil Poupard) is the new Captain of her heart – literally and sexually. The two go on to enjoy a great physical and working relationship – and Labed injects her ‘all’ convincingly into both roles: personal and professionally. Meanwhile, back on shore, she re-discovers the delights of her Norwegian dalliance who admits that her long absences at sea keep the winds blowing pleasurably through their relationship sails.

Borleteau’s script – co-written with Clara Bourreau – goes full steam ahead at first and avoids over-working tedious ‘woman in a man’s world’ tropes by keeping things engaging and authentic as Alice enjoys the best of both worlds in this cut and thrust male environment of the French merchant navy; where the ship’s destination can change daily depending on commodity market movements back home. But the narrative becomes rather becalmed in the third act where Alice and Felix’s affair enters stormy seas – although this is less of a problem by this stage as the focus is on the journey ahead and Simon Beaufils’ magnetic cinematography broadens the appeal, both on the widescreen and in intimate close-ups on board the Fidelio. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 3 OCTOBER IN SELECTED CINEMAS

Gold Coast (2015) | London Film Festival 2015

A budding entrepreneur arrives by boat in 1830s Danish Guinea (Ghana) in this locally shot and impressively mounted debut arthouse drama from Swedish director, Daniel Dencik.

With his tousled pre-Raphaelite locks and suave accoutrements, Wulff (Jakob Oftebro | Kon Tiki) is the decent but ‘wet behind the ears’ botanist who, having been granted a slice of the plantation action by his Danish King, swashbuckles into a moral morass when he discovers that the faceless natives are not only unfriendly but also recalcitrance at being beaten, oppressed and even raped by their colonial masters on the plantation.

In flashback we see him enjoying the carnal delights of his fiancee with whom he hopes to be reunited back in the fatherland after a year or so of sewing his seeds and building his empire in this brooding heart of darkness: where it emerges that things are far from as idyllic as gorgeously lush visuals would have us believe. And despite Angelo Badalamenti’s funkily romantic score, the script leaves a great deal to be desired as Wulff is prone to filmic episodes of plant-inspired navel-gazing and day-dreaming, frequently departing from the Colonial storyline of running a business, making this period drama feel rather lightweight albeit pleasurable from a visual point of view.

There is plenty of interaction between Wullf and his young slave boy, Lumpa (John Aggrey), but the story drifts through hallucigenic scenes involving local flora but it doesn’t seem to take us anywhere meaningful until it emerges that a tribe called the Ashantis have gradually desimated his growth potential plantation-wise. Being a plantsman and pacific, Wullf embarks on a conciliatry route to solve his problems emloying the aid of a local merchant to seek a humanistic solution. Dencik has made an ambitious debut with this absorbing and unusual approach to Danish Colonial history. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7-18 OCTOBER 2015

Blood of My Blood (2015) | FIPRESCI Award | Venice Film Festival 2015 | LFF 2015

Director: Marco Bellocchio

Cast: Roberto Herlitzka, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Abla Rohrwacher, Lidiya Lubermann

106min | Historical | Drama Italy

Marco Bellocchio fuses the past and present in this inventive horror story that explores a 17th century witch trial and its relevance to a more lightweight contemporary story.

The medieval town of Bobbio, Emilia Romagna, has inspired story-telling for hundreds of years. It was the setting for Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose and Bellocchio’s debut Fists in the Pocket. With Blood of My Blood he returns to the abandoned Bobbio convent; a slightly humorous arthouse outing that will appeal to cineastes prepared to let their imaginations wander.

The first half of the narrative is a classic tale of Catholic crime and punishment. A young nun, Sister Benedetta (Lidiya Lieberman), has slept with a fellow priest who has taken his own life in remorse. With her hair cut severely short, she hangs upside down in a cloister room awaiting punishment. Meanwhile, his twin brother Federico Mai (Pier Giorgio Bellocchio) has arrived to extract the truth and a confession from the defiant Benedetta, so that his brother can have a decent burial in holy ground. Federico pretends to be his brother while Benedetta undergoes a series of tests to determine whether she is Satan’s daughter and, surviving the trials, she is walled up in the convent. In an entertaining vignette, Alba Rohrwacher and Federica Fracassi meanwhile play a delicate duo of virgin sisters who accommodate Federico in their home and later their bed.

Embued with a rich palette of vibrant hues by expert cinematographer Daniele Cipri (Vincere|It Was the Son) the first half of the film is the most enjoyable. In its more fluid second half, the narrative broadens out into a more satirical style that feels at bewildering, and quite frankly disappointing, such is the intrigue of the opening section. Still in Bobbio, we land with an unwelcome bump into the world of social media and the upwardly mobile where a Russian billionaire (Ivan Franek) turns up at the convent doors (in his red Ferrari, naturally) demanding to buy the place. Federico Mai is now the estate agent. It emerges that the convent is haunted by Count Basta (a masterful Roberto Hertlitzka), vampire with a penchant for cultural pursuits. Implications and infringements on Italy’s strict bylaws and pension systems are also involved in this prospective purchase. But the Count has connections with the powers that be and an amusing final segment sees him swing into action in this playful if not tonally strange story. Carlo Crivelli’s score and Scala & Kolacny’s choir music feel out of place in this piece that feels happier in the past that it does in the present. A sentiment that many Italians will be in agreement with. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2 -12 SEPTEMBER 2015

Just Jim (2015)

Director: Craig Roberts

Cast: Emile Hirsch, Craig Roberts, Nia Roberts, Mark Lewis Jones, Sai Bennett, Richard Harrigan

84min UK Comedy Drama

Craig Roberts first surfaced to cineastes’ consciousness in Richard Ayoade’s sweet drama Submarine. A hundred years has passed since O A C Lund’s silent original flashed onto the silver screen and Roberts’ quirkily dark comedy JUST JIM, his debut as a filmmaker, is a fitting tribute to sardonic Swede.

Set in the dystopia of the dull as ditchwater Welsh village, Roberts takes the eponymous central role as a deeply shy and fearful teenager. Success here comes from its 50 retro feel and brilliant cinematography, courtesy of Bafta award-winning lenser, Richard Stoddard, to create a darkly comic vibe with similar framing and attitude to a slow-mo sombre Hal Hartley outing. The humour derives largely from the clever casting of US Emile Hirsh who, as Jim’s American neighbour Dean, injects a much-needed confident noirish swagger into the stultified atmosphere of the buttoned up Welsh backwater. Taking the painfully sensitive Jim under his wing, he starts to re-style the geeky village loser as the hottest thing that ever hit town; both with the boys and the girls. But Dean is not as good as he seems, and gradually Jim comes to learn that, even as his new and cool persona grips the glowering neighbourhood, trying to be special is not always as desirable at it seems.

Scriptwise, things are wobbly though and the entertainment and charisma is largely down to the strong performances of Hirsch, Roberts and his onscreen wannabe pink-haired squeeze, Jackie (Charlotte Randall). Roberts’ direction is charmingly kickarse and buzzes beautifully to Michael Price’s edgy original score. Clever collaborative choices on Roberts’ part makes JUST JIM a stylish and inventive debut MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE

99 Homes (2014)

Dir.: Ramin Bahrani

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern

USA 2014, 112 min.

In Ramin Bahrani’s gripping sub-prime thriller, we meet Dennis Nash (Garfield) for the first time in court, where he fights an eviction order. He lives with his mother Lynn (Dern) and son in a bungalow in Florida. Next day, the property “developer” Rick Carver (a brilliantly glib Michael Shannon) arrives to evict him with local sheriffs. The family has two minutes to pack their belongings – the furniture is dumped on the front lawn – Nash has 24 hours to remove them, before all will be trashed. Tearful farewells from the neighbours are followed by a move into a shabby motel. But Carver is not finished with Nash, he has done his homework: both men come from working class background, only Carver chose a career to sell houses, unlike Nash, who has worked on building sites, before his employers went bankrupt.

Carver offers Nash a way out: a job. First Dennis does the manual jobs for the ever increasing evictions, than Nash starts to be an enforcer like Carver. The money rolls in, and Nash is about to buy his house back, when a chance encounter with one the families he has evicted, lets Nash’ family into the secret he tried to hide from them. When Lynn takes his son away to her brother, Dennis has to make a decision.

In a contempo Faustian’ bargain: the devil (Carver) offers Nash the existence he would have had in the motel. Initially, Nash is only after getting his house back, than he is stung by the ever increasing profits as he becomes the devil’s apprentice. Step for step he looses his decency, represses the guilt with the excuse that he only does it for his family. He could be any of us. The mortgage crisis in the USA cost too many families their homes, families who paid their mortgages on time – as long as they could. But nobody is save from this fate, everyone is just a step away from this catastrophy.

This is a middle-class nightmare with some outstanding turns from three actors at the top of their game: Shannon is undestated, not painted as a bad person, just one who made the wrong decision. Garfied stumbles into the abyss, always looking over his shoulder to his former self. Dern is the sensitive but film matriarch: staying with her roots, unfazed by the opportunities her son might conjure up. The camera remains un-judgemental, showing the wealth and the poverty, neutral, like a true. 99 HOMES is a frightening film, because it could be all our tomorrows. AS

REVIEWED AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 24 SETPEMBER 2015

The Messenger (2015) |

Director: David Blair

Cast: Robert Sheehan, Joely Richardson, Lily Cole,

101min. Horror | Drama | Fantasy.

Jack (Robert Sheehan) is a decent bloke suffering from a severe mental illness where he is plagued by hallucinations of the dead. Is he an untrained psychic receiving vital messages from a spirit guide? It’s unclear in David Blair’s muddled and meandering fantasy drama that takes itself extremely seriously. There are certainly some good ideas here but they never coalesce into a cogent story. What is THE MESSENGER trying to say?: your guess is as good as mine.

After a strong opening the film THE MESSENGER descends into an unwieldy often sprawling narrative that relies on some good cinematography to string together an occasionally laughable script and some pretty ropey performances particularly from Liiy Cole and Alex Wyndham. Although there are some moving moments towards the end, Blair takes the sensitive themes of psychic awareness and mental illness and trivialises them quite shockingly. A missed opportunity. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18 SEPTEMBER 2015

Steamboat Bill Jr (1928) | The Play House (1921) | Buster Keaton is back

Buster Keaton (1895-1966), known as the man “who never laughed”, was not only the only silent movie star/director who could compete with Charles Spencer Chaplin, he was also a fearless stunt man who was in love with aesthetic innovation: The Playhouse (1921), a short, twenty-one minute silent ‘experiment’, featured not only, one, or two but nine (!) Buster Keaton’s in one frame. In this sparkling new restoration, with a score by Carl Davis and playfully directed by Edward F Cline, he stars not only as the inspirational leader of the vaudeville show but performs nearly all the roles of the characters and the audience. And, being Buster, he has to chase a girl who happens to have a twin sister. Full of visual gags, The Playhouse is still, nearly hundred years later, breathtakingly modern.

Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) is, with The General (1926), Keaton’s masterpiece of the silent era, before the studios took away his creative control of his films. Here, he plays Bill jr., the son of steamboat captain William Canfield, the latter a burly and robust tyrant who is disappointed that his son turns out to be a meek college graduate. Canfield senior is fighting for his existence while James King, another steamboat operator, runs a modern ship and is taking away Canfield’s customers. To make matters worse, Bill. Jr. falls in love with Kitty, King’s daughter. When a cyclone breaks out, Buster/Billy saves not only the lives of all main protagonists, but jumps again into the water, seemingly avoiding the grateful kiss of Kitty, only to fish the minster out of the sea. Steamboat Bill Jr. was a major production, $135 000 worth of street sets were built, just to be destroyed by the cyclone. In one of his most memorable stunts (often repeated in film-history), Keaton walks along a street, when a whole building façade collapses on him – the cut out of the set just big enough to miss him by inches. Steamboat Bill Jr. was the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Steamboat Bill, premiered six month later, and featuring, for the first time, a hero by the name of Mickey Mouse. AS

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 19 SEPTEMBER 2015 | 4k RESTORATIONS COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS | BFI

A Girl At My Door (2014)

Dir: July Jung

Cast: Doona Bae, Sae-rom Kim Sae-byak Song

119min Korean Drama Subtitles

Set in a remote corner of countryside Korea, July Jung’s simple narrative centres on Young-nam (Doona Bae), a young Police Chief, seconded to the small community after misdemeanours in the capital Seoul. There she takes charge of the rowdy locals and drunks. One family is particularly troublesome: the father brutalises his young daughter Dohee, encouraged by his batty mother who rides around on a truck. But when Young-nam takes Dohee under her wing, the problems start for the dysfunctional teenager. Caught between her own dodgy reputation with the Force and the mental instability of her protegee, Young-nam fights for her own professional survival in an environment that on the surface appears calm but is full of quirky surprises and unexpected pitfalls. July Jung’s subtle drama is embued with its own brand of gently subversive humour and affecting performances from Doona Bae and Sea-rom Kim in the central roles. MT

REVIEWED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2014 | ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18 SEPTEMBER 2015

The Tribe (Plemya) 2014 | Bfi player

Director/Writer: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy

Cast: Grigoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy, Alexander Dsiadevich

Ukraine Drama 132mins

How many single-take sex scenes in cinema today show the pair going at it in multiple positions over an appreciable amount of time? Answer: at least one—that being in Cannes prize-winner THE TRIBE (PLEMYA), the debut feature by palpably talented Ukrainian writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, who returns to Locarno Film Festival this year as a jury member overseeing its Pardo di domani competition, having won a prize at the festival in 2012 for his impressive mid-length film NUCLEAR WASTE.

Coming back to this sex scene though: teenagers Sergey (Grigory Fesenko) and Anya (Yana Novikova) make love on the cold, hard floor of a boiler room in the boarding school at which they both reside. It’s an unsentimental, rather passionless scene that ends with unexpected post-coital tenderness—Anya kissing Sergey with previously elusive sincerity—all the more so considering it begun with a monetary transaction. Why money? Because Sergey has for the first time just escorted Anya and her roommate Svetka (Rosa Babiy) to a nearby overnight parking lot for long-distance truck drivers, who routinely pay to have sex with the two teenagers. Witnessing the ease with which Anya accepts this scenario, Sergey fancies a go himself, and duly pays up.

There’s a twist. The whole scene, like the whole film, is dialogue-free: Sergey and Anya are both deaf mutes, attending a specialised school where new arrival Sergey has quickly fallen in with the wrong crowd—the same lot who, under the influence of their woodwork teacher (Alexander Panivan), mug innocent people for their booze and money at night, who illegally sell trashy souvenirs on local train services, and who are making money from Anya and Svetka’s exploits.

Exploits? Make that exploitation. THE TRIBE is all about the various strategies by which people are both impacting and impacted upon, how they adapt to and affect their social environment—whether through an organic chameleonism or something less subtle, such as intimidation and violence. Hierarchies are unavoidable. Upon arrival, Sergey’s lonely procession through the school canteen culminates in a pupil with Down Syndrome stealing his lunch, only for the head bully to spit on the burger and summon Sergey outside to take him under his wing. Soon after, Sergey must undergo an initiation, which entails him having to fight off his new friends—which he does so with surprising ease.

Communication goes entirely unsubtitled; to anyone unfamiliar with sign language, the literal content of the film’s many conversations will be a struggle. This is the point, of course: compare the aforementioned school canteen scene with similar examples in, say, Gus Van Sant’s ELEPHANT (2003) to realise the voluminous texture and timbre given by a wildtrack naturally composed of an indiscriminate sea of vocal chords. Consequently, this is an intensely and interpretably visual film, effortlessly blending immobile establishing shots with elegant Steadicam movements to simultaneously echo the characters’ own sensorial limitations and subsequent negotiation of the world through other, heightened gestures. Working with cinematographer (and editor) Valentyn Vasyanovych, Slaboshpytskiy opts for long-takes and, frequently, wide compositions in order to allow his performers full expressive range.

Soundlessness begets ambiguity. Without the benefit of sonic cues, otherwise disturbing incidents have a deadpan absurdity. Sergey’s initiation sequence begins with its participants warming up with comical shadow sparring and daft shoulder-nudges, and the fight itself, unfolding without edits, has a kind of emotionally constipated choreography. It’s as if we’re watching, out of earshot, the dance floor at a silent disco. There’s even something morbidly funny in the harmless way in which an otherwise vicious attack on someone walking home with their groceries one evening is rendered like a cartoon—or in that scene when one character is run over by a slowly reversing lorry as he smokes a cigarette completely unable to hear it approaching.

Obviously, to feel morbid funniness in a scene is not to claim there is an easy, go-to emotional response to it. Dragged into such tonal registers, we ourselves are tricked. And, as THE TRIBE continues, its silences seem to become more protracted, its tracking shots more suggestive, its scenes grimmer and darker. It takes a certain sort of director to alternate between strangely sweet moments, such as that in which a creepy official shares his innocent holiday photos with two teens he’s presumably paying for sex, and scenes of unthinkable physical and mental stress—such as that horrible scene in which Anya pays for and endures a backstreet abortion.

Just as the consequences of the latter scene will take time to register for Anya, one realises with belated horror—and, yes, excitement—that the violent underpinnings of THE TRIBE’s earlier scenes were glaring clues all along, setting in motion a sequence of events that can only end in the most hilariously heinous way possible. ©MICHAEL PATTISON

THE TRIBE IS ON BfiPlayer | SUTHERLAND AWARD WINNER – LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

Pasolini (2014) |

Dir.: Abel Ferrara

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Ninetto Davoli, Maria de Medeiros, Adriana Asti, Riccardo Scamarcio

USA 2014, 85 mim.

November 2nd 1975: the final day in the life of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian poet, novelist and filmmaker. After returning from Stockholm, were he met Ingmar Bergman amongst others, Pasolini’s day starts with a letter to his friend and fellow writer Alberto Moravia, asking him for advice on his nearly finished novel “Petrolio”. Later he is interviewed by a journalist and then dines with friends in a restaurant for supper, before setting off on his last journey to Ostia, having picked up the 17 year-old male prostitute Pelosi. In Ostia, on an abandoned football pitch, he is attacked by a gang, beaten to death. His Alfa Romeo driven over his prostrate body.

Abel Ferrara’s enigmatic portrait reigns back on any sensationalism to cover Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last day with dignity and sobriety. We see a refined man in love with writing and films; planning future projects on both fronts. We also see a man fearful of the future. “We are all in danger” – he tells a journalist. This is hardly surprising since the seventies in Italy was a decade fraught with politically motivated violence, kidnappings of industrialists and attacks by the “Brigate Rosse” (Red Brigades). Pasolini, a fervent Marxist, had many enemies.

Unlike Giordana in his 1995 film Pasolini, an Italian Crime, Ferrara does not dwell on the conspiracy theories, he simply shows a man who thrived on the streets of the Roman underworld. Cruising in his sports car, behind dark glasses, he diced with danger, enjoying casual sex with young adonises, often from the wrong side of the tracks. The film includes a part realisation of Pasolini’s film project “Porno-Teo-Kolossal“, where on one day of the year, the gay and lesbian denizens of the city have intercourse together, in order to procreate.

In a dynamite performance, Willem Dafoe not only looks like Pasolini, but brings him to life with integrity, sparse gestures; an economy of movement. Overall, PASOLINI is a film worthy of its subject, showing the two sides of the man: a sometimes aloof intellectual who loses his cool (and finally his head) in dangerous liaisons. In the end, Pasolini became a victim of the society he portrayed. AS/MT

REVIEWED AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 2014. ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM SEPTEMBER 2015

Blanka (2015) | Venice Film Festival 2015

Director: Kohki Hasei

Cast: Cydel Gabutero, Peter Milari

75min Drama Tagalog | English

Manila is the setting for this charming indie gem which is the debut of Japanese director Kohki Hasei, selected from the Biennale College Cinema at Venice 2015. In a similar vein but on a more modest scale to Trash and Slumdog Millionaire, it is an upbeat and unsentimental tale of urban survival that follows a trio of spunky street kids struggling to make ends meet in the Philippino capital.

Seen through the eyes of Blanka, a feisty little girl who is determined to go it alone in a world where adults are always trying to intervene, she manages on petty thieving to eek out an existence and escape the clutches of the local brothel and Catholic orphanage. One day she meets blind busker Peter (Peter Milari), a kindly man who has her best interests at heart. Blanka finds her voice and soon the pair are recruited as the star turn in the local bar. At the same time, Blanka feels that something is missing in her life and that ‘something’ is a mother. Advertising around with a reward of 30,000 pesos for anyone who will take her in to their home she becomes the target for several unscrupulous characters, but is determined never to become a victim.

The gentle rhythm of this heartfelt story with its vibrant camerawork of Manila is not without moments of tension, humour and sadness, making it the perfect family film. Cydel Gabutero gives a sparky central performance as Blanka supported by Peter Milari and her two young accomplices who could easily go on to bigger things and so could this promising new director. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2 -12 SEPTEMBER 2015

Rabin, The Last Day (2015 | Competition | Venice Film Festival 2015

Director: Amos Gitai

Cast: Yaël Abercassis, Ischac Hiskiya, Rotem Keinem

153min | Israel/France | Biopic

Yitzak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, was assassinated on the evening of 4th of November 1995 on King Square, Tel Aviv, after a rally for his peace policies. Amos Gitai’s sober docudrama tries to unravel events and draws far-reaching conclusions from repercussion of his assassination.

Strangely enough Rabin’s murder was caught by a cameraman who happened to witness this historical moment. The opening sequence with long overhead shots over King Square and jerky b/w images of the shooting give the film an intensive start; what follows are mainly re-staged scenes from the Shamgar commission which (under the leadership of Meir Shamgar, president of Israel’s Supreme Court) undertook the task of establishing the circumstances of the assassination. A third level shows the assassin, Tigal Amir (Yevet), preparing for his hideous crime, his interrogation in the immediate aftermath of the three fatal shots, as well as scenes from his right wing, fundamentalist environment.

These latter scenes are frightening featuring one of the the leaders of the movement declaring a ‘Din Rodef’ on Rabin -the equivalent of a Fatwa. Leon Trotsky was the last person to receive this damnation. Amir is unrepentant, he smiles sardonically during his interrogation, feeling superior like most political offenders, who take refuge in martyr status and declaring Rabin a schizophrenic, who should be committed to a mental asylum – the projection here is axiomatic.

What emerges from the Shamgar hearings is unconscionable: there was no efficient security for the prime minister (or his entourage, including his successor Shimon Perez, who gives a sort of introduction to the film). Everyone could have access to him and hardly anyone was questioned by the police. Witnesses speak of a total chaos regarding police and security forces, the assassin was a few feet away from Rabin when he fired his shots.

Rabin, a soldier for more than 27 years, had signed the “Oslo Accord” with Arafat, which would have resulted in a separate, Palestinian state. For the orthodox and right-wing politicians, this was treacherous: in the month before the assassination, placards showed Rabin either in Nazi or PLO uniform and his efigy was burned. There was certainly a murderous atmosphere in Israel, reaching even the Knesset. As Gitai said in a press conference “the Oslo accord was a small window which occurred in ths conflict, Rabin’s death ended all hope, and his murderer was not the only one who knew that the peace process would be dead without him”. In 1996 Perez’ Labour Party lost the General Election to the right wing coalition.

To say that RABIN, THE LAST DAY is not a typical Gatai film, is praise indeed. The director has, for once, let the subject of this docu-drama dictate the narrative. There are no side-shows which usually spoil many Gitai films. Thanks also to the brilliant work of DOP Eric Gautier, this is a thorough research project, told with the neccessary detachment, but still evokes intense emotion. To say that Israel was never the same after this tragedy is an understatement: The orthodox underground from which Amir emerged to kill, is today only a small step away from forming the government. Theodor Herzl, Israel’s founding father, was an enlightened liberal who never envisaged a state run on the lines of backwardness and fundamentalism, but it now looks as if the Rabin murder might have only been the first step on the road to a dictatorial, medieval era in the 21st century. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 12 SEPTEMBER 2015

New British Films |Toronto International Film Festival 2015 | 10 – 20 September 2015

Jean Marc Vallée’s DEMOLITION is set to open Canada’s biggest International film festival, which runs from 10 – 20 September this year, hot on the heels of VENICE. Toronto is a massive affair sprawling over the city and featuring many of Cannes, Venice and Sundance top pictures along with a fresh slate of World premieres and Canadian indies which will include Venice hits: Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation starring Idris Elba and Black Mass starring Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger. Also in the various strands and selection will be Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight; Jay Roach’s Trumbo; Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall and Jocelyn Moorehouse’s The Dressmaker.

But for the moment, let’s a look at the slate of new British Films that are set to screen at the Ontario jamboree. Most are literary adaptations, reflecting the British need constantly to reference the past, but Stephen Frears stands out from the crowd, offering The Program, a sporting drama to spice things up with its controversial subject matter: the evidence surrounding Lance Armstrong’s substance abuse. Dustin Hoffman, Ben Foster and Lee Pace star. Another combat-themed premiere is Eye in the Sky, an aviation thriller directed by South African Gavin Hood (Ender’s Game) but the script, written by Guy Hibbert, and cast couldn’t be more British: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman and Phoebe Fox star in what promises to be a fresh look at the increasing use of remotely piloted aircraft used in warfare. The Man Who Knew Infinity is director Matt Brown’s second feature also featuring a starry British cast. Based on American writer Robert Kanigel’s novel that explores the wartime story of Maths genius Srinivasa Ramanuajan, who rose from poverty-striken Madras to win a scholarship to Cambridge under the tutelage of a (no doubt) gravelly-voiced prof Jeremy Irons. Dev Patel, Toby Jones, Stephen Fry and Jeremy Northam and Kevin McNally also star in what promises to be a worthwhile sortie into Britain’s Colonial past. India is the location for Leena Yadav’s inspiration drama Parched. In a rural Indian village, it explores how four ordinary women begin to throw off the traditions that hold them in servitude.

Miss You Already is Catherine Hardwicke’s latest and has Toni Colette and Drew Barrymore as two friends struck by life-limiting illness. Dominic Copper and Paddy Considine also star. We were hoping to get a first look at Terence Davies’ latest drama Sunset Song at Cannes this year. But the drama, based on Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic novel, will now have its world premiere as a special presentation in Toronto, with a superb British cast of Peter Mullan, Agyness Deyn, Kevin Guthrie and Douglas Rankine. English novellist, Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay for Brooklyn, adapting from Colm Toibin’s 1950s love story that straddles the Atlantic and stars Saoirse Ronan, Jim Farrell and Julie Walters. Closed Circuit helmer John Crowley directs. Irish filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson came to fame with his remarkable 2012 debut What Richard Did, a coruscating coming-of-ager set during The Troubles. His latest, a literary adaptation simply entitled Room, is an exploration of the unconditional love between mother and child and stars Brie Larson, Megan Park and William H Macy. High Rise is Ben Wheatley’s much anticipated adaptation of JG Ballard’s novel of the same name that has Tom Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons caught in a class war in a London Apartment.

Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl has now premiered at Venice but British title Legend will have its prem at Toronto as a Gala Presentation. Starring Tom Hardy in another powerful role as both Ronnie and Reggie Kray, the vicious ganglands killers who purportedly nailed a rival’s head to a coffee table (if you believe Monty Python). Paul Bettany, David Thewlis and Emily Browning also star. MT

TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 10 – 20 SEPTEMBER 2015 | TORONTO CANADA

Here’s the full Toronto low-down.

GALAS
Beeba Boys (dir. Deepa Mehta)
The Dressmaker (dir. Jocelyn Moorhouse)
Eye in the Sky (dir. Gavin Hood)
Forsaken (dir. Jon Cassar)
Freeheld (dir. Peter Sollett)
Hyena Road (dir. Paul Gross)
Lolo (dir. Julie Delpy)
Legend (dir. Brian Hegeland)
The Man Who Knew Infinity (dir. Matt Brown)
The Martian (dir. Ridley Scott)
The Program (dir. Stephen Frears)
Remember (dir. Atom Egoyan)
Septembers of Shiraz (dir. Wayne Blair)
Stonewall (dir. Roland Emmerich)
SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
Anomalisa (dir. Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman)
Beasts of No Nation (dir. Cary Fukunaga)
Black Mass (dir. Scott Cooper)
Brooklyn (dir. John Crowley)
The Club (dir. Pablo Larrain)
Colonia (dir. Florian Gallenberger)
The Danish Girl (dir. Tom Hooper)
The Daughter (dir. Simon Stone)
Desierto (dir. Jonas Cuaron)
Dheepan (dir. Jacques Audiard)
Families (dir. Jean-Paul Rappeneau)
The Family Fang (dir. Jason Bateman)
Guilty (dir. Meghna Gulzar)
I Smile Back (dir. Adam Sulkey)
The Idol (dir. Hany Abu-Assad)
The Lady in the Van (dir. Nicholas Hytner)
Len and Company (dir. Tim Godsall)
The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Louder than Bombs (dir. Joachim Trier)
Maggie’s Plan (dir. Rebecca Miller)
Mountains May Depart (dir. Zhangke Jia)
Office (dir. Johnnie To)
Parched (dir. Leena Yadav)
Room (dir. Lenny Abrahamson)
Sicario (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
Son of Saul (dir. Laszlo Nemes)
Spotlight (dir. Tom McCarthy)
Summertime (dir. Catherine Corsini)
Sunset Song (dir.Terence Davis )
Trumbo (dir. Jay Roach)
Un plus une (dir. Claude Lelouch)
Victoria (dir. Sebastian Schipper)
Where to Invade Next (dir. Michael Moore)
Youth (dir. Paolo Sorrentino)

Irrational Man (2015) | Cannes 2015

Writer|Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Phoenix Abe, Parker Posey, Emma Stone

96min Comedy | Drama US

Woody Allen’s 45th film has him once again contemplating the perfect crime as he did in Match Point, Cassandra’s Dream and Crimes and Misdemeanours. With IRRATIONAL MAN (which takes its title from a 1958 work by philosopher, William Christopher Barrett, which aimed to explain existentialism to the uninitiated) his central character kills not for love or money but apparently as a intellectual exercise and out of a sense of social justice on behalf of a woman he takes pity on.

This rural drama takes place in the lush locale of the fictional ‘Braylin College’, at Salve Regina University, Newport Rhode Island, where Joaquin Phoenix stars a the rather louche and laconic philosophy professor, Abe Lucas (with beer belly). An immediate hit with all the women; he is single, vulnerable and a serial monogamist by his own admission, although too wrapped up in his own existential angst to be emotionally available ‘at the moment’. A red rag to a bull, and he knows it.

As he moves around the Campus, looking vaguely distrait, he also demonstrates courage and reckless abandon by playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun at a cocktail party: female students and lecturers are smitten. “Emotionally, I had arrived at Zabriskie Point” Abe tells us in voiceover, but this seems only to encourage his lustful entourage more, particularly the unhappily-married Prof. Rita Richards (Parker Posey in ‘cougar’ mode) who throws herself in his direction, offering to “unblock” him. And before you can say ‘Kierkegaard’ – they are in bed and he’s apologising (but not that much) for his lazy performance. Next up is fresh, young “ethical strategies” student, Jill Pollard (Emma Stone). But Abe is keen to remain detached because his depressive state has temporarily rendered him ‘asexual’. He is also well-aware of the intimate confines of this Red Brick community and Pollard has a regular boyfriend, who becomes suspicious of her increasing interest in Abe’s ‘mind’. But she plugs on attracted by his previous activist and aid involvement in Darfur. This sense of social justice is piqued again when Abe and Jill overhear a conversation in a local restaurant. A desperate woman is bemoaning the bitter details of her divorce and the judge who’s siding with her ex-husband – fancifully hoping that the judge will die before the final trial.

This pathetic wish seems to capture Abe’s imagination, galvanising him into action as he feels the stirrings of an ideal murder shaking him out of his mental torpor and even ‘unblocking’ him sexually. Suddenly, he is alive again, with the strategy for this crime coming together in his head. The premise is so fanciful and yet so all-consuming, that somehow this leap of faith seems entirely plausible.

Allen’s direction and editing are really masterful in IRRATIONAL MAN and his cast performances slick and enjoyable. particularly that of Joaquin Phoenix, who exudes both charm and sexual chemistry as the feckless yet endearing Abe. Emma Stone and Parker Posey compliment each other as his amorous partners, each evoking their representative age groups, of hope versus experience.

Cinematographer Darius Khondji does great justice to the environs of Connecticut making it a verdant, appealing setting in contrast to the usual urban sprall and the score of The Ramsey Lewis Trio evokes the mood of mounting tension with original version of “The In-Crowd”. MT

IRRATIONAL MAN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE LATER THIS YEAR | CANNES 2015 REVIEW.

[youtube id=”5vu2tyk8cvc?t=3s” width=”600″ height=”350″]

In Cold Blood (1967)

Director: Richard Brooks

Cast: Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, John Forsythe, Tex Smith, Paul Stewart, Jeff Corey, Gerald S O’Loughlin

130min Historical | Documentary | Thriller US

Truman Capote’s celebrated reporting of a Kansas murder case, In Cold Blood, is the basis for Richard Brooks’s disturbing docudrama is formally ambitious yet restrained with Conrad Hall’s stylish black and white visuals and classy score by Quincy Jones.

The events of the case grippingly unfold in chronological order recounting how four members of the God-fearing Clutter family were slaughtered in cold blood one night in 1959 by two two ex-convicts looking for cash during a random burglary in their substantial rural property. They stole a radio and a few dollars and left few clues as to their identity but Brooks shows how Kansas Police (lead by a superb John Forsythe) embark on a lengthy and painstaking investigation eventually catching and convicting the killers and bringing them to justice in 1965

Robert Blake (Perry Smith) and Scott Wilson (Dick Hickock) are utterly convincing as the ruthless killers. And although we already know that they committed the murders from the early scenes Brooks generates a palpable tension while he fleshes out the investigation and we get a chance to fathom the broken minds of the perpetrators.

At the end of the day, who can really understand why two people only intending to rob the Clutters, and who had not committed murder before, suddenly decided to sadistically murder four innocent people on a quiet night in 1959? And what did the God-fearing Clutters do provoke such vicious violence?

Richard Brooks’s fractured narrative flips nervously back and forth brilliantly evoking both the frenzied minds of the killers and the fervent need of detective to nail and endite their suspects. Conrad Hall’s noirish visuals re-visit the rain-soaked scene of the crime, the remote locations and the fugitives’ brief escape to Mexico and their chance arrest in Las Vegas, while allowing brief glimpses of the genesis of their disfunctional family stories.

Brooks skilfully avoids showing bloodshed, violence or macabre crime scenes, allowing the terror to haunt our minds rather than the cinema screen. The mercilessness of the intruders and the abject fear and vulnerability of Clutters in their final moments is more evocative than any blood-soaked bedroom scene. By the time we reach the trial and imprisonment, we are glad to be done with these criminals, although a papery vestige of pity remains for tawdry life of who Perry Smith who seems to have been led on. Robert Blake and Scott Wilson give chilling and resonant portrayals in the leading roles. MT

IN COLD BLOOD IS ON LONG RELEASE AT THE BFI DURING AUGUST | THE FILM HAS BEEN REMASTERED COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS FILMS.

Early Winter (2015) | Venice Film Festival 2015

Director: Michael Rowe

Cast: Suzaanne Clement, Paul Doucet

91min Canada | Australia | Drama

It’s hard to remember a more an unremittingly gloomy portrait of deadbeat marriage than Michael Rowe’s EARLY WINTER. This tonally monotonous domestic drama, posing as social realism, drones on in the dreary dregs of a Quebec Autumn where early snow is an indication that a long winter of disillusionment and discontent is about to set in for a couple who have fallen out of love. Or have they?.

A painfully overlong opening sex scene sets the tone for what is to come – or not to come – in the case of Mandy’s (Suzanne Clement) orgasm: “It’s ages since you came” says her care-worn care-worker husband David (Paul Doucet). Mandy’s sad reply is simply “Don’t start”. Terminally depressed from a tragedy that ended his previous marriage, David works nights in a hospice for elderly patients and his family life is clearly suffering as a result. As he comes home, Mandy gets up to take their two boys: Sergei and Maxime to school before returning to her sofa where she smokes, plays video games and watches TV. Clearly frustrated, she is an unpleasant and tetchy individual whose only mild enthusiasm is her favourite son Maxim.

Paul Doucet’s David is far the most engaging character in the piece: a crumple-faced gentle giant on anti-depressants, he gradually emerges as the driver in an accident that killed his daughter. Buttoned-up in his sadness and treading water in a ocean of repressed tears, he calmly radiates love and affection but receives little in return from either his wife, his patients or his co-worker who has her own tragedy to deal with.

EARLY WINTER works best as a character study of depression but there is no dramatic tension here in a story that features too few chinks of light or movement in its darkness. A talapia playing friskily by the waste bins and a mouse making its way warily across the family’s battle-strewn living room provide brief moments of release in a sober story that is shot in frames that enforce visual and emotional distance from the characters, whose lives are kept at arm’s length, and whose heads are often missing.

Cannes Camera D’Or winner Michael Rowe has made a difficult, often uncomfortable film to watch. Running at just over 90 minutes it feels much longer and gives us very little to appreciate about its characters or its subject-matter. Mandy and David are a fractile, toxic pair whose marriage, like many others, seems likely to endure even the bleakest Quebec winter. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 2 – 12 SEPTEMBER 2015.

Fire (2014) El Incendio | Cambridge Film Festival 2015

Director: Juan Schnitman

Cast: Juan Barberini, Pilar Gamboa

89min Drama Argentina

Juan Schnitman’s promising debut explores the mounting tension of a dynamite day in the lives of a young Buenos Aires couple as they prepare to complete the purchase of their new home.

Lucia (Pilar Gamboa) and her partner Marcelo (Juan Barberini) have a sparky relationship, to say the least. But things turn even feistier as they prepare to take the important step of becoming property owners in the Argentinian capital. In a quiet moment as face the day, they realise that this is also an important moment in their relationship. But their morning reverie quickly erupts into a loving tussle that turns into fight as tension mounts in preparation to take their hard earned cash to a man called Paglieri. As it turns out their anticipation is for nothing as the date is delayed; fraying their nerves even further.

Gamboa and Barberini give superb performances as a couple whose emotions are never far from the surface. Whether this is due to their unique chemistry or issues that have unwittingly come to the fore from their past experiences and childhood, is never properly explored although clearly both have emotional issues. Lucia has a better background than Marcelo does, and the heavily tattooed macho male is well aware of this but why he keeps a gun concealed is questionable. During her tearful therapy session, Lucia admits to “drifting away from her family” and even feeling Marcelo hates her.

Later we witness a febrile exchange between Marcelo and a local mother who accuses him of abusing a pupil in the school where he works; but again this thread is sadly not developed serving as another symptom of the histrionic tensions that resonate throughout a drama that fails to gives its audience a break from the high octane tone to re-group. Despite committed performances from the couple, this and a weak script are really the main pitfalls of Schnitman’s tensile debut. And although there are some powerful moments particularly in the final scenes, the pair and their insurmountable problems are a little too overwrought to make this feel enjoyable or worth the trouble. MT

SCREENING DURING THE CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL 3 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2015

Buttercup Bill (2015)

Dir.: Remy Bennett, Emilie Richard-Froozan

Cast: Remy Bennett, Evan Louison, Mallory June, Pauly Lingerfelt

USA/UK 2014, 96 min.

It is always tempting to try and follow in the footsteps of your favourite directors with your first film: writers/directors Remy Bennett and Emilie Richard-Froozan certainly have internalised much of David Lynch and Terence Malick’s work, but just being copy-cats is not enough, even if the film is set in a retro 70s aesthetic.

Pernilla (Bennett) and Patrick (Louison) are a couple with a secret buried in their childhood disclosed in enigmatic, dreamlike images. After the death of Flora, another childhood friend, Pernilla turns up on Patrick’s doorstep in the deep South, complaining that he has neglected her by not attending Flora’s funeral. He certainly makes up for it in the rest of the film; the two being more or less inseparable. Since the secret is not revealeduntil the final scenes (when everyone ceases to care), the audience has to guess why the couple have such a torrid relationship. Patrick is obviously a sadist, but Pernilla – who permanently runs around in various stages of undress – is only too keen to suffer physical and psychological abuse. This comes in the shape of Mena (June), a blonde with whom Patrick first has a one night stand, then, on her re-appearance (to collect her jacket!), he tries to make love to her in front of Pernilla, who is only to willing to watch before Mena runs off in disgust.

Apart the Southern preacher and freaky bar scenes, the narrative is nothing but a series of oddities – a collection of weird, pseudo-sexy and often involuntarily funny episodes.The total focus on atmosphere creates some wonderful images, but this reduction to a pure formal exercise leads to an audience detachment from which BUTTERCUP BILL never recovers in spite of the spilling of beans at the end. To call the film pseudo-mystic would be an understatement: its lack of any coherence degrades it to a freak show; with DOP Ryan Foregger being the only one able to claim credits. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 4 SEPTEMBER 2015

Venice International Film Festival | 72th Edition | 2 – 12 September 2015

2015 is set to be a knock out year as VENICE FILM FESTIVAL claims its position as the oldest major international film festival, now celebrating its 72nd edition and championing a glittering array of independent and arthouse films. Unlike Cannes 2015, that promoted its own actors and filmmakers, Venice has chosen an eclectic mix of international talent drawn from veteran auteurs to sophomore filmmakers. Under festival director, Alberto Barbera and an erudite competition jury lead by Alfonso Cuaron, including such luminaries as Pawel Pawlikowski, Hsaio-hsien Hou, Lynne Ramsay, Elizabeth Banks and Francesco Munzi, the competition line-up sparkles with renewed vigour showcasing independent film talent and stealing a march on Toronto which neatly overlaps the Italian festival by two days, leaving the Canadians to show the blockbusters which will come to Britain very shortly anyway, for those who follow them.

Presiding over the jury in 2001, Veteran Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski will be back in Venice with his long-awaited follow-up to Essential Killing, another thriller called 11 Minutes (left). This time the setting is Warsaw, with a strong Polish cast led by Richard Dormer, Piotr Glowacki, Andrzej Chyra (In the Name of) and Agata Buzek.

The Italians have four films in the competition line-up this year: Marco Bellocchio presents Sangue del mio Sangue (Blood of my Blood (right) which knowing the director’s strong visual aesthetic with doubtless be a stylish vampire outing, set in the village of Bobbio (Emilia Romagna) and starring the ubiquitous and pallidly delicate Alba Rohrwacher. Giuseppe M Gaudino is not well-known outside his native Italy but his latest film Per Amor Vostro may well change things. Sicilian director, Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love), once again casts Tilda Swinton in crime thriller A Bigger Splash which is set on the volcanic island of Pantelleria (south of Sicily). It has Matthias Schoenaerts, Dakota Johnson and Ralph Fiennes who play an assortment of interconnecting lovers in a game of mystery. Juliette Binoche will be on the Lido as the main star of Piero Messina’s drama The Wait, essentially a two-hander where she gets to know Lou de Laâge (Breathe) who plays her son’s fiance as they both await his arrival at a Sicilian villa. I Ricordi del Fiumi (Out of Competition) by Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio is a documentary about the platz, the large shanty town where over a thousand people of different nationalities live on the banks of the Stura river, in Turin. The area was recently the object of a major project to dismantle it and move part of the families into normal homes and the film documents life in this slum during the last few months of its existence, with its anguish, drama, hopes, life.

Having shot their cinematic bolt at Cannes this year, the French are thin on the ground in competition repped by Xavier Giannoli with Marguerite, a drama starring Catherine Frot (Haute Cuisin) and Christa Théret (Renoir). Christian Vincent (La Séparation) who has cast Sidse Babett Knudsen (The Duke of Burgundy) and Fabrice Luchini in his comedy drama L’Hermine.

From Turkey comes Emin Alper’s second feature, Abluka (Frenzy). The sophomore filmmaker is best known for his striking 2012 widescreen drama Tepenin Ardi (Beyond the Hill) which was outstanding for its atmospheric ambient soundtrack and searingly authentic performances from Mehmet Ozgur and Reha Ozcan.

From across the Atlantic, musician and actor Laurie Anderson will be in Venice with her latest drama, Heart of a Dog (right). Cary Fukunaga has cast Idris Elba in his actioner based on the experiences of a child soldier in the civil war of an unnamed African country: Beasts of No Nation. And where would Venice be without an animation title? Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman provide this in the shape of Anomalisa which features the voices of Jennifer Jason-Leigh, David Thewlis and Tom Noonon in a stop-motion film about a man crippled by the mundanity of his own life. Drake Doremus (Breathe In) presents Equals (above left) a sci-fi love story set in a futuristic world where emotions have been eradicated. The US crowd-pleaser, it will star none other than Kristen Stewart, Nicholas Hoult and Bel Powley. Veterans Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau and Bruno Ganz lead in Atom Egoyan’s latest thriller Remember that looks back at a dark chapter of the 20th century through a contempo revenge mission. Australian Sue Brooks is the other female director In Competition with her drama Looking for Grace starring Odessa Young (The Daughter/Locarno) in the lead, supported by Radha Mitchell (Man on Fire) and Tom Roxburghe (Van Helsing).

On the hispanic front, Mexico’s entry is Desde Alli (Out of There), the debut feature of filmmaker Lorenzo Vigas which stars Alfredo Castro (No). Pablo Trapero’s El Clan offers up a gritty slice of Argentine history in a drama that explores the true story of the Puccio Clan, a family who kidnapped and killed in Buenos Aires during the 80s.

Russian director Alexandr Sokurov’s La Francophonie: The Louvre Under Occupation studies the Second World War “from a humanitarian point of view” but the director is unlikely to attend the festival, according to sources. Israel’s Amos Gitai looks to politics for inspiration in his title: Rabin, The Last Day, and China’s Zhao Lang offers us a documentary Behemoth (left) which looks intriguing.

And last, but never least, Tom Hooper flies the flag for Britain with The Danish Girl, his screen adaptation loosely based on David Ebershoff’s book about the 1920s Danish artist, Gerda Wegener, whose painting of her husband as a female character led him to pursue the first male to female sex-change and become Lili Elbe. Eddie Redmayne leads a starry cast of Alicia Vikander, Ben Wishaw and Matthias Schoenaerts in this Copenhagen-set drama. MT

72TH VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 2 -12 SEPTEMBER 2015 | LIDO DE VENEZIA

Closed Curtain | Parde (2013) | Silver Bear Best Script | Berlinale 2013

Director: Jafar Panahi
Cast Kambozia Partovi, Maryam Moghadam, Jafar Panahi, Hadi Saeedi

106min Drama

Both the dog and his master are being tracked by the authorities in Closed Curtain, Jafar Panahi’s oblique existential piece of meta filmmaking from contemporary Iran which follows on from his documentary This Is Not A Film.

Opening with an extended static shot of a seaside window barred by security gates, it’s a sober and bewildering set-up brought to life only by ‘the man’, played sensitively here by Panahi himself, and his lovely little dog who he is at pains to hide in this modern villa on the shores of the Caspian Sea. When a strange couple appear from nowhere pleading to be given shelter a reign of attrition sets in with each character eyeing the other suspiciously and the dog aware that something isn’t right.

With its ambient feel of menace, Closed Curtain is a disorientating film that alienates its audience and generates a strong feeling of claustrophobia as, understandably, it never moves outside the villa but is nevertheless atmospherically shot in a palette of soft seaside hues and terracotta: you could almost be on the Mediterranean were it not for the echoes of ambient hostility from local Police and some intruders who ransack the property. Our sympathies lie with the gentle man and his clever dog rather than the passive aggressive provocative who has purportedly attended a party and is seeking refuge from rebuke.

What develops is exactly what you imagine would happen if you asked a group of students to produce a film about creative expression in a repressed society: heavy-handed and amateurish in style. Not one of Panahi’s stronger outings then but considering he was purportedly under house arrest for “committing propaganda crimes against the Iranian Government” not a bad effort and certainly worth watching for devotees of this inventive and resourceful director’s work. MT

REVIEWED DURING BERLINALE 2013 | NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Why Me (2015) | Cambridge Film Festival 2015

Writer|Director: Tudor Giurgiu

Cast: Emilian Oprea, Mihai Constantin, Andreea Vasile

125min Romanian Political Thriller

Romanian director Tudor Giurgiu crafts a caustic Kafkaesque thriller based on a true case of political and police corruption.

Romanian new wave drama WHY ME is Tudor Giurgiu’s third fiction feature and a no holds barred exposé of Romanian state criminal prosecutor Cristian Panait (29), who was found dead in suspicious circumstances in 2002 after he took a fearless stand to uphold the truth in a case the high-profile corruption battle that still resonates for those involved and affected. Whether it will have appeal for general audiences is questionable but this offers absorbing entertainment for keen cineastes or the Eastern European arthouse crowd.

Serving as an allegory for Post Communist Romania, WHY ME has all the trappings of a grown-up crime thriller. Slick production values and Giurgiu’s masterful direction elicits a dynamite performance from the dashingly dour Emilian Oprea in the lead as Cristian Panait (here called Panduru). As a university lecturer and leading light in the criminal prosecution service, his strict moral code does not extend to his sexual relationships: he enjoys a high octane feisty chemisty with his girlfriend Dora (Andreea Vasile) while hotly pursuing the charms of his female students. At only 29, he is put forward to handle a thorny corruption case against Bogdan Leca (Alin Florea), another prosecutor involved in smuggling charges against prominent political figures in post Soviet Romania. Although Panduru initially leaps at the opportunity to handle the case, he becomes less keen when he suspects the authorities of using him as a pawn. But his life downsirals into paranoia after backing out of the Leca case and soon he feels unable to trust even his own doting mother, with tragic consequences.

To some extent WHY ME is semi- autobiogrpahical for Giurgiu, who ia Romania’s best known director, both at home and abroad. He was also the main proponent of Romania’s BBC equivalent before resigning under political pressure. Not for the feint-hearted, the film is hard-hitting and heavyweight with some emotional scenes but very few glimpses of the usual dry Romanian sense of humour.

Through suberb widescreen cinematography WHY ME offers some opportunities to see Bucharest and the surrounding scenery and local architecture as well as the smoke-filled corridors of government power where Panait fought to expose corruption. Eventually, possibly through his efforts, Romania disbanded its secret forces in a widescale crack-down on corrupt politicians. Worthwhile and intelligent. MT

CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 3 SEPTEMBER UNTIL 13 SEPTEMBER 2015

Miss Julie (2014)

Dir.: Liv Ullmann

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton

Norway/UK/Canada/USA/France/Ireland 2014, 130 min.

August Strindberg’s play was written in 1888 and premiered a year later. The playwright had seen the play as a tribute to Darwin. Set in a pure and naturalistic way, it showed the battle for survival between the Count’s daughter Julie and his father’s valet Jean, as seen and refereed by Christine, Jean’s fiancée and a servant in the house. Liv Ullmann has set the film in a manor house in County Fermanagh in 1890, where Jean becomes an English John and Christine, Kathleen. Ullmann attempts to soften some of Strindberg’s misogyny, which spoils many of his plays.

Set on Midsummer’s Eve, Ullmann’s Julie (Jessica Chastain) is a brittle young woman, in awe of her father, but trying to follow the advice of her mother – who died when Julie was a child – in never becoming the slave of a man. She is a virgin, and no match for the scheming John (Farrell), who has lusted after her since boyhood and wants to run away with her, using her father’s money to realise his grand dream of opening a hotel near Lake Como, where he was once a headwaiter. After sleeping with Julie, and rebuffing his fiancée Christine (Morton), it dawns on John that Julie will never be able to get out of the shadow of her privileged upbringing: he tells the desperate woman to kill herself, so as to save his own discretion coming to light.

Miss Julie is more or less filmed theatre and apart from the several outdoor scenes where Julie frolics in a woodland idyll, the action takes place in the manor house, which is more like a claustrophobic prison than anything else. Shot through with this sombre and stultifying aesthetic, even the seemingly whitewashed walls feel deadly grey – Ullmann’s version has very much in common with another Strindberg play, Dance of Death (Two Parts), written in 1900. Julie and John fight it out between themselves but there is never any doubt who will be the winner.

In spite of the great pathos, the two lead performances save the film. Chastain’s Julie is the disturbed child woman who looks for a way out of her ‘Golden Cage’, given to histrionics one moment then crawling at John’s feet as if she was his servant, the next. Her emotions are all borderline neurotic, she has not really developed into an adult. The oily John is a masterful portrait of a creep by Farrell, slimy as an eel, he controls and manipulates Julie to save his own skin, mastering perfect spoken French for the role of a faux sophisticate who can barely hide an empty, jealous and small-minded past. It would have been easy for Morton’s Christine to be marginalised, but her performance as an honest, faithful and rather brave woman is astonishing. She is not afraid to tell both Julie and John the truth about their personalities and unmask their lack of authenticity, and provides a mirror into which the feuding couple are afraid to look. Running at over two hours, the drama is by far too long for the limited interaction, MISS JULIE is not helped by an old-fashioned and stagey treatment, leaving it firmly in the past, in spite of its contemporary appeal. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED VENUES ON 4 SEPTEMBER 2015

La Peau Douce | Soft Skin (1964) | Blu-ray release

Dir: Francois Truffaut | Cast: Jean Desailly, Françoise Dorléac, Nelly Benedetti, Daniel Ceccaldi, Laurence Badie, Philippe Dumat | France, Drama 123′

Truffaut’s La Peau Douce is known, in translation, as Soft Skin, as it best conveys the film’s vulnerability of character and minimal eroticism. It’s a superb, understated study of adultery that descends into a crime passionel.

Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly) is a middle-aged writer and publisher well-known for his TV appearances discussing the work of Balzac. On a flight to Lisbon he’s attracted to Nicole (Françoise Dorléac) a beautiful young air hostess. They meet later, at their hotel, and embark on an affair. His wife Franca (Nelly Benedetti) suspects her husband has a lover. Pierre denies the fact and leaves Franca and his young daughter, for Nicole. A divorce looks likely but…

Marital infidelity is so hackneyed a subject that even in 1963 it appeared unlikely to surprise audiences. The film did badly at the box office; even Truffaut was disappointed with the final result. Maybe because he was preoccupied with seeking funding for his Fahrenheit 451 project and interviewing Hitchcock, for what was to become a seminal book for our understanding of the art and craft of film direction: Indeed the shadow of Hitchcock is present throughout a feature full of subtle psychological details: shoes placed outside hotel rooms as a clue to finding the person you desire; or apprehension at the petrol station where Lachenay thinks Nicole has deserted him. Truffaut learnt so well from ‘The Master.’

Soft Skin’s characters are not in the least bit conventionally romantic. Pierre is weak-willed, indecisive and clumsy – arranging meetings with Nicole. She is seriously attached to him but her ‘love’ for Pierre results in her suffering humiliation and neglect because of their clandestine arrangements. The long middle sequence, set in Rheims, where Pierre gives a talk to accompany an Yves Allegret documentary on André Gide, has him desperately trying to ignore and hide from the presence of Nicole – she cant even get to buy a ticket to Pierre’s lecture less his relationship be discovered and reputation damaged. When the infidelity is revealed, Truffaut’s script devotes more screen time to the wife and the strong effect the infidelity has on her. Franca turns out to be the most determined and confident player in the drama: much more certain of her needs than the constantly interrupted lovers.

Casting is crucial to making an intense adultery movie work. The performances of Jean Desaily, Françoise Dorléac, (the late actress was the sister of Catherine Deneuve) and Nelly Benedetti are absolutely faultless. B& W Photography is by the great Raoul Coutard. Georges Delerue supplies a beautiful film score, sparingly used and well-timed. And one of the numerous, if incidental, pleasures of Truffaut’s brilliant direction is the knowledge that in order to cut down on costs, he shot a lot of the film in his own spacious Parisian apartment. Soft Skin has been underrated and unjustly neglected. But now it’s available on Artificial Eye Blu-Ray to re-evaluate or discover for the first time. Alan Price

BFI Blu-ray release on 6 June 2022

Pressure (2015)

Dir.: Ron Scalpello

Cast: Danny Huston, Matthew Goode, Joe Cole, Alan McKenna

UK 2015, 91 min. Thriller

Director Ron Scalpello (Offender) has made a thriller with absolutely no thrills or tension, for that matter. PRESSURE, the story of four divers trapped in their bell on the ocean ground is trite and hollow, on devoid of cinematographic values, due to the minimal spaces where the ‘action’ unfolds.

Classics of the genre, like Apollo 13, have shown that the use of a very restricted space for a man versus nature battle relies on the use of an alternative location and a narrative which uses fully-fledged characters with interesting/contracting backstories. PRESSURE is set nearly exclusively in the diving bell (apart from a few weak flash-backs showing the protagonists’ past), and none of the characters are anything but limp and under-developed. This is a shame, because Engel (Danny Huston) has a really dodgy past, but we learn nothing of substance about him. Mitchell (Goode) is ‘the’ family-man, but what emerges is the obvious, namely that he neglects his family due to his professional absence. Jones (Cole) the rookie, is just that; and even the semi-villain Hurst (McKenna), is just a weak wreck, unable to use his hands properly, thanks to to many hours under water, he nearly undermines the rescue work of the others, but redeems himself. It is difficult to root for any of them, and the main attraction for watching a film of this type is gone.

DOP Richard Mott tries his best to conjure up some images worth remembering, but narrative and locations give him little chance. PRESSURE is simply a wreck, better left to sink without trace AS

In cinemas 21 August | Available to download from 24th August & on DVD 31st August

One Floor Below | Cannes 2015 | Un Certain Regard | SARAJEVO FF 2015

Director: Radu Muntean

Cast: Ionat Bora, Liviu Cheloiu, Calin Chirila, Teodor Corban

93min Romanian Drama

Sandu Patrescu, the middle-aged anti-hero of Radu Muntean’s Un Certain Regard hopeful, ONE FLOOR BELOW, has a reason to be tight-lipped and dour. He grew up during the sinister communist regime of Romanian dictator, Ceausescu.

Living with his wife and geeky son in the faced glory of an Art Nouveau building in a leafy suburb of Bucharest, he walks his golden retriever Jerry in the local park, enjoys a close and lovingly respectful relationship with his mother and runs a successful car hire business. In this middle-class, Sandu keeps himself to himself so when he overhears raised voices and salacious goings on from the flat below, he guiltily decides to draw a veil over the proceedings but and tells the Police nothing when they arrive to investigate a woman’s death downstairs in the block of flats.

Muntean’s meta drama is exquisitely framed but rather sinister in tone as its slow-burning narrative gradually ignites into a flaming finale in the third act; always playing its sombre secrets close to its chest.

It turns out that his neighbour Dima (Iulian Postelnicu) who lives with his wife in the flat below, has been having sex with the dead woman. And when an ambulance arrives to remove the bodybag from her ground floor home, it emerges this was not just an accident. So when Dima asks Patrascu to help him change the title and deed of his car, his focus sharpens on this suspicious young man, who seems over-gracious and quite cocky his wife and son.

There is a great deal of watching and waiting in this tense and protracted psychodrama, but Sandu’s uneasiness gradually starts to permeates each calm and well-composed frame. Mundean’s minimalist new wave drama takes a Zen approach to crime-investigaton that will appeal to arthouse enthusiasts but may not suit those looking for a faster-paced thriller. This is a story that is more about the journey than the destination. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 13 – 24 MAY 2015 | CANNES 2015

SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 22 AUGUST 2015

Ang Lee Trilogy | Pushing Hands |The Wedding Banquet | Eat Drink Man Woman | DVD

PUSHING HANDS | Director: Ang Lee | Cast: Sihung Lung, Lai Wang, Bo Z Wang, Deb Snyder | 105min Drama US

Themes of duty and family were to shape Ang Lee’s work and his debut PUSHING HANDS is very much a domestic drama. Taiwanese Tai Master (Sihung Lung) struggles to adapt to a new life in the conflicted American household of his only son Alex, his Jewish wife Marsha, and their little boy. Co-written with regular collaborator James Schamus and starring Sihung Lung (Crouching Tiger, Eat Drink Man Woman) and veteran Lai Wang, this first feature’s only flaw is a rather clunky support cast.

Sihung Lung plays Mr Chu, an intuitive and affable old man at odds with his neurotic daughter in law, who subconsciously blames him for her ‘writer’s block’. Our sympathies lie more with Mr Chu and his amusing spiritual take on life. During the day, he teaches Tai Chi in a local Taiwanese community centre where he strikes up a tentative rapport with Mrs Chen (Lai Wang), a widow from Taiwan who teaches cookery.

This gentle often humorous drama pokes fun at national idiosyncrasies as well as cultural differences, showing the Taiwanese to be a feisty and fiercely loyal bunch. Sihung Lung gives a nuanced and thoughtful performance as an ageing father who still holds traditional values, making it hard to express himself romantically, despite his spiritual awareness.

Apart from their lacklustre performances as unappealing characters, Martha and Alex are a mismatched couple, both volatile and lacking in any real chemistry in contrast to the more successful pairing of Mr Chu and Mrs Chen who steal the show especially towards end where the tone shifts to melodrama in a devastating and unexpected finale.

Despite its pitfalls, PUSHING HANDS is a well-crafted and worthwhile start to Ang Lee’s success as a filmmaker. MT

THE WEDDING BANQUET | Cast: Sihung Lung, Winston Chao, May Chin, Mitchell Lichtenstein |106min | US Comedy

THE WEDDING BANQUET returns once again to family territory with a slick comedy with less heart and soul than Pushing Hands but entertaining nonetheless, as Ang Lee’s growing confidence ensures a smoother feel. A gay landlord’s marriage of convenience to one of his female tenants gets into Queer Street when her parents discover the ploy. As this is not a gay outing in the strict sense of the word, its appeal will garner more mainstream appeal.

Sihung Lung is once again the star turn, as wise head of a Taiwanese family, Mr Gao. Delighted that his son Wai-tung (Winston Chao) is finally going to carry on the family line (after years of nagging), he makes a surprise visit to NYC with his wife to meet the delightful Wei-Wei (May Chin) expecting a full scale wedding and not the registry office slot, planned for the following afternoon, as the Wai-tung’s gay lover Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) lurks sympathetically in the background as Best Man.

Plenty of Meet the Fockers-style awkwardness ensues during the hastily thrown together wedding banquet but proceedings take turn for the worse when, in a bizarre bi-sexual twist, Wai-tung makes Wei-Wei pregnant on their wedding night. This is a light-hearted affair with the thrust on comedy rather than character development. That said the ensemble cast give decent performances and Ang Lee is seen in cameo with the line “You’re witnessing the result of 5,000 years of sexual repression”. MT

EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN | Cast: Sihung Lung, Chien-Lien Wu, Kuei Mei-Yang, Yu-Wen Wang; Taiwan 1994, 123 min.

The third and most accomplished film in this Box trilogy is Lee’s 1994 outing EAT DRINK, MAN WOMAN based on the first lines of the traditional chinese Book of Rites “The things which men greatly desire are comprehended in meat and drink and sexual pleasures”, Eat Drink Man Woman is a gentle parable of domestic unhappiness. Mr. Chu (Lung), a famous chef and longterm widower, has three daughters who are frustrated in many different ways. Chu is always dissatisfied with his lot and, perhaps symbolically, has lost his taste buds with his cooking leaving much to be desired. Jia-Chien (Wu) is an airline executive, Jia-Jen (Mei-Yang), the oldest, is a prim school teacher who is disappointed in life after an unhappy love affair, and like her father, unable to make a new start. Jia-Ning (Wang), the youngest, is the only sibling able to express her unhappiness with her lot and the stifling family atmosphere. In a similar vein to Rohmer’s ‘Moral Tales”, there is a philosophical undercurrent and also, a somehow slightly false happy-ending. But Eat Drink Man Woman is hugely entertaining; the love life of the sisters wreaking havoc with the sleeping arrangements of the household. AS

THE TRILOGY IS OUT ON DVD FROM 24 AUGUST 2015

The Forgotten Kingdom (2013)

Director/Writer: Andrew Mudge

Cast: Nozipho Nkelemba, Zenzo Ngqobe, Jerry Mofokeng, Lebohang Nisane,

96min Drama South Africa English and Southern Sotho

A young man living in Johannesburg, South Africa, discovers unexpected enlightenment and redemption when he is forced to make a journey back to his Lesotho birthplace in Andrew Mudge’s perfectly pitched indie debut THE FORGOTTEN KINGDOM, another story of father/son estrangement.

Atang (Zenzo Ngqobe) has a buzzy life surrounded by friends and family in downtown Joburg. But duty calls him to his estranged father’s death bed in Lesotho. By the time he arrives the old man has already died of HIV, in a small remote village in the mountains, and Atang must give him a decent Christian burial. Set on the widescreen and in intimate domestic scenes, this magical modern parable is really brought to life by D.P. Carlos Carvalho’s stunningly limpid visuals that convey the luminosity of the South African countryside and the vibrancy of its people and customs. As Atang grudgingly connects with the place where he grew up, a low-key love story develops with his childhood friend Dineo (Nozipho Nkelemba), now a teacher, exerting a calm healing on his soul and helping him to come to terms with his complicated past. Atang eventually returns to Johannesburg with a greater perspective on his life and keen to earn enough money so he can make a life with Dineo. What he discovers on his return will be make or break him.

THE FORGOTTEN KINGDOM is one of those charmingly poetic indie films that actually draws you to South Africa to experience its rich culture and extraordinary beauty, in contrast to the stream of overwhelmingly negative stories that come out of a country that is is pictured as being constantly submerged by strife and conflict. Like everywhere, there are positive stories and South Africans want them to be told and while Andrew Mudge doesn’t attempt to paint an overly romantic portrait of this young man’s life, he avoids cliché while acknowledging that Lesotho does have a considerable HIV problem, but is not entirely defined by it. An absorbing narrative, naturalistic performances from a cast of newcomers and experienced actors and Robert Miller’s original and unobtrusive score, THE FORGOTTEN KINGDOM is a worthwhile, intelligent watch. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE IN SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 21 AUGUST 2015

Gemma Bovery (2014)

Director/Writer: Anne Fontaine Writer: Pascale Bonitzer

Cast: Fabrice Luchini, Gemma Arterton, Jason Flemyng, Kacey Mottet Klein, Niels Schneider, Isabelle Candelier, Mel Raido, Pip Torens, Elsa Zylberstein

Romantic comedy drama

If Posy Simmonds’ chick-lit and the saccharine charms of Gemma Arterton appeal to you then Anne Fontaine’s re-working of the classic Flaubert novel is for you. If not, stay well away from this trivial pick n mix of Chocolat and In the House, drenched in a helping of A Year in Provence…and a dash of Mother’s Milk.

Dumbly scripted by award-winning Pascale Bonitzer to echo Simmonds’ satirical paperback, this Normandy-set romantic romp will have Flaubert spinning in his grave with anger and dismay. A trashy English cast and half decent French one is lead by a charmingly sympa Fabrice Lucchini as, Martin Joubert, a publisher who has retired to the idyllic spot of Auberville-la-Manuel to run the local bakery with his sparky wife (Isabelle Candelier) and teenage son (Kacey Mottet Klein). Taking his romantic disillusionment out on kneading the daily bread, he has comes to terms with the banality of his life in this quiet country backwater when the arrival of English neighbours, a voluptuous young Gemma Bovery (Arterton) and her broke and raddled ‘hubby’ Charles move in next door, sets his feathers all a flutter with a sexual frisson tempered by the fear (or is it hope) that this perky young bride will end up with the same fate as her literary namesake from Flaubert’s 1850s novel.

Best known for Coco Before Chanel, Anne Fontaine opts for a jaunty and salacious tone that will most likely appeal to Daily Mail readers rather than Simmonds’ Guardian following, ramping up the sensational aspects of her Bovery story rather than the insightful realism of the French original, resulting in a schematic tale than feels rather dated with its 80s sensibilities riven with unlikely pairings and glaring plotholes (to discuss them would reveal too much). Let’s just flag up one for your consideration: Why would nubile and artistic Gemma end up with a divorced, insolvent loser like Charlie (Jason Flemyng) living in a damp and dreary country cottage in the 21st century? Clearly Fontaine wanted to make a commercial film that would appeal to UK|US audiences rather than French ones, and Bonitzer’s script is suitably tuned towards those audiences with its mentions of yoga, Notting Hill, rag-rolling and gluten-free bread).

In the same style as Ozon’s In the House, the story unfurls via Martin’s first person narration – he is the only interesting character – but the piece rapidly falls into what Flaubert calls ‘the pettiness and predictability of daily life” due to a trite and unlikeable set of provincial characters in a village that anyone would be desperate to get back to Paris to avoid. Luchini’s expression throughout is one of baffled wonderment and disbelief: that he can be the only decent actor in the film and that he is witnessing the destruction of his beloved literary work. Despite his better judgement, he falls under Gemma’s spell seduced by her sluttish vapidness and entranced by her louche disregard for decency as she falls for the local lord of the manor, a tousled hair youngster Visconte de Bressigny (a really well-cast Niels Schneider) and so begins her descent down the path of her literary counterpart. On the way we have to contend with the evil smugness of local arrivistes Wizzy and Rankin (ghastly Zylberstein and Torens), her ex, demon-lover Patrick (a second rate Mel Raido) and a strange cameo from Edith Scoob as the redoubtable Madame de Bressigny. All the while, we are treated to glimpses of Arterton in her undies (Myla or Agent Provocateur?), boogying down to her rag-rolling, and sensuously pouting over the freshly baked brioches which will finally lead to her downfall in the unlikely and far-fetched denouement. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 21 AAUGUST 2015

The Colour of Money | From the Gold Rush to the Credit Crunch | September 2015

Perfectly situated in the hub of Europe’s Financial centre, The Barbican offers a selection of films and discussions this Autumn exploring money through themes of power, wealth, poverty, corruption and consumerism.

From the silent era comes Erich von Stroheim’s potent thriller GREED, shows how the corruptive force of a sudden fortune ruins the lives of three Californians. The glitzy side of Hollywood is depicted in Mervyn LeRoy’s comedy musical GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (right) where millionaire turned composer Dick Powell uses his fortune for the good of the community. Robert Bresson won best director at Cannes 1983 for his classic l’ARGENT based on Tolstoy’s The Forged Coupon that explores the journey of 500 franc note and the devastating effect on its final recipient. In THE WHITE BALLOON (1995), Jafar Panahi’s slice of realism, written by Abbas Kiarostami examines how a child is swindled out of her birthday money and blockbuster THE WOLF OF WALL STREET charts the rise to riches and ultimate fall of New York stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) due to a 1990s securities scam. In AMERICAN PYSCHO (2000) Christian Bale stars as another wealthy City who sociopathic personality enables him to fund a lifestyle and escape into his own American dream. These are our recommendations:

GREED | Dir: Erich von Stroheim; Cast: Gibson Gowland, Za Su Pitts, Jean Hersholt | USA 1923; 462 min. (original), 140 min. (theatrical release), 239 min. (restored version)

Roger Ebert called Greed “the ‘Venus of Milo’ of films, acclaimed as a classic, despite missing several parts deemed essential by its creator”. It is also a classic example of Hollywood butchery, in this case performed by the new partners of MGM, Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer; Thalberg turning out to be Von Stroheim’s bête noir having already fired him from Merry-Go-Round at Universal. Just twelve people saw the original version (edited from 85 hours of total footage); one of them, the director Rex Ingram, believed that Greed was the best film ever and would never be surpassed. Shot over 198 days from June to October 1923 in San Francisco, Death Valley and Placer Country, California, it took over a year to edit, and cost $ 564 654 (around $ 60 million in todays money), but only grossed $ 274827 at the box office.

Based on the novel ‘Mc Teague’ by Frank Norris, Greed centres around the relationship of John Mc Teague (Gibson) and his wife Trina (Pitts). Mc Teague is operating as a dentist without a licence, when he meets Trina, who has been the girl friend of his best friend Marcus Schouler (Hersholt). After Trina wins $5000 in the lottery just before she marries McTeague, Schouler wants her back, and denounces Mc Teague to the police, for working without a licence. Mc Teague asks Trina for $3000, to save his skin, but she refuses him, being too fond of the money – she cleans the coins until they glitter. Mc Teague murders his wife and Schouler again reports him to the police. Mc Teague flees to Death Valley from his pursuers, among them Schouler, whom he fights to the death.

Greed caused violence to break out off screen too. The film was nearly destroyed because of its unwieldy length, making it almost impossible to edit. A fist fight broke out between Mayer and Von Stroheim, after the former provoked the director with “I suppose you consider me rabble”, to which Von Stroheim answered “Not even that”. Mayer struck him so hard, that he fell through the office door. Mayer wanted a uplifting film for the “Jazz Age’, and Greed was uncompromising realism. But the studio even changed the meaning of what was left with inter-title cards. In the MGM version, when Trina and Mc Teague went by train to the countryside, the MGM title card reads “This is the first day it hasn’t rained in weeks. I thought it would be nice to go for a walk”. In Rick Schmidlin’s reconstructed version of 1999 (based on Stroheim’s 330 page shooting script and stills) it reads: “Let’s go and sit on the sewer” – and so they sit down on the sewer.

Von Stroheim, who invented an aristocratic upbringing and a glorious army career for himself, was nevertheless a master of realism when it came to films: when Gowland and Hersholt fight in Death Valley, the temperature was over 120 degrees, and many of the cast and crew had to take sick leave, Von Stroheim coaxed the actor on “Fight, fight. Try to hate each other as you hate me”. AS

L’ARGENT (1983) | Dir.: Robert Bresson | Cast: Christian Patey, Caroline Lang, Sylvie Van der Elsen, Michel Briguet France/Switzerland 1983, 85 min.

To find the money to direct what turned out to be his last film L’Argent, Robert Bresson needed the intervention of the French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang – just like he did with L’Argent’s predecessor Le Diable Probablement (1977). L’Argent went on to win the Director’s Prize in Cannes, sharing in with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia.

L’Argent is Bresson’s truest ‘Dostoevskyan’ work, even though it is based on Leo Tolstoy’s novella ‘The Forged Coupon’. From the outset, money changes hands at a furious tempo: a young boy asks his father for pocket money but what he gets is not enough for him; he pawns his watch to his friend, who gives him a forged 500 Franc note. The boy, having recognised the forgery, takes the money to a photo shop, buying only a cheap frame with the note. The manager of the shop – after discovering the forged note, scolds his wife for being so naïve. But she reminds him that he took in himself two forged notes of the same denomination the week ago. The owner gives all three notes to Yvon Targe (Patey), who is the gas bill collector. Later, in a restaurant, Yvon tries to use the money but the waiter recognises the forgeries. Yvon is spared jail, but loses his job. Moneyless, he acts as get-away-driver for a friend’s robbery, but the plot fails and Yvon’s run of bad luck continues until its devastating denouement.

Apart from opening, everything is told in Bresson’s very own elliptical but terse style, making the smallest detail more important than the action. The prison is shown as a labyrinth in which Yvon is lost, particularly when sent into solitary confinement after a fight with fellow prisoners. The prison is shown in great detail in a similar vein to Un Condamne à mort s’est Echappé (1956) and becomes the material witness to Yvon’s suffering. The murder of the hotel-keepers is shown only in hindsight: a long medium shot of bloody water in a basin, followed by a close-up of Yvon emptying the till. The failed robbery is shown by the reactions of the passersb-by, who witness Yvon driving off, after shots are fired. Finally, enigma of the last shot in the restaurant, when the crowd looses interest in Yvon, as if he were simply not enough of a person, in spite of the hideous murders. In this shot, the whole universe of Bresson is captured: there seems to be no sense in human deeds, and, therefore there is no question of a why, and no guilt, but, perhaps just redemption.

DOP Pasqualino de Santis (Death in Venice) excels particularly in bringing together the close-up shots of the objects, and the long shots of Yvon as he gets increasingly lost: in the robbery, in prison, and in the cosy house of an old woman. We feel him shrinking, as he loses his identity during the film, becoming a total non-person by the end. The acting is as understated as possible, and Bresson closes his oeuvre of only thirteen films in fifty years with another discourse on spiritual and mystic values in a world, where money is everything and everywhere. AS/MT

THE COLOUR OF MONEY | BARBICAN LONDON EC2 | 10 – 20 SEPTEMBER 2015

The President (2014)

Dir.: Moshen Makhmalbaf

Cast: Misha Gomiastvili, Dachi Orvelashvili

Georgia, France, UK, Germany, 115 min.

Moshen Makhmalbaf’s THE PRESIDENT is a collaborative affair with his filmmaking family. It tells the story of a deposed dictator, running for his life in a seemingly naïve way, with his grandson in tow – only when the story develops do we appreciate the wisdom and humanism Makhmalbaf is famous for.

The film begins with the president’s family still in absolute control with the power to switch the lights on or off in the capital to his heart’s content. When a mass uprising by the impoverished population of this nameless country sees the entire ruling family clan fly away to safer shores – the stubborn patriarch digs his heels in with his equally tenacious grandson: the two of them are made for each other. With servants and friends deserting or being shot, soon the odd couple is alone: running from the opposition forces and a vengeful nation who want the ever growing price put on their heads. The tyrant poses as a political prisoner and joins a band of them, many of whom are tortured, on their way home. We ask ourselves, how long it will take for the two to be captured, but when this happens, it us under the most extraordinary circumstances.

Told in the style of a fable, THE PRESIDENT contrasts the before/after effect of the dictator’s existence: cold and cynical when in power, he changes into something more human after he is deposed – and not only because he is now on the receiving end of life. His love for his grandson is unconditional, and his machiavellian cunning is used for the benefit of another human being, for the first time in his life.

THE PRESIDENT is a parable on what a revolution does to a nation: how quickly liberation gives way to revenge and the hunt for new enemies. Wonderfully performed, with sweeping cinematography of this magnificent, unknown country and of the misery of the displaced. A mature and passionate film that finds humour n the most precarious situations. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE | CURZON BLOOMSBURY | AUGUST 15 2015

Venice | International Critics’ Week | SIC Selection 2015

Venice International Film Festival has its own version of Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique, entitled, not surprisingly – SETTIMANA DELLA CRITICA. Celebrating its 30 edition, British veteran actor Peter Mullan will be in Venice to open the festival as a guest of honour and will receive the Saturnia Prize 30 Special Award for ORPHANS (1998) for the best debut feature in the entire history of the Venice Film Critics’ Week: The selection runs in tandem with the competition films from 2 until 6 September at the famous Lido festival hub – all the films are debuts – as follows:

BAHADUR BHAM – KALO POTHI (THE BLACK HEN) right
Nepal, France, Germany, 86′
Khadka Raj Nepali, Sukra Raj Rokaya, Jit Bahadur Malla, Hansha Khadka

MARTIN BUTLER, BENTLEY DEAN – TANNA
Australia, Vanuatu, 104′
Mungau Dain, Marie Wawa, Marceline Rofit, Chief Charlie Kahla, Albi Nangia, Lingai Kowia, Dadwa Mungau, Linette Yowayin, Kapan Cook, Chief Mikum Tainakou

ESTHER MAY CAMPBELL – LIGHT YEARS
United Kingdom, 90′
Beth Orton, Muhammet Uzuner, Zamiera Fuller, Sophie Burton, James Stucky

ANTONIO CAPUANO – BAGNOLI JUNGLE [CLOSING FILM – OUT OF COMPETITION SPECIAL EVENT]
Italy, 100′
Antonio Casagrande, Luigi Attrice, Marco Grieco

PETER MULLAN – ORPHANS (1998) [OPENING FILM – OUT OF COMPETITION SPECIAL EVENT]
United Kingdom, 95′
Gary Lewis, Douglas Henshall, Rosemarie Stevenson, Stephen McCole, Frank Gallagher, Alex Norton

JOÃO SALAVIZA – MONTANHA (MOUNTAIN)
Portugal, France, 88′
David Mourato, Rodrigo Perdigão, Cheyenne Domingues, Maria João Pinho

LIU SHUMIN – JIA (THE FAMILY) right
China, Australia, 280′
Deng Shoufang, Liu Lijie, Liu Xiaomin, Jiang Jiangsheng, Chen Erya, Huang Liqin, Liao Zepeng, Liu Xuju

SENEM TÜZEN – ANA YURDU (MOTHERLAND) right
Turkey, Greece, 98′
Esra Bezen Bilgin, Nihal Koldas, Semih Aydin, Fatma Kisa

ADRIANO VALERIO – BANAT (THE JOURNEY)
Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, 82′
Edoardo Gabriellini, Elena Radonicich, Piera Degli Esposti, Stefan Velniciuc, Ovanes Torosyan

GREEN ZENG – THE RETURN
Singapore, 80′
Chen Tianxiang, Vincent Tee, Tan Beng Chiak, Gary Tang, Evelyn Wang, Wong Kai Tow, Isaiah Lee, Eugene Tan, Shan Rievan

INTERNATIONAL CRITICS’ WEEK | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2 – 6 SEPTEMBER 2015

Jack (2015) | Locarno Film Festival 2015

Director: Elisabeth Scharang

Austria Drama 95mins

Leopards changing or not changing spots is a good starting point for JACK. An anti-thriller that subtly asks whether a killer is born or made, it received its world-premiere at the 68th edition of Locarno Film Festival, whose fitting avatar—a speckled golden feline—prowls across the screen before each film. The second feature by Austrian director Elisabeth Scharang is a curious fictionalisation of the life of Johann ‘Jack’ Unterweger (Johannes Krisch), who rose to short-lived fame as a poet and writer in 1990s Vienna, having been released from a 15-year prison stint for murdering a woman in 1974—only to be convicted for more than ten additional murders thereafter, before killing himself in 1994.

Scharang is more vague than the history books as to whether Unterweger did indeed start murdering again after his release—and the real thrust of the film’s final third has to do with how far we can take the protagonist at his word, having never really been allowed in to begin with. In 2008, John Malkovich portrayed him on the stage. Krisch, who looks like Robert Carlyle playing Willem Dafoe, depicts him as an impenetrably and vulnerably confident soul (naked foetal positions abound), in line with Unterweger’s own psychiatric diagnosis with narcissistic personality disorder not long before his 1994 conviction.

It’s not until the final on-screen text that Scharang reveals her real-life inspiration, however, which makes the film itself all the more intriguing. With a catchy soundtrack by Austrian alt-rock band Naked Lunch serving to distance us from a position from which we might otherwise discern the eponymous character’s intentions, JACK—not unlike the protagonist—keeps its cards close to its chest. It’s never really made clear what the film’s overriding purpose, its dramatic premise, actually is. That’s a strength rather than a weakness here, forcing us not merely to invest in the central character but to question whether or not we want to, or indeed should.

It’s a clever approach, given the film’s theme of rehabilitation and the institutional and social structures that propagate or deny it. For many, Jack has paid for the callous murder of a woman one wintry night a decade and a half previously, and his release from prison concludes a process that heals by means of punishment—i.e., serving time (“time is running, but my time stands still”). But at the mere hint that Jack is responsible for other murders (in Prague, Los Angeles, Dornbirn), all bar a few of his associates abandon him.

This is, more than anything else, a cool treatise on the ways in which a media circus can extract capital from a convict at the same time as enabling his continued criminalisation. Long before Jack is suspected of killing again, we see publishers, sales agents and publicists happily promoting his entry into that fickle trajectory called fame (“I’ll be famous,” he tells his lover after sex. “I’ll get to the top”). Celebrity demands content like a leech does blood: when sales figures for his book aren’t quite as high as expected, Jack is pressured into investigative journalism, forced back into his old world of pimps and prostitutes so that he can file front-line missives.

Scharang and cinematographer Jörg Widmer light this latter milieu with the same superficial sheen as those parasitic offices of the publishing world, suggesting the two have more than a mere resemblance. Rather disturbingly, in fact, the director suggests that the entire punishment/retribution debate, as perpetuated by the media at least, is a charade. In an early scene, we see Jack in an open-air prison space, standing in front of a visibly fake backdrop of painted forestry. Real freedom, it implies, is a sham. MICHAEL PATTISON

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 15 AUGUST 2015

The Confessions of Thomas Quick (2015)

Dir: Brian Hill

Cast: Oscar Thunberg, Erik Lennblad, Leo Sigelius;

Documentary UK/Sweden 2015, 93 min.

Brian Hill’s documentary/reconstruction is the sad tale of Sture Bergwall, a lonely drug addict who found himself in the hands of well-meaning psychiatrists and then fell foul of the police and justice system in Sweden. Under the influence of drugs, Bergwall confessed unwillingly to 30 unsolved murders, just to keep everyone happy and end his loneliness.

Structuring the film in a similar vein to The Imposter, Hill uses reconstructed scenes with real actors, whilst keeping talking head interviews to a minimum. Whilst some of the “acting scenes” are slightly over-graphic, this does not minimise the overall effect of an informative and affecting piece of filmmaking.

Born in 1950 in Falun Sweden, Bergwall had six siblings, his mother tried as much as possible to give the family a home, but the father was a depressed, strict man. One of Bergwall’s poem from 1965 ends in the lines “I will kill you/you kill me”. After discovering that he was homosexual, he started to take drugs to numb his loneliness and alienation. Aged 23, he stabbed a man 12 times, and was taken into psychiatric care, but later released. Having staid mostly drug-free in the 1980s Uppsala, he started taking drugs again, and in 1991 he and an accomplice held the wife and son of a bank manager hostage, in order for the husband to ‘rob’ his own bank. Clad in Santa Claus costumes, the pair were caught, and Bergwall was committed to the psychiatric hospital in Säter, where he would stay for the next 23 years.

The hospital in Säter emerges as a very progressive place, where staff believed that patients would, under medication, reveal childhood abuse, and therefore would find a reason for their own violence, as well as a motive not re-offend. Between 1991 and 1995 Bergwall, now calling himself Thomas Quick, was in therapy, ‘reliving’ first gruesome family tales, like being raped by his father, and then having to eat his just born baby brother Simon. During these years he was under the influence of Benzodiazepine, a strong drug with hypnotic side-effects. He soon started to confess of having committed over thirty, gruesome murders, starting with the notorious case of Johan Asplund, a boy who vanished in 1980. Later Bergwall was convicted of murder in eight cases. But thanks to the journalist Hannes Rastam an investigation brings a remarkable outcome to this unsettling sortie into the Justice and Medical system in Sweden which offers a sad reflection on society as a whole. Needless to say, neither the psychiatrists, the investigating police or the judges involved wanted to appear in Hill’s documentary. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM AUGUST 14TH 2015

Videodrome (1983) | 4-disc DVD | Blu-ray release

Writer|Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: James Woods, Deborah Harry, Combining the bio-horror elements of his earlier films whilst anticipating the technological themes of his later work, VIDEODROME exemplifies Cronenberg’s extraordinary talent for making both visceral and cerebral cinema.

Max Renn (James Woods) is looking for fresh new content for his TV channel when he happens across some illegal S&M-style broadcasts called ‘Videodrome’. Embroiling his girlfriend Nicki (Debbie Harry) in his search for the source, his journey begins to blur the lines between reality and fantasy as he works his way through sadomasochistic games, shady organisations and body transformations stunningly realised by the Oscar-winning makeup effects artist Rick Bakeailed by his contemporaries John Carpenter and Martin Scorsese as a genius, VIDEODROME, was Cronenberg’s most mature work to date and still stands as one of his greatest.

In this 1983 cult classic Cronenberg outing, James Woods is the standout and Debbie Harry is convincing as his sexually experimental girlfriend in a visually audacious and stunningly disorienting drama that sees the director exploring dangerous sexuality and technological obsessions in collaboration with his cinematographer Mark Irwin. Howard Shore’s haunting score strikes a conjures up a similar atmosphere of dread as Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind achieved in The Shining

OUT ON SPECIAL FORMAT DVD | Blu-ray digipak | 10th August 2015 | Courtesy of ARROW

4 disc pack includes short films Transfer (1966) & From the Drain (1967) and newly restored early features Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970). Alongside a wealth of archival content, this lavish new edition will feature a stunning newly restored high-definition digital transfer of the unrated version of Videodrome, approved by both Cronenberg and cinematographer Mark Irwin.

The DVD includes new documentaries – David Cronenberg and the Cinema of the Extreme, a documentary programme featuring interviews with Cronenberg, George A. Romero and Alex Cox on Cronenberg’s cinema, censorship and the horror genre and Forging the New Flesh, a documentary programme by filmmaker Michael Lennick on Videodrome’s video and prosthetic make up effects.

Other features on the discs include brand new interviews with cinematographer Mark Irwin and producer Pierre David, alongside the feature AKA Jack Martin in which Dennis Etchison, author of novelizations of Videodrome, Halloween, Halloween II and III and The Fog, discusses Videodrome and his observations of Cronenberg’s script.

CAMERA (2000) Cronenberg’s short film starring Videodrome’s Les Carlson will also feature on the discs bonus content alongside the complete uncensored Samurai Dreams footage with additional Videodrome broadcasts with optional commentary by Michael Lennick. Two additional featurettes by Michael Lennick, Helmet Test and Betamax, which look at the effects featured in the film will be also be included.

War Book (2014)

Director: Tom Harper Writer: Jack Thorne

Cast: Sophie Okonedo, Ben Chaplin, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Shaun Evans, Kerry Fox, Adeel Akhtar, Phoebe Fox, Antony Sher, Nicholas Burns

UK Drama

Wide in scope and intellect, Tom Harper’s WAR BOOK is a chilling chamber piece based on a ‘game’ that took place regularly during the sixties and seventies in the political backrooms of Whitehall and is set here in contempo London. Key political staff assemble each day and are given a ‘scenario’ such as the aftermath of an international nuclear attack. As ministers, they are then tasked with reporting their individual strategies to cope with the ensuing meltdown, in a roundtable discussion.

Sharply performed by a glittering ensemble cast of British acting talent including: Sophie Okonedo, Ben Chaplin, Antony Sher and Kerry Fox, WAR BOOK bristles with political intrigue and in-fighting from the arcane to the trivial: a coruscating ‘corridors of power’ drama, it ducks and dives through the personal feelings, sexual predilections, and intellectual standpoints of some of ‘finest minds’ in politics, who make decisions on our behalf, but who are not all elected. Knives are drawn on the political front, and dirty washing is aired shamelessly behind an agenda of ethical and political stance-taking. Particularly good here is Ben Chaplin, an actor with ‘matinee idol’ looks who has been working away effectively for several decades in a variety of roles in both indie film (Dorian Gray) and TV (Game On). Here he shines as a suave and narcissistic sexual predator, Gary, to Phoebe Fox’s dilligent and seductive secretary who is tasked with taking the minutes. Antony Sher is integrity personified, in a ‘less is more’ role of senior advisor, elderly statesmen and contemplative intellect. Kerry Fox plays the soignée and experienced Maria – ‘you can’t put an old head on young shoulders’ type who fashions herself as a more glamorous and more sensual version of ‘the Widdy’ (Ann Widdecombe), and is in recovery from breast cancer. Token ‘Ethnic minorities’ are repped by a brilliantly measured Adheel Akhtar at Mohinder (Mo) and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the fresh-faced but highly capable Austin. Shaun Evans is the subversive and strung-out Tom, who goes against the grain and has to be cautioned by Philippa for his strident views and outbursts. And last, but not least, is Sophie Okonedo as Philippa, the dispassionate and masterful ‘Chair’, who turns in a performance that is both subtly nuanced and striking.

Anyone with a keen interest in the workings of politics and ‘the powers that be’ will find this quietly gripping and restrained drama an immersive and entertaining experience. MT

PREMIERED AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS

68th Locarno Film Festival | Preview 2015

Bruno Chatrian unveils his eclectic mix of films for the 68th Locarno Film Festival which runs from 5 until 15 August in its luxurious lakeside location. Locarno is known for its edgy profile and this year will be no different: Films by established auteurs: Hong Sang-soo, Andrzej Zulawski and Chantal Akerman (left) will screen alongside an inventive array of undiscovered newcomers in a selection that embraces traditional stories and more experimental and avantgarde fare.

COMPETITION

Fourteen world premieres compete for the Golden Leopard including Korean comedy delights from Sang-soo’s Right Now, Wrong Then and mavericks in the shape of Andrzej Zulawski who this year brings Cosmos. Pietro Marcello’s docu-drama Bella e Perduta (above right) will compete with Athena Rachel Tsangari’s Chevalier and Belgian auteur Chantal Akerman’s hotly awaited doc Not a Home Movie (above top) is sure to delight both the press and the public. Two Sundance 2015 outings will screen in competiton: Rick Alverson’s Entertainment, exploring the journey of an American stand-up comedian and James White, a coruscating family drama from Josh Mond. Sophomores in the section include Pascale Breton with her appropriately titled Suite Amoricaine and Georgian auteur Bakur Bakuradze’s Brother Dejan (above left). Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam’s latest film is a thriller, Schneider vs Bax. that focuses on a hit man whose mission is to kill a reclusive author (below left).

To open the festival in the open-air Piazza Grande, Jonathan Demme is back with Ricki and the Flash. Scripted by Diabolo Cody and starring Meryl Streep, it explores the efforts of an ageing rock star to get back to her roots.

Locarno is known for its European flavour such as Catherine Corsini’s La Belle Saison starring Cécile De France, Lionel Baier’s LGBT title La Vanité (nominated for the Queer Palm at this year’s Cannes) and Austrian auteur Elisabeth Scharang’s Jack (right) which tackles the thorny topic of recidivism through the story of a brutal murderer. Philippe Le Guay’s comedy Floride stars Sandrine Kiberlain and Jean Rochefort and German director Lars Kraume’s The State vs Fritz Bauer explores the story of a prosecutor in the Auschwitz trials. From further afield comes Anurang Kashyap’s Bollywood gangster drama Bombay Velvet, Barbet Schroeder’s historical drama Amnesia and Brazilian director Sergio Machado’s Heliopolis.

The CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE selection includes a fascinating array of indie newcomers with first or second films that focus on the filmmakers of the future: In Tagalog; Dead Slow Ahead (right) is cinematographer Mauro Herce’s debut (right). French helmer. Vincent Macaigne’s debut drama is Dom Juan. Kacey Mottet Klein (Sister) stars in Keeper by Guillaume Senez. Melville Poupard, Andre Desoullier and Clemence Poesy star in Le Grand Jeu, a debut for Nicolas Pariser and The Waiting Room from Serbian Bosnian director, Igor Drljaca, and starring Canadian actor Christopher Jacot (Hellraiser), and those that have seen the enchanting Elena by Petra Costa will be excited to see her next experimental docu-drama Olmo & the Seagull.

SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE

This strand screens perhaps the most auteurish films of the festival with a distinctive style and look. Two new Polish films stand out, My Name is Marianna (right) from Karolina Bielawska and Brothers from Wojciech Staron (below right).Christopher Pryor’s black and white New Zealand doc The Ground We Won (above) and Aya Domenig’s The Day the Sun Fell from the Sky (left).

The Jury Selection offers a chance to see their favourite titles including Guy Maddin’s stylish drama, The Forbidden Room, Joanna Hogg’s superb study of a family holiday seen through the eyes of a single, middle-aged woman: Unrelated; and Denis Klebeev’s Strange Particles. The competition jury comprises U.S. photographer-director Jerry Schatzberg; German actor Udo Kier; Israeli director Nadav Lapid; and South Korean actress Moon so-Ri.

Locarno also screens a retrospective of Sam Peckinpah including his standout Western PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. Marco Bellocchio will receive a Pardo d’Onore and show his 1965 classic I PUGNI IN TASCA along with Michael Cimino whose all time seventies favourite THE DEER HUNTER stars Robert De Niro. MT

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 5 -15 AUGUST 2015

Les Combattants (2015) Love at First Fight | DVD release

Dir.: Thomas Cailley

Cast: Adele Haenel, Kevin Azais, Antoine Laurent, Brigitte Rouan

Drama France 2014, 98 min.

Two outsiders, Madeleine (Haenel) and Arnaud (Azais) meet o the beach of a sleepy town in the region Alps/Maritime. This sounds as good as any romantic cliché, but their meeting is anything but sexy, because they are facing each other in a judo fight.

First time writer/director Thomas Cailley’s LES COMBATTANTS is the very opposite of a glossy French teenage romance. To start with Arnaud bites Madeleine after he is in danger of losing the fight, witnessed by his brother Manu (Laurent) and his mates. Whilst Madeleine does not tell anyone about his outburst, she will remind Arnaud more than often of his cowardice. The young man has just lost his father and is supposed to join his brother in running a carpentry business. In this capacity he soon meets Madeleine again, when he starts to erect a wooden beach house near the swimming pool on her parent’s property. Needless to say, his carpentry expertise is as bad as his judo skills and his half completed construction is soon blown apart by a storm; to the chagrin of his brother. But Arnaud and Madeleine have found common ground: they both want to get out of the boring middle-class environment they inhabit. Madeleine, who has just left university without completing the course, believes strongly that apocalypse is soon to happen. She prepares for the end-of-time scenario by toughening herself up with constant exercises and a disgusting diet, with includes eating a whole fish, whizzed up in the mixer. When she decides to join the marines for a preparatory army course, Arnaud follows her, abandoning his brother and mother Helene (Rouan). But the debacle doesn’t end successfully in this love story which ends up being a fight for survival.

Adele Haenel (Water Lilies/Suzanne) carries LES COMBATTANTS with a lively and intense performance. Her Madeleine still longs to be a tomboy, long into her adolescence. She is unaware that this image is just her way in pretending to be tough, as not to be found out how vulnerable and insecure she really is. Whilst she knows exactly what she does not want in life (middle-class security), she has no idea what she wants instead, and her experience shows, that she is far too independent for such a hierarchical life style. Arnaud on the other hand, behaves like every average man with the first woman he shows an interest in: he follows her obediently like a puppy. But is fascinating, how Cailley brings their combined weaknesses and strengths together in a rather dramatic finale. Shot in lively colours from innovative perspectives, by the director’s brother David, Les Combattants is as original as it is moving, never succumbing to any preconceived ideas, thus emulating the couple’s unruly and idiosyncratic behaviour within a narrative that develops just at the right tempo allowing us enough time to get to know this offbeat couple. AS

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD THROUGH ARTIFICIAL EYE | CURZON

New Horizons Film Festival Wroclaw | Poland | 23 July – 3 August 2015 | WINNERS

New Horizons Festival is one of Poland’s major international film events and a place for daring, unconventional film that push cinematic boundaries with films from Europe and beyond. Taking place in Wroclaw Poland each year with a competition programme comprising auteurish World cinema, a strand for Art cinema and the latest in Polish avantgarde film and cult classics. This year a retrospective on Tadeusz Konwicki will celebrate his life of the groundbreaking director, who died last month in Warsaw, at the age of 88.

The main competition line-up comprised premieres and titles selected from previous festival:

Arabian Nights Trilogy (Cannes); Goodnight Mommy (Venice); H (various); Heaven Knows What (various); Lucifer (Tribeca); Ming of Harlem; Twenty One Storeys in the Air; Necktie Youth

Grand Prix Best Film – LUCIFER
Special Mention – THE PROJECT OF THE CENTURY
Audience Award – GOODNIGHT MOMMY – review below

Director: Veronika Franz/Severin Fiala Producer: Ulrich Seidl

Cast: Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz, Susanne Wuest

99min Austria (German with subtitles)

The Austrians are very good at taking ordinary life and turning into horror at Venice this year. In the same vein as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), Ulrich Seidl’s (Im Keller) wife and collaborator, Veronika Franz, makes her debut with a vicious and expertly-crafted arthouse piece, set in a slick modern house buried in the Austrian countryside.

In the heat of summer, nine-year-old Elias is enjoying the school hols with his twin brother Lukas. They appear normal boys: swimming, exploring the woods, and keeping giant cockroaches as pets. But in the pristine lakeside home, their TV exec mother has made some draconian changes. Recovering from facial surgery and bandaged up literally like a ‘mummy’, she has banned all friends from visiting the house while her recuperation takes place in total privacy. Nothing wrong with that, but the boys misinterpret her behaviour as a sinister sign and start to wonder whether this is really their mother. The more they question her for re-assurance, the more fractious and distant she becomes. Reacting against her instinctively, they become convinced that she is not their mother but a strange intruder, and decide to take control of the situation.

Franz and Fiala create an atmosphere of mounting suspense with clever editing, minimal dialogue and the use of innocent images that appear more sinister and unsettling when taken out of context. Martin Gschlacht’s cinematography switches between lush landscapes, sterile interiors and suggestive modern art to inculcate a sense of bewilderment and unease. Susanne Wuest is perfectly cast as the icy, skeletal blond matriarch with menace and the innocent boys transformed into everyday psychopaths due to the lack of early maternal love or support, bring to mind those terrible kids from The Shining, The Innocents even Cronenburg’s The Brood. A very clever film which contrasts images of revulsion with those of serene beauty. MT

Special Tribute | TADEUSZ KONWICKI

JAK DALEKO STAD, JAK BLISKO (HOW FAR, HOW NEAR)

Dir.: Tadeusz Konwicki | Cast: Andrzej Lapacki, Gustaw Holoubek, Maja Komorowska | Poland 1972 | 95 min.

With his films The Last Days of Summer and Jump, Konwicki tries to re-create the life of his anti-hero Andrzej (Lapacki), going forward, but mainly backwards through his life. Before the opening credits, we see a man falling, surrounded by collages, reminding us a little of Vertigo’s pre-credit artwork. Andrzej has come to rserach, whilst his best friend Maks (Holoubek) committed suicide, but soon his search spins totally out of control and Andrzej is moving into his past. He again meets his ex-wife Musia (Komorowska), and other women he slept with. Trying to warn his friend to stay away, so as not to be killed, Andrzej finally has to face his darkest secret: the murder of a man. In a similar vein to Wojciech Has’ The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973), time is not linear, Andrzej literally falls into different time spheres, often trying to make sense out of the situation by himself and in this way examining his motives which are not particularly altruistic.

Konwicki always stood by the autobiographical context of his novels and films: “I write books and make films about myself. In other words, I describe myself in a conditional mode, past, perfect or future tense. I create situations in which I behaved or could have behaved or wish, that I had behaved in a certain way.” (Retrospective Tadeusz Konwicki at the Wroclaw International Film Festival, July/August 2015). AS

15TH NEW HORIZONS | WROCLAW INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 23 JULY – 3 AUGUST 2015

Story of My Death (2013) | Bfi Player

Dir: Albert Serra | Cast: Viçenç Altaió, Eliseu Huertas, Lluis Serrat, Montse Triola | 148min Catalan Drama

Purportedly a metaphor for the journey from Enlightenment to Romanticism, Albert Serra’s Golden Leopard winner is a deliciously louche and languorous drama that plays on the title of Giacomo Casanova’s autobiography “Histoire de Ma Vie”.

Distilled from 400 hours of freewheeling footage to a shimmering strand of candlelit and moonlit reverie, it is based on an imagined meeting between Casanova and Dracula that takes place in 18th-century Switzerland and Romania.

Sensitively re-creating the leisurely pace of the era, the film opens with an al fresco supper between paramours. Scenes in Casanova’s boudoir follow where the raffish Catalan Marquis (Viçenç Altaió) gives decadent rein to his appetite for salacious often philosophical badinage with his newly-acquired manservant, Pompeu (Lluis Serrat), while grazing on grapes and completing his ablutions. Embarking on a pastoral journey that will lead beyond the Carpathian mountains to Transylvania, he is joined by said manservant and an entourage of submissive female acolytes.

Altaió portrays Casanova as gently playful rather than predatory which is possibly how he manages to prolong his prodigious sexual appetite; he comes across as naughtily risqué rather than oppressively lecherous: an irresistible combination that evokes impish titillation rather than gaucheness reflecting the cultured gentility of the age of Enlightenment.

The tone slips sinuously into Gothic Horror in the Transylvanian segment where we meet the raven-haired, elegantly-coiffed Count (Eliseu Huertas) – a psycopath of a different colour, presenting himself as a gift-horse to the unsuspecting females in the travelling group, later devouring them with an horrendous nod to 19th century Imperialism. Casanova’s saucy superficiality is stretched to the limit as he suffers a Barry Lyndon style downturn in his fortunes and the backlash of violent vampires as the narrative down-spirals into valium-enfused blood-letting.

This inventive twist on a classic legend with its inspired performance from Viçenç Altaió is sumptuously filmed with exquisite attention to period detail. The luminescent candlelit set-pieces confirm Albert Serra as a master of ‘slow cinema’ See this when you have time to savour its treasures. MT

STORY OF MY DEATH in now on subscription with BFI PLAYER

The ‘Maggie’ (1954) | DVD | Blu-ray release

Director: Alexander MacKendrick Writer: William Rose

Cast: Paul Douglas, Alex MacKenzie, James Copeland, Abe Barker, Tommy Kearins

92min Comedy UK Ealing Black & White

Alexander MacKendrick was far from satisfied with his finished comedy drama The ‘Maggie’, claiming it too personal, but he scored a hit with his casting of Paul Douglas in the leading role. A sports reporter who had turned his hand to acting in middle age, he became an overnight Hollywood success during the forties and fifties starring alongside Barbara Stanwyck in Clash By Night, Richard Widmark in Panic in the Streets and Kirk Douglas in A Letter to Three Wives. The five-times married actor exuded a rugged masculinity which perfectly suits the role here of an American businessman in Scotland who is conned into shipping a valuable cargo to Islay to furnish a surprise gift of a holiday home for his wife (whom we never meet). The coal-powered boat turns out to be a leaky ‘puffer’ from which the film takes its name.

Sentimental in tone, this light comedy zips along playfully in a similar vein to MacKendrick’s other outings although it lacks the witty humour of Whisky Galore, or the more trenchant social commentary of The Man in The White Suit. That said, there are well-crafted performances from a strong cast particularly Tommy Kearins, a newcomer who gives a surprisingly good turn as the clever and mischievous ‘wee boy’ Dougie. Gordon Dines does a fine job of lensing fifties Glasgow, Crinan and the Isle of Islay in silky black and white visuals. The Radio Times described it as a “wicked little satire” and the pier scene will certainly make you laugh out loud. A worthwhile comedy drama from the Ealing era. MT

NOW OUT ON DVD COURTESY OF STUDIO CANAL | 24 AUGUST 2015 | DVD and Blu-ray

Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014) | BFI

Dir.: Josephine Decker

Cast: Sophie Traub, Joe Swanberg, Robert Longstreet, Kristin Slaysman

USA 2014, 79 min.

Hired farmhand Akin is lusting after Sarah, the daughter of his employer Jeremiah. But she soon finds out that he is married and has a daughter. Still, she drives him crazy and watches him masturbate in the barn. Finally, he succumbs to her on a field, after she eats a frog alive. This is not the only strange aspect of Sarah, we often hear her voice-over, talking about a lover who is always close –but it is not Akin. We begin to suspect that there is more to the father-daughter relationship between Sarah and Jeremiah, and when Akin’s wife Drew comes to rescue her husband, all is revealed in a bloody showdown.

In Butter on the Latch Decker creates an unsettling atmosphere, again opposing poetic shots of nature with characters moving around suspiciously, seemingly having to hide a lot. But unlike her debut feature film, THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY has a much more structured narrative (even though the title is again enigmatic). And again Decker is not afraid to be rather daring (or silly, depending on the viewpoint): apart from the frog episode, Sarah’s alluring traps she sets out to catch Akin, sometimes border on the hilarious, and Jeremiah’s dark glowing eyes remind one of biblical characters in a religious history film. Still, Decker has enough talent to get away with it, creating a moody little B-Picture, which is (again) under 80 minutes, the length of the classic B-Movies of the forties and fifties. She also recreates an atmosphere of mild terror, leaving the audience always guessing.

Decker’s critics from the mainstream press accuse her of an amateur approach, but they forget that she has to deal with a budget, which does not cover even the catering costs of an ordinary Hollywood production. She has to make due with imagination and improvisation, and does this in rather an entertaining way. She holds the middle ground between the soulless formula products of Hollywood, and the often too worthy indie films, which can be sometimes a little tedious. Decker is certainly a one-off, only she could pull off a scenario like this one, keeping a unity of aesthetics and creating a dark universe, which has echoes of the best of Tourneur or Joseph H. Lewis, who used to feature women like Sarah: fragile, slightly deranged and with a brooding sexuality. AS

THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY | REVIEWED AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014 | screening on 1 August 2015

52 Tuesdays (2013)

Director: Sophie Hyde

Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Del Herbert-Jane, Mario Spate, Beau Travis Williams, Imogen Archer, Sam Althuizen

120min Australia Drama

Newcomer Tilda Cobham-Hervey gives a dynamite performance as sixteen-year-old teenager, Billie, in Sophie Hyde’s fresh and frisky drama about female sexuality. Just as Billie is ready to discover boys, her divorced mother (Del Herbert-Jane) has decided to become James, in a challenging transformation that will take a year. To make things easier, Billie goes to live with her father Tom (Beau Travis Williams) but this change of circumstances leaves a gaping hole in Billie’s emotional life, just when she needs her close female role model the most: they shared everything and James’ promise to spend every Tuesday with her offers little comfort. Tom is in a new relationship and offers little help or support as a dad.

Sophie Hyde is best known for her documentaries and here she makes use of that experience with docu-drama style that takes the form of a video diary through which Billie records her emotional journey. In order to retain a feeling of authenticity, filming took place chronologically over the period of the year during which James’ amazing transformation (with incipient to full beard) provides fascinating food for thought as well as engaging factual information about female-male transition. But it’s Billie’s emotional state that really strikes the most meaningful chord as we witness the fragile mother-daughter dynamic slowly degenerate. James’ focus on his own burgeoning sexual desires leave little room for his focus as a ‘mother’: it’s a big leap of faith to expect Billie to suddenly understand an adult male’s issues when she herself is undergoing so much disorientating change from being a little girl to a woman, with hardly any guidance.

52 TUESDAYS asks the evergreen and universal question: do we have a duty of care to our kids when they really need us most, or is our own happiness of primary importance in best equipping us to provide this valuable emotional succour. Obviously it’s a question without an answer, and Sophie Hyde’s observational style offers a non-judgemental snapshot. As Billie, Hervey-Cobham is tender, endearing and vulnerable as she manages her life as cheerfully and as intelligently as possible in challenging circumstances. Sadly Del Herbert Jane as James, much as we want to understand him, never really convinces us or engages our sympathies in his own transformational journey. MT

52 TUESDAYS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7 AUGUST 2015.

Venice Days | Giornate degli Autori | 2 – 12 September 2015

Venice Film Festival has its own version of Cannes Film Festival: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, called GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI – VENICE DAYS. Independently run, parallel to the main programme, it all happens just down the road in the grounds of a lush villa overlooking the famous beach where Dirk Bogarde starred in Visconti’s melancholy masterpiece Death in Venice.

With a jury headed by French director, Laurent Cantet, this year’s official selection comprises new works from well-known talent including Chile’s Matias Bize and Italy’s Vincenzo Marra, along with emerging names such as Poland’s Piotr Chrzan and India’s Ruchika Oberoi. Agnes Varda will also be there with her short film Les Tres Boutons which is part of designer Miucci Prada’s strand ‘The Miu Miu Women’s Tales.’

VENICE DAYS opens with Spanish filmmaker Dani de la Torre’s debut thriller EL DESCONICIDOS (RETRIBUTION) (above) and closes with Jindabyne actor and theatre director Simon Stone’s debut drama THE DAUGHTER. which stars Geoffrey Rush and is losely based on Henrik Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck.

We’re particularly looking forward to the WORLD PREMIERES of Polish wartime drama KLESMER (left) from Piotr Chrzan and Stray Dogs scripter Song Peng Fei’s directorial debut UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE (below) which follows a similar vein to the 2013 outing which won Grand Special Jury Prize at Venice 2013. High on our list is also Vincenzo Marra’s fourth feature LA PRIMA LUCE which brings Riccardo Scamarcio back to the Lido again starring an Italian lawyer in search of his son lost in Chile.

Carlo Saura’s documentary ARGENTINA showcasing the country’s national pastime, compliments his series on dance that includes; Fados, Blood Wedding and Carmen. The 83-year-old director is taking a break to come to the Lido from filming Renzo Piano: an Architect for Santander, to screen next year. Britain will be represented in a special event by Grant Gee and his latest film INNOCENCE OF MEMORIES, based on Orhan Pamuk’s book The Museum of Innocence.

GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI | VENICE DAYeptember 2-12.

Car Park (2015) Parkoló | European Film Festival Palic 2015 | July 18 -24

Dir.: Bemnce Miklauzic

Cast: Ferenc Lengyel, Tibor Szervét, Lia Pokorny, Kálmán Somody, Zoltán Rajkal

Hungary 2014, 92 min.

Bemnce Miklauzic’s surrealist drama CAR PARK is a brilliant portrait of today’s Hungary: aggressive males dominate, status is everything and the crass materialism of the capitalist order brings out the worst in nearly everyone.

Miklauzic (CHILDREN OF THE GREEN DRAGON) has set his film mainly in a car park, hemmed in by houses on all sides. Légiós (Lengyel), the owner of the lot, has a traumatic past which he keeps alientated from everyone. Even his closest friend and assistant Attila (Rajkal) does not know what happened to him, or if Legios really served in the foreign legion. Legios’ main interest is keeping some young fledglings – nestled above a billboard – safe from the marauding neighbourhood cat.

One day, Imre, a transit entrepreneur and typical “Budapest Suit”, appears in his 1968 Ford Mustang. He asks for the only roofed parking space, which Legios denies him. Later we learn that Legios buries the bodies of the birds here. Legios and Imre take great delight in jossling for superiority. When Imre installs CCTV in Légiós’ caravan and watches from his penthouse office overlooking the car park, Legios gets his own back by sleeping with Ildiko (Pokorny), the wife of Edgar, a corrupt policeman, who has been sacked. Whilst Attila listens to the boiling cooking pot, and translates the noises into Morse-code, we learn that Imre has a kidney disease, which makes him impotent; his wife wanting a divorce, which her husband fights with his usual intransigence. When Imre shows Edgar the incriminating video of his wife and Légiós, and has a poster installed on the billboard, which gives away Légiós’Ó traumatic past, he sets up a duel to the death – something both men wanted all along.

CAR PARK would be worthy of Buñuel; Miklauzic shows human cruelty with great imagination. His sense of perversity is particularly evident in the surprise ending. The ensemble acting is very convincing, and the director uses the seemingly limited space of the car park to great effect. Shades of Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW enhance this absurd tragedy of isolation, mental and physical violence, greed and male death wish – attributes, which unfortunately manifested themselves under very different political regimes during the last century in Hungary. AS

SCREENING AT PALIC | SERBIA | EUROPEAN FILM FESTIVAL 18 -24 JULY 2015

Chrieg (2014) | War | Locarno Film Festival 5 – 15 August 2015

Director| Writer: Simon Jaquemet

Cast: Benjamin Lutzke, John Leuppi, Livia Reinhard, Ernst C Sigrist, Ste, Ella Rumpt

106min Drama Swiss

Possibly the sharpest but certainly the most violent film to come out of Switzerland since the Swiss Army Knife, CHRIEG is writer/director Simon Jaquemet’s award-winning feature debut that sees a young boy subjected to a surreal and brutal teen-hood in the Swiss German Alps.

Driving the narrative forward with merciless intensity during the first 40 minutes, Jaquemet is unable to sustain the gritty wretchedness of it all as the story gradually unravels into a violent meltdown of European teenage trauma and machismo that will do well on the International Festival circuit and with the arthouse crowd.

Matteo (Benjamin Lutzke) is a typical confused and introverted 16 year-old who is being poorly parented by a couple of self-serving hippies; a macho, grunting father (John Leuppi) and an earthmother-type (Livia Reinhard) who has recently given him a baby brother who he is forced to ‘suckle’ in a sick and misguided attempt to get them ‘bonding’. Matteo is understandably perplexed by the all mixed messages of his disfunctional home life and seeks brief solace in the nearby woods whence he is catapulted into an Alpine bootcamp run by another couple of nutters, Henspeter (Ernst C Sigrist) and his accomplice Anton (Ste), to toughen him up during the school hols. Whilst his family home life is emotionally unsettling, the bootcamp is physically violent and he is subjected to all sorts of humiliating treatment by the other inmates who lock him in a cage and chain him by the neck in a stomach-lurching initiation ceremony. When he finally becomes part of the gang, the drama drifts into urban territory as they trash venues in typical ‘teenage’ mode.

Lutzke won Best Actor for his raw and real portrayal of Matteo and the support cast of mostly newcomers are strong and authentic in this drama which is unusual for Swiss cinema but typical of the kind of rite of passage story you might see being trotted out in the UK, France or Belgium. These are teenagers without any heart or soul or even any particularly character development: They’re just as ‘bad’ individually and worse collectively as most gangs when left to their own devices. That said, Lorenz Mertz’s inventive visuals give a giddy groove to the proceedings both in the Alpine locations and in town. This is a bleak and brutal portrayal of modern Swiss youth refreshingly devoid of cuckoo clocks and chocolate. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 5- 15 August 2015 | Reviewed at Cannes Market 2014

I Am An Old Communist Hag (2013) | DVD release

SUNT O BABA COMUNISTA

Director: Stere Gulea

Cast: Luminita Gheorghiu, Marian Ralea, Ana Ularu, Collin Blair, Valeria Seciu

88mins Drama Romanian with English subtitles

Communism and the Ceausescu dictatorship were not popular in Romania, for obvious reasons, but Emilia, the central character of this New Wave drama from old school director Stere Gulea (Weekend With My Mother 2009), remembers the time with a great deal of nostalgia. And nostalgia and selective memory of the good old days are the themes that permeate this unevenly-paced but subversively touching drama told as a simple linear narrative and graced by Vivi Dragan Vasile’s luminous visuals, capturing the naturalistic location. These limpid, summer colours evoke the predominantly upbeat and serene feel of the piece.

But not all the old people here remember communism fondly. Dna Stroescu, a local dressmaker (beautifully played by Valeria Seciu), claims it prevented her from pursuing a career as a painter, adding contrast to Emilia’s view. But for those cherishing family life, security and full employment, the era had a great deal to recommend it and Luminita Georgiu’s Emilia (a modest character compared to her flagrant role in Child’s Pose) now retired and in her early sixties, enjoyed bringing up a family, holding down a factory job and now lives quietly with her husband Tucu (Marian Ralea) in a small Romanian village. Looking forward to a visit from her pregnant daughter Alice (Ana Ularu – Anaconda 4) and fiancé Alan (an amusing Collin Blair) from Canada, she is also taking part in a documentary being filmed in the village, about August 23rd, a national holiday before the 1989 Revolution in Romania.

When she hears about Alice’s shaky job situation in Canada, a free economy, she starts to peddle communist propaganda to her, putting a selectively rosy spin on her own past in the dark era of Ceausescu. These ‘golden’ memories are seen as bleached-out black and white flashbacks depicting Alina as a little girl with the young Tucu, when the dictator purportedly visited her factory and are accompanied by Henning Lohner’s rousing original score.

Alina’s homecoming exposes cracks in her daughter’s relationship with Alain and meditates on the merits of New World capitalism versus Old World solid family values and traditions with intelligence and surprising insight. MT

REVIEWED AT THE LONDON ROMANIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2013 | NOW ON DVD

The Wonders | Le Meraviglie (2014) | Grand Prix Cannes 2014

Writer/Director: Alice Rohrwacher

Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Monica Bellucci, Maria Alexandra Lungu, Sam Louwyck, Sabine Timoteo, Agnese Graziani

100min Drama Italian with subtitles

GRAND PRIX WINNER – CANNES 2014

Writer/Director Alice Rohrwacher’s debut feature Corpo Celeste was a delicate coming-of-age drama that had a brief outing in London cinemas in 2011, introducing us this new director. She returns with THE WONDERS another wistful but sure-footed rites of passage tale of an enigmatic family of bee-keepers, eking out a living in challenging circumstances in rural Tuscany. This time our heroine is 13-year-old Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lungu), the eldest of four daughters who work hard in this cottage industry, helping their father with the hives and honey bottling.

Rohrwacher’s restrained, impressionist approach creates a vague feeling of suspense that allows our imagination to wander and luxuriate in this magical story. A palpable tension is felt amongst the sisters as they carefully spin the honey and decant it into plastic buckets and jars without losing any of the precious nectar in the process. They tiptoe round round their cantankerous father who lives in the fear that colony collapse disorder or contamination with ruin the family’s future. Gelsomina absorbs all this angst at a time where she is also growing up and finding her feet as a young woman and the second in command of the business, and all the responsibilities involved. Out of the blue, the police entrust the family with a teenage boy delinquent who needs rehabilitation into the community. They are then asked to take part in a TV competition for local farmers to enter their produce – Gelsomina develops a teenage crush for the glamorous presenter in the shape of Monica Bellucci – who dazzles the impressionable girls. The preparations are fun but nerve-wracking involving national dress in local Etruscan costumes. Rohracher’s bitter-sweet depiction of teenage awakening is brought to life by Pina cinematographer, Hélène Louvart who beautifully captures the young girls’ dreams and anxieties while growing up in the country. THE WONDERS is naive, surreal and absolutely enchanting. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE 17 JULY 2015

Salute! Sun Yat-Sen | Meeting Dr Sun (2014)

Dir.: Yee Chih-yen

Cast: Zhan Huai-ting, Matthew Wei, Cheng Wei-teng, Gina Chien-Na Lee

Taiwan 2014, 90 min Drama

Meeting Dr. Sun is writer/director Yee Chih-yen’s first film in 12 twelve years, following Blue Gate Crossing which featured some of the same characters as his latest film. On the face of it Meeting Dr. Sun appears to be a surrealistic teen comedy but the real themes run much deeper. Two rival high school gangs are attempting to steal a statue of the founder of Modern China and use the money to pay off their outstanding school fees.

Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) was the founder of the Chinese Republic in 1912. He was soon deposed as president by warlords, but later returned to politics and formed a coalition between his Kuomintang (KMT) party and the Chinese Communist Party in 1923. He is one of the few politicians admired by mainland China and Taiwan. Along with Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-Shek, he was one of the most important figures in China from 1900 to 1976. Father of modern China (now Taiwan) espoused “Three Principles” – Nationalism, Democracy and Socialism which he developed whilst in exile in the UK.

Lefty (Huai-ting) is the gangling leader of a group of four students who have fallen behind with their school fees. He comes up with the plan to steal the massive stature of Dr. Sun which is stored away in the corner of the school. The group buys cheap masks so as not be recognised by the schools security cameras. But at the last minute Lefty finds a notebook outlining a plan to steal the statue in the same way he had planned. When Lefty meets Sky (Wei), the leader of the rival group, they compare notes on who is the least flush of the two. Sky than uses Lefty’s generosity to steal the statue with his four friends, but Lefty’s group appears just in time, wearing the same masks. This turns out to be helpful for both groups, since they need eight people to move the heavy statue. The delay alerts the caretaker and his girlfriend (Lee) who are suddenly surrounded by eight scarily masked men who chase them into a class room. Turning the situation to his advantage, the caretaker persuades his girl friend to make love, since “they may not survive the night”, as Lefty and Sky are the left fighting it out for the possession of the statue.

DOP Chen Tai-pu cinematography of the dark school and Taipei by night are highly imaginative, Meeting Dr. Sun plays out like a choreographed ballet performed in different shades of grey. What might seem like a prank, turns out to be a real fight for survival and the gang’s solidarity in the end is a metaphor for the student strike of March 2014 in Taipei. Dr. Sun’s statue represents the need for a social and democratic solution in Taiwan as well as in China. Meeting Dr. Sun is aesthetically a unique experience and when coupled with the political subtext, not easily accessible for European audiences, it becomes even more admirable. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 27 JULY 2015 | DVD

Self/less (2015)

Director: Tarsem Singh

Cast: Ben Kingsley, Ryan Reynolds, Natalie Martinez, Matthew Goode, Victor Garber

116min Sci-fi thriller UK

SELF/LESS imagines a future where brilliant minds can prolong their lives by re-incarnation using bodies grown in a laboratory. Or at least that’s what we’re led to believe in Tarsem Singh’s remake of John Frankenheimer’s vastly superior 1966 outing, SECONDS. Ben Kingsley is masterful as Damian Hale, a trumped up but simpatico Donald Trump-style mogul who lives in a gilded penthouse but is unable to vanquish cancer.

Under the auspices of a crisp-vowelled Matthew Goode, as psycho-scientist Professor Albright, Hale undergoes a risky procedure and is beamed up as Ryan Reynolds’ dishy dime a dozen denizen of middle America – a young Damian in a muscly new physique. Whisked away to New Orleans with a cache of pills to keep his new persona intact, he soon starts living the high-life in a chic townhouse in the French quarter where he beds young babes and mingles with the locals. So where’s the glitch? It soon transpires that his brand new body was donated to science by Mark, a man with a wife and daughter who needed expensive medical care. When the new Damian forgets to takes his pills, memories of this former life come flooding back.

So far so good, but when did Ryan Reynolds look anything like Ben Kingsley? Reynolds does his best as the new man – easy on the eye and appealing in a part that stretches the imagination to the limits, even if we suspend our disbelief – but this promising drama gradually morphs into a misguided mêlée of tedious punch-ups, car chases and shoot-outs as the new Damian attempts to extract truth from trickery. Why? Apart from an inept script (from Spanish brothers Alex and David Pastor), this Sci-fi conconction is impressively-mounted and rhythmically scored by Tarsem Singh who once made REM’s ‘Losing My Religion’. Here he demonstrates his inability to make a film that’s as engaging and intelligent as it is good-looking, despite a dynamite cast.

SELF/LESS loses its way after the first 40 minutes and takes another hour to reach a schematic finale. A decent idea gets lost somewhere in between. Like Damian Hale, sometimes the original is better than the re-make. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM JULY 17 2015

Cemetery Without Crosses | Una corde…un Colt (1969) | Blu-ray | DVD release

Director: Robert Hossein Writer: Dario Argento

Cast: Michele Mercier, Robert Hossein, Guido Lollobrigida, Daniele Vargas, Serge Marquand,

90min Spaghetti Western France

Robert Hossein directs this Spaghetti Western with a French twist and also stars as a friend who reluctantly comes to rescue and avenge a woman whose husband has been lynched by a rival gang. Well-crafted, sparingly scripted and infused with soulful Latin romance, the film conjures up the harsh and macho world of 19th century America where men were monosyllabic and women alluring. Sergio Leone’s memory comes flooding back through Andre Hossein’s evocative instrumental score and Scott Walker’s rousing rendering of the title track. Guy Villette’s sound design makes good use of howling ambient winds and creaking boards.

Maria (Michele Mercier) and her husband have made enemies and none more bitter than the Rogers family. But after his death a resonant and palpable chemistry ignites between her and Manuel and this, together with Henri Persin’s impressive range of set pieces that create a remarkable sense of place, is largely the reason for the film’s sixties success and enduring watchability.

Although Dario Argento is credited with writing the script, his input was more down to dialogue with Claude Desailly and Hossein making the major contribution. Performances are authentic and convincing from the largely French cast. Manuel and Maria work particularly well together, both giving subtle yet compelling turns as they gradually fall in love. CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES is a classic Western of the finest order. MT

OUT ON DVD and BLU-RAY COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS AND VIDEO on JULY 20, 2015

[youtube id=”v5zHIO5RtIo” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Slow West (2015)

Director/Writer: John Maclean.

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Kodi Smi-McPhee, Caren Pistorius, Ben Mendelsohn.

84min Western UK-New Zealand

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic category at this year’s Sundance Festival, Slow West marks the feature debut of director John Maclean (late of the Scottish rock group The Beat Band) and marks the latest outdoor film to exploit the recently discovered scenic possibilities of New Zealand. Set in Colorado in 1870, Slow West at first seems to be shaping up as yet another grimly realistic depiction of the Old West – an amateurish attempt at a store hold-up has particularly harrowing consequences – peopled by unpleasant characters all looking after Number One. Adrift in all this is fresh-faced innocent Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) newly arrived from Scotland in search of a girl (Caren Pistorious) who has fled her former homeland with a price on her head. His quest crosses the path of cynical bounty hunter Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), who also serves as the film’s narrator.

At the point where fellow bounty hunter Ben Mendelsohn emerges from the undergrowth bearing a bottle of absinthe and two drinking goblets like Trapper John with his jar of olives in MASH, the mood shifts to something decidedly more eccentric. It becomes difficult to figure out if what Jay is now witnessing is actually happening or if his imagination (as in Donnie Darko or A Beautiful Mind) is taking over, fuelled by the absinthe. The film’s depiction of violent death becomes progressively more light-hearted, culminating in a spectacular and cartoonish spaghetti western-style shoot-out (would all those guns really have functioned so efficiently to such lethal effect in 1870?) centring on a small shack set in a vast valley that provides a backdrop that is imposing even by the expected standards of the modern western. Richard Chatten

ON GENERAL RELEASE

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival | 3 – 11 July 2015 | Winners

The 50th Anniversary of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival takes place at the Spa Town, just a stone’s throw from the Czech capital Prague. This year’s Crystal Globe was won by a charming American feature film BOB AND THE TREES where the main character, logger and rap fan Bob Tarasuk, plays himself. US citizen Tarasuk, hails from Czech stock: his grandmother was Czech and grandfather Ukrainian.

Czech films included in the Competition included some great performances: Alena Mihulová received the Best Actress Award for her portrayal of a dedicated nurse in Slávek Horák’s debut HOME CARE (right) and Kryštof Hádek received the Best Actor Award as the problematic younger brother in the drama THE SNAKE BROTHERS directed by Jan Prušinovský.

The Special Jury Prize was awarded to Austrian director Peter Brunner for THOSE WHO FALL HAVE WINGS, (below right), a drama on coming to terms with the death of a loved one. Kosovan Visar Morina received the Best Director Award for his film BABAI, a story about a small boy setting off on a journey to find his father. The jury also awarded two Special Mentions to animated biography THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, directed by Anca Damian, and the drama ANTONIA, (right) a tragic story of Italy’s most famous female poet .

The prize for the best film of the East of the West Competition was awarded to social drama THE WEDNESDAY CHILD by the Hungarian director Lili Horváth, a tale of a young girl who wants to secure better circumstances for her child than she had. A Special Mention was awarded to Romanian film The World Is Mine.

The Grand Prix for Best Documentary Film went to Helena Třeštíková for her latest long-term documentary MALLORY. The jury also awarded a Special Mention to Austrian film The Father Tapes. The prize for the best documentary film up to 30 minutes in length was awarded to WHITE DEATH, a story of a Chilean military company trapped in the snow told using a variety of formats and animation techniques. The Special Mention in this category was granted to WOMEN IN SINK, a visit to an Israeli beauty salon. The Forum of Independents Award went to American transgender comedy TANGERINE, shot by director Sean Baker on an iPhone 5.

HIGHLIGHTS

Seven World premieres and six international premieres competed including HEIL Dietrich Bruggemann’s satire centred on neo-Nazis, which sounds quite different from his sombre 2014 Berlinale outing Stations of the Cross. Polish director Marcin Koszalka’s debut THE RED SPIDER (left) created plenty of buzz – it’s a psychological thriller inspired by true events from the Fifties, where we’re encouraged to see things from the killer’s perspective. GOLD COAST (main pic) is a Danish drama about a young maverick who embarks on a journey to the Danish Colonies to set up a coffee plantation. BABAI is a rites of passage road drama from Kosovar filmmaker Visar Morina. ANTONIA explores the tragic life of poet, Antonia Pozzi, Italy’s greatest female poet.

There is a distinctly Eastern flavour to the features from the two female filmmakers in Competition. Another title that has been getting some good reviews is Eva Neymann’s tender and touching SONG OF SONGS: images of the lost world of the Jewish Shtetl at the turn of the 20th Century is seen through the eyes of two teenage lovers (right), and Anca Damian’s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN explores a mujahedin fighter’s adventures during the Afghanistan wars.

There were seven screen debuts in the Competition line-up – the winner THE SOUND OF TREES, is Canadian filmmaker François Peloquin’s coming of age feature debut set in the Québec landscape (main pic).

FORUM OF INDEPENDENTS

Brazilian director Ives Rosenfeld’S world premiere of HOPEFULS (Aspirantes), takes light-hearted look at the world of football through the eyes of a young man and his girlfriend. And Kim Ki-duk’s latest offering STOP is a bizarre drama centring on a couple who are gradually descending into meltdown in the aftermath radiation sickness caused by Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor.

DOCUMENTARY STRAND

The Documentary Films strand included the international premiere of ‘poetic and moving’ I AM BELFAST, from English director Mark Cousins who reveals the history of Belfast through the ancient eyes of an 10,000 year old woman. The score is composed by David Holmes.

At finally, it takes an English woman, Cosima Spender, to make a film about the Sienese Palio, an ancient and daring horse race that takes place annually in the Florentine city. PALIO’s editor, Valerio Bonelli, was the editor of award-winning titles: Philomena, Hannibal Rising and Gladiator and the documentary won a prize at Tribeca earlier this year (below).

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 3 -11 JULY 2015 | KARLOVY VARY | CZECH REPUBLIC

Touch of Evil (1958)

Director: Orson Welles

Writer: Orson Welles, from the novel by Whit Masterson

Cast: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Joanna Moore, Ray Collins

95min Drama US

Welles’s Hollywood career was really all about film Noir and although The Stranger did best at the Box Office, A TOUCH OF EVIL, was considered his ultimate cult picture. In a US border town with Mexico, Welles stars as the corrupt and bloated homicide cop Hank Quinlan, who is unable to get over the death of his wife by strangulation. Charlton Heston plays a dignified Mexican narcotics agent who is married to a proud and pouting Janet Leigh, a role that prepared her for Hitchcock’s Psycho . The opening scene is particularly atmospheric as we are thrown into the midst of this sleazy world as it unfolds with a mixed score of eclectic beats, giving a real impression of a night on the town in dregsville during a tracking sequence that rolls on for over 3 minutes, without titles. With Welles at the controls the story is transformed into a dark, perverse and twisted affair, marking him out as one of the most inventive directors of the era. From this unique opening long-take to the final scene where a superb Marlene Dietrich comments “Hank was a great detective all right – And a lousy cop” A TOUCH OF EVIL seethes with malevolence. MT.

ON LONG RELEASE AT THE BFI SOUTHBANK IN CELEBRATION OF A THE CENTENARY OF ORSON WELLES.

The Face of an Angel (2014) | DVD |Blu-ray release

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Writers: Barbie Latza Nadeau and Paul Viragh

Cast: Daniel Brühl, Cara Delevingne, Kate Beckinsale, Ava Acres

101mins Drama English/UK

Michael Winterbottom’s latest film captures the mood of uncertainty and transience surrounding the mysterious murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia in the summer of 2012, tracing the story via a journalist and documentary filmmaker director called Thomas, played by Daniel Brühl. After a disastrous career in Hollywood, Thomas has arrived in Siena to kickstart his career, in much the same way as Colin Firth’s character, Joe, did in the 2008 outing GENOVA. Both are convincing portraits of troubled fathers, with adolescent kids, balancing their work and family lives while trying to make sense of their personal circumstances in a shifting scenario of contemporary Italy. Winterbottom gives the impression of trying to understand his characters from his own perspective of life.

Once in Siena, Thomas (like Joe) is overcome by visions of his ex-wife, dreamlike sequences in which he’s haunted by murderers as if the medieval city is transpiring with the past to create a unsettling and picaresque atmosphere of dread and mistrust. The dream sequences pepper the middle act of The Face of an Angel. They’re bewildering, involving and entirely disconcerting. While they are nothing to do with the murder he is investigating they create an ambiance of bewilderment that feels appropriate in echoing the mysterious circumstances of the death of the young English student and her involvement with the unusual American, Amanda Knox, that captured the collective imagination and obsession of news audiences all over the World. Michael Winterbottom is trying to tap into the zeitgeist that somehow, through ‘smoke and mirrors’ reporting or handling of the case (by the Media), obfuscation in the events surrounding the murder, allowed proceedings to be derailed.

Thomas becomes involved with two women: the first is Simone (Kate Beckinsale), an American journalist in a similar situation to himself, hoping that she may shed light on the truth of the case, but she, in turn, is involved with local Italian hacks who are a law unto themselves, chasing a story or an angle that may not necessarily reflect the truth of what happened. The second is a young English student, Melanie (Cara Delevingne in a dynamite debut), who serves to allow him to capture the essence of his youth away from the hackneyed hacks. Sadly, neither of these characters bring us anywhere nearer to enlightenment on the murder, or the truth.

There are analogies here with Dante – Beatrice being supplied by Melanie, and the hacks – the various characters from the circles of Hell. But above it all rises the terrible fact that a young and intelligent woman was murdered in suspicious circumstances and little clarity really emerges as to the whys or the wherefores of this terrible tragedy. When somebody dies in unclear circumstances, the press and public seize upon the story, forgetting the victims and their families. The murder becomes disassociated with the bereaved and suddenly belongs to the public imagination. This is both a natural phenomenon and a crass reality that Winterbottom has captured with intelligence and inventiveness. While it doesn’t offer any clues or solutions, it throws up and reflects something deeper to ponder upon. MT

THE FACE OF AN ANGEL IS ON DVD | BLu-ray from 20 July 2015

[youtube id=”fmmzSXohHnc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Love & Mercy (2015)

Director: Bill Pohlad Writers: Oren Moverman

Cast: John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Giamatti, Dee Wallace, Jake Abel, Joanna Going

121min US Biopic of Brian Wilson

LOVE & MERCY explores the life of iconic Beach Boys front man Brian Wilson during the formative years of the band and the abusive relationship with his father that led to mental illness that worsened under the control of a doctor whose care he sought in his troubled adult years.

In a resonant and well-managed double act Paul Dano (young Brian) and John Cusack (older Brian) evoke the creative brilliance of an intuitive soul caught between the strong egos of his father and the other band members while he strove to channel his musical talents into a string of highly original hits capturing the upbeat sunny vibe of America in the sixties while echoing the tender tones of love and loss.

Oren Moverman’s fractured narrative flips back and forth from the opening scenes as John Cusack’s quirky and quixotic older Brian is buying a cadillac from Melinda Ledbetter (a superb Elizabeth Banks), who is to play a crucial part in his adult years – and the early life portrayed by Paul Dano’s sensitive young Brian who is physically and mentally abused by his unhappy father, as he patiently feels his way ahead on a thrilling musical adventure. Although occasionally slack in places where the film attempts to drift into the dreamlike mindset of a creative genius or reflect the gruelling nature of recording sessions, this affecting emotional drama sings out with spine-tingling soul.

In some ways Bill Pohlad’s direction has tragic overtones of a man who succeeded against the odds. Wilson is seen as being constantly besieged by negative characters, amongst them his father, Murry Wilson (Bill Camp) who will eventually sell the rights to the Band’s music for less than a million dollars; bandmate and naysayer Mike Love (Jake Abel), not to mention the vehemently vicious Doctor Eugene Landy (a brilliantly ebullient Paul Giamatti), his disturbed legal guardian, who uses a toxic brew of Pavlovian tricks to keep Wilson psychologically under control. But glimmers of hope gradually transform the drama in the final scenes – and if you don’t know the story, this will come as a welcome surprise.

In the early years, a puppy-like Paul Dano paints Wilson as a home-loving peacemaker who relies heavily of intuition to be productive and uses accomplished professional musicians known as the Wrecking Crew to create the unique sound of mega hits ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Good Vibrations’. In one scene, we see him cancelling a $5000 dollars recording session simply because “the vibes don’t feel right”. Drummer Hal Blaine offers Wilson the only professional praise in the entire piece, assuring him: “Phil Spector’s got nothin’ on you”. This is a heart-warming moment in contrast to the many scenes of flagrant emotional abuse that Wilson suffers at the hands of Dr Landy and his father who continually puts him down: “Five years from now no one is going to remember you or the Beach Boys.”

John Cusack reflects Wilson’s inate good-nature but also his warped and tortured soul in the desperate lines “I want you to leave now, but I don’t want you to leave me”, after spending a romantic afternoon with Melinda in his beach-house. Their relationship develops under the constant control of Dr Landy, who insists on over-medicating Wilson, being a permanent presence in his daily acitivities and even dictating his living arrangements and attending his dates with Melinda. And as the couple gradually fall in love, the defensive Landy insists that Wilson wants no more of Melinda in his life due to his recording commitments.

Pohlad’s biopic is by no means hagiographic and this is the essence of its success as it accurately reflects the real nature of an intensely private man whose creativity strove to express deep-felt emotions and continual inventiveness and rather than a desire to engage with fans and pursue fame. And this is perhaps, in some ways, why Wilson was at odds with his bandmates. But even if you know nothing of the man himself but are familiar with the legend of the Beach Boys and their songs, this is moving musical biopic with appeal for the arthouse crowd and mainstream audiences alike. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 10 JULY 2015

[youtube id=”lpd4jzKA4SA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

3 Women (1977) | Robert Altman season BFI 2021

Dir.: Robert Altman | Cast: Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule, Robert Fortier | USA Drama, 124 min.

Robert Altman despised Hollywood with the true hatred of a renegade and claimed that the idea of 3 WOMEN came to him in a dream. Nowadays you have to be careful with these kind of statements – suffice to say the film is a free association on the topic of female identities, leaving ratio and conventional narrative behind. Calling the film an ‘American answer to Bergman’s Persona, does Altman no justice; the point is that 3 Women is an exercise in psychological symbolism, avoiding any classification in itself.

It all takes place in a spa for seniors in the Californian desert near Palm Springs where Millie Lamoreaux (Duvall) works as a physical therapist acquainting newcomer Pinky Rose (Spacek) with her duties in the opening scene. Millie is a walking/talking ‘Cosmopolitan’ woman, full of witticisms and superficial knowledge which she sprouts continuously.

Millie sees herself as ‘God’s given gift to men’, too often getting the bum’s rush, so it’s quite a surprising that Pinky, fresh from small town Texan small town, chooses her as a role model and soon the two are flat mates, Pinky a sycophantic sidekick to her mentor Millie

The trio is made up with pregnant Willie Hart (Rule), who paints disturbing murals on the apartment buildings and pool – owned by her husband Edgar (Fortier) – where Pinky and Millie now live. Edgar is an ex-stuntman more married to the beer bottle than his artist wife. But a startling turn of events sees the film change gear, Pinky becoming a much more functional version of Millie (and even seducing Edgar). And as the mood changes, structure and narrative also become blurred as the three women somehow drift into one united by another tragic turns of events.

What starts as a mordant caricature of California (and Hollywood) shifts in tone towards the end, the images becoming more languid, as the three women seem to glide towards one other. But this not just female solidarity at play, we are actually entering a new sphere. Altman lets the audience decide what to make of it all, offering an alternative to what has gone on before. It is an invitation to cut loose from the American dream of crass materialism and superficial uniformity, in order to find a dynamic we can share with others. Altman sets himself apart from mainstream cinema both in form and content without providing a clearly defined alternative. But, like Bodhi Wind’s murals, the emotional journey taken by these three different souls is enigmatic and mystical. 3 Women is a cinematic invitation to step outside the constraints of society, and try something different, for a change. AS

NOW AT THE BFI Southbank LONDON | ON BLU RAY RE-MASTERED COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS & VIDEO

Dancing With Crime | Jet Storm | Richard Attenborough Classics | DVD release

JET STORM (1959)

Written and directed by Cy Endfield (Zulu) this 1959 star-studded aviation drama has Dame Sybil Thorndyke, Stanley Baker, Hermione Baddeley, Paul Eddington, Diane Cilento, Bernard Braden, Mai Zetterling, Elizabeth Sellars.

When Ernest Tilley’s (Attenborough) daughter is killed in a hit-and-run, he’s hellbent on avenging her death. Armed with a homemade bomb, he tracks down the killer to an airport and boarding the same flight, he threatens to be the first suicide bomber. Cy Endfield’s in-jet thriller relies on the dynamite performances to ramp up the suspense and he gets them from a brilliant cast including Attenborough playing against type as a sinister potential killer, driven insane by sadness. Oscar-winning cinematographer Jack Hildyard does a great job with the claustrophobic setting (the interior of a Russian Tupolev Tu-104) and Stanley Baker is masterful as the suave captain, who has his own sad history. Elizabeth Sellers is foxy and provocative (and still rocking on at 93); Sybil Thorndyke lightens the mood with a mildly humorous turn and there is also a touching romance between Virginia Maskell and the co-pilot to sweeten things as emotions boil over in this tightly-scripted classic full of interesting texture and superb vignettes, based on a story by Sigmund Miller. MT

DANCING WITH CRIME (1947)

Directed by John Paddy Carstairs (Trouble in Store) makes its much-anticipated arrival on DVD for the first time since its theatrical release in 1947. Filmed at Cromwell Studios, Southall.

In this classic British film Noir, childhood friends and army comrades Dave Robinson (Bill Owen) and Ted Peters (a young and earnest Attenborough at 23) turn out to be very different when they get back from the War. Ted gets an honest job as a taxi driver, and saves for his wedding to his childhood sweetheart (Sheila Sim). Dave, however, is a bit of a geezer who wants easy cash and soon gets involved with a gang. When Dave is found dead in the back of Ted’s taxi, suspicions fly as Scotland Yard investigate the murder. This is schematic stuff but beautifully-crafted with Reginald Wye’s velvet visuals (The Seventh Veil) and enlivened by a score of forties band classics including “Bow Bells” and Ben Frankel’s original score. Vintage pleasure. MT

THIS CULT CLASSIC DUO IS OUT ON DVD FROM 17 AUGUST 2015

Line of Credit (2014) |Kreditis Limiti

Director: Salomé Alexi

Cast: Nino Kadradse, Salome Alexi, Koka Tagonidze,

90min Comedy Drama Georgia

Georgian filmmaker Salome Alexi’s LINE OF CREDIT is a finely-tuned and delicately rendered comedy teetering on the brink of tragedy to paint a tense yet elegant picture of a well-to-woman family forced into debt in penny-pinching post Soviet Georgia.

Purple-tinted pastel visuals and careful mid-distance framing echo Miss Violence but this is lighter in tone lacking the glowering menace of Avranas’ outing , despite its serious undertones. A predominantly female affair, it sets off with a large family gathering to celebrate an elderly woman’s birthday in the faded grandeur of the upmarket apartment she shares with her middle-aged daughter Nino and her husband in Tbilisi. It emerges that Nino had pawned her mother’s wedding ring to pay for the party. Close friend Lili (Alexi) reveals, in a discrete post prandial tête a tête, the need for an operation but can’t afford the medical cost but there is a crafty way round this involving her joining a drug programme. Meanwhile the aristocratic Nino (Nino Kadradse) and her mother are quietly selling off the family porcelain to cover expenses.

Graceful and soignée, Nino keeps up her appearances while constantly scrimping and saving to run her small cafe in a quiet corner of the bustling capital. Enlivened by occasional bursts of local music, this intimate domestic drama depicts a close knit community that cares for each other in frequent encounters and conspiratorial chats but the debt-ridden duos invariably focus on money matters and will resonate with art house audiences experiencing the need to tighten their belts. Alexi’s well-crafted and watchable debut gradually builds towards a shocking climax and by the end we feel thoroughy au fait with contempo middle class Tbilisi and its subtle yet far-reaching political undercurrents. MT

LINE OF CREDIT is screening during East End Film Festival on 9 July 2015

How to Lose Jobs and Alienate Girlfriends (2015) | East End Film Festival

Dir.: Tom Meadmore

Cast: Tony Jackson, Amanda Medica, Thomas Meadmore

Australia 2014, 73 min.

Back in 2008, Australian film editor Thomas Meadmore wanted to direct his own film. He chose his boss, TV director Tony Jackson, and his girlfriend Amanda Medica as subjects, since both were aspiring singers/musicians. As it turned out, his efforts did affect him professionally and personally, and, as the title suggest, not for the best.

The Melbourne set documentary might not be an aesthetic masterpiece and first timer Meadmore certainly knew very little about himself or his subjects, not to mention his total lack of empathy, but his honesty somehow saves this rugged undertaking. Whilst it soon becomes clear that Meadmore’s filmmaking skills are not much above your average home movie maker, he is obviously oblivious of his failings, and instead attacks both Jackson and his girl friend Amanda, telling his boss that he lacks talent as a singer and is far too old at the age of forty to start a career as musician. He then accuses Amanda of a lacking motivation, even though she has to earn her living as a waitress on top of her music career.

Meadmore’s arrogance is as surprising, as his lack of awareness: he is shocked that Thomas and Amanda resent him and it’s hardly surprising that the two split up fairly early on in the proceedings. Interviews with Jackson’s ex-wife, and conversations with his sister again show Meadmore as an overreaching self-starter with strong opinions, but few skills as a filmmaker and even less as an human being.

Meadmore comes over as control freak and manipulator, who has little going for himself, apart from his brutal honesty, which is underlined in the credits, when How to lose Jobs & Alienate Your Girlfriends is called a selfie/film. It is, alas, very much the first. In spite of himself, Meadmore somehow manages some scathing humour, but overall this is just an exercise in self-glorification, aspiring filmmakers can safely use the film as a model of how not proceed. AS

SCREENING DURING THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2015 | 1 – 12 July 2015

La Grande Bouffe (1973)

Director: Marco Ferreri

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Ugo Tognazzi

130min Comedy Drama French

One of the legendary European dramas of the era and the highest grossing, La Grande Bouffe redolent of seventies France with its mock ‘Louis Quinze’ interiors, florid cinematography and original score by Philippe Sarde (The Tenant). Mocking, cynical and drole in tone, it pokes fun at inappropriate sex, bestiality, marital strife, body functions and the more grotesque elements of everyday life, which are treated with a general nonchalance all round. Uniting the era’s famous acting talents: Michel Piccoli, Marcello Mastroianni, Philippe Noiret and Ugo Tognazzi give rather restrained performances as a group of friends (magistrate, chef, tv producer and pilot) who attempt to escape their woes by eating themselves to death in a French Maison Particulière with a trio of kindly callgirls, while salacious silent movies form background texture to their gargantuan feasts.

As the Cannes festival opener of 1973, the film was naturally going to divide critics, some who regarded it as a worthy enditement of mass consumerism and over-indulgence of the French and Italian middle-classeses (for whom it was quite normal to have a mistress); others as an amusing curio focussing on debauchery of one kind or another. Nevertheless, it went on to win the FIPRESCI prize that year.

There are shades of Walerian Borowczyk and Bunüel in the final scenes where Tognazzi gets a handjob while gorging on a vast pâté gâteau before dying of a heart-attack. The others meet their fate in equally distateful circumstances which somehow feel more tragically pathetic rather than offensive fifty years later; although at the time they must have felt shocking. The tragedy is to be found in the self-hatred and worthlessness of these men, rather than in their excess and depravity. These are people who have lost their zest for life due to stultifying self-satisfaction.

According to sources, the film was originally shown unlicensed at the Curzon Mayfair London causing an outcry from infamous campaigner Mary Whitehouse on the grounds of indecency in a public place. This only added grist to the censor’s mill, who went on to rule that films with “artistic merit” would be exempt from prosecution. Seemingly taking a cue from this experience, Ferreri went on to make Tales of Ordinary Madness, another drama focusing on excess and sexual depravity starring an equally impressive cast of Ben Gazzara and Ornella Muti. It won the FIPRESCI prize at San Sebastian 1981.

A 2K REMASTERING IS ON RELEASE FROM 3 JULY COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS

Dora or the Sexual Neuroses of our Parents (2015) | East End Film Festival 2015

Director: Stina Werenfels Writer: Boris Treyer| Stina Werenfels

Cast: Victoria Schulz, Jenny Schily, Lars Eidinger, Urs Jucker

90min Drama Austria/Switzerland

Stina Werenfels first came to Berlinale in 2006 with a powerful debut GOING PRIVATE. DORA marks her return with a morally challenging and visually appealing drama that probes some sensitive issues for the family of a disabled young woman in contemporary Switzerland.

In Zurich, a happily married couple in their early forties are parents to Dora (newcomer Victoria Schulz), a mentally retarded but attractive 18 year-old. Kristin (Jenny Schily) and Felix (Urs Jucker) have raised her with complete devotion but Dora is now an adult and certainly old enough to realise that she cannot interrupt her parent’s love-making by climbing into their bed. The problem is that Dora is still being treated like a child because her brain has not developed at the same time as her body and so she lacks the behavioural changes that normally follow puberty and adolescence.

The decision to stop taking her medication has had the added complication of making Dora completely sexually uninhibited. And this is both shocking and bewildering for her parents, and particularly her mother. Jenny Schily gives a convincing turn as Kristin, a loving woman who is deeply uncomfortable with her daughter’s burgeoning sexual prowess that appears not to know any shame (she comments on her father’s erect penis calling it ‘a front bum willy’ after surprising them in the throes of passion).

After an incident in a public lavatory, where Dora consents to a brutal rape by a stranger, she then embarks on a regular sex life with the man in question, much to the alarm and disappointment of her open-minded yet, understandably worried parents. All this is delicately and almost dreamily photographed by Lukas Strebel’s pleasingly soft-focused lens, a style that softens and blunts the emotionally traumatic nature of the subject matter

Atlantic (2015) | East End Film Festival | 1-12 July 2015

Dir.: Jan-Willem Ewijk

Cast: Fettah Lamara, Thekla Reuten, Mohamed Majd, Jan-Willem Ewijk,Wisal Hatimi

Germany/Belgium/Netherlands/Morocco/France, 95 min.

Some films are likeable because they stand alone and do not fall in any category or genre, or attempt to reach out to a certain target audience. In dreams, we cannot figure everything out, but can be nevertheless enthralled.

Fettah (Lamara), a young man in his early thirties, lives in a poor fishing village in Morocco where he helps his father on the boat in winter and works as a guide for the European surfers in summer. A dreamer, Fettah wants everything he cannot obtain. There is his grief for his mother, who drowned when he was seven. Then there is Wisal, a young girl in the village who wants to marry him but Fettah again wants what he can’t have: Alexandra (Reuten) who is already spoken for by Jan (Ewijk). The pair are staying in Fettah’s house during the summer and he becomes infatuated with Alexandra who has his mother’s eyes. After the couple leave, Fettah sets on his surf board to journey across the ocean, not so much in search of Alexandra (he doesn’t even have her address), but to get away from all the poverty. He soon discovers that he is just another emigrant, trying to get to Europe.

The all-present voice over, whispering, accompanies Fettah on his 180 mile journey across the ocean. Flashbacks help to put connect the real characters to the voice-over, which seems to draw Fettah more and more into himself, the further he gets away from Morocco . The hypnotic voiceover is accompanied by to sumptuous visuals – a mixture of wildness poetic languidness – from DoP Jasper Wolf. Fettah’s loneliness is occasionally relieved by fishermen, sharing sardines with him, but nobody can help him when his equipment starts to fail.

The simple storyline allows the audience to become lost in the images and Piet Swert’s score, making this a transcendental journey with a starting point, but no concrete goal – but then dreams often have no proper endings. ATLANTIC sometimes sails very close to pretentiousness, but the harsh environment is always there to remind us of the ever-present danger. Fettah’s identity, perhaps as unknown to him as to us, is best put in words that also describe the whole film: a wandering spirit in love with the sea and dreams, reality taking second place to something only to be felt: An absolute original.AS

Still the Water (2014)

Director: Naomi Kawase

Cast: Niijrô Muramaki, Jun Yoshinaga, Miyuki Matsuda, Makiko Watanabe,

121min Drama Japan

Set on the subtropical Amami Island off the South coast of Japan, there’s a blissful serenity to Naomi Kawase’s tender tale of love, ancient traditions and the healing power of nature that connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

Spiritual, intense and occasionally a tad pretentious in tone, very much in the vein of her previous outing, The Mourning Forest, Kawase explores how the cycles of nature are central to our existence and must be respected throughout our lives. Sumptuously captured on the widescreen and on intimate close-ups by Yutaka Yamazaki (I Wish), particularly magnificent are the aerial panoramas of lush jungles, turbulent sea-swells and the skylines of Tokyo.

Life and death coexist against the backdrop of everyday events and first love for teenager Kyoko (Jun Yoshinaga) and the ‘boy next door’ Kaito (Niijrô Muramaki), who is moody, awkward and emotionally less aware. Kaito’s father works as a tattooist and is divorced from his mother, a cook. Kyoko’s mother is slowly dying but her spiritual training as a shamen has prepared her to deal with the pain in a dignified and elegant way. In the midst of all this – a dead body floats on to the beach one morning after a heavy tropical storm. There is a vague connection between the drowned man and Kaito’s mother, although Kawase never really clarifies this in her otherworldly-style narrative. Clearly, the trauma affects Kaito’s ability to bond physically with Kyoko.

Exotic and surreal, the sea and verdant scenery has a hypnotic effect, lulling our senses with its gentle piano score and some island ‘Full-Moon’ dances performed by Kyoko and her extended family. Animals, however, do not get the same respect as Nature’s other creatures, and there are two highly graffic scenes of goats being slaughtered that seem to conflict the otherwise spiritual narrative flow. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 3 JULY 2015

Concrete Clouds (2013) | Pavang Rak | Thai Indie Festival

Dir.: Lee Chatametikool

Cast: Ananda Everingham, Janesuda Parnto, Apinya Sakuljaroensuk, Prawith Hansten, Katherine Reilly

Thailand/Hong Kong 2013, 99 min.

First time writer/director Lee Chatametikool has edited Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s feature films since 2002, and the Palme D’Or winner is one the producers of Concrete Clouds. But whereas Apichatpong’s features are strictly arthouse, standing out for their originality and enigmatic narratives, Chatametikool has delivered a very mainstream soap opera, where the blandness of what actually happens is dressed up in pretentious dialogue and dreamy images.

Set in 1997, when Thailand was rocked by a financial crisis, Concrete Clouds starts with a quote by Milan Kundera “The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past”. The quote is superimposed on blueprints of houses never to be built, since its developer jumps out of the window of his forth floor house, a victim of the financial crisis. In New York, his son Mutti (Everingham), a stock trader, who lives with his girl friend Katherine (Reilly), an art student, learns of his father’s death and boards a plane to Bangkok, where he meets his teenage brother Nik (Hansten), who lives a listless and unfocused existence. The brothers have nothing in common, and soon Mutti’s interest shifts to his ex-girlfriend Sai (Parnto), an ex-actress, now working as a PR adviser. Nik’s love interest, Poupee (Sakuljaroensuk), has been left alone by her older sister, an escort, and is about to follow in her footsteps, accepting a job in a night bar, to the great chagrin of Nik. It turns out, that Sai too is a financially stressed: her flat has been re-possessed, and instead of making love to Mutti, she phones a wealthy suitor to bail her out. Her criticism of Mutti is as trite as clichéd: “You have put me on a pedestal, and I will fall”. Sai and her pseudo glamorous girl friends seem only to be interested in shopping, complaining “the currency thing is infringing my rights to shop”.

Apart from the rather superficial narrative, the director seems to have a problem with women in general: Katherine, the only independent woman, remains a cypher, whilst Poupee and her older sister are selling themselves to men, and Sai is hardly an improvement; choosing financial security over love. The two male leads are self-seeking, only focusing on immediate satisfaction. The mostly impressive cinematography tries to conceal the emptiness of Concrete Clouds: it is a misogynist rant about the drawbacks of crass materialism, but showing exactly the same failings by investing into aesthetics, and totally neglecting any real criticism of society’s values. AS

SCREENING DURING THE THAI INDIE FESTIVAL 6 JUNE – 6 JULY 2015 | GENERAL RELEASE 26 JUNE 2015

Hippocrates (2014)

Director: Thomas Lilti

Cast: Vincent Lacoste, Jacques Gamblin, Reda Kateb, Marianne Denicourt

102min Drama French with subtitles

Reda Kateb (Abdel) and Vincent Lacoste (Benjamin) are the stars of this docudrama that follows the early internship of two young doctors in a large Paris teaching hospital. The warts and all portrait evokes the grisly dark humour that doctors often resort to (together with alcohol and cigarettes) to lighten their gruelling daily grind in a career which, as portrayed here, is very much a vocation and a labour of love. Hippocrates was the ancient Greek physician who gave his name to the code of conduct by which doctors live their professional lives and this sophomore feature from writer-director (and Doctor) Thomas Lilti.

At first Benjamin imagines this as a glamorous profession but as the days go by, in his six month stint in a department run by his father Prof Barois (Jacques Gamblin), the vulnerability and humanity of the patients (all played very movingly by an superb support cast) gradually persuades him otherwise.

Scenes of rowdy camaraderie with his colleagues in the common room punctuate more poignant moments of where we see patients suffering extreme pain and anguish and we soon discovery that the medics cover each other’s backs much in the same way as the Policemen portrayed in Precinct Seven Five. More sadly, older patients are not given the same chances as the younger ones and often patient care is managed according to the availability of beds and equipment, rather than the clinical requirements of the sick.

That said, Abdel (Kateb) goes out on a limb for the patients in his care offering them personal succour. A highly experienced immigrant doctor from Algeria, he is unable to be promoted due his lack of papers. Fully aware of this callous system, he tries to do his best for the patients, often going into ethical conflict with his superiors, and in particular, Dr Denormandy (Marianne Denicourt), the registrar of the department.

That public health provision is under-funded and over-burdened is nothing new and director Thomas Lilti, brings his experience at the coalface to bear in this gripping and affecting tale which explores how medics are worn out and demoralised leading to a volatile standoffs between staff and management. And HIPPOCRATES shows how the French medics are more vocal than their more tolerant UK counterparts. The situation goes from bad to worse in the final scenes where Benjamin and Abdel find themselves faced with a life-changing decision.

Reflected in a steely visuals of Nicolas Gaurin (Bright Days Ahead) HIPPOCRATES is hard-edged, its caustic humour authentically evoking real life. Kateb is dynamite is a likeable and sympathetic doctor who wears his smirking contempt for his seniors as a badge of honour on his white coat, show that when it comes to care-giving our immigrant workers often embody a sense of commitment and compassion that is sometime lacking elsewhere. Their much needed skill and approach is often hampered by their status, whereas Lacoste is sulky and clearly out of his depth, lacking the life experience and common sense to compliment his medical training. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 26 JUNE 2015

Last Days in the Desert (2015) | Edinburgh Film Festival 2015

Director: Rodrigo Garcia

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ciaran Hinds, Tye Sheridan, Ayelet Zurer

98min Historical Drama

“Forty days and forty nights, thou wast fasting in the wild; Forty days and Forty nights Tempted and yet undefiled”.

Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeszki takes what could have been just another addition to the Jesus and father|son sub-genres and transforms it into something ethereal and luminous in Colombian writer|director Rodrigo Garcia’s LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT.

The message of the Lenten parable can be interpreted in many ways, here Ewan McGregor is cast as a strongly self-critical but sympathetic Jesus, whose ‘shadow’ torments him as Lucifer (a mirror image often sharing the same frame) or a metaphor for evil. As ‘Yashuya’ nears Jerusalem at the end of his time of meditation in the arid wilderness (actually California’s Anza-Borrego Desert), Jesus confronts a final test when he meets a family in crisis: an anxious father (Ciaran Hinds); a frustrated son (Tye Sheridan) and a wife (Ayelet Zurer) who is slowly wasting away from an incurable disease.

Solemn in tone, Rodrigo Garcia’s serene and contemplative film is high-minded, as you might expect from the subject matter. It is also full of riddles, ambiguous dialogue and mysterious mirror images of Jesus’s shadow who persistently taunts and tempts him in his final days before the crucifixion. There is even a wicked crone who asks him for water but then reveals her true identity.

A stone mason, Hinds is attempting to build his son a home on the edge of a precipice (with a view to die for, perfectly captured by Lubeszki’s visuals that reflect each subtle nuance of light from dawn ’til dusk), but his son is keen to explore the World beyond this dry desert and engages eagerly with his new found holy mentor on their trips to the watering hole. Slow-paced but strangely mesmerising, the narrative builds towards an unexpected twist which generates surprising tension, and the performances, particularly those of Tye Sheridan and McGregor are illuminating and thoughtful.

As the ‘Jesus oeuvre’ goes, McGregor feels like a more sardonic version of Pasolini’s newcomer Enrique Irazoqui in The Gospel According to Matthew – what he lacks in Irazoqui’s purity and vulnerability he makes up for in his constant self-reflection and self-criticism which reduces him to a humble figure. As a meditation of the powers of good and evil, THE LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT is reflective and edifying. There are no acts of God or parting waters but there are some understated moments of surrealism and the quiet contemplativeness of the piece offers food for thought if not Manna from Heaven. MT

SCREENING DURING THE EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 -28 JUNE 2015.

Len and Company (2015) | Edinburgh Film Festival 17 – 28 June 2015

Director: Tim Godsall Script: Tim Godsall, Katharine Knight

Cast: Rhys Ifans, Jack Kilmer, Juno Temple

USA/Canada Drama 105mins

Montreal-born Tom Godsall brings together a veteran and a newcomer by way of a rising star in his debut feature LEN AND COMPANY, in which Rhys Ifans plays crabby superstar music producer Len, who wearily retreats to his country home in Upstate New York followed by his aspiring and retiring rockstar son Max (Jack Kilmer) and his newest award-winning collaborator Zoe (Juno Temple). Commendable primarily for allowing a limited performer like Ifans to play to his strengths, this curious and mostly understated drama world-premieres at the 69th Edinburgh International Film Festival.

From the moment we first set eyes on Len, whose comical grouchiness offsets the otherwise cheery tempo of Ian Dury’s ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick,’ we infer the story to come: stubbornly irritable old hand retires for some peace and quiet, only for the weak foundations of his idyll to be uprooted by unwelcome if belatedly appreciated visitors. If the particulars aren’t entirely precise, the general gist is there: it’s not long before Len’s son Max shows up, complete with inoffensively bland hairdo and a secret desire to have his dad listen to a new demo he’s made with some pals. Max finds it difficult to connect with his dad; the latter even responds to the mention of a Liverpool football match with a curt dismissal. It’s only when Zoe, the outwardly feisty but vulnerable popstar with whom Len has just made a hit record, also shows up that Len’s paternal and professional laziness are finally confronted.

For the most part (though it has its pitfalls, the most risible of which involves a final act visit from one of Zoe’s admirers) Godsall’s script, co-written with Katharine Knight, unfolds by way of casual segues rather than dramatic standoffs—unexpectedly so, perhaps, given the director’s success making TV commercials. André Pienaar’s consistently unshowy autumnal cinematography, meanwhile, helps to further subdue any would-be melodrama. The emphasis here is more on those unspoken wishes, the ones that gnaw away from within. Whatever kind of resolution is on the cards, here, it’s to be embodied by Ifans’s trademark raised eyebrow—and little more.

It’s a giant in-joke by now that any film character would find Ifans remotely appealing, and details about Len’s own artistic success here are suitably scant. Worn out by his own lifestyle and barely ready to admit to anything resembling regrets, Len prefers to sit around watching old episodes of The Sweeney and Blackadder on DVD. Likewise, Ifans keeps things relatively low-key, delivering lines like “she was an underfed coyote, poor thing” and “cheeky fucking cunt bastard” with a functional rather than expressive register. It’s a clever casting choice, all told: opposite Kilmer (Val’s son) and Temple, Ifans cuts an effectively exhausted figure, as much bemused as anyone by his own longevity. MICHAEL PATTISON

PREMIERING AT EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 – 28 JUNE 2015

Cop Car (2015) | Edinburgh 2015

Director: Jon Watts

Cast: Kevin Bacon, Shea Wigham, Camryn Manheim, James Freedson-Jackson, Hays Welford

90min US Drama

The big sky country of Colorado provides some magnificent widescreen potential for this rather twisty tale that starts as a gentle indie drama but soon enters thriller territory when two kids on a rural ramble innocently playing cops and robbers end up in serious trouble.

Jon Watts cruises ahead confidently with a plausible if outlandish plotline for this coming of age road movie that keeps us guessing for most of its journey. But the joy ride soon unspools into an adult gunslinger between two unlikeable characters – Kevin Bacon’s dodgy redneck sherriff and the bad guy he was trying to turn in – with the kids playing the victims in a cop chase whose origins remain a mystery from start to finish.

The two 10-year-olds – newcomers in question, Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford), discover an empty cop car during their make meander across the open fields – Travis is the sparky daring one and Harrison the more reserved of the two. Daring each other to touch the car, they end up inside and then driving off in a moment of exhilarating danger – sirens blaring and lights flashing – and unknown to them – a perp in the boot.

The car belongs to sherrif Mitch Kretzer (Kevin Bacon) who we then see, in flashback, dragging a body from the boot and then dumping it in an empty pit. When Kretzer returns, the boys have already left and are eventually seen snaking along the highway by a woman travelling in the opposite direction (Camryn Manheim).

Watts and his co-writer stick in the realms of superficial ‘boys own’ territory without scoping out the kids backstories or that of the sherriff and his victims, who all turn in superb performances. COP CAR imagines proceedings from a kids’ point of view: fearless and out to have fun – and to hell with the consequences. There is a sinister undercurrent as the boys – quite literally – take a back seat, but this lack of more ample characterisation throws the emphasis onto Bacon’s fairly routine sherriff and his bloodied baddie who we neither know about, and care about even less. A missed opportunity but a ripping yarn nevertheless. MT

SCREENING DURING EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 17 -28 JUNE 2015

Every Secret Thing (2014) | Edinburgh Film Festival 17 -28 June 2015

Director: Amy Berg, Writer: Nicole Holofcener

Cast: Diane Lane, Dakota Fanning, Elizabeth Banks, Danielle MacDonald, Nate Parker

99min Psychodrama | Mystery | US

Oscar-nominated Amy Berg brings her documentary expertise (West of Memphis | Deliver Us From Evil ) to bear in this feature debut that makes an interesting pairing with her documentary Prophet’s Prey, also screening at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, touching on similar issues. Although initially challenged by its fractured narrative style that takes place in two different time lines, the overtly sombre-toned psychological drama, based on Laura Lippman’s best-seller, goes on to exert a relentlessly unsettling grip throughout its 93 minute running time.

This is largely down to four good female performances from Elizabeth Banks, Diane Lane, Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald). Ronnie and Alice, (played as adults by Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald, respectively) are suspected of kidnapping two mixed-race kids in separate incidents a decade apart. We join the story as an investigation into the latest disappearance is taking place in contempo New York state. And gradually we discover more about the initial crime which resulted in the young girls being incarcerated for 10 years until they emerge as women in their late teens. Told through flashbacks with mock newspaper footage and news bulletins, the original murder is relayed from the perspective of the young girls, as the real story only emerges in the final stages of the movie.

Skilful edits require intense concentration as we bring our instincts to the forefront. In analysing the characters of the girls and their families, we become involved in determining the upshot of a story of female disturbance and deception that is open to so many different possibilities, twists and turns. Berg casts aspersions at a dreadful early childhood for both Alice and Ronnie but the circumstances surrounding their start in life, that lead them to become, in effect, psychopaths, is shrouded in mystery. Even at the finale, there is no way of knowing exactly who initiated the kidnapping or who committed the murder although it is possible to make an educated guess based on our own experience and intuitions. There is also the element of false memory that makes this a very exciting and engaging drama, particularly from a feminine perspective.

Themes of parenting, bullying, dating, adoption, the break-down on the family unit and its affects on female relationships, not to mention issues of re-integration into the community, are all carefully woven into the storyline and seen from each different female’s perspective with Rob Hardy’s stunning cinematography which incorporates inventive camera angles and a haunting original score from Robin Coudert (Populaire).

Diane Lane is superb as a single mother who appears to be grappling with a difficult daughter who she is also in competition with, as a female. Dakota Fanning is mesmerising, particularly in one scene where she attains almost horror status as a outwardly vulnerable but clearly cunning individual. But Danielle MacDonald gives the most frightening turn as a narcissistic fantasist with body image issues. And last, but not least, Elizabeth Banks plays an awarded woman detective tasked with investigating the case and bringing her own psychological insight into this nest of vipers. You will have a field day. MT

EVERY SECRET THING screens at EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 -28 JUNE 2015.

The Chambermaid Lynn (2014) MUBI

Director: Ingo Haeb | Cast: Vicky Krieps, Lena Lauzemis, Steffen Muenster | 90min Germany Drama

Vicky Krieps strikes just the right note in Ingo Haeb’s rather trite chamber piece based on a novel by Markus Orths.

The doomed relationship with her dull manager and boyfriend (Steffen Muenster) at a the chintzy hotel where they both work has exposed an obsessive compulsive streak in her fastidious behaviour as cleaner and chambermaid which she clearly enjoys.

The monotonous work routine and listening to French classic movies on her computer soothes Lynn’s anxiety. She tolerated a certain amount of stress from her prying elderly mother who lives far away in an another humdrum existence.

Cheerful in a vacuous way, Lynn offers her ex sexual favours – which he continues to accept – and even though the relationship is over she appears neither disappointed nor turned on by this one-sided routine which provides another evasion from her daily chores.

There are echoes of Amelie in both the tone and characterisation of The Chambermaid’s rather facile approach which belies some serious and even creepy psychological undertones.

Occasionally Lynn has taken to trying on guests’ clothing, riffling through their cubboards and sliding under their hotel beds in anticipation of what might happen when they return to the room. An expected S&M routine experienced under one particular bed brings her into contact with a masculine-faced dominatrix Chiara (Lena Lauzemis) who Lynn decides to try out on her own terms, with surprising consequences and although she doesn’t quite fit the submissive role, Lynn clearly enjoys being controlled and punished in bed and Chiara brings this out into the open in several paid encounters which prove therapeutic for Lynn’s wellbeing.

The Chambermaid was shot by French cinematographer Sophie Maintigneux, who cut her teeth on Eric Rohmer’s classic Le Rayon Vert. Coupled with an atmospheric score from Jakob Ilja, This is watchable but lightweight in comparison to more fully-fledged LGBT titles such as The Duke of Burgundy and Blue is the Warmest Colour, although its delicate psychology is perfectly fleshed out by Krieps’ subtle performance. MT

The Burning | El Ardor (2014)

Dir.: Pablo Fendrik

Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, Claudio Tolcachir, Chico Diaz;

Argentina/Mexico/Brazil/France/USA 2014, 101 min.

An on-screen text informs the audience at the start, that the people of the rainforest invoke beings from the river when they are threatened. Enter Kai (Bernal), whose name is never mentioned, emerging from the river with an strange tattoo on his shoulders. By introducing this enigmatic character, writer/director Pablo Fendrik (La Sangra Brota) sets in motion a story of greed and revenge, told in equal parts as magic-realism and Italo-western.

Three brothers, lead by the near psychotic Tarquino (Tolcachir), work for a company burning down the forest and replacing it with more lucrative pine and soy plantations. Murdering the farmers who do not give up their land – or, in the case of Joao (Diaz), even when they sell their land for nothing under threat, is their modus operandi. Joao’ daughter Vania (Braga) witnesses the murder and is abducted by the trio – another woman before her, hanged her herself in the forest to get away from her torturers). A friend of the family, trying to defend her, is shot, whilst Kai is in hiding. But he soon springs into action, saving Vania from a brutal rape and running off with her into the jungle. After making love, they are saved by a tiger, which gobbles up one of the brothers on the verge of shooting the sleeping pair. It becomes evident that Kai is somewhat of a pacifist and his reluctance to kill hinders his progress. In the meantime the brothers gather another six mercenaries to attack the farm where Kai, Vania and a friend (who once worked for Tarquino) are waiting. In a grand finale Kai will have to overcome his aversion to kill, if he wants to succeed.

THE BURNING is a confusing film that never clarifies whether its main protagonist Kai is a magical being, or just a warrior who is in harmony with nature and the tiger, whom he joins in the forest at the end. And whilst the images of DOP Julian Apezteguia, the real stars of the film, blend in with the magic realism represented by Kai and Vania and their often silent intensity. The ending is just another shoot-out, even though very masterly staged. One wonders if Fendrik would have not done better had he maintained the total ambiguity of the Kai character to the end, instead of making him the master-schemer and executor of a sophisticated action climax. The languid middle part of THE BURNING, which comes nearest to establishing the unity of Kai/Vania with the forest and its creatures, is in this way somehow eradicated in an old fashioned action spectacle. AS

AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 19 JUNE 2015

Blood Cells (2014)

Directors| Joseph Bull | Luke Seomore

Cast: Barry Ward, Chloe Pirrie, Hayley Squire

86min UK Drama

Barry Ward gives an intensely heartfelt turn in this doom-laden debut drama that pictures Britain as a sombre soul that has lost its way: untethered from its agrarian roots, haunted by the past, drowning a mire of cultural dislocation. Ward plays Adam, one of as a stream of people who are struggling to make sense of their lives, adrift from family and meaningful identity.

Told through David Proctor’s hauntingly evocative wide-screen visuals and intimate close-ups, BLOOD CELLS is a poetically poignant low-budget drama from Joseph Bull and Luke Seomore, whose powerful documentary Isolation explored the tragic aftermath of war for injured British Servicemen .

In the post apocalypse of Foot and Mouth disease, Adam’s family farm on the Yorkshire Dales has suffered a crippling loss, leading to the widescale slaughter of livestock and his father’s suicide, pictured in the tragic opening scenes. Adam has wandered around aimlessly in search of work, desperately clutching at the straws of previous loves and relationships until his brother, Aiden gives him the chance to reunite with the family for the birth of his first child. Making his way home involves an uncertain journey into a lonely past as Adam rakes over the ashes of his youth. The wretched recollections of the past, seen in vivid flashback, continue to dog his days, undermining his mental wellbeing as he struggles on, often close to tears.

In one vignette, he finds himself in a bleak seaside backwater in Rhyl where his ex-girlfriend Lauren (Chloe Pirrie from Shell), bitterly rejects his attempts to re-kindle their romance. In a nightclub he meets a couple of girls who echo his sentiments of loss and disorientation in their own young lives, presenting a pitiful portrait of young and directionless life. Heading to Sheffield, Adam discovers that his hard-edged ex-lover Hayley (Hayley Squires), is keen to have him back but he finds her new work ethically unacceptable and moves on.

BLOOD CELLS offers a strikingly naturalistic perspective of the British landscape and one that mixes various genres to create a deeply affecting and richly textured drama that is made all the more watchable by Barry Ward’s vulnerable and reflective performance as Adam. To its credit, BLOOD CELLS is the only British project ever to have been selected by the Biennale College: Cinema. Made on a shoestring budget £119,000 – and none the worse for it – and funded solely by the Biennale|Venice Film Festival. Recommended.

BLOOD CELLS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE ON 27TH JUNE AFTER A UK PREMIERE AT EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL

Le Jour Se Leve (1939) | Blu-ray Release | Bfi Matinee

Dir.: Marcel Carné

Cast: Jean Gabin, Arletty, Jules Berry, Jacqueline Laurent; France 1938, 86 min.

Between 1937 and 1953 the duo of director Marcel Carné (1906-1996) and writer Jacques Prevert (1900-1977) created more or less the canon of French poetic realism, and later the French version of film noir. LE JOUR SE LÈVE (1939) is perhaps their greatest achievement, though some might prefer the opulent “Les Enfants du Paradis”. But these two artistic collaborators were not alone responsible for the success of LE JOUR SE LÈVE: The Production Designer Alexandre Trauner had already worked with Carne and Prevert on Drôle de Drame (1937) and Les Quai des Brumes (1938). He had fled anti-Semitic Hungary in 1929, and worked for fellow emigres like Wilder and Zinnemann in the USA, apart from collaborating with Orson Welles, Joseph Loosey, Luc Besson and John Huston, his greatest achievement being Jules Dassin’s “Rififi”. Curt Courant (1899-1968) was the DOP, he had shot Fritz Lang’s Die Frau im Mond (1929), and after his emigration from Nazi Germany Hitchcock’s The Man who knew too much (1934) and would end his career with Charles Spencer Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

LE JOUR SE LÈVE is told mainly in a flashback. At the start of the film we hear a shot, and then a well-dressed man tumbles down the stairs of a block of flats in a working class suburb of Paris. The block just exists as a corner piece, it will be soon be demolished like the rest. In one of the flats, high up, we see Francois (Gabin), who has killed Valentin (Berry), a man of the middle classes, who earns his living as a dog trainer in Vaudeville. Whilst the police surround the house, and start shooting at Francois, who is barricading himself in, two woman appear in the crowd outside the block: Clara (Arletty) comforts Francoise (Laurent), both had relationships with the men involved in the shooting. When night falls, the police decides to storm Francois’ flat in daylight, giving him a short night’s peace and time for the film to tell the story. Francois, a furnace worker, had fallen in love with the naïve Francoise, who sells flowers. Soon he finds out, that she has a relationship with Valentin. Hurt, Francois befriends Clara, Valentin’s assistant, a woman much more experienced than Francoise. But when Francoise decides to leave Valentin, Francois breaks off with Clara. When Valentin comes to his flat provoke him, Francois shoots him. In the morning, the police tries to storm Francois’ flat, they throw tear gas, but he commits suicide before they get to him.

Shot in grainy monochrome, echoing the depressive atmosphere, Gabin is already dead before night falls. The weight of the world is on his shoulders, his gaze is melancholic and forlorn, as the archetypal romantic looser. The crowd outside the flat takes his side, the police are the enemy. When they storm the place and throw teargas, the scene could have as well been shot in a WWI movie. Valentin is a glib character who uses language as a weapon. Whilst Francoise, like Francois, has grown up in an orphanage, and Clara has come up the hard way, Valentin uses his middle class power to seduce the two women. Francois on the other the hand, is too honest for his own good – he tries to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. In a way, he is even more naïve than Francoise, who finally sees through Valentin’s façade. Arletty’s Clara is world weary, distant but passionate – a future Garence from Les Enfants du Paradis. Even though the film starts in daylight, it never really gets light: an eternal fog hovers over the street, Francois’ room is more like a prison, even before he barricades himself in. Dusk and dawn melt into an uneasy night.

Well received by critics and audience in June 1939, LE JOUR SE LÈVE was first censured by the Vichy government (a naked arm of Clara under the shower was cut, and all references to the police being against the workers were removed, the names of Trauner and Courant taken out from the credits). Later the film was completely banned, called “demoralising” and responsible for France defeat against the Germans (!). In 1947, RKO bought the rights to the film, Anatole Litvak’s remake was called “The long Night”, Henry Fonda starred. The contract entitled RKO to destroy all copies of LE JOUR SE LÈVE – luckily this never happened. AS

75TH ANNIVERSARY DIGITAL RESTORATION OF THIS CULT CLASSIC IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 3 OCTOBER AS WELL AS BLU-RAY AND DVD ON 27 OCTOBER 2014

[youtube id=”UOtrHvA2ajY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

West (2013) Lagerfeuer

Director: Christian Schwochow Writer: Heide Schwochow

Cast: Jordis Triebel, Tristan Gobel, Alexander Sheer, Jacky Ido, Anja Antonowicz, Ryszard Ronczewski,

102min Drama German with subtitles

Christian Schwochow’s escape drama WEST explores the pursuit freedom. Suffused with themes of friendship, emigration and emotional trauma, this is a deeply affecting film that has much relevance still today, although it focuses on a woman’s escape from East Berlin in the late 70s.

Based on the novel Lagerfeuer (Campfire) by Julia Franck, WEST opens with a sunny romantic scene of Nelly Senff (a foxy Jördis Triebel) kissing goodbye to her lover, Wassilij (Carlo Ljubek) and father of her her nine-year-old son, Alexej (Tristan Göbel). Fast forward several years, and the tone shifts to a grim West German refugee camp, where the two soon realise that crossing the Wall does not lead to the freedom and prosperity they had expected. The Allied officials processing new arrivals in West Berlin’s Marienfelde Refugee Centre are no different from the those Nelly left behind.

Although Nelly strikes up immediate friendships with Polish inmate Krystyna (Anja Antonowicz) and the enigmatic Hans Pischke (a prickly Alexander Scheer), the ‘Westerners’ regard them with disdain and Alexej is increasingly bullied in the streets. Stripped and interrogated, Nelly is humiliated to discover that her bid to obtain her papers and find work as a professional chemist is being hampered by suspicions that Wassilij may still be alive and living as spy, and that the Stasi are watching her – a hunch on the part of CIA Agent, John Bird (Jacky Ido) – who plays on her emotional fragility and their potent sexual chemistry to probe Nelly further – in more ways than one.

Frank Lamm’s hand-held camera contrasts the bleak scenes in the camp with moments of emotional richness – seein in the torrid love scenes between Bird and Nelly and the moment where Nelly gets her working papers, where the camera offers soft-focussed visuals accompanied by Lorenz Dangel’s atmospheric score, as Nelly and Alexej frolic in the Autumn leaves.

However, the hypothetical but consistently taught conspiracy narrative remains sketchily in the background of this less intriguing immigration story. Much more play could be made of her relationship with Bird (a mesmerising Jacky Ido) and the effects this has on Nelly’s state of mind with relation to her still un-resolved emotional trauma with Wassilij. Heide Schwochow’s script is clearly seen from a woman’s perspective with her superbly fleshed-out charactisation. This a drama of of rich human dynamics: the relationship between Pishke and Alexej, who relates to him as a father; that of Nelly and Bird, on whom she projects her pent-up physical need; and the tender scenes she shares with her son, all feeling palpably authentic and appealing. As Nelly, Triebel brilliantly portrays a woman whose gradual paranoia starts to affect those closest to her, as her personality breaks down. Tristan Gobel’s turn as Alexej is remarkably nuanced and sensitive for an actor so young (11). Nelly is a woman who is desperate to move forward: from her physical prison of the past and the subjective paranoia that threatens to derail her future. Schwoschow, an GDR born director, clearly understands this and so does his cast. Although it has a message of hope, WEST explores how a deeply yearned-for freedom has just as many complications as the restrictive prison of the past. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE ON 12TH JUNE 2015 AT THE FOLLOWING CINEMAS:

Curzon Mayfair 38 Curzon St London W1J 7TY 0330 500 1331 all week
Cine Lumiere Queensberry Place London SW7 020 7073 1350 all week
Curzon Bloomsbury Brunswick Square London WC1 0330 500 1331 all week
Ritzy Brixton Oval London SW2 1JG 0871 902 5739 all week
HOME 2 Tony Wilson Place
Manchester M15 4FN 0161 200 1500 all week
FACT 88 Wood St Liverpool L1 4DQ 0871 902 5737 all week
Showroom Paternoster Row Sheffield S1 2BX 0114 275 7727 all week
Watershed 1 Canon’s Road Bristol BS1 5TX 0117 927 5100 al week
Tyneside 10 Pilgrim St Newcastle NE1 6QG 0191 227 5500 all week
Little Theatre Cinema St Michael’s Place Bath BA1 1SG 0871 902 5735 all week
Arts Picturehouse 38/39 St Andrews Street Cambridge 0871 902 5720 all week
GFT 12 Rose St Glasgow G3 6RB 0141 332 6535 all week
DCA 152 Nethergate Dundee DD1 4DY 01382 909900 all week
Irish Film Institute 6 Eustace Street Dublin 2 01 679 5744 all week
Queens Film Theatre 20 University Square Belfast BT7 1PA 028 9097 1097 all week

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: WINNER – BEST ACTRESS, FIPRESCI PRIZE, GERMAN FILM PRIZE

The Misfits (1961)

Director: John Huston Screenplay: Arthur Miller

Cast: Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach, Estelle Winwood

125min Drama Romance Western US

The jury’s still out on posterity’s final verdict on the merits of this early road movie set in and around Reno. While it was in production a major event was anticipated: Pulitzer prizewinning playwright Arthur Miller’s script was his first original screenplay – written especially for his movie star wife Marilyn Monroe – and by the time it hit cinemas in early 1961 audiences also knew the film would mark the final screen appearance of Clark Gable. But no one could have dreamt that the film would turn out to be Monroe’s swansong too.

Miller continued ceaselessly to rewrite the script on location as his marriage to Monroe fell apart, and would later describe the shooting of THE MISFITS as a low point in his life. (The pair were divorced just before the film’s premiere). Doped up to the eyeballs, Monroe’s constant late arrivals on set – or complete no-shows – resulted in production relentlessly dragging on for months, and when Gable finally completed his scenes he sighed “Christ I’m glad this picture’s finished. She damn near gave me a heart attack. I’ve never been happier when a film ended”. Just two days afterwards Gable did suffer a heart attack, from which he died ten days later. Despite the massive advance publicity THE MISFITS received, the filmgoing public proved uninterested in the two-hour ramblings of a bunch of blue-collar losers and stayed away. The film continues to dismissed by some as a failure.

Yet from all this wreckage – aided by the immaculate location photography of Russell Metty (fresh from his Oscar-winning work on Spartacus) and the editing of Hitchcock’s regular collaborator George Tomasini (fresh from Psycho) – a beautiful and moving film somehow managed to emerge. While the fragile mental state of both Monroe and co-star Montgomery Clift are all-too apparent in the finished film, Monroe remains hauntingly beautiful in a role a million miles from the Hollywood glamour her name usually evokes. With the subsequent untimely loss first of Monroe and then of Clift the film’s morose self-pity began to mellow into melancholy (and it’s always wonderful to see Thelma Ritter again!).

Although making the film almost certainly killed him, THE MISFITS has ironically secured Clark Gable’s reputation with a younger generation that might otherwise know him only – if at all – as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind. Even those who know their old movies would be hard-pressed to name more than a couple of his post-war vehicles; and his name remains largely the property of those who cherish the classic Hollywood cinema of the thirties. (Gable himself once said that “The only thing that has kept me a big star has been revivals of Gone With the Wind“). Hence the glorious incongruity of his towering presence in this early example of independent US filmmaking; which in retrospect resembles the first of an unofficial trio of black-&-white early sixties contemporary anti-westerns, each dominated by a commanding male lead performance as a drifter in a stetson: the latter pair being Lonely Are the Brave with Kirk Douglas and Hud with Paul Newman. The late David Shipman described THE MISFITS as “an attempt by a New Yorker to come to terms with the West”. A precursor had been Nicholas Ray’s The Lusty Men (1952), whose star Robert Mitchum had also been John Huston’s intended lead for THE MISFITS. Mitchum however didn’t like Miller’s script (or the prospect of strenuous stunt work roping steers in the searing heat of the Nevada desert) and ironically turned it down; since the film is now unthinkable without Gable. He lost two and a half stone for the part, and at 14st looked trimmer than he had in years; and although looking every one of his fifty-nine years, the virility and charisma that nearly thirty years earlier had wowed Jean Harlow and Carole Lombard survives intact. After more than half a century THE MISFITS continues to remind audiences just why Gable was known in his heyday as the King of Hollywood; and his closing speech (“Just head for that big star straight on. The highway’s under it. It’ll take us right home”) has long ago taken its place in film legend alongside Scarlett O’Hara’s “After all, tomorrow is another day”. Richard Chatten.

THE MISFITS IS ON LONG RELEASE AT THE BFI FOR THE MARILYN MONROE SEASON FROM 12 JUNE 2015

Marilyn Monroe: Victim or Manipulator?

Marilyn Monroe’s success in the Hollywood firmament was built on a ruthless control of her own image: and whilst the myth would suggest that the Studio controlled her success, it was Marilyn herself who ultimately called the shots. And there were always enough men around to help achieve her aims. When she finally collapsed under the burden of stardom, she had successfully fashioned her profile for her own profit and that of the studios.

First of all, there was the Russian born Johnny Hyde (1895-1950), vice-president of William Morris’ West Coast office. In spite of being 31 years older than Marilyn, he wanted to marry her, and left his wife. He negotiated Monroe’s contract with 20th Century Fox, which lead to her having small, but noticeable roles in All About Eve and Asphalt Jungle. In the first one, she plays a dim-witted actress, seemingly wiling to sleep with anybody who would be of use to her. For five years Monroe would play roles which were just a variation on this theme. But, much more importantly, Hyde arranged for a portrait of her in ”Photoplay”. By this time, she had already been on the cover of both “Look” and “Life’ magazine. But her “Photoplay’ profile played up her vulnerability and loneliness and, of course, underlined her troubled past. Crucially, it stressed her lack of female confidantes, an important point, since female audiences were still not sold on Miss Marilyn Monroe. In confessing her need for female friendship and solidarity, Monroe made a direct appeal: “There’s a thing called society that you have to enter into, and society is run but women. Until now, I’ve never known one thing about typical ‘feminine activities’”.

In calling for the help of ‘her sisters’ Marilyn Monroe, and the studio, made a strong bid to change the male bias of her audience. Her self-confessed “vulnerability and innocence” helped this process on the way, films of the mid-fifites like Niagara, Gentlemen prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire made her blossom into a fully fledged star.

In 1948 Monroe had posed naked for the photographer Tom Kelley for “Golden Dream” calendar. And these photos had been reprinted in other girlie calendars. When she was a star in the making, she offered appealing reasons for posing in the nude: “I was hungry”, “three weeks behind with the rent” and, “Kelley’s wife was present”. Obviously, the real money came from the reprint as a centre-fold in “Playboy”. But her ‘honesty’ was well-received and this clever attitude meant that her image did not suffer greatly.

Her marriages to Joe DeMaggio and later Arthur Miller, were handled by her and the studios to maximum effect. Again, “Photoplay” was helpful in creating the image of Monroe after her marriage to the ex-baseball star: “At home their lives were as ordinary as any couple’s in Oklahoma. Monroe slips into an apron and begins opening cans and getting things ready for the big fellow’s dinner, which she cooks with her own hands”. Another magazine described her life style, as calling for “candlelight on bridge tables, budgets and dreaming of babies – simple, plain domesticity”. Monroe adding herself that “Joe doesn’t have to move a muscle. Treat a husband this way and he’ll enjoy you twice as much.” The reality looked different, during their honeymoon n Japan, Monroe left DiMaggio for Korea, where she appeared in ten shows for the serving GIs. A month later, Wilder let the public watch the famous “air vent” scene for The Seven Year Itch, and the enraged DiMaggio soon filed for a divorce.

In 1953, Monroe rebelled against the studio, she did not want to appear in the dim song-and-dance film The Girl with Pink Tights. Suspended by Fox, Monroe with the assistance of Milton Green (1922-1985), a photographer and PR agent, formed her own company ‘Marilyn Monroe Productions’. Fox gave in, and Monroe returned with a better contract, and a fine role in Bus Stop (1956), for which she received the best reviews of her career. During this time she met the playwright Arthur Miller. The gossip industry soon invented the new Monroe. Turning up for the press conference for her new production company wearing a full length ermine coat, signified better than words how serious she was about her art and her new marriage. Real life again has been re-invented: Monroe and Arthur Miller split up even before the shooting of The Misfits (their common project) began, Miller meeting his new wife during the shoot.

Marilyn Monroe was adept at being her best PR agent and stylist, she played the press more often than the other way around. The “Saturday Evening Post” was perhaps best in projecting her persona: There was the ‘Sexpot” image of the early 50s, followed by “frightened Marilyn Monroe, after the publication of her childhood history and than the “new Marilyn Monroe”, the legend, a composed and studied performer”. Whilst the ‘Legend’ was draped in furs, and responsible for the ‘Monroeism’, the ‘Woman’ herself was still shy, hesitant, removed and terribly lonely. AS/MT

THE MARILYN MONROE SEASON RUNS AT THE BFI, LONDON | 1-30 JUNE 2015

Freaks (1932)

Dir.: Tod Browning

Cast: Harry Earles, Olga Baclanova, Daisy Earles, Henry Victor, Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams

USA 1932, 62 min. Dystopic Drama

After the success of Dracula (1930) MGM wanted something “even more horrible” from Browning. Shot in five weeks on the set of Susan Lennox: Her Fall and Rise, FREAKS was a flop at the box office and critics slaughtered it. MGM withdraw the film very quickly and it went into the history books as hard core horror. But nothing could be more far from the truth: FREAKS is humanistic, never exploiting the disabilities of the actors; just showing their need for love and solidarity.

In a circus, were the huge majority of the artists are severely disabled, the Lilliputian Hans (H. Eagles) is engaged with Frieda (D. Eagles), a fellow sufferer. But Hans falls in love with the attractive trapeze artist Cleopatra (Baclanova), a woman of normal height, whose boyfriend Hercules (Victor) is equally venomous in the way he treats the disabled members. But when Cleopatra learns that Hans is wealthy, she changes her mind and marries him only to poison him slowly afterwards. The disabled artists take terrible revenge on her: at the end Cleopatra is just head torso and has gone mad, the crowd proclaiming, “you are now one of us”.

Far more shocking than the disabilities of the majority, is the moral unattractiveness of Cleopatra. Her greed is far more ugly than the disfigurement of the others. The wedding feast is one of the high points of the film: Hans and his friends offering Cleopatra to “become one of them”, something she shrinks away from in horror, not knowing that this is exactly how she will end up.

Other great moments include a scene when Violet, a Siamese twin, feels the kiss a man plants on the lips of her sister Daisy. Browning also shows the ingenuity that the disabled artists develop to overcome their issues to solve practical problems: the armless Frances holds a goblet with one of her feet, and the limbless Prince Randian lights a cigarette, using only his mouth.

FREAKS is also a parable on Hollywood, where the studio system exploits popular notions of beauty for profit. For Browning (1880-19620, who had directed 57 films before Freaks, the film signalled the end of his career, he would only be at the helm on four other occasions, before his enforced retirement in 1939. The film theorist Andrew Sarris called Freaks rightly “one of the most compassionate films ever made.” It was banned in the UK until 1963. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 12 JUNE 2015

36 (2012) | Thai Indie Fest London

Director/Writer: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit

Main Actors: Vajrasthira Koramit, Wanlop Rungkamjad

Length: 68mins Thailand Thai with English subtitles Drama

36 is an exquisite examination into memory and loss in the digital age. A startling debut from Thailand’s Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, the film takes its name from the number of frames found on a roll of 35mm film – and just like those remnants of our analogue past, 36 is divided into 36 frames, each one heralded by a poetic title and played in a single shot. If that sounds pretentious, it isn’t. Thamrongrattanarit’s film is genuinely thoughtful, managing to be both meaningful and meditative without become oblique.

A rumination tinged with melancholy, 36 begins with a location scout, Sai (Vajrasthira Koramit), taking photographs while on a recce. With her is an art director, Oom (Wanlop Rungkamjad), and as the two discuss the practicalities of filming within the location, we witness a bourgeoning friendship forming before our eyes. But then, after just 11 ‘frames’, the credits roll, and ‘frame’ 12 starts the story afresh: time has moved on, and so has Oom. And then Sai’s external hard drive goes down, taking a year’s worth of her location photographs with it. For Sai, “it’s like a whole year has died”.

As Sai begins the journey of attempting to recover the drive’s data, and with it her memories of Oom, the film becomes pervaded by a sense of loss and impermanence. Later, Sai talks to a director as he fingers a printed photograph, explaining that he wants to shoot in the pictured location because it has “a past” – but the building no longer exists and the photograph is all that remains. So photographs are not only memories, but histories too.

In an age when tourists and rock concert spectators seem more concerned with taking photographs than enjoying the moment, it seems the spectre of Baudrillard’s simulacra is never far away – and, 36 seems to suggest, we may be missing out on living life by living through unreliable technology. In other words, in the digital age, history is slipping away. One can only hope that the same fate doesn’t await this beautiful, haunting debut: as a film about photography, 36 is also a film about looking – so see it as soon as you can. Alex Barratt.

THE THAI INDIE FEST RUNS FROM 6 June to 6 July at Rich Mix and other London venues

The Rough and the Smooth (1959)

Director: Robert Siodmak

96min Drama UK

In 1959 Siodmak worked in the Elstree-Borehamwood studios, to direct THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH, based on the novel by Robin Maugham. Robert Cecil Romer, 2nd Viscount Maugham, nephew of Somerset Maugham, was the enfant terrible of his family. Socialist and self-confessed homosexual, he was a very underrated novelist: “The Servant”, filmed in 1963 by Joseph Loosey, with Dirk Bogarde in the title role, is one of the classic’s of British post-WWII cinema. THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH shows similarities: Mike Thompson (Tony Britton), an archeologist, is engaged to Margaret (Natasha Parry), the daughter of his boss, who finances his work. Mike feels trapped in a loveless relationship, and falls for Ila Hansen (Nadja Tiller), a young and attractive woman. But she has a secret: not only is she in cahoots with the tough gangster Reg Barker (William Bendix), but there is a third man in her life, who has a hold over her. After Barker commits suicide, driven by Hansen’s demands, the latter tries also to blackmail Mike and Margaret. The ending is quiet original. There are very dark undertones, particularly for the late 50s, when Ila comments: “I don’t cry much, I have been hurt a lot”. THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH is a subversive film considering the context of its period. The camera pans over stultified Britain of the last 50s, where there seems to be no middle-ground between boring respectability and outright perversion. When the two worlds collide, the conflict is fought on both sides with grim, violent determination. With THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH, Siodmak, would, for the last time, come close to his American Noir films, for which he was called “Prince of the Shadows”: referring not only to the quality of the images, but also to a society, where, to quote Brecht, “we are only aware of the ones in the light, the ones in the shadow, we don’t see”. Robert Siodmak made sure, that the ones in the shadows played the major roles in his Films Noir. Andre Simonoviescz ©

Dawn (Morgenroede) 2014 | Sci-fi Weekend 29 – 7 June 2015

Writer/Director: Anders Elsrud Hultgreen

Cast: Torstein Bjørklund, Ingar Helge Gimle

70min Norway Sci-fi Fantasy

Norwegian auteur Anders Elsrud Hultgreen found his way into filmmaking from a Fine Arts degree from Bergen University and brings this craftmanship to his feature debut DAWN, which he has directed, written and produced on a shoestring budget of £5000.

Set in an imagined future, DAWN is primarily a Sci-fi mood piece that developed from an intended short. With a two-handed cast, Hultgreen conjures up a strong sense of place in the rugged and desolate moonscape of Southern Iceland, where it was filmed and later selected for Reykjavik Film Festival and Bergen International Film Festival. The tale follows two survivors wandering vaguely in this hostile terrain, where a threadbare narrative focuses on their search for water, driven forward by a sinister and brooding tone that pervades the early scenes of ‘first light’ gradually becoming more doom-laden as the film draws to a slightly unsatisfactory finale in the full glare of high noon.

Nicolas Winding Refn’ Valhalla Rising comes to vaguely to mind as the younger of the two men, Rehab (Torstein Bjørklund) – and this is very much a tale of age versus youth – is pursued by an older man, Set (Ingar Helge Gimle), across the barren scenery. Bound by a daily ritual of drawing a circle in the sand and setting himself a frame between three silvery stones for prayer and protection, Rehab is completely shrouded from head to foot. In a nod to silent film, Bjørklund relies on the expressiveness in his eyes as the only indicator of his state of mind which ranges from fear to delirium. This is a slow-paced affair that occasionally drags, stretching the limits of its dramatic tension to near-breaking point, with no release from a pounding ambient score as the two search for aquatic Nirvana in the barren wilderness.

Landscape has always been a crucial feature of Norwegian films, and nowhere more so than in DAWN. Shot on the widescreen, Hultgreen has taken a wilderness and turned it into somewhere quite magical and alien with the help of titled angles, purple tinting, and inventive framing which has a pleasing sense of rhythm. For speakers of other languages, Norwegian has an ancient ring to it and these elements coalesce to create a sense of ‘otherworldliness’. The inclusion of a wrecked aircraft is the only thing that brings the piece into the context of the 20th century, slightly puncturing the mystical reverie. Clearly, Hultgreen has done his research and created an inventive piece of genuine Sci-fi with an impressively low budget, marking him out to be a talent in the making. MT

DAWN SCREENED DURING SCI-FI WEEKEND AT THE BFI 29 MAY – 5 JUNE 2015

Listen Up Philip (2104) |

Dir/Writer.: Alex Ross Perry

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Elisabeth Moss, Jonathan Price, Krysten Ritter

USA 2014, 108 min.

Philip (Schwartzman) is a promising young writer and emotional illiterate. To be precise, he not only champions the egocentrics of the (male) world, he is also a fierce misogynist who blames women for his self-destruction; sabotaging every relationship and feeling an enormous amount of self pity. In a word, he is a complete a..hole. An all-knowing voiceover recounts not only what’s going on, but also past and future pitfalls of this rather one-dimensional character.

The main recipient of Philip’s lust for alienating is his girlfriend Ashley (Moss), a professional photographer who has supported Philip during the many years of unpaid literary work. Now, with his second novel a success, Philip moves out, to live with his hero, the writer Ike Zimmerman (Pryce) in the countryside. The old man is a much further developed person-destroyer than Philip. The way he treats his daughter Melanie (Ritter), can only be described as serious psychological harm. Needless to say, Philip, a quick learner in these matters, soon treats the young woman the same way. After another failed relationship with a young French fellow college- lecturer, Philip runs home to Ashley in New York, like a naughty boy to his mother – only to be told, that the his ex is happy with a cat. The voice over tells us, needlessly, that Philip will not learn make any emotional progress in his life.

Alex Ross Perry’s narrative would have been successful for a thirty minute short film, but blown up to nearly two hours, it soon looses our interest in Philip and his rather predictable rants. It ceases to be funny, and with the voiceover taking away any possibility of surprise, we just wait for the words to end. Camera work is lacklustre and conventional, the actors have little scope to display any merit, being reduced to card-board cut-outs. LISTEN UP PHILIP is much closer to a radio play than a film. Somehow, writer/director Perry suffers from the same male hypertrophic beliefs his main protagonist, that great lines alone make a person. A regressive and awesomly repetitive outing. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5 JUNE 2015

The Magnet (1950)

Director: Charles Frend Writer: T E B Clarke

Cast: James Fox, Kay Welsh, Stephen Murray, James Robertson Justice, Thora Hird, Gladys Henson

79min Drama UK

THE MAGNET director Charles Frend was not as synonomous with Ealing Studi0s as its other directors: Charlie Crichton, Alexander Mackendrick and Robert Hamer. After working with British Gaumont and MGM at Elstree, he went on to direct several prestigious classics Scott of the Antarctic and The Cruel Sea. But he was also capable of creating a wonderful English family intimacy in this light-hearted dramady’ which gave James Fox his first starring role, as a boy of 11. It showcases postwar Merseyside and the towns of New Brighton, Wallasey and Liverpool Cathedral, where in a brief glimpse of Neo-realism, Scouse boys (including a young Chinese immigré ) offer a vibrant slice of local colour, rendered through the crisp black and white visuals of Lionel Banes’s cinematography.

James Fox plays Johnny Brent, a lively and imaginative kid who lives in a smart, double-fronted house with his parents, kindly psychiatrist Dr Brent (a smooth Stephen Murray) and elegant housewife Mrs Brent (Kay Walsh who had just divorced David Lean). Off school with Scarlet Fever, Johnny cons a younger boy out of a magnet on the beach. Feeling guilty, he then ends up being accused by the Police of using it to cheat on a pinball machine. But when he meets an iron-lung maker (an early form of life-support machine) who is raising funds for the local hospital, he hands over the magnet as a potential auction prize. In the meantime, Johnny overhears a conversation which leads him to believe the boy he ‘robbed’ has died of a broken-heart and, in his vivid imagination, he becomes convinced that he is guilty of murder. After accidentally absconding in a “Jacob’s Cracker” van (wonderful product placement) he meets some local boys on the other side of the Mersey and ends up rescuing one of them in a satisfying finale to this feel-good ‘boy’s own’ outing. There is also a more serious strand to the story, told through a coming of age twist involving Johnny’s psychiatrist father attempting to analyse his boy’s transformation to a young adult. In an uncredited cameo role, a then Parliamentary candidate and actor, James Robertson Justice, plays a local tramp with cheeky verve.

T E B Clarke (Tibby) wrote the script in between his more successful hits, crime drama, The Blue Lamp (an early example of social realism) and The Lavender Hill Mob, a mainstream comedy success. Nevertheless, THE MAGNET, is a delightful film that deserves to stand out in the Ealing cannon, epitomising a certain discreet charm that was England in the early fifties. MT

OUT ON DVD FROM 19 JUNE COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL

Madonna (2015) | Un Certain Regard | Cannes 2015

Shin Su-won

81min Korean Drama

South Korean filmmaker Shin Su-won is no newcomer to Cannes, where this year she shows a Noirish thriller MADONNA in Un Certain Regard.

This glossy, well-mounted affair transports us back to the Dickensian days where grave robbers regularly dug up bodies to sell to the medical profession. Here in 21st century Seoul, organ transplants thrive in the cut-throat (or even chest?) world of private medicine. Here a nurse attempts to stymie a heart transplant operation involving a pregnant sex-worker with low self-esteem and a wealthy industrialist, and you can guess who has the good heart.

Shin Su-won is not afraid of dangerous subjects and unpleasant characters who operate in a dog eat dog world where only a social elite can survive. Her LFF hit Pluto centred on rich high school kids desperate to get to the top and will trample on their fellow schoolfriends on the way. A this is a fight for life – at its most fundamental state – with a brilliant central performance from Korean star, Seo Young-hee.

Slightly marred by overlong flashbacks that rob the film of tension and dramatic punch, its fractured narrative draws a vibrantly contrasting picture of the haves and have-nots.

In a downbeat Seoul, a pudgy Hye-rim (Seo) is seen is surviving on the edges of society in a grim bedsit as she stuffs her face with noodles while watching the Korean equivalent of X Factor on TV. In an expensive private hospital her new job involves pandering to the egos of captains of industry who exert their power with selfish and demoralising demands. A billionaire living vegetable with a failing heart has repeated coronary transplants while he lies on life-support as shadow of his illustrious past.

When a donor finally arrives Hye-rim discovers she is not on death’s door but merely pregnant – her business card reveals she is a part-time prostitute called Madonna. The tycoon son (Kim Young-min) has a vested interest in keeping his father alive (as a cash cow) and orders Hye-rim to locate the ‘victims’ next of kin for a ‘sign-off’ form for a transplant.

This is a well-paced drama that intrigues for the first hour then starts to drag as it becomes over-involved in the backstory of Madonna, which is predictable and tedious to the main action. Kwon So-hyun’s gives a worthy performance as the pitiful Madonna whose life speaks volumes about the misogynist world of elitist South Korea, but it’s also a rather exaggerated portrayal of a social outcast that often draws an unsympathetic response. Nevertheless by the finale, it emerges that at least Hye-rim’s heart is in the right place. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL runs until 24 May 2015 | Un Certain Regard | Cannes 2015

Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) Golden Bear Winner Berlinale 2014

Director: Yi’nan Diao

Cast: Fan Liao, Lun Mei Gwei, Xuebing Wang

China Mandarin with subtitles Drama

BLACK COAL, THIN ICE, is an inventive thriller: touches of creative brilliance and caustic humour combine in a police inquiry into murder linked to a mysterious femme fatale. Set in a snowbound industrial wasteland, severed body parts regularly appear on asphalt trucks heading off to furnish the country’s burgeoning building boom in a bleak Northern China. A former policeman, Zhang Zili (Fan Liao, who won Best Actor at Berlinale 2014), turns vigilante in a bid to trace the perpetrator and make amends for previous misdemeanours in the force.

Macbeth (2015) | In Competition | Cannes 2015 |

Director: Justin Kurzel Writer: Jacob Koskoff

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Sean Harris, David Thewlis, Paddy Considine, David Hayman

113min |Drama l UK|Australia

Kurasawa, Polanski and Welles have all put their mark on Shakespeare’s Scottish play with its bloody imagery and regal treachery, not to mention the dreaded witches, who bring with them “the filthy air” of ineffable evil striking the tone of sinister foreboding from the outset. Set in a frighteningly bleak and hostile 16th century Scotland, Justin Kurzel’s glowering screen version is the follow-up to his 2011 debut thriller Snowtown, a breakout hit marking the Australian director as talent in the making. Kurzel retains the 9th Century feel of feudalism and danger here but adds some modern styling techniques to make this feel ‘de nos jours’. Judicious casting ensures a range of dynamite performances that, along with stylish sets and a really brooding tone, Kurzel’s version is a worthwhile addition to the Shakespeare film canon for the Scottish play.

A brilliant pairing of Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard ignites this production with a palpable onscreen chemistry; Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth controlling her lust for power both both sensually and emotionally, in a role infused with religious fervour, malicious intent, lustful longing and vulnerability: she appears to die of a broken heart, mourning her first child’s death and ruing the guilt of her treason. Kirzel crucially makes reference in the opening scene to the mossy funeral-byre of the Macbeth’s blue-tinged infant, laid to rest with shells placed over his eyes. The joint suffering permeates their relationship and they are seen as viscerally close: a sexual-charge always jolting their loving gaze.

Kurzel’s adaptation, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, stays fairly close the page with some exceptions – to be expected considering its less than two hour running time – although this is Shakespeare’s shortest play. The narrative consequently has a choppy feel but one omission in particular stands out, the scene with the drunken porter, that in the original play serves to inject much needed levity. This is the only criticism of Kurzel’s version: its monotone brooding which powers on relentlessly and without relief and the dramatic tension would certainly have benefited this light-hearted interlude, which Shakespeare introduced precisely for this reason.

That said, this sleek and pared-down adaptation with its modern sensibilities (Cotillard’s make-up brings to mind Bladerunner) also reflects a God-fearing nature of the era reflected in the religious motifs that run throughout and are shown in the costumes (Lady Macbeth wears shroud-like-calico and is decked in jewelled crosses) and are particularly resplendent in the interior castle scenes. The battle scenes are brutal and strikingly-evoked in slow-mo, to reflect a spectacular sense of place as haunting mists roll in and infiltrate the combat scenes, backlit with their crimson and lucozaid-tinged aesthetic.

The power-fuelled couple express every emotion with a full-throttled yet coldly-cloaked passion: Lady Macbeth is also seen as a religious woman who sets great store in the potent power of prayer. Fassbender grins seditiously and is encouraged by Cotillard’s sensual goading, bringing him to a climax of despotic fervour, as his sanity slowly evaporates despite occasional self-doubt “Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day”. Yet the pair retain a strange sense of their character’s humanity throughout. When Lady Macduff (Elizabeth Debicki) and her children are killed, we see them burning at the stake. Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth sheds a sympathetic tear in respect to her own bereavement and her own treachery. In the ghastly dagger scene, she holds court with a solomn soliloquy.

Sean Harris, is supremely sinister Macduff. David Thewlis, as good as ever, is a genuinely lordly Duncan, Paddy Considine superb as Banquo, all feel convincing characters rather than Shakespeare cut-outs. The whole thing reeks of fabulous negativity and regal evil. Thoroughly recommended. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 24 MAY 2015 | IN COMPETITION | CANNES 2015 |

OUT ON DVD, BLU-RAY & LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY STEELBOOK | FEBRUARY 1st 2016 | STUDIOCANAL

Je Suis Un Soldat (2015) | Un Certain Regard | Cannes 2015

Cast: Jean-Hughes Anglade, Louise Bourgoin, Laurent Capelluto

96mins Drama France

French director Laurent Larivière’s feature-length debut, which has its premiere in Un Certain Regard, tells an important story about dog trafficking in Europe. In a mix of social realism and grim thriller it fails to convince, offering a bland and occasionally odd mix of characters who completely feel completely unauthentic.

Larivière casts a promising French actress, Louise Bourgoin (The Nun) in the lead, as Sandrine, who is returning to her childhood home in a drab Roubaix, near the Belgian border. Here she moves back in with her over-worked mother (Anne Benoit) sister (Nina Meurisse) and brother-in-law (Nathanael Maini), and gradually emerges that she has nowhere else to go. Dowdy and down on here luck, Sandrine goes to work with her uncle Henri, an completely unrecognisable Jean-Hugues Anglade (Queen Margot) who runs a commercial dog kennels but has no interest in the welfare of the animals , and is trafficking dogs from Eastern Europe. Sandrine shows an aptitude for business and soon becomes involving in the trading, which is lucrative. But Henri is also manipulative and turns violent when she offers presents to her family urging her to be discrete about the money for fear of exposure.

Bourgoin’s Sandrine is a colourless character with little charm or sensitivity – the only trait she displays is one of mild disdain for those around her including the accountant (Laurent Capelluto) who exposes himself (bizarrely) at her front door, in a weird rom com twist that just feels awkward . Her general attitude appears to be confident, and this fails to convey why she is appearing to accept this tragic and uncaring scenario. Her family backstory is a tepid affair of mounting tediousness, offering nothing to contrast the hard-edged life world of her Henri’s business activities. The best moments of the drama involve the cute and cuddly dogs that inhabit this harsh underworld with its cruel and uncaring handlers. Larivière’s script, co-written with François Decodts, fails to convince us that Sandrine is appalled, picturing her as slightly irritated yet accepting of the situation. Anglade, a veteran actor of some stature, is extraordinarily underwritten here, coming across as a vacant sociopath with hardly any personality or depth. A dire treatment of what could have been a really affecting and worthwhile story about this serious criminal activity. MT

I AM A SOLDIER | UN CERTAIN REGARD | CANNES 2015

A New Girlfriend (2014) | Une Nouvelle Amie

Wri/Dir: Francois Ozon | Cast: Romain Duris, Anais Demoustier, Raphael Personnaz, Isild Le Bosco,

Mystery crime writer Ruth Rendell has provided filmmakers with some plucky plot-linesl over the years: Claude Chabrol’s La Ceremonie starred Isabelle Huppert and La Demoiselle D’Honneur had Aurore Clément who also stars in Ozon’s 2014 adaptation of a Rendell short story, cheekily exploring the nature of desire.

There are shades of Almódovar too in this subversive domestic melodrama that takes place somewhere in suburbia in contemporary France. Ozon’s recent films have all dabbled in the sexual dynamics of their seemingly sorted protagonists. And he’s well known for his tongue in cheek approach to the narrative. The upshot is that sexuality can be a distinctly moveable feast that often takes us by surprise, with feelings of desire or even repulsion emerging, sometimes inconveniently and when we least expect it, and between the most unlikely suspects. In the House upturned smug coupledom with some surprising revelations and A New Girlfriend develops this further in a story that sees sudden tragedy rocking the status quo of an outwardly loved-up young married couple.

Wealthy and good-looking, Laura (Isild Le Besco) and David (Romain Duris in frisky form) start their new lives together in the faux splendour of a picture perfect housing estate, very similar to the one in Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder. But when Laura dies leaving baby girl Lucie, her best friend Claire (Demoustier) is naturally devastated, and drawn into the circle of grief as the godmother of the little girl. Clearly David must now be Lucie’s mother as well as her father, and it seems he’s taken the female role really seriously, as the heartbroken Claire soon finds out. For her part Claire, has also taken her grief to new heights to the detriment of her marriage to Gilles (Raphael Personnaz). But when her husbands’s sexual-healing fails to work, Claire takes compassionate leave and heads chez David for tea and sympathy.

Bereavement has brought out the feminine side of David and, to Claire’s surprise, she finds him dolled up in Laura’s clothes complete with a blond wig and saucy underwear. Unfortunately, Duris is one male actor whose strong masculine looks can never make him look feminine. He certainly has the chops but his heavy jawline and thick eyebrows are more suggestive of a pantomine dame than an androgynous siren in cross-dressing. There are plenty of guys out there who look pretty in long hair and eyeliner – but Duris is not one of them. So when he turns girlie, the look is weirdly grotesque and mildly frightening, rather than sexy and seductive. Maybe that’s was Ozon’s intention. As the saying goes “there’s nowt so queer as folk”

David suddenly develops a desire to go shopping and Claire, in an act of female solidarity indulges him in a date in the local shopping centre. Gradually Claire buys into David’s sexual awakening, sympathetically aiding and abetting him with make-up suggestions and underwear advice, eventually transforming him into her new best friend “Virginie”helping herself to get over the loss of Laura.

Although Oxon is clearly pushing the boundaries on heterosexuality and role-play he doesn’t denigrate David/Virginie, and there is nothing sexually provocative about this change in circumstances. With clever casting, he could certainly have pulled off something quite sensational between David/Virginie and Claire (and it wouldn’t have just have involved an Agent Provocateur thong).

Using a clever selection of songs from the archives, Ozon indulges David/Virginie’s desires to the limit and Duris certainly gives the role depth, clearly enjoying the thrill of his female guise and all that it entails. But Claire and Virginie’s sexual chemistry fails to materialise, remaining firmly in the ‘just good friends’ camp. A reference to Gilles and David’s sexual linking also fails to ignite, but there’s enough complexity at work in the performances to keep things fun and fluffy despite some longueurs. In this inspired new twist on bereavement therapy, Duris and Demoustier keep things tender rather than soppy in their mutual grief over Laura, and a surprisingly upbeat denouement makes for an entertaining watch. MT

NOW ON BFI Player

A Most Violent Year (2015) | Bfi Player

Director/Writer: J C Chandor | Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Alessandro Nivola, Elyes Gabel, Albert Brooks | 125min US Crime Drama

The seventies was a dynamite decade for American crime drama: Chinatown, Taxi Driver, The French Connection, The Parallax View. A Most Violent Year wasn’t made in the seventies but it feels as if may have been. Writer, director J C Chandor’s third feature is a thriller, rich and redolent with promise: well-rounded characterisation; slow-burning narrative; subtle performances all topped with 21st century production values – and superb on the finish. From the opening titles, Chandor shows us that this is a film to be savoured; a grown-up film that will stand the test of time.

This superbly imagined drama takes place in 1981, according to Chandor, one of the most violent years for New York City crime. Like his previous drama ALL IS LOST, it takes its time to build a storyline but makes up for this with a sustained low-boil tension, gradually drawing us deeper into the intrigue and masterfully navigating towards a surprising denouement marking Chandor out to be a rare talent in the making. Oscar Isaac recalls Al Pacino’s performance in The Godfather: mesmerising, skilful and wonderful to look at. He inhabits his role, as decent businessman Abel Morales, with integrity and confidence. Endeavouring to stay on the straight and narrow as corruption seethes from every crack in the City’s pavements, Morales is an immigrant who started life as a truck-driver and married the boss’s daughter, Anna, (Jessica Chastain in a career-defining role) acquiring the gasoil importing business from her dodgy-dealing father, he has made a clean breast of the family business and intends to keep it that way.

Along the way, Chandor paints a picture of middle-class struggle, borrowing and risk-taking, building up relationships with clients and associates while keeping a beady eye on the competition. With Chastain’s Anna he crafts a credible chemistry: the two are partners and equals both in the sleeping and working sense. Sexuality frizzles in their every scene together. She is a woman who knows how to massage her man’s ego and when to up the ante, how to look attractive while keeping the books: but very much her father’s daughter, as we eventually discover. Theirs is an empowering partnership that would make any modern couple envious: the kids are well in the background, not pawns to be traded on the foreground of this marriage.

Abel prides himself on his upwardly mobile vision, still retaining the personal touches of his immigrant Latin background. Acquisitive, he has bought his family a “classy” mansion that would make any footballer envious of. His sales strategy is in line with Dale Carnegie’s: “Keep the eye contact for longer than it feels comfortable” his sales patter full of faux honesty “We’re never going to be the cheapest,” he advises, “so we have to be the best.”

But in this very violent year in NYC, his gasoil company is engulfed in a crime wave of its own: his drivers are being robbed at gunpoint and pistol-whipped. Even his family isn’t safe from a late-night armed prowler, whom Abel confronts with a baseball bat, in true macho style. This all puts in jeopardy his plans to borrow money to acquire a waterfront fuel terminal for easier delivery direct from barges (that can bring the gasoil straight from the offshore tanker) and give him a great profit margin. And the district attorney is fingering his business in a massive malpractice investigation.

Chandor manages this all masterfully with magnificent widescreen vistas of NYC and more intimate scenes that keep us in the picture, enjoying the moment, showcasing Chastain’s lush Armani fashions and Isaac’s exquisite tailoring, well-toned physique and quiet and authentic conviction while always maintaining an uncomfortable tension accompanied by Alex Ebert’s occasional organ score, then pumping up the adrenalin with shootouts and heart-stopping car chases. The scenes with his one of his threatened truck drivers, a fellow Hispanic ( Elyes Gabel) add a certain texture that is meant to add contrast to Abel’s success story, but instead feel slightly overplayed and melodramatic.

A Most Violent Year doesn’t tell us anything new, but what it does, it does extremely well and sets Isaac, Chastain and Chandor up there as artists at their peak. Ultimately this is a story about ‘the American Dream’. Support cast are also superb: there are interesting vignettes with Alessandro Nivola as a soigne Upper East Side competitor, Jerry Adler as an Orthodox Ashkenazi money lender and a world-weary Albert Brooks as his right-hand man. But most all this is a trip to New York at its best, the iconic skylines with the Twin Towers, the old-fashioned cadillacs, and streets deep in snow and a classic core from Marvin Gaye’s ‘Inner City Blues’. MT

ON BFI PLAYER and DVD

Carol (2015) | Best Actress | Cannes 2015 | LFF 2015

Director: Todd Haynes

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler

Patricia Highsmith’s novels make striking thrillers: Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr Ripley and The Two Faces of January have become screen classics. The eagerly-awaited CAROL, which premieres at Cannes, is a perfect screen adaptation of one of her more romantic stories. Two remarkable performances, by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, who picked up the Best Actress award, make CAROL particularly enjoyable. They play elegant fifties women caught in the seductive embrace of a lesbian relationship. Todd Haynes’ lush and leisurely adaptation of The Price of Salt, which was seen as rather daring at the time, now seems rather coy and kittenish, although Blanchett certainly wears the trousers in both her heterosexual marriage and an outré lesbian flutter. This is a luxuriously affair that unfolds rather tentatively during Christmas 1952 in a snowy New York heralding the Eisenhower era.

Phyllis Nagy’s clever screenplay clings close to the page while conjuring up the younger woman’s profession as photography rather than theatre set direction. It also retains the open, rather positive ending of Highsmith’s novel. The story opens in a New York department store (akin to Bloomingdales). Mara plays the young Therese Belivet who is meets Carol Aird – a creamy, mink-wrapped Blanchett – buying Christmas presents for her little girl, Rindy. A perfect excuse for further contact is provided when Carol leaves her gloves on the counter, and later invites the gamine-like Therese to her turreted New Jersey home. But the two finally meet in town over eggs and martinis. A chemistry of sorts develops through the velvety visuals of Ed Lachman’s camerawork (he shot in 16ml and blew the images up to look like 35ml) and Haynes’ competent direction – they worked together on Mildred Pierce and Far From Heaven – so you get the picture.

Carol’s successful businessman husband, Harge (Kyle Chandler), is seeking a divorce due to her previous affair with her childhood friend Abby (Sarah Paulson) but he still loves his wife and threatens to get custody of Rindy. But Carol’s mind is made up and she pursues Therese with masculine determination in a highly seductive role made all the more teasing in the rather languid pacing that takes in a multitude of changes in her gorgeous couture wardrobe (Sandy Powell excels in her designs). The two finally end up in a tastefully soft-focused, semi-nude embrace in Waterloo, Iowa, and Carol acknowledges the bathos of this location.

But their crime (and it was a crime in 1952) is captured on camera by a travelling ‘notions’ salesman and Carol swiftly extricates herself from the relationship. Blanchett plays her Carol as a woman of infinite breeding and stylish charm, occasionally looking down her nose but always with a witty grace. Mara is more cutely foxy with those exotic, piercing eyes. The delux experience is gift-wrapped in soigné sets and and an atmospheric period score from Carter Burwell. MT

Rooney Mara won Best Actress for her role at Cannes 2015 | The Golden Frog apAward for Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) at the prestigious Camerimage Awards 2015

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 13 -24 MAY 2015 | CAROL | IN COMPETITION | CANNES 2015

[youtube id=”aopRIEs6P5A” width=”600″ height=”350″]

The Lobster (2015) | Cannes 2015 Competition

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Writer: Efthymis Filippou

Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Coleman, Lea Seydoux, John C Reilly, Ben Whishaw

118min Sci-fi Drama Greece

THE LOBSTER is a cold-edged, dystopian sci-fi thriller set in an imagined near-future where citizens must choose a mate or be transformed into the animal of their choice. This is Dogtooth director, Yorgos Lanthimos’ first film in English and the first with a starry international cast, who give the impression of being ‘honoured’ to be there playing ridiculous roles with a script rammed with sexually explicit dialogue along the lines of: “I dreamt you fucked me up the ass” and so forth.

Colin Farrell has even developed a massive paunch for his part as David, a deadpan dork who has recently been dumped by his wife and arrives at base camp, one of those ghastly conference-style hotels with “luxury” over-stuffed pillows and maroon-tiled bathrooms, with his brother, Bob, who is now a sheep dog.

Later it emerges that the place is run by smug provincial marrieds (an erudite Olivia Coleman and Garry Mountaine) who give them 45 days to partner up with fellow interns or succumbing to their bestial fate. David choses to be a lobster because he likes swimming and wants a long life. As these harried citizens begin their pressurised life, they acquire nicknames defined by idiosyncratic traits: Limping Man (Ben Whishaw); Lisping Man (John C Reilly) and, like online daters, they are forced to find common interests and similarities in the hope of hooking up, whereupon they get to share a double room and are then assigned ‘children’. “The heartless woman” has been so successful in her dating efforts that she has been given a hundred extra days of human existence.

This theatre of the absurd takes place in deadpan seriousness as leaden clouds scud by in a moss-covered landscape. David eventually lucks out on a date with ‘Heartless woman” and the two have dispassionate doggie-style sex while she is wearing her undies. But, true to form, she finds dating dissatisfaction with David, and quietly slaughters sheepdog, Bob, on the white-tiled bathroom.

While Hackney viewers will be desperate to acquire the DVD/blu for “cool” nights in, other audiences may find this film quite tedious and obdurate in its desperation to be obtuse. There is a saving grace in David’s meeting with “Shorted sighted woman” (Rachel Weisz) who is part of the ‘loner’ party wandering around in the local woods and lead by a love-averse Lea Seydoux. As the two gradually bond, their random meeting proves that love is truly blind and motivated by the fear of being alone or metaphorically ‘turned into an animal’ – a spell in an old peoples’ home is possibly the real life analogy Lanthimos is alluding to here. Striking out as a married couple in the city, they discover that life is not as perfect as they imagined it would be. The moral of the story: Be careful what you wish for. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 24 MAY 2015 | CANNES 2015

Sleeping Giant (2015) | Cannes 2015 | Semaine de la Critique

Director: Andrew Cividino

89min Canadian Drama

Andrew Cividino lampoons and laments the male of the species in his piquant and delightfully-observed rites of passage debut feature, SLEEPING GIANT. Making great use of the magnificent ‘big country’ landscapes of his native Ontario, Cividino is another starlight trouper from the fabulous galaxy of contemporary Canadian filmmakers. This is a teen drama with surprisingly universal appeal that will appeal to the arthouse crowd of all age-groups.

Quietly incisive yet monumentally moving, SLEEPING GIANT explores the angst-ridden adolescent awakening of three teenage boys who joke and jossle together one sun-drenched summer in Lake Superior, that starts predictably bright but ends in a dark and frightening place. A razor-sharp script is matched with cutting-edge performances from newcomers Jackson Martin as Adam, Riley (Reece Moffett) and Nate (Nick Serine).

Adam is a thoughtful, intelligent boy with a face as pure as milk. Spending the summer with his parents in their luxurious lakeside cabin, he strikes up a friendship with hell-raiser cousins Riley and Nate that soon starts to challenge his perceptions of his parent’s marriage and his discrete upbringing. As they steadily bait him into joining them on shoplifting and drinking bouts, they also encourage him to abuse the trust of local girl, who Adam takes a liking to. Outwardly, it feels as if Adam is unable to rise to the challenge of these young male bullies but the perceptive Adam is slowly biding his time.

As the narrative unfurls amidst the impressive lakeside landscapes, an ominous score signals a sense shift in tone towards of unease in this unassuming coming of ager, which on the surface looks like any other glossy teen flick. And as the boys’ friendship deepens and they jockey for supremacy, so the cracks and resentments start to appear. Nate, in particularly, becomes more vituperative and vindictive as we get to know him, constantly provoking Adam’s masculinity and whilst Adam stays surprisingly calm, he is quietly formulating an informed impression of the situation. Clearly a budding psychopath, Nate masks his insecurity with typically violent outbursts where he hits a dead bird repeatedly with a stick and burns a mating beatle to death. All this is lushly observed in James Klopko’s inventive cinematography that brilliantly evokes the joy and excitement of teenage years in those long lost summers of our childhood.

But these boys are not the only ones playing fast and loose. It emerges that Adam’s father, a deliberately uncool David Disher, is also indulging in some naughty behaviour that could ruin his cosy family summer for good. And when Adam wises up to his father’s behaviour, a subtle inter-generational power-play is added to the sparky dynamic of this holiday crowd.

This is very much a film that focuses on how male selfishness and need for dominance effects the females in their entourage. SLEEPING GIANT develops from a upbeat character-driven piece to one with significant and sinister psychological punch where Cividino demonstrates a masterful control his material and cast in engaging drama that never outstays its welcome with a startling finale. MT

CRITICS’ WEEK IN CANNES FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 22 MAY 2015 | CANNES 2015

Second Coming (2014)

Dir.: Debbie Tucker Green; Cast: Nadine Marshall, Idris Elba, Kai Francis Lewis; UK 2014, 105 min.

First time writer/director Debbie Tucker Green, a successful playwright and theatre director, is asking the audience for too much patience and a huge leap of face regarding the solution of this moody family drama, which is uneasy mix of social realism, psychological drama and biblical allegories.

It takes SECOND COMING a long while to tell us its secrets – for a long time we are puzzled about the numbers coming up on the screen, before we learn that Jackie (Marshall), who works in a social security benefit office, is pregnant and the countdown figures are the weeks left to full term. Jackie is married to Mark (Elba), a brooding railway maintenance worker; their son Jerome (Lewis) is eleven, and Jackie has been told after his birth, that she will not be able to have any more children. Jackie confides in a co-worker and, without mentioning the word, discusses an abortion, since she has not slept with her husband for a long time, and has no lover. She than experiences hallucinations in the bathroom, involving nosebleeds. Finally, she confesses all to her husband and he takes it badly, making his son listen to his tirade. He drives his wife into a suicide attempt, but saves her life. On the first birthday of the child, we learn that it is indeed a ‘second coming’.

Whilst the scenes with the Jamaican families of the couple are very relevant and realistic, as is the trauma inflicted on Jerome by his parents (long shots of near-psychological torture), overall SECOND COMING lets us guess too much, and answers too little – particularly the ending forces us to make a huge leap of fate. One thought, that Jackie’s “visions” in the bathroom were psychotic episodes (that often occur in pregnancy), but a biblical explanation comes as a big surprise, considering the down to earth tone of the film.

The overall impression is a cryptic message, the dreamlike images are often elusive, the narrative opaque in the extreme. For example, when Jerome finds and tries to save an injured blackbird in the garden, we are reminded of the symbol of this bird in some cultures where it is a harbinger of major life changes. But again, we are left to wonder about the meaning which the film is unwilling to share. Marshall is the real star of the film, relegating Elba, despite of his physical dominance, to a clear second. She holds our interest in her sensibility with minimal but impressive gestures, as does Lewis, whose mature performance is simply marvellous. Luke Sutherland’s camera is tries to be inventive, but is too often simply pleasing, without helping the narrative along. SECOND COMING is a very ambitious failure, but a failure never the less. AS

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 15 MAY 2015

Standing Tall (2015) | Le Tête Haute | Cannes 2015

DIRECTOR: Emmanuelle Bercot, Benoît Magimel, Sara Forestier, Rod Paradot, Diane Rouxel, Aurore Broutin

120min French Drama

Actress and filmmaker, Emmanuelle Bercot, delivers a thorny and morally complex dramady to open Cannes Film Festival 2015. STANDING TALL has touches of the Dardenne Brothers about it and feels very much like their own slice of social realism, Kid on a Bike, that screened here three years ago.

The boy at the centre of the furore is Malony (Rod Paradot), a fatherless, provincial delinquent whose disadvantaged start in life has made him dependent on the French care system, despite the best efforts of his loving but irresponsible mother. Bercot’s story is in many ways schematic, all along, cleverly injecting sparks of humour and leaving us to make our own minds up about this angry boy, who most of the time feels lost and vulnerable. Bercot strives for empathy for her little anti-hero, but despite some cracking performances from the newcomer and his careworker, Benoît Magimel, (as M Le Vigan) you do come away feeling that this is a boy who “lucks out” in the end despite his shaky start in life that contributes to many vicious attempts to sabotage his helpers, friends and family and the best efforts the Judge in charge of his case – Catherine Deneuve is outstandingly regal here as a woman of moral integrity and professionalism.

This is a positive story that praises the care system in France, showing just how wonderfully dedicated and persevering its functionaries can be, and probably really are, although occasionally it does rather labour the point, outstaying its welcome with endless court episodes and social-worker interviews, that usually end in tears and vicious dust-ups. Although the first hour is full of loud anger and violence, a positive vibe starts to emerge in the second half bringing with it some forced tenderness and more filmic moments from Guillaume Schiffman’s (The Artist) creative camerawork, particularly of the gentle Normandy countryside, where Malony is sent on remand.

Here Malony meets Tess (Diane Rouxel) a girl who is to change his life; and despite a head-butting ‘courtship’ where he practically rapes his love interest, she is to be his salvation. Bercot’s film is full of well-drawn female characters: Catherine Deneuve’s aloof but warmly compassionate Judge; Sara Forestier’s emotionally tender but damaged mother; Diane Rouxel’s long-suffering but tenacious girlfriend and Maloney’s ever-patient teacher, and along with Benoît Magimel’s well-rounded father-figure, they all contribute to Maloney’s wellbeing, making STANDING TALL a positive, feelgood film to kick-off to Cannes 2015.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 13-24 MAY 2015 | SEARCH CANNES 2015 FOR OTHER REVIEWS.

Arabian Nights III | As Mil e Uma Nottes | The Enchanted One (2015) | Part 3

Dir.: Miguel Gomes; Cast: Christa Alfaiate, Chico Chapas, Americo Silva, Portugal/France/Germany/Switzerland 2015, 125 min.

In part of three of his trilogy Arabian Nights, titled The Enchanted One, Portuguese writer/director Miguel Gomes finally moves Scheherazade (Alfaiate) into the centre of this modern retelling of Thousand and One Nights, set in a contemporary Portugal, haunted by economic decline.

Like in part two, three fables are being told, this trio being more interconnected than in The Desolate One. Scheherazade’s own story is told against the background of high-rise blocks in working class Marseille, in the outrageous sumptuous Chateau d’If. Filmed in lush colours by DOP Mukdeeprom, this costume drama is even more a film-in-a-film than the segments of the proceedings films. Scheherazade’s father, the Grand Vizier (Silva) is frightened that his daughter might run out of stories, to save her life. At the same time, he is drawn back to his much-loved wife, now deceased: the images of the two women intermingling in his mind. Whilst this clearly artificial and theatrical episode revisits much of Gomes’ Murnau take in Tabu, it somehow does not fit in the whole canon, lacking in focus.

Leading to the second segment ‘Bagdad Archipelago’, where Scheherazade meets the paddle man (Charloto), who has 200 children, and Elvis, a robber cum street dancer, Gomes suddenly switches to a Godard mode, with multiple texts overloading the attention capacity of the audience, particularly the section that resorts to subtitles. Inserts like: “From the wishes and fears of men, stories are born” seem clever, but do not add much. The majority part of the The Enchanted is taken up by the 80 minutes log final segment “Chorus of the Chaffiniches” (shot by Lisa Persson), starring again Chico Chapas (Simao in Part II), as a birdsong expert and bird trapper. The bird trappers are mostly unemployed men, and when we see a man caught in a net meant for birds, the symbolic character is clear. The story of a Chinese girl, told in voice-over, who came to Portugal at the time of depression, adds a further layer of depression to the ending of the trilogy. Together with an open ending, The Enchanted somehow looses his way, suntratcting instead of adding to the whole trilogy.

The structure of Arabain Nights is obviously the main attraction; the narrative, however inventive at times, would not have carried 381 minutes. Gomes has fused Buñuel’s satire, Brechtian allegories and phantasy elements – not unlike Fernando Birri in his South American poetic realism. The stylistic variations, sometimes disperse , are often overwhelming, but Mukdeeprom’s images give the Arabian Nights its unique look, and a coherence. Whilst the opulence of Arabian Nights is obviously part of its strength, Gomes might have overreached a little. He is strongest in the ethnographic chapters, when he shows serous interest in the lives of real people. His choice of popular music, from Rod Stewart to Lionel Ritchie, underlines this argument: his journey between Italian Neo-realism and South American Poetic Realism is strongest, when he chooses a pictorial approach. AS

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD/BLURAY COURTESY OF NEW WAVE FILMS

Austeria (1983)|Kinoteka 2015 | Martin Scorsese Selects

AUSTERIA (THE INN, 1983) is set in the Galician (now Polish) border with Russia in the first days of World War I. Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s film of the novel of the same name by Julian Stryjkowki (who also co-wrote the script) is controversial because of its description of Jewish pacifism, which led to mass slaughter by Russian soldiers, and its parallels with the Holocaust. AUSTERIA is emblematic of the difficulties Polish filmmakers had after World II in dealing with the lack of Polish resistance to the Holocaust committed in their own country, and the fact that more than a thousand Jews, many of them survivors of the concentration camps, were murdered in Poland after the Second World War.

In the film, a Jewish innkeeper Tag (Franciszek Pieczka) is trying to keep some sort of order during the first hectic days of the war. Austrian troops manning the border, are on the retreat, Hassidic Jews from an nearby village arrive, panic stricken. An Austrian baroness and her family seem to have nothing else to do than to settle private scores; and a Hungarian hussar, who has lost contact with his regiment, is more interested in sexual escapades than finding his way back to his troops. A young Jewish village girl is killed and the rituals of her funeral are causing difficulties. The Hassidic Jews discuss Talmudic questions, before being slaughtered by the advancing Russian soldiers in a nearby lake. Whilst the film is a realistic portrait of the chaos and viciousness of the emerging war, its underlying ideology that Jews were slaughtered because they did not put up resistance is apologetic – centuries of pogroms in Poland are proof of a violent anti-Semitism. AS

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL | UNTIL 29 MAY 2015 | 13 MAY 2015

Semaine de la Critique | Critics’ Week | Cannes 2015

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL this year is very much a female affair with women stars and directors set to feature heavily in the competition line-up. With Isabella Rossellini heading up the UN CERTAIN REGARD jury and her mother, Ingrid Bergman, gracing the main festival poster, LA SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE follows suite with Israeli filmmaker Ronit Elkabetz leading the jury of an edition that includes seven titles in competition – six of which are feature debuts.

Those competing for the Critics’ Week Grand Prix are Italian-American director Jonas Carpignano with MEDITERRANEA and France’s Clément Cogitore with the Franco-Belgian co-production THE WAKHAN FRONT. From Argentina comes PAULINA (La patota) by Argentinian director Santiago Mitre, LA TIERRA Y LA SOMBRA by Colombia’s César Augusto Acevedo, and DÉGRADÉ by Palestinian directors Tarzan and Arab Nasser. Canada’s debut will be SLEEPING GIANT by Andrew Cividino and America’s KRISHA from Trey Edwards Shults. Korea’s Han Jun-Hee screen debut is COIN LOCKER GIRL.

Once again, French cinema seems to be heavily featured in LA SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE: the opening film will be LES ANARCHISTES by Elie Wajeman stars Tahar Rahim and Adèle Exarchopoulos. Mathieu Vadepied will bring proceedings to a close with his debut, LEARN BY HEART. And Cannes wouldn’t be Cannes without an appearance by Louis Garrel who this year presents his first film as a director, the Special Screening: LES DEUX AMIS.

SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE | 14 -22 MAY 2015

Gittiler ‘Sair ve Mechul’ | Gone: The other and Unknown | LTFF 2015

Writer| Director: Kenan Korkmaz

Cast: Oyku Peksel, Sonya Akay, Yuhannun Akay, Selin Koseoglu, Ruhi Sari

97min Drama Turkish with English subs

Kenan Korkmaz’s second feature is a doomladen affair that follows two Assyrian brothers who realise that their stateless ethnicity will always marginalise them, both at home and abroad. After their father, a village headman, comes under threat of attack, the brothers go their separate ways: Yuhan (Yuhannun Akay) stays in rural Turkey whilst Joseph (Savas Ozdemir) goes to Sweden.

Expertly filmed on the widescreen and in close-up, Korkmaz’s ethereal visuals are enhanced by a poignant folkloric score: There is an evocative scene early on where we see Yuhan driving towards the camera in one side of the frame while cattle run beside the car on the other side, this effective visual device is repeated throughout. But Korkmaz’s film adopts a crass and heavy-handed case for the underdog rather than allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions on the plight of these stateless, but well-grounded people, with their close family links, farming and animal husbandry skills in the sweeping landscapes of Anatolia. That said, the sheer beauty and imagination of the f ilm’s visual poetry make the first segment a watchable and engaging look at these ancient East Semitic people, whose origins lay in Mesopotamia.

It emerges that Yuhan (Yuhannun Akay) feels hard done by in the local cheese seller and resents his kids watching Turkish language TV and studying Islam at school. As Christian orthodox, they feel that their small church is dwarfed by the towering mosque. He is even seen crying at one point, out of sheer despair at his plight – although he has decent a family life with his wife Sonya, a car and a roof over his head. His only apparent hardship is caring for his family and father (Iso Akay) – whose role as village leader he will eventually have to take up. His wife Sonya (Sonya Akay), is forced to deal with both of these miserable men.

The Stockholm-set second half introduces us to his brother Joseph, and is again concerned with playing up themes of exploitation and victimisation with frequent references to xenophobia in the Swedish News channels. Despite having lived in Sweden for more than ten years and fluent in Swedish, Joseph too appears disenfranchised – living alone and with few friends. And when he does forge a link with the recently-arrived countryman Aziz (Ruhi Sari) they soon fall out over an imagined slight with a racist element in a local bar. To ramp up the negativity, we are also treated to TV news footage of the Norwegian far-right extremist Anders Brevik, who was responsible for the childrens’ camp massacre in 2011. Meanwhile, back in Turkey, Yuhan is still bemoaning his lot with a ‘grass is always greener’ perception of his brother’s life.

Animals are very much part of this dour docudrama, showing their importance in Assyrian life and culture. A trapped pigeon imprisoned in Yuhan’s house seems to symbolise his pent-up feelings of isolation, whilst Joseph tries to kill his goldfish (later saving it) in his Stockholm apartment – he also works with animals – in a fish factory.

GONE is filled with mournful images and utter desperation. While the Assyrians’ struggle certainly merits representation and recognition, Korkmaz shoots himself in the foot with this over-dour and melodramatic attempt to garner our sympathy. MT

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL 7 -17 MAY 2015

Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) | Mubi

Wri/Dir: Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Tadeusz Konwicki: screenplay, Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz | Cast: Lucyna Winnicka, Mieczyslaw Voit, Anna Ciepelewska, Maria Ciewalibóg, Kazirmirsk Fabiziak, Stanislaw Jasuikiewicz | Poland, Drama, 110min

A forerunner to Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS (1971) inspired by Aldous Huxley’s fifties novel The Devils of Loudun, comes the minimalist splendour of Mother Joan of the Angels (Matka Joanna od aniolów) from Polish Film School KADR director and writer, Jerzy Kawalerowicz who rose to fame with his stylish noir thriller, Night Train (1959). A fave of Martin Scorsese, the film was lauded as a masterpiece during the brief Polish New Wave of the fifties, winning the 1961 Special Jury Prize at Cannes. In a remote and nameless village in 17th Century Poland, Father Josef Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) is despatched to investigate claims of ‘The Devil’ possessing a group of nuns. That is not all he finds.

Owing more to Dreyer than to Russell, there are also echoes here of Black Narcissus (1947) a certain salaciousness twists through this Polish black and white re-imagining of the supposed possession of an Ursuline Convent in the French town of Loudon in 1634. The convent setting in a bleak and barren landscape is almost metaphor for a repressed hardship of Poland under the cosh of Communism, adding a particularly piquancy to Kawalerowicz’s narrative: although being an atheist himself and had no sensibility for the Catholic Church. The opening sequences reflect the poverty of the times: an outbreak of the plague having just wreaked destruction on the village, the vast landscape is bare apart from the charred remains of a stake that scars the horizon, marking the spot of Urbain Grandier’s execution. The film has an ethereal quality with its stylised minimalist aesthetic, pristine visuals and exquisite rhythmic symmetry seen in the nuns, dressed in white robes, dancing out of the convent, photographed from above and also later as they leave in single file to a simple toll of the bell, and stand in formation to receive the Holy rites, captured by Jerzy Wojciek’s camera against a predominantly dark background contrasting with the black robes of the priests.

All is not well in this Holy place and after a brief meeting in the Convent with Father Suryn, Sister Joan slithers around the stone walls in feigned ecstasy, cackling mischievously, Clearly she has been possessed by dark forces. Lucyna Winnicka is superb as the lascivious and possessed Abbess Mother Joan. By contrast, Father Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) is solemn and rather open-faced in his peity as he conducts the ceremony to exhort her sin, recommending total isolation to treat her condition. Particularly captivating is the scene where ravens swirl around to the chanting of female voices followed by the chiaroscuro sequence of Suryn’s self-flagellation as he fights inner demons of temptation provoked by his reaction to Mother Joan.

By the end he has transformed into quite a different character and visits the Rabbi for advice and support. Here, white-faced against a black background, the dialogue between a magnificently vehement Rabbi (also played by Voit) and the tortured soul of Father Suryn, alternate in an inspired twist of genius, Voit’s face looming out of the darkness to play each character to perfection.

Father Suryn is made aware of the duality of religion and that Christianity originates from Judaism, and takes pity on Mother Joan, clearly appreciating her plight of possession and, in an ultimate sacrifice of pure love, receives the demons into his own being, with the axe murder of two innocent stable boys. It is an impressive performance by Voit and a lively re-working of the novel. Each scene is a masterpiece of framing and inventiveness underpinned by the complexity of a storyline that feels fresh and fascinating even now. MT.

ON MUBI FROM6 JULY 2022

Too Much Johnson (1938) | Orson Welles Centenary |BLU-RAY

Cast: Joseph Cotton, Virginia Nicholson, Edgar Barrier, Arlene Francis, Mary Wickes

US Silent Comedy

At the 2013 Pordenone Film Festival a remarkable premiere took place. Orson Welles’s second film Too Much Johnson (1938) was finally revealed. A mint copy of this long-considered lost silent comedy displayed the ‘boy wonder’ Orson having cinematic fun with his new toy – the movie camera. Too Much Johnson is a chase movie. Joseph Cotton plays an elusive philanderer being pursued by his rival, in romance, across Manhattan rooftops, a meatpacking market and a Cuban desert.

The film was intended to be screened as an integral part of a Welles Mercury Theatre production of an 1894 stage comedy written by William Gillette. You have to keep this multi media idea in mind and realise that only a very small portion of the film was edited by Welles. What survives is an unfinished 66 minute work print that even to avid fans of Orson Welles does feel, on first viewing, a chore to sit through. True there are delightful pastiches of the Keystone Cops, Harold Lloyd, German expressionism, Harold and early Soviet cinema. Yet this is all un-edited stuff in need of a more dynamic momentum. However a newly-edited, cut down alternative cut (or intelligent guess) lasting 34 minutes has been done by the National Film Preservation Foundation.

This speculative edit of Johnson allows Welles’s fans to have more fun in seeing how much (if any) of a youthful auteur’s signature is here. Citizen Kane did come next, and there are low and quirky camera angles on rooftops (before Welles did his Kane ceiling images), some mischief with the novelty of the automobile and a sophisticated organisation of crowd scenes. These shots look like ideas to be fully realised in The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger and The Trial. But any possible Wellesian ‘look’ is still very much grounded in his personal love of the past and early cinema.

There is an amazing scene involving barrels and hats. This has the flavour of the René Clair silent The Italian Straw Hat. Group compositions combined with deft cutting, where guys scramble for their boater hats and trilbies after chaos amidst rolling barrels, lend a frenetic charm. These moments are matched by Johnson’s later scenes where the hunter and the hunted splash, fully clothed, around a lake near a desert. Here we are pushed into something a little odder, more absurd, even darker, than a knockabout comedy. I wonder if Welles intended some mad comic take on the final scenes of Stroheim’s Greed? (left).

Too Much Johnson is more of a fascinating, re-discovered curiosity than a lost gem.But it’s still wonderful to have it back in circulation. As for the acting, well Joseph Cotton reveals a gift for comedy that was never properly realised in his other films. Both versions of Too Much Johnson are now freely available, from the National Film Preservation Foundation, and can be viewed online. Now, I wonder if the discovery of the lost Magnificent Ambersons footage is just round the corner? Just a cineaste’s improbable hope! AP

CELEBRATING THE CENTENERY OF THE BIRTH OF ORSON WELLES | DVD / BLU| Screened at 2013 Pordenone Silent Film Festival – Cinema del Muto | Courtesy of Mr Bongo Films

Girlhood (2014)

Director: Céline Sciamma

Cast: Karidja Toure, Asse Sylla, Cyril Mendy, Idrissa Diabate

France 2014, 113 min.

After Water Lilies and Tomboy, GIRLHOOD is Céline Sciamma’s third portrait of female adolescence. The heroine Marieme (Toure) lives on an estate in Saint-Dénis, a Parisian suburb – it being France this is not just an ‘estate’, but an HLM (Habitation è Loyer Modéré), or rent-controlled housing; but the high-rise blocks are just a dump for everyone who cannot pay the exorbitant Paris rentals. Her brother (Mendy) is a brute who pushes her around, and her mother, who works as a hotel cleaning lady, has dumped her youngest daughter on Marieme. No wonder that Marieme’s grades are not up to standard and she has to choose a vocational course – which she hates. Closed in on all sides, Marieme meets three older girls, who hang out and look rather menacing. Lady (Sylla) is the leader of the pack, Fily and Adiatou are her obedient sidekicks. The mini-gang has recently lost the forth member to motherhood, and Marieme joins, at first, rather reluctantly. But after a night in a hotel, gorging themselves on pizza and trying on all the beautiful clothes they have nicked in Paris, the quartet is reborn.

The strict hierarchy of the girls is threatened when Lady looses a fight with another girl, and Marieme takes the victor on and defeats her, cutting off her bra like a trophy. But Marieme’s life is still in limbo: her boyfriend Ismael (Diabate) wants to marry her – but early motherhood is not on Marieme’s agenda; the leader of a gang makes her sell drugs before she stops before getting caught – but any real professional outlook is dim. Sciamma leaves GIRLHOOD open-ended: Marieme wondering, like the audience, what to do with a life, which has dealt her such a hopeless starting position.

Violence dominates GIRLHOOD, mostly male-instigated, but Lady (whose real name is Sophia) and even Marieme herself, resort to it when pushed. And yes, they do enjoy it – at least a little. In the opening scene an all-female American Football match sets the tone for what is to follow: these girls and young women are no shrinking violets. Architecture too is brutalist: The high-rise blocks look like awesome spaceships, where aliens might lurk behind the often blacked-out windows. “You can kill people with housing as well as with an axe”, said the Berlin journalist Zille in the 1920s – and this was as true as it is today. The camera is vey innovative in finding new angles to follow the fast moving action, always contrasting with intimate close-ups. But most brilliant are the actors, particularly Karidja Toure, who carries the film, which sags a little bit here and there, not justifying a near two hours running time. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE 2015 and ON GENERAL RELEASE from 8 May 2015

[youtube id=”j8xzi4yk0M8″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Stray Dogs (2013) ****

Director: Ming-liang Tsai

Cast: Shiang-chiyi Chen, Kang-sheng Lee, Yi Cheng Lee,

138min Drama

GRAND JURY PRIZE WINNER | VENICE 2013

Taiwan’s building boom is displacing and disenfranchising the inhabitants of Taipei, who scratch around to make ends meet, according to Tsai Ming Liang’s drama which divided the critics at its Venice premiere. It went on to win the GRAND JURY PRIZE. Some hail it as a masterpiece of social realism – each frame a lingering study of formal mastery playing out in an extended series of static images of despair and poverty that go to make up this non-narrative study of a poor family eking out an existence on the margins of the capital.

The opening scene – that lasts for nearly four minutes – is of a woman languidly brushing her hair as she sits on the edge of a bed in a room where two children lie sleeping. This is their home and the walls are dripping with floodwater from recent downpours. As the film continues its 138 minute running time, some of these shots of stillness will last for up to ten minutes. Another depicts their father, a human signpost who works on a busy intersection advertising property developments, holds up his placard against the dismal drizzle of another Godforsaken day. What emerges is a tragedy: a dysfunctional father unable to offer his family anything but suffering in this detrimental environment where their only nourishment appears to come from cabbages.

A critics’ film – STRAY DOGS will certainly appeal to the most ardent arthouse devotees of long, lingering shots and close-up footage but, be warned, it is a drama that requires perseverance, and the only message of hope that you can take away is that of the resilience of children, adapting to such a life and making up the next generation. MT

REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2013 | ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8 MAY 2015

The Stranger (1946) | Orson Welles | Retrospective

Director: Orson Welles Writers: Anthony Veiller

Cast: Loretta Young, Edward G Robinson, Orson Welles, Richard Long, Philip Merivale, Martha Wentworth

95min Film Noir US

Based on Victor Travias’ Oscar nominated original story of the same name, THE STRANGER earned Orson Welles a nomination at the Venice Film Festival, although he claimed it was the least favourite of his films. And it’s not difficult to see why.

The first film after World War II to show actual footage from the concentration camps, this restored classic noir stars Edward G Robinson, Orson Welles and Loretta Young in standout performances, particularly for Edward G. who plays Mr Wilson of the War Crimes Commission, tasked with seeking out Nazi war criminal and architect of the Holocaust, Franz Kindler (Orson Welles). Erasing all evidence of his past, Kindler is now Charles Rankin, a high-school teacher married to the headmaster’s daughter Mary Longstreet – a luminous Loretta Young who is forced to divide her loyalty between respect for her father and love for her husband, a masterful but manipulative Welles.

In order to entrap Kindler, Wilson releases his former comrade Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) from prison and follows him to Connecticut. With the arrival of his ex-Nazi comrade and his wife’s growing suspicion, Kindler knows that his past is catching up with him and will go to any lengths to prevent his identity being revealed. Noirish shadows pravail in this small town setting of decent, law-abiding folk. But Welles centres his thriller on the local church, a beacon of respectability but also a focus of fear. A real gem and Welles’ most successful film at the box office.

IN CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENARY OF ORSON WELLES’ BIRTH, MR BONGO RELEASES A BRAND NEW RESTORED 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF FALSTAFF CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (FROM 1 MAY 2015), AND DVDS OF TOO MUCH JOHNSON, IMMORTAL STORY AND THE STRANGER

Until I lose My Breath (2015) | Nefesim Kesilene Kadar | LTFF 2015

Writer/Director: Emine Emel Balci

Cast: Esme Madra, Riza Akin, Gizem Denizci, Sema Kecik

94min Drama Turkish with subtitles

In poor district of Istanbul Emine Emel Balci’s sure-footed feature debut, UNTIL I LOSE MY BREATH, follows a driven young woman, Dardennes-style. Senap (Esme Madra) is holding down a low-paid job in a garment factory, with little support from her friends or sister and brother in law, who only care about her contribution to the rent. Clearly Serap, is no fool and planning for better things; saving every Lira she can to pay for an apartment she’s hoping to share with her dad, Musatafa (Riza Akin), who has little regard for his youngest daughter, having already abandoned her as a child. Serap is quite keen on Yusuf (Ugur Uzunel), one of the factory delivery boys who often drives by to shoot the breeze with his mates and Seraps’s co-worker Dilber (Gizem Denizci), under the watchful glare of their draconian boss Sultan (Sema Kecik).

There’s nothing particularly new about this well-crafted and watchable tale of modern Turkey that shows our heroine as a diligent worker who is serious and emotionally unreachable in view of the negative experience that life has dealt her thus far. What emerges is a society where women compete with each other, desperate to escape to a better life abroad. We learn that Musatafa is a traditional male who is looking to a plaint female to take care of him, until the next one comes along.

One briefly joyful scene stands out – where Senap goes on a fairground rollercoaster but ends up vomiting into a waste bin: its almost as if women here are destined not to have any pleasure without pain in a place which is distinguishable only by its dismal streets, sunless skies and over-bearing disreputable males, seen through Murat Tuncel melancholy visuals.

Esme Madra’s debut turn as Serap shows promise as an actor who could well bloom and flourish in other more ambitious roles. MT

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | 7 – 17 MAY 2015

Praia do Futuro (2013) | Futuro Beach

PRAIA DO FUTURO (2014)

Writer|Director: Karim Ainouz

Cast: Wagner Moura, Clemens Schick, Jesuita Barbosa

106min Brazil | Germany Drama Subtitles in English

With some of the most captivating colour photography of Brazilian and Berlin skylines recently committed to film, Karim Ainouz’s leisurely-paced mood piece is sadly let down by a slim story and poorly fleshed-out characterisation of its three protagonists, who we hardly get to know at all. Appearances can be deceptive: after stunning opening sequences that generate a potent atmosphere, we discover that Praia do Futuro is one of the most beautiful but deadly beaches in Brazil. It also has the saltiest water, making it a hostile place to live. When his close friend is drowned in an accident, a Brazilian lifeguard follows his lover back to Berlin to discover a new life that’s both liberating and bewildering. Ainouz creates a palpable sense of place and identity in both cities but sadly the narrative floats around untethered in a sea of plotholes after a while, failing to generate enough momentum or feeling for his characters or their lives to carry it through to a meaningful conclusion. A missed opportunity to explore themes of isolation, adventure and migration. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7 MAY 2015 Reviewed during Berlinale 2014

Chimes at Midnight (1965) | Orson Welles Centenary

Director: Orson Welles

Writer: Orson Welles | Chronicles of England, Scotlande and Irelande | Raphael Holinshed

Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud, Marina Vlady, Walter Chiari

113min Comedy Drama US

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT is an amalgam of five Shakespeare plays: Richard II; Henry IV: Parts One and Two; Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The film’s re-ordering of selected scenes, textual cuts and a shift of narrative emphasis makes for a story more centred on Falstaff. Orson Welles gives a superb performance as Sir. John, the fat man playing an archetypal clown which morphs into a vulnerable fat man playing less of a role and more of his true self. Welles’s acting is never exaggerated and achieves a genuine pathos.

In interviews Welles called CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT ‘a sombre comedy’. It’s certainly a remarkably disenchanted view of ‘Merrie England.’ Welles’s energetic camerawork orchestrates a kind of fall from paradise. From the early zestful scenes, with Falstaff and Hal in the ale house, their friendship is enacted like a joyful, though manipulative, dance. We move onto a grim battle, and then to some beautifully framed scenes of father/son encounters. King Henry IV’s soliloquy on sleep and Hal’s banishment of Falstaff are elegiac and mournfully lit by photographer Edmond Richard.

This embittered view of history is perfectly realised in what is now regarded as a legendary film battle sequence. I’ve watched this so many times and I always marvel at the editing, dramatic rhythm and sensual texture. Not only do we witness the savagery of war but the deaths of its beasts (how many film battle scenes show close shots of horses penetrated by arrows?). Throughout the mayhem the huge figure of Falstaff (half clad in his imprisoning armour) struts and waves his sword. This is a brilliant part-comic touch of Welles. Both Orson as director and his Falstaff creation are detached spectators, yet ultimately complicit in the staging of a futile fight, as corpse upon corpse piles up in the muddy field.

After such powerful spectacle, Welles delivers an intimate coda. King Henry (John Gielgud), Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) and Falstaff speak of the real but hollow victory they’ve achieved. Their angry, funny and bitter comments followed by silent and expressive close-ups, convey much about duty, honour, rivalry, ambition and filial love. Welles’s casting is near-perfect. Everyone responds in a tremendously engaged way.

In his early films Welles brought a Shakespearean grandeur to his tragically flawed heroes. Yet sometimes they growled, and anguished, with too much self-conscious rhetoric; not so much losing the plot but our full attention and sympathy. But his Falstaff is the most human and touching of Welles’s creations. With nothing to prove, he simply tries to be a good child-like man.

Welles has made some great films: Citizen Kane, the first half of The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil and Othello, yet you can argue that sometimes their visual magnificence can be a little distracting. He was undoubtedly a master director, but perhaps rarely let go enough to show that he cared. The relaxation of Welles’s egotistical energy into a project that allowed him a profound classical simplicity, is fully apparent in his masterpiece CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT. Alan Price.

THIS 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION IS ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 1 MAY 2015 MARKING THE CENTENARY OF ORSON WELLES | BFI celebrates a season of his films during July and August including MAGICIAN: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014)

Cannes International Film Festival 2015 | Un Certain Regard

Isabella Rossellini will head the jury of UN CERTAIN RÉGARD – the Cannes sidebar that presents a selection of “original and different” visions and styles in film. This is very much an arthouse competition, introduced by Gilles Jacob in 1978. Fourteen titles have been been announced and include three debuts. Eventually 18-20 titles will take part. Last year’s winner was the Hungarian drama WHITE GOD.

Naomi Kawase will open the section this year with her latest film AN. Two films have been selected from Romania: Radu Muntean’s ONE FLOOR BELOW (Un Etaj mai Jos), and Corneliu Porumboiu, COMOARA (The Treasure) whose POLICE, ADJECTIVE won the FIPRESCI prize and the Jury Prize in the strand at Cannes 2009.

Once again French film features heavily with sophomore directors Alice Winocour casting Matthias Schoenaerts and Diane Kruger in CLOSE PROTECTION, a thriller that follows a troubled ex-soldier tasked with guarding a the wife of a wealthy Lebanese businessman – and Laurent Larivière’s debut, I AM A SOLDIER, (title image) starring Louise Bourgoin in the lead.

This year’s selection is also marked by a treasure trove of Asian delights – two from India: Gurvinder Singh’s THE FOURTH DIRECTION, Neeraj Ghaywan’s MASAAN (left); two from Korea: Oh Seung-Uk’s THE SHAMELESS and Shin Suwon’s MADONNA; one from Iran: Ida Panahandeh’s NAHID and another from Japan: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s JOURNEYS TO THE SHORE, about a wife reunited with her husband who was supposedly lost in a drowning accident. From Thailand comes CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (right).

RAMS, a farming tale from Iceland is Grímur Hákonarson’s new drama, and sees two brothers brought together by their animals, after 40 years of separation. Croatian director Dalibor Matanic, presents three different stories of forbidden love in THE HIGH SUN, and the Italian-American filmmaker Roberto Minervini (Stop the Pounding Heart) will be on the Croisette with THE OTHER SIDE, the only film in competition so far to embracing documentary and fiction. Writer Director, Yared Zeleke’s debut LAMB is from Ethopia. Two hispanic hispanics films join the line-up this year: THE CHOSEN ONES by Mexican director David Pablos and ALIAS MARIA by José Luis Rugeles Gracia. And finally Brillant e Mendoza’s TAKLUB completes the selection.

SPECIAL SCREENING

Une histoire de fou DON’T TELL ME THE BOY WAS MAD by Robert Guédiguian

MIDNIGHT SCREENING

LOVE by Gaspar Noé

CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 13 – 24 May 2015 | SALLE DEBUSSY

Night Train (1959) Pociag| Scorsese Selects | Kinoteka 2015

Director: Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Writers: Jerzy Lutowski, Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Cast: Lucyna Winnicka, Leon Niemczyk, Teresa Szmigielówna, Zbigniew Cybulski

99min Thriller Polish

Stylish and endlessly compelling, Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s NIGHT TRAIN (1959), is an accomplished psychological thriller set on a train carrying a variety of passengers from Warsaw to the Baltic coast.

Belonging to the Polish School, that flourished briefly during the fifties, a seductive Noir ‘whodunnit’ was written and directed by the renowned Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and features a seductive a subtle performance for Leon Niemczyk, in suave shades and slick-back hair, travelling to Gdansk. Having lost his ticket, he offers to buy a double cabin for sole occupation but discovers that his berth is already occupied by the foxy Marta (Lucyna Winnicka) who refuses to leave. They agree to share the carriage but their guarded behaviour sets the tone for this sinister and unsettling journey into the night.

At a brief stop-off, Jerzy buys cigarettes and is pursued by a mysterious woman, whilst Marta bumps into a troublesome ex-lover Staszek (Zbigniew Cybulski). It soon emerges that a murderer is on lose and may even be on the train, and it may even be the suspicious Jerzy. With incredibly skilful storytelling, Kawalerowicz keeps the tension taut throughout, heightened by the claustrophobia of the carriage, revealing very little about these beautiful strangers, making us do all the work, pointing the finger at Jerzy, adhering to the maxim ‘speech is silver, but silence is golden. Marta is clearly suffering from emotional strain due to the presence of Staszek. But there is no chemistry between Marta and Jerzy, despite his sultry allure. The couple remain strangers to the others passengers and to each other, eventually becoming complicit in their own status as outsiders against a World poised to indict them without evidence or proof.

Train journeys, particularly at night, conjure up the exhilaration n of the unknown, the excitement of travel, the possibility of danger, the mystery of exotic strangers and NIGHT TRAIN revels in all these elements with its smouldering jazz score by the Andrzej Trzaskowski (Innocent Sorcerers) adding to the atmosphere. Very much a triumph of less is more NIGHT TRAIN borrows from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, with its undercurrents of danger, it is a metaphor for xenophobia in a society suspicious of anything unknown or unusual, of a Poland fleeing from the cosh of Communism and Socialist Realism. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 2015, POLISH FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON | EDINBURGH

[youtube id=”cBBn9B99BKU?t=10s” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Phoenix (2014) |

Director/Writer: Christian Petzold

Co-writer: Harun Farocki From a novel “Le Retour des Cendres” by Hubert Monteilhet

Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf, Michael Maertens

98min Thriller Germany

Postwar Berlin is the setting for PHOENIX, a noirish thriller and poignant love story from German auteur, Christian Petzold. Rising from the ashes of a devastated city that has nothing left to offer but memories of the past, it stars Nina Hoss (Barbara) as the soulful heroine in a starkly simple yet moving narrative, where less is very much, more. Her character, Nelly Lenz, displays the human face of wartime destruction, in the literal sense of the word: Nelly, a Jew, has survived Auschwitz, her face shattered beyond recognition but her spirit unbroken, held together by hope, a hope that her husband, Johnny, survived too.

Relying on the talents of his regular collaborators, Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld, and their earth-shattering chemistry, Petzold strings this smouldering story of desperation and faith towards a harrowing conclusion with co-writer Harun Forocki, cinematographer Hans Fromm and Jerichow production designer K.D. Gruber.

Before the war, we discover that Nelly worked as a nightclub singer, Johnny as pianist. Arriving back in Berlin thanks to her close friend, Lene (Nina Kunzendorf), Nelly is the sole survivor of her family and a large inheritance: enough money to start a new life in Palestine, where many Jews fled after the Balfour Treaty of 1917. Nelly was, clearly, a beautiful and statuesque woman and the loss of her looks not only knocks her confidence but robs her of her identity. Plastic surgery will not improve her – she only wants her past back, and her previous life in Berlin. Wrapped in her bandages, Nelly echoes the sinister mother in Veronika Franz’s Goodnight Mummy or even George Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, garnering pity and sympathy for this forlorn image of mental and physical fragility.

In a nearby cabaret (also The Phoenix) Nelly eventually finds Johnny (now Johannes) who is working as a part-time pianist and barman. The twist is that Johnny doesn’t recognise his wife due to her facial damage. But as the narrative develops, Lena reveals a twist in this tale:Johnny isn’t the man she thought he was, although he is the man she loved, and she is still in love.; wanting to melt into his arms, be protected by his strong and healthy physicality. He kisses and smells like Johnny, but he is now Johannes, a brutal stranger, both beckoning and repelling her.

When Johnny sees her, still believing his wife is dead, he seizes the moment in a ugly display of opportunism. Inveigling her into a plan of using her likeness to gain control of her family’s inheritance, he subjects her to a rigorous makeover regime. Nelly welcomes this chance to be with him again: after all she’s becoming herself again, just like the old days. There’s a comfort and an excitement here in this inventive yet devious scenario, tinged progressively with the bittersweet knowledge of what Johnny has done under pressure to survive arrest by the Nazis. Working on several levels, Petzold’s clever narrative also reflects the political deviousness of a nation that has tricked its own people to espouse Nazism and undergo years of hardship in the hope of a better and more prosperous future.

Dramatic tension simmers on a knife edge as these two perform a brilliant and subtle dance of wits and emotions: a tour de force of second-guessing. As Nelly’s physical wounds heal, her emotional wounds go deeper until finally she summons the strength to take back her power and re-emerge from the ashes of her past in the devastating finale. Nina Hoss singing Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low” is one of the highlights of the festival. There is no youtube trailer; you just have to see it. MT

PHOENIX IS NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 MAY 2015

[youtube id=”xdiUmxCD4_I” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Sivas (2014)

Director|Writer: Kaan Müdjeci | Cast: Dogan Izci, Okan Avci, Cakir, Ozan Celik, Ezgi Ergin, Banu Fotocan | Drama Turkish with subtitles

Kaan Mujdeci’s brave feature debut has a fresh and feral feel to it, but don’t expect a shaggy dog story: this is about the powerful Kangal breed of working mountain dogs who are fierce and fearless in their work of protecting cattle and guarding the local farming folk who occupy this remote part of Turkey.

Set amidst the masculine world of dog-fighting in the wild open landscapes of eastern Anatolia, this stunningly photographed coming of age tale is about a boy of eleven with a strong personality despite his tender years. And it’s an astonishing performance for Dogan Izci, who plays Aslan, the boy in question. He has more ‘attitude’ and bravado than most adult men (we see him chucking stones at his father), yet he is still a child with his blue and white-collared school uniform peeping over his anorak. (Aslan appropriately means Lion in Turkish). His mutt, the eponymous SIVAS, whom he rescues from a savage local dog-fight, is named after one of the local cities in the region.

Mudjeci’s hand-held camera sketches out the the daily life of the village where Aslan lives with his parents and older brother, Sahin (Ozan Celik). A competitive and feisty character, Aslan considers it his right to play the principal part in the school production of Snow White, and yet there is still a cute vulnerability to his inchoate machismo: he has already an eye for the local girls, particularly Ayse (Ezgi Ergin) who has won the part of the Princess in the play.

But as the story develops, a more sinister vibe creeps in as the cruel and heartless world of dog-fighting is explored through Sivas’s meetings with other local kangal dogs. This is a serious sport. If these people lived on an estate in London, they would probably have ‘no fear’ tattooed across their muscled chests and own pit-bulls, but this is primitive rural Anatolia and Mudjeci gives the impression of a harsh, yet close-knit community where men are men and women remain behind closed doors. Although in reality some dogs will lose their lives, we are assured that this doesn’t happen during filming.

Eventually Aslan’s accompanies the older members of the village, including the head honcho (Muttalip Mujdeci), to the ‘National Championships’ of illegal dog-fighting in nearby Ankara. And this where the tone becomes more sinister and less intimate, the camera shifting into widescreen mode to capture the dangerous fights as darkness falls over the Anatolian countryside, lit only by roaring firelight as the macho crowd cheer noisily into the night. MT

PREMIERED AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014

Far From the Madding Crowd (2015)

Director: Thomas Vinterberg Writer: David Nicholls

Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Carey Mulligan, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge,

119min GB/US Drama

John Schlesinger’s 1967 film of Hardy’s novel, FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, was always going to be a hard act to follow. Nearly 50 years later. Thomas Vinterberg’s version of the tale of Bathsheba Everdene a “headstrong country girl” and her three suitors, has a distinctly European flavour. A Danish director and DoP; an English screenwriter (David Nicholls); a Belgian Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) and the occasional Welsh twang of Michael Sheen’s Mr Boldwood make up this neatly potted version, running at 40 minutes shorter than the original 1960s version.

Vinterberg’s focus here is on the intimacy between the central characters: particularly between Carey Mulligan who exudes a serene calm as Bathsheba. Her relationship with Gabriel – that starts as a proposal in the middle of a field – simmers away in the background as the two play a subtle and convincing game of interdependency that adds a sexual frisson to their working friendship – Oak is the only man who makes Bethesda smile broadly and shed a tear. After the reversal of fortune brought about by the loss of his sheep, he may have less to offer financially when she inherits her Uncle’s farm, but throughout he is his own man, and a good man at that, and not afraid to walk away – and that Hardy’s clincher at the end of the day. Schoenaerts evokes a powerful masculinity that is both physical and emotional, but he also a brings reliability – for as long as Bathsheba needs him – making it clear that he will one day walk away. Oaks not only becomes a confidante to Bathsheba but also to Boldwood, a middle-aged landowner whose senses are inflamed on receiving her casual Valentine with its throw-away message. But what Michael Sheen lacks the regal detachment of Peter Finch’s Boldwood, he makes up for in with the desperate, gnawing vulnerability he brings to the role; the only one of the trio who has as much to lose as to gain, as the eldest, if he fails to win Bathsheba’s hand. Sheen’s poignantly-tortured agony as he questions his chances, is one of the triumphs of the film.

But Vinterberg’s version has much less of the duplicitous chancer, Sergeant Troy (Tom Sturridge). In an underwritten role, that fails to conjure up his importance as the most manipulative and controlling of Bathsheba’s consorts, Sturridge is no match for the dashing blue-eyed charm or erotism of Terence Stamp – for one, he looks positively wet behind the ears (despite being exactly the same age as Stamp in the role – 29); for another, he emerges as even more the cad and less as the skilful seducer than Stamp did back in the sixties.

At the heart of Winterberg’s film is the subtle, slow-burn relationship between Mulligan’s Bathsheba and Schoenaerts’ Oak; which develops through the ups and downs of their farming challenges. The smouldering Schoenaerts has a difficult role as he is forced into underplaying his character, relying on a potent chemistry to attract Bathsheba. Carey Mulligan is elegantly attractive, her ladylike daintiness tempered by a shrewd sense-of-self and a maturity beyond her years; as against Julie Christie’s more ethereal light-hearted girliness.

What Vinterberg’s film lacks is Hardy’s (and Schlesinger’s) potent essence of 19th Dorset life – the vagaries of farming and animal husbandry and the way they drive the narrative forward, shaping the lives of this ‘madding crowd’ of rural countryfolk. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 MAY 2015

Last Day of Summer (1958 ) Ostatni Dzien

Dir/Wri: Tadeuz Konwicki CIN: Jan Laskowski: | Cast: Irena Laskowska, Jan Machulski | 66min Drama Polish

Tadeuz Konwicki hints at melodrama and impending doom in this elegantly-crafted mood piece set on a vast deserted Baltic Beach in amongst windswept dunes. As fighter planes pass overhead on a training sortie, two strangers meet tentatively, an older woman (Irena Laskowska) and a young man (Jan Machulski), each seemingly traumatised by memories of the past, unsure of each other and guarded in their attempts to reach out. The woman gradually warms to the man’s advances and they start to communicate with gestures and brief exchanges. Jan Laskowski’s sublime visuals conjure up a mood of sombre anxiety, perfectly capturing the feeling of reticent hope and restless energy in these troubled souls. There is an idyllic scene where the couple embrace in the rolling tide that echoes From Here to Eternity. The Last Day of Summer is perhaps a metaphor for the re-birth of the Polish nation in the aftermath of War, foreshadowing future conflict in the East but edging gradually towards the hope of renewal after a traumatised past. It won the Grand Prix at Venice in 1958. MT

NOW ON KLASSIKI CINEMA

Thou Gild’st the Even | Sen Aydinlatirsin Geceyi (2013) | LTFF 2015

Director|Writer: Onur Unlu

Cast: Ali Atay, Tansu Bicer, Cengiz Bozkurt, Asil Buyukozcelik, Demet Eygar

107mins Fantasy Drama Turkish with subtitles

Man is Created By Anxiety – Euripides

Taking its name from Shakespeare’s 28th Sonnet, THOU GILD’ST THE EVEN (Sen Aydinlatirsin Geceyi) garnered Best Film, Best Script, Best Editing and FIPRESCI Awards at the National competition strand at Istanbul Film Festival this year.

Elegantly shot in pristine black and white, Onur Ünlü’s obsurdist drama unspools as a series of satirical and poetic contemplations on the human condition. Blending fairytales with touches of surrealism and poetic realism and whimsical observations explored through the daily life of a melancholy barber in a Turkish village, it is a curio may enchants or amuse or even irritate.

Cemal (Ali Atay) lives with his fathe, having lost his mother and siblings in a fire. His neighbours are a doctor, an invisible teacher and a girl who can control time with the clap of her hands. Ünlü tries his hand at a range of special effects to tell his story – from slow mo, jump cuts and even back projection – the result is clever and effective for the most part and his ironic sense of humour adds a much needed levity to Cemal’s moody demeanour and mournful existence dwelling, for the most part, on negativity.

The film’s whimsical approach will appeal to devoted arthouse and festival audiences but those looking for a traditional drama may lose track of its endless flights into reverie and occasionally slow-paced narrative – this is essentially an everyday story of the trials, tribulations, occasional joys and passions of everyday life but told in an enchanting way. MT.

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 7 -17 MAY 2015

Come to my Voice | Were Denge Min (2013) | LTFF 2015

Dir: Huseyin Karabey

Cast: Feride Gezer, Melek Ulger, Tuncay Akdemir, Bahri Hakan

Turkey/France/Germany 2014, 105 min.

Set in the magnificent landscape near Lake Van in Southeast Turkey, Huseyin Karabey (My Marlon and Brando) tells a simple, but beautifully-crafted tale about repression, liberation and the power of storytelling. A Kurdish village is gathering around a bard, to hear the story which unfolds as the film. At the same time, Berfe (Gezer) tells her granddaughter Jiyan (Ulger) the story of the fox, who lost his tail – his pride and joy. Just when she starts talking about the many tasks the fox has to perform to regain his tail, Turkish soldiers, under the leadership of a sadistic captain, raid the village, demanding to be handed over weapons, in the village’s “secret” arsenal. But it emerges that this is ploy of a jealous informer, no weapons are found, and the men are taken to prison, among them Berfe’s son Temo (Akdemir). Soon it becomes clear, that the soldiers are looking for free weapons, in exchange for the imprisoned men, so that they can sell them for profit. Neither Jiyan’s plastic pistols nor Berfe’s father’s old rifle are deemed acceptle , and after trying her luck with a smuggler, Berfe travels with her granddaughter to the nearest city, to visit her relatives. There she steals a revolver, and with the help of travelling group of blind bards, led by Casim (Hakan), they smuggle the weapon through the many control points. When the two come home, a surprise awaits them.

Karabey’s inventive structure is fascinating, the story of the fox, told in many instalments, is a parallel story to Berfe’s struggle to find a weapon, to free her son. We can imagine, how further generations will hear the story of Berfe’s adventures with her granddaughter. This sense of history binds the villagers together, their collective memory much stronger than the blunt, simplistic and brutal approach of the Turkish soldiers. All families have either dead or imprisoned members, mistrust of the Turkish occupiers is everywhere. But the Kurds, personified by Berfe and Jiyan, use the stunning landscape to their advantage, they become a part of the wild and beautiful terrain. There are long stretches in Come to my Voice, where not a word is spoken, but the power of the images does not need much explanation, and the majority of the dialogue is short and up to the point. Anne Misselwitz’ camera is always gliding over the terrain; then, in gentle curves coming down to show the impressive faces of the actors, some like Gezer, being amateurs. A very impressive, touching but never sentimental film, which tells a rich and varied folk tale. AS

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | 7- 17 MAY 2015

Otto e Mezzo | 8½ (1963)

Dir.: Federico Fellini

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee, Sandra Milo

Italy/France 1963, 138 min.

After the success of La Dolce Vita, Fellini decided that the time had come to make films which relied less on a narrative structure, but more on an aesthetic concept. 8 ½ turned out to be a self-portrait of the director, played by his “Alter Ego” Mastroianni and combined favourite themes from his earlier films in a vivid collage of carnival-like picturesque settings, questioning not only beliefs but the form of film-making itself.

Middle-aged film director Guido Anselmi (Mastroianni) tries to escape from the self-inflicted pressures of his personal and professional life to the spa of Chianciano. But his “harem” as well as his problems with his next film compound to make his stay anything but relaxing. The original title of 8 ½ was La Bella Confusione (The beautiful Confusion), and Fellini literally throws everything into the mix: Anselmi’s dreams are interrupted by nightmarish visions from his childhood where he meets his dead parents on a cemetery and his guilty feelings towards Catholicism manifest themselves in scenes were he is haunted by clerics. His love life is equally bizarre: having invited his mistress Carla (Milo) to stay with him, he soon begs his long-suffering wife Luisa (Aimée) to join him in the circus which his life has become. His producer is very anxious that Anselmi starts shooting the film – instead of changing the script and having endless screen tests; the huge structure for an S-F film has been erected near the beach and the costs are mounting. But Anselmi is more interested in his past: he relives the dance of Saraghina, a frightening and alluring woman who chased the boys away. And whilst in reality he is ‘cheating’ both on his wife and his mistress, in his dreams he swings the whip, hoping to frighten them into submission. Enter Claudia (Cardinale), seemingly an innocent young girl, but really an opportunist, but Anselmi has retreated too far into himself to even try his vain charm on her. He dreams of suicide, before he turns the implosion into his only way out: he starts the film, incorporating actors and friends into a giant carnival of lost souls.

Fellini’s Anselmi is a sex maniac, a sadist, as well as a masochist, in love with myths (not real feelings), a coward, never having grown up from being a mother’s son, a fool, a phony and impostor. In one word, he is the archetypal Italian man of a certain class and education. In his review of the film, Alberto Moravia compares Anselmi with Leopold Bloom, the hero of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: he is a neurotic, his failings make him withdraw more and more into an inner world where he tries to gain control. 8 ½ is a film, where reality intrudes into Anselmi’s nightmares and visions – not the other way round. Anselmi only seems to be in touch with his feelings as a young man – the images of the countryside in Emilia Romagna being the only peaceful ones in the whole film. AS

OPENING IN SELECTED CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 1 MAY 2015

[youtube id=”RmIC9pQ80Fk” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Wild Tales (2014) | Relatos Salvajes | Bfi Player

Argentinian film-maker Damián Szifrón’s latest film was also his big hope for the Foreign Languages Oscars in 2015. He didn’t win but WILD TALES is worth watching: a collection of wacky and wonderful stories from contemporary Argentina: a country richly suffused with the feisty Latin temperament of its Spanish forebears and public services that would make even Franz Kafka proud. Exploring a series of nightmarish scenarios and characters on the verge of a nervous breakdown (Almodovar is co-producer), but WILD TALES could be set in any modern European capital making it a drama of universal appeal.

On a plane, a fashion model finds she is next to her nemesis leading to mile-high mayhem; a cook uses her culinary expertees to help her boss avenge an unpleasant diner; a macho driver gets more than he bargained for on a mountain journey, a demolition man (Ricardo Darin) brings the house down over a ill-judged parking ticket; a rich industrialist tries to cover up his son’s mistake and, finally, a Jewish wedding ends in a showcase showdown after the bride pits her wits against her unfaithful groom.

In scenes of spectacular violence, outlandish revenge and powerful poignance the portmanteau fiom travels the length and breadth of the country from the heart of Buenos Aires to the magnificent mountainsides and pampas, Szifrón uses dark humour and subtle gravitas to expose his fellow compatriots’ proud self-belief and unswerving inner-strength: a scene between a bride and a random waiter on a hotel roof-top is almost magical. Performances are gutsy and heartfelt from the ensemble Argentinian cast, WILD TALES offers world class entertainment worthy of any Oscar ceremony. MT

ON BFI PLAYER

Exit (2015) |

Director: Hsiang Chienn

Cast: Ming Hwa Bai, Shiang-chyi Chen, Ming-hsiang Tung, Chen-Ling Wen

90min Taiwanese Drama

The menopause is a topic that rarely figures in modern drama. Certainly not a positive time in most most women’s lives – in the West it is viewed with a range of emotions ranging from mild pity to downright derogation. But in the Far East, where older people command respect and often admiration, the emotionally effects of the menopause are often milder both physically and mentally suggesting that positive societal attitudes can alleviate symptoms.

And there is something admirable about Hsiang Chienn’s gentle and sensitive handling of this theme that affects its central character Ling (a subtle and measured performance by Chen) a Taiwanese woman in her forties who is clearly suffering the effects brought on by this change of life .

Having just lost her job in a garment factory, Ling is preoccupied with the future, anxious for her mother-in-law in hospital and dealing with a troublesome and distant teenage daughter. Her husband is working abroad and never returns her calls so she appears to be isolated and lacking in any emotional support. Hsiang Chienn shows insight and understanding of her character’s anxiety. Though there are occasional longueurs and the classic Taiwanese static shots where Ling moves in and out of the frame, the narrative maintains a manageable pace, allowing us time out for contemplation.

In the same hospital ward lies Chang, a young man who has undergone eye surgery and in incredible pain. His suffering seems to suffuse the drama with added poignancy as Ling develops a strange and attachment to him and she starts to day-dream of romantic scenarios as she intimately tends Chang, possibly excited by his vulnerable and semi-naked, blindfolded state. Gradually she becomes more excited about her visits to the hospital as a unorthodox intimacy develops with this mysterious young stranger with beautiful feet.

With it soft-lensing and delicate aesthetic EXIT is a daintily-crafted piece with shades of Wong Ka Wai’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, the voyeuristic camera lingers on well-composed shots, drifting around, often out of focus. Summer Lei’s tango score ramps up the erotic expectancy surrounding the couple and soon Ling is undressing him to gently give him a bed bath, her touch increasing positive healing in them both, showing how physical re-connection can be therapeutic and emotionally affecting, even if the outcome is ultimately frustrating. A graceful and appealing drama. MT

SCREENING ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 APRIL 2015

Cry of the City (1948) | Robert Siodmak Retrospective | BFI April – May 2015

Dir.: Robert Siodmak

Cast: Victor Mature, Richard Conte, Fred Clark, Shelley Winters, Betty Garde, Deborah Paget

USA 1948, 95 min.

Robert Siodmak made this noir thriller between THE KILLERS and CRISS CROSS, and although CRY OF THE CITY is not as spectacular, as a study of crime in the city – with the Little Italy being the real star – in all its brutality, photographed in grainy black and white by Lloyd Ahern, this is ultimately a superior film. It does not go for identification with the main protagonist as in THE KILLERS nor does it have the spectacular ending of CRISS CROSS. It is a noir in the true sense of the word, with no borders between police and criminals.

Martin Rome (Conte), a hardened criminal, is in hospital after a shoot-out. The police, led by Lt. Candella (Mature), wrongly suspect him of a jewellery heist where a woman was killed. Rome escapes, fearing rightly that Candella will frame him and his fiancée Teena (Paget) for the robbery. Candella and Rome grew up in the same neighbourhood and Siodmak shows that they are not very different. Rome is helped by his teenage brother Tony (Cook) and an old girlfriend Brenda (Winters in fine form). In spite of being chased by Candella, Rome finds the real mastermind of the jewellery heist, a murderous masseuse (a grotesque portrait by Hope Emerson). When Candella appears on the scene, he is wounded in a shoot-out. But, like Rome at the beginning, he leaves the hospital to hunt his prey, leaving Martin at the mercy of his brother.

The city is permanently present: its sounds, always important in Siodmak’s noir-films, accompany the action and showcase the vibrancy of New York’s Little Italy in the late forties. The clear images of the interaction are always framed by shadows of the environment. Doors in the background and side windows allow the replication of images: pictures of pictures. The cars and the huge crowds engulf the protagonists, very much like “Menschen am Sonntag”. A dominating city is shown in glamorous panorama shots. The narrative is not limited by an inner or outer world: violence is everywhere, and police violence is no exception. This is a cruel and callous environment, everything is played out with murderous hatred in front of witnesses. Italian emigrants in Martin Rome’s family home strive to replicate the emotional closeness and warmth of their homeland but there’s a bitter edge to their hospitality. Nothing escapes the beady eye of the voyeuristic camera, witnessing the action: even an emergency operation in car in the middle of the rush hour is witnessed, portraying a world of murkiness – with nowhere to hide adding texture to the narrative and placing it firmly in the historic context of post war New York. The psychology of ordinary life is subverted by the violence. The real, ordinary world has changed though, it loses its significance, not only for the protagonists, but also for the audience, who had submitted to the same violence of a society in crisis: the depression was not forgotten, and the Second World War had just ended. CRY OF THE CITY is dark and the camera penetrates this darkness – but what it shows is just a human twilight world – bordering on the psychotic. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE HEADLINING A RETROSPECTIVE OF ROBERT SIODMAK IN MARCH 2015 AT THE BFI

The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2014)

Dir.: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Cast: Addison Timlin, Veronica Cartwright

USA 2014; 86 min. HORROR

Based on a feature film of the same title directed in 1976 by Charles B. Pierce – based on real events in 1946 – this latest remake has nothing new to add. The only saving grace is the 40s hard core-retro aesthetic, which compensates (but not too much) for an otherwise really tedious double re-make, told in episodes that are sensational (and gruesome) in themselves, but lack any cohesion.

In Texarkana, a boarder town between Arkansas and Texas, we re-visit the so-called ‘moonlight murders’, where five people where killed by a masked killer in ten weeks – a culprit was never found. Starting again from reality, the story kicks off with a screening of the 1976 version in a drive-in cinema in Texarkana which happened, until recently, on Halloween. Jami (Timlin), a timid young woman whose parents died in a car crash when she was little, hates the movie and begs her boy-friend Corey to drive off. They do and find a secluded spot in the woods to make out, whereupon the bag-masked phantom strikes again, killing Corey, leaving Jami to spread the warning “that this is for Mary, make them remember”.

Whilst looking for the new and old murderer, the Police are having no joy and Jami’s grandmother (Cartwright) is killed at a petrol station, when the pair try to leave the town. The brutal “Trombone” murder of the original slaying is replayed, before a rather disappointing and hollow explanation. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 17 APRIL 2015

The State I Am In (2000) | Der Innere Sicherheit

Dir.: Christian Petzold | Cast: Julia Hummer, Barbara Auer, Richy Müller, Bilge Bingul | Germany 2000, 106 min.

Petzold’s debut feature, co-written with the filmmaker Harun Farocki, who was his lecturer at the Berlin Film and TV Academy, already shows a unique style and content, which would make him into one of the few German directors whose films have become cult classics outside Germany. Petzold avoids the ‘thesis’ approach of many of his compatriots, but tells a story from a personal viewpoint, leaving the audience guessing ’til the end.

THE STATE I AM IN could easily have been another dogmatic and sterile film about the anarchists of the Baader-Meinhof group; instead, Petzold shows a teenager struggling with adolescence, living with her parents, who are on the run from the police. Jeanne (Hummer) would love to be an ordinary teenager, but when we meet her for the first time in a costal resort in Portugal (Cascais), she is under constant surveillance from her parents, who are afraid that their daughter might accidentally blow their own cover. When Jeanne meets Hamburger, Heinrich (Bingul), in a café near the beach, she starts to fall in love with him – and his stories. Heinrich tells her that his mother committed suicide in the swimming pool of a villa, which he and his wealthy father abandon after her death. Jeanne’s parents Clara (Auer) and Hans (Müller) are planning to go to Brazil, to start a new life. But thieves rob their apartment and the key to a locker at the train station, where the money for their emigration is stored. The family travels to Hamburg to raise the money for flights to Brazil, meeting ex-members of their gang, who have since made their peace with the authorities. Jeanne leads her parents to Heinrich’s abandoned villa, where they take up resident. But Jeanne meets Heinrich again, by accident, living in a local hostel. Whilst they sees each other secretly, her parents plan to rob a bank. When her father is injured in a shootout, and Clara kills a guard, Jeanne finally tells Heinrich of her predicament, setting the cat amongst the pigeons in a tragic denoument.

In this moody thriller, Petzold engages in the state of mind of his protagonists, delivering a good analysis of the “Red Army Front”. The film successfully unravels an important part of West German history after WWII. Instead of taking sides, Petzold lets the audience discover the parallels between the make-believe world of Clara and Hans on one side of the narrative, and Heinrich on the other: both sides dream of a life in a different reality. Jeanne is caught between these two, unable to make sense of her parent’s bourgeois demands for a good education, and their status as criminals.

One of the most significant scenes of the film is a meeting between Jeanne’s parents and another ex-member of their group, where Jeanne is used as a go-between, carrying a copy of “Moby Dick” (Andreas Baader’s code name in the RAF was ‘Captain Ahab’) as a sign of identification. Here we see the dilemma of the members of the “Red Army Front” of the first and second generation, who usually came from middle class background and were well read’ believing in cultural values. These traits of their upbringing were fatal in their assessment of the political situation: they believed in the fictional world of books and films, and not in realistic power politics. It was a near psychotic delusion, to believe that a handful of middle-class dropouts could overturn a state security system with far superior manpower and technology.

The RAF’s argument – that Germany was still ruled by leading members of the Nazi Party – was absolute valid: Heinrich Erhardt, chancellor of West Germany from 1963-1966, was a member of the SS-Finance Organisation, his direct superior, Ohlendorf, was sentenced to death in Nuremberg; and Erhardt’s successor, Kiesinger, was a high-ranking member of Goebbel’s propaganda ministry – not a mention the huge number of civil servants and policemen of the old regime still in their posts – like the majority of the Berlin police force who beat up demonstrators in West Berlin on a regular basis, having served beforehand in the murderous repression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising..

But the RAF (and their sympathizers) did not acknowledge that this political status quo could only exist with the consent of the huge majority of the West German population, well-known for hiding war criminals for decades after WWII. The RAF’s failure was to see themselves as city-guerillas, supported by the majority of the population, whilst in reality they were a romantic sprinkling, turning to violence and being met by a much better prepared state force which crushed them to the applause of the huge majority. They left realistic opponents of the West German post-war system in a thankless position where they could defend the deeds of either side. Whilst the RAF’s violence was nothing compared with that of Nazism, the anarchists legitimised those in power in West Germany, who could rightly claim they upheld the peace against the ‘left wing’ perpetrators.

Apart from offering an entry into a wider political discussion there are some solid performances, particularly outstanding is Hummer’s Jeanne as a victim of parental delusions and neglect. Hans Fromm’s camera follows the trio, his shady visuals mirroring their paranoid view of the world, where everything could turn violently against them at any moment. Petzold’s debut is a convincing thriller with a cause, showing the sad state of mind of self-declared ‘liberators’ in this moving German-noir. AS

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON | along with BARBARA AND PHOENIX, AND JERICHOW

Stones for the Rampart (2014) | Kamienie Na Szaniec

Dir.: Robert Glinski

Cast: Tomasz Zietek, Marcel Sabat, Kamil Szeptycki

Poland 2014 | 111 min | Action drama

Robert Glinski’s drama, a remake of Jan Lomnicki’s Operation Arsenal from 1978 is based on the non-fiction novel by Aleksander Kaminski, first published underground in 1943 during the Nazi occupation of Poland, before it became a book on the curriculum of every Polish school after the war.

Kaminski based his chronicle on the clandestine fight of “Grey Rank” members, the equivalent of Poland’s Boy Scouts, who took up arms against the occupiers. Glinski positions his three heroes, Rudy (Zietek), Zoska (Sabat) and Alek (Szeptycki) in the centre of the action: first the three friends form their own “Grey Rank” unit, trying to sabotage the Germans, before they buy weapons and become part of the “Home-Front” Army, the official Polish resistance force, coordinated by the Government in Exile from London.

The main thrust of STONES FOR THE RAMPART is the liberation of their leader Rudy from the Gestapo. Whilst Rudy is tortured, Zoska and Alek make an exhaustive attempt to get permission from the Home Army to free him: the professional soldiers are not so keen to risk the lives of the resistance fighters. Finally, Rudy is sprung, but tragedy ensues for this brave trio.

Whilst the heroism of the young men deserves to be remembered, they also deserve a more subtle concept without so many clichés. Glinski’s all-out action approach gives too little room for the individuals and their rather complex family lives to be developed to their full potential. This ‘all-guns-blaring’ style with its bloody overkill in the torture scenes lacks subtlety and a decision to cast cute but histrionic girlfriends for our heroes, further trivialises the piece and leads to some prudish sex scenes. Glinski’s stone-age aesthetics together with over-simplistic dialogue, simply doesn’t do the real fighters any justice. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 17 APRIL 2015

A Little Chaos (2014) |

Director: Alan Rickman Writer: Alison Deegan

Cast: Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Stanley Tucci, Hellen McCrory

116min UK Drama

A woman’s touch sweeps through the court of Versailles in Alan Rickman’s second feature in which he also stars as a stately Louis XIV. The green fingers in question belong to Madame Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslet) who is hired by an inspirational, André Le Nôtre, to help him add a flourish of herbaceous perennials to the design and landscaping of the formal 17th century Palace.

As Sabine De Barra, Winslet is a breath of fresh air in the stultifying artifice of court life, where acolytes fester under Louis’ strict regime as absolute monarch. In a performance of confident grace and gentle determination, Winslet not only charms the birds from the trees but also the recently bereaved King himself, and they bond during an impromptu a tête à tête in the potager. Matthias Schoenaerts oozes a brooding sensuality, and even sings, as the legendary landscape architect, lashed by the tongue of his vituperative wife, a foxy Helen McCrory.

Alan Rickman shines in a sardonic and thoughtful turn as the King who eventually moves from Paris to Versailles to oversee the completion of the works (“I felt I shouldn’t get the builders out, unless I moved in”). His sumptuously-crafted tale of intrigue and inventiveness is wittily scripted by newcomer Alison Deegan, who adds a contempo feel to the dialogue, makes this 17th century tale feel fresh and ‘de nos jours’: Molière would be proud. In a sterling cast of British acting talent Jennifer Ehle is luminous as Louis’ mistress, Madame de Montespan, Phyllida Law plays a warm and reassuring courtier, Steven Waddington adds ballast as a hard-landscaper and US actor, Stanley Tucci, adds a touch of class as a flamboyant roué.

A subplot concerning Sabine’s family life and the death of her daughter feels slightly superfluous and unconvincing but her onscreen chemistry with Schoenaerts’ Le Nôtre certainly isn’t and, in contrast to the tawdry world he inhabits with his wife at court, their budding romance blossoms naturally and freely in this glorious British production. MT

NOW SCREENING ON GENERAL RELEASE

The Salvation (2014)

Director: Kristian Levring

Writers: Anders Thomas Jensen

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mikael Persbrandt, Douglas Henshall, Jonathan Pryce

92mins | Drama | Western | Denmark/US

I first discovered this burnished beauty smouldering in the out-of-competition section last year at Cannes: It’s always gratifying to see a great film that hasn’t had any buzz, pre-festival, and THE SALVATION was one of those outings – but with Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green what could possibly go wrong? Suffice to say, we’ve certainly found the next Clint Eastwood in Mads, who rocks a similar look in this Danish-styled Once Upon a Time in the West, from Dogma director, Kristian Levring. Mads plays Jon, a former soldier who immigrated to America after the Danish-German war in 1864. With his gung-ho swagger and just enough buttoned-up anger to keep the action taut and macho throughout. This glowering, sun-burnt saga also has echoes of High Noon, but was actually shot in South Africa by award-winning lenser Jens Schlosser.

When Jon’s wife and son are brutally killed on their arrival from Denmark; the modest, law-abiding outsider turns hurt into hatred, by taking the outlaw’s life in return, and in the process unleashed the fury of a notorious gang leader, Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), driving him to seek retribution. His own wife, Eva Green seethes in a stunning speechless part (as Princess), rendered mute by an Indian’s weapon. With a zippy running time of 92 minutes, this is a slick and enjoyable ride through the Wild West of the 1870s: The Danish angle works well with the xenophobic locals of that era, bringing a fresh new angle to the evergreen theme of transmigration. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 17 APRIL NATIONWIDE

Hardkor Disko (2014) | Kinoteka 2015

Director: Krzysztof Skonieczny

Writers: Robert Bolesto

Cast: Marcin Kowalczyk, Jasmina Polak, Agniesszka Wosinska, Janusz Chabior, Ewa Skonieczna

85min Thriller Polish with subtitles

Krzysztof Skonieczny uses techniques from Polish Masters to offer a chilling view of contemporary Poland.

Marcin, the central character of HARDKOR DISKO, is similar in many ways to the infamous Jacek (Lazar) who played the psychopath in Kieslowski’s A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING (1988). In the feature debut of young Polish director Krzysztog Skoniesczny (which has the identical running time to Killing) Marcin is a textbook psychopath who appears in an upmarket suburb of Warsaw to infiltrate the lives of a professional family. Nearly thirty years later than his counterpart Jacek, who focused on a hapless taxi driver, our contemporary protag is considerably more urbane and charming than his predecessor, but still has no money, and seemingly no job.

He meets Ola (Jasmina Polak) a spoilt twenty-something, at the entrance to her family’s penthouse and after being told that her parents are away, he joins her on an drug-fuelled evening climaxing in a prolonged bout of meaningless sex, doggie-style, in Ola’s stylish bedroom. Marcin’s Warsaw is considerably more prosperous than that of Jacek’s era and the jagged skyline of this cold-lensed thriller is perfectly captured by Kacper Fertacz (who honed his skills on Lars von Trier’s Melancholia) whose framing echoes that of Jerzy Skolismowski’s Walkower (1965), often on the widescreen and in harmony with its voyeuristic and detached feel. There may be more money flushing around in this contemporary Warsaw but there is still the same feeling of disenchantment and alienation that also permeated Kieslowski’s eighties outing.

The next morning, Marcin flips into convivial mode (but with the same flat emotionless stare) as he meets Ola’s parents Pola (Agnieszka Wosinska), a theatre designer, and Olek (Janusz Chabior) an snarky architect, at their breakfast table overlooking Warsaw’s modern skyline. There is something glib and unlikeable about these characters yet HARDKOR DISKO is strangely compelling, drawing you into its icy stare, half expecting a slap on the face by some sudden brutal revelation. But that is the point. The compulsion here lies in the lack of information provided and our inquisitiveness draws us further into this web of seeming intrigue, a clever ploy adopted by Jerzy Kawalerowicz in his noir thriller Night Train (1959).

Indeed, Marcin, (superbly played by Marcin Kowalczyk) is a suave and beautiful stranger, in the same mould as Leon Niemczyk’s Jerzy in Night Train: an adventurer and opportunist who can turn on the charm like a lightbulb and snap it off again, remaining a cypher at all times. Representing disenfranchised youth, he is clearly bored and ‘hungry’ but he is also out for revenge. After accepting a lift with Olek, he strangles him (from the rear, like our eighties villain Jacek), drags him from his jeep, ties him up and then places a cigarette, lit end into his mouth, slowly asphyxiating him with the fumes, before breaking his neck. Marcin’s aloofness continues in this elusive thriller that is, in some ways, more of a mood piece evoking the general state of contemporary Poland both for its upwardly mobile protagonists and the ones left behind. HARDKOR DISKO remains highly watchable, despite Skonieczny’s tendency to linger over shots, particularly noticeable in the last shower scene, as the enigmatic narrative moves inexhorably to a disturbing anticlimax. Flashbacks to Ola, as a bright vivacious child, show a glimpse of happier more meaningful times. Whilst Poland has moved into more affluent times, Krzysztof Skonieczny HARDKOR DISKO suggests that new cracks have opened in modern Poland’s facade: they may be different from those of the past, but they are just as noticeable. MT

SCREENING AT KINOTEKA 2015 POLISH FILM FESTIVAL

20 Hot Titles | Indie film | Part II

Looking further into this year’s treasure trove of buzz-worthy titles, April 2015 is set to be a exciting month for indie film. Cannes is waiting in the wings and the Chelsea Flower Show is on its way. April also brings Alan Rickman’s second feature, A LITTLE CHAOS, a romantic drama set in the gardens of Versailles’ where famous landscape architect, André Le Nôtre, falls for the capable charms of Kate Winslet’s, Madame de Barra.. Matthias Schoenaerts oozes a brooding sensuality as Le Nôtre, and even sings, despite being lashed by the tongue of his vituperative wife, a foxy Helen McCrory. 17 April 2015

Hotly-anticipated by the arthouse crowd is FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. Carey Mulligan stars as Bathsheba Everdene in Thomas Vinterberg’s version of Hardy’s novel, breaking into song for the soundtrack and proving that acting is not her only skill. Joined by Matthias Schoenaerts in his second simmering male role of 2015, he competes for her hand alongside Tom Sturridge and Michael Sheen. David Nicholls handles the Hardy’s script. 1 May 2015

A burnished Danish Western with Mads Mikkelsen in the saddle and Eva Green as his love interest? Look no further than THE SALVATION. This simmering tale of xenophobia 1870s-style, sees outlaw Mads turn macho pride into full-blown anger when he reeks revenge on the outlaws who murder his family after arriving in the Midwest from his native Denmark. Out on 17 April 2015

Juliano Salgado’s brilliant biopic of his father, Sabastiao, starts as a harrowing and dramatic set of photographs from Africa and beyond and soon develops into a story with a heart-warming and inspiring conclusion, with touches of the late (and great) Michael Glawogger and Richard Attenborough thrown in. SALT OF THE EARTH will wow you with its warmth and concern for nature. Wim Wenders co-directs. 3 July 2015

At only 33 years old, Mia Hansen-Love has already directed four features, a considerable achievement for a woman director in France. EDEN shares with her last two outings, a central character who does not know when to give up. Set in the world of ‘French Garage’, chronicling the years from the late eighties to the current day, EDEN is a spell-binding tour de force of music and emotion, brilliantly performed by a cast of Felix de Givry, Arsinée Khanjian and Greta Gerwig. 24 July 2015.

In the backstreets of an Iranian industrial blackspot, a skate-boarding vampire preys on men who disrespect local women. A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT is Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut that won her the Gotham Independent Film Award for breakthrough director. A refreshing contrast to the ubiquitous theme of war in Middle-Eastern cinema, A GIRL.. is also a stylish departure from the current glut of teen vampire movies; making it a must-see for 2015. Crisp monochrome visuals and a beguiling, funky soundtrack lend a strangely retro feel. Out on 17th April 2015.

After the triumphant success of The Great Beauty that placed him in the firmament of indie directors, Paolo Sorentino again looks to the past in THE EARLY YEARS (La Giovanezza), his second English-language film. It focuses on the friendship of two creative forces, (a conductor and a film director played by Michael Caine and Paul Dano) who meet up on holiday in the Swiss Alps, where one receives a Royal invitation. With Luca Bigazzi behind the camera, this is set to be another visual masterpiece that will most likely grace the Red Carpet at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Also stars Harvey Keitel, Jane Fonda and Rachel Weisz.

Based on the book by Deborah Moggach, Justin Chadwick’s TULIP FEVER follows hotly on the heels of his previous film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. With a stellar cast of Christoph Waltz, Jack O’Connell, and Alicia Vikander and Dane DeHaan, this is set to be another fascinating historical drama. TULIP FEVER also has a rather rare quality: it is a film that not only matches the mood and atmosphere of the book, but creates its own emotional cosmos of big dreams, crashing down emotionally as well in financial terms.

Set in Denmark and Sweden and c0-scripted by Tobias Lindholm (The Hunt, A Hijacking) Thomas Vinterberg’s drama, THE COMMUNE (Kollektivet), was inspired by memories of his seventies childhood in Copenhagen. Denmark has always been a liberal country and in this ‘no holds barred’ account he pays tribute to that spirit of independence, exploring what happens when personal desires collide with the collective responsibility. Regular collaborators, Ulrich Thomsen and Trine Dyrholm star as academic couple at the centre of the story. On release in late 2015.

British indie THE GOOB founds its way from the England to Venice last summer where it premiered in the HORIZONS strand. Guy Myhill’s enigmatic directorial debut evokes the open spaces of the Norfolk countryside veiled in golden summer. An unsettling coming of age story, it pits a young man’s burgeoning sexuality against that of his mother’s boorish boyfriend – an avid stock-car racing champion and local grower played by Sean Harris. Sienna Guillory and Liam Walpole also star. May 28th release.

And last but not least: the film we’ve all been waiting for since Venice 2014 and looks as if it’s now bound for the Riviera at Cannes 2015: CAROL – Todd Haynes’ screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s lesbian-themed novel ‘The Price of Salt’, a fifties story of a New York shop-girl who falls for an older, married woman. With Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara starring in the leads, this is set to be another glamorous arthouse treat, with the sinister twist in the tale of the previous Highsmith screen outings, The Talented Mr Ripley and The Two Faces of January.

EXACT RELEASE DATES TO BE CONFIRMED

The Constant Factor | Constans (1980) | Kinoteka 2015 |

DIR: Krzysztof Zanussi

Tadeuz Bradecki, Zofia Mrozowska, Malgorazata Zajaczkowska, Cezary Morawski

98min Drama Polish with Subtitles

Krzysztof Zanussi explores the life of a man drowning in a personal and political nightmare. Witold (Tadeusz Bradecki) is young and idealistic. With his affinity for mathematics he tries to understand the world with ready made formulas, which work only on paper. Constantly fighting corruption and bribery in his workplace makes him unpopular and he is relegated to an industrial job. The only person who he relates to is his mother and when she becomes ill and goes into hospital, he doggedly insists on a private room. A good-natured nurse, Grzyna, takes pity on him but it is too late: Witold’s mother is suffering from incurable cancer. The more Witold applies his logic, the more life points to death as the only “constant factor”. Not surprisingly, Witold is obsessed by his father, who died climbing in the Himalayas. Joining a climbing expedition to Nepal, he half-heartedly complies with the corrupt system – only to be cheated, in an ironic twist and tragedy soon follows.

Zanussi’s Poland is a drab and decaying picture of alienation and Witold’s rebellion is shown by the distance between him and the other protagonists, apart from his mother. Even when embracing Grzyna, the camera finds a little place, where the light falls in, to show Witold’s distance. Sometimes Zanussi’s humour is very provocative: when Witold is in India, he talks to an American business man who talks about upward mobility: “If the Indians work hard, they can go to New York, just like we can come here. You see, everyone has a choice just like you”. Witold replies with a simple “no’ and leaves the man standing. THE CONSTANT FACTOR is a very honest film, realist in it’s bleak and . Witold carries on in his dream like state, his equations leading nowhere. Death, follows, him where ever he goes, without touching him, but isolating him more and more.

THE CONSTANT FACTOR | 9 APRIL AT KINOTEKA 2015

Crossing Europe Film Festival | Linz | April 2015

CROSSING EUROPE is a film festival that showcases the best in Auteur cinema exclusively from European directors. This year, the competition features eleven new discoveries in the dramatic section and nine documentaries that have been successful in major international film festivals during the past year.

The competition dramatic entries deal with the living realities of young people who, caught in the process of having to “grow up”, are looking for their place in life (AUTOPORTRETUL UNEI FETE CUMINTI (SELF-PORTRAIT OF A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER – below right) and LICHTES MEER (RADIANT SEA), or adolescents who, in very different ways, experience the daze of their coming-of-age process, whether by choice or by force (CHRIEG (LIMBO – main pic) and VARVARI (BARBARIANS). Two of the selected films highlight the negative effects of capitalism in post-Soviet countries (KREDITIS LIMITI (LINE OF CREDIT – above left) and UROK (THE LESSON), and two others show attempts to adjust in an absolute retreat from society EL CAMÍNO MÁS LARGO PARA VOLVER A CASA (THE LONG WAY HOME – below left) and HIDE AND SEEK. CE LUME MINUNATĂ (WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD) and TUSSEN 10 EN 12 (BETWEEN 10 AND 12) tell the stories of unexpected events brutally turning the protagonists’ lives upside down.

The selection of documentaries forges a bridge across Europe, both geographically and thematically. Three focus on the the still controversial issues of migration/borders of Europe: BRÛLE LA MER (BURN THE SEA), EVAPORATING BORDERS [executive producer of this film is Oscar-winner Laura Poitras] and FLOTEL EUROPE, two of the selected films tell family stories – the life of the director’s grandfather in exile CARTAS A MARÍA (LETTERS TO MARIA) and the conscious decision of a father to pursue an alternative lifestyle outside of society: STÁLE SPOLU (ALWAYS TOGETHER).

A group of villages in southern Italy (PADRONE E SOTTO) and an eccentric street performer from Belorussia PEREKRESTOK (CROSSROADS) are part of the thematic universe as are the cautious attempt to portray the officially non-existing Abkhazia – LETTERS TO MAX and efforts to organise a concert for a group of Iranian female musicians from Paris, who are banned from performing in their native Iran where – NO LAND’S SONG.

CROSSING EUROPE FESTIVAL| 9 – 22 APRIL 2015 | LINZ | AUSTRIA

Nymphomaniac (2013/4) Volumes I & II Bfi player

Dir/Wri: Lars von Trier | Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellen Skarsgard, Uma Thurman, Shia LeBoeuf, Christian Slater, Stacy Martin, Connie Nielsen, Sophie Kennedy, Jamie Bell, Willem Dafoe Denmark, Drama 122mins Tagline “Forget About Love”

Lars von Trier loves to spark controversy and the final chapter of his trilogy that began with Antrichrist (2009) and Melancholia (2011), continues to do just that. You are unlikely to feel indifferent to the film, but not in the way you might imagine. Screening in two ‘volumes’ due to its running time of nearly four hours (each part has explicit dumbed-down versions); the first opened in European cinemas appropriately on Christmas Day but now both parts available on iplayer.

Regular collaborators Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stellen Skarsgard make ideal leads in this poetically unhinged saga that chronicles the life of Joe (Gainsbourg), a self-diagnosed ‘nymphomaniac,’ from birth to the age of fifty. As Gainsbourg is now fifty, Joe is played as a girl by the then newcomer Stacey Martin. But the film actually opens with Gainsbourg’s Joe, who we first meet on a cold winter’s night, beaten up in an alleyway. Refusing both ambulance and Police assistance, she accepts an invitation to go home with Skarsgard’s chilled-out, kindly Jewish batchelor Seligman, who is more than delighted to offer her the spare room (with rising-damp); a pair of his jimjams and a bowl of dishwater tea in return for the riveting revelations of her sex life so far. But before launching into her erotic confessions, Joe appears philosophical and resigned: “I’m just a bad human being”. What then follows is a masterclass ‘par excellence’ in von Trier’s inimitable style raccounting Joe’s sexual exploits.

Nymphomaniac is immersive, provocative and radical but never titillating, despite the hardcore premise, possibly because neither narrator nor listener feels the slightest bit turned on in performances that could be described as morose, in the best possible way. von Trier has made an engaging intellectual drama with a flip-side of light-hearted levity: is it deep and meaningful, or just a puerile prank?. Never taking itself too seriously, the film appeals to the ‘naughty boy’ in men and the sensual imagination of women – offering up the ultimate universal debate open to multiple interpretations.

During the candid revelations, Joe and Seligman gradually bond but each retain exclusive agendas, seemingly oblivious to the erotic possibilities of Joe’s dialogue. Seligman likens Joe’s exploits in male seduction to the behaviour of fresh-water fish, drawn from his fascination for fly-fishing, and later cleverly compares her need for multifarious lovers to Bach’s three-tone ‘Polyphony’. Joe admits that her sexual conquests started as a facile competition with her teenage friend (Sophie Kennedy) to notch up the most lays – a game played with the rather childish aim of winning a bag of chocolates. Here as the young Joe, Stacy Martin gives a chilling performance conjuring up Francois Ozon’s teenager ‘Isabelle’ in Jeune et Jolie: cold, calculating and confident with a scintilla of vulnerability (as she loses her unwanted virginity mechanically to Shia le Boeuf’s Jerome at the age of fifteen); and Michael Fassbender’s Brandon in Shame – a psychopath who gorges on unlimited sex to quell his feeling of emptiness. Similarly Joe admits to using sex to stave off the “loneliness that is my constant companion”.

In Gainsbourg’s voiceover narration we learn that Joe is a ‘daddy’s girl’ – and the daddy is convincingly played by Christian Slater as an emotionally intelligent doctor who inculcates in his daughter a love of nature and particularly of trees, from an early age. After a spell as a low level secretary to accommodate her busy schedule of night-time lovers, we see them come and go in strict rotation as she ‘treats them mean to keep them keen’.

There are gruesome episodes featuring Uma Thurman’s jilted wife (unconvincing) and Joe’s father who is admitted to a hospital likened – by von Trier – to the house of Usher. Eventually Joe loses track of her libidinous experiences, seen in a hilarious sequence of photos of circumcised and uncircumcised flaccid penises. Her teenage exploits are a bid to separate sex from love and she never appears remotely moved by her conquests beyond the bounds of pure animalistic satisfaction, gorging on coitus with any available stranger during moments of extreme stress: at one point we see her straddling a stranger in the hospital basement, as light relief from waiting vigil at her father’s deathbed.

Stellan Skarsgard’s Seligman resembles a sexual voyeur couched in bookish intellectualism; never giving the impression he is the slightest bit excited by the revelations. Joe, for her part, deflects any sexual overtures by presenting herself as dour, and troubled by the uninvolving experiences with her many lovers. She does become obsessed with Jerome, her long-term sexual interest. Shia LeBoeuf, although looking the part, fails in his portrayal of a convincing object of her sexual obsession. Struggling with a strange almost South African accent, he emerges as an effete and ineffectual partner. Connie Nielsen evinces a vapid portrait of Joe’s self-absorbed and emotionally-distant mother.

Despite the gently ribald humour there is a delicate melancholic quality to Manuel Alberto Claro’s cinematography that manages to match the sobriety of the drama making it feel very much part of the ‘Melancholia trilogy’ and the musical interludes are atmospheric and complementary. So Nymphomaniac (Volume I) manages to be provocative, subversive and strangely moving – but what else would you expect from the Danish die-hard? Volume II moves from the seventies to the present day and the flight of tongue-in-cheek surreality -continues with Jamie Bell as a sadist.

At the Berlinale premiere in 2013 Lars was jubilant, playful even; knowing that whatever he said or taken seriously – he doesn’t care either way. Nymphomaniac is like going to bed with a beautiful stranger: highly-charged, unpredictable, dangerous even but always fun and exciting. Make of it what you will but enjoy the experience. MT

NYMPHOMANIAC VOLUMES 1 & II | NOW ON BFI PLAYER | NYMPHOMANIAC: DIRECTOR’S CUT (Volumes I and II) is on DVD & BLu Ray with 90 minutes of previously unseen material courtesy of CURZON FILM WORLD. A total running time of 325 minutes

Viggo Mortensen | Interview | Jauja

FILMUFORIA spoke to Viggo Mortensen about his role in Lisandro Alonso’s existential drama JAUJA, which won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes 2014.

Viggo Mortensen (VM): JAUJA sounded like a good story and knowing that it would be told by Lisandro Alonso, I knew that it would be very unique. I’d seen some of his movies before accepting the role and I thought that the ingredients of it, at least at the start – a father goes looking in Indian territory for his adolescent daughter – was a classic start to an adventure story. And the fact that it would be shot by Lisandro Alonso and Timo Salminen, the cinematographer, I knew it would have a special look and a very original treatment of the landscape and the people within it. So it just seemed like the kind of movie I’d go and see.

Lisandro said in an interview that he wanted to pull you into a labyrinth that you couldn’t escape from…

VM: I didn’t think of it that way. It’s not so much the landscape or the events that happen – the landscape is the landscape, the things that happen that my character can’t explain or can’t find a logical answer to, the way the movie veers out of linear time, the changes in landscapes, the mystery of where his daughter’s gone, some of the things he hears and sees. I’m drawn to those things, I’m drawn to stories that challenge your way of thinking, that make you wake up in the middle of the night and question everything, your preconceived ideas about how life works, how you behave, what your attitudes are about everything and that’s something that I really enjoyed, just in reading the script but also as we were doing it, I thought that was an important thing and if he’s imprisoned it’s not by exterior things, it’s by his own preconceived notions. You know, he puts on his uniform which always worked in Denmark, let’s say, that’s the way he would deal with the situation and he goes out looking and he’s always – even the first conversation you see him have with this Argentine military officer, he’s asking lots of questions, he wants to know what things are called, what is the sequence of events, when can I expect to see this happen. He has, I guess, a Northern European perspective or world view and he tries to impose that, even if it’s he’s not aware that he’s doing it all the time, he’s imposing that on him, in a place and in situations where it doesn’t really work. But he stubbornly keeps doing it, as we tend to do. ‘There must be a reason for this, I’m going to stubbornly find out.’ So he’s probably imprisoned by his own limitations, not so much by the landscape. The trap is within himself, or within his own mind.

I understand you were involved with the music in the film? Can you talk about that?

VM: This is Lisandro’s fifth movie and he did a lot of new things here. I mentioned the cinematographer, who looked at the landscape and lit it in a way that was very different from the way the type of Argentine cinematographer Lisandro had worked with before would have done. But it’s also the first time that he worked with professional actors. The script, for him, is sort of wordy – you know there’s not a lot of dialogue in the movie, but there’s more dialogue in this movie probably than there is in all four previous movies put together. Music, he’s never had a conventional music soundtrack before. If you’ve heard any music in his previous movies it would have been because it would have happened organically, coming out of radio or something. It was something that he tried – we were already part way through shooting and he said, ‘I think that that scene is one of the more important ones, I mean there’s a lot of entering and coming out of dreams, a lot of transitions in the movie. It takes seeing it two or three times before you see all of these moments from the first scene where the daughter sort of grabs my arm once I give her the answer she wants about getting a dog. She closes her eyes and never opens them again for the rest of the scene and I think that’s the first dream and by the end of the story you don’t know if we’re being dreamed or if the characters are all dreams or if it’s the dog’s dream or the girl’s dream. In a way, it doesn’t matter, it’s just what it stimulates when you’re watching it. But the music was something that he decided, ‘That transition is important, that night where he falls asleep under the stars, holding the daughter’s toy soldier because the next day he wakes up and the landscape, the weather, everything is changed, everything is different and he doesn’t realize at that point that he starts charging out – maybe he never fully realizes it in this story. But time has changed, also. So he thought it was important to help that transition with music?, which surprised me, because I knew he didn’t usually do that. And I said, ‘Well, what kind of music? I mean we have limitations and we don’t have any budget – what are we going to do?’ He said, ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be period – I’d rather it wasn’t period specific music’, but he described something with guitar, something that was lyrical and had a certain feel. And so I said, ‘Well, I have worked with and known for many years a very good guitar player named Buckethead, he’s a genius really and we’d record a lot of things, sometimes they have a lyrical quality that sounds like what you’re describing, I can send you some of these tracks and see what you think’. I didn’t think any more of it and then he said, ‘Well, I like this one a lot, I want to use this one, it’s perfect in terms of the time it lasts for that section. And then he said, ‘I like this other one too, because it has a circular structure that would work at the end, that would fit, actually, with the credits really well and it would mirror what’s happening with the story’ and I said, ‘Great, fine’. So that’s how that happened, it was unexpected, I would have never imagined I was going to be providing music for a movie – music is something I do for fun. I mean, I take it seriously, but this was never something I would have thought of, especially on a movie like this.

You have a producer credit on the film too. Has that creative influence that you’ve had over the film, affected the way you’ve performed on camera too, or the way you think about the film?

VM: I hope not. I don’t think so. I mean every movie that I do, I always try to do my job. There’s nothing wrong with just preparing your lines, showing up, doing them and leaving and maybe having no interest in what anyone else is doing. But for me, from my way of doing things, I can’t help but be interested in what other people are doing. As a photographer, I’m interested in what the cinematographer does, how he lights, how he frames shots. I’m interested in the director’s point of view. I’m trying to help him get across his vision, basically and I like to work with other actors and see what happens. I’m interested in the costumes, I’m interested in all aspects of it. As a producer I have more of, I guess, an established or a legal right to intercede in the filmmaker’s behalf, to protect his vision, which is what I’m trying to do anyway, I think, as a collaborator. Just practical things like, ‘Well, let’s make sure that the subtitles are correct, and they have to be right, whether it’s in Spanish or French or Danish. The poster – I just want the director to be happy and have the movie he wants, to be able to shoot it the way he wants, to be able to edit it the way he wants, and present it the way he sees it. That’s all that’s about, but it doesn’t really affect the way I perform.

Were you involved in the location shooting?

VM: I wasn’t involved with that. Lisandro sent me pictures during his scouting period – he drove thousands and thousands of miles, all over the country, looking for these places and he was very careful about selecting them. It was interesting to see his process, discarding some and finally settling on others. But those were his choices, and good ones, I think.

Did the location shooting present any particular challenges?

VM: I suppose just comfort, but the group of people that made this movie, including me, it wasn’t a big deal to not have internet or not have phone service, or in some cases a hotel or something. It was part of the story and we knew that going in because of the remote areas we were filming in. I mean, logistics, yeah, getting equipment to certain places sometimes was tricky but we travelled light, we had one camera, I guess we had a small crew, so we made it work.

You touched on the multi-lingual nature of the movie previously. I don’t know if American-Danish is something you agree with as a label, but whether you appreciate that sort of cross-cultural mismatch between different people in the film.

VM: Well I was raised in Argentina and some people there mistakenly think I’m an Argentine actor. I guess you could say I’m an Argentine actor – I’ve been in two Argentine movies, speaking Spanish, in this case with a Danish accent. I don’t know – I may be more drawn to stories that have to do with that, but I’m not conscious of it. I don’t look at the budget or the language or the nationality, or even the genre of the movie when I’m looking for work or hoping something finds me. It’s really if it’s a story I think is interesting. you know I mean I was also in a movie that will be coming out soon called Far From Men, which is a movie that was shot in North Africa in French in Arabic and that’s not something I was setting out to do or would have ever expected I’d do but it’s a great story and I want to be part of it.

Can I just quickly ask about Timo (the cinematographer), because I’ve seen you talk about his Finnish sense of humor and some of the jokes that he pulled that you appreciated.

VM: At the start, I mean Argentines, generally speaking, there’s all kinds of people, just like there are everywhere. And every country in the world these days, especially Europe or almost anywhere is made up of all kinds of sensibilities and languages and points of view and races, even though if you listen to Marie Le Pen or UKIP or something you’d think that wasn’t true, but it is true, whether they like it or not. So generally speaking, I think that the crew, the first few days they were not sure what to make of him and Lisandro even asked me, ‘Is there something wrong with him? I said, No’, he said, ‘Why is he so sad?’ and I said, ‘He’s not sad, he’s just Finnish’. He was just, you know, standing by the sea, looking at the sky. I guess then I looked at it in terms of Argentines would more say what’s on their mind and there’s a different kind of energy and he was very still and very quiet. He didn’t hardly speak at all. He’s very efficient, doing his job, but to me he was just a guy from Finland looking at the sea, waiting for the Argentines to get their shit together so he could shoot the scene. That was all that was going on, there was nothing else going on. And even the first few days, occasionally he would say something and I might be the only person that might laugh, because they wouldn’t even realise he was telling a joke because he was so dry but after a few days they understood each other perfectly and it was great, it was a great combination and it was great to see their interaction and what can happen when you have an open mind. Both on his side and on their side, it was a really good experience for everyone.

What’s your perception of the film, now that it’s on release?

VM: I thought it would be an interesting movie but it turned out better than I could have hoped. And the reception, the reaction to it, particularly from critics who usually would only write about more mainstream type movies, in North America and Europe and elsewhere, has been incredibly positive. I think it’s maybe the best, overall the best reviewed movie I’ve ever been in, including maybe even Lord of the Rings and the Cronenberg movies. It’s incredible. I’m really pleased, but I am, to be honest, surprised. I didn’t expect that. When we showed the movie at Cannes, I felt it would probably go over well there, I didn’t know that the movie would win the Firpresci Prize for Best Movie and all that. In that place I thought, well, yeah, he’s been there before and this is probably a movie that’s a little more accessible and it probably will do well. But beyond that, at the time, I said to him, ‘Well, you know, when it’s shown in North America and Great Britain, other places, you may get savaged by the critics. They may just say, ‘Well, this is nonsense, I don’t know what’s going on here, I don’t understand anything, it’s too slow, etc, etc’. And that’s not been the case. Almost always it’s been well reviewed, by all kinds of newspapers.

Has your own understanding of what the film’s about evolved, from first reading the script to acting in it and now seeing the final film?

VM: I’m still working it out. I’m still working out what the movie’s about [laughs]. And I like those kinds of stories. I like those kinds of directors who tell a story or make something that provokes questions but resists answering the questions. I think Cronenberg is that way as well. I like artists that do that, whether they be poets or painters or musicians or film directors. Each time I’ve seen the movie I’ve seen another layer, usually some other aspect to it. Usually having to do with dreams that start and end with sleep, one dream tying into another until you’re not sure who’s dream it really is. I mean that, you get the first time, but you get it in a more detailed way with each viewing, I find, at least that’s been my experience. I’ve been really pleased – it’s much richer than I expected and I think Lisandrom would say the same thing, that things happen just because he’s was open to allowing them to happen, contributions to be made and chance to play a role. It’s a movie that has a much greater impact and many more layers to it than he would have imagined. I would bet that he would agree with that.

How does working with a director like Lisandro compare with working with Cronenberg?

VM: Not so different. I mean David Cronenberg, on a technical level and a story-telling level is doing something that’s different, but they’re very similar in the sense that they’re calm, friendly presences on the set, they’re not authoritarian, they’re not intolerant. They’re both very secure as people, so that you never get the sense from them that they have this insecure need to make sure everyone is aware at all times, especially in the media, but the crew as well, that every idea, every thing that’s happening is their idea and they control all aspects of the storytelling. They’re more secure than most directors, they’re open to contributions, they’re open to chance playing a role they don’t need to claim authorship of every aspect of what’s going on during the shoot and in the final product. So I find them to be very similar in that regard.

Speaking of Cronenberg, did you enjoy naked wrestling in Eastern Promises as much certain sections of your audience did?

VM: (Laughs). It was pretty uncomfortable, not just the idea of being naked, it was being thrown around on hard tiles. It would probably have been more comfortable if they could have had it be as warm as it should have been, because otherwise there would have been steam on the camera and we wouldn’t have been able to film very well. But no, it was just a scene that had particular physical challenges just to get through it and do the choreography right and obviously since there wasn’t clothing, you couldn’t wear padding and stuff, that was just the nature of it. So it wasn’t enjoyable in that sense, what what was enjoyable, like with any scene, is if the shots worked, and in that case of that particular scene, it was especially enjoyable if the shot worked, because it meant you don’t have to do it again [laughs]. Normally, I’ll do as many takes as you want, I like the process, but with that it was like, ‘Huh, I’m glad we got that, let’s move on’.

Do you have plans to work with Cronenberg again?

VM: Nothing specific, but we always talk about wanting to, so hopefully something will happen.

Is there a particular part you’ve always wanted to play or a dream project you’ve always wanted to get off the ground?

VM: There’s a couple of stories – I’ve written two scripts, I’m writing a third one now and one of those scripts I hope to some day direct. I have ideas for other stories that I think could make movies, but I don’t have one burning ambition in terms of a story or a particular character or anything like that. The same goes for acting – there isn’t a role that I’ve always wanted to play in the theatre or I’ve always wanted to make a movie about. As I say, I kind of try to see what comes my way and I try to pick things that I think I’d like to see, in part because it’s just more fun and then it’s easier to speak with you guys afterwards if it’s something I like, rather than having to find clever ways to avoid talking about something that I know is not very interesting. And also because it just takes a long time if you do it properly. Whether it’s an independent movie or even a very well planned big budget movie that has a start date and a release date and all things are known beforehand, it still takes a long time to prepare something well, to shoot it well and to promote it, so it might as well be something you really find interesting, you know, that you’re not just trying to convince journalists that you find it interesting, but that you actually like.

So, quoting from the film, what is it that makes life function and move forward?

VM: I don’t know. As my character says, I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth asking the question. It’s like saying what makes a perfect movie? Well, there is no way possible to make a perfect movie, it doesn’t exist, there is no such thing as perfect. But striving to make a perfect movie or to even describe what a perfect movie might be – which is also impossible, I think – is worth the effort. It’s like, why do you get out of bed and why do you even bother to brush your teeth or say hello to anyone? And some people opt out, some people commit suicide or otherwise check out, because they don’t feel it’s worthwhile. Why do we read a book? Why do we go to the movies? Why do we ask questions? Why do we answer questions? Because for some reason, we’re curious. We want to know. And some people get very upset when they start to realise as they grow up that there’s a lot of questions, most of them that don’t have definitive answers and that can be very unsettling. But it’s just a process. So I don’t know and I don’t mind not knowing, but I’m still going to keep trying to find out.

You mentioned theatre and obviously Brits are very fond of Danish actors. Would you consider returning to the stage?

VM: Yeah, I’d like to. The last thing I did was in Spain, an Ariel Dorfman play, and I enjoyed the sensation. And I’ve also done some poetry readings, I did one recently there, so that the live audience, the fear and overcoming that fear and connecting with a live audience is a really great feeling and I like that so yeah, sure, I’d like to.

You mentioned the Camus adaptation, Far From Men, earlier. Can you say a little more about what drew you to that?

VM: It’s a great story. He’s one of the writers I most admire, for his art, for his writing, but also his ideas and his stance, his humanist stance. I’ve always admired him or I’ve admired him for a long time and this story – it’s a very short story of his that David Oelhoffen, the writer-director expanded on, but in a very clever way and very true to Camus’ spirit. I liked it as an adventure story, as a relationship story, but I also found it valuable in terms of the thoughts it stimulates about what’s happening now, particularly in the Middle East, but everywhere. How do you get past extremism? In the case of this story, two men who seem so different, so much so that you can’t really see any way that they could be friends, an Arab and a man of European descent, and yet somehow, by going through some difficult experiences together, they do – not in some corny movie way but in a very organic, believable way they come to have some understanding. It doesn’t mean it’s unconditional love between them, but there is an understanding, there’s a rapprochement, there’s a coming together that happens emotionally, mentally between these two people that I thought was a really good story, worth telling and an important story for our times. And I think the director did a really good job with it.

You mentioned your poetry reading and it reminded me that on April Fool’s Day in 2006, you released a CD with your son. I was wondering if that was like a tradition in your family? Do you do April Fool’s jokes in your family?

VM: No, not necessarily. Once in a while, prank calls and so forth. April first has two connotations for me and the one that you are probably are not aware of is more important to me than the actual April Fool’s idea. On April first 1908, a football club named San Lorenzo was established in Argentina and that’s the team I grew up with as a child. So April first, that’s what I think of first.

Speaking of football, I gather you’re a big sports fan in general…

VM: I like to watch sports, particularly I like to watch football, hockey too, in the sense that I think there’s something dramatically interesting about what’s going on. What happens when your back is up against the wall, which I think is the foundation of any interesting drama. What happens when ordinary people are put into extraordinary situations. You know, when you see comebacks like what happened in Paris playing against Chelsea recently, that was a great drama. Watching that, if you like football, that was like watching a great dramatic, intense movie. That game, just because Mourinho’s tactic was, ‘No matter what happens, I cannot lose’ – he was playing not to lose and the other team had nothing to lose and they had ten men instead of eleven. It looked like there was no way that they could win it, but there was something compelling about that drama and the opposing tactics, so yeah, the tactical approaches of each coach. they were dramatically interesting and the combination of the two made for great drama. It doesn’t always work out that way, that the team that really is trying to play attractive attacking football wins. You know, life isn’t fair and sports aren’t fair and it doesn’t work that way, but every once in a while a fairy tale happens before your eyes and it’s fun to watch.

Have you considered playing a footballer in a movie?

VM: No, I’m probably too old to do that at this point anyway. I think it’s a difficult thing to make a good movie about, because there’s so much going on. There’s 22 players, 20 of them are moving constantly, and each move they make, each step they take or each change of direction is for some reason, tactically. It’s a really hard thing to make even an interactive video about. To make a movie about outside of playing has been done okay, I thought The Damned United was interesting, it was pretty good. But I think it’s very difficult to make a compelling drama about what you see. If you’re in a stadium, or watching on TV, it’s difficult to make a movie because there’s so much going on, so much being thought of, and if you’re not used to watching it, you don’t see most of that stuff anyway, but if you’re really into it, you see all that going on and how could you possibly film all that? Why does that guy go here? Why does that guy go there? Or why is that guy angry at the other player because he didn’t go there? There’s so much going on, which is why it’s so great to watch. Matthew Turner.

JAUJA IS IN CINEMAS FROM 10 APRIL 2015 | READ OUR CANNES REVIEW HERE

The London Spanish Film Festival’s 5th Spring Weekend | 17-19 April 2015

A selection of the latest Spanish films arrives in London on 17th April, with a chance to see multi-award-winning Noirish thriller LA ISLA MINIMA (Marshland) before it goes on general release this Summer.

LA ISLA MÍNIMA | Marshland

Two ideologically opposed detectives are sent to the Guadalquivir river marshes to investigate the disappearance of two teenage girls during the small town’s festivities only to discover that they have been brutally murdered and that there were many others before them. Marshland is a noirish and gripping thriller in which everything feels slippery as the marsh itself and, for this, oppressively real. Sevillian Alberto Rodríguez and long-time co-writer Rafael Cobos create here a captivating atmosphere thanks in part to their knowledge of the area and the depth of the characters. The film was the absolute winner at this year’s Goyas with ten awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Javier Gutiérrez).

Followed by a Q&A (tbc)

Enjoy a glass of Albariño wine courtesy of Martin Codax from 7.45pm

Fri 17 April | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10

10.000 km (main pic)

dir. Carlos Marqués-Marcet, with Natalia Tena, David Verdaguer | Spain | 2014 | col | 99 min | cert. 13 | In Spanish with English subtitles

10,000 km makes reference to the distance between Los Angeles and Barcelona, the distance between Alexandra and Sergio, who love each other but have to spend one year apart with their computer as the only tool to fight for their love and keep it alive. Based on the director’s own experience when he had to leave Barcelona, family and friends, the film is a reflection on the immediacy of communication nowadays and how there are certain things that cannot be substituted and that are key to our lives, such as touch and smell.

Fri 17 April | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10

Sun 19 April | 5.00pm | £12, conc. £10

LA VIDA INESPERADA | The Unexpected Life

“Primo” lives in Spain and, between jobs, decides to pay a visit to his cousin Juanito, who lives in New York City and works as an actor. Shortly after his arrival both cousins realise that the other’s life is not as good as it seemed. Written by Elvira Lindo and based in New York City, where the Spanish artist spends part of her time, La vida inesperada is a delightful romantic comedy about the uncertainties of life avoiding cultural stereotypes. Javier Cámara and Raúl Arévalo, two of Spain’s finest character actors, wander the streets of New York trying to find a sense to their lives when nothing is what it looks like.

Followed by a Q&A with the director

Sat 18 April | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10

TODOS ESTÁN MUERTOS | They Are All Dead

Beatriz Sanchís debut feature, is an inspiring film mixing evocative Mexican magic realism touches with 80s style music reminding the Movida madrileña, in which pragmatic Paquita invoques his dead son Diego to come back amongst the living to force her daughter Lupe to take responsibility for the education of her son Pancho. Best known to British audiences for her roles in Julio Medem’s Sex and Lucía and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In, Elena Anaya delivers a stunning as well as moving performance as the traumatised ex-music star overwhelmed by guilt feelings for the death of her brother. Both Anaya and Sanchís received several Best Actress and New Director nominations.

Followed by a Q&A

Sat 18 April | 8.50pm | £12, conc. £10

EL NIÑO

After Cell 211’s hit, Daniel Monzón comes back with an enthralling drug-trafficking action film based in real facts and set in the Strait of Gibraltar enriched by the presence of the social background. With stunning visuals and an impressive cast, the film follows El Niño (“The Kid”, superbly played by newcomer Jesús Castro) who, with his friend El Compi (“The Buddy”), dreams of a better life and thinks he can get it by running drugs across the Strait in his jet ski. After him are four very human cops…

Followed by a Q&A (tbc)

Sun 19 April | 7.30pm | £12, conc. £10

THE LONDON SPANISH FILM SPRING WEEKEND | 17 – 19 April 2015

Jauja (2014)

Director: Lisandro Alonso

Writers: Lisandro Alonso/Fabian Casas

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Ghita Norby, Viilbjork Mallin Agger, Adrian Fondari

108min Argentina/Denmark and others | Danish with subtitles.

Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso has become synonymous with the ‘slow cinema’ movement. His previous works, though mysterious, have been anchored in realism but here he drifts into full-on fantasy, ‘creating an original imaginary world with a landscape of passion and inner truth’. And there is certainly something fantastic and otherworldly about JAUJA despite its elegant historical context. The film is also in Danish, Mortensen’s native language.

In 1882, Viggo Mortensen’s troubled Danish captain casts around wearily in a shifting seascape of Patagonia where he is leading an expedition to discover Jauja – an mythical Argentinian ‘El Dorado’. Dinesen is worried for the safety of his teenage daughter (Agger) amongst his troupe of randy South American soldiers and bewildered by the rumours of a savage local tribe of ‘Coconut Heads’ who are also looking for the ‘paradise’. Meanwhile his daughter has a mind of her own and abducts a young soldier who she later seduces in the long grass. After a long and poetic introductory sequence where the camera is mostly fixed on the vast and wild panorama, Dinesen wanders off on horseback across the wilderness with its magical starry skies and incandescent daylight. He loses his horse after a lethal encounter with the tribe and then discovers a wise old woman (Norby) in a cave by a salty spring who introduces a shift in register to folklore and legend which transports us gradually back to Europe for a startling denouement. MT

CANNES ‘Un Certain Regard’ 2014 REVIEW – JAUJA IS NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

[youtube id=”F73KU_CgKZI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Force Majeure (2014) Bfi Player

Dir: Ruben Östlund | Cast: Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Kristofer Hivju, Clara Wettergren, Vincent Wettergren | 120mins Sweden/Drama

The working title for Ruben Östlund”s avalanche drama was originally Tourist but FORCE MAJEURE injects a more sinister and bewildering feeling into this cold-hearted psychological thriller that follows in the wake of an ‘act of God’. Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) is a family man on a skiing holiday with his wife and kids who puts his own safety before that of his vulnerable family when disaster strikes.

But luck saves the day (or fate, in his case) and once the threatening snow cloud has transformed into a harmless puff of ice, Tomas goes back to eat humble pie (or Baked Alaska?) having blown his marriage and betrayed his children. His ego gets in the way and he can’t admit his cowardice, even when good judgement prevails.

Ruben Östlund is a pastmaster of the moral drama. His previous film Play concerned a group of black immigrants who mugged some white kids while the disaffected adults looked on, afraid to report the crime lest being accused of racism. Here, Tomas puts his safety first, albeit in the heat of the moment. But this behaviour is not unusual in the scheme of things: Many men put their businesses or their own interests before those of their wives and families – it’s a natural human response want to safeguard the ability to provide. They end up losing their marriages and often their liveliehoods as a result – Ostlund has cleverly transposed this situation into an exciting and tense tragedy reaping dramatic rewards – but the family survive. Wives can often get over cowardice, if they feel their husband’s remorse. Here, Tomas’s wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), could forgive if only Tomas could admit his human failing, but his pride stands in the way. Tomas is caught between the avalanche of his male ego and that is what rampantly ends up destroying all he holds dear.

Fredrik Wenzel and Fred Arne Wergeland capture the magnificent natural landscape, both beautiful and hostile – showing the mountains as a fabulous natural force of nature and a dangerous, untamed wilderness, much the same as ‘male’ at its core. In Force Majeure, the real terror starts after nature has calmed down. Kristofer Hivju puts in a brave attempt to stick up for his friend but this all feels disingenuous in the scheme of things. It’s an uncomfortable film that forces us to contemplate our own behaviour. The children (newcomers Clara and Vincent Wettergren) watch silently as the family implodes. No justification can wash away this avalanche of guilt, no matter how strong the sun shines in the aftermath. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER | FORCE MAJEURE won the Jury Prize at UN CERTAIN REGARD in 2014 | REVIEWED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2014.

Cannes Film Festival| Projections for 2015 | 13 – 24 May 2015

In a months time the World’s most well-known film festival will once again be rolling out the Red Carpet and bringing you the latest in World cinema. Meredith Taylor speculates on this year’s programme hopefuls, ahead of Thierry Frémaux’s official unveiling in mid-April.

Joel and Ethan Coen will Chair the Jury this year, so let’s start with American cinema. Todd Haynes’ glossy literary adaptation from Patricia Highsmith’s novel Salt: CAROL (below) has been waiting in the wings since being a possible opener for last year’s VENICE Film Festival. Starring Cate Blanchett it is a glamorous choice for this year’s Palme D’Or. Terrence Malick made his entrance earlier this year at BERLIN with the divisive (amongst critics) drama Knight of Cups and it’s possible that his next film, a documentary on the creation of the Earth, VOYAGE OF TIME, will be ready to grace the Red Carpet this May. Narrated by Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt, this mammoth project is currently in post production. Cannes habitué Jeff Nichols also has a new film, MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, a father and son Sci-Fi road movie starring Adam Driver and regular collaborator, Michael Shannon, who discovers his boy has special powers. For star quality, Cannes thrives on US stars, and who better to add glitz to the Red Carpet than George Clooney. He stars in Brad Bird’s TOMORROWLAND, a Sci-Fi adventure that also has Hugh Laurie. Gus Van Sant’s THE SEA OF TREES, a story of friendship between an American and a Japanese man (Matthew McConaughey and Ken Watanabe) is another possible contender. William Monahan’s lastest, a thriller entitled MOJAVE, (Mark Wahlberg and Oscar Isaac) could also bring some glamour to the Croisette. Natalie Portman’s will bring her Jerusalem set screen adaptation of Amos Oz’s memoir A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS to the Croisette. It is a drama featuring an Israeli cast including herself, as his on-screen daughter, Fania Oz.

Most of this year’s films will be come from Europe and Italy has some brand new offerings from their côterie of well-known directors. Nanni Moretti was last on the Croisette in 2011 with his comedy drama WE HAVE A POPE, this year he could return with another drama co-written with Francesco Piccolo, MIA MADRE, in which he also stars alongside the wonderful Margherita Buy (Il Caimano) and John Turturro. There is Matteo Garrone’s long-awaited THE TALE OF TALES, adapted from Giambattista Basile’s 17th Century work and featuring Vincent Cassel and Salma Hayek in the leads. Another literary adaptation from Italy, WONDERFUL BOCCACCIO, is a drama based on The Decameron: the tales of ten young people who escape to the hills during an outbreak of Plague in 14th century Italy. A stellar cast of Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes and Matthias Schoenaerts appear in Luca Guadagnino’s latest, A BIGGER SPLASH, a thriller that unravels in Italy – when an American woman (Tilda Swinton) invites a former lover to share her villa with onscreen husband Ralph Fiennes, sparks fly, particularly as Matthias Schoenaerts is the love interest. After Cannes success with The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino could be back with YOUTH (La Giovenezza), a drama of trans-generational friendship that takes place in the Italian Alps with a starry cast of Rachel Weisz, Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Jane Fonda and Paul Dano. Definite Red Carpet material. And Marco Bellocchio could well be chosen for his latest historical drama L’ULTIMO VAMPIRO which stars Italian actress of the moment, Alba Rohrwacher – recently in Berlinale with Vergine Giurata.

The Scandinavians could well be on board with Joachim Trier’s first anglophone outing LOUDER THAN BOMBS, a wartime drama in which Isabelle Huppert plays a photographer. Tobias Lindholm’s follow up to the nail-bitingly rigorous A Highjacking, is A WAR. It has Søren Malling and Pilou Asbaek as soldiers stationed in Helmand Province, with echoes of Susanne Bier’s war-themed drama Brothers. Russian maverick Aleksandr Sokurov could present LE LOUVRE SOUS L’OCCUPATION, the third part of his quadrilogy of Power, following Moloch (1999) and Taurus (2001) and filmed in the magnificent surroundings of the Parisian museum. And Greeks could bear gifts in the shape of THE LOBSTER, Yorgos Lanthimos’ dystopian love story set in the near future and forecasting a grim future for coupledom, with Léa Seydoux, and Colin Farrell. There’s also much excitement about the long-awaited follow up Portuguese director, Miguel Gomes’ Tabu, with his 1001 NIGHTS, a re-working of the legendary Arabian tale; certainly destined for the auteurish “Un Certain Régard” sidebar together with Polish auteur Andrzej Zulawski’s Sintra-set COSMOS, a literary adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’ novel and starring Sabine Azéma (the former partner of Alain Resnais).

Further afield, it’s unlikely that Taiwanese fillmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien THE ASSASSIN will be ready to grace the ‘Montée des Marches’ but from Thailand, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s drama fantasy, CEMETERY OF KINGS, could well make it. Kiyoshi Kurasawa’s JOURNEY TO THE SHORE is in post production. The Japanese director is best known for award-winners, Tokyo Sonata and The Cure. Many will remember Australian director Justin Kurzel’s incendiary thriller debut SNOWTOWN, and his recent drama THE TURNING that is now on general release. His latest outing MACBETH (right) featured strongly in the Film Market at Cannes last year, starring Marion Cotillard and Michael Fassbender, so it could well enter the fray. For star quality and sheer impact MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (below) will make a blast onto the Riviera. Starring Britons Tom Hardy and Nicholas Hoult and the lovely Charlize Theron, the fourth in George Millar’s action thriller series could will certainly set the night on fire, in more ways than one.

From England there is Donmar Warehouse director, Michael Grandage’s GENIUS, a biopic of the book editor Max Perkins, who oversaw the works of Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and F Scott Fitzgerald. Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman and Jude Law all take part. Asif Kapadia has two films currently in production: ALI AND NINO starring Danish actress, Connie Nielsen and Mandy Patinkin, and adapted for the screen by scripter Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) from a book by Kurban Said. But his anticipated biopic on the life of Amy Winehouse UNTITLED AMY WINEHOUSE DOCUMENTARY is sadly not quite ready for screening. Other British titles could include Ben Wheatley’s HIGH RISE, a Sci-Fi drama based on J G Ballard’s eponymous novel centred on the residents of a tower block and starring Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Millar and Jeremy Irons. Veteran director Terence Davies could also be back in Cannes representing Britain. In 1988, he won the FIPRESCI Prize for his autobiographical drama Distant Voices, Still Lives. His recent work SUNSET SONG, (above left) is a historical drama based on the book by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and stars Agyness Deyn (Electricity) and Peter Mullan (Tyrannosaur).

And last but not least, the French have plenty to offer for their legendary ‘tapis rouge’. Cannes regular Jacques Audiard’s DHEEPAN is the story of a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who escapes to France and ends up working as a caretaker, Gaspar Noé’s first film in English, a sexual melodrama, in which he also stars, LOVE, is ready for the competition line-up. Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s BELLES FAMILLES is the latest vehicle for Mathieu Amalric to showcase his talents. After his stint at directing made the Un Certain Régard strand in the shape of Blue Room, he appeared in the recent English TV serial ‘Wolf Hall’. Here he plays a man who is sucked back into his past while visiting his family in Paris. Marine Vacth (Jeune et Jolie) and veterans André Dussollier and Nicole Garcia also star. And what would Cannes be without Philippe Garrel’s usual contribution. This year it will be L’OMBRE DES FEMMES, a drama co-written with his partner, Caroline Deruas. Palme D’Or Winner 2013, Abdellatif Kechiche, latest film, LA BLESSURE, starring Gérard Depardieu, it not quite ready to be unwrapped. But the well-known star may well appear on the Croisette with THE VALLEY OF LOVE, Guillaume Nicloux’s California-set saga which also stars the luminous Cannes regular Isabelle Huppert, never one to shirk the Red Carpet. I’ll be bringing more possibilities as the filming year takes shape, so watch this space. MT.

CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE FRM 13 MAY UNTIL 25 MAY 2015

The Arbiter (2013)

Director: Kadri Kõusaar

Cast: Lee Ingleby, Bille Neeve, Sofia Berg-Bohm, Tony Aitkin, Andrea Lowe, Lina Leandersson,

100min Thriller Estonia

Kadri Kõusaar’s unsettling thriller draws you into its dark and morally complex web from its opening scenes in a fin de siècle mansion in the chilly depths of the Estonian countryside. Here, we meet John (Lee Ingleby), a young and respectable research scientist who has been invited for an interview. The job? To provide sperm for a rich and intelligent woman who is looking for a perfect child. And so begins the exploration of a man’s descent into madness and a bleak tale of human genetics that explores some thorny and highly questionable ethical themes.

Fast forward a decade or so and John’s promising career has hit the skids and he is working as a backroom research scientist living with his girlfriend, a corporate high-flyer. Pregnant, she is opting for an abortion, on the grounds of John’s unsuitability as the father of her future child. We see the two of them by a frozen lake, scattering the ashes of the foetus into the icy waters. John is devastated by the brutal termination of his relationship and his fatherhood and retreats into himself, deciding that the best course of action is time out to heal the emotional scars.

Lee Ingleby, best known for his TV work, is brilliantly cast here as the lead in this eerily sinister story. He has the same quality of vapid ‘otherworldliness’ as Christopher Walken, and also brings a touch of sardonicism to the role. It is a perfect pairing with Lina Leanderrson, (who you will remember from Let The Right One In) who plays his daughter Ronja from the successful donation project, and with whom he embarks on a sinister road trip. Although it appears outwardly that John has recovered, his emotional sadness has subverted into a troubling personality change.

During his time out John has infact been brooding over some provocative issues concerning the future of his fellow humans. Initially, initially his efforts as a vigilante-style do-gooder pursuing moral rectitude are faintly amusing: he transforms a rowdy night club into a classical music event. But when he gets his revenge on a religious paedophile by pimping Ronja into the equation, it is clear that he is developing a ‘God Complex”. After gassing a busload of elderly mentally disabled passengers, Ronja draws the line and they part company. Eventually John meets his maker in a rather chilling denouement that brings him back again to a lakeside. With a chilling score, subtle performances and a great sense of place, this is a compelling and provocative film that won’t be to everyone’s taste. Viewed dispassionately, it raises some alternative issues marking Kõusaar out to be a director of intellect and talent.

VIEWED AT KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2013

The Tin Drum (1979) |Blu-ray release

Director: Volker Schlöndorff

Writers: Jean-Claude Carrière, Volker Schlöndorff | Günter Grass (novel)

Cast: Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, David Bennett, Katharina Thalbach, Daniel Olbrychski

144min Drama German with subtitles

In 1979 Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. It was hailed as “a major artistic achievement” and one of the best adaptations of a major novel ever made. Thirty six years on is it that good? Yes, it’s remarkably good. There’s a great fidelity to the book’s themes and characters. Superbly cast and wonderfully staged, the film impresses with its narrative energy.

This bizarre fable concerns Oskar Matzerath, a boy who receives a tin drum on his third birthday. Retreating from the oppressive dinner table habits of his parents, Oskar deliberately stages his falling down the cellar steps, so as to stop himself growing taller. He lives in the city of Danzig (claimed to be both Polish and German territory in the 1930s) and is a witness to the rise of Nazism. Oscar not only drums but emits a high pitched shriek that shatters glass. The boy’s refusal/inability to physically grow can be interpreted as Germany’s denial to wake up and respond to the destruction it will inflict on Europe. Oskar will not mature, nor fully engage or protest, but simply observe catastrophic events.

The film stands or falls on the casting of Oscar. Twelve-year-old David Bennett proves to be an inspired choice. His big eyes, physical demeanour and harsh vocal tone is pitched to a thrilling and chilling effect. It’s a great performance. The Tin Drum is both very realistic and frequently fantastic. And David Bennett makes an obnoxious kid perfectly human and perfectly symbolic. Unfortunately, scriptwriter Jean-Claude Carrière also has to deal with the problematic, wordy symbolism of Günter Grass’s novel being translated into images. The scenes involving the eating of raw fish by Oskar’s depressed mother (Angela Winkler) work as a cultural metaphor in the book, but not in the film. Schlöndorff and Carrière give them a repellent surrealist sheen that’s peculiarly erotic. However they don’t unpack the density of such shock imagery. Any probable signs of the social/historical defects of German history are left untouched.

The film flounders as we try to puzzle out more odd behaviour. After his mother’s death, Oskar teams up with a bunch of circus dwarves (with its leader coming to wear a military uniform). The symbolism becomes questionable. Are they all collectively in denial or colluding with the state? The first three quarters of the film achieves a nuanced picture of Oskar and Danzig society. Later on we are never quite sure about Schlöndorff’s intentions concerning Oskar. His moral position is unfocused.

The Tin Drum has great production values (Oskar’s shattering of a church’s stained glass window and his drumming in a Nazi rally – resulting in everyone dancing to the Blue Danube – are wonderfully done). For most of its very entertaining 142 mins, the film is a gripping account of a nation going ‘mad’ viewed through the eyes of a maddening child. Igor Luther’s photography is first rate. And Maurice Jarre supplies (as always) a fine music score. Alan Price

THE TIM DRUM IS NOW AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY.

Citizen (2014) | Obywatel | Kinoteka 2015

Dir.: Jerzy Stuhr

Cast: Jerzy Stuhr, Maciej Stuhr, Sonia Bohosiewcz, Jasmina Polak, Violetta Arlak

Poland 2014, 104 min.

CITIZEN, a chronicle of Poland’s history since the end of WWII, is funny, absurd and extremely moving; its central character, Jan Bratek, played by two different adult actors (Majiec Stuhr and his father Jerzy), is peaceful at heart, but always gets caught in machinations not of his making. The film’s overriding merit is that it deals with ordinary anti-Semitism in contemporary Poland, a topic usually avoided in all but a few Polish films. Stuhr tries to open the debate on how Polish people reacted to the mass murder of their own citizens, and what happened to the houses and belongings of the three million murdered Polish Jews, which made up nearly ten percentage of the Polish population.

Told in non-linear flashbacks, CITIZEN is a tour-de-force of emotions, with great ensemble acting and a vigorous camera which shows the narrative out of Jan’s POV: a traumatic rollercoaster ride for an ordinary man, trapped in a society were many layers of deceit create only new lies, stating unequivocally that neither communism nor fervent nationalism will wash away a past, blocked out by the huge majority of Poles for generations.

Little Jan grows up with parents who live in a flat full of the personal affects of murdered Jews, the Silvers. Jan always questions his parents, why so many objects are named “Silver”, but never gets a satisfying answer. One day, Jan and his friends are caught insulting a Jewish stamp dealer, and Jan (who was not the ringleader), is sent by the communist authorities to join a Jewish cultural group for rehabilitation. Here he falls in love with little Anna, a relationship which will dominate all his teenage years, until Anna (Polak) emigrates to Israel. Jan’s mother, a violent anti-Semitic, making sure her son misses a planned farewell at the station. For the rest of his life, Jan will dream of Anna, no other woman will be able to replace her. From then on Jan stumbles onwards in life, always with his mother in tow. He gets arrested at a “Solidarnosc” meeting at a neighbour’s flat, after using the code “I want to borrow salt” in all sincerity. But in prison, he is not trusted by his new comrades, because they believe that he is a snitch for the government. Rescued by a psychologist (Sonia Bohosiewcz), Jan is so grateful, that he marries her – only to find out during an interrupted love making, that she is working for the Secret Police. Whilst delivering milk, Jan (Jerzy Stuhr) falls for the passionate Kazia (Arlak), who turns out to be a member of the same state organ – but resigns and finally joins a convent. After the fall of communism, Jan is offered a leading position in an openly anti-Semitic political party, but declines. His professional adventures lead him to the catholic church, but during a TV interview, he can’t even names six pillars of the catechism; a priest, trying to help him, shows the answers on a placard – alas the wrong way round; and Jan has to resign. Finally, when a big object from the roof of the Polish TV Station station falls on his head, Jan is at the wrong place at the right time: next to the Prime Minister, whose life he is supposed to have saved. His dream to become a hero is realised after all. AS

SCREENS DURING THE KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON AND NATIONAL 8 APRIL – 29 MAY

Woman in Gold (2015) |

Director: Simon Curtis Writer: Alexi Kaye Campbell

Cast: Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Charles Dance, Tatiana Maslany, Allan Corduner, Jonathan Pryce, Max Irons

Helen Mirren plays the star turn here as a sensible elderly Jewish woman who sets off to Vienna with her reluctant young nephew, PHILOMENA-style, to recover the artistic heritage of her ancestors stolen by the Nazis. But Maria Altmann is no ordinary woman and the artwork in question is by Gustav Klimt, a painter from the Vienna Secession whose works now feature on fridge magnets and greetings cards. Amongst the collection is The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I who happened to be Maria Altmann’s aunt.

But don’t expect to discover more about this fascinating artistic era in turn-of-the-century Vienna. The focus in this light-hearted caper is the pursuit of justice and Maria Altmann’s nephew happens to be a lawyer, Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds). The painting is hanging in the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna and the only way of recovering it is to take the Austrian government to court for its rightful restitution. But why would Randy be interested in helping an old woman take on a lengthly and expensive legal case. Happily married to a placid wife (Katie Holmes) and with a baby on the way, and a new job in a Los Angeles law firm whose senior partner is Charles Dance? Tooling through the internet, Randy then discovers that the painting is worth millions and so, tempted by the his aunt’s money and her delicious apple-struedel cake, he embarks on a journey back to his Jewish roots, to bring the painting back to his family estate. .

In Vienna the pair team up with an investigative journalist (Daniel Brühl) who helps them navigate the corridors or power with his local expertise, although his keen interest in the project is never revealed. Flashbacks transport us back to the 1940s where we meet the younger Maria, an elegant Tatiana Maslany, and her father, an admirably proud and defiant Allan Corduner. These are the most enjoyable scenes adding historical texture and context along with those in the courtroom with Jonathan Pryce’s impressive vignette as the judge of the case. There is much negotiating and sifting through archives in dusty museum vaults. Eventually an outcome is achieved in a surprisingly moving finale. Once again Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn) serves up a dumbed-down but easy-to-digest and enjoyable slice of the past. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 10 APRIL 2015 | REVIEWED AT BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY. OTHER COVERAGE IS AVAILABLE UNDER BERLINALE 2015 IN THE SEARCH BOX

Foxcatcher (2014) | DVD release

Dir.: Bennett Miller; Cast: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Vanessa Redgrave; USA 2014, 135 min.

This is the story of a very rich man in his fifties, who fell in love with young athletes. His relationships with them oscillated between his repressed lust for them and his wish to emulate their youth, beauty and strength. Unable to fulfil either of his goals, he finally couldn’t look at them anymore – he smashed the fake mirror.

Bennett Miller (Capote) directs with rigour and style, portraying John Eleuthere du Pont (1938-2010) as an ambiguous, vain, and lonely man, living in the shadow of his overpowering mother, Jean Liseter du Pont (Redgrave), who bred race horses on an 800 acre estate. She lived to be 91, and after her death in 1988, her son and heir to the du Pont business empire, one of the biggest chemical mega-corporations, renamed the Liseter estate “Foxcatcher” and turned it into a training centre for Olympic athletes, mainly wrestlers.

Two years earlier, John (Carell) had met Mark Schultz (Channing), Olympic wrestling champion at the LA games in 1984, who lived in poverty. Du Pont invited him to live on the estate with him, and became his coach. Mark won the World Championship in France in 1987, but their relationship deteriorated, after du Pont was able to convince Mark’s older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo is superb), an-ex wrestler and coach, to live and work with him on “Foxcatcher”. Dave was Mark’s father figure, the two of them were abandoned early on in life by their parents. Du Pont, jealous of their close relationship, was able to separate the two, but even this was not good enough for him…

Carell’s Du Pont is a rather obnoxious, sad old man, slightly built and anything but athletic, he becomes a veteran wrestler in his fifties, buying his victories probably with bribes. When his mother, by now in a wheel chair, sees him touching the young wrestlers in the gymnasium, laying on his belly, pretending to teach them moves, but only interested in groping them, she leaves disgusted. For her, John has come down in the world – and she lets him feel it, in the way that only Redgrave can. In an unguarded moment, he tells Mark, that his only friend til his mid teens was the son of the family chauffeur – until he found out that his mother paid him to be nice to her son.

Carrel is breath-taking brilliant as the mean snake, paying for his emotional needs to be met. Channing’s Mark is an open book, full of good intentions, but only able to solve conflicts with aggression – against others or himself. Ruffalo’s older brother is the most mature of the triangle, he just wants to do the best for his family, always able to see the best in others. Camera : the panorama shots over the sheer endless estate are as beautiful, as the shots in the gymnasium are oppressive: evoking a palpable odour of stale sweat. FOXCATCHER is a mesmerising psychological thriller about a man who didn’t get love as a child and couldn’t buy it with all his wealth as an adult. AS

Now out On DVD

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Joe Turkel, M Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah

117mins Fantasy Sci-Fi US

BLADE RUNNER was considered so ‘out there’ when it originally ignited our screens back in 1982. Now, like that Thierry Mugler eighties suit, it feels dated despite its iconic status as a piece of finely-crafted history. Ridley Scott’s finely detailed Sci-Fi outing looks very ‘Now-Fi’ as his definitive ‘director’s cut’ takes to our screens, gleaming back at us with its bleak and cold-eyed vision. The replicants of yesteryear feel like the call centres operatives of today, minus their superhuman strength: they are ‘people’ who appear to be real but fail to engage on any level making us feel every sympathy for Harrison Ford’s character as he fumbles around in the new age darkness trying to make sense of things.

Based on Philip K Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, BLADE RUNNER is set in Los Angeles, but filmed at Burbank Studios – a HongKong shoot proving too expensive. It follows a detective called Rick Deckard who is brilliantly played by a permanently perplexed Harrison Ford. His sweat-soaked brow be-knitted with angst, he is tasked with tracking down ‘androids’ or replicants, as they are re-badged in Scott’s fantasy thriller. With all the semblance of flesh and blood humans, apart from their ‘shining’ eyes – created using a technique (the Schüfftan Process) that had actually been invented by Fritz Lang – they are robots from outer-space colonies where they have been investigating alternative living quarters for our over-crowded Earthbound population.

Rutger Hauer gives his ‘one hit wonder’ performance as a startlingly appealing yet lethally dangerous android, Roy Batty, with his now-iconic line “All those moments will be lost in time…like tears in the rain”. Daryl Hannah plays a female she-devil android whose initial cutesy mannequin charm turns deadly as she unravels in the final scenes and there is another memorable turn from Joe Turkel (as Dr Eldon Tyrell), the infamous barman from The Shining‘s Overlook Hotel. But the standout here is Sean Young as Rachael. Her spiky vulnerability and shimmering red lips are a legend in their own lunchtime and test Deckard’s male instincts to the limit. The final cut abandons the pseudo happy ending of the original version, opting instead for an unsettling unspooling of gradual dehumanisation. How prescient Scott’s vision turned out to be. MT

BLADE RUNNER: FINAL CUT IS IN CINEMAS FROM 3 APRIL.

HARRISON FORD WILL RETURN TO STAR IN A SEQUEL BY DENIS VILLENEUVE.

Fell (2014)

Director: Kasimir Burgess

Writer: Natasha Pinctus

Cast: Matt Nable, Jacqueline McKenzie, Daniel Henshall, Isabel Garwoli

94min Drama Australia

Kasimir Burgess’ striking debut is a tale of loss and self-realisation set in the lush forests of Australia’s Victoria, making this force of nature a healing catalyst that redeems a camper suffering traumatic loss. With the same unsettling undertones as Australian thriller Snowtown, it also has its star, Daniel Henshall, as a trucker, who kills the camper’s daughter in a tragic hit-and-run accident.

Burgess started out directing music videos and this comes across in his mesmerising visuals and a judicious use of silence, accentuating the stillness of this magnificent part of the World. In fact, this vast repertoire of sumptuous images occasionally takes over in telling the dreamlike story, evoking the power of feeling and desperate grief imbuing this heady and intoxicating first feature that will, no doubt, delight arthouse audiences and lovers of the thriller genre.

Matt Nable, who recently starred in The Turning, is strong and silent here as Thomas Ryan, who is holidaying in the Victorian Alps with his little daughter Lara (Isabella Garwoli). The two share a close and loving connection when tragedy strikes out of nowhere as Lara wanders into the path of a passing lorry. After an un-consoling vignette with his wife (Jacqueline McKenzie), Thomas returns to the forest, this time to search his soul as it plummets into the depths of grief.

Meanwhile, glib trucker Luke (Daniel Henshall) serves time in prison for manslaughter, and then returns to his former job and his own little girl, born during his incarceration. Life for Thomas has changed too in the intervening years. Abandoning his city life and his name (he’s now called Chris), he is working in the timber industry and is seen taking out his suppressed grief on felling a tree. In a quirk of fate, he finds himself in the same team as Luke and bides his time silently while the trucker unwittingly shares his innermost thoughts.

As slow-burn arthouse thrillers go FELL is amongst the most beguiling with its languid moody pacing and pared down dialogue. But its dreamlike impressionism is tightly underpinned by Natasha Pinctus’ tense script and Luke Altmann’s atmospheric neo-classical score. MT

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

Director: Monte Hellman

Writers: Rudy Wurlitzer, Will Corry

Cast: James Taylor, Warren Oates, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird, Harry Dean Stanton

Of the four leads in Monte Hellman’s cult classic road movie TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, sadly only one remains, the sing-songwriter James Taylor. Hellman too survives and although his offbeat and entertaining masterpiece was revered by the critics – winning two major awards for Warren Oates in his supporting role as a maverick lone-motorist GTO, and making Hellman an everlasting cult director – it was a flop at the box office.

The road movie genre had only just come into existence in the early 70s and BLACKTOP centres on a pair of loon-wearing hippies, musicians Dennis Wilson (The Mechanic) and Taylor (The Driver), who challenge Oates to a driving contest across America’s south-western states. The musicians are classic petrol-heads in their custom Chevrolet and dapper Walter Mitty character Oates drives a yellow GTO Pontiac, doling out a different diatribe to each quirky hick-hiker he meets along the way. One is played by Harry Dean Stanton, a homosexual cowboy who places his hand on GTO’s knee during the drive and gets short shrift in return: “I’m not into that!, This is competition man, I’ve got no time”. A voluble, tousled-hair teenager in the shape of Laurie Bird (‘The Girl’) hitches a lift with the Chevrolet. She sleeps with Wilson ‘s Mechanic on the first night and later flirts with the other two before leaving them all to their own devices on the back of another traveller’s motorbike.

BLACKTOP is wittily co-scripted with a string one-liners by Rudy Wurlitzer (who also gets a small part) and Will Corry from his own story, referencing the fear surrounding the Zodiac serial killings in the area during the late 60s, early 70s:”You guys aren’t like the Zodiac killers or anything, right?” And although Dennis Wilson was one of the Beach Boys, the soundtrack, “Moonlight Drive” was written and performed by The Doors. MT

SCREENING DURING THE AUTEUR FILM FESTIVAL, CURZON BLOOMSBURY, MARCH 2015

Heavenly Shift (2014) | ISTENI MÜSZAK

Dir.: Mark Bodzsar

Cast: Andras Ötvös, Roland Raba, Tamas Keresztes, Natasa Stork

Hungary 2013, 100 min. Drama

Director Bodzar’s feature film debut HEAVENLY SHIFT is very much in line with recent absurdist Hungarian comedies like György Palfi’s Taxidermia. Somehow between Luis Bunuel and David Lynch, HEAVENLY SHIFT is always entertaining, even though the grotesqueness is so over the top that sensitive souls might have difficulties in keeping their eyes open.

In 1992 young Milan (Ötvös) flees to Hungary from war torn Sarajevo, leaving behind his fiancée Natasa (Stork). In Budapest Milan joins up with a rather odd ambulance crew, led by Dr. Fek (Raba). The driver Kistamas (Keresztes) is very fond of his Samurai sword, which never leaves his side. Milan soon finds out that the crew’s wages are supplemented by a funeral director, who is called, whenever there is a fatality – often caused by Dr. Fek’s diagnosis, that the patient does not want to live any more and is therefore not be resuscitated. Luckily for Milan, said funeral director is also in contact with a Chinese gang, who smuggles people out of Yugoslavia in a coffin.

Milan saves up the 50 000 Forint reward to get his fiancée back, but Natasa has scruples about leaving her patients behind – on top of it, she does not fancy a long journey in a coffin. To compensate for this disappointment, Milan joins Kistamas in his frequent visits to a salon of topless hairdressers, the “Pink Laguna”. After causing the death of drug addict, the crew buries the body illegally, but Kistamas loses his temper and tries to kill one of burial crew, only succeeding in injuring Dr. Fek near fatally. Trying to save his life, Milan and Kistamas speed to the hospital, but tragedy intervenes leaving only one survivor.

Most of the action is set in the narrow compound of the ambulance, sparing audiences little of the gruesome and bloody details. Crass materialism and profiteering seem to rule post-communist Hungary, and Bodzsar is not very complimentary about his fellow countrymen. The acting is brilliant, and the camera as original as the narrative, always finding new angles from which to showcase the mayhem. Overall, cast and crew must have had a great time shooting a film which manages to entertain us as we fly by the seat of our pants amid an onslaught of grisly physical and psychological extremes. AS

HEAVENLY SHIFT WON THE DIRECTORS’ WEEK AWARD FOR BEST FILM AT FANTASPORTO 2014, PORTUGAL

Radio On (1979)

Director: Chris Petit

Writer: Chris Petit, Heidi Adolph

104min Drama | Music UK

Cast: David Beames, Lisa Kreuzer, Sandy Ratcliff, Sting,

With funding from Wim Wenders and his cinematographer Martin Schäfer, British director Christopher Petit’s first feature could hardly have been shot in colour. Indeed, black and white seems particularly fitting for the sombre and troubled tone of this endearing seventies road movie. With shades of Get Carter, without the stars, it sees David Beames (as Robert) driving from London to Bristol to check out the mysterious death of his brother. Under murky, sleet-soaked skies, the dismal journey has Robert searching for his own identity in a dispondent Britain where he fails to engage with anyone he meets along the way: an ex-soldier, a woman looking for her child and a child punk rocker. Accompanied by an iconic soundtrack comprising David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Ian Dury, Lena Lovich and a wonderful vignette from Sting, posing as a garage mechanic in the depths of Wiltshire; Robert’s failure to communicate with the disenfranchised seems, even then, to reflect the malaise now emblematic of the way we live in Britain today. The journey ends as bitterly as it began, with his Rover stalling and peters out on the edge of a desolate quarry. Raw and chilly, this sneering piece of British cinema raises an idiosyncratic question-mark, that still remains unanswered today. MT

[youtube id=”N_hiwawj-ts” width=”600″ height=”350″]

REVIEWED AT THE AUTEUR FILM FESTIVAL, CURZON BLOOMSBURY

Eskil Vogt | Interview | Blind (2014)

Eskil Vogt is playing with the essence of cinema. That’s what the slim-looking Norwegian director tells me as we sit for a chat after the London Film Festival screening of his latest, BLIND, which has toured the world since its premiere at the Berlinale 2014. But Vogt also taps into the building-blocks of storytelling in his depiction of blind writer Ingrid, played superbly by Ellen Dorrit Petersen, who toys with our understanding of cinematic narrative as she narrates her own damaged relationship with her husband Morten (Henrik Rafaelsen) after recently losing her sight.

EV: Blindness has a long relationship with stories. Just look at the Western canon’s earliest entrant, Homer, who’s frequently represented as blind. Perhaps without sight, fantasy and imagination can run wild. The way we imagine the origins of storytelling, around the fire surrounded by darkness with the flames flickering – you need the unknown around you for the story to work.

F: There’s something nightmarish in the way you presents blindness in the film – as if you were scared of going blind.

EV: It’s strange, people often ask me whether I’d rather be blind or deaf and immediately I say I’d rather be deaf. But when asked by a Norwegian radio station if I’d rather be deaf and lose a right arm, or be blind, I still admit, grudgingly: That’d be harder but I’d still let my right arm go.

F: Wouldn’t you miss, say, music?

EV: You’d get isolated, but I can’t imagine myself without visual intuition. Actually what people are afraid of is change. A deaf person might say ‘How could I not see the face of my lover?’ But I’ve met blind people who’ve said they couldn’t imagine never hearing the sound of their child.

F: What do you think of audio-described performances for the visually impaired?

EV: I was very surprised that blind people like to go to the cinema. Some of them listen to the description and some of them not – it’s too much dialogue, but also they want to experience the original feeling in a way.

F: Like, I suppose, their everyday experience?

EV: They miss some important visual cues, but they prefer that to having the movie descriped to them! We managed to be the first film in Norway to have the film audio-described with smartphones with an app. You download the additional soundtrack and there’s a sound at the beginning of the film – which we can’t hear – that syncs with the smartphone and they have this additional audio description.

F: Could we see that in the UK?

EV: It’d be great if they did this abroad, but they’d have to do the dialogue. It’s more expensive!

F: But you didn’t make the film for blind people.

EV: No, it’s a very visual film. But when we did screenings, blind people had really experienced the film. They ‘saw’ visual details in the film that I couldn’t for the life of me explain how they picked them up. I’m a die-hard film fan, a defender of celluloid and projection. I hate when people watch my movie on computer screen or – god forbid – a smartphone. But when a blind person can understand without seeing, I am less afraid of that technology.

F: On some level, BLIND plays out as an offbeat relationship drama, but how you use blindness creates all sorts of subversive narrative connotations – where did the idea originate?

EV: In the beginning, I thought blindness could be kind of interesting, but I didn’t know why. My first hunch was a blank screen with sound – it would be a cheap movie to make, but wouldn’t be seen much! And more than that, it isn’t true to the experience of blindness. BLIND is about someone who has lost her sight, so she has this visual imagination. Blindness is about these mental images.

F: Blindness can be difficult for sighted people to portray – I’m thinking Audrey Hepburn in Waiting for Dark – how was directing Ellen Petersen?

EV: What was the key to it was the body language. Because Ingrid moves around quite freely, but she has that little inhibition, guarding her body all the time. She tenses up a little, having this extra guesture to check if there’s something, for instance, is on the table before she puts her glass down. What made that sound? Is somebody watching me? Always that gesture just made it believable.

F: And there is somebody watching her – us.

EV: Yeah, I suddenly realised every scene I was filming was about watching and being watched. Even the sexuality of a blind person – still wanting to be desired, wanting to be seen. And that you could see in other films, in very visual films – in Hitchcock. I got the impression I was working with the basic stuff of cinema.

F: I remember Fellini saying that cinema used the language of dreams – with Ingrid’s imagination, were you thinking along those lines?

EV: Definitely. Cinema is also something of reality, of documentary. It’s true, it’s one of the strengths of cinema that you capture the actor at that age, that moment. That’s inarguably cinema. But to say it’s realism, that’s not true. You leave out a lot of stuff if you present this angle or that angle of their face. Reality is without any cuts – but that’s not how you perceive reality. Something of the essence of film is when you put two images next to each other, and something happens. Something more than just two images, something going from ‘this’ moment to ‘that’ moment. That’s when cinema really happens sometimes. That’s less reality and closer to our thoughts and to our dreams. Even though I was so obsessed with blindness, researching, getting to know blind people, I was more interested in how do we think about stuff, perceive things, change our ideas when we get more information. Anxieties inform what we see, so what we see is tainted by what we expect and fear is going to happen. How do we portray it on film? I think my film is about that.

F: There’s a central scene in the film in the aftermath of Anders Breivik’s attacks, were you looking to explore anxieties and feelings of Norway as a society?

EV: A young girl said that in Norway. ‘If one man can do that with hatred, imagine what we can all do with love’, a very beautiful statement, but a very naïve statement, because it unfortunately much easier to have an impact doing evil.
That’s the case with Ingrid and Morten’s broken marriage – their anxieties are stronger than their love. Yes, it’s easier to mess something up than keep something together. It’s harder to have an impact being a loving caring person. But love, some people don’t have that. The character of Einar (Marius Kolbenstvedt) sits around watching porn but is re-engaged into society as Breivik’s attacks. It was my entry point really, it represented that person’s loneliness. A week after the attacks I was supposed to be by my desk and writing, but I had the feeling like many in Norway of, ‘How can I continue with this stupid story’, with this woman, and some jokes and some pornography in it? I felt so futile. I never thought it would be part of the film, but it just felt right.

F: Did you think of Norwegisn people as blind, not expecting these kinds of things to happen to them?

EV: We’re very self-contained people. When the explosion happened in Oslo, everyone thought, ‘Oh we’ve got Muslim terrorists as well.’ And it turned out it was one of our own. And we could have used that to go much deeper in introspection. Instead we said ‘we’re all in this together’ but we were just forgiving ourselves. It was a missed opportunity. Instead we won the world championship in grief that year. Ed Frankl

BLIND IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 MARCH 2015

The Signal (2015)

Director: William Eubank

Cast: Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, Beau Knapp, Laurence Fishburne, Lin Shaye

97min US Sci-Fi Thriller

Deep in the countryside, three ramblers cross paths with a strange and unworldly encounter in William Eubank’s slick indie that starts as an compelling weird Sci-FI mystery thriller but gradually joins the highway to mainstream city, veering off the path of arthouse intrigue.

Nic and Jonah (Brenton Thwaites and Beau Knapp) are MIT students who seem to be involved in a computer virus dispute with someone called Nomad. When Nic agrees to take his girlfriend Haley (Olivia Cooke) back to University across country, Jonah goes to share the driving because Nic seems to be on crutches. On their way they pick up intelligence that may lead them to Nomad’s whereabouts. Against their better judgement, they take a detour into the desert.

This takes them through some glorious widescreen visuals and a retro vibe as we cruise zen-like along in the fields of big mountain country, enjoying David Lanzenberg’s gorgeous cinematography until arriving at nightfall at an abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere. And this is where proceedings go pear-shaped as the mood becomes edgy and sinister. Haley is abducted by an alien-like being before and they all space out and loses control. Nic gradually comes to his senses in a space-age hospital staffed by men in white overalls. He can’t feel his legs.

The doctor in charge of Nic is Wallace Damon (Laurence Fishburne). Apparently Nic and his friends came across an “extraterrestrial biological entity,” and it is vital for Nic to remain within the confines of the hospital for his own safety. But Nic, in a performance of palpable paranoia (by Thwaites), is not convinced and desperately tries to escape the sinister surroundings and endless white corridors and weird doctors. In vain. Then after an eerie dreamlike sequence of events where he is unable to move and is pursued by a very spooky-looking Fishburne as the doctor, Nic takes charge and breaks away from the hospital along a series of narrow tunnels and finally to freedom. But his troubles are far from over. Despite a delightfully off the wall turn from Lin Shaye as a religious nutter, this Sci-fi mystery fails to deliver the satisfying denouement that we’re hoping for as our interest gradually wanes in the last half hour. It’s watchable and wacky all the same and Nima Fakhrara’s ethereal soundtrack lends a surreal atmosphere. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 MARCH 2015 | DVD FROM 13 APRIL 2015

Asia House Film Festival 2015 | 27 – 31 March 2015

The 7th Annual Asia House Film Festival which takes place from 27 March to 31 March 2015 at various venues around London. This year’s theme of NEW GENERATIONS reflects on all that’s new about cinema from Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesian, India, Japan and Uzbekistan, with a special focus and retrospective on Mongolia.

The festival includes an selection of features including two European premieres. Opening the festival on Friday 27 March at the Ham Yard Theatre is the European Premiere of Indonesian film IN THE ABSENCE OF THE SUN, which frames the modern metropolis of Jakarta as never seen before. Directed, written and edited by Lucky Kuswandi (Madame X), it is a bittersweet tale of universal appeal, as its nostalgic memories unfold over the course of a single night.

Closing Asia House Film Festival 2015 on Tuesday 31 March at The Horse Hospital is the UK Premiere of YANGON CALLING – PUNK IN MYANMAR, directed by Alexander Dluzak and Carsten Piefke, an award-winning documentary about Myanmar’s underground punk scene filmed secretly in the former military dictatorship using hidden cameras. It provides a rare portrait of the rebels who really do have a cause, introducing us to their personal lives and their hidden world of rehearsal rooms and illicit concerts.

The European premiere of Kulikar Sotho’s THE LAST REEL presents different versions of the truth unearthed from a lost film, buried beneath Cambodia’s killing fields and the London premiere of PASSION FROM MONGOLIA, a poignant portrait of a man’s struggle to bridge two very different ages, is a great introduction to Mongolian cinema which will be showcased at the Cinema Museum on Sunday 19 April.

The festival will also host the UK Premiere of a musical documentary FLASHBACK MEMORIES 3D, that received the Audience Award winner at the 26th Tokyo International Film Festival. Directed by Japan’s Tetsuaki Matsue, it focuses on the didgeridoo maestro GOMA, who suffers from an inability to form new memories following a traffic accident at the peak of his career. Also on offer is a cult classic Uzbekistani “Red Western”. MT

[vimeo id=”121594253″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

VENUES: Ham Yard Theatre, Rich Mix, The Horse Hospital and the Cinema Museum | 27 – 31 March 2015

Frangipani (2013) | BFI Flare

Director|Writer: Visakesa Chandrasekaram

Cast: Dasum Pathirana, Jehan Sri Kanth, Yasogha Rasaduni

90min Sri Lanka Drama Singhalese with Subtitles

The best thing about this debut drama, the first LGBT film to come out of Sri Lanka, is its simplicity and ravishing cinematography capturing the exuberant lushness of the island’s countryside, its vibrant colours and the exotic beauty of the frangipani blossom that is used to decorate the local temple. A straightforward narrative unfolds against the natural background of a traditional Sri Lankan village community and is told through expressive performances from a sensitive cast and minimal dialogue.

Chamath, a young Sri Lankan man makes a living by embroidering and designing saris. His dream is to escape to the city to look for a better life, but he is being hotly pursued by a wealthy local girl, Sarasi, who he meets while preparing a sari for her wedding. Sarasi fancies Chamath and wants him to rescue her from a traditional arranged marriage. But Chamath finds himself attracted to Nalin, a young welding mechanic who come to work in the Temple, and the two begin a physical relationship. Sarasi is determined to find love on her own terms, and when Chamath spurns her, she turns her affections to Nalin. The undeclared love triangle remains secret but gradually the two men are pressured by the local community into making a decision, despite their strong feelings for one another. Five years later they all meet again to question whether they’ve lost out on the chance to realise their true happiness or ruined their lives forever. A delicate ambient soundtrack of local birdsong accompanies Viksakesa Chandrasekaram’s tender and affecting love story. MT

BFI FLARE FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 19-29 MARCH 2015 AT LONDON’S BFI SOUTHBANK CENTRE SE1.

The Killers (1946) | Master of Shadows | April 2015

Dir.: Robert Siodmak

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, William Conrad, Charles McGraw

USA 1946, 102 min. (spoilers)

Based on the short story by Ernest Hemingway, THE KILLERS was one of many classic Film Noirs by one of the key Noir craftsman, German born director Robert Siodmak (1900-1973). He was one of the team of filmmakers behind Menschen am Sonntag (1929); his fellow creators and emigrants Edgar G. Ulmer and Billie Wilder would, like him, excel in directing noir-movies in Hollywood, as well as another couple of ex-UFA directors: Fritz Lang and John Brahm. Considering that Robert’s brother Curt Siodmak (1902-2000), who became a busy script-writer in Hollywood, was also involved Noir-films, one can draw the conclusion, that all these emigrant directors transferred the traumatic displacement they had suffered in Nazi-Germany, into their new environment with films, in which everything, from the role of capitalism to gender roles, became questionable.

Robert Siodmak’s list of noir films between 1941 and 1949 is quiet staggering: Flight by Night, Conflict Phantom Lady, The Suspect, The Spiral Staircase, The Dark Mirror, Cry of the City, Criss Cross and Thelma Jordan. Apart from being aesthetically original, these productions were often great successes at the box office, and Siodmak had enough clout with the studio bosses, to cast an unknown debutant in the leading role for THE KILLERS: Burt Lancaster.

The film starts with two psychotic killers Max (Conrad) and Al (McGraw) entering the small town of Brentwood in New Jersey at night, going to the local diner and enquiring about Pete Lunn, called “The Swede”. After being told that he has not come for his usual dinner appointment, the killers terrorise owner and personnel of the diner in frustration, before turning their enquiries elsewhere. Finally, they enter the boarding house where Lunn (Lancaster) lives, shooting him in cold blood. Jim Reardon (O’Brien), an insurance inspector, investigating a life-insurance claim (Lunn had a life-insurance policy, a motel maid in Atlantic City being named the beneficiary), is puzzled why Lunn never ran away, even though he was warned by one of the guests in the diner about the arrival of the killers.

With the help of police detective Sam Lubinsky (Levene), who knew Lunn when he was a young boxer and put him behind bars after Lunn took the rap for a jewel theft for his secret love Kitty Collins (Gardner), Reardon tries to uncover the truth behind Lunn’s suicidal behaviour and finds out that Collins was the girl-friend of Big Jim Colfax ((Dekker), who was in charge of a heist, in which Lunn and three other members of the team successfully robbed a payroll worth $250 000. The jealous Colfax wanted to cut Lunn out of the proceeds, but Kitty warned the latter, and Lunn grabbed the loot and disappeared for good, being hunted in vain by the other gang members. But the more Reardon learns, the less sense it makes…

The narrative is told at first as a series of flashbacks portraying Lunn’s life, before the two killers from the opening sequence make another appearance, this time trying to get rid off Lubinsky and Reardon, setting in motion a series of shootouts. The acting is near perfect: Lancaster’s “Swede” is a naïve, emotionally immature man, who does not even know that Lilly is in love with him – she prompotly marries Lubinsky – whilst Lunn just loves the unobtainable Kitty from afar, only confronting the rough Colfax once before the heist. When Lunn meets Gardner, she is tthe ‘little girl lost” in the company of gangsters, begging Lunn to save her, and Lunn is only too happy to oblige, even if it costs him three years of his life. Their meeting in Atlantic City, when Kitty tells him of Colfax treachery, is the high point of the film: one literally feels the burning lust. Dekker’s Colfax is steely and arrogant – Ronald Reagan would play him in Don Siegel’s remake of 1956 – and Conrad and McGraw are truly frightening in their unrestrained violence. DOP Elwood Bredell plays masterly with shadows and light, creating an atmosphere of violence and repressed lust. The male protagonists are all severely damaged, even Lubinsky is just shown as a cop, who easily sells his friend Lunn out, even though he had the chance to save him; whilst Reardon is just a stupid insurance agent, who risks his life to maximise the profits of his company. Siodmak creates a totally corrupt and amoral world in this near perfect film. AS

SCREENING DURING MASTERS OF SHADOWS: A ROBERT SIODMAK RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI LONDON IN APRIL 2015

I Am Michael (2015) | FLARE London LGBT Film Festival 2015

Director: Justin Kelly

Writer: Justin Kelly |

Cast: James Franco, Zachary Quinto, Charlie Carver, Emma Roberts, Daryl Hannah, Avan Jogia

98min US Drama Biopic

The ubiquitous James Franco is either behind the camera or in front of it these days, playing both gay and straight roles and in I AM MICHAEL he does both with this inspired foray into the life Michael Glatze, a gay magazine editor who becomes heterosexual after finding God, and transforming into a Christian pastor with unsettling undertones.

Gus Van Sant has financed the debut feature from writer-director Justin Kelly, which is based on a real-life story with Zachary Quinto and Emma Roberts lending able support as his boyfriend and subsequent fiancée. This is not a straightforward film but one that offers much food for thought in a nuanced and cleverly-scripted narrative (based partly on a New York Times article about Glatze’s life) that insightfully explores the nature of sexuality, love and belief.

The story opens as Glatze (James Franco) is editor of a gay magazine in late nineties San Francisco and happily involved with lover Bennett (Zachary Quinto), who persuades him to move to Canada so he can take up an important post in Architecture. The relationship with Bennett is natural and totally convincing and both actors seem entirely at one in their performances. But Glatze is jobless and soon bored with the life in Nova Scotia, despite meeting Tyler (Charlie Carver) who adds spice to the couple’s love life and is soon sharing their bed. Glatze launches a new magazine aimed at the ‘coming out’ market whose sexual beliefs are being compromised or constrained by their religious beliefs, and the trio start shooting a documentary entitled Jim in Bold. At this point, we’re persuaded that Glatze’s real raison d’être is to help humanity. James Franco’s forceful presence and hard-eyed gaze melts, on occasion, and particularly when Glatze comes across Jacob Loeb.

But the emergence of regular panic attacks seem to indicate that he’s not happy with his life or his relationship, and these also stem from the fear of a heart condition that cut short his father’s life as a young man. His close relationship with his mother is also a motif running through the film, and he regularly visits her resting place to reinforce his convictions and reminisce. transformation is fleshed out on a blog with voiceover describing his religious zeal. Unable to see himself or his ambitions clearly, Glatze emerges a troubled and confused soul and, while Kelly in no way seeks to condemn or judge him, James Franco reflects this accurately and powerfully in a performance that’s both compelling and subtle but also indicates the presence of a mild personality disorder – it’s a tremendously difficult role which Franco pulls off with remarkable aplomb. After a Buddhist retreat in Wyoming where he meets the gentle Nico (a fine turn from Avan Jogia) he ends up in Bible School where he falls in love with Rebekah Fuller (Emma Roberts) a naive yet appealing young Christian girl.

Christopher Blauvelt’s camerawork is competent on both the widescreen and on more intimate moments but the score occasionally overdoes it, producing an intrusiveness that makes contemplation impossible – and there is a great deal to take in and process in Glatze’s transformation. By the end though, we are more than convinced that this man has by no means found his way in life and those who stray onto his complicated path will continue to find themselves in emotional danger. MT

I AM MICHAEL HEADLINES THIS YEAR’S BFI FLARE LONDON LGBT FILM FESTIVAL FROM 19 – 29 MARCH 2015 AT BFI SOUTHBANK, LONDON SE1. REVIEWED DURING BERLINALE 2015

Fanny (2013) | DVD release

Director: Daniel Auteuil Writer: Daniel Auteuil FROM THE THE WORKS OF MARCEL PAGNOL

Cast: Jean-Pierre Daroussin, Victoire Belezy, Raphael Personnez, Marie-Anne Chazel

104min Drama French with English subtitles

Marcel Pagnol’s work is still popular in France, especially among older viewers who made up the lion’s share of the audience at the Cannes Film Festival screening. FANNY is the second film in the trilogy and the last segment (CESAR) is still in development.

Daniel Auteuil directs and acts (as Cesar) using the same cast and crew as for MARIUS (the first part – which deals with his longing to be a sailor) namely Victoire Belezy as Fanny, Jean-Pierre Daroussin as Panisse and Raphael Personnaz as Marius.

Marseilles accents and the maritime setting gives this light-hearted ‘chamber piece’ a very French feel but the classic plot line is universally satisfying, marking Pagnol out as one of the last century’s most renowned dramatists. Alexandre Desplat’s elegant score carries the dialogue-driven narrative through its paces, most of the action taking place in the confines of Cesar’s bar in contrast to the resplendent summery visuals of the wedding scene.

Fanny’s good-looking boyfriend Marius has set off to the South Seas on a 5-year contract, leaving her in Marseilles where she discovers her pregnancy. Distraught at the idea of being an unmarried mother, Cesar secretly organises to marry her off to Panisse, a wealthy local manufacturer and drinking buddy, on the condition that the child will become his heir and inherit a considerable fortune.

[youtube id=”yJRJHwggWUs” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Auteuil and Daroussin are convincing in their roles as traditional French men: Daroussin is sensitive and unassuming as the dowdy and much older suitor to the sultry young girl. Auteuil’s character is more ‘rough and ready’ but with a tender heart of gold. The coquettish Bezey does her best to conceal her disappointment at the marriage particularly as she’s still in love with Marius, who eventually re-appears in a showdown that pits the evergreen theme of wealth and social suitability against passion, love and sexual desire. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD along with MARIUS

The Voices (2014) |

Director: Marjane Satrapi

Writer: Michael Perry

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick, Jacki Weaver

US Comedy Drama Thriller

This Dexter-inspired ‘serial killer pulp thriller’ is Marjane Satrapi’s imaginative follow-up to her breakout hits Persepolis and Chicken with Plums. There are some good ideas here, and her first film in English shows that quirky comedy can work across the cultural divide, although it’s not an outstanding success on all levels. Casting the superbly versatile Ryan Reynolds as the lead is an inspired choice: as disturbed warehouse stocker Jerry, Reynolds conveys normality with a dark side but, strangely, inspires our sympathy rather than dislike for his troubled character who is a sad victim of circumstance. Having been forced to kill his mother as a child, he wears his schizophrenic tendencies smartly tucked away behind the serene (almost autistic) gaze of an ordinary pleasant-looking guy next door. Respectably holding down his job and even volunteering to organise the entertainment at the office party; he drives a jeep and lives in a disused factory complete with pink cladding and neon signs. Not only that, he talks to his dog Bosco and cat Mr Whiskers and they talk back with accents (a Glaswegian cat and a dog with a Southern drawl are hilarious). Desperately keen to find a girlfriend, his forays with co-workers of the opposite sex, (superbly played by Gemma Arterton and Anna Kendrick) end in violent death for all concerned.

In Michael Perry’s screenplay, laughs are few but welcome in contrast to the highly inventive elements (Jerry stores the heads of his ‘dates’ in the fridge but they carry on talking) and brutal violence (stabbing his date to death by accident when pursuing her in the woods) that puncture Jerry’s volatile and psychopathic facade. THE VOICES is tonally out of kilter as an outright comedy or a horror outing; continually throwing us off-guard, not sure what to expect.- but somehow it’s an addictively watchable film with some unexpected moments of pure genius. Recommended. MT

REVIEWED DURING SUNDANCE UK WHERE WE TALKED TO MARJANE ABOUT DIRECTING RYAN REYNOLDS (below)| ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 23 MARCH 2015

[youtube id=”vbin6s5KMSs” width=”600″ height=”350″]

A Second Chance (2014) |

Director: Susanne Bier

Cast: Marie Bonnevie, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, May Anderson, Ulrich Thomsen

Susanne Bier is well known for her stylish if schematic melodramas – along the lines of BROTHERS and AFTER THE WEDDING. A SECOND CHANCE is another enjoyable, if cliched, collaboration with the dogma crew and regular scripter Anders Thomas Jensen (IN A BETTER WORLD).

The impossibly good-looking Nordic couple Andreas (Coster-Waldau) and Anne (Marie Bonnevie) share a designer beach house in the outskirts of Copenhagen with their new-born son Alexander. Meanwhile, Tristan (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and his partner Sanne (May Anderson in debut) are slumming it up as intravenous drug abusers in an urban hovel with their neglected bab,y Sofus. However, it’s important at this stage not to draw too many conclusions on the perfect family versus the ‘lowlife’ one.

Police detective Andreas is on a drug-releated hunt for Tristan and is attempting to get Sofus into care, with the help of his partner Simon (Ulrich Thomsen). So far their attempts have proved unsuccessful but when tragedy intervenes, Andreas makes an error of judgement changing his life forever.

Motherhood and parenting are always at the heart of Bier’s narratives and A SECOND CHANCE is no different. There’s no harsher judge of women than a woman herself, as Bier proves one again by portraying her female characters as somehow lacking: Although Anne appears to be the perfect caring mother in her softly lit and freshly laundered surroundings, she is also neurotic, self-centred and suffering from postnatal depression and her mother (Ewa Frowling) is not much of a help on the childcare front. Sanne is so angel either, leaving Sofus rolling about in his own excrement as she catnaps through another dose of crystal meth or is it pethidine? Nikolaj Lie Kaas is powerful as an irresponsible dad but also a controlling, abusive husband.

The story really centres on Andreas and his integrity as a man of the law, versus his vulnerability as a new father, desperate to satisfy the woman he loves, his moral compass briefly skewed by the hormonally-charged state of becoming a new father. Strong performances are compelling and slightly manage to counterbalance the narrative’s slow crescendo of doom-laden melodrama, accompanied by a sinister score, gusty winds and the classic Nordic Noir negativity that increasingly threatens disaster in every rain-soaked frame. Even after the initial booboo made by Andreas, it’s clear that life will never be the same in this chilly tale of woe. MT

A SECOND CHANCE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 20 MARCH 2015. SUSANNE BIER IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON AN ADAPTATION OF JOHN LE CARRE’S THE NIGHT MASTER WITH HUGH LAURIE AND TOM HIDDLESTON.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya (KAGUYAHIME NO MONOGATARI)

Dir.: Isao Takahata

Animation with the voices of Aki Asakura, Takeo Chii, Nobuko Myamato

Japan 2013, 137 min.

Based on the oldest recorded Japanese narrative ‘Taketori Monogatari’, THE TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA is the swansong of Isao Takahata (GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES), co-founder of Studio Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki. There are several screen adaptations of the story, the best known being Kon Ichikawa’s 1987 life version “THE PRINCESS FROM THE MOON”.

A bamboo cutter Okinia (Chii) finds a doll like girl sprouting from a bamboo shoot. He takes her home, but she is already growing in his hands. A few weeks later she is a young, wild teenager, running through the woods with the boys. Okina and his wife Ona (Myamato) call their foster daughter “Little Princess”, whilst the boys have named her “Little Bamboo”, because of her quick growth. The princess (Asakura) shows no signs of being different from her playmates, but when her foster father finds a cache of gold and fine, colourful garments in the wood, he realises that his foster daughter is destined to grow up a princess at court. The family moves, to the chagrin of Little Bamboo, who hates the court and her new teacher, who tries to turn her into a lady. She is even given a new name, Kaguya, meaning “creature of light”. Soon five famous suitors appear on the scene, all wanting to marry the enigmatic stranger. But Kaguya, who longs for a simple life in the woods with her friends, sets them all impossible targets, which they fail to achieve in different ways; a clever ruse to avoid marrying any of them. Finally, the emperor’s son makes a clumsy attempt to gain her love, and she prays to the forces which placed her in the bamboo sprout, to take her back to the moon. But as soon as she has asked to be taken back, she regrets it. Meeting her girlhood friend Satumaro again, they joyfully fly through the air, Satemaro promising to keep Kaguya safe. But the date of her return is fast approaching; Kaguya knows that back home she will loose all memory of her earthly stay.

THE TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA is an emotional and visual tour-de-force, the main protagonist’s desires of a peaceful life in the countryside are thwarted by her materialistic parents who want to achive status in society. Kaguya tries her best to counter the desires of her parents, she even hallucinates the landscape of her childhood, whilst looking out of the window of her palace, trying to go back in time. The eastern brush painting helps to make the images dreamlike, everything is fluid and magical, the vibrant images wafting like flowers in the wind. The silk clothes of the princess give the images an even greater transcendency, culminating in the flight sequence with Satemaro. Kaguya is the epitome of grace, perfectly suiting her: she is a delicately fluttering creature, always on the move, her mood changes translated into colourful images. Some of the early scenes are redolent of an earlier Takahata animation film HEIDI, A GIRL OF THE ALPS. The ending is an array of lighting, where arrows turn into flowers, and the God of the Moon tries to persuade Kaguya to return to her anti-septic home, bereft of any emotional content. THE TALE OF PRNCESS KAGUYA is a wonderful synthesis of dreamlike images, a metaphor for the spiritual life in conflict with materialism and status. An expressionistic phantasy, rather like the paintings of Monet, Manet or Sisley coming to life. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 23 MARCH 2015

BFI Flare | 19-29 March 2015

Last year’s BFI Flare was a phenomenal success drawing an audience of over 22,000 to the Southbank complex for this exclusive LGBT event. Not that you have be gay, lesbian or bi-sexual to enjoy thees films. They now offer progressive cineastes and arthouse audiences the best in acting and directing talent from all over the World. Prize-winning titles such as STRANGER BY THE LAKE, LILTING and EASTERN BOYS prove that gay interest cinema is starting to attract more informed audiences who are searching out more eclectic and experimental fare in their choice of what to see at the movies.

And this year is no different: the UK Premiere of I AM MICHAEL (left) will open this year’s fest. A feature directorial debut for Gus Van Sant protégé Justin Kelly, the film stars James Franco and Zachary Quinto in a powerful interrogation of gay identity through the real-life story of Michael Glatze, who went from crusading gay journalist to anti-gay pastor.

As evidence of the strength of documentary work in this year’s Festival, Closing Night will feature the European Premiere of director Malcolm Ingram’s highly topical and rousing OUT TO WIN, charting the experience of LGBT sportspeople working in the highest echelons of professional sport. Featuring contributions from such pioneers as Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, David Kopay, John Amaechi and Jason Collins.

Also included in this year’s programme is the European Premiere of DO I SOUND GAY?, a documentary exploring the provocative idea of whether there is a ‘gay voice’ and featuring humorous, insightful contributions from performers and comedians including Margaret Cho, David Sedaris, George Takei and Dan Savage.

And fresh from the Berlinale, TEDDY COMPETITION, where it won the Jury Prize, is STORIES OF OUR LIVES, Jim Chu Chu’s drama adaptation from real testimonies of LGBT Kenyans (where the film is banned for promoting homosexuality).

The festival offers rich cinematic insight into LGBT lives and loves around the world with films from the USA, France, UK, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Australia, Greece and India plus the world’s first LGBT film from Sri Lanka FRANGIPANI (right)

The festival’s follows similar strands to last year:

H E A R T S – films about love, romance and friendship

Mark Christopher’s 54: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT, fresh from its world premiere at this year’s Berlinale and bolder and gayer than ever before. UK feature film is represented in THE FALLING, Carol Morley’s wonderful tale of girl-school obsessions and hysteria. BROKEN GARDENIAS is a quirky dark comedy where Jenni takes on a dream-like quest for her long-lost father in LA. BLACKBIRD brings intense drama to a coming-of-age story set in a Mississippi small town including a stand-out performance by Mo’Nique as a traumatised mother. FRANGIPANI, the world’s first Sri Lankan LGBT film, features a classic love triangle with two men forced to make difficult decisions. PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL MONOGAMIST (left) is a whip-sharp comedy of 40-something lesbian dating, where commitments never seem to last for long but matters of the heart are never simple. GIRLTRASH: ALL NIGHT LONG is a lesbian rock musical, with a healthy disregard for stereotypes and irresistible performances and some good songs.

B O D I E S – stories of sex, identity and transformation

The World Premiere of DRESSED AS A GIRL is a celebration of an indefatigable group of drag performers, filmed over five years, from London to Glastonbury and back again. BORN TO FLY: ELIZABETH STREB vs. GRAVITY is a jaw-dropping encounter with the stunning aerial choreography of dancer Elizabeth Streb. DRUNKTOWN’S FINEST follows the lives of three young Native Americans, set against a background of extreme poverty, crime and violence, where coming-of-age presents difficult choices. MIRCO is a playful and thought-provoking documentary about three young people living in Berlin who identify beyond the gender binary. SOMETHING MUST BREAK is a tender love story between a shy trans teen and a young straight man, from the director of the acclaimed She Mail Snails. FULBOY is an insightful documentary into the real life of an Argentinian, professional football team, with camerawork which suggests there might be a ‘gay gaze’ or aesthetic, and offering a surprisingly intimate look at these athletes in their prime.

M I N D S – reflections on art, politics and community

Tab Hunter is a legend whose career as a Hollywood leading man was famously sacrificed when he was outed by his agent (to save the reputation of his other client Rock Hudson). Jeffrey Schwarz’s film TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL (left) in its European Premiere, reveals the utterly compelling Tab Hunter and his extraordinary life at the movies and elsewhere. Fresh from Sundance comes Jenni Olson’s thoughtful essay film THE ROYAL ROAD (below), a meditation on life and art and the politics of landscape, wrapped up in a dizzyingly beautiful range of images, with musings on Hitchcock’s Vertigo. WE CAME TO SWEAT celebrates the endangered Starlite, one of New York’s pre-Stonewall gay bars, a black-owned and operated influential dance club where some of the disco sound originated. EVERLASTING LOVE is a haunting tale of a teacher and student, and a group of friends caught up in illicit sexual encounters. THE LAST ONE: UNFOLDING THE AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT is a moving account of the final episode in the rich history of what is now the largest folk art project in the world, celebrating lives lost to HIV. And Cannes 2014 breakout hit, GIRLHOOD, a powerful, truthful story of young black girls growing up in Paris that subtly examines female friendship and gender dynamics. The ravishingly beautiful DIOR AND I celebrates the arrival of new designer Raf Simons at the house of Dior as he assembles his first couture collection in a film which truly gets under the skin of the fashion industry. No mention of John Galliano here!

And last but not least, BFI IMAX celebrates the 40th Anniversary of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW which launched a thousand devotional dress-ups, and will followed by a Blue Room party; dressing up is definitely encouraged. Other cult classics from the archives include: ORLANDO, THE COLOR PURPLE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and FRIED GREEN TOMATOES AT THE WHISTLE STOP CAFE.

BFI FLARE RUNS FROM 19 – 29 MARCH AT THE BFI SOUTHBANK LONDON – BE THERE OR BE SQUARE...

Bad Hair | Pelo Malo (2013) | DVD VOD release

Director/Writer: Mariana Rondon

Cast: Samuel Lange Zambrano, Samantha Castillo, Beto Benites, Nelly Ramos, Maria Emilia Sulbaran

93min Venezuela Drama

Joining the recent crop of gay interest films from South American comes Pelo Malo (Bad Hair). Themes of identity and nascent sexuality are sensitively but rigorously explored in this appealing Venezuelan arthouse gem which runs along similar lines as the award-winning Brazilian indie The Way He Looks. The star turn here is newcomer Samuel Lange (as Junior) whose fraught but loving single mother, Marta (Samantha Castillo), is anxious to suppress confusing sexual signals as she struggles to run home and family in the overpopulated city of Caracas. Meanwhile, Junior channels his childhood angst and burgeoning adolescence into taming his crop of afro curls. As the title suggests, he’s definitely having a ‘bad hair’ day, and it continues throughout the drama.

The barnet in question is the legacy of his black father, but Junior has more of a pop idol role model in mind as he desperately tries to straighten his unruly locks. As Marta, Samantha Castillo puts her foot down in a subtle performance of well-concealed irritation. She really needs a masculine man about the house to help her raise his baby brother, not a budding gay star with a eye for the boys, and particularly the local newspaper boy (Julio Mendez) who seems to be the object of Junior’s affections. As is often the case, Junior gets more leniency from his paternal grandma, Carmen (Nelly Ramos) but she has her own reasons for wanting to bring him up. Mariana Rondon crafts her narrative sparingly allowing us space to fill in the gaps and form our own conclusions in this nifty neorealist social drama that tackles the age old subject of oedipal love in a traditional matriarchal and Catholic environment, without resorting to sentimentalism. Micaela Cajahuaringa’s mobile camera evokes this nightmare of Caracas’s psychogeography with a vivid backdrop of traffic-choked streets and chaotic social housing that suffocate childhood dreams in a marasma of sombre daily reality. On a positive note, Camilo Froideval’s upbeat score suggests that Junior’s imagination may just win out in the end. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 January 2015 | 30 March on DVD VOD with interviews with Mariana Rondon, featurettes, and trailers.

Kinoteka Polish Film Festival 2015 | 8 April – 29 May 2015 | 13th Edition

KINOTEKA, the annual celebration of Polish Cinema and culture, is back in London for the 13th Anniversary. Taking place in various venues including BFI Southbank, ICA, Tate Modern, Fronline Club and Filmhouse Edinburgh.

Here’s a taster of this year’s highlights:

MARTIN SCORSESE PRESENTS : MASTERPIECES OF POLISH CINEMA

Filmhouse Edinburgh and BFI Southbank will be host to Scorsese’s 21 favourite Polish Films, all sparkling in new 2k prints. Showcasing the astonishing talent from the legendary Łódź Film School where directors such as Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi, Andrzej Munk, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Wojciech Jerzy Has, Aleksander Ford, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and Roman Polanski mastered their crafts.

Opening with a screening of CAMOUFLAGE with director Krzysztof Zanussi as special guest, KINOTEKA honours the work of Zanussi with 3 titles in the Masterpieces of Polish Cinema season: CAMOUFLAGE, THE CONSTANT FACTOR and ILLUMINATION as well as the UK premiere of his latest film, FOREIGN BODY in the New Polish Cinema section.

N E W P O L I S H C I N E M A – 1o April 2015 onwards

The ICA plays host to KINOTEKA’s New Polish Cinema strand from 10th April with a selection of popular and critically successful contemporary Polish films from the last year. Krzysztof Zanussi’s FOREIGN BODY, takes an uncompromising look at contemporary Poland and the struggles between capitalist reality and Catholicism, sin and sainthood, men and women. Jerzy Stuhr’s latest film, CITIZEN, a dramedy set over sixty years, tells the story of Jan Bratek who regretfully finds himself at the heart of events from the modern history of Poland, from the 1950s through to the present day.

Wojciech Smarzowski ‘s (TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT), THE MIGHTY ANGEL, is in many ways Poland’s answer to The Lost Weekend and Leaving Las Vegas. An uncompromising, naturalistic tale of addiction and redemption, Robert Więckiewicz stars as a writer hospitalised for his alcoholism and the film follows him and the patients he meets during his treatment.

Krzysztof Skonieczny’s HARDKOR DISKO, hails the arrival of a fresh voice in Polish Cinema, his incendiary, psychological thriller wowed audiences when it premiered at last year’s Edinburgh Film Festival. When a young man arrives in the city and makes his way to the door of a successful middle-aged couple, his motives for being there are unclear. What quickly becomes apparent is that his overriding desire is to kill them. Compelling and disturbing, Hardkor Disko has elements of Michael Hanneke’s Funny Games.

U N D E R T H E L E N S Polish Documentary film in focus

KINOTEKA showcases original, innovative documentary from Poland. Paweł Pawlikowski is primarily known in the UK for his critically acclaimed feature films, including the BAFTA-winning LAST RESORT, MY SUMMER OF LOVE and most recently the Oscar® winning IDA. He began his career in television making documentaries for the BBC, where his distinctive mixing of fact with elements of the personal and poetic challenged expectations of the television documentary format. Paweł Pawlikowski will present a special weekend of screenings at the ICA (18th/19th April), including DOSTOEVSKY’S TRAVELS about the Russian novelist’s journey to Western Europe in the early 1990s, his great grandson Dimitri makes the same journey, travelling from St Petersburg to Berlin and London to lecture about his great grandfather. Dimitri’s sole ambition is to earn enough money to buy a Mercedes. Blending real and fictional events, Pawlikowski’s film reflects on one of the pivotal moments in modern history: the fall of the Berlin Wall; ruminating on the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s transition to capitalism.

In a short career before his premature death at the age of 34, influential documentarian Wojciech Wiszniewski (1946-1981) produced just 12 films in total, yet he is now considered to be one of the most outstanding personalities of his generation. Known for his cutting edge and pioneering approach, his work broke conventions by employing bold techniques of framing, distorting sound and an associative use of editing to orchestrate or create a reality. His legacy is explored in Wojciech Wiszniewski Rediscovered, a programme of 6 of his shorts at the ICA on 12th April.

The documentary strand also celebrates the work of emerging Polish documentary filmmakers. Both Aneta Kopacz and Tomasz Śliwiński who studied at the Wajda Film School have been Oscar® nominated for this year’s Best Documentary Short Film category. Aneta Kopacz’s JOANNA is a tender portrait of a woman with terminal cancer and her attempts to prepare her young family for a world without her in it. Shot by Łukasz Żal, the talented young Polish cinematographer who is also Oscar® nominated for Ida, Joanna is a story of strength in the face of adversity. Tomasz Śliwiński’s OUR CURSE, is a personal statement by the director and his wife, the parents of a baby boy born with a rare and incurable disease. The film forms part of their process of coming to terms with his diagnosis.This year KINOTEKA will draw to a close with a special screening of cult Polish comedy THE CRUISE (1970) at the ICA (29th May), to mark Second Run’s DVD release.

KINOTEKA RUNS FROM 8 APRIL UNTIL 29 MAY 2015 IN LONDON AND EDINBURGH

King of Escape (2009) | DVD release

DIRECTOR: Alain Guiraudie

Cast: Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi, Pierre Laur, Luc Palun, Pascale Aubert

93min French with subtitles Comedy drama

Middle-aged gay tractor salesman Armand Lacourtade (Ludovic Berthillot) is a rough and ready country type who enjoys his food and a glass of red. But when he breaks up a local brawl to save sultry teenager Curly (Hafsia Herzi), he doesn’t expect her to fall in love with him. This is what happens in Alain Guiraudie comedy drama KING OF ESCAPE. A far cry from his award-winning hit Stranger By the Lake, this is rather a curio as gay-interest films go. Sharing the same laid back Provençale setting as Stranger, its upbeat summery charm contrasts with the sinister ambiance that haunted the thriller, although Armand is a similar character to the unlucky Henri (Patrick Assumcao).

Curly’s father, Daniel (Luc Palun), is one of Armand’s competitors, and there are no prizes for guessing why he is dead against his daughter’s budding romance an affable and harmless chap who has grown rather tired of the limited gay scene in their remote village, and rather fancies a cosy future with Curly. But when she falls for his easy charm, Dad turns nasty, pursuing the courting couple with a loaded gun.

The homosexuality here is a light bucolic ripple rather than a pulsating undercurrent, giving KING OF ESCAPE an almost irreverent comic tone: old men with unfeasible large members indulging in some over-the-top groaning are amusingly and indulgently weaved into a storyline that has some mainstream appeal, although it’s still not really a family film. As in several of Guiraudie’s previous outings, these older gay men are a normal part of the human landscape evoking a refreshingly laid back vibe, despite being a gay one.

That Armand should fall for this fresh young girl seems entirely plausible given the local competition and Guiraudie makes the salient point that sexuality, and indeed love, can be a moveable feast – often catching us unawares when we least expect it. Curly and Armand make convincing lovers in scenes of unbridled sensuality similar to those in the woods in Stranger. But there’s a twist to the tale involving Curly’s father and his mates.

KING OF ESCAPE is a simple story but an enjoyable one – Guiraudie drawing us slowly but surely into his world of southern camerarderie. His characterisation is inventive yet convincing and totally lacking in cliché in a setting that feels as comfortable as a pair of old shoes. Herzi is the main attraction and Berhillot’s relaxed style and economy of movement echo those of Henri in Stranger.

Sex scenes — mostly al fresco— are staged with humour and realism and the unlikely romance feels convincing in the heat of the Toulouse Summer. Well-formed characters bolster the comic background; from Francois Clavier’s serious gendarme who pops up when least expected, to Armand’s boss, played by Pascal Aubert. As a feisty old git, Jean Toscan provides a hilarious denouement. MT

RELEASE ON DVD FROM 23 MARCH 2015 COURTESY OF PECCADILLO PICTURES

Marius (2013) | DVD release

Director: Daniel Auteuil Writer: Daniel Auteuil FROM THE TRILOGY BY MARCEL PAGNOL

Cast: Raphael Personnaz, Daniel Auteuil, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Marianne Chazel, Victoire Belezey

93min Drama French with English subtitles

This is the first part of Daniel Auteuil’s adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s sun-drenched Provencal story of 1920s ordinary folk which follows young lovers MARIUS and FANNY. Intimate in feel and dialogue-driven, the focus here is on Marius and his wanderlust for the Southern seas. Very much a chamber piece with entertaining performances from the well-known cast, we get the occasional glimpse of the glorious seaside location of Marseilles, set to Alexandre Desplat’s suburb original score.

[youtube id=”yJRJHwggWUs” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Raphael Personnaz cuts a suave figure as Marius, the good-looking son of Danny Auteuil’s César, almost resembling an early Alain Delon with shades of Hugh Grant. He has no interest in tending his father’s bar and despite his strong feelings for Fanny, is not yet ready to settle down. Meeting with some local sailors, they offer him a possibility to join a voyage as they set sail for the Leeward Island and Marius is determined to satisfy his yearning for the big wide world.

Jean-Pierre Darroussin’s Monsieur Panisse is much more combative and feisty in this segment, waiting in the wings with his considerable fortune for Fanny’s hand in marriage,and Marius is well aware of the fact and insanely jealous of his older rival. But he refuses to confess his feelings or reveal the true object of his feeling even to his father. Meanwhile, Marianne Chazel plays the neurotic Honorine, Fanny’s mother, and is getting very upset and excited over the young couples ‘secret’ love-making which she discovers by accident on returning home from her weekly visit to her sister in Aix En Provence.

But Fanny is not entirely convinced that Marius is ready for commitment, despite his feelings for her, and she is under considerable pressure, for financial reasons and the future of her family’s respectability, to do the right thing.

NOW OUT ON DVD

X + Y (2014)

Dir.: Morgan Matthews Writer: James Graham

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Sally Hawkins, Rafe Spall, Eddie Marsan, Jo Yang

UK 2014, 111 min.

This first feature film by documentarian Morgan Matthews is loosely based on his 2007 doc Beautiful Young Minds with particular focus on the character of Daniel Lightwing.

Nathan Ellis, played brilliantly as a young boy by Edward Baker Close, is diagnosed early on with autism; he is mainly suffering from reduced emotional responses which cloud his relationships with others and anxiety about any form of bodily contact, His has a manic fear of change which manifests itself in an inability to eat a meal where the number pieces of meat (or ice cream scoops) does not represent a certain number, mainly seven, which happens to also be a prime number.

The only person who is able to get through Nathan’s defensive mechanisms is his father, who jokes Nathan’s fear away with a series of imaginative stunts. Unfortunately, the father is killed in a car crash whilst Nathan survives unharmed next to him. This traumatic experience leads to Nathan disappearing even more into the “safe” world of Mathematics, where the teenage Nathan (Asa Butterfield) is supported by his teacher Martin Humphreys (Spall), who is suffering from MS. The latter is starting a tentative relationship with Nathan’s long suffering Mum Julie (Hawkins), whilst Nathan is trying to qualify for the British team at the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) in Cambridge. The qualification tournament is held in Taipei, where Nathan is thrown into the orbit of a Zhang Mei (Yang), a member of the Chinese team, and the two gradually grow close.

It seems harsh to criticise X + Y for an overkill of extreme feelings, but Matthews does himself no favours by cranking up every scene for a maximum of emotional impact, ending it with a melodramatic exclamation mark. The accident, which kills Nathan’s father is traumatic enough, but Matthews has to top it with Julie running from the house, rushing to the wreck and finding her dead husband behind the wheel – even though the car travelled for a couple of minutes, making it rather improbable that she would have seen the crash. And Humphrey’s MS is torment enough in itself, there is no need to drag up his failure at a IMO long ago, to burden him on top with an emotional trauma of the past, totally apart from his inability to have an erection, which he confesses to Julie in a flippant manner. And before Nathan “falls” for Mei, he is attracted to Rebecca, the only female team member. When she is playing the piano, Nathan, who has never played, is able to play a romantic tune, just by mimicking Rebecca’s movements. Over-dramatising in this way, Matthews does not seem to acknowledge the fact that all autism sufferers like Nathan, who are in the medium of the spectrum, are just a step away from so-called normality, and do not need to be shown in a “tragic” light.

The acting is fabulous from a sterling British cast, including a cameo from Eddie Marsan’s British team leader at the IMO, who is treating his team very much like footballers – with a total lack of sensibility, just focused on winning. The camera work is rather conventional as far as the action in Britain is concerned, showing a rather cliché picture of Cambridge, but really comes alive in the streets of Taipei. That said, the general emotional overload leads to some rather cheesy scenes – overall a little less would have been so much more. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 MARCH 2015

Amour Fou (2014) | DVD release

Dir.: Jessica Hausner

Cast: Birte Schnoeink, Christian Friedel, Sandra Hueller, Stephan Grossmann, Barbara Schnitzler

Austria/Luxembourg/Germany 2014, 98 min.

AMOUR FOU opens in 1811, in with a painterly image of a Berlin intellectual household listening to Mozart’s “Das Veilchen”, performed by a professional singer. This is a typical setting for the classic “Hausmusik” (musical salon) chez Friedrich (Grossmann) and Henrietta (Schnoeink) Vogel and their twelve-year old daughter Pauline. Significantly, one of their guests is the poet and playwright Heinrich von Kleist (Friedel). The latter is in love with death and has already asked his cousin Marie (Hueller) to ‘die with him’ as a expression of their mutual feelings; Hausner implying that she is not the first to be asked this question. Henrietta, who appears a contented and modest mother and wife, is next in line, and she vehemently denies any interest in a suicide pact. Later on, she falls ill; what seems to be at first just a psychosomatic symptom, turns out be terminal cancer, and von Kleist seems to have found a companion to die with at last. But the couple’s first try falls due von Kleist’s boorish and petty behaviour, before the poet makes a second attempt to inveigle Henrietta at the “Kleine Wannsee” into to his pathetic scheme, near Potsdam on November 11th 1811.

Hausner portrays von Kleist not very sympathetically: he comes over as egocentric and not at all romantic or even physically appealing. After Henrietta’s illness is diagnosed, von Kleist rejects her wish for a suicide pact and tries his luck again with the much more upper class Marie, who rejects him again as she is now betrothed to a Frenchman. Left with no alternative, Heinrich returns, apologetic, to Henrietta. Friedrich Vogel seems to be a much better person, really in love with his wife, even though he treats her (as was common at the time) like an infant daughter. The most unpleasant person in the Vogel household is certainly Henrietta’s mother, a bitter and resentful person, who seems to dislike everyone.

Hausner (Lourdes) succeeds not only in revealing Heinrich as a manipulator, she also indirectly answers a question many asked after WWII: how could such a culture-loving nation like Germany commit so many crimes against humanity. The answer can be found in AMOUR FOU, and in historical figures like von Kleist himself. Right after listening to Mozart, the discussion at the table turns to the new Prussian tax laws which, according to Friedrich Vogel, a government official, will set the peasants free as with taxation comes more freedom. The undemocratic argument at the middle class table was “one cannot give the lower classes the freedom to do what they wish, since they are not capable of making decisions”.

Whilst cultural appreciation went hand in hand with reactionary arguments at this level of society, on a higher level, the togetherness of culture and aggression led to continuous wars: Frederick the Great, who played many instruments, among them the flute to a semi-professional level, led the most bloody wars of his period, including the Seven-Year war (1756-1763). He was not by chance the idol of Adolf Hitler. And one should not forget that Heinrich von Kleist himself spend the years between 1792 and 1799 in the Prussian army, seeing action in the “Rhine” campaign and leaving with the rank of a lieutenant. Hausner shows clearly, that all characters in her narrative have an emotional deficit, and that von Kleist’s false romanticism is really a death wish, accompanied by the need to murder somebody else in the process. There is a direct line from von Kleist’s Wagnerian dream of destruction and self-destruction, to Ucicky’s U-boot film Morgenrot (premiered not accidently on the 2.2.1933) and his hero declaring: “We Germans might not know how to live but we certainly know how to die”.

Hausner sets AMOUR FOU in expertly-framed and sumptuously-lit tableaux, showing distance and analytical endeavour and giving us a formal yet exquisitely pleasurable impression of looking at pictures in an exhibition. Schnoeink’s Henrietta is vulnerable, but still caring. All the men, including the doctor who treats her, suffer from a total lack of empathy; Friedel’s von Kleist leading the field. The set design and general aesthetic underline the lack of any sensual enjoyment in life: the bedroom of the Vogel’s looking like a luxury prison cell. AMOUR FOU is a brilliant portrait of a society unable to be in touch with emotions or any kind of sensuality. The relationship between von Kleist and Henrietta is symbolic: there is no passion or love, just a quiet resignation and a desire for death.

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6TH FEBRUARY 2015 | DVD from 5 March 2015

Difret (2014)

Dir.: Zeresenay Mehari

Cast: Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere, Rahel Tehome

Ethiopia/USA 2014, 99 min.

In an Ethiopian village, six men on horse back hunt down, capture and imprison a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl Hirut, capture and imprison her. Her would-be husband then rapes her, claiming that the abduction of a bride is his traditional right. But Hirut escapes, taking the gun of the man who raped her with and shooting him with it, when the men catch up with her. By traditional law she has to be executed, and the local DA does his best to get this sentence passed. But the village elder, to the protest of the majority of the men attending the meeting, rules that Hirut was too young to be married so, in mitigation he orders the girl’s family to pay reparations to the father of the killed man. Whilst the DA is still trying to go for the death sentence, Meaza Asheafi, Co-director of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association, takes on Hirut’s defence, finally challenging the Justice minister for upholding a law that basically allows men to abduct women and use and abuse them.

Based on facts, DIFRET (meaning ‘courage’ as well as ‘rape’ in Amharic, the official language of Ethopia) shows the struggle for basic womens’ rights; Asheafi’s organisation helped more than 30 000 women between 1995 and 2002. But Mehari not only shows the violence of men, but also what the prejudices of so-called traditional values have done to the victims. When Hirut meets the unmarried Asheafi for the first time, she inquires whether she is “a bad woman”. This refers to women who are not virgins at the time of marriage having to live alone, a custom prevalent in many rural areas of Ethopia. Hirut, does not only feel guilty, like many rape victims, but is not convinced that she has really “won” after her trial. She complains, justifiably, that the men in the village will take it out on her little sister, who she can’t protect, since she can’t return to the village. Luckily, the real Hirut is today working to help women victims like herself in Ethopia.

Since the number of 35mm films produced in Ethiopia is still in single figures – DIFRET was a co-production with the USA, Angelina Jolie being one of the executive producers – it would be churlish to be too critical about small details. But the lively camera work is excellent, showing the chasm between life in the countryside and Addis Ababa, the capital. Whilst Tizita Hagere’s Hirut gives a performance full of restraint, Meron Getnet as Asheafi is very convincing in her always-ready-to-fight-anybody attitude. DIFRET is testimony to a struggle so raw that few of us in Europe can really appreciate the terrible plight of its women protagonists. AS

BERLINALE REVIEW – NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 MARCH 2015

Appropriate Behaviour (2014)

Director: Desirée Akhavan

Cast: Desiree Akhavan, Rebecca Henderson, Scott Adsit

90 min. US DRAMA

After being voted ‘the ugliest girl’ at her school when she was fourteen, first time writer/director Desirée Akhavan wrote a play about it and from then on found a way to cope with life’s setbacks: “Telling stories is how I process life”. Her first feature APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR shows that there is a great deal to process.

Shirin (Akhavan) is the daughter of upper-middle class Iranians in New York. Whilst her family display all the outward appearances of success, Shirin struggles with her bi-sexuality and keeps it a secret from them. This may be have been one of the reasons her relationship with Maxine (Henderson) came to an end, since her ex-partner tried to push Shirin to “come out”. Most of the film is dedicated to this relationship and its aftermath. Shirin’s hunger for sex leads her into awkward situations: picking up a rather compliant male, she demands to be dominated, and the man takes flight. On another occasion, she is picked up by a couple but the ménage-à-trois never gets going, the other woman suggesting they play “Monopoly” instead. Shirin’s professional life is equally in disarray: she is supposed to teach a group of six-year-old boys how to make a video, but is overwhelmed by their obstructive and chaotic energy – whilst next door the girls of the same age group are only too willing to stage a remake of Hitchcock’s The Birds. Not surprisingly, Shirin’s class finishing film is titled The Fart. The gags come fast and furious, but utter absurdity and old-fashioned melodrama don’t always go together. And when Akhavan finally takes a breather in the last scene, it feels like a cop-out.

Playing the lead in her own drama – far from being ugly and a brilliant actress to boot – Akhavan’s debut feature suffers mainly from its weak screenplay, which is rather unstructured and episodic, the numbers being often hilariously funny in themselves, but lacking any dramatic coherence: it is more a revue of the funniest/saddest moments in the life of Shirin. The rather clumsy and prudish sex scenes do not help. Overall Akhavan shows that her heart is in the right place, but that an emotional outcry is not enough to make a successful feature film. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 MARCH 2015

Spring In a Small Town (1948)

Fei Mu’s post war melodrama Spring in a Small Town is considered one of the best Chinese films ever made and spearheads the BFI’s major exploration of Chinese Cinema that starts on 20 June 2014.

It concerns the delicate intricacies of a classic love triangle between The Husband (Shi Yu), The Wife (Wei Wei in a stunning debut) and The Guest (Li Wei Li) that took place in a remote country town in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War. This ‘dilemma of desire’ is very much an affair of discreet ecstasy rather than unbridled lust, as indicated by the formal titles of the characters, but loyalty and decency are the qualities at stake here rather than the personal wishes and sexual fulfilment of the individuals. The Dai family are somewhat down on their luck and the head of the household (Shi Yu) is now an invalid looking back on a prosperous past and a marriage that’s all but over, but the couple continue to go through the motions. A breath of fresh arrives from Shanghai in the shape Zhang (Li Wei) a childhood friend and now a successful and prosperous doctor. The potent chemistry between the newcomer and The Wife is palpable as she finds herself torn between erotic love and duty. Mei’s central theme here serves as a metaphor for re-building the past or embracing the future.

An enchanting voiceover gives substance to the emotions that the characters feel unable to confess through their shame, adding adding another dimension to this poignant story which is performed with great elegance and lightness of touch. The velvety visuals echo Rene Clément’s wonderful camerawork as the ensemble cast move graciously amongst the ruins of this Post War landscape. It’s clear to see how Fu Mei’s classic was a formative influence for Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-wai and others. MT

THE NEW RESTORED FILM IS now available on DVD/Blu

Quiet Bliss (2014) In Grazia di Dio | Cinema Made in Italy | 5-9 March 2015

Dir.: Edoardo Winspeare

Cast: Celeste Cascario, Laura Licchetta, Anna Boccadamo, Barbara de Mattheis, Amerigo Russo, Antonio Carluccio

Italy 2014, 127 min.

Edoardo Winspeare (Life Blood) has tried to create a modern family epic in the aesthetic forms of neo-realism, along the lines of Alice Rohwacher’s Cannes hit LE MERAVIGLIE. Whilst he not always succeeds, QUIET BLISS is an interesting family-saga, which is full of fights, reconciliations and renewed strife. Italy has always been known for its family businesses but Chinese competition and high loan-interests signal the end for a family-run clothing company in the Southern town of Salento. As a result, four women are made homeless and the family home has to be sold too. The mother, Salvatrice (Boccadamo) has three very different daughters: Adele (Cascario), who had run the factory with her cousin Vito (Russo), a goody-two-shoes, suffering from chronic psycho-somatic pain; Ina (Licchetta), who does not pull her weight in the factory and is more interested in the young men of town and Maria (Matteis), who has an university degree and is an aspiring actress. After Vito has unwisely taken up smuggling with the criminal Cracifixo, the men drift out of the picture to Switzerland, and leave the women to build a home and tend the olive orchards in the countryside. Bliss this is not, since none of the protagonists has changed – apart from Salvatrice, who marries the pious Cosimo. Adele still tries to “reform” her sisters, but her efforts are thwarted: Ina has an unwanted pregnancy and Adele’s selfishness nearly ruining Maria’s acting career. Her only friend in life seems to be Stefano, a former classmate, who tries to help her to reduce the still enormous loan payments to the bank.

QUIET BLISS begins intensely, the fight for survival in a global world is contrasted by the old-fashioned family intrigues. Together, they spell doom for Adele, who has to fight on two fronts. Her efforts at saving anything is finally thwarted by Vito’s smuggling affair, no wonder she sees men as an hindrance in life – just the opposite of Ina, who can’t have enough male attention. The tempo begins to limp when the women have arrived in the countryside, where too much time is spent on agricultural questions. The long shots, reminiscent of the Brothers Taviani, compensate for a sagging last hour. Cascario (Winspeare’s wife) and Ina (the director’s stepdaughter) head a very strong female cast. Camerawork tries to be innovative, working very hard to create a huge dichotomy between the factory and rural life, without making an idyll out of the latter. The length of QUIET BLISS is its main detractor, hampering the effectiveness of this otherwise watchable family drama. AS

SCREENING DURING CINEMA MADE IN ITALY FROM 5-9 MARCH 2015. TICKETS HERE

So Far, So Good (2014) | Cinema Made in Italy | 5-9 March 2015

FINO A QUI TUTTO BENE

Dir; Roan Johnson

Cast: Alessio Vassala, Silvia D’Amico, Melissa Anna Bartolini, Paolo Cioni, Isabella Ragonese, Gugliemo Favilla)

Italy 2014, 80 min.

Roan Johnson follows his first film, The First on the List, with SO FAR, SO GOOD, another outwardly enjoyable but ultimately empty film.

In Pisa, five flatmates are facing up to the end of their lives as students with varying degrees of success – or failure, as the case may be. Ilaria (D’Amico) is pregnant by a married man who has not returned to his wife but to a new mistress. Instead of writing her PHD thesis, she will have to return to her very traditional parents in a small town. Vicenzo (Vasallo), the only scientist in the household, has landed a job at Rejkavik university. His girlfriend Francesca (Bartolini) is a theatre student and actor like the rest of the group and doesn’t want to go with him and be jobless in Iceland. Cioni (Cioni), the odd man out and least selfish of the flatmates, offers to live with Ilaria and adopt her baby, in desperation. But over this whole story hangs the ghost of their flatmate Michele, who killed himself in a staged car accident a year ago. Andrea (Favilla), was going to follow Michele’s brother Marco to Nepal – until he bumps into his ex-girl friend Marta (Ragonese), an established TV actress, at the farewell party. So, the quintet is left at sea in a motorboat, without any gas in the tank.

SO FAR, SO GOOD suffers from the fact that Johnson can never make up his mind if he wants to direct a rather silly comedy or something more substantial. His protagonists are a selfish bunch and not very endearing. The men don’t even try to hide their rank machismo. The women blame the men for everything, whilst having a tendency to indulge in self-pity. All this would work with a much more serious approach, but Johnson takes a much more light-hearted look at their ups and downs, which are admittedly funny but detract from the underlying problems of the group. Instead of showing five people in search of an identity, SO FAR, SO GOOD is just another comedy about a group of young people who don’t know how to grow up. A shame then, since the ensemble acting is brilliant and the fresh and lively camerawork shows Pisa from an interesting and novel perspective. An opportunity missed. AS

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY RUNS FROM 5-9 MARCH 2015. FULL PROGRAMME HERE

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) MUBI

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Writers: Joseph Delteil/Dreyer

Cast: Maria Falconetti, Eugene Silvain, Andre Berley, Maurice Schutz, Antonin Artaud, Michel Simon

80min Drama | Biography

The close-up is one of the most potent means by which a filmmaker can make a point. It tells us what a character is thinking or feeling in an instant. Yet close-ups can produce emotional overkill – the ‘lesbian’ love story Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) is an example of employing the technique so often that the film is unable to breathe.

So what are we now to make of Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc where the entire drama is the close up? It has been called the supreme close-up film (not quite true for medium shots are also inserted). Yet Dreyer inescapably creates a film where the human face is the focal point. The face of Joan (the accused) and the faces of the clergy (the interrogators) are filmed with an unbearable tension.

The Passion of Joan of Arc taxes the viewer not with an excess of looks, but with intense spiritual intimacy. The critic Béla Balázas described Dreyer’s film as ‘a drama of the spirit’ enacted ‘in duels between looks and frowns.’ Joan is played by the French stage actress Maria Falconetti. Dreyer certainly found his Joan with Falconetti. He said that ‘She didn’t act for me. She just used her face.’ Falconetti’s androgynous beauty gives her performance a timeless quality. Her ‘acting’ or ‘being’ is magnificent.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is based on the 15th century records of Joan’s actual trial. Being a silent film we only get inter-titles. However Dreyer asked his actors to read out the records, even though we cannot hear what’s being said. This was Dreyer’s need for scrupulous authenticity. He also asked for the building of a medieval town and fort (rarely used) and the tonsuring of the male actors. Most of his film takes place in a set of stripped down purity. It was never meant to be a costume drama with medieval ornamentation. Not only does it look accurate, but it is also anti-naturalistic. To get at the soul of Joan’s story, Dreyer employed a radical editing style. A tableau of close-ups is often ‘irrationally’ employed to reveal the inner conflicts of each character, and not just logically to whom the dialogue is being addressed. The film has distortions of time and space. Actor’s bodies are rarely filmed below the waist. This abstraction takes the audience off guard. If space seems very strange, then cinematic time is also compressed, leaving us unsure if it’s an hour, day or a week that’s passed.

Many consider The Passion of Joan of Arc to be one of the pinnacles of silent cinema. It is certainly one of the best examples. Perhaps Dreyer’s last film Gertrud (1964) would be my favourite amongst his films. But Joan’s trial has to be experienced. 87 years old and still so essential, disconcerting and very moving.

A final suggestion. To fully experience Joan’s trial play the DVD/BLU RAY without choosing a music option. For me it’s probably the only silent film that benefits from being watched in total silence. Alan Price

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC IS AVAILABLE ON MUBI

The Killers (1964) Blu-ray

THE KILLERS, is out on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK on 24th February. One of the first post-noir movies, The Killers, based on a Heminway short story, is a sizzling sun-drenched thriller packed with shadows where the darkness at the heart of its protagonists’ souls is allowed to rot in the heat of the day. Probably best known as the film which was originally intended to be the first TV movie, but pulled by broadcasters due to what was seen as overtly graphic violence, THE KILLERS, is the film which established Lee Marvin: achingly cool, unnervingly relaxed and menacingly brutal. He went on to star in a slew of hits including another sixties seminal outing POINT BLANK. Clu Gulager provides sophisticated contrast as his venal partner in crime, together with a strong support cast of Angie Dickinson as the frosty blond, John Cassavetes and Ronald Reagan. Not surprisingly, Lee Marvin won a BAFTA as Best Foreign Actor (1966) for his portrayal of Charlie Strom.

EXTRAS: ARCHIVE INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR, DON SIEGEL

COLLECTOR’S BOOKLET FEATURING NEW WRITING ON THE FILM

Cinema Made in Italy | Cine Lumiere London | 5-9 March 2015

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY is back in London with a five-day mini festival showcasing the latest in Italian features and documentaries from new and established directing talent.

There will be plenty of opportunities for a lively exchange of views during the packed programme of screenings, Q&As and discussions with the filmmakers themselves. The 2015 line-up offers a variety of titles drawn from arthouse cinema, comedy and documentary fare. Ermanno Olmi’s wartime drama GREENERY WILL BLOOM AGAIN (Torneranno I Prati) will open this year’s festival and there will be a chance to see Gianni Di Gregorio’s witty comedy GOOD FOR NOTHING (Buoni a Nulla). Have a look at the full screening programme here:

GREENERY WILL BLOOM AGAIN (Torneranno i Prati) **** a finely-tuned wartime drama;

QUIET BLISS (In Grazia a Dio) a family goes back to the countryside after suffering great loss in this tender and beautifully-crafted drama.

THE LACK a sumptuous exploration of female suffering, separation and loss set in Iceland and Sicily.

THE MAFIA KILLS ONLY IN SUMMER (La Mafia Uccide solo d’Estate) charismatic and upbeat, “Pif’s” dark comedy follows the history of the ‘anti-Mafia’ seen through the eyes of a Sicilian boy.

SO FAR SO GOOD (Fino a qui, tutto bene) a comedy about a group twentysomethings on the cusp of real life

THE ICE FOREST (La Foresta di Ghiaccio) Claudio Noce’s icebound thriller stars Bosnian actor/director Emir Kusturica

9×10 NOVANTA Documentary shorts from a selection of directors

PERFIDIA – drama centering on one man’s fight to motivate his aimless son

DARKER THAN MIDNIGHT (Piu Buio di Mezzanotte) a young man’s journey into poverty on the streets of Catania

GOOD FOR NOTHING (Buoni a Nulla) comedy from Gianni Di Gregorio

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY TAKES PLACE AT THE CINE LUMIERE LONDON SW7 FROM 5 – 9 MARCH 2015

Wooden Crosses (1932) Les Croix de Bois | Dual format DVD/Blu

Director/Writer: Raymond Bernard Roland Dorgelès

Cinematography: Jules Kruger and René Ribault

Cast: Pierre Blanchar, Charles Vanel, Antonin Artaud, Paul Azaïs, René Bergeron, Raymond Cordy

One of the greatest wartime films LES CROIX DE BOIS is a work of staunch realism filmed in sombre black and white and re-launched to commemorate the onset of the Great War in 1914. Released in 1932, it provided a stark contrast to other Hollywood fare that year: Tarzan, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus and I Am a Fugutive from a Chain Gang. The impression its simple message of truth and tragedy made was overwhelming. Today it remains a valuable record of heroism: thrilling, pitiful but above all, sincere.

Adapted closely from the literary work by Roland Dorgelès, (who served as a corporal in the 39th Infantry Division), even down to the dialogue passages, WOODEN CROSSES is expertly-crafted to present a searing account of one regiment’s experience of the battlefield, without the romanticism of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); Hearts of the World (1918) or A Farewell to Arms (1932) or the glory of King Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925); Howard Hughes’s Hell’s Angels (1930) or Howard Hawkes’ s The Road to Glory (1933).

WOODEN CROSSES tells it like it was, without melodrama or exaggeration yet still expressing the poignancy of simple acts of martyrdom as the soldiers share cheerful bonhomie and dark humour, keeping their emotions in check with courage despite the awfulness of it all. And although the story is seen from a French perspective, the appeal is universal and evergreen. It is the true account of a soldier who is, in essence, Everyman. Set in 1915, in Northern France, the film depicts the dark months of the 39th Battalion that ended in tragedy for all concerned. A call to arms that started with the hope of success and triumph, ends in a row of wooden crosses. Pierre Blanchar plays law student, Gilbert Demachy, who signs up to join the war effort along with other ordinary men: bakers; farmers and manual workers. After a gruelling series of events depicting courage and loyalty in the face of endless defeat, Gilbert Demachy ends his life alone in the mud of the battlefield, as the parade of surviving soldiers marches on, each carrying a wooden cross. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON DUAL FORMAT DVD AND BLU/RAY COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA SERIES FROM 30 MARCH 2015

Hinterland (2014)

Dir.: Harry Macqueen; Cast: Harry Macqueen, Lori Campbell

UK 2014, 78 min.

Brilliant film debuts are rare: mostly we get to watch “calling-cards for Hollywood”; but British director/writer/actor Harry Macqueen’s HINTERLAND, produced on a shoestring (£8,000) is a film poem, realistic and magical with minimal dialogue, this two-hander delicately draws a picture of a young woman and her male friend set against the gentle Cornish landscape, to tell the story of a re-union which eventually becomes a homage to youth and its lost illusions.

When Harvey (Macqueen) fetches his friend Lola (Campbell) from her London flat to travel to Cornwall in an ancient Volvo – Lola greets the car enthusiastically with “Hello, old friend” – we know very little about them, apart from the fact that Lola has been away for a long time. The importance of her presence for Harvey lets us assume that he had not had the best of times during her absence. All this is relayed to the audience indirectly, sparing us long monologues and details. Instead we share their feeling of nostalgia as they set out to the Cornish seaside to visit a cottage where they had been close and happy together some time ago. Lola takes photos on the way, as if to prove to herself that the past is still alive.

In the cottage they revert to being young and silly, using walkie-talkies whilst evoking the past as if they were suddenly middle-aged. But the brittleness of both of them shows through: Harvey talks about a relationship with a certain Sarah, who wanted children and security, and found both with another man. Harvey’s professional life is equally unsatisfactory; he is re-writing his novels forever and the work in a publishing house is badly paid and boring – he “just tries to get noticed”. Lola, a musician, seems to have come to a sort of end-point too; she will try to support her mother, who has been left by a partner who had cheated on her for a long time. She complains: “What is it with middle aged-men, it’s like a switch is pulled and they are off and mess everything up”. Both Harvey and Lola swear never to become ‘mature” the way most people do: children and marriage after thirty. They’d rather hide forever in the illusionary world of their youth where everything is pure and noble, the grey of adulthood has no place in their wishful, independent world. There is a heavy languidness about them; a much too early resignation; an expense of spirit which leaves only place for nostalgia. Two wounded animals looking for cover in their past.

Macqueen and Campbell have a near telepathic understanding, they react to each other subtly, always emotionally alert. The camera captures the seaside imaginatively as a (lost) paradise, a dreamy, misty, fabled land from the past. Every object touched in the cottage is full of meaning and this is accentuated by a change of light. Finally, the music is unobtrusive but stays, like the whole film, for a long time with the viewer.

HINTERLAND’s uniqueness is perfectly captured by the mood of the first stanza of Verlaine’s poem, taking the name from its first line: “It’s Languorous ecstasy/It’s amorous syncope/It’s all the wood’s trembling/In the breeze’s embrace/It’s in branches grey/All the small voices singing. A poignant, magical debut. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 27 FEBRUARY 2015

HINTERLAND is a carbon neutral film. www.hinterlandthefilm.com

The Lack (2014) |Cinema Made in Italy 2015

Directors: Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni

70mins Experimental | Drama | Italian

Women’s suffering has long been the subject of World cinema and particularly in Italy. Curiously titled The LACK is a semi-experimental mood piece that plays a tune with four different themes: abandonment, separation, courage and exertion and their effects on six isolated female characters. With minimal dialogue and some sumptuously inventive camera effects, a visual narrative explores their inner journey of loneliness, discovery and eventually, self-healing in natural surroundings.

Best known for their work as video artists, directing duo Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni call themselves THE MASEBO. A metaphor for survival, their film concentrates on sound and visuals to express the palpable emotions of their female protagonists as they grapple with the reality of life. The opening scenes play out like a slick advert for Volvo:, a woman wakes up abandoned in a bedroom and tries desperately to call her lover without success. In tears and distraught, she takes to the road and drives recklessly through a vast and frozen snowscape with only a flimsy white gown to protect her from the elements. As she leave sthe vehicle, the camera follows her in close-up and slow-mo, painting an ethereal picture of ice blue alienation against the windswept wasteland.

The second segment studies an Oriental beauty alone inside a massive ferry boat. Seawater gushes against ancient rock formations and craggy cliffs as waves wash over the echoing steel plates of the hull. Escaping to the shoreline she is warmed by the setting sun. Only her sighs of exertion and the mournful sound of the seagulls are audible in the marine wilderness as she installs a large searchlight on the cliff face, illuminating the approaching night.

Part 3 is set in remote Steppes of Russia where an enormous pipeline is carrying oil or gas from an inland refinery, belching smoke creates puffy clouds into the endless skyline. A woman flights for survival swaddled in furs. Another woman floats flotsom-like in the aftermath of flood desperately clinging to domestic detritis in possibly the most conceptual segment which is intercut with images of a little girl dressed in white. The final segment is probably the most bleak. The weaker sex emerges tough yet vulnerable, suffering throughout.

MASEBO have exhibited their work in museums and film festivals as well, such as Venice, Locarno, Rome, Istanbul, Lisbon, Athens, Miami and Reykjavik. Since 2002 they have been working with the French writer Michel Houellebecq with whom they have written and produced 11.22.03 and THE WORLD IS NOT A LANDSCAPE, video art piece with Juliette Binoche, it had its premier in Paris at the Grand Palais.

REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2014. SCREENING DURING CINEMA MADE IN ITALY

A Dark Reflection (2014)

Dir.: Tristan Loraine

Cast: Georgina Sutcliffe, Rita Ramnani, TJ Herbert, Nicolas Day, Mark Dymond, Stephen Tompkinson

UK 2014, 102 min DRAMA .

Tristan Loraine, ex-pilot turned filmmaker, tackles the dirty secrets of the aviation industry in A DARK REFLECTION, comparing the scandal surrounding the use of toxic organophosphates in all planes (with the exception of the Boeing 787) to the repression of medical facts by the tobacco industry for nearly half a century. The highly toxic tricresyl phosphate (TCP) is used in the oil which service the jet engines, which is then sent unfiltered as “bleed air” into the cockpit and the passenger section. The problem has been known to the airline industry since 1954, but only came to light fully after the smoking ban on flights, enforced in the 80s, when passengers started to complain about a certain smell in the cabins.

Unlike in his documentary WELCOME ABOARD: TOXIC AIRLINES (2007), Loraine, who lost his pilot license in 2006 due to inhaling TCP, has chosen a feature film structure for A DARK REFLECTION, in a bid to engage a wider audience in his struggle against the cover-up of the airline industry. After a traumatic experience in the Middle East where her cameraman was shot in her presence, investigating journalist Helen (Sutcliffe) takes it easy with a stint at a local home county newspaper. Her boyfriend Joe (Herbert) is a pilot who has been suspended after a near accident which be believes was caused by some toxic air. Helen, with the help of cub-reporter Natasha (Ramnani), investigates more cases regarding near misses and passenger complaints with “JaspAirlines”, whose founder and chairman puts pressure on his CEO Tyrell (Dymond), to shadow Helen and Natasha. But the testament of a pilot (Tompkinson), dying of brain cancer, connects the airline clearly with the use of the toxic TCP. After Helen takes probes from the aircraft’s cabin walls during a flight to Glasgow, the toxicology report is damming for “JaspAirlines”. Tyrell, the CEO, pressured by his wife, has to make a decision for the forth-coming shareholders meeting.

Whilst an Australian Senate investigation in 1999 found proof for the connection between TCP and the (mostly short term) sickness of passengers and the more long term affects for pilots and cabin crew in the USA, the Californian Senator Diane Feinstein (Dem), has taken on the case with Federal Aviation Authority since 2010, Here at home, Baroness Mare called the repressed scandals of the air liners “a dark reflection on the industry”, giving Loraine’s film its title.

Working with a rather awkward script and some pretty clunky dialogue – at one point a middle-aged newspaper editor (played by Paul Antonry-Barber) says “Hello, how are you hanging?” – the ensemble cast manage to hold out in convincing performances, especially from Mark Dymond and Georgina Sutcliffe although Nicolas Day is slightly hammy as Mr Jasper. The camera’s panoramic shots pick up the glorious, sprawling mansions of owner and CEO, showing what they have to loose. Ironically, Loraine, who has clocked up 16 films as a producer and director (mostly documentaries) since his retirement as a pilot, was asked as a young man by his father to visit a film school but his love of flying made him choose an aviation career. MT/AS

SCREENING DURING THE UK FILM FESTIVAL 2014 and ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 FEBRUARY 2015

Catch Me Daddy (2014)

Dir.: Daniel Wolfe, Matthew Wolfe

Cast: Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Conor McCarron Garry Lewis

UK 2014, 111 min.

The debut film of the Wolfe brothers, Daniel and Matthew, can’t be faulted on any technical level: with Robbie Ryan’s stunning cinematography and an atmospheric soundtrack featuring music by Patti Smith, Tim Buckley and Nicki Minaj. However, their narrative of a damsel-in-distress (purportedly based on reality) raises so many personal and ideological questions which are never successfully explores make for a cliched chase thriller where type-cast cyphers are drowned out in a cacophony of perpetual motion on the Moors.

Laila (Ahmed), a teenager who has left her traditional British Pakistani family, is living with her out-of-work boyfriend Aaron (McCarron) in a trailer on the Yorkshire Moors. In a bid to track her down, her father sends out two groups of men: a Pakistani gang led by Laila’s brother Zaheer; the other by cocaine addict, Tony (Garry Lewis in fine form). Zaheer reaches the trailer first but is killed accidentally by Laila in a struggle. More struggles ensue followed by a long draw-out final scene where bitter vengeance is finally brought to bear.

The best thing about CATCH ME DADDY is its atmospheric setting on the windswept Yorkshire Moors where some night-time chase scenes are well-crafted and exhilarating. What pretends to be social realism here is hackneyed victimisation that only goes to re-inforce gender and racial stereotypes: the Pakistanis are all shown as fanatics, indulging in a senseless killing and Laila’s reason for leaving the family is never revealed but touched upon briefly and questionably when one of his group calls Zaheer a “sister fucker”.

CATCH ME DADDY, with its relentless, one-dimensional action mode, leaves no time for contemplation, throwing up so many important questions without ever trying to answer them. The theme of “honour killing” is used merely as background noise to this depressing boys-only action movie which reduces Laila to the usual ‘victim status’ of a female, totally lacking any respect or individuality. MT/AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 FEBRUARY 2015

Greenery Will Bloom Again | Torneranno i prati (2014) | Cinema Made in Italy

Writer/Director Ermanno Olmi

Cast:Claudio Santamaria, Camillo Grassi, Niccolò Senni,

80min Italian Drama

English translations of subtitles and films titles leave a great deal to be desired. Are they all being churned out from a trailer park in deepest Albania by teenagers googling internet translation sites? Not that I have anything against either but the English in the subtitles simply does not do these arthouse and independent films any favours – it does not reflect the tone or content accurately. The English translation of TORNERANNO I PRATI is GREENERY WILL BLOOM AGAIN. Surely MEADOWS WILL BLOOM AGAIN would more evocatively conjure up the hope of Peace and renewed prosperity after the grim hardship of War in this starkly drawn First World War drama by one of Italy’s most talented contemporary filmmakers, Ermanno Olmi.

Shot in a sombre palette of gunmetal and taupe by cinematographer (and son) Fabio Olmi, the anti-War story unfolds in the desolate mountains of North Eastern Italy near the Austrian border, where a winter landscape envelopes a group of exhausted and grimy soldiers, chilled to the bone despite being swaddled by heavy (and sodden) uniforms. Led by a strong performance from Claudio Santamaria as The Major, who arrives with a dispatch that can only lead to tragedy for all concerned in the bunker of death. In the meltdown that follows, soldiers lose their lives and are interred in the heavy snow.

The strength of Olmi’s drama lies in his stark depiction of the miserable drudgery of combat: an uneasy tension builds as the platoon waits in appalling conditions for certain death either from the elements or the enemy. TORNERANNO I PRATI is a gruelling mood piece that fails to match the complex narrative of his previous outings THE PROFESSION OF ARMS or TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS but nonetheless conveys the pity and futility of war. This is war that affects ordinary working men equally – there are no good or bad characters here, just simple farmers or tradesmen forced to fight in a senseless battle where no one is ultimately a winner, Olmi’s tragedy delivers its message simple and soberly.MT

Reviewed at Berlinale 2015 and screening at the CINEMA MADE IN ITALY festival here in March.

Tales of Hoffmann (1951)

Dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Cast: Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tcherina, Ann Ayars, Robert Rounseville, Leonide Massine

UK 1951, 138 min.

Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann was his last, unfinished work, his only serious opera. After the success of THE RED SHOES, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger looked for another ballet related project; in particular Pressburger, whose first love was music, wanted to realise the idea of “a composed film”. Whilst Moira Shearer, the star of THE RED SHOES had made clear, that she was never going to act in another film, Pressburger eventually talked her into appearing in THE TALES OF HOFFMANN, which was introduced as an ‘Archers’ production in October 1949; Alexander Korda’s ‘British Lion Film’ would distribute.

The poet Hoffmann (Rounseville) falls in love with Stella (Shearer), a ballerina. Watching her on stage, his leaves and wanders into a tavern, where a group of students ask him to tell them stories. His three stories are all connected by disappointed love: Olympia (Shearer) turns out to be a mechanical doll, Giuletta (Tcherina) wants to steal Hoffmann’s soul, and finally, Antonia (Ayars), a consumptive opera singer, dies whilst singing an aria. Hoffmann himself collapses at the end of his last story, just when Stella enters the tavern. She is lead away by Hoffmann’s eternal rival. But the muse of Poetry appears, and beckons Hoffmann to chose a life in the service of literature.

The film’s music is conducted by Sir Thomas Beeacham; of the cast, only Ayars and Rounseville sang. This was not a problem, since the film was shot entirely as a silent film (later to be dubbed in a studio), on the old silent stage at Shepperton studios, the largest in Europe, which had been constructed for THINGS TO COME in 1936. Shooting took place from July to the end of September 1950. When Korda was first approached by Pressburger and Powell about the project, he asked innocently, if any of the film makers had actually seen a stage version. Powell admitted that he never did, whilst Pressburger could claim to have played the second violin in the orchestra during performances in Prague, but “from where I sat, I could not see much”. Korda bought the duo tickets for a performance of he opera in Vienna, but their plane was delayed, they landed in the Russian zone, and had to wait for visas into the British zone, where the performance was held – they entered the theatre finally, when Antonia gave up her ghost.

The film was premiered on 1st April 1951 in New York, and seventeen days later in London, Queen Mary, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart being in the audience. Critical acclaim was great, but the film just recouped its production costs, being only shown in selected cinemas. On April 20th, the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won two awards. According to Powell, he had a fight with Korda and Pressburger, who both wanted to cut the third act of the picture, as to enhance its chances of winning the “Golden Palme”. This is highly unlikely, since there were only two days between the London and Cannes performance, hardly time for a recut – and Kevin Macdonald, who wrote Pressburger’s biography, claims, that “Powell wanted to see things as he saw them, not like they happened”. But THE TALES OF HOFFMANN was the beginning of the end for the working relationship of the Powell/Pressburger duo, they seemed to have been a lack of trust, which resulted finally in them going their different professional ways. AS

A 4K RESTORATION WILL BE AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY/DVD FROM 23 MARCH 2015, AS PART OF THE STUDIOCANAL VINTAGE CLASSICS COLLECTION

Introduction from Martin Scorsese

Interview with Thelma Schoonmaker

Tommy (2014) | DVD blu release

Director: Tarik Saleh

Writer: Anton Hagwall

Cast: Moa Gemmell, Lykke Li, Ola Rapace, Johan Rabaeus, Alexiej Manveloj

93min Thriller Sweden

As dark and intransigent as a Swedish January, Erik Saleh’s TOMMY is a moody crime drama which is really all about a brave and beautiful girl and some very nasty men. The girl in question is Estelle, played by Nordic beauty, Moa Gammel, who plays a resilient but vulnerable gangster’s Moll in search of her husband’s share of the loot in one of Sweden’s biggest robberies. For all its arthouse creativity and sumptuous cinematography, Saleh has made an extremely brutal thriller where scenes of terrible torture (involving electric hobs) and sudden violence rupture the dreamlike quality of its atmospheric camerawork in and around a snowswept Stockholm. That said, TOMMY works best in these moments of tension in contrast to the softer scenes with Estelle and her daughter which often slow the pace, making it feel longer than its 93 minutes of running time.

Estelle is on a journey back to Sweden with her husband Tommy’s ashes – in the opening moments we see him being murdered on a beach in Sri Lanka, the victim of his own crime spree. Searching out his co-conspiritors for a share in the proceeds, Estelle pretends to all and sundry that Tommy is still alive and coming home to collect his winnings. But despite her shrewdness and cunning, she cannot compete with the murderous intentions of Steve (chillingly portrayed by Johan Rabaeus) and Bobby (Skyfall’s Ola Rapace) who are hardened criminals with no intention of playing by the rules. Best known for her Swedish TV work and films such as SUDDENLY and LAPLAND ODYSSEY, Moa Gammel’s portrait of fragility contrasting with the venality of the criminal underworld, is compelling from start to finish, marking her out as a sparkling star in the Nordic Noir firmament. MT

OUT ON DVD courtesy of ARROW FILMS

87th Academy Awards | Foreign Language Section |OSCAR WINNER IDA

Short-listed films for the archaicly entitled “Foreign Language Section” have been announced for the Academy Awards 2015. Eighty three were submitted to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and only five of these are nominated. The international ceremony will take place on February 22, 2015 in Los Angeles.

Here are our reviews of some of the contenders:

WILD TALES, Damian Szifron, Argentina (right)

TANGERINES , Zaza Urushadze Estonia

TIMBUKTU, Abderrahmane Sissako Mauritania

IDA, Paweł Pawlikowski Poland (title)

LEVIATHAN, Andrey Zvyagintsev Russia

Ida won the Oscar in the 87th ACADEMY AWARDS ON 22 FEBRUARY 2015

The Boy Next Door (2015)

Dir.: Rob Cohen Writer: Barbara Curry

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, Ian Nelson, John Corbett, Kristen Chinoweth, Lexi Atkins

USA 2015, 91 min.

Director Rob Cohen is a veteran. Best known for the THE FAST AND FURIOUS franchise, he has been active in TV with Miami Vice and Private Eye, as well as producing five episodes of Topless Prophet. There’s nothing new about the THE BOY NEXT DOOR, a tepid drama that allows him to show off all the qualities of his past endeavours with a riff on the ‘cougar’ theme.

High School teacher Claire Peterson (Lopez) lives alone with her son Kevin (Nelson), her husband having left her for another woman. When next-door neighbour Noah (Guzman) arrives, Claire falls for him even though he is of school age and will end up in her classics class. After a one-night stand, Claire returns to being a responsible adult but Noah does not take ‘no’ for an answer. His behaviour becomes more and more weird; making a video of their lovemaking and plastering her classroom with pornographic photos – which Claire miraculously removes before anyone notices. When she finds out that Noah’s father had a fatal “accident” with his mistress, she puts two and two together, since Kevin and his father Garrett (sensible Claire is now trying for a reconciliation), had an narrow escape when their car’s brakes failed. After Noah kills Claire’s best friend Vicky (Chinoweth), the scene is set for the family Peterson to face Noah in an old garage equipped with a range of lethal weapons.

THE BOY NEXT DOOR is a laughable affair – unfortunately not for the right reasons: at the beginning, we see the scantily-clad Claire peeping out of her window, enjoying the sight of Noah’s muscular backside as he ‘showers-up’, returning her glances. Their over-the-top love-making is equally hilarious, a fifth rate version of the Anne Bancroft/Dustin Hoffmann encounter. Another ‘highlight’ is Noah’s action between the sheets with Allie (Atkins), a student fancied by Kevin, watched from the same window as before with envy and disgust by Claire. THE BOY NEXT DOOR is neither a full-blooded slasher or a soft porn affair, but an unimaginative try at lurid sensationalism, that succeeds in making FATAL ATTRACTION look like a art house movie. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 February 2015

Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter (2014)

Writer/Director: Nathan Zellner, David Zellner

Cast: Rinko Kikuchi, Nobuyuki Katsube, Shirley Venard, David Zellner, Nathan Zellnar,

The surreal collides with the banal in Nathan and David Kellner’s genre-blurring black comedy drama, in which the directors also star. Kumiko, a doltishly passive Japanese woman, abandons her dull life as a secretary in Tokyo to travel to snowbound Minnesota, on the strength of an imagined treasure trove she sees buried in a field somewhere outside Mineapolis, while watching a scratchy DVD. She is aided and abetted by the kindness of the local countryfolk who help her on her mission and provide humorous texture to this quirky but endearing road movie. If you can suspend your disbelief and tune into the weird humour, this is a work of inspired genius and well-planned eccentricity: Alexander Payne put his money into it and the Kellner Brothers’ drama has shades of Joel and Ethan Coen about it. MT 105min.

REVIEWED DURING BERLINALE 2014 | FORUM

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 20 FEBRUARY 2015

Pioneer Heroes (2015) | Berlinale 2015

Director|Writer: Natalya Kudryashova

Cast: Aleksei Mitin, Daria Moroz, Natalya Kudryashova

116mins Drama, Russian Federation

Writer\Director Natalya Kudryashova’s debut drama PIONEER HEROES, in which she also performs, sets out with good intentions to be a sort of Russian BOYHOOD. Sadly, the result is a muddled documentary-style piece that overstays its welcome, despite some convincing and even touching performances from the assemble cast.

Kudryashova follows the lives of three Russian kids born in the Soviet twilight years: Andrey, Olga and Katya, who attend the ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’ youth academy in the late 80s, until the present today. As kiddies, still wet behind the ears and full of excitement and patriotic enthusiasm, they are desperate to do the right thing by their country and we see them pledging allegiance to organisation. The only one who stands out from the crowd is Andrey – refusing pointblank to sing a solo in the choir, he later grows into a troublesome and frustrated young man, unhappily dating the endearingly gentle Katya. As little girls, Katya and Olga take their soviet origins very seriously, Olga even informing the authorities about her father’s crude attempts at home-brewing when she happens to a watch a political propaganda broadcast on TV, exhorting comrades to snitch on illegal bootleggers.

It emerges that the bright aspirations of the Soviet Union of their childhood has failed them in adulthood: their immense pride for their country as kids simply does not prepare them for mundane modern life, leaving them saddled with expectations that simply to not deliver success, fulfillment or even security in the sober reality of contemporary Russia. A qualified actress, Olga is receiving psychotherapy for depression, PR girl Katya lacks the self esteem as a young woman to command any respect or attention from Andrey whose thoughts are completely focused on making headway in his political career, rather than enjoying his relationship in their upmarket modern apartment in Moscow. On his way to a business meeting he manages to help out in a unfolding tragedy and wonders whether his intervention is really what it means to be ‘a hero’ in modern times. This is a sad and depressing view of today’s Russia from a disenchanted and desperate voice that would make Stalin turn in his grave. MT

BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2015

Love Is Strange (2013)

Director: Ira Sachs

Writer: Mauricio Zacharias

Cast: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Darren E Burrows, Marisa Tomei, Charlie Tahan,

94min Drama US

Ira Sach’s previous feature Keep the Lights On was an exploration of gay love seen from the perspective of a young man in a troubled relationship. Fraught with despair and conflict it was a difficult film to watch. Here is something more gentle and kind about a couple who have been together for nearly forty years are appear to have found true love and contentment together.

Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) finally decide to formalise their relationship but scarcely have the champagne glasses been put away than outside influences put a strain on their their early days of marriage. George is fired from his job at the local church because his new status is not considered acceptable there. During an odd interlude with their their close family and neighbours the pair fail to raise enough capital to pay their bills so while selling their place and searching for new accommodation Ben moves in with his nephew Elliott (Darren E. Burrows), his wife Kate (Marisa Tomei) and their teenage son, Joey (Charlie Tahan). George manages to find a room with some neighbours.

Forced apart, their relationship comes under strain and this is where Love Is Strange gradually becomes unconvincing. For a start, it seems implausible that this affluent-looking and established couple in their sixties/seventies would prey upon their younger family for help with accommodation and then agree to living apart in a rather bogus set-up. Once Ben is established at his nephew’s place he becomes unbearably self-centred and particularly irritating in his insensitivity towards Kate; seemingly unable to understand how their family functions and lacking any graciousness in his status as a guest. Yet when he meets up with George in the evenings, he behaves in quite a different way: as a normally-adjusted and sympathetic adult. As a result we feel little for this rather spoilt old man whose only focus is to paint on the roof of his nephew’s apartment block in the afternoons. As George, Alfred Molina shines as the more mellow and appealing character of the couple. The fact that they are gay is incidental here as Sachs’s narrative focuses on love, coupledom and the nuclear and wider family dynamics. Whether Sachs is simply telling a story or whether he is trying to probe and explore the differences between the intimate love of two people (essentially coupledom ) and the love of a couple and their inherent responsibility to their kids and extended family network and community is unclear. However, the result is that we feel nothing for Ben and George as they simper over their cocktails but every sympathy for Kate and Elliott, who are holding their union together with the additional stress of kids, while trying to be supportive to their rather cantankerous uncle.

Make of it what you will. Ira Sachs and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias craft some interesting characters in this slim but engaging drama which has some wistfully dreamy moments (such as those when Ben is painting over the New York skyline) that allow space to drift and imagine the strangeness of love, responsibility and human dynamics to an appealing piano score. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 FEBRUARY 2015

The Misfits (1960)

Dir.: John Huston; Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach, Thelma Ritter; USA 1960, 120 min.

Nearly four month in production, shot in chronological order, THE MISFITS was the most expensive black and white film in 1960, costing 4$m, roughly 31$m in todays money. A stellar cast helmed by John Huston at the zenith of his career, and written by the intellectual giant of the era Arthur Miller – whose script was based on his own short story, what could go wrong? Even Henri Cartier-Bresson was on board, leading a team of nine photographers shooting in the Nevada desert. The result seemed disappointing at the time, even though today THE MISFITS is very much a cult outing, appreciated much more that it was forty- five years ago.

Roslyn (Monroe), a newly divorced night club dancer, fancies the “simple” life away from the city. Unfortunately she meets two cowboys (Gable and Wallach) and a rodeo rider (an intense Monty Clift ), who catch horses with lassoos, just like in the good old days. The men are a cynical bunch, full of macho values and more often drunk than sober. Roslyn soon discovers the reason for their bravado: the men are fully aware the mustangs they catch, are destined for the abattoir, soon to be dog food. Having flirted with the whole trio, Roslyn goes for Gay (Gable), the oldest and most stable, also, perhaps because of his humanity – after one of the most shocking scenes ever committed to film, involving wild horses being savagely rounded up – Gay decides to let the horses escape, even though he knows his career is finished. THE MISFITS is an elegy for an America long lost, profit is the only game in town, and Huston’s poetic masterpiece is a long good-bye, shot in alluring black and white by Russell Metty. The grainy pictures somehow recall a ‘romantic’ Hollywood lost to colourful, spectacular super-productions. THE MISFITS has stood the test of time, a worthy forerunner for many “late Westerns” of the eighties and nineties, which confront a rotten the present with a make-belief past: fables for grownups.

The melancholic atmosphere almost presaged doom, spilling into real life: Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller lived in different hotels during the shooting, and were divorced shortly afterwards; Miller would soon marry Inge Morath, one of the nine photographers present. Montgomery Clift would die an untimely death after a serious accident; Monroe would never finish another film, and Clark Gable suffered a fatal heart attach before the premiere. MT

NOW OUT ON BLURAY | DVD

Ned Rifle (2015) |Berlinale |

Director/Writer/Producer: Hal Hartley

Cast: Liam Aiken, Aubrey Plaza, Parker Posey, Bill Sage, James Urbaniak, Thomas Jay Ryan

85min US Drama | The third installment of Hal Hartley’s ‘Henry Fool’ trilogy

After disappearing from indie filmmaking for several years – during which he lived in Berlin – Hal Hartley is back on brilliant form with a deconstructed drama that’s fast-moving, deadpan and deliciously offbeat.

With regular collaborators including the sparky Parker Posey, Hartley completes the trilogy of HENRY FOOL that burst onto the scene in 1997 and continued with FAY GRIM a decade later. NED RIFLE sees their son Ned (Liam Aiken,a John Cusack doppel-ganger in both looks and style) embark on a journey to track down his father Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) and kill him for ruining his mother’s life. Meanwhile, Fay is in prison serving a life sentence for her alleged ‘terrorism’ while Ned has been cared for in the community by a vicar (Martin Donovan) and proclaims himself a ‘chaste’ Christian.

Ned’s search starts in New York with a visit to his uncle Simon (James Urbaniak) who is learning to be a stand-up comic: “people want a good laugh occasionally, Ned, trust me”. But events are waylaid by the sultry and sexy Susan (Aubrey Plaza), who can only be described as ‘kooky’ – if you’re American, or if you’re European ‘distraite’ – and who fosters an obsession with his father that predates Ned’s arrival in the Grim family, or so we discover later. Ned makes it clear to Susan that he is not interested in a relationship but she tags along on the journey that leads them to Seattle (Hartley filmed this segment with local photos to keep the budget down) where Susan is increasingly desperate to get her paws on Ned – even sleeping in hold-ups and black underwear.

Performances are characteristically artificial and tongue-in-cheek with newgirl on the block, Aubrey Plaza, adding a certain foxy charm to the mêlée with her philosophical diatribes and smudgy red lipstick that drifts onto everyone’s cheek. Ned is given to hilarious religious soliloquys and is both appealing and convincing as a born again Christian. Hartley’s original score adds texture and a certain quirkiness to proceedings with its electric guitars that punctuate moments of drama. Fans will be delighted that the story finally finds a satisfying and amusing denouement, and there is much to enjoy in the acting and wittiness for those joining the party.

Hartley raised the finance (USD 400K) for his movie through a Kickstarter campaign and while the film may not get a theatrical release in the UK, there’s certain to be a DVD/VOD option on the way. MT

BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015 – FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2015

The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) | Berlinale 2015 | Generation

Director: Marielle Heller

Cast: Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård., Kristen Wiig, Christopher Meloni

102mins Drama US

There are a number of films out there in the cinematic plains that are alleged to “rock”. There are probably some lost souls who claim that Cameron Crowe’s ALMOST FAMOUS “rocks”. Or perhaps some slightly more informed folk who say that DAZED AND CONFUSED “rocks”. Even typing the words feels a little mortifying. Marielle Heller’s THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL – that won this year’s Sundance cinematography award and is based on Phoebe Gloeckner ‘s book- really does sort of rock. There’s just no better word for it. In a ‘boot through the saloon door, balls to the wall’ kind of way. It’s not just a film about enjoying sex, it is (God help us all!) a film about a young woman enjoying sex. And not only that, it announces Heller as a zest fresh, ballsy first time writer/director, while introducing American indie cinema to an electric new star.

Bel Powley is that star. She jumps from her small screen role in BENIDORM (whatever that is) to play Minnie, the titular teenage girl. DIARY opens on Minnie’s first post-coital strut; slow-mo, eyeing up the world, flares waving from side to side. We’re back in the 1974; Patty Hearst’s just been kidnapped; things are getting a little wild. Minnie takes us through her first sexual experience, sleeping with her mom’s boyfriend Monroe; a dim, handsome golden retriever of a man, played by Alexander Skarsgård. She’s swept away, but is it him she falls in love with him or is it simply the sex?

Her best pal is a skinny blonde, so Minnie naturally considers herself fat and ugly (who doesn’t at that age). But sex just seems to liberate her from all that. So we follow Minnie as she goes off trying new things, leaving a trail of men behind her, making pals, taking drugs and dancing to rock and roll. She’s a cartoonist too and her illustrations, which come alive in the frame, also play a central role. This might all sound a bit familiar, but the cartoons- taken from Gloeckner’s original work and brought to life beautifully by the film’s animation team- are more in the vain of Robert Crumb’s grotesque human comedy than anything we saw sprouting out of Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer.

So Minnie’s an artist, and a badass, and she smokes pot and listens to Iggy Pop. Sounds horrendous but by some sort of miracle, it’s not annoying at all. Perhaps it’s a matter of attitude, or simply offering up two fingers to the world.

And how rare and special a thing that is. A badass story finds a badass director and an equally badass star. Bel Powley is pure lightning in a bottle; bursting at the seams with strength, vulnerability, sexuality, and youth. That (500) Days mention really is telling. By comparison, Heller’s film is like a Sundance EASY RIDER. Despite being set over 40 years in the past, it leaves that last generation of indie film looking strangely creepy and desperately old-fashioned. A last nail, perhaps, in the manic-pixie coffin.

The film screened in the Berlin Film Fest’s Generation sidebar. A program selected for young people aged 14 or over. We can only hope and pray such leniency is awarded when national ratings boards catch the scent. Whatever the case, it seems safe to wager that by this time next year, Bel Powley will be everyone’s favourite new star. Expect inundated Facebook feeds whenever Fox Searchlight see fit to release it. Hop on the wagon quick, those seats are gonna go fast. Rory O’Connor.

BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015. ALL OUR COVERAGE IS UNDER ‘BERLINALE 2015’

Under Electric Clouds (2015) | Berlinale | Competition

Director/Writer: Alexey German Jr.

138mins Apocalyptic Drama Russia/Ukraine/Poland

The end of times never looked as pretty as they do in Alexey German Jnr’s fourth feature UNDER ELECTRIC CLOUDS, unveiled in competition this week at the 65th Berlinale. German, whose most recent directorial credit prior to this was in helping to complete his late father’s epically grotesque swansong HARD TO BE A GOD, has made a similarly sprawling if less assaultive account of the times we live in.

But while dad’s final film (no more mentions after this, I promise) was a science fiction work whose explicit allegorical links to our present-day transglobal crisis were half-cloaked in a tale set in a far-off planet suffering through its middle ages, UNDER ELECTRIC CLOUDS doesn’t afford our suspensions of disbelief the luxury of such temporal displacement: his film takes place in 2017, on the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Despairing through an endless winter characterised by gentle snow and an ecru-puce atmospheric haze, its ensemble of characters do not, however, have much to draw upon in terms of an industrialised class politically conscious enough to enact the wholesale change that is so evidently needed. Lenin is merely a statue here: the new future of post-communist Russia is a half-constructed building soon to be demolished.

Ranging from a Kyrgyz worker to two teen heirs of a deceased father’s estate to a museum guide and culture expert, to a jobless architect (“incredibly trendy, but meaningless”), German’s ensemble of unfortunates wander somewhat listlessly through the bleak, icy landscapes trying to figure out just what’s gone wrong. “The past is gone,” one of them notes. “We can build a new world, we just need to get rid of the dead weight.” Such lines, coming in a film whose opening ident ominously reveals funding from Russia’s Ministry of Culture, are at the very least ambiguous in intention. If the Brechtian mouthpieces don’t quite expose the film’s propagandistic agenda, German’s own penchant for half-baked ideas can often work against the film. (This is not to claim the film has an overtly propagandistic agenda; nor is it, of course, to claim it isn’t confused.)

Is this about the fall of capitalism, the ruthless world of real estate, or both? (The two, surely, are linked.) Perhaps the closest the film comes to addressing the root causes or results of our impending doom is in its nods to global warming (“In twenty years the climate here will be tropical”). “We enter a new era armed with historical experience,” one character claims. But there’s scant evidence here that the Russians can help themselves out of their rut. Multiple nods to China, the nation to which failing capitalist economies have looked with hopeful curiosity in recent years, offer little optimism: that too is in crisis. Japan doesn’t look much better. (Pepsi and Coke survive like unscathed ancestors, which might give some indication as to where Putin’s Russia needs to aim.)

Though it’s perhaps too stylised to be fully engaging as a drama, however, there are certainly things to admire, even love, about UNDER ELECTRIC CLOUDS. To a certain degree, this seven-chapter marathon works through its own lethargies in often teasing fashion, hinting at deeper truths about our ongoing catastrophe. German shoots at times from afar, allowing his actors full bodily expression while zooming into them to such an extent that their movements are often obscured, if not negated. The film is at once expansive and claustrophobic. Sergey Mikhalchuck and Evgeniy Privin’s cinematography, conveying a half-abandoned world of mist and infrastructural failure, compensates for scenes that German only intermittently feels the need to direct. Indeed, the visual beauty is often at odds with the content – perhaps deliberately so – so considered are the visual textures in contrast to what is sometimes a directorial laziness. MICHAEL PATTISON

BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY. ALL OUR COVERAGE IS UNDER ‘BERLINALE 2015’

Dairy of a Chambermaid (2015) | Berlinale 2015 | Competition

Director: Benoît Jacquot

Cast: Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lyndon, Clothilde Mollet, Hervé Pierre

Drama. France

Léa Seydoux is well-cast in accomplished French director Benoit Jacquot’s bucolic bonkbuster that follows the ups and downs of a sullenly confident country chambermaid, Celestine, after Octave Mirabeau’s 1900 novel. The work has been adapted various times but this one adopts a light-hearted approach despite its foreboding musical score with melodramatic undertones.

Told as a fractured narrative, we first meet the recalcitrant Céléstine as her long-suffering agency is attempting to re-deploy her to the provinces. Despite her lowly origins, Céléstine feels she’s destined for better things although her haughty resentment hides a sad and unsuccessful past. So despite her love of sophisticating, she reluctantly takes up the housekeeping role in the delightful country villa of Madame Lanlaire (Clothilde Mollet), a frustrated wealthy middle-aged woman, and her portly husband (Herve Pierre). As soon as she arrives, Céléstine realises that with a little guile and coquettishness she can wrap Monsieur around her little finger but there is also the mysterious figure of Vincent Lyndon’s hostile and saturnine handyman (Joseph) to deal with. He is, it transpires, a political activist and raging anti-semite and this sketchy backstory is presumably why the title is in competition at Berlinale 2015. However, the political angle is unexplored and largely unconvincing – making it feel tacked on to lend gravity and serious intent to this otherwise rather vapid affair.

Clearly, Céléstine has her work cut out with Madame Lanlaire and her rather chequered employement history – we are shown in flashback that she was dismissed from her previous post simply for witnessing the presence of an ivory dildo in her employer’s trunk – means that she cannot really afford to be choosy and must knuckle under her Madame’s draconian cosh. Chambermaids of the era were regularly sexually put upon by the males of the household but they also had the considerable advantage of using their feminine charms to hold these often sexually unsatisfied males to ransom, with a little savoir faire.

Jacquot’s is well known on the French arthouse circuit with FAREWELL MY QUEEN and VILLA AMALIA and his most recent drama, TROIS COEURS, was well-received at Venice 2014. DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID will go down very well with French audiences who will love its cheeky ‘follies bergères’ naughtiness. There are scenes of a sexual nature but it’s all very bawdy and superficial with little dramatic tension even from Vincent Lyndon’s political undercurrent of subversiveness. We do not remotely care for any of these people or feel moved by their plights. Even the young consumptive gentleman Céléstine is sent to care for (in another flashback) fails to evokes any sadness or even pity. There is nothing of the Thérèse Raquin or Madame Bovary to our central character and in no way is she a heroine. We are not even persuaded by the unconvincing ‘romance’ that suddenly crops up in the final stages of the film between Céléstine and Joseph although both actors perform well. Ultimately DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID is as frothy as a lace petticoat – giving a certain texture but no weight in the competiton line-up. Perfectly respectable though for a Saturday night out.MT

BERLINALE RUNS FROM 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE under BERLINALE 2015

Snow in Paradise (2014)

Director: Andrew Hulme

Writers: Martin Askew, Andrew Hulme

Cast: Frederick Schmidt, Martin Askew, David Spinx, Aymen Hamdouchi

118min UK Thriller

In Hoxton, two young men have formed a friendship across the cultural divide Dave (Frederick Schmidt) and his friend Tariq (Aymen Hamdouchi) are wide-boys on a small scale, working for Dave’s notorious East End family.

This gutsy gangland Britflick is the screen debut of Andrew Hulme, better known for his work editing Lucky Number Slevin, The American and The Imposter. SNOW IN PARADISE stands out for its portrayal of an increasingly gentrified East End where the old school crims are slowly being pushed aside by upmarket media types who would rather sip organic beer than chomp bacon sandwiches in the local greasy spoon and a Muslim ‘bruvverhood’ who spend their time preaching peace in the local Mosque.

The film is loosely based on the life of Martin Askew, who co-wrote the script and stars as arch villain “Uncle Jimmy”, a gangland hoodlum. Holding Dave in his thrall with a mesmerising presence, he offers Dave a chance to make some real money with a drug deal – a step up from his usual petty crime. Dave takes the unwitting Tariq along but events turn sour when Tariq goes missing causing Dave’s private demons, coke and crystal meth, to resurface in his life, clouding his vision as he gradually descends into a murky underworld caught between the false bonhommie of “Uncle Mickey” and his rival, the venal “Uncle Jimmy” (David Spinx). His desperate search for his friend eventually leads him to Tariq’s Mosque, where he is welcomed by the faux sincerity of Amjad (Ashley Chin).

As gangland Britflicks go, SNOW is a gripping and watchable thriller and certainly a cut above the rest but the problem lies with the character of Dave. Good-looking and cockily self-assured, he certainly cuts a confident dash in the opening sequences but then completely falls apart on Tariq’s disappearance, despite sexual and emotional support from his girlfriend Teresa, whom he openly adores despite her sideline in sexual favours. Sceptical and almost derisory at first about the power of Islam, Dave then appears to openly embrace the faith without a by-your-leave, making his character both implausible as a hardened petty criminal and a born-again, enlightened soul. All this is viewed through a trippy haze of stylised visual flourishes and a hypnotic soundtrack that occasionally serve to blunt the narrative rather than sharpen what could be a brilliantly hard-nosed thriller with some really first class acting, particularly from Askew, David Spinx and Frederick Schimidt in the volatile lead. With a little more focus on Dave’s religious conversion (be it to Islam, Buddism, Christianity or any Faith) and what it actually means and stands for in the scheme of things, this cracking debut could have been a good deal more convincing. As it stands, SNOW IN PARADISE is nevertheless a worthwhile contribution to the British gangland genre making Andrew Hulme a directing force to be reckoned with. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 FEBRUARY 2015

[youtube id=”qtTlLAEgunE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Coherence (2013)

Dir.: James Ward Byrkit

Cast: Emily Baldoni (as Emily Foxler), Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, Lorene Scafaria

USA 2013, 89 min.

Shot on a micro-budget with handheld video cameras in the living room of first time writer/director James Ward Byrkit, this would-be “Twilight Zone” product is proof that nothing can replace talent.

Somewhere in North California, eight friends are meeting in a suburban house for a dinner party on the night a comet is in a unique constellation while passing The Earth. Fifteen minutes pass with nothing but small talk until Em (Baldoni) tells us a creepy story about the last time a comet appeared in this constellation in 1923. The lights fail and some of the group sets out to a neighbouring house, the only one left with electricity. Looking trough the windows from the outside, they see their own group dining in the stranger’s house. From then on the the story shifts into paranoia: personal and scientific. The “quantum de-coherence theory” is ‘explained’, but marital tensions interfere in the process of solving the mystery. Em, a ballet dancer who has suffered a professional setback, and her partner Kevin (Sterling) are somehow forced into the spotlight; their relationship is not helped by Kevins’s ex-girlfriend Laurie, who snogs Kevin. Not surprisingly, it is Em, who tracks down her double for a violent confrontation.

The clues are overwhelming but lead to nothing: photos of the eight, with numbers attached are found in the strange house, and their cars are attacked by strangers, glass shattered. Long lost objects are found and disappear again, and the camera tries to evoke a claustrophobic feeling, which never really materialises. Worst of all, the constant babble of conversation ruins any sense of developing fear since the protagonists are constantly analysing proceedings, any frightful occurrence is discussed and dissected in a lengthy group discussion, robbing the piece of any dramatic tension or mystery. The confrontations seem to be staged and, apart from Em, the characters are one-dimensional and to be pedestrian. COHERENCE is anything but the title suggests: a banal, overly wordy and utterly unchilling amateur production. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 FEBRUARY 2015

A Minor Leap Down | Berlinale 2015 | Panorama

Director: Hamed Rajabi

So it seems Jafar Panahi won’t be the only subversive Iranian voice to be heard at the Berlinale this year. Apparently slipping through the cracks of that country’s strict cultural ministry comes a debut feature of great wit and defiance. Hamed Rajabi’s Paridan az Ertefa Kam Ukhra (A MINOR LEAP DOWN) follows the trials of an Iranian woman who, upon losing her unborn child, decides that she’s just not gonna take it anymore.

We meet Nahal in the waiting room of her gynaecologist as she receives the tragic news. In normal circumstances it should hit her like a tonne of bricks, but under the veil of her social etiquette, as well as Negar Javaherian’s deadpan performance, it’s really quite difficult to tell. Nahal sheds some tears but decides not to tell. The established forces in her life- doctors, husband, family- keep asking what’s wrong; pushing Nahal to take her meds and enjoy her life. You might expect the director to indulge in some cinematic moping from here, but it’s not tragedy that the horrid situation brews, it’s defiance.

Nahal goes on a relatively mad spree. She splashes out on her husband’s credit card; she writes off his car; and, in the film’s most audacious scene, she invites friends and family for juice… She’s like Iran’s mild mannered answer to Michael Douglas in Falling Down (it might even be a reference in the title?).

Like Paul Schrader’s ‘one man in a room’ theory, the viewer is privy to absolutely nothing the lead character doesn’t see, so we walk the entirety of the film in her modestly heeled shoes, and we quickly get inside her head. You can just feel the frustration of an indifferent, dust coated society and revel as Nahal raises two fingers towards it.

The film also seems to look at a cultural changing of the guard. Nahal is a woman stuck on the tail end of her generation and her tragedy seems to sever the connection with that past. Her younger sister represents a new age in the country. Her clothes are bright and chic; her friends are cosmopolitan; chilling in a trendy Tehran cafe. It’s a scene we seldom see in Iranian cinema. The group pokes fun at the old fashioned way Nahal carries herself, despite there only being a few years between them. At one point our hero retreats to the cafe’s kitchen to make a cup of tea. She finds a young handsome employee and enjoys a charming, flirtatious chat. He shows her a kitten he’s been hiding in a shoebox under the stove. It’s tiny, beautiful and oblivious to the world. Nahal’s eyes immediately widen.

Javaherian ends his terrific film on a choice for Nahal, between conformity and independence; the old world and the new. We’re left wondering how many other woman might be making that choice as we sit there in our seats. It’s great stuff, great cinema. The empathy machine humming away on an 88 minute cycle. Rory O’Connor

BERLINALE RUNS FROM 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015. ALL COVERAGE IS UNDER BERLINALE 2015 in search

Queen of the Desert (2015) | Berlinale 2015 | Competition

Director/Writer: Werner Herzog

Cast: Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis, Robert Pattison, Jenny Agutter

121mins Historical Romantic Drama Germany

Werner Herzog is considered one of the leading lights in German cinema along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders but those expecting quirky outlandishness from his dazzling epic that imagines the life and loves of explorer, writer and suave diplomat Gertrude Bell, will be disappointed. But don’t lose heart. QUEEN OF THE DESERT is devastatingly romantic, deliciously witty and Nicole Kidman gives a dynamite turn in the leading role.

In this drama Herzog embraces the sweeping romantic ideals that were central to FITZCARALDO and even NOSFERATU. rather than a straightlaced bluestocking, he styles the intellectual Gertrude as a imaginative and emotional character, whose independent nature and shrewd persuasiveness lead her to become one of the leading diplomats in Middle Eastern politics and tribal dealings leading up to the Great War and helping to establish Hashemite Kingdoms in Jordan and in Iraq.

QUEEN OF THE DESERT is all about heart and soul and yet Gertrude is far from being a pliant female. Starting life as one of the first women to study at Oxford, her mother (a luminous Jenny Agutter) advises her to “listen to the men and smile” rather than wield any intellectual prowess. Begging her father to ‘send her anywhere’ away from the comfort of the Shires, she is dispatched on a trip to Tehran where she is seduced by the unsuitably smarmy and langourous charms of James Franco’s, Henry Cadogan, a betting-man and attaché at the British Embassy. A palpable chemistry fizzles between the two and Gertrude is smitten but marriage plans are thwarted by her father, whereupon Cadogan hurls himself from the nearest rockface.

In Egypt, her next port of call, Gertrude actually befriends T E Lawrence – a vapid Robert Pattinson who lacks the charisma or clout of Peter O’Toole. This is a relationship that has more grounding as they were eventually to work together with Winston Churchill on the Ottoman question. But there is no real romantic tension between the pair and while Nicole Kidman has the freedom to create her own persona for the largely unknown character of Gertrude, Pattinson has a difficult act to follow in the dapper footsteps of O’Toole. For her part, Nicole Kidman portrays Gertrude as playful, charming, socially adept and highly elegant. She displays the confidence of good breeding, is never back-footed but supremely poised at every encounter even when she is waylaid by an Arab Sheikh as the intended newcomer to his harem. She presents an ideal female role model for contemporary audiences and yet she is one of many fearless women of the era who were simply held back by their peers and elders rather than by their ambition and capabilities, At 47 she looks extraordinarily delicate in close-ups and moves with a litheness and gentleness in every scene even excelling in a ‘wet tee-shirt moment’. After the Franco affair she creates a similar chemistry with Damian Lewis’s suave Charles Doughty-Wylie, an officer who is captivated by her charms, and the two correspond with smouldering billets doux, despite his ailing marriage.

The desert scenery or Morocco and Jordan is magnificently beguiling and we are carried along by Klaus Badelt’s exotic score that transports us back to Lawrence of Arabia, potent with Eastern promise. And although QUEEN lacks the dramatic punch of David Lean’s epic, the emotional roller-coaster that drives Gertrude forward to bigger and better adventures somehow adds tension to the narrative from a female perspective as Gertrude sublimates her romantic feelings and channels them bravely into higher goals: It’s almost as if Herzog is writing this with a female voice in his head and can read a woman’s mind. There’s also a feeling that QUEEN is a bridge he has built to allow wider and more mainstream audiences access to appreciate his legendary filmmaking talents. Arthouse audiences will enjoy this film but so will those who otherwise may be put off or scared of his usual arthouse or inaccessible fare. MT

THE BERLINALE RUNS FROM 5 -15 FEBRUARY – to follow our coverage search BERLINALE 2015

Nobody Wants the Night (2015) | Berlinale 2015 | Competition

Director: Isabel Coixet Writer: Miguel Barros

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Rinko Kikuchi, Gabriel Byrne

118m Spain, France, Bulgaria Drama

Catalan director Isabel Coixet’s Berlinale festival opener, a sweeping arctic epic that takes Juliette Binoche to the ends of the earth and back, is a drama that’s visually splendorous, if emotionally and intellectually perfunctory.

Binoche is Josephine, the wife of American explorer Robert Peary whose 1908-9 expedition to the North Pole gives the film its setting – the people involved, rather than events, inspire the film say its credits. Josephine arrives on Ellesmere Island, at the northern tip of Canada, to surprise her husband for his return from the Pole. She wants to be as close to him as she can be to his success at the top of the world, and sets out on a dangerous trip with huskies, Inuits and Gabriel Byrne’s crusty guide Bram to a remote outpost where her husband was last confirmed to be camped.

Arriving to find only eskimos and a frostbitten member of her husband’s party, Josephine sets up in a rickety hut, sticking her nose up at the native inuits who eat raw meat in their igloos outside. With winter approaching, the natives leave to head south, leaving Josephine and Rinko Kikuchi’s eskimo Allaka alone in the wilderness, the six-month long arctic night approaching. The scenery (actually northern Norway) is undeniably dramatic, helped by the authentic feel of Alain Bainée’s production design, this is a rare film that feels like it’s set at the edge of nowhere. Coixet’s direction in this department only lacked when – set in sub-zero temperatures – we never once saw Binoche’s breath in the cold air.

Binoche has neither the accent nor the pronunciation of the American she’s playing (she calls herself “Pee-air-ee”), but she’s a solid presence nonetheless, grounding Josephine as a bigot whose headstrong nature hides an insecurity of her roles of her family and her sex. But it’s Kikuchi, (nominated for an Oscar for Babel), who steals the show as Allaka, utterly believable as a woman only able to perform minimal verbal communication, but carrying deep emotional maturity.

Festival director Dieter Kosslick makes a significant move for women directors with Isabelle Coixet opening this year’s Berlinale – only three directors in the 19-film competition are women. Miguel Barros’s script is a broad feminist rewrite of arctic explorer myths of Shackleton and Scott: a particular moment when Josephine remarks that being “owned” by her husband gives her family life stability, proves cleverly ironic. Indeed, her stated desire to surprise her husband masks – perhaps even to herself – a wish to experience her own adventure in a way that would be inappropriate for a woman of her class from what she terms “civilised” society.

But if Coixet wanted audiences to take away a feminist perspective from the film, it’s almost undone by the fact that it is a man who comes to save Josephine from her frozen outpost. Indeed, Barros’s screenplay is frequently too self-regarding (lines like “every journey has its dangers – otherwise it wouldn’t be a journey” prompted guffaws) and a clunky voiceover takes away from the robustness of Coixet’s visuals in the Nordic mountains. It’s a shame that a film this highly promoted seems less strong when compared with other recent films of women in the wild. Only the scenery matches last year’s largely overlooked Tracks, led itself by a superb Mia Wasikowska performance. Another woman ‘on a mission’ in this year’s Berlinale is Gertrude Bell played by Nicole Kidman in Werner Herzog’s competition film QUEEN OF THE DESERT. Ed Frankl.

THE BERLINALE RUNS FROM 5-15 FEBRUARY.

FOR OUR FULL COVERAGE SEARCH UNDER BERLINALE 2015

British Film | Women Directors | Great start for 2015 | Festivals

SO THE BRITISH NEVER WIN ANYTHING? – well we’re off to a good start in 2015. At Sundance, the US indie film festival that kicks off the cinema year, Louise Osmond’s documentary DARK HORSE about a local steed that gets up and finishes first, took the Audience Award. DREAMCATCHER a documentary about prostitution won seasoned UK documentarian, Kim Longinotto, Best Director in the World Cinema strand. Another Brit, Chad Garcia, took home the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER that sees a Ukrainian victim of Chernobyl tackling his dark secret during the revolution. And a UK/New Zealand- filmed Western SLOW WEST was awarded World Cinema Grand Jury Prize – it was directed by a Scotsman, John Maclean, and has Michael Fassbender in the lead role.

Meanwhile over at Rotterdam International Film Festival, filmmaker Debbie Tucker Green’s look at the life of a London family, SECOND COMING, with a sterling British cast including Idris Elba and Frederick Schmidt, won the Big Screen Award. And three women directors out of five, is certainly looking more promising for this year’s crop of indie films.

At BERLINALE, the major European festival held in February (5-15) each year, British filmmakers are set to fly the flag with 45 YEARS, a much-anticipated drama from Andrew Haigh (Weekend) and a starry cast of Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay who play a married couple hit by tragedy when they discover a skeleton in the cupboard, in the shape of a past lover. The legendary character of Sherlock Holmes is brought to life when Ian Mckellen plays the 93-year-old detective, looking back over his sleuthing past, in a drama loosely adapted from the novel A Slight Trick of the Mind.

Helen Mirren will also be in Berlin with her new wartime drama WOMAN IN GOLD. She plays a Jewish heiress embarking on a desperate search for a painting by Gustav Klimt. Directed by Simon Curtis, the drama also stars British veterans Jonathan Pryce and Charles Dance along with Ryan Reynolds. And last but not least, Berlinale will play out with Britbuster CINDERELLA ‘out of competition’. Filmed in the English countryside of Buckinghamshire, this is Kenneth Branagh’s new title for Disney and stars Brits, Derek Jacobi, Hayley Atwell, Helena Bonham Carter and Stellan Skarsgård.

BERLINALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 5- 15 FEBRUARY 2015 – for all our coverage follow the link Berlinale2015

In Order of Disappearance (2014) ****

Dir: Hans Petter Moland | Writer: Kim Fupz Aakeson | Bruno Ganz, Stellan Skarsgard, Goren Navojec, Pal Sverre Hagen, Peter Andersson | 116min Action comedy Norway/Denmark

The late Bruno Ganz and Stellan Skarsgard star in Hans Petter Moland’s outrageously absurd follow-up to A Somewhat Gentle Man (2010). The film competed for the Berlinale Golden Bear in 2014 and went home empty-handed but its an honest and enjoyable crime caper and offers some of the best snowscapes of the year so far, and some arch political incorrectness.

Skarsgard plays Nils, a dour but appealing Swedish immigrant, who drives a snow plow and has just been awarded ‘Best Citizen’ by the local community. But when his son dies in a drug overdose, Nils turns vigilante to find out who is responsible. That said, the tone is light-hearted and upbeat: Moland wanted s narrative reflecting what happens when society’s attributes of decency get mixed up with the baser instincts that kick in when we are threatened: “Norway has a history of being generous to people in need, but now this is being challenged” he said at the press Berlinale conference. “The comedic style was the best way to deal with this theme positively: Violence lurks within us and occasionally erupts in normal, well-adjusted people like Stellan’s character.” What ensues is an unfeasibly violent chase to track down the two rival gangs of traffickers: one Serbian (lead by Ganz as Papa), one local (led by Pal Sverre at Greven). There are some great gags arising out of ‘ad-libbing’ rather than sticking rigidly to Kim Fupaz Aakeson’s script that give this piece a fresh and authentic feel, although 115mins is stretching it for a comedy caper. MT.

Available on Amazon Prime

Wim Wenders | Kino Dreams 2022

The films of Wim Wenders focus on alienation, trips between city and the countryside KINGS OF THE ROAD, countries THE AMERICAN FRIEND, ALICE IN THE CITIES, reality and visions WINGS OF DESIRE and simple alienation from humanity THE GOALIE’S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK.

They are often urban stories, but human survival seems only possible in the countryside according to PARIS, TEXAS and UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD. Wenders’ protagonists make their journeys weighed down with emotional baggage, and as much as they try, this is often hard to leave behind.

TOKYO-GA and PINA, city nightmares and visions of dance seem to complement each other despite their different topics: the only way out in all Wenders’ films are the flights into another dimension: represented by the director’s obsession with American culture, his emigration to, and remigration from the USA. At home in both “realities” he is nevertheless a stranger in both and therefore seeks a less earthly vision to make up for it – permanently on the road of visions.

THE GOALIE’S ANXIETY (1972), after a novel by Peter Handke, is the simple story of man losing his identity. The goalkeeper Josef Bloch causes a penalty and is later sent off, this drives him over the edge and he starts murdering at random, hellbent on being caught by the police. Vienna is the main background, a city devoid of tourist trappings it emerges just a grim place for the story to enfold. Bloch is already in another world when he is sent off, the unfolding drama is told as a series of banal but brutal acts. Bloch is alone with his demons, jail seemingly the only answer to his being lost in the real world – which he cannot escape despite his violence. A film about ordinary madness told in form of a chronicle; Kafka and “Weltschmerz” rolled in one and perhaps Wenders most austere feature film.

First of a trilogy of road-movies, ALICE IN THE CITIES (1974) features the German writer Philip Winter, stranded in the USA after having missed a deadline for his publishers. He meets his compatriot Lisa and her daughter Alice who seem equally lost. Lisa leaves her daughter with Philip and then disappears. On his return to Germany with Alice, Winter is faced with only one clue to Alice’s home: a photo of the front door of her grandmother’s house. The journey turns into an act of self-disclovery for Winter and ends in Wuppertal, a city with a tube like construction which carries its denizens over the river Wupper, reversing conventional means of transport. Shot in black and white by Robbie Müller, ALICE is a poem of travels as means of a search for identity.

KINGS OF THE ROAD (1976), the third part of the “Road-Movie” trilogy, features Bruno Winter, a projection equipment repair mechanic on the road along the border with East Germany, repairing the projectors in old, decaying cinemas. He picks up the depressed Robert Lande who has just tried to commit suicide after the divorce from his wife. Both men are fearful of women (a central theme in nearly all Wenders films), they don’t trust them – meaning, they don’t trust themselves. Again, Müllers b/w camera catches the gloomy landscape beautifully, and the main protagonists seem to be dying on their feet, like the cinemas they visit.

In MY AMERICAN FRIEND (1977), Wenders re-stages Patricia Highsmith’ moral drama “Ripley’s Game” in Hamburg, where the picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman becomes the victim of the cynical Tom Ripley. With Samuel Fuller as Mafia boss and Nicholas Ray as Pogash, this is an homage to American cinema even though European directors like Lilienthal, Schmid, Blain and Jean Eustache also appear. Wender’s Hamburg seems to be a backwater compared with Paris, the city of light taking the place of LA – for the time being.

PARIS, TEXAS (1984) is the story of Travis Henderson who tries to reconcile with his wife Jane for the sake of their son Hunter. His brother Walt is trying to bring his brother’s family together but in the end, after finding out that Jane is working in strip club, Travis drives off alone having confessed to Jane that he ruined their relationship with his drinking and jealousy. Again, the main protagonist is unable to come close to the woman in his life – he leaves her for good, seemingly for altruistic motives, but in reality he is running away. Landscape again plays a dominant part, and Robby Müller shows that he is able to translate his poetic realism into colour. PARIS, TEXAS is a mournful poem, very much a replay of “KINGS OF THE ROAD” set in the USA.

WINGS OF DESIRE (1987) is Wenders’ most poetic film, where angels and trapeze artists meet in a sad Berlin, and Henri Alekan’s nostalgic camera seems to be find the past at every junction. This past echoes through all the buildings, giving even the angels a hard task. Without mentioning exactly what has happened in particular buildings (or their remains), Wenders portrays Berlin not so much as a city of angels, but as a city of sadness and ghosts where the violence of the past violence still peeps through contemporary city life. It seems that the past cannot be eliminated or forgotten amongst the new buildings, so even angels must suffer in sadness.

UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991) is a film in two parts: the first segment is a mystery about a prototype which seems to enslave people. In the second part, we learn the secret of the device: it can record and translate brain impulses, a camera for the blind. A hitchhiker is traveling all over the world recording images, but this strange activity remains an enigma. Finally, a nuclear satellite is shot down causing an electromagnetic pulse which wipes out all unshielded electronics worldwide. We learn the hitchhiker has filmed the images to bring them home to his blind mother. The characters of the film end up in the Australian Outback where the device is used to record human dreams by the hitchhiker’s father. Nearly everyone becomes addicted to the machine except for a novelist who is writing a new book to prove words are more powerful than the device. Overly symbolic, UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD is a sort of compendium of all Wenders’ themes, filmed again by Robbie Müller, who creates many different worlds, all of them alienating, giving humankind very few places to connect with each other.

THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL (2000) is set in an LA flophouse where a murder has been recently been committed. Co-written by Bono, the narrative is contradictory, just two characters deserve to be mentioned: Geronimo thinks he is a tribal chief, but is in reality an art thief, posing as a artist. Eloise believes she does not exist, and is therefore immortal. The only reason to enjoy this drama is for the seedy LA background which cameraman Phedeon Papamichael has caught perfectly. Not one of Wenders’ best, THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL feels just like an étude, compared with the rest of this selected retrospective. AS

CURZON has announced a Wim Wenders retrospective called KINO DREAMS the first UK retrospective of his films in 15 years. Along with IN FRAME it takes a deep dive into into the work of some of the most outstanding filmmakers in the industry and takes place at the CURZON MAYFAIR and nationwide this summer | WIM WENDERS joins the live event on 24 June 2022 with a 4k release of Wings of Desire.

The Turning (2013)

REUNION, Dir.: Simon Stone; AQUIFER, Dir.: Robert Connelly; ON HER KNEES Dir.: Ashlee Page; THE TURNING, Dir.: Claire McCarthy; LONG, CLEAR VIEW, Dir.: Mia Wasikowska; COMMISSION, Dir.: David Wenham ; COCKLESHELL, Dir.: Tony Ayres; BIG WORLD, Dir.: Warwick Thornton; SAND, Dir.: Stephen Page; Australia 2013,107min

Even though the original format of THE TURNING had 180 minutes of running time and seventeen episodes, this shorter version, featuring only nine segments of the book of the same title by the Australian writer Tim Winton and the brainchild of producer Robert Connelly, is still very impressive. Somehow one would have liked to watch the full version, where the central character of Vic Lang is played by eight different actors, of varying age groups – with his wife Gail and his father Bob represented also by different actors.

But we are still left with a convincing picture of the not-so-sunny-side of Australia, where the over-riding optimism and material indulgence is replaced by sorrow, guilt and alienation. In REUNION Gail (Cate Blanchett) and her husband Bob (Hugo Weaving) celebrate an awkward New Year: egged on by Bob’s mother, their search for a relative ends up in a stranger’s house, where the two women end up in the swimming pool, to the annoyance of Bob, a police officer. Somehow we get the feeling that this displacement is not the first – Gail and Bob’s relationship is more than fragile. When she congratulates herself “on the best new year’s party for years’, we know how bad things are in her marriage, in spite of the couple’s tentative tries at some reconciliation. A macabre version of a marriage on the rocks.

Actress Mia Wasikowski’s debut as a director, LONG, CLEAR VIEW is a sensitive observation piece of a teenager’s sexual awakening – even though the girl he is courting is much more experienced then him, he is stubborn in his attempts, and, in the end, overcomes his shyness in a dramatic finale. The coastal setting contributes very much to the success of the film: this is not a glorious beach bathed in sunshine, but a dreary, lonely place, where people make a living from fishing. Never sentimental, LONG CLEAR WAY is a fine character study.

Staying with youth, Warwick Thornton’s BIG WORLD is a portrait of two young men, Biggie and Davo, already disappointed with life after working in a meat factory after leaving school. Their unsatisfactory grades prevented them going to university, and what was once a Saturday job, has become their life. They pick up a young hitchhiker, Meg, who falls for Biggie, who has so far had no success with women. Davo, until now the more successful of the two, is extremely jealous. The last word goes to the narrator, foretelling Biggies demise in an accident, and Davo’s uneventful life. BIG WORLD shows a moody, pessimistic outlook, reality overtaking any dreams the protagonists ever had.

THE TURNING by Claire McCarthy is outstanding. Set in a dreary trailer park near the ocean, Raelene (Rose Byrne) tries to leave her violent husband Max (the same character already showing signs of violence as a child in the episode SAND). When Raelene meets Sherry (Miranda Otto), a born-again Christian, who is married to an ex-alcoholic, still fighting against a relapse, a whole new world opens to her: Sherry shows her an alternative world. Raelene is impressed, but a new, even more vicious attack by her husband, drives her not into leaving him, but leads to a tragic end. Atmospheric and impressively acted, THE TURNING is a little gem.

With most of the other episodes it shares a multitude of great camerawork, which leaves the audience with a rather harrowing vision of Australia, where most of the fragile protagonists seem to teeter on a brink, a step away from falling over the edge of the world. The narration helps to sustain a literacy quality throughout. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6TH FEBRUARY 2015

Sundance 2015| 22 January – 1 February 2015 | Winners

SUNDANCE is the first major film festival of the year; a true indie festival coming to you from snowy Utah courtesy of its founder Robert Redford. Setting the benchmark for independent titles in 2015, SUNDANCE focuses on excellence in screenplays and innovativeness in cinematography: each filmmaker is put their paces before their film can be considered in competition. Unlike the Academy Awards, SUNDANCE is purely about talent. We have highlighted the buzzworthy titles in RED and winners – watch out for them!

BEST FILMS

Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Me & Earl & the Dying Girl by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Grand Jury Prize: Documentary – The Wolfpack by Crystal Moselle

World Cinema Jury Prize: Dramatic – Slow West by John Maclean

World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary – The Russian Woodpecker by Chad Gracia

Special Jury Prize for Breakout First Feature: Documentary – Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe for (T)error

BEST DIRECTORS

Directing Award: Dramatic – Robert Eggers for The Witch

Directing Award: Documentary – Matthew Heineman for Cartel Land

World Cinema Directing Award: Dramatic – Alanté Kavaïté for The Summer of Sangailé

World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary – Kim Longinotto for Dreamcatcher

BEST SCRIPTS, CINEMATOGRAPHY and ACTING

Best Script: Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award – Tim Talbott for The Stanford Prison Experiment

Cinematography Award: Documentary – Matthew Heineman and Matt Porwoll for Cartel Land

Cinematography Award: Drama – Partisan

World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Acting: Dramatic – Regina Casé and Camila Márdila for The Second Mother

World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Acting: Dramatic – Jack Reynor for Glassland

AUDIENCE AWARDS

World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic – Umrika by Prashant Nair
World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary – Dark Horse by Louise Osmond

Audience Award: Documentary – Meru by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Audience Award: Dramatic – Me & Earl & the Dying Girl by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Best of NEXT Audience Award – James White by Josh Mond

U .S. D R A M A T I C C O M P E T I T I O N

ADVANTAGEOUS / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Phang, Screenwriters: Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang) — In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy, despite the instability surfacing in their world. Cast: Jacqueline Kim, James Urbaniak, Freya Adams, Ken Jeong, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Kim.

THE BRONZE / U.S.A. (Director: Bryan Buckley, Screenwriters: Melissa Rauch, Winston Rauch) — In 2004, Hope Ann Greggory became an American hero after winning the bronze medal for the women’s gymnastics team. Today, she’s still living in her small hometown, washed-up and embittered. Stuck in the past, Hope must reassess her life when a promising young gymnast threatens her local celebrity status. Cast: Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan, Haley Lu Richardson, Cecily Strong.

THE D TRAIN / U.S.A. (Directors and screenwriters: Jarrad Paul, Andrew Mogel) — With his 20th reunion looming, Dan can’t shake his high school insecurities. In a misguided mission to prove he’s changed, Dan rekindles a friendship with the popular guy from his class and is left scrambling to protect more than just his reputation when a wild night takes an unexpected turn. Cast: Jack Black, James Marsden, Kathryn Hahn, Jeffrey Tambor, Mike White, Kyle Bornheimer.

THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Marielle Heller) — Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend. Cast: Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård, Christopher Meloni, Kristen Wiig.

DOPE/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Rick Famuyiwa) — Malcolm is carefully surviving life in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles while juggling college applications, academic interviews, and the SAT. A chance invitation to an underground party leads him into an adventure that could allow him to go from being a geek, to being dope, to ultimately being himself. Cast: Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons, Blake Anderson, Zoë Kravitz, A$AP Rocky.

I SMILE BACK / U.S.A. (Director: Adam Salky, Screenwriters: Amy Koppelman, Paige Dylan) —Laney Brooks does bad things. Married with kids, she takes the drugs she wants, sleeps with the men she wants, disappears when she wants. Now, with the destruction of her family looming, and temptation everywhere, Laney makes one last desperate attempt at redemption. Cast: Sarah Silverman, Josh Charles, Thomas Sadoski, Mia Barron, Terry Kinney, Chris Sarandon.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl / U.S.A. (Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Screenwriter: Jesse Andrews) is getting some great reviews, judging by the buzz currently coming out the festival crowd. Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia. Cast: Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, Olivia Cooke, Nick Offerman, Connie Britton, Molly Shannon. WINTER : Audience Award: Dramatic

THE OVERNIGHT / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Patrick Brice) — In an attempt to acclimate to Los Angeles, a young couple spends an increasingly bizarre evening with the parents of their son’s new friend. Cast: Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman, Judith Godrèche.

PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: James C. Strouse) — Will Henry is a newly single graphic novelist balancing being a parent to his young twin daughters and teaching a classroom full of college students, all the while trying to navigate the rich complexities of new love and letting go of the woman who left him. Cast: Jemaine Clement, Regina Hall, Stephanie Allynne, Jessica Williams, Gia Gadsby, Aundrea Gadsby.

RESULTS / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Andrew Bujalski) — Two mismatched personal trainers’ lives are upended by the actions of a new, wealthy client. Cast: Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders, Kevin Corrigan, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Michael Hall, Brooklyn Decker.

SONGS MY BROTHERS TAUGHT ME / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Chloé Zhao) — This complex portrait of modern-day life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation explores the bond between a brother and his younger sister, who find themselves on separate paths to rediscovering the meaning of home. Cast: John Reddy, Jashaun St. John, Irene Bedard, Taysha Fuller, Travis Lone Hill, Eléonore Hendricks.

THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT / U.S.A. (Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Screenwriter: Tim Talbott) — Based on the actual events that took place in 1971, when Stanford professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo created what became one of the most shocking and famous social experiments of all time. Cast: Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, Michael Angarano, Tye Sheridan, Johnny Simmons, Olivia Thirlby. BEST SCRIPT

STOCKHOLM, PENNSYLVANIA/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Nikole Beckwith) — A young woman is returned home to her biological parents after living with her abductor for 17 years. Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Cynthia Nixon, Jason Isaacs, David Warshofsky.

UNEXPECTED / U.S.A. (Director: Kris Swanberg, Screenwriters: Kris Swanberg, Megan Mercier) — When Samantha Abbott begins her final semester teaching science at a Chicago high school, she faces some unexpected news: she’s pregnant. Soon after, Samantha learns that one of her favorite students, Jasmine, has landed in a similar situation. Unexpected follows the two women as they embark on an unlikely friendship. Cast: Cobie Smulders, Anders Holm, Gail Bean, Elizabeth McGovern.

THE WITCH/ U.S.A., Canada (Director and screenwriter: Robert Eggers) — Another buzzworthy title at this year’s festival is set in New England in the 1630s: William and Katherine lead a devout Christian life with five children, homesteading on the edge of an impassable wilderness. When their newborn son vanishes and crops fail, the family turns on one another. Beyond their worst fears, a supernatural evil lurks in the nearby wood. Cast: Anya Taylor Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Lucas Dawson, Ellie Grainger.

Z FOR ZACHARIAH / U.S.A. (Director: Craig Zobel, Screenwriter: Nissar Modi) — In a post-apocalyptic world, a young woman who believes she is the last human on Earth meets a dying scientist searching for survivors. Their relationship becomes tenuous when another survivor appears. As the two men compete for the woman’s affection, their primal urges begin to reveal their true nature. Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, Chris Pine.

U .S. D O C U M E N T A R Y C O M P E T I T I O N

Sixteen world-premiere American documentaries that illuminate the ideas, people, and events that shape the present day.

3½ MINUTES / U.S.A. (Director: Marc Silver) — On November 23, 2012, unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Russell Davis was shot at a Jacksonville gas station by Michael David Dunn. 3½ MINUTES explores the aftermath of Jordan’s tragic death, the latent and often unseen effects of racism, and the contradictions of the American criminal justice system.

BEING EVIL / U.S.A. (Director: Daniel Junge) —Millions know the man, but few know his story. Academy Award-winner Daniel Junge (Saving Face) and actor/producer Johnny Knoxville reveal an unprecedented and candid look at American daredevil and icon Robert “Evel” Knievel. Being Evel is a surprising tale about a childhood hero…flaws and all.

BEST OF ENEMIES U.S.A. (Directors: Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon) — Best of Enemies is a behind-the-scenes account of the explosive 1968 televised debates between the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr., and their rancorous disagreements about politics, God, and sex.

CALL ME LUCKY / U.S.A. (Director: Bobcat Goldthwait) — Barry Crimmins was a volatile but brilliant bar comic who became an honored peace activist and influential political satirist. Famous comedians and others build a picture of a man who underwent an incredible transformation.

CARTEL LAND/ U.S.A., Mexico (Director: Matthew Heineman) — In this classic Western set in the 21st century, vigilantes on both sides of the border fight the vicious Mexican drug cartels. With unprecedented access, this character-driven film provokes deep questions about lawlessness, the breakdown of order, and whether citizens should fight violence with violence. Directing Award: Documentary

CITY OF GOLD/ U.S.A. (Director: Laura Gabbert) — Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jonathan Gold casts his light upon a vibrant and growing cultural movement in which he plays the dual roles of high-low priest and culinary geographer of his beloved Los Angeles.

FINDERS KEEPERS / U.S.A. (Directors: Bryan Carberry, Clay Tweel) — Recovering addict and amputee John Wood finds himself in a stranger-than-fiction battle to reclaim his mummified leg from Southern entrepreneur Shannon Whisnant, who found it in a grill he bought at an auction and believes it to therefore be his rightful property.

HOT GIRLS WANTED / U.S.A. (Directors: Jill Bauer, Ronna Gradus) — Hot Girls Wanted is a first-ever look at the realities inside the world of the amateur porn industry and the steady stream of 18- and 19-year-old girls entering into it.

HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO / U.S.A. (Director: Alexandra Shiva) — In Columbus, Ohio, a group of teenagers and young adults on the autism spectrum prepare for an iconic American rite of passage — a spring formal. They spend 12 weeks practicing their social skills in preparation for the dance at a local nightclub.

LARRY KRAMER IN LOVE AND ANGER / U.S.A. (Director: Jean Carlomusto) — Author, activist, and playwright Larry Kramer is one of the most important and controversial figures in contemporary gay America, a political firebrand who gave voice to the outrage and grief that inspired gay men and lesbians to fight for their lives. At 78, this complicated man still commands our attention.

MERU / U.S.A. (Directors: Jimmy Chin, E. Chai Vasarhelyi) — Three elite mountain climbers sacrifice everything but their friendship as they struggle through heartbreaking loss and nature’s harshest elements to attempt the never-before-completed Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru, the most coveted first ascent in the dangerous game of Himalayan big wall climbing. Audience Award: Dramatic

RACING EXTINCTION / U.S.A. (Director: Louie Psihoyos) — Academy Award-winner Louie Psihoyos (The Cove) assembles a unique team to show the world never-before-seen images that expose issues surrounding endangered species and mass extinction. Whether infiltrating notorious black markets or exploring humans’ effect on the environment, Racing Extinction will change the way you see the world.

(T)ERROR/ U.S.A. (Directors: Lyric R. Cabral, David Felix Sutcliffe) — (T)ERROR is the first film to document on camera a covert counterterrorism sting as it unfolds. Through the perspective of *******, a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned FBI informant, viewers are given an unprecedented glimpse of the government’s counterterrorism tactics, and the murky justifications behind them. BEST BREAKOUT FILM

WELCOME TO LEITH / U.S.A. (Directors: Michael Beach Nichols, Christopher K. Walker) — A white supremacist attempts to take over a small town in North Dakota.

WESTERN / U.S.A., Mexico (Directors: Bill Ross, Turner Ross) — For generations, all that distinguished Eagle Pass, Texas, from Piedras Negras, Mexico, was the Rio Grande. But when darkness descends upon these harmonious border towns, a cowboy and lawman face a new reality that threatens their way of life. Western portrays timeless American figures in the grip of unforgiving change.

THE WOLFPACK / U.S.A. (Director: Crystal Moselle) — Six bright teenage brothers have spent their entire lives locked away from society in a Manhattan housing project. All they know of the outside is gleaned from the movies they watch obsessively (and recreate meticulously). Yet as adolescence looms, they dream of escape, ever more urgently, into the beckoning world. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary

W O R L D C I N E M A D R A M A T I C C O M P E T I T I O N

Twelve films from emerging filmmaking talents around the world offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles.

CLORO (Chlorine) / Italy (Director: Lamberto Sanfelice, Screenwriters: Lamberto Sanfelice, Elisa Amoruso) — Jenny, 17, dreams of becoming a synchronized swimmer. Family events turn her life upside down and she is forced to move to a remote area to look after her ill father and younger brother. It won’t be long before Jenny starts pursuing her dreams again. Cast: Sara Serraiocco, Ivan Franek, Giorgio Colangeli, Anatol Sassi, Piera Degli Esposti, Andrea Vergoni. World Premiere

CHORUS/ Canada (Director and screenwriter: François Delisle) — A separated couple meet again after 10 years when the body of their missing son is found. Amid the guilt of losing a loved one, they hesitantly move toward affirmation of life, acceptance of death, and even the possibility of reconciliation. Cast: Sébastien Ricard, Fanny Mallette, Pierre Curzi, Genevieve Bujold. World Premiere

GLASSLAND/ Ireland (Director and screenwriter: Gerard Barrett) — In a desperate attempt to reunite his broken family, a young taxi driver becomes entangled in the criminal underworld. Cast: Jack Reynor, Toni Collette, Will Poulter, Michael Smiley. International Premiere. World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Acting:Jack Reynor

HOMESICK/ Norway (Director: Anne Sewitsky, Screenwriters: Ragnhild Tronvoll, Anne Sewitsky) — When Charlotte, 27, meets her brother Henrik, 35, for the first time, two people who don’t know what a normal family is begin an encounter without boundaries. How does sibling love manifest itself if you have never experienced it before? Cast: Ine Marie Wilmann, Simon J. Berger, Anneke von der Lippe, Silje Storstein, Oddgeir Thune, Kari Onstad. World Premiere

IVY/ Turkey (Director and screenwriter: Tolga Karaçelik) — Sarmasik is sailing to Egypt when the ship’s owner goes bankrupt. The crew learns there is a lien on the ship, and key crew members must stay on board. Ivy is the story of these six men trapped on the ship for days. Cast: Nadir Sarıbacak, Özgür Emre Yıldırım, Hakan Karsak, Kadir Çermik, Osman Alkaş, Seyithan Özdemiroğlu. World Premiere

PARTISAN/ Australia (Director: Ariel Kleiman, Screenwriters: Ariel Kleiman, Sarah Cyngler) — Alexander is like any other kid: playful, curious and naive. He is also a trained assassin. Raised in a hidden paradise, Alexander has grown up seeing the world filtered through his father, Gregori. As Alexander begins to think for himself, creeping fears take shape, and Gregori’s idyllic world unravels. Cast: Vincent Cassel, Jeremy Chabriel, Florence Mezzara. World Dramatic Award for Cinematography.

PRINCESS / Israel (Director and screenwriter: Tali Shalom Ezer) — While her mother is away from home, 12-year-old Adar’s role-playing games with her stepfather move into dangerous territory. Seeking an escape, Adar finds Alan, an ethereal boy that accompanies her on a dark journey between reality and fantasy. Cast: Keren Mor, Shira Haas, Ori Pfeffer, Adar Zohar Hanetz. International Premiere

THE SECOND MOTHER / Brazil (Director and screenwriter: Anna Muylaert) — Having left her daughter, Jessica, to be raised by relatives in the north of Brazil, Val works as a loving nanny in São Paulo. When Jessica arrives for a visit 13 years later, she confronts her mother’s slave-like attitude and everyone in the house is affected by her unexpected behavior. Cast: Regina Casé, Michel Joelsas, Camila Márdila, Karine Teles, Lourenço Mutarelli. World Premiere

SLOW WEST / New Zealand (Director and screenwriter: John Maclean) — Set at the end of the nineteenth century, 16-year-old Jay Cavendish journeys across the American frontier in search of the woman he loves. He is joined by Silas, a mysterious traveler, and hotly pursued by an outlaw along the way. Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Caren Pistorius, Rory McCann. World Premiere. World Cinema Jury Prize: Dramatic WINNER

STRANGER LAND / Australia, Ireland (Director: Kim Farrant, Screenwriters: Fiona Seres, Michael Kinirons) — When Catherine and Matthew Parker’s two teenage kids disappear into the remote Australian desert, the couple’s relationship is pushed to the brink as they confront the mystery of their children’s fate. Cast: Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes, Hugo Weaving, Lisa Flanagan, Meyne Wyatt, Maddison Brown. World Premiere

THE SUMMER OF SANGAILE/ Lithuania, France, Holland (Director and screenwriter: Alanté Kavaïté) — Seventeen-year-old Sangaile is fascinated by stunt planes. She meets a girl her age at the summer aeronautical show, nearby her parents’ lakeside villa. Sangaile allows Auste to discover her most intimate secret and in the process finds in her teenage love, the only person that truly encourages her to fly. Cast: Julija Steponaitytė, Aistė Diržiūtė. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM. World Cinema Directing Award: Dramatic – Alanté Kavaïté

UMRIKA / India (Director and screenwriter: Prashant Nair) — When a young village boy discovers that his brother, long believed to be in America, has actually gone missing, he begins to invent letters on his behalf to save their mother from heartbreak, all the while searching for him. Cast: Suraj Sharma, Tony Revolori, Smita Tambe, Adil Hussain, Rajesh Tailang, Prateik Babbar. World Premiere. World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic

W O R L D C I N E M A D O C U M E N T A R Y C O M P E T I T I O N

Twelve documentaries by some of the most courageous and extraordinary international filmmakers working today.

THE AMINA PROFILE / Canada (Director: Sophie Deraspe) — During the Arab revolution, a love story between two women — a Canadian and a Syrian American — turns into an international sociopolitical thriller spotlighting media excesses and the thin line between truth and falsehood on the Internet. World Premiere

CENSORED VOICES / Israel, Germany (Director: Mor Loushy) — One week after the 1967 Six-Day War, renowned author Amos Oz and editor Avraham Shapira recorded intimate conversations with soldiers returning from the battlefield. The Israeli army censored the recordings, allowing only a fragment of the conversations to be published. Censored Voices reveals these recordings for the first time. World Premiere

THE CHINESE MAYOR/ China (Director: Hao Zhou) — Mayor Geng Yanbo is determined to transform the coal-mining center of Datong, in China’s Shanxi province, into a tourism haven showcasing clean energy. In order to achieve that, however, he has to relocate 500,000 residences to make way for the restoration of the ancient city. World Premiere

Chuck Norris vs Communism / United Kingdom, Romania, Germany (Director: Ilinca Calugareanu) — In 1980s Romania, thousands of Western films smashed through the Iron Curtain, opening a window to the free world for those who dared to look. A black market VHS racketeer and courageous female translator brought the magic of film to the masses and sowed the seeds of a revolution. World Premiere

DARK HORSE / United Kingdom (Director: Louise Osmond) — Dark Horse is the inspirational true story of a group of friends from a workingman’s club who decide to take on the elite “sport of kings” and breed themselves a racehorse. Showing how animals can unite the community in a common interest and cause, Osmond’s film has been well-received at the festival’s first showings. World Premiere

DREAMCATCHER/ United Kingdom (Director: Kim Longinotto) — Dreamcatcher takes us into a hidden world seen through the eyes of one of its survivors, Brenda Myers-Powell. A former teenage prostitute, Brenda defied the odds to become a powerful advocate for change in her community. With warmth and humor, Brenda gives hope to those who have none. World Premiere – World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary – SEE OUR ROTTERDAM REVIEW

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD/ United Kingdom, Canada (Director: Jerry Rothwell) — In 1971, a group of friends sails into a nuclear test zone, and their protest captures the world’s imagination. Using rare, archival footage that brings their extraordinary world to life, How to Change the World is the story of the pioneers who founded Greenpeace and defined the modern green movement. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM

LISTEN TO ME, MARLON / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Stevan Riley, Co-writer: Peter Ettedgui) — With exclusive access to previously unheard audio archives, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career and extraordinary life away from the stage and screen, the film fully explores the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely in Marlon’s own voice. World Premiere

PERVERT PARK/ Sweden, Denmark (Directors: Frida Barkfors, Lasse Barkfors) — Pervert Park follows the everyday lives of sex offenders in a Florida trailer park as they struggle to reintegrate into society, and try to understand who they are and how to break the cycle of sex crimes being committed. International Premiere

THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER / United Kingdom (Director: Chad Gracia) — A Ukrainian victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and must decide whether to risk his life by revealing it, amid growing clouds of revolution and war. World Premiere. World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary

SEMBENE! / U.S.A., Senegal (Directors: Samba Gadjigo, Jason Silverman) — In 1952, Ousmane Sembene, a Senegalese dockworker and fifth-grade dropout, began dreaming an impossible dream: to become the storyteller for a new Africa. This true story celebrates how the “father of African cinema,” against enormous odds, fought a monumental, 50-year-long battle to give Africans a voice. World Premiere

THE VISIT/ Denmark, Austria, Ireland, Finland, Norway (Director: Michael Madsen) — “This film documents an event that has never taken place…” With unprecedented access to the United Nations’ Office for Outer Space Affairs, leading space scientists and space agencies, The Visit explores humans’ first encounter with alien intelligent life and thereby humanity itself. “Our scenario begins with the arrival. Your arrival.” World Premiere

N E X T

Pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling populate this program. Digital technology paired with unfettered creativity promises that the films in this section will shape a “greater” next wave in American cinema. Presented by Adobe.

BOB AND THE TREES/ U.S.A., France (Director: Diego Ongaro, Screenwriters: Diego Ongaro, Courtney Maum, Sasha Statman-Weil) — Bob, a 50-year-old logger in rural Massachusetts with a soft spot for golf and gangsta rap, is struggling to make ends meet in a changed economy. When his beloved cow is wounded and a job goes awry, Bob begins to heed the instincts of his ever-darkening self. Cast: Bob Tarasuk, Matt Gallagher, Polly MacIntyre, Winthrop Barrett, Nathaniel Gregory. World Premiere

CHRISTMAS, AGAIN / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Charles Poekel) — A heartbroken Christmas tree salesman returns to New York, hoping to put the past year behind him. He spends the season living in a trailer and working the night shift, until a mysterious woman and some colorful customers rescue him from self-destruction. Cast: Kentucker Audley, Hannah Gross, Jason Shelton, Oona Roche. North American Premiere

CRONIES/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Michael Larnell) — Twenty-two-year-old Louis doesn’t know whether his childhood friendship with Jack will last beyond today. Cast: George Sample III, Zurich Buckner, Brian Kowalski. World Premiere

ENTERTAINMENT / U.S.A. (Director: Rick Alverson, Screenwriters: Rick Alverson, Gregg Turkington, Tim Heidecker) — En route to meeting with his estranged daughter, in an attempt to revive his dwindling career, a broken, aging comedian plays a string of dead-end shows in the Mojave Desert. Cast: Gregg Turkington, John C. Reilly, Tye Sheridan, Michael Cera, Amy Seimetz, Lotte Verbeek. World Premiere

H. / U.S.A., Argentina (Directors and screenwriters: Rania Attieh, Daniel Garcia) — Two women, each named Helen, find their lives spinning out of control after a meteor allegedly explodes over their city of Troy, New York. Cast: Robin Bartlett, Rebecca Dayan, Will Janowitz, Julian Gamble, Roger Robinson. World Premiere

JAMES WRIGHT/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Josh Mond) — A young New Yorker struggles to take control of his reckless, self-destructive behavior in the face of momentous family challenges. Cast: Chris Abbott, Cynthia Nixon, Scott Mescudi, Makenzie Leigh, David Call. World Premiere. BEST OF NEXT AWARD

NASTY BABY / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Sebastian Silva) — A gay couple try to have a baby with the help of their best friend, Polly. The trio navigates the idea of creating life while confronted by unexpected harassment from a neighborhood man called The Bishop. As their clashes grow increasingly aggressive, odds are someone is getting hurt. Cast: Sebastian Silva, Kristin Wiig, Tunde Adebimpe, Alia Shawkat, Mark Margolis, Reg E. Cathey. World Premiere

THE STRONGEST MAN / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kenny Riches) — An anxiety-ridden Cuban man who fancies himself the strongest man in the world attempts to recover his most prized possession, a stolen bicycle. On his quest, he finds and loses much more. Cast: Robert Lorie, Paul Chamberlain, Ashly Burch, Patrick Fugit, Lisa Banes. World Premiere

TAKE ME TO THE RIVER / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matt Sobel) — A naive California teen plans to remain above the fray at his Nebraskan family reunion, but a strange encounter places him at the center of a long-buried family secret. Cast: Logan Miller, Robin Weigert, Josh Hamilton, Richard Schiff, Ursula Parker, Azura Skye. World Premiere

TANGERINE / U.S.A. (Director: Sean Baker, Screenwriters: Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch) — A working girl tears through Tinseltown on Christmas Eve searching for the pimp who broke her heart. Cast: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian, Mickey O’Hagan, Alla Tumanyan, James Ransone. World Premiere –

SUNDANCE RUNS FROM 22 JANUARY UNTIL 1 FEBRUARY 2015 IN PARK CITY, UTAH, AMERICA

Thief (1981)

Dir.: Michael Mann

Cast: James Caan, James Belushi, Tuesday Weld, Robert Prosky

USA 1981; 122 min.

For his feature debut THIEF Michael Mann (Manhunter, Miami Vice) delivers a perfect action movie and a philosophical discourse on the unattainability of the American Dream. Frank (Caan), a middle-aged professional safe breaker who has honed his skills in jail and now wants to press a button and settle down to a ready made family and a financially secure life. To remind him of his goal, he carries a postcard with cut-out motives of middle class happiness. In order to achieve this, he has to do a last caper. But instead of working with his own crew, he agrees to work with Leo (Prosky), a big crime lord.

Frank’s choice of a woman, the vulnerable, disillusioned and poorly paid Jessie (Weld), demonstrates his powers of projection: he wants to save her as much as himself. Needless to say, things don’t go according to plan. Frank’s personal life changes in 24 hours: he loses a father figure, who “told him everything about the job”, who dies of a heart attack after spending too much time in jail – Frank can’t make good his promise to spring him loose. His substitute father figure, Leo, procures a baby for the couple, after they are turned down at an adoption agency. The preparations for the job take Frank’s mind off family life; his trust in Leo is unshakable, as is his near religious belief in a happy, carefree life after crime.

The success of the heist brings in millions of dollar in form of small diamonds, but then Leo presents Frank with just $85000, the amount missing a zero at the end of his agreed share. Strangely, Leo presents an intact family life as an excuse for cheating Frank, who, after watching one of his men killed by Leo’s hired men, goes into an all-out war with Frank and his numerous enforcers. Even though action scenes dominate through pure force, Frank’s loneliness is the central aspect of THIEF. Even in the company of his men, he is the lone wolf – he takes his responsibility for them very seriously, a sort of “Pater Familias” in the crime world. His relationship with Jessie is founded on his wishful thinking, that they can both escape their past. Leo turns from a benevolent godfather into a brutal killer, whilst still keeping his identity as a family man – Frank, so skilful at work – is too naïve to see Leo’s game right from the beginning. Frank is the real outlaw, fit for any Western.

Well-cast and fabulously crafted, Donald E Thorin’s camera-work is brilliant, long shots show the city of Chicago as a decrepit background, Kentish Town on a bad night. It never really gets light, and the night drives are exceptionally emotive. Caan and Weld are a couple lost in their dreams for a future they were never made for, and Prosky’s Leo is one of the best all-time baddies. Frank Hohimer’s novel is the basis for this sleazy chronicle of unobtainable respectability. AS

A LIMITED SLIPCASE EDITION OF THIEF IS NOW OUT ON BLU-RAY INCLUDING TWO VERSIONS OF THE FILM, THE ORIGINAL THEATRICAL CUT AND AN EXTENDED DIRECTOR’S CUT. £19.99 COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS.

Violette (2013)

Dir.: Martin Provost; Cast: Emmanuelle Devos, Sandrine Kiberlain, Olivier Gourmet, Catherine Hiegel | France 2013, 139 min Drama

After his sparkling bio-pic of the French painter Seraphine Louis (2008), Provost successfully tackles another woman artist whose humble background helped and hindered her literary career in different ways: Violette Leduc (1907-72) was a protégé of Simone de Beauvoir, who valued her writing paid her for many years a generous allowance (pretending it came from the publisher Gallimard), Evenutally years later, in 1964, Leduc made the breakthrough with her passionate and painfully honest memoir ‘La Batarde”.

Violette unglamorously, but brilliantly played by Emmanuelle Devos, is the illegitimate daughter of a kitchen maid. At the beginning of the film she is living with the homosexual writer Maurice Sachs in Nazi-occupied France. After marrying her as a ‘cover, he mistreated her but encouraged her to write), in Nazi occupied France. She survives by trading luxury food items successfully on the black market, a ‘profession’ she continues after the end of the war in Paris. After reading a book by Simone de Beauvoir (a strong portrait by Sandrine Kiberlain ), she visits the writer and develops an unrequited crush on her.

De Beauvoir channels her emotional feelings into serious writing but encourages Leduc whose first book “L’ Asphixie” is published by Gallimard, through de Beauvoir’s literary contact. The lack of success of her next books, coupled with de Beauvoir’s stardom, drives Leduc into a deep depression, but the restrained and outwardly frosty de Beauvoir, supports her and even pays for her stay in a sanatorium, where Leduc is – against De Beauvoir’s will – treated with electro shocks.

Leduc whose writing was at least as revolutionary as de Beauvoir’s (she was the first to describe lesbian sex), suffered most of her life from lack of self-esteem, she felt unloved by her mother (Catherine Hiegel). Sets and lightning reflect Leduc’s self-image: before moving to Faucon, she lives mostly in squalor, the colours are washed out, grey is dominant. Paris is anything but the city of light for Leduc, she sees Paris more like tunnels, in which she gets lost. Her temper tantrums seem to reverberate from the shoddy walls of her rooms, she dresses with little elegance believing in her own modest background (only making an effort when meeting De Beauvoir). Leduc is always shown as coarse and unattractive – the total opposite of her status as a literary icon and taboo-breaker who is regarded now by some as on par with De Beauvoir.

NOW ON MUBI | DVD

Corbo (2014) | Berlinale 2015 | Generation 14plus

Director: Mathieu Denis,

Cat: Anthony Therrien, Antoine L’Ecuyer, Karelle Tremblay, Tony Nardi, Marie Brassard

110mins Drama Canada

Montreal in the late sixties: the French-speaking minority are being repressed by the Anglophone majority in the rest of the county – English rules, not only in parliament. The “Liberation Front of Quebec” (FLQ) also holds sway in the region of Quebec. It’s a radical underground organisation, not unlike the “Baader Meinhof” Group in Germany and the “Red Brigades” in Italy, which followed in their footsteps by the end of the decade. The FLQ are using violence in the pursuit of their target: they want to bomb their way to independence from the rest of the country. Like the European groups that followed, the movement attracted, disaffected young people, mainly romantics from middle class backgrounds. Corbo is one of these young men.

Quebecois director, Mathieu Denis’s observational and linear narrative drives his elegantly-styled, classicly-framed drama forward. Jean Corbo (Anthony Therrien) is a shy boy who felt alienated even in his own family and persecuted in school, were he is a misfit due to his Italian origin. At home, Jean’s father is a Liberal careerist lawyer who does not want to be reminded by his son the Italian population of Canada were put in camps after the outbreak of WWIII. His older brother agitates for the “Quebec Independence Party”, a very tame outfit, compared with the FLQ. As is happened so often in “revolutionary” circles, alliances are often the result of love affairs (successful and failed ones), and Jean also falls first for Juliet (Tremblay), and joins the FLQ to impress her. Unfortunately for him, Jean has to prove to himself and the leading theorists of the movement that he is not a pampered result of middle class upbringing. And whilst Juliet and another comrade are not ready to use violence any more, after a woman is accidentally killed in a bombing, Jean develops a radical mindset that leads to tragic consequences.

Denis is careful in his characterisation of Jean, making him neither a hero nor a villain – just a mixed-up kid who wanted to impress his girl fr show his family that he was their equal, not the baby. His politics were immature, his longing to be a revolutionary founded on sentiments alone. CORBO shows the leaders of the FLQ (who, in 1970 would kidnap and kill a minister of the Quebec government and a British diplomat), as manipulative and remote. Therrien is convincing as Jean, showing youthful vulnerability and daredevil tendances. Denis and his cinematographer, Steve Asselin, capture the details sensitively, crafting the oppression of the secure, middle-class world Jean is desperate to escape. CORBO is a powerful and truthful portrait of a romantic soul lost in power games that lead to drastic consequences for all concerned. AS

CORBO IS SCREENING DURING THE BERLINALE 5 – 15 FEBRUARY 2015

Night Train to Lisbon (2013) | DVD release

Director: Bille August Writers: Ulrich Hermann, Greg Latter

Cast: Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Huston, Melanie Laurent, Martina Gedeck, Lena Olin, Bruno Ganz, Tom Courtenay

115min Thriller

Train journeys have always been romantic and especially those at night: a sense of intrigue and expectancy as you hurtle through dark tunnels in the depths of the countryside. Here, Danish director Bille August has adapted Pascal Mercier’s novel NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON into an enticing art house treat with widescreen visuals and a starry cast.; or so it looks from the posters. So what could go wrong? Jeremy Irons puts his best foot forward as Raimund Gregorius, a buttoned-up boffin in search of himself in Bern. Having missed the boat on love, can he catch up by train?

On his way to work one day the jaded Gregorious meets a woman (Sarah Spale-Buhlmann) who obviously shares his ennui of life. Taking things a stage further, she is attempting suicide by jumping off a bridge, but eventually, due to his powers of persuasion, she agrees to follow him home. Before he can establish any facts, she disappears leaving her red coat and a book of musings by a certain Amadeu de Prado, who lived during Salazar’s dictatorship in seventies Portugal (Salazar, romantically, died falling off a deckchair). Inside, there’s a ticket for the night train to Lisbon..

Lost in the musings of de Prado (some of which is heard in voiceover), we’re all set for a train journey fraught with noirish strangers, cloaked villains and clanging bells. What we get is a tedious narrative that plods along occasionally rousing us from our slumbers as it hits another plothole in the tunnel of Gregorius’s own late-life crisis. Luckily the sympathetic figure of Marian (a compelling Marina Gedeck) shares his carriage and they bond instantly as the story unfolds. Told mainly in flashback, it features resistance spies, love triangles and the talents of Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay, Bruno Ganz and Christopher Lee, all doing their utmost to breathe life into this ambitious but rather stodgy affair that teases us with promises it never actually delivers. Unfortunately the train is soon derailed by the (self-confessed) bore Gregorius whom nobody can galvanise, least of all the nubile charms of Mélanie Laurent (as Estafania) or Jack Huston (as Amadeu himself). Do see it, if you’ve got an indolent afternoon with nothing to do, it might wile away a few hours but it won’t transport you to anywhere other than your cinema. MT

OUT ON DVD from 2 FEBRUARY 2015

Son of a Gun (2014)

Director: Julian Avery

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Alicia Vikander, Brenton Thwaites

118min Action Drama

The only reason to see SON OF A GUN is Ewan McGregor’s performance that sweeps this raunchy crime caper off its feet and wipes the floor with everyone else in the cast. McGregor plays Brendan, a venal gangster serving time, who befriends the new kid on the jail block, JR, (Brenton Thwaites) rescuing him from the clutches of a rival gang behind bars. But there’s no such thing as a free luncheon voucher, and once JR is out in the open again, he’s forced into a series of trials on behalf of Brendan, who keeps him firmly under the cosh to aide and abet his own escape and then compete in a complex gold heist. Despite providing beefy goodness and sultry arm candy for Alicia Vikander’s underwritten nubile Russian moll (Tasha), Thwaites is upstaged by Ewan McGregor at every turn as the plot finally melts to slurry in the Australian sun. McGregor emerges the victor on every level here. Well he would, wouldn’t he. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 January 2015.

Rotterdam International Film Festival 2015 | 21 January 1 Feb 2015| Winners

The 44th Rotterdam Film Festival had 13 premieres competing for the Hivos Tiger Awards. The winners are:

La Obra del Siglo

Videophilia (and other viral syndromes)

Vanishing Point

Nicolas Steiner’s documentary ABOVE AND BELOW looks at the challenging lives of survivors in contemporary America and goes underground in Las Vegas where a couple inhabit a tunnel; to the Californian desert where a lonely guy survives the climate and to the flat landscape of Utah where a girl contemplates a mission to Mars. They may be far away but these characters all feel familiar. Switzerland, Germany, 120 min.

Based on Indonesian legends, Ismail Basbeth’s ANOTHER TRIP TO THE MOON is a weird and wondrous fantasy that sees a young daughter hiding from the clutches of her mother, deep in the forest. Indonesia, 80 min.

BRIGEND – full review
And back in Wales, a mysterious cult of suicide has been prevalent over a 5-year period in Bridgend. 79 people, many of them teenagers, have taken their own lives without leaving any clue as to why. Danish director, Jeppe Rønde, explores this bizarre trend, hoping to shed light on this bizarre set of events. 2015, Denmark, 99 min.

GLUCKAUF
In the impoverished Dutch province of South Limburg, a powerful father-son drama plays out. Like many co-dependent relationships, this one appears to offer no escape. Johan Leysen and Ali Ben Horsting star in Remy van Heugten’s drama 2015, Netherlands, 102 min.

HARUKO’S PARANORMAL LABORATORY

Lisa Takeba directs this comedy from Japan that focuses on Haruko, a girl who prefers to cuddle up to her old-fashioned TV set. Lisa Takeba, 2015, Japan, 76 min.

IMPRESSIONS OF A DROWNED MAN

Kyros Papavassiliou’s drama focuses on a Greek man suffering from amnesia. He meets a former lover who tells him he is the famous poet, Kostas Karyotakis, who killed himself in 1928. Every year he returns.., 2015, Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia, 82 min.

DOG LADY (Mujer de los perros)

Co-director Llinás plays an intriguing and offbeat character in this existentialist fable about a woman who lives with a pack of dogs in the wilderness. Laura Citarella, Verónica Llinás, 2015, Argentina, 95 min. Definitely one to watch!

NORFOLK

Another father and son drama unfolds, this time in an isolated part Norfolk (not a million miles from South Limburg) the narrative here surrounds a painful family saga. But who’s right and who’s wrong remains a mystery. Martin Radich, 2015, United Kingdom, 87 min.

THE WORK OF THE CENTURY (Obra del Siglo)

Carlos Quintela is a Cuban filmmaker who feature debut La Piscina has so far earned him several awards. Here, drifting effortlessly between raw psychological realism and dreamy surrealism and loaded with unique Cuban archive footage, he explores the lives of three men. Carlos M. Quintela, 2015, Argentina, Cuba, Switzerland, Germany, 100 min.

PARABELLUM

We’re hearing great reports about this sci-fi drama from Argentinian director Lukas Valenta Rinner. Threatened by the end of the world, a group of Buenos Aires residents receive lessons in survival at a resort in the marshy Tigre delta. Lukas Valenta Rinner, 2015, Argentina, Austria, Uruguay, 75 min.

TIRED MOONLIGHT

At first sight, small towns are not so different from one another: identical shops and identical pleasures. In the big mountain country of Montana we meet Dawn, a middle-aged woman, who dreams of a great future while scraping a living in the daily grind. Someone from her past reappears to change things. Britni West, 2015, USA, 78 min.

VANISHING POINT

A serious film about serious, complex issues (including a dramatic car crash), presented in a light, playful way. The film follows two very different men,
Jakrawal Nilthamrong, 2015, Thailand, 100 min.
Tickets »

VIDEOPHILIA (AND OTHER VITAL SYNDROMES)

Internet cafés and slackers, not-so-innocent schoolgirls and amateur porn using Google Glass, Mayans and the end of the world, acid trips and guinea pigs all feature in this comedy drama mystery from Peruvian filmmaker: Juan Daniel Fernández Molero, 2015, Peru, 103 min

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 21 JANUARY – 1 FEBRUARY 2015

Poland’s Tragic Filmmakers

Perhaps because of its geographical position, between Germany and Russia, the history of Poland has been littered with tragic events that have percolated through the subconscious of its artists and creatives to give lasting legacies in the visuals Arts and particularly cinema.

The image of the doomed Polish underdog, a sad victim of Fascism or Stalinism, litters the screens of the postwar period. These historical tragedies effecting their homeland seem to have left a scar on the collective psyches of these talented artists and filmmakers, often causing them to lose their lives while in full swing.

The leading example of this must be Andrzej Munk (1921-1961), who died in a car accident, after returning from the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau where he was shooting part of PASSENGER, ironically a film about an ex-concentration camp inmate who meets one of her former torturers on a ship. The film was finished, partly with stills, by Witold Lesiewicz and premiered on September 20th 1963, the second anniversary of Munk’s death, winning the FIPRESCI award at the Cannes Film Festival1964. Munk, who was Jewish, had to hide in Warsaw, and was part of the uprising in 1944. He started studying law, but later was one of the first students at the soon-to-be world famous Lodz Film School. He graduated in 1951 and begun shooting poetic documentaries, very much against the grain of the ruling dogma of “socialist realism”. Munk had joined the Polish United Workers Party in 1948, but was expelled already in 1952 for “blameworthy behaviour”. His first feature film MAN ON THE TRACKS was the first anti-Stalinist film in Central Europe. Followed by EROICA (1957) and BAD LUCK (1960), (both written by Stefan Stawinsky) Munk had established himself as the leading Polish director of his generation. Returning to Lodz Film School in 1957 as a teacher, Munk’s students included Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski and Krzysztof Zanussi.

Even though Krzysztof Kieslowski (1941-1996) may have lived a few years longer than the “mythical” limit of 50 attributed to artists having died ‘young’, his life is exemplary for his generation of Polish filmmakers, caught between creativity and Stalinist bureaucracy, which tried to suffocate them. After training to be a fire fighter, Kieslowski is successful, after many failed attempts, to study at Lodz Film School in 1965. He finishes in 1965 and joins TOR a documentary film collective in Warsaw. “From Lodz” (1969) and “Worker 71 – nothing about us, without our participation” (1972) are examples for his critical view of Stalinist repression. But his breakthrough is a feature film: THE AMATEUR FILMMAKER (1979), winner of the “FIPRESCI Price” at the ”Moscow Film Festival” of the same year. The satirical story tells the tale of a worker, who suddenly discovers his love for film making – taking himself too serious, he looses his wife, job and finally sanity. DEKALOG (1989), originally a TV film, is a liberal version of the “10 Commandments”, even though Kieslowski denied any religious intentions. A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING and A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE, part of the series, are later shown in separate forms in feature film length. His cultural pessimism found its maximal expression in the THREE COLOURS TRILOGY (1991-1994), where loss and alienation win over, in spite of the will for human survival. Even though Kieslowski retired from directing, he wrote two more scripts, ”Hell” and “Paradise”, but died before he can finish his new trilogy after a failed by-pass operation.

But the list of Polish directors who died long before they could fulfil their potential is much longer, and by no means complete, they don’t deserve to be forgotten. Aleksander Hertz, was a leading Polish director of the silent period. Film production flourished particularly during the war years of 1914–1918; all in all Hertz directed 48 films in his short life. Eight of them featured a certain Barbara Apolonia Chaĺupiec, later known as Pola Negri. She starred in eight popular erotic melodramas, including BESTIA and SLAVE TO HER SENSES (both 1914), before leaving in 1917 for Germany and later Hollywood.

Richard Boleslawski was born in Warsaw in 1889; after fighting in the Tsarist army in WWI he stayed in Russia, where he directed two films, before returning to Poland in 1917, shooting the same number of films, before emigrating to Hollywood in 1929, where his first great success was RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS (1932), featuring no less than three Barrymores: Ethel, John and Lionel. Two years later Greta Garbo starred in Boleslawski’s THE PAINTED VEIL. Then tragedy struck whilst shooting THE GARDEN OF ALLAH with Marlene Dietrich in 1936 in the south western desert. Despite company advice, he drank some local unboiled water and became ill, eventually losing his life half way through his last production THE LAST OF MRS CHENEY (starring Joan Crawford) almost a year later. In tribute to his short but invaluable contribution to cinema, the Americans made him a Star on the famous Walk of Fame (1960) on Hollywood Boulevard.

Mieczyslaw Krawicz (1893-1944) started out as a set designer and was later assistant to Aleksander Hertz. He directed 19 films between 1929 and 1939. His last work was as producer and DOP for the documentary THE CHRONICLES OF THE BESIEGED WARSAW (1939). He would lose his life five years later during the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto.

Eugeniusz Bodo (1899-1943) directed only two films but starred in over thirty productions and was one of the most popular figures in interwar Polish cinema. His father was Swiss and owned a cinema in Lodz, where Eugeniusz grew up. In 1931 Bodo jr. founded the BWB studios, and two years later the “Urania” production company, named after his father’s cinema. After the German invasion, he toured the USSR with a jazz band. He was supposed to be repatriated to Poland, but the USSR claimed that he was not eligible, since he carried a Swiss passport. He starved to death during the journey to the labour camp of Kotlas. The USSR claimed that he was murdered by the Germans, but the truth emerged after 1989. In tribute, Stanislaw Janicki shot a documentary about Bodo’s last years FOR CRIMES NOT COMMITTED in 1997..

Henryk Szaro (Henryk Shapiro) was born in 1900 in Warsaw. He started his artistic career at the Polish National Theatre, later working with famous Russian directors like Meyerhold and Arbatov. Szaro directed his first film ONE OF THE 36 in 1925, it had a Talmudic theme. He would return to this subject again in 1937 with THE VOW, which was shot in Jiddish. Overall Szaro directed eleven films between 1925 and 1939. He founded the Association of Polish Producers in 1927, and nine years later the Association of Polish Filmmakers. After the German invasion he fled to Vilnius, but returned to Warsaw, where he was murdered in the ghetto in 1942.

Wojciech Wiszniewski was born in 1946 in Lodz. After his father’s premature death, his mother was forced to rent rooms to students of the Lodz film school, young Wojciech getting to know future film directors like Roman Polanski, Andrezej Kostenko and Heryk Kluba. Between 1965 and 1969 Wiszniewski himself studied at the famous PWSFTvIT in Lodz. He was one of the most gifted students of his year, but suffered from heart problems. After film school, he only managed to direct five short films, six documentary shorts and a TV feature but won five awards. His films showed a rather grim picture of Polish society and did not endear him to the authorities. When he finally got financing to start his first feature film “King Slayers” based on a famous novel by Stefan Stawinski (who wrote the scripts for Munk’s “Eroica” and “Bad Luck”), he died a few days before shooting started in 1981 of a heart attack, a day before his 35th birthday. AS/MT

THE 13TH EDITION OF KINOTEKA: POLISH FILM FESTIVAL WILL BE BACK IN LONDON in APRIL 2015

Au Revoir les Enfants (1987)

Dir.: Louis Malle

Cast: Gaspar Manesse, Raphael Fetjo, Francine Racette

France 1987, 104 min.

When Louis Malle returned from the USA to France in 1986, he was ready to start work on a project close to his heart since with he had become a filmmaker. AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is a very autobiographical film, based on Malles’ experience in a Catholic boarding school in January 1944 when three Jewish boys, hiding with the consent of the padres, were denounced by a disgruntled kitchen help and sent to a concentration camp together with one of the teachers, Father Jean. None of them survived.

Malle had already tackled France under German occupation in 1974 with LACOMBE LUCIEN. But the role of French collaborators in the Holocaust, particularly the French police, is still a contentious issue today. When President Hollande recently commemorated the Round-Up of foreign Jews at the “Velodrome d’Hiver” in July 1942 and their subsequent deportation to the concentration camps, he mentioned –quiet accurately – that this was done by French men alone. The political storm was enormous – French history is full of praise for the Resistance, but the reality was that 99% of France collaborated with the Germans – closing their eyes to what was going on. Malle, very aware of the national repression of this period was adamant in an interview: “We all knew. And people who pretend that they didn’t know are just – well, we knew. I was not even twelve, and I knew. I remember my parents talking about it, how horrible it was.”

Similar to his narrative in LACOMBE LUCIEN, the traitor is a young boy with a grudge; somebody without a formed identity who could have equally ended up in the resistance but for circumstances and choice: Joseph is jealous of the privileged boys in the convent trying to be their friend and ally and helping them with their little black market deals. But when the teachers find out about their activities, Joseph, whose limp already makes him an outsider, receive the worse punishment: he is dismissed and informs the Gestapo.

Malle confessed that he only invented the character of Joseph. During his research for the project, he found out that such a person had actually existed at the time of the arrests. However, he may not have been the culprit as some say the denunciation came from neighbours and others that an ex-student who had joined the resistance confessed to the crime under torture. There were contradictions and discrepancies, but Malle stuck with the Joseph figure who seemed to ring true. At the end of film, we hear Malle’s voice, declaring “that this was the key memory of my life, I thought about this every day since then, I will never forget it.”

Set during a grim January in 1944, this exceptionally moving yet unsentimental personal masterpiece garnered much critical acclaim including The Golden Lion at Venice 1987, a BAFTA and several Césars. AS

ON RELEASE AT THE BFI FROM 30 JANUARY 2015 AT BFI SOUTHBANK, IFI DUBLIN AND SELECTED CINEMAS NATIONWIDE.

Trash (2014)

Director: Stephen Daldry Writers: Felipe Braga, Richard Curtis, Based on the novel by Andy Mulligan

Cast: Rooney Mara, Martin Sheen, Wagner Moura, Selton Mello, Christiane Amanpour (herself)

114min Adventure drama UK

Stephen Daldry made a speculative trip to Brazil with a small film crew. Heading for Rio’s famous favelas, he came across a group of local kids living off the landfill sites. TRASH is their astonishing story.

After a sizzling chase sequence where a man chucks his wallet out of his window onto a skip before being captured and fatally beaten by the Police, we meet 14-year-old Raphael Fernandez (newcomer Rickson Tevez) who finds the wallet while foraging. It contains a wad of cash, a photo of a little girl and a locker key. Delighted, at such a scoop he hides the wallet when Police arrive next morning announcing a reward for its retrieval. Along with his best friend Gardo and a sewer boy called Rato, Raphael sets off to find the mystery behind the wallet’s contents and a set of figures written on the photo – are they lottery numbers or a secret code? Solving the riddle turns into a dangerous fight for survival as the boys discover the Police are prepared to kill them unless they give up the wallet and a ledger containing information about corrupt Government officials. Martin Sheen and Rooney Mara provide ballast as a couple of unconvincing local do-gooders (a Catholic priest and an aide-worker) who only serve to secure financing and distribution for this entertaining chase movie, which apparently works as comedy to Brazilian audiences – speaking volumes from a social point of view!

There are some similarities here with Slumdog Millionnaire and Ciudad de Dios but the best thing about Daldry’s well-made movie is the genuine appeal of the local boys – all untrained newcomers who can barely read or write in their native tongues let alone speak English. But Daldry has mastered the art of working with children, as we saw in Billy Elliott and although TRASH is a less-convincing outing, it nevertheless amuses with a fearsome pace for most of its run-time – although at nearly two hours, it occasionally feels as sprawling as the endless favelas themselves. The script is in the safe hands of Richard Curtis (Love, Actually) and loosely-based on Andy Mulligan 2010 novel.

Rickson Tevez (Raphael) is screen dynamite as the ‘heart of gold’ hero who triumphs through inventiveness and perseverance delivering a message of hope and serving as a fabulous role model for young kids of today. The other standout is Gabriel Weinstein, who plays the ‘sewer boy’ with charm and considerable aplomb. Selton Mello, the detective leading the chase, is consistently sinister while also portraying the modern face of the Brazilian middle class and there’s also a deftly-placed cameo from Christiane Amanpour to keep the whole thing tethered in the reality of this real human interest story which, despite its tragic backstory, ends on a positive note. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 30 JANUARY 2015

[youtube id=”VN08JrXZ9eM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Leviathan (2014)

Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev | Writers: Andrei Zvyagintsev, Oleg Negin | Cast: Aleksei Serebyakov, Elana Lyadova, Roman Madyanov, Vladimir Vdovichenkov | Russia Drama |141min

Small, large, small, large: that’s the pattern of canvas sizes on which Andrei Zvyagintsev seems to be working. The Russian filmmaker’s tight debut feature THE RETURN (2003) was followed by sprawling sophomore effort THE BANISHMENT (2007), while taut masterpiece ELENA (2011) is succeeded now by suitably named LEVIATHAN, his most ambitious work to date. Taking its inspiration from the Book of Job, Zvyagintsev and co-scriptwriter Oleg Negin’s big, bleak statement on contemporary Russia won the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes, and held a capacity audience rapt for its 141 minutes this week at the 14th edition of T-Mobile New Horizons in Wrocław, Poland.

Melding the domestic and the social, the personal and the political, LEVIATHAN tells the northwest Russia-set tale of vodka-swigging Kolya (Aleksei Serebryakov), whose beautiful inherited beachside home – shared with his younger wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova) and his son from a previous marriage Roma (Sergei Pokhodaev) – is under threat when the corrupt local mayor Vadim (Roman Madyanov) purchases the surrounding land. Kolya enlists good pal Dmitri (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), a lawyer from Moscow, who arrives in town to scare Vadim off with some canny research of his own, and to rekindle a sexual fling with Lilya.

To say any more is to ruin Zvyagintsev’s most narratively complex work to date. What makes this tremendous film so rewarding, however, is the director’s retention of previously employed ambiguities, which he puts to use in an unprecedently expansive storytelling style. As such, the Russian, who for many has been a kind of successor to Tarkovsky (claims and comparisons that appear now to be unhelpfully lazy), is pushing the boat out here into new territory not unlike how Nuri Bilge Ceylan did with ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA – which ranks alongside Zvyagintsev’s ELENA as one of this decade’s best films.

LEVIATHAN now surely joins such ranks. Before anything else are the familiar strengths. Regular cinematographer Mikhail Krichman shoots with a reliance on the natural light of northwest Russia’s late summer/early autumn, giving the whole thing a pallet at once unhealthily under-lit and richly blue. Elena Lyadova, a less central performer in ELENA, is here elevated to key player: in her, Zvyagintsev has found an actress whose hardened beauty betrays all the hurt and disappointment that an ordinary life down on the lower rungs can bring. In so much as a glance here, she conveys a woman caught between the rock of an unhappy marriage and the unbearably hard place of a doomed affair. Philip Glass’s music also returns: ‘The Ruins’, from his 1983 opera Akhnaten, bookends proceedings over sequences of harsh, foreboding cliff faces and crashing, ominous waves.

Does the film overreach? Though such passages as that just mentioned are vivid and gripping in themselves, they do suggest a director who’s possibly too eager to imbue his work with an air of thematic significance. All the more refreshing, then, that the film is also Zvyagintsev’s funniest by far. Never settling for any one simple tonal register, it at times reaching levels of black satire, most notably in its early depictions of Vadim the mayor, a shark in a small pond whose office boasts a framed portrait of Putin, to whose shady Machiavellianism he palpably aspires (other framed leaders, from Lenin to Gorbachev, feature in another scene). As Vadim, Madyanov steals the show, resembling a fluffy teddy bear dowsed in vodka one moment and a ruthless, no-nonsense brute the next.

In a key scene, this cartoonishly disgusting villain seeks sympathy from the church – and comes away with an unspoken blessing to destroy the lives of ordinary and largely decent folk. And, on the beach not far from the domestic space eventually demolished with brutally undiscerning abandon by a bulldozer, is to be found an avatar of Russia today: the sad, giant skeleton of a beached whale. MICHAEL PATTISON

NOW ON DVD/Blu from

Berlinale 2015 | Panorama |Selection

P A N O R A M A S E C T I O N – PROBING THE PAST TO SHAPE THE FUTURE

The 36th Panorama titles reflect global concerns from America to East Asia and tackle themes from the past that are still having a deep impact today on the society and people they represent:

DRAMAS

54: The Director’s Cut – USA (SEX, DRUGS)
By Mark Christopher.

The full and un-expiated version of the famous Mark Christopher’s exploration of the famous 70s NYC nightclub seen and told through the eyes of a young employee. Ryan Phillippe, Salma Hayek, Mike Myers, Sela Ward, Mark Ruffalo star. World premiere

CHORUS –Canada (BEREAVEMENT)
By François Delisle.

There’s nothing like a good Canadian film and this one, in black and white, is a love story that emerges from mourning. With Sébastien Ricard, Fanny Mallette, Pierre Curzi, Geneviève Bujold. European premiere

Der letzte Sommer der Reichen (The Last Summer of the Rich) – Austria (CHILD ABUSE)
By Peter Kern

A rich financier from the crème de la crème of Viennese society is the centre of this fascinating drama from one of Austrian best-known directors. With Amira Casar, Nicole Gerdon, Winfried Glatzeder
World premiere

Dora oder Die sexuellen Neurosen unserer Eltern (Dora or The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents) Switzerland / Germany
By Stina Werenfels
With Victoria Schulz, Jenny Schily, Lars Eidinger, Urs Jucker
World premiere

Dyke Hard – Sweden (LESBIANISM/LGBT)
By Bitte Andersson
With Alle Eriksson, Peggy Sands, M. Wågensjö, Iki Gonzales Magnusson, Lina Kurttila
International premiere

Gukje Shijang (Ode to My Father) Republic of Korea
By JK Youn
with Hwang Jung-min, Kim Yunjin
International premiere

I AM MICHAEL – USA (GAY ACTIVISM)
By Justin Kelly
With James Franco, Zachary Quinto, Emma Roberts
International premiere of a yet another film starring James Franco – this time playing Michael Glatze, the co-founder of Young Gay America and former advocate for gay rights, in Justin Kelly’s debut.

Jun Zhong Le Yuan (Paradise in Service) – Taiwan / People’s Republic of China (GANGSTER with a heart)
By Doze Niu Chen-Zer
With Ethan Juan, Wan Qian, Chen Jianbin, Chen Yi-Han
European premiere

Meurtre à Pacot (Murder in Pacot) – France / Haiti / Norway (HAITI EARTHQUAKE DRAMA)
By Raoul Peck
With Alex Descas, Ayo, Thibault Vinçon, Lovely Kermonde Fifi, Joy Olasunmibo Ogunmakin
European premiere

Mot Naturen (OUT OF NATURE) – Norway (FATHERHOOD)
By Ole Giæver, Marte Vold
With Ole Giæver, Marte Magnusdotter Solem, Rebekka Nystadbakk, Ellen Birgitte Winther, Sievert Giaever Solem
European premiere

NED RIFLE (Ned Rifle) – USA (CRIME)
By Hal Hartley

Parkey Posey stars in Hal Hartley’s latest part of the Grim family trilogy that Hartley began back in 1997 with Henry Fool that one him Best Screenplay at Cannes Film Festival. With Liam Aiken, Martin Donovan, Aubrey Plaza, Thomas Jay Ryan. European premiere

600 Millas (600 MILES) – Mexico
By Gabriel Ripstein

This Mexican thriller stars Tim Roth, Kristyan Ferrer, Harrison Thomas, Noé Hernández, Armando Hernández. World premiere

AL BAR MIN OURAIKOUM (The Sea Is Behind) – Morocco

Hisham Lasri’s dramatic story explores violence, intolerance and conservatism in the Arab World. With Malek Akhmiss, Hassan Badida, Yassine Sekkal. European premiere

Al-Hob wa Al-Sariqa wa Mashakel Ukhra (Love, Theft and Other Entanglements) – Palestinian Territories
By Muayad Alayan
With Sami Metwasi, Maya Abu Alhayyat, Riyad Sliman, Ramzi Maqdisi, Kamel Elbasha
World premiere

ANGELICA – USA

TEETH director, Mitchell Lichtenstein’s ghost story is set in Victorian England where a young couple are driven apart after the birth of their child, Angelica. With Jena Malone, Janet McTeer, Ed Stoppard, Tovah Feldshuh
World premiere

Ausência (ABSENCE) – Brazil / Chile / France
By Chico Teixeira

Daily life in all its glory is examined through the eyes of a little boy growing up in a poor neighbourhood of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

With Matheus Fagundes, Irandhir Santos, Gilda Nomacce, Thiago de Matos, Francisca Gavilán. International premiere

BIZARRE – France / USA

Working in a Brooklyn Nightclub, Maurice is haunted by a troublesome past that make him reject everyone who tries to love him. Étienne Faure’s drama stars Pierre Prieur, Adrian James, Raquel Nave, Rebekah Underhill World premiere

DE CE EU? (WHY ME?) – Romania / Bulgaria / Hungary

Katalin Varga producer, Tudor Giurgiu, directs this drama starring Emilian Oprea, Mihai Constantin, Andreea Vasile, Dan Condurache, Liviu Pintileaska World premiere

El incendio (THE FIRE) – Argentina

In Argentina, a young couple’s love for each other is severely put to the test when their house purchase is jeopardised by unexpected disaster. By Juan Schnitman. With Pilar Gamboa, Juan Barberini. World premiere

Härte (TOUGH LOVE) – Germany
By Rosa von Praunheim
With Luise Heyer, Hanno Koffler, Katy Karrenbauer, Marion Erdmann, Andreas Marquardt
World premiere

HOW TO WIN AT CHECKERS (Every Time) – Thailand / USA / Indonesia. By Josh Kim. World premiere

Mariposa (BUTTERFLY) – Argentina
By Marco Berger
With Ailín Salas, Javier De Pietro, Julián Infantino, Malena Villa
World premiere

NASTY BABY – USA
Fresh from SUNDANCE FESTIVAL, Kristen Wiig stars in Sebastián Silva’s drama exploring a gay couple’s desperate search to have a baby with the help of their best friend. Also starring Tunde Adebimpe, Mark Margolis, Reg E. Cathey. International Premiere

NECKTIE YOUTH – South Africa
By Sibs Shongwe-La Mer
With Sibs Shongwe-La Mer, Bonko Cosmo, Emma Tollman, Jonathan Young, Colleen Balchin
World premiere

Onthakan (THE BLUE HOUR) – Thailand
By Anucha Boonyawatana
With Atthaphan Poonsawas, Oabnithi Wiwattanawarang, Duangjai Hirunsri
World premier

OUT OF MY HAND– USA
By Takeshi Fukunaga
With Bishop Blay, Duke Murphy Dennis, Zenobia Kpoto
World premiere

Paridan az Ertefa Kam (A MINOR LEAP DOWN) – Iran / France
By Hamed Rajabi
With Negar Javaherian, Rambod Javan
World premiere

PETTING ZOO– Germany / Greece / USA
By Micah Magee
With Devon Keller, Austin Reed, Deztiny Gonzales, Kiowa Tucker
World premiere

Pionery-geroi (PIONEER HEROES) – Russian Federation
By Natalia Kudryashova
With Natalia Kudryashova, Daria Moroz, Aleksei Mitin, Aleksandr Userdin
World premiere

Que Horas Ela Volta? (THE SECOND MOTHER) – Brazil
By Anna Muylaert
European premiere

Sangailė (THE SUMMER OF SANGAILé) – Lithuania / France / Netherlands
By Alanté Kavaïté
With Julija Steponaityté, Aisté Diruté, Juraté Sodyté, Martynas Budraitis
European premiere

Sangue azul (BLUE BLOOD) – Brazil
By Lirio Ferreira
With Daniel de Oliveira, Caroline Abras, Sandra Coverloni, Rômulo Braga
International premiere

Zui Sheng Meng Si (THANATOS – DRUNK) – Taiwan
By Chang Tso-Chi
With Lee Hong-Chi, Chen Jen-Shuo, Huang Shang-Ho, Lu Hsueh-Feng, Wang Ching-Ting
World premiere

P A N O R A M A Documentary FILMS

B MOVIE: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin
Germany
By Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck, Heiko Lange
With Mark Reeder, Marius Weber
World premiere

Danieluv svet (DANIEL’S WORLD)

Czech Republic
By Veronika Liskova

Daniel is a student and a writer – he’s also a paedophile. This Czech title goes inside a community where people are desperately struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation. International premiere

El hombre nuevo (THE NEW MAN)
Uruguay / Chile / Nicaragua
By Aldo Garay

Stephania is a transvestite born in Nicaragua. As a boy, he was adopted by a couple of Uruguayan leftist activists in the midst of the Sandinista revolution. In Montevideo, we explore Stephania’s journey to rediscover her home country where she now wants to be accepted for the woman she is. World premiere

FASSBINDER – lieben ohne zu fordern (Fassbinder – To Love Without Demands)
Denmark
By Christian Braad Thomsen
with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Irm Hermann, Harry Baer, Lilo Pempeit. World premiere

IRAQI ODYSSEY

Switzerland
By Samir
European premiere

STORIES OF OUR LIVES

Kenya / South Africa
By Jim Chuchu
With Kelly Gichohi, Paul Ogola, Tim Mutungi, Mugambi Nthinga, Rose Njenga
European premiere

THE YES MEN ARE REVOLTING
USA
By Laura Nix, Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno
European premiere

BERLINALE RUNS FROM 5 -15 FEBRUARY 2015.

THE FORUM, PANORAMA and other sections will be updated in due course. MLT

Las Ninas Quispe (The Quispe Girls) | Berlinale 2015 | NATIVe Selection

LAS NINAS QUISPE *** SETTIMANA DELLA CRITICA (2013)

Haunted by sadness, mistrust and a hostile political climate, three sisters herd goats in the high planes of seventies Chile as they contemplate their bleak future. Sebastian Sepulveda’s debut is a plaintive affair shot through with human tenderness, subtles turns by the Quispe sisters (Francisca Gavilan, Catalina Saavedra and Digna Quispe) and a captivating sepia-tinted aesthetic. MT

God’s Pocket (2014) | DVD release

Director: John Slattery

Writers: John Slattery, Alex Metcalf (from the novel by Peter Dexter)

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christina Hendricks, Richard Jenkins, John Turturro, Eddie Marsan, Caleb Landry Jones

88mins US Drama

The South Philadelphia neighbourhood of God’s Pocket, depicted here in John Slattery’s debut, may be a poor and depressing, but it’s honest and God-fearing. This is where Mickey Scarpato (Philip Seymour Hoffman lives with his wife Jeanie (Christina Hendricks) and her son Leon (Caleb Landry Jones), an insipid loser who has so few friends amongst his co-workers at the local junk-yard that when he threatens one with a flick-knife and gets a fatal head wound in retaliation, no one is disappointed. And when the police arrive on the scene, everyone swears blind it was an accident. But his histrionic mother will have not of it and forces her unlucky husband to ask around for clues and cash to afford a decent burial.

A rich vein of black humour runs through this close community of Italian and Irish blue-collar workers, drunks, hustlers and bottom-feeders: it doesn’t seem to matter what you do (steal, cheat, or even murder) – as long as you’re from ‘The Pocket’ – you’re safe amongst your own. Mickey is an outsider but part of the Pocket by marriage and he understands the status quo and hangs out with the best of them; gambling and drinking in the Hollywood bar. Trading in meat, his refrigerated van is home to stolen carcasses and a good deal more. But celebrity journalist Richard Shelburn (Richard Jenkins) a burnt out intellectual, doesn’t belong and although he’s championed the community and knows how to depict these hard-working denizens in the newspaper, he misjudges the mood when he’s called in to ‘investigate’ the crime he falls foul of the locals, offending them with his phoney, working class diatribe (‘Simple men, who rarely leave)”. And especially when he crosses the boundary with Jeanie.

John Slattery (of Mad Men fame) bases his impressive first feature on an eighties novel by Peter Dexter (The Paperboy). It’s a witty and well-written affair, richly textured, cleverly lensed in seventies style (by Lance Acord) with a gripping storyline and characters that ring out with rare authenticity.

[youtube id=”X9m28UxbhQM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Among the performances, Christina Hendricks is appealing as a sexually dutiful wife and doting mother and Philip Seymour Hoffman excels in a paunchy portrait of a small time hustler who is forces to do the right thing but feels little inclination or real joy in his life. John Turturro and Joyce Van Patten are unmemorable but Caleb Landry Jones is strong and unsettling as the spoilt son. Here in God’s Pocket, the community is a religion that supports a godforsaken people who have little else to support or really sustain them; a brash world but not an entirely unfeeling one and there are moments of comedy in the bleakness such as the undertaker (Eddie Marsan) who spills beer on the corpse. This is a place with little to recommend it and characters you would probably rather not know, but it’s a world with a heart that keeps on beating despite the odds. MT

NOW OUT ON DVD

Foyle’s War (2015) | DVD release

Cast: Michael Kitchen, Honeysuckle Weeks, Ellie Haddington, Tim McMullan, Jeremy Swift, Rupert Vansittart, Daniel Weyman.

This quietly gripping post Second World War series, written by Anthony Horowitz, has been a firm favourite since 2002 with around five million TV viewers at the last count. Series 8 finds reliable stalwart Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen), now working as a highly professional M15 detective tasked with investigating three cases both on the home front and abroad relating to past real-life Wartime events packs a particularly relevant punch as is possibly why the series, which some find rather too sedate, appeals to more mature audiences.

Slow-burning but superbly acted by a Sterling British cast, Kitchen portrays Foyle as breviloquent, gently sardonic and certainly no fool when it comes to dealing with wrongdoers: flushing out suspicious characters in these three new stories. Meanwhile his feisty assistant, Samantha Stuart (Honeysuckle Weeks), is going to great lengths to conceal another big secret, her pregnancy.

HIGH CASTLE: Corrupt Nazi businessmen come into the spotlight when a University Professor is found brutally murdered in a London Park after working as a wartime translator in Nuremberg linked to Global American Oil. Foyle’s boss, Sir Alex Myerson, is desperately trying to defend the American ‘good guys’ who run the energy company, but it’s clear to see that young executive, Clayton Del Mar, is as slippery as a barrel of West Texas Intermediate. John Mahoney saves the day in a serious role (no sign of Eddie, sadly).

TRESPASS: Ensuring an exciting international flavour, Foyle is tasked with ensuring security and uncovering a potential bombing threat at a high level Palestinian conference.

ELISE: Foyle’s colleague Hilda Pierce has a knack of being both unpleasant and indomitable. After surviving a point blank shooting, it appears that the shots were fired by a traitor within the ranks of the Special Operations Executive and Foyle is forced to examine his own inner sanctum to expose the truth.

DVD includes interviews with Anthony Horowitz and extensive coverage of the truth behind the stories.

OUT ON 19 JANUARY 2015

Under The Skin (2013) | Mubi

Dir: Jonathan Glazer Wri: Walter Campbell | Cast: Scarlett Johanssen, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Paul Brannigan | US/UK Existential Thriller 107min

Promos director Jonathan Glazer’s two previous features have been exceptional: Sexy Beast was one of Ray Winstone’s best performances, launching his distinctive talent onto the big screen. Birth, was a drama of subtlety and resonance not least because of Nicole Kidman.

Under the Skin is a twisted, art house mind-jammer with echoes of Species and the creepiest soundtrack since Snowtown. But this is no ordinary fantasy drama. Jonathan Glazer claiming he felt threatened at the film’s premiere at Venice 2013 where the film was greeted with scepticism for its groundbreaking ideas. Based on Michael Faber’s acclaimed novel is sees an alien seductress in the shape of Scarlett Johansson who fetches up in Scotland where she turns predator on a series of unsuspecting men. Striking as a mysterious vamp with blood red lips, ‘The Female’ has a subversive agenda aimed at derailing the male of the human species. Under the Skin is a deliciously creative visual masterpiece that certainly gives us a run for our money, courtesy of cinematographer Daniel Landin.

Provocatively teasing the imagination, the film opens with some luminous images of refractive light and lenses- suggesting a different interpretation of seeing things from the alien POV. Glazer then offers up a portrait of a outwardly timid but skanky looking young woman who silent cruises around the Scottish countryside and the urban backwaters of Glasgow in her black land-rover. Occasionally stopping to ask directions from random male passers-by (a cast of non-pros keeps things edgy) who are only too happy to be led astray when offered a lift.

For the first half of the film our cold-eyed provocative heroine is very much the daylight succubus: welcoming men in dark recesses of empty properties where they slowly undress at the thought of what may follow. They sink into a pitch-black viscous void as she turns to nothingness before their eyes. On a beach, she watches vacantly as a whole family drown. Without a scintilla of anguish or interest, she drives away. On meeting a deformed young stranger, she seduces him and abandons him naked on the Moors. With another, she switches to a more submissive modus operandi; or is this just a ruse to appear vulnerable in order to gain control? Having gleaned some insight into the male psyche, she learns how to control men through lust, while remaining a siren like cypher. Is she an alien with a mission to learn about feelings, or just a random psychopath to mimicking a human response? We are sucked in; mesmerised; looking for clues; hoping to make some sense of the images floating across the scenery of this sinister landscape with its haunting and unsettling soundtrack from Mica Levi.

UNDER THE SKIN morphs between horror and sci-fi; drawing you into its bewitching spell with some deliciously inventive images (some poetic, some horrific). Jonathan Glazer is a visionary artist seeing the World through different eyes; those of an unworldly being. The voyeuristic camera makes no verbal judgement as it roams the High Streets, focussing on random individuals, making us see ourselves from a new perspective, exploring human behaviour through the eyes of an alien, until everything starts to look weird. With its bewildering narrative and intense visual experience this is certainly one of the most challenging and exciting films of the past decade . MT

Attenborough Award 2015| Best British Film UNDER THE SKIN is on MUBI

[youtube id=”7S1yhSp5jaI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Southern District | Zona Sur (2009)

Director: Juan Carlos Valdivia

Cast: Ninon del Castillo, Pascual Loayza, Nicolas Fernandez, Juan Pablo Koria, Mariana Vargas

104min drama Bolivia

According to SOUTHERN DISTRICT, Bolivia is still trapped in the dark ages. But despite an overriding tone of misogyny, it remains a firmly matriacal society full of tradition and firmly in the thrall of Catholicism.

In a luxurious home in La Paz, a well-to-do family lives a cloistered existance: their staff very much part of the intimate family. Wilson (Pascual Loayza), the family butler and handy man is a benign and gentle soul who tolerates his boss Carola (Ninón del Castillo) who hasn’t paid him for months. Having been abandoned by her husband, Carola relies heavily on Wilson’s capable support. The children are typically undisciplined and play fast and lose, taking advantage of their mother’s weakness and Carola dotes on her vapid son, Andrés (Nicolas Fernandes), spoiling him and offering him a poor role model of the female of the species.

Essentially a chamber piece, SOUTHERN DISTRICT is sparsely written, resorting to cliche in a narrative that fails to be meaningful or convincing, perhaps due to the English translation of the Spanish. Occasionally there are flashes of Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown in its female-centric plot, though whether there is an attempt at black humour it’s difficult to judge and certainly fails to come across. Despite its delicately muted aesthetic and elegant, almost magical setting and tentative classical piano/folkoric score, the film feels very much like an upmarket Bolivian soap opera, gradually charting the financial down-spiralling of this once affluent family.

Wilson is the pivotal character in the piece, demonstrating how men are still relied upon for support and protection, whatever their class or background, and he is vital in providing a paternal role model in all their lives and standing by his middle-aged mistress of the household.

The intimate camerawork captures the stiffling and claustrophobic lives of these people whose world implodes in on them once the male figurehead has left them stranded without financial backing to maintain their status in society, as gradually the sinster class system is exposed. A small film but a clever one. MT

DVD Release Date: 26 January 2015
Retail price: £15.99
BBFC: 18
Running Time: 104 minutes
Catalogue no: AXM617
Region: 2
Country: Bolivia
Language: Spanish, Aymara with optional English subtitles
Genre: Drama
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1 anamorphic
Audio: Stereo 2.0 and Optional 5.1

Palo Alto (2013) |DVD release

Director: Gia Coppola Writer: Based on the ‘Palo Alto Stories’ by James Franco

Cast: James Franco, Emma Roberts, Val Kilmer, Nat Wolfe

100mins Drama US

Who is really interested in the vacuous lives of spoilt kids in Southern California? Well, perhaps the vacuous spoilt kids of Surbiton or any other affluent teenage neighbourhood in the Western hemisphere. But Gia Coppola’s debut is resonant and meaningful for its heroine, an inexperienced kid on which the story focuses. You can almost hear Francis Ford saying to the younger members of his clan “if you want to make a film, make it about what you know”. And this is the result. The 27-year filmmaker has adapted James Franco’s 2010 short-story collection ‘Palo Alto’ (inspired by his Personal memoirs of growing up in this wealthy city) and it seems genuinely to echo the lives of the other students who attended Palo Alto High School.

There’s nothing particularly new or even fresh about Palo Alto, other than the latest crop of ‘in’ words and phrases that she uses in her story of April (Emma Roberts)…..Larry Clark and Auntie Sophia have made similar inroads into the genre: teenagers ducking and diving in their natural habitat where adults are neither respected nor welcomed – nor were they every teenagers themselves; these kids get into the usual scrapes involving drugs and alcohol and sex. Franco gets a chance to massage his oversize ego and equally well-developed pecs as the local football coach, Mr B, letching around the young and perfectly-formed girls (is this wish fulfillment or fact on Franco’s part?). Emma Roberts is the standout here as his naive and inexperienced love interest, who is actually lusting after a more appropriate crush her own age in the shape of Jack Kilmer. She brilliantly evokes the pent-up confusion and bottled-up hormones of her nubile years, ready to run riot and potentially ruin her chances of a decent education – but it’s unlikely to ends in tears here in affluent West Coast Wonderland. This is a small but perfectly-formed niche drama and maybe Gia will spread her wings to pastures more inventive in her next outing when she has more life experience. For the moment this is her reality. MT

Courtesy of Metrodome Home Entertainment release date with be 9th February 2015

American Sniper (2014)

Dir.: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Luke Grimes;

USA 2014, 132 min.

Clint Eastwood is no stranger to films portraying war, “Letters from Iwo Jima” and “Flags of our Fathers”, were lauded justifiably as projects trying to show the ambivalence of armed combat. Unfortunately, AMERICAN SNIPER, the portrait of Chris Kyle (1974-2013), a marine with the exclusive S.E.A.L. unit who had 160 kills as a sniper during his four tours during the Iraq war, is a one dimensional, patriotic hagiography relying for nearly all of its 132 minutes on combat scenes. Eastwood gives very little room here to explore Kyle himself, or his relationship with his wife Taya.

Kyle (Cooper) grew up in Texas, his father introducing a rigid, homespun philosophy of dominance by way of God, Country, Family; enlarging the concept by dividing humankind into three categories of sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. After buying his son a rifle at the age of three, Kyle senior remarks that his son has a “gift” for shooting after Chris killed his first deer. On finishing school, Kyle worked as a professional bronco rider before being invalided out due to injury. After enlisting with the SEALS in 1999, he serves on four tours in the Iraq war where his skills as a sniper earn him the name “The Devil of Ramadi”. The Iraqis put up a $ 80000 bounty on his head. Discharged in 2009, he published his autobiography “American Sniper” in 2012.

Kyle’s relationship with his wife Taya (Miller) is relegated to mere footnotes by Eastwood; the family scenes with their two children are clumsy and full of clichés. Instead of commenting on America’s passionate and deadly love affair with weapons – Kyle’s “American Gun: A history of the US in Ten Firearms” was published posthumously in 2013. AMERICAN SNIPER is dominated by endless combat scenes. Kyle’s comment to an army psychiatrist (another cardboard figure), when asked if he regrets any actions in the war is simple: “I only regret the people I did not save”; is one of many statements by Kyle, worthy of more exploration; after all he did lose his life in circumstances that question the overriding presence and use of weapons in American society.

Eastwood tried very hard to make Cooper into a second Kyle: the actor had to gain an enormous amount of weight and was coached to deliver the “Texan drawl”, which is vey hard to comprehend outside the state of Texas. But the director is unable or unwilling to discuss any concepts oitside those of naïve patriotism, ending AMERICAN SNIPER with a vast array of American flags, draped all over Texas on the final 200 mile journey of Kyle’s coffin to the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. AS

Out on general release from 16 January 2015

Testament of Youth (2014)

Dir.: James Kent; Writers: Juliette Towhidi from the original book by Vera Britain

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, Emma Watson, Dominic West, Hayley Atwell

UK 2014, 130 min. Drama

Based on Vera Brittain’s well-known wartime memoir of the name, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH is a study of loss and change. Not only the loss of a whole generation of young men in the First World War, but the loss of identity of the British middle classes and their sheltered existence of innocence and naivety. Standards, cultural ambitions and their belief in slow progress were rocked to the core and shattered in the trenches and mass slaughter in France. What arose, like a phoenix from the ashes, was the advent of feminism; the slow emancipation of women.

In James Kent’s excellent screen adaptation, Vera Brittain (a spirited Alicia Vikander) embodies both loss and change. We first see her in peace time, at the family home in Yorkshire. Her parents (Emily Watson and Dominic West) can hardly cope with their rebellious daughter, whose goal is to study literature in Oxford. Her father tries to placate her with the gift of a piano, but in vain, Vera wants it all. Supported by her brother Edward (Taron Egerton), and his friend Roland Leighton (Kit Harrington), she finally gets the parental consent and passes her entrance-examine at Somerville College Oxford. When war arrives, her father does not want Edward to serve, but Vera defends the right of her brother to fulfil his patriotic duty. Having fallen in love with Roland, who writes poetry like herself, Vera says goodbye twice. When the two men come home from the front for a short holiday, the strain is obvious. The difference between the war slogans and the traumatic reality in the trenches is enormous. Vera can’t stand the sedate life in Oxford anymore, and enrols as a nurse. In France, she saves the life of her brother, and after her mother has a nervous breakdown, she meets Roland again and they promise to marry when he comes home.

Being a BBC co-production, technical values, particularly production design and camera are in reliable hands. Yorkshire is as magnificent as the trenches are grim and the field hospitals are awash with the blood of carnage. Oxford looks spectacular with its dreamy spires gently tracing the skyline, and the Brittain’s mansion is exquisite. We have seen all this before but the reason to see this version is Alicia Vikander, who storms through the film like stick of dynamite, lifting the conventional goings to another level. Her resistance is as heartfelt as her mourning, her anger fired by indignance and ambition. She is well supported by Harington’s Roland Leighton, a sensitive poet and brave soldier, the epitome of the dashing hero of his era. Emily Watson is moving as the classic matriarch. TESTAMENT OF YOUTH is a true memoir of death on the battlefields and the last breath of an era. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 JANUARY 2015

Tangerines (2013) | Estonia’s Oscar Entry 2015

Dir.: Zaza Urushadze

Cast: Lembit Ulfsak, Elmo Nugamen, Giorgi Nakashidze, Misha Meshki

Estonia/Georgia 2013, 87 min.

Writer/director Zaza Urushadze (Here comes the Dawn) has succeeded where many before him failed: TANGERINES is an authentic anti-war film that neither glorifes nor moralises over the murderous pursuit without offering any real alternatives.

TANGERINES is set in a rural village in Abkhazia (Georgia) during the 1992/3 conflict, when the Russian-backed forces from North Caucasia tried to invade Georgia. Ethnic Estonians fled to the region and settled long ago, but most of them had returned to their homeland, recently liberated from the Soviet regime when the war broke out in Georgia. Just two old men, Ivo (Ulfsak) and Margus (Nuganen), have stayed in the village where Margus farms tangerines, Ivo making the wooden boxes to package the fruit for market. One day, the fighting reaches their village and just two men survive: Ahmed (Nakashidze), a Chechen mercenary fighting for the rebels; and Niko (Meshki), a Georgian. Ivo offers them refuge in his house but spends most of his time keeping them apart as their animosity towards each other is not quelled by their serious injuries. But time is a great healer and as Urushadze’s slow-burning narrative unfolds a remarkable relationship develops between the pair proving that the human bond is often stronger than national identity or even religion.

Using the conflict as a mere counterpoint to his human story, Urushadze takes his time in introducing his characters authentically, showing the two Estonians at work and concentrating on the victims of war, rather than the exponents. Ahmed and Nico’s friendship is tentatively sketched through careful gestures as they gradually build a trusting bond. The camera is a brilliant observer, showing objects and faces in long panning shots. The beauty of nature is in stark contrast to human devastation: the tangerines are destroyed in the mayhem and become symbolic of the damage humans wreak through war, both to each other and the environment. Melancholia is the dominant mood: Ivo has a photo of his granddaughter on his wall, claiming that she is the most important person in his life, but he is evasive when asked why he has not emigrated to Estonia to join her. The reason why gradually emerges, providing subtle dramatic tension; and like everything else in TANGERINES, explanations come too late. A wonderful and humanistic film, showing the depth and breadth of human emotions from both ends of the scale. Through his quietly intense study of the human cost of war, Urashadze shows how there is always a choice. AS|MT.

NOW ON DVD/blu-ray

Before I Go to Sleep (2014) | dvd/blu

Director: Roland Joffe

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth,

Before I Go To Sleep is the glum screen adaptation of a best-seller penned by hospital worker turned writer, S J Watson. Set in a deeply gloomy winter in the English home counties, it re-unites Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman – last seen miserable together as a married couple in the extremely average drama The Railway Man.

Nicole plays Christine, an amnesia victim, who wakes up each morning having forgotten her identity and, indeed, who she married 13 years ago. Her condition is due to a bump on the head (atypical psychogenic amnesia) and her loving and supportive husband Ben (Firth) has to leave notes on the ‘fridge and remind her where she keeps her underwear and other personal effects. It emerges that a brutal attack caused Christine’s memory lapses and she visits neurosurgeon Dr Nasch (Mark Strong) who advises her to record the daily events on a camera, these events are seen in flashback in this fractured narrative.

Christine discovers that her close friend Claire (Anne-Marie Duff) has moved abroad after the accident but can’t think why they are no longer in contact. Gradually, she also finds out that her dear husband is not the sensitive companion that he appears to be. Dr Nasch is also rather a creep: we all know from past experience that Mark Strong usually plays the bad guy, so does a leopard ever change his spots? Difficult to say, without giving the game away. Infact, it’s difficult to review this film without revealing a few clues on the storyline. Suffice to say that this is the sort of story that relies heavily on female paranoia and Nicole Kidman is an inspired casting in the role of Christine. Her delicate features and subtlety are superb here (remember her in Birth and The Others?) but it’s Colin Firth who really excels in morphing from the warm and tender lover to a troubled and vicious bully. However, Roland Joffe’s choice of a heavy soundtrack to ramp up tension is a weak device and so it’s entirely left to cinematographer Ben Davis to create the creepy atmosphere and generate sufficient terror in the final stages of this chilling British thriller. You have been warned. MT

ON DVD/Blu from 12 January 2015

Wakolda (2013) The German Doctor | DVD

Director: Lucia Puenzo

Cast: Alex Brendemuhl, Diego Peretti, Guillermo Pfening, Alan Diacz, Natalie Oreiro

98min Argentina Drama

The name of Dr Mengele (‘The Angel of Death’) always strikes fear into anyone familiar with his Wartime medical experiments on behalf of the Nazis. Writer-director Lucia Puenzo first published the story as a novel about an unsuspecting Argentine family who offer hospitality to a suave Germany doctor, in return for medical care.

Her rather stolid drama instills an unsettling feeling right from the outset but places the story in the wider context of Argentina’s history of giving sanctuary to war criminals during the Second World War.

From the moment they all meet on the road to the family guest house in a cold and remote mountain region of Patagonia, a strange chemistry develops between the middle-aged doctor and the attractive but undeveloped 12 year-old daughter Lilith (Florencia Bardo), whom he calls “a perfect specimen’ – immediately giving the game away to anyone paying attention.

What they don’t realise is that Dr Josef Mengele was one of the Nazi’s most celebrating geneticists responsible for medical experiments which ended the lives of countless prisoners during the Second World War. But with an ailing business and a wife experiencing a difficult pregnancy with twins, what could be more comforting for the family than the presence of a mature and capable physician around the house?

As Mengele (aka Helmut Gregor – his pseudonym), Alex Brendemuhl evokes a subtle portrayal of a man with a sinister, mysogynist satisfaction in ministering to the needs of Lilith and her bewildered mother. Inculcating a sense of fear and hypochondria in the women, prior to offering them highly dubious medical solutions to their imagined problems, feels rather like reading the ‘Femail’ pages of the Daily Mail.

In a unsettling twist, husband Enzo (Diego Peretti), runs the family business making morbid porcelain dolls (the one belonging to Lilith is called Wakolda) and is trying produce one with a mechanical beating heart. The doctor suggests glibly they should be mass-produced in an interesting metaphor for the soulless Aryan race he is employed (by Hitler) to create.

Everyone looks either permanently worried sick or lascivious and scheming (as in the doctor’s case). And well they might, because apart from performing his sinister experiments with growth hormones; Mengele is also an exploitatively messing with their minds and their relationships with each other.

Unlike The Boys From Brazil, the 1978 horror outing which Gregory Peck plays the notorious Mengele, Puenzo’s narrative cleverly only hints at Nazism and is actually set in the early sixties (20 years before Mengele’s death), giving the piece a more generalised sinister (using original war footage) feel rather than one solely focussed on the War. This serves to make Wakolda feel like a film about an evil serial killer who evades capture through his charm and skills as a sociopath – a brilliant conceit, giving it both universal and contemporary art house appeal. MT

[youtube id=”fG4PKyQUE6Y” width=”600″ height=”350″]

WAKOLDA IS ON DVD

Duck Soup (1933)

Dir.: Leo McCarey

Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx, Margaret Dumont

USA 1933, 68 min.

In 1932 Paramount Pictures announced that Ernst Lubitsch would direct the next Marx Brothers film – in the end, after a long contractual fight between the Marx Brothers and the production company, Leo McCarey would be behind the camera for DUCK SOUP a year later. Unlike the successful Horse Feathers DUCK SOUP was not successful at the box-office, but the truth is far from it being the mythical flop: DUCK SOUP was still the six-highest grossing film of 1933.

Mrs. Teasdale (Dumont), a very rich woman, underwrites all the debts for the bankrupt state of Freedonia, which is threatened by the neighbouring country of Sylvania. But Mrs.Teasdale will only go on financing Freedonia if Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho), whom she wants to marry, becomes president and leads them into the war with Sylvania. Firefly is equally incompetent a leader as are the Sylvanian’ spies Pinky (Harpo) and Chicolino (Chico) in their metier, all three just causing mayhem, ending up pelting poor Mrs. Teasdale with fruit right at the end.

DUCK SOUP is famous for its mirror scene when Pinky, dressed as Firefly, imitates Groucho with identical movements. But the harmony is destroyed when Chicolini, also dressed as Firefly, bumps into the two and destroys the symmetry. There are polemic anti-war scenes, including a Mussolini send-off, which, to the great amusement of the Marx Brothers, led to the ban of the film in Italy. The scenes between the straight acting Dumont and the anarchic humour of the Marx Brothers are the highlights of a film, which somehow did not resonate with contemporary critics because, in their opinion, the ongoing Depression was asking for a less frivolous narrative. DUCK SOUP is essentially a surrealist comedy but this did not appeal to audiences at the time and resulted in them losing their contract with Paramount. Subsequent outings under the auspices of Irving Thalberg and MGM, considerably toned down the zany nature of their humour and sets but with Sam Wood directing their later outings (A Day at the Races, A Night at the Opera), the outrageous sending-up of everything sacred as the time including (and especially), Religion, gradually toned them down.

Today, DUCK SOUP is seen as the quintessential Marx Brothers film, and many contemporary directors are influenced by the film, including Woody Allen, whose character in “Hannah and her Sisters” regains his will to live, after watching DUCK SOUP by accident. AS

Duck Soup, which will have 34 screenings at BFI Southbank, is the highlight of The Best of the Marx Brothers season, running 14 – 31 January, which includes screenings of The Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937) and A Night in Casablanca (1946).

The Way He Looks (2014) |dvd/blu release

Director: Daniel Ribeiro

Cast: Tess Amorim, Fabio Audi, Ghilherme Lobo,

This upbeat story of two teenagers is the feelgood coming-out debut from Brazilian filmmaker Daniel Ribeiro who came to fame with You, Me and Him in 2008. Pristine visuals and a winning script (Fipresci and Teddy awarded at Berlinale) ensures a watchable experience that centres on Leonardo, a blind college boy, managing his burgeoning sexuality and desperate to move on with his life in an upmarket part of Sao Paulo where he lives with his supportive, if overprotective, parents.

Extended from a short I Don’t Want to Go Back Alone filmed to finance the feature, Ribeiro develops his narrative extremely capably with this original premise, casting blind newcomer Ghilherme Lobo as his lead. Tess Amorim gives a thoughtful turn as his hopeful girlfriend Giovana, with well-concealed competitiveness for rivals in the school room. But when Gabriel Fabio Audi comes into the picture, Giovana is pushed out amid much jealousy, as a palpable spark develops between the boys.

Lobo as Leo captures the sensitivity of gay love made even more poignant by his blindness and tentative approach to taking matters further with Gabriel. Although for the most part uninventive visually, with the Brazilians looking very pale despite the sunny poolside life – there are some great sequences such as one in the nightclub. That said, it’s a brave attempt at handling a tricky story that comes off well and provides a strong and moving tale for young gay teens hesitant at coming out, to feel encouraged by. MT

THE WAY HE LOOKS IS BRAZIL’S ENTRY TO THE 2015 ACADEMY AWARDS. It is available on dvd/blu from 9 February 2015

The Woman in Black 2 Angel of Death (2014)

Director: Tom Harper

Writers: John Croker from the novel by Susan Hill

Cast: Helen McCrory, Jeremy Irvine, Phoebe Fox, Leanne Best, Ned Dennehy, Andrian Rawlins

98min UK Thriller

Tom Harper’s well-crafted adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel fails to inject any real fear into our hearts despite brave attempts and a sterling British cast of talent. True to the book, John Croker places his narrative in the midst of the Second World War and, in particular, the Blitz, a time when school children were being evacuated from London to the provinces. His select group of kiddies are led in their well-polished StartRight shoes to an abandoned mansion appropriately located in atmospheric marshland somewhere in East Anglia. But Eel Marsh House is already occupied dark presence far more disturbing than Germans Bombs. Placed in the care of a sensitive young student Eve (Phoebe Fox), who appears to have mental problems of her own, and a strict and uncompromising School Mistress, Jean Hogg (Helen McCrory), their new home is by no means the cosy bolthole they were hoping for.

Harper carefully contrives the cold and haunting ambience at Eel Marsh House with a series of appropriately ghoulish props and spooky sound effects that attempt to chill us to the bone at regular intervals. But gradually we become inured to the well-worn Gothic Horror tropes: creaking floorboards, howling winds and judiciously-placed shoes at the bottom of curtains. The marshy location of is wonderfully evocative and miserably melancholy and each characters’ fears are played upon to conjure up their own private Hell in on Earth here, evoking the presence of darkness embodied by the restless ghost of the house. Helen McCory produces another winning portrait of stiff-upper-lipped pragmatism as the hard-bitten School Mistress and Phoebe Fox, who starts as a gentle and calming presence for the children, gradually reveals her troubled side as she falls for Jeremy Irvine’s failed fighter pilot, Harry Burnstow, who have issues of his own to deal with. Irvine is convincing as the dashing young airman, broken and destroyed by the tough responsibilities of wartime leadership. But the story more or less ends there.

Ultimately Harper fails to bring any fresh spookiness to his film and the storyline has no real dramatic tension beyond the odd scary moment; the dramatic punch is derived more from the pathos and anguish we feel for the individuals and their plights and this does illicit a haunting feeling, in the true sense of the word. In fact, THE WOMAN IN BLACK works best as a tribute to those who suffered emotionally and mentally during wartime, as a contrast to the many stories of physical injuries and death that more often come to light in the War genre. As such, THE WOMAN IN BLACK is more of a psychological thriller than a true horror or ghost story.

That said, THE WOMAN IN BLACK is worth watching for its excellence performances from a solid British cast. A worthy tribute then to the Second World War and to the great British House of Hammer, the producer, being it’s first equel since Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974).

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 JANUARY 2015

Unbroken (2014)

Dir.: Angelina Jolie

Cast: Jack O’Connell, Miyavi, Domhnah Gleeson, Finn Wittrock

USA 2014, 137 min.

After Land of Blood and Honey Angelina Jolie chooses another war theme for her second film as a director: UNBROKEN is the biopic of Louie Zamperini, US long distance runner and celebrated survivor of a Japanese prison camp. In choosing war and sport, the two predominant interests in the American way of life, Jolie secures a wide audience together with her populist approach, assuring the title moderate box office success (at least in the country of origin).

The action opens in WWII when Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) is part of a bomber crew over Japan. Their first outing is succeeds by the skin of its teeth but on their next mission they have to crash-land in the ocean. Apart from Zamperini, only Phil (Gleeson) and Mac (Wittrock) survive. They have to tackle sharks, storms and hunger – in a pool, that has ‘studio’ written all over it . Before they are picked up by a Japanese vessel, we learn in flashbacks some of Zamperini’s life story: a youthful delinquent, he was told by his brothers to toe the line; they showed him how to put his unrest into a career as a long distance runner. He excelled and was on the US team for the Berlin Olympics in 1936, finishing third in the 5000 m race, but running the fastest last lap. This fame seems to work against him in the prison camp, where the commander Takamasha Ishihara (Miyavi), singles Zamperini out to degrade him in front of his fellow prisoners. Since we knew that our hero would live to be 97, little suspense is created.

To read in the end credits that Joel and Ethan Coen have co-scripted this overlong patriotic vehicle, seems absurd. UNBROKEN is the anti-Coen brothers film. Told at a snake’s pace, with lumbering action scenes and sentimental childhood memories of an America long gone (if it ever existed in the first place), this is aesthetically a throw back to Ben Hur, with which it shares some of the religious undertones. Jolie relies on her PD department (and the budget) to save anything worthwhile. Ideologies apart, this is one of the worst hagiographies in film history: every question asked is answered with the most simplistic solution. Jolie leads us back into a time, where men were simply good or bad (no prize for guessing which side wins in UNBROKEN), and their athletic prowess was the only criterion to be considered. In this context, the main leads succeed admirably, and the camera tries its best to recreate the best moments from past films. UNBROKEN is like a stodgy, overcooked and tasteless Christmas dinner and will be served to you ‘warmed through’ from Boxing Day. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM BOXING DAY

Enemy (2014)

Dir.: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Melanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rosselini

Canada/Spain, 90 min.

Based on the novel “The Double” by Portuguese Nobel-Prize winning author Jose Saramago, ENEMY suffers greatly from its transfer from Portugal to the soulless concrete jungle of Toronto – Saramagos’ magic realism simply does not work well in a cold, detached and purely functional environment. Director Denis Villeneuve, whose films include the brilliant INCENDIES (2011), tried to counteract the atmospheric deficit by creating a mostly depopulated background, his protagonists seem to live in a vacuum, creating an eerie and enigmatic feeling – but it does not help the audience to grasp the undercurrents of the narrative.

University lecturer Adam (Gyllenhaal) and his girl friend Mary (Laurent) live out the last weeks of their relationship, Adam is getting more and more distant from her, their sex life is unsatisfactory. One day, Adam sees a feature film, and discovers, that one of the minor actors looks exactly like him. Intrigued, Adam tracks Anthony (played again by Gyllenhaal) down, who is living with his pregnant wife Helen (Gadon) in a high rise block. Their meeting is confrontational and Adam loses even more control of his life in spite of visiting his dominant mother (Rossellini), who simply tells him to forget all about his ‘Doppelgänger’. Finally, Anthony, who suspects that Adam has slept with his wife, put the pressure on Adam as a violent and bewildering denouement unspools.

Apart from the magic symbolism, which seems totally out of context with the rest of the rather banal realism of the narrative, Gyllenhaal is the main reason why ENEMY is far less effective than the original novel: he is simply unable to be authentic, particularly his portrait of the paranoid Adam, following his prey on a motorcycle with a visor reminiscent of “Spiderman”, is more caricature than anything else. Like the film itself, he does not convey the dark undercurrents of his personalities. Laurent’s Mary, and Gadon’s Helen are pushed aside to the margins, not much more than cyphers, the same goes for Rosselini. Whilst Nicolas Bolduc’s camerawork tries hard to make Toronto look like a background for Saramagos’ novel, it only succeeds somehow in misleading the audience: the ensuing drama is not rooted in outside oddities, but in the head of the main protagonist. ENEMY is serious and worthy, but it fails far more than the average literary adaptation to translate the page into an equally powerful cinema experience. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 JANUARY 2015

Cult classic | DVD | Blu | Box Sets for the holidays 2014

Q: What do David Lean, Claude Lanzmann, Kurosawa, Spike Lee, and Katharine Hepburn all have in common?
A: They all come in box sets and any one of them could make the perfect Christmas presents for film lovers…just click through and buy. But if you’re just looking for a small stocking filler, the following may appeal to any film buff.

French cinema always springs to mind when people talk about ‘arthouse’ film and one timeless French classic is Maurice Pialat’s A NOS AMOURS. (1983) Starring Sandrine Bonnaire, it explores the life of a sexually precocious young woman contrasting sensual escapades with those of her violent experiences at home. If you fancy something meatier, Raymond Bernard’s screen version of Victor Hugo’s classic novel LES MISERABLES is a slightly substantial drama (on Blu-ray/DVD) for those long afternoons by the fire. Both are available from Masters of Cinema.

Stanley Kubrick is sure to be a big hit with any film aficionado. Those who’ve recently seen the new print of Sci-Fi classic 2001: SPACE ODYSSEY would be pleased to add FEAR AND DESIRE (1953) to their collection of classic titles. Perfect to celebrate the Centenary of the Great War – this low-budget indie film takes a raw and occasionally surreal glimpse at War from the perspective of those fighting and dying. It also explores the psychological impact it has of four soldiers. Makes a superb companion piece to FULL METAL JACKET.

Staying with the Wartime theme, Claude Lanzmann spent twelve years spanning the globe for surviving camp inmates, SS commandants, and eyewitnesses of the “Final Solution”. Without dramatic re-enactment or archival footage – but with extraordinary testimonies – the filmmaker’s landmark documentary about the Holocaust, SHOAH, renders the step-by-step machinery of extermination, and through haunted landscapes and human voices, makes the past come brilliantly alive.

Alongside the four films he made through 2013 on the subject, SHOAH is out in January. So why not start with a sparkling blu-ray Lanzmann taster: LAST OF THE UNJUST – before the series launches in January 2015. All the EUREKA films have fabulous SPECIAL FEATURES such as booklets and interviews with key talent, making them really worth their weight in gold.

On a lighter note – and simply called ‘Spike Lee’ this set contains nine of Spike Lee’s best, that’s 2,000 minutes of film for £25.00, Mo’ Better Blues, Crooklyn, Inside Man, Clockers, School Daze, She Hate Me, Do The Right Thing, Get On The Bus and Jungle Fever . That’s Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Mekhi Phifer, Jodie Foster, Alfre Woodard and John Turturro, Harvey Keitel, Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra et al, either in store at HMV or online at Amazon.

For lovers of mellow Hollywood classics, the ‘Cary Grant Box Set’, at £49.00 the most expensive of a selection of Cary Grant Box Sets, but this one contains 21 (count ‘em) films, whereas many of the others only three or four… Blonde Venus, Bringing Up Baby, Charade, Father Goose, The Grass Is Greener, Gunga Din, The Toast Of New York, I’m No Angel, Indiscreet, The Last Outpost, Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, Mr Lucky, None But That Lonely Heart, My Favourite Wife, Once Upon A Honeymoon, In Name Only, Operation Petticoat, She Done Him Wrong, Suspicion, Sylvia Scarlett and That Touch Of Mink. That’s a whole lot of suave for one lucky girl. Amazon.co.uk

Staying with Hollywood greats: ‘Screen Icons, Katharine Hepburn’ offers you six top films for a paltry £15.00. Rooster Cogburn, State Of The Union, Bringing Up Baby, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, Holiday and Suddenly Last Summer. Teaming her up with Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Angela Lansbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Sidney Poitier and John Wayne. I’m not sure your screen is wide enough. The films form part of a major retrospective that runs from 1 February 2015 at the BFI, London.

Moving to Japan: Three box sets to mull over for the Kurosawa aficionado:- The ‘Kurosawa Classic Collection’ at £39,99, released by the BFI was always going to feel less of an immediate bargain, but no less of a genuine treat for any true cineaste; Ikiru (1952); I Live in Fear (1949); Red Beard (1965); The Lower Depths (1957); Dodes Ka-den (1970). A couple of previously impossible to obtain here, in Red Beard and Dodes Ka-den.

At £35.79, ‘Akira Kurosawa- The Samurai Collection’ has Seven Samurai, Throne Of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro. Nothing amiss there then.

Finally, for £37.00, there’s ‘Early Kurosawa’, Sanshuro Sugata (1943), Sanshuro Sugata No 2 (1945), The Most Beautiful (1944), The Men Who Tread On The Tigers Tail (1952), No Regrets For Our Youth (1946) and One Wonderful Sunday (1947). His early work, before he hit his métier then, but if they do like Kurosawa, they won’t have seen these and will also appreciate the fledgling canon.

Over at ARROW FILMS there is a re-mastered British eighties classic WITHNAIL AND I: out on DVD/Blu-ray along with a fabulous collection of NORDIC NOIR boxsets to while away long Winter evening. From Eureka: WAKE IN FRIGHT, Ted Kotcheff’s Australian outback drama starring Donald Pleasance. Both is edgy cult classics that will delight any film lover worth his salt and bring some welcome heat into the cold nights.

Now also digitally remastered, ‘The David Lean Centenary Collection’ of 10 films for £20.00, either at HMV or online at Amazon, is some sort of bargain of the season. Lean is of course best known for Dr Zhivago, Bridge On The River Kwai and Lawrence Of Arabia, but this Centenary Collection boasts some of his perhaps lesser-known works, but no less fabulous for it: The Sound Barrier, Hobson’s Choice, Blithe Spirit, Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Madeleine, The Passionate Friends, This Happy Breed and In Which We Serve. Those are some stonking films for the price of one arthouse DVD at a boutique stall.

Stocking fillers all. That’s not to say there aren’t a basket load of other choices, from Ealings finest to Mizoguchi, Ozu to Bogarde, Judy Garland to Tarantino… if not your stockings, then fill yer boots at Amazon.co.uk and BFI, online stores.

Intolerance (1916)

Dir.: David Llewelyn Wark Griffith

Cast: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Lilian Langdon, Constance Talmadge, Miriam Cooper

USA 1916, 168 min. SILENT

Premiering on September 5th 1916, when the First World War was raging in Europe, D.W. Griffith’s INTOLERANCE had cost $2.5 m (the equivalent of $46 m today) and was a colossal flop at the box office. What might have been the first “auteur” film in history ran originally for three and a half hours and combined four different narratives which were intercut. Griffith had started with the ‘modern’ episode of INTOLERANCE, “The mother and the law” – which was sometimes shown on its own – and featured a fight between workers and management, with strike-breakers and police involved in deadly fighting. This episode was finished before BIRTH OF A NATION was shown for the first time. Griffith then wanted to put this modern drama into historical context adding three historical events: Jesus becoming the victim of a power-mad Jewish religious establishment; the St. Bartholomew Night in France (1572) when the Protestant Huguenots were slaughtered by Queen Catherine of Medici; and the defeat and death of the Babylonian prince Balshazzar at the hand of the Persian king Cyrus, as a result of a religious conflict of followers of two Babylonian deities in 539 BC. As a form of interlude, Lillian Gish is shown rocking a cradle, representing the positive symbol of humankind. But Griffith ends the film with apocalyptic scenes of the destruction of New York.

Griffith employed no fewer than six assistants, among them the future directors W.S. Van Dyke, Erich von Stroheim, and Tod Browning. The massive towers of Babylon had a height of 70 m, at Belshazzar’s feast more than 5000 extras mingled in the huge hall. And one of battle scenes in this episode was filmed from a balloon, featuring 16,000 extras.

Even the critics of the time preferred the rather racist BIRTH OF A NATION to INTOLERANCE, failing to understand the narrative structure of the film, which was strictly non-linear. Later, Pudowkin and Eisenstein would copy Griffith’s parallel montage in their classic films of the Russian Revolution, and Cecil B. De Mille would employ the luckless Griffith to direct action scenes for THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and THE KING OF KINGS. In spite of founding “United Artists” with Chaplin, Pickford and Fairbanks in 1919, Griffith would stop directing in 1931, after a long series of mediocre productions, among them ISN’T LIFE WONDERFUL, which forced him to leave “UA”. Long forgotten, Griffith died lonely and embittered in a hotel room in Los Angeles in 1948; very few of his stars and co-workers attended his funeral. AS

INTOLERANCE is available on Masters of Cinema www.eurekavideo.co.uk from 8th December 2014

Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1929) (Diary of a Lost Girl)

Dir.: G.W. Pabst

Cast: Louise Brooks, Fritz Rasp, Edith Meinhard, Andre Roanne, Valeska Gert

Germany 1929, 94 min.

G.W. Pabst (1885-1967) was one of the main proponents of what Kracauer called “Die Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivism) and was called the “red Pabst”, because he was the most left-wing of the established directors of German Cinema during the Weimarer Republic. It is hard to believe that between 1925 and 1931 he directed classic productions like Die Freudlose Gasse, Geheimnisse einer Seele, Die Büchse der Pandora, Westfront 1918, The Three Penny Opera and Kameradschaft. His return to Nazi-Germany in the late 30s came as a shock, and ruined his post-war career.

All the modern heroes of his films: the engineers, students, workers and clerk, are fighting for their existence in the inter-war years, they don’t need war as an excuse to die. Everywhere machines seems to gobble them up; even nature, in the mountain world of “Piz Palü“, is deadly. He will be remembered for his female heroines: Asta Nielsen and Greta Garbo in Die Freudlose Gasse and Louise Brooks in Pandora and TAGEBUCH EINER VERLORENEN.

Pabst opens TAGEBUCH with a close-up: Thymian is looking at her diary, a present from an aunt. Later on, Thymian (Brooks), daughter of the pharmacist Henning, is seduced by his assistant Meinert (Rasp). After falling pregnant, her family puts the child up for adoption and punishes Thymian with a stay in a strict reform school. Together with her new friend Erika, Thymian escapes, but when she finds her child, it is already in a coffin. For a short time she lands in a bordello before an inheritance (which she rejects in favour of her half-sisters), leads to a marriage with a nobleman – and a visit to her old reform-school where she liberates Erika, who had been re-admitted.

Needless to say, censorship was strict: in September 1929 the film was shown with cuts of arount ten minutes, in December a higher inspecting authority (“Oberprüfstelle”) had all copies confiscated and cut a further three minutes before the release in January 1930. Among the cuts where the scene in the bordello because “It is corruptive to watch when the girls go with one gentleman after the other into bedrooms, where the exchange of money is shown”. One of the most brilliant moments of TAGEBUCH, when Valeska Gert as the manic directress of the reform school is gyrating in a sexually agitated way (the Weimar equivalent of ‘twerking’), was also a victim of the censors: “It is impossible to show the scene in the reform school as a mixture of Christianity and sadism – it is clearly seen as a violation of religious feelings”.

Whereas the writer Carl Mayer was the leading figure of early 20s German cinema; G.W. Pabst dominated the latter half. Every detail in his films has a presence which does not allow metaphysical association. Lighting, the movement of the objects, the wild camera and eclectic angles, all this was changed by Pabst and formed into something new: there is nothing but the scene itself, the present dominates through intensity. Pabst seems only to show the surface, but in such a way as to allow us to delve beyond and below: exposing the workings of society. AS

SPECIAL DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITION ON 24 NOVEMBER 2014, AS PART OF THE MASTERS OF CINEMA COLLECTION

Algol (1920) | Tragödie der Macht

Director: Hans Werckmeister Writers: Hans Brennert, Friedel Köhne

Cast: Emil Jannings, John Gottowt, Hans Adalbert Schlettow, Hanna Ralph, Erna Morena

99min Fantasy | Sci-Fi

The intriguingly titled ‘Algol’ (1920) crops up occasionally in histories of silent cinema in general and sci-fi cinema in particular, but the excellent restoration – complete with a live musical accompaniment by the esteemed Stephen Horne – displayed at the Barbican, in the City of London, represented the first chance in Britain actually to see the film on a big screen in over 90 years. (The film can be viewed on YouTube, but untinted and with German titles only; and a DVD, also scored by Horne, may be in the pipeline).

Subtitled Tragödie der Macht (Tragedy of Power), the film provides a fascinating glimpse of a period when Germany’s fragile new postwar democracy seemed precariously poised on the brink of total political and economic collapse, yet was possessed of a film industry capable of producing an ambitious, lavishly mounted production such as this.

Emil Jannings – already a star of international stature on the strength of his roles for Lubitsch, and later the first actor to win an Oscar – plays Robert Herne, a coal miner presented by a mischievous alien called Algol (played by John Gottowt) with a machine that renders coal obsolete as a source of energy and thus gives Herne the financial clout to suck the rest of the world dry. (Sound familiar?) The action spans twenty years, during the course of which Herne loses his wife and ultimately his marbles before finally going up in smoke with his diabolical machine.

The histrionic plot combining both anti-capitalism and anti-technology provides a rather slender framework for such an opulent production, but Hans Werckmeister (a quantity otherwise totally unknown to film historians, who died in 1929) directs with a firm hand. The acting is generally good; far less like stereotypical ‘silent film’ acting than that in Fritz Lang’s later and much better-known Metropolis, while the superb photography and production design (the latter by Walter Reimann, fresh from working on The Cabinet of Dr Caligari) consistently provides something interesting to look at. All in all, a dynamic and enjoyable relic of an extraordinary era both in the history of the world and of the cinema. Richard Chatten.

Richard Chatten has written for Film Dope, The Independent, the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, The Encyclopedia of British Film, The Journal of Popular British Cinema and Cinema: The Whole Story. His favourite film is A Matter of Life and Death (1946).

20 Hot Titles for 2015 | Indie | Arthouse film| Part 1

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING: The main reason to see this moving and ambitious biopic of our most famous living scientist Stephen Hawking, is that Eddie Redmayne’s is pure dynamite as the man himself. Combing through endless footage of the Professor Hawking’s voice recordings and photos, he literally inhabits his very being from early life at Cambridge right through to his epic achievements in the realm of Science. Co-Written by his wife, Jane Hawking. touchingly played by Felicity Jones (The Invisible Woman). Out on 1 January.

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR: If you’re ready for a grown-up thriller with a gripping storyline and fabulously crafted-performances, look no further this tightly-plotted, New York-based slow burner from J C Chandor (All Is Lost). Set in 1981, during the city’s most dangerous year for crime, if tells the story of an ambitious immigrant’s bitter fight for survival in a precarious and competitive world. Oscar Isaac (Llewyn Davies) and Jessica Chastain star. 23 January 2015

ALTMAN: There’s nothing to beat an absorbing biopic on a prolific film director, and this one eclipses them all. Ron Mann charts the story of Robert Altman’s career from his lucky first break, to his far-reaching TV work and finally his outstanding contribution to independent cinema. A pithy, poignant and highly-entertaining portrait. Julianne Moore, Robin Williams, Lily Tomlin, Elliott Gould and Paul Thomas Anderson reminisce to add ballast. T. B. A.

THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY: Peter Strickland’s edgy and inventive seventies-themed drama tackles the delicate subject of sexual dominance and submissiveness amid butterfly buffs in a seventies-setting deep in the Hungarian counrtyside. Sidse Babett Knudsengarnered Best Actress for her portrayal of a lesbian with performance fatigue in this unsettling but yet darkly comic treasure. 20 February 2015

WHITE GOD (Feher Isten): ‘Superiority has become the privilege of white Western civilisation and it is nearly impossible for not to take advantage of it’. With this premise Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo’s invigorating drama WHITE GOD scratches at the edges of horror to create a richly inventive fable where dogs take over the city of Budapest. Starting out as gentle and harmless, the narrative gradually darkens into something morbid and frightening. No shaggy dog story here but certainly one to salivate over. 27 FEBRUARY

THE LOOK OF SILENCE: Following on the heels of his devastating documentary about man’s evil to man, Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE LOOK OF SILENCE is in some ways even more affecting. For a start, it’s running time of under two hours makes it a more manageable to engage with. Don’t be fooled though. Oppenheimer probes the killers much more harshly this time and elicits some unsettling revelations from the perpetrators and those affected by the terrifying regime in Indonesia. T. B. A.

MACBETH: Roman Polanski was the last director successfully to adapt this most dark and sinister of Shakespeare’s plays. Here, Australian director, Justin Kurzel (Snowtown) casts Marion Cotillard as the chilling chateleine of Cawdor Castle playing alongside Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth as the fatefully ambitious couple whose ‘follie de grandeur’ leads them depose of Scotland’s King Duncan. T.B.A

IT FOLLOWS; David Robert Mitchell’s latest film has emerged by general consensus amongst critics to be the most heart-thumpingly horrific indie thrillers of recent years. Simple in concept, this low-fi outing is inventive in creating a fairytale atmosphere in a modern-day setting. A must-see for all audiences. 27 FEBRUARY 2015

1001 NOITES: Tabu director Miguel Gomes is back with a re-working of the fabulous legend of Scheherazade locating his film in crisis-ridden present-day Portugal. Shifting between imagination and reality, the narrative takes on familiar elements to the original but retains the same teasing quality that Scheherazade employed on the King. T.B.A.

PHOENIX: Christian Petzold’s heart-wrenching drama works cleverly as both a wartime love-story and an evergreen metaphor for regeneration and identity. Starring regular collaborators Ronald Zehrfeld (In Between Worlds) and Nina Hoss (Barbara) who gives the best rendition of ‘Speak Low’ known to mankind, it has also one of the most devastating climaxes of recent years. TBA

RELEASE DATES FOR ALL THESE FILMS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY.

Big Eyes (2014)

Director: Tim Burton

Writers: Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski,

Cast: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Krysten Ritter, Danny Huston, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp

105min Biopic Drama US

Tim Burton’s latest film BIG EYES, is as weirdly kitsch as the paintings it features: they are the work of prolific artist Margaret Keane who enjoyed fenomenal success in the 1950s in California with her pictures of urchins with enormous, saucer–like eyes. Quite a departure from Burton’s usual work and particularly his last project Frankenweenie (a re-hash of an earlier outing), BIG EYES is a biopic, a psychological thriller and a portrait of narcissism which delivers a universal message to its 21st century audience.

With his regular collaborators, screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, BIG EYES also has echoes of Ed Wood (1994), Burton’s pic about a tortured artist. In California, we first meet Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), fleeing with her little daughter from the serene but sanitary housing estate outside San Francisco where she lives with her husband – who we never meet. Quite why she chooses to leave her marriage with no job or money in fifties America is never explained. Suffice to say, that Margaret lands on her feet and quite soon meets up with ‘fellow’ artist, Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), a successful realtor and “Sunday painter” of Parisian street scenes. As is often the case, Keane is a better businessman than a painter and he soon cottons on to Margaret’s value in the marketplace and decides to make her his wife, gradually taking credit for her work.

Margaret is a submissive woman who suffers from low self-esteem and is only happy to trust in her new husband’s confidence and considerable business acumen. Amy Adams is perfectly-cast in the role of Margaret, a typical fifties housewife and shrinking violet. Resembling a modern-day Doris Day, her delicate features and retroussé nose are just right for this highly-stylised drama with its technicolour palette of rich pastels and the usual Burton touches of early sixties high kitsch (Mood Indigo springs to mind here).

For his part, Christophe Waltz is also right for the role: his slightly unctuously manic demeanour and genial smile belie his credentials as a fully- blown abusive narcissist, as the story unfolds. Controlling and egocentric, he has tremendous appeal providing when getting his own way. Once thwarted, he transforms into a vicious monster with a ego the size of the turquoise blue swimming pool in the couple’s luxurious California villa. While Margaret slaves away at painting (the celebrated “Keane’s”) in a darkened studio, Walter is out there schmoozing and selling ‘his’ wares to the great and the good.

The reason to see BIG EYES is for its portrayal of female empowerment: woman artist finds the strength to confront her own demons in the male-orientated society of the sixties. Margaret must have had some ‘balls’ to walk out in the first place, but Burton never plummets the real character behind the facade so she remains largely a mysterious cypher as a character in a stylised construct. That said, BIG EYES also deals with contemporary issues of modern day fame and the abuse of power in a patriarchal society which, in the workplace and the boardroom, still exists today.

Burton’s drama is far from subtle with most of the characters blurting out their opinions raucously as exponents of ‘the male point of view’ rather than these attributes being skilfully woven into the narrative and script; although there are some moments of dark humour. Terence Stamp plays a strident New York Times’ art critic and Jason Schwartzman a bigoted gallery-owner. Amy Adams gives a moving performance although there’s little to enjoy in the dreadful paintings that are merely there to illustrate how easily money can be made for old rope. The main point here is that her joy at painting them was a therapy itself, proving that artistic endeavour can indeed save our souls. Danny Huston gets short shrift as Walter’s journalist buddy, and only appears in a few scenes. He could equally have played Walter, but Waltz is the bigger actor and so naturally the box office would demand him in the lead. All in all, BIG EYES presents an intriguing look at American social history of the sixites showcasing the birth of the American dream in all its sad tawdriness. Perfect Christmas fare!. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26 December 2014

Boy Meets Girl (1984) | The Leos Carax Collection | DVD/BLU

Director: Leox Carax

Cast: Denis Lavant, Mireille Perrier, Christian Cloarec

100mins Fantasy drama French with subtitles

Maverick French auteur Leos Carax tells an autobiographical story of doomed love in Paris for this stylish black and white debut. Set in 1984, it has the look and feel of the fifties and early sixties. A mood piece, slight in narrative and dialogue but rich in atmosphere and visually stunning, Boy Meets Girl is an exploration of his central characters’ dysfunctional insecurities that emerge in the fumblings of first love and the first flourishes of characteristic Carax eccentricity.

Denis Lavant stars as Alex, an insecure 24-year-old who has just split up with girlfriend Florence (Anna Baldaccini) who immediately falls for Thomas (Christian Cloarec). Distraught and frustrated by the break-up, film student Alex sets off to roam the nocturnal streets of Paris, stealing some records which he leaves at Florence’s door with a love letter. The action is scored by musical interludes of piano and jazz music and, at one point, an unknown couple talking about their preferred styles of love-making. Eventually Alex finds his way into a strangely sedate soirée, welcomed by a middle-aged woman who becomes his hostess. There he meets and falls in love with a mysterious but alluring actress Mireille (Mireille Perrier) who is aloof and self-absorbed. Boy Meets Girl has a weirdly detached and unique ambiance marking out Carax’s distinct talent to amuse. MT

OUT ON DVD/Blu COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL EYE. The box includes HOLY MOTORS and THE NIGHT IS YOUNG

EXTRAS: INTRO BY DENIS LAVANT/ON SET IN THE KITCHEN

[youtube id=”BuOyWsJ33DA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Bronco Bullfrog (1969) | Bfi Flipside Releases |DVD Blu

Director/Writer: Barney Platts-Mills

Cast: Del Walker, Anne Gooding, Sam Shepherd, Roy Haywood

86min UK Drama

There was once a working class street style known as ‘suedehead’ that was influenced by skinhead and mod culture, but still allowed you to have longer hair, Doc Martin boots and Combe coats. Fashion is one of the many pleasures of Barney Platt-Mills’s 1970 film BRONCO BULLFROG. Yet Bullfrog isn’t a dated costume piece but a poignant and funny drama of bored, inarticulate young people, with narrow horizons, little money, into petty crime and trapped in working class East End London. “Not much to do round here?” moans young Del Walker (as Del Quant) an apprentice welder who’s in a street gang and desperately trying to escape, with his girlfriend Anne Gooding (as Irene) to Newhaven and the countryside.

BRONCO BULLFROG has a slight plot. It’s all about character, feelings and atmosphere. The kids might be inarticulate but they’re likeable, vulnerable and well observed. Speech rhythms, long pauses and body language are delivered with a great spontaneity by Bronco’s cast and director. The film is influenced by Italian neo-realism and creates a series of sketches (beautifully photographed in black and white) that keeps its reality honestly lived, and never pulled into obvious melodrama. One scene has Del and Irene driving, on his motorbike, into the West End to see a film. When they get to the cinema (showing ‘Oliver’) they see that the seat prices are far too expensive. The next scene has them in a Wimpey Bar where Del says that it was a shame that they couldn’t get into the pictures, to which Irene replies that it would have been a waste of money anyway. This all takes about two minutes of screen time, has minimal dialogue and yet says volumes about youthful frustration, making do, class and aspirations.

None of the young cast had acted before. They were taken under the wing of the now legendary theatre director Joan Littlewood and encouraged to get involved in theatre work. Director Barney Platt-Mills, who worked with Littlewood, managed to raise £18,000 pounds, to shoot a partly improvised and scripted film in six weeks. Bronco Bullfrog was the result. A film that the critic Alexander Walker said would still be spoken of very highly in years to come. If you want to decide for yourself then ask the NFT Southbank to screen it again soon, or buy the BFI dvd / blu-ray issued in their British Flipside series. And why is this film called Bronco Bullfrog? Well that’s the name of the ex-borstal guy who Del, and his mates, meet up with to do a railway holdings robbery. Coming back to fashion you just have to see Sam Shepherd (as Bronco Bullfrog) wearing his late sixties floral shirt and tie!

Bronco Bullfrog is a film unlike any other production of its time. My only possible comparison might be early Ken Loach, without the tragedy, or early Truffaut with all his generosity. For me, it’s a classic. Alan Price©2015

Alan Price is a poet, short story writer and scriptwriter. His collection of poetry, OUTFOXING HYENAS (Indigo Dreams 2012) can be sampled on the website

DEDICATED TO REDISCOVERING CULT BRITISH FILMS THAT MIGHT OTHERWISE BE FORGOTTEN, THE BFI’S FLIPSIDE RANGE FLESHES OUT OUR NATIONAL FILM HISTORY WITH A SERIES OF DVD/BLU-RAY EDITIONS (NOW 26 TITLES STRONG) FROM FILMMAKERS IN DANGER OF BEING FORGOTTEN. Available on amazon.co.uk

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Dir.: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Writer: Jo Swerling

Cast: Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra, Vivian Blaine

USA 1955, 150 min.

GUYS AND DOLLS had premiered on Broadway late in 1950, and was a great success. It was no great surprise then that MGM bought the rights but much controversy was to surround the casting. It was Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s first musical and Gene Kelly was the first choice for the role of Sky Masterson, but MGM refused to loan him to Samuel Goldwyn. And Frank Sinatra, who had coveted the role of Sky Masterson, had to give way to Marlon Brando, grudgingly accepting to play and sing Nathan Detroit. Mankiewiecz justified his selection, keeping the two head-strong stars apart during the shooting, no small feat considering the volatile temperaments of his two leading men.

GUYS AND DOLLS opens on a very busy day for gambling in New York with all the hot players in town. Nathan Detroit (Sinatra) has to come up with $1000 to find a suitable venue for a crap game which will bring him a very decent profit. But that’s not all: having promised Miss Adelaide, a show dancer and his fiancée of 14(!) years to marry her, he is supposed to keep his word the next day – and there will be no excuse, since Adelaide had invented not only a marriage but five children for her middle class family in Rhode Island. Enter Sky Masterson (Brando), a man who has never lost a bet. Nathan does not need much time to ensnare Sky when they meet: he bets Sky that he could not entice a certain young woman to follow him for a nightly trip to Havana. Sky accepts the $1000 wager, but is not so confident any more when Nathan points out the lady in question: Miss Sarah Brown (Simmons), a strident Salvation Army officer, hell bent on converting any person on earth to live a clean life. Needless to say Sky succeeds, but what kind of woman – even one as smitten by Sky as Sarah was – would like to be the wager in a bet?

Simmons and Brando developed a palpable chemistry on the set (they had worked together on DESIRE a year earlier), and whilst Brando’s voice was not in the same class as Sinatra, he still managed well enough. The Adelaide/Nathan relationship is equally believable, helped by the fact that Blaine had starred in the original Broadway production. But somehow the leads are sucked into the colourful and ever-moving production, which seemed never to stop. The audience is not allowed to rest for a second – very impressively, considering the running time: two and half hours flying by. Camera work is impressive, always finding new ways of showing off the magnificent set and the dancing crowds who mill in and out of the picture. Thanks to Harry Stradling Sr’s skilful cinematography the audience is unaware that GUYS AND DOLLS is actually played out on a giant studio set – a wonderful kaleidescope of colours and movement with quiet a few smouldering moments between Brando and Simmons. Costume designer, Irene Sharaff ‘makes great use of vibrant colours that complimenting the technicolour process and her innate understanding of movement in creating Sarah Brown’s costumes really showcase Jean Simmons’ superb figure and dance moves to great effect. The best Sachertorte with marshmallows you will ever get without putting on weight. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19 December 2014

Ida (2013) Bfi player

Dir:: Pawel Pawlikowski | Writer: Pawel Pawlikowski, Rebecca Lenkiewicz | Cast: Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, Dawid Ogrodnik | Poland 80’

Seven minutes into Ida, a startlingly beautiful return to Poland for UK-based director Pawel Pawlikowski, the character of Wanda Gruz stands against the window of her sparse kitchen, smoking, still in her dressing gown. Across the room sits a young novice, Sister Anna – Wanda’s niece. Wanda flicks ash from her cigarette, the smoke beautifully backlit. Casually, she opens her mouth and drops the bombshell that will shake Anna’s foundations to their core: ‘So you are a Jewish Nun’.

Sister Anna, we learn, is really Ida Lebenstein, a Jewish girl orphaned during the Second World War. Her Mother Superior has sent her into the world to meet her last remaining relative before she takes her vows. In Wanda, she finds a bullish presence, a world-weary judge with a formidable reputation (and immunity). Anna and Wanda may be opposites in so many ways, but their characterisation is deft and multifaceted enough to allow no easy answers. When the women set out on a quest to discover how Anna’s parents died, we glimpse beneath the surface, catching sight of the lasting impressions the estranged relatives will leave upon one another. Wanda believes in life, and encourages Anna to experience it in all its carnal forms – otherwise, she argues, ‘what sort of sacrifice are those vows of yours?’ And besides, she says later after referring to herself as a ‘slut’, ‘Jesus adored people like me’. Perhaps, the implication goes, living ‘life’ does not rule out God’s love? Perhaps there is room for both.

But such religious angst is not the only dilemma pounding in the heart of Ida. As the women’s quest through 1960s Poland continues, the legacy of war comes under examination. Political currents ripple through Anna’s personal search for her parents, causing questions of national – and international – guilt to rise to the surface. The spectre of death hovers in the air. It seems our past cannot be easily buried: perhaps we are caught in the consequences of the actions of those who came before us?

As a film, Ida too seems to be built upon forbears; the spirits of Bresson, Dreyer and Antonioni are all here, alive and well, not least in the film’s stunning1.37:1 black and white images. If those names imply an austere coldness alongside a total mastery of the cinematic medium, then all the better – when it is handled as well as this, such a tone is surely something to commend. Ida is intensely visual, impeccably performed, quietly profound – and, at a compact 80 minutes, it may even be perfect. Now with an Oscar under his belt (for Cold War) and another feature – The Island – in the offing more perfection is hopefully on the way. @Alex Barrett

FIPRESCI AWARD WINNER Toronto Film Festival 2013 | WINNER-BEST FILM 57th BFI London Film Festival 2013

Boyhood (2014) |DVD Blu

Writer/Director: Richard Linklater

Main Actors: Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Ethan Hawke

165 mins Origin: US Drama

It has to be said, Boyhood is an unusual beast: a 165 minute, high-concept coming-of-age drama. Filmed in annual instalments over a twelve-year period, there was a serious danger that the concept could overpower the screen, and that the extended runtime could prove ill-fitting to director Richard Linklater’s often loose-knit style. Thankfully, Linklater has managed to skilfully circumnavigate these pitfalls and create something which is not merely atypical, but truly extraordinary.

The runtime might seem dauntingly extended, but it allows for an expansive scope: the film may be called Boyhood, but it is so much more than a story of adolescence. Linklater marks the passing of time not through title-cards or voiceover, but through the changing styles of fashion, music and technology: it is not only the character of young Mason that grows, changes and matures, but the world itself. Linklater has said that he wanted the film to flow like memory, like snatches of a remembered past – this is life as a series of moments. At times, it feels like the swirling ruminations of Slacker and Waking Life have been grafted onto the teen drama of Dazed and Confused and then blended with the returning rise and fall of the Before trilogy. With its epic scope and prolonged gestation (during which time he made other eight features), it’s possible to see the film as something of a summation of Linklater’s work to date (and a fitting one at that).

As ever in a Linklater film, the performances shine. If the phrase is a cliché, it seems necessary never-the-less to say that Ellar Coltrane doesn’t so much portray Mason, as inhabit him. Indeed, it’s like the actor that grew from the young six-year-old performer was custom-built to play a Linklater protagonist, and one can’t help but speculate on the influence (or should that be impact?) that growing up under Linklater’s careful directorial gaze must have had. Meanwhile, Ethan Hawke (as Mason’s Dad), reminds us what an enjoyment he is to watch – but it’s Patricia Arquette (as Mason’s Mum) that steals the show. As the film progresses, she weathers and ages, a woman beaten down by life, but one who finds the resilience to carry on. If Boyhood is about a child becoming a man, it is equally about a mother growing old and emptying her nest. It’s perhaps no surprise that Boyhood ultimately becomes a film about parenting, given that Linklater’s own daughter, Lorelei, plays Mason’s sister in the film.

There’s an air of quiet tragedy that rings throughout Arquette’s storyline, and the film is by turns touching, tender and terrifying. But it’s also funny throughout, and it ends on a note of hope which offsets the sadness and melancholy that we’ve felt along the way. Only time will tell if Boyhood ends up being regarded as one of Linklater’s best – but for now I certainly feel safe declaring it to be one of his most heartfelt. Alex Barrett

SILVER BEAR WINNER 2014 (BERLINALE) Available on DVD|Blu

[youtube id=”lY8hzy3cBf8″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Interview with Robin Campillo | Director – Eastern Boys (2013)

EASTERN BOYS come from all over Eastern Europe to Paris where they hang around the Gare du Nord. Some are as old as 25 but others could still be in their late teens. They might be prostitutes but there’s way of knowing. Fifty-something Daniel Muller (Olivier Rabourdin/Of Gods And Men) meets one of them, Marek (Kirill Emelyanov) who agrees to visit him the next day. But when the doorbell rings, Daniel is unaware that his life is going to change forever.

Meredith Taylor chatted to writer/director, Robin Campillo, about his latest film which won the ORIZZONTI Prize at VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2013. He is a known for THE CLASS (2008), TIME OUT (2001) and THE RETURNED (2004).

MJT: Eastern Boys is a gay love story wrapped up in a migration thriller – where did the idea come from?

RP: The love story comes from a friend of a friend of about 55 who decided to adopt his former boyfriend of 35 or so who came from Poland. And I thought, how can I direct a film where the meaning of love changes?. And that was the challenge; to create the mutation that started with a sort of prostitution, then became more tender and gradually developed into a father and son relationship. And the other thing was that I wanted to create a character who was like ‘Boss’ (Daniil Vorobyov) who was at the same time frightening, enchanting and mesmerising. I love the idea of being afraid of someone but also by being attracted by them. And most of the time I think people are afraid of migration (and immigrants) and I find that exciting too, so I wanted to create a paradoxical situation here.

MJT: Now, in the film the younger man (Marek) attracts the older man (Daniel) by his charismatic gaze – did you intend him to be sexually submissive?

RP: I’m not sure whether Marek was a real prostitute but he uses sex to escape from his life and get what he wants – he wants to be desired by someone, and to re-gain his power (as ‘Boss’ the gang-leader, controls his life in Paris). He has empathy with Daniel and they get on but I don’t know what is going on between them actually. Daniel thinks he’s having a tender affair with Marek but all the time money is involved and he tends to forget that.

MJT: But Marek has sexual control over Daniel when they first meet at the Gare du Nord and that control continues…

RP: Well he’s trying to exert some power over his life and that’s the only way he knows how…maybe he has been taught by Boss how to behave in this situation so that he can get what he wants from Daniel…he (Marek) thinks he has the control because of the sexual power he has over Daniel but once they start their relationship, I think Daniel has the power…

MJT: Yes, and especially at the end…but we won’t reveal what happens there. What was the idea to set part of the film in your own apartment?

RP: It’s a thing about invasion (laughing) sometimes invasion can be positive..being invaded created a lot of things in the world so I like the feeling of being invaded by my own characters in my own film and my own space – it all felt very weird and very exciting..

MJT: Did that continual spontaneity with the actors lead you to have to keep changing the script and re-writing during filming?

RP: Yes – before we started the shoot I didn’t realise that some of the Russian actors couldn’t speak English so, nine months before the shoot, I asked them to come to the apartment with Olivier Rabourdin and we did improvisations of a lot of the scenes and the party and they collaborated with me. Afterwards I went home and I re-wrote a lot of it..I used to think that directing a film meant being in control of it but I let go of this control and it became very exciting…I abandoned myself during the shooting and I wanted the others to do my film and it was a great idea.

MJT: Did you like that feeling of letting go?

RP: Yes, so much..I was mesmerised by the fact that they could take over the film. Of course, there was some germs (seeds) in my script to begin with but the collaboration then became so much more exciting – we had two cameras during the shooting and played with creating a different atmosphere with each and I found that very inspiring because it’s not like you have a programme when you wake up in the morning. You need to stay flexible and be surprised by what happens. I now have a lot of distance from my film and I love my film because it doesn’t belong to me and I that’s what I mean by being invaded by other people..foreigners… and yet to learn a lot myself.

MJT: Well film is really teamwork and certainly so in this case.

RP: Yes you’re right…and I’ve worked a lot with Laurent Cantet on this idea

MJT: Tell us about that.

RP: Well I’ve known Laurent for about 30 years or so and we are very close and good friends. When we did THE CLASS we were using three cameras and didn’t have a fixed project it mind. So we decided to look to the actors and let them create the characters. It was amazing to create that atmosphere where everyone is a little bit free. And I know now that whatever the story, we need to keep that feeling. It took me time to realise this but it always depends on good casting, so I always use good actors – the actors and the locations are the most important things in the film…for me.

MJT: Marek is amazing – he’s got a particular sense of vulnerability and he’s instinctive – where did you find him?

RP: It took me nine months..I searched all over the internet for my actors and watched them in many Russian films, not very good films I must say, and when you see bad films, and this is important, that’s when you can see who good the actors are…someone tried to tell me in France “you took these guys off the street” so I told him “please…he’s an actor, he’s been acting for years”. And Marek comes from a family of actors; he’s been acting since he was five. And you don’t even see the techniques with him because he’s so good. Between takes, he’s fiddling with his ‘phone but when you say ‘action’ he immediately starts to act. During the film I only told him three things and he’s so quick to learn and he understood everything. I’ve never met an actor like this – you just have to tell him a few things when you want to make some adjustments and he’s knows the character completely – he’s an amazing actor and, as you say he’s instinctive – he never asks you any questions – he just plays the part as you want it or completely differently – if you want that too..

MJT: Olivier’s also well-cast as Daniel. He’s vulnerable but also looks very worn down by life.

RP: Yes that’s right. That’s why I chose him because actors wear their lives on their face – and it’s very important to spend time to find the right casting – you can feel their life from their face without asking them. You don’t have to hear about their sad story with their last relationship. When you chose an actor, you chose a history on his face. That’s what cinema’s about. You don’t have to push things – things exist before you come along, you just have to find them. He has his own story and it’s rich for this character, he has this way of looking..

MJT: He has a world-weariness about him..

RP: Exactly – that’s the word “world-weariness”. You have a lot of expressions for everything…English is great for that!

MJT: Tell us about the look of the film. In the beginning it’s so disorientating…

RP: Yes the world ‘disorientation’ is for me a very important one. I like the idea that I lose myself: the spectator in the middle of nowhere with no compass! Debating what’s happening in this film. I want it to be (a) chaos! Very much like in THE CLASS – then after a moment you realise that there are characters and a relationship between them. You are the spectator and you are creating your own story, and you get lost occasionally and you have to focus a lot to see the fiction appear.

MJT: When you wrote VERS LE SUD (a drama about female sex tourism, starring Charlotte Rampling and directed by Laurent Cantet) it was about older women going with young boys, here you have an older man with a young boy. This oedipal/dominant relationship seems to fascinate you?

LC: Yes – it’s very strange because, I didn’t think a lot about it at the time but I must have a thing about it. I think what we call prostitution, or sex with money, is an important way of talking about domination and especially occidental domination in the world today. It’s a way of thinking about social differences but also about ‘desire’. I think prostitution will become much bigger because of the internet and because of people getting older…and wanting ‘desire’ in their lives.

MJT: Do you mean older people still wanting to find chemistry ?

RP: Yes chemistry…people want to live more and have more experiences and I think it’s going to be huge. And I don’t mean that’s good or bad…I’m not judging..

MJT: No, you’re just making an observation about what’s actually happening.

RP: What we loved in VERS LE SUD was there were two kinds of minorities – women can be a kind of minority: they can be dominated a lot. So if women were dominated in their own lives they were going there (the Dominican Republic) to gain a little bit of power and desire. These films are about two types of people who were being dominated and now dominate a little bit. We found that fascinating.

MJT: So what’s next?

RP: This time I’m going to make another fantasy film (LES REVENANTS/The Returned was his first) with much more money! (laughing)

ME: So financing is not going to be a problem..

RP: I don’t know – we’ll see – but I want to make a film about women – because this one had a lot of men…

ME: And who would be your fantasy actress?

RP: Well I love Catherine Deneuve – but it’s a fantasy…(laughing)

ME: Well I hope your fantasy comes true. Thanks very much Robin Campillo.

RP: Thank you!

EASTERN BOYS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5TH DECEMBER 2014

Les Miserables (1934) | Blu-ray DVD release

A mammoth undertaking that puts the latest version to shame is Raymond Bernard’s 1932 adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel LES MISERABLES which followed rapidly in the wake of his epic First World War drama LES CROIS DE BOIS (WOODEN CROSSES (1932). With a screen time running to nearly five hours, Bernard’s epic version reflects the original source matter in all its breadth and glory: this is not a film for the faint-hearted but well worth it when time and leisure permits.

There is much to admire about Bernard’s version which followed the style of the historical spectacle; skilfully blending his dramatic narrative with ambitious set design by Lucien Carré and Jean Perrier, cinematography by Jules Kruger and a cast of over fifty characters. Told against the background of 19th France, it traces two decades in the lives of Jean Valjean, the central character, played by the superb Harry Bauer (who sadly was to die in the Second World War) as he attempts to evade the clutches of the unscrupulous Inspecteur Javert (Charles Vanel – The Wages of Fear). Told in three parts: ‘Tempest in a Skull’, ‘The Thenardiers’ and ‘Freedom, Dear Freedom’ , it was filmed in and around Antibes and Nice on the Côte d’Azur.

SPECIAL FEATURES including:

• New presentation of the film in its complete length from the new Pathé 4K digital restoration
• 40-PAGE BOOKLET with new and vintage writing, rare archival material, and more!
• A host of additional extras to be announced

[youtube id=”RAXpDOg_E2M” width=”600″ height=”350″]

AVAILABLE FROM 8 DECEMBER 2014 Amazon (Blu-ray) http://amzn.to/1BD7oS1 Amazon (DVD) http://amzn.to/1pKUxGC

School of Babel (2014)

SCHOOL OF BABEL (LA COUR DE BABEL)

Dir.: Julie Bertucelli; Documentary; France 2014, 89 min.

Julie Bertucelli (SINCE OTTO LEFT) has filmed students at the special reception class of “La Grange aux Belles” Secondary School in Paris’ 10eme arrondissement for one year. All of the eleven to fifteen year olds have one common denominator: they come from four continents and have to learn French, before they are transferred into the normal school system.

Taught by Brigitte Cervoni (her last class, before she will exchange the care for 24 students to oversee 300 teachers in the Ministry of Education), the students bring not only the fears and traumas acquired in their homelands with them, they are isolated in France, because they speak French poorly. On top of it, adolescence is never easy, particularly when some of the students have to be the interpreters for their parents. Considering all this, clashes with teachers are relatively rare, most of the students see France as a stepping stone to a prosperous life – they try, with exceptions, much harder than English children in Secondary Schools, who on the whole, rely very much on their parents bailing them out with private tutors.

Rama, who comes from Senegal, is one of the exceptions. The young girl is lazy and unmotivated, even though she was beaten by male family members at home. Her older cousin, who is looking after her in Paris, tells her in front of Cervoni, that she will be send back home, if she is not more compliant. But at the end of the school year, Rama blames racism (unjustly) for her poor results.

Religion and fear of the future plays a major part in the life of the students. They discuss their upbringing under different religions; one girl grew up in a home split between a Muslim father and a Christian mother. A young Serbian boy had to flee with his family, because Neo-Nazis persecuted them in his homeland. Overall, they question the usefulness of religion, even quoting the troubles in Ireland, where one of the boys suffered.

The class competed in a school film festival, and won second price at the Festival in Chartres. The unbridled joy showed is proof, what this medium can do for students having to express themselves in their second language. The last day at school is very emotionally charged, many of the students will move on into Secondary schools, others will remain. But together with their equally teary teacher, they can celebrate a first, giant step into integration. SCHOOL OF BABEL is informative and very moving, a testament to creative schooling.

On general release from 5 December 2014

Stingray Sam | Sundance Org | January 22 – February 1 2015

Programme coming soon. Until then we’ll leave you with a treat from the archives

[youtube id=”CIxixu_syqM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

The Killers (1946) | Blu-ray release

Newly restored High Definition (1080p) presentation of the feature, transferred from original film elements by Universal

Dir.: Robert Siodmak

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, William Conrad, Charles McGraw

USA 1946, 102 min.

Based on the short story by Ernest Hemingway, THE KILLERS was one of many classic film noirs by the German born director Robert Siodmak (1900-1973). He was one of the team of filmmakers of “Menschen am Sonntag” (1929); his fellow creators and emigrants Edgar G. Ulmer and Billie Wilder would, like him, excel in directing noir-movies in Hollywood, as well as another couple of ex-UFA directors: Fritz Lang and John Brahm. Robert’s brother, Curt Siodmak (1902-2000), also became a busy Hollywood script-writer in Hollywood involved in noir-films so clearly all these emigrant directors transferred the traumatic displacement they had suffered in Nazi-Germany to their new environment creating films in which everything, from the role of capitalism to gender roles, became questionable.
Robert Siodmak’s list of noir films he directed between 1941 and 1949 is quiet staggering: Flight by Night; Conflict; Phantom Lady; The Suspect; The Spiral Staircase, The Dark Mirror; Cry of the City; Criss Cross and Thelma Jordan. Apart from being aesthetically original, these productions were often great successes at the box office and Siodmak had enough clout with the studio bosses to cast an unknown debutant in the leading role for THE KILLERS: Burt Lancaster.

The film opens with two psychotic killers Max (Conrad) and Al (McGraw) entering the small town of Brentwood in New Jersey at night, where they start at the local diner enquiring about Pete Lunn, called “The Swede”. They get a dusty answer and terrorise the owner and staff in frustration before turning their enquiries elsewhere. Finally, they track down Lunn’s (Lancaster) boarding house and shoot him in cold blood. Jim Reardon (O’Brien), an insurance inspector investigating a life-insurance claim (Lunn had a life-insurance policy, a motel maid in Atlantic City being named the beneficiary), is puzzled as to why Lunn never ran away, despite being warned by one of the guests in the diner about the arrival of the killers. With the help of police detective Sam Lubinsky (Levene), who knew Lunn when he was a young boxer (putting him away in jail after Lunn took the rap for a jewel theft for his secret love Kitty Collins), Reardon tries to uncover the truth behind Lunn’s suicidal behaviour. But the more Reardon learns, the less sense it all makes…

The narrative is told at first as a series of flashbacks portraying Lunn’s life before the two killers from the opening sequence make another appearance, this time trying to get rid off Lubinsky and Reardon, setting in motion a series of shootouts. The acting is near perfect: Lancaster’s “Swede” is a naïve, emotionally immature man who does not even know that Lilly is in love with him – she promptly marries Lubinsky – whilst Lunn obsesses about the unobtainable Kitty from afar, only confronting the rough Colfax once before the heist. When Lunn meets Gardner, she is “the little girl lost” in the company of gangsters, begging Lunn to save her, and Lunn is only too happy to oblige, even if it costs him three years of his life. Their meeting in Atlantic City, when Kitty tells him of Colfax treachery, is the high point of the film: one literally feels the burning lust. Dekker’s Colfax is steely and arrogant – Ronald Reagan would play him in Don Siegel’s remake of 1956 – and Conrad and McGraw are truly frightening in their unrestrained violence. DOP Elwood Bredell plays it masterly with shadows and light, creating an atmosphere of violence and repressed lust. The male protagonists are all severely damaged, even Lubinsky is just shown as a cop who easily sells his friend Lunn out, even though he had the chance to save him. Reardon is just a stupid insurance agent who risks his life to maximise the profits of his company. Siodmak creates a totally corrupt and amoral world in this near perfect cult classic. AS

[youtube id=”4m0NBlhkgPE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

OUT ON 8TH DECEMBER ON BLU-RAY COURTESY OF ARROW FILM

Original uncompressed PCM mono 1.0 audio
Isolated Music & Effects soundtrack to highlight Miklós Rózsa’s famous score
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
Frank Krutnik on The Killers, a video piece by the author of In a Lonely Street, which introduces the film and offers a detailed commentary on four key scenes
Heroic Fatalism, a video essay adapted from Philip Booth’s comparative study of multiple versions of The Killers (Hemingway, Siodmak, Tarkovsky, Siegel)
Three archive radio pieces inspired by The Killers: the 1949 Screen Director’s Playhouse adaptation with Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters; a 1946 Jack Benny spoof; the 1958 Suspense episode ‘Two for the Road’ which reunited original killers William Conrad and Charles McGraw
Stills and posters gallery
Trailers for The Killers, Brute Force, The Naked City and Rififi
Reversible sleeve featuring one of the original posters and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw
Collector’s booklet containing new writing by Sergio Angelini and archive interviews with director Robert Siodmak, producer Mark Hellinger and cinematographer Woody Bredell, illustrated with original production stills.

AVAILABLE FROM MONDAY 8TH DECEMBER COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS

Tallinn Black Nights Festival | 15 November – 1 December 2014

LUCIFER by van den Berghe awarded the best film at the Black Nights Festival at Tallinn, Estonia.

The winner of the Grand Prix of the 18th edition of the Black Nights Film Festival was LUCIFER by the Belgian director Gust van den Berghe which carries a grant of 10 000 euros from the City of Tallinn for his third feature. The prize for the Best Cinematographer was awarded to Erik Põllumaa for IN THE CROSSWIND (Estonia), directed by Martti Helde for its compelling and innovative approach to filming one of the most bitter times in Estonian history and its aftermath.

Jury prize for Best Director went to Marat Sarulu for MOVE (Kyrgyzstan) for working against cinematic conventions by telling a story that not only compels but engages in remarkable social ways.

Jury prize for Best Actor was awarded to Eddie Redmayne in the film THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (UK), directed by James Marsh for his tour de force representation of the integrity of the human spirit as well as the human mind. The Best Actress went to Kalki Koechlin for her role in MARGARITA WITH A STRAW (India), directed by Shonali Bose and Nilesh Maniyar for its unmitigated approach to how physically challenged individuals can overcome all obstacles and learn to be at peace with one’s personal worth.

TALLIN BLACK NIGHTS FESTIVAL (a FIAPF-accredited non-specialized international competition) 15 November until 1 December 2014

Turin Film Festival (2014) | 21 – 29 November 2014

Eddie Redmayne received the first of many awards for his Oscar-worthy portrayal of Professor Stephen Hawking in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING which was screened during the Turin Festival this week. The Grand Jury at the 32nd edition of the Northern Italian Film Festival, which culminated on the 29 November, was composed of Ferzan Ozpetek, Geoff Andrew, Carolina Crescentini, Debra Granik e György Pálfi, who awarded the following winners:

BEST FILM EAT YOUR DEAD: Jean-Charles Hue (FRANCE 2014) (Above)

JURY PRIZE: FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON Gábor Reisz (HUNGARY, 2014) (left)

BEST ACTRESS: Sidse Babett Knudsen (CYNTHIA) THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY Peter Strickland (UK, 2014)

BEST ACTOR: Luzer Twersky (SHULEM) FELIX & MEIRA Maxime Giroux (Canada, 2014) (right)

BEST SCREENPLAY: WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS Jemaine Clement e Taika Waititi (New Zealand, 2014)

BEST DOCUMENTARY : ENDLESS ESCAPE, ETERNAL RETURN di Harutyun Khachatryan (Armenia/Holland/Switzerland, 2014) (left)

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING will be out on general release early in January 2015 (right).

Bonobo (2014)

Director: Matthew Hammett-Knott

Writers: Joanna Benecke/Matthew Hammett-Knott

Cast: James Norton, Tessa Peake-Jones, Josie Lawrence, Will Tudor, Orlando Seale, Eleanor Wyld

83min Comedy Britflick UK

BONOBO’s great premise: that human conflict can be minimised through regular sexual activity is at best hopeful and, at worst, naive but let’s give it a spin round the block. Matthew Hammett Knott’s third feature, about a human community organised to mimic the lifestyle of the Bonobo apes – is set in Devon. To his credit he has a devised the piece based on predominantly female leads; to his detriment these characters are either sexually uptight or barking mad. What could have been the sinister story about a deliciously subversive cult or even a hilarious comedy with unusual characters instead turns out to be a trite drama that veers between the cringeworthy and the desperately weird.

That said, Hammett Knott’s has managed it all on a shoestring and with a very accomplished cast who really do their best in the circumstances despite having to play a string of boring stereotypes. The first is played by Tessa Peake-Jones as Judith, a well-meaning, intelligent woman in her late fifties who has single-handedly brought up her only daughter with the treasured hope of her becoming a successful lawyer with a ‘decent husband and a family’. Nothing wrong with that, so why make her feel like a boring failure to the rest of this talentless bunch of real losers ? Just because she’s not twenty something does it mean she can’t be portrayed as alluring, successful or elegant? (what about Mrs Robinson?). Her counterpart, the voluptuously endearing Anita (Josie Lawrence), who runs this community of “Bonobo humans” is depicted as some sort of sad nutter despite her attempts to run a business giving sanctuary to a community of young people who have somehow ‘lost their way’ their only redeeming feature being firm buttocks (the boys) and porky thighs (the girls).

So Judith must join the community in order to resolve the conflict between her and her daughter. Sadly this story goes nowhere fast. It’s not enough to show a motley crew of puerile characters indulging in free sex while ‘a parent’ (who has never had sex) looks on in horror – they have to have personalities and there has to be a narrative arc. The young ones in the assembled cast are composed of Ralph (James Norton) a bumptious yoga-practicing man-child: Malcolm (Orlando Seale) who’s only claim to fame is having impregnated his colourless girlfriend (Carolyn Pickles) and a couple of vapid gay men who just stroke each other and everybody else. This is a ‘drama’ with no dramatic punch, a ‘comedy’ with scant laughs; just a bunch of one-dimensional kids and clichéd adults (Judith’s character feels more in her eighties that her fifties). Even Judith’s lawyer graduate daughter Lily (Eleanor Wyld) is portrayed as a facile kid who only comes into her own when one of the men tries to bed her.

So if you’re looking for a light-hearted piece of comedy fluff to have on in the background on a stag night on a girls’ night in – BONOBO will do the trick. But if you’re expecting something more appealing or even funny give it a miss. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5TH DECEMBER 2014

Hello Carter (2014)

Director: Anthony Wilcox

Cast: Charlie Cox, Annabelle Wallis, Jodie Whittaker, Paul Schneider, Judy Parfitt

80min Britflick comedy drama

Anthony Wilcox isn’t new to the world of film; working as the producer of Trishna and The Face of an Angel, he got to know Michael Winterbottom who has now helped finance this debut drama HELLO CARTER, a day-in-the life drama starring Charlie Cox. And this is the only reason to see it. Cox plays Carter, an upbeat and charmingly decent 30-year-old who, finding his feet socially and professionally in London, gets to know Jodie Whittaker’s flat and disillusioned Northern lass (through an interview). The two share a certain chemistry, more as a default position to survival rather than anything more meaningful as Charlie is still getting over strong feelings for his ex, who he tries to contact again through her irritating brother, Aaron (Paul Schneider). But Aaron wants a favour in return for new number and in trying to accomplish this Carter accidentally kidnaps a baby and manages to get locked out of his flat. For a film set in the present day, it all feels rather dated and dernière siècle but Charlie Cox remains watchable and appealing throughout.

HELLO CARTER is not without other charms: Judy Parfitt is superb as his warmly wise Aunt Miriam, who offers him board and lodging in her splendid house, but after a promising start the narrative goes off piste and never really delivers anything more meaningful. Despite its 80 minute running time, HELLO CARTER loses our interest midway and this is possibly due to it feeling like an extended short; and that is, indeed, how it started off. MT

HELLO CARTER IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5th December 2014

Dekalog (1988)

Dir.: Krzysztof Kiešlowski

Cast: Wojciech Klata, Krystina Janda, Janusz Gajos, Jan Tesarz, Anna Polony,Ewa Blasczyk, Miroslaw Baka, Jerzy Stuhr

Poland/West Germany 1988/89, 572 min.

This ten-part TV series is often called “Kiešlowski’s Ten Commandments”, but nothing is further from the truth. In the first place, the director never believed “in the need for an arbitrator” like the Church, when it came to a credo. Secondly, Kiešlowski never thought that his films would change anything – never mind being taken as commandments: “At best some people will remember some parts of some of my films”. So the deeply pessimistic director was doubting everything human and, particularly, he had little faith in society in all its forms: after his nearly life-long attack on Stalinism, he was deeply disappointed with life in Poland under Capitalism.

Whilst the ten parts are loosely connected by their references to the ten commandments, they primarily depict chaos and a lack of human commitment to anything but the individual. Kiešlowski’s co-author, the lawyer Krzysztof Piesiewicz, found the basis of the narratives in newspaper articles, declaring “that more and more I came to the conclusion that humans did not know any more why they lived”. Even then, it becomes clear that the media, TV or computers had become much more important than human relationships themselves.

Shot in a soulless, claustrophobic suburbs of Warsaw, the norm is Hell: indifference, loneliness and absurdity rule. The episodes are dominated by cowardice, violence, dishonesty and opportunism; nearly everybody seems to be a crook of some kind. Kiešlowski is just an observer, perhaps symbolised by a young man (Artur Barcis), who appears briefly in every episode, but never participates. Stanley Kubrick described the DEKALOG as the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime.

DEKALOG offers no solutions at all, no home-made philosophies or didactic assistance; despite its comparative ‘triviality’ as a TV production, it presents no moral or ethical help to make us feel better. Perhaps “moral tragedy” is the right term for DEKALOG, even though Kieslowski would not have liked to call anything moral. His non-judgemental narratives pose questions, with the audience having to find the answers. This approach is perhaps best symbolised by the woman, in one of the episodes, who is pregnant by another man but only wants to carry the baby to term if her husband dies.

Kiešlowski was the last “metaphysical’ filmmaker in Europe, he is critical of all forms of society because they have chosen to live without any commandments, religious or otherwise. AS

(Dekalog Five and Six also exist as larger versions: “A Short Film About Killing” and “A Short Film About Love”)

SCREENING AS PART OF THE KIESLOWSKI RETROSPECTIVE IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Gare Du Nord (2013) | French Film Festival UK 2014

Director: Claire Simon Writers: Claire Simon, Shirel Amitay, Olivier Lorelle

Cast: Francois Damiens, Reda Ketab, Nicole Garcia

119min Docudrama French with English subtitles

Whether this stylish docudrama will keep you captivated for nearly two hours, it certainly offers a visually appealing look at the daily comings and goings of the one of France’s busiest transport hubs. In the Gare Du Nord, Paris’s ever-shifting social and economic population rub along together sometimes positively and sometimes with outbreaks of violent hostility. Amongst the handful of characters who regularly inhabit the station is Algerian- born Ismael (Reda Kateb) and graceful history prof Mathilde (Nicola Garcia) who strike up an unusual romance when he interviews her for a survey. Gradually, through snatched moments of talking and flirting, from platforms to cafes, they be come involved.

Claire Simon is best-known for her documentary work such as Coute que Coute (1995). Her original approach, which aims to capture ‘the essence of reality’ with half-documentary, half fiction pieces, has been seen before in her TV film: That’s Just Like You (2000) set inside the European Parliament and big screen outing God’s Offices (2008) which tackles the world of town planning.

Here in GARE DU NORD, she focuses on four main characters: Ismael, Mathilde, Sacha (Francois Damiens) and Joan (Monia Chokri). As Ismael introduces Mathilde to his many acquaintances, he discovers she’s undergoing cancer treatment and suffering considerable emotional and physical strain. But when she becomes involved with a store robbery by a particularly unpleasant thief, it’s TV comic Sacha who comes to her rescue, acting as a witness and assisting the police with their inquiries. Ismael becomes elusive and it’s at this point that the narrative starts to wander off on more generalised and less intimate terms, adding texture by introducing incidental characters (often non-professional actors) who commiserate with each other in snatched conversations about their hopes and dreams, as the voyeuristic camera pans over the station offering well-composed widescreen visuals of majestic local landmarks and interiors. Marc Ribot’s atmospheric original score highlights moments of zen-like calm and those of anxiousness.

Alluring and enigmatic at times, confusing and arcane at others, Claire Simon offers up an inventive way of reflecting both the anonymity and the intimacy that can exist in contemporary urban settings, echoing the rich tapestry of cosmopolitan life in an everyday setting. Performances from Damiens, Kateb and Garcia give ballast and integrity to this ephemeral slice of Paris. MT

Winter Sleep | Kis Uykusu (2014)

Dir.: Nuri Bilge Ceylan; Cast: Haluk Bilginer, Melisa Sözen, Demet Akbao; Turkey/ France/Germany, 2014, 196 min.

Set deep in the mountain region of Cappadocia in Anatolia, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Palme D’Or Winner is, in spite of its considerable length, a dense and often very confrontational portrait of human fallibility. Even though it takes place inside a claustrophobic hotel, the outdoor scenes are riveting, set against the background of the majestic mountains.

Men are usually out of touch in all of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films, and in WINTER SLEEP, his new anti-hero Aydin (Bilginer) is no exception. An ex-actor, he owns and runs a hotel, but his real (inherited) wealth is derived from rentals and businesses in the nearby villages. Aydin sees himself as an enlightened feudal lord; mostly spending his days in the hotel, where he writes a daily column for the local newspaper, leaving the dirty work to his right-hand man Hydayet, his lawyers and the bailiffs. He is therefore shocked, when Ilyas, a small boy, throws a stone into the side window of his jeep. It later emerges that his father, Ismail, has been visited by the bailiffs for unpaid rent. In an absurdly degrading scene, Hamdi, Ilyas’ uncle and the local iman, brings the child to Aydin’s hotel, were he has to kiss “the master’s” hand in the presence of Aydin’s much younger wife Nihal (Sözen).

At home, where Aydin lives with Nihal and his recently divorced sister Necla (Akbao), he again presents himself as somebody he is not: the tolerant intellectual, man of the world, writing an history of the Turkish theatre, and letting the women get on with their lives – which is obviously not as important or interesting as his. The reality is, that Nihal lived for many years in fear of him, and even now, he tries to interfere in her charity work, treating her like a teacher would treat a not particularly clever child. His passive-aggressive behaviour towards his sister, the only person brave enough to tell him the truth (“I wish my threshold of self-deception was as low as yours”), culminates in him accusing her of failing to prevent her ex-husband’s alcoholism. Whilst he is benevolent and generous to the few hotel guests, he treats the women with arrogance and utter impudence.

Doubtless, Ceylan pays homage to Bergman and Bresson: in the long, vicious arguments between Aydin and his wife/sister, the camera catches the protagonists in shot/contra-shot movement, the close-ups showing the hurt on the faces of the women, and Aydin’s sarcastic smile. In choosing Schubert’s piano sonata no. 20, which Bresson used in Au hazard Balthazar, Ceylan connects not only Nihal’s treatment by Aydin to the French master, but also shows the wild horses of the region; one of them, Aydin, in a more generous mood, frees, so it can return to the wild.

In the last hour, changes are signaled, when Aydin decides to go to Istanbul for the winter, only to change his mind, landing himself and his wife in unconnected situations, which serve as a showdown for both of them. The widescreen camera catches the wintry landscape in panorama shots, as well the equally cold relationships inside the hotel. Bilginer’s Aydin is a wonderful study of a heartless tyrant, who tries to fool everyone, but only succeeds in being more and more isolated. Sözen’s Nihal is vulnerable, but she tries to fight her husband, even if he just chuckles, when called “selfish and spiteful”. Akbao’s sister is angry and alone, since she does not take Nihals’ side, instead she starts longing for her ex-husband, even he seems to be agreeable than her brother. Ceylan’s intensity never lets up, leaving WINTER SLEEP as an unforgettable chronicle of human psychological warfare, in the midst of a magnificent winter landscape. AS

On GENERAL RELEASE FROM 21 NOVEMBER 2014

KAJAKI (2014)

Dir.: Paul Katis;

Cast: Mark Stanley, Malachi Kirby, David Elliot, Paul Luebke, Ali Cook; UK 2014, 108 min.

KAJAKI – the true story – is debut helmer Paul Katis’ account of an incident near the Kajaki dam in the southern Afghan province of Helmand in 2006, involving a group of British soldiers, when a routine mission turned into a nightmare.
One has to stress that there are two very different issues involved: the film itself, and the wider context of war films, particularly with the anniversary of WWI throwing up many issues.

KAJAKI is, in the strictest sense, not really a war film sincere does not involve enemy combat, even though the Taliban soldiers are shown as a threat. One member of the three-man patrol sent out, steps on an anti-personal mine, probably left there during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. His leg is blown up and his comrades send for help, which duly arrives. But there are more mines in the vicinity of the first explosion, and a series of gruesome explosions leave more soldiers seriously wounded before a helicopter finally arrives.

Shot in six weeks last summer in Jordan, no detail is spared in KAJAKI and one has to question the BBFC “15” certificate: the realism of the injuries shown is horrendous and demands an “18” rating. In the final credits we learn the fate of the real men involved, amongst them is one soldier who died in a subsequent tour in Afghanistan. Another is collecting money for a veteran’s charity, by parachuting, even though he is an amputee. Part of the proceeds from various pre-screenings is also going, deservedly, to a veteran’s charity. Well acted, photographed and directed, there is little criticism of the film on a pure professional level apart from the sometimes hard to understand dialects of some of the actors.

The real issue is that one cannot show any film about the Afghan war out of context: the Soviet Union was rightly condemned for its invasion of the country. But in spite of the action of the Taliban, the last Labour government’s decision to send British soldiers to Afghanistan (or Iraq for that matter), is at best a grave error of judgement, at worst the condonement of mass slaughter. The lack of public support for the wars in this country does not seem to worry the MPs who voted for them (or the media who covered the campaign) but for the soldiers who were led to believe that there was a just war to be fought, it is a continuing tragedy. Returning, they feel totally unappreciated and lack even the basic funds for their re-integration into society. Therefore, one cannot deal with these complex issues with a straightforward, one-to-one account of individual heroism (however commendable), that obviates the fundamental questions regarding British involvement in this war. And on a very real and pragmatic level one does not need to be a clairvoyant to see that the military engagement had to end at some point – leaving the Taliban in charge. KAJAKI occasionally demonstrates the nobler side of soldiering, but that does not absolve politicians and parts of the media from their guilt.

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28 NOVEMBER 2014

Stations of the Cross (2014)

Dir.: Dietrich Brüggemann

Cast: Lea van Acken, Franziska Weisz, Lucie Aron

Germany 2014, 107 min.

Dietrich Bruggemann’s drama that won Ecumenical prize at the Berlinale this year, centres on fourteen-year-old Maria (Van Acken) who is soon to be confirmed into the Catholic Church. Neatly divided into 14 chapters, each representing a stop on Jesus’s way to Golgotha (based on the biblical text of the Crucifixion) Bruggemann tried not to fall into the same trap of dogmatic anti-pleasure, like the fanatics he attacks. But he only succeeds so far: his didactic way of wringing every ounce out of a scene soon grates in the same way as the long speeches of religious fanatics: not only do they want to do away with joy, they also hate anybody who doesnt agree with them – and are ready to fight every inch of the way.

Pater Weber, the priest instructing Maria and the small group of teenagers in a small German town, is not an ordinary priest but a member of a radical sect, which has split from the Catholic Church. There are claims that the Church itself has been taken over by Satan, since the Second Vatican Council has questioned the existence of the Evil One. Pater Weber wants his flock to follow in the footsteps of a Mexican group of children who fought the “Anti-Christian” government in Mexico a hundred years ago, and were all martyred. Since a contemporary Children’s Crusade is out of the questions, Maria wants to sacrifice herself, so that her mute little brother is given the power of speech. Driven into total isolation by her fanatical mother (Weisz), who teaches her relentlessly to repress any joy in life and to denounce contemporary books, clothes or music as works of the Devil, it seems Maria’s life is set in end in tragedy.

The only person really on Maria’s side is Bernadette (Aron), a French Au-pair, who tries in vain to intervene on her behalf, only to be told by her vicious mother “not to interfere with the education of my daughter”. Maria’s father is totally in the shadow of his wife. One can only wonder what Ulrich Seidl (Paradise:Faith) would have made of this, with his anarchic humour. But the director of STATIONS OF THE CROSS does not stray from the format of a seventies “Thesenfilm”, were everything has its place: the aesthetics are middle of the road, the images slightly bleached with the camera carefully restricted not to show off anything spectacular; everything is prim and minimalist. Words are the only domineering entity, nothing detracts from the verbal onslaught, and there is nothing to feast on visually. Still, one has to admire the rigour of the script, because this is not fiction. As we have discovered recently, Germany is not the only country with a lunatic fringe, always looking out for enemies and victimising even their own flesh and blood. AS

[youtube id=”9Mrfd1RJqVA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

“STATIONS OF THE CROSS is in cinemas 28 November”
Award-winning film which won the Berlin Silver Bear for Best Script this year and the EIFF Student Jury Pri

UK Jewish Film Festival | 6-23 November 2014

The UK Jewish Festival is back with another nationwide feast of film (Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester and Glasgow): this year is the biggest festival yet with 67 features and 28 shorts showcasing life and all its guts and glory throughout the diaspora.

The festival kicks off with the UK premiere of French thriller THE ART DEALER, a modern-day detective story set in Paris, where a young woman uncovers a web of deceit and betrayal surrounding her family’s fortune. Follow a selection of this year’s films here.

[vimeo id=”102132567″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Cold Eyes (2014) | UK Korean Film Festival

Dir.: Cho Ui-seok, Kim Byung-seo

Cast: Han Hyo-joo, Jung Woo-sung, Sol Kyung-gu; South Korea 2014, 118 min.

As we all know, remakes rarely match the original outing, but Cho and Kim have succeeded in re-planting one of Hong Kong’s most original crime thrillers EYE IN THE SKY from 2007 to a seedy Seoul with their COLD EYES, the original title translating simply into The Surveillants.

COLD EYES is the story of hunters and their prey. All three main protagonists are introduced in a long and rather enigmatic opening sequence set in a high-speed tube train: Tom-boy Ha Yoon-joo (Han) is muttering to herself, her fingers moving seemingly on their own will, whilst she constantly survives (and memorises) the goings-on in the carriage. Middle-aged Hwang (Sol) casts a detached eye on the proceedings: people dropping newspapers, bumping into each other, exchanging looks. Of all the people caught on camera one figure stands out: the grim-faced, soulless James (Jung) who tries to slip into the background, avoiding eye contact. The following scene, in a restaurant, at least solves the identity of two of the trio: Ha is a young police cadet, trying to qualify for Hwang’s prestigious surveillance unit. Needless to say, she passes with flying colours, even though Hwang makes sure that she can see her limits. It’s clear that boss and apprentice have much in common: in their different ways they are obsessed with surveillance work to the point of being slightly insane, having lost contact with the real world.

The unfolding narrative concentrates on the hunt for a gang of criminals led by James, who turns out to be a sadistic killer. After a bank robbery the surveillance unit follows one the participants caught on CCTV: an overweight man, given the code name “hippo” by Hwang, who has also given all his team members animal names; Ha being “Piglet”, somehow not as grand as her own proposed “Reindeer”, eventually proves her self in the impressive denouement.

There are hand-to-hand combat scenes, car chases and long, technical explicit surveillance scenes. The directors show a seemingly endless knowledge of this field. But neither this aspect, nor the fast-forward mode of the action sequences explain the fascination of the film: Ha is dominating the proceedings subtly, a brilliant mixture of vulnerability as well as mental and physical toughness. Like Hwang, she lives in a world of her own, when she is chasing her prey with a viciousness belying her frail but lean exterior. Her eyes seem to have a much more quality than the countless lenses we see in action.

COLD EYES is a playful exercise in over-kill, carried by Ha’s personality. The Seoul settings are changing constantly between the high-tech world of the city and the seediness of the districts – leaving the viewer in no doubt, how these seemingly so different environments rely on each other. Camera work is very innovative, particularly in scenes set at great height; it also gives every member of the team and James their own POV. Whilst the narrative hardly offers any surprises, Ha and the virtuosic photography make COLD EYES a superior action thriller.

Screening at the UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL

Revivre (2013) | UK Korean Film Festival

Dir.: Im Kwon-taek

Cast: Ahn Sunki, Kim Hojung, Kim Qyuri; South Korea 2014, 93 min.

In his 102nd feature film REVIVRE, veteran South Korean director Im Kwon-taek tells the story of an ageing man caught between his duty to a dying wife and his lust for a young woman. Based on the short story “Hwajang” by Kim Hoon, the ambivalence played out in the film is explained by the double meaning of ‘Hwajang’ in translation: “putting on make-up” as well as “cremation”.

Mr. Oh (Sunki) is an advertising executive for a major company producing beauty products. In his mid-fifties, he lives a very unhappy life: His wife Jinkyung (Hojung) is dying of a brain tumour, and he is suffering from prostate trouble, causing him to visit a hospital on a regular basis, to have his bladder emptied. Further more, his job is very stressful, competitors and his own staff making his working life a living hell. No wonder therefore, that he is falling in love with the young Choo Eunjoo (Qyuri), a new employee in his department. We suspect that the latter might be taking advantage of the situation, when Oh is finding out, that his by now deceased wife knew along about his feelings for the young woman.

Set between the months of February and December, Hoon’s short story is very much told in internal monologues. Im Kwon-taek avoid voice-overs, which would have been an easy solution, and tries instead to focus the narrative on Oh, whose ambiguity dominates the proceedings. His relationship with his wife is typical: whilst he is looking after her in the hospital, even performing tasks for the nurses, it becomes clear in flash-backs that he never really loved her. He sees her, like his job, as a duty, which he performs as well as possible. The only events he really enjoys before Choo Eunjoo appears, are the long drinking dinner parties with his staff. Family and work life always collide: after the funeral of his wife, Oh’s house is full of family guests, but he prefers to tend to employees who need his authorisation for the forthcoming release of the summer collection. Whilst he makes one failed attempt to talk to Choo, he prefers to imagine making love to her. Mr. Oh is a lonely man indeed and he is going to realise this even more when he learns rather surprising facts about the woman of his dreams.

REVIVRE is an elegy, a melancholic portrait of an old man who has to come to terms with his own mortality and a life that from the outside might have looked a success, but was much more empty. In one short scene with his wife and her dog, we see how much more the dog means to her – the gulf between the couple was only camouflaged by the presence of their children and Oh’s long working hours. The camera follows him often mournfully; in long shots he seems to disappear into the background. Sunki’s Oh is very understated, he is played with great restraint and his inner hollowness is translated into a stooping walk and long gazes into a far-away world. Somehow he seems to be so lightweight that a wind could blow him away. REVIVRE is a convincing “trauerarbeit”. AS

REVIVRE WAS THE CLOSING NIGHT GALA OF THE STRAND OF THE UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2014

My Old Lady (2014)

Writer/Director: Israel Horovitz

Cast: Dame Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas

107min US Comedy Drama

Israel Horovitz has written over 50 plays. He makes his directorial debut here with an adaptation of one of them, a wittily-observed comedy drama that explores the vagaries of family relationships through the joint ownership of an apartment in Paris. It stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith and Kevin Kline as the family members.

As Mathias Gold, an impoverished New Yorker, Kline arrives in the French capital to claim an inherence from his father: a plush apartment in a chic part of centre Ville. Chipper at the thought of solving his financial problems, he lets himself in to discover the elderly occupant, an English woman in the shape of Mathilde Girard (Maggie Smith): “I’m ninety, subtlety is not something that interests me”.

Mathilde explains that the apartment is a ‘viager’, which in French property terms means that his father has acquired it from Mathilde at a decreased value, subject to a monthly rental payable to her and allowing her secured tenancy until her death. In other words, the flat is a poisoned chalice. But providing she dies before Mathias does, it reverts to him, permitting a sale. So Mathias must pay 2,400 euros to Mathilde and her daughter, Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas), who he later surprises in the unlocked lavatory. Mathias is forced on a steep learning curve to bone-up on the arcane laws of French property while ingratiating himself with his intransigent new landladies.

All very awkward but therein lies the edgy humour: Kevin Kline is forced to eat humble pie while still keeping his end up and his eye to the main chance. In a racy performance of suave aplomb, he manages to maintain control of his faculties, manoeuvring himself deftly towards a satisfactory modus vivendi while also hustling for the rent by discreetly selling some of the furniture. He makes a firm friend and ally of local estate agent, Monsieur Lefebvre (Dominique Pinon) and also keeps negotiations on the boil with a wealthy would-be buyer on his own account. Mathias is a character who is both flawed and pathetic yet strangely masterful in his manipulation of the two straight-laced Englishwomen, who are themselves no fools. Mathilde in particular, is shrewdly crafty and Maggie Smith portrays her with a touch of class and her usual hard-edged charm.

In a tricky role, Kristin Scott Thomas injects brittle unpleasantness into her frustrated middle-aged portrayal of Chloe, an English teacher who is physically attractive but emotionally flawed by Mathilde’s selfish form of motherhood. At times, the dynamic between Chloe and Mathias feels strained, but understandably so, given the circumstances of their past and as they move towards a deeper understanding of one another, a tragic secret is gradually revealed, amid much soul-bearing. What they achieve in this highly complex interaction is skilful and believable.

Throughout, the stoical Mathilde remains discretion personified despite emerging as rather a snake, although a charming one, nonetheless. Some poignant emotion seeps through the cracks of this enjoyable comedy drama that manages to retain an authentic feel, despite its slightly bizarre conceit, and never takes itself too seriously. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Stations of the Cross (2014) Kreuzweg| Interview with Dietrich Brüggemann

Matthew Turner spoke to Dietrich Brüggemann, director of German indie, STATIONS OF THE CROSS, which won the Berlinale 2014 SILVER BEAR for Best Script

Where did the idea come from, first of all?

Dietrich Brüggemann (DB): Well, basically out of thin air. I had made a film with a lot of long shots earlier on, it was my graduation film that I made at film school. That principle of the long, steady shot had fascinated me and I always wanted to return to that. And first of all, with Catholicism, we had this episode in my childhood where we actually went to church with this very pious community, so we knew those people. And in some way, over the last few years, religion has had this kind of comeback, like everyone talking about it and fundamentalists in America and even those strong, fierce opponents like Richard Dawkins, they’re all about religion. So that was the thin air where the idea just sprang from, one day, I thought, like, ‘There are fourteen stations of the cross, why not shape a film after that? There should be a main character who follows the main path of Jesus, but actually suffers for religion’. So that was how it happened.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in doing the single shot for those fourteen takes?

DB: Obviously it was a huge challenge for the actors to learn their lines, yes – there was more line-learning than on a usual film. On the other hand, for the actors, it was hugely liberating, because it gave them the opportunity to play out those long scenes without splicing it up into lots of set-ups or repetitions. It was a huge gift to the actors. And the main challenge was to get the writing right, to get the script right, because you can’t fix it in the editing, because you don’t have the opportunity to re-edit the scenes that don’t work [on the page]. So the script has to be in pretty good shape and you really have to know your way around what each scene is about. And yes, the whole dialogue thing, I think that was the main challenge, but that’s fun, that’s something I enjoy doing. And also, the technical process of making the film was so rewarding, in a way, because on a normal film, you’re always in a hurry and you’re always late, because you keep setting up shots and breaking them down and moving on, and it was basically very, very different on a film like this.

What was the highest number of retakes you had to do on any single scene?

DB: I think the highest figure on the slate we had was something like 20. Other scenes were more like 15. With the scenes that were so very, very long, we didn’t do that many takes on those, because they were just too long, you’d get exhausted after a few times. And those scenes where the two kids are acting with each other without any other actors, they required a bit more work, because I had to work more technically on them, telling them where to stand and how to do timing, so these typically required a few more takes, but shooting is actually a bit like constant rehearsal, you do it over and over again and you have the camera rolling each time and it’s technically a take, but on the other hand it’s just a rehearsal and each one is a step to perfection and then at some point you get the perfect take, which is very often actually the last one and then you know it and then you can stop.

Am I right in thinking the camera only moves twice in the entire film?

DB: No, actually, it’s three times. It moves from left to right twice and there’s a crane shot that goes up at the end.

I wanted to ask what the significance was of moving the camera from left to right in those two shots?

DB: It could have been from right to left, it was more due to the nature of the locations we shot in. Maybe from left to right is just a more basic way of moving in our culture – it’s the direction we write in, it’s the direction the sun moves in the sky, you always have left-right movements there, so that is the normal way you tend to unfold a story. Like in [inaudible], the character always runs from left to right, so we didn’t want to go against that. Hey, you’ve never seen [inaudible] run from right to left, have you?

Who were your key influences as a director? I’m guessing maybe Dreyer…

DB: Well, Dreyer was an obvious reference for this film. Actually, funnily enough, the films that really influenced me are hugely different from this. So, the one film that really blew me away when I was 20 was Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. That made me want to make films. And then a strong influence for this particular film is the works of Roy Andersson, the Swedish director, who’s not as famous as he deserves to be. I absolutely adore his films, I watch them on my knees and that’s maybe the main tipping point reference for Stations of the Cross. On the other hand, of course, we try to kind of outdo him, by telling an actual story and having even longer shots, you know?

What’s your own relationship with religion?

DB: Well, I’m not really against it. Apart from all the theological stuff and all the voodoo and all the ‘Does God really exist?’ questions, the basic thing I see that are the reasons for people going to church are singing hymns and playing the organ and gathering together, flocking together and supporting each other in a basic, everyday way and what’s wrong with that?

I really liked the complexity of the ending in terms of whether or not you’re religious, the fact that the miracle works, if you like?

DB: Or is it a miracle to start with? I wanted it to be that complex – it’s not even being complex, it’s about encouraging difference and maybe even contradicting expectations.

I wondered if you’d seen a film called Lourdes?

DB: Yeah, I saw that. It’s by Jessica Hausner, an Austrian director. Yeah, of course, I had to watch it before making this one. I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it, I thought it was okay. I don’t have any strong feelings, at any rate, towards that film.

It just seemed to be playing around in similar ideas with quote-unquote miracles and religious bases for those miracles.

DB: Yeah, it plays around with the same ideas, but it treats its characters in entirely different ways, it’s more like that cold, distant, arthouse stance it takes towards its characters and I’m just not fond of that, you know?

Can we talk briefly about the casting? How did you come to cast Lea van Acken as Maria?

DB: Actually just by following the usual path. When you set out to do a film like this you hear all these stories that people tell you from other films, you know, like, ‘We looked at 5000 people and went to every school in the country’ and I was prepared to do that, of course, but then what you do first is approach the usual agencies and just ask who they have and they had Lea van Acken. She just wanted to act and had left her previous agency and they put her into their files – she hadn’t done anything at that point, it was her first film. And so we ran the first day of casting and we had seven girls to try out that one scene and she was really, really good and she was one of those seven. So in the evening, I was like, ‘This is too easy, now I’m supposed to look at 5000 people and go to every school in the country…’ But it was that easy, actually.

Do you have a favourite scene or moment in the film?

DB: Not really, I like them all. I have a favourite set. All these sets were built on a stage, you know, and my favourite set is the undertaker’s office, because it’s so intimidating. It’s like a nightmare version of an undertaker’s place where all these coffins approach you like the guns of a battleship. And that’s my favourite set and that’s why we didn’t put a picture of that in the publicity stills, because I didn’t want anybody to see that before.

Normally at this point I would ask if you cut anything out that you hated to lose, but I suppose with the structure of the film and the continuous takes, you couldn’t really cut anything out at all?

DB: That undertaker scene I think started maybe two or three lines earlier, there was some kind of exchange that we actually cut and that’s the only cut we made in the film.

What’s your next project?

DB: Oh, well, it’s very very different. It’s probably going to be a comedy about neo-Nazis in Germany. We had this case that went all over the news, maybe not that internationally. It was a huge farce that was going on and someone had to put this in a film. A strong reference for that film is Four Lions, but on the other hand we have a wider scope, so it’s not completely about some neo-Nazi idiots, it’s about a whole country that is too stupid to come to terms with a bunch of stupid neo-Nazis. It’s a bold attempt at doing a 360-degree comedy about all aspects of German society. Well, we’ll try.

And have you left behind the attraction to fixed longshots or will it be similar?

DB: Ah, well, I think I’ll always return to that every once in a while!

STATIONS OF THE CROSS is out on general release on 28 November 2014

French Film Festival UK | 7 November – 4 December | 2014

Aimed at bringing new French films to the provinces, there is also a strong London presence to this popular festival, celebrating its 22nd anniversary this year. From the latest features to iconic cult classics, the 2014 edition offers with a strong slate of dramas starring a variety of well-known French talent: Emmanuelle Devos, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Mathieu Amalric and Jean-Pierre Darroussin, to name but a few. This year the focus is on the work of the late Alan Resnais, with his debut HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959) to his swan song: AIMER, BOIRE, CHANTER (2014).

LIFE OF RILEY | AIMER, BOIRE, CHANTER | ALAIN RESNAIS | 2014 | ***

For his 50th film, which also turned out to be his swan song, Alain Resnais adapts the work of Alan Ayckbourn in this stagey farce with garish theatrical sets and occasional glimpses of the leafy countryside of the Yorkshire Dales. Starring his wife Sabine Azema, Sandrine Kiberlain (Bird) Andre Dussollier and Hyppolyte Girardot, it’s just the sort of thing that older French audiences lap up but do we really need another stage adaptation (his third) of YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET?. This turns out to have additional flourishes with drawings by French artist Blutch and puppetry to boot! You know the story here – middle-aged, middle-class couples whose close friend is diagnosed with cancer. Or is he? Mannered performances all round may appeal to his diehard devotees.

THE BLUE ROOM | (LA CHAMBRE BLUE | MATHIEU AMALRIC | 2014 | ***

Mathieu Almalric bases his directorial debut, in which he also stars, on a 1964 crime thriller from Belgian detective Simenon. Lushly erotic and superbly shot on the Academy format (square) by the capable Christophe Beaucarne, it will please the art house circuit with its subtle performances and fractured narrative style. After making love to his mistress Esther (a sinuous Stephanie Cleau) in the eponymous blue room, tractor magnate Julien goes home to his lovely wife and daughter. The story jumps forward to show him being cross-examined by a local magistrate (a masterful Laurent Poitrenaux) as it transpires that his affair with Esther is not as simple and compartmentalised as he thought. As the story goes back and forward further clues gradually emerge, fleshing out the storyline but leaving the details as shady as Esther’s own background. The Blue Room is a workable and stylised piece of cinema that offers good entertainment, but many critics questioned why it was considered for Un Certain Regard this year at Cannes.

DIPLOMATIE | VOLKER SCHLöNDORFF | 2014 | **** | Best adapted Screenplay CÉSAR 2015

Based on a play by Cyril Gely, Niels Arestrup brings his sinister talents to this slick WWII drama when he plays General Dietrich von Choltitz, a German assigned by Hitler to carry out the destruction of Paris in 1944. Fortunately he underestimates the negotiation tactics of Andre Dussollier’s Swedish consul, Raoul Nordin, and it soon emerges that both men have personal rather than moral issues at stake. Thrillingly tense and skilfully-crafted, the narrative is teased out slowly as the city’s cultural heritage hangs on a thread at the mercy of two men’s powers of persuasion. A brilliantly acted and tightly-scripted wartime treat.

GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE, | ADIEU AU LANGUAGE | JEAN-LUC GODARD | 2014 | ***

FRENCH RIVIERA, | l’HOMME QUE L’ON AIMER TROP | 2014 |**

ARIANE’S THREAD | AU FIL D’ARIANNE | ROBERT GUEDIGUIAN | 2012 | **

Robert Guédiguian takes a light-hearted break from his usual leftist political fare with slice of magical realism set in his beloved Marseiiles and starring his regular collaborators Ariane Ascaride (in the lead) and Jean-Pierre Darroussin. Very much along the lines of GLORIA (2013) it focuses on a middle-aged woman who is suddenly all alone for the first time in her life on her birthday. Marseilles is very much a character here, and athough there are plenty of darker undercurrents to this sunny sejourn as Ariane’s attempts to have fun are thwarted by a series of set-backs, like a glass of Pastis on a hot day, it goes down smoothly enough but, at times, has you wondering whether you’re really seeing straight.

GARD DU NORD | CLAIRE SIMON | 2013 | ***

FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME FOLLOW THE LINK

La Sapienza (2014) | Seville Film Festival

DIR/WRITER; Eugene Green

Cast: Fabrizio Rongione, Christelle Prot Landman, Ludovico Succio, Arianna Nastro

107min Drama Italy/France

Eugene Green’s Portuguese Nun was a work of subtle and enigmatic beauty. La Sapienza (a Univeristy in Rome and ‘wisdom’ in Italian) has the same rather cool detached allure in which the actors recite their lines clearly and often looking straight into the camera, in well-composed frames. It centres on a disillusioned middle-aged couple who have reached the companion stage after a difficult marriage where they have lost a handicapped child. Alexandre (Fabrizio Rongione) and Alienor (Christelle Prot Landman) arrive in Stresa, Lake Maggiore, on the first leg of a trip that intends to re-ignite their relationship and allow Alexandre to complete his architectural research on the work of his hero, the Baroque master, Francesco Borromini. They come across a brother and sister who are students; the young man Goffredo (Ludovico Succio) is studying architecture, his sister Lavinia (Arianna Nastro) becomes bed-ridden with unexplained dizziness. Alienor suggests that her husband continues his research trip down to Rome with Goffredo’s able assistance, while she remains with the poorly young girl to chat in French and help with her recovery.

In this intellectual, dialogue-driven drama there is little natural small talk: each conversation is direct and frank, aiming to offer some kind of didactic enlightenment or edifying debate on the subject-matter discussed: architecture, the theatre, love, philosophy allude to the title of Wisdom. Through these crisp and pared-down exchanges, Green fleshes out his characters’ thoughts and feelings. The men embark on an richly textured architectural diatribe covering the finer points of Barroque architecture while the women discuss more emotional and psychological issues including the nature of how the past, present and supernatural co-exist in perpetuity. Gradually though, the mens’ conversations appear more cultivated and heavyweight while the womens’ are made to feel more trivial and ephemeral. That said, this is an ambitious and richly textured film not least for its spectacular landscapes and majestic views of Borromini’s Baroque architecture in various locations around Italy. Occasional flashes of humour help to lighten the load of the intense didacticism, enriched by the elegant visuals of Raphael O’Byrne. MT.

Seville European Film Festival runs from 7-17 November 2014

The Smell of Us (2014) Seville Film Festival

Director: Larry Clark

Writer: Mathieu Landais

Cast: Lukas Ionesco, Diane Rouxel, Theo Cholbi, Hugo Behar-Thinieres, Rayan Ben Yaiche, Maxime Terin

100min French with subtitles US Drama

Nearly two decades after Larry Clark’s breakout success Kids stunned Cannes audiences, his latest cinema vérité piece THE SMELL OF US premiered at Venice 2014. As the voyeuristic camera trawls through a collage of urban life in Paris: you might expect beguiling glances and sexy women sashaying through chic boulevards. Not here. Instead we see bodies urinating, rutting furiously and giving oral sex: hard-ons, roll-ups and tattoos. Gradually through this ‘ordure’ of sweating humanity emerges a narrative that recalls last year’s Venice outing Eastern Boys. Far nastier and more graphic but equally compelling, it focuses on a circle of French ‘skate’ kids from troubled but reasonably affluent backgrounds. Idle and ‘on the make’, rather than desperate for food and shelter, they meet up to get stoned and hook-up online for paid sex.

Clark’s film was inspired by the French youth he met while in Cannes in ’95. Gradually getting to know them and their parents, he decided to shoot THE SMELL OF US. It makes grim and rather disquieting viewing. So disenchanted and uninspired are these characters that ambition and careers have so far failed to inspire. If, indeed, they wanted to engage in meaningful jobs, the ability to earn easy money has spoilt them and they now face a future of despair. For the central character Math (Lucas Ionesco), a pretty boy in his teens, it’s easier to be rodgered senseless up the arse by a rich man, than pass and exam and attempt to get a job, even if it renders you catatonic with boredom. The quick route to decent money has come through an internet cable. These are hateful creatures but they are also mindless and pitiful. It appears their parents are the root of their misguided ennui. These are the spawn of broken marriages and mothers who have robbed them of their innocence through inappropriate sexual advances.

But Larry Clark seems to despise his own generation even more than these sad youngsters. There’s a streak of ageism here: that older people suddenly becomes sexless and have to withdraw just because they lose their physical attractiveness seems a harsh indictment of today’s society. In their desire for sexual gratification, they too have gone online for empty experiences. The men fuck these young bodies furiously, the women stroke, admire and gloat on their young looks. The old characters here get little pity. We’ve shot through, race, culture and mysogyny and it now appears that ‘ageism’ is the last taboo. Clark has a dim view of these parents, and particularly Math’s mother who tries demands sexual gratification from him in one scene that proves difficult to watch, for moral reasons. Youth and beauty is always going to be a better sell than wrinkled skin and sagging arms, despite a rather attractive grey-haired woman who simply wants to watch and caress her young lover.

Clark weaves a vibrant tapestry of ugliness and despair guilded with occasional flourishes of welcome allure: a fashion defilé in the gardens of a Parisian villa, an elegant woman carrying a tray of champagne up a flight of stairs. A shame that it’s a prelude to violent death. MT

THE SMELL OF US PREMIERES AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL FROM 27 AUGUST UNTIL 6 SEPTEMBER. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVAL DROP-DOWN MENU

UK Korean Film Festival 2014 | 6-21 November

This year’s Korean Film Festival will focus on the work of maverick filmmaker Kim Ki-duk, who is best known for his controversial titles such as PIETA and MOEBIUS. The UK premiere of his Venice Festival hopeful ONE ON ONE will also screen during the festival. The opening night film: Yoon Jong-bin’s KUNDO: AGE OF THE RAMPANT, is a 19th century ‘Robin Hood’ style Kung-Fu thriller about a militia group of bandits – Kundo – who rise up against their unjust nobility, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

Cult classics will again feature this year with a selection from the archives under the ‘K Classics’ strand such Ki-young Kim’s shocking melodrama THE HOUSEMAID (1960).

Other films worth watching are Seong-hoon Kims’ A HARD DAY starring Baek Jong-hwan, and July Jung’s A GIRL AT MY DOOR, which was nominated in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes this year. THE KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 6-15 IN LONDON AND 16-21 NATIONWIDE. Tickets and schedule available here

[youtube id=”npfe0EzJiOc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit – filmmaker

ALEX BARRETT spoke to Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit on his recent visit to London during the Pan-Asia Film Festival 2014.

As I sit opposite Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, getting ready to interview the young Thai director of 36 and Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy, I place my two recording devices onto the table in front of us. One is my BlackBerry phone, but the other is an old Sanyo Microcassette Recorder. Normally, at this point in an interview, I would make a joke about still using an analogue machine – but given the director before me, the combination of old and new technology seems somewhat fitting. As if sensing this, Nawapol comments that ‘analogue is reliable’. And, as 36 has shown us, digital is not. I switch on the recorders, and the interview begins…

AB: Your first two films, 36 and Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy had their London Premieres at the Pan-Asia Film Festival this weekend. Could you tell me a little a bit about them in your own words?

NT: I think 36 is a love story about people in the digital era. One day I saw my hard drive and I thought ‘that’s a lot of memories’. I think electronic appliances, like hard drives and computers, are quite fragile. You don’t even need to drop it, maybe one day it’s just broken. And we keep pictures and things, as memories, in these fragile containers. People don’t like to print out digital photos, we just keep them like this. This is our era. So I wanted to discuss this topic, but via the love story, not as a serious drama film or something like that.

Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy is kind of conceptual, because I use social media quite often, and I love the pacing of posting and reading Tweets. I think it’s quite interesting, because it’s short and fragmented. It’s our new way to communicate with each other, and for me Tweets are like a digital diary, like the diary of the era. It’s not like the old days when we needed to go home and every night write something like ‘Dear Diary, blah blah blah’. Today, when we see something, we just Tweet. When we think something, we just Tweet. So I think it’s like a diary. And if it’s a diary, there must be a story. So I thought it would be fun to adapt that into a film.

AB: The two films feel linked by the theme of life in the digital age, and I was wondering – do you think that life has been affected by digital technology? I don’t mean in a practical or superficial sense, but in a philosophical or ideological sense.

NT: I think when we have a new technology, it always changes us in some way, or in many ways. Like one day we got mobile phones, and it changed human behaviour and human relationships. Or, it’s like, do you know when you chat, and it says ‘seen’? It’s quite a problem in Thailand. People say ‘you’ve seen it and you don’t answer me!’ And it always happens between a couple: ‘you’ve seen it but you don’t answer me’. This is a new aspect to relationships of humans, so I’m quite interested in this topic, because I think inspiration comes from the new technology. A new way of communicating, or a new way of thinking, always comes from new technology. I think 36 is the product of the digital era, because every part of it, is digital – from shooting to promotion. When I first screened it in Thailand, it wasn’t in cinemas: it was a conference room, and I had no money to make a TV spot or buy the place for the banner or for putting the poster or something like that, so I used digital only. Digital has changed the way of filmmaking too.

AB: You mentioned that you use Twitter a lot, and you also have a blog and other social media pages – do you think any of them are affecting the way that you approach cinema? You said 36 wouldn’t have happened without digital technology – but do you think social media itself has affected your filmmaking and the way you approach storytelling?

NT: I think so. For the past three or four years, I always think of everything as a fragment – small things. I don’t know if it’s because I watch YouTube a lot or something, because there’s a lot of short video clips and I get used to that rhythm. I think maybe this affected me in some way, my way of thinking.

AB: Mary Is Happy is based upon 410 consecutive Tweets from Twitter user @marylony (aka Mary Maloney). Could you tell me about her? Who is she, how did you find her, and how did her stream end up becoming your film?

NT: I chose [Mary] from my followers on Twitter, because I think it’s easy when I go to them to get the permissions, because if they follow me, it means that they know me on some level, so it’s quite easy. I didn’t choose from my friends, or something like that, because I love the concept that we read some Tweets or some Facebook Statuses of someone, and we imagine them in our way, you know? For example, when I read your Status or I read your Tweets, and I’ve never met you before, I have your face in my imagination, or something like that. We have to use our imagination to interpret that, what really happened in their life. So I chose someone that I never met before. I randomly chose from my followers, and I found Mary Maloney. She is a Thai girl, but she only posts her Tweets, she doesn’t reply to anyone and she doesn’t Retweet anything. So if you go to read her timeline, it’s quite in order. It’s quite a good layout, because it’s only her own. So this is one thing which I think appealed to me. And she Tweets what she thinks, not what she sees. So it’s quite broad for me to interpret.

AB: And has she seen the film? Have you been in dialogue with her?

NT: First, when I wrote the script already, I sent it to her for permission, but I never met her, I just sent an email to her and she gave the permission. And almost a year later, because we go through production and postproduction, I invite her for a press screening, and that’s the first time we met each other. I think it’s like a blind date, because it’s like I know her by the text, by her messages only, and I know her, but actually I don’t know her. So it’s like a blind date. I think it’s interesting when she watched the film, because she’s the owner of the story and she always compared her real life to the film. Something like…there are some Tweets where she plans to go to Paris, and she Tweets that ‘today I’m in Paris’, but actually, she doesn’t go. She hoped to be there, but she didn’t feel sure about it. But in the film, the character Mary is there, in the real Paris. So, I don’t know what you call it. Hyper real or something?

AB: Did Mary like the film?

NT: She liked it a lot. I think it’s quite personal for her. It’s not like – we can’t say she liked it like a general audience, but I think she liked it because it’s quite personal for her.

AB: Even though both 36 and Mary deal with people’s relationship to technology, stylistically they’re very different: 36 has long static shots, whereas Mary Is Happy is hand held and jump-cut. I was wondering how you decided the style for the films, and was it a conscious decision to make them very different?

NT: I think both of them came from the concept, which is quite different. 36 comes from a film roll, because that is 36 pictures in one film roll. I tried to imitate that still photo – so the shot is quite static, like a photo, something like that. But in Mary it’s like, I wanted it to be fragmented, quick shots, quite quickly cut. It’s about teenagers and I wanted to imitate the quick videos on YouTube. It’s quite unstable, it’s like documentary style. It’s like people who play, fall down or do something bad or funny or something like that. They always use an iPhone camera or something like that, so I tried to imitate that style. So the two films are quite different.

AB: Your two films have been produced by Aditya Assarat, who is known to UK audiences for his film Wonderful Town. Could you tell me about how he got involved in your projects, and what influence he had on your work?

NT: For 36, actually, it’s like my film was self-produced, but when we needed to send it to festivals, I called him to help me, and that’s all for 36. But for Mary he was my producer. He called me to see if I had a new idea, and if he could support the project. But actually, about the style, I think our style is quite different. Because he’s more static than me, and more character based, human behaviour, it’s quite deep in his way, but my [style is more] kind of comedy, my films are a little bit more comedy. And I love to talk, I love to tell stories, so my stories are quite obvious and people can catch something from my story.

AB: In addition to your work as director, you also work as a script consultant and film critic. How do you think these roles have affected your work as director, if at all?

NT: I think when I write as a critic, I take myself as the audience. I think when we start making films, sometimes we are deep into our projects and we don’t see the problems. But when we move ourselves as the audience, we will see a lot of problems, or something we need to fix. And when I have to write about the films, I have to analyse why I like this film, or why I don’t like this film – and sometimes I get something from analysing [other films] that we use for my films.

AB: Do you think film is very important to you? In Mary you have a lot of reference to filmmakers, such as Wong Kar-wai, Ang Lee and Jean-Luc Godard.

NT: The film [Mary] is like my world, my subconscious, because I want to give a chance like when people read someone’s Status and they use their subconscious and their imagination to recreate the reality in their head, something like that. So I think it’s possible to bring in my, not my idols, but yeah…I grew up with those films a lot, because when I start to watch independent cinema, it’s Wong Kar-wai or people like Ang Lee or Godard, so I think it’s funny to bring them into this film like, ‘this is my world’. I grew up with Asian cinema, like Wong Kar-wai or Takeshi Kitano, so I think the world in my head must be something like the world in the film.

AB: I think we’re out of time now, but just quickly: what’s next for you?

NT: My next project is making a film with a studio, a Thai film studio. Because usually I [just] write scripts for them, but this time it’s directorial work. It’s not that mainstream. You know, we understand each other, they know what I do, so it’s kind of low budget, but under a studio. Something like that. I’m okay with it, because I love both narrative film and experimental film, so I think it’s fun we that we can move back and forth between the two.

AB: Great. I look forward to seeing it.

NT: Thank you.

IMAGES COURTESY OF SONALI JOSHI, DAY FOR NIGHT ©

[youtube id=”qc32yu6n_1Q” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Third Person (2013)

Dir.: Paul Haggis; Cast: Liam Neeson, Olivia Wilde, Kim Basinger, Mila Kunis, James Franco, Adrien Brody, Moran Atias, Theresa Bello; USA/UK/Germany/Belgium 2013; 137 min.

Paul Haggis has worn the label “misunderstood Canadian maverick” for too long – THIRD PERSON is his coming-out into trash films. He wouldn’t have got away with it for so long had the “Oscar” jury in 2005 not shown utter cowardice in preferring Haggis’s Crash to “Brokeback Mountain”. But look at the rest of his writing CV: One speculative script after the next: the Bond franchise’s Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, Eastwood’s racy Million Dollar Baby and his own directorial efforts with superficial actioner In the Valley of Elah and, more recently, the primitive French re-make The Next Three Days – the latter even seen as a coded metaphor for his break with Scientology.

But with THIRD PERSON Haggis does outdoes even himself, adding soft porn and an utterly misogynist script to his already long list of failures. Using a multi-stranded narrative as in Crash, he tries to tie together the stories of three couples whose life has been blighted by the loss (or near loss) of a child. In Paris, Michael (Neeson), a writer in his sixties and well past his creative height, is having it off with the fashion journalist Anna (Wilde), a twenty-something who also has another mysterious lover lurking – yes, you guessed right – in another luxury hotel. Anna gives us (and the taxi driver) a good preview of things to come, changing all her clothes for no apparent reason in the backseat, before arriving at her lover’s hotel. Soon we can see Anna and Michael in a rather cheesy sexual clinch, before the author returns to his laptop and his autobiographical novel, having criticised Anna’s own literally output rather harshly and sending her away in a strop. Later, he locks her out of his own room, and Anna has to scamper naked through the hotel (faithfully followed by the CCTV) to reach her own room. Enigmatic phone calls with his wife Elaine (Basinger) show Michael in a more sombre mood with a voiceover whispering “Watch Me” a few times. Finally, we learn the meaning of the title, when Anna reads what Michael really thinks about her, after having been told by his editor (another card-board character) “That women have the ability to deny reality”.

The two other, not really that interlocking, stories are treated with less time and effort: In Rome, fashion spy Scott (Brody) meets hot gypsy woman Monica (Atias) in a café, and follows her to Sicily, having to fork out more and more money to get Moncia’s daughter back from a Russian kidnapper, who threatens to sell her into prostitution. We are never sure if this is a con on Monica’s part, adding more mileage on the misogynist speedometer, which runs to new heights in story number three, where a tearful and utterly useless Julia (Kunis) misses her appointments in a case of child-visitation rights in New York. Julia, an ex-soap opera star, has voluntarily swapped her old job (totally unexplained) to work as an underpaid maid in a hotel. Her vengeful husband, a painter (Franco), accuses her of violence against their son, and Julia has – again – only tears as an answer, whilst his new partner looks on mournfully as the old couple fights.

Having re-established the age old male phantasy that twenty-year old women prefer to sleep with men in their sixties; that women in general are so stupid that they leave glamorous jobs in order to work as servants and are so greedy that they use their own daughters to extort money from strangers. Haggis’s images offer up the postcard idylls of all the famous places visited on this absurd merry-go-round: an in-flight soft porn movie indeed. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE

Saint Laurent (2014) Tribute to Gaspard Ulliel

Director: Bertrand Bonnello | Cast: Lea Seydoux, Gaspard Ulliel, Louis Garrel, Aymeline Valade, Brady Corbet | France Biopic

Bertrand Bonnello presents his sinuously sensual portrait of YSL that focuses on the designer’s early years. Although a great deal longer than Jalil Lespert’s version, it doesn’t really illuminate more of the designer’s life but centres on his sexuality to the apparent disproval of Pierre Bergé for reasons that will emerge on viewing. Gaspard Ulliel gives a far more complex portrait than Pierre Neney’s elegant but sterile take on YSL (although the latter was superb); Ulliel’s starry allure also has more to offer female audiences coupled with the additional frisson of Louis Garrel as his lover, Lea Seydoux as Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux (Aymeline Valade). There’s an inspired midway montage where the screen splits to offer salient events ‘du jour’ as the YSL key looks are parading on the seventies catwalk. This serves as a brilliant counterpoint to social history as much as a slight dig at the ephemeral nature of the fashion world. Bonnello captures the zeitgeist of the seventies and the heady world of pristine couture that ushered in the more relaxed prey-a-porter era. YSL’s languorous and luxurious styling; darkly exotic designs; femme fatale models (Helmut Newton-style); louche living both in Paris and Morocco, and, of course, his descent into drugs are all encapsulated in this dreamy drama. Ulliel’s performance is vulnerable and coltish; always delicate but supremely sexual. Bergé gets short shrift here, with Jeremie Renier hardly getting a look-in and there is much less focus on the business-side apart from a protracted scene with a US Financier (Brady Corbet) that feels out of place. Louis Garrel gives an awkward performance as his lover, Jacques de Bascher, looking more like a German stormbamführer than his aristocratic and dominant beau. The only other slight flaw in Bonnello’s biopic is his decision to cast Helmut Belger as the ageing YSL, in a badly voice-synced, and ill-advised jump forward. Otherwise, this is a visual treat that won Best Costumes at the Cesar awards. MT

GASPARD ULLIEL 1984-2022 | CÉSAR 2015 WINNER – BEST COSTUMES

Spirited Away (2001) | Blu-ray release

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Cast: Daveigh Chase, Jason Marsden, Mari Netsuke Miyu Irino, Rumi HIragi, Suzanne Pleshette

126min Japanese Animation

If ever a film deserved to be called ‘fantastic’ it is this one. Even if you’re unfamiliar with animation, you will be enchanted by this wittily perceptive drama from Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli. Beautifully hand-drawn, delicately rendered and magical in its conception, Spirited Away is a metaphor for real life in the form of a fairytale for adults and children. Taking us on a fantasy ride to a mythical place of enchantment, its characters feel authentic and are often touched by poignant tragedy.

Miyazaki’s work is borne out of the great Hollywood traditions of Disney but also incorporates references to Lewis Carroll and L Frank Baum, offering up an eclectic mix of styles that feel both tender and intensely appealing on a psycholgical and emotional level. Dazzlingly lithe and intricate visuals move effortlessly before our eyes with a complete absence of high-tech glitz. Some of the scenes across the lake are so intoxicating that they literally glow from the screen, offering intense pleasure in the enhanced Blu-ray format.

The Japanese family is usually at the core of Miyazaki’s narratives and this one explores a variety of themes from environmentalism and ecological awareness to forging our personal identity in an increasingly consumerist world. Here a professional couple are the proud owners of a smart German car which is transporting them to a new life in the Japanese countryside. But their little daughter Chihiro is devastated by the move and misses her old friends. Gradually the family get lost in the woodland, fetching up in a mysterious psychedelic world where they turn into pigs after eating a huge meal laid out for them. Chihiro is forced into hard labour in a bath house by the wicked owner Yubabu. Her only friend is a slightly older boy called Haku who helps her to restore her parents to their original human state.

Spirited Away won a string of awards on its release including the Oscar© for Best Animated Feature and the prestigious Golden Bear at Berlin. It went on to become Japan’s highest grossing film of all time. MT

SPIRITED AWAY AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL FROM 24 November 2014

Set Fire To The Stars (2014)

Director: Andy Goddard

Writers: Andy Goddard and Celyn Jones

Cast: Elijah Wood, Celyn Jones, Shirley Henderson, Steven Mackintosh

UK Drama 90mins

One of the very few non-dreadful UK productions to premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, SET FIRE TO THE STARS is the debut feature of Andy Goddard, whose previous directorial work includes TV’s Torchwood, Doctor Who, The Bill and, most recently, four episodes of Downtown Abbey as well as that show’s 2012 Christmas Special. Depicting the volatile relationship between Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and the American academic-cum-literary critic John Malcolm Brinnin, the film is a conceptually intriguing work whose chief strength is Chris Seager’s evocatively crisp monochrome digital cinematography.

Dylan Thomas (Celyn Jones) arrives in New York in 1950 with reputations preceding him: not only is he a much-lauded genius of poetry, he is also a drunken liability whose unfaltering approach to life is to enjoy it—to feel it and to sense it in all its excess. Drink now, worry later: Thomas is an unthinkably quick-witted partygoer who seemingly lacks an off-switch—though he arrives from Wales burdened with barely acknowledged psychological hang-ups and in palpable retreat from marital turmoil. Consequently, there’s a flipside never too far away. If he isn’t embarrassing himself before more attentive company by slurring his way through tortured, inebriated recitals, in private moments he stews in a debilitating swamp of depression.

Thomas is in America for a tour of performances organised by John Brinnin (Elijah Wood), who accompanies the poet after assuming responsibility for him and his behaviour. As one Yale academic puts it, Thomas is a “manchild… terrorising functions with his mischief.” Forever deflecting the serious professionalism required of him, the poet sends Brinnin out one night for milkshakes, candy and a comic book; when the latter returns, Thomas has disappeared. Before long, the hotel’s kicked the pair out, and they retreat to a picturesque country home in Fairfield County, Connecticut, where Brinnin feels better equipped to distract his visiting guest into something resembling a mental focus.

Thomas’ ceaseless antics not only test the patience of the more prudish Yanks around him, but also that of the film’s viewers. The dramatic crux of SET FIRE TO THE STARS is how far the man can go without confronting his alcoholism and apparently broken marriage—the sole reminding image of which is an unopened letter from his wife. While Thomas is the subject of Goddard and co-writer Jones’ script, it is through Brinnin’s perspective that the tale is framed. An obvious admirer of Thomas—perhaps beyond intellectual curiosity—Brinning asks the poet where he gets it all from: ‘it’ being his wit, his genius, his sensitivity and so on. Thomas snaps: “Why do you have to label it?” The film does little to demystify the poet.

Brinning is an unreliable narrator, and though telling their tale from his perspective facilitates an unusual narrative vantage point, the filmmakers don’t seem to know what precisely to do with it—beyond telling a tale about a tempestuous, uneasy relationship. Tellingly, STARS is at its best when its makers are compelled to explore the class tensions an appreciably popular working-class artist such as Dylan Thomas might stir. While earlier scenes—in which our temperamental but self-deprecating adult-baby outwits and outrages intellectual bowtie-wearing types while in full-on hedonistic pursuit of adoring babes—suggest a narrative pattern that may grow irritating rather quickly, the strongest (and funniest) sequence here involves deliberate crudity at Yale itself.

Obviously nervous about performing privately in front of the university’s higher ranks, Thomas takes a painful pause and many sips of water before beginning with a winningly stirring rendition of ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’. After, a more unbearable discomfort takes hold of the poet, as he finds himself at a formal dinner expected to keep up and hold court with the stiflingly snobby professors. As their highbrow pettiness leaks through, the Ivy Leaguers get their comeuppance when the Swansea-born writer deliberately lowers the tone by breaking into vulgar limericks. What better way to uproot the literary elite’s unflinchingly old-world views than by the evocative opening lines, “A whore from Timbuktu / Filled her vagina with glue”? Who said revolutions can’t start over dinner? MICHAEL PATTISON

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

The Skeleton Twins (2014)

Director/Writer: Craig Johnson Co-writer: Mark Heyman

Cast: Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Luke Wilson, Boyd Holbrook, Ty Burrell, Kathleen Rose Perkens

93min Comedy US

Comedic duo Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader originally found fame with ‘Saturday Night Live’. In this darkly humorous character study they star as estranged twins who are brought back together through fate. Milo (Hader) is recovering from a suicide attempt in LA after a break-up with his male partner and Maggie (Wiig) is trying to make her marriage to work, despite serious misgivings on the sexual front. So Maggie offers Milo a shoulder to cry on and her spare room in upstate New York.

After this rather tragic opening, writer/director Craig Johnson cleverly crafts an amusing storyline, teasing out the sibling’s dysfunction past to show how it inevitably impacts on their life and relationships in the present. And while Maggie’s husband Lance (Luke Wilson) is stable and honest ‘marriage material; she is forced to face their sad lack of sexual chemistry when she falls for her scuba diving instructor, Billy (Boyd Holbrook), and sparks fly. Milo, meanwhile, is trapped in an sexual obsession with a figure from his childhood (Ty Burrell).

Johnson skilfully evokes both the intense rivalry and the visceral closeness of the siblings with some laugh-out-loud moments and even a hilarious rendition of “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and there is a brilliant vignette with their mother (Joanna Gleason) which perfectly portrays the reasons for their failure to find suitable relationships. There’s a great deal to be enjoyed is this watchable drama with its perceptive charm and superb performances from the leads. And even though Maggie’s dorky husband is unappealing on many levels, Luke Wilson manages to show us why Maggie, and women like her, end up with unsatisfactory partners when their biological clocks go off with the vital wake-up call that never goes off for men. So nothing ground-breaking here, but Hader and Wiig make The Skeleleton Twins solid and enjoyable entertainment for an easy Saturday night at the pictures. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

Director: Raoul Walsh

Writers: Lotta Woods and Douglas Fairbanks

Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Julanne Johnston, Anna May Wong, Sôjin Kamiyama

155min Silent Adventure Family Drama US

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD was Douglas Fairbank’s pet project after success with The Three Musketeers (1921), The Mark of Zorro (1920) and Robin Hood (1922) had cemented a Hollywood career. His powerful physique and athletic prowess that was later to make him the inspiration for Superman (despite being only 5.7”) fits well with this swashbuckling role that required him to scale walls stripped to the waist as the charismatic and infamous Arabic ‘Thief’ Ahmed. Based on one of the ‘1001 Nights’ tales, Ahmed uses his powers to win the heart of the Princess, but his father The Caliph (Brandon Hurst) forbids the marriage so the couple to embark on an exciting adventure involving a crystal ball, a magic apple, an invisibility cloak and, of course, a magic carpet. But vying for her hand is also the deceitful Mongol Prince (Sôjin Kamiyama) who also has a few more tricks up his sleeve. The first Chinese American star, Anna Way Wong has a role as the Mongol slave.

Under the direction of Raoul Walsh this is a dreamy and visually seductive fairytale affair that glistens with all the mystique of Araby and must have enchanted audiences young and old on its release in 1924. Today it’s still mesmerisingly beautiful to watch. and its silent format adds to its magnetic allure with Julanne Johnston as a simply luminous Princess. Her delicately romantic costumes were the creations of Mitchell Leisen, who was known for his elegant designs worn by Olivia de Havilland. After training under Cecil B De Mille he went on to work on The Thief. With its gorgeous technicolour sequences by Arthur Edeson and sumptuous sets by William Cameron Menzies transporting us to a distant world of make-believe, it was one of the costliest outings of the silent era and also the most lush, even by Hollywood standards. Carl Davies’ atmospheric score adds to the magic making this an ideal film for Christmas for all the family. MT

DUAL FORMAT DVD BLU RAY RELEASE AVAILABLE FROM EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT FROM 24 NOVEMBER 2014

Spione (1927) | DVD release

Dir.: Fritz Lang; Cast: Fritz Klein-Rogge, Gerda Maurus, Lien Deyers, Willy Fritsch; Germany 1927, 144 min.

SPIONE, whilst directed by Lang, is much more a Thea von Harbou film, co-written by her, based on her novel of the same name. It has long become fashionable to put all the blame for the weaknesses of Lang’s films before his emigration on von Harbour – after all, she stayed in Germany, being a convinced national socialist. But it is not so easy: Kracauer rightfully criticises that “SPIONE could have been a true forerunner of the Hitchcock thrillers if Lang had not fashioned it after the pompous manner of METROPOLIS, with empty sensations taking on the air of substantial revelations.” But to say that its “virtuosity alienated from the content”, and later alleging that Lang only found his true ‘style’ in Hollywood, is simply going too far and forgetting that Lang’s Hollywood B-movies were much leaner because of restricted budgets. But one should not forget that on his return to Germany in 1958, Lang’s last films again could be put into the category of “form above content”; mainly for the reason that he could command a much higher budget – using scripts co-written by von Harbou (who had died in 1954) and himself based on her novels for “Der Tiger von Eschnapur” und “Das Indische Grabmal”.

In many ways SPIONE is a more rational version of Lang’s earlier “Dr. Mabuse” films from 1921/2. The main protagonist, Haghi (Klein-Rogge, who also featured as Mabuse), has a triple existence: he is leader of a powerful spy ring; the (crippled) president of a bank and the circus clown Nero. But whilst Mabuse was driven by lust for power alone, Haghi is much more a protagonist of the “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivism). He does not want power, he wants to have a better organisation than his opponent, the boss of the state run counter-espionage. Being a pragmatist, he underestimates the power of emotions: Haghi’s agent Sonja (Maurus) falls in love with her opposition agent no. 326 (Fritsch), and after Haghi fails to kill 326 off in a wonderfully staged railway accident, he flees into the circus world, but is even cornered there: he commits suicide on stage, the audience clapping, wildly believing it to be the highlight of his performance.

As usual, in most films from Kracauer’s so-called “Stabilised Period” in German cinema (1924–1929), neutrality is the order of the day. Whilst Mabuse was seen as the enemy, Haghi and his opponents are just competitors – like police and underworld in M (1931). In Lang films of this era, technology is perhaps the most dominant factor. Haghi’s spies use planes, which are much quicker than the trains used by the agents of the state. (A copy of SPIONE was taken by Zeppelin to New York for its US premiere). And all the walls in Haghi’s banking empire have spy-holes, as in Metropolis: so he could spy on his workforce. Spying is the central idea of many Lang films, SPIONE morphing without little transition into MINISTRY OF FEAR sixteen years later. AS

RELEASED AS A DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD ON 17 NOVEMBER COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) blu-ray

Dir: Don Siegel | Wri: Daniel Mainwaring | Cast: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter | 90min Sci-Fi/Thriller US

Don Siegel’s sci-fi noir, based on Jack Finney’s novel, is one of the best screen metaphors for collective paranoia in fifties America, and possibly the most glamorous and well-dressed. Shot in pristine black and white, it showcases the creeping undercurrents of fear that permeated the anti-McCarthy era from a melodramatic opening sequence right through to a stunning denouement. Further adaptations followed on, from Philip Kaufman (1978), Abel Ferrara (1993) and Hirschbiegel & McTeigue (2007) but none match the edgy exhilaration of Siegel’s elegant outing.

Dr Miles Bennell investigates alien duplicates that surface to replace their real-life owners in the starchy, middle-class town of Santa Mera, California. The aliens are almost attractive in their surreal perfection, making them seem eerie rather than horrific, and their mysterious arrival feels otherworldly and serene, giving INVASION an unnerving and strangely magical feel. Well-paced and gripping, Siegel’s thriller also serves as a tender love story between Dr Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) and Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) who conform to the traditional macho male and submissive female roles consistent with the era.

An atmosphere of disorientation and fear pervades this cosy bourgeois corner as a gradual dehumanisation creeps into the ordered lives of a trusting close-knit community that gradually morphs into a climate of downright hostility and alienation. The “pod people” look and act the same, but progressively lose their emotional engagement. Crime novelist, Daniel Mainwaring, cleverly scripts the piece to reflect these subtle mood changes from slight cognitive dissonance through to full blown paranoia. Carmen Dragon’s moody score primps moments of romance with shrill melodrama to fabulous effect. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS not only reflects the socio-political zeitgeist of the era, it is a story that feels evermore timely in the middle America of today: When Dr Miles Bennell pleads with the police he could so easily be speaking to audiences here and now. MT.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – first UK Blu-ray release, out for Halloween on 25 October

Gods (Bogowie) 2014

Dir.: Lukasz Palkowski;

Cast: Tomasz Kot, Piotr Glowacki, S. Piotr Warszawski, Magdalena Czerwinska

120 min Polish with subtitles Drama

The ‘Gods’ of the title are three Polish heart surgeons who, under the leadership of maverick Dr. Zbigniew Religa (Kot), performed the first heart transplants in Poland in the mid-80s. Palkowski portrays Religa as a rebellious rock star rather than a stuffy medic; the unrelenting tempo of GODS matching Religa’s unrest.

We first meet our ‘hero’ in a Warsaw clinic hemmed in by bureaucracy and an entourage of flaccid colleagues, reminding us that medicine is run by traditionalists, whatever the country. When Religa saves the life of the son of a party official, on the pavement in front of the hospital (by extremely unorthodox means), he is given more freedom to flex his muscles. After loosing a teenage girl on the operating table, Religa and his colleagues Zembala (Glowacki) and Bochenek (Warszawski) re-locate to the provincial Silesian town of Zabrze where they are promised a ‘state of the art’ venue to perform heart transplants. But when they get there neither the operating theatres nor the funds are available. Religa doesn’t give up. Rather than returning to his long-suffering wife Anna (Czerwinska) in Warsaw, he commandeers a gang of new nurses to kick-start the building works; tricks the local party officials into giving him the grants; and performs in 1985 the first heart transplant on Polish soil.

Palkowski creates a sort of Wild-West atmosphere in Zabrze; everything seems possible for the chain-smoking Religa, who is as egoistical as he is daring. Driving like a bat out of hell through the countryside, he hires a dissident doctor and fights the secret police: he is an old-fashioned hero in the Errol Flynn mould: gung-ho and uncompromising; tough on himself and everyone around him; taking the medical establishment by storm; disregarding the rules and making his own.

The real Dr. Zbigniew Regila (1938-2009) went into politics, ran for president and was Minister for Health between 2005 and 2007. Whilst the laws of (political) reality are often stretched, the sheer panache of Regila and his crew keep us glued to the screen. Piotr Sobocinski’s camerawork is as vivid and innovative as the good doctor, and we’re rooting for him with bated breath as he overtakes everything on the road. The rest of the ensemble cast matches his manic enthusiasm, apart from Religa’s wife Anna (Magdalena Czerwinska) who sacrifices her career for her husband, in the only downside of this tour de force story. AS

On general release from 24 October 2014

[youtube id=”7QFhxfVF7SA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Mystery Road (2013) | DVD release

Director: Ivan Sen

Writer: Ivan Sen

Main Actors: Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving, Ryan Kwanten

121 mins Australian. Thriller

At the beginning of Mystery Road, a truck driver stops by the roadside in atmospheric silhouette and, walking further into the darkness of the ominously titled ‘Massacre Creek’, finds the murdered corpse of a teenage Aboriginal girl. Finding the girl’s murderer becomes the first big case for indigenous Australian detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen), freshly returned from a jaunt around the ‘big city’. But tracking down the killer within a small community where everyone knows everyone proves surprisingly tricky – not least because no one seems to want the crime solved, not even Swan’s fellow police colleagues. Are they really as understaffed as they make out, or are they part of some conspiracy involving the girl’s death? Or is it simply the case that, for them, life only matters when it’s white?

Mystery Road may be a sun-drenched noir in which an outsider works alone to try and solve a crime, but at its heart there lies some taut social observation. At times, Writer-Director-Editor-Cinematographer-Composer Ivan Sen cuts away as characters talk, showing us other people nearby going about their business. Sometimes these people return later in the story, sometimes not – but the effect is always an increase in texture. It’s at moments like these when the film is at its most interesting, when it feels like the nuances will build to a compelling whole. But, unfortunately, they never do.

In addition to its exploration of ingrained racism, there are flirtations with themes of time, memory and absence, but too often it feels like neither these themes, nor the police procedural plot, are enough to keep interest afloat. Things are buoyed along by some skewered humour, an off-kilter tone, and an excellent supporting performance from Hugo Weaving, but somehow, despite it all, the film simply feels a little too slight to sustain its two-hour runtime. It’s not so much that attention flags, but more that one starts to question the point – something not helped by the film’s unsatisfying conclusion. With a little more weight to balance our engagement, Mystery Road could perhaps have been great. But, as it is, I fear it may prove to be an enjoyable but all-too-forgettable experience. Alex Barrett.

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD

Dancing Arabs (2014) | UK Jewish Film Festival

Dir.: Eran Riklis; Cast: Tawfeek Barhom, Yael Abecassis, Michael Moshonov; Israel/ France/Germany 2014, 105 min.

Israeli-born director Eran Riklis tries very hard to be impartial in this portrait of Israeli Arabs. After all, they represent a fifth of the whole population. Everywhere, anti-Arab slogans daub the walls and Israeli youth bully these second class citizens, quite apart from the widespread stop-and-search tactics of the police who spring out of the woodwork with surprisingly regularity.

Gifted teenager Eyad (Barhom), leaves his family in Palestine to study at a prestigious boarding school in Jerusalem. His family expects him to make up for his father, who went to university in Israel, but was arrested, imprisoned but never charged for terrorist activities. He is now working as a fruit picker and expects Eyad to ‘avenge’ him. Eyad’s Hebrew is weak, and he is teased (and worse) by his classmates. As part of the university programme, all the students have to do “social activities”, Eyad’s ‘case’ being Jonathan (Moshonov), a Jewish boy of his own age, who is suffering from muscular dystrophy and becomes Eyads only friend. Until that is, he meets Naomi, a Jewish girl from his college. The two fall for each other, and Eyad starts to forget a little about his roots. To make some money he uses Jonathan’s Jewish identity card so he can qualify as a waiter; Arabs work in the kitchens. When Jonathan’s mother finds out, she surprisingly encourages him. With Naomi, the dying Jonathan and his mother being closest to him, Eyad will have to make a decision about his identity, and his future.

DANCING ARABS takes its title from the saying, “that Arabs have to dance at two weddings”, meaning that they have to obey their religion and the rules of their family lives; but, if they want to succeed in Israeli society, they have to hide their roots, at least in public life. This leads to a schizophrenic state of mind, Eyad being a good example. Not only does he want to succeed for himself, he also carries the burden of his family’s expectations. But once away from his family’s influences, he soon discovers that love and friendship with Israelis can be a normal way of life. This film works best when exploring the relationship between Eyad and Jonathan, two outsiders, whose relationship is governed by equality. Eyad’s affair with Naomi on the other hand is less convincing, whilst his relationship with Edna, Jonathan’s mother, is very subtle – somehow replacing that of his own mother.

Lively cinematography offers panoramic shots of Jerusalem, intercut with newsreel images,showing the brutal war between Israel and the Arab world. Barhom is very convincing, and Moshonov plays out all the desperation of his ever shortening life. Riklis tries hard to be impartial, but in doing so, he sometimes has to resort to sentimentality. Still, DANCING ARABS is a worthy stab at reconciliation, even though the reality is much too grim for even such a small attempt at compromise – proven by the cancellation of the Open Air performance of this film in Jerusalem for security reasons. AS

LFF 9.10. 20.45 MAYFAIR, 12.10. 12.00 VUE5
THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Self-Made (2014) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2014

Dir.: Shira Geffen Cast: Sarah Adler, Samira Saraya

Israel 2014, 91 min.

Director Shira Geffen won the ‘Palme d’Or’ in 2007 in Cannes for Jellyfish. Here she uses absurdist comedy to deliver another provocative comment on the Israeli/Palestine conflict. In Jerusalem a conceptual artist is thrown out of bed with a bang. We naturally suspect a bomb attack, but the answer is much more simple: Mihal is the victim of a collapsing bed, leaving her with a bruise on the head and a rapidly diminishing memory. She forgets her husband’s trip to Stockholm and an interview with a German TV crew. Having ordered a new bed at an IKEA-clone shop, Mihal, complaining (wrongly) about a missing screw for the bed, inadvertently causes Arab teenager Nadine (Samira Saraya) to lose her job in charge of packing screws at the furniture store.

Meanwhile Nadine is fighting for her right to wear jeans and pink earphones, whilst her traditional family simply wants to marry her off. Since Mihal is a VIP, she not only gets a new bed, but some freebies in compensation – one of them being a playpen, which is ironic, since she’s had her uterus removed and made into a purse for a an exhibition at Venice Biennale. In the confusion that follows the two girls swop roles and assume each other’s identity and when Mihal tries to cross the border she gets arrested at the checkpoint between Israel and Palestine. Here the narrative descends into a ridiculous farce where anything can happen: Mihal is mistaken for Nadine, and after the identity switchover, Mihal is fitted out as a living bomb to cause havoc in Israel, whilst Nadine has to face the irate German TV crew. And so confusion reigns in a region where Arabs have to queue for hours at checkpoints between the two countries, just to do a day’s work in Israel.

Geffen delivers and clever and convincing drama full of contradiction, acerbic humour and convincing performances from Adler and Saraya. Mihal’s frustration in trying to assemble her ‘IKEA’ bed will strike a sympathetic cord with audiences everywhere in this is a well-craafted sociopolitical story from the much troubled Middle East. AS

LFF: 9.10. 18.15 Covent Garden, 12.10. 20.45 Cine Lumiere, 13.10. 15.15 NFT1

Villa Touma (2014) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2014

VILLA TOUMA

Dir.: Suha Araf

Cast: Maria Zreik, Nisreen Faour, Ula Tabari, Cherien Dabis

Drama Israel 2014, 88 min.

So many stories from Ramallah Palastine deal with conflict and war, it’s refreshing to see a female-focused drama about the Christian community. VILLA TOUMA, is the feature debut of writer/director Suha Araf, and although it was produced mainly with Israeli money (and a female Israeli crew), is a technically a Palestinian film, running under a stateless flag. Set after the war of 1967, it explores the rather old-fashioned world of three aristocratic Christian sisters, who take their orphaned niece Badia (Zreik) into their house of gloom, as an act of generosity and altruism.

Badia, the niece of one of the sisters and a Muslim woman, has spent her life in a catholic orphanage, but even this harsh environment has not prepared her for the loveless and cloistered life with the three sisters, ruled with an iron fist by the oldest, Juliette (Faour). Even worse is Violette (Tabari), a spiteful spinster (whose elderly husband died before the marriage was consummated), who hates Badia because of her youth. Only the youngest, Violette (Dabis) has any humanity, and tries to support Badia as much as possible. After vainly trying to marry Badia off to one of the very few Christian suitors of the rapidly declining upper-class Christians in Palestine, the girl meets an Arab musician and gets pregnant after a secret one-night stand in the garden of the villa. Badia’s pregnancy isolates her even more from the sisters, who feel threatened not only by her fecundity but also by her ability to attract a member of the opposite sex behind their backs, and when she suddenly gives birth, disaster strikes.

VILLA TOUMA is not a perfect film, it feels rather airless and stagey, but it carries its heart-breaking story with brilliant acting and a bijou aesthetic: the villa is really more of a mausoleum than anything else: the sisters have buried themselves in time, pretending not to have witnessed any change in society. Furthermore, their attitude towards Arabs, in the specific case their caretaker, who is treated like a second-rate citizen, resembles very much the position of the Israeli. Their poverty is obvious, but they try to pretend a glorious life style to the outside world, particularly when entertaining suitors for Badia – ignoring the fact, that nobody falls for their charade. Admittedly the semitic races in the Middle East do still engage in matchmaking of this sort (Jordan and Syria are no different). But these cloistered sisters live in denial, and are only too happy to devour each other out of self-hate. Badia is their victim, and welcomed only as such. On the few occasions, the sisters go out into the world, they seemed lost, without the aggression they vent against each other and Badia, and we see them for what they really are: left behind relics of a long bygone era.

The Camera pans through the house, picking up objects of the past, and treating the sisters alike: inhuman, they are part of the furniture. Badia stands no chance against these immovable objects; only once, when dancing with Violette, is she allowed to move like a young person. The claustrophobic atmosphere gobbles her up. VILLA TOUMA is a nightmarish vision, in which the three sisters try to vanish into a glorified past, alienating themselves from the real life outside. AS

REVIEWED AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014

Mr Kaplan (2014) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2014

Dir.: Alvaro Brechner; Cast: Hector Noguera, Nestor Guzzini, Rolf Becker

Uruguay/Spain/Spain 2014, 98 min.

Uruguayan filmmaker, Alvaro Brechner is perhaps best known for his multi-award winning comedy: Bad Day to Go Fishing. His second feature Mr Kaplan is Uruguay’s official submission to next year’s Academy Awards. It centres on an emigrant Jew from Europe. At 76, he’s living out his late-life crisis in a small seaside town in Uruguay, very similar to the one in Pablo Stoll’s Whisky (2004). Jacob (Noguera) has lost interest in his family, particularly his two sons who bore him with their quarrels (one a total conformist, the other an equally convinced outsider) and he often fights with his wife Rebecca (Nidia Telles), who tries to keep his diet under control. Then, one day he discovers the beach-bar owner is German, old enough to have been a Nazi, and overnight Jacob enlists the help of portly ex-cop Contreras (Guzzini), to mount a ‘war-crime’ case against him. Jacob, seeing himself in the news as a self-styled heir to the Eichmann hunters, succeeds against all odds with his companion playing Sancho Pansa to his Don Quixote.

But after having captured their prey, they find out why “the German” is running away: he is a Jew, having served in a concentration camp as a “Kapo”, meaning he was selected by the Nazis to do some of their dirty work for them. To refuse this appointment, would have meant immediate death for any inmate. The ex-Kapo, tired of running away from hunters and himself, decides to take his own life and in an extraordinary twist of fate finds salvation.

A small film with its heart in the right place where all the characters (apart from Rebecca) appear to be more or less lost; struggling for an identity, running from the past, and ultimately themselves. Jacob, bored with his bourgeois life-style, suddenly decides to become a hero at the wrong time of his life. Whilst the consequences of his actions could have been much harsher, when he finally finds himself back in the midst of his family, he looks grumpier than before, not at all relieved to be alive.

MR KAPLAN has a some fine performances, a bone-dry take on life, a vibrant camera capturing the action from interesting angles and a stringent script, which makes the audience root for Jacob because he is such a lovable anti-hero. AS

THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 6-23 2014 NOVEMBER NATIONWIDE

Genova (2008)

Director Michael Winterbottom Writers: Laurence Coriat/Michael Winterbottam

Starring Colin Firth, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Willa Holland, Perla Haney-Jardine

94 mins UK Mystery/Drama

From documentary to porn, it’s always interesting to see what Michael Winterbottom has in store. Genova is no exception especially as it stars Colin Firth as Joe, a middle class English Daddy who takes his kids to Italy to recover from the tragic death of their mother in a car accident back in America.

Taking the opportunity to teach at the University, he settles the family into a flat in the old part of town and meets up with Barbara (Catherine Keener) a friend from his days at Harvard. A gentle routine develops: classes in the morning, beach in the afternoon. Pubescent Kelly (Willa Holland) discovers Italian boys. Mary, (Perla Haney-Jardine) the younger one, is sensitive and introspective and doesn’t cope at all. She really misses her mother in poignantly observed scenes.

From the outset there an uneasy feeling that this is no ordinary drama. Very much a ‘ghost’ story in the modern sense. But why Genova? The old town is just the place for this sinister tale. A hand-held camera pans the narrow medieval streets as shadowy figures loom out of the darkness and give a whiff of menace that’s reminiscent of Roeg’s: Don’t Look Now. Prostitutes haunt the shady courtyards of the Port and birds fly out of dilapidated buildings in scenes that would be difficult to come by in a more modern city such as Chicago, the family’s US home.

One minute Kelly is disappearing on the beach or zipping precariously through the streets on the back of her boyfriend’s dodgy moped, the next Mary has gone missing in a Church, causing a frantic search. And all the time Colin Firth is holding things together with that nagging expression of impending doom he does so well. This is a narrative about a family falling apart, dislocated in time and space: the onslaught is geographical and personal.

Marcel Zyskind’s atmospheric location shots echo the wistful sadness of this tale of bereavement and individual reactions to it. Mary has a wild imagination and is the most candid in her expression of sadness. Her vivid nightmares start to feature her mother Marianne (Hope Davis). Kelly resents her younger sister’s angst and tries to appear cool, playing out in her waywardness, nevertheless.

But ultimately this is Colin Firth’s film. He is superb as a respectable 40-something guy who’s keeping things together for his children. Continually on the verge of tears he is by turns incredibly tender and caustically abrupt; and this is the refreshing part. His performance is subtle yet accessible, so English: there is no embarrassing breakdown – just a dignified portrayal of a man who’s making a very brave attempt to carry on and succeeding despite the interference of his friend (Catherine Keener) and of a nubile student, Rosa (Margherita Romeo). Both are desperate to ‘get it on’ with Joe, but end up just getting in the way.

Michael Winterbottom has given us realistic sex in 9 Songs: This is realistic grief and feels unsentimental yet utterly moving. MT

Susanne Bier interview | Serena

Susanne Bier and Christopher Kyle were at the London Film Festival with their new film arthouse drama SERENA which stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Matthew Turner spoke to them:

How did the project come about, first of all?

Christopher Kyle (CK): I read this remarkable novel when it was still in galleys and I really asked my agent to go after it hard and eventually got the job to adapt it. I was really attracted to the dark love story, to see a woman in this crazy macho world of the logging camp, the way they love nature and want to destroy it at the same time, all these big themes were really exciting as a writer to dig into, so I started working on the script, wrote a draft and then a year later, Susanne got involved and we started working on it together.

Susanne, what was the appeal of the project for you?

Susanne Bier (SB): The same. (Laughs). No, I mean, I was attracted by the dark love story and I was attracted by the fact of having this woman who is forceful and who is actually more capable than most of the men and who has a kind of a damaged soul, in a way. I was very attracted by all of those elements. And I still am.

With regards to getting on board with the project, is it right that Darren Aronofsky and Angelina Jolie were originally tied to the project and was there trepidation for you to pick it up after that?

CK: You know, the nature of this business is that people get attached to projects and then unattached to projects – it happens all the time. Darren was involved with the project for six or eight months and then financing came through for Black Swan, so he became unavailable, so we moved on. He did talk to Angelina at one point, I don’t know how far that got, but that’s normal, you talk to actors, you see who’s interested. None of that developed very far before Susanne got involved.

What had you seen Jennifer Lawrence in at the time that she was cast in Serena?

SB: Winter’s Bone. And that’s it. She had not yet done Hunger Games and she had not worked with Bradley. So she got involved and, actually, at the time, she had only done Winter’s Bone and because she was a clearly very talented, very beautiful, very interesting young actress, but not yet a big star, it was quite difficult financing the movie on the basis of her, so it took a little while. But on our first conversation – I mean, she now claims that it was her idea [to cast] Bradley, but I was also going to talk to her about Bradley, so it was clearly both of us who had the same idea, and then we asked Bradley and he was quite keen to get involved and he was quite keen to portray a kind of slightly troublesome character, someone who is an idealist, but an idealist for reasons that today we don’t really consider particularly proper or particularly wholesome. And I was very fortunate that both of them wanted to be attached, but then it took longer to finance it. And in the interim, Jennifer had then done Hunger Games and they then did Silver Linings, but none of the movies had come out when we shot Serena.

What had Bradley Cooper done when he was cast then? Had he done Limitless?

SB: He’d done Limitless, he’d done The Hangover, he was an established star, which is sort of what made it possible to finance it. And then she became a huge big star in the interim.

You also have so many great British actors in the cast – I’m thinking of Sean Harris, Rhys Ifans, Toby Jones and so on. How did they get involved?

SB: There are Danish stars too! The movie was shot in Prague. It was tempting to partly use a European cast, but also I always felt that Britain has this richness of amazing character actors, character actors who are really distinct and special. And so the script was full of archetypes, like the archetype sheriff and the archetype villain, in a way. And actually, we were pretty much agreed that it would be really interesting having character actors who would not just fit into the archetype and would add something very extra to the characters. So, Rhys Ifans, who has a very gentle way of talking, that just makes him doubly scary when he plays the villain.

Did you have many of those character actors in mind early on in the process then, when you were looking at the script?

SB: It came together quite quickly. Once we started casting out of Britain, it was very joyful and fun to do that, because it left space for slightly unexpected choices.

How was the experience of working together?

SB: Very problematic. (Laughs).

CK: Susanne’s like a dream for a screenwriter. I mean, she knows what she wants, she can be very clear about what she needs from the script, but she’s also a great collaborator, she listens, she’s willing to entertain other ideas, so you really can’t ask for anything more, as a writer.

SB: That’s very nice of you! I want to say the same thing. But we have a tone between us where the characteristic of the tone is that we don’t pay each other compliments!

CK: We express our fondness through insults, which is unusual.

That’s very British…

SB: Which is quite fun! We’re actually having a lot of fun, I want to say. And it’s actually been really seamless and very creative.

CK: I wish it was always like this!

You mentioned Danish actors. I spotted Kim Bodnia on screen for maybe two or three seconds. So does that mean that you cut quite a lot out that you were sorry to see go?

SB: Yes. I think what happened in the process of the script was – it’s such rich material and the novel was such rich material that the challenge is losing scenes you love. The challenge is not losing things you don’t like, because that’s easy to do. The challenge is losing things you love. And that was true for the script as well as for the editing. And there was possibly a bit too much complexity in the film in the first edit, which is why we actually had to focus on the love story, which is why certain characters became much less prevalent or almost virtually disappeared. So Kim Bodnia was Rachel’s father in the film and he was one of those characters.

Susanne, you tend to explore relationships in your films rather than creating something effects-driven or, say, an action film. Do you find that this is something that you particularly connect with and interests you still?

SB: I am interested in human beings. I am interested in relationships. Basically, that’s the only thing that interests me. However much I theoretically would love to do a real action film, I can’t really see myself engaging for hours and hours about a car chase. The thing is that I really enjoy some of them. I enjoy the ones that still have a human aspect to them or the ones that have a sense of humour, but I am always longing for the car chase to stop and for them to start talking, or kissing, or any other possible human exchanges.

CK: Certain types of movies get so technical that the director spends all their doing everything but work with the actors on the human beings in the story.

SB: It would drive me crazy and I can’t really see anyone who would offer me that type of movie!

You have two films at this festival, Serena and A Second Chance. Will you continue to go back and forth between Hollywood and making films in Europe?

SB: I would love to, but it’s also a little bit about working in different financial scales and that’s probably the major difference.

What are the main pros and cons of both?

SB: The pros (of working in Hollywood) are that you can actually make an epic picture, which is really attractive and satisfying in terms of beauty and the whole cinematic experience. The cons are that it is a more complicated process.

So, is it a case that the reverse is true, where making films in Europe is a more streamlined and simple process but the financing is harder?

SB: Ah, but then when you see a lot of small European films, you wish it were a more complicated process, because there is also that thing of an auteur arrogance in Europe. ‘I’m the director, nobody’s going to say anything, so I’m just going to do the movie I want to make’. Then it’s a three-hour long, incomprehensible and very boring movie. I do actually think there is a kind of healthiness in a bit of an exchange. I don’t think making a movie by committee works either, but I think that a certain relevant questioning is probably healthy.

In the first half of the film we see the start of the relationship between the two central characters. In a lot of the scenes where they are alone together, it just becomes a sex scene. Was that a conscious decision?

SB: Love is a funny thing. I think that we wanted to suggest the character of their love was also a very physical character. I do also think that the trigger for someone like Serena, to make her so crazy, is also a physical love. You’re right, but that was also in the nature of the love affair. Yes, of course, you could have made another sort of love affair, but we didn’t want to do that.

We’re experiencing a strong time for television and, in particular, Scandinavian television. Would either of you ever be tempted to move into that?

SB: For me, television is the most exciting thing. It’s the most exciting place to be right now so, yes, absolutely. I think one has to live in the last century for not recognising where most, but not all, of the… well, it’s also where the best writing is. [Turns to Kyle] Don’t you agree?

CK: It’s so depressing trying to get work as a screenwriter in Hollywood right now, because all the movies are about toys or comic books. Opportunities like Serena are extremely rare and very competitive, because all the writers want those jobs, so where there’s growth, where there’s excitement, is television. Not just in the US, but all over the world. Everybody’s clamouring for these interesting, serious dramas with good writing, good acting and good directing. The production values have exploded. You see something like True Detective. It’s shot like a beautiful eight hour movie, which wasn’t what television was like 5 or 10 years ago at all. A lot of people are excited about television…

SB: I also like watching it! And I want to say, particularly, in writing. You mentioned Scandinavia, because I actually think that the writing in Scandinavian films is still, comparatively, really good, but I think that particularly in America, I think that the writing in television is way better than the writing in films.

Does that mean that it is just a question of you waiting for the right project to come along? Or would you be thinking about producing or developing your own material?

SB: I’d love to do television. Whether it would be me initiating it or doing a project with him [indicates Kyle], I would be very intrigued by that.

CK: I’ve just made a deal to write a pilot for FX, based on a French historical novel called ‘The Cursed King’, it’s about the 14th century and the events that led to the 100 years’ war.

What was the hardest thing to get right in Serena?

SB: The hardest thing was balancing the fact that we’re dealing with two fraught human beings and still rooting for them, because it’s all very well having a clean heroine or a clean hero, but the complexity of what the characters are doing, and yet still being attracted to them; still being fascinated by them; not being repulsed by them. I think that’s probably the trickiest balance of all.

CK: I agree; the tone. It’s very tricky when you place at the centre of a film characters who do things that are objectively offensive. And yet, if you make them compelling, fascinating and complex enough, the audience will go with them. Last night, a young woman at the Q&A was going all the way with Serena to the point where she said she was rooting against Rachel and the baby.

Was something like Macbeth at the forefront in terms of references?

CK: Yes, absolutely, and that starts with the novel. The novelist was inspired by Lady Macbeth and also Medea; these tragedies with strong women at the centre of them, so that was something we were conscious of from the beginning.

Were there any other specific reference points for you when making the film?

SB: There were a number of references. There was a noir reference. A Barbara Stanwyck, noir reference. It was very important for me to give this a contemporary feel, but that there was also a sense of psychology; that she wasn’t just an evil black widow that would just seduce a man, because I don’t feel that a contemporary female audience would respond to that. I feel that a contemporary female audience would respond to someone who might behave in an offensive way, but we still understand her, which is what I was trying to aim at.

Was that perhaps the biggest tussle that you might have had with the original source material, in terms of making sure you walk that delicate tightrope, right between not alienating the audience from the actions these characters are taking, making them sympathetic enough that they can still go with it, was that a challenge?

SB: Yes, a big challenge.

CK: It’s always a challenge with a novel, because novels can tell you what a character’s thinking, but in a film you only get to see what they do and what they say, so it can be more challenging to get that nuance sometimes.

In relation to the locations that you chose, because it’s set in Carolina, but you shot in Prague. Obviously with these Hollywood film stars – well, they weren’t both stars then, but Bradley Cooper was – you had to bring them over. Was it a convenience for you to be in Europe rather than in America?

SB: Because it was way more financially viable. And so it made sense. I mean, one of the things you want to do as a filmmaker is that you want to have the most part of it on screen, so you’ll go to great lengths to secure that. And, as we spoke about, since you don’t automatically just inflate the budget, that would be one of the decisions.

I have to ask a slightly facetious question: what do you have against babies? You have terrible, terrible things happening in A Second Chance…

SB: Stop saying that! I don’t want you to say that! Firstly, here’s the thing: I love babies. I mean, I’m crazy about babies. I’m kind of dangerous, to be honest. And so the truth is that it would be more tempting for me to steal babies than anything else.

So it’s a coincidence that it’s been terrible things happening to babies back to back?

SB: The babies on set had a great time.

CK: All of her children lived to adulthood. She took good care of them.

What’s your next project?

SB: Probably Mary Queen of Scots, with Working Title.

I wanted to ask about your other film in the festival, A Second Chance. How did A Second Chance come about?

SB: Well, it was the result of a collaboration between myself and my other writer, Anders Thomas Jensen, he wrote it. And he’s had four kids in a very brief period of time, so maybe you should ask him about what he thinks of babies.

And the casting for that? How did you get those two involved?

SB: Are you talking about Nicolaj Coster-Waldau? I asked him. He’s, you know, he’s Danish, and I know he comes out, and you know him from Game of Thrones, and we all know that he doesn’t really have a hand. But I’ve been looking, he hasn’t done a Danish film for 10 years or something, and I’ve kind of been looking to find a movie to work with him in. And when we had the first draft of this one, I thought, ‘He’s going to be amazing in it.’

I think Nicolaj Lie Kaas is a really fascinating actor, because he can play heroes and he can play villains, there’s not really very many people who can do both so brilliantly.

SB: It’s crazy, he’s crazily good at both. He’s really amazing.

So was getting him involved an important part of the film? Also, those two actors together, you don’t often see two such big Danish actors together in the same film these days, so was it important to have those two big presences together?

SB: Yes, and also Nicolaj Lie Kaas is probably the most funny person on the planet, so he just needs to be on set so I can laugh.

CK: That’s your number one, yeah?

SB: Do you think I’m getting silly? Do you think I’m being very un-serious there? Because I can feel it, the seriousness slipping out.

In relation to these two films, was there any overlap at all, or has Serena basically sat in the can for a bit longer?

SB: No, there was overlap, that was part of the delay of Serena. We had a delay in editing, and then we realised that the ADR was gonna be a real challenge, because it was shot in Prague, and it was huge on the ADR. And then I had another film, that I was committed to doing, so there was, I did that one while doing post on Serena, so there was a kind of crazy–

That must be really hard.

SB: I don’t know, it wasn’t necessarily hard, but it was crazy in terms of logistics, and planning and actually finishing Serena. But, I now have two films.

Yeah, exactly, that’s true. Do you have a favourite?

SB: That’s exactly what my kids ask me, and I consistently say, you know, when my son asks me I say, ‘Of course I love my daughter much more than I love you.’

Going back to the question of adaptation, I haven’t actually read the book but it’s my understanding that the endings of the book (of Serena) and the film are quite different. What was it that made you want to make the large changes to that in particular?

CK: You know when you adapt a book it ends up taking on its own logic. You start with what you see as the core story of the book, which was this love story, between these two really dark and interesting characters, and then start stripping away and trying to focus on the best parts of that story for the film. And then you have to look at it as the story that you have in the screenplay, and how do you end that story, regardless of how the book, which is tying together all these other plotlines that you’re not really using. So it’s just a process that you get to, and this ending seemed to make the most sense for the story we were telling.

SB: It’s also that sometimes in a movie, making a very long time gap gets complicated. And I think we kind of felt that it suited this move to actually finish within its own world.

Fury (2014)

Dir.: David Ayer; Cast: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Alicia von Rittberg; USA 2014, 120 min.

War films tend to lack subtlety – understandable when considering the topic, but writer/director David Ayer (Sabotage) can claim to have reduced the genre to Neanderthal levels with this latest outing FURY. His motley US tank crew, fighting in April 1945 on German soil, consist among others of Brad Pitt’s Don Collier as the leader of the pack, a very oily and rather unconvincing Shia LeBeouf as Boyd Swan and a baby-faced Logan Lerman as the newcomer Ellison (as gunner), who claims “only to have trained as a typist, to achieve 80 words a minute”. Yeah…

It is impossible to catalogue all atrocities committed by cast and crew, but here are two of the worst: when Ellison arrives, after introducing himself with his CV mentioned above, he has to clean the inside of the tank including the remains of his predecessor whose face is literally plastered all over the floor. Later on, our ‘heroes’ conquer a German town and Collier and Ellison enter a flat where a middle-aged woman is hiding a frightened teenage girl, Emma (von Rittberg), under the bed. Collier finds her immediately and before sitting down for a meal, Lerman plays a few notes on the piano. Collier whispers in his ear “if you don’t take her to the bedroom. I will.” Lerman obeys his commander’s order, and has sex with Emma. One would expect the girl to be traumatised by this semi-rape, but Emma declares her love for Lerman, promising to “write to him” (sic). Soon afterwards she is killed, when bombs hit her house.

Collier’s tank is strangely shown more or less in single action, the budget obviously did not stretch to the employment of the usual divisions of armoured vehicles we are used to. This way, war is reduced to a purely individual combat, where ideology or even strategy is left out. Camera work is reduced to showing the obvious (in mostly garish colours), and the acting is as stereotyped as possible. FURY lacks intensity as well as drama, it is an empty vessel for stars ‘showing off’ – unworthy of the real allied soldiers, who fought the last war one could call justifiable. AS

FURY WAS THE CLOSING GALA AT THE RECENT LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

Belle (2014) | DVD release

Dir.: Amma Asante

Cast: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson, Emma Watson, Sarah Gadon, Miranda Richardson, Sam Reid

UK 2013, 104 min. Historical Drama

Based loosely on the life of Dido Elisabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the illegitimate daughter of an English Naval Admiral and a black slave, who grew up in Kenwood, London with her uncle Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson), then the Lord Chief Justice, BELLE has more than its fair share of conflicts and confrontations. Apart from the permanent struggles of the title heroine to adjust as a bi-racial woman in an overwhelming male-dominated racist society (less than one third of the black population in London were free, slavery was only abolished in 1833), her status in the household was ambiguous to say the least. Whilst her relationship with her cousin Elisabeth (Sarah Gadon) is that of personal equality, this stops when the outside world arrives at Kenwood: Belle is closeted away till after dinner when the “informal” part of the evening begins. And when Elisabeth is introduced to London Society to find a suitable husband, Belle is kept away – even though her inheritance from her father will change even that in the end. And, to cap it all, there is a great judicial case to be decided: Lord Mansfield had to rule in the case of the “Zong”, a slavery ship, whose owners wanted compensation from the insurance company for dead slaves who were killed because they were too sick to work, due to lack of water. Meanwhile, Belle has fallen in love with the young vicar’s son John Davinier (Sam Reid), who is a radical opponent of slavery and has fallen out with Lord Mansfield, his ex-employer, over the issue of abolition.

There are so many fine supporting performances, particularly that of Emma Watson as Lady Mansfield, and Miranda Richardson, whose Lady Ashford is so eager that her son Oliver should marry a rich woman, that she is even prepared to overlook Belle’s ethnicity. Why then is the end product so underwhelming? Well, first there is the formulaic structure of the narrative, which leaves little to the imagination. The solemn deliverance of speeches does not help either – the turbulent political landscape in England in question during the film covers mostly 1778-1793 and deserves vivid images, not mildly heated intellectual duels. And perhaps we have all seen enough of upper-class splendour, the rigidity of their lives and their repressed emotions – the BBC has the monopoly here. BELLE was inspired by a portrait painting of Dido Elisabeth Belle and Lady Elisabeth Murray, most certainly created by Zoffany, portrayer of royalty, in 1779. One can say, that the technical perfection, but also the lack of originality and the beautiful superficiality has found its way into the film. Covering so much turmoil, it still remains a resolutely limp and tepid drama. AS

BELLE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 JUNE 2014 | from 24 October on DVD

Cold in July | Interview with Jim Mickle | DVD Blu release

Filmuforia talked to Jim Mickle about his 80s-set noir thriller adapted on the novel by Joe R Lansdale:

Matthew Turner (MJT): How did the project come about, first of all?

Jim Mickle (JM): I read the book – I picked it up at a used book store – I’d been a fan of [author Joe R Lansdale]’s – read it in one night and fell in love and thought, ‘I want to make a movie that makes me feel how this book feels, this sense of discovering this crazy mish-mash of genres, dark tough guy characters – I want to make a movie like this’.

MJT: I thought the structure of the film was very interesting, in that it starts as one thing, but becomes something else. How much of that is reflected in the book?

JM: Very much. Very, very, very much. We did it in slightly different ways – at times we had to do a slower transition between things or at times do a more abrupt transition, but it was very much that in the book – that was what I fell in love with, I kept hitting moments where you sort of settle into a story. You realise how interactive watching a movie is, in a way, or reading a book – any kind of receiving a story – when you start to settle into something and think, ‘Great, you know, this is cool, this is Cape Fear, sort of revenge thing, cat and mouse, great, I’m into that!’ And then as soon as that shifts into something else, it just sort of changes all expectations. You realise how lazy I think we are as audience members, because you have expectations and you want things to meet those expectations and when something doesn’t or it shifts it becomes this really challenging experience. But I just loved it and that was something we wanted to carry over into a film.

MJT: Are you worried about film reviewers spoiling too much of it?

JM: Yeah. Yeah. I think there’s a way to talk about it that’s sort of like that, you know, that it starts off as Cape Fear and then becomes two or three other films by the time it stops. I like that, in any reviews I read of any movie, I usually read the first part and then skip the synopsis and go to the end, to sort of see what’s going on. So I hope people stick with that, but for the most part, people have been pretty good about being coy about what they talk about. Except the New York Times- the New York Times gave us this shit review that was just – all they did was just summarise the entire movie, plot point for plot point! It was like, ‘How lazy can you be?’ And then offered no opinion about the movie whatsoever. It was like, ‘Great. So you basically just printed a list of spoilers and called it a review of our movie’. So that can be frustrating, you know.

MJT: This is a hell of a role for Don Johnson. Was that all on the page? How much did he bring to it?

JM: The energy of the character was on the page, much of his dialogue was on the page. Much of it was in the book. We transcribed some of that, or tried to find ways to paraphrase stuff, obviously. And he’s a very talkative character, which doesn’t always work in movies, so we had to pare that down. He added a lot on top of that, so there was a lot where he sort of got into that mode. He improvised a lot and I think that was really strong for comedy – I think when that stuff feels natural and not forced it’s good, so we let him improvise a lot. Some of my favourite stuff in there is him, you know, that line about, ‘I need a goddamn drink, I haven’t even had my coffee yet’. Little asides and stuff like that were all Don. That bit with the old phone – we sort of gave him the phone and said ‘Go’ and he came up with all that stuff, so yeah. It was sort of like, once you have him, you sort of need to capture that larger than life persona and not try to keep it in a box.

MJT: How did the cast all get involved? And did you have them in mind for the parts?

JM: No, not at all. I try not to write stuff or be thinking of stuff with certain people in mind, because you fall in love with stuff too easily. I think it’s better to get the script exactly where it needs to be and then start to think, ‘Alright, who could facilitate the script’ rather than – my writing partner Nick a lot of times will think of people and I think that paints you into corners a lot of times. So, no, I always sort of had this idea of sort of like a Texas Everyman, I kept describing him as like McConaughey in Frailty, like a 35 year old, sort of [blue collar worker], could work as a trucker, could work in a field, who knows where. So [Michael C. Hall] we met at a party in Sundance and at that point he had read the script and really liked the script. So we talked about it at Sundance and I had always pictured – I had always had a hard time accepting Dexter, because I always thought of [Michael] as his Six Feet Under character, so it took a while to really buy that and I thought, ‘I’ll never accept him as this guy!’ And the reality was just the opposite – I think he was highly qualified to play an Everyman because he had spent his entire life playing these dark characters with a lot going on. He got to finally play somebody that was very normal. So we met him at Sundance, sort of fell in love there and then the movie, I think we came to the Cannes Film Festival last year, financing happened, we landed in New York the next day, sent the script to [Sam Shepard] and Don and both of them signed on very quickly after that. After years of having a very hard time finding money and actors who would even read it, all of a sudden it was instantly – everything kind of fell into place.

MJT: Did you encourage the actors to read the book?

JM: I did, yes. I did and then I realised it was probably not the greatest idea, because there are a lot of things where we zig left where the book zagged right. And so I think [Vinessa Shaw] read the whole thing, which is great, because I think she was able to – we had to really pare her character down, which sucked, because her character’s a big part of the book and a big part of the journey they go on. And in order to keep it focused on Michael and to really make it a two hour movie instead of a four hour movie, we really pared it down to more his story, but what was great is I think she read it and really got a sense of who her character was and fill in a lot of the gaps and stuff, so that was really great. Don and Sam did not – I remember Don saying, rightly so, that the book is not the script and the script is not the movie and the movie isn’t the movie until you edit it, which I think is very true. And so he was very careful to make sure that he wasn’t – I think it’s easy to say, ‘Well, in the book, this happens!’, you know, and he would say, rightly so – but that’s not reflected in the movie and so it can be very hard to remember what’s what.

MJT: Johnson’s having this kind of amazing late career resurgence that reminds me a bit of William Shatner, making these kind of iconic appearances. How conscious of that was he?

JM: Good question. He has a very strong sense of self and a very strong sense of who his audience is, who his demographic is. He has a very clear, very accurate idea of how he comes off, which is really great.

[Digi-recorder fault meant that interview cut out at that point. Spotted it a few minutes later and resumed].

MJT: Did you cut anything out that you were sorry to lose?

JM: There was. In the book, there was Vinessa’s character that I was – there was a really strong sense of the husband / wife journey that happened in that book that we really had to boil down to Michael’s sort of discovery as a man. That, I was sorry to see go, but I don’t think it would have worked in the movie. There’s a lot of scenes with Jim-Bob in the book, he gets introduced in a much different way and he comes in earlier, he’s involved in the digging of the grave scene and that kind of stuff, that was great. Miss a lot of that stuff. There’s about twenty minutes of deleted scenes that will be on the DVD and they’re all great scenes but as much as I love them, there’s always a reason why stuff gets cut. So we just watched some of them to do a commentary on them and as I watched, I thought, ‘It’s so funny that anyone ever thought this needed to be in the movie’, but in almost every case, there were scenes that were like, ‘We can not cut that out of the movie, it needs to be there!’ I just find that interesting, that the things that get cut are the things that, usually, on the page, are the things you think you need the most.

MJT: What was the hardest thing to get right, overall?

JM: Good question. I think the rhythms, because even if something works and has a certain energy and pace and rhythm in the book and even though when they work in a script, once you get to the actual movie experience, there is a different way to ingest that. And so that was something that was constantly being shaped the entire time, you know, how long do you spend here, how quickly do you move through things. And it took a long time of back and forth with a lot of test audiences to really get a sense of when there was too much of something. And I still see people that feel like there’s too much of something and not enough of something else, but that is a tough thing. It’s really hard to stay objective to that when you’re editing something and something you know for that long. So that was always a tough thing.

MJT: Had you seen Blue Ruin? I noticed its director [Jeremy Saulnier] had a thank you in the credits.

JM: Yeah. I love that movie. And Jeremy was there at our first screening. He read the script and gave some really great notes at the script stage and then he came and watched the first cut and I just remember him being like, you know, ‘Take a deep breath – it’s going to get there. This movie isn’t it, but take a deep breath, it’s going to get there.’ We had met on our first movies in 2007, we were at South By Southwest and we kept bumping into each other at festivals with Murder Party and Mulberry St and then last year, We Are What We Are played Director’s Fortnight with Blue Ruin and we sort of rekindled and met back up. He was very helpful and I think we’re a little bit of a support group for each other in many ways.

MJT: What makes Texas so perfect for Texan Noir? And why are we seeing the rise of it now?

JM: Well, I think it always was there, I mean, I think there’s a lot of – I mean, even like Jim Thompson’s stuff and Cormac McCarthy is a little bit further east of there, but I think there always was that and I think there’s a sense of nostalgia in America, probably that dates to the cowboys, old west sort of vibe that I think a lot of people link to Texas, even though it was happening in a lot of other places. I think there’s still a strong connection to that and I think there is a lot of leftover nostalgia for those kinds of stories and that sense of morality. I think that happens a lot. And I think there’s a big sense of pride in Texas, both self-pride – I’m always amazed that everyone from Texas has a great sense of self-confidence, in a very cool way. And also a confidence and a pride in their state and I think that makes for strong-willed people and strong-willed characters and I think they’re always interesting, when you put them into these kinds of stories. I think there’s a great sense of lawlessness there that, in society, sucks – in society, Texas is like the state that keeps popping up and causing problems and you keep sort of having to [give them a] smack on the head and keep them in line. But in movies, that’s great, that’s a great character to have. It’s very open, it’s gigantic, there’s a million different areas of it, you know, you have the dusty plains of the west and you have the more sort of Bayou country pine tree green luscious spot like East Texas, where our movie is set, so there’s a lot of interesting thematic stuff and then visually, I think it’s just great. You know, Paris, Texas, Sam Shepard, when you need a story about a guy who’s lost in this open world, you go there.

MJT: That was a happy coincidence, casting Shepard, then?

JM: Yeah, it was, it was. Because originally I had always thought of Cold in July as a sort of 1989 western set in the suburbs, so I would always listen to the Paris, Texas soundtrack, Ry Cooder’s steel guitar, I would always listen to that soundtrack every time I’d read the script and just try to dive back into it, get into the head of it and then it’s one of those happy evolutions is, you know, we ended up being nowhere near that, musically, at the end of the day.

MJT: Do you have a favourite Texan noir movie?

JM: Blood Simple.

MJT: What’s your next project?

JM: We’re doing a TV show called Hap and Leonard, which is a continuation of Cold in July in some ways. Joe R. Lansdale, who wrote that novel, it’s a book series he has of two bumbling idiots who crime-solve in the late 80s in East Texas. So we’re working on that right now and there’s two films that I’m working on right now, one a much bigger film and one that’s sort of a quieter, subtler, sort of Hitchcockian thing. Trying to have a couple of different things out there and see what works first, as opposed to what we did with Cold in July, which was fall in love with one idea and fall into depression when we thought it wasn’t going to work.

MJT: Does that mean you’re sort of moving away from horror movies?

JM: I don’t know ‘moving away’ – I don’t have a strong ability to structure things from the outside, you know? So it’s been now a matter of reading a lot of scripts, reading a lot of books, trying to develop my own stuff and with Nick and it’s really hard to control that. So I’ve been responding to just the best material, whether it’s horror or science-fiction or action or whatever. It’s been really focussing on that and also, I think, being in a weird spot where we’ve done – we’re getting a great release here in the UK with Cold in July, which I’m so thankful for and so thankful to Icon for. And in the US we’ve had a great release, but the whole model of distribution there is changing so much, so we came out Memorial Day weekend, against X-Men, you know, and we came out with zero advertising, on a couple of screens. And that was the movie I thought was going to be sort of our breakout film, it was really going to make some noise. So it’s been like a little bit of an existential thing of, like, what do independent filmmakers do anymore? How do you get stuff out there? Part of that is a move towards television, I think, because that’s a place where you can do things that don’t have to be laden with superheroes in order to make it connect with an audience. But it’s tough, it’s really tough, because I think if you do horror, everyone wants it to be really, really cheap horror, so they can turn it around and make gangbuster dollars – you know, unless it’s Paranormal Activity, it’s not successful. And so I feel like every couple of years, when we start to do the rounds with talking to studios or Hollywood executives, it’s always, ‘It’s very much ‘The Conjuring’, that’s what anyone says that just means, ‘Some people go into a house and some supernatural shit happens’, that’s code for that. It used to be, ‘It’s Paranormal Activity-inspired’, which was everyone’s way of saying it’s found footage. So I think in horror, it’s really hard to do anything different, it’s really hard to do anything that’s challenging in any way. There used to be a little more receptiveness, I think to financiers who were willing to back something like that and I think now we have a lot of ideas of things that we want to do like that, but you need a lot of money to do it, and then once you start talking about that, then you shift very quickly out of those movies and fall into fifty million dollar plus summer blockbusters that have to be remakes or sequels or based on previous intellectual property and that sort of thing. So it’s trying to find what’s going to succeed, what’s going to feel like, yes, it was worth spending two years slaving on this, what’s going to feel sustainable and I don’t know what’s sustainable right now in movies other than television.

[youtube id=”FonWTNWtjmg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

COLD IN JULY IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-ray AND ON DEMAND

Zabriskie Point (1969/70) |IMAGE © WARNER BROS

Dir.: Michelangelo Antonioni; Cast: Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, Rod Taylor: USA 1969/70, 111 min (IMAGE © WARNER BROS)

Zabriskie Point was an unmitigated commercial failure at the box office but has since become somewhat of a cult classic largely due to its atmospheric, otherworldly score by Pink Floyd complimenting ravishing widescreen visuals of Death Valley. Along with Blowup (1966) and The Passenger (1975) it completes a trilogy of English-language films made by Michelangelo Antonioni. Critics were not very kind at the time of the premiere: Pauline Kael wrote: “Antonioni has always been a clumsy director and has never had much luck at solving the mechanical problems of how to get his characters in and out of places”. But when you realise the Americans, as a nation, didn’t like themselves at the time, why should they like foreigners holding up a mirror?

ZABRISKIE POINT is not a masterpiece, but a rather misunderstood film poem that became at important signpost in US counter-culture of the time. Since everyone wanted to see action and revolution, nobody was happy: neither the European art house audience nor the American counter-culture brigade. Strange to think that anybody could expect ‘action’ from Antonioni; and his sort of revolution was mainly an internal process, slow burning and with a lot of self destruction. The only point worth making is that Antonioni himself tried too hard to please the audience – just leave out the fireworks and shoot in black and white and all what would have worked out much better. But then, he could have stayed in Italy. This way, he fell between two stools, but there is still a lot to admire about ZABRISKIE POINT.

The narrative is sparse: Mark (Frechette) is at a student’s meeting in LA “willing to die, but not of boredom”. Later he nearly shoots a police officer during a violent demonstration, steals a small plane, circles in the desert over a Buick, driven by young, naive pot-smoking Daria (Halprin). Later the two meet, make love in the desert, “Zabriskie Point” being the lowest one in the whole of the USA, before Mark paints the plane full of political slogans and psychedelic colours, and on landing is shot dead by the police in LA.
ZABRISKIE POINT is predominantly a road movie, with some Western thrown in. But is not political, let alone revolutionary. Yes, what we see about America is rather ugly and violent, not much change there, but Mark’s actions come from the heart: he wants fun, sex and travel. Sure, the police are in way way, but not as a collective political force.

In the end, ZABRISKIE POINT is just about a man lost in the vastness of LA, needing another point of view (like most of Antonioni’s heroes), finding Daria in a sort of no-mans-land, where happiness can exist, before choosing to go back to the city and death, spurning his second chance. Alfio Contini’s camera paints both the vast city and the valley in the desert as a melancholic death dance. AS/MT

RE-RELEASED FROM 24 OCTOBER AND AVAILABLE ON DCP FOR THE FIRST TIME – IMAGE SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT OF WARNER BROS ENTERTAINMENT INC.

What a Wonderful World (2014) | 30th Warsaw Film Festival

Director/Writer: Anatol Durbală

Cast: Igor Babiac, Igor Caras-Romanov, Tudor Ţărnă

Moldova Drama 73mins

Born in 1970, Moldovan actor and television personality Anatol Durbală has taken his time to write and direct his first feature film, but the wait was worth it. World-premiering at Warsaw Film Festival – where it received the FIPRESCI Prize – ironically-titled WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD is as gut-thumping a debut as any.

April 7, 2009. Petru (Igor Babiac), a student in his early 20s, arrives for a short visit to his native Chişinău from Boston, USA, where he has been studying for two years. Being taxied from the airport to his aunt’s home, he calls his Dominican Republican girlfriend Elizabeth, with whom he arranges a Skype conversation later that evening. Upon sorting through his old bedroom, however, Petru remembers that he loaned his computer monitor to a friend, Slavic. He goes to retrieve it from the latter’s grandmother.

Anyone familiar with the civil unrest that rocked the Moldovan capital and other major cities following accusations that its unannounced parliamentary elections had been rigged (in favour of the incumbent Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova) will have been forewarned by in-scene news footage anchoring the film to April 2009. For others—and they’ll be numerous, for too little western coverage was given to such news—the narrative switch at this point will come as a surprise. Uprooting the previously established emphasis upon the quotidian—such as his protagonist simply walking from one place to another—Durbală has Petru, computer monitor in hand, suddenly attacked and arrested in the street by masked men.

Other ominous signs were present. The book on Petru’s lap as his plane lands in the opening scene is Harry Dolan’s Bad Things Happen. Indeed: whereas the film had teasingly suggested before this point that it might follow one lad’s dogged, neorealist quest to have an online video call with his girlfriend, the narrative thereafter brutally precludes any notions of romance. In the scene immediately following what looks like his random kidnapping, Petru is dragged out of a van and brought to lie face down with other detainees of similar age and appearance.

As a kind of statement of intent, the scene unfolds in one take, a De Palma-style crane shot that begins as a rooftop aerial view of shenanigans before descending with clinical precision to settle upon a helplessly limited ground-level perspective. Hereafter, cutting is sparse and misery is prolonged. Here, the end of a long take will afford the characters some kind of relief from the dreary, claustrophobic compositions in which they are trapped. “You want to turn us into Romania?” one character asks late in the film, which is presumably meant to double as a sly nod to Durbală’s neighbours, who have, with the likes of THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (2005) and POLICE, ADJECTIVE (2009), pointed unrelenting lenses at their own nation’s crippling post-communist bureaucracy.

Petru is caught up in the violent police crackdowns that followed protestors attacking and looting governmental buildings. His computer monitor is mistaken for the government’s. Similar to Steve McQueen’s own debut feature HUNGER (2008), Petru’s arrest initially gives way to a more ensemble feel, as protestors are collectively held in close confines, in the cold and without water. In an office along the corridor, two police officers enjoy humiliating one prisoner by having him elevate a TV aerial so that they can watch Barcelona’s football team hammer Bayern Munich.

Though such scenes risk caricature, Durbală’s unflinching portrayal of police brutality makes it clear which side he’s on—though opening his film with the vague gambit that it’s merely ‘based on facts’, and ending with a muddled dedication to ‘all victims of violent protests’ may dampen the blow in the same way that an amateurishly flat sound design detracts from scenes in which young people are truncheoned along a corridor by swing-happy coppers.

The suitably gruelling qualities of Durbală’s long takes, however, make compelling set-pieces out of increasingly doomed scenarios. Again recalling HUNGER, and perhaps also POLICE, ADJECTIVE, the climactic showdown here is a conversation-cum-interrogation between Petru and a tea-sipping police major (Igor Caras-Romanov). While the former naively persists with the only truth he knows, the latter, a simmering pot of inherited prejudices, deeply-embedded fascistic paranoia and ad hominem accusations, bubbles cartoonishly as he erupts into nostalgia about Stefan the Great and spits with incoherent venom about some kind of national degradation.

Though Durbală’s chosen, fictionalised vantage point often lacks dramatic insight, his writing and directorial talents are evident. Taking its title from the Louis Armstrong number, WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD is unapologetic in its deployment of such an overused but somehow never unmoving musical choice. Clichés can be effective too: in its artistic depiction of a painful episode in Moldova’s recent history, the film is all the more unremittingly gloomy for using a song whose beauty always felt melancholic to begin with. MICHAEL PATTISON

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD HAD ITS WORLD PREMIERE AT 30TH WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL WHERE IT WON THE FIPRESCI PRIZE

Northern Soul (2014)

Director/Writer: Elaine Constantine

Steve Coogan, Antonia Thomas, Elliot James Langridge, Jack Gordon, Lisa Stansfield, Ricky Tomlinson

102min UK Drama/music

I remember the Seventies, and so does photographer turned director Elaine Constantine. Evoking her version of ‘up North, her memories are of rowdy disco nights with ‘yer mates, tentative snogs on the dance floor, of ‘fuckin’ this and fuckin’ that. A time of power cuts and miners’ strikes , of T.S.O.P and Tamla Motown.

The narrative is linear and directionless, yet through it all emerges the essence of moody isolation and loneliness. A time when parents were angry and disciplinarian and kids felt fearful and frustrated. ‘Yer mum and dad’ weren’t you friends in those distant days, they’d sooner rap you on the back of head with a spoon and send you up to bed.

Elliot James Langridge is brilliantly cast as the lanky teenager John (he probably has acne but you can’t tell through the dim lighting), misunderstood by his parents and at logger heads with his teacher, Mr Banks, at the local Comp (although it’s unlikely he’d have given him the ‘f’ sign). Steve Coogan plays Mr Banks with swagger and savvy: he was there too and manages to rise above the teenage angst. When John meets Matt (Josh Whitehouse) down the ‘Youth Club’ they immediately bond and together discover a world of disco dancing, music gigs and girls – cue Antonia Thomas as ‘the nurse’. Although they all get on together superficially, there is little real camaraderie or chemistry between these underwritten characters, and this is where it all feels slightly unconvincing.

Where Northern Soul works best is in the club scenes where the old hits blare and the alchemy of the seventies gets a chance to percolate and produce a visceral kick that takes us straight back to our early teenage years. Originally intended as a musical documentary, it would certainly have worked better that way: Constantine certainly knows how to create a cult classic feel and mix the vibes that rocked those furtive pubescent years, wherever you were. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 OCTOBER 2014

[youtube id=”F-mYUMgjM4Y” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Two Days, One Night (2014) | DVD release

Dir.: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Cast: Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione, Pili Groyne, Simon Caudry

Belgium/France/Italy 2014, 95 min.

The Dardennes brothers began their filmmaking activities in the late seventies and have hugged the limelight at Cannes since their Palme d’Or win with Rosetta in 1999. Success continued with wins at Cannes for Le Fils in 2002, L’Enfant in 2005, Le Silence de Lorna in 2008 and Le Gamin au Velo in 2001 but this year they were not so lucky with Two Days, One Night.

It stars Marion Cotillard as Sandra, who has been off work with depression. When she returns to her workplace in small company producing solar panels, Dumont, the owner, gives his staff an ultimatum: they can either get their 1000 Euro bonus, with the result that Sandra will be sacked (since the foreman Jean-Marc has decided that the production line can work without her), or they sacrifice their bonus and Sandra can keep her job. Apart from two close friends of Sandra, the fourteen others vote for their bonus. Since Jean-Marc has wrongly informed the workers, that one of them will be sacked, if they vote for Sandra to keep her job, Dumont gives Sandra a last chance: she has the weekend to convince the majority of her co-workers to change their mind for the new ballot on Monday morning.

Sandra is anything but a heroine: she pops her anti-depressants like candy, permanently attacks her supportive husband Manu (Rongione), oscillating between self-pity and passive-aggressive behaviour, she is often her worst enemy. The Dardenne brothers show that victims of society, like Sandra (and her colleges) are not nice, simpering waifs who suffer in resplendent silence, but show their hurt in an unpleasant, sometimes obnoxious way. But there is a reason: Sandra and Manu know that without Sandra’s salary, they will fall down the social ladder unable to pay their mortgage, and have to go back to social housing. A fate they would like to avoid, particularly for their two young children.

In spite of herself, Sandra gets through to some of her co-workers on her weekend odyssey around the local houses, where every encounter is a small story in itself: one worker breaks down in tears, ashamed of himself that he voted for his bonus, even though Sandra had saved his job in the past. Another starts a violent fight with a college, who is open to Sandra’s argument and a wife leaves her abusive husband, because he wants to use the bonus money for a patio. A Black worker is equally afraid of God and his foreman at work, suffering from his dithering. But in the end they are all put in this position by the management: the choice they have to make is inhuman and nobody should be made to make an inhuman choice, according to Jean-Luc and Pierre Dardenne.

Even though this is the first time that the brothers have worked with a real star, a brilliant Cotillard, they have spurned a Hollywood like happy-end. Instead we get another measured, sober but not at all depressing solution. Apart from Cotillard, the camera (who follows her every subtle emotional nuance) is as always the ‘star’ of a Dardenne film: un-intrusive, non-judgmental but chronicling nevertheless every detail. Somehow the directors avoid repetitiveness and the Belgian hinterland is not shown as an uniform downtrodden landscape of no-hopers, but a vibrant place of struggle. TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT is a hopeful, against-the-odds message, like the hero in De Sica’s Umberto D, Sandra often stumbles, but always regains her dignity to go another step further. AS

Coming soon on DVD

[youtube id=”InuzW58ydyU” width=”600″ height=”350″]

I Nostri Ragazzi (2014) The Dinner | Venice International Film Festival

Dir.: Ivano de Matteo

Cast: Alessandro Gassman, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Luigi Lo Cascio, Barbara Bobulova

Italian with subtitles, Drama, 92 min.

Two brothers, Massimo (Gassman), a doctor and Paolo (Cascio), a glib lawyer, meet regularly with their wives, whilst their teenage children Benedetta and Michele go to parties together. The adults actually despise each other: Massimo is self-congratulatory, looking down on his more down-to-earth brother and trying to bend the law in favour of his clients. No love is lost between the women either: Massimo’s wife Clara (Mezzogiorno), a practical hands-on woman, finds the fashion-conscious Sofia (Bobulova) rather trivial, despite her responsibility for Benedetta, whose mother died very young.

But of the blue, the parents find out that their kids have killed a homeless woman, apparently just for fun. All but Paolo, want to cover up the crime so as not to destroy their future. But when Paolo insists on handing the pair over to the police, Massimo reacts with violence.

Ivano de Matteo delivers a moral, character-driven fable, with some unexpected twists. These are, by no means, the people we thought they were to begin with: Massimo starts out as the moral apostle, doing good in his profession, full of love for mankind (apart from his brother and his wife). Paolo is only interested in success, the means do not matter to him. But when it comes to the crunch, he is the only one to ask for justice – the other man wants to cover up for the children. Nowadays, over-protection of kids in the middle classes is the norm; parents buy (or cheat) to get their “mini-me’s” a good place in life (this author being no exception); trying to resolve all problems for them; making them dependent on the older generation; often forgetting to teach responsibility and self-reliance. Sure, the outcome is not often so cruel as in this fictional case, but the root of Benedetta and Michele’s coldness lies in their own upbringing.

The cast is brilliant, the camera vividly tries to find the protagonists in the concrete jungle, or in their work places. The grown-ups seem always on the run; the teenagers are indolent. A very gloomy but perceptive indictment on a social class who, on superficial appearances, seems to have everything.

REVIEWED AT VENICE 2014. LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 19 OCTOBER 2014

The Furthest End Awaits (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Chinag Hsiu Chiung; Cast: Hiromi Nagasaku, Nozomi Sasaki; Japan/ Taiwan2014,118 min.

This simple (but never simplistic) film is a story of solidarity between three very different women.

An impressive cast and lively, innovative camerawork make for a moving but never sentimental experience in this contempo Chinese drama, reflecting human nature in all its glorious imperfection. Yoshida Misaki (Nagasaku) finds out that her father has disappeared, feared drowned, leaving her nothing but debts – apart from a boathouse on the Nodo Peninsula (think Lands End). Yoshida’s father has been missing for six years and she has not seen him since her parents divorced thirty years ago. Deciding to await his possible return, she converts the boathouse into a modern coffee shop. Nearby lives the young Eriko (Sasaki), mother of two small children, who is much in need of parenting skills herself, since she neglects her own children. When Eriko’s daughter is (wrongfully) suspected of stealing money at school, we meet her class teacher Megumi, who, like Eriko, is immature and has no idea how install discipline at school. After a terrible incident, Yoshido offers support to Eriko and her children, giving them paid jobs in her shop, and helps to straighten out the young teacher. But when she learns that the missing boat and the corpses of its crew have been found, she leaves in desperation. Left alone, Eriko burns a light in the boathouse each night, looking sadly over the waives. AS

LFF 15.10. 20.15 ICA, 18.10. 15.15 NFT2

Dearest (Qin Ai De) (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Peter Ho-Sun Chan; Cast: Huang Bo, Zhao Wei, Hao Dei; China/Hong Kong 2014, 130 min.

China’s social woes have been evoked by many films of late. This years Berlinale winner Black Coal, Thin Ice was a recent example of how the hurried introduction of capitalism is costing lives, loosening family ties and setting ordinary citizens against each other in the ruthless pursuit of material gain. Peter Ho Sun’s DEAREST deals with a particular macabre excess of Chinas’ neo-capitalism: organised child abduction.

Ho-Sun (Comrades, Almost a Love Story) takes his time introducing the main protagonists in this subtle and delicately told story of three harrowing abduction experiences: Tian (Bo) runs a small shop cum internet-café in Shenzen, he is looking after his little son Pengpeng, having gained custody, since his divorced wife Lu (Dei) was deemed an unsuitable mother by the courts. But it is Tian who is responsible for his son running away, chasing after his mother’s car after she dropped him off after her visiting day. Tian and Lu reunite, trying to find the boy. They discover that the kidnapping of children is a lucrative business in China, run by many organised groups. A huge number of bereft parents have founded support groups where they meet to console each other and travel all over the country when an abduction group is caught by the police, showing the criminals pictures of their children, asking (mostly in vain) if they have seen them. The leader of the support group, Tian and Lu join is helpful but his wife is near breaking point, looking for their son for over six years. Finally the couple ask for a death certificate for their son (under China’s “One Child per Family” they need this to have another child). Eventually they track down their son Pengpen 13 hours by train away from Shenzen. His “mother” Li ((Wei), literally fights them as they scramble away with the child. It turns out, that Li’s husband has not only abducted Pengpeng, but also a little girl, brought up as Pengpeng’s sister but their struggle is far from over.

The most interesting part of DEAREST is the second of the well-crafted narratives with an unexpected twist in the tale. Shot on the widescreen, bleached-out visuals show squalor everywhere with an atmosphere of pervading desperation as civilisation breaks down into an amoral dystopia: Tian looses his shop whilst still looking for his son because the owner of the building has increased the rent. Li has to sleep with a stranger and work for a lawyer, trying to get her ‘daughter’ back. Lu’s new husband leaves her after she has found her son again, because he does not want to support Pengpeng. The organised child abducting groups are only the tip of the iceberg: this is a society self-destructing in the greedy pursuit of even the smallest profit. Zhao Wei’s Li is particularly impressive in this human, passionate but never sentimental portrait of an emotional wilderness, ruled by inhuman greed and soulless bureaucracy. AS

LFF Mon 13, 14.45. VUE5, TUE 14.10. 18.15 CINE LUMIERE

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 19 OCTOBER 2014

Madame Bovary (2014) | London Film Festival

Dir.: Sophie Barthes; Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Rhys Ifans, Ezra Miller, Logan Marshall Green, Henry Lloyd-Hughes

UK/Belgium, 118 min.

Few would argue that Claude Chabrol’s 1991 version of Madame Bovary is the definitive film version of Flaubert’s masterpiece – the same goes for Isabelle Huppert’s Emma. Sophie Barthes, the first woman director to tackle the classic, delivers something entirely different – as does Mia Wasikowska as Emma. Barthes’ MADAME BOVARY relies on a detached way of story telling told very through visuals, helped by Wasikowska’s equally cool but layered performance – her Emma does not want our sympathy, let alone pity. The widescreen camera helps the contemplative way Barthes choses her narrative to develop: this is not so much a drama, but more a chronicle of a failed liberation. Barthes’ Emma is truly independent, her motto is: life should give us more than our dreams, not less. Wasikowska translates this into the most un-tragic Emma imaginable, in her most triumphant performance to date.

After growing up in a drab and regimented convent, Emma hopes that her marriage will elevate her into a world of social success and passionate love. But her husband, the well meaning but very limited village physician Charles (Lloyd-Hughes), is only interested in practical matters. He is happy with his place and station in life – something Emma is not. Enveigled by the unctuous charms of Monsieur Lheureux (Ifans), the local trader, she tries to buy a lifestyle: chic clothes, drapery and furniture – all on credit. Paul Giamatti has a slim role as the local pharmacist, with a broad American accent, the most noticeable of the native-accented cast. But Charles does not satisfy her lust for life; neither does the young clerk, Leon (Ezra Miller), she toys with on a romantic level, After he moves to Rouen (the city will become Emma’s paradise she never attains), Emma takes up with the Marquis (Marshall Green), who promises her a way out of her misery, only to run away without her. In the end, the bailiffs at the door, Emma tries to barter her body with the obnoxious Lheureux, only to be rebuffed. She takes poison and tragedy ensues.

Emma is the archetypal ‘disillusioned romantic’; wanting permanent excitement and glamour, wild emotions and great settings, not unlike many girls today. The village of Yonville is the anti-thesis of her dreams, whilst the city of Rouen represents all she longs for. Upper class society is where she thinks she belongs: not out of snobbery, but because she can see that this class has the means to direct their lives as a never-ending tableau of entertainment and caprices, like Schnitzler’s “La Ronde”. But Emma has absolute no idea how society functions: apart from being in the wrong class for her ambitions, she is the wrong gender: yes, men like her, because she is attractive – but not even Leon risks his professional success for her – let alone the Marquis, who lives on another planet, far away from her. Filled by dreams and desires, Emma neglects social reality and pays for it, her all-or-nothing attitude is her strength, but also her downfall.

Andrij Parekh’s elegant visuals reflect the world through Emma’s eyes: vibrant and shot through with natural light in Rouen and, by contrast, Yonville is a dire and gloomy hole shrouded in autumnal clouds of melancholy, the near- retarded villagers are shown in a permanent half-light.
Men fail Emma all for different reasons: she is up against a world of them, but is always true to her heart. AS

LFF 13.10 15.00 OWE2

The Imitation Game (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Morten Tyldum; Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance; UK/USA 2014, 114 min.

Tyldum’s moving biographical feature tells the story of the most unsung hero of British wartime and scientific history. Alan Turing (1912-1954), not only (nearly) single-handedly cracked the code of the German Enigma machine during WWII in Bletchley, shortening the war and saving millions of lives, but his Turing machine was also the first digital computer. THE IMITATION GAME explains why he didn’t become the household name he deserved to be: a sad tale then of a genius betrayed by an ungrateful country and a bigoted establishment.

For once, the use of dramatic liberty used in the narrative of this drama is legitimised by the fact that only such an artistic approach will ensure that Turing’s legacy is made known to a wider public. The events of Turing’s life are played out on three levels: the largest part is obviously reserved for his work on Enigma; his boyhood experience, the bullying and first crush on a boy called Christopher at Public School, and finally, his rather sordid end in Manchester, were he was convicted of indecency and chose a hormonal treatment, otherwise known as chemical castration, as an alternative to a two-year stretch in jail. After a year of treatment, Turing committed suicide, in love with his ‘Machine’, which he named – like the Enigma code breaker – ‘Christopher’.

Cumberbatch plays Turing as an eccentric often arrogant but usually reserved man, who is socially awkward, dissociating himself more or less from emotional life and his fellow humans; finding solace only in numbers and their application. He loved his own company and we frequently see him running long distance – the real Turing was a gifted marathon runner, nearly qualifying for the London Olympics in 1948. His time at Bletchley is memorable for his relationship with the cryptographer, Joan Clarke (Knightley), who wants to marry him, being unfazed by Turing’s self-confessed homosexuality. The two outsiders (Clarke was the only women in the team of ‘Hut 8’ were the code breakers worked), found solace in each other’s company, but Turing was unable to have a close relationship with anybody, regardless of their gender, and he broke off their engagement. The film overplays the rivalry between Turing and Hugh Alexander (Goode), who was the team leader of ‘Hut 8’, but Turing was hardly interested in the administrative duties this post brought with it. After Turing’s death Hugh Alexander was adamant that “there should be no question in anyone’s mind that Turing’s work was the biggest factor in ‘Hut 8’ ‘s success”.

After Bletchley, Turing worked on the Turing machine, based on his seminal paper of 1936, which was a modern computer but for its name: “Except for the limitations imposed by their limited memory stores, modern computers have algorithm execution capability equivalent to an universal Turing machine”. In 1948 Turing devised a chess programme, which beat a human player.

Tyldum’s approach is deeply humanistic because he avoids the ‘tortured soul’ treatment, Cumberbatch’s Turing is shown as just marginally off and very capable of psychological insight: “From contradictions you can deduce everything”. Whilst everybody around him could decipher the social niceties of white lies, he was so detached by choice, that he just listened to WHAT was said, making social engagement between him and the rest of society difficult. Knightley plays Clarke with the same understatement, her isolation caused by gender, Turing being the first man, who took her seriously as a scientist. The wartime atmosphere is lovingly recreated with great attention to detail. The camera encircles Turing and Clarke from above, as if finding specimens of particular interest in an experiment. In spite of some (perhaps unavoidable) clichés, THE IMITATION GAME is the rare exception of a mainstream movie not selling out. AS

LFF 9.10. 15.15 OWE2, 10.10. 20.45 HACKNEY

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 19 OCTOBER 2014

Nagima (2013) | BFI London Film Festival

Director/Writer: Zhanna ISSABAYEVA

Cast: Dina Tukubayeva, Galina Pyanova, Aidar Mukhametzhanov

80min KAZAKH, RUSSIAN – Drama – KAZAKHSTAN 80 min Russian with subtitles

Belonging, being wanted and loved are universal themes that Kazakh director, Zhanna Issabayeva, explores in this stark but affecting piece of social realism. Echoing Danis Tanovic’s Golden Bear winner An Incident in the Life of an Iron Picker, its heroine is ugly, passive and insecure but there is a stark beauty and nihilism about her wretched scenario that makes for compelling viewing right through to the shocking finale.

In a devastated industrial wasteland somewhere in Kazakhstan, Nagima, (Dina Yukubayeva) a young migrant worker is abused daily in the kitchens of a local restaurant, by a Kasakh equivalent of Gordon Ramsey. At night, she is greeted by social alienation in an iron shack, the TV her only companion apart from neighbours, Ninka (Galina Pyanova) a pragmatic Kazakh prostitute, and pregnant Anya (Mariya Nezhentseva), another immigrant.

When Anya goes into early labour, the girls rush her to the local hospital where they receive short-shrift from the portly ‘jobsworth’ matron who demands documentation. But a doctor takes pity on Anya, who dies delivering a baby girl. This tragedy sparks Nagima to seek out her own biological mother; another unsympathetic female who offers no comfort or shoulder to cry. Inured to the pain of rejection, the worn-down Nagima then turns to her on/off boyfriend, Abai, whose tentative message of love, prompts her to return to the orphanage in a bid to adopt Anya’s baby. Here again, she meets rejection from the ‘powers that be’ but leaves with baby Mila, with the putative idea of finally creating a family for the three of them. The unremitting pessimism is relieved by Sayat Zhangazinov’s able cinematography and a pared-down minimalist aesthetic which at one point sets Nagima on the summit of a vast grey concrete hillside, emphasising her fragility and insignificance in the scheme of things. In this vast and hostile terrain, the cast perform with a purity of expression completely devoid of histrionics, allowing space and serenity to contemplate the desperate struggle of these hapless individuals in this humanist portrait. MT

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Moebius (2013) | DVD release

Director: Kim Ki-duk

Cast: Lee Eun-woo, Cho Jae-hyun, Seo Young-ju

Drama Korea

After his triumphal Golden Lion win (in 2012) with Pietà, a vile drama about maternal incest – Korean maverick, Kim Ki-duk, again shocked audiences with another stomach-turning and frank tale of familial dysfunction in the shape of Moebius. Kim took the knife several times to his own film, in order to obtain a release certificate. Digging deep into the dark, obsessive side of the Korean psyche, Moebius is certainly a difficult film to watch and several viewers found it too much to bear, leaving in disgust. Suffice to say, it involves genital mutilation (0f a teenage boy) and incest (again) by his mother (Lee Eun-woo). The boy in question (Seo Young-ju) is castrated by his mother in a strange act of revenge after she discovers her husband’s infidelity. Quite how the mother’s female thought process come to inflict this vicarious punishment on her son, is difficult to fathom. But feeling guilty on both counts, the appalled father (Cho Jae-hyun) offers his own member for a transplant. Not only is this possibly the most strident form of self-sacrifice, it’s also the most painful one, but remember, we are in Korea. The father then begins an obsessive trawl through internet sites in order to instruct himself in methods of ‘self-surgery’, or, in this case, self-mutilation.

The operation is a success but the patient becomes the unfortunate object of his mother’s sexual attraction. Not only this, but, in a voracious twist, she also plays a supporting role as a shopkeeper who then sleeps with the father and his son. Sexual arousal is very much the prime focus of this drama, but not in a good way. Entirely silent (apart from the odd distraught howl) the film feels like an endurance test made all the more effective in its mental torture by its almost complete wordlessness. Not recommended for the feint of heart. MT

Now on general release. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival 2013

[youtube id=”gG4kaGZah1M” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Casa Grande (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Fellipe Barbosa

Cast: Thales Cavalcanti, Marcello Noaves, Suzanne Pires, Clarissa Pinheiro, Bruna Amaya, Alice Melo

Brazil 2014, 114 min.

Fellipe Barbosa’s feature film debut is somewhere between late Buñuel and a Brazilian “Telenovela”. Family and servants living in the great villa the title refers to, will undergo a fundamental change during the detail-obsessed narrative, painting rich psychological portraits of downfalls and awakenings.

In Rio, we first see Hugo (Noaves), the patriarch, climbing out of the pool, surveying the mansion with a certain angst. His wife Sonia, a catholic from France, is the bearer of standards – mostly from the beginning of the last century. Their teenage children Jean (Cavalcanti) and Nathalie (Melo), try to hide their transgressions from the parents, particularly the randy Jean, who cosies up to the attractive maid Rita (Pinheiro) at night.

Gradually we learn the reason for Hugo’s anxiety: the family is bankrupt, and soon the driver Severino – a replacement father figure for Jean – has to go. When Sonia discovers pornographic photos of Rita in her son’s bedroom, she finds a good excuse to sack her too. And after the cook follows the exodus, Sonia has to start selling cosmetics to make ends meet. But these sacrifices are not enough: we see Hugo showing the villa to a potential buyer. Jean, left to his own devices, drops out of his high school exams at private school and starts looking for the servants in ‘favelas’: his real family.

The camera shows meticulously the objects in the family home, and the relationship the adults have with them. The same goes for the parents’ relationship with the servants: racial and class barriers are huge, even though Sonia pretends otherwise. The parents’ power lies in their status symbols (house and servants) and when Jean understands that both are gone, he is free from parental power, since love was never part of the bargain. Whilst the family interactions are convincing, Jean’s short relationship with Luiza, another student, who argues in favour of the new law for “University Quotas for students from public schools”, is just a pandering to political correctness. Jean is only interested in members of a lower social class if there’s something in it for him.

Newcomer, Cavalcanti is brilliant in his raw performance of a permanently lustful teenager, he could easily be from a Truffaut film. Noaves’ Hugo is a fine portrait of a materialist, unable to function without house and servants, but too cowardly to accept his limitations, whilst Melo’s Sonia really belongs to the world of Buñuel/Visconti: unable to hide her transparent emotions when her husband puts his arm around her in bed, she viciously rubbishes his advances, hissing “can’t you see, I’m praying”. CASA GRANDE is a lively portrait of a society torn apart by race and class, a sort of South American “Götterdämmerung”. AS

LFF 10.10. 12.00 VUE5, 12.10. 15.30 MAYFAIR, 14.10. 18.15 Ritzy

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Macondo (2014) Berlinale 2014

Director: Sudabeh Mortezai

Ramasan Minkailov, Aslan Elbiev, Kheda Gazieva, Rosa Minailova

93min German and Chechen Drama

Berlinale 2014 was awash with really good films about children, particularly boys. MACONDO was one of the best. The feature debut of Iranian doc-director Sudabeh Mortezai, it’s a quietly observed cinema verité piece that looks at the life of a young Chechen boy, Ramasan Minkailov, growing up in Vienna with his mother Aminat (Kheda Gazieva)and siblings. Already the head of the household in his nuclear family (his father was killed by in Chechnya) to the Austrian authorities he’s still very much a child.

The weight of responsibility lies heavily on his shoulders and is reflected in the stern seriousness of his boyish face, etched with the trauma of memories of the past: it’s a subtle yet moving performance from such a young actor. Already his peers are resorting to petty thieving but Ramasan takes his responsibilities seriously and his cue from the elders of the community and, in particular, his neighbour. When Isa (Aslan Elbiev), an old friend of his father turns up, he’s on his guard; slow to trust and sceptical of the interloper. As the slow-burning narrative moves forward, Ramasan’s vulnerable childhood morphs into hard-edged, impulse young adulthood with a suspenseful intensity that allows plenty of space for reflection; uncertain of how matters will unfold. Sudabeh Mortezai’s drama is cleverly-scripted, skilfully-crafted and sensitively-performed MT

MACONDO SCREENING IN COMPETITION AT BERLINALE 2014 and at the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL until 19 October 2014

GÜEROS (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Alonso Ruizpalacios; Cast: Sebastian Aguirre, Tenoch Huerta, IIlse Salas, Leonardo Ortizgris

Mexico 2014, 106 min.

When Tomas (Aguirre), a rebellious teenager from Veracruz, is sent to study in Mexico city with his big brother Sombra (Huerta), his family back home could not have foreseen the chaos he would encounter. Living in a soulless high rise block, Sombra, buries himself in his ‘thesis’ with a great deal of white noise. Whilst the students in Mexico City are on strike, Sombra and his flat mate Santos (Ortizgris) have declared themselves “on strike from the strike”, they steal electricity from their neighbours and escape in an old car on a journey that leads nowhere, but is vibrant and emotionally all-consuming.

Ruizpalacios’ debut film is the closest to “Nouvelle Vague” we’ve seen for a long time. The monochrome camera is inventive, bordering on the manic, the actors don’t take themselves very seriously, neither does the director: occasionally darting into the frame, he asks the actors what they think about the script (“not very much”), and criticise contemporary Mexican cinema, “where they grab beggars from the street, film in black and white and try to impress French critics.”

GÜEROS has a loosely structured narrative. There are some interesting subplots but overall the actors get more or less lost in the big city. The men are later joined by Ana, one of the student’s leaders, adored by the very shy Sombra. Avoiding tidy solutions to anything, the director keeps the emotional level very high, always engaging the audience: the small, mostly aborted missions they embark on give the film enough drive. And there are always new surprises: when the four of them visit the Zoo, Ana shows Sombra a tiger. But Sombra suffers from panic attacks and is plagued by tigers in his nightmares – and quotes a Rilke poem about a caged panther. The reason for their Zoo visit is Epigmenio Cruz, a singer, the brothers’ father adored. But Cruz is an alcoholic, and the stories told about him – he made Bob Dylan cry – are much more interesting than the man himself.

There is a nice elliptic structure to the film: it starts with Tomas throwing a balloon filled with water from a roof terrace in Veracuz, hitting a baby in the pram; later the quartet find themselves lost in a rough neighbourhood in Mexico City, and a kid throws a brick from a bridge, shattering the windscreen of their car. DOP Damian Garcia very zooms in very close, and sometimes, like in a scene were Sombra imagines a snow storm in the car, Garcia blurs the edges of the image, as in films of the silent era. The acting is spontaneous with humour echoing the early short film collaborations of Truffaut and Godard, before they became serious. Filmaking feels like fun for Ruizpalacios and his cast. AS

LFF 9.10. 18.30 NFT3, 12.10. 18.30 Ritzy

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Effie Gray (2014)

Director: Richard Laxton

Writer: Emma Thompson

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Emma Thompson, Greg Wise, Julie Walters, John Suchet, Claudia Cardinale, Riccardo Scamarcio, Robbie Coltrane, Derek Jacobi

108min Drama UK

The name of John Ruskin is nowadays synonymous with socialist ideals and a College for educationally-challenged adults in Oxford. In Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner, Ruskin comes across as a sparky intellectual art critic but in Richard Laxton’s Effie Gray, he is something far more dark and sinister: a cowering narcissist with undercurrents of misogyny. Emma Thompson has written another winning script for this enjoyable slice of Victorian English social history, suffused with the intense colours, finely-detailed interiors and dramatic paintings of the pre-Raphaelite era. Dakota Fanning makes for a cool-headed and haunting heroine as Euphemia (Effie) Gray, a figure of purity and feminine empowerment. Betrothed in marriage to John Ruskin (Greg Wise) from an early age, she goes like a lamb to the slaughter from her impoverished Scottish home to Ruskins’ family villa in South London, presided over by his severe and suffocating mother (a beady-eyed Julie Walters) and draconian father (a saturnine John Suchet).

Despite her initial joy at joining a wealthy and respectable family, all is not well. Hothoused by his strict parents since childhood, Greg Wise’s Ruskin emerges an impotent loner, despite his affable public persona. After a disastrous wedding night, Effie descends into despair; emotionally sickened by the strictures of this tightly-regimented Victorian household. Emma Thompson steals the show as the elegant and vivacious patron of the Arts Lady Eastlake. With her handsome husband Sir Charles, she provides upbeat contrast to the deeply dysfunctional Ruskins, and a supportive shoulder to cry on for the beleaguered Effie.

The stifling scenes at the Ruskins are lightened by luminous appearances where Lady Eastwick lends maternal support and a magical trip to Venice where Claudia Cardinale and Riccardo Scarmarcio play host to the newlyweds, as Viscountess and Rafael, in a dreamlike sequence of masqued balls and midnight escapades. While Ruskin stays firmly behind closed doors in their Venetian Palazzo, Effie falls for Rafael’s sultry charms in an episode that sparks a growing sexual obsession in the young woman who is clearly desperate for some action between the sheets but also acutely aware of her social position, staying faithful to Ruskin despite the obvious temptations of the exotic interlude.

When pre-Raphaelite’s artist Everett Milais is commissioned to paint Ruskin, the trio head to the Highlands where Millais and Effie grow close as Ruskin recedes into his work in the croft, between sittings. As Millais, Tom Sturridge gives a gently stirring portrait of the tortured artist who reaches out to Effie’s plight. Best known for his TV work on Eastenders and The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, director Richard Laxton’s grim portrait of Victorian England at the height of the Empire and the nadir of womens’ rights is watchable and immersive, probing Ruskin’s remarkable story with intelligence and insight. Dakota Fanning’s compelling performance as Effie shows a determination to overcome her desperate situation in this touching take on repression and redemption. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 10 OCTOBER 2014

You and The Night (2013) Les Rencontres d’apres Minuit

Dir: Yann Gonzalez Writers: Yann Gonzalez, Rebecca Zlotowski

Cast: Kate Moran, Niels Schneider, Nicolas Maury, Eric Cantona, Beatrice Dalle

98min Comedy Drama

First films are rarely as self-assured as Yann Gonzalez’s LES RENCONTRES D’APRES MINUIT (YOU AND THE NIGHT). As it is always the case for French filmmakers, there is something to fall back on: in this case the surrealism of Robbe-Grillet or the poetic realism of Jean Cocteau. Gonzalez borrows heavily but puts his contemporary stamp on it. Ali (Kate Moran) and Mathias (Niels Schneider) have been lovers for over hundred years. To celebrate, aptly supported by their bi-sexual Maid (Nicolas Maury, they give a party inviting the Stud (Eric Cantona), the Star (Fabienne Babe), the Slut (Julie Bremond) and the Teenager (Alain Fabian Delon). All play their roles against type, and lots of contradictory emotions emerge. But there is always enough wit, particularly from the Maid, to prevent it all becoming too serious: this is after all a film about sexual hang-ups and how to deal with them. In the end, Matthias opts out of eternal life but Ali and her Maid immediately recruit his successor: the angel faced Teenager. An entertaining cameo from Beatrice Dalle as the ‘male’ Police commissioner who tries to have his way with his prisoners, is also worth a mention. What makes YOU AND THE NIGHT so entertaining (and that is its main objective), are the aesthetics that conjure up a nightly garden of rich dreamscapes in which the main characters act out their phantasies. True, surrealism and poetic realism play their part in the jamboree but the filmmaker makes it quite clear that this is the 21st Century, where everything is possible. Apart from the brilliant sets and the innovative camera-work, the ensemble work is outstanding, helping to cover some weaknesses in an uneven script. In many ways, a real eye opener. AS

On general release on 3rd October with a DVD release on 10th November 2014

Dukhtar (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Afia Nathaniel

Cast: Samiya Mumtaz, Mohib Mirza, Saleha Aref; Pakistan/ Norway/USA 2014, 93 min.

In contemporary Pakistan two warlords decide to make peace: the price of the alliance will be paid by 12-year old Zainab (Aref), who is to be married to man who could easily be her grandfather. But Zainab’s mother Allah Rakhi (Mumtaz), herself a victim of an arranged marriage to a man who isolates her and does not allow her to see even her own mother, flees with the child from the village. The warlords, disgraced by their own code of honour, both send their men out to hunt the two women. With the help of the truck driver Sohail (Mirza), they escape into the mountains, where they hide. But Rakhi wants to see her own mother who now lives in Lahore. Sohail drives them there, knowing that the warlords have not given up their chase.

The great mountain landscape of North Pakistan is the background to this moving and superbly cinematic tale. Whilst the men drive modern cars and use every electronic device available, they still rule women like cattle. And they fight viciously to keep their rights in the so-called ‘honour’ code. Zainab is clearly underage, but everyone maintains silence about the brutal consequences of her proposed marriage. Everybody – apart from Rakhi.

First time director Nathaniel focuses mainly on the relationship between the women; Sohail, even though he is putting his own life at risk, is somehow left out of the narrative: all men are an enigma to women like Rakhi, who is carrying the burden of endless generations of Muslim women in this region – victims of brutal male violence, that is not even camouflaged by religious excuses. This is an immersive drama with convincing performances from the central characters as the camera oscillates between widescreen panorama shots of the towering mountains and intimate close-ups of the women in fear for their life. Well-crafted on a tight budget, DUKHTAR is a cry for help, a cry that should be listened to. AS

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Charlie’s Country (2013) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Rolf de Heer; Cast: David Gulpilil, Peter Djigirr, Luke Ford; Australia 2014, 108 min

David Gulpilil won Best Actor ‘Un Certain Regard’ at Cannes this year for his portrayal of Charlie. Its his third collaboration with helmer, Rolf de Heer, after The Tracker and Ten Canoes, but this time, Gulpilil also co-wrote the script, making CHARLIE’S COUNTRY more personal, and autobiographical. Charlie, a ‘blackfella’ lives in Arnhem Land community, another name for reservation. Alcohol here is strictly forbidden, so is the possession of “deadly” weapons. Charlie and his friend Pete (Djigirr) are guilty on both counts, losing not only their weapons (spear and gun), but also the buffalo they have shot. Because Charlie can’t stomach much of the white men’s food, this incident is particularly vexing for him: he had helped the police, led by the friendly but strict Luke (Ford), to find white lawbreakers – in return for nothing. As a result, Charlie decides to leave the community for a life in the wild. Initially all goes well; he catches fish and enjoys his freedom. But torrential rainstorms affect his already damaged lungs and Pete assists in getting him to a Darwin hospital. There he meets another Aboriginal from Arnhem, who is dying. Charlie discharges himself and meets some “long grassers”, homeless Aborigines, who drink and smoke, living homeless in the parks of the city. When the police arrive to arrest them Charlie takes a shovel and smashes the windshield of their car. Sentenced to time in prison, he returns to Arnhem after his release, to teach the young Aborigine boys to dance – something Charlie did himself in front of the Queen at the opening of the Sydney Opera House.

This is a film about identity: Gulpilil, the most famous Aboriginal face on screen since he appeared as a 16year-old in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, is very hard on himself because the prison sequence here is autobiographical. Gulpilil does not shrink away from his own failings, he is adamant to be held responsible for his actions. His face alone, seemingly cut in stone, speaks volumes. Proud and melancholic at the same time, it tells about the long struggle for cultural identity in a country taken away from Aborigines by White settlers, who proudly consider themselves superior to Gulpilil and his fellow men and women. But his sense of identity is unbroken, even in prison he is neither cowed or intimidated. This is not only a film about ethnographical issues, but a poem, when spoken in Gulpilil’s own language, Yolngu. CHARLIE’S COUNTRY is a testament to permanent resistance, not glorious at all, but David Gulpilil is still walking tall. AS

LFF 9.10. 21.00 NFT1 11.10. 15.00 OWE1 and then on general release

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Kelly & Cal (2014) |BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Jen McGowan Cast: Juliette Lewis, Johnny Weston, Josh Hopkins, Cybil Shephard, Lucy Owen; USA 2013, 110 min.

Debut features don’t come much more assured and risk-free than Jen McGowan”s bitter-sweet nearly-love story between Kelly (Lewis), a thirty something housewife, struggling with a new born baby, and Cal, half her age, wheel-chair bound after an recent accident. Kelly met her husband Josh (Hopkins) at art school, but now Josh is working an advertising, well aware that he has signed over his life (and, to a large extent, Kelly’s) to the corporate world – making neither of them happy, in spite of a their affluent lifestyle. Baby Jackson prefers his Dad to his Mum; the latter feeling even more depressed when Josh’s mother (Shephard) and sister Julie (Owen) turn up nearly every day to give the new mother unwelcome tips: how to change her sad life into that of a conceited member of the middle-class. After meeting Cal, who is rather rude to begin with, Kelly does discovers her 18year old self: a rebellious member of a girl band, which obviously impresses Cal. Whilst Josh slaves away in the city and has little time for chat (never mind sex) with his wife, Cal is only to keen to try his luck. Stripping in front of the window, looking down at the gasping Cal, Kelly oversteps the boundary, and Josh moves out with the baby to live with his mother.

The narrative starts out fresh and sometimes daring, even though some might consider scenes with Kelly riding on Cal’s lap in the wheelchair rather corny. But the longer this particular ménage-a-trois goes on, the more it calls for the Kleenex. In the end, every real conflict is drowned in sentimentality and pseudo-reconciliation. Everybody goes back to the starting position “trying harder” being the solution. This way, the status quo is confirmed, as in all “serious” Hollywood movies. Instead of producing the free flowing tears of the protagonists as an answer to their central dilemma, the director should have questioned why, just for a nice house and designer furniture, do Kelly and Josh have to sacrifice their love for each other. Having started out together at art school, they are now a millions miles away from the life they really wanted. Does the (limited) material security the Corporation offers really justify a life style that betrays their original aspirations?

Juliette Lewis is slightly over the top in her exuberant portrayal of an ’18 year old in love”. Hopkins’ Josh is a little too passive before his outburst, and whilst Weston manages the bravado of a teenager, it is difficult to see any real hurt, only bad-tempered anger. Shephard’s mother and Owen’s bitchy sister are by far less one-dimensional than the main protagonists. The camerawork is slick and effective in portraying the world of advertising: interior designs and cars feature prominently. Will Mc Gowan’s second film push the boundaries out a little further? AS

LFF: 9.10. 18.15 Hackney, 10.10. 18.00 VUE5, 11.10. VUE7

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Viktoria (2014) | London Film Festival

Dir.: Maya Vitkova; Cast: Irmena Chichikeva, Daria Vitkova, Kalina Vitkova, Dimo Dimev, Mariana Krumova, Georgi Spasov; Bulgaria/Rumania 2014, 155 min.

First time director/writer Maya Vitkova has managed to create a stunning debut film, which overwhelms the audience with its aesthetic brilliance and epic narrative, a mixture a hyperrealism and political slapstick. In Bulgaria in the late seventies and Boryana (Chichikeva), a librarian, and her husband Ivan (Dimov), a doctor, are living with Boryana’s mother (Krumova) in a tiny flat and all sharing a bedroom. Boryana feels no allegiance to her mother who she calls “a party member, not a mother” and wants desperately to escape to the West. When Boryana gets pregnant, she tries, in vain, to get rid of the child, chain-smoking to the end of term. Symbolically, little Viktoria is born without a belly-button – which is seized upon by the authorities as a proof of communist superiority: Viktoria is declared to be “Baby of the Decade” and communicates with Bulgaria’s President Zhivkov (Spasov) via a personal phone line. Her parents too are given privileges: a car and a new flat.

All if this makes Boryana even more bitter and resentful, since her emigration plans are squashed. As she grows more distant from her daughter that even her own mother; Viktoria, played at different ages by Daria and Kalina Vitkova, develops into an arrogant young girl well aware that a phone call to Zhivkov could mean punishment to everyone crossing her – including her own parents. But all this comes to an end in 1979, Viktoria cutting symbolically the phone line to Zhivkov after his last message: “It’s all over”. Her parents separate and Viktoria moves in with her maternal grandmother, who, unable to speak after a stroke, can only communicate in writing. After the old woman dies, Boryana shows great care in preparing the body for the funeral, a gesture too late, but nevertheless moving.

The narrative is intercut with newsreel sequences from the communist past: instead of being awe-inspiring they are revealed for what they really were: slapstick comedy at its best. But the grip of the Stalinist regimes on the psyche of their population was anything but laughable: the material depravation was nothing compared with the emotional repression. Vitkova shows this vicious cycle: Boryana punishing her daughter with emotional neglect, just to get even with her own mother. Husband Ivan is shown as a mild, but cowardly figure, which mainly stays on the periphery of the narrative. Viktoria is the only member of her family who tries to come to term with her loveless upbringing, trying to learn from her mother and grandmother. But Vitkova leaves no doubt that the trauma of the past needs a long time to heal – and that a greater access to material goods might be more of a hindrance than a solution. Filmed with diffuse lighting, the suberb cast, particularly Chichikeva, enact a “Trauerspiel” which is both emotionally moving and enlightening. Vitkova delivers a mature epic, original and innovative, but always concerned with delivering its humanistic message.AS

LFF 12.10. 20.20 NFT 3, 14.10. 15.15 ICA

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

FRENCH RIVIERA (L’HOMME QUE L’ON AIMAIT TROP) 2014 | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Andre Téchiné

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Guillaume Canet, Adele Haenel, Judith Chemla

France 2014, 116 min.

Sometimes the subject matter defeats even the best directors: Andre Téchiné is a veteran of French cinema and his emotional dramas have almost always delivered something special. But this time milieu and protagonists have defeated him: based a real events (every director should see this as a red light), his story of love and death in seventies Cote d’Azur is tacky and superficial.

Catherine Deneuve gives a rather flat performance as Renée Le Roux, fighting a battle with a gangster, Fratoni, who wants to take control of her Casino in Nice. But when her recently divorced daughter Agnès (Haenel) appears on the scene and falls in love with her mother’s close advisor, the attorney Maurice Angelet (Canet), Le Roux quickly appoints another righthand man; whereupon Angelet turns against her, making Agnès vote against her mother in a shareholders meeting. Shortly afterwards Agnes disappears in mysterious circumstances. What follows is a tale of double-crossing and intrigue that sees the case re-opened at Le Roux’s behest thirty years later, although without conclusion.

The emotional fallout of the rich in this luxurious environment of the Cote d’Azur is hard to stomach, as they ham their way through this character study of unspooling of trust, love and betrayal.. The general lack of subtlety makes for a claustrophobic drama resembling “Dallas” on occasion. Worst of all, Téchiné seems to have no distance from the class he is portraying – one can only imagine what Chabrol would have made of the same scenario. Despite the magnificent settings, this is a banal and trite melodrama, lacking in contrast or any interest for general audiences outside France. AS

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

LFF: 8.10. 18.00 NT1, 9.10. 20.45. Cine Lumiere, 11.10. 15.00 VUE5

10,000 KM (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Carlos Marques-Marcet; Cast: Natalia Tena, David Verdaguer;

Spain 2014, 99 min.

Beautifully acted with the camera successfully integrating all electronic media into the narrative, this is a slim but convincing example of a relationship drama that explores the limits of the male psyche. In painting a picture of unrelenting patriarchy in a world which has changed so dramatically, Carlos Marques-Marcet is always inventive and original in examining the couple’s interaction, showing that distance is not the real reason for the stand-off in their relationship.

We meet Alex (Tena) and Sergi (Verdaguer) first in their flat in Barcelona, making passionate love, trying for a baby. After their exhausting love making, the electronic world intrudes not for the last time: Alex, a photographer, is offered a residency at LA, a last chance for her flagging career. Sergi, a music teacher, who has to succeed in some board examination coming up soon, is at first dead against her move, but gathers himself and agrees. After all it’s just 12 month – and with the help of Skype, Facebook and Internet they hope to be well enough connected, to keep their relationship going. At least that is what they believe.

At first, all goes to plan, thanks to Skype, Sergi learns everything about Alex’s new environment. But than, thanks to over-sharing of her Facebook updates, he learns “that she could stay forever in this city”. Doubts starts to germinate in Sergi’s mind, not helped by Alex forgetting his examination, which he fails miserably. Whilst Alex is being more and more absorbed by her professional world, Sergi struggles with his loneliness, shutting himself up in the flat. Finally he snaps, destroying their favourite vinyl record and other memorabilia in front of the Skype eye, with Alex watching tearfully. A short truce is then jeopardised when it becomes inevitable that she might have to stay longer in LA. Emotional blackmail is followed by Sergi suddenly turning up at Alex’ doorstep. Their whisky- fuelled lovemaking is short and brutal – the opposite of their first tender encounter we shared.

Social media destabilises Sergi and his rampant possessiveness takes over. As long as he feels in charge, he gives Alex the freedom she needs. But after failing professionally himself, he wants her back home, to prop him up, blackmailing her emotionally. When she does not give in, he reacts with panic. He is, like many males, unable to live with a woman who might be more professional successful in their professionally than himself. As their bond unravels, the couple have to find a new way back into their relationship. AS

LFF 9.10. 21.00 Rich Mix, 10.10. 21.00 NFT1, 12.10. 12.45 VUE7

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

4 Reasons to visit the 10th London Spanish Film Festival 2014

The 10th London Spanish film festival kicks off on 25 September with a varied programme of events in the Cine Lumiere and Instituto Cervantes. Here is a selection of films we recommend:

STELLA CADENTE | Falling Star

Dir: Luis Minarro, with Lorenzo Balducci, Alex Batllori, Alex Brendemuhl, Gonzalo Cunil, Lola Duenas | 105 min | Spanish with Subt

STELLA CADENTE is as timely as it is flippant. Though historical periods are seldom fully analogous, Spain once again finds itself in political and economic disorder, and Miñarro’s film had its first of two public screenings at Edinburgh just days after the ascension to the Spanish throne by Felipe Carlos, following father Juan’s recent abdication. Even at an unjustifiably lengthy 110 minutes, though, STELLA CADENTE eschews the greater intricacies of its historical backdrop. For the most part, it’s instead an unfussily light-hearted affair, featuring musical interludes, tripod-fixed longueurs, matter-of-fact homoerotic desire and the incongruous minutiae of a rococo social class that doesn’t know what to do with itself.

Wed 1 Oct | 8.30pm | £10 |

10.000 NOCHES EN NINGUNA PARTE | 10,000 Nights Nowhere

Dir. Ramón Salazar, with Andrés Gertrúdix, Susi Sánchez, Lola Dueñas, Najwa Nimri | Spain | 2014 | col | 113 min | cert. 16 | In Spanish with English subtitles

In this high voltage, emotional roller-coaster, a young man tries to escape his deepest fears (and his mother) by making a journey to Paris and Berlin.. Beautifully shot, Salazar’s film experiments with narrative, cinematography, improvisation and script. Indeed, he does everything he can to create a unique experience. A wonderful, engaging film, free of any label.

Mon 29 Sep | 8.30pm | £10, conc. £8

DIOSES Y PERROS | Dioses y perros

Dir. David Marqués and Rafa Montesinos, with Hugo Silva, Megan Montaner, Juan Codina and Elio González | Spain | 2014 | 84 min| In Spanish with English subtitles

Pasca works as a boxing sparrer in an effort to earn some money, having abandoned his promising boxing career when the car he was driving crashed and killed his parents and left his brother in a wheelchair. Daily life is a painful existence, finding small jobs, earning a bit of money, getting his old friends out of trouble, and taking care of his brother. Dioses y perros is a film about facing our fears, getting on in life, finding and accepting love… and, ultimately, about hope.

Followed by a Q&A with actor Hugo Silva and director David Marqués

Wed 1 Oct | 6.30pm | £10, conc. £8

THE FOOD GUIDE TO LOVE | Amor en su punto

Dir. Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri, with Richard Coyle, Leonor Watling, Ciara Bailey and Michelle Beamish | Spain/Ireland | 2013 | 91 min | In English

Richard Coyle plays Oliver Byrne, the ultimate foodie, and The Food Guide to Love, is his ultimate book about food. A connoisseur of fine dining, Oliver became a major success in Ireland thanks to his approach to food writing and his emphasis on the sensual aspect of food. His love life, however, is not as stable as his career, and he has serious problems maintaining relationships. That is, until he meets the Spanish Bibiana… A delicious romantic comedy about love, dreams and mistakes, with some spicy ingredients.

Followed by a Q&A with the directors and actress Leonor Watling

Fri 3 Oct | 8.30pm | £10, conc. £8

10TH LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL 2014 RUNS FROM 25 SEPTEMBER UNTIL 5 OCTOBER 2014

City Visions Festival | 25 September – 8 October 2014

Film meets architecture and urban design in CITY VISIONS (25 September to 8 October) a documentary and feature season showcasing not only the energy and exciting variety of Urban life but also its decay and deprivation. City Visions highlights the need for architecture and urban planning to respond not only to contemporary design and visual ideals but also to the needs of burgeoning globalisation at a time when city growth is at its most explosive. 50% of the earth’s population now lives  in urban centres; a figure that is predicted to rise to over 75% by 2050 as rural workers flock to cities around the world), this is an exciting and timely look at our built environment and follows on from last year’s URBAN WANDERING season.

This mini-festival gets off to a good start with ambitious compendium CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE: the six-part 3D project directed by Wim Wenders, Michael Glawogger, Michael Madsen, Robert Redford, Margreth Olin and Karim Aïnouz which offers startling different responses to the question: “if buildings could talk, what would they say about us?”. The featured buildings are Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin, Germany (Wenders); National Library of Russia, St Petersburg, Russia (Glawogger); Halden Prison, Halden, Norway (Madsen); The Salk Institute, California, USA (Redford); Opera House, Oslo, Norway (Olin); and Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (Ainoux).

In tribute to the late Michael Glawogger, who died earlier this year, there will be a chance to see his extraordinary MEGACITIES – Twelve Stories of Survival – which looks at a group of people living in four gigantic urban agglomerations:

On Friday 26 September, writer and historian Leo Hollis, urban designer Alastair Donald and others will take part in a live debate: Are Cities Good for Us? On Saturday 4 October, a panel discussion about gender and the city will follow a screening of Mikio Naruse’s Tokyo masterpiece WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS.

Other highlights of the season are CAIRO DRIVE (Best Film from the Arab World – Documentary competition – Abu Dhabai Film Festival 2013) followed by a ScreenTalk with filmmaker Sherief Elkatsha and Dr Alisa Lebow. Producer Sarah Arruda will introduce, demonstrate and discuss Kat Cizek’s award-winning interactive project Highrise and the Architecture Foundation will present a ScreenTalk following Heinz Emigholz’ most recent essay: The Airstrip-Decampment of Modernism, Part III.

Additional talks will include author Amit Chaudhuri, introducing THE BIG CITY Satyajit Ray’s panoramic portrait of metropolitan life in 1950’s Calcutta. Detroit-based journalist Rose Hackman will introduce Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s DETROPIA; Istanbul based journalist Constanze Letsch will introduce EKUMENOPOLIS: City Without Limits; and London based architectural and design journalist Herbert Wright will introduce ECOPOLIS CHINA.

There’s be a chance to see CANNES best screenplay winner A TOUCH OF SIN (2013), a drama set in rapidly expanding contemporary China, In LAGOS WIDE AND CLOSE – An Interactive Journey Into An Exploding City, architect Rem Koolhaas and filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak’s study of the Nigerian megalopolis in an attempt to understand the hidden logic that makes a ‘dysfunctional’ city work.

Cult classics will include Eric Rohmer’s LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON as well as Jean Luc Godard’s TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER and Mathieu Kassovitz’s LA HAINE. Filmmaker and author Richard Misek will introduce his documentary ROHMER IN PARIS about the director’s lifelong relationship with the world’s most cinematic city. the season will include Author Richard Martin will introduce David Lynch’s enigmatic LA outing MULHOLLAND DRIVE, while the 10th Anniversary of Thom Andersen’s LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF (recut and remastered) weaves together clips from hundreds of movies to build a fascinating argument about how Hollywood has represented – or misrepresented – LA. Woody Allen’s love-letter to the city MANHATTAN plus the 1921 silent short MANHATTA based on a poem by Walt Whitman depicting a day in New York City from dawn until dusk, and Robert Flaherty’s THE TWENTY FOUR DOLLAR ISLAND, which observes the docks and architecture of Manhattan in 1927. And last but by no means least, lovers of Jem Cohen can enjoy NYC Films featuring 30-years of the renowned music video-maker filming NY. MT

CITY VISIONS FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 25 SEPTEMBER TO 8 OCTOBER 2014 AT LONDON’S BARBICAN CENTRE EC2

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FURTHER REVIEWS AND UPDATES

Human Capital (2014)

Director: Paolo Virzi

Cast: Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Fabrizio Gifuni, Valeria Golino, Matilde Gioli, Guglielmo Pinelli, Giovanni Anzaldo

Italian with subtitles Thriller

Writers: Paolo Virzi, Francesco Bruni, Francesco Piccolo based on a novel by Stephen Amidon

Paolo Virzi is best known in Italy for his savvy comedies (Caterina In The Big City), but there’s nothing to laugh about in this slick character-driven whodunnit that brings the lives of two families into sharp focus after a tragic road accident in the affluent northern city of Como.

Based on Stephen Amidon’s novel, the main reason to see this intelligent and well-dressed thriller is Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s elegant turn as the wife of a wealthy hedge-funder experiencing heavy losses on the markets. Although she glides around in furs and stratospheric heels as Carla Bernaschi, she is also the vulnerable and appealing mother of spoilt son, Massimiliano, and demanding husband Giovanni (Fabrizio Gifuni) often finding it difficult it to decide between a manicure or a chauffeur-driven trip to Prada. But when ‘Giova’ gets involved with an unpleasant social climber, Dino Ossola, who mortgages his house to buy into the Bernaschi’s hedge fund, life becomes more complicated for everyone concerned. Dino’s wife, Roberta, (Valeria Golino) discovers she’s unexpectedly pregnant with twins causing Dino starts to try and extricate himself from increasing funds losses. Meanwhile his daughter Serena (Matildi Gioli) is dating Massimiliano but has recently fallen for another boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

One snowy night a complex mix-up in events leads to the fatal accident but the identity of the culprit is not revealed until the final denouement. Using a clever device of telling the film in four chapters, each from a different character’s point of view, Virzi’s tightly-plotted thriller works extremely well as a gripping drama and a treatise on social politics in contempo Italy. Looking back at the fateful night of the accident that takes place while the characters are sharing a table for the school awards ceremony, each character’s viewpoint cleverly reflects a different aspect of society; from the wealthy but sexually frustrated Carla, to the gauche and greedy Dino so obsessed with making money, he doesn’t realise how ridiculous he looks and his hard-working pregnant wife, The teenagers, meanwhile, give a more edgy insight into the street life and crumbling public face of Italy. Italians wear their money on their backs and social status is reflected here in this provincial dynastic community by displays of wealth in the form of chauffeured limos, uniformed domestic staff and the chic interiors of the Bernaschi home as they vy with other well-known local families to give a good impression, but their social etiquette and thinly-disguised manners soon give way to bitter exchanges when the chips are down. In contrast, the struggling middle-classes are desperately fighting for survival in the crumbling infrastructure of a country already on its knees. MT

The term “human capital” refers to an accident victim’s net worth in compensation claims.

On general release at selected cinemas from 26 September 2014 and dual format from 29 September courtesy of Arrow Films and Video

Jim Jarmusch Collection | Blu-ray restoration

Born in 1953 to middle class parents in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Jim Jarmusch spent his childhood regularly being left in movie theatres to watch matinee double-bills by his mother, a former film critic. In spite of this ploy, his first love was reading, and he majored at Columbia University in English and American Literature in 1975, wanting to become a poet. Instead he went to NY University’s Tisch School of Film, where he met his future partner and co-operator Sara Driver, Tom DiCillio and Spike Lee.

Jarmusch’s graduation film, PERMANENT VACATION (1980) was a great hit in Europe but found no support in his homeland. Starring Christopher Parker as Aloysius Parker, an early slacker who goes by the name of ‘Allie’ –perhaps an abbreviation of ‘Alienated” due to his inability to engage with anybody, he goes through life totally dissociated. This could, in part, be attributed to his mentally ill mother whom he visits in a grubby psychiatric ward in New York. Parker meets the street musician John Lurie, steals a car, and has a meaningful conversation with a popcorn seller who is obsessed by Eskimos. Finally, in autobiographical touch, he sets off for Paris: Jarmusch himself spent his last university year in the French capital. PERMANENT VACATION is without a narrative, it deals with Parker’s encounters with a world he does not understand. Going through life in a slow motion dreamscape, he is, like many Jarmusch heroes, a stranger in this world, and feels comfortable as the permanent outsider.

STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1984) was the first of Jarmusch’ “Triangle-Films”, where eccentric characters feed of each other, taking the narrative not so much forward, but keeping it among themselves. Here, the trio is set in a sort of permanent state of purgatory – rather like a Sartre play, but with much more humour. Willie (John Lurie), is Hungarian born but speaks perfect English, unlike his niece Eva (Esther Balint), who has arrived in New York to be ferried to an aunt in Cleveland by Willie and his friend Eddie (Richard Edson), the latter making his living by playing the horses and cheating at cards. Eva upsets the male comradeship at first, but after she steals food and cigarettes for them, Willie is very much taken by her and buys her a dress. Eva is not impressed: “I think it’s kind of ugly”, she says. After surviving a snow storm, the men deliver Eva to the aunt and Eddie comments on the way back the motto of the film: “It’s kind of funny. You are some place new, and everything looks just the same”. Beguilingly filmed in black and white, the film is composed of single shots each giving way to a black screen.

DOWN BY LAW (1986) is the story of three prison inmates in New Orleans who escape into the swampy Bayou: Roberto (Roberto Benigni), Zack (Tom Watts) and Jack (John Lurie). Roberto is learning English and his hilarious use of the language (via a phrase book), is one of the main attractions of DOWN BY LAW. Zack, a radio DJ, on the run from a miserable relationship and Jack, a pimp equally trying to leave his past behind; may not be the finest of men but Jarmusch gives them every opportunity to find the better part of themselves, in this delightful road movie. But the real star is Robby Müller’s monochrome camera which finds poetic images in this minimalism, driven by interaction rather than narrative. Jarmusch had found his signature style which he would continue to hone until his characters are left bereft of any identity, the minimalism robbing them of attributes; making them pure functionaries of their roles, with the audience finding little to love or hate.

MYSTERY TRAIN (1989) follows a group of disparate characters through an interconnected series of seemingly haphazard events, all linked by a shabby hotel in Memphis. In the first story (“Far from Yokohama”), a pair of Japanese teenagers are on the search for the grails of American pop music, but end up in the Hotel. The second episode (“A Ghost”) features a depressed woman staying in the hotel on the way to the airport, where she will take the coffin with her dead husband back to Italy. The third segment features Steve Buscemi and Joe Strummer as comically inept criminals. Featuring the ghost of Elvis in the middle section, MYSTERY TRAIN is one of Jarmusch’s most innovative aesthetic achievements.

No wonder therefore, that he stayed with this structure for his next outing NIGHT ON EARTH (1991). Five cabbies drive their customers in as many cities around the world: Winona Ryder ferries movie agent Gena Rowland around LA; Armin Müller-Stahl’s passengers are Giancarlo Esposito and Rosie Perezin in NY; Isaach De Bankole takes Beatrice Dalle through Paris; Roberto Benigni shows Paolo Bonacelli Rome and Kaurismaki star Matti Pellonpaa drives his fellow country folks Kari Vaananen, Sakari Kuosmanen and Tomi Slamela in the Finnish capital Helsinki. All the action happens at exactly the same time. Jarmusch captures the glorious night time drives, romantically well-supported by Tom Wait’s songs. The actors are brilliant and Jarmusch again creates his own little universe, separated from everything we might call real. Again, the narratives are just there to make the film hang loosely together.

Robby Müller again shot DEAD MAN (1995) in glorious monochrome, perfectly matched by Neil Young’s soundtrack. Since this Western is Jarmusch’s most narrative-driven film, one understands why he usually chooses different formats. Johnny Depp stars as William Blake, a rather sterile account who travels to a town at the very end of the world in the Wild West, to find a job. After killing a man in self-defence, Christian Bale has to flee, a bounty on his head. He meets an Indian called “Nobody”, who mistakes him for the great English poet. The two of them embark on a journey to find a place in the spiritual world. Haunting, poetic and rather unnerving, DEAD MAN is often too enigmatic for its own good but the atmosphere of permanent death is so overwhelmingly gloomy that the viewer is eventually transported away in dark undercurrent of hopelessness. AS

JIM JARMUSCH’S SIX FIRST FILMS ARE NOW AVAILABLE FULLY RESTORED ON BLU-RAY WITH EXCITING EXTRAS FROM 6TH OCTOBER 2014

Salvatore Giuliano (1962)

Dir.: Francesco Rosi; Cast: Frank Wolff, Salvo Randone, Frederico Zard;

Italy 1962, 123 min.

When the body of the bandit Salvatore Giuliano is found in the Sicilian market town of Castelvetrano (1950) we expect some sort of de-mystification of this legendary figure – a sort of CV with full explanation. But this vivid political masterpiece just offers the bare facts; the action is carried by his friends and enemies, the people of Sicily. In Rosi’s enigmatic treatment Giuliano is just a peripheral figure who appears fleetingly and, for the most part, in disguise. The Mafia, the Police and the Military all had a vital interest in Giuliano’s death – as they had in his murderous career.

After killing a policeman in the late 1930s, Giuliano is forced to flee into the mountains where he lives mainly from organised kidnappings and well executed robberies. After the Allies land in 1943, he supports their campaign and when the war is over, Giuliano supports the Sicialian independence movements of EVIS and MIS despite their low profile in the elections in 1946. The Mafia and local landowners recruited Salvatore to discourage the Popular Front from realising the land reforms they planned. At the Farmers’ May Day meeting of 1947, Giuliano and his men fired into the crowd at Portella della Ginestra, killing eleven, among them women and children. A year later, Salvatore “organised” the election against the Popular Front in Sicily, helping to “return” a two-thirds victory for Christian Democrats and their followers. Afterwards he returned to his usual business of kidnapping and robbery. But he was becoming an embarrassment for the Police and the military, which send 2000 men into the mountains to capture him – in vain. Finally the Police convinced Gaspare Pisciotta, a close ally of Salvatore, to kill him – in return for a pardon Pisciotta never got. He was poisoned 1954 while in jail, having threatened, like Giuliano before him, to reveal the men really responsible for the massacre of Portella della Ginestra.

Unlike Viscont’s colourful Il Gattopardo, which dealt with the Sicilian question at the time of Garibaldi’s unification campaign and produced around the same time as SALVATORE GIULIANO, this is a dark affair of conspiracies, murder and betrayal. Shot in grainy black and white by Gianni De Venanzo (who at the beginning of the 60s was DOP for Antonioni’s trilogy of bourgeois alienation), the factions who direct Giuliano and profit from him are shown as the main protagonists of the tragedy of this rather simple man, who was killed by the very forces he served so well. Therefore, Rosi’s decision to show him as a shadowy figure is the basis of his form of neo-realism. Rosi had worked with Antonioni and Visconti before and developed his own narrative style, away from the central characters of earlier films, who dominated the action, whilst Rosi developed a style away from the idealisation or vilification of characters, in favour of showing the role of protagonists acting for violent interest groups like the Police, the Military or the Mafia, who cooperate to subvert any form of democracy not only in Sicily, but in the whole of Italy. A year later, Rosi would surpass himself with Hands over the City. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE IN SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 26 September 2014

Grand Piano (2013)

Dir: Eugenio Mira; Cast: Elijah Wood, John Cusack, Kerry Bishe

Spain/USA 2013, 90 min.

In perhaps the most absurd film in recent months a pianist, Tom Selznik, performs for the first time in five years; wife Emma, a singer, in attendance. Soon the already nervous Selznik (Elijah Wood) gets notes and calls from a stranger, threatening to kill him and his wife, if he does not play perfectly. Selznick leaves the podium three times during his performance (always arriving back just in time for his part in a piano concerto, having tried in vain to alert friends (who are both killed) to the danger. Style dominates substance throughout and a bizarre denouement leaves us bewildered but uncaring. The motive of the psychopath remains unclear, like most of the machinations of this charade masquerading as a film. John Cusack hardly gets a look-in. MT

REVIEWED AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2013 – NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE.

The Two Faces of January (2014)

Director/Writer: Hossein Amini Novel: Patricia Highsmith

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Oscar Isaac, Kirsten Dunst, Daisy Bevan

96min UK USA France Drama

With a narrative based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, this long-awaited debut feature from DRIVE screenwriter Hossein Amini is a lavish affair set in sixties Greece. And what could go wrong with such a fabulous cast, magical sets, gorgeous tailoring and a romantic original score? The answer is nothing. One of the most gripping and sophisticated thrillers for some time, THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY stars Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst as an American married couple, Chester and Colette MacFarland, and Oscar Isaac (Llewyn Davis) as their tour guide, Rydal. After meeting up in by chance in Athens, a terrible accident that forces the trio to flee to the islands whence they embark on a dangerously eventful journey that ends in tragedy for all concerned.

This is a complex, dark, Hitchcockian thriller despite its sun-drenched Mediterranean setting and Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Isaac are first rate as the terrible partners in crime who never quite trust each other as the double-cross their way through Europe fleeing from their suspicious past. Mortensen plays a covert swindler, Isaac an overt skimmer but both are charmingly beguiling with Kirsten Dunst playing their perfect foil with sexy restraint. Visually alluring thanks to Marcel Zyskind’s rich cinematography, the drama is complimented by Alberto Iglesias’s classy film noirish score which really sets the elegant tone for this sophisticated crime story.

The narrative is driven forward by ambiguity and doubt as the trio proceed from Crete to Istanbul where an exotic twinge of the East adds further piquancy to the plot. If you haven’t read this minor novel of Highsmith, then it would be a shame to reveal the entire proceedings but this is a thriller to savour and salivate over long after its tragic denouement brings the foray into a luxurious playground to a close. MT

NOW ON DVD

[youtube id=”It-NVYptHIU” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Salome (2013)

Dir.: Al Pacino

Cast: Al Pacino, Roxane Hart, Jessica Chastain, Kevin Anderson

USA 2013, 78 min.

Al Pacino’s SALOME is a study in power play: Salome (Chastain), the stepdaughter of King Herodius (Pacino) and her mother Herodias (Hart) has to settle a score with both them. She wants emancipation from her overbearing mother, using her stepfather’s lust for her to divide them. Unfortunately, her true love, John the Baptist (Anderson) is also her victim. Refusing to kiss the princess, whom he calls a whore, she swears to make his lips touch hers. She uses Herodius’ infatuation with her to grant her a free wish, if she dances for him. The king is much too randy to refuse his stepdaughter anything, being a crass materialist himself, he thinks she will settle for half his kingdom. But after her beguiling dance she wants John’s head on a silver plate. Herodius is at first confused, offering Salome more and more – but she is adamant. When the king, desperate, finally gives in, she kisses John’s bloody head, and reminding him of her oath: “Thoust will kiss my lips”.

Pacino is his slimiest best, a real child molester – Salome was 15 – with no regard for her mother’s feelings. (The real Herodius was known as a mass murderer of his family and many rabbits). But the queen was not innocent herself: she had left Herodius’ brother to become queen. Salome is accustomed to power, but like King and Queen, not to love. John the Baptist is an idealist, quiet happy living in an underground dungeon, talking non-stop about the upcoming retributions for the royals. But he too does not know the real meaning of love – he just apostolates.

Wilde’s play is a narrative without pity and Pacino’s version follows this concept. The Greek chorus of the soldiers (one of them is in love with Salome, and kills himself when she wants to kiss John) acts like an echo chamber: distrust of their betters, mingled with fear, loyalty for a price. Jessica Chastain’s Salome glides like a snake through the film, using her physical charm, while keeping a cold heart. Pacino’s SALOME is the absence of any moral or ethical values, a very modern story indeed.

The lighting and the mobile camera are the dominant factors saving this production from being mere filmed theatre. Every main protagonist has their own colour: Herodius’ black/grey, Salome’s is an innocent pink and a bloody red. John has a shining silver aura in his dark prison. The soldiers are clad in a ghost like grey, corpses in waiting.

SALOME is intriguing because Pacino seems to follow no orthodox concept. He simply lets fly, creating a jungle of lust, power and death. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 21 SEPTEMBER 2014 AT THE BFI – WITH DIRECTOR’S Q&A AND SELECTED CINEMAS

Hide Your Smiling Faces (2013)

Director: Daniel Patrick Carbone

Cast: Ryan Jones, Nathan Varrison

81mins US Drama

Seen through the eyes of two young brothers, Erik (Nathan Varrison) and Tommy (Ryan Jones), this perfect depiction of a slow-burning summer takes place in the leafy, rural idyll of the Garden State, New York. But what starts as a tale of mischievous boyishness at its best soon becomes a tragic tale shot through with teenage angst, when the body of their close friend is discovered near the bridge that forms the focus of their verdant summer playground.

Gorgeously lensed and perfectly pitched to reflect its subdued and moody narrative, ‘Smiling Faces is also redolent of inchoate adolescence echoing the fragility of childhood in the face of tragedy, the mystery of nature and the bond that kids feel with the animal kingdom.

In his state of burgeoning puberty, Erik is deeply unsettled by the loss of his friend that seems to go against everything that he is currently processing as a teenager. Tommy’s placid contentment is over-shadowed by his older brother’s anxiety as they are both forced to deal with feelings of bereavement, shock and nascent sexuality at a critical time in their development.

Carbone skilfully directs from a unique childhood viewpoint placing the narrative firmly in childrens’ hands. The parents are very much seen as periferal characters of discipline, control and even hostility in a story centred on two young leads who both give performances of rare perfection and sensitivity in this magical drama. MT

ON DVD and Blu-ray from 27 October.

[youtube id=”UxqpTRI94zo” width=”600″ height=”350″]

No One’s Child (2014) Niceje Dete | Venice International Film Festival

NICEJE DETE/NO ONE’S CHILD

Dir.: Vuk Rsumovic

Cast: Denis Muric, Pavle Cemerikic, Milos Timotijevic, Isidora Jankovic

Croatia 2014, 96 min. Drama Serbian with subtitles

Based on true events, Vuk Rsumovic’ debut feature NO ONE’S CHILD, a variation on Truffaut’s L’Enfant Sauvage, tells the story of a young boy of about eight, who is found in the woods near Travnk, (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) by Serbian hunters. Sent to an orphanage in Belgrade, the prognosis of re-integration into human society is not that good. Haris (Denis Muric), as he has been called randomly, kicks and spits, moves on all fours, hates wearing shoes and eats with his bare hands. His language skills are non-existent and he dislikes all human contact. It is up to Ilke (Timotijevic), one of the guardians in the orphanage, to lure him into the human world.

Ilke makes certain progress, particularly teaching Haris words by showing him objects drawn on big posters, but the real breakthrough happens when of the boys, Zika (Cemerikic), takes a liking to Haris, who is called by the derogative name “Puchke” by the rest of the boys. Zika and his girl friend Alisa (Jankovic), take Haris to a fair, and show him around the city, gaining his confidence. But later Zika decides to go back to his violent father, and Haris regresses. When Zika returns, having been beaten up badly by his father again, he can’t stay in the orphanage any more, because he is over the age limit. For a short time, Haris is looked after by Alisa, who has left the orphanage and makes money as a part-time call girl. But disaster strikes for Haris, with the outbreak of the civil war in Yugoslavia. Because of the name given to him by the men who found him, the Bosnian authorities claim him, and soon the young teenager is seen fighting with adults in the trenches.

Muric is outstanding and his physical exploits are as brilliant as his acting skills. Rsumovic avoids pathos and sentimentality, showing the case with the eyes of a documentary filmmaker. Damjan Radovanovic’ widescreen photography captures the panoramic landscapes and intimate close-ups alike with brilliant originality. Far from having the look of a debut film, NO ONE’S CHILD is a mature, but nevertheless a stunningly fresh achievement. Without being judgemental, the director lets the viewer decide which world is the more humane one: nature or the world of human relationships, fraught with permanent conflicts, build on an imaginary hierarchy, in constant flux with haphazardly changing values. Rsumovic’ elliptical parable is stunningly beautiful, and emotional harrowing, it fully deserved the FIPRESCI prize for the “Settimani di Critica” section of the Festival. AS

REVIEWED AT THIS YEAR’S VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL SEPTEMBER 2014

Ballet Boys (2014)

Dir.: Kenneth Elvebakk

Documentary; Norway 2014, 75 min.

In this documentary equivalent to Billy Elliott, Kenneth Elvebakk explores the experience of three teenagers who follow their dream in Norway. Lukas, Syvert and Torgeir live in Oslo, finishing their last year at Secondary School and trying to get into the Oslo National Academy of Arts, to crown many years of training in classical ballet. Though close friends, they could not be more different: Lukas is the star of the trio, he even dreams of going to The Royal Ballet School in London, the most prestigious of its kind in Europe. Syvert, full name Syvert Lorenz Garcia, is the odd one out, his parents are from South East Asia, and he is very much aware of his special status: “Sometimes I only wish to be Norwegian, I mean white”. He drops out of Ballet School, but returns just in time, to train for the Entrance examination at the National Academy of Arts. Torgeir is quiet and unassuming sort of a middle-child position in the trio; he fits in easily and tries to succeed without much fuss.

Elvebakk follows his main protagonists in a sensitive, unpretentious but humanistic style. There is so much to take in for them: the struggle to do well at school and excel at time-consuming ballet lessons, leaving very little time for a social life: not to mention financial pressures. Two of the boys travel to France for a competition, without success. Lukas and Torgeir are dismayed at Syvert’s decision to quit, but equally joyful when he returns: they have been through thick and thin together. Finally, the big day of the entrance examination arrives…and with it the twist. BALLET BOYS works best when it focuses on the human angle. Far away from any gloss and glamour, it offers a sober look at this life, the camera work is intimate without being intrusive, yet, at just over an hour, it all feels quite rushed. Elvebakk is collaborative with his cast, friendly but always analytical. AS

ON RELEASE AS SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 12 September 2014

Locke (2013) – DVD

Writer/Director: Steven Knight

Cast: Tom Hardy, Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, Tom Holland, Andrew Scott, Ben Daniels

85mins UK Thriller

Steve Knight’s one-handed ‘driving seat drama’ never feels claustrophobic although all the action takes place within the confines of a car on a journey from Wales to London. Tom Hardy plays Ivan Locke, in a skilled and gripping performance, that window into his life and the people he shares it with plenty of action-packed thrills despite its decidedly low-budget premise. He plays a father, husband and lover whose life unravels as he races South on the M1 to meet the latest of his offspring while managing the tendering of a complex building project, that . All conducted over the telephone from his BMW, he talks to his wife (Ruth Wilson), his lover (Olivia Colman), two teenage sons and members of his building team: the traffic police would have a field day but they’d probably thoroughly enjoy this seat-clenching thriller.

[youtube id=”TsBDYAYnQb0″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

NOW ON DVD

The Postman’s White Nights (2014) | BEST DIRECTOR | Venice International Film Festival

The Postman’s White Nights (Belye nochi pochtalona Alekseya Tryapitsyna)

Director: Andrei Konchalovsky

Aleksey Tryapitsyn, Irina Ermolova, Timur Bondarenko

Russia, 110 mins, Drama

Just when it appeared that the Venice film festival was winding up the red carpet for another year, in comes Andrei Konchalovsky’s remarkable small-town docudrama to set the cat among the pigeons (of St Mark’s Square). With his film warmly received at yesterday’s press screening, the veteran Russian filmmaker could prove a late Golden Lion winner after a 50-plus year directing career.

Konchalovsky takes us to the outer reaches of Russia to a remote, serene lakeside community where boat is the only means of entry. Their sole connection to the outside world is the postman Aleksey, a sprightly middle-aged man who brings not only the daily post, but supplies, food, fuel and the daily gossip. He chats with the locals and helps them with their chores and has a deep longing for outsider Irina and is a father figure for her son Timur.

The postman is played by Aleksey Tryapitsyn, a real-life postman who joins with the rest of the community in playing versions of themselves, following a similar fly-on-the-wall used in Kurochka Ryaba and House of Fools. Yet nothing seems overtly staged or recognisably false: this pastoral idyll has a glorious, charming, lived-in sensibility.

Tryapitsyn doesn’t falter with his grand role in the proceedings. He has an uncanny ability to convey emotional power in the slightest of reactions, and has a witty comic timing that belies his non-professional origin. His unrequited love for Irina (one of the few professional actors in the show) has elements of Checkov (particularly The Seagull), the playwright Konchalovsky recently directed for the stage in London.

A greater conflict comes when his boat’s engine is stolen, and Aleksey engages in a Gogol-esque encounter with an uncaring municipal representative on the mainland. Without a means of work, and a route to the island (it’ll take a month for a replacement to come from Arkhangelsk, he’s told), he seeks out his friend to deal with the situation, a general at a near-by military base. It’s revealed this is no normal base, but a space port – the absurdity of modest country life next to interstellar industry is barely recognised by locals – and the payoff is a glorious final, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot to close the film.

The best work happens in the quieter, contemplative moments. A moving scene comes at a village elder’s funeral, when the community talk of the “socialistic romanticism” of her era, a time unlike, apparently, a present Russia in which their humble roles in society seem almost obsolete. Why should Russians pay for humble fishermen in rural villages for their fish, rather than modern, faceless dragnet fishing, as one sequene depicts? And as the young Timur is wont to say to Aleksey, do we need postmen when we can email? Konchalovksy’s art reveals a beauty to a rustic life that is being lost – as if this is the last chance to witness this kind of small-town life. If it is, Konchalovsky has crafted a beautiful record of this world. Ed Frankl

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 6 SEPTEMBER 2014. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVALS BANNER

[youtube id=”qGgC5CkPojk” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Loving (2012) Milosc | San Sebastian Film Festival 2014

Director: Slawomir Fabicki

Julia Kijowska, Marcin Dorocinski, Adam Woronowicz

Truth is often stranger than fiction and although the premise of this intimate Polish drama based on real life events in the city of Olszytn appears bizarre, when you think of a certain Mayor’s track record, it could easily happen.

Slowomir Fabicki’s drama is saved by moving and convincing performances from leads Julia Kijowska and Marcin Dorocinski who play Maria and Tomek, a successful working couple expecting their first child. Maria works in the local council, Tomek is an architect with a practice specialising in Civic work and reliant on Government building contracts. Maria’s boss, the Mayor (Adam Woronowicz) is driving her mad with inappropriate emails and texts messages and when the couple attend an evening function at the Town Hall, the Mayor asks her for the last dance and it doesn’t end there. Although our working laws and easy access to industrial tribunals make this drama feel implausible to UK audiences, Poland is not so advanced in these matters and women are still very much dominated by men in the workplace. Maria is also mindful of the ongoing building contracts that her husband’s practice is tendering for. All this could be jeopardised if she makes a complaint although she is clearly irritated by her Boss’s advances. But Tomek laughs the whole thing off appearing flattered that his heavily pregnant wife could be attractive to another man. Soon it becomes clear that this is no laughing matter.

What happens next could easily descend into farce but the clever pacing and elegant cinematography elevate this potentially sordid story into something much for meaningful. Loving is a simple tale, well-told and touchingly performed. MT

REVIEWED DURING KINOTEKA LONDON 2014

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 19 – 27 SEPTEMBER 2014

Red Amnesia (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

Red Amnesia (Chuangru zhe)

Director: Wang Xiaoshuai

Lü Zhong, Feng Yuanzheng, Amanda Qin, Qin Hao, Shi Liu

China, 115 mins

China’s past weighs heavily on the characters of Red Amnesia, Wang Xiaoshuai’s slow burning family drama that carries a quiet, subtle, but combative denouncement of the country’s treatment of recent history. This is a ghost story that unearths pains of the past that leading to tragic consequences, a thoughtful allegory of China’s contemporary relationship with its cultural revolution and, unquestionably, Tiananmen Square protests and beyond.

In a dearth of leading female performances at this year’s Lido, Lü Zhong is a top bet for a Best Actress win at the end-of-festival awards. At 73, she is tremendous as Deng, a lively grandmother who herself cares for her ageing mother, while being barked around by her affluent children who symbolise a faceless notion of China’s new rich. There’s something of Ang Lee’s early comedy of manners in the opening sections of the film, but the film turns out to be more politically minded and challenging.

Deng begins receiving anonymous phone calls in which nobody replies. Her kids think she’s dreaming, and she herself begins to have vivid nightmares of her own situation. Lü’s performance is just poised enough to suggest that she may or may not be losing her mind, especially when she starts talking to her recently deceased husband, even laying out a seat for him at the dinner table.

She begins seeing a young boy, at first worried he’s following her, but later engaging with him as he helps her one day with her daily chores. Is he real, or ghost? Deng suggests he might be the reincarnation of a mysterious man, Zhao, from her past, suggesting she makes good on her “debts”, and the film gives us only hints at her sanity. “Since his death it’s as if a shadow has been following me,” she says.

There’s something of Hidden in the set up, and like Haneke’s film, the whole situation unearths some terror of the past that cannot be rectified. That’s Wang’s intention: setting up a film that raises the issues of China’s lack of admission of past mistakes. In that way it’s a remarkable film – the title reveals to be ironic as, in China, the past hasn’t been forgotten; it’s the people in factories and the farmers in the countryside that the Chinese government have let down. Late in the film, we travel with Deng to the countryside where she grew up and where workers speak out against the authorities who say the government has given “No prestige for the workers”. Indeed, in the film’s sucker-punch ending, her past, and so China’s past, drives the guilt Deng so profoundly feels. Ed Frankl.

VENICE INTERNATIONL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 6 September 2014. Follow all our coverage under the FESTIVAL banner.

Life of Crime (2013)

Dir.: Daniel Schlechter

Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins, Isla Fisher, Mos Def (as Yasiin Bey), John Hawkes, Will Forte

USA 2013, 94 min.

Based on the novel The Switch (1967) by Elmore Leonard, LIFE OF CRIME is set in Detroit in 1978, were two small time crooks Ordell (Bey) and Louis (Hawkes) are setting their minds on a million Dollar coup: they kidnap Mickey Dawson (Anniston), wife of the crooked property developer Frank (Robbins). But they have not bargained for Melanie (Fisher), Frank’s girlfriend, who has persuaded him to send his wife the divorce papers, which coincides with her kidnapping. And when Ordell phones Frank at Melanie’s at her place in Florida, Frank seems to be reluctant to come up with the one million Dollar ransom – particularly since Melanie is telling him how much he can save if his wife “disappears” for good.

Meanwhile, Ordell and Louis have trouble on their own: they have incarcerated Mickey in Richard’s flat, but the fat man is a crazed fascist and Hitler fan, who wants to rape Mickey. Louis saves her just in time, and takes her back to her home, where she finds the divorce papers. Meanwhile, Ordell has travelled to Miami, where he meets Melanie, to put the screws on. But after they got to get to know each other better, Melanie tells him that he is a great stud, but a lousy extortionist. She goes with him to Detroit, to take things into her own hands. But Louis and Mickey convince Ordell, that they have taken the wrong “Mrs” Dawson..

Schlechter stays very much with the style of Barry Sonnenfeld’s film of Leonard’s novel of the same name, Get Shorty, from 1995. Apart from the Richard character (who is later shot by the police) nobody is really dangerous, just misguided. Robbins is particularly convincing as the double-crossing husband, he is ice cold when he meets Mickey after her ordeal, just interested in how much the divorce will cost him. Fisher is slightly over the top in her utter superficiality, but Bey and Hawkes are brilliant at the two low-lives, being in over their heads. There is little to chuckle about, because everything is simply too lightweight to make any impact. Whilst everything, including the camera work, is very professional, LIFE OF CRIME feels like one of those slick but slightly anonymous pictures from the nineties. And there’s nothing wrong with that.. AS

OUT ON 5 SEPTEMBER 2014 COURTESY OF CURZON WORLD

Le Dernier Coup de Marteau (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

LE DERNIER COUP DE MARTEAU (The Third Hammer Blow)

Dir.: Alix Delaporte

Cast: Clotilde Hesme, Romain Paul, Gregory Gadebois

France 2014, 82 min.

Set in Montpellier, Delaporte’s simple narrative (Angel and Tony) centres on a football-obsessed teenager, Victor, and his mother Nadia, who is suffering from cancer. The family lives in a caravan, next to Spanish emigrants, in the open seascape of the Camargue in southern France.

Victor has the usual teenage worries, but he is well-behaved and trying to teach the little Spanish neighbour French, whilst hoping to get into an elite football academy. Out of the blue, Victor’s father, the famous conductor Samuel Rovinski, turns up. He is rehearsing Mahler’s 6th in the opera house at Montpelier. Father and son get on surprisingly well, and whilst Nadia’s condition is getting worse, Victor manages to get into the academy, somehow helped by the fact he has a famous father, and discovers a liking for classical music.

Delaporte often asks us to suspend any sense of reality, but nevertheless, she delivers a stunningly original narrative: with scenes of football played to Mahler’s music. Furthermore, she makes us really believe in this co-existence. Victor takes to classical music like a fish to water, he is his father’ son and the two share a palpable chemistry; yet Victor is proud to be independent with his mother. Despite living a simple existence, Delaporte shows mother and son enjoying themselves: jumping from a height into a cold lake, and trying to get as much fun out of life with their Spanish neighbours as possible. And despite their difficult circumstances, Victor and Nadia are never cast in the victim’s role, neither does Delaporte glorifies Rovinski’s world.

Hesme and Paul are perfect, Rovinski good at hiding his sensitive side. Camera work is unobtrusive, colours and landscapes vibrant and emotive. LE DERNIER COUP DE MARTEAU is a very original and moving film.

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs until 6 September 2014. Follow our coverage under the FESTIVAL banner

The Cut (2014) – | London Film Festival 2014

Director: Fatih Akin

Cast: Tahar Rahim, Akin Gazi, Simon Abkarian, George Georgiou, Kevork Malikyan

138 mins, Drama Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Canada, Poland, Turkey

One of the hot picks for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Turkish-German director Faith Akin’s Armenian genocide epic is sweeping, if rather anodyne affair, starring Tahar Rahim as a (primarily) mute father searching for his missing daughters.

Taken out of the running for Cannes by Akin for “personal reasons” might have proved an omen, but Akin is able to rely on an old-fashioned sensibility, which only disappoints because he’s been so irreverent elsewhere. His Berlin winner Head On and Edge of Heaven were exciting indie films that talked about culture clashes and integration in a very modern and sophisticated way, but in making a historical epic in such a conventional fashion, The Cut misses out what was previously so refreshing about his work.

The film begins in 1915 in the Anatolian city of Mardin, as Ottoman troops tear away Rahim’s Nazaret from his wife and daughters under the auspices of conscription. In fact, like other ethnic Armenians, he’s dragged to lay roads for the Ottoman forces in the First World War. The slave labour is all right for some, who believe it’s better than being on the battlefield, but those who survive the dehydration and exhaustion are later faced with death marches. Nazaret narrowly survives after a civilian executioner feigns his death, leaving instead a tear in his throat that makes him unable to talk. After spending the war in soap factory – a metaphor for ethnic cleansing if you needed one – he discovers that his daughters survived, and proceeds to cross the Atlantic in search, from Havana to the plains of North Dakota.

The 1915 atrocity which killed 1.5 million remains a hotly politicised issue, which makes Akin’s conventional exploration of the story all the more baffling. This is an event that Turkey denies took place, and even Britain, unlike, say, France and Germany, also refuses to call a genocide. Directing aside, there are strong overtones with crises in the region today: at one point Ottoman soldiers order Nazaret and his fellow Armenians to convert to Islam to be set free – only a few accept the offer.

Rahim has a shaggy charm in the role, although when he stops communicating through words, he doesn’t quite have the physicality as an actor to really excel in the part. It’s strange, since his excellent performance in A Prophet depended so much on the presence he brought to the role, something found wanting here. One of the film’s more moving moments has Nazaret stop to watch Charlie Chaplin in The Kid in a town square screening, and you can’t help but regrettably compare the two actors – Rahim is even made to look like Chaplin.

The dialogue in English is not so much stilted but terribly naff, and the decision to have Armenians speak English in the film proves problematic when the film reaches, well, America. But perhaps concentrating on dialogue is taking away something from the film. This is a film about images – like when Nazaret, desperate for water, looks down a well to find piles of dead bodies – and, indeed, about silence. Silence about how the world has reacted, shrugged, at the history of the Armenian genocide that was an example to the Nazis two decades later. In that way Akin is speaking about today: while Chaplin’s job was to take people away from the horrors of the First World War, Akin and Tahar Rahim’s silent tramp is doing the opposite about today’s conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Ed Frankl

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 6 SEPTEMBER 2014. READ ALL OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVALS BANNER.

Loin des Hommes (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

Writer/Director: David Oelhoffen

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Reda Kateb

110 mins, France, Historical Drama, French with English subtitles

Albert Camus’s short story ‘The Guest” becomes a thrilling Western-orientated road movie, in which Viggo Mortensen adds French and Arabic to his screen repertoire of various European tongues.

Mortensen is Daru, a Pied-Noir schoolteacher educating village kids in French language and customs in the midst of the Algerian war high in the haute plaines of the Atlas Mountains, during the 1950s. In a desolate part of the country, on the northern fringe of the Sahara, his choice of profession is to the chagrin of people on both sides of the conflict now brewing: the French don’t see the point in educating ordinary Algerians, while the natives are irritated at the instruction in French rather than Arabic.

One evening, a French gendarme hands Daru an Algerian (Reda Kateb) accused of murder and asked to transport him to the French authorities at a village a day’s walk away. However, Daru has no wish to deliver a man to a certain death (either because of his real guilt, or the prejudices of the colonial establishment). Instead, he initially chooses to do nothing, allowing the prisoner to sneak out on his first night, only to return. Daru has no easy way out, and instead is forced to make some significant moral decisions about the welfare of his charge.

Mortensen is eminently watchable as the craggy-faced Daru (it’s a face that paints a thousand unknown memories) who develops a strange rapport with Kateb’s Mohamad that is unexpectedly warm. Crossing the barren wastelands, they find themselves fleeing Mohammad’s vengeful townsfolk and freedom fighters before rebels fighting for independence capture them. Some of the soldiers recognise Daru as their unit’s leader from the Second World War, commenting that now every Algerian in his unit is fighting for independence – and he must now pick his own side. Where once he was the teacher, now he is the prisoner. Is this what happens when, as Burke would say, good people do nothing?

A terrific scene sees Mortensen’s Daru become a hostage as the rebels take fire from a French brigade, and even though the film’s political slant might be slightly blunt, this is effectively-told filmmaking with a ravishing visual style. Camus’s story is given a new life here and Oelhoffen has provided one of the best adaptations of the author’s work. While Camus’s ‘L’Exil et le Royaume’ short story hints the outbreak of a coming divisive war in the country, Oelhoffen sets his film just as the independence conflict took hold. It provides the text with a renewed sense of moral purpose that finds parallels with the troubles rocking the north African country today. Photographed with an eye for stark and barren scenery (actually filmed in Morocco) and with another great score written by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis; it looks, sounds, and thinks like an epic with big ideas. Ed Frankl.

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27 AUGUST UNTIL 6 SEPTEMBER 2014. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVALS BANNER.

[youtube id=”eQdfBSkY1Mk” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Hungry Hearts (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

Director: Severio Costanzo

Cast: Adam Driver, Alba Rohrwacher, Roberta Maxwell

USA/Italy 2014, 109 min.

In Severio Costanzo’s second Venice offering, Jude (Adam Driver) and Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) have an inauspicious meeting in a Chinese restaurant in New York, where they are locked in the bathroom together. It takes a while to free the couple, who then lose no time in slipping between the sheets. Mina is working for the Italian embassy and, when she is transferred, Jude asks her to stay. Soon they are expecting a baby. Mina consults a psychic who predicts this will be an ‘indigo’ with paranormal powers.

The audience, like Jude, shrugs off Mina’s conviction – but it is the first of many indications that Mina is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. After lengthy weddings celebrations champagne glasses are packed away as they couple hunker down in this weird and quirky drama that’s not quite a thriller but feels it ought to be. A feeling of claustrophobia descends on their cramped flat that seems to made of little boxes where nobody is able to breathe – but it is clearly a place were Mina really thrives. After the birth of the baby boy, the couple remain cloistered in the apartment.

Mina, who has been anorexic during the pregnancy, loses even more weight, and the baby, fed only on vegan food like her mother, is neither gaining weight or growing. Finally Jude wakes up to this fact, and takes his son to a doctor, who advises a radical change of food for the baby. Whilst Jude is only too willing to follow the advice, Mina fights him all the way. She is also germo-phobic and does not want to leave, or take the baby outside. Finally Jude, with the help of a social worker, more or less kidnaps his son, who goes to live with his mother (Maxwell) in the countryside outside New York. But Mina does not give up, she tries to regain custody of her son, and after Jude hits her, she manages to regain custody. The desperate grandmother can only think of a very radical solution.

Half way through the film, the fish-eye lense is introduced, turning the narrative even more into a real life horror story. Mina is a frail and emaciated creature, just skin and bones, a fanatical gleam in her eyes. Jude is geeky and ambivalent – for much of the film, he tries to mediate between Mina and reality. His mother is made of much sterner stuff, and does not fall for Mina’s passive-agression schemes. However harsh the denouement appears, it’s clear that somebody had to make a stand – and Jude was much too feeble to be this person. Despite a weak script with gaping potholes, the superb cast handle the action masterfully. Not a film for the faint-hearted, but a convincing story of ordinary madness. MT

REVIEWED AT VENICE 2014

They Came Together (2014)

Director: David Wain

Writers: David Wain, Michael Showalter Cast: Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Melanie Lynskey, Jason Manzoukas

81mins US Comedy

They Came Together is a comedy from the school of ‘have a go humour’. You can imagine the scriptwriters getting together with a loose story of coupledom and just ‘going with the flow’ in a totally spontaneous way. What comes out is a cinematic version of comedy diahorhea. Directed by David Wain and co-written with Michael Showalter, this wild send-up of the romcom is so over the top it sometimes makes you laugh out of desperation and sheer disbelief.

The solid comedy cast includes the latest in American indie humour: Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler with a side serving of Melanie Lynskey and Jason Mantzoukas who feed them the lines. There are some laugh-out-loud moments and others that are just downright cringeworthy. Some of the gags are so unexpectedly weird, the laughter comes as a gag-reaction, rather that one of sheer pleasure.

The story centres on the relationship between Joel (Rudd) and Molly (Poehler). Over dinner with the other couple they discuss how they met, broke up and got back together, ad nauseam. Unstructured and rambling, They Came Together eventually descends into a series of jerky comedy vignettes, each one sillier than the last, as the storyline gradually loses control. Performances are strong across the board, but the narrative flow feels uneven and staccato rather than flowing and natural, abandoning any effort to provide a satisfying yarn or to flesh out an emotional arc or a for these characters by making them believable, interesting or moving.

There’s a great deal to be admired about the autistic bravado and sheer hung-ho attitude of Wain and Showater who are so hell bent on shocking and shaming us we end up not caring at all: and maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’ve reached romantic saturation point in the 21st century, preferring to just snatch moments of pleasure along with the weirdness and pain. So if you’re looking for the ultimate antidote to the ubiquitous romcom – this is surely it! And at a meagre running time of minutes it certainly won’t MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5TH SEPTEMBER 2014 IN SELECTED CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

The Goob (2014) – Venice International Film Festival 2014

Dir: Guy Myhill | Cast: Liam Walpole, Sienna Guillory, Oliver Kennedy | UK Drama | 90′

In this enigmatic debut, Guy Myhill evokes the open spaces of the Norfolk countryside veiled in golden summery softness -wild flowers, drifting corn – and steeped in a an unsettling coming of age story, that pits a young man’s burgeoning sexuality against that of his mother’s boorish boyfriend – an avid stock-car racing champion and local grower.

Simon Tindall’s ethereal camera-work captures the rough and ready allure of this farming landscape and the gutsy inhabitants recalling that motorcycle opening sequence of Lawrence of Arabia with soft-focus art house twist contrasted with a gutsy song selection including Donna Summer. This is social realism that bristles with sexual tension and dreamy awakenings from childhood to young adulthood in the Fens, teasing with an enigmatic storyline that weaves through the fields but then departs in a different direction through never quite reveals itself.

The Goob is newcomer Liam Walpole who lives with his single mother Janet (Sienna Guillory) and her vicious partner in a run down shack of a roadside cafe Gene Womack dislikes the boy and makes no bones about showing it. Matters worsen when the Goob and his brother right the car off in a boy-racing moment, resulting in forced labour on the beet farm that threatens to curtail his social life. He does however meet hired farm-hand Elliott (Oliver Kennedy) and Eva (Marama Corlett) another picker who takes a shine to him during an impromptu midnight party in one of Gene’s fields.

This is a story that brims with intrigue and erotic tension not only between the Goob and Eva, but also in other enigmatic subplots where there’s a constant suggestion that Gene (a spiteful, mincing Harris) is drawn to other female characters and quite why Janet is involved with him remains a mystery. The intensity of the racing fraternity adds a rough machismo to the narrative, placing it firmly in Swaffham and the locale and the cast is almost entirely drawn from Norfolk. Liam Walpole has a gangly vulnerability about him which brings a unique appeal and gentleness to the otherwise hard-bitten, rough-edged Harris. MT

3 Coeurs (2014) 3 Hearts – Venice International Film Festival 2014

Director: Benoit Jacquot

Writers: Benoit Jacquot, Julien Boivent

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Benoit Peolvoorde

116min Drama/melodrama French with English subtitles

3 COEURS is a classic French ménage à trois where two provincial sisters fall for the same man. Chiara Mastoianni and Charlotte Gainsbourg play the sibling love rivals as Catherine Deneuve watches this classy affair unfold with a beady eye, as doyenne of the family antique business in Valence, a picturesque town in the Rhone Alps. Benoit Poelvoorde turns in another powerful performance as the object of their affections, a neurotic tax inspector from Paris with a roving eye but a heart of gold.

It all begins when Marc (Poelvoorde) misses his last train home to Paris and finds himself chatting up Sylvie (Gainsbourg) in the station bar. A chemistry develops as they walk and talk through the night and arrange to meet up in Paris. Quite convenient, as she’s living with her husband. But when she arrives in Paris the next weekend, Marc suffers a heart attack and fails to turn up to their rendezvous. Thinking he has lost interest, Sylvia goes home. Strangely, Marc returns to Valence but this time runs into Sophie (Mastroianni) who needs tax advice on the antiques business. The couple fall in love, she leaves her boyfriend and Sylvie is strangely brushed out of the whole affair. Meanwhile she has decided to follow her husband to his new job in the States.

To keep the tension mounting and the vital clues hidden from the relevant characters, Julien Boivent’s screenplay relies heavily on poetic licence – a vital ploy in melodrama: no mobile phones are used in the early stages of this story, although they are critical in the denouement, and despite the sisters’ closeness, it never dawns on Marc from the numerous family photos in Deneuve’s family mansion, or the constant skyp-ing that goes on between the girls, that they are related.

The enjoyment of 3 COEURS depends heavily on suspension of disbelief: it’s certainly a slick and watchable film with some subtle performances particularly from Charlotte Gainsbourg as the ‘dark horse’ of a sister and Mastroianni as the more straightforward one. As in Strangers on a Train, the vital clue lies in Sylvie’s cigarette lighter that Marc discovers among Sophie’s stuff and twigs that he’s operating on dangerous ground. Where the story falls down is in director Benoit Jacquot’s failure to realise that these two sisters, who clearly love each other, would not have exchanged photos of Marc and discussed the subtle nuances of the relationship before things moved on to a permanent basis between Marc and Sophie.

Deneuve is very much in support mode here; chain-smoking and eating her way through the narrative as the wealthy and wise bedrock in the girls’ lives. If you enjoy Deneuve’s traditional French fare such as A Christmas Tale and Kings and Queen then this will definitely appeal. MT

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs from 27 August – 6 September 2014

The Humbling (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

Director: Barry Levinson

Cast: Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Nina Ariadna

USA 2014, 112 min.

In Levinson’s adaptation of the novel by Philip Roth, Simon Axler, a famous actor on the wrong side of 60, loses his craft and his love of the theatre. After a black-out he collapses into the orchestra pit and ends up in a posh sanatorium. There he meets Sybil, one of the patients, who wants to pay Simon handsomely to kill her husband, who has molested their daughter. Simon declines, but Sybil returns during the rest of the film, to talk him into the killing. Simon could do with the money, because he is broke. After returning home to his country mansion in Connecticut, he is visited by Pegeen (Gerwig), the daughter of an actress Simon had an affair with more than 30 years ago. Megeen, who is a lesbian, had a life long crush on Simon, and they start a rather one-sided relationship, in which the aging actor plays the role of a sugar-daddy, while Megeen still sleeps with women – hardly surprising when one considers Axler’s physical state. Finally, Simon has the choice between a hair replacement commercial and the title role in King Lear on Broadway. Choosing the latter, and wanting to father a baby with Pegeen, brings Simon again too close to the abyss.

This is a glossy, beautifully crafted drama in which Levinson shows us that leaving the sanatorium makes no difference to Simon: inside he had only Sybil to contend with, but in his own home he has Megeen on his hands, who literally drives him even more crazy. She wants all, material and attention-wise, and her moods are violent. Axler is caught between his own loss of reality, his wishful phantasies and his rapidly declining body. A crippled man, playing the teenager in an old body and a disturbed mind. Pacino is superb, he fights the dying of the light for far too long, always wanting a little stay from execution. He is so caught up in himself and his delusions, that he can not see what Pegeen is doing to him. In his mind he is still a much younger man, able to cope. Gerwig is dominance personified, crushing Simon, like her former lovers.

Shot in only 20 days near Levinson’s own house in Connecticut, THE HUMBLING has a freshness that suits the narrative: we are rushed through the last rites for Axler, his life violently fragmenting around him: past and present, all the stories of life and theater merging into one in the old actor’s mind. His fears and wishes are dangerously close, his imaginations haunting him. The vivid and innovative camera supports his descent into a private hell. AS

THE HUMBLING IS SHOWING AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL FROM 27 August to 7 September 2014. Follow our coverage under the FESTIVALS banner.

Blanche (1972) – DVD release

Dir.: Walerian Borowczyk

Cast: Michel Simon, Ligia Branice, Georges Wilson, Jacques Perrin, Lawrence Trimble

France 1971, 92 min.

Thirteenth century France: An old baron (Simon) lives with his beautiful, pure wife, Branice, in an old gloomy castle. When the King (Wilson) comes to visit, he and his page Bartholomeo both immediately lust after the countess, who has to defend her honour against both of them. When the King, wearing Bartholomeo’s coat as a disguise, tries to enter Blanche’s chamber at night, he is injured by a man holding watch: Nicolas, Blanche’s stepson, who is secretly in love with his stepmother. The King pretends to the old Baron, that his page is to blame, but does not give up his quest to conquer Blanche. He sends his page away with a sealed message to his army commander, ordering him to attack the baron’s castle and keep Bartholomeo prisoner. The page, attacked by Nicolas, finds out what the King had planned for him, but gets walled in a room by the suspicious baron, after Blanche swears that nobody is in the chamber. On the King’s return, he is liberated, but has to fight a duel with Nicholos, who lets himself been killed. After leaving again, the King returns with his army, Blanche takes poison and the baron falls on his dagger, after chaining Bartholomeo to horse, which drags him to a slow death.

There are many elements of Borowczyk’s short film in BLANCHE: monks hide in wall cupboards, a dwarf runs amok, a white dove (symbol of Blanche’s innocence) flatters around the castle. Based loosely on Byron’s “Mazeppa”, the surrealistic elements in BLANCHE echo Buñuel, particularly of Viridiana, where a young woman also has to defend herself against old men, lusting after her. Setting and story also have their roots in Chaucer’s “The Millers Tale”, with the same theme dominating. Lastly, Blanche has also much in common with Bresson’s title heroine of Une Femme Douce, based on a story by Dostoevsky. Borowczyk begins by showing the castle as an idyllic backdrop, but he ends up with a portrait of a slaughterhouse. The King and his page are shown as vile, aggressive intruders, whilst Blanche and Nicolas (the true, but chaste lovers), die as victims of male lust and jealousy. Blanche wanders around dressed in white or grey, as if she is already mourning for herself.

The camera frames the action in a way that’s full of ambiguity: the locations are never what they seem to be; a simple room becomes a prison for the page and the dove. But Blanche wanders around naïve and trusting: Ligia Branice portrays a being from another world with subtlety and elegance. The men, apart from Nicolas, who seems to be too underwhelming, are brilliant in their lying schemes resorting to violence, when their plans fail. The music, played on contempo Medieval instruments, creates a poetic atmosphere, often contrasting with the brutal machinations played out. The final scene, shot from the POV of the dying Bartholomeo, dragged through the autumn landscape, is unforgettable. BLANCHE is a masterpiece, not only in Borowczyk’s oeuvre. AS

NOW ON DVD in a brand new restoration

One on One (2014) | London Korean Film Festival 2014

Director/writer: Kim Ki-Duk

Don Lee, Kim Young-min, Lee Yi-kyung, Cho Dong-in, Yoo Teo, Ahn Ji-hye, Jo Jae-ryong, Kim Joong-ki

Drama, South Korea, 122 min

Kim Ki-Duk hasn’t been given a competition berth at Venice since he controversially won the Golden Lion in 2012 (beating off The Master almost by proxy), so it’s to the second-string Venice Days strand that the veteran Korean prankster goes. And it’s a shame if he’s completely side-lined by the critical fraternity here, even if One On One is a lesser film than his grisly but hilarious Moebius (2013), which premiered here last year out of competition. His latest somehow remains an intriguing skew-eyed look into the pain of violence n the giving as well as in the gruesome receiving.

Moebius began with a castration and got grislier from there, and alarm bells start ringing from the off as Kim launches into a brutal murder of a teenage girl in the opening frames. But even with its lot of ultra-violence and extended torture sequences, there’s a more nuanced tone at work as the narrative gathers momentum. Months after the murder, a group of mysterious mercenaries abduct the killers and those who authorised the murder one by one, torturing them through rusty nails, hammers, pincers, and electrocutions. But they only torture until the perpetrators admit their part in the plot, letting them live with any shame or indeed pride they might’ve held. It starts with dogsbodies, and the film takes us up the chain of command to the top of a web of gangsters. At first the men are apologetic and say they only did what they were told, but later the top men say they did it because it was a just action – one whose motives are never conclusively revealed. But when one character tells its leader (Don Lee) that there is “something sad in you”, he reflects a man whose viciousness is as painful to him as it is to those he gives it out to (well, almost).

At first the film’s kill-list narrative suggests we’re in the territory of a genre flick, but Kim plays with the ideas that the film present and it becomes a more than adequate allegory on the echoes of genocide, where culprits at different points of the chain of command have different explanations for unforgivable crimes. The paramilitary group themselves disguise themselves in various garbs – from an anti-communist brigade to a shady government organisation, as if to heighten the sense that this story cold play out on different levels in different settings.

The film’s violence becomes so routine that it may well bore some, but that’s part of the point, so numbed are these characters to a world where violence begets violence. One of the members of the paramilitary is a victim of domestic violence, raped in a scene that might’ve just have crossed an exploitative line here. But as one character says, “dictators are in families just as much as countries”, and I found myself considering, among the expected bloody finale, the implications of how violent men are often as much troubled as troubling.

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2014 | ONE ON ONE PREMIERED AT THE VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL |

Q&A with the Director at the Villa Degli Autori, Venice Lido [youtube id=”ergRH05lqnw” width=”600″ height=”350″]

LA RANÇON DE LA GLOIRE (2014) – Venice International Film Festival 2014

LA RANÇON DE LA GLOIRE

Dir.: Xavier Beauvois

Cast: Benoit Poelvoorde, Roschdy Zem, Chiara Mastroianni, Nadine Labaki

France/Belgium/Switzerland, 114 min.

1977: Eddie, a 40 year old Belgian small-time crook, is released from prison in Vevey, Switzerland. He is going to live with his friend Osman, looking after his daughter Samira, since her mother is in hospital. Whilst Eddie gets on well with Samira, his relationship with Osman (whose life he once saved) is strained, since Eddie is still not going straight, even stealing the lights for the Christmas tree and a TV. But soon Osman has to rely on Eddie’s ‘profession’, because of a legal loophole means he has to pay over 50 000 Swiss Francs for his wife’s operation. Eddie comes up with a master plan: Charlie Chaplin had just died, and Eddie proposes to steal his corpse and ask for a ransom from the family. Osman is so desperate, that he agrees to the mad scheme. The two commit all sorts of amusing blunders along the way but Beauvois makes sure of a happy ending.

Xavier Beauvois tells his story like a fairy-tale, with the seven year old Samira being much more of an adult than the two men. Caroline Champetier’s photography is stunning, never falling to re-create the postcard-idyll of Switzerland, but showing us the grim places as well the the contrasting beauty. Performances are very convincing but Benoit Poelvoorde leads with his suberb portrait of a likeable ex-con whose heart is in the right place but can’t help slipping back into crime. Chiara Mastroianni, is shoe-horned in as the glamorous owner of the local circus, although as a love interest for Eddy, she doesn’t quite make the grade in a rather underwritten part. Michel Legrand’s music (plus Chaplin soundtracks) often help us over the the sagging middle of the film. A colourful B-Picture for children and grown-ups alike. But Beauvois makes sure of a happy-ending for Eddie in the arms of Chiara Mastroianni AS.

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27 AUGUST UNTIL 6 SEPTEMBER. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVALS BANNER

Venice Film Festival 2014 – preview

With a focus on World premieres from maverick directors from France, Italy and the USA, this year’s Venice Film Fesitval (27 August until 7th September) may yet prove to be a treasure trove of gems. Stars gracing the Red Carpet at the 71st Edition of the Italian Lido’s most glamorous event will include Ethan Hawk and Al Pacino. Composer, Alexandre Desplat, heads up the Competition jury that includes Tim Roth, Jessica Hausner, Sandy Powell.

The Festival opens on 27th August with BIRDMAN, or the UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) starring Michael Keaton and Ed Norton and closes on 6th September with Ann Hui’s THE GOLDEN ERA, that looks back at Japanese Imperialism in China.

The Competiton line-up at the World’s oldest film festival looks at new work from Abel Ferrara with a biopic on the Italian filmmaker PASOLINI, (his Welcome to New York recently shocked critics at Cannes) Swedish director, Roy Andersson brings his existential film A PIGEON SAT ON BRANCH and Fatih Akin’s THE CUT, starring Tahar Rahim as a father looking for his lost daughters, promising to be a contraversial year with hardly any offerings from Eastern Europe or the Far East . Most noticeably, Venice agent provocateur of the past two festivals, Kim Ki-duk, has been side-barred to Venice Days with his latest outing ONE ON ONE.

Five American films feature in the competition line-up among them: R Bahrani’s subprime mortgage drama 99 HOMES, with Laura Dern and Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary THE LOOK OF SILENCE, a welcome follow-up to his critically-acclaimed The Act of Killing. Last year David Gordon Green brought Joe to the Lido, this year his film MANGELHORN stars Al Pacino as a small-town Texan locksmith suffering from unrequited love. Ethan Hawke appears in Michael Almereyda’s modern take on Shakespeare’s CYMBELINE.

From France, Benoit Jacquot’s drama THREE HEARTS stars Charlotte Gainsbourg and Catherine Deneuvre. THE PRICE OF GLORY is a seventies-set comedy involving the imaginary theft of Charlie Chaplin’s coffin, starring Peter Coyote. Viggo Mortensen plays a teacher in David Oelhofften’s LOIN DES HOMMES that centres on the French war in Algeria.

From Italy comes Francesco Munzi’s mafia thriller ANIME NERE, Saverio Costanzo’s New York love story HUNGRY HEARTS starring Alba Rohrwacher and Adam Driver and Mario Martone’s historical biography IL GIOVANE FAVOLOSO that tells the fascinating story of the poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi.

Another Turkish director vying for the Golden Lion in this year’s competition is Kaan Mujdeci who makes his debut with SIVAS, that tells the story of an 11-year-old boy and his dog on the steppes. Already we have two contenders for the “Golden Dog” along with Vittorio De Sica’s Neo Realist drama UMBERTO D‘s mutt who appears in the Venice Classics strand this year. Meanwhile British outings are thin on the ground (in the Horizons (Orizzonti) sidebar) and include Duane Hopkins’s social-realist crime thriller BYPASS and Guy Myhill’s Norfold-set debut drama THE GOOB, starring Sienna Guillory and Sean Harris.

Other highlights from the East include Andrei Konchalovskiy’s POSTMAN’S WHITE NIGHTS that depicts an isolated community that live a neolithic lifestyle in contemporary Russia. Iranian director, Rakhshan Bani-Eternad’s TALES, Shanghai director, Xiaoshuai Wang’s thriller RED AMNESIA (Chuang ru zhe) and, finally, not to be missed in the competition line-up is, WWII epic drama FIRES ON THE PLAIN (NOBI) – the original 1959 version involved the starvation and privation of its entire crew and cast and is said to be one of Roman Polanski’s favourite films. Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s remake is one of the most anticipated dramas, starring Riri Funaki (Like Father Like Son) in the lead role and is a fitting tribute to this year’s WWII commemorations.

Debut films competing for the Lion of the Future
“Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film

Kaan MÜJDECI, Sivas (Turkey) (Venezia 71)
Naji ABU NOWAR, Theeb (Jordan/U.A.E./Qatar/United Kingdom) (Orizzonti)
Michele ALHAIQUE, Senza nessuna pietà (Italy) (Orizzonti)
Salome ALEXI, Kreditis limiti (Line of Credit) (Georgia/Germany/France) (Orizzonti)
Veronika FRANZ, Severin FIALA, Ich Seh / Ich Seh (Goodnight Mommy) (Austria) (Orizzonti)
Chaitanya TAMHANE, Court (India) (Orizzonti)

Suha ARRAF, Villa touma (Palestine) (SIC)
Stéphane DEMOUSTIER, Terre battue (40-Love) (France/Belgium) (SIC)
Ivan GERGOLET, Dancing with Maria (Italy/Argentine/Slovenia) (SIC)
Timm KRÖGER, Zerrumpelt Herz (The Council of Birds) (Germany) (SIC)
Hoàng Điệp NGUYỄN, Đập cánh giữa không trung (Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere) (Vietnam/France/Norway/Germany) (SIC)
Vuk RŠUMOVIĆ, Ničije dete (No One’s Child) (Serbia) (SIC)
Yukun XIN, Binguan (The Coffin in the Mountain) (China) (SIC)

Shawn CHRISTENSEN, Before I Disappear (USA/United Kingdom) (Venice Days)
Mario FANFANI, Les nuits d’été (France) (Venice Days)
Peter HOOGENDOORN, Tussen 10 en 12 (Between 10 and 12) (Belgium/France/Holland) (Venice Days)
Guy MYHILL, The Goob (United Kingdom) (Venice Days)
Adityavikram SENGUPTA, Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love) (India) (Venice Days) ”

THE 71ST INTERNATIONAL VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27TH AUGUST UNTIL 6TH SEPTEMBER 2014

Blind Dates (2014) – Sarajevo Film Festival 2014

Director: Levan Koguashvili

Cast: Andro Sakvarelidze, Ia Sukhitashvili, Archil Kikodze.

99min Georgian with subtitles Drama

Dry humour and a sense of the absurd pervade this second feature from Georgian director Levan Koguashvili. Set on a wider scale than his 2010 debut Street Days, and casting a mixture of professionals and newcomers, he offers another glimpse of Georgian society, tough and determined despite economic adversity and social unease.

In a bus station in Tbilisi, a middle-aged teacher Sandro (Andro Sakvarelidze), and his mate Iva (Archil Kikodze) are are waiting for some girls to arrive on a date. This is a meeting culled from the internet and doesn’t look promising when Lali arrives on her own. Why Sandro takes her to a hotel room is not clear but adds to the sense of irony and the two get on despite Lali’s mysterious bad mood; arranging a follow-up. Back at the family home later, Koguashvili contrasts traditional values and new hopes in Sandro’s narrow-minded parents who constantly berate him over his lack of a bride, like a couple of Yiddisher snorrers, despite their Orthodox origins.

Then Sandro bumps into Mañana, the mother of one of his pupils and a strange chemistry develops, despite her marriage to Tengo, who is soon to be released from prison. Sandro finds himself drawn into their domestic arrangements as Tengo’s driver and general side-kick in his recidivist activities. There’s a raucous and hot-headed humour to the Georgian males in Tengo’s criminal coterie which is the source of much fun in a society where men are macho and women, feisty. It also turns out that Tengo has not been altogether faithful during his time in jail. BLIND DATES is entertaining despite some narrative cul de sacs and offers wry insight into Georgian society through its amusing characters and rich textural asides.

Tbilisi’s faded glamour provides a majestic backdrop to the melancholy tone and is lavishly captured by Tato Kotetishvili on the widescreen and in intimate scenes. MT

SCREENED IN THE BERLINALE 2014 FORUM SECTION. also at EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 2014

The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013)

Director: Mikkel Norgaard Writers: Jussi Adler-Oslen and Nikolaj Arcel

Cast: Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Fares Fares, Sonja Richter, Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, Peter Plaugborg

93mins Nordic Noir Danish with subtitles

Nikolaj Lie Kaas takes the leading role as a truculent Danish cop who re-opens the case of a female local councillor who allegedly committed suicide in this slick and gripping Nordic Noir outing based on a bestselling novel, and adapted here by award-winner scribe Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

Well-cast as Inspector Carl Morck, the central character of Jussi Adler-Olson’s Department Q books, Lie Kaas is suitably taciturn and withdrawn as a man who’s failed at marriage and is also recovering from the trauma of being shot during a bungled investigation in which one colleague was killed, the other paralysed. Re-assigned to Dept Q, where unsolved cases are re-examined, he gets an assistant in the shape of Assad (Fares Fares – Zero Dark Thirty).

Although the pair don’t automatically hit it off, his attention is immediately absorbed by the cold case of the appealing figure of Merete (Sonja Richter) who apparently drowned while on board a ferry with her brain-damaged brother Uffe (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard) who won best actor in A Royal Affair, and here again shines out in a skilful portrait of mental illness. Told in parallel narrative, the detectives start the investigation as Merete’s real story unfolds while suspense is cleverly maintained with vital clues withheld, continually keeping us guessing. It emerges that Merete was mysteriously kidnapped on board and held prisoner in a pressure tank while enduring gruesome torture.

Meanwhile, Kaas is suffering from depression over his broken marriage and enduring his stepson’s loud sex-life in the next door bedroom but remains stoic throughout in a dynamite performance as Mr Angry from Copenhagen. The film looks magnificent with widescreen cinematography courtesy of Eric Kress with its use of chiaroscuro combined with occasional inventive touches of chromatic brilliance during the scenes in the pressure tank. Although the climax drifts into clichéd-ground, this is an edgy and immersive drama. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 29 AUGUST 2014

[youtube id=”vuWEtr1yKkM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

God Help the Girl (2014)

Dir.: Stuart Murdoch; Cast: Emily Browning, Olly Alexander, Hannah Murray

111 min UK Drama

Best known as lead singer of the indie band ” Belle and Sebastian” Stuart Murdoch turns his talents here to filmmaking with a sparky little Britflick GOD HELP THE GIRL. Far from perfect, it’s a moving piece of drama, despite a slim storyline. Three young wannabe-be musicians spend a glorious summer in Glasgow, trying to fill in time before adulthood. This might seem unoriginal, but they sing and dance around the city in the spirit of a Jacques Demy film: his stories were never particularly original, but they also grabbed you by the heart, and his colourful city backgrounds of Cherbourg or Rochefort, were pure fantasy. Murdoch’s Glasgow evokes the same magic, but the charm lies in the details.

Eve (Browning), suffering from anorexia and depression, absconds from hospital at night and tries to kick-start her life as a musician. She meets the guitarist James (Alexander) at a concert, where he fights with the drummer. James introduces Eve to Cassie (Murray), a posh girl in whom he tries to instil the basics of music, but Cassie finds Eve much more interesting, and soon they roam the city on foot, bike or in a canoe. On forming a band, Eve has a relapse and has to go back to hospital, but finally success arrives (sort of). In the same style as Demy, Murdoch chooses a bitter-sweet ending.

Much of the success is down to the actors: Browning’s Eve hiding her rather steely interior behind a helpless-little-girl persona, but living by her wits. James is just the opposite: he seems to be the leader of the group, but it becomes soon clear that he is only too happy to stay in this in-between stage for the rest of his life. He is an avoid ant; fearful of testing himself, personally and professionally. No wonder Eve sleeps with Anton, a French singer, who turns out to be an arrogant bastard. Cassie is the most earthly: she knows that she can always fall back on family money and connections, and enjoys herself as much as she can: this is her gap year.

The camera creates a dream world in Glasgow: vibrant and colourful, glossy and full of surprises. And it’s a fantasy life the trio creates for themselves; a background invented to suit their needs: young and romantic, far away from the adulthood, which awaits them round the corner. And when Eve and Cassie perform a dance duel with umbrellas, you HAVE to fall in love with GOD HELP THE GIRL – for Demy’s sake. AS

[youtube id=”6jc2gHpNbyc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

LAUNCHING ON 16 AUGUST AND IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 22 AUGUST 2014

The Congress (2013)

Dir.: Ariel Folman | Cast: Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Jon Hamm, Paul Giamatti, Danny Huston,Israel 2013, 120 min.

After the success of Waltz with Bashir director Ariel Folman has filmed Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 novel “The Futurological Congress” with an even more stunning result in this psychedelic animation. In the first forty minutes of aesthetically straightforward action, Robin Wright stars as an actress with a conflict: sell her identity and secure the future of her children, Sarah and Aaron (who is suffering from a rare disease), or be herself and suffer the consequences of any Hollywood actress over 40. A tough choice for any woman.

Her agent (Keitel) wants her to give her identity to the film corporation Miramount: as a scanned “product” she can be used in any film to be shot in the next twenty years. Miramount boss Danny Huston pressurises her eventually into signing and makes good use of her in countless B movies and TV series. After twenty years on the shelf an aged Wright is invited to the Congress of the title, where her future ‘career’ will be discussed. On entering a special zone, she (like the majority of the human population) takes a sniff from a vial – and the world changes into an inferno of glaringly coloured animations, in which everything is possible.

The answer for this radical aestheic change is easy: the pills have got better, Prozac is passé, the vials give everybody who uses them the identity they want; Marilyn Monroe, Dracula or Superman/woman in cartoon form. Only snag: you can never go back into the real world and be your real self. As it emerges, only a few believers in truth and identity live in the old world: drab, grey and full of poverty. Searching for Aaron (she has already lost Sarah to an unknown new identity), Wright, thanks to a special pill, wanders between the two worlds.

In an horrific parody to our current world of call-centres and diminishing personal engagement, everybody here is degraded to a gigantic cartoon existence, where life follows the dramatic rules assigned by ‘Disney’. But most people love this dream which panders to and embraces the growing cult of celebrity; allowing characters to assume the starring roles in movies, even if they are only animated ones. The contrast between the outsiders in their miserable Third World existence and the trippers of the entertainment world could not be greater: The shocking, strange, and action-orientated colour cartoon versus the black and white doc realism. What price a soul, if you can be everything you want to be in colour and Technicolor? A melancholy dystopian adventure that envisages a post Covid future even more frightening and bleaker than Orwell’s 1984. AS

THE CONGRESS IS NOW ON MUBI

The Werner Herzog Collection | Mubi and Bluray

This collection from one of Germany’s most celebrated modern film directors kicks off with Heart of Glass

Directed by Werner Herzog with a cast of Josef Bierbichler, Stefan Guttler, Clemens Scheitz, Sonia Skiba, this slice of German Gothic Horror is based on a story by Herbert Achternbusch.

HEART OF GLASS offers a distopian vision of the future. In tribute to his beloved Bavaria, Herzog set most of his film here in a small village in the depths of the forrest, at the beginning of the 19th century. In the opening sequence a mesmerising time-lapse sequence of clouds moves slowly through the valley like a velvet river, portending gloom (the scene took Herzog 12 days to shoot). The downfall of humanity and the industrial revolution is encapsulated in this gloom-filled microcosm in the Black Forest, uncannily predicting the demise of the manufacturing industry: it is a narrative with universal implications; both ancient and contemporary.

To achieve the otherworldly atmosphere and trance-like performances, Herzog put most of the cast under hypnosis including the shepherd who delivers doom-laced prophecies to the locals.

The story is unremittingly grim, enigmatic and inconclusive and the atmosphere gives us all we need to know and understand about this simple tale of woe that concerns the backbone of the community: a glass factory.

The talented craftsman and foreman, Muhlbeck, has just died and with him dies the secret of the famous ruby glass. All efforts to recover the special ingredients fail. The local baron becomes obsessed with the ruby glass and its purported magical properties and gradually goes mad, and the villagers are plunged into utter despair and depression, gradually losing the will to live as a result of their aimless existence, they turn into zombie-like creatures. Hias (Joseph Bierbichler – the only cast member not hypnotised) remains positive but predicts events that appear to mirror those of the 20th century and beyond.

Mesmerisingly slow and weirdly hypnotic: this is a powerful yet somniferous film that grips from the opening sequences, particularly the scene where two friends quarrel and fall drunkenly from a hayloft, where one dies. As the other dances with his friend’s body, he sings out the extraordinary line: “I’ll sleep my hangover off on your corpse” With its dismal interiors and shadows, it paints a bleak and desolate community. The performances are ghostly, evoking an uncanny ambiance not similar to that of Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932).

The final scene was shot in Skelling, Ireland and shows a man looking out to see from the mountains. Men are seen rowing furiously out to sea with birds following them but gradually they lose sight of the land. Whether this is positive or negative is difficult to fathom. Should we recklessly embrace the future (doom or success) or wait silently for it to come and get us. Herzog is a filmmaker of infinite ambition who embarks on projects with the gusto and tenacity of Stakhanovite (both Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre spring to mind), so no doubt he would chose the former. MT

FATA MORGANA Germany | 1971 | colour | 74 mins
Even for Herzog, the master of the surreal, FATA MORGANA was an out-of-this-world experience, literally. Based on a sci-fi novel, this documentary is shot by “aliens” who visit our planet – East Africa, to be precise. We see many animals; dead and alive – planes starting and landing and people doing everything people do. The film historian Lotte Eisner (a close friend of the director) reads the Mayan version of the history of creation, and the music of Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen helps to transcend reality even more. All the images shimmer, nothing seems real, Herzog’s earth is home to an enigmatic species. All shot with a stolen camera, as the director proudly admits.

LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS | Germany | 1971 | colour | 81 mins

Shot with a static camera, this documentary introduces us to the world of the Deaf/Blind; centred around Fini Straubinger (56), a woman who, after an accident in her childhood, lost her sight and hearing. After learning the Lorm alphabet, a manual alphabet and only way of communication for these suffering from this double-impairment, she teaches others and takes her students out into the world – even on a plane journey. She shows Herzog how much enjoyment is still possible, but also the limits of their existence: “If you let go of my hand, it seems that are thousands of miles between us”. Extremely moving.

STROSZEK | Germany | 1977 | colour | 133mins

More or less the real-life story of the main protagonist Bruno Schleinstein (1932-2010), an actor and musician with mental health problems, who was earlier the star of Herzogs’s “Kaspar Hauser” feature film in 1972. Here Bruno S. plays a Berlin musician who lives on the margins of the city (and even sounds like Kaspar Hauser) and plans to rob a bank with friends. Finding the bank closed, they rob a hairdresser instead, spending the money at the supermarket opposite. Fame did not last long for Bruno S. and he complained later “that everybody abandoned me”. He never acted again but started painting.

WOYZECK | Germany | 1979 | colour | 77mins is the third of five Herzog films featuring the actor Klaus Kinski between 1972 and 1987. WOYZECK was shot more or less directly with more or less the same cast and crew after NOSFERATU: Phantom Der Nacht. this was the most peaceful co-operation between the director and the star who had a permanently strained relationship,. Perhaps everybody was too exhausted (particularly Kinski after his magnificent portrayal of the vampire), or perhaps the short shooting schedule (18 days) asked for discipline, but Kinski played the proletarian victim of a class-ridden society with great restraint. Strangely enough Herzog scores the film of Büchner’s play of the same name with music by Beethoven and Vivaldi – very much at odds with scenes like when Woyzeck’s doctor is throwing a cat out of his second floor window, who, caught by Woyzeck, promptly empties her bowls on him.

FITZCARALDO | Germany | 1982 | colour | 152mins | is based on the life story of the Irish business-man and adventurer Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, who tried to introduce opera to Peru in the 1890s. Jason Robards played the title role, but was taken ill after forty per cent of his scenes had been shot. After recovering from a heavy bout of dysentery, Robard’s doctor forbid him to resume working. Herzog tried to hire Jack Nicholson for the part, but he declined. Against his better judgement, Herzog went back to cast Kinski, who is on his best behaviour, entranced by his co-star and on screen lover, Claudia Cardinale.

But behind the scenes Kinski soon became engaged in fights with the film crew and the native Indians, who worked as extras. The native chief even offered to kill Kinski, to protect the director but the Herzog declined. In one scene, the natives are watching the white men at meal-times, and their angry comments are particularly candid in their aggressiveness, since they are directed at the despised Kinski.

COBRA VERDE | Germany/Ghana | 1987 | colour | 106min | is the last of Herzog’s collaborations with Kinski. Based on a novel by Bruce Chatwin, it tells the story of a deranged Brazilian rancher (Kinski), who collides with the law and turns into the fearsome bandit Cobra Verde (Green Snake). He is later commissioned to re-open the slave trade with Ghana. Not surprisingly, Herzog and Kinski fell out even before shooting started: Herzog chose Ghana as one of the locations, whilst Kinski travelled to Columbia and insisted on that as a location: “Herzog does not know that I give life to dead scenery”. During the shooting, Kinski openly attacked Thomas Mauch, the DOP, who left the production and had to be replaced by Victor Ruzicka. Twelve years later Herzog would release a documentary charting heir creative but tumultuous relationship in MY BEST FIEND (My best frenemy).

THE BFI SET COMPRISES:

The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1967;

Last Words (1968);

Precautions Against Fanatics (1969);

Handicapped Future (1970);

Fata Morgana (1971);

Land of Silence and Darkness (1971);

Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972);

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974);

The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1975);

Heart of Glass (1976);

How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976);

Stroszek (1977);

THE WERNER HERZOG COLLECTION IS RELEASED ON DVD AND BLU-RAY at THE BFI | LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS IS ON MUBI

Madame DuBarry (1919) – DVD

Dir.: Ernst Lubitsch

Cast: Pola Negri, Emil Jannings, Reinhold Schünzel, Eduard von Winterstein, Harry Liedtke

Germany 1919, 85 min.

Madame Dubarry was the favourite mistress of King Louis XV, so it would seem fitting that Ernst Lubitsch’s drama of her amorous adventures MADAME DuBARRY should premiere on the 18th September 1919 to celebrate the opening of the “UFA Palast am Zoo” in Berlin: the Marquise cinema of the film production corporation of the same name, which had been founded during the war years and would dominate German cinema until 1945. The cinema was, symbolically, destroyed in the same year.

To this day, it is still surrounded in controversy – Kracauer lambasted it in “From Caligari to Hitler” as a soap-opera, stating “it reduces the [French] revolution to a derivative of private passions”. Other critics saw MADAME DuBARRY simply as a German version of the Italian cinema of the period, whilst another interpretation saw “a reckoning with every form of power”. It was indeed ironic that at the same time the French revolution was being depicted in the local cinema, Berlin (and other German cities) were experiencing riots between rival political organisations, as well as hunger marches. Right-wing critics saw parallels in the drama to the demise of the German monarchy of the House of “Hohenzollern”. Lubitsch himself wrote thirty years later: “At the time, I tried to make my films less like operas, and attempted to humanise the historical protagonists. I showed that their intimate details were equal in importance to the role of the mass movements, and tried to make them co-exist.”

Lubitsch set great store in the importance of intimate details of his drama, the main characters are shown with all their foibles – but the masses are depicted as characters straight out of Le Bon’s “Mass-Psychology”: they are either totally passive or terrorise the aristocrats – said intimate details are just left to the latter. Not that Lubitsch shows any sympathy with them: Jannings Louis XV is shown a fool, unable to lead a nation, just interested in young women, making a fool of himself in the process. Even his death of smallpox, is not dramatic, just another macabre accident. Pola Negri plays Jeanne/Dubarry as a naïve coquette, just interested in making her way to the top – saving her love only for her cousin Armand (Liedtke). Dubarry’s end, unlike the one of Louis XV. – is particularly gruesome: she is guillotined, her head thrown into the jubilant masses, who fight for it like souvenir hunters at a football match.

Lubitsch would follow MADAME DuBARRY with equally monumental productions like Anna Boleyn (1920), Sumurun (1920) and The Loves of Pharaoh (1922), all sold with profit to the USA – before he himself would follow to Hollywood by the end of 1922. His confidence in the Weimar Republic seems to have been minimal, a point he stated often enough. Pola Negri beat him by a few month – The Flame (1922) was the last of their three UFA films. AS

[youtube id=”NMywx7DsatQ” width=”600″ height=”350″]

This is the first ever blu-ray release of Lubitsch’s epic history, and will be accompanied by Lubitsch’s earliest surviving film, Als Ich Tot War. MADAME DuBARRY will feature as part of Eureka’s award-winning The Masters of Cinema Series and will be released on 22 September 2014.

SYNOPSIS:

Before Ernst Lubitsch created his eminently sophisticated Hollywood sex comedies, he was at work in Germany perfecting his earliest entries into the genre, alongside sweeping ironic dramas based on historical events and often set in exotic locales. One of his earliest successes merged elements of both modes: Madame DuBarry.

A recounting-à-la-Lubitsch of the torrid affair between the title character (Pola Negri) and France’s King Louis XV (Emil Jannings, who would go on to portray Henry VIII in Lubitsch’s Anna Boleyn of the following year – a film that neatly bookends Madame DuBarry), the picture spans scandalous intrigue at the court and the ring of the guillotine among the riotous mobs of the Revolution.

Also included in this edition is Lubitsch’s earliest surviving film, the 1916 Als ich tot war [When I Was Dead], which stars the director himself in a lead role that involves his faked suicide and (prefiguring the later Die Puppe.) an infiltration of the domestic space whilst in disguise (not as an automaton, but as a servant). The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Madame DuBarry and Als ich tot war in a special Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition for the first time.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New high-definition 1080p presentation of the main feature on the Blu-ray, and progressive encode on the DVD
• Original /French / German intertitles with newly translated optional English subtitles
• Lubitsch’s earliest surviving film, Als ich tot war [1916]
• 36-PAGE BOOKLET

67th Locarno Film Festival 6-16 August 2014 – WINNERS

The 67th Locarno Film Festival, kicks off on August 6th with Luc Besson’s thriller LUCY, starring Scarlett Johansson, and closes on August 16th with Tony Gatlif’s immigration drama GERONIMO. Overseen by Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, the festival boasts a number of world premieres, thirteen of which will compete for the coveted GOLDEN LEOPARD in the festival’s International Competition section. World premiere titles in competition include Pedro Costa’s HORSE MONEY, Jungbum Park’s ALIVE, Syllas Tzoumerkas’s A BLAST, Paul Vecchiali’s WHITE NIGHTS ON THE PIER and Yury Bykov’s THE FOOL.

Alongside the International Competition films, the festival has a further fifteen features in its famed Piazza Grande strand, with the films playing outdoors on Europe’s largest screen. Anticipated highlights include: road comedy LAND HO!, Aaron Katz’s Iceland-set follow-up to COLD WEATHER, co-directed with Martha Stephens; Olivier Assayas’ CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA starring Juliette Binoche (receiving a career honour at the festival); Jasmila Zbanic’s LOVE ISLAND (receiving its world premiere); and Lasse Hallstom’s restaurant comedy THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY, starring Helen Mirren.

In addition to the International Competition and Piazza Grande strands, Locarno features a number of other strands showcasing the diversity of modern cinema. They include: the new Signs of Life strand, centring on “cinema at the frontiers” (sample film: Nicolas Pereda’s THE ABSENT); the Concorso Cineasti /Cineastes of the Present discovery strand, featuring both first and second features (sample film: Soon-Mi Yoo’s SONGS FROM THE NORTH); the Open Doors section, which focuses on a specific region every year (this year, it’s films from sub-Saharan Africa); and the Pardi di domani section for shorts.

One thing Locarno is feted for is its epic retrospectives and this year is no exception, with a strand dedicated to Titanus (one of the great Italian film production companies) that includes over fifty films, with De Sica’s TWO WOMEN and Visconti’s THE LEOPARD among them. There’s also a Histoire(s) du Cinema section, dedicated to film history, showcasing films as diverse as Charlie Chaplin’s MODEarN TIMES and Cem Kaya’s REMAKE, REMIX, RIPOFF. On top of that, there are two smaller tribute sections, one for actor Jean-Pierre Leaud and one for director Li Han-hsiang.

This year’s jury members at Locarno include Venice Golden Lion winner Gianfranco Rossi (Sacro GRA), German filmmaker Thomas Arslan (who made the wonderful GOLD, sadly still not released in the UK), Chinese director Diao Yinan (Berlin Golden Bear winner for BLACK COAL, THIN ICE) and actresses Alice Braga (City of God) and Connie Nielsen (NYMPHOMANIAC). Locarno has a happy tradition of screening films associated with its jury members, so there’s also an Official Jury Films strand, containing 15 films, including both Gold and Black Coal, Thin Ice. Alongside the main jury there are two other juries, one for the shorts strand (headed by Rutger Hauer) and one for the Concorso Cineasti strand, headed by Ossama Mohammed.

This year, the festival is honouring three different actors with career awards: Juliette Binoche will receive the clumsily named Excellence Award Moet & Chandon, Mia Farrow will receive the Leopard Club award (a recent addition to the festival) and Armin Mueller-Stahl will pick up the Lifetime Achievement Award. All three actors will also have selections of their films screened as part of the festival. In addition, there will be a number of other special guests this year, with confirmed attendees including horror maestro Dario Argento, acclaimed Spanish director Víctor Erice (also receiving a career award and a mini-strand), Melanie Griffith, Julie Depardieu, Jonathan Pryce and Jason Schwartzman.

With so much going on, Locarno audiences are pretty much spoiled for choice, but here are five films to look out for, in addition to those mentioned above.

BUZZARD (US) – Concorso Cineasti

Indie darling Joel Potrykus concludes his “animal trilogy” (his previous features include Coyote and Ape) with this low-budget drama starring regular collaborator Joshua Burge as a disaffected temp who runs a series of low-level scams from his office cubicle.

THE IRON MINISTRY US/China) – Official Competition

Director J.P. Sniadecki’s intriguing-sounding documentary explores China’s sprawling railway system and examines the social experience of train travel, meeting a range of passengers and railway employees along the way.

CHRISTMAS, AGAIN (US) – Concorso Cineasti

Director Charles Poekel took to Kickstarter to fund his feature debut, an ultra-low budget drama about a Christmas tree vendor in New York, based on his own experiences.

DOS DISPAROS (aka Two Gun Shots) (Argentina/Chile/Germany/Netherlands) – Official Competition

The first feature in a decade from director Martin Rejtman, one of the founders of New Argentine cinema. The provocative film focuses on a 16 year old boy who finds a gun in his house and impulsively shoots himself, twice, only to survive.

LISTEN UP, PHILIP (US) – Official Competition

Writer-director Alex Ross Perry’s third feature is a sharply written, darkly funny comedy starring Jason Schwartzman as a bad tempered and self-centred writer awaiting the publication of his second novel. Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss co-stars as his long-suffering live-in photographer girlfriend.

THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 16.

THE WINNERS ARE:

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

GOLDEN LEOPARD – Mula sa kung ano ang noon (WHAT WENT BEFORE) – Lav Diaz, Filippine
JURY PRIZE – Listen Up Philip – Alex Ross Perry, USA
BEST DIRECTOR – Cavolo Dinheiro (HORSE MONEY) Pedro Costa, Portugal
BEST ACTRESS – Ariane Labed per Fidelio, l’odyssée d’Alice di Lucie Borleteau, France
BEST ACTORS – Artem Bystrov per Durak (THE FOOL) di Yury Bykov, Russia
SPECIAL MENTION – Ventos de Agosto di Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil

Land of Storms (2014) Viharsarok

Director: Adam Csaszi

Writers: Adam Csaszi, Ivan Szabo

Cast: Andras Suto, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Adam Varga, Lajos Otto Horvath, Eniko Borcsok

105min Hungarian/German/English Drama

Adam Csaszi’s feature debut is a stunningly-shot and steamy affair that explores the erotic life of the three young men in the traditionally Catholic Hungarian countryside. Similar in tone and atmosphere to the recent Polish dramas: Floating Skyscrapers and In The Name Of, Storms is another foray into Eastern European attitudes to homoexuality and benefits from the excitingly inventive visuals of Csaszi’s cinematographer Marcell Rev, whose widescreen compositions and intimate close-ups compliment the sexually-charged performances of lust and longing by leads Suto (Szabolcs), Urzendowsky (Bernard) and Varga (Aron).

Szabolcs and Bernhard are best friends, training with a German soccer team to become professional footballers. Before their big game, attended by a scout from a leading team, the young men watch straight porn and smoke joints, setting the tone for what is to follow. In the match, Andras is not only sent off, but has a bad game overall. He makes a hasty retreat to his native Hungary, where he takes refuge in a ramshackle house on the prairie, inherited from his grandfather. During the night a young man from the nearby village, (Aron), tries to steal Szabolcs’s motorcycle, but in spite of it, they become friends and are physically drawn to one another during horseplay, ending up in bed. Aron is shunned by the villagers after he shares this with his mother. Splitting up with his girlfriend Brigi (Zita Teby), he then moves in with Szabolcs. Suddenly Bernhard arrives, declares his love for Andras, and asks him to make a decision which has dramatic consequences and vehement resistance from the villagers.

Hungary, particular in the provinces, is still very much influenced by the Catholic Church, and even the young attend mass regularly and participate in processions. Homosexuality is therefore considered a sin, especially in these villages. The love between Andras and Aron is doomed from the beginning; Andras is seen as the seducer, not only poisoning Aron but taking away the male head of a household and potential husband to his girlfriend. The young men of the village want revenge, and since beatings for both men do not change anything, psychological pressure is put on Aron with startling consequences.

Csaszi’s debut captures the wide flatness of the Hungarian countryside, and shows a life more or less unchanged since the First World War. The camera pans over the vastness, dwarfing the men in the enormity of their environment. Szabolc’s diffidence is touching and sensitive, very much in contrast to Aron’s physical masculinity. Land of Storms is a slow-burning mood piece, that may be too slow for some audiences, but nonetheless mesmerises throughout with its potent narrative and the powerful atmosphere. Congratulations to Adam Csaszi’s brave attempt to convey the hostility of a country governed by ‘The Small Landholders Party’, which represents exactly the sort of old-timers who hunt down the likes of Szabolcs and Bernard.

LAND OF STORMS SCREENED DURING THE BERLINALE 2014 IN THE PANORAMA SECTION.

IT IS ALSO SCREENING AT SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL which runs from 15 – 23 August 2014.

[youtube id=”50ti14z2zcE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Alleluia (2014) -Frightfest 21-25 August 2014

Director: Fabrice Du Welz

Cast: Laurent Lucas, Lola Duenas, Helena Noguerra

90min Belgium Psycho drama

Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz’s spiky and unsettling indie feature was one of the best thrillers to come out of Cannes this year, screening in the Directors’ Fortnight strand. His previous outings Calvaire and Vinyan have both been adaptations of other films: Calvaire of Deliverance and Vinyan (loosely) of Apocalypse Now. And ALLELUIA bases itself on the US hit The Honeymoon Killers and a news event that shocked America in the late forties (the story of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez).

Guaranteed to put you off online dating forever, ALLELUIA is anointed with flourishes of weird brilliance that give real insight into the disturbed minds of his outwardly straightforward protagonists: Gloria and Michel who are people we might easily meet on a dating site. But when we see the Michel (Laurent Lucas) lighting a candle to summon his powers of seduction for his next victim, and Gloria (Lola Duenas) giving a delightful rendition of a self-composed song before sawing off her rival’s ankle, it’s clear that these two are broken individuals who should carry a public health warning on their teeshirts. But it’s the sensual overload of Manu Dacosse’s imaginatively suggestive cinematography, Vincent Cahay’s score and Emmanuel de Bossieu’s sound effects that hint at so much more, collaborating to make this a warped psychological drama soaked in horror and a potent winner for the art house circuit.

In the Belgian morgue where she works, Gloria is having an ordinary day, washing down the body of a corpse, an early hint that she’s comfortable with death and morbidity. A single parent: she’s lonely and looking for someone to share her life with. Online, she meets Michel (Laurent Lucas), an inveterate womanizer and professional hustler but also an impeccable gentleman; quietly spoken and masculine with good looks and a way with words. Their chemistry is instant and palpable. During a romantic dinner, the camera views them in sensual soft focus with the emphasis on soundbites of Gloria’s sighs. Rose-tinted images of Gloria in the afterglow of love-making are all that’s needed to convince us that she’s loved-up and smitten. The next day they go about their business, but something clicks in the minds of these two that is unleashed once they are drawn into the emotional relationship. Gloria has somethings deeper and darker in mind for Michael: she wants to possess him. When she discovers that Michel inveigles women into his life for money, she decides to become his accomplice rather than risk losing him. It is clear Michel is a damaged, but clearly adept with words that he is able to make anyone believe anything he wants them to.

Fabrice Du Welz’s narrative focuses on this dynamic: two purportedly ordinary people bringing their toxic pasts to bear on their unsuspecting romantic victims. We do not know Gloria’s past but for Michel: his doting mother – who used him for sex when none was available with men her own age – seems to be the catalyst for the obsessional devotion he thrives on from his maternal role model: his brian is hard-wired to pleasuring older women and extracting their money. In her lust to possess Michel, Gloria offers him the ultimate ‘have you cake and eat it’ scenario: agreeing to put up with his philandering, even offering to aide and abet him; on condition that he continues their sexual relationship. The segments (‘Acts’) that follow are entitled: ‘Marguerite and Michel, ‘Gabriella and Solange’; each track Michel’s romantic seductions of wealthy and lonely women. Marguerite (Edith le Merdy – who he marries) is told that Gloria is Michel’s close sister; Gabriella (Anne-Marie Loop), an elderly Catholic charity worker, is also seduced and finally Solange (Helena Noguerra) who is an elegant, fresher-looking, younger version of Gloria, with a country house and vintage Jaguar to tempt him. Michel bonds with the little innocent girl in Solange, further angering Gloria. He seems genuinely happy although he tricks Gloria into believing that he is not sleeping with her rival, so as to further their complicity, making Gloria believe she is ‘in control.’ Each of these romances is threatened by Gloria’s insane jealously and demanding nature and Michel acquiesces to her demands that feed the dynamic he shared with his mother.

Increasingly desperate measures are required to satisfy Gloria’s obsession. Gloria has as strong a pull on Michel as he has on her. Duenas is superbly cast as the broken and raddled bunny-boiler Gloria, with her explosions of violent temper erupting unpredictably, exposing not only her desperate neediness but also her psychopathic tendencies: of the two, Gloria is the most evil. As Michel, Lucas has the good looks and flashing eyes of a lothario and the sexy, seedy quality that Gabriel Byrne does so well. ALLELUIA is the perfect psychological thriller ‘de nos jours’ showing how sometimes love and passion can really be ‘to die for’. MT

SCREENING DURING FRIGHTFEST 21-15 AUGUST 2014 WHICH RUNS IN VARIOUS VENUES IN LONDON

Charulata (1964)

Dir.: Satyajit Ray

Cast: Madhabi Mukherjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, Shailen Mukerjee

India 1964; 117 min.

Set in Kolkata in the early 1880s and based on the short story “The Broken Nest” by Rabindranath Tagore, Ray uses utmost candour in this screen version, without betraying any of Tagore’s intentions. Charulata (M. Mukerjee) is the wife of publisher Bhupati (S. Mukerjee), publisher of a newspaper “The Sentinel”. Feeling that his well-educated and elegant wife is lonely, Bhupati invites his older brother Umapada and wife, Manda, to come and stay. When their company does nothing to alleviate his wife’s boredom he asks his younger cousin Amal (S Chatterjee) into the household. Both share a passion for literature and slowly the relationship becomes more and more intimate. Bhupati, submerged in his masculine world of politics, fails to see the development. But Amal, feeling guilty and threatened by Charulata’s intellect and his feelings for her, abruptly breaks off his relationship with disastrous consequences.

Very much in the style of the Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu (An Autumn Afternoon), this beautifully-told domestic drama offers a pared-down and understated portrait of family life in nineteenth century India. Even in 1964, the role of the Indian woman of Charulata’s class, had not changed that much from the 1880s – many female viewers cried openly after the premiere and Ray was aware of the tension his film would create. Strangely, the Cannes Film Festival rejected the film but it was shown in the summer of 1965 at the Berlinale, were Ray won the “Silver Bear” for best director.

Despite the simplicity of the narrative, Charulata’s passion is still very much in evidence and Madhabi Mukherjee is still remembered today for her luminous performance. The monochrome camera glides through the big house with its imposing clocks and furniture as atmospheric sounds drift in from the street: the cries of street vendors and delicate birdsong from the garden.. Although she is surrounded by a legion of of capable servants, Charulata is isolated until Amal appears. But despite his artistic sensitivity and feelings for her, Ray illustrates how he is still a man in a man’s world – not so far removed from Bhupati and when challenged, he is surprised that Charulata’s opinions differ (understandably) from views and his literary taste. In the end, he is shown as a coward who runs away, emerging a traitor to his own ideas. Bhupati is a cold man, who loves his politics and uses his power to exercise his own ego, not to understand people. In the end, the question of reconciliation is left open: and the final frame is illuminating.

Penelope Houston summed it up in 1965 when she wrote in ‘Sight and Sound’: “…the interplay of sophistication and simplicity is extraordinary”. And for Satyajit Ray this would remain the favourite of his film, “the one he would make again exactly the same”. Today, CHARULATA still feels modern. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 22 AUGUST 2014 AT BFI

[youtube id=”EcUHbTBElO0″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

All Is By My Side (2013)

Director/Writer: John Ridley

Cast: Imogen Poots, Hayley Atwell, Andre Benjamin, Ruth Negga, Burn Gorman, Tom Dunlea

118 mins UK Biopic

Jimi Hendrix will go down in history as the legendary rock musician who died of a drugs overdose. John Ridley’s montage biopic was made without the consent of the family so it is, by nature, impressionistic and possibly a tad ill-judged but passionate, none the less.

Why make such a film about Hendrix without access to his music, his family? Well this is a drama based around his life from the imagined perspectives of various people in his coterie. Not every piece of art has to be fact-based and Ridley is entitled to give his version of the musician’s impact on the sixties music scene, from his own point of view. Whether it’s a cogent and valid piece of filmmaking is another matter.

Most noted for his screenplay of 12 Years A Slave, Ridley feels his way through this biopic with a judicious choice of acting talent and some interesting perceptions: some are engaging, some are crass. As Hendrix, André Benjamin evokes the gentle coltish physicality of the artist, playing him as a naive but wilful, free spirit. Imogen Poots is simply exultant as Linda Keith, the stabilising professional force in his career; a guiding light that showed him the way through sixties London from a balanced perspective, an intelligent girl who knew the ropes and was also Keith Richards’ girlfriend. And Hayley Atwell, sparkles as lover Kathy Echingham, who fought tooth and nail for Jimi’s attentions (in and out of bed) and became the inspiration for several classic hits. However, this is a callow depiction of the sixties which was a humorous upbeat time of new creative frontiers and artistic discovery, of fresh and fervent optimism untainted by greed, depravity or jadedness. Instead, what Ridley offers is a biopic about a slightly misguided loner who is indecisive in love and, for the most part, unremarkable as a rock musician. There are some disastrous, ill-judged moments where Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney are presented as laughable cardboard cut-outs via freeze-frame: an appalled device that pours derision on the film. Malcolm X is depicted as a benign uncle-like figure,

At nearly two hours All Is By My Side outstays its welcome, to say the least. Lacking in archive footage of the man himself performing his music, even diehard fans will fail to root for it, and as a testament to the swinging sixties it totally misses the beat. As a study of female adoration and groupiedom it hits the nail on the head. All Is By My Side may not be about the real Jimi Hendrix the rock musician, but through some strong performances, emerges the essence and charisma of a true artist and creative: who inspired strong feelings: to know him was to love him.

The Policeman’s Wife (2013)

DIE FRAU DES POLIZISTEN

Dir.: Philip Gröning;

Cast: Alexandra Finder, David Zimmerschied, Chiara Kleemann, Pia Kleemann; Germany 2013, 175 min.

In 59 chapters, each divided by about 45 seconds intervals, Philip Gröning (Into Great Silence) tells the story of a nuclear family of today. In the opening sections all appears to be boringly normal as Mr and Mrs get to grips with child rearing in a small German town. Uwe (Zimmerschied) is a policeman who has to work long shifts to make ends meet. Nothing new there. His wife Christine (Finder) is often alone at home with their little daughter Clara (Chiara and Pia Kleemann) but seems content with motherhood.

Gradually Uwe turns from a doting father and husband into a vicious monster; beating his wife for no apparent reason. When his daughter sees the horrendous injuries, Uwe tries to cover things up: ‘Mummy is ill’. Jeopardising her own well-being, Christine wants to stay so that her daughter has a father. This is a realistic, everyday horror and yet it depicts a situation that’s alarmingly commonplace: a woman degrading herself by not leaving her abusive husband, in order to give her daughter a ‘normal’ family life.

Not an easy film to watch for obvious reasons, quite apart from the tedious “Chapter” breaks, Uwe’s violent outbursts, two work-related scenes and the enigmatic appearances of an old man, this small household feels increasingly filled with a claustrophobic menace. But the reasons for Uwe’s mental deterioration are never explored, leaving the viewer to ruminate and speculate: is he mentally ill, or just a sadist.? The narrative structure is also ambiguous: are we watching flash-backs, or following a straight-forward timeframe. This is real ‘fly on the wall’ stuff: information is so limited that we have no way of appraising or analysing the endless repetitiveness. Clearly Gröning wants us to draw our own conclusions, but we are given very little to work with in the process. Bombarded by the stringent quality of the individual chapters, the viewer starts to drown in nearly three hours of emotional warfare and very little narrative flow from chapter to chapter, let alone the entire film.

Performances and cinematography are superb, as the camera probes new angles of faces and objects, perfectly catching the emotional storm from every possible viewpoint. In spite of all this, the viewer feels excluded; as if Gröning is just out to prove a point, a relentless exercise in cruelty, without the slightest explanation for motives. Overlong and tedious, this is an exhausting dogmatic lesson in contemporary dysfunctional family life. AS

Venice Film Festival review. THE POLICEMAN’S WIFE IS OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 22 AUGUST 2014

[youtube id=”aeBSay3NXZM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Die Frau im Mond (1929) – Dual Format Blu-ray & DVD

DIE FRAU IM MOND/WOMAN IN THE MOON

Dir.: Fritz Lang

Cast: Willy Fritsch, Gerda Maurus, Gustav von Wangenheim, Fritz Rasp, Klaus Pohl;

Germany 1929, 170 min.

DIE FRAU IM MOND is Fritz Lang’s last silent movie, and his last one for the UFA. The film is not only a composite of Nibelungen (1922/24) and Metropolis (1925/6), but also forward looking to Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1932), Lang’s last film which was banned by the Nazis, before his emigration. It is a melodrama like Nibelungen, belongs to the science-fiction genre like Metropolis, and shares with his second ‘Mabuse’ film the same political implications, wherein powerful individuals are seeking to undermine progress for their own good.

Helius (Fritsch) is interested in space travel, and he seeks out Professor Mannfeldt (Pohl), who believes, that there is gold on the moon. But a clique of super-rich business men hire the assassin Walter Turner (Rasp), to profit from the planned moon landing. Turner blackmails Helius to let him fly with the crew, which is completed by Helius assistant Windegger (v. Wangenheim), who is secretly in love with Helius’ fiancée Friede (Maurus), another assistant. During the flight, they discover Gustav, a young boy, who has travelled as a stowaway. After the moon landing, Mannfeldt goes out with his diving rod (!) to find the gold he has dreamt about in the caves. His success is short lived, since Turner has followed him and kills him. Turner then tries to fly alone back to earth, but he is killed in a struggle, but one of the bullets has hit the oxygen tanks, which means, that one of the remaining crew has to be left behind. Windegger and Helius draw lots, and Helius, who is (not without reason) jealous of Windegger, looses. But Windegger sacrifices himself, after teaching Gustav how to fly the rocket back to earth, he puts sleeping pills in the drinks of Helius and Friede, and watches the rocket blast off. But when he turns in despair, Friede embraces him.

Lang actually invented the count-down to blast-off for real space travel, counting backwards to zero before the rocket ignites. But DIE FRAU IM MOND is often very uneven particularly towards the end, when the ménage-a-trois takes all our attention, reducing the meaningful main conflict to a side-show. Somehow Lang’s relationship with his wife and script writer Thea von Harbou (1888-1954), might be the cause for this. Having married in 1922, the couple lived in an exotic flat in Berlin, their relationship driven by work (Von Harbou wrote the scripts to all ten films Lang directed from 1920 to 1932). But whilst Lang was a left-wing Jew, von Harbou had joined the Nazi party already in 1931, and whilst shooting “Dr. Mabuse der Spieler” in the same year, Lang found his wife in bed with Ayi Tendulkar, an Indian follower of Ghandi, whose hatred of the British made him welcome in Berlin. (Von Harbou married Tendulkar secretly in 1938 because the Nazis did not approve of a “mixed-marriage” of this kind, particularly for a very prominent party member).

But there is still much to be admired about DIE FRAU IM MOND: the sets for the rocks and craters of the moon, the secret meeting rooms of the conspirators, and Mannfeldt’s attic, surreally plastered not with wallpapers but newspapers. The acting is brilliant, particularly Rasp’s Turner, who is a man “of thousand faces”. Von Harbou’s influence is seen in the Helius character, who is shown as a weak intellectual, who cannot stand any tension – a coward who looses his girl for a man of action. The camera is very inventive, and, like in all Lang films, the design dominates through sheer brilliant details. A tour-de-force, not without its sarcastic humour. AS

OUT ON 25 AUGUST 2014. RELEASE INCLUDES ORIGINAL GERMAN INTERTITLES WITH NEWLY-TRANSLATED OPTIONAL ENGLISH SUBTITLES.

ALSO INCLUDES A 36-PAGE BOOKLET WITH MICHEAL E GROST’S ANALYSIS ON FRITZ LANG’S WORK AS A WHOLE.

AVAILABLE THROUGH MASTER OF CINEMA

[youtube id=”kXQEHDyCCTs” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Interview with Chris Mason Johnson – filmmaker

Alex Barrett spoke to Chris Mason Johnson during his recent visit to London. His latest film TEST is now out on DVD.

The first thing that strikes me about Chris Mason Johnson is how friendly he is. Conversation strikes up as soon as we meet, and before I’ve even finished turning on my recorders, we’ve already neatly segued into talking about filmmaking, discussing the pros and cons of updating editing software (as well as being a writer/director, Mason Johnson also serves as editor on his films). It comes up that I’m a filmmaker too, stuck in that awkward place between first and second feature. He comments that ‘the time it takes to get another feature up can be…challenging’, saying it in such a way that I feel there’s a story to be told. It’s not where I’d intended to start, but, I decide to ask him about the journey he’s been on since the release of his first feature The New Twenty (2008). He lets out a long, frustrated exhale, and we both laugh – it’s a feeling all filmmakers know only too well. He picks up the story:

CMJ: After The New Twenty, I launched into a new project – an independent comedy, also with a gay theme, but more mainstream. It had a bigger budget, $3-5 million, and I got caught in that waiting around game in L.A. It was a very frustrating couple of years. It was optioned, it won a prize, it was going to get made, and then it wasn’t and… long story short, I had the feeling as an artist that I’d given all my power away. I was powerless to do anything. I was just waiting for other people. So I flipped 180 degrees and I said ‘I know how to make a film. I’m going to do that now’. So I started writing Test as something very small and personal, something that I knew I could make for the couple of hundred thousand that I felt I could raise. And I did that. It was a great lesson and a great experience, because I remembered that I could make things. I think filmmakers trying to fit into a large, complicated industry, it’s easy to forget that. As a writer or a painter you don’t forget, because you wake up and there’s a canvas or there’s a blank page. But as a filmmaker, it’s very easy to forget that – and I think, as an artist, it’s important not to forget that.

AB: Test is set in 1985, against the backdrop of the first effective HIV-tests. Can you tell me what it was about this time period that interested you? What drew you to it.

CMJ: Well, I was there. I was a very young dancer, a professional at 16-17. I lived through it. So I was drawing on personal history. What interested me, aside from the fact that it was me, was that the AIDS movies that we have seen up to now have mostly been deathbed stories – stories of people getting sick and dying. That’s natural. When you’re dealing with this subject, it’s natural that narratively that’s where it would go. But I wanted to do something different, something that was more hopeful – something lighter that showed somebody coming through and surviving. At the end of The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo has a necrology of all the different ways gay characters die, and I didn’t want to add to that necrology. I wanted someone to live and be happy. And I think the time was right to tell that story, because the other stories really did need to be told first: they were more important politically and emotionally. But I think enough time has now passed that this other story can be told.

AB: You’ve mentioned that you were there, that you lived through this – that raises the question of how autobiographical the film is.

CMJ: I think anyone, any filmmaker or novelist who draws on their own life for their material, will be very quick to tell you ‘it’s not me’. And I would say the same thing. Yes, I’m drawing on my experience, but also it’s not me. My experience was different in lots of key ways. But I was in a [dance] company. I was in New York, not San Francisco, but I had a lot of real stuff to draw from.

AB: Aside from your own background, was there something else that made you want to explore the dance world on film?

CMJ: A couple of things. Dance world movies tend to focus on women – from The Red Shoes to The Turning Point to Black Swan, it’s usually a very classical ballerina. And then there’s Billy Elliot, but I don’t think it’s any accident that he’s pre-sexual. I think it’s very difficult to deal seriously with a sexualised – as in adult – male dancer. Because, the ‘men in tights’…it’s actually a subtitle of a Mel Brooks film, Robin Hood: Men in Tights. It’s just automatically a joke. So to treat a character seriously as someone who’s gay and who’s a dancer, who might even wear tights, and to treat that character as a serious person, that was something I wanted to do. And then also…As a former dance who knows the dance world well, and who knows choreography well, dance on film is frankly, in my opinion, cheesy stuff. You know, there’s some great dance on film like DV8, a British group who do short dance films – but they’re not narrative features. So I wanted to put some good dance and choreography on film. So it was those two aspects.

AB: I’ll come back to the choreography in a minute, but something else that struck me about the dance world of Test was the camaraderie. Often when I see films about dance companies, they tend to be about competition, rivalry or obsession, whereas I felt like the characters in Test had a real bond between them. Was that also a deliberate decision on your part – an attempt to do something different? Or was that just what you experienced when you were there?

CMJ: Well, I guess both. I like the way you focused that question – that is true. I think as a screenwriter I understand that anytime you deal with a given subject, you’re led into certain narrative tropes, and the dance world, as you say, tends to lead towards competition and obsession. The other dance world trope is, of course, ‘the understudy goes on’ – and I did engage with that cliché intentionally. I wanted to disarm it, so to speak, by taking what would be the normal climax of the movie – where the understudy goes on at the end, if it was Black Swan or 42nd Street or Moulin Rouge, or anything else – and put it in the middle, as if to say ‘this isn’t the focus’. He’s a professional, this is what he does: he’s an understudy that goes on. He wakes up and it’s another day, it wasn’t even a big deal [that he went on]. So I did want to disarm that cliché.

In terms of the camaraderie – absolutely. I mean, every experience I had in every dance company was like that. It’s like any band of people doing a difficult job, whether it’s the army or hospital work or theatre or dance… you bond in that work. There’s a tremendous amount of camaraderie in the dance world, and it’s true that’s not really represented very often in film.

AB: To go back to the choreography… The dance sequences were predominantly choreographed by Sidra Bell. Could you tell me about how she got involved, and how you worked together on the film?

CMJ: She’s a very talented New York based choreographer, and her work had actually been influenced by William Forsythe’s work in Frankfurt, which was a company – the Frankfurt Ballet – that I was in way back when. So I liked her aesthetic. I recognised it. And then, we did it very quickly, in two weeks. I was with her as a kind of editor, making suggestions in the studio, that kind of thing.

AB: And at what stage did she get involved? Is this something that was happening during the shoot, or already at script stage?

CMJ: I knew that it was a huge part of the movie because, on our budget, I knew that all the production value and spectacle I was going to have was from the stage. So it was hugely important to get that choreography right. So I brought her in early on. We spent two weeks choreographing it and setting it, immediately prior to the shooting schedule. It was a four week shooting schedule, so the two weeks before that were the choreography.

AB: Scott Marlowe, who plays Frankie, has a background in dance rather than in acting. What sort of challenges did that present you with?

CMJ: Well, that was the thing. You know, Natalie Portman did an amazing job in Black Swan, but when it came to the really technical stuff, like the fouetté, she did have a double. This kind of dance is not something you can fake. It’s what opera singing is to pop music, you know? You can sing a song on camera if you can carry a tune, but you couldn’t sing opera. And this dance is like that – you just can’t do it unless you’re in that field. So I interviewed dancers who had an instinct for acting and seemed natural. Scott seemed natural, and then I worked with him for six months prior to the shoot, work-shopping scenes and teaching him acting technique, which he really loved. He’s gone on to do more. So he’s a real collaborator, a real partner on the film.

AB: Do you think your own background as a dancer has affected the way your approach cinema or the way you make films?

CMJ: I think so. I mean, there’s a long history of dancers and choreographers making films – from Busby Berkeley in the 30s, through experimental work like Maya Deren, through Herbert Ross Rob Marshall and Bob Fosse… Dancers and choreographers have eyes trained for movement, and cinema is about movement. The difference is that you have movement within the frame, and you have movement between the frames with the cuts – you’re just playing with different ideas of movement. The camera becomes like another moving body. So I think it’s very easy for choreographers and dancers to grasp the kinetic aspects of filmmaking. I think it’s a natural transition.

AB: Saying that, though – and forgive me if you don’t agree – Test doesn’t feel like a film with a lot of camera movement, apart from that amazing moment when Frankie comes up the stairs and walks into the empty apartment.

CMJ: There’s actually a lot of dolly and handheld. It stays close to him, and it’s a very intimate feel. But it doesn’t call attention to itself, apart from that sequence which you mention – which is maybe why you remember it, as a technical moment with lots of dolly tracks. But throughout the film there’s a lot of handheld that stays close to him and just creates a feeling of intimacy.

AB: So when you approach that, are you choreographing it like you’re choreographing the actors?

CMJ: Absolutely. We blocked it out, choreographed it, and then my DP – who’s a super talented guy named Daniel Marks, who I call the human dolly – he becomes the other body moving through the space.

AB: Right from the start of the film, there’s a great onscreen chemistry between Scott Marlowe and Matthew Risch. It feels like the film places its emphasis elsewhere, but to me it plays as almost like a love story between the two of them. To what extent did you see it in those terms?

CMJ: I do see it in those terms now. It’s not a love story conventionally, because the connection happens very late, but it does have that feeling, yeah. I didn’t set out for it to be that, but it became that in the writing. And then, when I cast it, I knew I had to have chemistry between these guys, so I looked for it and I found it. I have worked with actors who don’t have chemistry before, so I… there’s a reason why there’s something called ‘the chemistry read’ in Hollywood. It’s hugely important because your work is done for you if there’s a spark there. And they definitely had a spark there.

AB: Going back to the era that the film is set in…There’s a sense in the film, for me, that the HIV-test signals the end of an era, and I felt like the film really captures the complexity of that moment: on the one hand, the growing awareness of AIDS is dampening the sense of sexual freedom, but on the other, the test is putting an end to the paranoia and uncertainty that the characters feel. Could you comment on this?

CMJ: The first part I agree with: it put an end to a certain kind of ‘culture of promiscuity’ – I’m not trying to judge it by using that word, but there was definitely a shift there. But the second part…I don’t think that’s exactly right, because for several years there was quite a bit of paranoia about what would be done with the test by the government. There was real fear, real talk, and ACT UP in part was founded to make sure that the government couldn’t keep those records. That went on for several years. Also, the test was a death sentence: there was no treatment, there was nothing anyone could do, so many people opted not to take it, because what was the point? It was to protect other people. So no, I think from ’85 through to the mid-’90s, when the Protease Inhibitors drug treatment came out, it was still a very dark and very uncertain period. In the context of the movie, the tiny era of panic, freak out and total ignorance – can you get it from mosquitos, can you get it from sweat, there’s no test – that sort of micro-era ended, maybe. But it’s a stretch to call it an era, because 85-95 was really a continuation of the horror.

AB: There’s a sense though, in the film – and maybe this is just something that I’m reading into it – of decay: the wooden bowl gets cracked and is replaced by plastic, which almost seems like a metaphor for condoms…

CMJ: [laughs] That’s good, I like that.

AB: …But all these things – the bowl breaks, the mice are coming in, the phone is tangled, the Walkman breaks down – all these things feel like a sign that things are ending, like doom is approaching.

CMJ: That’s an interesting reading of it. I definitely wanted a sense of morbidity, because disease is about morbidity, doom, fear and the decay of the body. And that’s why the choreography calls on images from Egon Schiele, an artist from Vienna from around the turn of the [twentieth] century… these images of morbidity and twistedness and decay. I wanted sexuality and eroticism to co-exist with that kind of morbidity, because that’s what you’re dealing with in that era. And most movies that deal with that subject sanitise the sex out, because it’s difficult for us to think about disease and sex at the same time – and that’s exactly what I wanted to do: to have this character be sexualised and eroticised, because he’s twenty and he wants to have sex. I didn’t want to vet that out of the story.

AB: I think we have to finish now, but just quickly: what’s next for you?

CMJ: I’m working on two things. One is a TV project which I’m developing, set in the 1970s, and the other is an independent film which I hope to shoot this summer in Berlin.

AB: And do you think you’ll go back to your big budget project, or is that finished with?

CMJ: I may, but it was a comedy about gay marriage – so I’d have to look at it again, because things have changed so quickly. I’d have to see whether I could make it as a period piece [laughs] or really update it.

TEST SCREENED AT THE BFI FLARE FESTIVAL AND IS NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD THROUGH PECCADILLO PICTURES

To Catch A Thief (1955)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writer: John Michael Hays

Cast: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jesse Royce Landis, H H Hughson, Charles Vanel, Brigitte Auber

106min Technicolour drama UK RE-RELEASE

In this frothy frolic, Alfred Hitchcock captures the essence of Riviera joie de vivre laced with intrigue and not a drop of blood to be seen. Cary Grant plays retired cat burglar, John Robie, who honed his skills during the French Resistance and now hangs out in a villa on the Côte D’Azur. But when a series of jewellery thefts hits rich heiresses holidaying in this ‘sunny place for shady people’, Robie comes under suspicion and goes undercover to discover the real villain of the piece. His task is complicated by a tricky relationship with a nouveau-riche American widow (Jesse Royce Landis) and her ravishing daughter (Grace Kelly), in Cannes to find a husband. Witty dialogue, sumptuous scenery and costumes to die for it (designed by Edith Head) , To Catch A Thief is the ideal Summer film, showcasing Grant’s suave charm and Kelly’s incandescent beauty to perfection. The only cloud on the horizon was that Grace Kelly would drive along exactly the same road to her death nearly thirty years later, as Princess Grace of Monaco. MT

[youtube id=”pdOXnkwuMdI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8 AUGUST, COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS

FAUST (1926) Dual format Blu-ray DVD

FAUST – EINE DEUTSCHE VOLKSSAGE

Dir.: F.W. Murnau

Cast: Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn, Yvette Guilbert, William Dieterle

Germany 1926, 107 min.

Initially it was Ludwig Berger (The Thief of Baghdad) who was supposed to direct the 2M Reichsmark production (200 M in current currency), but Emil Jannings, who was cast as Mephisto, insisted on F.W. Murnau, the man who made him world famous in the The Last Man two years previously. It would be Murnau’s last German film, before he went to Hollywood, where he would direct Sunrise a year later.

Hans Kyser’s script for the film was based on texts by J.W. Goethe, Christopher Marlowe and an old German folk legend. Faust was already a favourite topic for film makers: Louis Lumière was first in 1896, Georges Melies followed a year later and the first American version of Faust was directed in 1900 by Edwin S. Porter. In Murnau’s version, the conflict is a straightforward fight for supremacy between God (represented by an archangel) and Mephisto (Jannings). Their wager is the first: if Satan could win the soul of one person, he would rule the earth. Mephisto chooses Faust (Ekman), an old alchemist, trying to make gold from metal. He lives in a small town, where a huge cloud turns everything into dark: Mephisto has arrived to punish the citizens with pestilence. Faust is unable to find a cure, and Mephisto seduces him into a bargain: he will grant Faust a cure in return for his soul, the original deal lasting a day. But whilst Faust succeeds at first, the citizens find out about his connection with Satan, and hound him out of town. After being promised eternal youth, wealth and power, Faust kidnaps the Duchess of Parma on her wedding day, and after returning to his home town, he seduces the virgin Gretchen (Horn). After Faust kills Gretchen’s brother, the pregnant woman is accused of being a whore and put to the stocks. Going mad, she mistakes a pile of snow for a cradle, killing her baby child. She is condemned to burn on the stake, but Faust at last sees his guilt, joining her in the flames, though loosing Mephisto’s wager.

In spite of the many aesthetic tricks Murnau used, he was very keen on realism: Horn, for whom Gretchen was her first main part, never stopped telling journalists how close she came to be really consumed by the fire. Dissolves are dominating the film, and dancing letters like in Caligari, help to create a super natural atmosphere. When Mephisto and Faust are flying over world on a carpet, Murnau uses a camera on a roller coaster. Faust’s change from an old to a young man (and vice versa) are impressive, and the riders of the apocalypse are truly frightening even today. Jannings dominates the film, his Mephisto is truly evil, but not in a superficial way – he really seduces Faust. Horn is very aptly cast, and Guilbert is a great Marthe Schwerdtlein. We also re-encounter the German expressionist design and architectural flourishes of Caligari with its spiky gables and narrow alleyways – unsurprisingly, since Walter Röhrig was again in charge of the design. A new harp score by Stan Ambrose (there is also an orchestral option) underlines the phantastic atmosphere, transcending images and words into a glorious poetic realism. This is an absolutely enchanting visual experience. AS

AVAILABLE AT MASTERS OF CINEMA FROM 18TH AUGUST 2014

COMPLETE WITH FULL-LENGTH AUDIO COMMENTARY BY CRITICS DAVID EHRENSTEIN AND BILL KROHN

40-PAGE BOOKLET WITH A ESSAY BY PETER SPOONER, WRITING ON THE FILM BY ERIC ROHMER, AND RARE ARCHIVAL IMAGERY.

[youtube id=”kV3bjDVIEl0″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Lilting (2014) | BFI Flare 2014

Director: Hong Khaou

Cast: Ben Whishaw, Cheng Pei Pei, Naomi Christie, Andrew Leung, Peter Bowles

91mins Drama UK

LILTING, is the feature debut of writer/director Hong Khaou. Made on a shoe-string, this simply-told and sweet-natured drama, sensitively explores loss, denial and grief that ensues when gay writer Richard (Ben Whishaw) loses his partner Kai (Andrew Leung) in a tragic accident. Kai’s Chinese-Cambodian mother Junn (Cheng Pei Pei), also struggles to accept this sudden loss, and the nature of the relationship between Richard and her son. Having recently been moved to a retirement home, she speaks little English and is resentful at this isolation from her only son, who never told her of his homosexuality. Richard, at pains to support her emotionally despite the language barrier, feels hurt by her mild hostility, as he suffers with his own grief. But when Alan (Peter Bowles), a kindly gentleman in the care home, makes romantic overtures to Junn, it’s clear that the language of love transcends the spoken word.

Hong Khaou shows how language is so much more than just mere words: while words can build a dialogue between people, sometimes body language and gestures can build a more significant rapport. When (Naomi Christie) arrives to interpret between them, her well-meaning efforts clarify matters for Richard, yet threaten the relationship between the amorous couple. A whole cultural mindset divides these people, who despite waves of goodwill, are still oceans apart. Ben Whishaw is moving as a man diminished by grief, yet determined to act with integrity and despite occasional lulls in pacing, and the implausible rapport between the love-birds, his mesmerising performance holds it all together. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE 20 – MARCH 2015 | ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8 AUGUST 2014

[youtube id=”I8HhLd07fYY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Blackwood (2013)

Director: Adam Wimpenny

Cast: Grey Wise,

Gothic horror/Fantasy

With a modest budget, a respectable cast of minor British acting talent and a quaint Oxfordshire setting, Adam Wimpenny has made a piece of fantasy horror that looks rather good.

It has Ed Stoppard as Ben Marshall, a high-flying Oxford professor whose recent mental breakdown has forced him into a less pressurised role in a minor university. With his wife Rachel (Sophia Myles) and young son Harry (Isaac Andrews), he hopes the change will help him recover and save their marriage and family life. But their move to Blackwood, a deserted manor house deep in the English countryside, gets off to a inauspicious start after a series of unsettling things that go bump in the night, and during the daytime too.

Local vicar Father Patrick (Paul Kaye) doesn’t exactly calm Ben’s fears by suggesting that the house may indeed be haunted by the victim of an unsolved murder. Their neighbour Jack (Russell Tovey), an ex-soldier, doesn’t instil Ben’s confidence either: he too is suffering emotional trauma. But it’s the arrival of Rachel’s flirty ex, Dominic (Greg Wise), that finally sends Ben into turmoil- suggesting that he may be cracking up again.

Cinematographer Dale McReady does a brilliant job of lensing this good-looking Britflic with its Autumnal hues and lush countryside. Gorgeously shot on digital 35mm, Blackwood has the feel of a much more expensive production. Lorne Balfe’s atmospheric score also conjurs up some very unsettling vibes deep in the shires.

The problem is the story and characters feel very predictable, pushing all the right buttons, but staying in very safe territory narrative-wise: weird animal masks; lightening flashes; clocks that stop and start; mentally unstable loners: these cliches all are all textbook tropes in the horror arsenal, so Blackwood doesn’t feel very scary. The cast perform their tricks well, but they are predominantly known for their TV work; making this feel very much like a decent episode of ‘Midsomer Murders’.

So, Blackwood is a reasonable and well-made debut but let’s hope that Adam Wimpenny will really set the night on fire with something really different next time around. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 AUGUST 2014

Half of a Yellow Sun (2013) -DVD

Dir.: Biyi Bandele

Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Joseph Mawle

Nigeria/UK 2013, 111 min.

Olanna (Newton) and her twin sister Kainene (Rose) celebrate Nigeria’s independence in October 1960 with their upper-class parents and a future minster of the government. They are expected by their parents to thrive in the new elite, but whilst Kainene stays with the family clan, British educated Olanna moves with her boyfriend Odenigbo (Ejiofor), a radical academic in the eastern city of Nsukka. Kainene falls in love with the British journalist Richard (Mawle). For all his revolutionary talk, Odenigbo is very much in thrall of his mother, who calls Olanna a witch and manipulates her maid into seducing her son while he’s drunk. Olanna, who beds Richard as revenge for this unfaithfulness, later forgives her boyfriend and adopts the baby resulting from Odenigbo’s one-night stand finally gaining the respect of her future mother-in-law. These domestic scenes have a soapy quality to them that feel at odds with the overall political context of the piece, and the ensuing shift to high melodrama when the couple’s wedding is interrupted by an air raid on the outbreak of civil war (which started in 1967) feels over-sensationalised compared with what has gone before, despite the intensity of feelings, which were understanding running high at the time. We are unprepared for this sudden shift in tone, which feels overly dramatic given the low-key amorous jostling and domestic ups and downs of the first half of this debut feature.

That said, Bandele is clearly at pains to reflect the fervour of the Igbo nation, that, feeling threatened by the central government in Lagos, eventually rises up to become the independent Republic of Biafra. During an extremely bitter, three-year war Olanna and her husband are forced to flee more than once from the advancing troops of the central government. In the last months of the war the sisters are reunited, but Kainene, who helps to run a refuge camp with her husband, is lost in the chaos of atrocities.

This is playwright Bandele’s screen debut. He has worked with the Royal Court and the RSC, and although he creates an intense melodrama reflecting the bitter feelings generating by colonialism set against the relationship of the two couples: Bandele seems to side with Kainene, who argues that the civil war is not a direct result of colonial repression, but a war of resources. But it is harrowing to see how helpless these people are in their individual ways: their education and intellect in creating a civilised society, negated and brushed aside by forces beyond their control. They belong viscerally to the Igbo nation yet intellectually to the past – the war has obliterated this past and everything everything that once had meaning. It is ironic to hear the voice of Biafra’s leader Odumegwu Ojukwu, an Oxford graduate, asking for “a fight to the last man” – just as many educated white men before and after him.

Thandie Newton dominates HALF OF A YELLOW SUN, somehow playing the rest of the quartet into the background. Her Olanna is the driving factor of the narrative, carrying it mesmerizingly forward. Whilst the action scenes are sufficiently brutal, they do not overshadow the political implications: this is not a simple anti-war film, but one that argues from a reasoning, as well as emotional perspective. The camera is not always as innovative as possible, but overall the film gives enough startling images, reflecting the vibrant landscape and creating a palpable sense of place and ample food for thought without degenerating into a didactic, sterile thesis.

[youtube id=”TDlyJjdNiyg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Now on DVD

Swallows and Amazons (1974) – DVD re-release

Watching Arthur Ransome’s children’s classic “Swallows and Amazons” makes you realise just how much the world has changed, even since the seventies, when Claude Whatham’s screen adaptation was made. Those simple summer days of innocent childhood adventure now seem almost otherworldly forty years later, somehow summing up the quintessence of Britishness.

A group of children go on a summer escapade with their mother (that classic feminine icon of Englishness,Virginia McKenna) where they sail off to an island in the Lake District and pretend to be pirates. Here the story is set in 1929 and Virginia’s husband is an Officer away in the Navy. The children:John, Susan, Titty and Roger (Simon West, Suzanna Hamilton, Sophie Neville and Stephen Grendon) take their family dinghy ‘Swallow’ and set off to an uninhabited island in the Cumbrian lake district. But when they get there, they discover a rival gang (the two Blackett sisters) are also exploring Wild Cat Island and so the holiday adventure begins, not with computer but a real experience.

Claude Whatham’s adaptation stays faithful to the original with its simple and uncomplicated narrative structure and fictional characters such as an old pirate Uncle Jim (Ronald Fraser) who rather hams things up in contrast to the naturalistic performances of the others that feel almost unscripted thanks to clever writing on the part of David Wood. So although the piece feels dated there’s considerable charm, nostalgia and fun to be had for all ages in a story where kids let their imaginations run wild to create their own incredible world of adventure. MT

OUT ON DVD/BLU 4th August 2014 WITH A NEW RESTORATION SCREENING AT HASTINGS PIRATE DAY, THE ELECTRIC PALACE CINEMA ON 20 JULY 2014.

Pioneer (2013) -DVD

Director: Erik Skoldbjaerg

Writer: Nikolaj Frobenius and others

Cast: Wes Bentley, Stephen Lang, Aksel Hennie, Jonathan LaPaglia, Jorgen Langhelle, Andre Eriksen

111 min Thriller Norway

Erik Skoldbjaerg – best known for Insomnia (1997) delves back into Norwegian history here with a tense thriller that accurately reflects the gritty social realism of the seventies oil scene. Based on a conspiracy theory of sorts surrounding the American research projects that part-funded Norwegian upstream crude oil pipelines back in 1981, the action centres around three diving engineers working under pressure (both time-wise and in a tank) to prepare for construction to begin. They are brothers Petter (Aksel Hennie), Knut (Andre Eriksen) and colleague Jorgen (David Jorgensen). Tragically one of them will not emerge to tell the tale and the land-based team deny any responsibility on their part, implicating Jorgen who (conveniently) has a history of seizures. It is left to Petter to investigate his brother’s death and support the family while in a state of deep mourning. What emerges from his findings is that Jorgen’s illness stems from faulty gas supplies provided by (none other than) the Americans, but can he prove this? In a masterful and gripping performance, Aksel Hennie pits his wits against the weight of pressure from the American team and the slightly stiff handling of the narrative. At times confusingly teetering between Petter’s understandable mental instability and his increasingly distorted view of events. Pioneer cleverly explores the political conspiracy theory at work in this dour and suspenseful thriller that takes it time to convince but manages to surface in the end. MT

On DVD

[youtube id=”zWh6yaRwh_U” width=”600″ height=”350″]

A Promise (2013)

Director: Patrice Leconte

Writer: Patrice Leconte

With its Belle Epoque overtones and hauntingly romantic retro feel A PROMISE is set in a German industrial town before the Great War. It stars Alan Richman as an ageing steel magnate whose refined and vivacious wife (Rebecca Hall) falls hopelessly in love with his young assistant engineer (Richard Madden) from a modest background. Based on a novella (Journey Into the Past) by Austrian Stefan Zweig, one of the most famous writers during the 1920s and 30s, it questions whether real love can last forever, when a young couple promise to continue their romantic liaison even after the privations of the First World War.

Written and directed by Patrice Leconte (The Hairdresser’s Husband) A PROMISE premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2013, where Leconte described his film as “an intimate, troubling and compelling love story that delves into the lasting power of passion”. Well, there’s nothing new about the idea of falling hopelessly in love, but this story champions romantic passion as apposed to the instant gratification of sex and physical chemistry that is now a more popular subject-matter: A PROMISE explores whether love can survive time, distance, betrayal or even War: or as Oscar Wilde put it, “Time nor Tide can never sever, those whom love has brought together”.

So, Romance, The Great War, magnificent costumes and an enchanting setting enhanced by Eduardo Serra’s elegant visuals – all perfect ingredients for a bodice-ripping ride – what could go wrong? Rebecca Hall is perfectly cast for the role of Lotte Hoffmeister and her feminine appeal as a woman receptive and ripe for passion is beguiling. As Karl Hoffmeister, Alan Richman’a masterful bearing and powerful personality shines through and despite suffering from a heart complaint and no longer (presumably) able to satisfy his wife in bed, his mental strength generates a strong presence of masculine integrity.

But Richard Madsen fails to convince as the young and vigorous lover in the throws of romantic turmoil. He pales into insignificance alongside this Victorian power couple, generating about as much sexual magnetism as a sick child. This is not helped by Gabriel Yared’s nervous score that irritates rather than anticipates the excitement of romantic undercurrents.

Leconte’s direction also wavers midway lacking much needed reference to salient socio-political developments of the era in contrast to the stifling potboiler with its occasional forays into the Hoffmeister factory. After being separated geographically and emotionally by a break-down in communications due to the war effort, the narrative recovers towards the end as the couple reunite against the grim reality of 20th Century Europe and the rise of Nazism. But this is not enough to set the night of fire as anticipated, and in the end Leconte delivers a stolid period drama that feels dated despite its potential for moving romantic impact and long-winded despite a running time of only 94 minutes. MT

Now on general relelease from 1 August 2014

Scar Tissue (2014)

Dir.: Scott Michell;

Cast: Danny Horn, Charity Wakefield, Shaun Dingwall

UK 2014, 102 min.

Luke, an ordinary bloke, wakes up one morning and finds a mutilated corpse in his bathroom. He soon teams up with Sam Cross, a police detective on suspension, whose older sister was murdered by the serial killer Edward Jansen twenty years ago, before he was shot dead by police. But the corpse in Luke’s bathroom has Jansen’s DNA all over it, and soon more grisly murders happen all over London – always seemingly committed by serial killers; long dead. More and more sinister protagonists are introduced. It emerges that the government has cloned the killers to see if their “offspring” has signs of deviant DNA which could be eradicated in future in order to make this planet peaceful for good. Like all developments in this British thriller, the identity of the killer is “telegraphed” early on, simply by suddenly leaving him out of the storyline shortly after introduction.

Michell has plenty of seen enough B-movies, horror or otherwise. But instead of trying to find a variation of his own, he throws everything together into a gruesome mix. Yes, Dari Argento and Mario Bava are his idols, but apart from some visual creativeness, he offers nothing new, delivering just a structureless copy of everything he has seen. The sound level reaches “Transformers” heights, but SCAR TISSUE can’t even compete with the intellectual level of the car giant series. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 25TH JULY 2014

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) DVD-blu-ray

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL **** SILVER BEAR, GRAND JURY PRIZE

Writer/Director: Wes Anderson, Hugo Guinness

Cast: Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, F Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan.

100min US Comedy Drama

Ralph Fiennes is pure magic as Monsieur Gustav H, a legendary lothario and eloquent hotel manager in this witty, whimsical and very European tale within a fairytale, inspired by the Gorlitzer Warenhaus on the Polish/Czech border (which is currently being renovated) in a fictional Republic of Zubrowka.

This fairytale for adults, written and directed by Texan Wes Anderson, is probably his finest film to date: well-scripted; beautifully acted by a fine assembled cast of Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Lea Seydoux, Jude Law, Matthieu Almaric, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan and newcomer Tony Revolori (as the young Zero M): Fiennes and Tilda Swinton are particularly good as sweethearts and sparring partners in a comedy double-act; it’s also gorgeous to watch with its candy-coloured aesthetic, fairytale sets (with stylishly interwoven animation) and costumes that would make even swoon with envy. Appealing to all ages, despite moments of brutal violence, it tells the story of how the hotel came to be handed down to Zero Mustafa via a rich and riotous history. Wes Anderson has made a film that’s both cinematic, intelligent and playfully Wentertaining. MT

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL IS ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 28 February 2014

Joe (2013)

Director: David Gordon Green Writer: Gary Hawkins

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Gary Poulter, Adrien Mishler

US Southern Gothic Drama

In Joe, David Gordon Green’s bleak exploration of a macho community in hicksville, Nicolas Cage triumphs with a brilliant portrayal of a mercurial but likeable some-time crim who gambles and womanises his way through his days as a lumber merchant. In contrast to the upbeat and quirky Prince Avalanche, Joe is darker and low on narrative, driven forward by an atmosphere of brooding menace that seeps through the Southern town, keeping the suspense taut with unpredictable episodes of brutal violence.

Adapted from a 1991 novel by Larry Brown, Joe loosely echoes Undertow and tells how a young teenage Gary Jones (Tye Sheridan) manages to persuade the reluctant Joe (Cage) into employing him through sterling persistence and a stankovian work ethic. Once in the job, however, Joe becomes very protective of Gary, whose violent father (a superb Gary Poulter) steals his wages and abuses him.

Unfortunately Poulter never gets to see his debut as he died before the film was released. Womenfolk get short shrift in this neck of the woods, but Adrien Mishler does her best with a slim role as Joe’s on/off girlfriend, who tries to make something of their relationship competing against his regular bouts of drinking, gambling and the demands of his work. Tye Sheridan gives another really excellent performance as Joe’s employee forming a winning partnership with Nicolas Cage along similar lines to the one he successful forged with Matthew McConaughey in Mud. MT

[youtube id=”_w_yqcQUTfY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival 2013 – the film is on general release from 25 July 2014

The Lady from Shanghai (1946/7)

Dir.: Orson Welles

Cast: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders

USA 1946/47, 87 min.

Shot between October 1946 and January 1947, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI cost Columbia in the end two million dollars (200m by today’s standards), although it was scheduled to come in after 60 days of shooting, at a cost of 1.25m $. And if Columbia boss Harry Cohn would have had his way, it would have never been seen in cinemas at all (it has its first preview in April 1948). Having watched the finished film for the first time, he promised “the first person who can explain the plot to me’ a thousand dollars. The famous DOP Rudolph Mate had to do a great deal of re-shooting of Rita Hayworth close-ups at the Columbia studios. Welles seemed not be too sure himself, but later proclaimed the film (rightfully) a masterpiece. That did not stop it flopping at the box office. THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI was Welles’ last film as a director in Hollywood for ten years (he would shoot Touch of Evil in 1958). And it was his very last film with his wife Rita Hayworth: they were to divorce in November 1947. During the hearing Hayworth testified: “Mr. Welles showed no interest in establishing a home. Mr. Welles told me he should have never married in the first place, as it interfered with his freedom in his way of life.” Never mind that the couple had a three-year-old daughter, Rebecca. And whilst nobody can argue with Welles’ genius; his lifelong misogyny was something to behold, as he told the French film historian Maurice Bessy “Women are stupid; I have known some who are less stupid than others, but they’re are all stupid”.

And this opinion is written all over THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. To start with, Hayworth had to loose her long mane, her trademark. Welles and Cohn made it into a publicity show, ordering the hair-dresser Helen Hunt from her honeymoon, so that she could “perform” under the eyes of the press, Welles asking Hunt to cut ruthlessly. Hayworth, now a “topaz blond”, was cast as the most evil and stupid woman on the planet: Elsa is the young and alluring wife of the crippled defence lawyer Arthur Bannister. Holidaying on his yacht in the West Indies, Elsa meets the Irish sailor Michael O’Hara (Welles), and lures him on board. There, Bannister’s partner Grisby (Anders) dreams up a plot to kill Bannister, so he and Elsa can share the insurance money. They set O’Hara up as the fall-guy, but Grisby looses his nerve and kills Broome, a detective hired by Bannister to spy on Elsa. O’Hara is accused of murder and Bannister defends him, to make sure he is convicted. But O’Hara escapes from the court house, is captured by Elsa and her Chinese friends, and ends up in a closed fair ground where he watches Elsa and Bannister shoot each other to death in the hall of mirrors. Elsa begs Michael to save her life, but he wanders off declaring full of self-pity “that I might die trying to forget her”. Male paranoia of women has never been expressed more artfully. AS

ON RELEASE IN A STUNNING NEW 4K RESTORATION IN THE BIF SOUTHBANK AND SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 25TH JULY COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS FILMS

The Assassin (1961) l’Assassino

THE ASSASSIN (L’ASSASSINO)

Dir.: Elio Petri; Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Micheline Presle, Salvo Randone, Christina Gaioni; Italy 1961, 105 min.

This is the first feature film of Elio Petri (1929-1982), who would become famous for Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion (1970) and The Tenth Victim (1965). He tells the story of the antique dealer Nello Poletti (Mastroianni), who is one day accused of murdering his former lover Adalgisa de Matteis (Presle). During the investigation we learn that Nello has exploited Adalgisa, who is much older than him. She has set him up with a luxury antique-shop, but he still has debts and a new lover, the young Antonella Nogara (Gaioni), daughter of a rich industrialist. On the night of the murder, Nello had visited Adalgisa in a hotel near the coast, where he slept with her for the first time in a very long time, wanting her to pay a huge loan he owned the bank. Whilst we learn a lot about Nello (all rather damning) during the course of the investigation, led by the enigmatic inspector Palumbo (Randone), he is cleared of the murder, and for a time Nello seems repentant. But when we meet him again a year later, he sleeps with the now married Antonella, and is back to his old semi-criminal existence, calling himself laughingly ‘the Assassin’.

The monochrome photography shows a realistic portrait of Rome, far away from the splendour of Fellini or Antonioni. Nello is a real sleaze bag, and Mastroianni fills his shoes perfectly. With a chip on his shoulders, because of his upbringing in a poor quarter, he exploits everyone and everything around him; mainly woman, who fall for his boyish charm. But behind the façade, Nello is a perpetual schemer, using his glib tongue to seduce for cash. He is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled with the goods belonging to others. Adalgisa is rather a sad case: whilst looking right through Nello, she stills wants him in perverse way, even if it means paying his debts whilst he sleeps with Antonella, whom she introduced him too for exactly this purpose. Nicoletta is just a younger version of Nello himself: playing him at his own game, and soon to tire of his antics. Inspector Palumbo is the most sophisticated character: world weary and tired, he plays the game more than being a policeman. Sated with a life in the world of crime, he is just waiting to retire. We see a lot of storylines and characters of later Petri films, they are invariably studies of men being guilty, even if not in the eyes of the law. AS

ON ON DVD FROM 21ST JULY 2014

Arrow Academy is proud to present the first ever UK video release of L’Assassino in a gorgeous high-definition restoration created by the Cineteca di Bologna.

This deluxe package will be full of special features and bonus material including:
· New 2K digital restoration from the Cineteca di Bologna

· Uncompressed Mono 2.0 PCM Audio

· Elio Petri and L’Assassino, an introduction by Italian cinema expert Pasquale Iannone

· Tonino Guerra: A Poet in the Movies: Nicola Tranquillino’s documentary about the great Italian screenwriter

· Theatrical Trailer

· Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw

· Booklet featuring new writing on the film by Elio Petri expert Camilla Zamboni, Petri’s own critical analysis of 1950s Italian cinema, plus a selection of contemporary reviews

NORTE, the End of History (2013)

Director: Lav Diaz

Cast: Sid Lucero, Archie Alemania, Angeli Bayani, Mae Panes

Philippines 2013; 250 min.

For most filmmakers a 250 minutes opus like NORTE would be the exception in length, and this goes also for Philippine director Lav Diaz – only for him, four hours represent a compromise the other way round: compared with his seven and a half hour masterpiece Melancholia (2009), NORTE is just a short.

Lavrente Diaz was named by his parents after a character from a Dostojevsky novel, and NORTE is in its epic format and contents definitely comparable with ‘Guilt and Punishment’.

As always with Diaz, the harsh landscape of the Philippines is the background for a violent narrative, but Diaz rarely shows this violence: his aesthetics are puritanical like Bresson’s, with whom he also shares the transfiguration of his characters. Whilst being a realist, there is also some deeply felt spiritualism in Diaz films.

The first ‘shock’ for the Diaz enthusiast is that NORTE is his first film in colour for over eleven years. Being used to his grainy black/white images, one wonders, how this change will affect the film. Not to worry, Diaz uses colour to show the exterior even in even more dominant form: Long, panoramic shots, the camera panning above the fields, the light diffuse, the colours only vibrant at night, the stillness of the land, in contrast to the hectic, with which the protagonists move. A mixture of Cezanne and Monet.

The film gets under way as a discussion between law students in a café, one of them, Fabian, has left the course in spite of his talent and drifts from job to jop, always borrowing money from friends and the moneylender and pawnbroker, Miss Magda. She is a fat woman with bad manners and exploits everyone in need, like Joaquin and Eliza, who have two children. After Eliza had to pawn a ring, Joaquin threatens Magda and tries to strangle her, before running away. A few hours later at night, Fabian kills the pawnbroker and her teenage daughter (we only hear the killings behind doors), than runs off. Next day, Joaquin is arrested and later sentenced to lifelong prison. Years go by, Joaquin gives Eliza some money, which she uses to visit her husband, whose far away prison can only reached by plane. Being a guest at his sister’s house, Joaquin rapes her and than kills his favourite dog (again off scene). Then he hires a boat and drifts into the direction of the ocean. But the second to last scene shows the site of a plane crash, we mostly see the lamps, which Joaquin had made in prison for his family. The images of the crash side are one of the saddest moments in the history of film.

NORTE is delicate and at the same overwhelming, we learn so much about the characters, when watching them at work, or listening to their reflections. There is always enough time to observe, and one has the feeling of being a part of this film. Without sentimentality, Diaz shows the emotion, in peeling back layer after layer. A true masterpiece. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18TH JULY 2014

[youtube id=”nzpfJrlL4SE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Dir.: Billy Wilder

Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Pat O’Brien

USA 1959, 121 min.

SOME LIKE IT HOT, the classic comedy and feel-good film about two musicians being chased by the mob, after having witnessed the Chicago Valentine’s Day Massacre, ending up in a all-girl-band in Florida dressed up in drags, should have been an enjoyable shoot. But far from it: tensions between director Billy Wilder and his star Marilyn Monroe led to bickering, and ultimately a catastrophe, when Monroe had a miscarriage a day after shooting ended.

Wilder complained about Monroe being ‘unreliable in her unreliability’: he went on “during the scene at the beach, when Monroe meets Curtis for the time, him pretending to be a ‘Shell’ heir, I expected trouble, since there was so much dialogue to go through. Further more, we shot the scene on a beach near San Diego, and nearby was a military airport, and we could only shoot between the jets staring with a lot of noise. I thought, that we would have to plan at least for four shooting days, considering Monroe’s lack of discipline and memory. But she was perfect, we finished after twenty minutes. But on another scene, much simpler, when Monroe storms into the room of Curtis and Lemmon, being disappointed and simply having to say one sentence; “Where is the Bourbon?”, we had 65 takes, it took us one and a half days”.

After the end of shooting, Wilder and Monroe’s husband Arthur Miller engaged in a bitter exchange of letters, after Wilder had told a reporter: “I can eat again. My back does not hurt any more. And I can look at my wife again, without wanting to beat her up, simply because she is a woman”. Asked by the same reporter, if he would shoot again with Monroe, Wilder answered: “I discussed this with my GP, my psychiatrist and my accountant; they all said I am too old and too wealthy to go through this all again”.

Wilder, not a friend of intellectuals or women, was piqued, because Miller could not see the “wonderful product” he had created against all odds and blamed the play write of being a snob, because he did not like comedies – even though Miller had just questioned if any film was worth the tragic consequence. Wilder could not stop complaining about Monroe, calling her “nasty”, and telling a story about the star shouting at a second assistant director “Go fuck yourself” after he had asked her to come to the set for the tenth time. But to be fair, Curtis too seemed to have had a rugged time with her, telling a reporter “that kissing Monroe was like kissing Hitler”. But Wilder, whose films very often feature “bad” women”, whose victims are helpless men, like Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity, who seduces MacMurray’s Walter Neff to murder her husband. Whilst in the novel by James M. Cain, on which the film is based, Neff’s greed for an easy life is the catalyst for the murder. But Wilder’s negative obsession with Monroe continued even after her death. Landing at Paris airport on 4th of August 1962 to shoot Irma La Douce, he was, in his own words “insensitive and mean” about her, but he never the less did blame the journalists for not having told him, that Monroe was dead. Wilder’s humour was always double-edged, his final words on MM were ”There are more books about Marilyn Monroe that the Second World War. There is a certain resemblance: It was hell, but it was worth it”. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 18TH JULY 2014 COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS

Il Cinema Ritrovato – Bologna 28 June-5 July 2014

IL CINEMA RITROVATO or literally, Cinema Rediscovered, is now in it’s 28th year and, judging by the increased attendance this year, continues to grow in popularity. The Bologna festival takes place each year at the end of June for 8 days with screenings showing across four main screens in the city, all within easy walking distance, and the famous late night free open-air screenings in the Piazza Maggiore.

Each year film scholars, academics and everyday cinemagoers descend upon medieval town in Emilia Romagna for specialised film screenings ranging this year from a William Wellman mini-retrospective, James Dean, The Golden 50’s – India’s Endangered Classics, Riccardo Freda, Werner Hochbaum, Italian episode films, Polish New Wave in cinemascope and Hitler war films to name but just a few of the strands. The regular strands that continued this year included new restorations of cinema classics, cinema from 100 years ago along with this year’s Japanese section which focused on early talkies from the Shochiku studio.

At any given time you could bump into on the streets, or at a screening, the likes of Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dave Kehr, Scott Foundas, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson or even US director, Alexander Payne who is back for his second successive year.

Director Costa Gavras was in attendance this year. Since 2007 he has also been president of the Cinémathèque Française. He was interviewed by the festival’s creative director, Peter von Bagh, and spoke about his early life in Greece and then working as an assistant director with the likes of René Clair (TOUT L’OR DU MONDE 1961), Jacques Demy (LA BAIE DES ANGES 1963) and René Clément (LE JOUR ET L’HEURE 1963 & LES FELINS 1964) before embarking on his own first film COMPARTIMENT TUERS (1965). He also discussed the political outcry around the release of his most celebrated movie Z (1969).

There was an opportunity to see some more recent restorations that had premiered at the Cannes Film Festival back in May. These included DRAGON INN (1967). LES CROIX DE BOIS (1931), LA PAURA (1954), COLOUR OF POMEGRANATES (1968) and LA CHIENNE (1931).

There were two real highlights from these films and the first was Renoir’s film LA CHIENNE aka THE BITCH. Michel Simon plays the hapless Maurice Legrand, unhappy in his marriage to the nagging Adele and one night meets the beautiful Lulu who has just been beaten by her pimp boyfriend, Dédé. He walks her home to take care of her. Legrand falls in love with Lulu only to be the victim of her and her boyfriend’s plot to extract as much cash as possible from him. Simon is in superb form, as is Janie Marèse as the bitch of the story, Lulu. The film was later remade in 1945 by Fritz Lang as SCARLET STREET. The print screened at the festival was restored by the Cinémathèque française.

The other film highlight from this strand was the L’Immagine Ritrovata Bologna restoration of Raymond Bernard’s 1931 film LES CROIX DE BOIS aka WOODEN CROSSES. Bernard’s remarkable and inventive use of both handheld and tracking shots to film recreated battle sequences in the trenches and on the battlefields of World War 1 are simply astonishing. There’s one particular battle scene that takes place in a cemetery that shall stay long in the memory as an incredible achievement of choreography in cinema.

The Polish New Wave in CinemaScope strand at this year’s festival was particularly impressive, following on from last year’s Czech New Wave strand entitled L’emulsione conta: Orwo e Nová vlna (1963-1968). Delights such as THE FIRST DAY OF FREEDOM (1964), SAMSON (1961), THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1964), FARAON (1965) and PASSENGER (1963) were on show. It would be hard to pick a favourite from this impressive selection as seeing and Wajda’s SAMSON turned out to be a real discovery.

Munk died tragically in a car accident on his way home from the Auschwitz concentration camp where he had been shooting PASSENGER, so the film was left incomplete and was finished posthumously by the use of stills and narration, two years later. Seeing it projected on the big screen was a gruelling yet rewarding experience.

One of the more interesting strands, and an ingenious programming idea, were the Italian episode films. The strand was entitled L’Italia in corto. Prima parte (1952-1968) and featured two single episodes from different compendium films made during this period. Several of these were a lot of fun and worked surprisingly well when put together as a double bill. The best two were an episode entitled Il Professore by Marco Ferreri from the 1964 film CONTROSESSO paired with Renzo e Luciana by Mario Monicelli from the 1962 film BOCCACCIO ’70. The restoration of the latter film looked beautiful with its strong rich, vibrant colours literally glowing on the screen.

William A Wellman was being celebrated at this year’s festival whereas in previous years we have seen the likes of Allan Dwan, Raoul Walsh and John Ford. I saw just three of Wellman’s films at the festival; NIGHT NURSE (1931) with a very early performance from Clark Gable as a suited and booted psycho-chauffeur, YELLOW SKY (1948) and THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943), a dark, disturbing western about a posse who end up lynching three innocent people. Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews starred.

A remaining highlight of the festival, was Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 film THE MAN I KILLED aka BROKEN LULLABY. Whilst the acting would never win any awards, the film itself was very affecting indeed. It tells the story of a French soldier who kills a German solider in the trenches of World War 1. After the war he becomes wracked with guilt and sets off to Germany to beg forgiveness from the dead German’s parents and fiancé. The screening I attended was packed, with people standing around the sides and seated on the floor of the cinema. When the film was over it received a very deserved rousing applause from the audience. There’s something comforting when a fairly obscure 1932 film can still cause this sort of a reaction and this is really what IL CINEMA RITROVATO is all about; re-discovering those forgotten gems of cinema. NEIL MCGLONE

Neil McGlone is agent/representative for Il Cinema Ritrovato’s creative director, Peter von Bagh and has been involved with both this festival and Midnight Sun Film Festival for the past five years. He is also programme advisor for London’s Nordic Film Festival. Neil recently worked as film advisor and researcher for Mark Cousins’ A STORY OF CHILDREN AND FILM (2013) and Peter von Bagh’s SOCIALISM (2014). He is currently in pre-production with Alexander Payne on a documentary about British film historian, Kevin Brownlow (IT HAPPENED HERE).

IL CINEMA RITROVATO

Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2014)

Dir.: Peter Greenaway

Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Ramsey Nasr, Kate Moran, Giulio Berruti, Anne Louise Hassing;

UK/Netherlands/France/Croatia, 128 min.

In continuing his staged lectures about painting, theology, printing and everything else worth quoting, Peter Greenaway has turned to the Dutch printer and engraver Hendrik Goltzius, who between 1577 and 1617 was famous for his engravings of biblical and mythological scenes. Whilst the real Goltzius was travelling in 1590 from Italy via Germany, Greenaway imagines a visit to the court of the Margrave of Alsace (Abrahams), where Goltzius (Nasr) sells the wealthy patron of the art six tableaus of sexual perversions (voyeurism, adultery, child abuse, incest, prostitution and necrophilia), based on biblical themes, and staged by his printing company and their wives – plus a promised active participation of the permanently randy Margrave, who is also fond of taking a public shit every day.

What follows is the usual Greenaway treatment of digital trickery, particularly superimposed images of Goltzius, commenting on the actions like a second-class newsreader with a very fake French accent. The other actors follow his lead, they ham their way trough the proceedings, speaking their texts without any passion, like prompted. And yes, there is sex, actually lots of it, but it is mechanical like the rest of the proceedings. Greenaway throws in some theological debates between a Calvinist, a Roman Catholic and a Rabbi, succeeding in taking proceedings even further away from anything resembling a film. The schematic characters are as dead as wordy – emotionless and distant, they resemble very much the soul- and heartless director of this exercise, which (again) has only been undertaken, to show that Peter Greenaway is really the most cleverest person on earth.

The settings of Margrave’s court in a large industrial hanger work very well, as does the neo-baroque music, which helps to wile the time away, and the architectural drawings are (as usual) brilliant. Greenaway has even taken a step back from Nightwatching, totally falling back on a self-indulgent and pure sensationalist style. But his sex scenes, including gay rape, might have been challenging in the 70s, but today they are only proof of the director’s age. And no matter how impressive the sets, costumes, lighting and special effects are, they can never make up for the lack of any narrative. This is a peep-show, a row of cabaret numbers, staged for the benefit of the director alone, who tries in vain to come even near to his only true film, his debut The Draughtsman’s Contract. “Goltzius’” contract, in contrast, is just the work of a culture vulture. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 JULY 2914

Love Me Til Monday (2014)

Dir.: Justin Hardy

Cast: Georgia Maguire, Royce Pierreson, Tim Plester

UK 2013, 89 min. Comedy drama

LOVE ME TILL MONDAY is very much like its lead Becky (Georgia Maguire): spirited, a little vague, not very focused but immensely likeable. Whilst all this is fine for Becky/Maguire, the floppy, episodic narrative and the lack of direction (never mind conclusion of anything) is often grating.

The film is set – refreshingly – in Reading, this British comedy is all about about growing up and knowing what you really want: unfortunately, twenty five year old Becky (Georgia Maguire in a very spirited debut) doesn’t really want the former and has no clue about the latter. She works in a dead-end office job, but her mind is mostly somewhere else. Because Becky is not alone in this limbo situation: everyone in the office (bar Steve) wants a good time, but seems not to care very much about the future – again the after-university symptom of lack of adjustment. This can be sweet – up to point, but when none of the protagonists seems to learn anything from their mistakes, one looses a little interest.

After her Mum dumps her younger brother Ollie on her, she lovingly neglects him. Becky has never adjusted to life after university, and she really just wants to be taken care of. Her first choice is ‘HIM’ (Pierreson), the office hunk. But because Becky hesitates, one of her co-workers picks him up – but not for long. Next in line is Steve (Plester), the much older office manager. He seems to fit the role of ‘boyfriend’, not only does he show Becky the finer points of life, he also helps looking after Ollie, introducing him to a museum and interesting him in the Battle of Hastings scenario. Becky seems to be overwhelmed, but when Steve does not want the office to know about their relationship, she bolts – straight back to HIM, but the one-night stand is unsatisfactory and HIM wants ‘time out’ from all relationships. Becky has a small nervous breakdown, asks Mum to come back and packs up: the last we see her of her is in the bus, eying the next man of her choice…

The tiny budget does not allow for much, but the aesthetics have not suffered: the acting is fresh and lively, the camera changes between loving close-ups and pleasant panorama shots of Reading, and the atmosphere created is one of bliss, with the occasional regrettable over the-top comedy elements. What is lacking is a structured script, which money can’t buy. Without it, LOVE ME TILL MONEY is just a small, fluffy film, carried (just) by Maguire’s Becky. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 11 JULY 2014

[youtube id=”CbccUuB3_1w” width=”600″ height=”350″]

The Year and the Vineyard (2013)

El ANO Y LA VINA

Dir.: Jonathan Cenzual Burley

Cast; Andrea Calabrese, Fede Sanchez Garcia, Yavier Saez; Spain 2014, 75 min.

Jonathan Cenzual Burley’s debut Soul of the Flies, was a wonderful story about a meeting between two long-lost Spanish brothers, featuring elements of magic realism. In his latest drama The Year and the Vineyard, he’s tried very hard to follow in the footsteps of Michael Radford’s Il Postino, a gentle bitter-sweet comedy about Pablo Neruda’s life emigration to Italy. Somehow Burley fails, because his premise never rings true – three men and a ladder into the sky is simply too far-fetched. Other parts are truly funny, particularly the slightly gay priest trying to find Andrea’s wings, whilst reading aloud from a book to discover their location. Calabrese tries very hard to be convincing, he doesn’t lack charm, but the script leave him little chance.

The film is set in 1937. After leaving his village in Sicily (and his fiancé Isabella), Andrea Pesce (Calabrese), joins the Garibaldi Brigades on the side of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. On the way to the battle of Guadalajara, he suddenly finds himself in a vineyard in the province of Salamanca – the year being 2012. The vineyard owner is much more concerned by the destroyed vine, but the priest (Saez) hopes that the man who “fell from the sky” is an angel, or at least a saint. The village teacher (Garcia) has a more rational approach, but can’t help Andrea neither, since the latter finds a photo of Isabella in a book, showing her being active in the battle of Guadalajara in 1937. Finally the three men threw stones into the air, near the spot where Andrea landed – and finally find a hole in the sky. Via a ladder, Andrea climbs up, to find Isabella…

Cenzual Burley is very successful in the scenes helping the teacher to declare his love for Maria, proving that all the story strands outside the implausible main plot are rather well done. What sinks the film is its flimsy link to the Spanish Civil War, which always seems an abstract concept.

In lively and convincing performances, the trio tries their best to make up for the holes in the narrative. Camera work is conventional, too often producing idyllic post card images without creating any specific atmosphere. But the main drawback is Cenzual Burleys’ script, which mixes high-minded philosophic concepts with silly, second rate slap-stick comedy, ending up with neither a meaningful message or a truly comic film. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 4 JULY 2014

[youtube id=”3sADH1FWVn4″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Cycling with Moliere (2013)

Director: Philippe Le Guay

Writers: Fabrice Luchini, Philippe Le Guay

Cast: Fabrice Luchini, Lambert Wilson, Maya Sansa

104min French with subtitles Drama

Fabrice Luchini has come to be associated with intelligent French drama and here, in one he devised himself, he plays a well-known thespian Serge Tanneur, who has retreated to a remote manoir on the Ile de Re to recover from a nervous breakdown. Essentially a three-hander, the premise revolves round a bid by successful TV star, Gauthier Valence, to lure him back to Paris to collaborate in his sparkling new production of Molière’s classic comedy of manners: ‘Le Misantrope’.

But Tanneur has a mind of his own, despite its fragility, and an ego that’s second to none in luvviedom. And so this elegant piece goes backwards and forwards as their egos vy for attention, and they embark on a two-week series of rehearsals and play readings in the rain-swept French countryside.

Cycling with Moliere works best during these witty exchanges and literary sorties into the works of Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire as Tanneur prepares for his definitive role as the outspoken and unpopular central character, Alceste. And Life starts to mirror Art as it emerges that, in real life, their relationship very much runs along the same lines as Moliere’s two 17th century protagonists Alceste and Philinte. When the love interest arrives in the shape of an Italian divorcee Francesca (Maya Sansa) the natural underlining comic pessimism of Moliere’s also plays out in the real life denouement. Despite some ill-judged episodes of slapstick humour and a lightweight support cast, Luchini and Wilson keep the show on the road in an entertaining drama that makes great use of its glorious island setting photographed by Jean-Claude Larrieu. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 4 JULY COURTESY OF CURZON WORLD CINEMA

Keeping Rosy (2014)

Director: Steve Reeves

Writer: Steve Reeves, Mike Oughton

Cast: Maxine Peake, Blake Harrison, Elisa Losowski, Christine Bottomley, Sam Hoare

93min UK thriller

In this chilly urban thriller Maxine Peake plays a ‘stuck-up, self-centred cow’; but is she? Unlucky in love for sure, and (as it turns out), professionally too. As a hard-working Media boss, struggling with the pain of infertility, all her efforts have been dedicated to building a Media Consultancy and, despite success (as her magnificent Docklands penthouse portrays), she’s tricked in the boardroom for a slice of the rewards by smarmy colleague Tom (Sam Hoare). Love-rat Tom has recently sired a child with his unsuspecting wife (another colleague) but also wants some action with Charlotte on the side. So it’s not easy to be charitable when her cleaner Mykala (Elisa Lasowski) flagrantly defies her ‘no smoking’ pleas, and then steals an expensive bottle of champagne in a stony-faced act of entitlement and revenge. In a fit of pique the two come to blows, and from there on Charlotte’s shiny-looking life implodes as quickly as a party balloon.

Maxine’s Peake rose to fame as a barrister in the BBC series ‘Silk’ and here again she holds court, navigating the odd pothole in her Roger Vivier pumps with suave cool. Resplendent as the efficient ice maiden, her stoical facade melts into patient tenderness when she meets Rosy, Mykala’s baby. The vulnerable and affectionate little girl brings out the best in Charlotte, showing her ability to love and nurture, as she fights back nobly to gain control of the life she’s tried so hard to build. This is a world where strong, beautiful, successful women are seen as a threat: the males want to bed and destroy Charlotte, the female feel threatened and seek to undermine her. The psychopathic caretaker Roger, (Blake Harrison) acts greedily to leverage his position of control over Charlotte: his precious CCTV footage showing valuable evidence of the incident with the cleaner. In contrast, Charlotte’s sister Sarah (Christine Bottomley) adds a touch of realism, arriving from Manchester all brash and blowsy, to help out in the crisis. But the sisterhood rapidly breaks down in the presence of the conniving womaniser, Roger, showing what really goes on in women’s minds when the chips are down. The contrast between these two is startling and demonstrate just how much of a self-made woman Charlotte has become, from their modest beginnings up North.

Keeping Rosy is a slim but workable affair, developed by Reeves and co-writer Mike Oughton from a short film Taking Life (2011). Like Jonathan Glazer (Beneath the Skin) Steve Reeves is best known for his commercials work: his ad for ‘Agent Provocateur’, starring Kylie Minogue, had millions of hits on the internet. This hard-edged Noirish debut feels contemporary and real – reflecting unwholesome truths about the sort of Britain we’ve become. MT

KEEPING ROSY IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 JUNE 2014.

[youtube id=”b9bU6b9vWHI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Secret Sharer (2014)

Director/Writer: Peter Fudakowski

Cast: Jack Laskey, Zhu Zhu, Leon Dai, Hsia Ching-Ting

103min Romantic thriller English and with English subtitles

Inspired by Joseph’s Conrad’s 1909 novella, SECRET SHARER sets sail full of ‘Eastern Promise’ and so it should. Filmed on the widescreen with magnificent visuals of the Gulf of Siam, the original is a story fraught with exotic intrigue that follows a young captain Konrad (Jack Laskey) on his maiden voyage with an unknown crew. But Peter Fudowski’s version is set in the present day and the mysterious swimmer who climbs on board the ship at night is a seductive Chinese girl (Zhu Zhu) – not a man, as in the novel. Konrad discovers she is married to the Captain (Leon Dai) of a nearby ship and wanted for the murder of one of his crew. And in a further twist, it appears that Konrad is being bribed to sink his vessel.

Directed, written and produced by Fudowski himself, this is a lavish voyage that rapidly sails into stormy waters as Fudowski attempts to fuse two films into one. As Konrad, Jack Laskey lacks screen presence and his crew are also a motley bunch who fail to redeem themselves due to poor characterisation and a drama with no dramatic punch whatsoever. From the start, we care nothing for these characters or what becomes of them, largely due to slack performances and a poor script that limps along in Mandarin and English. By supplanting a woman (instead of a man) as the strange floater who mysteriously boards the ship, Fudowski is hoping to inject some romance into his romantic thriller casting Zhu Zhu for her looks alone. While this may provide a shot of titillation for some viewers (as her bum cheeks protrude cheekily from under her shirt) it’s certainly not a relationship “Shot through with suspense and intense eroticism”. There is no chemistry between the leads who morph in a sterile brother/sister relationship early on (the boyish Captain may fantasise about her in his feverishly wet dreams but he doesn’t possess the “balls” to carry this through), spending the night sharing a bun,k but very much as friends rather than lovers. As a character Li has little to offer this turgid drama (apart from her pert bum) and although she is billed as being the link between the crew and Captain, there’s little evidence that they respect her enough to take her seriously either. MT

SECRET SHARER IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 JUNE 2014

The Golden Dream (2013) La Jaula de Oro

Dir.: Diego Quemada-Diez

Cast: Brandon Lopez, Rodolfo Dominguez, Karen Martinez

Guatemala, Spain, Mexico 2013, 102 min.

Diego Quemada-Diez has made an astonishing debut film: a poetic road movie, a wonderful character study of changing group relationships and an always surprising narrative, shot in wonderful colours, showing beauty and deprivation at the same time.

Young teenagers Juan, Samuel and Sara (masquerading as a boy) want to leave the slums of Guatemala for the bright lights of Los Angeles: to do so, they have to travel 2200 miles, mainly on railways but often on foot. Having crossed the border to Mexico, the trio soon encounters organised gangs of thugs, who specialise in robbing the would-be emigrants of their meagre possessions. They are deported back to Guatemala, where Samuel decides to stay put. Chauk, an Indian, who has recently joined the little group, makes up the new trio. He is liked by Sara, but despised by Juan, who looks down on him, because he can’t speak Spanish. Together they set out again, but soon they are rounded up by another gang in Mexico, who kidnap Sara, after having discovered her true gender. We are mercifully spared her fate. Chauk nurses Juan back to health after both boys are injured, trying to fight off Sara’s assailants. Later Juan sacrifices his US Dollars to free Chauk and miraculously they reach the border fence separating Mexico from the USA, where they have to carry drugs for their guides. They cross successfully, but Chauk is shot dead by a bounty hunter. Juan finally sees the snow they were all dreaming of – but watching him work in a frozen meat factory, makes the ending decisively more bitter than sweet.

Whilst the interactions of the little group are told carefully and detailed, the journey itself is breath-taking in its pace. Quemada-Diez has created a form of social realism that Loach and others can only dream of: similar to the films of Rosselini and De Sica, we not only see the grim reality, but also the dreamlike elements of the journey the trio undertakes. But this does not detract from the fact that children in these parts of the world seemed to be only there to be molested and exploited. Just a few priests seem to be aware of their plight. And the police treats them like the gangsters they encounter all the time: they steal from them. In the end, when utopia is replaced by the hell of dystopia for Juan, one is, rightly so, utterly deflated. From the wonderful, non-professional cast – again shades of Rosselini – the towering camera work and its stunning panoramic shots and hand-held chases, to the excellent structured, always twisting narrative, this is a truly great achievement. For once, poverty and degradation is shown neither sugar-coated, with false happy-endings nor grim as depressing realism, but with a wonderful mixture of dreamlike wonderment and shattering emotional turmoil. AS

SCREENING AT THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2014

Cold In July (2014) – Edinburgh Film Festival 2014

Dir.: Jim Mickle

Cast: Michael C. Hall, Don Johnson, Sam Shephard, Vinessa Shaw

USA 2014, 109 min.

Jim Mickle (We Are What We Are) is leading the audience more than once up the garden path in this clever and intense retro-noir. Whenever we feel safe about the narrative, Mickle changes gear introducing new characters who change everything as radically as possible. It begins, very much cliché, in a small Texas town in 1989: Richard Dane (Hall), a picture framer, is woken up one night by his wife Ann (Shaw), who has heard a noise in the house. Richard loads his revolver, searching his home for an intruder and duly shoots an unarmed man in the living room. Richard, very much on the sensitive side for an archetypal Texan male of that (or any) era, is distraught, but the local Sheriff consoles him: the intruder he shot was a wanted man, a certain Freddy Russell, and Richard acted in self-defence. Nevertheless, Richard doesn’t find solace, and goes to Freddy’s funeral, where he is seemingly the only attendant. But soon he encounters Russell senior: soft-spoken but menacing, Ben Russell (Sam Shephard) reminds Richard that he too has a young son, albeit of school age.

Ben begins a cat-and-mouse game with Richard’s family and the police, but in the end is taken into custody by the sheriff. By chance Richard witnesses the policemen dragging Ben onto a railway track, injecting him with an anaesthetic and leaving him on the track, with the train approaching. Richard has to make up his mind pretty quickly, but his good side wins over and he rescues the father of his victim. They both soon find out that Freddy is still very much alive: hiding under the shield of the witness protection scheme, after having agreed to testify against the mob, for whom he had worked. Ben enlists the help of a larger-than-life army buddy, Jim Bob (Don Johnson), who is as outspoken as ready for any action coming his way – the classic Texan man. The trio finds out the sad truth, that Freddy is taking part in snuff-movies, killing prostitutes. Father Ben compares his wayward son with a dog who has to be put down or chained for life – the latter clearly no alternative for Daddy and Jim, they drag Richard into an inferno….

Nothing seems to fit in this rollercoaster of a movie, starting with the middle-class couple, fighting a day after the shooting about the choice of a new sofa, to replace the blood-soaked one. Ann is prim and only too happy to be the bait for Ben Russell, while Richard is much more afraid for his son, wanting to send his family away, till the police has caught Ben. Richard than falls under he spell of Ben and Jim, seemingly permanent on the lookout for strong characters he can follow – not at all the leading man for a Texan movie, which is synonymous with violence, of which we are served up enough – even before the slaughter house of the grand finale. Hall is convincing as the man who has to act violently because he follows his conscience, whilst everybody around him just loves violence of any form – Johnson and Shephard are enjoying themselves mightily. The camera is versatile, resting lovingly on period details like Apple Mac classics or VHS recorders, but swinging wildly into action shots, tracking and panning vividly. COLD IN JULY is impressive, very much in the Jim Thompson mould, where rather weak men are tested in the violent environment of the American underbelly, where there’s no place for them. AS

[youtube id=”FonWTNWtjmg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

SCREENING DURING EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 2014

Stella Cadente (2014)

Director/Writer: Lluis Miñarro

Cast: Àlex Brendemühl, Lorenzo Balducci, Barbara Lennie

Spain Drama/Comedy 110min

One of the better titles to world-premiere in-competition at Rotterdam earlier this year, STELLA CADENTE (aka FALLING STAR) was a welcome addition to the 68th Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it received its UK Premiere as part of the festival’s ‘New Perspectives’ strand.

Though ‘New Perspectives’ celebrates an international array of work from emerging directors, STELLA CADENTE’s writer-director Lluís Miñarro is no newcomer to the festival circuit. As a producer or executive producer, his CV boasts the likes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010), Lisandro Alonso’s LIVERPOOL(2008), Albert Serra’s HONOR OF THE KNIGHTS (2006) and others. His own first feature-length fiction work is a typically eccentric affair, unfolding at a stately pace and with an exquisite cinematographic flair, but all with a droll, deadpan, throwaway edge.

Suitable form, given the content. STELLA CADENTE tells the tale of Amadeo I, King of Spain between 1870 and 1873, whose unusually brief reign ended in abdication. The brevity of his rule can be accounted for by opposition to the Italian-born monarch’s foreignness, by the fact that his election coincided with the assassination of his most influential supporter, and by the in-fighting that gradually tore apart Spain’s progressive party throughout the latter half of the 19th Century. Compounding matters was the turbulent situation that greeted Amadeo shortly after taking up his position: turmoil among the democrats, conspiracies from the republicans, separatism in Cuba, assassination attempts, uprisings and strikes.

STELLA CADENTE is as timely as it is flippant. Though historical periods are seldom fully analogous, Spain once again finds itself in political and economic disorder, and Miñarro’s film had its first of two public screenings at Edinburgh just days after the ascension to the Spanish throne by Felipe Carlos, following father Juan’s recent abdication. Even at an unjustifiably lengthy 110 minutes, though, STELLA CADENTE eschews the greater intricacies of its historical backdrop. For the most part, it’s instead an unfussily light-hearted affair, featuring musical interludes, tripod-fixed longueurs, matter-of-fact homoerotic desire and the incongruous minutiae of a rococo social class that doesn’t know what to do with itself.

Surprisingly, Miñarro extends empathy and even sympathy to his king. Played by Àlex Brendemühl—blessed with the most amazing peepers in Spanish show business—Amadeo here isn’t as dim-witted as historical legend has had us believe. Advised not to leave his own palace lest he meets the same fate as Maximilian of Mexico, Amadeo seems fully aware that the governmental structure in his “folkloric country” denies justice and freedom. Though hewants to govern Spain, he spends the entire film in listless retreat from all-consuming boredom. In truth, Maximilian I, the Emperor of Mexico, had in 1867 been executed after being betrayed by those closest to him. Of Spain, Amadeo remarks, “This country is full of absurd conspiracies.”

It’s also visually sumptuous. As Amadeo’s wife, Queen María Victoria (Barbara Lennie), remarks, “You know what I love about Spain? It looks like a canvas.” Fittingly, Miñarro’s cinematographer Jimmy Gimferrer shoots in digital chiaroscuro that retains its absorbing clarity and seductive colour throughout. It’s painterly, but it’s also how a child might view things, and kid-like Amadeo, eager to serve his country but never taken seriously enough to be given the chance, doesn’t help himself whenever surrounded by advisors. In his first such meeting, he repeatedly asks if there’ll be a dance or a concert to mark his coronation. Later, his enthusiasm has dimmed: “Ambition is a trap.”

It’s not clear what Miñarro and co-scriptwriter Sergi Belbel’s intentions are here. Any serious allegory or warning cry that might pertain to contemporary Spain is offset by the unnervingly cheery tones, while brief episodes such as that in which Amadeo’s loyal servant Alfredo (Lorenzo Balducci) fucks a watermelon are outright bizarre. Still, it’s perhaps unfair to judge, given the kind of work Miñarro has been drawn to as a producer—adding to those mentioned above is fellow Catalonian Sergio Caballero, whoseFINISTERRAE (2010) is perhaps STELLA CADENTE’s most fitting comparator, as a bonkers journey through time and space. MICHAEL PATTISON

Exhibition (2013) Bfi Player DVD

Dir: Joanna Hogg | Cast: Viv Albertine, Liam Gillick, Tom Hiddleston | 104′ UK Drama

In her portrayal of the English middle-classes Joanna Hogg has a unique voice. And she particularly understands the women. We’re not talking about the huntin’ and shootin’ brigade: her characters are writers, artists, and creative types often played by untrained actors.

Hogg found her way into the film world after a chance meeting with Derek Jarman and her first film Caprice featured (the then unknown) Tilda Swinton. Her first big screen release UNRELATED (2007) tells the story of a childless woman who joins her married friend’s house party in Tuscany and feels “fated to spend the rest of my life on the periphery of other womens’ families’. It won the FIPRESCI prize that year. Her follow-up ARCHIPELAGO (2010) witnesses the disintigration of a family on holiday in the Scilly Isles where the visual language speaks louder than the embittered dialogue between them.

EXHIBITION takes place in a fabulous modernist house in London (Kensington?), which is on the market. Newcomers to acting D and H (played by Turner prize nominated artist Liam Gillick and onetime punk musician, Viv Albertine) love living here but feel the need to move on with their lives and the house is full of bittersweet memories. Essentially a two-hander, it has Hogg’s regular collaborator Tom Hiddleston, as the estate agent tasked with the sale.

The house is very much a character and a part of who they are; embodying not only their artistic personalities but enforcing the pain of the past and embued with the story of their married life. Full of hope, they moved in after marrying with plans for a family and all the happiness that couples wish for, sadly not for them. But in their own way they still love each other.

Communicating via intercom from their respective offices in the house, they evoke the typical nature of ego-driven but insecure artists: permanently at work – sometimes avoiding contact; sometimes welcoming reassurance of each other’s existence and commitment. Competitive, independent yet needy of affirmation and understanding. Sex has died but H’s libido is still dormantly waiting for male excitement.

This is an urban London film and Hogg absolutely nails the minor and major irritations of life here: the estate agent’s glib patter; dinner parties talking about other peoples’ children; the street noise, parking problems and alarms. Here again Hogg elicits a strong visual language from her actors that requires minimal dialogue evoking their individual dynamic in the relationship: H is an appeasing mother figure, D is controlling, anal, looking for comfort.

Leaving the house, can they leave the ghosts that haunt them behind? Joanna Hogg offers up another subtle masterpiece. Poignant and absolutely authentic. MT

EXHIBITION IS now on BFIplayer | READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH JOANNA HOGG HERE

[youtube id=”3ybIk-pQoqM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Her (2013) -DVD

Director/Writer Spike Jonze

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Chris Pratt, and Rooney Mara.

US Drama

Spike Jonze is best known for Being John Malkovich and Where the Wild Things Are. Her is his first outing with an original script of his own. Looking into the future it imagines a pastel-coloured dreamscape of downtown LA, where a lonely Hobbit-like dweeb (Joaquin Phoenix), bereft from his marriage break-up, falls hopelessly in love with his laptop’s artificially intelligent operating system voiced by the dulcet tones of Scarlett Johansson. Well which red-blooded man wouldn’t?

In Jonze’s film, the online world and reality collide providing a parallel universe where educated and polite characters interact sweetly with each other in high-waisted trousers. This premise is both plausible and unsettling, but more importantly, underscores the increasing laziness of social communication, where physical interaction is limited to the minimum and everyone relies personally tailored menus run by online personal advisors. This is a world where all human needs are met inclusively online – well almost exclusively. This sounds practical until it creates a society where brains become hard-wired to rely on screens and buttons rather than real faces and human chemistry and social and emotional intercourse starts to become alien to the human race.

But let’s not get too morose. Jonze’s drama is a light and fluffy affair enveloping a heart of glass, As his characters tailor their online information to reflect personal preferences, eliminating undesirable elements at the stroke of a finger, so their real relationships go down the tubes. Chilling and scarily believable, Jonze captures the zeitgeist of this future perfectly but, in doing, inadvertently creates a film that can have no heart or soul. In one scene, Phoenix’s character tries to make love to a call-girl sent by his advisor, while she talks him through the motions with fascinating results. Like candy-floss, HER looks appealing and but is forgettable several hours later. Or maybe it’s just not all of us are ready for this type of existence. MT

[youtube id=”ne6p6MfLBxc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

NOW ON DVD

The Sea (2013) – DVD

Director: Stephen Brown

Writer: John Bamville (novel)

Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Ciaran Hinds, Natasha McEhlone, Rufus Sewell, Sinead Cusack, Karl Johnson, Bonnie Wright, Matthew Dillon

Stephen Brown directs John Bamville’s screen adaptation, loosely based on his novel about a bereaved man (Ciaran Hinds) who returns to the seaside resort of his childhood, to get over the death of his wife (Sinead Cusack). Often feeling as chilly as its Irish coastal setting, a stellar cast of British stalwarts keep this grim drama afloat on the shifting sands of Brown’s direction.

Charlotte Rampling is superb as Mrs Vavasoor, the restrained and elegant hostess at the seaside hotel who offers tea and empathy (“Solitude is a thing you learn…”).. while suffering the effects of delayed bereavement Max (Hinds) hits the bottle in a toxic mixture of grief, ennui and an adverse reaction to her geometric prints. Visions of his dying wife (a stoical Sinead Cusack) provide comfort but plunge him further into grief.

Even the idyllic sun-filtered flashbacks to his repressed fifties childhood feel unsettling and remote, as he remembers some kids he used to play with on the beach. His mind is filled with fantasies of their libidinous (and bisexual) mother Connie (McElhone) whose marriage to Rufus Sewell’s Carlo, although outwardly buoyant (think ‘Five Go Mad in Dorset’), appears to be have hit the rocks. A series of weird subplots involving Connie’s lesbian nanny and Carlo’s coquettish dalliance with a shopgirl feel gauche and implausible under Brown’s direction, and work much better on the page. And when the plot finally unravels, it’s so underwhelming we almost what to cry into our ginger beer. MT

THE SEA IS ON DVD from 23 June 2014

[youtube id=”H6tbCuTrAeU” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Chef (2014)

Director/Writer: Jon Favreau

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Favreau, Sophie Vergara, Emjay Anthony, Oliver Platt

114 min US Comedy

Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Swingers) returns to his indie roots with this lip-smacking romp around America that’s enjoyable and informative in content despite its predictable storyline. Did you know that there are 50 styles of barbecue; how to prepare Texas-style beef or make the best Cuban sandwich? Well in Chef you can find out. Wrapped inside the delicious gourmet coating is a tender-hearted rites of passage success story of how one man gets the show back on the road family-wise while kick-starting his career – most of all its about being true to yourself.

According to Jon Favreau, an affable bon viveur whose generous proportions and sunny personality light up every scene (as the chef in question) the script ‘wrote itself’. While not most inventive story but certainly one that guarantees a level of truth and authenticity mixed in with the enjoyment of the subject-matter and its dynamite delivery. Akin to chomping through the juiciest flame-grilled hamburger in the Ritz, it’s competent and enjoyable with no surprises.

His acting chops are unquestionable as Carl Casper, a respected head cook at a celebrity Los Angeles restaurant who starts to feel cheesed-off with the restrictive menu imposed on him by crusty owner Riva (Dustin Hoffmann). Despite the dulcet support of Scarlett Johansson’s luscious Maitre D Molly, Casper is unhappy and an unfulfilled man makes a bad partner. But when award-winning and influential restaurant critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt) openly lambasts his cooking as being tired and turgid, Caspar decides its time to make some creative changes. Luckily his intelligent 10-year-old Percy (newcomer Emjay Anthony ) discovers the power of the critic’s Twitter following (running into the thousands); he sets up an account for his father which proves disastrously counter-productive causing him to make a gracious yet powerful exit from the restaurant and out into the cold.

At this point it always helps to have a rich and beautiful ex-wife and the gorgeous Sofia Vergara is wheeled in as Inez to sooth the troubled waters by taking Percy and Caspar with her on a business trip to Miami. It feels like she still holds a candle for her ex and the ulterior motive is to oil the wheels of creativity and romance – a double-edged sword. And so begins a food-fueled road movie with overtones of boyish bonding and undertones of a flirty romance.

With its rousing soundtrack and magnificent views of California, Florida,Texas and Louisiana this is an indie film with big-hearted ambitions and some enjoyable performances from the star-thronged cast. Although Scarlett Johansson feels under-utilised in her small role, there’s something genuine and heartfelt at the core of Jon Favreau with its upbeat and universal message of hope that leaves the audience satisfied, yet raring to eat. MT

[youtube id=”mJiN6a7K5fI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Chinese Puzzle (Casse-Tete Chinoise) (2013)

Director: Cedric Klapisch

Cast: Romain Duris, Cecile de France, Audrey Tatou

117min French with subtitles Comedy Drama

A European version of Richard Linklater’s Midnight series, CHINESE PUZZLE wears its heart a little more lightly on its fashionable sleeve. The third part of Cedric Klapisch’s student story that kicked off in Barcelona with Pot Luck (2002) then St Petersburg with Russian Dolls, follows our freewheeling friends to New York. Now nearly forty, Xavier (Romain Duris) is a writer; father of two and newly divorced from his English wife Wendy (Kelly O’Reilly). Living in a Chinatown bedsit, he’s sired a child for lesbian best friend Isabelle (Cecile de France) and is being hotly pursued by ex-girlfriend Martine (Audrey Tatou). There’s never a dull moment in this feelgood frolic of mutual soul-bearing and farcical melodrama in the Big Apple. Although there are parts of this puzzle that fit a little too neatly, Romain Duris holds it all together with his genial good humour. For sheer upbeat entertainment value, this is well worth a watch. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Blue Caprice (2013) | Washington Snipers – East End Film Festival 2014

Writer|Dir: Alexandre Moors | Cast: Isaiah Washington, Tequan Richmond, Tim Blake Nelson, Joey Lauren AdamsThis exquisitely filmic arthouse docudrama, based on the Beltway sniper murders that rocked Tahoma (Washington) in 2002, is the debut of Alexandre Moors and tells the story from the perspective of the two killers as they gradually forge an unholy alliance that lead to their venal activities.

Sober in tone, the rather forlorn narrative unfolds with the early childhood of young Lee Boyd Malvo (Tequan Richmond) who starts life roaming the streets of Antigua after his mother is forced to seek work abroad. Swimming in the sea one day, he meets John Muhammad (Isaiah Washington) who appears, on the surface, as the ideal role model with his calm masculine demeanour and strong physicality. John lives with his children, but he turns out to be on the run, having kidnapped them from his ex-wife. By stealth John nurtures the psychopath at the heart of Lee and this is the powerful central focus of Blue Caprice, rather than the re-enactment of the Beltway murders.

With a hauntingly atmospheric semi-religious score and dreamlike pacing Blue Caprice is a work of stunning beauty that creeps up on you by stealth painting a picture of mental bewilderment that descends into a fight for survival as Lee becomes inured to a life of petty crime and murder at the hands of his iniquitous ‘saviour’. Particularly disturbing is the scene where John teaches Lee how to use a gun and drive the infamous petrol blue Caprice. This is primarily a mood piece that focuses more on the men’s developing relationship than on the actual killings and once they hit the freeways on their murderous spree the story enters a kind of dream narrative of shot through with steel blue skies, neon landscapes and rain-washed gunmetal roads where flocks of birds rise silently in protest against the violence beneath them.

As John, Washington exerts an effortless power over Lee and his armed henchman mate Ray (Tim Blake Nelson). As Lee, Tarquan Richmond is a cold and vacant cypher who rarely speaks or has an opinion. R.F.I. Porto’s script doesn’t attempt to explain how Lee submits to John’s control. The fact that he represents a much-needed omnipotent father-figure is all that Lee requires as the psychopathic pair progress with inexorable and menacing intent towards their victims.

The compelling nature and ultimate success of Blue Caprice is the disassociation from the terrible events it portrays. The almost poetic way that Alexandre Moors portrays the development of an innocent and desperately lonely child into a fully-formed dispassionate killer. That is both its brilliance and its horror. MT

SCREENING AT THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2014

[youtube id=”ggnPv_lTbGA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Miss Violence (2013) 70th Venice Film Festival

Director: Alexandros Avanas Writers: Alexandros Avanas, Kostas Peroulis

Cast: Themis Panou, Constantinos Athanasiades, Chloe Bolota, Chloe Athanasiades,

98mins * Greece Drama

A nasty, evil and smug drama that surrepticiously feeds on man’s sexually exploitative nature couching it in a wrapping of finger-wagging worthiness in an attempt to capitalise on the success of recent tales of family dysfunction such as Giorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth and Michalis Konstantos’ Luton, from the Greek New Wave.

Suffocating in a sickly pastel aesthetic even the cast look drained and inanimate although Themis Panou is far from that, playing the debauched and controlling ‘pater families’ that won him Best Actor at the 70th Venice Film Festival. In a performance of venal subtlety, you hardly notice him any more than you might the insipid stranger who is later found flashing in the dimly-lit park.

On daughter Angeliki’s (Chloe Botota) 11th birthday, she jumps unceremoniously from the family’s ghastly appartment balcony after tea. Social services are keen to keep an eye on proceedings and, no doubt, lessons will be learnt, or will they?. The eldest daughter, Eleni (Eleni Roussinou), announces her pregnancy but she could well be the nanny judging from her mother’s distant and slightly irritated reaction to the news. MISS VIOLENCE is a buttoned-up, bewildering drama that has you constantly trying to work out who’s related to whom and how. As the father, Themis Panou behaves more like his daughter’s husband, dispassionately discussing details of her menstrual cycle, organising the kids and doing the school run. His wife, the matriarch, (Reni Pittaki) feels more like the grandmother here, as turgid as a lounge lizard with her slothful eyes. Sissy Toumasi stands out as daughter Myrto, a spirited teenager who’s desperately going against the grain in her hope of a more fulfilling existence.

What gradually unfolds is as nauseating and unpalatable as the three-piece suite in the family living room. Well-performed and competently crafted, Avranas’ feature nevertheless feels a cheap and gratuitous example of modern European cinema from a country whose morals seem to go hand in hand with its lax financial probity. MT

MISS VIOLENCE WON BEST ACTOR (THEMIS PANOU) AND BEST DIRECTOR (ALEXANDROS AVANOS) AT THE 70 VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2013.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 20 JUNE 2014

[youtube id=”rZ63JuWkSh4″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Bright Days Ahead (2013) Les Beaux Jours

Director/Writer: Marion Vernoux From a novel by Fanny Chesnel

Cast: Fanny Ardant, Patrick Chesnais, Laurent Lafitte

94min French with subtitles Drama

A classic ménage à trois is at the heart of this clever French drama. Director, Marion Vernoux, clearly appreciates and understands the intricacies of female sexuality and particularly those of a beautiful and intelligent woman who has been much admired and who, now in her sixties, still values her powers of attraction and is looking forward to the future. Loosely based on co-writer Fanny Chesnel’s book “Une Jeune Fille aux Cheveux Blancs” the film title has a dual meaning: as the ‘sixties plus’ retirement club in a small French seaside town and the positive outlook of their latest member Caroline (a fabulously luminescent Fanny Ardant) who has recently hung up her dentist’s drill but still has a twinkle in her eye and an upbeat frame of mind. Her family are less confident in her social abilities, projecting onto her their own clichéd ideas of retirement as a time of dusting down the zimmer frame, knitting and looking after grand-children. But the languidly sensual Caroline is having none of it: she casts a quietly disdainly eye over her fellow retirees and patronising instructors and makes a beeline for the door. But when the dishy 30-something computer teacher Julien (Laurent Lafitte) gives her some encouragement, and not just with her keyboard skills, she decides that Les Beaux Jours is a club where she definitely wants to be a member.

The appeal of this story lies in the authenticity of the telling. Like most affairs, the success of this one is based on initial spontaneity and chemistry but this is no ‘cougar’ story: although it just so happens that there is a large age-gap between them. Caroline is not looking for a younger man, or any man, for that matter: she’s contentedly married to Philippe (an amusingly laconic Patrick Chesnais) and content to see where her feelings take her. Julien just loves women; he’s not obsessed with older women but at nearly 40 is also at a vulnerable turning-point in his life, where he’s no longer necessarily seen as marriage material but equally wants to have a relationship rather than just endless conquests. The sex they enjoy is languorously romantic, not desperate or needy. There are some amusing moments when Caroline attempts to hide the romance from members and her local friends, but when Philippe finds out he’s not devastated just resigned, disappointed and ready to discuss the future. The denouement is not earth-shattering but completely plausible, reflecting the subtle intricacies of emotion, long-term love and marriage and the realities of life . But there is also wit and warmth here and some really poignant moments that show that, in the end, no matter how experienced we think we are, love still has some surprises in store. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 20 JUNE 2014

[youtube id=”Wzx0oRXvVws” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Moonless Summer (2014) Kino Otok 2014

Director/Writer: Stefan Ivančić

Cast: Isidora Markovic, Jelisateva Karadzic, Stefan Djordjevic, Matija Ristic

Serbia Drama 31min

Yugoslav-born Stefan Ivančić follows last year’s SPRINGTIME SUNS with MOONLESS SUMMER (LETO BEZ MESECA), the final-year project with which the writer-director graduated from Belgrade’s prestigious Faculty of Dramatic Arts. Premiering in the Cinéfondation Selection at Cannes last month, the film boasts a level of sophistication and confidence often absent from such film-school settings. Last week, it screened at the 10th edition of Kino Otok, Izola’s international film festival.

Said screening was part of a themed triptych that also featured SPRINGTIME SUNS and Ivan Salatić’s INTRO. As well as sharing an editorial credit in Jelena Maksimovic, all three shorts are personal evocations of youth – and, by extension, that painful and mysterious space between adolescence and adulthood, not only in terms of individual growth but of political and social maturation: each work is a past-tense memoir-like piece by an artist born in 1980s Yugoslavia.

As its seasonal title suggests, MOONLESS SUMMER is both a continuation of and a departure from SPRINGTIME SUNS. Whereas the previous film was a palpably autobiographical account of four teenage lads enjoying a lakeside night together, Ivančić’s latest focuses on two female characters: seventeen-year-old Isidora (Isidora Markovic) and her older sister (Jelisateva Karadzic), with whom she spends a few days at their childhood country home before embarking upon studies abroad. As fleeting romances develop with two local boys, Isidora enjoys being in the moment, but dormant anxieties emerge.

As previously demonstrated, Ivančić channels presumably personal experience with vivid but unforced detail. It’s too often the case that this kind of ‘authorial’ filmmaking disappears into its own navel – so that one senses the filmmaker ‘needed’ to make the work but that one needn’t bother seeing it oneself; or else, the filmmaker experiments with form so as to paint over the more ostensibly ordinary aspects with a false radicalism. Needless to say, it takes a certain confidence in one’s own material to perspectivise and balance autobiographical elements (which in any case can be easily overstated).

To this end, Ivančić has profitably expanded upon the earlier film while also ‘othering’ it, opting to distance himself from incidents by telling them this time from a female perspective. (Like Isidora, the filmmaker moved to Spain with his parents in 1991; he returned to Serbia in 2009.) MOONLESS SUMMER, like SPRINGTIME SUNS before it, presents us with a relatably straightforward account of an otherwise innocuous vacation, one whose comprising minutiae are nevertheless experienced with a private, inexplicably heightened sensitivity by its protagonist.

Indeed, while Ivančić and cinematographer Igor Djordjevic often frame Isidora in detached, tripod-fixed mid- to long-shots – thereby evoking her conditioning environs as much as the character herself – the film also contains more gestural moments, when it gradually reveals one barely discernible image over another, such as that in which an apparition of Isidora’s holiday crush appears over a landscape shot of the rural surroundings. Suggestive and elusive, such moments juxtapose the world as we see it and the world as experienced by Isidora. When we see the night sky slowly dissolve over an image of two human hands touching, we feel all the romance of an inner cosmos blown out of proportion.

Beneath the veneer of this ever-shifting utopia, of course, is raw vulnerability. Though far removed from emotional hyperbole or some superficial apocalypse, MOONLESS SUMMER captures in its latter moments those often-unstable foundations upon which the straw house of adolescence is built, when it cuts from rigid framing to a handheld shot following an unaccountably tearful Isidora along a shoreline. Tides continue while traumas fade. MICHAEL PATTISON

Interview with Jean-Pierre Jeunet for TS Spivet

At the recent San Sebastian Film Festival, Matthew Turner spoke to Amélie director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, author Reif Larsen and composer Denis Sanacore for T.S. Spivet (based on Larsen’s book, The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet). The film is on general release from 13 June 2014:

Q: The director has accustomed us to little details and this film was an excellent example of this. Why do you believe those details are so important? And secondly, how did you manage the 3D aspect of the film?

Jean-Pierre Jeunet (JPJ): Well, it’s just like in football, eveything comes down to detail. In the book by Reif Larsen, there are a lot of drawings that are supposedly by T.S. Spivet. When I saw the book and the illustrations, I thought the way of fitting them all in as 3D from the outset, that’s the way I saw it. The 3D is not there just to make it spectacular, but also for the narration and the poetry, just like I did with Amelie and the special effects. And I wanted to renew and use a lot of fantastic American landscapes and also to shoot in English, that’s why I shot in 3D. Plus, when I was a child, I had a ViewMaster, you know, those red box glasses with little discs, so that you can see 3D images. They were my first steps in cinema. I was eight years old, I would cut and change the order of the images and that’s how I created films that subsequently I recorded and projected and showed my friends. So I already took my first steps in 3D when I was eight years old.

Q: Is this the first quote-unquote “American” film that you’ve made?

JPJ: No, it’s not my first American film. Prior to this, I did Alien: Resurrection with Winona Ryder and Sigourney Weaver for Twentieth Century Fox. That was a true American film, but this is a false American film, and that’s very important, because obviously it’s an American film but produced in Europe between France and Canada. For me, the most important word in cinema is the word freedom. Here, for example, in Europe, we’ve got freedom, we’ve got the final cut and that’s something which is marvellous. If I exclude Alien: Resurrection, where I had to make some concessions, all of my other films, I’ve never made any concessions, so I am 100% responsible for my films. This makes me feel very proud. So I prefer to make films in this way, because there’s no freedom in Hollywood. Spielberg and Soderbergh complain because in Hollywood everything is formatted, everything is compulsory, so therefore we have to follow the law of benefits and profit and money, let us say the law of Hollywood. And I made an American film but with French freedom at the same time.

Q: Where did you find your marvellous child actor, Kyle Catlett?

JPJ: Well, it was very difficult to find him. We had to see two or three thousand [actors]. We carried out the casting in a dozen American cities and I was desperate and all of a sudden, by the internet, this young, little boy actor – very small, but he had magic in his eyes and I felt he had something special. So I Skyped him and he said, ‘I can cry if I have to cry, plus I can do karate and martial arts and so on, so I’m your T.S. Spivet’. I saw so much conviction in him, that I thought it was quite clear that he had to play the role. I went to New York and we did a test audition and it was formidable. And when you don’t make a mistake when you choose a boy actor, you’ll only achieve very good surprises and so obviously we had to work very hard in the rehearsals so that he could portray the role – I believed there was 10 or 15 or 20 per cent possibilities of going even further and so I discovered that he achieved 60 per cent more than what I expected. He’s a boy actor who has a past that I can’t talk about, it’s very hard, and he’s hyper-positive at the same time. He’s almost like a bright light, he never felt tired, he never complained, he was never negative. I saw him cry once and I thought he was playing the role, I thought it was a joke, but it was because he’d lost, I think, a beetle or something of that nature and I treated him as if he was a true actor, just like Audrey Tautou. I compare him to Audrey Tautou because he’s got the same technical [ability], he’s got the same sense of rhythm, he can cry, he’s got all these abilities, he’s a true actor.

Q: Could you talk about the dual aspect in the script between the use of weapons and science, the context of the film – as a children’s film – and what the production process was like?

JPJ: I don’t know whether I could summarise like Reif Larsen, who’s the author of the book. Everything was in the book. When I talked to [Larsen] the first time, I said, ‘I don’t feel I’ve contributed my personal ideas, because your book is so rich and wealthy, I’ve got to take things out of it, it’s not worthwhile adding anything on to it. Albeit, I did add small details, I adapted it a little bit, I couldn’t resist, I couldn’t hold myself back. For me there are many issues in this book, those dual aspects between poetry and science and also a Canadian scientist, I took an idea because he describes forms through poetry, through his chemical composition, I included this in the film. There’s something that is close to me, which is sincerity, we’ve got a young boy who draws things, sketches at home and he creates, he’s very similar to me and then at a given moment, he’s projected before the media and the front line and he knows what’s expected of him but all of a sudden and he prefers to go home and to keep drawing his sketches. And that’s the definition of cinema, which is Jean Renoir – I make films for the pleasure, for the pleasure of doing so and then I want people to watch them and that’s what I try to teach my students to do, to make the films you want to and enjoy it, just for the sheer pleasure of doing so.

Can you speak about the soundtrack for the film?

Denis Sanacore (DS): Well, Jean-Pierre called me up in February 2012 and the producer, Suzanne Girard called me to ask me to contribute some work for Jean-Pierre, because he’d listened to my work on MySpace, for example. I like acoustic guitar very much, so there was a finger style, finger picking, accompanied by a violin and Jean-Pierre already knew that aspect of my music. And I brought along some other songs to the producer and I met Jean-Pierre and he gave me the storyboard and the script and he asked me to compose music, promising – well, I couldn’t really promise anything, but I composed thirty different pieces of work and Jean-Pierre chose them and then he edited them with the images.

JPJ: At the beginning, during pre-production, I said it would be very good if it were a Canadian musician and I didn’t feel like working with Canadian musicians who do music for Hollywood, that’s not my style, I never use orchestrated music with violins and so on. I think on the internet. On the internet, I think I listened to 500 Canadian composers, all of them! I found one who said, ‘Let’s compose music – I compose music and plus I can also change the wheels and tyres on cars at the same time, I can do both things’. And so, when I found him, I said, ‘Well, this is very good’. And we came to an agreement, I said, ‘Well, I can’t promise you anything, but if you compose thirty different pieces, we’ll see’ and therefore, I provisionally edited the film, so that I could be sure, with the 3D and at a given moment, I knew that it was going to work at the end of the day. But he wrote thirty pieces of work, using his talent. The songs, when you hear them, immediately, they stick to your mind, all night long, you can’t get them off your mind.

Q: Reif, were you satisfied with the adaptation of your novel? Did you participate in the script at all?

Reif Larsen (RL): It was a sort of a dream experience for me. When I first wrote the book, I gave my agents five directors who I said, ‘I would love to any of these five’ and actually Jean-Pierre was one of the five directors. I’m not just saying that – it was true!

JPL: You told me the first!

RL: The first director! My first choice. But nothing happened at that point and a couple of years went by slowly and I thought, ‘Okay, maybe this book will never be made into a movie’. And then out of the blue, completely out of the blue, I was making coffee one morning in my underwear and I got this email from Jean-Pierre Jeunet and I thought it was a joke, I thought it was one of my friends playing a joke on me, but no, it was real and two days later, we were sitting across from each other in New York City and he was telling me all his favourite parts of the book, the little details that he loved. And he kept saying, ‘Remember when the boy is on the train and he sees the girl? You will see that on the screen!’ And I felt a little bit like I was on drugs or something, I couldn’t believe that this would actually happen. But we got on very well, I think, and we share a lot of similar aesthetics, there’s a lot in common. And Jean-Pierre was a big influence on me – I saw Delicatessen, Amelie and this influenced my work, so in a way, he was inside the book already and maybe this is what he recognised when he wanted to choose the book. But I was involved a little bit, I didn’t really want to be involved too much, because I believe that if you write the story, you’re too close to it – these characters are too much yours to know how to do the adaptation. I’m fascinated with how adaptation works but I think for this story, I wouldn’t be a good person to [do it]. So I was glad to give it to Jean-Pierre and he trusted me enough to show me the script and I gave little comments but nothing major, because I really believe that any story, in order to work, needs a vision behind it and for this movie, it was my child initially and then I gave him to Jean-Pierre.

Q: Who else was on that list of five directors?

RL: Jean-Pierre, Tim Burton, Alfonso Cuaron, Wes Anderson and Guillermo Del Toro. That’s good, right? Any one of those would be good. And Capra, but he’s [dead].

Q: How did you direct the actors? It must have been a challenge, because it’s an imaginative story and you’ve got to make up these characters which aren’t really realistic.

JPJ: Well, all directors probably say the same thing. It all depends on the casting. Helena Bonham Carter, I thought of her directly when I read the book. I had already seen her in Fight Club and she, at that time, said she’d love to work with me. And I don’t know why, when I read the book, I saw her and I got in touch with her and she said, ‘I fell in love with your script’ and that’s how easy it was. She accepted immediately. And then there was a casting and it was marvellous to discover [other] actors who are unknown in France, from Toronto, English or from Quebec, so the casting was excellent, each of the actors are fantastic, even the smaller roles, but the casting, I’m always there and I test audition everyone. And I think that’s the only way to not make a mistake at the end of the day. And vis-a-vis directing on set, yes, there’s a very interesting story here and that’s that the role of Jibsen, Judy Davis, a lot of actors received the script, they said yes, they said no and then the American agents, the biggest liars on the planet, made us believe that they’d loved the script, but they hadn’t even read it. And finally I sent it to Kathy Bates and for two months the agent was saying yes, that she loved it, but she hadn’t even read it. At the end of the day we decided to write to her, she had heard talk about it, she read it and said, ‘I love it, I want to play the role’ and quite happily she came along. And then she realised she had cancer and instead of making the film, she had to be operated on and that’s probably saved her life. So therefore, Judy Davis came from Australia at the last minute to play that role. She arrived on a Friday night and we shot the next Monday morning, so that’s how the directing process was: ‘Be yourself but make me laugh’. And that’s what she did.

Q: Just a while back, Hollywood paid tribute to French cinema with The Invention of Hugo. French cinema also paid tribute to American film with The Artist, then Woody Allen shoots Midnight in Paris, then you make this film, which is super-American coming from France. Could you tell us, what’s this recent love story between French and American cinema?

JPJ: Well, it’s a love-hate relationship at the same time, just like I said before. [Don’t get me wrong], my wife’s American and I love the U.S., to go to San Francisco and I like the American people, but U.S. cinema requires profit and it’s a prisoner of its own industry. The Americans say this, not only me. And I claim freedom, I think we’ve got to do artist / auteur-type films. When a gallery exhibits paintings, the gallery owner can’t say to the painter, ‘Change this here, paint it blue, don’t paint it white’, but in cinema it does occur. And for us, for the French, that can’t be tolerated, so therefore you see that there are two different cultures here. This doesn’t mean that the Americans can’t make excellent films, of course, but it’s much more difficult, you’ve got to fight and fight. It’s a big struggle, I’ve been in Hollywood, I know what it’s about, so that’s why, if I can continue to work in France, that’s what I prefer to do. This doesn’t mean I don’t adore American films. The great Americans, Scorsese and so on and so forth, I love them. Recently, I reread Renoir’s biography – in the 30s and 40s, he said that there’s always going to be somebody that knows better than you what the audience is going to like and I got the impression that in the 1930s, he was already talking about my films, so therefore, this has always been the case.

Q: Reif, how did you choose the name for the character? Tecumseh Sparrow – why such an Indian name? Tecumseh was a famous Cherokee chief and the middle name of a famous Yankee general.

RL: Who was named for the Cherokee chief, yes. Well, I love names that are initials, like T.S. because always, if you say, ‘My name is T.S. or B.J. or D.D, there’s a story there, there’s an untold story, because the two initials always stand for something. So I like names that have stories behind them. T.S. of course is an echo of T.S. Eliot, who is one of my favourite writers, but Tecumseh Sparrow is an interesting name, it’s about the contradictions that are what the West is about. You know, the American West, on the one hand is about map-makers, cartographers, scientists, it’s about the “conquest” of the Indians, it’s about cowboys, all these things – it’s a real playground of the imagination. There’s what actually happened in the West and then there’s what we believe happened in the West. The genre of the Western was only created after the West was already closed, in some ways. The frontier theory, Turner’s thesis, which is that the frontier is where America was made, but the frontier is already gone. This is the first real American idea and it was a nostalgic idea, it was already told after the fact, so there’s something about the West that is nostalgic, we can’t help thinking about the West without moaning that it’s gone. So I wanted to capture that in that name: Tecumseh – he was this Indian figure who tried to unite all the tribes together and failed and was shot, so there’s history in that name, which was important.

Q: How did you come up with the character of T.S. Spivet?

RL: Writing a novel is always complicated, it’s not like you snap your fingers and go, ‘Ah, I know what I’ll write’. For me, a lot of the time, I have to write and as I write, I learn about the story. But for this book, I was struggling with this character who was dealing with his past on a ranch, so it’s the same kind of thing, it’s this nostalgia for the west. Originally, when I first wrote this book, T.S. was 45 years old and he was drunk and actually living in a prison in Paris and sort of narrating his past from the prison. And I wrote about ten pages of this and it was really bad, total shit, so I had to [mimes screwing it up into a ball and throwing it away]. Part of being a writer is knowing when what you write is really bad. So I threw that out and I said, ‘No, he’s not 45, he’s not drunk and he’s not in a prison, he’s 12, he’s still on the ranch and he’s struggling with his father, who’s very different than him’. And once I made that decision, I found the voice of T.S., I was immediately inside the character of T.S. And what I love about this movie is that it also gets inside his head, you feel his struggle and you feel his sense of wonder and also his grief for his brother. And I think that’s what carries the book and it’s also what carries the movie.

Q: Jean-Pierre, what projects do you have in your head now?

JPJ: I’ve got a problem, which is that I never know what film I’m going to make next. I need to see what’s going to happen with this one first. Obviously, if you’re successful now, later on you can be much more ambitious, but if that isn’t the case, perhaps we will have to review my potential for my next film. And it’s very difficult for me to find a subject matter, because in ideal terms, I want a good story, good characters, emotion, humour, interesting graphic aspects and to be original and it’s very difficult to find those five elements. And I think in this film, those five elements do exist. I need to love everything I do, but I also need to feel I like it and I also need to fall in love with the subject as I write. And then my films are seen throughout the world and I’ve got to promote things and this is four years of my life, so it’s very important for me to like it. So unfortunately I can’t answer you, I don’t know what I’m going to do after this film.

TS SPIVET IS ON GENERAL RELEASE IN CINEMAS FROM 13 JUNE 2014

[youtube id=”1hxBoiQCtMI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

TS Spivet (2013)

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Cast: Helena Bonham-Carter,

105min French/Canadian 3D Drama

The latest from Amélie director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is an adaptation of Reif Larsen’s illustrated novel about the life of a child prodigy TS Spivet. Traumatised by the violent death of his twin, Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet (aged 12) slips away unnoticed from his Montana home to collect an award from the Smithsonian Institute in DC and follow his dream to work in the field of map-making. Told in glorious 3D, this is a spectacular-looking film that plays out like a pop-up comic book with whimsical echoes of the recent Moonshine Kingdom and the same child-like charm.

Helena Bonham-Carter is superb and witty as his scientist mother, Dr Clair, who clearly had things mapped out for her son from an early age, once conversation dried up with her hunky, monosyllabic husband (Calllum Keith Rennie). Disappearing into a glorious bucolic landscape of honeyed Autumnal hues, newcomer Kyle Catlett excels as TS, finally reaching the City where his mother catches up with him and the action morphs into a game-show spectacular. The only blot on the landscape is Judy Davis overplaying her blue-stocking role. MT

[youtube id=”2tXSIoYes2c” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Club Sandwich (2013) – East End Film Festival 2014

Director: Fernando Eimbcke

Cast: Lucio Giménez Cacho, Maria Renée Prudencio, Danae Reynaud

82min Comedy. Spanish with subtitles

A boy just nudging puberty spends time with his mother poolside in an off-season resort, in this charming and ruminative slow-burner from Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke.

In moments of extreme intimacy, such as picking the spots on his back, single forty- something mother Paloma (Maria Renée Prudencio) also feels comfortable talking candidly about sex with Hector and re-assuring him of his own sex appeal which highlights their obvious oedipal link. The camera observes them quietly doing nothing but chomping through the eponymous sandwiches and discussing how to prevent his incipient beard looking like ‘peach fuzz’.

For his part, Hector (Lucio Gimenez Cacho), appears to be on the brink of a sexual awakening which is fulfilled when he meets Jazmin (Danae Reynaud Romero), a slightly older girl who’s staying at the hotel with her father. Hanging out by the pool, Jazmin gives Hector a deodorant which he slathers on while secretly trying out Paloma’s bikini top later in the room, in gentle nod towards sexual experimentation.

Gradually, Paloma grows resentful as the kids pleasure each other poolside, but fails in her attempt to interrupt their time together or dissuade her son of his potential girlfriend’s worthiness: even when she criticises Jazmin’s musical taste to Hector later at night, he defends Jazmin.

This gentle shift from peaceful acquiescence to irritation is so subtle it’s hardly noticeable but it marks that dramatic point in time where a mentally healthy child moves slowly from being a ‘mummy’s boy’ to a mature adult in possession of his own masculine sexuality and it’s that transformation that makes Eimbcke’s nuanced narrative such a triumph. A beautifully performed and enjoyable drama that will coax you into a quietly contemplative mood. MT

SCREENING AT THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2014

Of Horses and Men (2013)

Director: Benedikt Erlingsson

Cast: Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson, Charlotte Boving, Helgi Bjornsson

81mins Drama Comedy

Horses are the stars of Benedikt Erlingsson’s raw and startling debut which was Iceland’s submission to the 2014 Academy Awards. In a remote Icelandic location, a community of earthy horse-breeders live hand in glove with their beasts, attuned to the animals’ needs that often mirror their own physical urges and desires. This is illustrated in darkly amusing episodes: a man (Ingvar Sigurdsson) decides to pay a courting visit to his female neighbour (Charlotte Boving) riding his perfectly trained white mare. The woman’s frisky stallion pre-empts matters in a way that’s both hilarious and deeply embarrassing for all concerned. Another man (Steinn Armann Magnusson) rides his horse into the sea where they both boldly swim out to a Russian trawler, begging the captain for vodka. There’s a raw savageness to these staggering events which feel natural yet strangely bizarre; taking us by surprise.

Of Horses and Men captures the sensitive but feral nature of the horses living in symbiosis with their (at times) equally wild owners in this remote and magnificent landscape. Even the minimal dialogue seems redundant in a narrative told expressively through lenser Bergsteinn Bjoergulfsson’s extraordinary images: each vignette is introduced in the close-up of a horse’s eye. Erlingsson never loses his sense of humour in conveying the quirkiness of his Icelandic characters who perform with consummate ease and gracefulness in complete harmony with the animals they train and nurture.

David Thor Jonsson’s rousing original score is played on traditional European instruments. MT

[youtube id=”SPPYKx9QaQk” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Winner – Best New Director – San Sebastian 2013

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 JUNE 2014

Jack (2014) – Edinburgh Film Festival 2014

JACK: A leafy Berlin is the setting for Edvard Berger’s thoughtful and touching drama underpinned by newcomer Ivo Pietzcker’s performance of tear-jerking poignancy as Jack, a little boy left in charge of his half-brother, when their feckless mother abandons them. Sensitive and filmic, it’s an old-fashioned portrait of childhood anxiety that echoes the Dardennes’ The Kid With A Bike and shows that children are sometimes far more intelligent and perceptive than we give them credit for but also that early responsibility and self-reliance can be the making of them. Won’t set the night on fire but will certainly brighten your day with its message of hope. MT. 104 MIN GERMANY.

EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 2014

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014 | EIFF

This June (18-29th), the Edinburgh International Film Festival returns for its 68^th edition with a programme absolutely jam-packed with filmic goodness – even by the festival’s high standards, this year seems an exciting one. With 156 features on offer, there’s an overwhelming amount to choose from, including the UK Premieres of such much-discussed festival hits as Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, Tsai Ming-liangs’ Stray Dogs and Journey to the West, Dietrich Brüggemann’s Stations of the Cross and Fernando Eimbcke’s Club Sandwich (which we recently picked as our anticipated highlight of the East End Film Festival). Of course, Edinburgh isn’t only about new films, and this year’s retrospective strands focus on writer/director/producer John McGrath, overlooked German filmmaker Dominik Graf, and Iranian Cinema from 1962-1978 (the festival also has a special focus on new films from both Iran and Germany). With so much on offer, one wonders where to start… Here are ten things we’re particularly looking forward to:

Life May Be, Dirs. Mania Akbari, Mark Cousins – World Premiere

A collaboration between exiled Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari and the filmmaker/critic Mark Cousins, Life May Be is a correspondence of essayistic films, touching upon themes that ‘are at the core of their personal and artistic lives’. Both filmmakers have shown an insightful honesty in their previous work, and the film-letter form (which has worked so well for the likes of José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas in recent years), will surely bear interesting fruit in their hands.

My Accomplice, Dir. Charlie Weaver Rolfe – World Premiere

A romantic comedy concerning a burgeoning relationship between a young Scottish caretaker and a German baker, Charlie Weaver Rolfe’s debut feature My Accomplice should offer some light relief to off-set some of the festival’s heavier titles. The film plays in competition for the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film which, in recent years, has cast a much-needed spotlight upon small, independent films such as this.

Something, Anything, Dir. Paul Harrill – International Premiere

A feature-debut from a filmmaker behind a Sundance-award-winning short, Something, Anything tells of a young newlywed who abandons her domestic life to go in search of something more spiritual. If the premise invokes the story of Rossellini’s Europe ’51 (and therefore of Saint Francis), surely, 60-years on from Rossellini’s masterpiece, the time is ripe for another investigation into such themes?

The Invisible Life, Dir. Vítor Gonçalves – UK Premiere

Gonçalves’ debut film, A Girl in Summer, was released to wide acclaim in 1986 – and now, after a 27-year hiatus, he returns with The Invisible Life. The film centres upon the melancholic memories of a middle-aged public servant. As he tries to remember the final days of his former superior, he is reminded of the woman he loved.

Letters from the South, Dirs. Royston Tan, Midi Z, Sun Koh, Tsai Ming-liang, Tan Chui Mui, Aditya Assarat – UK Premiere

A portmanteau film by an impressive roster of directors, Letters from the South examines the Chinese diaspora living in other areas of Asia. If it’s true that portmanteau films are often uneven in quality, it’s also true that last year’s Centro Histórico was one of Edinburgh’s highlights, suggesting that the EIFF team have a good eye for picking omnibus films that work.

Manakamana, Dirs. Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez – UK Premiere

The new film from the Sensory Ethnography Lab (the people behind Sweetgrass and Leviathan), Manakamana takes its name from a legendary temple in Nepal. Confined to the cable car that transports people to and from the temple, the film offers an insight into the lives of several groups of pilgrims visiting the temple.

Sorrow and Joy, Dir. Nils Malmros – UK Premiere

The new film from acclaimed Danish auteur Nils Malmros, Sorrow and Joy centres upon the bond between a husband and wife, and the challenges they face together after the death of their infant daughter – at the hands of the wife. The films is said to be Malmros’ most personal feature film to date.

Truths Beyond Truth: Three Masterpieces, Dirs. Forugh Farrokhzad, Kamran Shirdel, Amir Naderi – Retrospective Screening

As mentioned, Edinburgh isn’t only about new films, and this collection of three short films from the Interrupted Revolution: Iranian Cinema, 1962 to 1978 strand promises to be quite a treat. The programme features the sole directorial offering from famed poet Forugh Farrokhzad, an ironic examination into notions of documentary veracity by Kamran Shirdel, and a wordless tale from Iran New Wave leading light, Amir Naderi.

Black Box Live, Dirs. Sally Golding, Michaela Grill, Karl Lemieux, Phillip Jeck, Guillaume Caillleau, Jan Slak – Live Event Screening

After its successful debut last year, Black Box Live returns to offer another evening of expanded film performance from some of the biggest names in the live audio-visual scene, promising to be a ‘veritable treat for the senses’. As the festival’s experimental strand, Black Box continues to offer some of the most challenging – and the most rewarding – films on display in Edinburgh.

EIFF in Conversation: Wang Bing – In Person Event

To coincide with their screening of leading Chinese documentarian Wang Bing’s new film, ‘Til Madness Do Us Part, Edinburgh will be welcoming Bing to the stage to talk about his work, and discuss wider questions of documentary practice.

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 18-29 JUNE 2014

The Sacrament (2013)

Writer/Director: Ti West | Cast: Amy Seimetz, Joe Swanberg, A J Bowen, Gene Jones | US Found Footage Indie Thriller

The Sacrament came into being when the ‘found-footage’ era was in full swing with its bid to import serious thrills to contemporary audiences, that started with The Blair Witch Project. Ti West’s thriller certainly succeeds in purveying an ambience of genuine and sustained terror, but since then the genre has increasingly required the kind of suspension of disbelief akin to that of the second coming of Jesus.

Back in the day my belief was suspended – not out of shock or horror – but out of genuine incredulity that an audience would find this sort of nonsense believable, in any shape or form. The mere fact that the footage is ‘found’ intact and undamaged surely means that the collaborators are alive and well and enjoying the fruits of their labours so, by its very nature, this presents a foregone conclusion to the intelligent art house cinema-goer.

In The Sacrament three New York documentary makers become embroiled when they explore a ‘Moonie’ style ‘religious’ commune where the egregious presence of Father (Gene Jones) holds omnipotent sway over the proceedings. But the problem here is that West’s signature slow-burning narrative skills start to wear thin once its dawns that this is just another cliché-ridden swamp of ‘what-ifs’, albeit one filmed in the remote and atmospheric reaches of sweltering Savannah, Georgia by an excellent ensemble cast. MT

THE SACRAMENT IS ON PRIME VIDEO

Lone Survivor (2014) DVD/Blu

Director/Writer: Peter Berg

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Yousuf Azami, Ali Suliman, Eric Bana, Alexander Ludwig

121min Action Drama US

Inspired by the novel by Marcus Luttrell

Peter Berg’s hard-hitting Afghanistan drama, LONE SURVIVOR, is based on the true story of Navy SEAL, Marcus Luttrell. In 2005, he was the sole survivor of Operation Red Wings when 20 soldiers were killed in a mission to take out a Taliban leader. If you’re wondering whether you need to see another film based on this intractable conflict, the answer is resoundingly – Yes. Apart from being set in some of the World’s most captivating mountain scenery (Afghanistan’s Kunar Province); it also has some of the most technically skilful fight sequences that have ever been filmed. And after his rather glib outings in 2 Guns, Pain + Gain and Broken City, Mark Wahlberg’s performance as Marcus Luttrell’s evokes his inherent moral decency and integrity as a soldier, making it a moving portrait of camaraderie and courage in battle.

The story opens as the Navy SEALs are being put through their paces on the training ground, where they are encouraged to be aggressive, pugnacious and above all, to win. Arriving in the mountain location, dialogue stuffed full of cheesy male bonding chat about wives and kids back home and the usual war-mongering cant along the lions of ‘America is great’, soon subsides when a chance meeting with a shepherd leads to their wooded hideout being uncovered, leaving them exposed to high-skilled local guerrillas in a Taliban stronghold.

Lone Survivor is a brutal body-blow of a film with some devastating gun and aerial battle scenes. Subtle and moving performances from Mark Wahlberg (as Mark Luttrell) and Ben Foster (as Matthew “Axe” Axelson) also make this an immersive account of real-life warfare which engages our sympathies, while keeping us on the edge of our seats – some scenes are gruesomely difficult to watch.

LONE SURVIVOR shows how the might of the American War Machine is not a match for the deftness, skill and local knowledge of the Taliban fighters. And despite their high-level military strategising, this makes the American forces look embarrassingly inadequate, using a mallet to crack a pine-nut.

Berg’s screenplay here is far and way superior to previous outings Battleship and Lions for Lambs,possibly because in being inspired to rise to the challenge of committing the glory and ultimate sacrifice of these courageous men to perpetuity on celluloid, he speaks from the heart. There are digs at the American government on military funding and the subject of budget cuts and lack thereof. As war movies go, LONE SURVIVOR is a meaningful film that deserves attention. MT

[youtube id=”tnh9DHLDRVM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Whispers Behind the Wall – East End Film Festival 2014

Grzegorz Muskala’s debut film DIE FRAU HINTER DER WAND (WHISPERS BEHIND THE WALL) has echoes of Tom Tykwer’s first film The Deathly Maria and it is no accident that it was commissioned by the same TV broadcaster (ZDF). The story is a mixture of suspense and horror: when Martin, a law student, arrives in Berlin, he can’t find a flat, until a ‘helpful’ caretaker helps him out with a run-down apartment, whose last tenant, Robert, has disappeared. When Martin visits his landlady, the attractive sculptress Simone, who happens to live next door, she seduces him. Soon Martin becomes obsessed with her, since he can see from his window into the flat of the pianist Sebastian, whose lover Simone is. Observing the two, Martin forgets his studies, and when a hallucinating Robert suddenly appears, Martin starts to believe that Simone is up to no good. But his lust wins out, and even an ugly confrontation with Sebastian, who is on his way to Cape Town, does not stop him from pursuing the object of his obsession. When Sebastian has eventually departed to South Africa, Martin believes that his dream has come true, until he takes a closer look at Simone’s latest work of art. Whilst the narrative is not very original, Muskala (like Tykwer), takes great care with the aesthetics, not very common in contemporary in German cinema: the rooms seem to shrink, the light is diffuse and threatening objects pop up all over the place. Borrowing from Dario Argento as well, Muskala skilfully confuses the audience, always mixing imagination and reality, not letting on if Martin is imagining everything. Perpetrator and victim are only revealed in a rather bloody ending. Whilst one should not be carried away, Muskala is an exception in today’s German film landscape, dominated by a pedestrian, didactic approach and lack of imagination.

Screening during the EEFF 24.6. Hackney Picture House, 18.30) For all our coverage follow the link

East End Film Festival Preview

East End Film Festival 2014 – Preview

The East End Film Festival returns next month for its thirteenth edition and, throwing caution to the wind, will seek to turn that unluckiest of numbers into something more fortunate: the festival begins on Friday 13^th June, and will run for thirteen days. In an interesting move, this year the festival has become a not-for-profit Community Interest Company, meaning that it can focus on its true objective, to ‘champion the films EEFF really believe in’. So, what of these films? Here are a few that have caught our attention:

Dermaphoria – Dir: Ross Clarke

The festival opens with the World Premiere of British filmmaker Ross Clarke’s America-set tale of a man who wakes up in jail with no memory of what’s landed him behind bars. In fact, all he can remember is a name: Desiree. Based on a novel by Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria stars Joseph Morgan and Ron Perlman, and promises to be a tense, mysterious and hallucinatory experience.

The Golden Dream (La jaula de oro) – Dir: Diego Quemada-Díez

Taking its name from a 1987 film, and the song that inspired it, The Golden Dream deals, like its predecessors, with immigration to the United States. This time, the subjects are three Guatemalan teenagers who fall into the hands of human traffickers. The film previously played at Festival de Cannes in 2013, where it won Un Certain Regard’s A Certain Talent award.

The Dance of Reality (La Danza de la Realidad) – Dir: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Another success from Cannes 2013, The Dance of Reality sees cult legend Alejandro Jodorowsky return to the director’s chair after a 23 year absence. The film, which details Jodorowsky’s Chilean childhood, is based upon his autobiography of the same name. Far from a straight biopic, though, the film throws metaphor and mythology into its surrealistic mix.

Concerning Violence (Rozwazania O Przemocy) – Dir: Göran Olsson

The follow-up to Göran Olsson’s popular The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011), Concerning Violence once more sees Olsson working with footage shot by Swedish documentary filmmakers and television journalists. This time, the material concerns Africa’s decolonisation and its independence movements, and the film is based upon Frantz Fanon’s book on the subject, The Wretched of the Earth.

Palo Alto – Dir: Gia Coppola

The directorial debut of Gia Coppola (yes, it seems there is another of them – she’s the granddaughter of Francis Ford), Palo Alto is based upon a collection of linked short stories by James Franco, who also stars. The story concerns a group of teenagers and their experiences with the excesses of youth.

You and the Night – Dir: Yann Gonzalez

Seeking to capitalise on the football buzz generated by the World Cup (which begins the day before the festival), EEFF will be welcoming Eric Cantona for a post-screening Q&A of Yann Gonzalez’s debut feature, which is said to contain ‘a career redefining’ performance from the French footballer. A ‘sex comedy’ about a young couple, their transvestite maid and an orgy, the film also stars Beatrice Dalle as a ‘sex-crazed Russian prison guard’.

A Very Unsettled Summer (O Vara Foarte Instabila) – Dir: Anca Damian

A British-Romanian co-production, A Very Unsettled Summer concerns a Scottish journalist living in Romania who becomes embroiled in an erotic game with his ex-girlfriend, only to have things complicated further when a friend begins to write a screenplay about them. Based on a short story by Philip Ó Ceallaigh, A Very Unsettled Summer promises to be an intriguing examination into storytelling, role-playing, and the impact that fiction can have on our lives.

Here & Now – Dir: Lisle Turner

One of the things EEFF is known for is supporting home-grown talent. With funding from Creative England, Here & Now tells of the bourgeoning connection between a city-girl and a country-boy, after the former travels to the country to help her parents save their marriage. Though technically a feature debut, director Lisle Turner has plenty of experience, having formerly made more than 50 dramas and documentaries of varying lengths for Amnesty International.

Godard & Others – Dir: Barry Bliss

Described as ‘an anarchic comedy about guerrilla filmmaking in Britain’s post “Section 44” society’, Godard & Others is the fourth feature from writer/director Barry Bliss. Starring Paul McGann as a charismatic teacher delivering a lecture on how to survive as an independent filmmaker in today’s society, this may be a film best appreciated by other filmmakers. Still, it looks like just the type of fun, irreverent film that tends to flourish at a film festival.

Club Sandwich (Club Sándwich) – Dir: Fernando Eimbcke

Back in 2004, Fernando Eimbcke’s Duck Season touched many a heart with its minimalistic portrayal of the adventures of two 14-year-olds during an afternoon power-cut. If his 2008 follow up, Lake Tahoe, failed to strike quite the chords of success, his contribution to the 2010 portmanteau film Revolución reminded us of his brilliance. So, while it has been seen elsewhere on the festival circuit, the London premiere of his new film is something for Londoners to get excited about. A slow-burn comedy about a teenage boy and his off-season holiday romance, it may prove to be the quiet highlight of EEFF.

THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM FRIDAY 13 JUNE UNTIL WEDNESDAY 25 JUNE 2014

Cheap Thrills (2013)

Director: E I Katz

Writer: David Chirchirillo, Trent Haaga

Cast: Pat Healy, Ethan Embry, Sara Paxton, David Koechner

89min US Thriller

There’s something utterly despicable about E. I. Katz’s indie thriller CHEAP THRILLS. Its message is nothing new -that money talks; but it’s method: – just how powerfully it talks; takes the genre to a new low. And don’t take that in a negative way: the unmitigated mood of depravity will certainly devide audiences but the performances, script and direction are admirable. Indeed, the film won both the SXSW’s Audience Award and the Best First Feature prize at the festival, leaving viewers speechless or appalled. But the content is more suggestively violent and cruel than abjectly blood-soaked: although we do have to experience some bloody noses and a severed finger. It may even garner cult appeal amongst arthouse audiences who admired the recent films of Lars Von Trier. It even has shades of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games: Katz’s version is cruder and more basic, but has the same psychological implications and mind-games.

Pat Healy stars as Craig, a wannabe writer, who is made redundant from his job as a mechanic just as his wife loses her job and the rent is due. With a young baby to support, Craig is desperate. While drowning his sorrows over a drink in the local, he bumps into an old friend in the shape of Ethan Embry (as Vince). The drinking buddies are then befriended by a married couple who are celebrating a birthday. They have admired the bored-looking wife Violet (Sara Paxton) but the husband Colin (David Koechner) seems to have money to burn, and is keen to impress his wife and new pals with a $300 bottle of Tequila. Colin then starts a game of ‘dare’. He offers the men $500 dollars to get a woman at the bar to slap them – Vince duly wins the game – but it doesn’t end there. Soon the foursome find themselves at Colin’s ‘crib’ and the dares escalates out of all proportion. But this is where it also turns nasty. Soon, the old friends are pitted against each other, exposing their worst defects in a dehumanising psychological battle of wills, as petty grievances and feelings from the past laid bare. Both men are down on their luck and willing to do almost anything for money. But Craig seems prepared to sacrifice a friendship for the sake of his wife and child. Vince is more loyal as a friend: although he resents Craig’s better start in life, he ultimately appears to value his relationship with Craig above money when the chips are down. Craig has his family to think of, but conversely, some men will kill their wives for money too. Koechner is magnificent as the coaxing psychopath: calm and collected as he bribes the men dispassionately to the last. Sara Paxton is a cypher – morally ambivalent and emotionally vacant, complicit with her husband in some sort of private sexual game. And this is a game that proves to be dangerously addictive for all concerned. MT

CHEAP THRILLS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 JUNE 2014

The Japanese Dog (2013) – Edinburgh Film Festival 2014

CAINELE JAPONEZ

Director: Tudor Cristian Jurgiu

Cast: Victor Rebenguic, Serban Pavlu, Kana Hashimoto, Laurentiu Lazar

85min Romanian with English Subs Drama

Romanian cinema is remarkable in its ability to take the rough with the smooth and often with humour. Here in his impressive debut feature (set in his childhood village) Tudor Cristian Jurgiu gradually builds a visual narrative of the difficulties faced by an elderly man following the floods that affected the east of the country in 2010. Slow, intimate and poetic in feel but always with its feet firmly on the ground, (no pun intended) this Romanian New Wave piece is upbeat and positive, for the most part.

Costache is played by the stoical and melancholic Victor Rebenguic (Medal of Honour), a strong man exuding integrity and not without hope, who has just lost everything including his wife, Maria. Coping (barely) with the tragedy, his energy is spent clearing up and attempting to make a home of the new place he’s been given and dealing with the necessary authorities in the village. And this wouldn’t be Romania without the trademark red-tape that always rears its head at some point. But that’s not his only worry. He’s concerned that his son (Serban Pavlu) will not make it for the funeral. But he does, with his Japanese wife , Hiroku (Kana Hashimoto) and a strange robot that looks like a dog – and talks.

As son and father re-connect, a deepening relationship develops that brings its own challenges. Andrei Butica’s (Child’s Pose) glorious but simple visuals convey the essence of the countryside and the locals’ attachment to this bucolic way of life. The humour often lies in the ‘lost in translation’ moments between Costache, his grandson and the Japanese dog. MT

THE JAPANESE DOG’s Victor Rebenguic, has been an actor since 1957.

SCREENING DURING EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014

When I Saw You (2012)

Director/Writer: Annemarie Jacir

Cast: Mahmoud Asfa, Ruba Blal, Saleh Bakri, Ali Elayan, Anas Algaralleh

93min Drama Arabic with subtitles

A sweet-hearted coming of age drama that explores a young boy’s life in a Palestinian refugee camp in sixties Jordan. Palestinian writer-director Annemarie Jacir uses a tender and playful approach to what could easily have been a traumatic and violent story: her elegant pacing and Hélène Louvart’s painterly visuals make this story appealing for children and adult art house audiences alike.

Tarek (Asfa), is a cheeky and endearing Jordanian boy who lives with his mother Ghaydaa (Blal) in the pre-fab camp; the two of them hoping that one day his father with take them back home. Tarek’s intelligence alienates him from the rest of the school kids and he gravitates towards the older men, and in particular, a soldier called Layth (Bakri) who is a member of a paramilitary group stationed locally. Soon he’s joining in with training activities under the watchful eye of the draconian commander Abu Akram (Elayan), who injects a more aggressive political tone to the proceedings, keeping Tarek on the straight and narrow.

With his big brown eyes and floppy hair Tarek is the main focus of Jacir’s camera for most of the story and his enthusiasm and brio sometimes threatens to overpower the serious message of the story which is the plight of two helpless refugees in a war torn country. That said, it’s a soft-natured affair and Blal’s austere performance as his mother provides a suitable ballast to Tarek’s antics, reining in any over-exuberance successfully, while he keeps an eye out for any unwanted male interest on her part. The final moments of the film give a message of hope to the ongoing narrative of displacement and strife in the Middle East. Sad to think that 50 years later, not much has changed. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 JUNE 2014

Pluto (2013)

Dir.: Shin Suwon; Cast: David Lee, Sung June, Kim Kkobi-bi:

South Korea 2012, 120 min. Psychological Drama

[youtube id=”vXuLm0NEbxg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

The director Shin Suwon was a teacher at a middle school before turning to filmmaking. Her valuable working knowledge of the system makes this film even more depressing than it already is and proves that truth is sometimes than fiction.

Kim June gets transferred to an elite school where the top 10 students form a clique and engage in acts of rape, murder, bomb-making in a bid to eliminate their fellow students, ensuring that they maintain top grades eventually allowing exclusive access to the revered Seoul National University.

In contrast to the other, wealthy students, June is from an underprivileged background with a mother who financing the family by selling insurance. June takes the place of a girl who has killed herself; and after his roommate Jujin Taylor is murdered by masked students, June becomes the main suspect with the local police.

Another pupil Sujin, then hacks into the activities of the group via the internet, trying to find out more about the suicide of her friend Eun-Joo. This psycho-drama culminates, with June committing further atrocities in a bid to discover the truth. The action takes place in the cellar of the school building, which was once the site of a CIA torture chamber.

Despite a rather bewildering script, PLUTO succeeds in being frightening with its frosty, wintry, blue and white aesthetic. These characters are like sharks in an aquarium. June is shown as an hopeless opportunist, unable to solve anything without resorting to violence. But at least he is aware of his nefarious actions. The rest of the group is busy trying to keep the exclusivity of their elite intact, for fear they may threaten their status. Random acts of physical and psychological violence are an everyday occurrence, and never questioned, in their quest to achieve their goals: a place at the National University. The use of surveillance equipment is logical, it gives the film an extra layer of emotional fascism.

With this immersive study of evil, Shin Suwon demonstrates how the environment of the school prepares these young, well-heeled psychopaths for their future leading roles in society. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 JUNE 2014

Benny and Jolene (2013)

BENNY & JOLENE

Dir.: Jamie Adams; Cast: Craig Roberts, Charlotte Ritchie, Rosamund Hanson,Tom Rosenthal, Dolly Wells; UK 2013, 80 min.

Benny and Jolene are a folk-duo who fall into the hands of the music industry whose incompetence is even worse than the songs of their charges. In a caravan on tour in Wales, followed by Joelene’s biological mum and her partner in their car, the two teenagers have to confront their feelings for each other, and their aborted trip into stardom.

One knows exactly what writer/director/producer/editor Adams had in mind: a British comedy on the lines of SIGHTSEERS (2012). Here the leading duo was out of cinch with reality and the humour developed because they literally get away with murder. But Benny, Jolene and their helpers are just incompetent, and all their faux-pas’ are hardly funny – just stupid and incompetent. You can’t laugh when the cover of the duo’s CD shows a big tree instead of Benny, or when Joelene’s mum and her argumentative friend fail to put up a tent – it’s something we have seen too often and in much funnier ways. The duo and the rest of the cast act clumsy ‘on purpose’, but since they have only random contact with reality, there is no confrontation and the little comedy there is targets only the clumsiness of the characters. Why give away the ending at the beginning?, so that we cannot expect a single surprise. Everything is miles over the top, but never in a funny way. The camera only excels in the road externals, and the actors stand no chance with the script. An unstructured narrative stumbles from one episode to the next.

Even today the ‘CARRY ON’ comedies have more bite than BENNY & JOLENE, let alone a professional standard, which Adam and his team can only dream of. Even after only eighty minutes one can only feel relief when it’s all over. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 JUNE 2014

Dallas Buyers Club (2013) DVD

éDirector: Jean-Marc Valleé Script: Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner, Denis O’Hare and Steve Zahn

117min US Biographical Drama

Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee’s last film Cafe de Flore was a vibrant musical love story with an intriguing psychic twist. Dallas Buyers Club couldn’t be more different in theme but still has the same energetic gusto. It’s based on the true story of Ron Woodruff, a macho homophobe with a side-line in cattle-trading who lived hard and partied long until he found himself HIV-positive. Set in the mid-eighties at the height of the AIDS crisis (with an atmospheric soundtrack featuring the music of Marc Bolan), the narrative kicks off in a rodeo, with a focus on Woodruff’s inveterate womanising and drinking ways. Scriptwriters Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack’s angle is to tell an entertaining story of redemption where tragic circumstances in life bring out the best in their central character, rather than just focused purely on AIDS. And it works. Avoiding any kind of tear-jerking sentimentality or ‘why me’ negativity, it shows how Ron Woodruff’s ‘death sentence’ causes him to take life by the scruff of the neck and search for a means to survive. By refusing to give in to the doctor’s prognosis – that he has only 30 days to live, he grabs those days by the scruff of the neck and sets out to defy death.

Dallas Buyers Club is very much about living rather than dying and Matthew McConaughey’s performance is exultant in every sense of the word. Kicking against the system, and doing battle with the medical authorities (the FDA and large pharmaceutical companies) he sets out to turn his life around. Transforming from a drinking, whoring, gambler to a clean-living seeker of ‘snake oil’ he teams up with Jared Leto’s rampant transexual Rayon, a person who previously he wouldn’t have given the time of day to, let alone worked with, to help other AIDS sufferers. Both leads throw themselves into their performances (there was no time for rehearsal in a shoot that lasted less than 45 days) McConaughey losing nearly three stone for the role and delivering an Oscar-worthy performance. He commented in the press conference: “It made me smarter. I lost 40 percent of my strength but added 40 percent to my brain power”.

The film follows a straightforward, almost documentary-style format, avoiding melodrama and taking an elliptical approach to the lives of its protagonists. Where it works best is in portraying McConaughey as a gutsy hero with human failings who challenges authority and refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer, even when on death’s door in hospital with after a heart-attack and physical exhaustion. In seeking alternative methods to fight the medical system, Ron Woodruff actually created his a “medical club” to help other AIDS victims: the ‘illegal’ provision of unregistered drugs to patients who had been failed by the American health system was thus made possible via membership of the club. Woodruff goes from a simple country red-neck cattle-trader to a slick international jet setter who negotiates drug provision from doctors in Mexico, Israel and Japan.

Despite his sleazy former self, which would make any normal woman run a mile, McConaughey’s Woodruff is at his most appealing and sympathetic in his relationship with a compassionate hospital doctor (Jennifer Garner) who he comes across through his initial hospital trial with AZT, and which almost turns into an unlikely romantic fling but then flatlines rather disappointingly.

As Rayon, Jared Leto makes a remarkably vulnerable yet streetwise transvestite and Denis O’Hare (as Dr Seward) and Steve Zahn (as Tucker) provide great support. But at the end of the day, the Oscar should go to McConaughey for sheer indomitable dynamism in bringing the remarkable life of Ron Woodruff to the international stage. MT

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB IS NOW ON DVD

[youtube id=”6TZalZRuyC4″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

A Million Ways to Die In The West (2014)

Dir.: Seth MacFarlane

Cast: Seth McFarlane, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson, Sarah Silverman

USA 2014, 118 min.

It is difficult to imagine that Seth MacFarlane could have made TED look like a masterpiece, but with A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST he has easily succeeded in this task. Whereas TED had at least some sparks and original ideas (the humour was already off), A MILLION is an absolute disaster. It is difficult to find something that worked, but a short synopsis might give you an idea: MacFarlene himself is a very weak lead as Albert, the sheep farmer, who is left by his girlfriend Louise (Seyfried) for Edward, the moustache merchant. Liam Neeson is the mean gangster Clinch, whose beautiful wife Anna (Theron) falls in love with the pathetic Albert, who eventually kills Clinch in a shoot-out with the help of a poisoned bullet. Add Sarah Silverman as Ruth, the whore with a golden heart, (who doesn’t want to sleep with her boyfriend because she doesn’t believe in pre-marital sex), and then douse it all with a horrendous amount of toilet-humour for two very long hours and you are there.

Everything is always topped by something worse: the cardboard characters are played by so-called stars whose limp performances suggest that their minds where light years away from the film set. And if there would have been something like a cliché-counter, the machine would have imploded midway through the film. To give you an example: when Seyfried’s Louise rejects Albert, looking at him with her big eyes, Anna puts her down with “how can you have so big eyes and be so blind”. But MacFarlane is not finished; in a later scene, when Albert has a nightmarish, drug- induced dream with the Indians, Louise reappears, her eyes big as saucers.

Any comparison with Mel Brooks BLAZING SADDLES (1974) derisory and akin to comparing the work of a very capable artisan with that of a dilettante. Whatever the critical value of the early “Family Guy” and “American Dad” TV comic-strips, MacFarlane has lost any right to be taken seriously any more. In one of the flashbacks in A MILLION, young Albert is seen putting a tooth under his pillow, expecting the tooth fairy to reward him. But by next morning, he finds horse shit under his pillow, his father triumphantly announcing that fairies don’t exist. This shows that MacFarlane in his demise has sunk so far as to make fun at the expense of the weak, the worst sort of humour possible. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 MAY 2014

Downhill (2014)

Director: James Rouse Writers: Torben Betts/James Rouse

Cast: Ned Donnehy, Richard Lumsden, Jeremy Swift, Karl Theobold, Emma Pierson, Katie Lyons

98min UK Comedy/Drama

Men and midlife crisis in all their glory are the themes of this hilarious and sometimes poignant ‘road movie on foot’ from commercials director James Rouse and playwright Torben Betts.

When four old school friends get together to walk coast to coast from the North Sea to the Irish Sea they also embark on a journey into themselves exposing insecurities and often tortured relationships. Fraught with setbacks and unexpected developments but always with a genial sense of the ridiculous, this is a passionate blend of well-judged wit and wisdom from a well-known cast of Richard Lumsden (Sense and Sensibility); Jeremy Swift (Gosford Park); Ned Dennehy (Sherlock Homes) and Karl Theobold (TwentyTwelve). A thoroughly enjoyable romp through the English countryside. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 MAY 2014

[youtube id=”fcYuhviGtEU” width=”600″ height=”350″]

A Farewell to Arms (1932)

Director: Frank Borzage

Writers: Ernest Hemingway

Cast: Gary Cooper, Helen Hayes, Adolphe Menjou, Mary Philips

88min US War Drama.

Boy meet girl in Frank Borzage’s sublime thirties wartime romance, that stars Gary Cooper as Henry, a volunteer in the Italian medical services, and Catherine Barkley (Helen Hays), an pure English rose working in the British hospital in Italy during WW1. Although Gary Cooper is in ‘playboy’ mode at first, he soon realises that this English woman is to be taken seriously and a passionate affair soon develops. Although the couple are supposedly in their early twenties, they appear much older, as is often the case in Hollywood outings of the era and their chemistry sparkles incandescently in Charles Lang’s glorious black and white setting, winning him an Oscar for Best Cinematography.

When Henry is wounded in battle, Catherine gets a chance to nurse him and work her wonders on his vulnerable state but tragedy soon follows. Frank Borzage’s adaptation is the first and best of the original Hemingway novel and the full glory of romantic tragedy is enhanced by Wagner’s Liesbestod score, making this a rousing tribute to this year’s Centenary Celebrations. MT

A FAREWELL TO ARMS IN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 MAY 2014 AT THE BFI AND SELECTED CINEMAS

Omar (2013) Cannes 2013

Director/writer: Hany Abu-Assad

Cast: Adam Bakri, Samer Bisharat, Ehab Hourani, Leem Lubany, Waleed F Zuaiter

97min Palestinian Drama Arabic with subtitles

Hany Abu-Assad’s vibrant portraits of the conflict in his country make a worthwhile contribution to Arabic history, first with Paradise Now (2005) and most recently OMAR, an intense Middle Eastern twist on ‘Othello’, that carries a powerful sting in its tale forcing us to reflect on the endless violence and retaliation in the occupied territories. Abu-Assad’s not judgmental approach maintains distance but with his cinematographer Ehab Assal he manages to convey powerful emotion.

Adam Bakri gives a standout turn as the rebellious Omar of the title, a decent young baker in love with Nadia (Leem Lubany). But in order to marry her, he needs to gain the respect of her brother Tarek (Ehab Hourani), a senior militant, and this involves accompanying him on a mission to kill an Israeli soldier, along with mutual friend Amjad (Samer Bisharat). But Omar is captured and tortured by the Israelis, who attempt to force him into collaboration. Omar has other ideas.

Both films have won him Academy Award nominations with OMAR.

[youtube id=”v5dSeBD-qiY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Cannes 2014 – Winners and those disappointments

So the 67th Cannes Film Festival has drawn to a close and the prizes awarded – here are some of the more interesting titles that found their way to the Red Carpet this year:

PALME D’OR WINNER – WINTER SLEEP (Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan/Turkey)

Undoubtedly a masterpiece in the true sense of the word – Winter Sleep is also at 196 minutes, one of the longest films ever to have won the Palme d’Or. In a nutshell the plot of this quietly subversive and distinctly feminist drama surrounds a male mid-lifer who is gently seething in the privilege afforded by his Turkish male domain. The domain in question is a small hotel in Anatolia which he runs with his young wife Nihal and sister Necla who is smarting from her recent divorce. Bilge Ceylan’s previous outing Once Upon a Time in Anatolia was baked in burning summer, Winter Sleep returns to a subject-matter and bleak and snowy landscape of DISTANT (2002). Ceylan’s wife co-wrote the screenplay, adding a valuable female perspective.

BEST SCREENPLAY – Andrey Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin for LEVIATHAN/Russia

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan gives a damning dressing-down to the authorities in this scathing social commentary of contemporary Russia that has universal appeal and relevance echoing Checkhov and even the Bible. The film’s lead is Kolia (Alexie Serebriakov) whose family home and livelihood is threatened by the local mayor, who wants to evict him. Gradually he meets his destiny among the corrupting influences of power and money in this coruscating and brilliantly ambitious exposé of Russian contemporary society. A star turn.

BEST ACTOR – Timothy Spall for MR TURNER (Director: Mike Leigh/UK)

Taking Mike Leigh’s ‘method’ to the extreme, Timothy Spall plays J M W Turner as a grunting, romantic grufflalo in late middle age in this magnificent, contemplative and painterly portrait of the 19th Century British artist who was known for his use of light in painting. He explores Turner’s life, works and contemporaries (Constable; Ruskin (a witty Joshua McGuire); Sir John Soane) and his predilection for a bohemian life neglecting his wife and children, abusing his housekeeper (a superb Dorothy Atkinson) and eventually finding love with his seaside landlady (Marion Bailey). Rich and rewarding.

BEST ACTRESS – Julianne Moore for MAPS TO THE STARS (Director: David Cronenberg/Canada)

MAPS TO THE STARS a bitter and snarky LA-set satire with the classic Cronenberg brutal flourishes and scripter Bruce Wagner’s witty one-liners mostly delivered by John Cusack. Julianne Moore works her wonders as a hard-bitten, neurotic actress Havana Segrand, relentlessly chasing fame and celebrity. Robert Pattinson mumbles his way through as a wannabe star cum chauffeur and Mia Wasikowska plays a damaged young PA (to Segrand) who returns to Hollywood to seek reconciliation with the family who disowned her.

GRAND PRIX WINNER – THE WONDERS (Director: Alice Rohrwacher/Italy)

Alice Rohrwacher’s debut feature Corpo Celeste was a delicate coming-of-age drama that had a brief outing in London cinemas in 2011. With THE WONDERS, she returns with another wistful and touching story about an enigmatic family of bee-keepers, eking out a living in challenging circumstances in rural Italy. This time our heroine is 13-year-old Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lungu). Rohrwacher’s restrained, impressionist approach creates a vague feeling of suspense that allows our imagination to wander and luxuriate at this magical story.

UN CERTAIN REGARD – WHITE GOD (Director: Kornel Mundruczó/Hungary)

WHITE GOD imagines a Budapest where vengeful street dogs rise up and hold sway as a metaphor, quite literally, for the underdog in society. But this is neither a straight horror story nor a film a for kids but an stylish and well-told drama that centres on teenage classical musician Lili and her rescue dog Hagen who went on to win the coveted “Palme Dog” award competing with Jean-Luc Godard’s clever mutt (in Goodbye to Language 3D) and Saint Laurent‘s pug who dies from an accidental overdose.

BEST DIRECTOR – Bennett Miller for FOXCATCHER

Capote helmer Bennett Miller only has four full-length titles to his name but he has managed to shine both in documentary and drama and won Best Director this year for FOXCATCHER – an accomplished and nuanced piece based on the true story of Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz, demonstrating the masterful control he has both of his narrative and his cast and crew.

JURY PRIZE – Jean-Luc Godard’s GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE and Xavier Dolan’s MOMMY (shared)

Mommy is a raw, exuberant yet intimate study of a love-hate relationship between a mother and her ADHD-suffering son and fifth feature from Canadian wild-child Xavier Dolan (Tom at the Farm), who is still only 25!. Regular collaborator Anne Dorval gives a dynamite performance as Diane Despres, a 46-year-old widow who finds salvation when her enigmatic neighbour Kyla (Suzanne Clément) comes the rescue in raising Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon). Unfortunately, 83-year-old Jean-Luc didn’t turn up to the screening of his Jury prize winner – a 70-minute collage-style mishmash affair of an affair which grabs the attention with its fragments of meaning and shades of philosophy. None the wiser: neither were we. Perhaps he can be forgiven: his 116th outing is a certainly a challenge.

DISAPPOINTMENTS

After the stylish silent film The Artist, Michel Hazanavicious returns with Annette Benning and Berenice Bejo for THE SEARCH: a bleak and terribly worthy Chechnya-themed doc-drama that will have you nodding off in no time at all.

Hearthrob Ryan Gosling may be a fabulous actor but a talented director/writer he ain’t; at least not according to his debut flop LOST RIVER – very much style over substance, it follows a single mum and her son lost in a Detroit underworld and ‘borrows’ loosely (and I mean, very loosely) from Lynch, Malick and Winding Refn. Saoirse Ronan, Eva Mendes and Christina Hendricks star.

TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT is another slice of social realism from Double Palme d’Or winners the Dardennes brothers. A sort of Belgian ‘EastEnders’, it stars Marion Cotillard as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and redundancy but she is the only really good thing about this ordinary drama.

Accomplished director, Atom Egoyan has had some near misses of late and THE CAPTIVE joins the queue. After a promising start this bland abduction ‘thriller’ simply lacks thrills and fails as a straightforward drama despite the considerable talents of Ryan Reynolds as a father whose child is kidnapped from his jeep while he’s shopping. The crims responsible feel implausible and cartoonish and the plot creaks as heavily as a Canadian mountain hideaway in January. Michael Danna’s original score is so insistent is drowns out any momentary eeriness. Meredith Taylor

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2015 RUNS FROM MAY 15 -26.

FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER CANNES 2014

The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013) East End Film Festival 2014

Directors: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani Writers: Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet

Cast: Klaus Tange, Ursula Bedena, Joe Koener

102 mins French, Dutch Origin: Belgium, France, Luxembourg Colour and Black and White Thriller

In their new film The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, co-directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani build upon the giallo-inflected style and themes of their previous work, considerably upping the ante to create an even headier mix of colour, sound, sex, fetish and murder. To some it will be intoxicating, to others nauseating. This is cinema as visceral experience. The enigmatic story at its centre concerns Dan Kristensen (a blank but effective Klaus Tange) and his attempts to discover the whereabouts of his missing wife. As the film begins, we witness Dan asleep on an airplane, the camera creeping slowly towards his eyes. Is everything that follows a dream? It certainly feels like a nightmare made flesh.

The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears is horror by way of the avant-garde, a spell of uneasy atmosphere, a vision full of Anger. The frame of the screen dissects alongside the (often sexualised) bodies it shows us, the split-screen images becoming mirrored, kaleidoscopic, double exposed. New faces form out of extreme close-ups of multiple actors, and strong colours mix with negative images and black and white stills brought to life through stop motion pixilation. Combining, as they do, such a breath-taking barrage of visual tricks with an equally active soundtrack, Cattet and Forzani certainly risk overloading their viewers. But the effect also imbues the film with a dense dreamlike atmosphere, mirrored in the fractured intensity and surrealist logic of the narrative itself. At one point, Dan becomes trapped in a loop of false awakenings, the visuals repeating, making us feel his pain: just as he is trapped, so are we. There are hints elsewhere that maybe his wife too felt trapped – in her marriage to Dan – and the film can perhaps be taken as a metaphorical examination of entrapment, with us, as viewers, also trapped within the confines of the screen.

But this is storytelling placed through a Surrealist blender. Narratives within narratives begin to form, and it seems storytelling itself might be the subject. The walls – of the apartment and of the cinema – come alive with the sounds of heavy breathing. People hold stethoscopes against ceilings and peer through holes they have drilled. Voyeurism, yes, but perhaps also watching and listening, trying to make sense of the stories forming around them. One story, told to Dan by a detective, is pointedly cut short by Dan asking ‘What does that have to do with my wife?’ It seems there is a dark humour at play here too. The film may be a game. Certainly, it is a challenge. Events are fractured and told in close up, so even the screen space isn’t clear. Faced with such an onslaught, how are we, as viewers, meant to decode it? Or aren’t we? Multiple meanings proliferate, but perhaps we are simply meant to experience it.

But as the rich, layered and decadent experience continues, a new question arises: what is it all amounting to? And then the film begins to drag, and the feeling increases. Another iris dilates in close-up, and the effect slips towards the comical (and the tedious). Interpretation slides further away from us. But, nevertheless, the overall experience remains visceral, exciting and experimental. Coming at us in a world (and a genre) where the same old clichés are thrown out time and time again, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears is, ultimately, refreshing and invigorating filmmaking. ALEX BARRETT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 APRIL 2014 and during the EEFF 2014

Venus in Fur (2013)

Director: Roman Polanski Writers: Polanski and David Ives

Cast: Emanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Amalric

96min Drama

Roman Polanski’s long-awaited VENUS IN FUR, is another New York stage hit to add his successful collection of play adaptations along with CARNAGE and DEATH AND THE MAIDEN.

Emmanuelle Seigner (Vanda) and Mathieu Amalric (Thomas) play the leads in this two-handed chamber piece. And this is not the first time he has cast his wife as a sexually suggestive role in one of his films. In BITTER MOON, she plays Mimi, the young wife of Peter Coyote’s crippled lothario, Oscar. Here Vanda is an older but equally seductive and larger than life character who brings passion and delicious wit to this demanding role as an actress who arrives late for her audition for a part in a play. The action takes place in an empty theatre where Thomas, a listless writer and theatre director is exhausted after a day of futile auditions and on the verge of going home, when she finally arrives.

David Ives’ original stage version was based on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 VENUS IN FURS and originally adapted from a book in which the protagonist, Severin, is a sexually submissive man who offers himself as a love slave to a woman who he is obsessed with. Polanski has collaborated with Ives on this screenplay of this two-handed chamber piece entirely built on the clever dialogue between the actress and writer as she engages every trick in her armoury of seductive techniques to secure an opportunity to read.

Emmanuelle Seigner gives a skilful performance as Vanda, adopting an array of foxy voices, sexy accoutrements and alluring postures until she convinces Thomas, despite the fact of her initially unsuitability for the role, that she is the embodiment of Vanda. So persuasive are her acting skills that by the end we are not sure whether she is playing the role or the role within the role. For his part, Amalric offers stalwart resistance to her charms, eventually being overcome by her playful persistence.

This is the first of Polanski’s films shot with digital and regular cinematographer Pawel Edelman successfully manages to give the piece a more open feel to the traditionally claustrophobic ambience of some earlier chamber pieces such as CARNAGE. With Alexandre Desplat’s perfectly-pitched score reflecting the ambience of enigma and intrigue, this is a really entertaining piece of filmmaking. MT

[youtube id=”PyGwx9g59gU” width=”600″ height=”350″]

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 MAY 2014 NATIONWIDE

The Rocket (2013)

Dir.: Kim Mordaunt;

Cast: Sitthiphon Disamoe, Loungnam Kaosainiam, Thep Phongam, Bunsri Yindi, Sumrit Warin, Alice Keohavong

Australia/Laos/Thailand 2013; 96 min.

Laos: Ahlo was born a twin, his sibling died at birth. According to the Animist religion this can bring bad luck for the family. Ten years on and the prediction appears to have some truth to it: The family has to move to make way for a big dam and Ahlo’s village is one of many which will be flooded by the Australian company responsible. Ahlo insists on taking a boat to Paradise, a new housing settlement that is anything but. But it is this boat which causes an accident, killing his mother Mali. For Taitok this is proof enough that Ahlo is indeed the “evil one”. Ahlo makes friends with the orphan Kia, a very headstrong and enterprising nine-year-old. She lives with her uncle “Purple”, a member of the Hmong tribe, who was enticed by the CIA to fight for the Americans in the Vietnam War. More tragedy ensues. The only hope is on the horizon is the ‘Rocket’ festival: a dangerous venture that rewards the builder of the highest flying rocket (causing the long awaited rain to start) free land and housing. ‘Purple’, who is drinking himself to death, advises Ahlo to build a magic rocket.

THE ROCKET is Mordaunt’s first feature, but he has shot numerous documentaries, among them Bomb Harvest (2008), a film about Australian bomb disposal specialists, clearing Laos from the unexploded American bombs, still littering the country; together with cluster bombs, designed to look like fruit. Children, who sell both types of bomb as scrap metal, are often the victims of a war that was over nearly forty years ago. Ahlo and Kia have two narrow escapes, the ground is still littered with these deadly weapons. ‘Purple’ is still living in the past, still adoring US culture, modelling himself on James Brown. Foreign engagement past and present meet in THE ROCKET: The socialist government is opening the country up to foreign investors, but so far it has created too many displaced people, who have had to leave their villages and end up, like Ahlo and his family, in refugee camps. Traditional life has suffered and although the Loatians are a resilient people, they are ill prepared for survival in the 21^st century.

Mordaunt’s camera work is exceptional: long panning shots and panoramic views of the beautiful landscape entrance the viewer, without suffocating the content. The acting is superb, even (or because) the two lead actors are newcomers bringing a fresh enthusiasm to the drama. THE ROCKET is moving, but never sentimental, keen like a debut film should be, but never over-emphasising the point. But the greatest strength is its faithful documentation of everyday life, showing care in even the smallest details. AS

THE ROCKET is on general release from 14th courtesy of EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT.

[youtube id=”dDxt4gKyGfo” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Amat Escalante Interviewed for Heli

Matthew Turner spoke to Amat Escalante, the director of Mexican drama, HELI, which is currently showing in cinemas nationwide:

Matthew Turner (MJT): Where did the idea come from, first of all?

Amat Escalante (AE): I guess with all my movies, an image is the first thing I come up with. Here, the first image was a young man looking for his father in the countryside.That’s the first image that came and also the name, somehow. That was there from the very beginning and maybe had something Biblical about the name, also. Because right away, when I found the name, I looked up what it meant, the son of God or something like that. So there was this thing about father and son that was somehow intriguing and somehow inspiring. And that was the initial seed and then there was the location part of it also, where I was shooting it and what I could tell from that location, which was very near my house, around where I live. And so there’s this car factory there, a General Motors plant that put themselves there about 25 or 30 years ago and it brought a lot of families, a lot of people that work there. And I wanted to make a movie about one of these families and how they were affected by the corruption and the terror that is going on in many parts of Mexico.

MJT: How has the film been received in Mexico?

AE: Very well. It came out in August last year and it was surprisingly refreshing for a Mexican audience to see it and for it to have been very well received by both critics and audiences. That was very satisfying. Usually, my movies – my two other movies – have found a lot of people that like them and a lot of people that don’t like them, so it was always a half-and-half type thing. But now I would say it’s about 75 to 80% liked it or saw what it was supposed to be – they understood it, let’s say – and appreciated it. So we were happy with that.

MJT: Were there any specific influences on the film?

AE: Well, I was inspired by – like with my last movie, somehow – by westerns, by Sergio Leone westerns a lot. And everything that’s in the movie is what everybody knows in Mexico, it happens, we see it in the newspapers, etc, and I basically made a story out of those things, but searching for the characters and the human side of things. In Mexico, we are used to seeing the images that I show, the images of hangings or beheadings etc, in newspapers and magazines and I wanted to go somehow beyond that, you know. To go through that, show it somehow, but also go beyond that, to see where I could get to if I showed more and to also tell the story of one of these families, out of the 100,000 people that have been killed from the War On Drugs, there are many stories of many families that have been destroyed or affected, you know? So I wanted to make a movie about that, basically.

MJT: You use non-professional actors in the cast. Why did you decide to do that and how did you go about finding them?

AE: Well, my brother, Martin, he does the casting, usually, for my movies. All my movies I have looked [for actors] in the streets, basically. I’m very inspired by people who don’t think they can act, people who don’t look like normal actors, people that you would find in an acting school etc. [So I look for people who] inspire me and then instead of just being inspired by them, I like to put them in the movies. I always look for actors and non-actors equally. In Mexico City we were looking for actors and we found the main actor of the film, he wants to be an actor, Armando Espitia. So we looked at about 300 actors and thousands of non-actors. They don’t read the script, I don’t show them the script, I just give each one of the main people – or anybody, actually – I give them a list of the difficult things they have to do, so ‘You have to be nude’, or ‘They’re going to hit you’ or ‘You have to kiss somebody’. So I give them a list, very detailed, of all the difficult things and they all accept whether they’re going to do it or not. Usually they accept, sometimes they don’t or whatever and then they don’t read the script and every day we go over the scene and I change the dialogue so that it’s the way that they would say it or I hear how they say it and I change it, I ask them ‘How would you say it?’, ‘Do you feel comfortable saying that?’ and it’s very much I don’t really care about the dialogue much, as long as what I want is somewhat communicated. So in that way, I’m very flexible and I adjusted to them. So whoever that person I cast is, the script will become them instead of them trying to become something else, so I find people that will be able to transform and make it interesting and that’s the way I work with non-actors.

MJT: I have to ask, how did you achieve that horrific shot of Beto’s genitals being set on fire?

AE: Well, it’s with digital technology. It’s quite simple, actually! You know, he was there, we put some tracking points, they’re called, and a lighter with a hole in it, so there was no gas at all. And they would fake it as if they were turning it on and then he screams and then later we put everything in there.

MJT: So as you were directing it, you were asking him to imagine his genitals were on fire? What pain did he draw on to scream like that?

AE: Mmhmm. Well, he knew if he didn’t do it right he would have to be hanging there for longer, like much more time. So he did it, actually, he did it good right away, it was surprising. I just told him, you know, ‘Just imagine that’ and he was naked there, he was showing anything. He didn’t care that much about it. I asked him about the kissing scene with the young girl and he said that was much more difficult than the burning for him. He was much more nervous and it was awkward and much more difficult, that scene, than when he was being burned. Actually, all that stuff, it was very difficult to shoot in that small room, but we were all having a good time, trying to have a good time, otherwise it would become too unpleasant, you know? So all that was done with a lot of humour and was a comfortable situation.

MJT: It’s very shocking here to see a 12 year old girl in this kind of relationship. Is it as shocking in Mexican society?

AE: Well, it’s common and you know the baby that is in the film, the six month old baby? The mother had to be on the set and the mother is 14 years old, she had the baby when she was 13. So we all know, once again, in Mexico that it’s something that is common, especially outside of Mexico City. And it’s a shame and it’s part of the problem, also. It’s part of the problem that there is, the violence has to do with very young mothers having babies and these babies growing up without a proper moral compass. And it was important for me to show that side, also, because there’s a reason for things, you know, and I’m trying to explore the reasons of why society is like that, is so undeveloped, society, that it still does things that savage people used to do hundreds of years ago. And not only in Mexico, they’re doing it all over the world, but to see why people get to that point and it has to do with people not being taken care of when they’re educating, when they’re small and when they’re being born. And that’s why it was important for me to put these young people there.

MJT: How would you categorise your relationship with Carlos Reygadas?

AE: Well, he’s a friend, for more than ten years now. I got close to him because I saw Japon, his first movie and I admired it very much and I contacted him from that. I had a script already written, Sangre, and I showed him my script. He believes in what I’m doing and I believe in what he’s doing. I edited Heli in his house, in his studio, sorry, for five months. Somehow we support each other, we’re colleagues, I guess you could say. I’ve only worked on one movie which is not my own and that’s [Reygadas’] Battle in Heaven and that’s the only other thing that I’ve done in the film industry. I didn’t go to film school. By the time I worked with Carlos, in 2003, I was 23 years old. And from the age of 15, I already had it very clear, what I was going to do and from 15 on, I was watching hundreds of movies and being obsessed with Herzog, Robert Bresson, Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, Fritz Lang, all these things. And then by the time I met Carlos, we had a lot of those people in common that we liked, so we were in synch in that way and that was a nice connection that has lasted so far and I hope it lasts longer

MJT: Is there a particular scene in the film that you’re especially proud of?

AE: Yeah, I like when things happen, when we get a certain thing in the sky and with the action, you know? For example, the scene where they leave the house with the military guys in the truck and then they leave into the sunset and it’s kind of going to rain. And then later you see that they drop off the father’s body and it’s raining in the distance. I like that type of stuff that’s not really planned and it turns out better than what you planned just because of nature. That type of stuff excites me, so, for example, when the kid gets up onto the stage in the burning scene, of the drugs, those things that happen there, at the moment, and we capture them, those are inspiring. When you’re shooting the movie, they give you fuel to keep on going the next day, instead of doing whatever the script says. That would be very boring for me, I need things that change everything, you know? And that’s in part why many scenes end up different from in the script, but usually it’s better, they end up better because I think life is much more interesting than my imagination can be, so I’m very open to life when I’m shooting

MJT: What was the hardest thing to get right, overall?

AE: To get right? I guess what I struggled the most with was with trying to tell the story through the actors, you know? Through acting, basically, which was something that in my other movies was much more difficult and I was less worried about, but in this one, I really thought I had to be able to tell the story through the characters, therefore the acting had to be, let’s say lubricated enough so that people would be able to go into the movie. And so I tried to take care of the acting as much as possible, from everybody.

MJT: Did you cut anything out that you were sorry to see go?

AE: Yeah, many things. I like to see gore a lot, gory stuff. I had more than what there is now, but I had much more and some things it was obvious they were too much and they had to be taken out.

MJT: So you shot more gore, you put the actors through it all, but you didn’t use any of it?

AE: No, usually, for example, there’s a scene where they shoot a dog, they shoot him and then Beto, the guy that’s there, the kid, he runs over the body of the dog again [makes squashing sound] and then we see how the tyre smashes the dog’s face and all the eyes come out.

MJT: [makes “Ewwww” face]

AE: Yeah, you see? It’s too much.

MJT: Yeah, that’s too much [laughter].

AE: But I liked it. And we made like this mannequin of a dog, filled with meat inside and things that looked like brains and everything and there was a close-up of the wheel and it went over and exploded and it looked really real, you know? It was like, very close and I had it. It’ll be in the DVD extras. Those types of things, because they’re fun for me and I like gore stuff. So that and many other things, of course, that I had to take out.

MJT: And finally, what’s your next project?

AE: I just did a short that will come out very soon on the internet. They asked me to do it in Mexico, kind of a campaign against violence, different types of violence. And they gave me the subject of human trafficking, of women. I chose women, young prostitutes, etc. It’s something I didn’t want to do so much, because again, it’s the type of subject that I will need to move away from, a little bit – I want to move on from that. But they’re going to show it at schools and it’s for a good purpose, so I did it and that will be on the internet at some point. And soon I’ll write and hopefully film something at the end of this year or next year, if everything goes well.

HELI IS ON GENERAL RELEASE in LONDON AND NATIONWIDE

Willow Creek (2013) DVD

Director: Bobcat Goldthwait

Cast: Bryce Johnson, Alexie Gilmore

78min US Horror

When Jim (Bryce Johnson) and his girlfriend Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) arrive at Willow Creek, a remote wooded location in Northern California and home to the legendary BigFoot – a huge ape-like creature that was captured on film in 1967 and terrified visitors ever since – the only real danger appears to be from mountain lions and rattle snakes.

But they decide to explore the folklore and make a film in this ‘found footage’ docudrama directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (God Bless America). And it’s watchable enough: the pair are typical twenty-something dudes but there’s a feeling early on that this is re-visiting ‘Blair Witch Project’ territory as the vibe turns creepy once they reach a more isolated wooded location. There’s one shot that seems to go on forever (20 minutes) and holds on to the pair’s bewildered expressions of abject terror as they contemplate the scene before them . Shame the ending is such a let down. MT

OUT ON DVD ON 26 MAY 2014

Fading Gigolo (2013)

Dir: John Turturro

Cast: John Turturro, Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Sofia Vergara, Vanessa Paradis, Liev Schreiber

USA 2013, 98 min.

After his excursion into musical films (Romance and Cigarettes and Passione), the director Turturro has returned to the theme of his debut film Mac (1992): the human male torn between lust and ideal, laziness and honest self respect. Murray (Allen) and Fioravante (Turturro) are nearly down and out: the much older Murray has just lost his second-hand bookshop, and Fioravante, a shy dreamer, is even worst off: he only works two days in a florist shop and has to borrow his rent money from Murray. After a visit to his dermatologist, the attractive Dr. Parker (Stone), Murray comes up with a solution: he will pimp Fioravante – for a hefty “agents” fee – to Dr. Parker, who wants to have a stud for a threesome with her equally stunning girl friend Selima (Vergara). Fioravante is not too eager, but the bills accumulate, and he gives into the Faustian bargain offered by his “friend”. Murray is much more eager than his younger friend, he finds another “client” for him: Avigal, a widow of a Chasidic Rabbi, who has been kept away from the outside world for twenty years by the strict laws of her religion. Fioravante, himself a non-observant Jew like Murray, falls in love with the shy mother of six, – in spite, or rather because of their relationship being rather chaste – but the Jewish vigilante Dovi (Schreiber), who himself is in love with Avigal, follows Murray and Avigal, suspecting “indecencies”. He finally kidnaps Murray with his fellow-vigilantes to get to the bottom of things. Meanwhile, Fioravante fails miserably in his task to satisfy Dr. Parker and Selima, who guess immediately that he is love…..

It is quiet clear from the beginning, which choices Murray makes: he is an old, sleazy, mean and totally corrupt man, whose greed for easy money is only superseded by his hypocrisy. Fioravante on the other hand, wants to do right, but he is too weak and malleable – the perfect victim for Murray’s scheming. Parker and Selima are at least honest in their quest for lust, whilst Avigal takes her time to develop a sense for right and wrong – no wonder after twenty years of “imprisonment”. Dovi is the self-appointed leader of an ultra-orthodox Jewish neighbourhood watch, a sort of misogynist mind police. Cruising along in his car all day, he is as lazy and hypocritical as Murray, the irony being that the kidnapper and his victim are the different side of the same coin. When Dovi asks Fioravante towards the end of the film “are you really a Jew?” the latter answers “I don’t know”. Because labels of identity have lost their meaning: there is no common ground between Dovi and Fioravante – apart from the fact that they love the same woman.

Turturro gently unmasks his characters, never judgemental, but painting a rather sad picture of human nature – apart from Avigal, everybody seems to have become a consumer, be it money, emotions or ideals. The camera elegises New York, the panorama shots are wistful, sometimes doleful, the tracking shots keep everybody distanced, there are few close ups: intimacy has ben lost. Allen’s viciousness is near psychotic; Turturro is mournful, with a permanent low-level depression; Stone and Vergara are slightly over the top in their total abandonment, with Paradis’ Avigal full of dignity, bravery and restraint – an outsider in this world of total sell out. AS

On general release from 23 May 2014

Carrie (2013) DVD

Director: Kimberly Peirce Writers: Lawrence D Cohen, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa FROM THE NOVEL BY STEPHEN KING

With: Julianne Moore, Chloe Grace Moretz, Gabriella Wilde, Portia Doubleday, Alex Russell, Zoe Belkin, Ansel Elgort, Judy Greer

100min Horror/Drama US REMAKE

Sissy Spacek is synonymous with the 1976 horror classic CARRIE just as Beatrice Dalle was with Betty Blue or Vivien Leigh with Gone With Wind, so ‘re-imagining’ Brian De Palma’s seminal horror outing was always going to be a challenge. How could this classic story of a bullied, outsider possibly be improved upon? Strangely, Kimberly Peirce’s CARRIE overhaul manages to be a well-paced and mildly appealing tragedy, as prom flicks go and a great improvement on the TV remake of Carrie that outstayed its welcome at a running time of well over two hours.

And it has a starry cast to help it along with Julianne Moore as mother Margaret – a religious nutter if ever there was one – she excels in the role with her straggly hair, wild eyes and discretely quivering lips. But Chloe Grace Moretz is cute and adorable rather than weird and tortured as Carrie, and never captures the frail erratic eerieness of Spacek’s Carrie.

For a start, dressed as a prom-queen she’s a babe with pouty lips and a cute smile that even Dracula would fall in love with. As an emotionally damaged child, she displays none of the angst that Sissy Spacek brought to the role. Even in the hammed-up shower scene (one of the worst tributes to womanhood ever to be made apart from Powder Room), her performance feels fake rather than authentic (in a scene that really goes on far too long), but has the contempo feel of being recorded on an iPhone, to give it that fatal modern twist.

Peirce has used the same screenwriter as Brian De Palma: Lawrence D. Cohen, working with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa in an attempt to bring respect to the outing, even re-hashing some of the original dialogue. Best know for her 1999 feature, BOYS DON’T CRY, Peirce’s remake is more faithful to De Palma’s film that it is to Stephen King’s novel, and there is also clearly a attempt to examine Carrie’s toxic relationship with her mother that was central to his original story. But none of this is really dealt with in depth. There is no terror here only special effects, and heightened melodrama replaces the lyricism that existed in the original. Another contemporary twist is the use of a middle class father to attempt to threaten the school with his legal expertise in support of his vile daughter Chris (Portia Doubleday) but this feels out of place and irrelevant to the drama. Gabriella Wilde (Sue Snell) and Ansel Ansort (Tommy Ross) although competent in their roles seem like plastic characters as the teen lovers who try to save the day, piqued with guilt over their shabby treatment of Carrie and Ansel Ansort’s Tommy feels almost too much chemistry for Moretz’s Carrie at the prom.

The only character to stand out with any real personality or human warmth is Judy Greer as the gym mistress.

And the Carrie here comes across as a thoroughly nice and well-adjusted teenager. It’s only really when she discovers and develops her latent power of telekinesis that proceedings turn sinister. But the tragedy of the prom night evokes only pity and then unbelievability with its final absurd meltdown. Up to this point, tragedy is the only emotion evoked. Never terror or even fear.

Special effects are confined to the apocalypsis, where we’re rooting for Carrie in her final hour of glory as she fights back with the lethal conviction that only a child from a broken, abused background can muster. That said, Peirce goes into overgear as almost touching drama turns to manic melodrama as Carrie takes control. If nothing else, let’s hope that this pale remake will resurrect interest in re-visiting the true cult classic that rocked our teenage collective consciousness in the hot summer of 1976.

CARRIE IS OUT on DVD/BLU

Heli (2013)

Director: Amat Escalante

Armando Espitia, Andrea Vergara, Linda Gonzalez, Juan Eduardo Palacios Beto

104min Mexico Crime Thriller

Cruelty goes hand in hand with beauty in this savage crime thriller from Mexican filmmaker, Amat Escalante. Set in the wide windswept countryside of Guanajuato, it won Best Director at Cannes and tells of an ordinary family brought to its knees in a country riddled with drug crime and corruption.

Heli is a young factory worker living with his wife, baby son and father in a ramshackle hut. His 12 year-old sister is dating a cadet soldier, Beto, who’s stolen some cocaine and hidden it in a water tank on the roof.

The film opens with a man hanging from a bridge, a group of wasters look on from a tatty sofa, taking turns to use a brick bat to hit him, and there’s worse. Tortured cries echo as a woman makes tea in the kitchen nearly. As the story plays out, it bears witness to the cadet’s foolish action which unleashes a series of appalling atrocities (genitals aflame, puppies crushed) in a society where men are men and women are proud, no one plays fair.

Escalante’s direction is calm and composed reflecting this crooked society capable of great brutality but also acts of loving care and support between family members. MT

[youtube id=”EPTmpiaCA2E” width=”600″ height=”350″]

HELI IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 23 MAY 2014 – READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH AMAT ESCALANTE coming this weekend

One Way Ticket to the- Moon Bilet na ksiezyc (2013) Kinoteka 2014

Director: Jacek Bromski

Filip Plawiak, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Bozena Adamek, Alicja Bach, Andrzej Beja-Zaborski, Kaja Walden

120 min Comedy Drama Polish with subtitles

Jacek Bromski’s gloriously nostalgic rites of passage road movie takes place a Communist Poland in 1969. Country boy Adam Sikora (Filip Plawiak)is drafted into the Navy to serve at Swinoujscie naval base on the Baltic. With his older and more worldly brother Antoni (Mateusz Kaosciukiewicz) he sets off on the bucolic road to coast from Warsaw in a journey that will change their lives forever.

Despite their easy blokeish bonhomie, tousled blond Adam and darkly charismatic Antoni disagree on everything, especially sex. Travelling mainly by train, they meet up with old friends and new. Antoni certainly knows how to get the girls and is determined to show his kid brother the ways of the world. The tone is light-hearted and fraught with of period details including the Apollo 11 moon landings accompanied by an eclectic sixties soundtrack and even a live rendition of House of the Rising Sun.

When Adam finally breaks his duck, he unintentionally also falls foul of a police officer in an altercation that develops into an ugly situation as he attempts to extricate himself. Almost immediately Bromski ‘s light-hearted comedy shifs in tone into a melodramatic hostage caper which fetches up in edgy Berlin, in a bizarre true-story style ending.

Despite its ill-judged final stages where it ultimately loses its way by the end, it’s the two leads energy and joie de vivre that drive the early narrative forward, particularly Kaosciukiewicz who went on to be a big star on the Polish film scene. MT

Showing 18 May at Kinoteka.org

Cherchez la Femme at Cannes 2014

This year’s 67th Festival de Cannes features nine films directed by women but only two compete in the official competition for the coveted PALME D’OR. Here’s the low down.

I N C O M P E T I T I O N

Naomi Kawase – FUTATSUME NO MADO (Still the Water)

Something of a Cannes veteran, Japanese filmmaker Kawase not only served alongside Steven Spielberg on the festival’s 2013 Jury, but back in 1997 she became the youngest winner of the festival’s Caméra d’Or award for her debut fiction film, Suzaku. More recently, The Mourning Forest picked up the festival’s Grand Prix in 2007, and Hanezu premiered in competition in 2011. Perhaps this time she’ll take the top prize. Her fiction work is typically informed by her beginnings in documentary, and Still the Water is described as being a ‘romance’.

Alice Rohrwacher – LE MERAVIGLIE (The Wonders)

The follow up to her acclaimed debut Corpo celeste, The Wonders sees 33-year-old Rohrwacher return to Cannes, moving from the Directors’ Fortnight to the Official Competition. Set in her native Italy, the film explores the impact of a stranger upon a dysfunctionally hermetic family living in the Umbrian countryside. As with Corpo Celeste, the film focuses on a young girl’s coming of age. The sole Italian film in the Official Competition, The Wonders stars Monica Bellucci alongside the director’s sister, Alba Rohrwacher.

U N C E R T A I N R É G A R D section

Keren Yedaya – LOIN DE SON ABSENCE (That Lovely Girl)

Another director who is no stranger to the Croisette, Israeli Yedaya won the Caméra d’Or for her debut Or (My Treasure) in 2004, before returning with her sophomore effort Jaffa in 2009. The film tells the story of an incestuous relationship between a 60-year-old father and his 22-year-old daughter. Cannes director Thierry Frémaux has stated that the film will ‘spark controversy’, and it is adapted from a 2010 book by Israeli author and poet Efrat Yerushalmi (aka Shez).

Jessica Hausner – AMOUR FOU

Five years after Lourdes, Hausner’s excellently complex exploration of faith, the Austrian filmmaker’s fourth feature will premiere in Un Certain Régard. A period biopic set in early 19^th Century Berlin, the film concerns the tragic relationship forged between the Romantic dramatist Heinrich von Kleist and his terminally ill lover Henriette Vogel. Hausner has spoken about the detailed research undertaken for the project, and the influence of Vermeer’s paintings upon the visual style of the film.

July Jung – DOHEE-YA (A Girl at my Door)

Also playing in Un Certain Régard is A Girl at my Door, the debut film from South Korean filmmaker July Jung. The story concerns the obsessive feelings a young girl develops for a policewoman who attempts to save her from her abusive father. Jung has previously gained acclaim on the festival circuit with her imaginatively-titled short films A Dog-Came Into My Flash (2010) and A Man Under the Influenza (2007).

Marie Amachoukeli and Claire Burger – PARTY GIRL

The opening film of Un Certain Régard, Party Girl is the debut feature of co-directors Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis. If that sounds like a lot of directors for a single film, the trio collaborated previously on the short film Forbach (2008), which they co-wrote (according to IMDb, Burger also directed, Theis also starred, and Amachoukeli also served as additional editor). The film screened at Cannes and won the Grand Prize at the International Short Film Festival Clermont-Ferrand in 2009. Party Girl centres on an aging nightclub hostess who decides to settle down, loosely based on Theis’ mother. All of the actors in the film are non-professionals.

Asia Argento – Incomprensa (Misunderstood)

Incomprensa, Argento’s third film behind the camera, is freely drawn from her own childhood experiences. The daughter of giallo director Dario Argento and his star Daria Nicolodi (who collaborated together on such classics as Suspiria), Asia has previously spoken of her formative years as being drenched in loneliness and depression, going as far as saying that she only became an actress to attract attention from her father. The film plays in Un Certain Regard, and stars Charlotte Gainsbourg as a Nicolodi-like figure.

Pascale Ferran – Bird People

Long in the works, Pascale Ferran’s belated follow up to 2006’s Lady Chatterley plays in Un Certain Regard, after having originally been touted for screening at Cannes in 2013 (ultimately, it wasn’t finished in time). The film concerns an American engineer (played by Josh Charles) who abandons his old life in order to start afresh in Paris. Intriguingly, the film is said to also contain supernatural elements.

Stéphanie Valloatto – CARICATURISTES – FANTASSINS DE LA DÉMOCRATIE (Cartoonists – Foot Soldiers of Democracy)

Playing in the Special Screenings of ‘Un Certain Régard’, Stéphanie Valloatto’s debut film is a documentary portrait of twelve political cartoonists from around the world, featuring artists from France, Tunisia, Russia, America, Burkina Faso, China, Algeria, Ivory Coast, Venezuela, Israel and Palestine. Valloatto’s one prior credit as director is a 2011 episode of the television documentary series Empreintes. Meredith Taylor

THE 67TH CANNES FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 14 TO 25 MAY 2014

An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

Director: Yasuijiro Ozu

Writers: Kogo Noda and Yasuijiro Ozu

Cast: Chishu Ryu, Shima Iwashita, Keiji Sada, Mariko Okada

112min Japan Drama

The final work of master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, An Autumn Afternoon portrays the inexorable decline into old age, as seen by irreverent youth. Ozu inspired many modern directors from Claire Denis to Aki Kaurismaki and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. His swansong pays homage to the universal theme of tradition; here seen in sixties Japan, casting the well-known Chishu Ryu in the role of Hirayama, an honourable gentlemen whose main concern in his twilight years is to find a husband for his daughter. Rich with its spectacular use of primary colours, evergreen themes of loneliness; old age and family responsibilities are explored with cheeky and endearing humour that will resonate with art house audiences. While it may rile feminists with its male-orientated view of life, it will certainly entrance them with its delicate performances and lovely set design. MT

Opening on 16th May 2014 at the BFI Southbank, National Media Museum, Bradford and selected cinemas Nationwide.

A Touch of Sin (2013) Bfi Player

Writer/Director: Jia Zhangke | Cast: Zhao Tao, Jiang Wu, Wang Baoqian, Luo Lanshan | 133’ | Drama | Mandarin/Cantonese/English

A TOUCH OF SIN has more than a touch of anger and a sneering contempt for modern China’s moral bankruptcy brought on by rapid urbanisation. More visually stylish than the director’s naturalist forerunners, and more appealing to Western audiences, this eventful wuxia road movie threads together four real stories from the pages of the contemporary Chinese press. Vibrant and glistening with vehemence for the splashy affluence of contemporary China, it satirises a country where donkeys, oxen and even tigers now jostle with migrants, Western cars and state of the art modernity.

The story opens in the Northern agricultural province of Shanxi, where a simple man called Dahai, (Jiang) is understandably put out by the sudden opulent wealth and new-found kudos of the town’s mayor – who has recently trousered profits from the sale of a local coal mine. This unleashes an angry backlash of brutality that runs from North to South, expressed by ordinary people smarting from the rape of their country: a migrant worker coming home for New Year; a receptionist at a sauna who is attacked by a rich client; a factory worker who finds himself out of work. Representing the decent values of traditional China, this army of resentment fights a losing battle against the inexorable march of capitalism in modern China. MT

A TOUCH OF SIN IS NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD

In Secret (2014)

Dir.: Charlie Stratton; Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Oscar Isaac, Tom Felton, Jessica Lange

USA 2013, 107 min Drama

Based on Zola’s novel “Thérèse Raquin”, written in 1867, this is a surprisingly faithful adaption. Stratton captures the contradictory longings of these members of the petite bourgeoisie: to achieve power and control in their family circle by whatever means, while appearing serene and impressive to the outside world.

After the death of her mother, young Thérèse (Lily Laight) is farmed out to the country residence of her brother’s sister, Madame Raquin an impressively stern Jessica Lange. Thérèse’s only function in the household is to look after Madame and her sickly son Camille: The whole film echoes of “Thérèse, I need you”. When the children are grown up, Madame moves to Paris to run a small fashion shop, and the obedient Thérèse marries Camille: a loveless and sexless marriage leaves her even more depressed. But when she meets Camille’s friend, a painter called Laurent (Oscar Isacc) who has been disinherited by his father for studying Art instead of Law, and who works in the same dreary office as Laurent, her life changes. She falls for the handsome Laurent, who is in love with life and women, slightly shallow, but a great improvement on Camille, who they decide to kill. But after the deed is done, the couple’s love turns into contempt and hate for each other. Madame Raquin gives in under the pressure of her friends to allow Thérèse to marry Laurent, and the couple hopes to get rid of her to inherit the shop and a decent amount of money. But Madame suffers a stroke, leaving her incapacitated and unable to speak, but she learns of the murder of her son. Ingeniously she finds a way to communicate with her friends, and Thérèse and Laurent see only one way out.

Thérèse, the wallflower and Laurent the pseudo-artist, seem to be outsiders, but when they mistake their lust for love, they don’t just elope, but become scheming murderers with the intention to inherit and so to join the petite bourgeoisie. IN SECRET shares much which “Carrie”, William Whyler’s film from 1952, based on Theodore Dreiser’s novel “Sister Carrie”, written only 23 years after Zola’s Thérèse Raquin. Shot in black and white, “Carrie” tells the story of a married man, trying to live with a younger woman, but his jealous wife destroys his career, and his young lover leaves him when he is unemployed. Both films explore the’ love versus bourgeoisie’ adjustment conflict, without being judgemental.

Jessica Lange dominates the rest of the cast, her bitter, resentful and ultimately vengeful matriarch is a great character study, as the mature Thérèse, Elizabeth Olsen is believable as a repressed “little girl”, who suddenly wants it all. The men are, on purpose, rather weak: Isaac’s Laurent is easy going but without scruples and Felton’s Camille is just a mousy mother’s son, ordering his wife about, when he wants to go back to the live in the countryside. The film was shot in Belgrade, where the small, darkened alleys with their miniscule shops, still exist today; the camera makes good use of them to express this grim and miserable story. Overall IN SECRET is a traditional, but well-crafted narrative exploring the contradictions of love and material ambitions in historical settings, but with very contemporary parallels. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 MAY 2014

[youtube id=”s8VtloZcQMM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Kinoteka 2014 – Cinema of Desire 24 April – 30 May

Kinoteka is back this Spring for a month-long celebration of Polish film, music and visual arts. This 12th year of the festival celebrates the work of Walerian Borowczyk with his Erotic Fables CINEMA OF DESIRE – the legendary filmmaker whose debut THE BEAST (1975) brought him to the film spotlight after an early career as a painter, sculptor and poster artist.

Taking place at various venues across London: The Barbican, Riverside Studios, BFI Southbank, ICA, The National Gallery Dalston’s Cafe Otto and Islington Union Chapel, it offer the chance to explore the latest in Polish film with masterclasses, Q&As and interactive workshops.

The festival opens with the award-winning PAPUSZA, that follows the rise and fall of Polish-Gypsy poetess Bronislawa Wajs and her relationship with her discoverer, writer Jerzy Ficowski. Directors Joanna Kos-Krauze & Krzysztof Krauze (Saviour Square, The Debt)’s film premiered at Karlovy Vary and is an insightful portrait of the Polish Roma community and of a way of life pushed to the margins of society. Joanna Kos-Krauze and the film’s star Jowita Budnik will be taking part in a Q&A after the special event.

Other highlights the latest in new Polish Cinema strand are TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT, a high-grossing, police thriller packed with sleaze and corruption in a Warsaw Police department. The Riverside Studios play host to KINOTEKA’s popular New Polish Cinema strand, delivering a consistently strong selection of Polish films from the last year, boasting critical and box office successes. In LOVING (Wojciech Smarzowski -Rose) a couple’s relationship is put to the test after an emotional and physical trauma. Maciej Pieprzyca’s LIFE FEELS GOOD is an upbeat tribute to the human spirit, based on a true story about a man with cerebral palsy struggling to communicate to those around him is an entertaining film, brilliantly acted by non-disabled performers, the film captures as much wonderment as frustration and is filled with fully fleshed-out characters.

Acclaimed director Pawel Pawlikowski will present his highly anticipated and multi-award winning new film IDA. Pawlikowski’s latest film is a poetic, almost Bressonian exploration of the limits of faith following the story of Anna, a young novice in rural 1960s Poland, who discovers a dark family secret on the verge of taking her vows. Exquisitely composed and shot in luminescent black and white, , won Best Film at the London Film Festival.

Sex behind the Iron Curtain, Sex in the Socialist Republic of Poland is a fascinating and insightful look at sex behind the Iron Curtain with a programme of Polish animation shorts from the Communist period, thematically linked around sex with works by Julian Józef Antoniusz, Andrzej Czeczot, Piotr Dumała and Alexander Sroczyński amongst others.

KINOTEKA – CINEMA OF DESIRE RUNS FROM 24 APRIL UNTIL 30 MAY 2014

[youtube id=”z1o9n_1X9K4″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Before the Winter Chill (2014) Avant l’Hiver

Director: Philippe Claudel

Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Kristen Scott Thomas, Richard Berry, Leila Bakri

Drama French with subtitles

Novelist turned film-maker Philippe Claudel third feature is a gentle riff on the theme of ‘A la Recherche de Temps Perdu’. Intimate in feel and dialogue driven, it makes lavish use of its lush Luxembourgeois setting to tell a classic love story that interlinks the lives of three people and their close friends and family. Naturally, being French, it’s also a ménage à trios and stars Daniel Auteuil and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Auteuil plays Paul, a neurosurgeon in his sixties whose long marriage to Lucie (Scott Thomas) is happy enough but lacking in sparkle. Gérard (Richard Berry), their oldest friend, shares a medical practice with Paul and the three are close; Lucie spending her days working in the couple’s modernist house with extensive landscaped gardens and doting on her grandchild. But all is not well in paradise and when Paul starts receiving mystery bouquets of roses, the skies start to darken.

Around the same time, a young Moroccan waitress in Paul’s local cafe, engages him in conversation, claiming to be a former patient, Lou Vallee (Leila Bakri). Gradually Paul is drawn into her story, one of sadness and emotional trauma. Falling for her sultry charms, Paul leaves the family home to ‘get some space’. He’s a decent guy and unsure of himself in this latelife crisis. At this point Gérard moves in for the kill, revealing his feelings for Lucie in a subtle interplay of shock and bewilderment. Through Gérard, Claudel lampoons this bourgeois set-up with its unfounded dissatisfaction and ennui. This couple appears to have had an easy ride of it: Paul has reached a professional plateau and Lucie moans that her days her full of emptiness in classic bored housewife mode. And Lou is a complex character and not all she seems and as Paul’s life spins out of control, it’s not just his marriage but his professional integrity that is on the line. Lou is ravishingly attractive but does she possess the magnetism to lure Paul away from his comfortable surroundings. Auteuil captures the naivety of a man who’s been married a long time, but is unsophisticated when it comes to the game of love and out of touch with his feelings.

What makes this story appealing is the easy and watchable way that Auteuil and Scott Thomas inhabit their well-worn roles as an ordinary (albeit affluent) couple whose bond is deeper than the first flush of sexual attraction but has reached a point of mutual understanding and acceptance. They hold the narrative firmly in their hands and the support cast spin round them like acolytes unable to compete. It may not be an extraordinary drama but what it does, it does extraordinarily well.

[youtube id=”Gqrs74iJQOQ” width=”600″ height=”350″]

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9 MAY 2014

Silent Sonata (2014) Circus Fantasticus

Director: Janez Burger

Cast: Leon Lucev, Ravil Sultanov, Paulina Rasanen, Rene Bazinet, Daniel Rovai,

75min Drama

Elements of Theatre of the Absurd and Magic Realism coalesce to startling effect in Janez Burger’s imagined silent wartime drama, appropriately entitled, SILENT SONATA.

In a farmstead somewhere in the Balkans – possibly Slovenia – some soldiers kill a woman (Marjuta Slamic), leaving her in the barren wasteland. Her husband (Leon Lucev), naturally devastated by the murder, is left to mourn with their children, no doubt epitomising the indomitable spirit of a people who have long endured the tragedy of conflict in this war-torn part of the World. Confusingly, a travelling circus then appears from nowhere, actually featuring members of the Cirque de Soleil, which seems appropriate but totally in keeping with tone of this inventive drama, with its echoes of Jodorowsky’ Santa Sangre. Very much an art house pleaser, it may not have mainstream appeal, but certainly stands out from the crowd with its striking set pieces and sheer ‘joie de vivre’. MT

SILENT SONATA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9 MAY 2014 AT SELECTED CINEMAS

The Canyons (2013) Venice Film Festival 2013

Director: Paul Schrader

Script: Bret Easton Ellis

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, James Deen, Nolan Gerard Funk, Gus Van Sant, Amanda Brooks, Tenille Houston

A great director and writer doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good film: such is definitely the case for THE CANYONS, Paul Schrader’s much-anticipated ‘erotic’ thriller described as “Youth, glamour, sex and Los Angeles 2012”. Really?.

Matters got off to an unpromising start when it was reported that Leslie Coutterand had been on call throughout the entire filming process due to Lindsay Lohan’s repeated absences and feuds with the director, who had been forced to direct a scene naked just to placate her (?). Finance was raised through a Kickstarter campaign, and the resulting film was rejected from Sundance and SXSW. I was determined to give it a chance being a fan of Schrader’s earlier work, though not, I hasten to add, of Lohan.

As it is, she appears vaguely unhinged and physically bloated during her performance as young actress, Tara. This is supposed to be a soft porn movie, so why is Lohan wearing a pair of Bridget Jones-style knickers under her leatherette treggings for an evening out with a girlfriend?. One can only assume it was to rein in her midriff from too much booze and cigarettes (consumed during the shoot). Sexy or what?

As suggested by the title, Tara is living with her producer boyfriend Christian (porn star James Deen) in a rather glamorous modernist house on the edge of the hillside, overlooking the ocean. Theirs is not an easy relationship with Christian being a control-freak and demanding to know her schedule as he swings in from the studios to find her poolside. He cleverly swaps her phone to discover text messages showing that she’s cheating on him with a pretty young actor called Ryan (Nolan Gerard Funk). When the camera starts zooming in on mobile phone screens, and relying on text messages to drive the narrative forward, one realises the whole story is doomed.

The strange thing about ‘soft porn movie’ The Canyons is that it’s possibly the least sexual film of the entire festival (apart from the Andrea Segre’s La Prima Neve). There are no real sex scenes to speak of but a great of deal of glowering, posturing and pouting goes on, largely between Lohan and Deen. It transpires that Ryan, who is straight, has his own cross to bear: he is up for a juicy acting role, but to seal his success he may have to sleep with the gay head of the studios and is forced to receive oral sex with him just for starters.

What follows is a predictably troubled but unremarkable voyage through the seamier side of dysfunctional relationships. It almost feels like one of those ‘made for TV’ soaps you catch in a hotel room in Spain or Italy when surfing through the options looking for News. In a cameo, Gus Van Sant plays Christian’s shrink, and it’s the best thing about the whole affair. Brett Easton Ellis’s script is appalling with cardboard dialogue along the following lines: “Are you cheating on me? What d’you mean by cheating? Well cheating, with another guy….

Please Mr Schrader, you’re such a talented man. When you next make a film, make it with proper actors and a decent storyline. MT

THE CANYONS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9 MAY 2014

Naomi Campbel (2013) IndieLisboa 2014

Directors/Writers: Nicolás Videla and Camila Donoso

Cast: Paula Dinamarca, Ingrid Mancilla, Josefina Ramírez, Camilo Carmona

Chile Drama 83min

NAOMI CAMPBEL is the first collaboration between Chilean filmmakers Nicolás Videla and Camila Donoso and the debut feature of both. It screened at the 11th IndieLisboa in the festival’s long-standing Emerging Cinema programme, and its first screening proved very popular in the audience ratings (subsequent screenings are not voted upon).

On the outskirts of present-day Santiago, Chile, 22-year-old transgender woman Yermén (Paula Dinamarca) makes a living at Portal Tarot, an inbound call-centre that provides a fortune telling service. Aware that her wages won’t cover gender reassignment surgery, Yermén hopes to appear on a reality TV show, which could eventually earn her enough money to subsequently proceed with an operation. Undeterred by the bureaucratic process by which she must appeal for an op (which includes a series of Rorschach tests) and supported by older pal Lucha, Yermén remains optimistic about her immediate future.

Along the way, our protagonist ditches her neglectful boyfriend and meets an African immigrant who is herself seeking surgery – which will enhance her resemblance to Naomi Campbell. Named after such a narratively peripheral character (or, more precisely, her more famous surrogate), the film is a study of a certain milieu that promotes and feeds off the unattainable, from the glorification of size zero to the very consultancy provided by Portal Tarot. This is a society that alienates by way of seduction: it seduces the marginalised at the same time as denying the fulfilment of the very desires enabled by it.

The film is visibly documentary-like at points. Like its protagonist, it straddles the liminal space between two established codes with conviction and purpose and without self-pity or sentimentality. Most obviously, the film evinces a diaristic feel in those recurrent passages in which Yermén handles a lo-fi digital camera, depicting (for example) local canines that bark but don’t bite: “Just like men,” she says repeatedly and venomously, implying unacknowledged emotional wounds. Indeed, it is in such sequences that the otherwise inscrutably dogged Yermén’s vulnerability (as well as a palpably dormant torment) leaks through. At a decisive moment in the film – and in a rare instance of verbalised feelings – Yermén looks at a portrait of her deceased mother: “I miss you so damn much comrade.”

At other points, the filmmakers appear to capture the very real social layers amidst which their film is set. Early on, we eavesdrop on elderly neighbours’ prejudiced gossip, almost to camera, about Yermén’s gender. Later on, the film resembles an ethnographic study: nothing screams urban poverty like an image of two stray dogs mating in the street as locals walk by on their daily grind. In such scenes, Matthías Illána’s cinematography lends an authenticity of place that only anchors the story.

Despite the odd occasion of arthouse ambiguity here – such as that when we cut from Yermén peeling potatoes to a shot of her lying on the kitchen floor, in apparent shock-cum-paralysis – NAOMI CAMPBEL compellingly boosts its central drama with a subtly woven, more symbolic current. (Yermén’s idiosyncratic sense of humour also helps.) Indeed, in essence the film is about one transgender woman’s negotiation of an overly masculine world driven by ever-shifting masculinities – masculinities that are undergoing continual crises due, no doubt, to the changing shape and declining appearance of global labour relations.

One such masculinity is found in the propagandistic images of an incessantly action-packed war movie, which we see casually playing on a television set in the waiting room as Yermén awaits a consultation. Another is encountered when Yermén’s boyfriend suggests during sex that she fuck him from behind. Horrified by the thought of using the one organ she is hoping to have removed, her objection is an amusing and telling statement of anti-genderisation. Michael Pattison

INDIELISBOA runs until 4th May 2014 in Lisbon, Portugal

As Rosas Brancas (2013) The White Roses IndieLisboa 2014

Director/Writer: Diogo Costa Amarante

Cast: Carolina Tamez, Cristina Tamez, Francisco Rodriguez, Oisin Managhan, Ella Bishop, Harrison Liepis

Portugal / USA Short Fiction 20mins

Portuguese law graduate and current Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking student at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Diogo Costa Amarante demonstrates a fine compositional eye and tonal command in THE WHITE ROSES (AS ROSAS BRANCAS). The 20-minute short premiered at the Berlinale earlier this year and screened as part of the International Shorts Competition at the 11th IndieLisboa last week.

Opening with six teenage lasses dancing in a basketball court to distant but audible Martin Luther King soundbites, this US-Portuguese co-production proceeds in an associational manner: from the apparently surreal sound of ‘The Logical Song’ being danced to with such choreographed abandon, Amarante cuts to two girls lying down on a snow-covered farm. “Yesterday,” one of them says with deadpan negligibility, “I had a strange dream.” Just as she says it, with perfect timing, a flock of sheep go running by.

The exact meaning of such juxtapositions is unclear. Indeed, so disparate are these individually distinctive set-ups that THE WHITE ROSES lends itself quite happily to the kind of recipe-style synopsis that seems to have taken over festival catalogues like some insidious fad. With one eye on the difficulties of translation, beware the write-up that lists a film’s ingredients with confident neutrality before making a summarising gesture that explains why such elements amount to an excellently rendered theme.

The theme of THE WHITE ROSES, as it turns out, involves grief and loss, as one family – a father and his three children – looks to recover from the death of its loving matriarch. The crux of the matter is that the son, Gabriel, is looking to replace his mother by becoming her. As legitimate as all grieving processes are, this one has naturally unsettled the family unit.

Amarante’s preferred method is not so much symbolism as it is a visually rich succession of tone-evoking non-sequiturs that only occasionally takes a breather to give a little more narrative info. Boasting precise, gorgeous framing from cinematographer Federico Cesca, THE WHITE ROSES is – like so many shorts of its ilk – symptomatic of a filmmaking culture that emphasises the irrational, the gut feeling, the poetry of the image – or some other such quality. To emphasise the visual is a filmmaker’s prerogative, of course, but she or he must forgive us if we sit unmoved by the routine narrative strategies employed alongside it.

Michael Pattison

SCREENED DURING INDIELISBOA WHICH RUNS UNTIL 4TH MAY 2014, IN LISBON, PORTUGAL

Back to the Garden (2014). DVD

Dir.: Jon Sanders

Cast: Emma Garden, Anna Mottram, Bob Goody, Charlotte Palmer, Richard Garaghty

93 min UK Drama

Even though it’s summer, the emotional temperature in BACK TO THE GARDEN is very much late autumn, much in the same vein as his recent outing LATE SEPTEMBER. A group of friends are visiting the widow Maggie, whose husband, a theatre director, died a year ago. The friends from the theatre milieu have gathered to bury his ashes under a tree in Emma’s garden in Kent. Whilst the women are aware of their responsibilities to Maggie, Julia’s womanising husband Jack takes the opportunity to make a direct pass at Stella, a younger actress, and a longstanding friend of the couple. Maxine, also in a relationship, meets her younger lover Ed, for one of their weekend trysts. Ed is the outsider of the group, he feels uncomfortable, and Maxine knows, that she has to make a decision soon about their relationship.

The maudlin atmosphere of the meeting is underlined by the claustrophobic sets: Maxine and Ed spending the night before the meeting on Maggie’s boat, cramped and anything but romantic. And the little cottage seems to suffocate the many visitors, the tiny rooms more like traps than living accommodation, make it difficult to breathe. Even the outdoor scenes are not joyous, the spaces seem confined, restricted, even though the protagonists praise the beauty of nature all the time. The camera shows exactly how the emotional turmoil of the participants determines their view of the surroundings: they project the “Endzeitstimmung” (Apocalyptic mood) on their environment. The atmosphere is never dramatic, but the underlining resignation is quiet deadly, served in small portions.

Apart from Ed, all the friends have been young in the seventies – they grew up with hopes of a different society, and feel somehow betrayed by the development, which leaves them as has-beens in a much harsher and unforgiving world. Therefore Maggie’s loss is a double one: she has lost her husband, their close relationship means that she has also lost a big part of her identity. She feels fragmented, a ship without an anchor. But on top, and this goes for the rest of the group, she knows that her time will come soon too, and that life has not been as fulfilled as hoped for. Not a disaster, but a disappointment. The women in particularly are victims of a professional environment, which is ageist and discriminates against their gender. In contrast, Jack is the prototype of the ageing hippy with long hair and surplus vanity, who finds himself still very interesting at the age of nearly sixty, and has the professional and personal success to prove that arrested development and self delusions can get you a long way.

BACK TO THE GARDEN is a perfect autumn sonata, which evokes the first stanza of Verlaine’s “Chanson d’Automme”: The long sobs/Of the violins/Of autumn/Wound my heart/With a monotonous/Languor. AS

[youtube id=”DpzafMv06Ic” width=”600″ height=”350″]

ON DVD MAY 12th 2014

The Railway Man (2013) DVD

Director: Jonathan Teplitzky Writers: Frank Cottrell Boyce and others

Cast: Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgard, Jeremy Irvine, Hiroyuki Sanada

117min Drama Australia/UK

Colin Firth stars as a railway anorak and former British Army officer Eric Lomax, living in Scotland, but still deeply affected by his wartime experiences during the fall of Singapore in 1942.

The film opens with Eric’s dying moment (at 93 in 2012) and then casts back to his club in Berwick-upon-Tweed in the 80s as he reminisces with fellow Prisoner of war detainee Finlay (Stellan Skarsgard), recounting his recent meeting on a train with Patti (Nicole Kidman) who later becomes his wife. But soon after the wedding he starts to experience nightmares that transport him back to the evil camp and the Japanese officer (Tanroh Ishida) who tortured him as a young soldier during the Second World War.

The jumpy fractured narrative of this drama has the same effect as constant commercial breaks, diminishing the dramatic punch of this otherwise gripping story. Scenes in the Far East are resplendently shot on the widescreen where Jeremy Irvine gives a stunning performance as the young and sensitive Eric, whose naivety and courage stand out as a tribute to all who fought and suffered at the hands of the cruel and barbaric Japanese warlords.

Colin Firth is outstandingly sensitive as Eric, inhabiting the part with every fibre of his body while retaining integrity as a decent Brit in the face of conflict. But his relationship with long-suffering Patti lacks any real authenticity as a modern marriage under strain, feeling more like a Victorian one, with Nicole Kidman doing her best as a mousy Anita Brookner lookalike, without the literary angle to add texture to her character, who trained as a nurse. Eventually she summons up the courage to speak to the sober but decent Finlay (Skarsgard in King of Devil’s Island mode) who spills the beans about her husband’s ordeal in the jungles of Thailand.

It then transpires that Eric’s tormentor is still alive and kicking as a tour guide. A tragic (but rather implausible) event is the trigger that forces Eric back to confront the demons of his past with a surprisingly poignant denouement that clasps victory from the jaws of failure and serves as a touching tribute for ‘entente cordiale’ between Britain and Japan.

The Railway Man is an absorbing film that almost falls victim to its narrative structure and rather leaden script but is untimately saved by exultant performances and rousing score that evokes atmosphere and suspense in all the right places. Cinematographer Garry Phillips stunning visuals reflect the strong contrast between the muted shades of the Scottish seascape and the strident earthy colours of the Far East. So it’s really the performances that win over with Irvine and Firth acting their socks off, Kidman doing her best and Skarsgard doing his steely strong and silent Swede. Not on a par with Bridge on the River Kwai but for Colin Firth, it’s definitely one that marks him out as one of the best British actors of all time. MT

NOW OUT ON DVD

Indie Lisboa Lisbon 24 April – 4 May 2014

INDIE LISBOA is Portugal’s largest film festival showcasing the best in Portuguese indie World film and raising the profile of new and even experimental cinema in the Emerging Cinema strand.

The festival revisits some familiar names: Joaquim Pinto and Nuno Leonel’s O Novo Testamento de Jesus Cristo Segundo João, a documentary staring one of the big names in Portuguese theatre, Luís Miguel Cintra. Director Sérgio Tréfaut establishes with Alentejo, Alentejo, the reigning force of the “cante alentejano” (Portuguese traditional folk music from Alentejo) – also a celebration of Portuguese culture. Cláudia Alves will present Tales on Blindness, a documentary that unveils the Portuguese occupation in India. In the strand Director’s Cut, there will be films by Luís Alves de Matos, Refúgio e Evasão, a documentary that tracks the cinematographic vision of Alberto Seixas Santos and the short films, Head, Tail, Rail, by Hugo Olim and Walk in the Flesh by Filipe Afonso. Sebastien Lifschitz’s Teddy Award (LGBT) winner Bambi, the extraordinary story of a little Algerian boy who grows up to be a respected female professor and entertainer in Paris. From Italy comes Bertolucci on Bertolucci: Walter Fasano and Luca Guadagnano’s expansive documentary on the legendary director.

Established directors feature in two Portuguese productions, specially made for the Capital Europeia da Cultura – Guimarães 2012 program: 3x3D, by Peter Greenaway, Edgar Pêra and Jean-Luc Godard and the long-awaited Centro Histórico by Pedro Costa, Manoel de Oliveira, Víctor Erice and Aki Kaurismäki. In Costa da Morte Lois Patino (who won Best Emerging Director at Locarno last year) takes to us to Spanish region of Galicia, with a documentary that explores the traditions of this wild region infamous for its legendary shipwrecks and dramatic coastline. Meanwhile, Vitaly Mansky’s documentary Pipeline gives fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary country-dwellers in the vast expanses of contemporary Russia.

In this year’s edition, the director chosen as “Independent Hero” is Claire Simon, and her latest feature film Gare du Nord will screen on the opening night. This section will display six films by the filmmaker:Gare du Nord, Géographiehumaine, Ça brûle, Mimi, Sinon, oui and Côute que coûte. Claire Simon will join the audience of IndieLisboa as she will visit our festival on the 29th to introduce and discuss her poetry, her films.

The Filmballad of Mamadada, by Cassandra and Lilly Benson is an ode to the extraordinary Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, dadaist that agitated the city of New York and an agent provocateur of her time. In Naomi Campbel, like the protagonist Yermén, the filmmaker Nicolas Videla and Camila Donoso dwell in two universes, the fictional and real one. Yermén, a transexual that survives as a spiritual telephone guide, while on a waiting room, meets a lady that pursuits the perfect body, the body of Naomi Campbell. The leading man in Jeremy Saulnier’s US indie thriller: Blue Ruin is a serial killer, almost by mistake, a lost, misguided soul with a need for revenge, somehow emerges as a sympathetic character. The young filmmaker Jordi Morató has brought to life outstanding images of Tarzan of Argelaguer – a man that built a labyrinth-city with his own hands and tells his story in The Creator of the Jungle. The lead in Suzanne, a film by Kate Quillévéré, is at the centre of a family falling apart, an complex soul who evokes everyone’s compassion. Mi Nina, mi vida tells the story of a father’s pain at the absence of his daughter and is one of the section’s highlights marking the comeback of Yan Giroux to IndieLisboa.

And finally as a special tribute to Austrian documentary-maker Michael Glawogger, who has died aged 54, there will be a screening of his 2011 film Whores’ Glory, the third and final part of his globalisation documentaries (Megacities (1998), Workingman’s Death (2005)). MT

INDIELISBOA RUNS FROM 24 APRIL TO 4 MAY 2014

Rendezvous with French Cinema 2014

RENDEZVOUS is a chance to catch up on all the latest releases from France and this edition looks rather good. Running from the 23 of April, it has VIOLETTE, **** Martin Provost’s sumptuous and involving postwar portrait of writer Violette Leduc, starring Emmanuelle Devos in the title role and Sandrine Kimberlain as Simon de Beauvoir.

The long-awaited VENUS IN FUR**** is Roman Polanski’s film adaptation of the stage version of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s play “La Venus a la Fourrure”. Unfolding as a tempestuous two-hander, it follows the slow seduction of Mathieu Amalric’s theatre director Thomas by the vampish primadonna Vanda, played by his foxy wife Emmanuelle Seigner, in explosive form. Two tributes to the late and great Alain Resnais are showing during the Rendezvous: his stunning debut feature HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR**** and swan song feature AIMER, BOIRE, CHANTER (Life of Riley)*** hot from the Berlinale, where it won the FIPRESCI prize. Very much an acquired taste, it’s another film adaptation, this time of the play by Alan Ayckbourn. Featuring animated footage and collage-style sets, it is graced graced with theatrical performances from his late wife Sabine Azema, Hippolyte Girardot and Sandrine Kimberlain. Tahir Rahim and Lea Seydoux play tortured lovers in Rebecca Zlotowski’s sinister drama of friendship and divided loyalties in a French nuclear power plant: GRAND CENTRAL***.

On a lighter but less successful note, are the festival’s child-based features : JE M’APPELLE HMMM**… fashion designer Agnes B’s first foray into film that follows a runaway child on a coming of age journey with an older truck driver. Contrived and flatly directed, it does have an appealing performance from newcomer Lou-Leila Demerliac as the little girl, Celine. Nicolas Vanier’s screen adaptation of Cecile Aubry’s wartime story of a boy who foils the Nazis with the help of his dog BELLE ET SEBASTIEN** unfortunately fails to leave the page with the original’s vim and verve, largely due to poor direction. But Bertrand Tavernier’s political comedy QUAI D’ORSAY**** offers a witty and stylish look behind the facade of the French Foreign Office with some great talent too in the shape of Niels Arestrup (Our Children), Raphael Personnaz (Marius) and Thierry Lhermitte (Le Diner de Cons).

RENDEZVOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA RUNS FROM 23-30 APRIL 2014 in CENTRAL LONDON

Ilo Ilo (2013)

Director: Anthony Chen

99min Singapore Drama

An effecting debut drama from this Singaporean filmmaker, sees a couple struggling to make ends meet during the economic crisis of the late nineties. Their troublesome ten-year-old son Jiale (Koh Jia Ler) is a handful and the Filipina nanny hired to take care of him makes matters worse. Chen cleverly crafts his characters making them believable and authentic but not always appealing: Jiale and his mother (Hwee Leng) are strong-willed but Chen makes no attempt gloss over their defects, whilst allowing us to see their humanity. Moments of warm humour and compassion peep through the stresses and strains of normal family life in a story with universal appeal. MT

REVIEWED DURING DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT AT CANNES 2013- ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 MAY 2014

[youtube id=”ISovsVvX8Bg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

A Thousand Times Goodnight (2013)

Director: Erik Poppe Writer: Harald Rosenlow Cinematographer: John Christian Rosenlund

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, Maria Doyle, Larry Mullen, Lauren Canny

117min Drama

Juliette Binoche plays a war photographer whose relationship unravels when she escapes death in Afghanistan. Norwegian director Erik Poppe (Hawaii, Oslo) sets this absorbing story in a glorious seascape near Dublin and vibrant locations in the Middle East, cleverly casting Binoche in the lead role of a strong but feminine Rebecca. Clearly the main bread-winner, she’s married to Marcus (Danish actor, Coster-Waldnau) a teacher who looks after their two girls during her frequent trips to the war zones. Rebecca freely admits “I don’t do normal”, finding it hard to engage with the local mums in provincial life back in Dublin. But after returning home to nurse her physical and emotional wounds inflicted during a female suicide bomb blast in Kabul, she starts to reassess her life.

Erik Poppe’s work in the eighties as a war photographer makes this intense drama emotionally more resonant, and particularly because his protagonist is female – it’s fascinating how the tables are turned when a woman has the dangerous job. Vilified by her Marcus and her kids for ‘torturing’ them emotionally, Isabelle remains steadfast in her commitment to her chosen vocation despite constantly risking her life to bring worthy causes to the public domain: and there’s nothing more evocative than pictures in telling a moving story. There would be no question about a man working in a dangerous field, so why should a woman evoke a different response?. Binoche is so masterfully convincing here that we totally buy into her dilemma in a role that she handles without resorting to sentimentality; retaining her female qualities of compassion and affection. Her relationship with Marcus is less convincing from his point of view: Coster-Walnau switches a little too abruptly from coldness to acceptance and back to resentment in his portrayal of the aggrieved partner. But this is very much Binoche’s film; she radiates calm capability outshining the support cast, ably assisted by Lauren Canny who makes a promising debut as her daughter.

READ OUR INTERVIEW

[youtube id=”Y98z8tkpNe8?t=3s” width=”600″ height=”350″]

After the Night (2013)

Director/Writer: Basil da Cunha

Cinematographer: Patrick Tresch

99min Crime drama

Basil da Cunha spent his early years in Switzerland, later moving to Lisbon where he has written and directed this drama about an ex-con Sombra (Pedro Ferreira) and his battle to escape the debtors.

Casting largely non-professional actors, the action takes place in the seedy backstreets of the capital where vibrant cinematography evokes a strong sense of place, using the hours of darkness to great effect with chiaroscuro contrast. Sombra emerges a venal figure in gangland Lisbon, but there is nothing to differentiate his story from that of any other European crim. Da Cunha could have created something really special with his tentative use of magic realism, instead the narrative sticks to well-trodden paths, preferring to re-hash his past work rather than embrace the new and ground-breaking. MT

AFTER THE NIGHT IS ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS and ON VOD FROM 25 APRIL 2014

I Declare War (2014)

Director.: Jason Lapeyre, Robert Wilson

Cast: Siam Yu, Gage Monroe, Michael Friend, Mackenzie Munro

Canada 2012, 90 min.

Two groups of twelve year olds play “Capture the Flag” in a wood. One group is led by the enigmatic PK, the other one by the bully Quinn. When Quinn captures Kwon, PK’s best friend, a rather nasty element is introduced: Quinn starts to torture Kwon for real, and only Quinn’s stupidity and arrogance allows Kwon to escape. Surprisingly, PK insists on Kwan’s return to their HQ up in a tree, that Kwan returns voluntarily to Quinn, giving himself up, so that PK can execute his master plan. Whilst PK succeeds in humiliating Quinn, he looses Kwon’s friendship.

The main concern one has with the film, is that the weapons used by the children change often from make-shift to real, sticks to machine guns, balloons filled with red paint into grenades. Sure, the real weapons don’t kill, but the effect is very unsettling. Even though the child actors improvise their dialogue, everything seems stilted, unreal. The narrative is unstructured, and the actions seem accidental. There is no overriding concept, just endless fighting and very little real communication. Further more, the only female character, Jess, who is in love with one of the boys, seems to be totally displaced among the boys. One can’t always expect classics like Jeux interdits or La guerre des Boutons, but I DECLARE WAR not only fails in this respect, but opens itself up to some serious concerns regarding its use of weapons, and showing, more often than not, the rather dark side of its youthful protagonists.

The camera is as hectic as the action, the setting very unimaginative, leaving the child actors as the only positive element of this production. A film about children, seen through the eyes of adults, who seem to have forgotten any joy of childhood. Somehow, one understands why this film has been left on the shelf for two years. AS

Father and Son on a Journey (2013) Ojciec i syn w podrozy Kinoteka 2014

Dir.: Marcel Lozinski

Cast: Marcel Lozinski, Pawel Lozinski; Poland 2013, 75 min.

This journey of a father and his son – both documentary filmmakers – from Warsaw to Paris is a trip into the past and a search for identities. Father Marcel was born in Paris in 1940, his mother was in the French Resistance, and he lived in different children homes, always frightened to lose his mother, even (or particularly) when she was visiting him. His son Pawel was born 25 years later in Warsaw. We see footage from Marcel’s Super 8 camera, showing the young Pawel growing up at home with his parents. But when Pawel was 17, his father left his mother Tamara for another woman, Ania: this trauma is still unresolved for Pawel, and during the journey he tries stubbornly to make his father own up to some moral responsibility for the divorce, particularly since he accuses him of having made him buy the wedding rings for the new couple – an accusation the father strongly denies.

The two travel in a camper van, stopping at camping sites along the route via the Czech Republic (which Marcel still calls Czechoslovakia) and Austria (“they still love order and organisation”), before arriving in Paris, where Marcel had buried the ashes of his mother in a public park in 1964. Two generations clash: Marcel still trying to find his identity, finally settling for Jewish, with Polish and French being relegated to the ranks. He too is still a believer in causes (which he needs, like most of his generation), whilst his son is happy just to care for his family, he accuses his father of being enthralled by the communist system, which turned out to be inhuman, even though “you thought it was fantastic”. Pawel further accuses his father of being a control freak, who has an opinion on everything and interferes with everyone. But, contradicting himself, he admits that his education of his daughters is much more conventional and hierarchic, than his father’s: Marcel treated little Pawel like an equal, not like a son – a fact, which Pawel turns against him “You wanted a little mini-me”.

Somehow a pattern develops: father and son wanted for their children an upbringing neither ending up having. Marcel grew up with parents who were looking very much for stability in their life, “happy not having to live in hiding any more”, whilst Marcel saw his son more as an object of an experiment – who himself in turn, wanted for his family nothing more than ‘normality’. In the end, in spite of unresolved issues, we get a sort of happy-end: father and son cuddling in the grass, the same way they did in Pawel’s childhood.

FATHER AND SON ON A JOURNEY is a very intimate document, the two of them living in a very cramped space, holding the camera alternatively. They stop mostly in the countryside, where they seem to feel free to express their feelings. But the dominant feature is their dialogue and their struggle for dominance: more than once, one of them leaves the scene sulking. Somehow we end up with the feeling that Marcel’s concept of having a “partner, not a son” has been successful, the two behave very much like a couple – though it would be interesting to see Pawel’s take of this journey: his version (a mere 54 min), edited from the same material as his father’s film is called “Father and Son”. AS

KINOTEKA 2014 RUNS FROM 25 APRIL UNTIL 30 MAY

Il Divo (2008) Bfi player

Dir: Paolo Sorrentino | Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti, Flavio Bucci | 110min Italian with subtitles Drama

After successes with the small but perfectly formed Consequences of Love and The Family Friend, Il Divo bursts on to the screen in a baptism of fire that marks Paolo Sorrentino as a filmmaker of considerable talent in winning collaboration with much loved actor Toni Servillo. He plays Giulio Andreotti, the enigmatic leader of the Italian Christian Democrats who haunted the face of Italian politics like an enigmatic smile for nearly forty years and was seven times prime minister.

Mesmerising filmmaking takes over the first twenty minutes as the camera cuts and thrusts from every angle and Sorrentino’s signature soundtracks punctuate the action often to comical and contradictory effect. The story focuses on Andreotti’s last term in office and manages in nearly two hours to fast forward through complex political intrigue interweaving the mafia, corruption and the Catholic Church in a vast tapestry of Italian affairs at the end of the last century while creating an intimate portrait of a rather inaccessible and self-contained man.

Understanding such an ambitious and complex subject is quite a challenge for any audience and there’s a danger of being submerged by the complexity, and bowled over by the visual treatment of this fascinating story and, to some extent, this is where the film falls down. That said, Sorrentino’s lively and accomplished film reflects the tenaciousness of a significant statesman and Toni Servillo is magnificent as Andreotti in one of the best performances of his career so far. A masterful tribute to one of Italy’s most signicant historical moments. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

Lasting (2013) Kinoteka 2014

Director: Jacek Borcuch

Cinematography: Michal Englert (The Congress, Elles, In the Name of)

93mins Drama Polish with English subtitles

With its sun-drenched images, palpable sense of heat and lissome lovers with tousled blonde hair, JACEK BORCUCH’S drama LASTING will appeal to art house audiences, capturing the aching lustfulness of first love seen through eyes of two young Polish college graduates (Michal and Karina) who take off for a summer in Spain. LASTING is a dreamy memory of carefree love on the cusp of adulthood and challenged by fate.

Michal and Karina’s relationship is put to the test when a Michal’s chance meeting with a local man in the riverside farm where they are staying with his family, ends in tragedy sending a chill breeze through their sunny idyll and threatening to tear them apart.

Michal Englert uses the same bleached-out aesthetic, slowmo sequences and hazy camerawork that he does so effectively in In the Name of ; to create a timeless picture of Summer heat that is soon intensified by an undercurrent of anxiety, leaving us as bewildered as the protagonists themselves. Borcuch’s effective use of silence, minimal dialogue and a subtle instrumental score ramps up the tension as the camera observes the fallout of the tragedy and its psychological effect on the young lovers. Once they get back home, it transpires that Karina is harbouring a secret of her own and this additional element starts to have a wearing effect on both their relationship and the pacing of the film. There’s nothing particularly original about Borcuch’s narrative, but the strong, performances and sizzling chemistry of the leads powerful sense of place make it a romantic drama worth watching. MT

KINOTEKA RUNS UNTIL 30 MAY 2014 AT VARIOUS VENUES IN LONDON

Mia Wasikowska – TRACKS

Take the Australian outback, three wild camels, a black labrador and a woman with a mission and you’ve got John Curran’s drama inspired by the true life of Robyn Davidson, who walked from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean in 1977. During this breathtaking travelogue of painful and sweaty trials and tribulations, she makes some interesting discoveries about survival and herself: mainly that she ‘wants to be alone’. Mia Wasikowska gives an exultant performance as Robyn, not the most easy of characters, but certainly dogged and single-minded in her pursuit of a dream. It also stars Roly Mintuma as her Aboriginal guide and Adam Driver as the photographer who fails to win her heart. Despite looking for solitude in the magnificent landscape of the Outback, Robyn feels her deep loneliness at every step of the way, remaining a fascinating but private individual. Matthew Turner met her to try and find out more.

Matthew Turner (MJT): What attracted you to the part and how did you get involved?

Mia Wasikowska (MW): I liked Tracks because I just really understood the character and liked her and I read the book that it was based on and really liked her character and just connected to that.

MJT: What kind of research did you do?

MW: I mainly just read the book and I felt like I understood her well enough to [play her]. I also met Robyn [Davidson], who it was based on and it was nice just to meet her and talk to her.

MJT: How important do you think it was that the film never really tries to explain Robyn or why she decides to undertake this journey? Was that important for you, that you didn’t try to put that across for the character?

MW: Yeah, I think so. Like, I always liked that she had this attitude where she didn’t feel like she owed anybody an explanation and she was just doing something for the sake of – it meant something to her and I don’t think she quite understood why she was doing it at that stage either, it was just something she was really drawn to. And I liked that, I felt like I understood it and what I understood of it was that she kind of wanted to simplify her existence and a good way of doing that is taking it back to the very basics of survival, like putting one foot in front of the other and attending to just your needs in each moment, like feeding yourself or drinking, setting up camp, you know, it just makes it a very simple reality.

MJT: You knew [shooting in the desert] was going to be physically and mentally challenging, but were there any really unexpected challenges that came up that you hadn’t planned for?

MW: I was expecting it to be like, kind of hard. I think the main thing that came up was just the – it’s really nice to be in those locations when you’re on your own time, but when you’re abiding by a set schedule of a film, which is always very regimented and just being outside, like all the time, in the glare and that was probably the harder thing, like even more than just it being hot, it’s more just like the intensity of it on your eyes, of it being so bright all the time. But yeah, other than that it was alright, like it was really enjoyable being in clothes that weren’t precious or anything, so it was nice.

MJT: And I guess being back in Australia as well?

MW: Yeah, it was great.

MJT: Did you feel like you learned anything about yourself? I mean, it’s quite a journey of self-discovery for her and with the connection with Australia and coming back, did you feel – I mean, obviously, it’s a film and it’s a job, but did you learn anything about yourself over the course of the film?

MW: I think it was like an interesting process, the whole making of the film. Most films and scripts usually are kind of in flux as you get closer to production, but this one more so than anything, so the most challenging thing was it changing a lot and having to voice your opinions more if something didn’t work for me in like a new draft or something, more like feeling like it was okay to express that, whereas I’ve always been sort of more submissive or not felt so part of something, to the point of where I could have an opinion or something, so more just like learning to voice an opinion or something.

MJT: Did you spend an extended amount of time in the desert on your own, just to get a feeling of what it was like for Robyn?

MW: Not really. I mean, in my own childhood, we would camp in this one particular spot in Australia, which wasn’t in the desert, it was like in the bush, that was always a greatly formative experience for me, because every summer we would have like at the least three weeks at the one place and there were no showers or bathrooms or anything like that. There was a town like twenty minutes away or something. So that was always really great and that was probably the main thing that it felt like, or, you know, that I could imagine what it was like for her and the kind of freedom that you get from throwing away the kind of more normal parts of society.

MJT: What was John [Curran] like as a director?

MW: He was the complete opposite [of Richard Ayoade, her director on The Double]. He wanted to discover things on the day and didn’t really want to do rehearsals or anything. We had very different opinions about everything, so we were always coming up against differences of opinion and that was like a new thing. But yeah, it was good, it was just like different things.

MJT: John said at the London Film Festival that he wanted to let you discover the character for yourself and he was very welcoming of you having a difference of opinion with him. Did you enjoy working like that?

MW: Yeah, I mean it’s good when you can express something without someone else cutting it off. It’s great when someone is open to that. So I did like that, for sure, yes.

MJT: Did you butt heads at all because you were working from the book? Were there parts of the book that you loved that didn’t make it in?

MW: Yeah, but it was like a different process. So there was an original script, which I loved and then he did a rewrite and I would be like, ‘Well, I hate this bit and I hate this bit and I hate this bit!’ And he would be like, ‘Well, I hate that bit and I hate that bit and I hate that bit!’ And so it was always this continually having to find the middle ground between our two different tastes. I’ve never experienced that before, so that was, like, unusual.

MJT: Do you think benefited from having the two viewpoints?

MW: I don’t know! I think it’s been the best case scenario for the film, because it’s come together quite well, but there were moments where I had no idea what we were making, really. I’d just never really experienced that extremity of differences in opinions. But I mean films, so some extent, are always changing, so it’s kind of the nature of it, anyway.

MJT: What was Robyn’s take on the final film?

MW: She had such a good perspective on it, like I was very scared or tentative about meeting her, because the Robyn in the book would have punched anybody who wanted to play her in a film. And so I was so aware of her probably thinking it was completely ridiculous, but they kept convincing me to meet her and I did and it was a real relief, actually, because she had a really good perspective on it, being just like an abstraction of something that was already an abstraction of the journey. So that was a relief, to be freed from it being her being there, like, waving her finger at us. And yeah, she was just really lovely as well. And anybody can say anything now, about the movie, like, she’s happy with it, so I’m like, I don’t mind if it’s trashed! She liked it and gave it her tick of approval, so it’s fine. That’s the biggest relief.

MJT: What was Adam Driver like as a co-star?

MW: Oh, great. Adam is so spontaneous and really brilliant at coming into a situation and not feeling self-conscious, or not appearing self-conscious or nervous or anything but just going with it and ad-libbing and pretending and I completely admired that.

MJT: How about the camels?

MW: They were great! They’re like the most, like the best film animals ever, which is a shame, because they will be needed like once every decade or something. They were just super-easy, like the dog was really quite hard to work with in comparison to the camels and I thought it might be the other way around, but the camels just like follow you and walk and we had one camel that was just like the most brilliant actor ever, it would just like growl any time it had to growl and, yeah, it was brilliant.

MJT: They didn’t have a special growling camel and a walking camel

MW: Well, that one became the growling camel. The one at the back became the go-to growling camel, because it would growl at everything! It was really great.

MJT: Do you have a favourite scene in the film?

MW: I like the bit where Adam’s character, Rick turns up and he’s talking about his routine where he eats an orange before a flight and after a flight, but he didn’t get an orange because the shops were – it was so brilliant and he was just ad-libbing, it was so funny.

MJT: I gather you’re directing yourself – you’ve done a segment of [portmanteau film] The Turning. Have you finished it? What was that like? And did you take anything from the directors you’ve worked with?

MW: Yeah, I finished it. It came out in Australia. I loved it. We were given complete creative control, so every filmmaker was given a short story and then you had to adapt it. So we shot it over four days and it was really fun, it was really great. But the main thing that I’ve learned from the different directors that I’ve worked with is just that there’s no one way to make a film, there’s no one formula that makes a good film, everyone has their own way of making a film and you have to find your own process or something. So it was really fun and I’d love to do it again.

MJT: How do you pick your projects, usually? Is the script the most important thing or the director or does it vary from project to project?

MW: Usually the director, because I am like a film fan firstly, so if I can work with a great director – and if I’m not sure about the script, at least I can trust that they will have some interesting take on it or they would be open to collaborating or something, so I usually would work with a great director. But also, whatever, if it’s a great script and someone who’s unknown, I would do that as well. So it’s like character and script and director, one of the three.

MJT: It seems like since Alice in Wonderland you’ve taken a slightly less obvious route than people might have expected. Is that something you’ve done deliberately, to choose more interesting projects rather than blockbusters?

MW: Yes, definitely. I mean, I’m in a lucky position, after a movie like that, to be able to be slightly more selective, so I’ve just done films that I like or worked with directors that I really like, so yeah, it’s a good position to be in.

MJT: Do you feel, as a woman, there are a lot of those, because most of the characters that you’ve played are interesting or unusual or they have that [element]. Is it hard to find those roles still, or do you feel like the landscape has changed a bit?

MW: I think I’m lucky in that sense, because I can choose that stuff, but I think that there can always be more. And I would definitely love to see more female directors, like, I think I’ve only worked with one female director on a feature film. But I would love there to be more females working in films. But I’ve been pretty lucky in terms of good female characters, so I can’t complain.

MJT: You mentioned you were a film fan. Did you watch any particular films in preparation for Tracks? I was thinking, maybe Walkabout?

MW: Yeah, I mean Walkabout and Wake In Fright were two films that were [relevant to this]. So I watched those.

MJT: And as a final question, I was wondering if you could please tell us the correct pronunciation of your surname?

MW: Oh! Vash-ee-kov-ska.

MJT: Thank you! Do you correct people if they say it wrong?

MW: I don’t, really. I mean, I always say it the right way, but I wouldn’t enforce it on other people.

MJT: Thanks Mia.

Blue Ruin (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director/Writer: Jeremy Saulnier

Cast: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves, Kevin Kolack, David W Thompson

90min US Thriller

Blue Ruin is a slow-burning feral beast of a thriller that holds you in tight claws ’til the final bloody finale. Awarded at Cannes, it’s the second feature of Jeremy Saulnier who cut his teeth as a cinematographer on low budget horror outings before he wrote and directed this stylish indie revenge piece, which despite a low budget makes clever use of the atmospheric Virginia countryside, stunning visuals and a hunting original soundtrack with shades of the Coen Brothers in the storytelling.

Macon Blair plays Dwight, a mysterious and homeless loner gets by scavenging until he learns of the release from prison of Wade Cleland, who murdered his father in revenge for a long-standing feud with his family. This forces him to return to his former home and his estranged sister’s to reconcile with her and protect her from further acts of retaliation from the Clelands. Clearly disturbed and very much an outsider, Dwight is no murderer, but the depth of feeling he had for his dad, mingled with fear and anger forces him to fight back with a vehemence he never knew he had. Tracking Dwight down he murders him in a surprisingly brutal act of defence which cannot go unpunished. The consequences take him down an unpredictable journey from which there is no logical or possible return. An old school pal, Ben Gaffney (Devin Ratray ) provides unexpected support as they

Although Blue Ruin opens in a straightforward vein, it reveals its narrative very gingerly so as to keep up on tenterhooks as the true awfulness slowly emerges. This unsettling treatment of leaving out so much information is intensified by minimal use of dialogue and long stretches of silence allowing the imagination to run wild and feeding on the subconscious to powerful effect. Saulnier’s skilful use of pacing is probably the most powerful tool in his arsenal of mean tricks, making him an exciting talent in the making. MT

BLUE RUIN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 MAY 2014 and previews at SUNDANCE UK 25-27 April 2014

[youtube id=”U_1mgieaGvY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Suzanne (2013) Now on DVD

Dir.: Katell Quilléveré;

Cast: Sarah Forestier, Adèle Haenel, François Damiens

France/Belgium 2013, 94 min Drama

After the death of their mother, sisters Suzanne (Sarah Forestier) and Maria (Adèle Haenel) grow up with their father Nicholas, a truck driver (Francois Damiens). Suzanne is impetuous from the beginning, living in a dream world, whilst her sister is less self-centred, helping her sister adjust to life’s problems. At seventeen, Suzanne gets pregnant, an absent father means that Maria has to help out. But soon she is the sole provider for little Charlie, since Suzanne has fallen for Julien, who goes from robbery to drug smuggling during the course of the film. Suzanne, helping him in the first stage of his criminal career, acquires a criminal record. But the death of her sister catapults Suzanne (finally) into adulthood, and for the first time she takes responsibility – not only for herself.

Katell Quilléveré (Love Like Poison) crams a quarter century of the life of Suzanne into just over 90 minutes of her second feature film: When we see her at first, Suzanne is playing innocently with her little sister near the grave of her mother. When we leave her with Leonard Cohen’s song of the same name, we either love or hate her – and the same goes for the film. Quillevéré does nothing to make her heroine sympathetic, on the contrary, Maria and (sometimes) her father carry the emotional load Suzanne leaves them with. But still, we fall for her all or nothing approach to life. Somebody once said, there must be more than everything to life, and this is exactly Suzanne’s motto. She lives purely for the day, emotionally driven: she is a wild child-woman. And absolutely oblivious to reality or duty, she races through life on self-centred emotional roller-coaster, often at the expense of others.

Sarah Forestier as Suzanne carries the film, which could have easily been an awkward mixture of TV drama and sentimental story-telling. But her Suzanne is real, and so are the settings: the ugly hotel rooms, the father, who is king of the road but lacks emotional understanding, and the dullness of prison life. The camera is lively, bordering on hectic, showing a realism, which sometimes reminds us of the Dardenne brothers. Nothing is artificial, we get what we see. It is Suzanne trying to transcendent an ugly life by sheer emotional force. There are obviously gaps in the narrative, but such is real life and Suzanne is such an emotional tornado, that we soon forget the missing parts. The second film is the most difficult, but Quillevéré storms, like her heroine, through all obstacles with an overpowering emotional and aesthetic force. AS

[youtube id=”Yrx21ncOcqU” width=”600″ height=”350″]

SUZANNE IS NOW OUT ON DVD

You and Me Forever (2013)

Dir.: Kaspar Munk Writers: Kaspar Munk, Jannik Tai Mosholt

Cast: Julie Andersen, Frederikke Dahl Hansen, Emilie Kruse, Benjamin Wandschenider

Denmark 2012, 82 min. Drama

Kaspar Munk’s coming-of-age drama looks at teenage friendship. Laura and Christine have been friends forever, but when you are only sixteen everything suddenly changes. When Laura meets Maria she’s awestruck by this new sophisticated girl who puts her down: ‘You are boring, but have nice eyes” and has lived in New York. Hesitantly she follows her into the world of parties, drugs and drinking. But when it comes to sex, she is diffident about Maria’s experience with boys, especially Jonas, who lives in a condemned building and seems suicidal. But when Maria pays a boy to sleep with Laura for 500 kroner, she is forced to evaluate not only her new friendship but also her own sexuality.

Munk revolutionises the genre with his subtle approach in this well-paced drama with its stand-out performance from Julie Andersen as the melancholic Laura, who seems unable to make up her mind about anything, particularly when it comes to her own life. A dreamer, she’s held back by doting parents who panic at the slightest threat of their daughter becoming independent. Laura dreams her way through life and she is drawn to Maria (Frederikke Dahl Hansen) as the polar opposite to her. Maria plays the adult, it’s an strong and alluring performance – but when it comes to the crunch, she’s very much a teenager: promising a couple of boys a blow job if they pay for a taxi, but running away with the overwhelmed Laura in tow and the money – then missing the last train. Laura puts herself out for Maria – whose response to boys is always “don’t touch me”. Maria makes the mistake of using money to soften-up Laura.

A “Sturm und Drang” feel dominates permeates this dark and downbeat piece with lightning, storms and heavy rain predominating. The murky interiors are never fully lit, going in tandem with Laura’s dreamy demeanour. The strongest scenes are close-ups between the three girls: Christine pleading in vain, Laura evasive at the beginning, than alienating her childhood friend; whilst Maria stays in the background, pretending to be the adult. Laura captures the imagination of the viewer because she is living in slow-motion, dragged forward by Maria, but never loosing her subdued hesitancy. Andersen’s Laura is moody, evoking insecurity and self-doubt, yet carrying the film with consummate ease. AS

YOU AND ME FOREVER is on general release in selected cinemas from 25 April 2014

Little Accidents (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director/Writer: Sara Colangelo

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook, Jacob Lofland, Josh Lucas, Chloe Sevigny

US Drama 105min Slow-burning mining drama really feels like the pits.

Grim reality bites for three people thrown together in the aftermath to tragedy in a depressed mining town. Sara Colangelo’s bleak drama tackles themes of class, comradeship and guilt affecting a community when ten families lose their loved-ones and potentially their livelihoods.

Boyd Holbrook plays Amos, a coal miner who is the only survivor of the accident. He’s faced with the invidious task of giving evidence on behalf of his co-workers to secure a large cash settlement from the management or keeping quiet in case the mine is shut down, risking the futures of those unaffected. Another victim is teenager Owen (Jacob Lofland from Mud) whose father was killed and whose mother (Chloe Sevigny) wants to use her settlement to spoil her bereaved sons incurring the envy of his schoolmates, one of whom, JT, is the son of the manager (Bill Doyle) implicated in the accident, caused by professional negligence. During a scuffle in the woods, Owen witnesses JT’s death in a fall and is forced to remain silent whilst his mother (Elizabeth Banks) waits in agony for news. The fallout to all this is intriguing and immersive as Colangelo explores the different relationships and dynamics, feeling her way intuitively with a slow-burning visual narrative, assisted by Rachel Morrison’s softly focused camerawork that makes good use of the dourly atmospheric West coast landscapes.

SUNDANCE UK RUNS FROM 25-27 APRIL 2014

The One I Love (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director: Charlie McDowell

Writer: Justin Lader

Cast: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson

Drama 91min US

Flailing marrieds Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) and Ethan (Mark Duplass), visit a relationship counsellor (Ted Danson) who recommends some R&R in a tranquil villa deep in lush California countryside. When they arrive, the visitors’ book bears testament to the healing power of the place but surreal events take over, forcing them to reconnect in this inventive take on navel-gazing and couple dynamics. It’s impossible to reveal more without giving the whole plot away, but suffice to say that Charlie McDowell’s romantic comedy turned psychodrama is well-acted, intriguing and carries an unexpected sting in the tale. MT

[youtube id=”_4AUBoIgsvc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE ONE I LOVE IS SCREENING DURING SUNDANCE UK 2014 FROM 25-27 APRIL 2014

They Came Together (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director: David Wain Writers: David Wain and Michael Showalter

Cast: Cobie Smulders, Paul Rudd, Christopher Roland, Michael Shannon

83min RomCom US

Following in the vein of Matt Damon’s Promised Land – this clichéd rom-com meets corporate demon versus local entrepreneur flick is one truckle of cheesiness.

Molly (Amy Poehler) is small sweet-shop who faces serious competition from Joel’s big chain megastore that opens in the road opposite – and, 0f course, despite the competition, they fall in love. Told through flashback during a cosy dinner between Molly, Joel and their friends; their love story is hilariously revealed with all the usual side-dishes of getting together, splitting up, re-uniting, meeting the parents (and the grandparents) and so forth, with some laugh-out-loud moments and uneven patches where the jokes are re-worked until rather threadbare. That said, the performances are entertaining throughout especially from the leads and Ed Helms, Cobie Smulders and Max Greenfield who work hard to bring it all together. A mixed bag of sweeties, then, but enjoyable in the end. MT

THEY CAME TOGETHER IS SCREENING DURING THE SUNDANCE LONDON WEEKEND FROM 25 APRIL 2014 at 02, NORTH GREENWICH LONDON

The Double (2013) DVD LFF 2014

Set in a back-to-the-future dystopia, this doom-filled drama, based on Dostoyesky’s short story, is suffused with all kinds of influences from Kafta to Orwell to Polanski.’s The Tenant.

Richard Ayoade’s follow-up to Submarine, features a similar cast but the main reason to see it is Jesse Eisenburg’s double-act as a troubled young man (Simon) struggling with his identity. Tortured by a mindless existence pushing paper in a faceless organisation and further traumatised by a suicide in the building; he’s then thwarted by a supercilious doppelgänger (James) who appears on the payroll, stealing his professional limelight, threatening to win the heart of his crush and female colleague Hannah (Mia Wasikowska).

The tone throughout is brooding and unsettling. Suspicion, doubt and fearfulness are constant themes that fuel its edgy narrative. In the same vein as Polanski’s Trelkovsky; Simon’s neurosis morphs into full blown psychosis as he loses control of reality or, at least, of what reality is imagined to be in this warped and sinister storyscape.

Despite touches of brilliance, largely due to Eisenburg (whose angst-ridden persona was pre-honed to perfection in Night Moves 2013), and a suberb cameo from Paddy Considine; The Double feels as cold and uninhabited as a Edward Hopper painting – intriguing to look at but emotionally unable to involve.

THE DOUBLE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 4 APRIL 2014

[youtube id=”MgpeaZc7IH8″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Wrinkles (2011)

Director: Ignacio Ferreras

Writers: Angel de la Cruz, Paco Roca, Ignacio Ferreras, Rosanna Cecchini

Voices of Matthew Modine, Martin Sheen, George Coe

89min Animated drama

One day, we will all have empathy for Ignacio Ferreras’ characters shuffling towards death in his brilliantly-bleak animated feature set in a retirement home. Based on a comic by Paco Roca, the tragic inmates compete to survive against the odds: bereft of dignity, bewildered and beset by Alzheimer’s, incontinence, drug regimes and each other. As they regress into a childlike state of helplessness, an ill-judged bid for freedom results in a comic tragedy. WRINKLES is a film that bravely says “Do not go gentle into that dark night!”

[youtube id=”MyhsAnPt0iM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18TH APRIL NATIONWIDE AND ON DVD AND BLU-RAY FROM 28TH APRIL 2014

Sundance London 25 – 27 April 2014

SUNDANCE LONDON is a great way to catch up on the latest US indie titles hot off the runway from Sundance Utah and brought to you by the lovely Robert Redford. Conveniently, it all takes place under one roof at the O2 Centre which is just a hop away on the Jubilee Line from the centre of town. Plenty of cafes and bars nearby if you fancy a bite to eat and there are music events too, so it’s not just a paradise for cinephiles. We covered SUNDANCE UTAH in detail but here’s a round-up of the films we particularly recommend amongst the 20 titles offered. Booking opens on 28th March, so get your skates on!

BLUE RUIN — A mysterious outsider’s quiet life turns upside down when he returns to his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance. In a US version of LEON, he fights back at the men who have ruined his life. Director and Writer Jeremy Saulnier hasn’t quite got the caché of Luc Besson but you can’t have everything and this indie thriller is every bit as stylish and moody. Cast: Macon Blair, Amy Hargreaves, Sidné Anderson, Devin Ratray, Kevin Kolack.

THE CASE AGAINST 8 : Shot over five years, this newsworthy documentary picks up on the same-sex marriage theme, exploring the case to overturn California’s ban, it follows a motley crew of campaigners in their fight for justice. Sundance US Documentary Winner for Directing.

FINDING FELA : the indefatigable, award-winning Alex Gibney (Silence in the House of God) is at it again with this musical documentary about Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who created the musical movement Afrobeat and used it as a political forum to oppose the Nigerian dictatorship and advocate for the rights of oppressed people. This is the story of his life, music, and political importance. In conjunction with the film, there’s a free performance from Dele Sosimi, one of the original members of Fela Kuti’s bank, with an Afrobeat orchestra on Sunday, 27 April.

THE TRIP TO ITALY: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon head off to the continent for a fun-filled epicurean outing to search out the finest wines known to humanity and delicious food too. Not to be confused with the BBC2 series that starts on April 4th.

KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER: (Director: David Zellner, Screenwriters: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner) — The dark humour of this Coen Brothers-style drama has a strange appeal it also stars one of the writers Nathan Zellner as a decent guy who helps a doltish Japanese woman, convinced that a satchel of money buried in a fictional film is, in fact, real. Leaving her structured life in Tokyo for the frozen Minnesota wilderness, she comes across people even weirder than herself, in her quest for the pot of gold. Cast: Rinko Kikuchi. Winner of a U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Musical Score at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. UK Premiere

LITTLE ACCIDENTS (Director and screenwriter: Sara Colangelo) — In a small American coal town living in the shadow of a recent mining accident, the disappearance of a teenage boy draws three people together—a surviving miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive, and a local boy—in a web of secrets. Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook, Chloë Sevigny, Jacob Lofland, Josh Lucas. International Premiere

FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE. SUNDANCE LONDON 25 -27 APRIL 2014

Reaching for the Moon (2013)

Dir.: Bruno Barreto

Cast: Miranda Otto, Gloria Peres, Tracy Middendorf

Brazil 2013, 118 min.

In 1951, the poet Elisabeth Bishop (1911-1979), suffering from writer’s block, travels from New York to Rio de Janiero, on the advice of fellow poet Robert Lowell. There she visits her college friend Mary, who lives with the architect Lota de Macedo Soares (1910-1967) in an idyllic retreat in the countryside. Soares, an imposing, strong willed woman, clashes immediately with the fragile, introvert and shy Bishop, who wants to leave but food poisoning intervenes and she stays – for another 14 years.

Barreto (Four Days in September) tries successfully to avoid a melodrama and succeeds in a character study of the three leads. Bishop, not surprisingly extremely neurotic after the loss of her father before her first birthday and the institutionalising of her mother when she was five, uses alcohol to dampen her fear of losing people close to her again. She says to Soares “I am not drinking only because things go wrong, I am drinking when I am happy too, because I am afraid to lose you”.

Winning the Pulitzer creates even more fear for Bishop, because the expectations are raised. Paris-born Soares, on the other hand. acts when challenged. Self-confident, she survives in a world ruled by men – no mean feat, considering the balance of power between the sexes – particularly in South America during the fifties and sixties. She rules both Bishop and Mary, lovingly, but with a strong hand. Mary is by far the more socially responsible, compared with the self-obsessed Bishop, more attractive too – but Soares wants what she can’t get: the opposite of herself. In the end, her unsuccessful quest destroys her.

Gloria Peres is a brilliant Soares, vibrant and full of life’s optimism, whilst Otto is just right as the simpering, but sly Bishop. Middendorf’s Mary copes well with being “pig in the middle” in this tug of love and war. Camera work is lush and sumptuous, full of original angles and tracking shots. The music is staying well in the background, helping to bring a clearer understanding for the viewer, instead of drowning out all the nuances. But the greatest success for Barreto is that REACHING FOR THE MOON is neither a case celebre or a lesbian drama. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 18 APRIL (ICA LONDON + BRIGHTON

DVD ON DEMAND FROM 28 APRIL 2014 WITH INTERVIEW AND FEATURETTE

[youtube id=”MeMtHkH_jX8″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

We Are the Best (2013) Venice 2013

Director: Lukas Moodysson

Writer: Lukas and Coco Moodysson

Cast: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne, Johan Liljemark, Matthias Wiberg

102min Sweden Drama

Lukas Moodysson moves away from his more serious fare with this upbeat celebration of teenage girlhood set in eighties Stockholm and based on a graphic novel by his wife, Coco. Refusing to believe that punk is dead; rebellious, rank outsiders Bobo (Mira Barkhammer) and Klara (Mira Grosin) get together to form a girl-band. The only trouble is, they can’t play any instruments. Enter the unlikely figure of Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), a committed Christian and classical guitar player, who is persuaded to join the fun and frolics and, voilà, the band is born. The tone turns more serious when the girls join forces with a boy band and competitiveness enters the arena but their strong friendship conquers all in the end. The music may be outdated but it’s their natural performances as actors that really win the day as they embark on unexpected stardom in a confident and fun-filled way. Brim-full of irreverence and teenage angst as well as exuberant charm, We Are The Best, has appeal for all age-groups with its superb sense of place and infectious joie de vivre that captures the era and guarantees some out loud moments. MT

[youtube id=”NDDGT1xazdU” width=”600″ height=”350″]

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18 APRIL 2014 NATIONWIDE

Willow and Wind (2000) Beed-o Baad The Cinema of Childhood Season

Dir.: Mohammad-Ali Talebi Writer: Abbas Kiarostami

Cast: Hadi Alipour, Amir Janfada, Majid Alipour

Iran/Japan 1999, 81 min.

WILLOW AND WIND headlines a touring film season exploring and celebrating rare film classics about children “Cinema of Childhood”. The season launches this week with Mohammad-Ali Talebi’s film that poetically mirrors the political unrest in Iran at the beginning of this century and, in particular, the concerns surrounding artistic censorship.

A young schoolboy in a primary school in the Iranian mountains is threatened by his teacher with immediate expulsion, if he does not repair a broken window, which he smashed whilst playing football days ago. The boy’s father has no time or inclination to help him, and so he has to turn to his new friend, who has recently joined the class. Together they somehow manage to get the funds, but the glass merchant lives miles away from the school. Our hero stumbles with the big plate of glass through the wild landscape, but arrives with the window plane intact at his destination. Just when he seems to be successful against all odds, the gathering storm finally brings his odyssey to an unfortunate end.

Based on a script by Abbas Kiarostami, director Mohammad-Ali Talebi (Bag of Rice, 1998) has painted more than filmed this poem about loneliness in childhood. Ozu and Bresson immediately spring to mind, their fragile child characters in a world of insensitive adults are very much related to all the children in this film. But, surprisingly too, there are also echoes of early Hitchcock films, where children are the victims of the adult world. Talebi starts his discourse in poetic realism right at the beginning of the film, when the newcomer to the class, coming from an Iranian region where it hardly rains, is naturally more fascinated by the rain than the lesson. The weather plays a central role in the film, nearly always having a negative influence on the hero’s struggle. Adults are shown as remote: even when they want to help, they are unable and sometimes unwilling to engage with the childrens’ problems. Modes of transport are archaic and unreliable, not helping the quest of the boy, which is thwarted at every turn. Talebi’s narrative, fraught with incidents, is always second to his lyricism; dialogue is minimal and feels redundant, since the tortured look of the main character tells the story on his own. The howling wind and wild landscape is integrated beautifully, always playing a main role in the proceedings.

The camera is very mobile: panning and tracking vigorously, panoramic shots of the mountains are breathtaking. The young boys Razam and Kuchakpourso give convincing performances as they form a bond of friendship, their vigour contrasted (rightfully) with the adults, who seem either subdued or pedantic. Merhad Jenabi’s intense original score underlines the enfolding drama without intruding. Willow and Wind successful creates a world of childhood, full of passionate dreams and, at the same time, rejection by an adult world – the boy’s imagination – which drives him on, so much superior to the dreary world of the adults. In this atmospheric mood piece, Talebi shows us, that in the process of growing up, we loose often much more than we gain. AS

HEADLINING the SEASON ‘THE CINEMA OF CHILDHOOD‘ AT THE FILMHOUSE EDINBURGH

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) East of Eden (1955) Giant (1956) An Icon Restored

Director: Nicholas Ray Writer: Stewart Stern Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Ann Doran 111min

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE gets a sparkling makeover as a tribute to the actor James Dean’s major films. It features his definitive role and goes down in history as one of the iconic movies of the 1950s. As Jim Stark, the archetypal troubled teenager from a dysfunctional family, arriving in a new town and falling in with the wrong crowd and Natalie Wood’s fresh-faced girl next door, it captured the zeitgeist of the powerful cultural changes of the era and immortalised Dean as the all American hero, earning him a posthumous Oscar nomination for this mesmerising portrait.

EAST OF EDEN***

Director: Elia Kazan, Writers: Paul Osborn Cast: James Dean, Raymond Massey, Julia Harris, Richard Davalos 115min

Another dysfunctional family drama this time set in the lush landscape of California where Dean stars in his debut as Cal Trask, a man in turmoil competing with his brother, Abra (Richard Davalos) for the attention of his parents and the shared affections of their sweetheart in the shape of Julie Harris. Elia Kazan’s epic adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel (Cain and Abel) benefits from the atmospheric score of Leonard Rosenman and was the only film of the three to be released before Dean’s death. The exchanges between Dean and Raymond Massey as his father Adam add a vibrancy to the otherwise slow-burning potboiler: it is said James Dean deliberately provoked Massey off-set to get him into character.

GIANT ***

Director: George Stevens, Writer Edna Ferber, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Carroll Baker, Jane Withers 201mins

Set to Dimitri Tiomkin’s rousing score, another love triangle this time based in the wide open spaces of a cattle ranch in Texas where James Dean plays Jett Rink, an embittered oil prospector set on destroying the family who has never welcomed him. Despite the dynamite leads (Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor became lifetime friends after starring as, Leslie Benedict and Jordan), the film feels stolid and self-important. Nevertheless, GIANT was the highest grossing film in Warner Bros. history until the release of SUPERMAN (1978).

AN ICON RESTORED – JAMES DEAN’S MAJOR FILMS ARE SHOWING AT THE BFI AND NATIONWIDE FROM 18 APRIL 2014

Nebraska (2013) Mubi DVD

Dir.: Alexander Payne; | Cast: Bruce Dern, Bill Forte, June Squibb, Stacey Keach | USA 2013, 115 min. Drama/Comedy

Bruce Dern won Best Actor at Cannes for his portrayal of Woody Grant in Alexander Payne’s sixteenth outing NEBRASKA. In common with all his features this is a dry comedy, and a road movie. But this time there is nothing to explore, nothing to find. Anyone with ageing parents will appreciate the banal humour that can be found in simple exchanges between close members of a family who have grown up together and found their roles evolving from son to parent, lover to carer. Bob Nelson’s spare screenplay captures the caring, sympathy of David Grant (Will Forte) for his father’s predicament and the occasionally snarling ridicule that Bruce Dern’s Woody has for his youngest son.

The vastness of the countryside and the broken emptiness of the towns during the journey from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska are captured meticulously in the black and white landscapes: this not a journey into any future, but a glum portrait of the past and, in some ways, America’s past glory now reflected in the desolate urban spaces. But also a lack of hope for the future, both socially and economically, as seen through the younger generation’s lack of real substance. And, like the main protagonist, the ageing alcoholic Woody Grant, this America is dying. The vastness of the abandoned land and the dilapidated streets and ramshackle buildings of small town America are dying a slow death. NEBRASKA is close to The last Picture Show, only even more moribund.

Woody is married to Kate, and their marriage is full of nagging (from her side) and blatant egoism from his. As Kate, June Squibb is hilarious without intending to be so and captivates with her strength of personality and self-belief. They live a small flat that looks like a night shelter. Sons David and Ross, are decent and kind men, the latter being more adjusted to modern life than his brother, who is in a dead-end job, can’t commit to his girlfriend and living in a bed sit that makes his parents’ place look grandiose.

Woody, like most men in his late eighties has reverted to a kind of childhood: hearing and memory are selective – he stumbles around on the foothills of dementia – with a yen for booze. One day he gets hold of a flyer telling him that he has won a million dollars – he only needs to collect it with a company in Lincoln, Nebraska. Whilst Kate is dead against the idea; David, out of empathy and partly selfish reasons – agrees to take his father – hoping (in vain) for increased bonding and a chance to get away from his own depressing life . On the way there they meet Woody’s family and friends in Woody’s hometown Hawthorne, Neb. Here David learns about his father’s youth, his trauma in the Korean War, and also about the greed of his so-called friends, lead by Ed Pegram (Keach), who suddenly remember vast amounts of money Woody’s them in the light of his prospective fortune. The money is a scam but the trip offers catharsis; laying bare all the hidden hopes, aspirations and desires between father and son.

NEBRASKA is never sentimental, the bleakness is unrestrained. It’s a world where parents have now proved more successful than their children in every way and despite a positive ending we know how short-lived that will be. The narrative is driven forward by sublime camerawork, intense images staying with us longer than the simple but rewarding plot. Acting veteran Bruce Dern as Woody is tough yet vulnerable and Will Forte’s David has just enough naivety to make himself believable and appealing. But the star is the camera. When panning over the presidents at the monument of Mount Rushmore, (looks unfinished – says Woody) we see a desperate yearning for a past long lost and a people interested only in religion, guns and cars. MT

NEBRASKA IS NOW ON MUBI

Life Feels Good (2013) Kinoteka 2014

Director/Writer: Maciej Pieprzyca

Dawid Ogrodnik, Doroto Kolak, Arkadiusz Jakubik, Helena Sujecka, Mikolaj Roznerski

107min Poland Disability Drama

Based on a true story, LIFE IS GOOD is a touchingly unsentimental portrait of life with cerebral palsy, as experienced by a young Polish man, trying his best to communicate intelligently with his family. On diagnosis, his mother is made brutally aware of his condition with no attempts to soften the blow. But despite the awkwardness and distorted bodily movements of its central character, there is a serene and almost poetic quality to this quietly observed art house piece, enhanced by soft visuals and a pleasant original soundtrack combining classical piano with soft whistling tunes. Through interior monologues we learn how normal his feelings actually are despite his flailing limbs and incoherent utterings. Masterfully played by non-impaired actors, the film manages to evoke the frustration, bewilderment and isolation of disability from all perspectives.

Mateuz (Kamil Tkacz) enjoys an emotionally stable and almost happy childhood surrounded by his traditional family of loving mother (Dorota Kolak) and inspiring father (Arkadiusz Jakubik). The girl next door (Anna Karcmarczyk) briefly enters his life as he develops into manhood (then played by Dawid Ogrodnik), but a sexual relationship sadly eludes him. Life gets tougher in the asylum where he moves, when his mother is unable to care for him on the death of his father. There are echoes of MY LEFT FOOT and THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY and even ABUSE OF WEAKNESS here. Romance enters his life for the second time in shape of nurse Magda, and matters start to look up but it is clear that there is also a downside to this interest that is not entirely positive, but adds well-judged, authentic texture to this disability drama with its unexpected elements and upbeat ending. Cleverly evoking the shifting sands between the real person inside and our perception of them through their outward physical being, LIFE FEELS GOOD is a worthwhile and immersive addition to the sub-genre and won the GRAND PRIX at Montreal Film Festival. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF KINOTEKA 2014 WHICH RUNS FROM 24 APRIL UNTIL 30 MAY 2014.

[youtube id=”9gqruDfHn5Y” width=”600″ height=”350″]

A Brutal Game (1983) Un Jeu Brutal DVD

Director/Writer: Jean-Claude Brisseau

Cast: Bruno Cremer, Emmanuelle Debever, Albert Pigot, Liza Heredia

89min Drama/thriller France

Jean-Claude Brisseau’s brooding psychological drama works both as a Chabrol-style thriller and a strangely-sensitive coming of age drama. Bruno Cremer plays Tessier, a mentally disturbed sadistic father who brutalises his rebellious crippled daughter, Isabelle, while moonlighting as a serial killer. Both are unsympathetic characters, but Brisseau evokes our pity for both Isabelle and Tessier, who is as much a victim as the perpetrator of his crimes, brought on through depression and dissatisfaction with his life. Emmanuelle Debever is suburb as Isabelle, a bitter and disillusioned romantic spirit. Magnificently set in the scorching heat of the Midi countryside, this disturbing character study is spiked with poetic and surreal flourishes; its sinister undercurrents heightened by Jean-Louis Valero’s atmospheric soundtrack. MT

A BRUTAL IS NOW ON DVD FOR THE FIRST TIME COURTESY OF AXIOM FILMS

Easy Money II Hard to Kill (2014) DVD/Blu

Director: Babak Najafi

Writer: Maria Karlsson From the novel by Jens Lapidus

Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Matias Varela, Dragomir Mrsic, Fares Fares, Madeleine Martin, Dejan Cukic, Joel Spira

99min Sweden Crime Thriller

The first part of Daniel Espinosa’s catchily titled Snabba Cash (Easy Money) throbs with brutal energy from its impressive opening sequence to the bitter end. The Swedish-based crime thriller (from the book by Jens Lapidus), put him on the map and launched the big screen career of Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman. Some of the original cast join helmer Babak Najafi’s sequel that elaborates the story, cuts the running time, but loses some of the original’s stylish edgy velocity.

In EASY MONEY I, business student turned coke smuggler, JW, (Kinnaman) was heading for jail after a drug conviction. Three years later he’s institutionalised with the crippled Mrado, (shot in the closing moments) whose relationship with his little girl seems increasingly dreamlike. During the time inside, the two crims have buried the hatchet and formed a strong bond. In a bid to return to an honest living, Joel has developed trading software, attracting potential investors. Mahmoud (Fares Fares) is in debt to Serbian gang leader Radovan (Dejan Cukic), while Jorge (Matias Varela), also involved with Radovan, is working another potentially lucrative drugs deal worth 10 million. The love interest this time around switches from JW’s posh Swedish blond, Sophie (Lisa Henni) who’s given him the boot, to Jorge’s budding crush with one of Radovan’s prostitutes Nadja (Madeleine Martin). And when JW discovers that his well-healed ex-colleague and poker partner Nippe (Joel Spira) has stolen his software idea, a recidivist life with Mrado seems to be the only thing now on the cards.

In the hands on Babak Nataji, this thickly-plotted second part (there’s a third coming up) is less believable and more given over to happenstance and stylised melodrama (a car crash that traps the booty in the boot, conspiring crims fetching up in adjacent locations); but also highly immersive in its exploration of Stockholm’s inter-racial underworld.

Nataji keeps the balls in the air and us on our toes reading the English subtitles and following the blood-soaked turmoil as it twists and turns towards tragedy. Joel Kinnaman makes a convincing felon, retaining a scintilla of class in his steel-blue eyes, but Mrdo’s switch to back to psychopath-mode (in the closing moments) feels rather too facile. The rest of the cast are suitably vicious and Madeleine Martin’s turn as Nadja is fearlessly feisty. Ultimately this is a study in one man’s final descent into Hell after crossing a landscape of petty criminality. In Part II, JW goes from being a decent guy on the margins of society to fully-fledged bad boy in a treacherous snake-pit of venality. Will he redeem himself in the final part of the trilogy? From the look of his eyes in the showdown with Sophie, all bets are on. MT

EASY MONEY: HARD TO KILL IS NOW ON DVD/BLU-RAY and iTunes

EASY MONEY III: LIFE DELUXE is coming soon.

[youtube id=”7Hm9dJ07RKU” width=”600″ height=”350″]

The Short Films of Walerian Borowczyk Kinoteka 2014

Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006) was born in Poland, where he studied painting. His film career started with a series of posters and black and white animated shorts films in collaboration with Jan Lenica. After emigrating to France in 1959 he worked with Chris Marker on LES ASTRONAUTS. In RENAISSANCE (1963), he uses a reverse motion technique to create innovative often violent images: an owl, a trumpet, a desk are pictured breaking into a musical march, and then blown to smithereens.

L’ENCYCLOPEDIE DE GRANDMA EN 13 VOLUMES (1963) is a race involving veteran cars in spectacular collisions on an aqueduct, before encountering a balloon, which comes face to face with a zeppelin. A visual persiflage that is always surprising and different.

LES JEUX DES ANGES (1964) is homage to the victims of Auschwitz. Cut out graphics show a slow train journey where enigmatic forms emerge: a woman is cut in half, a bird comes out of a grave, covered in grass. Other undefinable objects turn into birds. The forms are distorted, the darkness prevails. Haunting and enigmatic, silence prevails.

LE DICTIONNAIRE DE JOACHIM is much lighter. Joachim is a simply drawn figure of a man trying in vain to find contact with the outside world. Whenever he meets a female figure, he blushes. When he finally meets a real woman, he proposes, then finally commits suicide, only to later emerge from his grave, green grass in his hair. He turns into a bird to the sound of the Marseillaise.

In GAVOTTE (1967) a dwarf sits on a small easy chair. A huge man takes his chair, and the dwarf sits on bigger chair and finally settles with a pillow on a big chest of drawers; but another dwarf, dressed as a servant, removes him. The two get into a fight, then the servant lands in the chest of drawers, so our hero can rest again on his pillow. All this hectic action is acted out to the peaceful sound of a gavotte.

THEATRE DE MONSIEUR & MADAM KABUL/LE CONCERT (1962) is a battle of the sexes. Madame Kabul is tall and has a hook like a bird. She plays the piano, her arm suddenly becomes elongated. For a second she changes into a beautiful woman cutting her husband into parts and stuffing them into the piano. But he escapes and is put together again, acquiring many more legs in the process. An eccentric contemplation on music and marriage.

DIPTYQUE (1967) is a reflection in two parts. In the first half, a silent b/w film, we see an old man ploughing his field. A dog follows him faithfully. Then the man drives home to his village in a vintage car. Documentary in form with no flourishes apart from a sentimental score, the second part sees the action reversed: a vase with flowers, a sweet kitten playing with a ball of string. An analytic juxtaposition of opposites, both contents-wise and aesthetically.

ROSALIE (1966) is based on Guy de Maupassant’s short story of the same name. Rosalie, a servant girl, has killed her twin babies and buries them in a garden. She can’t afford to bring them up on her meagre salary. During the court hearing it transpires that a male member of her family is responsible for the kids, but hotly denies his paternity, and the girl is released. Borowczyk’s wife, the actress Ligia Branice (who would later star in his feature films), lends her face and voice to this heart-breaking story. Apart from her face we see objects from a shop, with price tags, showing how little chance Rosalie stood of raising her children. Simple, but very moving. AS

AVAILABLE COURTESY OF ARROWFILMS.COM AMAZON.CO.UK

Honour (2014)

Cast: Aisha Hart, Paddy Considine, Harvey Virdi, Faraz Ayub, Shubham Saraf, Nikesh Patel

UK 2014, 104 min.

HONOUR is one of those rare things – a meaningful thriller: whilst all the classic elements of the genre are aptly fulfilled, director/writer Khan never looses the moral thread of the story. Mona, a young Pakistani Muslim woman, is working as an estate agent in London. She falls in love with Tanvir, a young Punjabi man, who is working for a rival company. Mona was promised in marriage to a man in Pakistan at the age of three, and her family is desperate that she should stay a virgin. Encouraged by their two-faced mother, Kasim strangles Mona, just as Adel (who betrays the trust of his sister) in arriving home. But she miraculously survives and goes into hiding. Her family then hires a British contract killer (Considine), himself a racist, to track her down and kill her. But instead of killing her, he turns against her family. Kasim uses his powers a policeman to track them down, and corner them on a rooftop for a shoot out.

Khan’s male characters are all accurately portrayed and believable: Kasim is a British Muslim hypocrite, who uses his role as a policeman in a western country to hunt down his sister in the name of a religion, who’s rules he does not follow himself. His younger brother Adel is not much better, he too enjoys the benefits of western youth culture, but is quick to scarify his sister, when his brother puts pressure on him. The contract killer (without a name), has been abandoned by his mother, his tattoos shows racial hatred, but he is taken in by Mona’s fragility and when he learns that she is also pregnant, his own personal issues surrounding abandonment kick in, and he encourages her to keep the baby. Of the two women, the mother is most straightforward in her hatred of her own gender, her belief in male superiority and her pride that singles out one son (her eldest) but denigrates her others children; whereas Mona is a classical victim turned survivor model. Whilst being unrelenting on the religious fanatics that exist in British society, Khan also shows racial prejudice by the certain factions of the white population. But overall his attack on the perpetrators of honour killings is the driving force behind his film.

The film’s narrative is not linear, the flashbacks increase the suspense, and none of the characters is allowed to maintain a stable relationship with each other: alliances are shifting permanently, and Khan makes it clear that everyone has a choice in the end, whatever their past, beliefs or prejudice may be. The acting is convincing, and the classical film score helps to propel the narrative forward. Unusually, it is the cinematography which lets the piece down, shot mainly in the Glasgow rain: Whilst an action film obviously requires a certain tempo, the camera overdoes the hectic panning; there are few moments of calm where we might learn more about the protagonists. In falling victim to its own pace, the images of this film are often too fleeting to be impressive. But overall, HONOUR is a unique, ambitious achievement. AS

HONOUR IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 APRIL 2014

[youtube id=”LIX1PeIXk70″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

The Last Match (2014) BFI Flare 2014

THE LAST MATCH (LA PARTIDA)

Dir.: Antonio Hens

Cast: Milton Garcia, Reinier Diaz, Louis Alberto Garcia, Mirta Ibarra

Cuba/Spain 2013, 94 min.

In a contemporary Havana (even though the film was actually shot in Puerto Rico), two young men are fighting in their very different ways for economic survival and sexual identity: Yosvani is working for his future father-in-law, a loan shark and black marketer, as an enforcer. He does not seem to be much in love with his future bride, even kissing her seems to be an effort. On a rundown football pitch he meets Reinier, a star player, who supports his mother, wife and baby as a rent boy, mainly for wealthy Spanish men, who visit the city as sex tourists. At the beginning, it seems clear that Reinier is heterosexual, he tells one of his clients angrily that he is not a ‘faggot’. Yosvani on the other hand is certainly dreaming of boys, seeing the way he looks at them, but he is too uncertain of his budding homosexual awakening. But somehow Yosvani finds the courage to declare his love for Reinier, but leaving ‘the closet’ has dramatic effects for him: He steals money from his employer, originally for Reinier to pay his debts to the loan shark, but than Yosvani goes a step further – he wants to elope with Reinier, who has just started training with the national youth team.

THE LAST MATCH works well before the young men get together. The narrative is often hilarious, like in one scene, when Reinier’s mother is playing up to the clients of her son, in the hope to make a good impression, so he gets more work. Equally, the relationship between Yosvani and his girl friend is full of little details of mutual misunderstanding, which make one smile. But after the young men fall in love, the film deteriorates into a mixture of thriller and bad melodrama. As long as the social aspects are the driving force of the narrative, we can believe in the characters, but unfortunately it does not work as a tragic love story. Everything becomes contrived and the original ideas, which carried the film for so long, are replaced by stilted clichés, making the end torrid and simply unbelievable.

The main actors are by far the strongest aspect of this production, they are lively and their enthusiasm makes them carry the film, until the script lets them down. The camera is not so much adventurous, it is driving the point of the narrative (poverty and alienation) home in a very didactic way, creating an unsubtle world of opposites without being convincing (like the luxury hotel for the Spanish tourists and the beach front, where the young boys ply their sex trade). Less overtness would have been more in this case. But whilst the film suffers from its horrendous ending, one should not forget the original inspiring ideas, which carried it for so long. AS

THE LAST MATCH SCREENED AS PART OF THE BFI FLARE 2014

Copenhagen Architecture x Film Festival 27 – 30 March 2014

Some of the the World’s finest filmmakers are Danish: Carl Theodor Dreyer; Lars von Trier; Thomas Vinterberg; Nicolas Winding Refn and Susanne Bier. The Danes also excel in architecture, design and the spatial arts. With this in mind, COPENHAGEN ARCHITECTURE X FILM FESTIVAL will open its doors for the first year of what aims to become an annual event. Offering 80 films and events. including first-run as well as older releases showcasing architectural space as only cinema can. Copenhagen Architecture Festival x FILM is built around 6 strands: Cinematic and Architectural Space; Landscape and Film; Personal Spaces; Architectural Processes; Ritual, and Modernism.

The inaugural festival presents the world premiere of Heinz Emigholz’ entire trilogy of DECAMPMENT OF MODERNISM, the 21st part of his monumental series PHOTOGRAPHY AND BEYOND. All three films will be shown including the final part: THE AIRSTRIP, hot from Berlinale 2014, with an an introduction by the filmmaker himself.

Wim Wenders’ 3D project CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE (2014) also comes fresh from its Berlinale 2014 World premiere and there are other treats in store: KOOLHAAS – HOUSELIFE that takes a looks at the designs of legendary architect Rem Koolhaas and MICROTOPIA, Jesper Wachtmeister’s documentary study about a group of designers whose work focuses on the use of recycled and industrial products in order to minimise waste and human footprint. Dieter Reifarth’s HAUS TUGENDHAT (2013) explores the fascinating history of Mies van der Rohe’s functionalist villa from private ownership in the thirties to official functions under the Germans and Russians to its current status as a stylish backdrop to films such as Hannibal Rising.

THE NEW RIJKSMUSEUM, Oeke Hoogendijk’s prize-winning documentary is a massive undertaking that charts the controversial renovation of one of the World’s oldest and best known museums. Angel Borrego Cubero’s documentary masterpiece THE COMPETITION (2013) explores the working relationship of star-architects Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Dominique Perrault and Zaha Hadid’s through the tense process of tendering for the design of a new Arts Museum in Andorra.

There will be a chance to revisit the past with DOG STAR MAN, Stan Brakhage’s experimental sixties piece that prioritises the visual to create the concept of an ‘optical mind’, and Werner Herzog’s acclaimed sci-fi documentary FATA MORGANA (1971), that imagines the world’s most remote corners as another planet. Critic Sophie Engberg Sonne looks at Wong Ka Wai’s films in the context of his greatest muse: Hong Kong: this artist-city double-act will be illustrated with excerpts from his oeuvre including HAPPY TOGETHER and THE CROWD, King Vidor’s psychogeographical 1928 silent epic, based in New York; and Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s haunting and sinister documentary ABENDLAND, that takes a voyeuristic look at the vast continent of Europe from the night skies.

COPENHAGEN ARCHITECTURE X FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27-30 MARCH 2014

The Borderlands (2014)

Director/Writer: Elliot Goldner

Cast: Gordon Kennedy, Robin Hill, Patrick Godfrey

90min UK Horror/Thriller

Making a funny horror movie is quite a feat but Elliot Goldner has pulled it off in his debut Britflic, The Borderlands. After The Blair Witch Project, found footage films are always going to raise an eyebrow of contempt, but here the crackling chemistry of the leads and the well-paced sparky narrative never take the ghoulish theme too seriously, until the horrific finale eventually bites back with a nasty sting in the tail.

Made on a shoestring budget, but none the worse for it, The Borderlands stars TV regular Gordon Kennedy and Robin Hill (of Ben Wheatley fame) as spirited sparring partners: a Vatican investigator and a recording technician, who fetch up in a remote West Country village to explore the truth behind suspected paranormal activity in the medieval Parish Church, as reported by the disturbed and deeply sinister vicar Father Crellick (Luke Neil). Combining a strong sense of place in the lush English countryside with some genuinely spooky happenings, this is a film that cleverly keeps us sceptical yet on the edge of our seats right up to its devastating denouement. MT

THE BORDERLANDS IN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28 MARCH 2014.

[youtube id=”wZ4mSBE3ip8″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Klown (2010) Prime

Dir: Mikkel Nørgaard | Cast: Frank Hvam, Casper Christiansen, Mia Lyhne, Iben Hjelje, Marcus Jess Petersen| Denmark, 89min Comedy

Dont’ listen to the po-faced critics who tell you this is ‘crass, unfunny or outrageous’ – it’s a bit of adult fun, even Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian’s trusty critic, was seen laughing out loud. You might think this Danish road comedy is going to be dire, then you’ll start to enjoy the ludicrous humour that touches on The Hangover – but much more ridiculous and real: A trip into strictly grown-up territory – so don’t take the kids – for once they can stay at home!

Frank (Frank Hyam) makes a geeky and unfanciable boyfriend for Mia (Mia Lyhne), prancing around in his y-fronts and a baseball cap. But when she discovers she’s pregnant, the time has come to settle down. Before making the final commitment, Frank plans a boys’ weekend of fun with his womanising married friend Caspar (Caspar Christiansen): A spot of canoeing and then canoodling with the local talent at a music festival and, to round off the trip, a visit to a friend’s upmarket brothel located in a fairytale castle. The only problem is that Frank has been left in charge of Bo, Mia’s 12-year-old nephew. This may be a chance to prove his fatherhood potential, or it could be a complete disaster. No prizes for guessing which one it turns out to be.

Apart from the totally inane humour, Klown is imaginatively set in the idyllic Danish summer countryside and there are some gloriously cinematic moments as they navigate the waterways of this beautiful part of Scandinavia. The brothel setting is like something out of Festen – location-wise, promising an evening of upmarket naughtiness and nastiness too. It’s watchable and convincing, written by Hyam and Christiansen: two of Denmark’s most popular stand-up comedians.

So off they go with one mishap leading to another. There’s not much of a storyline but instead you get a good hour of politically incorrect shenanigans and arch ribaldry on the river. With themes of male-bonding and female-bonding, the only bonding that doesn’t feature is bondage itself but there is a little scene that really hits the spot – you’ll either love it or hate it – but see it before the Hollywood re-make! MT

KLOWN IS OUT on PRIME VIDEO

Gerontophilia (2013) BFI FLare 2014

Director: Bruce LaBruce

Writer: Bruce La Bruce, Daniel Allen Cox

Cast: Pier-Gabriel Lajoie, Walter Borden, Katie Boland, Yardly Kavanagh

82min Comedy Romance Canada

A young lifeguard gets a hard-on while giving mouth-to-mouth to an elderly male swimmer, forcing him to re-assess his romantic intentions to his girlfriend, in Canadian arthouse director Bruce LaBruce’s tame trans-generational romance that dabbles in attitudes towards ageism.

Lake and his girlfriend Desirée (Kate Boland) seem a well-matched, happy couple, but Lake decides to explore his emerging fetish for older men by taking a job in the local care home, where he meets Melvin Peabody, an elegant and sophisticated man in his eighties. Shocked at the ageist attitudes towards its inmates, Lake’s growing affection for Melvin makes him determined to help him pursue his dream of visiting the Pacific Ocean.

Once on the road, Melvin emerges a flirty, vivacious character, while Lake morphs into his implausibly jealous boyfriend. Gerontophilia is tonally uncertain from start to finish, swinging from candid openness (in scenes with Desirée) to lukewarm humour and performances that feel equally ‘warmed through’. It toys with the subject of ageism but comes down firmly as a tale of misogyny with both the female leads appearing weak and directionless, and totally reliant on men for their kicks (“Woman is the Nigger of the World”).

As Lake, LaJoie is a bland boy threatened by his strangely mannish mother (Marie-Helene Thibault) who is rapidly heading off the rails. He plays hunky himbo to Katie Boland’s sparky Desirée, but when Ralph Borden’s Mr Peobody comes on the scene, he disappears completely behind the coquettish ‘queen of the road’ in a pairing which totally lacks sexual chemistry or intellectual spice. Clearly, Melvin Peobody is the father figure he never had because, if there is sex, it doesn’t happen here. LaBruce is so uncertain about these ‘non-happening’ pairings that he uses footage of stirring skylines and simmering sunsets attractively shot and accompanied by Ramachandra Borcar’s tuneful original sounds, in an effort to inject romance to the flagging storyline. It’s clear that Lake has some serious emotional issues, but GERONTOPHILIA is neither a meaningful gay romance or a particularly funny straight comedy. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI FLARE LGBT FILM FESTIVAL

Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) NOW ON DVD/BLU

Directors: Abdellatif Kechiche

Writers: Ghalia Lacroix and Abdellatif Kechiche

Main Actors: Léa Seydoux, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Jérémie Laheurte

179 mins French with English subtitles France Drama

On her way to meet her would-be boyfriend Thomas, Adèle passes a girl with bright blue hair in the street. The world seems to slow around her: Adèle is transfixed. In class, she has been discussing a passage in a book relating exactly to such fleeting glances, to love at first sight. Could this be what Adèle is experiencing? It certainly seems like it. It’s one of the weaker moments in Abdellatif Kechiche’s heart-breaking romantic drama, but it’s also a defining moment for Adèle.

During lunch with Thomas, Adèle will question whether it’s better to study books in class, or read them alone for pleasure. She likes to read, Thomas doesn’t. But later, when Adèle reconnects with the blue-haired girl – Emma – in a gay bar, we learn that her knowledge doesn’t extend to art. In fact, the only artist she knows is Picasso, in sharp contrast to Emma’s expansive knowledge as a Fine Art student. Their meeting in the bar seems, perhaps, a little too coincidental – but Emma doesn’t believe in chance, and maybe we shouldn’t either.

As a relationship begins to form between the two women, Adèle becomes uncomfortable around Emma’s friends, feeling she is not their equal culturally. Adèle might know literature, but not art or philosophy, and Emma’s knowledge in the latter area allows the girls a cover story: to Adèle’s parents, Emma is a friend who is helping her learn philosophy. There is truth in this alibi. Emma is broadening Adèle’s horizons: sexually, culturally and socially. Emma’s values, and her sense of freedom (both as a lesbian and as an artist), come from Sartre, who has taught her that humans are defined by their actions.

Sartre’s ideas, then, become the philosophical underpinning of a tale about the journey into womanhood, sexual awakening and the construction of human identities. Adèle’s reaction to Emma’s cultured friends mirrors her earlier conversations with Thomas, but with the tables turned. Culture and society form a part of who we are, who we become. As Adèle grows, becoming a woman, the film’s protracted duration allows Kechiche to leisurely build a detailed portrait, both of her personal development and her relationship with Emma – which Kechiche portrays with warmth, humour, drama and sex.

Julie Maroh, author of the graphic novel on which the film is based, has condemned the explicit nature of the sex scenes, labelling them ridiculous and unconvincing – and there’s certainly no denying that they are graphic and prolonged (their duration often seems excessive). At times, too, the camera lingers or pans over bodies in a gratuitous manner. When Emma teaches Adèle to enjoy the taste of shellfish, one can’t help but wonder if it’s all a cheap, sleazy metaphor.

But, the sex scenes aside, the film is a convincing and moving exploration of romance. Kechiche’s camera catches much of the action in close up and, if the visuals themselves at times seem rather unexceptional, the sterling work of lead actors Adèle Exarchopoulos (Adèle) and Léa Seydoux (Emma) more than makes up for it. The film’s original French title translates literally as Life of Adele: Chapters 1 + 2, and the thought of seeing further parts would be extremely tantalising, were it not for the reports of the ‘horrible’ experiences that Kechiche put his actors through on set. In response, Kechiche has even said the film shouldn’t be released, that it’s ‘too sullied’ – but that’s too far. The shoot may have been gruelling, but the results speak for themselves. Blue Is The Warmest Colour is a film that deserves to be seen. ALEX BARRETT

[youtube id=”IDHv7XMyA1c” width=”600″ height=”350″]

NOW OUT ON DVD BLU COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL EYE

Diana (2013) Now on DVD

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel

Writers: Stephen Jeffreys and Kate Snell

Cast: Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, Douglas Hodge, Geraldine James, Juliet Stevenson, Cas Anvar

103min Drama

So DIANA is now on DVD and the full horror of this sad ‘tribute’ can be viewed from the privacy of one’s own boudoir. Well, pour yourself a glass of late harvested Riesling and settle down with the girls for a couple of hours of noble rot. Purporting to represent the real face of the Princess behind the pages of ‘Hello’, it focuses on her relationship with heart surgeon, Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews). And what a travesty, in more ways than one. Portraying Diana as a simpering, eyelash fluttering heiress (a nineties ‘Made in Chelsea’ one at that), Naomi Watts completely fails to convey the allure of a woman whose innate style and bearing conquered the hearts and minds of millions all over the World. Dressed in ASOS meets Country Casuals, she scuttles around giggling and blushing, like a skittish teenage ingénue, completely in awe of her surroundings during hospital visits and awkward in public appearances when posing on the international stage.

With his dark, sultry magnetism, Naveen Andrews looks the part but has nothing to work with but a stilted script full of trite clichés (“if I marry you I marry the whole World”). Their sexual chemistry is as tantric as tea with the Vicar, yet this man is supposed to be her sexual nirvana after years in the sack of jug-eared clumsiness (“I love it when you put your hand there”). Sofa suppers in front of ‘Casualty’ (as if!) and cosy trips in his Ford Mondeo to the seaside (at least give him a Saab): feel like excerpts in the life of Kevin and Janice from Staines not a recherché couple with grace and breeding. Geraldine James and Juliet Stevenson are believable and well-cast as her kindly therapists, but the episode in Pakistan just feels implausible. When things fall apart, Diana comes across as irritated and defensive rather than emotionally devastated although Andrews manages some tear-jerking ‘can’t live with you, can’t live without you’ pathos. As Diana walks away from love and rebounds into the swarthy arms of Dodi, she creeps back into her Cancerian shell only to emerge a hard-edged, manipulator of men and the media, on his yacht. Shame that one so talented as Oliver Hirshbiegel (Downfall) should put his name to this clunky cable TV crud. MT

DIANA IS OUT ON DVD FROM 24 MARCH 2014

Le Mani sulla Citta (1963) Hands Over the City

HANDS OVER THE CITY (Le Mani sulla citta)

Dir. Francesco Rosi; Cast: Rod Steiger, Salvo Randole, Guido Alberti, Carlo Fermarielli

Italy 1963, 105 min.

In one of the finest political dramas ever made, Francesco Rosi exposes the unscrupulous culture of civic corruption in post-war Naples, still endemic and universal today within the corridors of power.

After a panoramic view of Naples, we see Eduardo Nottola (Rod Steiger), a land speculator and owner of a big building company in Naples, explaining to Maglione, mayor of the city, the benefits of a new development at the outskirts of the city. Nottola holds up his hands and tells Maglione the profit margins, which he will share with him and the Christian Democrats, for whom he sits as a councillor on the city council. The next hands stretched up belong to the councillors of the CD, who are defending Nottola against a few communist councillors, who accuse him of responsibility for the death of two people, after one of the old buildings, which stands next to one of his new projects, collapses because of the pneumatic drills used for the foundations of the adjacent site. The Liberals, under the leadership of Professor De Angelis, join the communist, but it turns out that it was only a manoeuvre for the forthcoming election: the Liberals are the strongest party, but need the CD, so a bargain is struck: Nottola, who has joined the Liberals, will become the new Commissioner responsible for all building works in the city, after De Angelis promises Maglione, who had fallen out with Nottola for personal reasons, a share in the forthcoming profits of the new city development. The film ends with another panoramic overview of the city: it can sleep peacefully under the protecting hands of its leading citizens.

HANDS OVER THE CITY is not a film about Mafiosi, but about people who only have their own interests at heart. The politicians including de Vita, the leader of the communists, are only concerned with winning elections – the rest is talk. All parties are part of the system. And they need a powerful figure like Nottola, to make things happen. He is rightfully not shown as evil, but as part of a pseudo-democratic system, which excludes the majority of citizens. The new buildings Nottola is so proud of, are not for the inhabitants of the slum buildings he is demolishing – they are being ferried out on lorries to just another slum further away from the city centre. And the two victims of the accident are just footnotes, whilst the little boy, who has lost his legs in the accident, is being groomed as a beneficiary of the public health system, which otherwise is as underfunded as the rest of the public services – whilst Maglione is showing off his sumptuous art treasures to a friend.

Rod Steiger dominates the film, not only physically but emotionally. Whilst being critical, Rosi shows him as a tiger among hyenas. He paces the rooms, uses the telephone like a weapon as he barks orders and is not afraid to scarify his own son, who was in charge of the site where the accident occured. The politicians are greedy and self-seeking, but they don’t want to get their hands dirty. Camera work and music have all the elements of a thriller: the politicians are shown as conspirators, who hide in dark corners, afraid of Nottola and their own shadows. The music underlines the noir atmosphere, always threatening and dissonant. AS

[youtube id=” [youtube id=”wzUuYXJmBKg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

LE MANI SULLA CITTA IS NOW ON DUAL FORMAT (BLU-RAY AND DVD) AS PART OF AWARD-WINNING MASTERS OF CINEMA SERIES ON EUREKA FROM 31 MARCH 2014

The Machine (2014)

THE MACHINE is one of those stylish sci-fi thrillers worth searching out even if you ‘hate’ sci-fi. When you see Toby Stevens and Denis Lawson amongst the cast, you know things are going to be alright. With a hidden heart (albeit one of steel) and set against a plausibly futuristic cold war scenario with China, a human story plays out where intelligent robots are being secretly developed to fight the good fight not just the antagonistic, violent one.

Working with a palette of subdued metallic greys and chilling backlighting, director Caradog James compliments his foray into the imagined unknown with an electronic score that crystallise this ‘retro’ brave New World, evoking a dazzlingly sinister ambience despite a low budget. The script is also rather clever in that it leaves a great deal to our imagination almost leading us to believe that the future can be bright, even though it’s a cold-eyed brightness.

In this second feature from British writer and director Caradog James, Toby Stevens plays Dr Vincent McCarthy, a rather soigné engineer who designs brain implants for injured soldiers at the Ministry of Defence. Behind his noble facade there lurks a nagging sadness over his daughter’s deteriorating mental illness, and he’s secretly hoping to find her a cure, utilising the funds of the MoD. There are concerns regarding the ethical aspect of his work for the Government but he’s prepared to turn a blind eye to all this in the public interests until a rather appealing new scientist joins the team in the shape of Caity Lotz who manages to be both appealing and restrained as Ava. An engineer and designer in her own right, she has developed a clever AI robot that beats as it sweeps: building knowledge from its human interactions. She’s also an attractive blonde and with Dr McCarthy, the chemistry crackles, and we’re not just talking about neurones. Her expertise compliments Dr McCarthy’s ability to create lifelike bodies endowed with bionic strength so seemingly they’re home and dry with a solution. The problem is we’re only halfway into the action. And matters take a sinister turn when Ava is fatally injured. Wracked with anguish, Dr McCarthy’s morals take a nose dive as he decides to use her brain power to flesh-out his artificial bodies and create an android clone aka ‘The Machine’. But there’s a twist in the tale and it involves his draconian boss Thomson – enter Denis Lawson. MT

THE MACHINE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM from 21 March with a Blu-Ray and DVD release from 31 March 2014

[youtube id=”wF6l4LAmN8A” width=”600″ height=”350″]

War (2002) Voyna Alexsei Balabanov Series

Director/Writer: Aleksei Balabanov

Cast: Sergei Chadov, Ian Kelly, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Sergei Bodrov, Giorgi Gurgalia, Evklid Kyurdzidis

120min Russian with English subtitles Drama

There is an upbeat cynicism to Aleksei Balabanov’s tale of Chechen gangsters that feels bracingly authentic and unashamedly pragmatic. Tightly-plotted yet unpredictable, the story unfolds from the interrogation cell of Ivan Yermakov (Sergei Chadov), a Russian soldier who has returned from a mission to release English and Russian hostages taken by Chechen rebels in the aftermath of the fall of Grozny in 2000.

Amongst the captives is John Boyle (Ian Kelly), an effete, almost comical, whingeing British actor (think a ginger John Cleese), who has been touring with a Shakespeare play and his girlfriend Margaret (a fabulously stoical Ingeborga Dapkunallit); Russian, Captain Medvedev (Sergei Bodrov) and a Jewish businessman.

After the ritual decapitation of an unnamed Russian soldier (to cries of “Allah Akhbar” and actual audio footage from a internet video), the hostages are finally taken away and holed up in a remote mountain enclave. But the gangster leader, Aslan Gugayev (a fiercely convincing Giorgi Gurgulia), wants money from the West and so releases John, sending him off to London to raise the ransom of £2 million. Failure will result in Margaret’s death although once in Whitehall, John predictably draws a blank with the ‘powers that be’, both Russian and British. Then an executive from Channel 4 offers to put up £200K in return for John’s video footage of the mission. A further £400k comes from John’s own coffers.

Sergei Chadov’s debut is a quietly stunning portrayal of Sergeant Ivan: canny, sardonic and impeccably organised with a cigarette rarely out of his mouth, he leaves a grim postwar future in his home town of Tobolsk, but his decision to accompany John back to Chechnya is swayed more by a sense of national duty to Captain Ruslan and his family than the prospect of being compensated for his efforts by a slice of John’s cash. And although John appears weak and ineffectual, when the chips are down he makes a wise choice in hiring the honest and reliable Ivan, who emerges a figure worthy of national pride and heroism. Through shrewd decision-making and gung-ho aplomb, the pair make their way back via Vladikavkaz (for equipment), later enlisting the help of Chechen shepherd Ruslan (Evklid Kyurdzidis), a rival of Aslan’s tribe, who is kept under the cosh by Ivan but whose knowledge of Chechen mores proves invaluable on their final leg of the journey back to the Chechen camp to do business with the gangster rebels.

Dark humour seeps through the stark realism of this satisfying story; well-told, brilliantly put together and easy to follow in its straightforward narrative structure. The only sadness is that Aleksei Balabanov won’t be telling anymore stories from the rich and eventful history of his native Russia. MT

[youtube id=”mrSBq4umFKI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

WAR IS PART OF THE ALEKSEI BALABANOV SERIES AT THE SLOVO FESTIVAL, WHICH RUNS COURTESY OF ACADEMIA ROSSICA DURING FEBRUARY AND MARCH 2014. FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME VISIT the Website

Yves Saint Laurent (2014) Netflix

Dir: Jalil Lespert | Wri: Laurence Benaiim, Jacques Fieschi, Marie-Pierre Huster, Jalil Lespert | Cast: Pierre Niney, Guillaume Gallienne, Charlotte Le Bon, Laura Smet, Marie de Villepin, Nikolai Kinski, Marianne Basler | France, Biopic drama 104′

The legendary designer and couturier, Yves Saint Laurent, had two biopics dedicated to him in 2014. The first is this one from actor turned director Jalil Lespert, the second is Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent.which won the Palme Dog at Cannes for Best Doggy Death scene played by pooch Moujik.

For fifty years YSL was the creative force that shaped the International fashion scene with designs celebrating haute couture and paving the way for prêt-à-porter to gain respectability for those with more dash than cash.

Lespert takes the first (and most significant) part of YSL’s career, which deals with his rise to fame; his significant relationship with his business partner, Pierre Bergé, and his emotional decline. This biopic is meticulously-crafted in conveying the importance of style and correct dressing, epitomising French style through wearable elegance. The film features his immaculate designs and particularly his appreciation of the female body in celebrating voluptuous curves and waists (his sister and mother modelled for him in the early days) unlike Chanel whose boxy designs focused on a more gamine look, highlighted by Audrey Hepburn.

After a childhood in Algeria, then a French colony, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent moved to Paris to study fashion design. The film opens in 1953, as Christian Dior appoints him in-house designer. After a dalliance with one of the favourite in-house models (Charlotte Le Bon), he falls for Pierre Bergé (Guillaume Gallienne), who is to become his business partner and the love of his life.

On Dior’s sudden death, he is drafted into the army but escapes conscription in Algeria, on emotional grounds. The House of Dior then sacks him and YSL takes them to court, and wins. Lespert’s film works best in these early years when it deals with YSL’s perfectionist nature and his appreciation of the impeccable professionalism surrounding French design standards, and the seriousness with which the French treat the industry.

Lespert is also at pains to flesh-out his struggle with homosexuality in fifties France, and illustrates how Pierre Bergé was such a vital partner, providing a business brain and an emotional anchor due to their strong chemistry; showing how this was a compatible love match not just a sexual exploit, and also how the two strayed from their relationship, eventually making it stronger.

After they form their own fashion house, YSL moves with the times developing a groundbreaking prét-a-porter collection that responded to a new generation with sportier and more sexy, shape-flattering clothes for women such as the ‘Le Smoking’, thigh boots, tight trousers and swaggeringly sophisticated trouser suits.

Stylish to look at, the film follows the couture shows on the catwalk, charting how the collections developed creatively demonstrating the importance of business acumen in the face of growing competition from the likes of Courrèges in the late sixties. As the brand grows in profile, the couple consort with the Jet Set, moving between Paris and Marrakech where the drama loosens up as an exotic twist tracks Saint-Laurent’s louche descent into drugs and alcohol – a reaction to his stiff upbringing and Bergen’s controlling influence. This segment also deals with Yves’ friendships with Loulou de la Falaise and Nicole Dorier and also his pioneering fascination with non-white models and ethnic designs, and this is accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack of hits from the era. The narrative then wanders into more predictable ’sex, drugs and rock-roll’ territory rather than exploring Saint Laurent’s more personal love life.

Guillaume Gallienne is spectacular as Pierre Bergé, evoking not only his acute business and PR skill and in-depth understanding of Saint-Laurent, but also his aching desire to be seen as more than just a business man; and this shows through in Marrakech when his stiff style is at odds with the other relaxed creatives hanging out there. Pierre Niney physically inhabits the role of Yves-Saint-Laurent. Not only does he look like the designer but he also embodies his volatility to perfection: his acute shyness in myriad expressions of painful anguish, mercurial anger and also his dignified restraint.

The film ends abruptly but perhaps at best the possible juncture for Saint Laurent as the later years of his life were less ground-breaking than his rise to fame. On reflection, a more in-depth examination of the earlier years would have made more fascinating viewing from a fashion point of view, with less of the repetitive drug-fuelled years which reveal nothing out of the ordinary, but create dramatic heft. Lespert’s film is at its best when charting the fashion scene of the fifties and early sixties and his family influences. Watching Pierre Niney, though, you cannot help but feel you’re in the presence of the great designer himself. MT

YVES SAINT LAURENT IS ON DVD and NETFLIX

Salvo (2013) Semaine de la Critique 2013

SALVO wastes no time in getting down to the gritty business of assassination. Hit man Saleh Bakri (Salvo) kills his rival, Renato, in the stunning opening of this action thriller which then rams on the breaks and becomes a slow-burning story of redemption (five years in the making). The scorching Sicilian heat permeates every frame of Grassadonia and Piazza’s intense debut that turns its attention to the dead man’s visually-challenged sister, Rita (Sara Serraiocco), who is quietly awaiting his return at home.

Daniele Cipri (It Was the Son) is behind the lens of an exquisitely-executed long-take, ratcheting up the tension as it watches Rita going about her duties inside the darkened house as Salvo breaks in and tracks her down. Holding her hostage in a disused lock-up, he transforms her life into a bewildering nightmare of vaguely moving shapes. Has the trauma caused to her to regain sight or did she simply have extremely poor vision?: this is sadly unclear but Salvo becomes obsessed with his helpless captive gradually mending his former ways, as if out of respect for suffering. In a quirky twist, he also becomes the focus of an eccentric couple (Giuditta Perriera and Luigi Lo Cascio) who give him board and lodging in a seedy side of town, injecting texture and offbeat humour.

With a judicious use of silence and limited dialogue, SALVO has some clever ideas and a brilliant starting point, but the narrative flatlines in the second half and never really peaks again despite some interesting twists and turns. Bakri is superb as Salvo, a criminal with a fascinating modus operandi, and Daniele Cipri’s cinematography is a joy to behold. MT

SALVO IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 21 MARCH 2014 THROUGH PECCADILLO PICTURES.

[youtube id=”aZ897EDK_wQ” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Meteora (2012) Now on DVD

METEORA is a densely mountainous region in central Greece. Steeped in ancient history, it’s best known for its medieval Orthodox monasteries that cling miraculously to the peaks. In one such holy setting, filmmaker Spiros Stathoulopoulos’s part-animated drama imagines a love affair between a young lustful monk and his courtship with a nun in the convent on the opposite mountain-side. Making a perilous journey each day from their precarious perches they embark on an affair made all the more exciting by its illicit and dangerous nature.

Spiros Stathoulopoulos uses delicately rendered animations of icons and religious motifs to illustrate his narrative conveying guilt, desire and inner conflict: the struggle of man against the strictures imposed by his pious maker serve to heighten the eroticism of their clandestine meetings which take place in sun-baked fields nearby, over a well-lubricated ‘dejeuner sur l’herbe’.

A million miles away from the Greek New Wave, hovering between the sacred and profane (in tone as well as concept), METEORA feels like a legend from an illuminated manuscript that bursts into life in the arid heat of its heady summer setting, as the lovers finally unite. Fraught with images of desire and damnation, it references classical mythology and biblical events that are cleverly interwoven into the narrative (The Minotaur and Theseus, Christ’s crucifixion). Theodor (Theo Alexander/True Blood) and Urania (Tamila Kulieva) radiate strong sexual chemistry as they stray from cloistered celibacy to unbridled fornication in scenes reminiscent of Ken Russell’s The Devils or Dominic Moll’s The Monk. Ultimately the message is a simple one: we’re all sinners in the eyes of God and this makes carnal love all the more appealing. Despite some tonal shifts, the overall vibe is serene, slow-burning and sultry and suitably scored by music from the Middle Ages, including Perotin’s ‘Viderunt Omnes’. MT

[youtube id=”OKvUU7Ml4LY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

METEORA IS RELEASED ON DVD ON 23 MARCH 2014

The Zero Theorum (2013) Venice 2013

Director: Terry Gilliam

Cast: Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, David Thewlis, Melanie Thierry, Matt Damon, Lucas Hodges

107min Fantasy Drama UK

Terry Gilliam is back with a psychedelic mish-mash of mysogyny and male musings: THE ZERO THEORUM is a mathematical formula that seeks to determine whether life has meaning, as seen through the eyes of Christophe Waltz’s middle-aged geek in a dystopian town of the future. Waltz is both perplexed and benign in the role as he’s badgered to settle down and marry by Melanie Thierry’s blonde piece of fluff who taunts him to commit in various states of undress (a typical male fantasy from the warped mind of a commitment-phobe). Gilliam’s fantasy drama explores the nightmare of online, corporate Hell so just hope that we never get there. Despite some creative flourishes in the Art department THE ZERO THEORUM is puerile, repetitive and overlong. An acquired taste that will divide audiences: I’d give it a miss unless you love his films. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14 MARCH 2014

Boys on Film 11 – We Are Animals Now on DVD VOD

BOYS ON FILM is an ongoing DVD series offering a selection of daring and diverse LGBT drama shorts from all over the World. These pithy and poignant peeks attempt to challenge and explore sexuality from differing points of view. The eleventh bumper edition is particularly interesting on trans-generational relationships. THREE SUMMERS: a daring and unlikely love story emerges when a divorced woman gets to know a teenage boy developing over the course of three years (Denmark, 28min); the groundbreaking issue of physical disability is tackled in FOR DORIAN: that deals sensitively with the nascent sexuality of a Down’s Syndrome boy, seen from the perspective of his father (Canada, 16min) and LITTLE MAN; a physiological drama that centres on 30 year-old Elliot and his track record of emotional avoidance and uneasy relationships with his older brother and the strange man next door (by award-winning Israeli director Eldar Rapaport (AUGUST).

OUT ON DVD FROM 10 MARCH 2014

[youtube id=”QjbaHMkVNiE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Rome, Open City (1946) NEW 4k restoration

Director: Roberto Rossellini
Script: Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini
Producers: Guiseppe Amato, Ferrucio De Martino, Rod E Geiger, Roberto Rossellini
Cast: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcelo Pagliero, Vito Annichiarico, Nando Bruno, Harry Feist, Giovanna Galletti

103mins War film Italian with subtitles

In 1944 Italy there was, understandably, no film industry or indeed any money. Despite this, Roberto Rossellini had persuaded a wealthy woman to finance a documentary about a priest who had helped with the resistance. She was also interested in telling another story of the children who fought for the resistance.

Rossellini approached Fellini with the ambition of casting Fabrizi for the role of the priest, but Fellini came up with the idea of combining these two documentary strands into one fictional movie and they set about writing the piece with Amidei, just two months after the Germans vacated Italy.

Based on factual events of 1944 and filmed in Rome directly after the war, Roberto Rossellini’s masterpiece stands as one of the greatest war films ever made. Handheld camera, shot almost entirely on location: Rome, Open City is another superb offering from the Italian Neo-Realist stable. The hatred of the Germans and the freshness of the atrocities is palpable in all of the non-professional actors serving justice to this story; where one is never in any doubt about the authenticity of the mise en scene. Presumably a cathartic experience for all involved.

As the Nazi net closes in, more by luck than judgement, resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is forced into hiding, entirely dependent on the kindness and assistance of friends and colleagues. However, the stresses and strains on the whole community inevitably begin to show, where what normally might be seen as easy neighbourliness, during wartime becomes a matter of life and death.

One of the things that is remarkable here is Rossellini’s ability to find sublime humour in the darkest of moments. And there’s nothing quite like a war movie, with Nazis as the baddies exerting unbearable pressure, to extract the most extreme jeopardy and distress. The human condition is under the microscope and with this kind of duress, everyone’s character and resolve is forced to the fore; the subjugator as much as the subjugated.

[youtube id=”h3_6NSdqWgs” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Anna Magnani has a quite wonderful role as the feisty pregnant Pina, who lives life with a passionate vibrancy that seems to epitomise Italy. But it’s interesting to note that both she and Fabrizi, the only professionals in the film, were, up to that time, well known only for their comedy, this being their first foray into serious drama.

Rossellini was a trailblazer in a great many ways, not only in the casting, but also in the manner in which he ignored the script that the financiers had agreed to and simply went out and shot the film he wanted to make. Rossellini had had terrible trouble financing it; the money he already had from his initial investor wasn’t sufficient to cover the whole budget, but other potential investors shied away from a film with scenes of torture, wondering who in their right minds would go and see it, so it was shot on the hoof very much out of necessity than design.

Upon its completion, Paris lauded the film, but the premier in Italy was a catastrophe, audiences perhaps understandably wanting more escapism than the grim realities of what they had just been through. US soldier Rod Geiger then took it to the US, where the film made a fortune for the distributor and also opened American doors to Italian Neo-Realist films. It was only by gaining a reputation abroad, winning the Grand Prix at Cannes, that Rome, Open City gained more acceptance at home.

A massive achievement and a landmark film, that, like so many recognised classics, gained its reputation in the years long after a less than stellar launch. But even if you disregard its significance as a piece of cinematic history, or the innovations on filmmaking, just see this film as a truly amazing and passionate piece of storytelling. It’s got all you could wish for: Nazis, suave resistance fighters, beautiful women, plucky kids, homemade bombs, espionage, religion and Rome. You cannot fail to be moved. Andrew Rajan.

THE 4K RESTORATION OF ROME, OPEN CITY OPENS ON 7 MARCH 2014 AT THE BFI, CURZON MAYFAIR, IFI DUBLIN AND SELECTED CINEMAS NATIONWIDE.

Derek Jarman Retrospective at the BFI February – March 2014

DEREK JARMAN

Two events are celebrating Derek Jarman in London in 2014. “Pandemonium” Exhibition at Somerset House, WC2 and a Retrospective at the BFI 5.2. – 31.3.)

Derek Jarman died twenty years ago at the age of 52 but was undoubtedly the most innovative director of the British cinema in the second half of the 20^th century and arguably the greatest visionary since Michael Powell. His films are always the opposite of the traditional English ‘masterpieces’ featuring the heroes of the past – he turned the glorious history into a macabre sideshow. And he was obsessed with death, from the very beginning. And death never comes easy to Jarman’s heroes: SEBASTIANE, the title hero of his first feature (co-directed by Paul Humfress in 1976), dies a slow, agonising death, bound to face the penetrating arrows of his torturers. Needless to say, that for Jarman, Sebastiane was not a Christian martyr, but a gay anti-hero. Ten years later it is the turn of another title hero, the painter CARAVAGGIO to die a horrible fever death in black and blue. The youthful hero in THE LAST OF ENGLAND (1987) dies a small, dirty little death. And death rules the WAR REQUIEM (1988), this time in glowing pink. Laurence Olivier in a wheelchair, as a war hero in his last film role. And in between shots of bombing raids by Jarman’s pilot-father, which he took with his camera in WWII.

In EDWARD II (1991) the title hero perishes with a red hot poker in his rectum – in the arms of his tender murderer, whilst Annie Lennox sings Cole Porter’s “Every time we say goodbye, we die a little”. Jarman always re-mastered the originals of the classics into something demonic, obscene and really evil: He transformed the magic island from Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST (1979) into an labyrinth of terror, and the Sonnets of the Bard into a witch’s Sabbath in THE ANGELIC CONVERSATIONS (1985). And he shows contemporary England – JUBILEE (1977 and the aptly titled THE LAST OF ENGLAND – as an island out of hell – just the opposite of what Margaret Thatcher, with her ideas of a strong, back-to-the-Empire orientated country, had in mind. And Jarman’s own death, foretold with BLUE a year before he died, blind from the medications which did not cure Aids, but a peaceful BLUE nevertheless: a final work without pictures, just words. It is the viewer, who projects his pictures on this film – not uncommon for Jarman’s work, since he was always more interested in the creative process than the result: “The end-product is not important, it is only the witness of a creative process”.

Jarman studied painting at the Slade School in London, but his interest in stage design made him collaborate with the Royal Ballet and the ENO. His first work for the cinema was the Production Design for Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS (1970). Then he wandered around London with his ‘Super 8” camera – home movies, but also first documents of the gay community. The difference between fiction and documentation did not exist for Jarman. “Life is Art”, the title of a documentary about Jarman by Andy Klimpton (they met first in the early 80s) is by far the best description of Jarman’s life and work. His garden and wooden cottage near Dungeness was his last refuge, much more than a hobby. Four years after being diagnosed with aids in 1986 THE GARDEN shows a gay couple, being seemingly senseless tortured and murdered, whilst a Madonna (Tilda Swinton) is harassed by paparazzis, Jesus looks on painfully and Judas’ death is exploited as an advertisement for credit cards.

THE LAST OF ENGLAND is perhaps the best example of Jarman’s work, because it is as personal as it is political. The ‘home movie’ fragments, which his father and grandfather shot, show the small world from which Derek was going to escape. We see innocence, but it is only superficial – the “Kodak” family always smiles. But behind the smiles is the soldier father, who repressed his children. When we see little Derek playing ball, the innocence is undercut by the security fences, and we also hear the noise of the war planes in background. Cut to the scenes in Brixton, where police and demonstrators show a new meaning of war: the total civil war. It is a dark portrait of a nation rotting away. If one thinks of an equivalent in literature, one would choose Baudrillard’s “Kool killer”. The apocalypse is already here, it is happening before our very eyes. The present as future, Science Fiction as the new reality. As proven in JUBILEE, where Elizabeth I asks her court magician to show her the future of her domain, 400 years on, during the reign of Elizabeth II.

In DEREK (2008) a homage to Jarman, by Isaac Julien and Bernhard Rose, Jarman’s muse, the actress Tilda Swinton (‘Caravaggio’, The last of England’, War Requiem’, ‘The Garden’, Edward II’ and ‘Blue’) reads her ‘letter’ to Jarman ‘in the sky’. She misses his contra-poison to the disco-light of a culture where everything is for sale. And: “Derek, this is what made you a real artist – you worked from your ‘soup kitchen’, which was your life” And in this ‘soup kitchen’ the private, the intimate and the public life touched each other, present and history. Jarman never wanted to build borders between these spheres. Like the painter Caravaggio, who painted a Madonna like a prostitute, and holy men as rent boys.

Derek Jarman was not only a leading figure of the independent British film but also of the gay movement. He fought energetically against Thatcher’s anti-gay policies, like the Paragraph 28, which forbade any information in schools about homosexuality. He was a creative figure, a dreamer, an eccentric and a militant poet with his brush and his Super 8 camera. He was a minimalist too, his WITTGENSTEIN (1993) was shot against a black background. And it is no accident, that the philosopher Wittgenstein, one of Jarman’s heroes, said “that philosophy ought to be written as if it was poetry.” Derek Jarman’s films were always poems, close to the heart. AS

[youtube id=”xddcSuzCrvg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

DEREK JARMAN RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI, SOUTHBANK, LONDON SE1 UNTIL MARCH 31, 2014

Still Alice (2014)

Directors/Writers: Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland From a novel by Lisa Genova

Cast: Julianne Moore, Alex Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish

99min US Drama

In an extraordinary year for films about dread diseases, we’ve seen some superb performances so far: Agyness Deyn plays an epilepsy sufferer in ELECTRICITY, and Eddie Redmayne is heading for an Oscar with his portrait of Motor Neurone Disease in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING. Now along come Julianne Moore, with another winning performance to add to her growing list of best actress gongs.

As a fifty-year-old university professor diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in STILL ALICE, Moore is superb. Cleverly, the film incorporates a generalised and gnawing sense of dread throughout the rest of the cast when we learn that isn’t just early onset, it’s a rare genetic type with a 50/50 chance it will be passed to her children. With a daughter undergoing fertility treatment, which successfully leads to twins, Alice’s affliction leads to a wider sense of dread as the narrative unspools; pulling each member of the family into its web of fear and anxiety. Ironically, Alice and her husband, Dr John Howland (Alex Baldwin), are neuroscientists who specialise in the study of memory. So Alice has the added insight into her condition as it slowly develops.

Alzheimer’s is a condition that everyone fears and part of that fear lies in the loss of control it entails. From being responsible and free individuals we are gradually forced to rely more heavily on our families and, for many of us, this is an added aspect for concern in this world of family dysfunction. STILL ALICE ramps up these fears in quite a sinister way by also exploring how Alzheimer’s is worse when it effects the intellectual mind. These are facts that make the film much more depressing than it needs to be but strangely it fails to be move in the same way as THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, and for most of the time, it comes across as a film that been made for the Alzheimer’s Society or some Government body.

Undoubtedly, we feel for Alice – it would be inhuman not too, and Julianne Moore depicts her decline in a sensitive and gentle way: where she could have been more angry and bitter, she comes across as appealingly vulnerable. Yet the other characters feels vapid and rather formulaic and the film’s straightforward linear narrative fails to contrast its central story with other engaging narrative strands, making it ultimately feel one dimensional. Alex Baldwin, as her husband is simply terrible. Not only is he weirdly wooden, but it also feels like he’s actually acting in another film (Sleeping With the Enemy) as a break-out psychopath control freak. As her youngest daughter (Lydia) Kristen Stewart is cold-eyed and awkward throughout – and totally lacking in the empathy that you would expect from her character’s role as a budding actress. Kate Bosworth, her eldest daughter, feels flat and uninteresting. Unlike her intellectual parents she behaves like a woman who spends most of her days shopping and reading magazines and this feels totally unauthentic, in the circumstances. So Moore is left to carry the film entirely on her own shoulders, surrounded by a support cast who are, at best, vapid cyphers, and at worst, unappealing. STILL ALICE fills you with a sense of unremittingly gloom throughout; totally unleavened by humour or even pathos.

Alzheimer’s disease currently effects around a million people in the UK. Little is still known about its aetiology and care facilities are poor and underdeveloped. When it strikes, it gradually obliterates our personalities and woe betide those who lack a significant other to look after them as they become increasingly difficult to handle: and they will be. Here we see a woman who has had a successful life and is surrounded by a loving and supportive family. But it totally lacks any humour or, indeed, drama, concentrating on the romantic cheesiness of Alice and her husband and the worthiness of her ‘close’ family., none of which feels particularly believable. As an American film, it may well be that care is fare superior in the States than in Britain. But here the standard of treatment and care is currently pitiful. Where STILL ALICE succeeds is in showing how the individual can cope with the slow decline by taking some early precautions. Alice writes notes to herself on her computer desk top – to be opened when things eventually get worse. It also offers the idea of memory tests: we see Alice performing these exercises daily; keeping her cognitive impairment from going downhill too rapidly. Expounding the benefits of diet and exercise which can nourish the brain.

So, apart from Julianne Moore’s breakout performance, which won her the Best Actress at the 87th Academy Awards, and bringing the plight of sufferers to the international stage, STILL ALICE is otherwise a lacklustre drama which fails to convince, largely down to the unconvincing performances of the support cast. Alzheimer’s is one of the most devastating afflictions of our times and it would churlish to deprecate a film that aims sensitively to raise awareness of its the tragic effects it wreaks on the individual and those that care for them. Nonetheless this is a film that feels worthy and earnest and fails to deliver any great dramatic punch. But it’s nt a film to go and watch when you’re feeling low or lonely or in need of entertainment. It will bring you down, so be warned. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE

Gravity (2013) Oscar for Best Director ON DVD/BLU

DIRECTOR: ALFONSO CUARON WRITERS; ALFONSO AND JONAS CUARON

Cast: George Clooney, Sandra Bullock

USA 90min Thriller

2014 OSCAR FOR BEST DIRECTING; FILM EDITING; ORIGINAL SCORE; SOUND MIXING; SOUND-EDITING; VISUAL EFFECTS

Seven years after Children of Men, Mexican Director Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY 3D swirled silently into Venice with a distant murmur of astronauts talking via satellite in space. George Clooney (Matt Kowalksy) gradually floats into view, as sauve in a space-suit as he is in Gucci tailoring. With his co-pilot Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), he injects much-needed humour into this claustrophobic but technically brilliant sci-fi drama that follows a stricken space-ship as it floats towards the Earth’s orbit with its surviving astronauts. The pair float helplessly amid a welter of emotionally-charged memories of the World they left behind. A pithy script and Emmanuel Lubezki’s ethereal visuals make this a worthwhile experience for the art house crowd and well as blockbuster fans and Sandra Bullock is surprisingly moving as a co-pilot who has nothing left to live for but every reason to survive.. MT

GRAVITY IS ON DVD/BLU FROM 4 MARCH 2014

Dangerous Liaisons (2012) Pan-Asia Film Festival 2014

Dangerous Liaisons (2012) Jin-Ho Hur

Do we really need another adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’s 18^th Century French novel? Yes we do when it stars Ziyi Zhang in a ravishingly romantic Chinese-Korean version filmed in 1930s Shanghai, at its glamorous heyday. Much celebrated as an alluring film location for dramas such as Lust, Caution and The White Countess and Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, Shanghai adds a touch of piquant charm to a story that has over the centuries enjoyed universal appeal. The Oriental twist works particularly well with the sumptuous fashions of the era, echoing Shanghai’s exotic wartime alias “Paris of the East”. Jin-Ho Hur’s luxurious imagining is a visually alluring affair (at times a little too dazzling and overdone) boasting possibly the most attractive ensemble cast in the history of film. Several film versions of the epistolary novel also exist, possibly the most successful is the 1988 outing by Stephen Frears, but this is a worthwhile addition.

A lothario and his machiavellian ex-lover indulge in naughty power play intending to taint the innocence of young members of their coterie. Here, Jang Dong-gun plays a suave heartbreaker in the role of Xie Yifan and Cecilia Cheung is delicately coquettish as his sparring partner, Mo Jieyu. Ziyi Zhang brings integrity to the role of the coy young widow who they inveigle into their vengeful trap. The performances here are light and dainty rather than dark and dastardly and the tone is very much soap opera rather than serious drama. Nevertheless, it’s highly entertaining and watchable and at just under two hours, only slightly overstays its polite but increasingly anodyne welcome: the repetition of the name BeiBei. although well-played by Candy Wang, starts to grate eventually. Very much a case of ‘all that glisters is not gold’ but a decent gem, all the same.

SCREENING DURING THE PAN-ASIA FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON 26 FEBRUARY TO 9 MARCH 2014

CINEMA made in Italy 5-9 March 2014

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY is at the Ciné Lumière in South Kensington from 5 – 9 March, giving Londoners an opportunity to see the latest Italian films that may not go on general release. Screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with directors and actors. The five day annual event is organised by Istituto Luce – Cinecittà’s promotional department in Rome (Filmitalia), and the Italian Cultural Institute in London. This year’s line-up includes eleven feature films and one documentary. We recommend:

VIVA LA LIBERTÀ by Roberto Andò

THOSE HAPPY YEARS (Anni Felici) by Daniele Luchetti

HOW STRANGE TO BE CALLED FEDERICO! (Che Strano Chiamarsi Federico!) by Ettore Scola

THE REFEREE (L’Arbitro) by Paolo Zucca

BORDER by Alessio Cremonini

ZORAN, MY NEPHEW THE IDIOT (Zoran, Il Mio Nipote Scemo) by Matteo Oleotto

THE FIFTH WHEEL (L’Ultima Ruota del Carro) by Giovanni Veronesi

THE THIRD HALF (Il Terzo Tempo) by Enrico Maria Artale

THE HUMAN FACTOR (La Variabile Umana) by Bruno Oliviero

FIRST SNOWFALL (La Prima Neve) by Andrea Segre

OFF ROAD (Fuoristrada) by Elisa Amoruso

Full Programme details

Oscar Winners | 86th Academy Awards 2014 | Foreign Language

So, LA GRANDE BELLEZZA wins the Oscar placing Paolo Sorrentino firmly on the international map. The Oscars are not all about the big studios and the blockbusters: The archaically-named “Foreign-Language Section” was full of fascinating dramas from all corners of the Globe from Hungary to Cambodia. After disappointment for WADJDA and BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR, who didn’t make the list – let’s look back at the films that competing in the year’s race to the Red Carpet.

Hong Kong director: Wong Ka Wai will present The Grandmaster, a dazzling drama of noirish shadows and precision camerawork by Philippe Le Sourd. It tells the story of two Kung Fu masters – Ip Man (the man) from China’s south and Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang) is his adversary) from the north. Their paths cross in Foshan on the eve of the Japanese invasion in 1936. Gong Er’s father is travelling to Foshan to visit the legendary brothel, The Golden Pavilion, where the country’s best martial artists come together for his retirement ceremony. This tale of betrayal, honour and love plays out against a war-torn backdrop as is Wong Ka Wai’s most commercial outing so far.

Paolo Sorrentino first came to fame with his 2004 outing Consequences of Love: a mafia thriller and love story set in Northern Italy. It featured a magnificent central performance from Toni Servillo who also stars in Italy’s nomination The Great Beauty, possibly his best film so far. Capturing the essence of Italy’s rich, beautiful and cultured middle classes with an appealing and bittersweet languor that was first described in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Servillo here plays Jep Gambardella, a writer, raconteur and party-animnal who embarks on a Proustian trip down memory lane in the rich Autumn of his life. Ageing but suave, he exudes Mediterranean masculinity and confidence until he is suddenly jolted from his benign state of bachelorhood by an unexpected discovery that throws him off-balance and into action before all is finally lost in old age. The Great Beauty is an opulent banquet for the senses, epitomising the cultural essence of Italy and particularly of Rome.

Belgian’s entry is a musical love-story based on a true-life band. Inspired by Johan Heldenbergh (one of the stars of “The Misfortunates”) and Mieke Dobbels, it’s cleverly brought to life by Van Groeningen and set in the lush, bucolic countryside around Bruges, Belgium.

Didier (Heldenbergh), a singer and musician and his partner Elise (Veerle Baetens), discover during a hospital visit in Ghent that their 6-year-old daughter, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), has leukaemia.

There’s a vibrant energy to Moving Circle and Heldenbergh and Baetens’ attraction feels real in moments of elation and sadness and they give passionate performances especially between the sheets, and when they perform with the Didier’s local ‘Blue-grass’ Band. As the narrative develops though, the storytelling becomes more erratic despite strong and heartfelt performances from the leads and particularly Veerle Baetens’ who is one of Belgian’s most popular actresses.

The Notebook (Le Grand Cahier) is János Szász’s magnificent screen adaptation of Agota Kristof”s French-language: ‘The Notebook’ (hence the title) – a lesson in history and Hungary’s nomination to the 86th Academy Awards. Christian Berger’s sumptuous visual treatment almost blunts the harrowing nature of this Second World War tale of twin boys who are taken by their mother Gyöngyver Bognar, (Opium) to live in near-starvation with their tyrannical peasant grandmother (who villagers call “the witch”) deep in the countryside.

Their experiences are recorded in a notebook, providing illustrative testament to this important slice of Hungarian history and serve as an intriguing psychological texture to the ongoing World War narrative.Despite its harsh subject-matter, Le Grand Cahier is a beautiful film to experience accompanied by its atmospheric score. János Szász has provided a rich and important account of the impact of the war on the Hungarian countryside.

Omar was one of the hits at Cannes last year and Hany Abu-Assad’s tense, gripping thriller about betrayal, suspected and real, in the Occupied Territories in the Palestinian nomination. Adam Bakri leads as Omar, a Palestinian baker who routinely climbs over the separation wall to meet up with his girl Nadja (Leem Lubany). By night, he’s either a freedom fighter or a terrorist-you decide-ready to risk his life to strike at the Israeli military with his childhood friends Tarek (Eyad Hourani) and Amjad (Samer Bisharat). Arrested after the killing of an Israeli soldier and tricked into an admission of guilt by association, he agrees to work as an informant. So begins a dangerous game-is he playing his Israeli handler (Waleed F. Zuaiter) or will he really betray his cause? And who can he trust on either side? Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now) dynamic, action-packed drama also engages with the universal themes of moral dilemmas and tough choices that face those on the frontlines of all international conflict.

Denis Tanovic made a big impression at Berlin this year with Incident in the Life of an Ironpicker (Bosnia Herzegovina), a piece of social realism that offers slim pickings in the way of entertainment or standout performances (despite the non-actor lead winning Best Actor in Berlin) but nevertheless raises the important debate on the plight of Roma gypsies in contemporary Europe. Traditionally they have wandered all over the place pursuing their own moral and social cod, living in encampments and opting out of social costs. Tanovic takes a poor couple who live with their two little girls a Roma gypsy camp in Bosnia Herzegovina. Denis Tanovic’s trick of using non-professional actors lends authenticity to this simple story with largely improvised dialogue which draws on the international debate of small communities all over the world and he makes a strong evolutionary point with this film. May be these people have inadvertantly discovered the ultimate answer to sustainability by running their own show in a political regime where many people feel marginalised, unheard, unloved, uncared-for and ultimately disenfranchised in the organised mainstream. But then the Romas weren’t running their own show; they needed medical care and they couldn’t provide it within their own community. A simple tale then that offers stimulating food for thought and a universal message.

The British entry for the Oscars is another tale of the disenfranchised and comes from Sean Ellis, a British director who shot his tense thriller, Metro Manila while on location in the Philippines. First shown at Sundance Film Festival in January, Ellis’ quest for authenticity and his desire to shoot the film in local Tagalog language made the project a hard sell to financiers, but he eventually succeeded. The story centres on a young couple of economic migrants with two small kids who move to the violent urban conglomeration of Metro Manila from the countryside, in a bid to survive.

Poetic in feel and sumptuously filmed, Metro Manila is a immersive thriller: Sean Ellis’s skill with his lenses, the lush tropical countryside, and the gentle-looking Philippino leads Jake Macapagal (Oscar) and Althea Vega (Mai), give natural performances and their lovely children make this a pleasurable watch that feels refreshingly thoughtful as a counterpoint to the mounting suspense it generates.

The Danish submission The Hunt, comes from Thomas Vinterburg and actually premiered at Berlin in 2012. It’s a mischievous psychological study of child abuse in a traditional contemporary village community in the heart of the Danish countryside.

The action revolves around Mads Mikkelsen who is pitch-perfect as Lucas, a metrosexual man relocating to the place of his childhood after a difficult divorce and custody battle for his son. And although Mads has been a baddie for much of his career, as Lucas, we’re rooting for him all the way as he fights his corner. The performance won him best actor and Cannes this year and, for my money, The Hunt was one of the best films showing at the festival, along with Heneke’s Amour which won the Palme D’Or. It also stars Thomas Bo Larsen and Alexandra Rapaport.

And finally, Rithy Pahn’s The Missing Picture reflects his experiences with genocide on a large scale and serves as a heartfelt memoir of the invasion of Cambodia in the seventies. Making his documentary has helped him come to terms with the terrible losses he suffered during the time of his adolescence, when over 2 million people died during the regime.

Using a collage of bleached-out black and white footage and finely-rendered clay figurines (symbolising stultifying control) set to a weirdly sinister score. What emerges is a a non-confrontational animated record of the hostilities; as individuals became a collective of meaningless numbers imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge to become Democratic Kampuchea. In a regime (similar Nazism and Stalinism) characterised by hunger, torture and emotional cruelty and lack of respect or compassion for the individual, Panh tells how his father was denied a decent burial. Schools became detention centres reflecting a ‘perfect society’ where Marxist ideology reigned as revolutionary winds wafted through the paddy fields heralding ideals of creating an agrarian socialist economy which failed incontrovertibly leading to the deaths (from hunger) of millions of its inhabitants. The mantra – “Whoever apposes, is a corpse” indeed became a reality.

Completing the list is Germany’s official entry for best foreign language film is Two Lives, an historical drama from director Georg Maas starring Juliane Kohler and Liv Ullmann. Based on the true story of Kathrine Evensen (Kohler), a German woman brought up in East Germany and living in Norway, is the child of a Norwegian woman (Liv Ullmann) and a German Second World War solider. Her secret past gradually emerges during the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

THE 86TH ACADEMY AWARDS TAKE PLACE ON 2 MARCH 2014 IN HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES.

USE THE SEARCH ENGINE TO READ REVIEWS OF THE FOREIGN-LANGUAGE NOMINATIONS.

Non-Stop (2014)

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra and Joel Silver

Cast: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’O Gwen, Anson Mount, Linus Roche, Michelle Dockery, Corey Stoll

106min Action/Thriller US

Based on a story by John W Richardson and Chris Roach.

Probably not a film to see before a flight or evening during one, NON-STOP is one of those ‘what happens when’ films that, if nothing else, takes you through the paces of an emergency crash landing from 40,000 feet. You have been warned. Fans of Liam Neeson’s particular brand of gentle giant physicality will see him turning cold-blooded killer in this claustrophobic whodunit from Jaume Collet-Serra and Joel Silver (of Matrix and House of Wax fame). He plays Bill Marks, a whisky-swilling, bleary-eyed air marshall, tortured by an unhappy personal life and an uncertain future. Travelling ‘undercover’ on a plane to London from New York, he’s faced with the unenviable task of dealing with a series of menacing and mysterious text messages effectively blackmailing him to organise, with the airline, a transfer of USD150 million into a bank account or risk having a passenger killed, every twenty minutes.

Not a bad premise thus far, although the cliche’d dialogue hardly sets the night-flight on fire: “I hate flying; the lines; the crowds; the delays”: Does anyone actually find these exciting? But some appealing characters and witty repartee could still make this a journey with some thrills. No chance there either. After a cheesy bit of bonding with a little girl on her maiden solo flight, Bill finally settles down with a neurotic passenger Jen (Julianne Moore). She plays one of those irritating people who desperately wants the window seat and won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, making you wish you could upgrade to club class. A few rows down sits a deeply unlikeable NYPD Officer (Corey Stoll); a devout Muslim doctor complete with skullcap (Omar Metwally), and a mousy stewardess (Michelle Dockery) who’s pale and shaky from a vegetable fast. Great. In lieu of some edgy interrogations with potential suspects, the dialogue is driven forward by text messages between Neeson and the mystery ‘perp’ on a special intranet. None of this throws up any tangible clues and soon everyone on the plane is a potential culprit, and Neeson gets heavy with his uncooperative colleague, Hammond (Anson Mount) in the loo, breaking his neck in a surprisingly violent altercation. Push follows shove, none of it very edifying although there are plenty of bland, red herrings in the inflight catering, and a pilot who pops his clogs mysteriously (Linus Roche).

Jaume Collet-Serra, who also made the impressive Orphan, House Of Wax and the awful Unknown, tries to keep his vehicle buoyant with frequent fisticuffs and eventually stages a dramatic CGI-enhanced landing sequence, which is more fascinating than frightening (oxygen masks DO fall down as promised, and people DO faithfully adopt the brace position). But this is a flight that even Julianne Moore can’t save, and Liam Neeson’s closing moments (where he tries to inject a scintilla of romance into the equation) will have you rushing for the sick bag. MT

[youtube id=”XSF6GPNXr9Y” width=”600″ height=”350″]

NON-STOP IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28 February 2014

Directors – Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor

Directing duo Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor came to prominence under the moniker of the ‘desperate optimists’, with their Civic Life series of short films, made between 2003-2010. In 2008 they struck out to feature film territory with their acclaimed debut Helen. Now, five years later, they return with their follow-up, Mister John, which tells the story of Gerry (Aidan Gillen), who travels to Singapore after the untimely death of his brother John, only to find himself slipping a little too comfortably into John’s old life…

Ahead of the release of the film, Alex Barrett sat down with Christine and Joe to talk to them about the ideas and methodology behind Mister John.

AB: I wanted to start by asking you about one of the key ideas behind Mister John, that of ‘trying on a life that isn’t yours’. It seems to me that this idea can be related back to Helen, and I was wondering how conscious you were of that? Do you see the two films as companion pieces, or is it more a case that this idea interests you, and just happens to be in both works?

JL: No, we don’t see them as companion pieces, but it may well be that they get forced to be such. So, it would be much more of a case that we are really interested in that idea as a premise. We were very conscious of that [idea] as we were embarking on the development ofMister John. It wasn’t that we were thinking about Helen, we are intuitively drawn to framing devices where somebody tries to get out of a wormhole in their life and enter into some other kind of world. I suppose the question of why that interests us…I have no idea why we’re drawn to that. I guess at its root it’s really an interest in, without sounding too literary, moments where the human condition is up against a wall and under great pressure. In that moment, one thing that may well happen is that you become somebody else, or lose a sense of who you are, or some opportunity might present itself. And that’s always a very interesting thing. It may be that it’s a desire, an interest in other films where people are hanging on to their sanity – which is ultimately the greatest sense of losing oneself. And I guess that may be to do with our own family history, where that’s been very much a reality. So if I was on your couch, I might say that it is a childhood thing, that it’s been there ever-present in our lives. But as a theatrical or cinematic device, we’re drawn to that for some reason.

CM: And there might be another counter-point to that, which is probably much more banal. We left Ireland in our twenties, and that idea of being an outsider coming into a new environment and that chance to start again has always been something that intrigued us and informed the theatre work that we made when we were in college, and when we subsequently left college. We’re interested in places and worlds where people are afforded that opportunity. The seeds for the idea of Mister John came out of the experience of going to visit Joe’s brother, who had remade his life in Phuket in Thailand where he runs a bar, and being interested in the kind of people who are drawn to a place like Phuket – what kind of man in particular. A lot of them have really complicated stories, and they come to Phuket and it’s almost like they’ve been given a clean sheet of paper, and they can reinvent themselves. Whatever troubles and baggage they have, they’ve left them behind. And they kind of step into another world, because a lot of them have girlfriends, you know? And they pick up the threads of that relationship, and it’s not even a relationship and everybody knows that it isn’t. But they behave and act out as if it is. And I guess those kind of elements do really interest us. That’s the more banal side of it, and then maybe the more psychiatrist couch end…

JL: I was just thinking of one guy, actually, who’s now in jail. He was doing some sort of social welfare claim, he had nine pseudonyms going in Ireland, and he would spend half the year in Thailand. So he had nine identities in Ireland and I think Thailand was the only one where he was living this great life. Anyway, he was eventually caught. But I think that is true. It’s also true that when you go away to another place, I don’t know if it’s the case for everybody, but when you’re alone, I think Simone de Beauvoir has this comment, you become very alive, and when you’re travelling alone in particular. And maybe in those moments people begin to realise things about themselves – things they like and things that they don’t like. Which again, is to do with Mister John: this idea he’s travelled. But maybe in the travelling, in the very nature of travelling, alone and being alone, that sense of loathing about himself might be replaced by wanting to be something that he’s happier with. I think that’s very much present.

AB: Something else I wanted to ask you is related to what we’ve just been talking about: I don’t know if you’d agree with this, but it seems to me that the idea of ‘trying on a life that isn’t yours’ can also be applied to the filmmaking process. Quite obviously with actors, but also with writers and directors, because when you write or direct you have to put yourself into the mind-set of the characters. So I was wondering if you saw any connection between the themes of your work, and the actual creation of your work? Do you and your characters have that in common? You spoke about potentially autobiographical elements, but is there something in you personally that…

JL: Well, I think it’s in all of us. In the lift on the way up here we were talking about our daughter and her cousin, and the various role playing games that they act out. You know, mad ones. And so they play out different kinds of characters, with different accents. As you get older that’s kind of knocked out of you in a way, people become less imaginative about who they are and who they might be. Kids can try out different fashions and different styles, then as you get older you come to be identified with one particular kind of way of being or way of looking, which is not necessarily your nature. You might have suppressed certain things. So consequently, yes it’s true, I do think by writing characters, you can really keep that alive. Actors, obviously, can keep that very much alive, but writers more, I think, than directors, actually. I think writing and acting can keep that sense of transference. If you really wanted to do that, and you wanted to play out certain kind of roles, I think writing and acting would be the way to do it. Directing is probably less a way of applying that. When you’re in the act of directing, in a sense, the moment to really act that out or inhabit someone else’s skin is in the moment of writing rather than the moment of directing, from our experience.

CM: Yeah, but directing is a more concentrated job. It’s an interesting thought. You might define yourself as a director, and we don’t necessarily. It’s one of the jobs we do. But it’s the one you do the least of. I mean, we shot Helen in 2007, and then we shot Mister John in 2012, and we made one short film in the intervening years. And so, to call yourself a director when you do it so rarely…I mean, Helen was shot in 14 days, Mister John was shot in 22 days. So you’re not doing much. You have to almost take on a role, and then imagine yourself into it, because it’s not something that you do very often. I remember when we were in college doing theatre degrees, one lecturer who did performance always encouraged us to fake it. If you’re not sure, just fake it. And I think it’s probably a very useful lesson to keep in the back of your mind, that you can fake it by stepping into a role. When we performed ourselves, one of the things that we did in our approach to performance was to almost have on/off buttons, so the idea of stepping into a role and building up a character was never really present. It was ways to switch things on and off, so if you needed a real heightened moment of performance, you just switch that button on and then switch it off. So it was something that you can step into and then step out of very quickly.

JL: To go back to the directing. I remember reading, I don’t know how true it is, that footballers, in an average game, actually have the ball at their feet for something like six seconds. That’s it. So they’re 90 minutes on the pitch, but literally with the ball, it’s only a few seconds. That’s all it ever is. And you’re just hanging around the rest of the time, man marking, getting into position, not getting the ball. But you’re always in the game, aren’t you? You’re always writing, you’re dreaming, you’re fantasising, you’re projecting, you’re fictionalising. It’s really about the mental process, ultimately. How you come to this set or the floor or the scene. Why you’re so clear is because you’ve actually written through this whole process. Now what it would be like if you weren’t the writer of that material, that would be a difficult job, I think. To just step into that. That’s something I wouldn’t do. I can’t imagine that, unless you went through a very intimate journey with the script.

AB: One of the things I really like about your work is that it feels like the product of a distinct vision. Your films, and I means this as a compliment, have a designed look to them. How do you work with the camera? Are you designing it all with pen and paper before the shoot? What’s your process?

JL: No, we don’t storyboard, although I think perhaps there’s a good argument for that in the future [laughs]. Helen was much more distinctive in a way, much more wilful. Each day we just did four shots. I think all the camera crew were just completely bewildered. But it was mad, actually, for them, and Ole [Birkeland, cinematographer on Helen and Mister John] was brilliant because he had never worked like this before either. We pretty much knew how we wanted every shot to go, to function. Mainly, for us, it’s really choosing the right location and hanging out in the location. And imagining the scene in that actual space. We try not to imagine a location. We like to find the locations. Sometimes, in the case of Helen, the writing came after the location. We found a lot of locations, and wrote a story about the locations. And I think the reasons we choose forests a lot is we just love forests, and they’re usually very easy to photograph, and they photography very well with 35mm. So we think about the shots very much as the experience for the audience, and what the scene requires. But we don’t storyboard. I think the locations are really really central to the overall experience.

CM: It’s trying to create a believable world to preserve the ideas in the film, I think. It’s really central to the way we approach making films. So I guess we’re thinking less about the machinations of plot and narrative, and more about trying to create a world. So obviously the role of the camera and how it’s filmed and framed, and how things operate within the frame, are really central. But yeah, we don’t [storyboard]. We did do this really silly thing in Singapore which drove me mad in the end, where we tried…it was almost like a halfway house to storyboarding, but to me it was a really difficult exercise, because it’s a lot easier to work things out when you’re actually in the location – although there is certain things, certain problems you can pre-empt and work yourself out of, I think, if you’ve maybe used pen and paper a little in advance. But mostly we like to work on location.

JL: If you’re working with design, and somebody had to come up with these designs and not something that we can literally find in a room, or if you’re looking for the right kind of hotel…This was a bit of a problem for us in Singapore. We looked at eighteen or nineteen hotels, minimum, and we never really…The one we got in the end was okay, but we did see one that was better than that, but they didn’t want anyone [to film there]. It was a bit of a dodgy hotel. In those moments, when you can’t find the right kind of hotel, then I suppose you do need something purpose built, and then it’s more difficult to imagine what the shot is, because you can’t actually be in the right location until that design is made. But I think the locations tend to inform the kind of shot that should take place in there, and the kind of words also. Now that we’re in this bedroom, and now that we can see the light the way it is, and we don’t like to use that many lights, it seems to be that this mood would require…you know, we’d say to Aidan, ‘we’ve spent the last few years writing the script, and these are the words for the scene, maybe we don’t need them now, or maybe we only need half of them’. It was the scaffolding to get you to that particular point, because now you’re in this room with these actors, you really need to be alert to what’s required now. You have to be careful about not deviating too much from the script, which we didn’t at all, but you can’t be so compelled by everything that you’ve written, and what the actors say doesn’t have to necessarily happen exactly verbatim right here, right now. But you have to be a bit open to that possibility as well.

AB: I thought the score was really powerful in Mister John. Could you talk about the use of music in the film, and how you worked with your composer, Stephen McKeon?

JL: It’s a big thing for us. I thought the score for Helen was very strong. But you’re taking a risk, you know? You work very closely with the composer, because it’s the one thing which could really make an emotional mess of things. We had to work with Irish composers because of taxation reasons, and that’s fine – there are lots of great Irish composers. We had this shortlist, and we met a few of them. This particular guy, Stephen, talked about the film in the right way and had one or two things in his catalogue which were sort of heading in the right direction. We just wanted a sense of theatricality about it. We use this word far too liberally, I think, at times, but we do like a sense of theatrically, that it feels real, but ultimately we don’t believe that’s it real real. It’s theatrically real. And we like that. I mean, we like the work of, I don’t know, Miklós Jancsó, for example – it’s got a theatricality to it, which we find quite powerful. And we’re not looking for it to be socially realistic, in that sense, but realistic and effective on other levels. And so we wanted the music, when it happened, to not be one of those plinky-plonky things. We wanted it to be more Hitchockian. Big. It won’t happen that often, but when it would come in, it would be quite strident and it would announce itself quite clearly and it was telling you: this is the music and we’re not trying to seduce you unbeknownst, we’re not trying to manipulate you. It’s very upfront and honest in that level. But we wanted something pretty scored, something quite large and classical. We had a lot of temp tracks from Greig, actually. We listened to a lot of Greig throughout the editing process, and there was a great piece of music that we could never afford. In the end I was glad, and Stephen was thrilled because he wanted just his music in the film, but it was by Carl Orff and it was part of his Schulwerk series, and it was a beautiful little folk ballad, amazing. But it didn’t quite work.

CM: Yeah, it would have been all wrong.

JL: It was like twenty-five grand, or something like that, just for that song. You’re just thinking, get out of here.

CM: But we also wanted to work with somebody who we could have a conversation with, and really collaborate with. It was a really great part of the working process, our dialogue with Stephen. [We wanted] somebody who was up for that, and Stephen was really really up for a dialogue. We got into a lot of detail about how the score was working. Stephen really wanted to see that there was money in the budget to have the music performed live, that we could bring that feel and interpretation to the music. We ended up having the music performed, which I think really worked and was incredibly effective. On some level I think the music kind of charts aspects of Gerry’s journey into his brother’s world, and yes it’s a rupturing, or a real kind of counterpoint to the environment that he’s in, because it’s classical. So it’s kind of at odds.

JL: Yeah, it’s not Asian music. We wanted something Northern European, very much of the European sensibility, and not of the South East Asian one. We’re not musicians, but we do approach things in something of a musical sensibility. So we can talk music to him, about certain phrases and quotes, and ‘could that just go into this, segue into this bit rather than this bit’. So we can get into that level of detail. But I think it was really important that if the composer was just one of those people that said, well look, I will compose something and that will be it, I don’t know if we would…then it would be like ‘well, what if we didn’t like it?’. And so the idea is to have a dialogue, so you would head that off at the pass, so of course you’re going to like it, because any good composer would be listening to the music that we’ve been listening to and would pick up on that. We were fortunate that he’s really great with his job, but he did respond very well and we were very pleased with that music. Alex Barrett.

MISTER JOHN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 27TH SEPTEMBER 2013 AT CURZON RENOIR

Mister John (2013) Now on DVD

Directors: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

Writers: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

Cast: Aidan Gillen, Claire Keelan, Zoe Tay, Michael Thomas

95 mins English UK Drama

In their acclaimed debut Helen (2008), writer-directors Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy probed into the mind of a passive protagonist whose desire to reinvent her life slowly manifested itself as she took part in a police re-enactment of the last known movements of Joy, a college classmate gone missing. In their follow up, Mister John, another passive protagonist (Gerry, played by Aidan Gillen) travels to Singapore after the death of his brother (the eponymous John). Upon landing, Gerry finds that his luggage has been lost, and John’s widow later lends him one of John’s shirts to wear – and, much like Joy’s distinctive yellow jacket does for Helen, John’s shirt seems to offer Gerry the first step towards a possible reinvention of the self. However, despite the many similarities between the two projects, Mister John never feels like a repetition: a continuation, perhaps, or a development (both of style and of themes), but never a repeat. If anything, the similarities could be offered as proof of the distinct, singular vision of the directing duo.

With its lush images, languid pacing and heavy, brooding soundtrack, Mister John is a film thick on atmosphere, and relatively thin on plot. At times, its dialogue feels clipped and overly minimal, and there are occasional slips into cliché – Gerry sitting on his bed, rubbing his face in his hands; a frustrated woman cutting up her lover’s clothes – but none of this detracts from the alluring, beguiling success of the film. In fact, it all feels like a part of the overall design, a deliberate play with convention on the part of the filmmakers. The film is, after all, a kind of anti-thriller (in this there is, perhaps, an obvious comparison to be made to The Passenger, Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic identity-swap anti-thriller – but the similarities feel superficial. The tone, the mood and the ideas all seem different here, even if the filmmakers have publicly acknowledged Antonioni’s influence).

Another element of Mister John which shouldn’t go overlooked is the rich vein of humour which runs throughout. That the film’s scariest moment leads to one of its funniest, shows again the mastery of Lawlor and Molloy’s control of the medium. If Helen was, as many claimed, an outstanding debut, Mister John is most certainly a worthy follow-up. ALEX BARRETT

MISTER JOHN IS OUT ON DVD FROM FEBRUARY 24 2014 COURTESY OF CURZON ARTIFICIAL EYE

Cracks in Concrete (2014) Risse Im Beton Berlinale 2014

Director: Umut Dag Writers: Petra Ladinigg/Umut Dag

Cast: Murathan Muslu, Alechan Tagaev, Mehmet Ali Salman, Margarete Tiese

101min Turkish/German with subtitles Thriller/Drama

Best known for his work on 2007 Oscar-winner The Counterfeiters, Umut Dag’s drama explores the under world of a close-knit Turkish community in Vienna. Running along the usual lines of crims going against the grain of their previous misdemeanours to make good, it follows two men on a quest for acceptance and respect. Ertan (Murathan Muslu) has served time for murder and is now on parole, Mikail is a teenage drug-runner for Yilmaz (Mehmet Ali Salman), and is hoping for a better life as a rapper. But what makes this thriller really stand out from the crowd is the dynamic performances of the two leads Muslu and Tagaev.

CRACKS hits the floor running with a devastating opening scene where a middle-aged white woman is repeatedly slapping a heavy-set young man. Later we discover this was Ertan in an attempt to gain forgiveness from the mother (Margarete Tiesel/Paradise:Love) of his victim. Having fallen from grace with his father, brother and girlfriend, Ertan strikes a macho yet vulnerable figure in the ‘hood, and matters don’t seem to improve. Meanwhile, Mikail is, in many ways, a younger version of Ertan and Dag’s narrative soon reveals that the ties run much deeper that initial appearances might suggest. But when Ertan gets a job in Mikail’s recording studio, there is no doubt about their hidden connection, although at this stage Mikail is oblivious to the truth.

As a crestfallen antihero, Muslu is superb in a believable performance reflecting Ertan’s gradual descent into social hell, exquisitely etched in his myriad expressions of pain and dejection, as he reins back from violence and recidivism. The young Tagaev lacks Muslu’s acting finesse but projects a strong image of a broken teenager, gentle and fearful behind his ‘no-fear’ persona.

Shot through with its cool blue aesthetic, Georg Geutebruck’s agile ‘chiaroscuro’ camerawork skilfully captures both light and dark in a visually stylish thriller that races forward in the filmic ambience of a seedy concrete underworld, throbbing with sinuous energy and nightclubs throbbing with exotic totty and macho males. There’s a stunning sequence towards the end where Ertan is walking along the street, that makes you forgive Dag his slightly formulaic narrative in a feature that literally pulsates with the rhythm of life. MT

CRACKS IN CONCRETE SCREENED AT THE BERLINALE 2014

A Map for Love (2012) DVD

Director: Fernandez Constanza

Cast: Andrea Moro, Francisca Bernardi, Francisco Pizarro, Mariana Prat

81min Drama Chile

A subtle and sophisticated story of emerging lesbian love and generational conflict that navigates choppy waters, exploring the relationship of three woman: a mother, her daughter and girlfriend, embarking on a sailing trip on the Chilean coast.

Using water and the shifting weather patterns as a barometer for the myriad emotions that emerge during the trip is a clever metaphor for confusion, calm and conciliation in this immersive debut feature from writer and director Fernandez Constanza.

Roberta (Andrea Moro) wants to develop her relationship with her actress girlfriend Javiera (Francisca Bernardi) but is concerned about her conservative mother Ana’s (Mariana Prat) approval. As the three get to know each other more deeply during the holiday, initial awkwardness gives way to a raw intensity as intimacy develops and sins of the past emerge to complicate matters. Set against a backdrop of stunning seascapes and scenery in Santiago de Chile, the trio are gradually divested of artifice; personalities and thoughts laid bare to the elements.

Rich and full of interesting insight and dramatic punch, this is a film worthy of its subject-matter and should appeal to both LGBT audiences and the art house crowd. MT

A MAY FOR LOVE IS AVAILABLE ON DVD from 10 FEBRUARY 2014 RRP £14.99

Butter on the Latch (2012) Berlinale 2014

Dir.: Josephine Decker

Cast: Sarah Small, Isolde Chae-Lawrence, Charlie Hewson

USA 2012, 73 min. Drama -Fantasy – Horror

In Josephine Deckers debut feature BUTTER ON THE LATCH, we first meet the central character Sarah, when she stumbles around dreamily in Brooklyn and sleeps with a man she picked up in a nightclub. Suddenly, she appears again at a summer festival of Balkan folk music in some woods near Mendecino, California. There she seems at first to settle down with girlfriend Isolde, but then the two get lost in a wood and nearly set it on fire. Exchanging intimacies and secrets, the two become become increasingly closer, but something is worryingly wrong with Sarah. We might connect her otherworldliness with the Balkan stories of people beings possessed by dangerous animals, like dragons (clearly shades of Tourneur’s Cat People). But before we are able to guess further, Sarah suddenly turns to the young Steph, but their relationship culminates into a dramatic and violent end near a lake.

This is truly an enigmatic film, characters are only sketched, images are often blurry, jump cuts interrupt dramatically and the narrative seems to be propelled forwards by the director/writer with a near manic force – but then, this is a portrait of a psychotic woman. Sarah stumbles through life, not knowing her motives, second-guessing herself and never knowing what is important or not. She picks people up at random, not knowing anything about them. She takes a chance on life, but is obsessed by some deadly impulse, which drives her on.

The aesthetic style is uneven, the camera, hectic most of the times, suddenly gives us respite, with nature and inventive singing images. The music is as oblique as the whole film and its title, and Sarah Small as the unfortunate young woman is quiet impressive.It would be wrong to call this film impressive, but for sheer guts to try something different – even if it not always comes off, Decker deserves some praise. AS

BUTTER ON THE LATCH SCREENED DURING BERLINALE 2014

Berlinale Daily Bites 6-16 February 2014

D A Y O N E

KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER *** The surreal collides with the banal in Nathan and David Kellner’s genre-blurring black comedy drama, in which David Kellner also stars. Kumiko, a doltishly passive Japanese woman, abandons her dull life in Tokyo to travel to snowbound Minnesota on the strength of an imagined treasure trove she sees buried in a film, aided and abetted by the kindness of narrow-minded strangers who help her on her mission. If you can suspend your disbelief and tune into the weird humour, this is a work of inspired genius and well-planned eccentricity: Alexander Payne put his money into it and the Kellner Brothers’ drama has shades of Joel and Ethan Coen about it. MT 105min FORUM

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL **** SILVER BEAR, GRAND JURY PRIZE

Ralph Fiennes is pure magic as Gustav H, a legendary lothario and eloquent hotel manager in this witty, whimsical and very European tale within a fairytale, inspired by the Gorlitzer Warenhaus on the Polish/Czech border (which is currently being renovated) in a fictional Republic of Zubrowka. Written and directed by Texan Wes Anderson, it’s probably his finest film to date: perfectly scripted, beautifully acted by an assembled cast of Tilda Swinton, (who must be the most elegant and ethereal woman on the planet) Lea Seydoux, Jude Law, Matthieu Almaric, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan and newcomer Tony Revolori (as the young Zero M); it’s also gorgeous to watch with its candy-coloured aesthetic and fairytale sets. Appealing to all ages, despite moments of scary violence, it tells the story of how the hotel came to be handed down to Zero Mustafa via a rich and riotous history. MT World Premiere IN COMPETITION 100mins

In Josephine Decker’s debut feature BUTTER ON THE LATCH, we first meet the central character Sarah, when she stumbles around dreamily in Brooklyn and sleeps with a man she picked up in a nightclub. Suddenly, she appears again at a summer festival of Balkan folk music in some woods near Mendecino, California. There she seems at first to settle down with girlfriend Isolde, but then the two get lost in a wood and nearly set it on fire. Exchanging intimacies and secrets, the two become become increasingly closer, but something is worryingly wrong with Sarah. We might connect her otherworldliness with the Balkan stories of people beings possessed by dangerous animals, like dragons (clearly shades of Tourneur’s Cat People). But before we are able to guess further, Sarah suddenly turns to the young Steph, but their relationship culminates into a dramatic and violent end near a lake in this inventive, dreamy, fantasy horror. See full review

D A Y T W O

JACK **** A leafy Berlin is the setting for Edvard Berger’s touching drama underpinned by newcomer Ivo Pietzcker’s performance of tear-swelling poignancy as Jack, a little boy left in charge of his half-brother, when their feckless mother abandons them. Sensitive and filmic, it’s an old-fashioned portrait of childhood anxiety that echoes The Kid With A Bike; and shows that kids are sometimes far more intelligent than we give them credit for but also that responsibility and self-reliance can be the making of them. MT. 104 MIN GERMANY. IN COMPETITION

’71 **** TV director Yann Demange (Top Boy) has chosen the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland as the subject of his feature debut ’71, setting his tightly-plotted narrative from the perspective of a young British soldier (Jack O’Connell) left behind by his unit following a street riot. The memory of the terrible internecine warring is brought back with visual clarity and some of the best street combat scenes ever committed to film. Demange has masterful control of his subject-matter and delivers an utterly gripping thriller with a strong central performance from Jack Connell (This is England) and a superb all-British cast including Sean Harris, Sam Hazeldine and Paul Anderson MT 99min UK IN COMPETITION.

TWO MEN IN TOWN **

Rachid Bouchareb’s is an award-winning filmmaker known for LONDON RIVER, picking up a Silver Bear Award at Berlinale 2009. Here he casts Brenda Blethyn as a lil’ ol’ Kansas probation officer who sets out to assist Forest Whitaker’s reformed convict, Garnett, in a small community near the Mexican Border. Recently converted to Islam, Garnett does his best to make a go off things but Harvey Keitel is determined to put a spanner in the works, as the local sheriff, so we know the outcome of this story before the get-go. Despite some filmic moments and an experienced cast, it feels about as plausible as Jesus coming down from the cross. MT 120mins IN COMPETITION.

D A Y T H R E E

AMMA & APPPA (2014) ***

Franziska Schonenberger’s debut documentary is a part-animated story of twenty-somethings who meet at University and fall in love. Across the cultural divide of his strict Tamil parents, who envisaged an arranged marriage, and her homespun Bavarian background; a touching and immersive story emerges which is really a doc-style Meet the Parents, with some equally hilarious moments. MT 89 min Panorama Germany

FREE RANGE- Ballad on Approving of the World ** (2013)

Fred is a chain-smoking pseudo-intellectual with a high opinion of himself. After losing his job as a deliberately abusive film journalist and mindful of looming fatherhood, he turns his hand to working in a timber factory with equally disastrious results. Veiko Ounpuu’s bleached- out, grainy visuals evoke the lemon n lime beauty of the Estonian spring to great effect in this sardonic drama which is accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack of hits from ‘The Smiths’ among others, but it’s difficult to care what happens to Ounpuu’s unappealing characters who never really feel authentic or to engage with his facile narrative. MT 104min. Estonia. Forum Expanded

STO SPITI (2014) At Home (2013) ***

The stunning coastal location and elegant summery visuals of Athanasios Karanicolas’s serene feature debut bely the melancholic nature of his narrative that follows a wealthy Greek family who are finding ends increasingly difficult to meet in the financial crisis. When their long- term Georgian housekeeper falls sicks it’s clear that life will have to change but also rather predictable in the way it does. So no surprises here but certainly some applause for this well-crafted and promising film. Maria Kallimani gives a performance of great subtlety in the central role. MT. 103min Greece/Georgia. Forum Expanded

THE MONUMENTS MEN (2014) ***

George Clooney has made a brave and well-intentioned bid to shine a light on one of the most important episodes of Art history – the looting of art treasures by the Nazis during their retreat during the Second World War. The result, in which he also stars as art historian Frank Stokes, (a fictionalised version of George Stout) along with a fine cast of Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, and High Bonneville, is rather too worthy for its own good. This is his 5th big screen outing and sees him and his colleagues setting out to France in 1944 where they discover the Russians are also hot on the trail, and intend to keep to uncovered treasure as spoils. Cate Blanchett is remarkable as a bluestocking curator under the Nazis, who at first is unwilling to cooperate but finally falls for Damon’s charms. The search goes underground and there is much ranting and raving in rhetoric about the supreme value of Art, as if Clooney underestimates his audience, although naturally he has the best orating. Production values are slick and strong and Alexandre Desplat’s score is well-pitched and moving, but ultimately this is a rather artless drama that sacrifices suspense for altruism. MT, 120mins US IN COMPETITION

D A Y F O U R

BLIND DATES (2014) ***

Levan Koguashvili’s follow-up to STREET DAYS (2010) is another tale of contemporary Georgian folk with particular emphasis on womens’ issues in this male-dominated culture. Unexpectedly funny and feisty, it explores young hopes versus old ways in the crumbling splendour of Tbilisi through a tentative romance between 40 year old bachelor Sandro and a woman whose husband has just been released from prison. MT 95 mins. Georgia. Forum

HISTORY OF FEAR (2014) **

Random acts of violence, criminal activity and hostility between neighbours punctuate a hot summer in down-town Buenos Aires. Benjamin Naishtat’s first full-length drama strings together a series of interconnecting events in an attempt to evoke a climate of uncertainty and paranoia but leaves the audience bewildered and disengaged in the process. Ultimately he offers no reason for us to feel anything for his characters despite their plight and his narrative drifts aimlessly without a really immersive plot-line in the chaos. MT Argentina. 79mins IN COMPETITION

NYMPHOMANIAC 1 *****- Director’s Cut

The entire, director’s cut version of Lars von Trier’s culminating segment of his ‘Melancholy’ trio that began with ANTICHRIST and MELANCHOLIA leaves in some minor footage and artistic flourishes but fails to add anything to the plot, ultimately rather than gilding the lily it actually detracts from the piquancy of his brilliantly enigmatic narrative. 145mins See our review

THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY (2013) *****

With a narrative based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, this long-awaited debut feature from DRIVE screenwriter Hossein Amini is a lavish affair set in sixties Greece. And what could go wrong with such a fabulous cast, magical sets, gorgeous tailoring and a romantic original score by? The answer is nothing! One of the most gripping and sophisticated thrillers for some time, THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY stars Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst as an American married couple, the MacFarlands, and Oscar Isaac (Llewyn Davis) as their tour guide, Rydal. After meeting up in by chance in Athens, a tragic accident forces the trio to flee to the islands whence they embark on a dangerously eventful journey that ends in tragedy for all concerned. 96min UK USA France

D A Y F I V E

IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE (2014) ***

Bruno ganz and Stellan Skarsgard star in Hans Petter Moland’s dark comedy follow-up to A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN (2010) has some of the best snowscapes that you’ll probably see this year and also possibly the most unapologetically un-politically incorrect script. Skarsgard plays, Nils, a Swedish man living in Norway who drives a snow plow and has just been award ‘Best Citizen’. But when his son dies in a drug overdose, Nils turns vigilante to find out who is responsible. That said, the tone is light-hearted: Moland wanted s narrative reflecting what happens when society’s attributes of decency get mixed up with the baser instincts that kick in when we are threatened: “Norway has a history of being generous to people in need but now this is being challenged” he said at the press conference. The comedic style was the best way to deal with this theme positively. “Violence lurks within us and occasionally erupts in normal, well-adjusted people like Stellan’s character.” What ensues is a brutally violent chase to track down the two rival gangs of traffickers: one Serbian (lead by Ganz as Papa), one local (lead by Pal Sverre at Greven). There are some great gags that arise out of ‘ad-libbing’ rather than sticking rigidly to Kim Fupaz Aakeson script and give this piece a fresh and authentic feel, although 115mins is a tad long for this simple crime caper. MT 100min Norway/Denmark IN COMPETITION

CALVARY (2014) *** ECUMENICAL PRIZE

A priest’s struggle when his life is threatened during a confession:”I first tasted a man’s semen when I was 7 years old”, is a metaphor for the continuing challenge The Church faces to retain a place of respect and succour in today’s society. Traditionally the bedrock of Irish communities, it gets a really rough ride in this black comedy that examines the role of the local priest amongst a group of characters in a small Sligo village, who have lost their way. Gloriously set in this verdant Southern Irish county, Brendan Gleeson leads with a performance of rare dignity and integrity as the Father concerned , in this follow-up to THE GUARD. Less comedic and that the former, CALVARY’s soul is a more brooding and desperate one, leavened by moments of gentle often caustic humour. Pointing its finger at paedophilia amongst Church leaders, it follows the tone of the recent PHILOMENA echoing documentaries such as Alex Gibney’s MEA MAXIMA CULPA. For John Michael McDonagh it is a triumph and a far better drama than the recent and glib, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS. A superb all-Irish support cast of Kelly Reilly, Chris O’Dowd, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran and Isaac De Bankole make this thoughtful and trenchant second feature a rare pleasure that stays in the memory long afterwards. MT 100min UK/Ireland Panorama Special.

AIMER, BOIRE, CHANTER – THE LIFE OF RILEY (2014) ALFRED BAUER PRIZE

For his 50th film, Alain Resnais adapts the work of Alan Ayckbourn in this stagey farce with garish theatrical sets and occasional glimpses of the leafy countryside of the Yorkshire Dales. Starring his wife Sabine Azema, Sandrine Kiberlain (Bird) Andre Dussollier and Hyppolyte Girardot, it’s just the sort of thing that older French audiences lap up but do we really need another stage adaptation (his third) of YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET?. This turns out to have additional flourishes with drawings by French artist Blutch and puppetry to boot! You know the story here – middle-aged, middle-class couples whose close friend is diagnosed with cancer. Or is he? Mannered performances all round will appeal to his devotees. MT 107min France IN COMPETITION

HUBA, PARASITE (2014)

The work of Polish filmmakers, Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal (IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE) focuses on simple lives of working people in the Polish countryside; their latest film is no different. A tender portrait of family closeness centres on an old factory worker and his daughter and her baby, who come to live with him. Intimate in scale, daily rituals are viewed at close quarters with a ‘warts and all’ approach that provides an immersive and worthwhile testament to the continuing narrative of rural lives under threat in remote locations. MT. 66min Poland Panorama

D A Y S I X

PRAIA DO FUTURO (2014)

With some of the most captivating photography of Brazilian and Berlin skylines, Karim Ainouz’s filmic and leisurely-paced drama is sadly let down by poorly fleshed-out characterisation of its protagonists, who we hardly get to know at all. Appearances can be deceptive and we soon find out that Praia do Futuro is one of the most beautiful but deadly beaches in Brazil. It also has the saltiest water, making it a hostile environment for living in. When his friend is drowned, a Brazilian lifeguard follows his lover back to Berlin to discover a new life that’s both liberating and bewildering. Ainouz creates a palpable sense of place and identity but sadly the narrative floats untethered in a sea of plotholes with not enough momentum or feeling for his characters or their lives to carry it through to a meaningful conclusion. MT 106mins. Brazil/Germany In COMPETITION

SOUVENIR (2014)

German photographer Alfred Diebold disappeared during an Arctic cruise in 2009 leaving a massive collection of videos archiving his peripatetic life as an attention-seeking traveller, husband and politically engaged also-ran. André Siegers doc looks back at his footage (407 videos in all) but despite some moving moments from Alfred’s intimate family life, it’s difficult to work out why he considered this film worthy of the public domain (let alone financing) as it is neither involving, visually inventive nor particularly interesting from a historical point of view. Maybe a German audience would feel more empathy with the subject-matter. MT 81mins Russia/Germany Forum

TO MIKRI PSARI – STRATOS (2014)

Although not particularly intended as such, Yannis Economides’ drama serves as a metaphor for the parlous state of moral and physical decline that Greece has suffered over the past several decades. In STRATOS communities are breaking down, buildings have fallen into disrepair and parks are overrun with weeds. Even felons are at each others throats, overworked by the burden of debt-fuelled crime in their neighbourhoods. Economides’ narrative steadily builds into a caustically angry thriller involving local low-lives and their families. Tightly-plotted: the story is told through a series of one to one to conversations between the fellow criminal fraternity that grow in vehemence, and focus on the gang-leader in jail. The story is told from the point of view of Stratos, (well-played by Vangelis Mourikis), a wealthy local crim who is called upon to finance the release of the gang-leader and in so doing is drawn further into a web of lies, deceit and paedophilia. Cracking performances from the support cast and Babis Papadopoulos’ edgy score help create a feeling or menace and desperation throughout. MT 136 min GREECE IN COMPETITION

D A Y S E V E N

THE THIRD SIDE OF THE RIVER ***

‘Another Us and Them’ drama from Argentina. This time Celina Murga delivers a soft-focus, slow-burner about an affluent family in Buenos Aires, seen through the increasingly critical eyes of the eldest son. This disapproval of his father’s dominating ways gradually leads to a startling epiphany in this melancholic tale of a boy who is forced into responsibility at a young age. Not sure why Martin Scorsese gave this his ‘seal of approval’? Wait a minute – was his money involved? : yes Siree!. Nonetheless, this is a decent story, well-told and well-acted but hardly anything to write home about as a competition headliner. Spain. 104mins In COMPETITION

GUIDELINES: Le Marche a Suivre *

Jean-Francois Caissy fails to flag up any changes in the way kids are and always will behave in the classroom and out of it. His tame documentary kicks off, for some reason, rather promisingly with a car trying to cross a ford with difficulty. Are we in for an exciting adventure? No, this is a predictable affair that focuses on a group of kids in the Canadian province of Quebec. Nicolas Canniccioni’s bland camera-work explores how they interact with each other with close-up one to one interviews intercut with images of the playground and ‘environs’ in and out of the school (i.e. the lens zoom in on a lock, and then a group of kids playing ball, there are frequent ‘black screen moments’). Visually uninventive, and for the most part repetitive: it nevertheless provides a living testament for the parents involved and those interested in the subtleties of paediatric psychology. MT 76min. French Forum

ALOFT ***

Stunningly shot on the widescreen, this dreamily poetic Canadian drama from 2009 Golden Bear winner Claudia Llosa (from Peru) ‘boasts’ Jennifer Connelly, Cillian Murphy and Melanie Laurent in its star line-up. Told in fractured narrative style, it follows the central character Ivan (Murphy) as a child and as an adult as he sets out to find his mother who left after a family tragedy to develop her skills as a healer in the Arctic Circle. Llosa’s highly creative camerawork evokes the enigmatic feel of this drama which is intimate in style yet deep and immersive in its scope and subject matter. There are sensitive performances from Murphy and Connelly as they portray a close son and mother relationship. 112min Spain Canada France. In competition 114min Canada, IN COMPETITION

BLACK COAL, THIN ICE *** GOLDEN BEAR WINNER, SILVER BEAR – BEST ACTOR

Chinese director, Yi’nan Diao offers an inventive drama set in a snowbound industrial landscape where body parts appear regularly on asphalt trucks heading off to furnish the country’s burgeoning building boom. A former policeman turns vigilante in a bid to trace the perpetrator and falls in love with a mysterious woman who seems to be connected to the crimes. MT 106min World Premiere China/Mandarin

D A Y E I G H T

NO MANS LAND Wu Ren Qu (2013) ***

Ning Hao’s follow up to is a slick parable about a society that has completely lost its moral compass in a struggle for wealth and prosperity in the modern world. In a cheap Chinese car, a cocky lawyer sets off across a rugged Taklamakan desert populated by weird and dangerous wayfarers on his journey to a trial. Visually and technically superb Ning Hao has excised the heart from his action drama, where men are macho and women are still looking for a hero to rescue them. There aint any here, but then its really just abit of fun and a homage to Sergio Leone’s epic desert westerns minus the great performances the the killer soundtrack. That said, there are brilliant moments in this desert. of MT 119min Republic of China Mandarin COMPETITION

BOYHOOD (2014) ***** SILVER BEAR, BEST DIRECTOR

Richard Linklater is popular in Berlin. Last year he collected an Honorary Bear and here’s back this year with Sundance break-out hit: BOYHOOD. Following the life of Mason from five until eighteen it stars Ellar Coltrane in the leading role with Linklater’s regular collaborator on the series Ethan Hawke, it authentically captures these years of growing up into an immersive and moving drama that runs for nearly 3 hours. Although this will make it a headache for cinemas, it is elegantly paced, engagingly scripted and performed with seamless authenticity by Mason and his extended family and friends, amongst whom by Patricia Arquette as his mother and Tamara Jolaine, as his sister, particularly shine . Ethan Hawke brings to his performance the same laid-back charm that he works so well in the Midnight Trilogy. In order to achieve the subtle changes in the characters, Linklater began the project in 2002, with the crew getting together annually to film the developing story. This isn’t the perfect childhood, but it’s warm, witty and deeply-felt and stands as a record of turn of the century interpersonal relationships and family life in the Western World. This is drama that will be the talk of filmlovers for quite some time. MT 166min US Drama COMPETITION

THE FOREST IS LIKE THE MOUNTAINS (2014) ****

This quietly observed and beautifully filmed documentary was one of the standouts of this year’s Berlinale. Debut Directors Christiane Schmidt and Didier Guillain spent some time in the enchanting mountain setting of Sfantu Gheorghe, central Romania, with a community of Roma people. Living a self-regulated existence and avoiding interaction with the Establishment except when their annual potato harvest is sold to the local council, they follow the Seventh Adventist Faith, trusting in the spirit of a supportive and intuitive community and Christian prayer for guidance. Aron Lingurar is the self-appointed head of the village, commanding respect as the ‘governor’ he is a man of integrity who runs the show and instills a sense of respect amongst his people. Christiane Schmidt’s sublime cinematography and clever eye for colour and framing make this a joy to watch and with a total absence of sound, apart from natural dialogue, it is serene experience to behold. It would seem we have much to learn from these people. MT 101min Romania/France/Germany Drama Forum

D A Y N I N E

TRYPTYCH ****Canadian filmmakers have brought some great films to the Berlinale this year and this avantgarde piece from Pedro Pires and Robert Lepage is one of the best. Well-known for his theatrical work, Robert Lepage excels here with a transgenre drama that follows the lives of three interconnecting characters, sisters Marie and Michelle and Thomas, Marie’s soon to be partner. In an snowy timeless Quebec, Michelle, a book specialist, is recovering from depression. Michelle arrives to announce her marriage to Thomas, a brain surgeon. Dreamlike sepia-tinged visuals, unsettling characterisation and an eclectic score of jazz and classical music combine with Lepage’s unique approach make this an experience not to be missed. Sombre in tone, TRYPTYCH alludes to the deep melancholy of ageing, loss and illness. Lepage evokes a strong sense of the Quebec and Montreal but it is timeless in feel. MT 94min. Canada French/English

LA BELLE ET LA BETTE (2014) ****

Jean Cocteau’s gothic horror original was an pioneering piece of magic made when he turned his hand to filmmaking during WWII. With very limited resources, the result was enchanting and eerie. Even with a large budget (and filmed in Babelsberg where Metropolis and The Blue Angel were shot) this doesnt engender the same mystique but is a lavishly-imagined if over-the-top frolic from Christophe Gans that spans both Renaissance and Napoleonic eras. It has Lea Seydoux as a gentle Belle and Vincent Cassel as her fiercely masculine Beau yet elegantly pathetic Beast – essentially an asshole who turns into a nice guy. Andre Dessollier is strong as the kindly father. Because all the leads were versed in mime and method acting the piece really benefits from their acting chops and makes it a success, if you can overlook the overzealous CGI. Narrative-wise Gans has developed Cocteau’s original here, with co-writer Sandra Vo-Anh adhering faithfully to Madame de Villeneuve’s book to explore the origins of the Prince’s curse and its connections with the forces of nature. The result is more a chilldrens’ fairytale than Cocteau’s enchanting and subversive outing but there are some dark moments too. MT. 111min. In COMPETITION (out of competition)

THE LITTLE HOUSE *** SILVER BEAR, BEST ACTRESS

There’s something very sweet and old-fashioned about this Japanese domestic drama set in Wartime Tokyo. Taki (Haru Kuroki, who won Best Actress) looks back on her life as a maid in a well-to-do household (the red-roofed little house) echoing the previous Tokyo Family in tone. Now as an old woman, she tells her grandson in flashback what was really happening at home while the fighting was going on in the cities. There’s a genteel ‘soap-like’ quality to the drama and also shades of Hayao Miyazaki’s recent THE WIND RISES to the storyline. But forget WWII, this really concerns the emotional yearnings of women in a society where men have the upper hand and the State dictates how society should conduct itself. Based on a novel by Kyoko Nakajima, THE LITTLE HOUSE quite literally explores the discrete charm of the bourgeoisie. Taki nurses the infant son through polio while also serves as a companion to the beautiful wife, Tokiko. The narrative shifts backwards and forwards from 1936 to the present, eventually engaging our attention as we witness the Tokiko’s affair with her husband’s colleague, a young and timid architect who doesn’t exactly set the night of fire, but buys into to her endless drivel. Engaging and demure, it may appeal to more traditional art house audiences for its quaint performances but lacks the romantic thrust or erotic charge to garner mainstream indie fans. MT 136min Japanese COMPETITION

A N D T H E W I N N E R S A R E:

GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST FILM

Bai Ri Yan Huo Black Coal, Thin Ice by Diao Yinan

SILVER BEAR GRAND JURY PRIZE

The Grand Budapest Hotel The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson

SILVER BEAR ALFRED BAUER PRIZE for a feature film that opens new perspectives

Aimer, boire et chanter Life of Riley
by Alain Resnais

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR Richard Linklater for

Boyhood (Boyhood)

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST ACTRESS

Haru Kuroki in
Chiisai Ouchi (The Little House) by Yoji Yamada

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST ACTOR

Liao Fan in Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice) by Diao Yinan

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SCRIPT

Dietrich Brüggemann, Anna Brüggemann for Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross) by Dietrich Brüggemann

SILVER BEAR FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION

in the categories camera, editing, music score, costume or set design

Zeng Jian for the camera in
Tui Na (Blind Massage) by Lou Ye

BEST FIRST FEATURE AWARD

Güeros
Güeros
by Alonso Ruizpalacios

FOR MORE COVERAGE ON THE BERLINALE 2014 . FOR MORE IMAGES AND VIDEOS VISIT THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Director/Writer: Jim Jarmusch | Cast: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska

Jim Jarmusch adds another dimension to the vampire genre with this quirky tale of centuries-old lovers Adam (Hiddleston) and Eve (Swinton). Still blissfully inseparable despite living in different corners of the globe; Eve is in exoticly bohemian Tangiers, Adam in rain-washed mo-town Detroit. Their long lives and artistic leanings have allowed them acquaintances from Pythagoras to Bryon and Shelley and they share an intimate command of literature, science and music while taking pleasure in daintily imbibing the purest blood (sourced through medical contacts) from cut-crystal glasses.

There is nothing sinister or threatening about Jarmusch’s light-hearted luvvies in this droll comedy of social mores with its langorous pacing: These are elegant, uber-vampires of considerable finesse whose own artistic endeavours have been the inspiration for Schubert and Shakespeare: Eve is still on personal terms with Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) who lives nearby. Despite their rather ridiculous names they are coltish, cool and extremely cultured. While visiting Detroit (on a first-class night flight from Tangiers, naturally) Eve dreams of her sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) who then blows from LA to disturb their loved- up twilight reverie with her intrusive irritating chatter. After threatening to empty their coffers of precious supplies of pristine blood, she queers the pitch with Adam’s assistant ‘zombie’ (Anton Yelchin).

Eventually, the runs out of steam. Jarmusch attempts to inject a serious twist to proceedings as it bleeds to death but by this stage our exhausted protagonists are finding (as we are) the going rather hard: the two-hour running time feels far longer. The lovers offer a fascinating perspective on the last thousand year captured in widescreen cityscapes, an atmospheric soundtrack of electronic and Renaissance lute music and the captivating performances of the gently-spoken leads. MT

NOW ON MUBI

The Monuments Men (2014) Berlinale 2014

THE MONUMENTS MEN (2014) ***

Director: George Clooney Writer: George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Robert M Edsel

Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, Dimitri Leonidas

Original score: Alexandre Desplat 118min US Drama based on the novel by Bret Witter

George Clooney has made a brave and enterprising bid to shine a light on one of the most important episodes of Art history – the looting of paintings and artworks by the Nazis during their retreat in the Second World War. The resulting historical drama, in which he also stars as art historian Frank Stokes, (a fictionalised version of George Stout) along with a fine cast of Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, and High Bonneville, is rather too worthy for its own good. This is Clooney’s 5th big screen outing and sees him and his colleagues setting out to France in 1944 where they discover the Russians are also hot on the trail and intend to keep to uncovered treasure as spoils. Cate Blanchett is magnificent as a bluestocking curator under the Nazis, who at first is unwilling to cooperate but finally falls for Damon’s charms and gives access to the archives. The search goes underground and there is much ranting and raving in rhetoric about the supreme value of Art, driving home the salient points with vehemence, as if Clooney underestimates the intelligence of his audience, although naturally he has the best orating. Production values are slick and strong and Alexandre Desplat’s score is well-pitched and surprisingly moving, but ultimately this is a rather artless drama that sacrifices suspense for altruism. Possibly a documentary would have been a better way to raise the profile of this injustice. MT, 120mins US IN COMPETITION

THE MONUMENTS MEN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14TH FEBRUARY 2014 NATIONWIDE.

The Patience Stone (2012) DVD/VOD

Director: Atiq Rahimi Writer: Jean-Claude Carriere and Ariq Rahimi

Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Hamid Djavadan, Hassina Burgan, Massi Mrowat

102min Drama FARSI with English subtitles

This poetic follow-up to EARTH AND ASHES is Atiq Rahimi’s second feature and based on his book which won the French literary equivalent to the Booker Prize. Essentially a chamber piece, filmed in a dusty house (putatively during the Afghan conflict), a woman is tending to her wounded older husband who has been shot. Golshifteh Farahani gives a magnificent portrait of vulnerability and desperation in the central role. Recounting her memories and feelings to her comotose husband, she tells her story in an extended monologue that serves as a quiet backlash to their unsatisfactory time together. The couple met when she was only 17.

The ambient sound is of war: the only visits from men. A Mullah who comes to pray for her husband, aggressive incursions from soldiers, one of whom rapes her then pays her to have sex (providing valuable income for the household). It’s a drama very similar in form to that of Jafar Panahi’s recent CLOSED CURTAIN. As ‘the woman’ talks she remains focused on the medical needs of her husband, and he represents a “Patience Stone” (from Persian folklore), an absorbing ‘oracle’ that is reputed to shatter when it can take no more of the unburdening.

The woman is strengthened by this therapeutic, low-key, rant about his lack of lovemaking skills and her fear of doing the right thing. She expresses and shares her new experiences of sexual awakening with her soldier pupil, who she’s ashamed of enjoying. Her worldly and more sophisticated aunt (Hassina Burghan) also provides comfort although we only meet her once. More of Hassina Burghan’s input would had added texture and cinematic contrast to the narrative. She is evidence that more urbane women do exist in this closed society.

With its muted visuals and themes that focus on womens’ issues in a society of religious and social repression and bigotry, this is a brave and controversial drama. Golshifteh Farahani now lives in Paris and is one of the most important and well known actresses working in Iranian cinema. Her delicately sensual role in THE PATIENCE STONE shows how this repressed comes full circle from the submissive teenage virgin to a finale of sexual realisation where she gains control of her life, all within her husband’s earshot.

Golshifteh has previously given strong performances in Chicken With Plums, Asghar Farhadi‘s About Elly and Ridley Scott‘s 2008 Body of Lies.

THE PATIENCE STONE IS OUT ON DVD AND VOD FROM 3 MARCH 2014 COURTESY OF AXIOM FILMS

[youtube id=”ZAhtT7zfF6U” width=”600″ height=”350″]

George Clooney Lost the Bet

George Clooney Lost the Bet

With the release of THE MONUMENTS MEN, Alex Barrett looks back at the Directing career of George Clooney

The story, such as it is, goes something like this: George Clooney never wanted to become a director. The script that was to become his debut feature, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), was due to be directed by, variously, Curtis Hanson, P. J. Hogan, David Fincher, Brian De Palma and Bryan Singer, with Clooney attached to act in a supporting role. When Singer departed, and the film collapsed once more, Clooney stepped up: the script, he said, was simply too great to be left languishing in development hell. So Clooney got to work, called in some favours, made the film, and bet Chuck Barris (on whose memoir Confessions is based) $10,000 that he wouldn’t make another film in the next five years – it really was, Clooney said, only the great script that made him want to direct the film.

But the truth, perhaps, is a little more complicated. Charlie Kaufman, the writer of that ‘great script’, has publicly denounced the finished film, stating that Clooney ‘took’ the project from him and made something that little resembled the original screenplay.

Such stories are not unique to Kaufman and Confessions – five years later, Clooney would resign from the “Writers Guild of America” after the Guild refused to allow him a writing credit on his screwball sports comedy Leatherheads (2008), for which he claimed to have so significantly reworked the original screenplay that only two scenes remained intact. Also significantly changed was Beau Willimon’s Farragut North, which Clooney and his producing partner Grant Heslov brought to the screen as The Ides of March (2011) – though this time seemingly with the writer’s full collaboration and endorsement (Willimon shares the screenplay credit with Clooney and Heslov on the final film).

If Clooney’s reworking of scripts is far from the only constant that runs across his directorial work, it may well be a contributing factor to the other consistencies. The protagonists of his first four features, and his television series Unscripted (2005), are all driven individuals who wish to succeed at any cost, most of whom are seeking love, fame and fortune of some kind, and who have a reluctance to play by the rules. There is also a recurrence of characters who work in the media, television and journalism – often allowing for themes of integrity and honesty to emerge. If it’s possible to reduce this to biography (Clooney’s father, Nick Clooney, was a journalist, game show host and news reader), it’s also possible to see it as a tribute to the cinema of the past – for, lest we forget, it was ex-newspapermen like Ben Hecht and Herman J. Mankiewicz who wrote the films of Hollywood’s Golden Age, often placing reporters at the centre of their stories. Indeed, Clooney’s films exhibit a surprisingly level of cine-literacy, and in his audio commentaries he often talks openly about his references, and about ‘stealing’ ideas from other filmmakers.

To put all this another way: for someone who ‘never wanted to direct’, Clooney’s films display a surprising degree of consistency, despite their seemingly disparate genres and styles – and, in this, one can’t help but be reminded of Steven Soderbergh. One of Hollywood’s greatest polymaths and an acknowledged influence on Clooney’s direction, Soderbergh is, of course, also a close friend and frequent collaborator of both Clooney-the-actor and Clooney-the-director (Soderbergh served as Executive Producer on Confessions, Unscripted and Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)). But if Soderbergh’s influence is often felt in Clooney-the-director’s work, it’s far from the only discernible impression left by those that have worked with Clooney-the-actor. The tone of Leatherheads, for instance, owes something to the work of the Coen Brothers, and it’s interesting to note that Clooney was working on the film’s script during the making of Intolerable Cruelty (2003), and was shooting the pickups while starring in Burn After Reading (2008). If nothing else, such impressions of influence remind us that Clooney has worked with, and learnt from, the best.

Although a notorious prankster, those who have worked with Clooney-the-director have commented on his focus and intelligence, and he is known for meticulously planning and storyboarding his films in advance. As a debut, Confessions was startlingly accomplished, already displaying an excellent grasp of four fundamental tenets of filmmaking: camera, story, sound and performance. An anarchic play with the conventions and tropes of biopics, the film finds a fascinating form for exploring an ambiguous mind. If that makes it sound like Clooney-the-director sprung fully formed from Clooney-the-actor, the looseness of Confessions nevertheless makes it feel like a film made by a director still finding his feet – which didn’t take long. With his second film, Good Night, and Good Luck., Clooney-the-director truly came into his own.

A riveting, claustrophobic account of broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow’s outspoken reportage of Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts, the film almost plays like an inverse of Confessions: where Confessions told of a globe-trotting anti-communist agent, Good Night is almost entirely confined to the studio in which Murrow railed against those combating the ‘red threat’; where Confessions was about a figure considered to be responsible for the decline of American television, Good Night is about a bastion of quality television. As if in recognition of his more serious, sombre subject, Clooney replaces the showy style of his debut with a calmer, more lyrical beauty (roaming, long-lens, shallow-depth photography may be a cliché of modern cinema, but rarely – if ever – has it been used so well). If it’s true that the film is undoubtedly in thrall to its subject, and no less editorialised than Murrow’s own work, it seems Clooney is taking a leaf from Murrow’s book, following his dictum that not every story has two sides: sometimes we must choose. McCarthy is left to defend himself in his own words, now as he did then, and the choice to use only real footage of McCarthy, rather than have an actor portray him, lends the film the authentic air of reportage. But there is real drama here too, and the film remains Clooney’s masterpiece. Simply put, it is in a different league from Confessions, and from the film that Clooney made next: Leatherheads.

But Leatherheads itself is no slouch, and certainly much better than its lacklustre reception suggests. Though it’s true that the speed and charm of its one liners never reaches screwball at its best, and that the film is occasionally derailed by moments of outright silliness, there are also moments of real beauty, and it’s never less than amusing and heartfelt. Clooney shot the film with no handheld camerawork, no steadicams, and nothing else that he considered stylistically ‘contemporary’. It’s an unashamed throwback, and one that is surprisingly dense and endearing.

For his forth film, The Ides of March, Clooney returned to the more serious, political register of Good Night. A tale of loyalty and betrayal set against the backdrop of a (fictional) Democratic primary election, the film takes its title from the day that Julius Caesar was murdered – and in doing so invokes Shakespeare. If the invocation feels like a stretch, it’s far from unwarranted: there’s no denying the power of Clooney’s terse and tense examination of political skulduggery. Moreover, Clooney should be commended both for once again daring to make a small-scale drama, and for once again showing how thrilling they can be (dramas, filmmakers are constantly told, don’t sell). So far, Clooney has alternated his dramas with comedies (his films neatly follow a comedy – serious – comedy – serious pattern, as if aping the classic ‘one for me, one for them’ formula), and this looks set to continue with the forthcoming release of his new comedy-drama The Monuments Men (2014).

Comedy was also a big part of his seemingly little seen and underappreciated HBO series Unscripted (Clooney directed five episodes of the ten-part series, the other five being helmed by Grant Heslov). Less broad than his other forays into comedy, the series fuses fact and fiction to present a quick-moving, naturalistic tapestry of the lives of three actors – Bryan Greenberg, Krista Allen and Jennifer Hall – who all play versions of themselves. Thrown into the mix is a superb Frank Langella as acting teacher Goddard Fulton – a pretentious, sleazy sage, if ever there was one. Shot in a low-fi, mumblecore-esque aesthetic, the series boasts cameos from a whole host of celebrities playing themselves, including Noah Wyle, Akiva Goldsman, Doug Liman, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Hank Azaria, Sam Mendes, Francis Lawrence, Shia LaBeouf, Danny Trejo, Brittany Murphy, Sam Rockwell, Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman, amongst others. As this roll-call perhaps suggests, there’s an impish mischievousness to the proceedings, and the end result is both a hilarious satire on the entrainment industry, and an engaging and addictive portrayal of the lives of actors, both struggling and successful. In fact, the show’s lack of wider recognition may be the biggest mystery of Clooney’s career, and while his continued interest in directing may have lost him his bet with Barris, it certainly feels like the world of modern Hollywood filmmaking is all the richer for it. ALEX BARRETT

THE MONUMENTS MEN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14TH FEBRUARY 2014 NATIONWIDE

Le Week-End (2013) Netflix UK

Dir: Roger Michell Wri: Hanif Kureishi | Cast: Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Goldblum, Olly Alexander, Brice Beaugier | UK Comedy Drama 93min

Hanif Kureishi and Roger Michell were regular collaborators on the subject of mature adult love (Venus, The Mother). LE WEEK-END sees a teaching couple from Birmingham in their sixties (well-known British thesps: Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent), embark on a second honeymoon to Paris in a bid to spice up their tired marriage. Predictable premise: yes, but don’t let this put you off. The city of love is always a welcome setting for any romantic drama and Paris doesn’t disappoint as we hurtle down open boulevards and swing by Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur. But time doesn’t stand still and Meg and Nick discover the hotel of their honeymoon has rather gone downhill. In a moment of pure madness, they head for the Georges V and find themselves in the Presidential Suite.

Hanif Kureishi reflects their well-worn resentments, hopes and idiosyncracies in his sharp and well-judged script that sails close to the wind with bittersweet and laugh-out-loud authenticity appealing to art house and mature sensibilities.

As Nick, Broadbent’s keen attempts on the physical front are met will derision from Meg who feels sexual but not sexy despite her Laboutin stilettos and black lacy dress. They resurrect the vamp in her and excite Nick’s dormant libido; still alive but flailing desperately in search of encouragement.

Both nurse secret agendas as they chomp their way through gastronomic blow-outs: Nick has bad news on the work front and Meg feels restless and unchallenged by her job, fearing the future. There’s a feistiness to this relationship that, despite its bickering, feels so much more upbeat than the tawdry sniping of Before Midnight. We actually feel for them both and want things to work out.

A chance meeting with an ex-student of Nick’s (Jeff Goldblum) throws up an invitation to a soirée the next day. Full of false bonhomie and pretentiousness, it’s an evening of self-gratification for a group of minor intellectuals but brings Nick’s sincerity and openness into sharp-relief amid a barage of boastful toadying. Here Broadbent is unexpectedly moving in a performance that breathes honesty from every pore. Lindsay Duncan too is surprisingly touching and believable in one of her best turns so far. There’s a gung-ho attitude to these two that feels both appealing and genuine and very much buys into the theory that you only live once and life is not a rehearsal. Refreshing, fun and everything that Blue Jasmine was cracked up to be and wasn’t. MT

LE WEEK-END IS ON NETFLIX UK

The Human Factor (2013) La Variabile Umana

(La Variabile Umana)

Director Bruno Oliviero

Cast: Silvio Orlando, Giuseppe Battiston, Alice Raffaelli, Sandra Ceccarelli

83min Crime Drama Italian with English subtitles

Bruno Oliviero’s moody crime drama focuses on a police inspector whose life goes off the rails after the death of his wife. Refusing to return to the cutting edge of life on the streets, dealing with criminals and engaging with ‘joe public’, he opts for a desk job to lick his wounds and contemplate his next move. But his when his only daughter is implicated in the murder of a rich industrialist, he’s dragged back into the criminal underbelly of Milan to conduct his own investigation. Following a straightforward narrative structure, The Human Factor is fairly standard fare, although well-crafted and watchable thanks to an atmospheric original score by Michael Stevens (Mystic River/Grand Torino). Father and daughter share a troubled relationship and Silvio Orlando and newcomer Alice Raffaelli give committed performances in the lead roles. If you’re looking for a good-looking thriller then this certainly fits the bill .

SCREENING DURING CINEMA MADE IN ITALY 5-9 MARCH 2014

Alexei Balabanov Retrospective February – May 2014

Alexei Balabanov Retrospective:

Brother / Брат

In celebration of late and great Alexei Balabanov, Russky London KinoKlub are running through the major works of one of Russia’s most incredible and uncompromising cult directors Between 1 February and 25 May, this retrospective will chart the director’s work, from the darkly comic to the shockingly caustic –BROTHER , BROTHER 2, OF FREAKS AND MEN, WAR, MORPHINE, IT DOESN’T HURT ME, CARGO 2000, STOKER and ME TOO.

The Patrol (2013)

Dir.: Tom Petch; Cast: Owain Arthur, Nav Sidhu, Ben Righton, Daniel Fraser, Nicholas Beveney

UK 2013, 85 min. Drama

Afghanistan, Helmand Provence, 2006: A patrol of seven British soldiers are fighting an unseen enemy. The two officers in charge are out of their depth, equipment and supply are not up to scratch. As a result of a faulty body armour, one of the soldiers is wounded and later dies in hospital. Finally the men revolt and the lieutenant, who has just become a father, sides with the soldiers. The mission, set originally for three days, but lasting well over ten days, is finally abandoned. The soldiers have no clear objectives: they can’t protect the civilian population, who sees them as intruders, and they know that the Taliban will return when they are gone. The events shown are a microcosmos of the British involvement in this war.

TOM PETCH served for eight years in the British army and his view of the fighting conditions the soldiers find themselves in is highly critical. The camera shows unrelenting spaces of sand in which the soldiers are viewed as ants, trying to find an enemy which hides, and will take their positions, the moment they have gone. They are supposed to support the community of poor dwellers in their primitive houses, but all they do is endanger them, when they mistake a football for a grenade. Petch shows the boredom, the repetitions and the resignation of the man, and the useless hurrah-patriotism of the Captain. Everything is as real as possible, but herein lays the main problem of this film. Anybody having watched countless hours of TV news is able to imagine the dreadful, monotonous slug of this war, with all the shortcomings the soldiers are suffering from. What the film shows is honest, non-judgemental, unquestioning of the doubtless bravery of the soldiers involved, but all these facts are known to a huge majority. But a simple reconstruction of the fighting conditions is (as shown here) is not enough to create strong emotional or intellectual reactions in the viewer. What we would have liked to have known is what sort of people sign up to the army, in which physical and psychological condition do they leave the army – if they leave alive at all. Three Prime Ministers have sanctioned this futile war, calling the same people who fought the Russian Army in the 80s insurgents, but the public reaction is muted to say the least. And however heartfelt this film may be, it does not help to stir up any badly needed outcry against this war. AS

THE PATROL IN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7 FEBRUARY 2014

The Stoker (2010) Kochegar Aleksei Balabanov series

Director: Aleksei Balabanov

Script: Aleksei Balabanov
Producer: Sergey Selyanov
Cast: Mikhail Skryabin, Yuriy Matveev, Aleksandr Mosin, Aida Tumutova, Anna Korotayeva, Varvara Belokurova, Roman Burenkov

Russia 87mins 2010 Black Comedy

Balabanov follows up his successful period piece Morphia with something more in line with Cargo 200. The Stoker is a scathing attack on the nascent mob culture in Russia and with Pop composer Valeriy Didyulya providing the music that is the only thing that lends this film the comedy element to its tone. Otherwise, it is a pretty dark, stark depiction of life in the 1990s in the ‘burbs of a harsh, wintery St Petersburg.

Known more as a theatre actor, the recently deceased Skryabin is superb in the titular role. Skryabin is a Major, retired due to injury during the Afghan War and now the eponymous stoker, tending the furnaces of an industrial complex, owned by Russian mobsters.

Life here is cheap. You may not even be aware that you have transgressed, only to find yourself food for the fire. Skryabin turns a blind eye to the bodies fed into his coal box by erstwhile army colleague Misha (Alexandr Mosin), content to spend what little time he gets with his daughter and write a long-gestating book about the persecuted North East Siberian ‘Yakut’ people on an ancient typewriter set up by his bed in the boiler room adjacent to the voracious incinerators.

First time actress Aida Tumotova is perfect as Sasha, the stoker’s daughter, now set up in business in the fashionable fur trade and in love with Misha’s taciturn hired gun, ‘Bison’ (Matveev). Indeed, the cast are terrific throughout.

Balabanov has extracted all of the sexiness out of killing, counter to the current American fashion. Here, it has become a sanitised occupation, a clinical undertaking, exercised with the practiced functionality of a fruit-picker or glassmaker and is all the more powerful for it. Likewise, nudity is treated with the same total lack of self-consciousness.

The only downside to this sparse, economically shot, finely executed and highly stylised drama is the pop music, which although making its comedic point quite obviously, finally grates in the use of the same pop song over and over; although this is of course is presumably also an artistic choice.

An eloquent, if somewhat light tragicomedy; in the end, it’s an exploration of the venality of life, where moral bankruptcy slips down through generations with ease, with even less compunction even than the generation coming before. At what point do you take a stand? AR

THE STOKER WILL SCREEN AS PART OF THE ALEXEI BALABANOV RETROSPECTIVE AT KINO KLUB, THE MAYFAIR HOTEL FROM 1 FEBRUARY UNTIL 25 MAY 2014 COURTESY OF ACADEMIA ROSSICA

MyFrenchFilmFestival online January 17 – February 17

So how about a film festival you can watch from home? Entirely online and perfect for those sofa suppers with your loved-one or just the dog, MyFrenchFilmFestivalonline is the antidote to going out in this bleak and blustery winter weather.

Now in its fourth year, MyFrenchFilmFestivalonline will runs from January 17 until February 17 this year. For a whole month, cinema lovers all over the world over will be able to access the festival on 20 partner platforms, including iTunes in 80 countries.- Shortlisted films will be screened in more than 1,000 venues around the world. Films will be available for free on MyFrenchFilmFestival.com and on partner platforms in Latin America, China, Poland, Russia and Turkey.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (restored version) will be available for free viewing on January 17, the first day of the festival.

The full feature programme #MYFFF – here’s a flavour of what’s on offer:

IN A RUSH, by Louis Do de Lencquesaing

[youtube id=”t_NCuKKGCuQ” width=”600″ height=”350″]

AUGUSTINE, by Alice Winocou

[youtube id=”6JWEORpY2xc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

MADDENED BY HIS ABSENCE, by Sandrine Bonnaire

[youtube id=”_jqcfXyWdTI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE VIRGINS, THE COPTS AND ME, by Namir Abdel Messeeh

[youtube id=”Uq55basWt28″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE DAY OF THE CROWS, by Jean-Christophe Dessaint

[youtube id=”09PUtsdbHt4″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

WELCOME TO ARGENTINA, by Edouard Deluc

[youtube id=”Fc_HXWZr610″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

PAULINE DETECTIVE, by Marc Fitoussi

[youtube id=”cmEsme64xuA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

MyFrenchFilmFestival.com will be available on 20 partner platforms including iTunes in 80 countries. MT

Ealing Music & Film Valentine Festival 12-16 February

By popular demand, Ealing Music & Film Valentine Festival returns in 2014 to light up February’s dark days with a programme to celebrate the rich and varied music, film and dance heritage of one of London’s most culturally enriched boroughs.

The excellent film slate follows this years dance theme with one of the BFI’s top ten British films of all time, the Oscar winning THE RED SHOES from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and Tony Palmer’s MARGOT. There will also be a screening in association with the Ealing Classic Cinema Club of the Ealing Studios-made satirical comedy THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT starring Alec Guinness. Ealing Studios will once again be throwing open its doors to the public for tours.

Full Programme

Sundance 2014 WINNERS ANNOUNCED 16 -26 January 2014

SUNDANCE is the top American festival for independent film. The brainchild of Robert Redford, it takes place each year in the snowy city of Park Town, Utah, often selecting films that go on to become strong contenders in Hollywood’s annual awards race. Previous selections include 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine, which won two Oscars and 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was nominated for four Oscars.

This year’s 30th Festival offers the latest indie docs and features taking a look at the lives of extraordinary people. From 118 films (97 World premieres) the competition strand will showcase 17 feature films and 11 documentaries from upcoming directors together with those of more seasoned critical acclaim. No less than 11 documentaries will be shown in the premieres section, reflecting the increased popularity of this form of filmmaking. Robert Redford describes this as ‘a cultural exchange’.

Highlights this year will include 20,000 Days on Earth, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s biopic of the notorious musician Nick Cave; In Mitt. Greg Whiteley follows former governor Mitt Romney on his failed 2012 US presidential campaign. Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney returns with Finding Fela, showcasing the life of Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, while To Be Takei by Jennifer Kroot explores the career of Star Trek actor George Takei.

In the dramatic section, Mike Cahill’s I Origins, is a drama about a pair of scientists who make a breakthrough altering the future of mankind; Dutch director Anton Corbijn presents his adaptation of John le Carre’s best-selling thriller novel A Most Wanted Man, featuring a starry cast of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams and Willem Dafoe. British actress Keira Knightley stars as a young woman with emotional development issues in Lynn Shelton’s Laggies alongside Sam Rockwell and Chloe Grace Moretz. Frank is Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s follow-up to What Richard Did (2012).

The theme of genre-defying films continues within the premieres category. Oscar-nominated actor William H Macy makes his directorial debut with Ruddersless, a story of a bereft father who forms a rock and roll band to keep the memory of his lost son’s songs alive. Starring Billy Crudup and Anton Yelchin it will be the closing film this year. Arrested Development star David Cross also makes his directorial debut with black comedy Hits, which examines the culture of fame in today’s YouTube generation.

Comedy-wise, British director Michael Winterbottom returns to Sundance with his latest comedy: ‘The Trip to Italy, a follow-up to 2010’s The Trip, Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan’s good food travelogue of the best restaurants in Britain. Comedian Nick Offerman’s directorial debut is American Ham, a live stand-up show with topics as diverse and sex and woodworking. Other strands this year are ‘In the Spotlight’, ‘Park City at Midnight’ and ‘New Frontier’.

Rather than cherry-picking from the selection – here’s this year’s full run-down to give you a full flavour oF what’s to come:

PREMIERES

Calvary / Ireland, UK (Dir/writer: John Michael McDonagh) For those who enjoyed The Guard, Calvary sees McDonagh back on familiar territory with this black comedic drama about a priest tormented by his community. Father James is a good man intent on making the world a better place. When his life is threatened one day during confession, he finds he has to battle the dark forces closing in around him.Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Marie-Josée Croze.

Frank / Ireland, UK (Director: Lenny Abrahamson, Screenwriters: Jon Ronson, Peter Straughan) — Frank is an offbeat comedy about a wannabe musician who finds himself out of his depth when he joins an avant garde rock band led by the enigmatic Frank—a musical genius who hides himself inside a large fake head. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy.

Hits / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: David Cross) — A small town in upstate New York is populated by people who wallow in unrealistic expectations. There, fame, delusion, earnestness, and recklessness meet, shake hands, and disrupt the lives around them. Cast: Meredith Hagner, Matt Walsh, James Adomian, Jake Cherry Derek Waters, Wyatt Cenac.

I Origins / U.S.A. (Dir/Writer: Mike Cahill) — A molecular biologist and his lab partner uncover startling evidence that could fundamentally change society as we know it and cause them to question their once-certain beliefs in science and spirituality. Cast: Michael Pitt, Brit Marling, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Steven Yeun, Archie Panjabi.

Laggies/ U.S.A. (Dir: Lynn Shelton, writer: Andrea Seigel) Laggies is a coming of age story about a 28-year-old woman stuck in permanent adolescence. Unable to find her career calling, still hanging out with the same friends, and living with her high school boyfriend, Megan must finally navigate her own future when an unexpected marriage proposal sends her into a panic. Cast: Keira Knightley, Sam Rockwell, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ellie Kemper, Jeff Garlin, Mark Webber.

Little Accidents / U.S.A. (Dir/writer: Sara Colangelo) — In a small American coal town living in the shadow of a recent mining accident, the disappearance of a teenage boy draws three people together—a surviving miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive, and a local boy—in a web of secrets. Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook, Chloë Sevigny, Jacob Lofland, Josh Lucas.

Love is Strange / U.S.A. (Director: Ira Sachs, Screenwriters: Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias) — After 39 years together, Ben and George finally tie the knot, but George loses his job as a result, and the newlyweds must sell their New York apartment and live apart, relying on friends and family to make ends meet. Cast: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Darren Burrows, Charlie Tahan, Cheyenne Jackson.

A Most Wanted Man / Germany, U.S.A. (Director: Anton Corbijn, Screenwriter: Andrew Bovell) — Based on John le Carré’s bestselling book, Anton Corbijn directs this modern-day thriller with Academy Award–winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, and two-time Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe headlining an ensemble cast.Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright.

Nick Offerman: American Ham / U.S.A. (Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts, Screenwriter: Nick Offerman) — WARNING: MINOR NUDITY AND NOT SUITABLE FOR VEGETARIANS. This live taping of Nick Offerman’s hilarious one-man show at New York’s historic Town Hall theater features a collection of anecdotes, songs, and woodworking/oral sex techniques. The routine includes Offerman’s 10 tips for living a more prosperous life, so hearken well. Cast: Nick Offerman.

The One I Love / U.S.A. (Director: Charlie McDowell, Screenwriter: Justin Lader) — Struggling with a marriage on the brink of falling apart, a couple escapes for the weekend in pursuit of their better selves, only to discover an unusual dilemma waiting for them. Cast: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson.

The Raid 2 / Indonesia (Director and screenwriter: Gareth Evans) — Picking up where the first film left off, The Raid 2 follows Rama as he goes undercover and infiltrates the ranks of a ruthless Jakarta crime syndicate in order to protect his family and expose the corruption in his own police force. Cast: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusadewo, Alex Abbad.

Rudderless / U.S.A. (Director: William H. Macy, Screenwriters: Casey Twenter, Jeff Robison, William H. Macy) — When a grieving father in a downward spiral stumbles upon a box of his deceased son’s original music, he forms a rock ‘n’ roll band, which changes his life.Cast: Billy Crudup, Anton Yelchin, Felicity Huffman, Selena Gomez, Laurence Fishburne, William H. Macy. CLOSING NIGHT FILM

They Came Together / U.S.A. (Director: David Wain, Screenwriters: Michael Showalter, David Wain) — This subversion/spoof/deconstruction of the romantic comedy genre has a vaguely, but not overtly, Jewish leading man, a klutzy, but adorable, leading lady, and New York City itself as another character in the story. Cast: Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Ed Helms, Cobie Smulders, Max Greenfield, Christopher Meloni.

The Trip to Italy / United Kingdom (Director: Michael Winterbottom, Screenwriters: Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan, Michael Winterbottom) Michael Winterbottom reunites Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for more delectable food, some sharp-elbowed rivalry, and plenty of laughs. Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon.

The Voices / U.S.A., Germany (Director: Marjane Satrapi, Screenwriter: Michael R. Perry) — This genre-bending tale centers around Jerry Hickfang, a lovable but disturbed factory worker who yearns for attention from a woman in accounting. When their relationship takes a sudden, murderous turn, Jerry’s evil talking cat and benevolent talking dog lead him down a fantastical path where he ultimately finds salvation. Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick, Jacki Weaver.

White Bird in a Blizzard / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Gregg Araki) — Based on the acclaimed novel by Laura Kasischke, White Bird in a Blizzard tells the story of Kat Connors, a young woman whose life is turned upside down by the sudden disappearance of her beautiful, enigmatic mother. Cast: Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Christopher Meloni, Shiloh Fernandez, Gabourey Sidibe, Thomas Jane.

Young Ones / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jake Paltrow) — Set in a future where water is hard to find, a teenage boy sets out to protect his family and survive. Cast: Michael Shannon, Nicholas Hoult, Elle Fanning, Kodi Smit-McPhee.

DOCUMENTARY PREMIERES

Renowned filmmakers and films about far-reaching subjects comprise this section highlighting our ongoing commitment to documentaries. Each film is a world premiere.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball / U.S.A. (Directors: Chapman Way, Maclain Way) — Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.

Finding Fela / U.S.A. (Director: Alex Gibney) — Fela Anikulapo Kuti created the musical movement Afrobeat and used it as a political forum to oppose the Nigerian dictatorship and advocate for the rights of oppressed people. This is the story of his life, music, and political importance.

Freedom Summer / U.S.A. (Director: Stanley Nelson) — In the summer of 1964, more than 700 students descended on violent, segregated Mississippi. Defying authorities, they registered voters, created freedom schools, and established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Fifty years later, eyewitness accounts and never-before-seen archival material tell their story. Not all of them would make it through.

Happy Valley / U.S.A. (Director: Amir Bar-Lev) — The children of “Happy Valley” were victimized for years, by a key member of the legendary Penn State college football program. But were Jerry Sandusky’s crimes an open secret? With rare access, director Amir Bar-Lev delves beneath the headlines to tell a modern American parable of guilt, redemption, and identity.

Last Days in Vietnam / U.S.A. (Director: Rory Kennedy) — During the chaotic final weeks of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army closes in on Saigon as the panicked South Vietnamese people desperately attempt to escape. On the ground, American soldiers and diplomats confront a moral quandary: whether to obey White House orders to evacuate only U.S. citizens.

Life Itself / U.S.A. (Director: Steve James) — Life Itself recounts the surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert. The film details his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.

Mitt / U.S.A. (Director: Greg Whiteley) — A filmmaker is granted unprecedented access to a political candidate and his family as he runs for President.

This May Be the Last Time / U.S.A. (Director: Sterlin Harjo) — Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo’s Grandfather disappeared mysteriously in 1962. The community searching for him sang songs of encouragement that were passed down for generations. Harjo explores the origins of these songs as well as the violent history of his people.

To Be Takei / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Kroot) — Over seven decades, actor and activist George Takei journeyed from a World War II internment camp to the helm of the Starship Enterprise, and then to the daily news feeds of five million Facebook fans. Join George and his husband, Brad, on a wacky and profound trek for life, liberty, and love.

We Are The Giant / U.S.A., United Kingdom (Director: Greg Barker) — We Are The Giant tells the stories of ordinary individuals who are transformed by the moral and personal challenges they encounter when standing up for what they believe is right. Powerful and tragic, yet inspirational, their struggles for freedom echo across history and offer hope against seemingly impossible odds.

WHITEY: United States of America v. James J. Bulger / U.S.A. (Director: Joe Berlinger) — Infamous gangster James “Whitey” Bulger’s relationship with the FBI and Department of Justice allowed him to reign over a criminal empire in Boston for decades. Joe Berlinger’s documentary chronicles Bulger’s recent sensational trial, using it as a springboard to explore allegations of corruption within the highest levels of law enforcement.

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film.

Camp X-Ray / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Peter Sattler) — A young woman is stationed as a guard in Guantanamo Bay, where she forms an unlikely friendship with one of the detainees. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Payman Maadi, Lane Garrison, J.J. Soria, John Carroll Lynch.

Cold in July / U.S.A. (Director: Jim Mickle, Screenwriters: Jim Mickle, Nick Damici) — After killing a home intruder, a small town Texas man’s life unravels into a dark underworld of corruption and violence. Cast: Michael C. Hall, Don Johnson, Sam Shepard, Vinessa Shaw, Nick Damici, Wyatt Russell.

Dear White People/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Justin Simien) — Four black students attend an Ivy League college where a riot breaks out over an “African American” themed party thrown by white students. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, the film explores racial identity in postracial America while weaving a story about forging one’s unique path in the world. Cast: Tyler Williams, Tessa Thompson, Teyonah Parris, Brandon Bell.

Fishing Without Nets / U.S.A., Somalia, Kenya (Director: Cutter Hodierne, Screenwriters: Cutter Hodierne, John Hibey, David Burkman) — A story of pirates in Somalia told from the perspective of a struggling, young Somali fisherman. Cast: Abdikani Muktar, Abdi Siad, Abduwhali Faarah, Abdikhadir Hassan, Reda Kateb, Idil Ibrahim.

God’s Pocket/ U.S.A. (Director: John Slattery, Screenwriters: John Slattery, Alex Metcalf) — When Mickey’s stepson Leon is killed in a construction “accident,” Mickey tries to bury the bad news with the body. But when the boy’s mother demands the truth, Mickey finds himself stuck between a body he can’t bury, a wife he can’t please, and a debt he can’t pay.Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, Christina Hendricks, John Turturro.

Happy Christmas / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Joe Swanberg) — After a breakup with her boyfriend, a young woman moves in with her older brother, his wife, and their 2-year-old son. Cast: Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham, Joe Swanberg.

Hellion / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kat Candler) — When motocross and heavy metal obsessed, 13-year-old Jacob’s delinquent behavior forces CPS to place his little brother Wes with his aunt, Jacob and his emotionally absent father must finally take responsibility for their actions and each other in order to bring Wes home. Cast: Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis, Josh Wiggins, Deke Garner, Jonny Mars, Walt Roberts.

Infinitely Polar Bear / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Maya Forbes) — A manic-depressive mess of a father tries to win back his wife by attempting to take full responsibility of their two young, spirited daughters, who don’t make the overwhelming task any easier. Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Imogene Wolodarsky, Ashley Aufderheide.

Jamie Marks is Dead / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Carter Smith) — No one seemed to care about Jamie Marks until after his death. Hoping to find the love and friendship he never had in life, Jamie’s ghost visits former classmate Adam McCormick, drawing him into the bleak world between the living and the dead. Cast: Cameron Monaghan, Noah Silver, Morgan Saylor, Judy Greer, Madisen Beaty, Liv Tyler.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter/ U.S.A. (Director: David Zellner, Screenwriters: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner) — A lonely Japanese woman becomes convinced that a satchel of money buried in a fictional film is, in fact, real. Abandoning her structured life in Tokyo for the frozen Minnesota wilderness, she embarks on an impulsive quest to search for her lost mythical fortune. Cast: Rinko Kikuchi.

Life After Beth / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jeff Baena) — Zach is devastated by the unexpected death of his girlfriend, Beth. When she mysteriously returns, he gets a second chance at love. Soon his whole world turns upside down… Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines, Paul Reiser.

Low Down / U.S.A. (Director: Jeff Preiss, Screenwriters: Amy Albany, Topper Lilien) — Based on Amy Jo Albany’s memoir, Low Down explores her heart-wrenching journey to adulthood while being raised by her father, bebop pianist Joe Albany, as he teeters between incarceration and addiction in the urban decay and waning bohemia of Hollywood in the 1970s. Cast: John Hawkes, Elle Fanning, Glenn Close, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, Flea.

The Skeleton Twins / U.S.A. (Director: Craig Johnson, Screenwriters: Craig Johnson, Mark Heyman) — When estranged twins Maggie and Milo feel that they’re at the end of their ropes, an unexpected reunion forces them to confront why their lives went so wrong. As the twins reconnect, they realize the key to fixing their lives may just lie in repairing their relationship. Cast: Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Luke Wilson, Ty Burrell, Boyd Holbrook, Joanna Gleason.

The Sleepwalker / U.S.A., Norway (Director: Mona Fastvold, Screenwriters: Mona Fastvold, Brady Corbet) — A young couple, Kaia and Andrew, are renovating Kaia´s secluded family estate. Their lives are violently interrupted when unexpected guests arrive. The Sleepwalker chronicles the unraveling of the lives of four disparate characters as it transcends genre conventions and narrative contrivance to reveal something much more disturbing. Cast: Gitte Witt, Christopher Abbott, Brady Corbet, Stephanie Ellis.

Song One / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kate Barker-Froyland) — Estranged from her family, Franny returns home when an accident leaves her brother comatose. Retracing his life as an aspiring musician, she tracks down his favorite musician, James Forester. Against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s music scene, Franny and James develop an unexpected relationship and face the realities of their lives. Cast: Anne Hathaway, Johnny Flynn, Mary Steenburgen, Ben Rosenfield.

Whiplash / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Damien Chazelle) — Under the direction of a ruthless instructor, a talented young drummer begins to pursue perfection at any cost, even his humanity. Cast: Miles Teller, JK Simmons. DAY ONE FILM

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Sixteen world-premiere American documentaries that illuminate the ideas, people, and events that shape the present day.

Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory / U.S.A. (Director: Michael Rossato-Bennett) — Five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia—many of them alone in nursing homes. A man with a simple idea discovers that songs embedded deep in memory can ease pain and awaken these fading minds. Joy and life are resuscitated, and our cultural fears over aging are confronted.

All the Beautiful Things / U.S.A. (Director: John Harkrider) — John and Barron are lifelong friends whose friendship is tested when Barron’s girlfriend says Barron put a knife to her throat and raped her. Not knowing she has lied, John tells her to go to the police. Years later, John and Barron meet in a bar to resolve the betrayal.

CAPTIVATED The Trials of Pamela Smart / U.S.A., United Kingdom (Director: Jeremiah Zagar) — In an extraordinary and tragic American story, a small town murder becomes one of the highest profile cases of all time. From its historic role as the first televised trial to the many books and movies made about it, the film looks at the media’s enduring impact on the case.

The Case Against 8 / U.S.A. (Directors: Ben Cotner, Ryan White) — A behind-the-scenes look inside the case to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Shot over five years, the film follows the unlikely team that took the first federal marriage equality lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cesar’s Last Fast / U.S.A. (Directors: Richard Ray Perez, Lorena Parlee) — Inspired by Catholic social teaching, Cesar Chavez risked his life fighting for America’s poorest workers. The film illuminates the intensity of one man’s devotion and personal sacrifice, the birth of an economic justice movement, and tells an untold chapter in the story of civil rights in America.

Dinosaur 13 / U.S.A. (Director: Todd Miller) — The true tale behind one of the greatest discoveries in history. DAY ONE FILM

E-TEAM / U.S.A. (Directors: Katy Chevigny, Ross Kauffman) — E-TEAM is driven by the high-stakes investigative work of four intrepid human rights workers, offering a rare look at their lives at home and their dramatic work in the field.

Fed Up / U.S.A. (Director: Stephanie Soechtig) — Fed Up blows the lid off everything we thought we knew about food and weight loss, revealing a 30-year campaign by the food industry, aided by the U.S. government, to mislead and confuse the American public, resulting in one of the largest health epidemics in history.

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz / U.S.A. (Director: Brian Knappenberger) — Programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz achieved groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing. His passion for open access ensnared him in a legal nightmare that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26.

Ivory Tower / U.S.A. (Director: Andrew Rossi) — As tuition spirals upward and student debt passes a trillion dollars, students and parents ask, “Is college worth it?” From the halls of Harvard to public and private colleges in financial crisis to education startups in Silicon Valley, an urgent portrait emerges of a great American institution at the breaking point.

Marmato / U.S.A. (Director: Mark Grieco) — Colombia is the center of a new global gold rush, and Marmato, a historic mining town, is the new frontier. Filmed over the course of nearly six years, Marmato chronicles how townspeople confront a Canadian mining company that wants the $20 billion in gold beneath their homes.

No No: A Dockumentary / U.S.A. (Director: Jeffrey Radice) — Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter on LSD, then worked for decades counseling drug abusers. Dock’s soulful style defined 1970s baseball as he kept hitters honest and embarrassed the establishment. An ensemble cast of teammates, friends, and family investigate his life on the field, in the media, and out of the spotlight.

The Overnighters / U.S.A. (Director: Jesse Moss) — Desperate, broken men chase their dreams and run from their demons in the North Dakota oil fields. A local Pastor’s decision to help them has extraordinary and unexpected consequences.

Private Violence / U.S.A. (Director: Cynthia Hill) — One in four women experience violence in their homes. Have you ever asked, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” Private Violence shatters the brutality of our logic and intimately reveals the stories of two women: Deanna Walters, who transforms from victim to survivor, and Kit Gruelle, who advocates for justice.

Rich Hill / U.S.A. (Directors: Andrew Droz Palermo, Tracy Droz Tragos) — In a rural, American town, kids face heartbreaking choices, find comfort in the most fragile of family bonds, and dream of a future of possibility.

Watchers of the Sky / U.S.A. (Director: Edet Belzberg) — Five interwoven stories of remarkable courage from Nuremberg to Rwanda, from Darfur to Syria, and from apathy to action.

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Twelve films from emerging filmmaking talents around the world offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles.

52 Tuesdays / Australia (Director: Sophie Hyde, Screenplay and story by: Matthew Cormack, Story by: Sophie Hyde) — Sixteen-year-old Billie’s reluctant path to independence is accelerated when her mother reveals plans for gender transition, and their time together becomes limited to Tuesdays. This emotionally charged story of desire, responsibility, and transformation was filmed over the course of a year—once a week, every week, only on Tuesdays. Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Del Herbert-Jane, Imogen Archer, Mario Späte, Beau Williams, Sam Althuizen. International Premiere

Blind / Norway, Netherlands (Director and screenwriter: Eskil Vogt) — Having recently lost her sight, Ingrid retreats to the safety of her home—a place she can feel in control, alone with her husband and her thoughts. But Ingrid’s real problems lie within, not beyond the walls of her apartment, and her deepest fears and repressed fantasies soon take over. Cast: Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Henrik Rafaelsen, Vera Vitali, Marius Kolbenstvedt. World Premiere

Difret / Ethiopia (Director and screenwriter: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari) — Meaza Ashenafi is a young lawyer who operates under the government’s radar helping women and children until one young girl’s legal case exposes everything, threatening not only her career but her survival. Cast: Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere. World Premiere

The Disobedient/ Serbia (Director and screenwriter: Mina Djukic) — Leni anxiously waits for her childhood friend Lazar, who is coming back to their hometown after years of studying abroad. After they reunite, they embark on a random bicycle trip around their childhood haunts, which will either exhaust or reinvent their relationship. Cast: Hana Selimovic, Mladen Sovilj, Minja Subota, Danijel Sike, Ivan Djordjevic. World Premiere

God Help the Girl / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Stuart Murdoch) — This musical from Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian is about some messed up boys and girls and the music they made. Cast: Emily Browning, Olly Alexander, Hannah Murray, Pierre Boulanger, Cora Bissett. World Premiere

Liar’s Dice / India (Director and screenwriter: Geetu Mohandas) — Kamala, a young woman from the village of Chitkul, leaves her native land with her daughter to search for her missing husband. Along the journey, they encounter Nawazudin, a free-spirited army deserter with his own selfish motives who helps them reach their destination. Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Geetanjali Thapa, Manya Gupta. International Premiere

Lilting / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Hong Khaou) — The world of a Chinese mother mourning the untimely death of her son is suddenly disrupted by the presence of a stranger who doesn’t speak her language. Lilting is a touching and intimate film about finding the things that bring us together. Cast: Ben Whishaw, Pei-Pei Cheng, Andrew Leung, Peter Bowles, Naomi Christie, Morven Christie. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM

Lock Charmer (El cerrajero)/ Argentina (Director and screenwriter: Natalia Smirnoff) — Upon learning that his girlfriend is pregnant, 33-year-old locksmith Sebastian begins to have strange visions about his clients. With the help of an unlikely assistant, he sets out to use his newfound talent for his own good. Cast: Esteban Lamothe, Erica Rivas, Yosiria Huaripata. World Premiere

To Kill a Man / Chile, France (Director and screenwriter: Alejandro Fernández Almendras) — When Jorge, a hardworking family man who’s barely making ends meet, gets mugged by Kalule, a neighborhood delinquent, Jorge’s son decides to confront the attacker, only to get himself shot. Even though Jorge’s son nearly dies, Kalule’s sentence is minimal, heightening the friction. Cast: Daniel Candia, Daniel Antivilo, Alejandra Yañez, Ariel Mateluna. World Premiere

Viktoria / Bulgaria, Romania (Director and screenwriter: Maya Vitkova) — Although determined not to have a child in Communist Bulgaria, Boryana gives birth to Viktoria, who despite being born with no umbilical cord, is proclaimed to be the baby of the decade. But political collapse and the hardships of the new time bind mother and daughter together.Cast: Irmena Chichikova, Daria Vitkova, Kalina Vitkova, Mariana Krumova, Dimo Dimov, Georgi Spassov. World Premiere

Wetlands / Germany (Director: David Wnendt, Screenwriters: Claus Falkenberg, David Wnendt, based on the novel by Charlotte Roche) — Meet Helen Memel. She likes to experiment with vegetables while masturbating and thinks that bodily hygiene is greatly overrated. She shocks those around her by speaking her mind in a most unladylike manner on topics that many people would not even dare consider. Cast: Carla Juri, Christoph Letkowski, Meret Becker, Axel Milberg, Marlen Kruse, Edgar Selge. North American Premiere

White Shadow / Italy, Germany, Tanzania (Director: Noaz Deshe, Screenwriters: Noaz Deshe, James Masson) — Alias is a young albino boy on the run. His mother has sent him away to find refuge in the city after witnessing his father’s murder. Over time, the city becomes no different than the bush: wherever Alias travels, the same rules of survival apply. Cast: Hamisi Bazili, James Gayo, Glory Mbayuwayu, Salum Abdallah. International Premiere

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Twelve documentaries by some of the most courageous and extraordinary international filmmakers working today.

20,000 Days On Earth / United Kingdom (Directors: Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard) — Drama and reality combine in a fictitious 24 hours in the life of musician and international culture icon Nick Cave. With startlingly frank insights and an intimate portrayal of the artistic process, this film examines what makes us who we are and celebrates the transformative power of the creative spirit. World Premiere

Concerning Violence / Sweden, U.S.A., Denmark, Finland (Director: Göran Hugo Olsson) —Concerning Violence is based on newly discovered, powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. World Premiere

The Green Prince / Germany, Israel, United Kingdom (Director: Nadav Schirman ) — This real-life thriller tells the story of one of Israel’s prized intelligence sources, recruited to spy on his own people for more than a decade. Focusing on the complex relationship with his handler,The Green Prince is a gripping account of terror, betrayal, and unthinkable choices, along with a friendship that defies all boundaries. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM

Happiness / France, Finland (Director: Thomas Balmès) — Peyangki is a dreamy and solitary eight-year-old monk living in Laya, a Bhutanese village perched high in the Himalayas. Soon the world will come to him: the village is about to be connected to electricity, and the first television will flicker on before Peyangki’s eyes. North American Premiere

Love Child / South Korea, U.S.A. (Director: Valerie Veatch) — In Seoul in the Republic of Korea, a young couple stands accused of neglect when “Internet addiction” in an online fantasy game costs the life of their infant daughter. Love Child documents the 2010 trial and subsequent ruling that set a global precedent in a world where virtual is the new reality.World Premiere

Mr leos caraX / France (Director: Tessa Louise-Salomé) — Mr leos caraX plunges us into the poetic and visionary world of a mysterious, solitary filmmaker who was already a cult figure from his very first film. Punctuated by interviews and previously unseen footage, this documentary is most of all a fine-tuned exploration of the poetic and visionary world of Leos Carax, alias Mr. X. World Premiere

My Prairie Home / Canada (Director: Chelsea McMullan) — A poetic journey through landscapes both real and emotional, Chelsea McMullan’s documentary/musical offers an intimate portrait of transgender singer Rae Spoon, framed by stunning images of the Canadian prairies. McMullan’s imaginative visual interpretations of Spoon’s songs make this an unforgettable look at a unique Canadian artist. International Premiere

The Notorious Mr. Bout / U.S.A., Russia (Directors: Tony Gerber, Maxim Pozdorovkin ) — Viktor Bout was a war profiteer, an entrepreneur, an aviation tycoon, an arms dealer, and—strangest of all—a documentary filmmaker. The Notorious Mr. Bout is the ultimate rags-to-riches-to-prison memoir, documented by the last man you’d expect to be holding the camera. World Premiere

Return to Homs / Syria, Germany (Director: Talal Derki) — Basset Sarout, the 19-year-old national football team goalkeeper, becomes a demonstration leader and singer, and then a fighter. Ossama, a 24-year-old renowned citizen cameraman, is critical, a pacifist, and ironic until he is detained by the regime’s security forces. North American Premiere

SEPIDEH – Reaching for the Stars / Denmark (Director: Berit Madsen) — Sepideh wants to become an astronaut. As a young Iranian woman, she knows it’s dangerous to challenge traditions and expectations. Still, Sepideh holds on to her dream. She knows a tough battle is ahead, a battle that only seems possible to win once she seeks help from an unexpected someone. North American Premiere

We Come as Friends / France, Austria (Director: Hubert Sauper) — We Come as Friends is a modern odyssey, a science fiction–like journey in a tiny homemade flying machine into the heart of Africa. At the moment when the Sudan, Africa’s biggest country, is being divided into two nations, a “civilizing” pathology transcends the headlines—colonialism, imperialism, and yet-another holy war over resources. World Premiere

Web Junkie / Israel (Directors: Shosh Shlam, Hilla Medalia) — China is the first country to label “Internet addiction” a clinical disorder. With extraordinary intimacy, Web Junkieinvestigates a Beijing rehab center where Chinese teenagers are deprogrammed, focusing on three teens, their parents and the health professionals determined to help them kick their habit. World Premiere

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE IN PARK CITY, UTAH FROM 9 UNTIL 26 JANUARY 2014.

THE WINNERS OF THE 2014 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

US GRAND JURY PRIZE; DRAMATIC – WHIPLASH

US GRAND JURY PRIZE: DOCUMENTARY – RICH HILL

WORLD CINEMA GRAND JURY PRIZE: DRAMATIC – TO KILL A MAN

WORLD CINEMA GRAND JURY PRIZE: DOCUMENTARY – RETURN TO HOMS

AUDIENCE AWARD US DRAMATIC – WHIPLASH

AUDIENCE AWARD US DOCUMENTARY – ALIVE INSIDE : A STORY OF MUSIC & MEMORY

AUDIENCE AWARD: WORLD CINEMA; DRAMATIC – DIFRET

AUDIENCE AWARD: WORLD CINEMA: DOCUMENTARY – THE GREEN PRINCE

AUDIENCE AWARD: BEST OF NEXT – IMPERIAL DREAMS

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)

Dir: Jacques Demy, Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castalnuevo, Roland Cassard, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel

France 1964, 89 min. Drama French with English subtitles SPARKLING NEW REMASTERING

LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG, a musical which won the Palme D’Or’ in Cannes 1964, is the middle part of a loosely connected fantasy trilogy by Jacques Demy (1931-1990); bookended by Lola (1961) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967). The latter two starred the young Catherine Deneuve, who Demy made into a star. LES PARAPLUIES is set in Nantes, Demy’s hometown. It relies very much on architecture and interiors, Demy even had part of the town repainted, so it would fit in with his colour scheme. The narrative is simple: The young Genevieve Emery (Deneuve) is madly in love with Guy (Nino Castalnuevo), an auto mechanic. Her mother (Anne Vernon) is vey much against this match, since she has long ‘decided’ that her daughter should marry the well off jeweller Roland Cassard (Marc Michel). Fate takes a hand when Guy is called up to serve in the Algerian war. Just before he leaves, the couple consummate their relationship, pledging eternal love. But the one night stand is enough to make Genevieve pregnant, and her mother successfully intercepts and destroys all letters Guy sends from the front. In the end, Madame Emery gets her way: Genevieve, pregnant, gets married to Monsieur Cassard. And when she meets Guy by chance three years later, there is only embarrassed silence.

LES PARAPLUIES was seen as the French answer to ‘Mary Poppins’ – obviously we get a love instead of a kiddies classic . But the aesthetics are similar: a sort of pre-pop escapism, with a colour scheme to match. Everything is over the top, the singing and design scream loudly of a world widely removed from any reality. Together with Legrand’s magical music score Demy delivers the viewer into a fairy-land – but no happy Hollywood ending. Bittersweet and with radical changing emotions, PARAPLUIES is a very French escapade.

Jacques Demy was a contemporary of all the Nouvelle Vague crew, and he started his career at about the same time. But unlike them, he did not wanted to break with tradition, his films are in the tradition of the pre-war films of Prevert, Max Ophuls and Renoir. Demy wanted to relieve the viewer of the pressure of reality, not confront them with it like Jean-Luc Godard. Most of his films are set in Nantes, he relies heavily on this background. But it is anything but realistic, Demy re-creates a contained fantasy world. Playful and always relying very much on the central performances as in PARAPLUIES, he created an alternative universe, in which reality goes under in waves of colour, music and melodramatic emotion. AS

LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG CELEBRATES 50 YEARS WITH A BLU-RAY RELEASE COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL OUT ON 10 FEBRUARY 2014

La Prima Neve (2013) Venezia 70

Director: Andrea Segre

Cinematographer: Luca Bigazzi

Cast: Giuseppe Battiston, Anita Caprioli, Roberto Citran, Jean-Christophe Folly, Matteo Marchel, Peter Mitterutzner

103min Italian with subtitles Drama

Andrea Segre’s poignantly-observed but non-judgemental ‘New Wave’ mood piece is an immigration story set in the Italian Alpine region of Trentino Alto Adige. Segre stumbles at first but gradually finds his feet in telling the story of Dani, a grieving refugee from Togo, who has lost his family and fetches up in a remote community that has also experienced the tragedy of loss. Peter Mitterrutzner plays a woodcutter and his daughter Elisa (a brilliant Anita Caprioli) who are bringing up Michele (Matteo Marchel), a young boy who has been emotionally scarred by the loss of his father.

The local woods provide therapy for the pair as they work out their frustrations and disappointments on the land and although Dani feels very much at odds with his new environment, Michele leads the way, being familiar with the local countryside. Newcomer Matteo Marchel is particularly good in a believable performance that combines childish anger with an ability to manipulate his elders.

Well-known for his documentaries, Andrea Segre uses his considerable talents in capturing the quiet beauty of the mountain landscape with the help of lenser Luca Bigazzi (La Grande Bellezza, This Must Be the Place). Very much a character in its own right, the isolated mountain region provides an effective backdrop to this compelling narrative with its themes of nature, childhood and loss. Immersive and visually stunning, La Prima Neve is a promising feature debut. MT

SCREENING DURING CINEMA MADE IN ITALY WHICH RUNS FROM 5-9 MARCH 2014 AT THE CINE LUMIERE LONDON SW7

Snowpiercer (2013) Coming soon….

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Producer Park Chan-wook

Song Kang-ho, Ko Asung, John Hurt and Tilda Swinton and comic author Jean-Marc Rochette

South Korea

When Bong Joon Ho first opened Jean-Marc Rochette’s comic “Snowpiercer” in a Seoul bookshop, he supposedly devoured all three volumes on the spot. Eight years later, the French comic has been made into the most lavish Korean film of all time. Seolguk-yeolcha (Snowpiercer) describes an impending ice age caused by human hand, whose last survivors are left circling the earth in a non-stop express train. The rich are in the front carriages and the poor ¬– from whose perspective the story is told – at the back.

[youtube id=”hgQ8uKFFwik” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Last Passenger (2013) DVD

Director: Omid Nooshin

Cast: Dougray Scott, Kara Tointon, Iddo Goldberg, David Schofield, Lindsay Duncan, Joshua Kaynama

90 mins Thriller UK

This Britflic is part drama, part thriller with a touch of horror thrown in. It’s also the debut feature of shorts director Omid Nooshin and a technically ambitious one that he surprisingly pulls off with some success.

Set in the confines of a commuter train from Victoria, it ambles along uneventfully for the first 40 minutes where we meet a crew of cut-out characters who fail to engage our interest further than an average trip on the Gatwick Express. A jowly, knackered Dougray Scott is believable as the stressed Dr Lewis Skolar heading to an A&E emergency with his cute little boy (not unlike Danny from The Shining). Flirting with Kara Tointon’s chirpily flirty events manager; he locks horns with a taciturn accountant played by Brian Schofield in his usual sinister style, but here with no real depth. Then there is a caricature Polish LT worker (Iddo Goldberg) who turns nasty and threatens the guard (as if: Poles are disciplined and respectful of authority?). Meanwhile, Lindsay Duncan plays the ‘token’ older woman sitting winsomely with her knitting, the epitome of the smug grandma.

But the real baddie appears to be the mysterious driver who seems to be sealed into his carriage; never to appear. And as the train gathers breakneck momentum, the passengers are unable to work out what’s going on. LAST PASSENGER is a well-meaning thriller that lives up to its tagline: One Train. Six Passengers. No Chance. It tantalises us with some scary moments and the promise of exciting things to come, but then fails to deliver its goods. Ultimately this vehicle that has momentum but never really takes off. British Rail: eat your heart out. MT

[youtube id=”DeqYC3At0Kw” width=”600″ height=”350″]

LAST PASSENGER IS ON DVD FROM 27 January 2014

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013) DVD

Director: David Lowery

Cast: Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Keith Caradine, Nate Parker

105min US Drama

What separates David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints from other contemporary tales of romance, is that when we are first introduced to our protagonists, we see them bickering, setting the precedent for the rest of this memorable Texan drama. Though hopelessly romanticised in its approach this is by no means a ‘Disney’ fairytale. Beneath the surface lies a pragmatic and bittersweet drama of a husband and wife desperately hoping to be reunited.

When Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) lands himself a lengthy prison sentence, having taken the fall for his wife Ruth’s (Rooney Mara) impetuous shooting of a police officer, he manages to break out of jail, eagerly hoping to be reunited with his wife and the daughter she gave birth to during his incarceration. However in the meantime, Ruth has struck up a strong relationship with the officer himself, Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster), who is blissfully unaware that it was she who pulled the trigger, as both nervously await the impending return of the feared outlaw.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is not your conventional love story, as the only time we truly see Bob and Ruth together they seem somewhat uneasy in each other’s company. Considering the entire film is built around these romantic notions and the foundations of their marriage, it’s a brave move to depict it so truthfully. To an extent, such an honest portrayal actually allows for the viewer to invest even more into their relationship, as we genuinely believe in it. However, Lowery can be accused of not presenting enough back story for our leads, as the jailbreak occurs too swiftly into proceedings, and because of this we don’t really get a sense for either of their personalities beforehand, which makes it difficult to then root for their cause as a result.

Meanwhile the crime itself is understated somewhat, which, considering the entire film hinges on this very moment, appears a strange move to have made for the filmmaker. But despite the lack of context provided, Lowery is evidently attempting to portray how life changing moments such as this can occur in the most unexpected of ways, and take us by surprise. Whilst appreciating the realism, the scene itself doesn’t feel like it is given quite enough substance or detail to help settle us into the story.

There is a gentle atmosphere prevalent in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, enhanced by the A Cappella score, where mere clapping makes up much of the film’s soundtrack. However the clapping can also create a tense, foreboding ambience on occasion, as it speeds up dramatically to suit the nature of the scene at hand. Meditative and slow-burning in its approach, there is a pensive tone to this production, and though telling a simplistic tale, you never once question the significance or conviction of the narrative, despite so little actually happening for the most part. Unfortunately – and this is the case with many films of this type – Lowery can’t avoid unwanted bouts of tedium, but hey, we can’t all be perfect. STEFAN PAPE

OUT ON DVD FROM FEBRUARY 10TH 2014

Leon (1994) 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray Steelbook

Director: Luc Besson

Cast: Jean Reno, Nathalie Portman, Gary Oldman

111/113min Crime Thriller English

Leon is Luc Besson’s controversial and unforgettable story of an unlikely friendship within the brutal world of New York. Starring tough guy Jean Reno as a deadly assassin who gives refuge to a little girl whose dysfunctional family has been slaughtered by the Police; it launched the career of Natalie Portman. She is remarkable as the savvy Mathilda in contrast to Reno’s silent but deadly assassin and Gary Oldman psychotic, drug-dealing policeman. Garnering critical acclaim for its ground-breakingly stylised depiction of violence, it pathed the way for the 90s hitmen movies of Tarantino, Michael Mann et al.

A one-disc Blu-ray featuring both the Director’s and Theatrical cut. Extras include:

Interviews with Jean Reno and Eric Serra

OUT ON FEBRUARY 3RD 2014 COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL

The General (1927)

Dir.:Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman

Cast: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender

Silent; USA 1926, 89 min.

Based on a true incident in 1862 during the American Civil War, THE GENERAL stars Keaton as Johnny Gray, a train driver who tries to enlist in the Confederate Army, mainly to impress his sweetheart Annabelle Lee, whose father and brother enlist immediately. But Gray is more useful to the Southern cause as a train driver than a soldier, and he is rejected in spite of many (comical) efforts. Annabelle, a proud Southern woman is enraged: She will only talk to him again when he is uniform. Soon the dastardly Yankees kidnap the two things Gray loves most: Annabelle and his locomotive ‘ The General’. He swiftly steals another steam engine and pursues the enemy, eventually freeing Annabelle and his locomotive.

THE GENERAL is not a comedy, it is an adventure film with comical features, which might explain its lack of success at the box office since the audience expected a traditional Keaton comedy. Another reason for the classic’s poor box office on its original release may be the fact that the film shows the Southern cause favourably, which will have alienated audiences in the North and East of the USA. But it is Keaton’s work as his own stuntman that’s the most admirable feature of the outing. Whilst wearing his famous poker face bereft of any emotions, he jumps onto driving locomotives, crawls over the roofs of carriages and lumbers wood from carriages into the furnace, whilst the train drives at top speed. He does all this not in a very heroic manner, on the contrary, all his actions teeter always on the brink of failure. Sometimes they even go wrong, for reasons of oversight or clumsiness. Most of the film was shot outdoors in Oregon because the narrow-gauge railroad tacks that were able to accommodate antique locomotives were still in use at the time. It is a miracle that the Keaton/Gray venture succeeds in the end – against all odds of the situations and his own capabilities. He is ‘everyman’s’ hero, triumphing mainly because he expects even worse obstacles on the way ahead.

THE GENERAL was a turning point for Keaton, because it lost him much creative control over his career due to the film’s financial failure and resulting in him having to move to MGM. During filming costs kept rocketing. One scene alone (when the Yankee train drives over a burning bridge, which collapses, sinking the train in the water below) cost 42, 000 dollars at the time of production – we can easily add two zeros at today’s cost. The train was actually left in the water, becoming a tourist attraction.

Adapted from William Pittenger’s book “Daring and Suffering: A History of the Great Railroad Adventure” and subsequent memoirs, THE GENERAL has a narrative that keeps the audience engaged all the time and there is always something happening in a tempo that is relentless, even by today’s standard: ‘Action packed’ is not an overstatement. The camera is very mobile, integrating the landscape at all times, and showing Keaton as a small but resilient character, turning the role of prey into hunter. In spite of context of war, the directors never glamourise the army, but make fun of its structures and hierarchies. A visually stunning achievement, with a magnificent musical score by Carl Davis, that remains entertaining nearly 90 years after its creation. AS

[youtube id=”XLgl8aEtnqc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Restored by The Cohen Film Collection, THE GENERAL is back in cinemas from 24 January 2014, opening at BFI Southbank, as part of a larger Keaton retrospective, and selected cinemas nationwide.

Free Fall (2013) | DVD

Director: Stephan Lacant

Writers: Stephan Lacant, Karsten Dahlem

Cast: Hanno Koffler, Max Riemelt, Attila Borlan, Katherina Schuttler, Stephanie Schonfeld, Maren Kroymann, Luis Lamprecht

100min Gay-themed Drama German with English subtitles

In Stephen Lacant’s gay-themed drama Free Fall, the Police Academy is a hotbed of young, fit trainees all preparing to serve their country. One of them is Marc (Hanno Koffler) who is blessed with a great sex life, a girlfriend Bettina (Katharina Schuttler) with a baby on the way and the support of his parents, who understand the rigours of Police life. Into this seemingly perfect state of affairs, drops Kay (Max Riemelt) a fellow recruit who has heart set on Marc and pursues him hotly despite Marc’s hostile protests to the contrary. Why then does Marc fall for the temptations of a gay fling with a fellow recruit, who also has a girlfriend?

Writers Stephan Lacant and Karsten Dahlem tackle this intricate story with skill and aplomb, creating a stylish and thoughtful drama set in the lush forests of Southern Germany. Free Fall is a tense and tight-lipped affair that sees Marc’s burgeoning homosexuality slowly take light like a smouldering bonfire. It gives the impression (quite convincingly) that if it weren’t for social conditioning, any one of us is open to any sexual persuasion, given the right opportunity and chemistry. Kay offers such a persuasive possibility and such an exciting contrast to Marc’s staid and quotidian lifestyle with Bettina, that this whole premise becomes entirely plausible. But without this opportunity, would Marc have discovered his nascent desire for same sex satisfaction?

Stephan Lacant presents his case with alarming simplicity but is never judgemental. As Marc becomes increasingly inventive in his love-making with Bettina, his boring stereotype of a dull marriage rears its ugly head. And as his homosexuality develops Marc emerges as the more interesting character, where Bettina becomes clingy, oppressive and needy. His parents are predictably one-dimensional and disappointed once Marc’s secret emerges and even his work colleagues are suspicious and mean-spirited in the middle class area of Baden-Wurttemberg. Free Fall, is a metaphor for straight-laced lives and uniformity in a society where the only rewards come out of sticking to the mainstream, toeing the line and keeping up with the Jones’s. Instead of trying to understand Marc’s complex response to his sexual unconformity, Bettina is hostile and unyielding: “Are you gay? – then if not, what are you Marc?” As Marc, Hanno Koffler’s performance is disarmingly moving and exultant by turns.

Free Fall has the feel of Flying Skyscrapers, shot through with the same resonating sensibility and aqua-tinted aesthetic. Visually it may lack the inventive creativeness of Skyscrapers but evokes a far greater sense of loss, delusion and shame, particular through the characterisation of Marc. Stefan Lacant has made a film that tackles some important issues and does so with engaging insight, making even mainstream audiences prick up their ears. MT

FREE FALL IS OUT ON DVD FROM 27 JANUARY 2014. AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER THROUGH AMAZON.CO.UK

Crystal Fairy (2013)

Director/Writer: Sebastián Silva

Cast: Michael Cera, Gaby Hoffmann, Juan Andres Silva, Agustin Silva, Sebastian Silva

98min Adventure/Comedy Spanish with subtitles

You can’t be blamed for feeling distinctly apprehensive towards a film called Crystal Fairy, which stars US indie-chic sensation Michael Cera. It’s only natural to anticipate a forcefully quirky production, and one that has a contrived whimsicality running right through the middle of it. However any such trepidation is extinguished almost instantaneously, as Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva’s first English language film handles dialogue in a more naturalistic, compelling way than many of those in their native tongue would manage.

Cera plays Jamie, a narrow-minded, inherently naïve tourist, travelling in Chile, and staying at Champa’s (Juan Andrés Silva) apartment, a receptive and equable twenty-something. The pair – along with the latter’s brothers Pilo (Agustín Silva) and Lel (José Miguel Silva) – decide to take a trip to the coast, on a quest to get their hands on a fabled hallucinogenic derived from cooking a rare cactus plant. However, whilst high on cocaine at a party the evening before the trip, Jamie invites the eccentric, offbeat bohemian Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffmann) along for the ride – an invitation he certainly lives to regret, as the adventure takes something of a wild turn when she arrives the following morning.

Silva has created a world that seems entirely naturalistic, and yet he offers an almost heightened take on reality. Life seems exaggerated and overstated for comic purposes, yet nothing is actually too far out of the ordinary, as he plays on the quirks and spontaneity of everyday life. Crystal epitomises this notion, appearing as a caricature of the archetypal hippie, cliched and comedic – and yet there are people like this, they genuinely exist. In fact, they’re probably backpacking their way across Chile right now as we speak. In spite of the humorous elements to this film, some scenes are uncomfortable, as an awkward social dynamic is explored, particularly so when Jamie responds with vitriol towards Crystal to make a point that he’s not happy that she took him up on his invitation.

Cera turns in one of his most mature performances to date, but he is blessed with a well fleshed out character, portraying somebody we all have the displeasure of knowing in real life. Though certainly flawed, Cera uses the vulnerability and naivety for which he has become so renowned to ensure we stay on his side. He has a physical fragility as well, and an awkward demeanour that puts him on the back foot somewhat, reminiscent of Woody Allen, and in many regards it enhances the immaturity of the character at hand. Meanwhile the three Chilean brothers – who are genuine siblings off camera – are our entries into this somewhat absurd world. Usually you’d take the perspective of the tourist in this situation, peering into a society and culture somewhat unknown, and yet we relate more to the pragmatic, placid nature of the brothers, causing us to feel rather embarrassed for the Americans and their cliched, almost patronising take towards this foreign land.

Silva portrays his homeland with a beautiful serenity, creating a picturesque film that truly takes you to the heart of the environment. However, despite all of the positives that exist, the unfulfilling finale does leave a sour taste in the mouth, with a ‘revelation’ that seems out of place, taking you away from the story at the very point you’re most engaged. Nonetheless, expectations have been suitably raised as we approach Silva’s next project, which also happens to be set in Chile and also features Michael Cera in a leading role. An idea that now seems somewhat more inviting. Stefan Pape.

CRYSTAL FAIRY IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 JANUARY 2014

[youtube id=”elU_AlgW6Lw” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Kelly + Victor (2012) DVD Blu-Ray

Director/writer: Kieran Evans

Cast: Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Julian Morris, Stephen Walters

90mins UK-Ireland *** Drama

Kelly and Victor meet on the dance floor and the attraction is instant. Both are struggling to make their way in contemporary Liverpool where their close friends are all involved in drug dealing and prostitution. Kelly has learnt a few tricks from a dominatrix friend leading to some sparky chemistry between the sheets but she also has a few dark secrets from the past up her sleeve. Best known for FINISTERRE, his music biopic that featured in the recent URBAN WANDERING FESTIVAL, Kieran Evans’s second feature is based on the eponymous novel by Niall Griffiths and has strong and convincing performances from leads Antonia Campbell Hughes as Kelly and Julian Morris as Victor. Liverpool is very much a character in the film: Evans’s well-crafted direction shows us the city as an attractive and vibrant cultural centre surrounded by verdant countryside; not just as a large shipping port as seen in so many film treatments. Kelly + Victor also confirms Kieran Evans as an exciting and talented filmmaker with this first outing into fiction. MT

Kelly + Victor is out on DVD and Blu-Ray from January 13 2014

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Director: Charles Laughton Screenplay: James Agee

Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Billy Chaplin, Sally Jane Bruce, Evelyn Varden, Don Beddoe, James Gleeson

Cinematographer: Stanley Cortez

93min US Film Noir/Southern Gothic from the novel by Davis Grubb

Back in the fifties, Charles Laughton’s reputation as a flamboyant actor on stage and screen totally eclipsed THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, his only outing as a director. This magical piece of ‘Southern Gothic’ was America’s answer to German Expressionism. Dark themes of religious fervour, sexual tension and fear strike terror into the subconscious. Coalescing with dreamlike set pieces rendered exquisitely in black and white, this masterpiece of chiaroscuro lighting has the ability to shock and enthral. The image of Willa’s corpse in her white winceyette nightie, languishing underwater in the Bayou, is one of the creepiest sequences in Gothic cinema.

However, the film was not a commercial or critical success at the time. James Agee, scripter of The African Queen, was the brains behind the screenplay, based on the novel by Davis Grubb. He offered up the idea to Laughton providing the Britsh thesp with a ideal framework on which to unleash his creative genius on the silver screen.

The setting is the Christian bedrock of West Virginia during the Depression years, a time of hardship and male chauvinism in the Deep South where Shelley Winter’s ‘Willa’ is left widowed after her husband, Ben Harper, receives the ultimate punishment of execution, having left the secret of the stolen loot with their two young children. Posing as a man of God, Robert Mitchum plays psychopath Harry Powell who prays upon such widows, marrying them and stealing their money, he tracks Willa down through the criminal network. She is persuaded by the local matron, Evelyn Varden, that in their God-fearing community a widow is more respectable if she re-marries, particularly to a respectable man of the cloth. So Willa marries Harry, who only really worships himself. On their wedding night, he makes it clear that sex in not on the agenda and he has no desire for progeny and so Willa’s dreams are shattered and her sexual energies are subverted into religious fervour. Joining Harry on a mission to prosceletize through fire and brimstone sermons, the piece is chockfull of religious motifs and sensationalism with its well-crafted Gothic art and set direction, redolent of the Silent Era.

Shelley Winter plays a similar role to that of Alice Tripp in A Place in the Sun (1951): a gullible, disillusioned romantic, down on her luck and disappointed with life. Cowering under the dominating figure of Icey Spoon (Evelyn Varden) she brings a subversive quality to the role of a young and vulnerable mother who eventually becomes a victim.

After the children evade Powell in a rowing-boat, the film takes on a fairytale feel as the fast-moving Mississippi carries them on a nightmarish journey through starlit countryside: Stanley Cortez’s magical cinematography zooms in on all manner of local flora and fauna: a white owl swooping down on a baby rabbit is a metaphor for Powell threatening his step-children: “It’s a hard World for little ones”.

As Powell, Robert Mitchum gives one of his most innovative performances: menacing, cruel and demonic, as his black figure rides on horseback silhouetted against the sunset, whistling religious hymns. Well-known for his langorous looks and lazy drawl in Noir classics such as Out of the Past (1947) and His Kind of Woman (1951), here he plays a more sinister role as a magnetic charmer who is a figure of fear to children but one of sexual allure to women, with his tattooed fingers and rakish respectability. Purportedly, it was his favourite role in a film.

Lillian Gish gives an exultant turn as a winsome carer with attitude. Taking in the Harper children, she styles herself as a soft earth mother who is later to produce a rifle and to actually use it. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER is one of the most mesmerisingly horrific arthouse films of all time. Worthy of its re-mastering and ripe for a re-viewing. MT

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER completes GOTHIC: THE DARK HEART OF FILM series at the BFI, Southbank and selected cinemas nationwide from 17th January 2014

[youtube id=”DwlSrpMK3VA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Two Lives (2012) Zwei Lieben

Director: Georg Maas

Writers: Georg Maas, Christoph Toele, Stale Stein Berg and Judith Kaufmann

Cast: Liv Ullmann, Julianne Koelher, Sven Nodin, Ken Duken

Psychological Wartime thriller 97mins Germany/Norway subtitled

Georg Maas’s Two Lives is Germany’s foreign-language submission to the 2014 Oscars. Loosely based on the novel by Hannelore Hippe, this well-crafted and sombre tale is set ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but brings to light an important episode in German Second World War history for a Norwegian family.

Liv Ullmann and Julianne Koehler play Norwegian mother Ase and her German national daughter Katrine, fathered by a German soldier serving in German-occupied Norway during the War. The family’s whole identity is blown apart by revelations that emerge after the fall of the Berlin Wall directly relating to events that happened during the War and forming of the Stasi Police in the new East Germany. As a young girl, Katrine was transferred to Germany and raised in a children’s’ home, finally to be united with her mother in Norway after a gruelling escape as the War comes to an end. After marrying a Norwegian Navy Captain Bjarte (Sven Nordin), she then has a daughter of her own (Julia Bache-Wiig) and also becomes a grandmother.

The film’s narrative structure reveals Katrine’s motivations as a decent woman with a double life, going from blond to brunette (as ‘Vera’) and travelling back and forth to Germany purportedly to see friends – although we know otherwise. And although this serves as interesting insight into her difficulties (and Koehler’s admirable acting talents), it has the effect of robbing the story of much of its dramatic punch, as we are ‘in the know’. However, Bjarte believes she’s having an affair and is naturally aggrieved and suspicious, being ‘in the dark’. But when a human rights lawyer working on reparations gets involved, the situation becomes painfully complex for all concerned, as the real facts start to emerge.

The final denouement redresses the balance slightly as the full shocking psychological effects ripple through the family, shown in grainy flashback footage on a handheld camera. With its strong performances and richly stunning cinematography of the Norwegian coastline and rural locations in Westphalia, Bonn and Hamburg, Two Lives is a classic War-related story and a sobering tribute to an important part of Norwegian/German history. Tightly-plotted and immersive throughout, it is accompanied by a suitably rousing score. MT

[youtube id=”TzKBLzVStXY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE OSCARS CEREMONY TAKES PLACE ON 16 JANUARY 2014

Kiss the Water (2013)

Director: Eric Steel

Documentary/Animation 80min US

American filmmaker Eric Steel describes his documentary Kiss the Water as an ‘invitation to a fairytale’. And it certainly is. Set in Scotland, it tells the story of Megan Boyd, an artist based deep in the Highlands, who was enchanted by the brightly coloured and intricate pictures she found in a book about fly-fishing when she was a little girl. A lonely outsider, she taught herself to make these delicate objects using the finest feathers known to humanity. Their vibrant colours and delicate shapes are certainly the stuff of dreams and carry names redolent of the rich and regal heritage of the British Isles.

Even if you have no interest in fishing or Scotland, this beautifully-crafted film will enchant you with its cleverly-animated sequences featuring impressionist-style paintings of swirling underwater wildlife that conjure up a world of mystery and intrigue, perfected pained with dreamy photography of the glorious Highland countryside. Even though Megan Boyd never married and appeared to be an outsider, working away devotedly in her workshop, it is clear that she possessed a richly emotional and romantic soul that is cleverly evoked by Eric Steel’s imaginative rendering in animated mixed media. Working exclusively during daylight hours and eventually losing her sight, Megan perfected her skills and worked on into her eighties.

Despite the ultimate (rather crass) revelation that one of her flys actually fetched thousands of pounds, it is fair to mention that Boyd was a humble creature who never intended to capitalise over her skill and never actually charged more than a few pounds for her wares. Naturally, among her customers was Prince Charles, who grew so fond of her that he actually invited her down to London to collect her OBE award. Such was her modesty that she declined the invitation and the Prince duly delivered the award personally to her Scottish abode. MT

KISS THE WATER IS ON RELEASE FROM 10 JANUARY 2014

Walesa. Man of Hope (2013) DVD

Dir: Andrzej Wajda; Cast: Robert Wieckiewicz, Agnieszka Grouchowska

Poland 2013, 127 min. Drama

One of the Polish ‘greats’, Andrzej Wajda ends his trilogy of Man of Iron with his latest film Walesa, Man of Hope. Like the first two films, Walesa is set as an epic, Wajda being perhaps the last European director capable of this form. Whilst the politics of the film are obvious; being a staunch anti-Stalinist, he has avoided showing Walesa as a hero: actually in this film he is not a particularly likeable person at all. He succeeds in spite of his personal faults (womanising, a short temper, egoistical tantrums and narcissism).

The film covers the years between the mid 70s and 1989, leaving out Walesa’s years as president of Poland and his loss of power. Wajda uses the city of Gdansk as a vibrant background, the camera always mobile in his signature style, tries to show (sometimes) too much of everything. Shot through with a palette of ashen-grey, it never gets really light, even in moments of triumph for the Solidarnosc movement. The mass scenes are directed masterfully, and the emotions are always overwhelming. What is ironic, is that the film’s aesthetics are very much like soviet films, with the camera following the hero at the top of a movement who directs the masses; who follow him faithful.

The private scenes between Walesa (Robert Wieckiewicz bears a remarkable resemblance) and his wife Danuta (Agnieszka Grouchowska) are the weak points of the film. Whilst Wajda shows the male chauvinism of the main protagonist, he never really explores the personality of the woman, leaving her clearly in the shadow of her husband, an appendix. The same could be said for the portrayal of the children who are only shown as a troublesome group, functionless and anonym. Somehow the private and political never meet to become a unit.

In spite of these reservations WALESA. MAN OF HOPE a major achievement of a veteran film maker, who shows on a purely technical level that he can still teach the younger generation of film makers a great deal.

Andre Simonoviescz

WALESA. MAN OF HOPE is OUT ON DVD 24FEBRUARY 2014

This Must Be the Place (2013)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino | Writers: Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello | Cast: Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Harry Dean Stanton, David Byrne (as himself) Judd Hirsch, Dorothy Shore, Eve Hewson | English Cert 15 113mins Comedy Drama

Retired rock star Chayenne (Sean Penn) swaggers around his Irish mansion like a soulful red-lipped raven in doc martens. Bored since retirement from the music world he plays the stock market and pilote in an empty swimming pool and loves his wife Jane.(Frances McDormand). But something’s not right. And then his father dies.

Paolo Sorrentino’s latest feature starts in seaside Dublin then relocates to rural New York where a weird and wacky road movie begins. His mission to revenge his father’s humiliation by a Nazi war commander ends up as a fascinating journey into himself.

Sorrentino’s style is playful and visually exciting as he whips through middle America with an energetic slide show of holiday-style snap shots punctuated by the music of David Byrne who performs the title song live. Chayenne is a gentle and intuitive soul refusing to be phased by the intense characters he meets along the way on his quest to find clues: relative Mordechai Midler (Judd Hirsch); Harry Dean Stanton as Utah Business man Robert Plath and his childhood history mistress (Joyce Van Patten). He offers up inconsequential aphorisms to an imaginary audience: “Have you noticed how nobody works anymore but everyone does something artistic?”

But the holocaust and retribution are just red herrings; what’s really going on here is an eccentric insight into the value of family and the price of success. With subtly-nuanced performances from Sean Penn and Frances McDormand and delicious turns from Harry Dean Stanton and Judd Hirsch, this thought-provoking muse on midlife will amuse and entertain. “We go from an age when we say “that will be my life” to an age when we say “that’s life.” Paolo Sorrentino keeps on getting better. Meredith Taylor©

William Nicholson on the making of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

William Nicholson knows Nelson Mandela’s life inside out. Starting work in 1997 on the script the the film that eventually became MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, two years before director Justin Chadwick even came on board, he’s looked at the story from every possible angle – even at one point locating it in the Palace of Versailles, even toying with TV and a two-parter film version eventually coming up with an appealing, filmic journey. Working every single day on a script, from linear narrative to fractured narrative – he’s tried every angle to bring us a way to understand the life of this great South African Statesman, Politician and human being , who, significantly chose to leave this World during the UK Premiere, never actually seeing the finished product – MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, 33 drafts later- ‘a story version of the truth’ has emerged – a film the creators thought would never happen.

Naturally over the last sixteen years events have unfolded and developed – nearly every well-known black actor has been considered for the part and moved on, due to other work commitments. South African actors also came and went. But when Idris Elba arrived on the scene, he made an indelible impression with his appealing humanity that stems in part to his father being a trade union organiser. The emotional link is stronger than the ‘Africanness’ in him, although Elba’s origins are in Ghana.

Now it seems he’s set for international stardom, after magnetic roles in TV (Luther, The Wire) and this standout performance. The young Mandela was a fitness freak and a boxer, so Idris Elba’s strong physicality was ideal for the part, which he embraced wholeheartedly; running tapes of Mandela’s voice over and over again. Says Nicholson of Elba “He’s not an intellectual and doesn’t spend all day ‘in character’ like some actors. He internalises the part and reverts in and out of Hackney, completely naturally”. Naomi Harris also fits the persona and stance of Winnie Mandela, even – this film has been ‘made’ by this serendipitous casting.

The film has been extremely successful in South Africa and will most likely be used as an educational tool in schools: successfully encapsulating the key idea that Mandela made the White population fear the Black, encouraging them to work for a solution to harmony. This is particularly felt in the scene where Mandela refuses to let P W de Clerk offer him a state funeral, on principal. He reasserts his power through moral emotion.

William Nicholson believes that the ANC will split and form an opposition. And he does bring some heritage to the story. Born to a Catholic mother and Jewish businessman father, whose parents were South African, the scripting job was a natural fit. But although he has studied the history in depth, William Nicholson describes how important it is not to let research engulf the project: “Know it, don’t let it overwhelm you”. Producer Anand Singh was also adamant he didn’t want a South African screenwriter for the feature but someone who could tell a story for the whole World to appreciate and understand. For his part, William Nicholson considered it his duty to get across the moral quality in Mandela – a quality that’s the key to making his enemies embrace him. So MANDELA becomes a universal story. As in SHADOWLANDS and GLADIATOR, Moralism is the most important element of all in MANDELA – ‘Everything I write is driven by moral emotion”.

MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM comes out on 6th January 2014

The Great Beauty (2013) La Grande Bellezza

Dir: Paolo Sorrentino Writers: Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello

Cast: Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Verdone, Carlo Buccirosso

137mins ***** Italian with English subtitles Drama

Paolo Sorrentino’s sensual overload of all things Italian transports you to Rome for a paean to pleasure and pain, gaiety and melancholy seen through the eyes of writer and roué, Jep Gambardella. Played exultantly here by Sorrentino’s regular collaborator, Toni Servillo (The Consequences of Love, Il Divo), this is possibly Sorrentino’s best film so far, capturing the essence of Italy’s rich, beautiful and cultured middle class with an appealing and bittersweet languor that was first experienced in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, here seen in the context of 21st century ennui.

But Jep Gambardella has only written one book having spent most of his nights as a party animal and bon viveur. At 65, well-preserved and suave, he exudes a Mediterranean masculinity with his finely-tailored jackets and well-made shoes. In this rich Autumn of life, jolted from his benign state of bachelorhood by an unexpected discovery, he is thrown off-balance and onto a Proustian trip down memory lane. But as he looks back with friends and paramours, he sees complexity and spirituality beyond all the glamour and profanity.

The Great Beauty is an opulent banquet of tone and texture, captured here by Luca Bigazzi’s dizzying cinematography, evoking all that’s stylish and beautiful as well as hypocritical and shallow about the Italian way of life. See it, enjoy it, savour it; because one day its passion and glory may be gone forever and only memories will remain. MT

[youtube id=”koxRDhAQOpw” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE GREAT BEAUTY IS OUT ON DVD and BLU-RAY ON 13 January 2014 COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL EYE.

THE FILM HAS ALSO BE SHORT-LISTED FOR THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE SECTION OF THE OSCARS IN MARCH 2014

7 Memorable Opening Sequences

THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE (2004) (Dir) Paolo Sorrentino

[youtube id=”r5mEEPukDVk” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE SHINING (1980) (Dir) Stanley Kubrick

[youtube id=”4q7CV10OvPQ?” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE BANISHMENT (2007) Andrey Zvyagintsev

[youtube id=”h-PwYoY-nOg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE MAN FROM LONDON (Part 2) (2007) Bela Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky

[youtube id=”a8HY9Rd_mfA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD (1959) by Louis Malle, Miles Davis (original score)

[youtube id=”vXKN6HCwuxM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

POST TENEBRAS LUX (2012) Carlos Reygados

[youtube id=”he2wdLYPHUA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE GRANDMASTER (2013) Wong Ka Wai

[youtube id=”AlZDri41l2s” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Our favourite in 2013 is from Jonathan Glazer’s UNDER THE SKIN. The film releases next year so, for the time being, here’s a taster with the official trailer.

[youtube id=”X_HL0FF3FtE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Dir.: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Kathryn Hahn, Shirley MacLaine, Sean Penn, Adam Scott

USA 2013, 114 min. Comedy Drama

First thought: Do we really need a remake of Norman Z. MacLeod’s classic from 1947, with Danny Kaye as the superhero of his own dreams? Thirty minutes into Ben Stiller’s remake (in which he also stars) we probably think: not really. In Stiller’s version, Walter is a photographic archivist at ‘Life’, which will close down in a few weeks after a takeover and go exclusively online.

Down in his basement office, Walter is meticulously preserving all the negatives, particularly those sent in in by Sean O’Connell, an elusive war and wild life photographer (Sean Penn) who embodies Walter’s romantic dream of an action hero (and also happens to be Stiller’s ideal actor for the part). But the cover photo for the last edition of the magazine is missing – and Walter is to blame. Cue cringeworthy company liquidator played by Adam Scott in a performance epitomising glibness and corporate sleaze.

The only problem is that Walter – true to his legend – can only imagine his ideal life in “zoning out” experiences, where he becomes the romantic superhero, make his bland life bearable. During these episodes he saves humans and animals from great peril, and even getting the girl of his dreams, co-worker Sheryl Melhoff (Wiig), a single mum whom he is unsuccessfully trying to dating ‘in reality’ and on the e-harmony website. At this point the film, having shown off his big budget in special effects, changes gear.His desire to capture Sheryl’s heart is the kicker that spurs him on to realise his full potential.

Embarking on a quirky and action-packed mission to find O’Connell (and the photo), all the way through Iceland, Greenland up to the Himalayas. his dream is tethered now to reality and this is where the narrative becomes both engaging and plausible despite the hysterical shenanigans that ensure. Walter embodies you and I – his ‘Superman’ is a disorientated character, buffeted by external forces, running for his life in a hostile land/seascape, forced on by his obsession for Cheryl – Walter becomes a metaphor for ‘everyman’. He is really a blob on the landscape. And how magnificent is this landscape: huge panoramic shots of great beauty, but not in the way of a postcard idyll, but retaining all the rough edges, which threaten Walter’s pursuit of his goal. Not to mention the humans he encounters: a drunken helicopter pilot in Iceland, who drops him into the sea instead onto a vessel, where he narrowly misses being a shark’s breakfast. And the perils of the English language, when Walter has to be saved from a volcano eruption in Iceland – he interprets the warning, Freudian slip-wise, as ‘erection’.

In his least cynical film (his own words) Stiller directs himself not as the slap-stick hero he normally portrays, but as (at least in the second half) the lonely, shy man Walter really is. Having been traumatised as a teenager by the death of his father (and supporting his family), he is still in the clutches of his mother Edna (MacLaine) and sister (Kathryn Hahn/Afternoon Delight). Cheryl is as many light years away from him as his fantasies, and he only makes contact with her via her son and a common love of skateboarding. In sympathy with many guys, Walter is not good at communication with women of his age; he feels a longing, but can’t articulate those urges in a coherent way. He’s much more able to react angrily to men, like the corporate baddy (Adam Scott). But he is not yet fine-tuned for a real partnership, because he has to embrace the Jungian concept of finding an adult version of himself, away from the stifling closeness of his mother and the hero-worshipping for O’Connell.

Stiller has presents a well-crafted film – the dissolves are stunning and he matches the narrative with a suitably emblematic score, always finding the right song for a particular moment, like the ‘fantasy’ Cheryl who morphs into his muse, singing “Major Tom” in a pub in Iceland, encouraging his to follow his ‘star’. The message overall is humanistic and anti-corporate – not without good reason, because the online version of ‘Life’ closed down for real in 2012, having lasted a fraction of the time of the newspaper. Stiller’s MITTY takes its time to find his human feet, but it deserves our attention like Walter his happy-end. AS

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY
IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26 DECEMBER 2013.

Notions of Reality in Cinema

If easily digestible stories are really what the audience wants from cinema, and if reality doesn’t offer this to us, then why have films ‘based on’ a true story at all? says Alex Barrett..

In 1944, while still a freshmen at Columbia University, a young Allen Ginsberg became friends with his dashing and rambunctious classmate, Lucien Carr. They met during an introductory tour of the library, in which Carr danced on tables while reading the forbidden texts of Henry Miller. Later, Carr introduced Ginsberg to William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and David Kammerer – a creepy older man with a heavy infatuation for Carr. When this infatuation escalated, Carr murdered Kammerer. After the murder, Carr visited Kerouac, and then Burroughs. Subsequently, Ginsberg was expelled from Colombia after refusing to withdraw a risqué piece of coursework.

At least, that’s the way John Krokidas’ feature debut KILL YOUR DARLINGS tells it. Spend a few minutes online, however, and you’ll find out that: Ginsberg met Carr by knocking on his dormitory door to find out who was playing a Brahms trio; Ginsberg actually really liked Kammerer and went on record to say he was ‘not a creep!’; Carr (rather importantly) visited Burroughs and then Kerouac after the murder; Ginsberg actually got expelled from Colombia after a college dean found Kerouac in Ginsberg’s room one early morning, both men wearing nothing but their underwear. Amongst a multitude of further inaccuracies and distortions, Kill Your Darlings also paints Kerouac’s lively and wild girlfriend Edie as tame and mild, and fails to mention the important fact that Lucien had a long-term girlfriend at the time. In all, it’s enough to make you wonder what kind of research the filmmakers were doing during the ten years they spent in development.

Of course, in reality, such ‘inaccuracies and distortions’ are unlikely to be down to lack of research, with deliberate creative decisions being a more likely cause. Recently David Cox wrote about a similarly loose use of history in SAVING MR BANKS (2013), arguing that such falsifications are actually a necessity, needed to make a dramatically palatable story out of a ‘messy, shapeless and ethically ambiguous’ reality. But if easily digestible stories are really what the audience wants from cinema, and if reality doesn’t offer this to us, then why have films ‘based on’ a true story at all? For Cox, having a factual basis ‘performs a vital function’, helping to reassure us ‘that the narratives that comfort us are actually true’. In other words, it’s a symptom of the trend novelist Douglas Coupland has written about so eloquently: the need to turn our lives into a story, and to know that our own lives will ultimately conform to a conventional three-act structure.

However, moving beyond this idea of ‘narration’ in life – and the inherent psychological dangers that subscribing to such a notion can bring – a darker undercurrent of the trend for ‘inaccuracies and distortions’ emerges. Even Cox admits that: ‘Because they have been made so palatable, they are eagerly swallowed. The big-screen lie becomes the world’s definitive truth’. To put this another way: an unsuspecting audience, believing they are witnessing factual history, is actually being fed historical untruths. When a falsification unfolds onscreen, it bleeds into the ether, destined to emerge as fact or confusion in the public consciousness. This is not a case of a gullible public who believe everything they see, but a testament to the power of cinema upon the collective unconscious. Filmmakers working from reality, then, surely need to acknowledge the moral responsibility that the words ‘Based on a True Story’ bring with them.

For Cox, filmmakers who ignore story in favour of cleaving to the truth produce nothing but ‘arthouse fare for audiences numbered in dozens’. Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept this questionable notion as true, the work of Gus Van Sant, which has oscillated between the commercial and the arthouse, seems to offer another alternative.

Leaving aside questions of veracity in his crowd-pleasing, Oscar winning biopic of the politician Harvey Milk (MILK, 2008), more pertinent points are posed by his so-called ‘Death Trilogy’: GERRY (2002), ELEPHANT (2003) and LAST DAYS (2005). Each of these films was inspired by a real-life death, but portrayed as fiction. Take, for instance, Blake, the introspective rock star at the centre of LAST DAYS: even from the film’s poster, he is heavily signalled as being the deceased Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain – and yet he isn’t. He is Blake, a fictional creation – and thus the moral dilemma is neatly sidestepped, because reality has been wholly subsumed in fiction.

While it’s true that LAST DAYS ultimately eschews conventional narrative storytelling, there’s no reason why Van Sant’s ‘fictionalising’ couldn’t be fused to a more conventional approach. Would Kill Your Darlings have been any less interesting as a cinematic experience if the names had been changed and it had been presented as a work of fiction? If we’re approaching the film as a piece of narrative storytelling, then the answer must be no, because the story itself would remain unchanged. The only thing that would change is our perception of the film: we would no longer be able to see the film as a way of finding out the true story behind the murder of David Kammerer. It would lose the ‘I didn’t know that’ aspect of its appeal. But, as we’ve seen, if the truth of the presented history has been creatively reworked, then this aspect becomes irrelevant – perhaps even dangerous.

In documentary, truth is seen as tantamount: but there too it remains a slippery term. When one learns, for instance, of Michael Moore’s heavy manipulation of footage – and therefore of reality – in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE (2002), one begins to feel used and abused as a viewer (and, once again, Van Sant’s approach appears preferable – cf. his treatment of the Columbine massacre in Elephant). People expect, and hope for, a certain level of truth in investigative journalism, but should they not expect the same from a fiction film which bears the words ‘Based on a True Story’? Is not the same authenticity required? Or, on the flipside, is it actually permissible for documentaries to bend the truth if it shapes the material into a more consoling ‘story’? Surely not.

In some senses, the key to the filmmaker’s moral dilemma – and responsibility – lies in perception. While Quentin Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) may have been criticised from some quarters for making light of the true horrors of the Second World War, I suspect there were few who worried seriously that it would rewrite the public consciousness of Hitler’s history – partly because the film in no way presents itself as factual. In saying this, then, the moral emphasis can be shifted away from a need for strict historical fidelity, and towards a need for openness about the distortions, falsifications and alterations made within a given text. It’s therefore possible, perhaps, to identify the source of the problem in the very words ‘Based on a True Story’ (in the case of KILL YOUR DARLINGS, perhaps ‘Loosely Inspired by Real Events’ may have been a more fitting tagline than ‘A True Story of Obsession and Murder’).

History may be written by the victors, and historians may be led by their own biases – but in academia, the moral issue is more widely acknowledged (as it also is in journalism). Similarly, issues of morality, reality and fidelity in film are complex issues – and when public knowledge is at stake, it cannot be so readily subordinated to the importance of (commercial) storytelling. Surely it isn’t good enough to simply say, as Cox does, that we can pillage and slander the legacy of history so we can reassure ourselves with comforting stories? Film is a powerful medium, and as Uncle Ben famously said to a young Peter Parker: with great power comes great responsibility. Alex Barrett

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS IS NOW ON NETFLIX

The Missing Picture (2013)

Rithy Panh and Christophe Bataille

96min French with English Subtitles Documentary Animation

The serene and gentle voice of award-winning director Rithy Panh narrates this tragic and heartfelt memoir of the invasion of Cambodia on April 17th, which has helped him come to terms with the terrible losses he suffered during the time of his adolescence, when over 2 million people died during the regime.

Pol Pot strides confidently through the crowds amid idolatrous applause proceeded by pictures of tortured dissidents and those that kicked against the crushing power of communism. In a regime (similar Nazism and Stalinism) characterised by hunger, torture and emotional cruelty and lack of respect or compassion for the individual, Panh tells how his father was denied a decent burial. Schools became detention centres reflecting a ‘perfect society’ where Marxist ideology reigned as revolutionary winds wafted through the paddy fields heralding ideals of creating an agrarian socialist economy which failed incontrovertibly leading to the deaths (from hunger) of millions of its inhabitants. The mantra – “Whoever apposes, is a corpse” indeed became a reality.

Footage of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing provides a contemporary counterpoint reflecting advancement and freedom in the US as Cambodia’s people drown in the mud. While he lost his entire family during his teenage years from 1975-79, the Khmer Rouge was destroying everything outside their central control; forbidding fishing and any kind of attempt to grow private foodstuffs and demolishing hospitals, while simultaneously rejecting offers of outside humanitarian aide.

Panh was inspired to channel his energies and creative impulses into filmmaking during this time of loss, working quietly in an agrarian cooperative work camp, lit by neon at night. His serene depiction of pure evil is made all the more effective by its peaceful approach and intricately delicate treatment. MT

“UN CERTAIN REGARD” WINNER AT CANNES 2013 and HAS BEEN SHORTLISTED FOR THE ACADEMY AWARDS FOREIGN LANGUAGE SECTION IN 2014.

THE MISSING PICTURE IS SHOWING FROM FRIDAY, 3 JANUARY 2013 AT SELECTED CINEMAS

[youtube id=”GBsf1TvX_WI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas (2013)

Director: Arnaud des Pallieres

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Bruno Ganz, Sergi Lopez, Denis Lavant, Roxane Duran, Melusine Mayance, Delphine Chuillot

122min Drama French/German with English subtitles

Heinrich von Kleist’s 1811 novella has been adapted a number of times for the Big Screen and TV capturing the imagination of various filmmakers with its rich cultural background. In 1937, Max Haufler (The Trail) took this tale of a 16th Century horse-trader and produced a black and white version. More recently Volker Schlondorff cast David Warner and Michael Gothard (The Devils) in the leads in Michael Kohlhaas: Der Rebell. The only reason to see this slim and overlong version is for the magnificent locations and magnetic central presence of Mads Mikkelsen in the title role. That said, it’s possibly not his most resounding performance to date although it captivated the jury at the Brussels film festival this year, where the film won the top award.

Themes of justice and revenge are tossed around in the windswept widescreen wilderness untethered by any real historical or political reference to the social upheaval of the Peasant’s Revolt and the Protestant Catholic conflict – massive elements of political change with rocked the 16th century Europe and made the original work so resonant. And despite judicious castings of Denis Lavant (as the theologist), Bruno Ganz (as the Governor) and Sergi Lopez all lending their heavyweight support, it all feels rather hollow and underwritten. To confuse matters, des Pallieres has transposed the drama from Germany to France, for some unknown reason, leaving Mikkelsen with the task of having to speak French and master horse-husbandry. That said he does his best, giving a haughty and charismatic thrust to his portrayal of a loving family man eaking out an existence on the land.

But when the landowner, the arrogant Baron (Swann Arlaud) thwarts and humiliates him by suddenly introduces a tollgate on Kohlhaas’s regular route to sell his lovingly-reared steers events take a sinister turn made worse by the discovery that his prized horses are being brutalised by the Baron’s henchmen. To top it all, his wife Judith (Delphine Chuillot) is tragically murdered on her way to gain support from a timid Princesse d’Angouleme (Roxane Duran). Kohlhaas strikes out for justice, raising a rebel army of supporters (among whom are a one-armed Sergi Lopez and a typically subversive Denis Lavant) who rather wish they had stayed at home quietly by the fire when push comes to shove. At this point, they try to persuade Kohlhaas to trust the outcome of his brave stand for the common man, to God’s Will.

So Arnaud des Pallieres offers us a magnificent visual spectacle of Mad’s cinematically-chiselled features set against the lichen-covered wilds of the Rhone and Languedoc locations taking in the Chartreuse Pierre-Chatet (Ain), the Chateau du Cheylard, (Gard) and dominated by Martin Wheeler’s resounding original soundtrack. MT

[youtube id=”PdX0fy8so6U” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Unit One: Series Three DVD

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Charlotte Fich, Lars Mikkelsen, Trine Pallesen, Soren Malling, Lars Brygmann

UNIT ONE is possibly the most hard-hitting of the Scandi-Noir TV series based on real-life crimes that have ravaged Denmark. Series Three is out on DVD as a box-set that could make the January blues more bearable. So pull up an Arne Jacobson chair, pour yourself a nice Aquavit chaser and settle in for the evening…

Featuring some of Denmark’s well-known actors Trine Pallesen (as foxy blond, Gaby Levin) and Soren Malling (A Hijacking), Charlotte Fich (Headhunter) plays Ingrid Dahl, the first female homicide boss who is on the warpath against sexism as well as a string of rather nasty murders not to mention comforting her female staff through miscarriage. Mads Mikkelsen stars as Allan Fischer, a detective with a fine line in black leather and womanising but plausibly gritty in this contemporary series that’s intimate in feel but gets out and about in Denmark’s windy landscapes, historic centres (Kalundborg) and modernist architectural homes to giving it a uniquely Danish flavour. Dahl could be Sarah Lund’s sister, she also has a listless marriage and a nerdy son.

Like a Volvo, Unit One has that calm, assured handling occasionally breaking out into a fast-moving thriller but always well-paced and underpinned with believable characterisations of the trusty ‘Elite Force’ as well as the psychopathic perps they pursue. So if you like your crime dramas classy and watchable in the same mould as Wallander, Borgen and The Bridge then Unit One will appeal. It’s not as slick as The Wire or Luther but this Emmy-Winner has class and breeding (it first came out in 2000) and that goes along way. MT

UNIT ONE: SERIES THREE IS OUT ON DVD from 6 January 2014

What Maisie Knew (2012) DVD

Dir.: Scott McGehee, David Siegel

Cast: Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan, Alexander Skarsgard, Joanna Vanderham, Onata Aprile

USA 2012, 99 min. DRAMA

In this cliché-ridden but timely drama from Scott McGree (Suture) (taken from a Henry James novel) every move of the narrative is telegraphed long before it happens. 6 year-old Maisie (well-played by Onata Aprile) is caught up in a custody battle between her parents who shower her with gifts. Mum Susanna (Moore) is a highly strung singer, often on drugs and/or alcohol, whilst her Dad, Beale (Coogan) is a businessman, always between deals in New York and the rest of the world. Enter two young ‘replacements’: new hubby Lincoln (Skarsgard), a bartender, is soon been shouted at by Susanna, and Beale treats his young wife Margo (Vanderham) to the same permanent absence like his ex-wife. Maisie becomes the football between her bitter parents, who soon use their new spouses as surrogates to fight their war. Life for Maisie doesn’t improve with these new parents. Despite competent performances, especially from Julianne Moore and decent camera-work, this modern adaptation of a novel written over a 100 years ago fails to bring anything new to the modern-day parenting story.

OUT ON DVD 6 JANUARY 2014

Last Vegas (2013)

Director: Jon Turteltaub Writer: Dan Fogelman

Cast: Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen, Bre Blair

105min US Comedy

A stellar cast of real pros makes this trip to Las Vegas a worthwhile bet. When Robert de Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline head off on a ‘boys’ weekend’, it’s bound to be gold-plated especially when the destination is Vegas and they are clearly out to have fun. Schematic and corny it may sound but this certainly hits the jackpot comedy-wise, offering moving moments and valuable insight into mature dating and life-long friendship.

A glitzy get-together is the clearly the order of the day before Billy, 69, finally decides to tie the knot with a girl who could be his grand-daughter (Bre Blair). And where better than the Nevada gambling haven?. Michael Douglas is a natural charmer as Billy, the oldest swinger in town, with his biscuit tan and ‘stay-pressed ‘slacks. His bitter love-rival Paddy (De Niro) is still mourning his beloved wife who Billy once dated (seen in flashback to their youth). Sam (Kevin Kline) is hoping for a late leg-over too (with his wife’s blessing) and 76 year-old Archie (Morgan Freeman) is desperate to escape house arrest at his son’s, after suffering a stroke.

Dan Fogelman’s sparky script ensures cut and thrust with events taking an unexpected turn for Billy when he bonds with a sophisticated cabaret singer Diana, (Mary Steenburgen) on arrival. In Vegas to revitalise her career and not afraid to push the love boat out, Diana proves a mellow counterpoint to his young and brittle fiance, Lisa (Bre Blair) who never really convinces but certainly looks the part. In a strange twist, Sam gets embroiled with a drag queen (Roger Bart) who takes the wind out of his sails, while Archie hits the jackpot and is upgraded to the hotel’s presidential suite, providing the venue for an impromptu knees-up and attracting the resort’s most alluring eye candy, allowing him to kick back from his more worthy roles of late.

Naturally, these actors are at the top of their game when dealing with the ups and downs that predictably ensue as the veterans are let lose to explore their interpersonal dynamics (both social and erotic). The sparkling results feel plausible, farcical and charismatic. De Niro is on form as the grizzled old love victim. Kevin Kline, the youngest and most insecure as Sam, also gets the roughest deal and the leanest character arc – but with his comic genius makes of it what he can. He really needs another film like The Ice Storm to give this brilliance another chance.

Mary Steenburgen’s musical role is the icing on the cake and one delivered with charm and mature assurance that makes her delightful to listen and popular with the flirty foursome. The bets are off on who finally wins her hand. MT

LAST VEGAS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 3RD JANUARY 2013.

SEE OUR MOVIE GUIDE TO LAS VEGAS

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Director/Writer: Giuseppe Tornatore

Cast: Marco Leonardi, Salvatore Cascio, Philippe Noiret, Antonella Attili, Isa Danieli

171mins Italian with English subtitles Drama

This cute cult classic from memory lane was garlanded with awards including an Oscar back in 1990. Now celebrating its 25th Anniversary with a sparkling re-master and back on our screens for more cinematic indulgence. Nostalgia and sentimentality aside, we see Salvatore (Marco Leonardi), now a famous auteur, transported to his childhood Sicily when he hears of the death of his cinema mentor, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), the village projectionist. As a young ‘Toto’, (Salvatore Cascio), he had been inspired to follow his star thanks to Alfredo’s fatherly inspiration. Now the world has changed and there’s no going back. That said, the drama made Marco Leonardi an international star. A romantic tribute to the love of film and the love of life. MT

CINEMA PARADISO (RE-MASTERED) IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 DECEMBER 2013

Christmas Film for kids

THE MAGIC REINDEER reviewed by Daniel Pyszora, 11

Dir.: Kari Juusonan, Jorgen Lerdam; Animation; Finland 2012, 74 min

Nico the reindeer has a father who was in the flying forces to help Santa. Nico could fly, because he had some of his father’s genes. They were going at Santa speed, and the father said “if you want to go at Santa speed, you have to have a big heart, open eyes and look up”. Nico’s mum had met another man after her divorce, and this man had another son, with a different woman, so now Nico discovers a half brother. He doesn’t like the fact that his mum met somebody else, particularly he did not like his new half-brother. After Nico slept, his best friend, a flying squirrel, said that the little brother was cute. Nico goes with the little boy into the woods to play hide and seek. They hid, but an eagle took the little boy and Nico chased after them, but he lost them. He tried to find them and he bumped into another reindeer. They walked together to the eagles domain, where they found the little boy. Then they met the white wolf, the leader of the eagles, she wanted to take revenge, killing his brother, and they run away. They went back home, and the stepdad was talking to Nico’s dad. The eagles broke into Santa factory and placed a booby trap. But Nico trapped the wolf in a box, and they run away. Santa flew away delivering presents.

It was brilliant animation, the story was perfect and I would like to see a sequel being made. DP

THE MAGIC REINDEER IS OUT ON DVD MRP £5.99

THE GREAT SANTA RESCUE – reviewed by Daniel Pyszora, 11

Dir: Dustin Rikert;

Cast: Caitlin Carmichael, Benjamin Stockham, Kevin Pollack; USA 2013, 87 min.

First a boy, Zach wakes up and sees Santa. Then Santa disappears. Then Zach and his sister Miley are watching TV and find out that an evil politician, Schmucker, is banning Santa robbing him of his magic powers. The two kids go to school. In the lessons the girl was drawing a Santa, but the teacher came over and said: “What are you drawing?” She said: “I am drawing a picture of Santa, because nobody believes in him.” The teacher whispers to her “I believe in Santa”. After that Schmucker comes and says: “Don’t talk about Santa, because we are banning him”. Then it was playtime, the girl went outside and she saw a Santa’s coat hanging on the wall, and a man ripped it off and threw it on the floor.

When Miley and Zach get home, the girl saw a gleaming light in the barn, and they went into the barn and saw Santa. But when they opened the door, there was nothing there. Then their mother gets ill. But the two children pretended to be ill too, because they want to save Santa, who was dying, because nobody believed in him. The mother came home from the hospital and told them she had cancer. The children made their own YouTube video about Santa, and send it to all websites. Everybody saw the video. The evil politician sees the video and he and the children have a debate about Santa on TV. Later the politician meets Santa, and he says to him ,” all you needed was love, but you didn’t get it, because your parents thought giving you toys made you happier than their love”. Santa’s magic powers come back and on Xmas night Santa uses his magic to save the Mum.

The acting was good but not great, the camera was alright, but it is the the design I liked best, particularly the house, it was real. The story was very sad, but it had a happy ending.

THE GREAT SANTA RESCUE IS AVAILABLE ON DVD

JOURNEY TO THE CHRISTMAS STAR, reviewed by Daniel Pyszora, 11

Dir.: Nils Graup; Cast: Vilde Zeiner, Anders Baasmo-Christiansen, Agnes Kittelsen; Norway 2012, 77 min.

The story is about a little princess, who was looking for the Christmas star, and then an evil witch made the her disappear, putting a curse on her. Her father, the King, was really distressed and her mother died from grief. The King had to find the Christmas Star in ten years, to get his daughter back. He looked for nine years, but no hope of finding her. Sonja, a young girl, was working for a woman who was really horrible to her, and who had other people who stole for her jewellery and food. One day they nicked lots of jewellery, but Sonja walked trough the door and ran away to the city. When she was in the city, she saw a horse carrying people, and she saw a white cloth, and hid under it, whilst the thieves working for the bad lady were chasing her. The horse caravan entered the castle and Sonja went into a big hall in the castle, and there she hid behind a curtained door, and she observed a meeting with the King; they were talking about the Christmas Star. The King took her into his room, where they talked about the Christmas Star and how to find it, and she said she would find the Christmas Star. Then she went off into the woods, but the evil witch was after her, but a little boy shrunk her and invited her into his tree house, so they could get away from the witch’s helper. Then she mentioned to the boy the Christmas Star, and the boy knew a bear who could help her to get see the Christmas Star. Then Sonja met a flying cloud, which flew her to the North Pole, where Santa Claus lived. There she met Santa Claus, and asked him where the Christmas Star was, and he said “it is in your heart”. She travelled back to the castle, and the King asked her “where is the Christmas Star”, and she said it is in my heart, and a shining Christmas Star came out of her body and it shone up to the sky and everybody could see the Christmas Star. And than there was a happy-end for everybody.

The acting was good, the girl who played Sonja was the best. Lovely sets, and the story made you interested in the film, it draws you in. The camera’s views were brilliant, they were showing everything important. It looked very realistic. It should be an “U” certificate, for younger children. But there was no comedy, which I like most, therefore it gets only four stars. DP

JOURNEY TO THE CHRISTMAS STAR IS AVAILABLE ON DVD MRP £5.99

Interview: Sean Ellis and Jake Macapagal (Metro Manila)

Whilst on holiday in the Philippines in 2007, British filmmaker Sean Ellis witnessed the two drivers of an armoured truck having an argument. As Ellis explains: ‘They had M16s and guns, and looked like they were going to shoot each other. It ended with one of them kicking the truck, getting in and driving off. And I started to think that it could be a scene from a movie’. Developing the idea from there, Ellis’ imaginary movie became his third feature film, Metro Manila, a ‘slowburn thriller’ about the events that transpire after Oscar (Jake Macapagal) moves to Metro Manila from the provinces, in search of a better life.

Alex Barrett spoke to Ellis and Macapagal about the making of the film.

AB: Sean, what was it like for you working in the Philippines? I don’t necessarily mean practically, but as someone that’s effectively an outsider coming in – what was that experience like, and how did that effect the way you directed the film?

SE: There was some weird ‘reverse racism’, as they call it. And it is weird. Some people won’t work with you because you’re white, and they expect to be paid American fees, and it was like ‘well, this film is in Tagalog, it’s not an American film’. So [it was hard] just to get people to take me as one of their own, and pretend that I was Filipino. And the heat was pretty difficult. Very oppressive.

JM: Humid.

SE: Trying to work – carrying cameras all day – it’s kind of tough.

JM: I think the challenge is also the bureaucracy. You have to know a lot of people in the government and the community, so you can pay them off and get licences. And if you don’t get the licence, you can just shoot guerrilla style. So those are the challenges, but at the same time, it’s pretty exciting because, you know, everyone was excited to shoot with Sean.

AB: And what was that like for you, having someone who is an outsider come in?

JM: It didn’t… I’ve worked here in the UK, I’ve worked in international productions. Sean just happened to be British. I got on with him since the first time we met each other. I really respected his vision and his love of cinema. And you can tell, because he gives you that space to…[turns to Sean] I’m talking like you’re not here [laughs]. He gave me the space to just discuss things and develop the character, and just try to deal with the journey. The first question he asked me after he offered me the role was ‘are you willing to take the journey with me?’ Which was pretty exciting.

AB: Sean, you’ve spoken elsewhere about your desire to bring authenticity to the project, and I’m wondering how you went about trying to get that. Did you do research? Did you spend a lot of time there? And Jake, were you able help Sean bring that authenticity to the project?

SE: It was definitely an organic process, and being immersed into the culture you can’t help but take everything that you’re seeing and try and use it in some respect. And I think what’s interesting about a Westerner going to the Philippines is that they would see things that Filipinos just take for granted and see every day. I was very open to seeing these things for the very first time and using them.

JM: We were discussing that a lot of times. The thing with Sean is that he’s like a curious kid, you know? The way they think, the way they go in this direction and that direction…that’s what we did.

AB: The real-life story of Reginald Chua is integrated into the narrative of the film. How did you come across that story, and what did that blend of fact and fiction mean for the project?

SE: Well, in the first two weeks I was there I was doing the preproduction for the film, and I was immersing myself into the Filipino culture. I was doing a lot of research, and meeting a lot of people, talking about their lives and how it all related to the script, trying by osmosis to bring that authenticity into the project, and I met with a director called Quark Henares, who’s actually become a friend of mine. Quark said ‘it’s a similar situation to this Reginald Chua’, so I said ‘who’s that?’, and he said ‘oh, you know, this desperate guy, caught in a bad place, who ended up robbing a plane, taking everyone’s money and jumping off using a parachute from his father’s silk factory’…

JM: A homemade parachute.

SE: I found this article online and I read it and the last paragraph of it said ‘Reginald was found four days later buried up to his waist in mud surrounded by money, with the silk parachute of his father’s factory bellowing in the wind behind him’. I was so struck by that image that I couldn’t help but put that in the film. It felt like a bookend to me, so I bookended the film with this image, and used it as a parallel fable to explain some of Oscar’s backstory, and also as a way of sort of tying up his climax in the third act. You know, the fact that Oscar has learnt quite a lot from Reginald, or as we call him Alfred Santos. Alfred was in a similar situation but hadn’t thought it all the way through to the end, whereas I think Oscar learnt from that and thought it out through to the end.

AB: Jake, how did the incorporation of factual elements help you with the development of your character, and the way you approached building that role?

JM: Most of my characterisation was just really based on… I just imagined myself in that situation. And I think it’s something that most Filipinos experience. I know how it is to have no money. And as an actor as well, you wait on jobs. But I sort of just put myself in the situation. I mean, I don’t have to look very far. It’s in my neighbourhood, it’s out there in the streets. You know, people wake up and the only thing they think about is what they’re going eat that day. This is – and I’m not blind to that – part of our Metro Manila, of our society. So I just took it all in. When we went to the slums, my first reaction was ‘how can anyone survive that?’, but then eventually you get used to it and you think ‘oh yeah, this is the way they live’. You don’t have to do method for that.

SE: I was quite struck by actually how big hearted the people of the slums were and how generous they were, and actually, weirdly, weirdly, how happy they were.

JM: Yeah, it’s really odd.

SE: I’m not saying that’s the secret to life, but what I’m saying is that, when you have nothing, life is very simple, you know? Like Jake said, your needs are ‘find food for that day’, you’re not worrying about updating your fucking Facebook account, or who said this or this promotion, or whatever.

JM: Living for the moment, they just live for the moment.

SE: It’s just very simple. They live very much in the moment. There’s an honesty to that, and it’s actually a very beautiful thing when you meet people that live very much in the moment. So it was a very joyful time to actually spend with those people. They were excited, weren’t they?

JM: All the kids were following you around, right? I mean, it made us comfortable, gave us a comfortable atmosphere.

AB: Sean, I wanted to ask you: one of the things I thought was quite extraordinary about the film is the lyricism that it has – it’s almost meditative. But when you actually look at it, it’s very quickly cut and the shots are very short. So I was interested in how you were able to strike upon that kind of pacing, where it’s very quickly cut, but also very lyrical. And I was wondering if it was planned, or if it was found in the edit room?

SE: You have to remember that this is a film that’s been designed as a subtitled film. It’s not a foreign film that then has subtitles slapped on it after the edit is finished. So it was very much part of the process of being able to cut the film, knowing that people would be reading what you put up on the screen as a subtitle, which then meant that once it disappears their eyes go back to the image. And once their eyes go back to the image, that’s when you give them the information or the detail that they need to see. And then when the character starts speaking again, then they’re drawn away from what’s happening on the screen to reread the subtitles. So we were very conscious that we were making a film where you would be reading subtitles, and that did affect the structure and the approach to the edit. It is a pretty furious edit. I mean, there is a lot of detail in it, there’s a lot of quick cuts away to detailed stuff. And we did a lot of coverage on this, as opposed to some of my other films which were very stagnated and still. But I think what happens when you have quite a fast edit, when you suddenly don’t cut, the audience notices it. When they’re actually on one shot for quite a long time, it becomes elongated time, in some respects, you’re sort of like…It’s like a dance, you’re going quick, quick, slow. Quick, quick, slow. And I guess that gives it that lyricism that you’re seeing.

AB: I think the lyricism also comes from the cinematography. We don’t have much time left, but could you maybe talk quickly about the way you approached the cinematography, and the lighting especially?

SE: We didn’t have a great resource of equipment. We didn’t have much time. So my approach was documentary style filmmaking. And the two reasons being: first of all, it’s very quick, and you can move very fast, and you can get a lot of coverage that way. And secondly, it gives you the code of documentary filmmaking – so it added a realism to the fiction, because you’re used to seeing documentarians finding their focus and being handheld, and this gave the family [in Metro Manila] a sense of realism, I believe. You felt you were actually following a documentary of a family migrating from the provinces to the city. So it’s sort of a two-fold, two-pronged attack.

AB: Jake, could you talk about how it was for you to act within this documentary approach? Do you think it helped your performance?

JM: Yeah, because you feel like you’re not conscious of the camera. I mean, it’s just following us on the journey. And the more you spend time with that, with Sean, you can just get used to that. As an actor, your job is to get to the objective and understand what the director is trying to get you to do, to move from A to B. So as an actor, I just concentrate on what it is he wants, which is great when it’s someone following you around with the camera. You can trust that.

SE: It also meant a lot less stopping and starting.

JM: Yeah.

SE: There’s a lot of waiting around on film sets normally, but we were pretty furious with what we were doing, so Jake didn’t have much time to sit around and get pedicures. [Laughs].

JM: Yeah, no time for that. I suppose as well it’s like the rote memory way, when you just keep on doing it. I don’t know if Sean was doing that consciously, but the way he does it, you don’t think anymore, until you get the right balance, and he says ‘okay that’s right’.

SE: I have a bad habit, actually, of talking while they’re acting.

JM: But it’s kind of good, in a way, because you know that you’re doing ok. You don’t … Because the camera will pick up if there’s a doubt in your eyes. ‘Am I doing this right?’ – the camera will pick it up. But if one hears ‘okay, that’s good, can I get one more’, it gives you a guide that’s useful to follow.

SE: You know, it’s all ‘just go back two words’, ‘say those two words again’, ‘just do it again’, ‘go back three words’.

JM: Yeah, yeah.

SE: I think it just drums out any notion of, like, ‘now act’, because you’re redoing redoing it, redoing redoing it. Breaking it down, you know?

JM: And maybe because you get tired, all of a sudden you’re just less conscious, and then [claps hands] that’s what he wants.

AB: Unfortunately it looks like we’re out of time, but thank you very much.

JM: Thanks.

SE: Thank you.

METRO MANILA won BEST FILM at the BEST INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS, SEAN ELLIS WON BEST DIRECTOR AND THE FILM IS BRITAIN’S SUBMISSION TO THE ACADEMY AWARDS 2014

Fill the Void (2012)

Dir. Rama Burshtein, Israel 2012, in Hebrew with Engl. subtitles, Dur. 90 mins.

Cast: Hadas Yaron, Yiftach Klein, Irit Shele

Giving an insight to a different world that still exists in contemporary society, Fill the Void is set in the orthodox Hassidic community in Tel Aviv. This very religious sect has its own rules which its members stick to rigorously without complaining.

This is director Rama Burstein’s first feature film – which she has also written – and she has direct experience of this world, living as she does, within the ultra-orthodox community. This appealing film has a good story, told without any great histrionics. Through the eyes of young Shira we begin to understand something of the pull between the religious rites and needs of the family and doing right by both as opposed to the tug of the young woman’s heart which moves her towards romance and the lure of marriage to a young man.

Feminists might well balk at the idea that marriages are arranged and that women have no right to choose who they marry, but Burstein tries to show that adherence to a family’s moral compass is also worth a great deal and perhaps family comes before personal choice. She tells how 18 year-old Shira (Hadas Yaron) has been promised in marriage to a young man her own age, who, although virtually unknown to her, nevertheless meets with her approval. She looks forward to her wedding once details of the marriage contract have been finalised. Suddenly her beloved older sister Esther (Renana Raz) dies in childbirth and the whole family is overcome with grief. Shira’s match is put on hold while the family mourns their loss. Then they learn that Yochay (Yiftach Kelin), Esther’s husband, has been approached to marry a Belgian widow. He believes he needs a wife to care for his new baby son. Shira’s mother, Rivka (Irit Sheleg) however, is desperate for the baby to remain in Israel and proposes that Shira marries Yochay, although he is a lot older. Shira must now choose her future

The acting throughout is delicate and evoking real passion between husband and wife Yochay and Esther and later some smoldering emotion between Yochay and Shira. Humour comes out in the opening scene where Shira and her mother walk around a supermarket trying to identify the young man who is lined up for Shira. The film is well photographed with good use made of the lighting to view the characters, often through gauze, and the all the scenes take place within the home except a couple of short ones inside a synagogue and on the street. CARLIE NEWMAN

FILL THE VOID won Best Actress for Hadas Yaron Venice 2012 and was hown recently at the UK Jewish Film festival. It is on release from 13 December nationwide

2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013 Now in Glasgow

Fans of Nordic cinema will be excited to hear that the festival returns this winter with a vibrant array of films from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Opening in London and taking the film highlights further afield: a music strand will also feature in this year’s celebrations in the shape of the seminal Icelandic band Sigur Ros.

The programme includes various strands: ‘New Nordic Features’, ‘Other Side of the Docs’ and ‘Arctic’ and focuses on Nicholas Winding Refn with a new film NWR by French doc helmer Laurent Duroche, which looks at the life of the director and his regular collaborators Ryan Gosling and Mads Mikkelsen with another chance to see Winding Refn’s 1999 Cult Classic BLEEDER, a love story set in Copenhagen.

The festival kicks off on 25 November with the UK premiere screening of short noir animation series ODBOY & ERORDOG SUITE (Marcus Fjellström, Sweden/Germany 2013) with live soundtrack performed by Swedish quartet, The Pearls Before Swine Experience. This 22-minute piece, screened/performed earlier this year at International Film Festival Rotterdam, presents the eerie twilight escapades of a boy and his dog: inspired by nightmares, retro computer games and a pet dog.

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur has been prominent in the London film scene this summer with his docudrama THE DEEP and crime caper 2 GUNS. The festival offers a chance to see his debut feature 101 REYKJAVIK, a romcom starring Spanish actress Victoria Abril.
Finnish films are always quirky and fascinating CONCRETE NIGHT is no different. It’s the latest outing from Finnish maverick director: Pirjo Honkasalo. Set in the backstreets of Helsinki, it follows two brothers in the 24 hours before the eldest goes into prison.

In the doc strand, another Finnish director Petri Luukkainen will be in town to talk about MY STUFF, a documentary comedy that examines our attachment to possessions and asks the question: what do we really need in life?. Also on the documentary front, Mia Engberg’s BELLEVILLE BABY, a meta-textual memoir that examines the director’s relationship with her ex through visuals, photos and feelings evoked by their past conversations heard in voice-over.

Mika Ronkainen’s is attending to talk about his road-doc: FINNISH BLOOD, SWEDISH HEART that looks at the unresolved issues of a Finnish father and son forced to grow up in Sweden, before returning to their homeland.

From Norway, NORTH OF THE SUN and THE DEVIL’S BALLROOM looks at the harsh beauty of life in the magnetic North.

The festival closes with the premiere of Kaspar Munk’s YOU & ME FOREVER, a drama focusing on teenage angst from a female perspective exploring sensitive issues of nascent sexuality, vulnerability and idolisation at this very formative stage in a girl’s life. MT

THE PROGRAMME IN DETAIL

London: 25 November - 4 December 2013

25 Nov	6.45pm	Opening Gala: Odboy & Erordog Suite + live soundtrack performance + opening gala party	Republic of Fritz HansenTM
29 Nov	6.30pm	101 Reykjavik	Riverside Studios
29 Nov	8.45pm	Chasing the Wind	Riverside Studios
30 Nov	6pm	NWR	Ciné Lumière
30 Nov	9pm	Concrete Night	ICA
1 Dec	1pm	The Hidden Child	ICA
	3.30pm	Bleeder	Riverside Studios
	6pm	Kidd Life	Riverside Studios
	8.30pm	Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart + Q&A	Riverside Studios
2 Dec	6.45pm 8.45pm	Sigur Rós double bill: Inni Valtari Mystery Film Experiment	Riverside Studios
2 Dec	7pm	Directors’ Talk: Finnish Docs	Republic of Fritz HansenTM
3 Dec	6.45pm	North of the Sun + The Devil’s Ballroom	Riverside Studios
3 Dec	8.30pm	My Stuff + Q&A	Riverside Studios
4 Dec	8.20pm	Closing Gala: You & Me Forever + Q&A	Ciné Lumière

Edinburgh: 6 – 11 December 2013

6 Dec	6.15pm	Chasing the Wind	Edinburgh Filmhouse
7 Dec	6.15pm	My Stuff	Edinburgh Filmhouse
8 Dec	6.15pm	Kidd Life	Edinburgh Filmhouse
9 Dec	6.15pm	NWR	Edinburgh Filmhouse
10 Dec	6.15pm	Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart	Edinburgh Filmhouse
11 Dec	6.15pm	You & Me Forever	Edinburgh Filmhouse

Glasgow: 8 December 2013 – 2 January 2014

8 Dec	5.30pm	Chasing the Wind	Glasgow Film Theatre
10 Dec	6.45pm	Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart	Glasgow Film Theatre
15 Dec	6.50pm	You & Me Forever	Glasgow Film Theatre
17 Dec	9.00pm	NWR	Glasgow Film Theatre
22 Dec	6.40pm	Kidd Life	Glasgow Film Theatre
29 Dec	6.30pm	My Stuff	Glasgow Film Theatre
2 Jan	6.30pm	Belleville Baby	Glasgow Film Theatre

Big Bad Wolves (2013)

Director/Writers: Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado

110min Comedy Crime Thriller Israel. Hebrew with subtitles

Cast: Guy Adler, Dvir Benedek, Lior Ashkenazi, Tzahi Grad, Doval’e Glickman, Rotem Keinan; Israel 2013, 110 min.

Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s violent thriller courts controversy with nearly all the characters involved, and one wonders if this was not the main raison-d’etre behind this film in the first place. The torture scenes are technically well-crafted and graphic, and would fit in with any horror/slasher movie. But even worse is the manipulation of the filmmakers: trying to make the viewer side with Dror against his vigilante captors, having created the narrative this way.

When a group of police officers are brutally interrogating a suspected serial child killer, they are filmed undercover. Miki, the leading officer is suspended. He starts trailing the suspect Dror, a teacher of religious education, who seems to be awkward, but harmless. Miki wants to capture Dror and ‘continue the interrogation’, but Gidi, the father of the last victim, captures Dror first and takes him into a remote hut. Miki is also captured by the grieving father, but the policeman agrees to help Gidi, to make Dror confess, and tell them, where he has hidden the heads of the girls he has killed.

Is there still a place for self-justice or torture, are the filmmakers overstepping the boundaries of moral responsibilities, in making this feature?Decide for yourselves. As a pure shocker the film may be excusable, but the moral implications are not. Child killers will always excite vigilante action, but in a civilised state such actions should be condemned outright. Perhaps the permanent war situation in Israel has blurred the reaction to violence as a whole: A reason more to listen to the Peace movement inside the country. AS

BIG BAD WOLVES IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 DECMEBER 2013

Floating Skyscrapers (2013)

Director/Writer: Tomas Wasilewski | Cast: Mateusz Banasiuk, Katarzyna Herman, Marta Nieradkiewicz, Bartosz Gelner | Poland 93’

Hailed as ‘Poland’s first LGBT film’, Tomasz Wasilewski’s striking drama follows a champion swimmer whose gay relationship causes ripples.

It forms part of an erotically-charged series of films from a new wave of Polish filmmakers and follows on from the director’s affecting debut In A Bedroom, once again starring In A Bedroom’s Katarzyna Herman.

The central character in Floating Skyscrapers has a dilemma: is he heterosexual, gay or just a highly-sexed bi? Played with emotional and physical gusto by Mateusz Banasiuk, Kuba is a professional swimmer whose honed physique and competitive-edge belies his shaky sexual identity.

Living with his mother, Ewa (Katarzyna Herman) and girlfriend Sylwia (Marta Nieradkiewicz), makes matters worse as the two women compete for his attention when he is not poolside. It’s clear that his sporting prowess does little to curb his sexual appetite which is further stimulated by the athletic bodies of his fellow swimmers until he’s drawn to the charismatic Michal (Bartosz Gelner) who he meets one evening with Ewa. The men’s attraction becomes palpable during unspoken gestures and eye-contact during dinner and Ewa picks up on this. Ewa is dismayed the two have met not least because her sexual relationship with Kuba is adversely affected as the unresolved tension in Kuba slowly becomes apparent.

Gelner and Banasiuk give utterly convincing performances as they gradually become closer, beautifully filmed by cinematographer Kuba Kijowski in neutral tones of silvery beige and acqua echoing the water motif. A judicious use of silence accentuates the tension throughout. Michal is an interesting thoughtful character, appearing more urbane and sensitive as a counterpoint to Kuba’s tough macho quality that gradually melts away as the narrative unfolds. Katarzyna Herman’s turn as Ewa evokes a subtle and deep-understanding of her son. Thomas Wasilewski is a promising filmmaker and storyteller with an excellent vision for both creative widescreen visuals and for detailed camerawork marking him out as an exciting talent in recent Polish cinema who has since directed United States of Love and Fools. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER | READ ALEX BARRETT’S INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR.

A Long Way From Home (2013)

Sharing a dp (Ed Rutherford) with Joanna Hogg doesn’t guarantee the end result will produce her subtle brand of middle-class English drama. That said, this sun-filled story of elderly Brits in the South of France is not without merit, although dark clouds do occasionally appear. Watchable and appealing, it successfully evokes the heady summer atmosphere of Languedoc-Roussillon with stunning visuals.

It also has the suave acting talents of James Fox as Joseph, a debonair gent in his early seventies who’s enjoying a leisurely but aimless retirement in Nîmes with his motherly Irish wife (Brenda Fricker) scrabbling about on the foothills of senility. At dinner one night they meet a young couple on holiday – Suzanne (Nathalie Dormer/The Tudors) and Mark (Paul Nicholls/Life Just Is). The pretty blond makes a palpable impression on Joseph, with her perfectly blow-dried hair and delightful smile.

At first this feels like an upmarket version of Bergerac, with equally inane dialogue, but then a tragic accident proves Brenda to be worth her weight in gold and the narrative gains momentum. The following day Joseph meets the couple again and they head off to the vineyards in Joseph’s car – cue idle banter about their respective relationships. Nathalie Dormer manages to be sexy and sensitive as Suzanne but Paul Nicholls is slightly miscast: he does his best to play a slightly vulnerable geezer but this role would have been perfect for someone like Jack Davenport who was wasted recently in the (dreadful) Mother’s Milk. Joseph and Suzanne grow closer while Mark proves to be a bit of a lad, chumming up with a local wine-maker Robert, on a business venture.

Virginia Gilbert’s well-paced and convincing drama offers an insight into male sexuality and feels authentic and heartfelt (with echoes of the more robust Le Weekend). James Fox gives a poignant performance as Joseph; clearly smitten by a “late-life crisis” – his dormant libido flickering at Suzanne’s frisky sexuality but his bittersweet voyeuristic moments (when he sees the couple later in the village) feeling sad and rueful rather than raunchy. Ultimately, this is a story about revisiting the past with regret, about the quiet desperation of old age for those whose pleasure is not tethered to their family but to their cherished and much enjoyed sexuality. A la recherche du temps perdu. MT

A LONG WAY FROM HOME RELEASES ON THE 6TH DECEMBER 2013

Domestic (2013) 10th Romanian Film Festival in London 2013

Director/Writer: Adrian Sitaru

Cast: Adrian Titieni, Gheorghe Ilfrim, Ioana Flore, Clara Voda, Sergiu Costache, Dan Hurdu

85mins Comedy drama, Romanian with English subtitles

Surviving every day couped up in close proximity naturally brings out the worst in this group of ordinary Romanians living in an apartment block, Adrian Sitaru’s third feature offers another Romanian New Wave meta cinema outing; a black comedy that draws its humour from inane conversations and small talk between families and neighbours, seen from a ‘fly on the wall’ perspective. Dialogue-driven, it takes a simple linear narrative style.

Nothing really happens but they moan about everything from failing technology, pets fouling the common parts to immigration and these banal conversations take on a surreal aspect reflected, ‘fly in the wall style’ in long static takes from Adrian Silisteanu’s voyeuristic camera, which occasionally wanders out into the open air to capture cats, rabbits and other local fauna.

Mainly known for his TV work, Sitaru’s previous award-winning dramas Hooked and Best Intentions followed various characters and their relationship crisis. When the subtitles in one long kitchen scene are almost impossible to read (as they are white on a very pale background); this highlights just how much these meta dramas are rely on their dialogue, which is essential in driving them forward. MT

DOMESTIC IS SCREENING AS PART OF THE 10TH ROMANIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON

Kill Your Darlings (2013) | BFI FLARE 20-30 March 2015

Dir: John Krokidas; Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Dane de Haan, Ben Foster, Jennifer Jason Leigh

USA 2013, 104 min. Drama

The first feature film of scriptwriter John Krokidas (Being John Malkovich) takes Daniel Radcliffe in the role of young Allen Ginsberg to Columbia University in the autumn of 1943. There he meets future stars of the literary anti-establishment like Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), Lucien Carr (Dane de Haan) and William Burroughs (Ben Foster). Ginsberg, the shy Jewish boy, suffering from the breakup of his parent’s marriage, falls madly in love with Carr, who is still seeing his ex-lover David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), who a year ago saved his life in Chicago when Carr tried to commit suicide.

The fading College running back Kerouac (who could now imagine him playing American football!) is also part of the group, though he seems the only heterosexual in the posse of rebels. The lads get up to pranks, some more serious than others, but a certain bookish tranquility holds sway until Carr kills Kammerer sadisticly, without an apparent motive. Thanks to Ginsberg, who finds an escape route for him in an old law book (if attacked by an homosexual, the straight man can claim self-defence), Carr gets off with 18 month in prison, but rejects Ginsberg, who is heart broken.

Krokadis film is uneven, too often episodically, and its straight linear narrative and mostly conventional aesthetics make the end product much less than it could have been. Radclliffe excels in the frank sex scenes and it is the ensemble acting, which saves the film in the end. Dane de Haan’s Carr is particularly menacing, the boy-man with the face of an angel, who can’t stand any rejection, and plays off all his lovers against each other. Like a little vampire, he sucks all the good out of people; his golden looks masking his exploitative nature. Surprisingly, the real Carr stayed with one publishing house until his death in 2005: twice married with two children.

In spite of its shortcomings, KILL YOUR DARLINGS delivers some fascinating background about the cradle of the Un-American dream. AS

[youtube id=”RKCpOm7-erw” width=”600″ height=”350″]

KILL YOUR DARLINGS IS screening during BFI FLARE 20-30 March 2015

Gilles Bourdos – Film Director

Andrew Rajan met Gilles Bourdos in London recently to talk about his latest film RENOIR, which is now out on DVD.

AT Obviously, the first question has to be – what inspired you to make this film? You were in a museum?

GB Every time I finish a movie, I love to go to a museum, to walk, to clear my head, without any agenda, just to find peace. They make me feel peaceful. So, I was in NY and I was walking in the Met and was in the French area- Renoir and Cezanne; it was striking for me because right then, I really felt I belonged to this cultural history.
So, maybe I have been making movies now 15-20 years, but this was the first time I had a feeling that I wanted to be a French director of this movie. It was very strange sensation and I started to read around Cezanne, Renoir and I found this specific story of when Andree Heuschling first arrived at Renoir’s house and I found it very fascinating, as we don’t know very much about this moment.
So she was the Perfect link to tell the story, not something intellectual, but something real, with flesh and blood, you know, the relationship between a father and a son, the relationship between cinema and a painting.
So, it was a ‘narrow’ situation, you know, with just a house, with a garden paradise around it and a big wall around that, so I found it to be a perfect set up situation for this film.

AT That being the case, the story is of course about two extraordinarily famous people. Were you at all worried about making a film about two ‘Sacred Cows’?

GB Sacred Cows! [laughs] Yes, yes, you know, that is the reason also I wanted the specific sequence when Andree is breaking the plates and she is saying ‘I am really fed up with the Renoirs’, you know, sometimes I felt the same way too, I needed those plates.. making this movie, it provided me with alot of pleasure to make this sequence too, you know?! [laughs]. So you know, in the beginning when you think about it, at the beginning of starting work, it could be an impressive (intimidating) thing, but after a while you (understand you) are simply working on a story about a father and a son and a girl and a young boy, so for example with (actor) Vincent Rottiers, I would say ‘don’t think so much about Jean Renoir, because then, you act with all of it on your shoulders’. You are back from the War, just try to keep it simple. It could be anyone; you work on a character, but it could just be a worker in a factory. They are birth(right) and race free in cinema.

AT I am interested to know about you; where you were born and your influences…

GB Well, I was born in Nice (1963)..

AT Ah..

GB Yes, so it makes alot of sense.. I came from a working class background… and when I grew up with paintings everywhere, when I was a kid.. because it is a city -an area- where the (notion) of painting is very important; there was Renoir, Picasso… Cezanne.. Bonnard so many painters from there and around… so you have almost a museum of painting on every corner.

AT So, even as a working class boy…

GB Yes, it’s cool, there were pictures, posters and postcards everywhere, it wasn’t just separate, you know. The idea of the painting, it was everywhere, so it was just normal to have a picture of a Matisse somewhere. So I think it was huge influence on me.

AT Then, going through school, you didn’t decide you were going to become a painter…

GB I don’t know why (I chose what I did).. I didn’t go to (film school) I was looking at photography to begin with, more so than painting. But then I do love cinema too, so it started like that… and then I started to write and I always felt that I could learn what I needed to learn from watching cinema too, learn..

AT …Enough.

GB Enough, exactly –enough to Start something. And make Alot of mistakes. And afterwards, you are learning because you are making mistakes. I just had to make my first 16mm movies.. and make alot of mistakes and… you learn, step by step, you know.

AT Your first films, you just made with friends, or…?

GB Yep. I was in Paris- I moved from Nice to Paris, because unfortunately, if you live in France, you cannot see films anywhere really, unless you live in Paris.

AT So you realised when you were in Nice you needed to move to Paris if you were going to be a filmmaker. And how old were you..?

GB Yes.. I was 24.. 23.

AT Ok, so you go to Paris…

GB …I go Paris and I was with a friend who is a filmmaker too now, a good one and a screenwriter too and we were writing together… actually, we didn’t go to Paris to become filmmakers, to be exact, we didn’t know then.. we went because -it was before the DVD (existed)- we were not able to see enough movies. We wanted to see all the Tarkovski movies, all the Ingmar Bergman movies… and on the Big screen. And the only place to do that was in Paris! We spent maybe two or three years, just going to see films. Paris is the best city to see films. There are so many cinemas there. Every year you have a festival showing All the Bergman films, so that was the most important time in my life for me as a director, you know, but maybe even then, I didn’t know I wanted to be a film director…

AT Even then..

GB Even then, I didn’t know! I was just driven by this desire to see cinema.

AT Who would you say is an influence- you mentioned Bergman, Tarkovski..

GB Different moments of my life I would say different directors, but… Italian directors, really.

AT Such as…

GB Bertolucci. The way that Bertolucci worked with colours, for example. That is something I found myself drawn to, because you see, born in Nice, growing up there we are just so close to the Italian border, you know? I am French but…

AT Very close to the Italian sensibility..

GB Yes, yes, we are very close there to the Italian sensibility. We share the same coast, the water… And I did love Visconti, Fellini, Bertolucci… all those.

AT More than the French..?

GB More than the French, yes, definitely. More than the French.

AT Interesting. So you made a few short films. How did your first feature film get off the ground.. Disparus? (Disappeared).

GB Disparus, yes, (sighs) it was a big fight, because it was set in the Thirties, a kind of political love story.. it was a very ambitious film. Period films are very difficult to do anyway, as you always need more money; it was a kind of thriller. It was based on a true story too. There, the Surrealists and the Trotskyists were very close to each other in Paris before the war (1938), so there was political intrigue and infiltration. It was a big movie, which I also produced.

AT ..The story came from a news article?

GB A book. A novel..

AT Going back to Renoir- you live in New York too, I believe?

GB Yes..

AT When you go to a museum, is it the art that attracts you, or the space?

GB I going for the walk inside… actually, you know what? I think I am going to a museum, as others go to a church. So… it’s the whole thing…

AT A combination..

GB A combination of the place, the art… because what I have found in a museum is that it is a holy place for the ‘genius of humanity’, you know? So I need to talk with the dead. It is a way to talk to the dead artist, you know, it’s a way to say ok, I am the one -following the chain…

AT The thread.

GB The thread. You know that is something very important for me now. Because I am not trying to break everything (that has gone before, in order) to do something new.. Not that. When you are young, it seems like you can do that, you can break every rule and do something Totally new. Now, I love the idea that I belong to a long chain of history..

AT …Continuity.

GB A continuity, of course.

AT So, what’s next for you now?

GB Yes, I am working on a different possibility in France. It will be a European movie, an 18th Century movie..

AT Ok, a Period piece in France… because I know before, you worked with the Americans and did an American film (Afterwards 2008).. how was that?

GB I like the American landscape. I like the people. The idea of America, it is nice because it is a melting pot; New York, Paris, London, Berlin, they have this and I like it. But I find New York to be more similar to London than it is to Atlanta. Living in a big city, there is a similarity.. Also different (life) experiences.
The Americans are very efficient at working.. and that is good, but there is no flexibility! That is my main problem with them. Because I am working with a Taiwanese DoP (Ping Bin Lee) and this is very different. But he works only with me in the West.. he works in Japan, in China, in Korea. But we work in a very similar way. We try to stay flexible. We work with a small crew; I am extremely precise the details, hair, costume, makeup, everything coming into my frame needs to be checked precisely, but I don’t use storyboards.
Whether I use track and what kind of shot, I decide at the last minute.

AT You like to see what the actors are going to do first..

GB Because you don’t know how an actress is going to move from here to there, so how can you decide months before how you are going to shoot it?! And maybe it is going to be sunny, or cloudy, raining, so how do you know where you are going to position things until you get there? I love to stay flexible.
As a filmmaker I am working with living elements; Weather, human beings. We are not puppets. So I don’t want to be too strict or lock it all down with papers and storyboards. That’s the problems with the Americans!

AT So, over there, the producers are wanting everything just so..
GB Not just the producers, everyone! Even the actors! Everyone in America hates improvisation.. they hate it!

AT The actors? I thought maybe with John Malkovich…

GB Ah, Malkovich, no, he was very good. He is great, he is great.. he understood, but then, he has worked in France alot and lived in France for a while. They don’t like it. They like rules, you know, they need everything to be nailed down. But then, they are very effective, you know, they are very good at what they do. They really need to organise it. They really believe in the system. This is why they made the computer, because they are very good at needing everything organised… with them there is only black and white.

AT There’s no greys…

GB Yes, exactly.

AT Well…. I think we are done.

GB Ok, great!

AT Thank you very much indeed. I didn’t wish to pry too much, but I was interested and you were a total mystery, there is nothing of you online so…

GB No, but it is ok, I am a very private person, you know. But I understand. It is all about the movies, so that is ok.

RENOIR IS NOW OUT ON DVD

Chasing the Wind (2013) Jag etter Vind 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

Director and Writer: Rune Denstad Langlo

Cast: Marie Blokhus, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Frederik Meldal Norgaard, Sven Bertil Taube, Tobias Santelmann

91min NORWAY Drama

CHASING THE WIND is an intimate family drama, small in scale yet far-reaching in its themes of human communication and the difficulties of family ties. Set in an idyllic part of Norway on the Western archipelago of Afjord, this melancholy piece of filmmaking is rendered even more so by the poignantly delicate occasional score composed by Ola Kvernberg, The gentle seascapes and verdant summer landscapes are imaginatively lensed by cinematographer Phillip Ogaard’s on the widescreen and in gorgeously framed close-ups, shot through with muted shades of aqua, taupe and blond reflecting its marine location.

Anna hasn’t seen her family for almost ten years. When her grandmother dies, she returns home to face her grandfather (Sven-Bertil Taube) and the ones she left behind. In the week leading up to the funeral, as numerous setbacks confound proceedings, Anna is forced to reconsider how she lives her life. The narrative is driven forward purely by the simple often troubled conversations between Anna, her grandfather and her ex-boyfriend Lundgren (Anders Baasmo Christiansen). Occasional chats with locals help to add texture and context, reflecting the insular prejudice of communities all over the world.

Chasing the Wind is a lightly bittersweet love story that shows how communicating with family is the most difficult engagement of all. The film’ s humour emerges from the frustration and anger felt by the characters when they can neither reach or comprehend each other. The melancholy is connected to their realization that the longer they wait to tell the truth to more it hurts all concerned. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 2ND NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL

Jeune et Jolie (2013)

Director: Francois Ozon

Cast: Marina Vacth, Geraldine Paihas, Frederic Pierrot, Fantin Ravat

95min French with English subtitles Drama

Student prostitution has come under the spotlight recently with dazzling insight from Emmanuelle Bercot’s edgy Parisian drama Student Services (2012) to Malgorzata Szumovska’s intimate look at female grads on the game, Elles (2011). Here the prolific and provocative French auteur, Francois Ozon, offers up his sultry and mischievous story of Isabelle.

Once again the setting is Paris but JEUNE ET JOLIE (YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL) is a coming-of-age drama with a twist. Avoiding winsome innocence, it focuses on a very confident, hard-edged 17-year-old from an educated background, played vampishly by French model Marine Vacth.

As the title suggests, Isabelle is a good-looking young woman who’s comfortable with her nascent sexuality and the power it enables her to wield, not least in flirtations with her mother’s partner who shares their Parisian home. Unmoved by her first sexual encounter Isabelle realises how to turn this disaffection to her advantage in financing her studies. Nothing new there. But Ozon cleverly keep us guessing about the power that women hold in the sexual arena. And although it appears that Isabelle is fearless and calculating, he shrouds her emotions in mystery leaving us to wonder whether this girl is really in control of her life and her relationships as much as she would have us believe. Sexually available and canny she may be, but she is still immature emotionally and this comes across in Vacth’s subtle performance.

Ozon provocatively portrays the upmarket setting with its glossy visuals as being quite normal but then he blows apart this facade slowly teasing us with glimpses of reality as the drama unfolds. Isabelle’s dynamic with her mother (Isabelle Paihas) is a fascinating one. Initially the daughter appears to have the power but eventually emerges as the weaker of the pair, accurately reflecting the inner turmoil of adolescence but also examining the fading power of female sexuality as we saw before with in Juliette Binoche’s clever performance as Anne in ELLES.

Well-crafted and competent, this is a challenging film that asks questions, leaving the viewer open to doubt about the normality of a situation that on the surface feels straightforward but on reflection starts to raise complex questions about the nature of adolescence, innocence and female desire. MT

Only God Forgives (2013)

Dir: Nicolas Winding Refyn | Cast: Kristen Scott Thomas, Ryan Gosling, Vithaya Pansringarm, Rhatha Phongam, Gordon Brown, Tom Burke | 90mins Denmark/France

For sheer cinematic brilliance and artistic style, Nicolas Winding Refyn’s Bangkok-set revenge tale really set the night on fire at its Cannes premiere back in 2013, dividing critics and polarising opinion. Some derided it for its cold brutality and lack of emotion but Heli was equally violent, gratuitously so, and won an award.

Only God Forgives is all about controlled emotion, seething under the surface of Refyn’s glittering jewel-box of visual tricks: brooding resentment, latent anger, moody scorn and dysfunctional lust also join the party in a thriller seething with a pervasive sense of dread, heightened by a dynamite score.

The performances are stylised, mannered and supremely elegant: Ryan Gosling, who runs a Thai boxing club, very much serves the film rather than stars in it, wearing a sharp suit and the expression of a frightened rabbit as the submissively loyal son of Kristen Scott Thomas’s vampish mother and drug baroness, Crystal. She’s a woman at the top of her game, her two sons are trophies she toys with dispassionately.

We first see her arriving in Bangkok to demand retribution for the murder of her ‘first son’ Billy (Tom Burke) on the grounds of his raping and killing a local teenager. “I’m sure he had his reasons” she claims, very much her own woman. It’s a superbly entertaining performance and one which should have won her Best Actress. Sporting a long blond wig and killer heals, she is every bit as sexy, poised and alluring as any actress half her age, or less.

Against advice, she hires a hit man to take out Chang (Pansringarm), the local police chief responsible for the killing of her son Billy. But the plan backfires and Chang turns the tables on Crystal and her agent (Gordon Brown) who is tortured and killed in possibly one of the most inventive and exquisitely painful deaths in cinema history, all playing against a glimmering back-drop of the lacquered night club interior. Glamorous hostesses look on motionless and expressionless in compliance with their oriental culture of self control.

Only God Forgives glides gracefully along, each frame an expertly composed, perfectly balanced, a shimming masterpiece. Punctuated by brusque episodes of savage violence, it epitomises a world of clandestine doings and shady characters suggested but not fully fleshed-out, adding an exotic mystique to the piece rather than detracting from it, leaving room for the imagination to wander, to speculate and to dream. It’s a world where evil meets evil and no one is up to any good.

Nicolas Winding Refyn’s points out “We must not forget that the second enemy of creativity, after having ‘good taste’ is being safe”. This is not a safe film, it’s a daring, exciting and malevolent. MT

NOW ON MUBI | OUT ON DVD

Day of the Flowers (2013)

Director: John Roberts Writer: Eirene Houston

99mins Rom com UK

Cuba-set and gorgeous to look at, this tender chick-flick comedy opens with a pair of bickering Glaswegian sisters attending their father’s funeral in the grim Scots town. Rosa (Eva Birthistle) is a revolutionary spirit unlike Allie (Charity Wakefield), who’s a self-confessed, fashionable ‘girlie’. But when they discover their stepmother (Phyllis Logan) intends to turn dad’s ashes into a golf trophy, they steal the urn and head for a sun-filled trip to Havana in homage to their father, who once dabbled in the revolution during the seventies.

With Rosa’s best friend Conway (Bryan Dick) in tow, they arrive in the Caribbean Island where their taxi breaks down and the ashes are confiscated by dodgy Police. But it’s not all bad. Once the rumba rhythms kick in, they let their hair down with two locals: the slightly leery Ernesto (Christopher Simpson) and decent dance instructor Tomas (Carlos Acosta).

Light-hearted and sun-drenched this may be, but as Eirene Houston’s debut script works overtime to spice up the search for the ashes with local politics and the complications of romance between rich girlies from Europe and poor local dudes, implausible elements surface and the affair becomes too complicated.

Performances are mixed with Acosta coming across well in his debut screen role. As a relaxed and convincing love interest, he gives the film international appeal, although his dance turns are minimal. The girls are less engaging possibly because their characters lack real dynamism in the first place. Conway doesn’t really get much to work with. DAY OF THE FLOWERS is best seen as a musical trip through the softly alluring island of Cuba, sumptuously lensed by Vernon Leyton to Stephen Warbeck’s catchy rumba rhythms. MT

DAY OF THE FLOWERS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM NOVEMBER 29, 2013

Concrete Night (2013) 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Pirjo Honkasalo; Cast: Johannes Brotherus, Jari Virman, Annelie Karpinnen

Finland 2013, 92 min.

Teenager Simo lives with his much older brother Ilkka and his alcoholic mother in a cramped high rise block flat in the outskirts of Helsinki. The film starts with a dream: he sits in a train, driving over a bridge which collapses, leaving him drowning in his bed. Simo has an ambivalent relationship with both: on the one hand he admires his tough brother (who is going to prison for a drug offence), on the other hand Simo fears that he will end up like him. His love for his mother is offset by her neglect and near permanent drunkenness. Simo is slim, and his movements are effeminate; he is well aware of this and fears he will be mistaken for a homosexual.

In the opposite block lives a man who the brothers call ‘poof’, even though they have nothing but their prejudice to determine his sexual orientation. Illka has a bad influence on his younger brother, telling him “that women liked to be hit”. Later we see Illka abusing and degrading his girl friend Vera. Their mother is afraid (seemingly without reason), that Illka might commit suicide – but it turns out that it is Simo who needed her help. When he is visiting the neighbour they called a homosexual. Simo’s fear of being mistaken for one leads to violence, his dream becoming reality.

This is the first feature for fifteen years of 66-year-old Pirjo Honkasalo, who is well known in her homeland for her documentaries. The film is based on a novel by Pirko Saisio, who also wrote the script for Honkasalo’s last feature. CONCRETE NIGHT is shot in black and white and is stunning to look at. F W Murnau would be proud to have directed it, had he still been alive. The characters live in shadows, the only light trying to get in is artificial and deflected. Even when the brothers make the trip into central Helsinki, it never gets properly light. The acting is sparse, reminding us of the early films of British realism of the 60s.

The landscape surrounding the estate is gloomy, reassembling some giant tip where everything has been dumped and discarded, including the people. The weather is harsh and unforgiving like everything else this film. Honkasalo’s use of restrictive dialogue strongly evokes the characters mistrust of feelings; their fear is couched in latent violence. In spite of this, there are moments when he camera shows Simo in a poetic, even lyrical way. Although these moments are short, they give us an idea of what could have been. A small masterpiece, but utterly depressing. AS

Hannah Arendt (2013) Now on DVD

Director: Margarethe von Trotta Writers: Pam Katz and Margarethe von Trotta

Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Axel Milberg, Janet McTeer

103 mins Germany Drama German/English

Hannah Arendt, the eponymous real-life subject of this well-meaning biopic, was a political theorist who studied under a series a great twentieth century philosophers, including Jaspers, Husserl and Heidegger. Born in Germany in 1906, the Jewish Arendt fled her home country amidst the rise of pre-war anti-Semitism, finally settling in America. Among the many important works Arendt would go on to produce were The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a lieutenant colonel in the Nazi HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel” \o “Schutzstaffel” SS who oversaw the deportation of Jews from Germany. It is Arendt writing the latter work which forms the basis of Hannah Arendt.

After persuading The New Yorker to send her to Jerusalem to cover Eichmann’s trial, Arendt is overcome by Eichmann’s sheer ‘mediocrity’, and unable to reconcile this with the ‘greatness’ of his crimes – thus leading her to develop her concept of ‘the banality of evil’. Expressing the concept in her New Yorker piece, alongside some ambiguous comments about the conduct of Jewish leaders during the war, Arendt unwittingly unleashed a tidal wave of controversy. As her friend Hans Jonas says in the film, Arendt turned the trial into a philosophy lesson, using it to raise important questions about the nature of evil. In reliving the story and controversy behind Arendt’s piece, Hannah Arendt shares these preoccupations, transferring Arendt’s ideas from the page to the screen.

The film’s key themes are neatly summarised by the darkness of the film’s opening, which shows Eichmann’s capture followed by a scene of Arendt smoking and thinking, lying alone in darkness – an apt visual metaphor for what’s to follow. And in perusing Arendt’s thoughts, the film seems to posit that her attempts to understand Eichmann were at least in part also an attempt to understand how Heidegger, her former mentor and lover, could have likewise become a member of the Nazi party.

It’s a very human motivation for a woman who was criticised for being ‘all arrogance and no feeling’, as one character says here. In attempting to try and show us Arendt’s mind at work, it could be argued that Hannah Arendt likewise fails to truly engage feelings. There are attempts: quickly sketched friendships and romantic exchanges, and yet when health troubles strike for both her husband and an old friend, neither moment carries the necessary dramatic impact. We’re constantly told how great Arendt is (students fawn over her, the editor of the New Yorker claims ‘she wrote one of the most important books of the twentieth century’) – and yet, as portrayed in the film, her humble, human side never feels truly exposed. Though we see her criticised and hounded, it feels like the film presupposes our sympathy, assuming Arendt’s likeability without the need to actually show it to us.

Thankfully, the power of the story, and the ideas ultimately win out, the film becoming powerful, gripping and thought-provoking. But it’s a shame that the film never engages emotions quite as successfully as it does the intellect. Alex Barrett.

HANNAH ARENDT IS SHOW AT THE EVERYMAN HAMPSTEAD, TRICYCLE KILBURN. WATERMANS ART CENTRE BRENTFORD, CURZON RENOIR and IS NOW OUT ON DVD

Aftermath (2012) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Wladyslaw Pasikowski’s holocaust-themed outing is inspired by Jan Gross’ book ‘Neighbours’ about the massacre during the Second World War of a Polish village’s Jewish inhabitants. This Polish ‘secret history’ is filmed in a contemporary timeframe (2000) and has the advantage of legendary cinematographer Pawel Edelman’s sumptuous visual treatment and an atmospheric and aptly-composed score by Jan Duszynski to keep the spooky storyline on a knife’s edge, thrumming with unexplained events and hostile characters. That said, it sometimes feels like Pasikowski has bitten off more than he can chew with this tale of two brothers, Franciszek and Jozef Kalina, who come face to face with rampant anti-semitism when they discover old Jewish gravestones put to use as road-pavings in their childhood village. The drama caused an uproar in Poland on its release due to its controversial storyline. And this is certainly one of the most important recent films concerning Jewish Polish history.

We first meet Franciszek Kalina (Ireneusz Czop) returning to the family farm after 20 years working in Chicago. His homecoming is spoilt when he finds the mood in the parochial village is distinctly unfriendly. The locals are still angry about him leaving of nearest and dearest in the lurch. But his brother Jozef (Stuhr), makes no effort to explain or make amends. As the brothers set to work removing the Jewish tombstones and replacing them in their own field, the villagers rise up in scenes of outrage and hostility, threatening to beat them, even savagely killing their pet dog. When the pair start to dig deeper into local history archives, they discover that there is more to this grave desecration than first meets the eye.

With Pawel Pawlikowski’s recent drama IDA winning Best Film at the London Film Festival 2013; interest in the holocaust shows no sign of abating and Pasikowski has chosen another good story for this screen adaptation. The problem is that Franciszek and Josef are fairly unappealing, one-dimensional characters and the brothers are difficult to engage with, despite their heroic campaign. This coupled with a total absence of any meaningful females leads (how can a village have no prominent women in Poland) apart from am occasional appearance of the local doctor and a brief vignette from a hospitalised old Jewish lady, makes this a very dry, male-orientated story. As such, it feels rather worthy and preachy rather than involving as an emotive drama; the only sympathy and contrast coming from the Catholic priest (Jerzy Radziwilowicz). As the action builds to an hysterical climax, there is also a shift in tone from straight drama to histrionic melodrama as almost implausible skeletons gradually tumble out a cupboard heaving with anti-semitic overtones. MT

AFTERMATH SCREENS AT THE TRICYLE ON 13TH NOVEMBER 2013 AS PART OF THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2013

Mirrors (2013) 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Marina Migunova; Cast: Viktoria Isakova, Roman Polyanskiy, Victor Dobronravov

Russia 2013, 130 min. Biopic Russian with English subtitles

Some brave Russian dramas will never reach mainstream audiences in their homeland such as WINTER JOURNEY. MIRRORS is one that probably should have stayed at home.

A biopic of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), MIRRORS is carried alone by Viktoria Isakova in the title role. With her strong performance she saves this overlong, often confusing and in the end not very truthful feature. Tsvetaeva was born into an upper-class Russian family. Her very strict mother died when she was 14, which was a liberation for Marina. At the age of 16 she studied at the Sorbonne, before returning to Russia, where she met Sergej Efron, a cadet, at a Black Sea town. She was 19 when they married. Her two first children Irina and Alya were born before the Russian Revolution. Whilst Efron was fighting at the front, and later for the White Army, Tsvetaeva suffered from near starvation in Moscow. She wrote poems glorifying the White Army and later emigrated via Berlin and Prague (where she had an affair with Konstantin Rodzevitch, a soldier and friend of her husband) to Paris. She suffered from Tuberculosis from 1925 onwards, bcause her life in the Russian émigré society in Paris was materially very unrewarding. Efron became homesick for Russia in Paris, and joined the NKDW (forerunner of the KGB), killing a man near Lausanne. In 1939 Marina followed Efron and her daughter Alya to Russia, where she killed herself in August 1941, after being notified by the authorities of the death of her husband.

It is always difficult to show the written work of a genius in a feature film, and Migunova, like many before her, fails the task. We hear voice-overs of Tsvetaeva’s poems, but mainly we see a rather affected woman, craving for affection and making scenes about banalities. Her husband is portrayed as a weakling, who suffers for his love for his wife and his sudden conversion to communism remains totally unexplained. These rather one-dimensional characters act in a rather well set up design of diverse stages of poverty, but they cannot compensate for the episodic nature of the narrative. Camera work is very conventional, mainly relaying on close-ups.

But the worst aspect of the film is its lack of truthfulness. To begin with, we never learn that Tsvetaeva gave her daughters Irina and Alya to an orphanage in Russia, in the misguided hope that they would be fed better there. Irina died, leaving the poet with a life-long trauma. And whilst we are shown the ménage-a-trois between Marina, Sergej and Konstantin in Prague at length (even though it lasted not much more than a year), Migunova leaves out totally more important personal encounters of the poet, all of which fond their way into her most celebrated work. Soon after her marriage she had an affair with Osip Mandelstam, and between1912 and 1917 she was the lover of Sofia Parnock, both of them poets. And in 1917 Tsvetaeva met the actress Sofia Holliday, writing countless poems and a novella about their relationship, which lasted until 1917. Do we have to understand that the ideology of the leadership of the Russian Federation regarding homosexuality is being followed by its artists to the letter? AS

MIRRORS screens during the 7th Russian Film Festival 2013 on Friday, 15th November at The Mayfair Hotel London.

Winter Journey (2013) London Lion Winner – 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Directors/Writers: Sergei Taramev, Liubov Lvova

Cast: Aleksei Frandetti, Evgeny Tkachuk, Vladimir Mishukov, Dmitry Mukhamadev, Andrei Tsymbalov

90min Drama Russian with English subtitles

[youtube id=”5lNws62gTm4″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Winter Journey takes its title from Schubert ‘s “Winterreise” song cycle. The central character is Eric (Aleksei Frandetti), a young, gay classical singer, who is preparing for audition at the Moscow State Conservatory when he meets his nemesis, Lyokha (Evgeny Tkachuk).

One of the standouts at this year’s Russian Film Festival, the feature is unlikely to be widely screened in Russia due to issues surrounding Putin’s new law criminalising ‘gay propaganda’. But apart from a snatched kiss between Eric and the psychotic criminal he becomes involved with – there is very little to offend mainstream audiences but a great deal to entertain them in this quirky and visually engaging snapshot of Moscow’s contemporary bohemian scene.

In a snowbound Moscow, thawing round the edges – the voyeuristic camera offers insight into Moscow’s hard-bitten underworld: Cabaret venues, urban backwaters and waterways as well as the more traditional majestic architectural facades and panoramas of the capital. Reflecting the polarity that still exists in modern Russia, Lvokha’s disenfranchised world collides with Eric’s artistic one when their paths entwine during an altercation on a bus. Each leaves the scene with an item of the other’s property.

The story then follows them both: Lyokha gives an unflinching and raw performance full of anger and despair as he embarks on a brutally-violent crime-fuelled mission to survive on his wits from mugging young Russian yuppies to shedding tears of self-pity on hearing Eric’s rich singing voice.

Erik is more enigmatic as a member of Moscow’s romantic professional elite. Frandetti manages successfully to convey his ego-driven artistic sensibilities and his damaged psyche with considerable allure. Prone to bouts of drinking and smoking, he too appears to be on a journey of self-destruction; although a more ‘Romantic’ one. Caught up in a submissive relationship with a gay doctor; he hangs out with a crowd of cultured professionals- the most interesting of whom is Slava, who lives in an antique-strewn house and owns jewels purportedly inherited from the ‘Royal Family’.

Tkachuk won best actor for his role as the mercurial and ultra-violent psychopath who somehow pushes the buttons to ignite Eric’s passion. They scamper deliriously through the snow in the the film’s coruscatingly bleak dénouement, sumptuously evoked by Michael Krichman’s inventive visuals and enhanced by occasional bouts of the classical score highlighting the intense melancholia of the piece.

Directors Lvova and Taramasev are professional actors from a background of TV and film and this shows through in this directorial debut which aptly reflects the sentiments of Franz Schubert’s elegant yet mournful songs to piano composed when he was dying of syphilis. Perhaps the one entitled “Frozen Tears” best expresses the drama: “Frozen tears fall from his cheeks as he walks away, but the breast from which they arise is so burning hot with feelings that they should melt the winter ice completely”. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 7TH RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON 2013

Parkland (2013) 70th Venice Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Peter Landesman; Cast: Zac Efron, Paul Giamatti, Colin Hanks, Mark Duplass, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, USA 2013, 93 min.

The only thing PARKLAND gets right is its timing: the 50^th anniversary year of JFK’s assassination. But it is nearly impossible to imagine such a dull realisation of one of history’s most dramatic moments. To start with, the acting is wooden, with everyone is hamming it up, like they think it should have looked on November 22^nd 1963. So we see Jackie clutching skull and brain parts of her husband, eyes wild. The trauma surgeon hammering away on JFK’s chest like a drummer; the nurse fetching a cross from the cupboard with all the solemnity of a papal ceremony; the CIA man dragging the coffin with the corpse through the plane door with the violence associated with American football players, just to underline their unwillingness for an autopsy.

But worst of all is the total lack of standpoint – Landesman declared in the press conference, that he just wanted to show the emotional impact of the tragedy on the main participants but not touch on the question of who shot the president. How anybody can be so wilfully naïve is hard to understand. To make a point, the filmmaker mentions none of 18 material witnesses of the shooting who died: six were shot, 3 died in car accidents, 2 committed suicide, 3 died of heart-attacks, just two from natural causes. Did the shooting not impact emotionally on their lives and those of their loved ones? And how can we judge the impact on Harvey Oswald, when Landesman leaves it open as to if he was the assassin or not – even though the Abraham Zapruder film (which is used in PARKLAND) shows clearly that JFK was shot from the grass hill and not from the fourth floor of the library, where Oswald was supposed to be.

PARKLAND’s film aesthetics top the list of conventional boredom and its supposedly naïve a-political message is disingenuous. Paul Giamatti convinces as Zapruder in a fine performance. Otherwise, this is one of the few films that can compete with any propaganda film – just by leaving out the truth. Make up your own mind. If you’re looking for more on the Lee Harvey Oswald story, KILLING OSWALD makes the intellectual argument and works an interesting companion piece to this dumbed-down Hollywood pap. ANDRE SIMONOWEICZ.

PARKLAND IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 22 NOVEMBER 22 NOVEMBER 2013

0 stars

In The Shadow (2012) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Dir.: David Ondricek; Cast: Ivan Trojan, Sebastian Koch, Sona Norisova, Jeri Stepnicka;

Czech Republic 2012, 106 min.

This Czech Republic Oscar entry 2013 is a film noir that takes us back to Prague 1953: Detective Hakl (Ivan Trojan) is working on a case of robbery where jewellery has been stolen, and a safe cracked open in a very unprofessional way. Kirsch, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, living in the Jewish Centre of Prague, seems to be the main suspect, but Hakl soon finds out, that he is only the fall guy in a conspiracy which leads to the top of the Prague Police. Hakl’s boss, soon to be promoted, has ‘arranged’ not only this crime, but also a robbery on a post office, where a huge amount is stolen, and witnesses, including a police officer, are killed.

All this is set up to prosecute members of the Jewish community as ‘Zionist agents, who rob the state to buy weapons for the Zionist state as part of a worldwide American conspiracy’. Hakl meets Zenke (Sebastian Koch), an Ex-SS man, who has returned from a Siberian prison, to help the Czech police with this case. Zenke, who can’t speak the native language, is shown as a piano-playing, cultured man, who flirts with Hakl’s wife Jilka and plays football with his son Thomas. Hakl confronts Zenke, but he can’t stop the show trial of the ‘Zionist conspirators’, and Zenke returns to Germany in a swap for a German spy.

This film has two sides: the brilliant aesthetics of the camera work; the sets (the film was shot in Lodz, Poland); the haunting music that echoes the sinister mood and the restrained but subtly-convincing acting. The bleak city; the grey buildings with the bullet marks of the Second World War; the lack of food and the dreariness of everyday life is wonderfully re-created. The camera follows Hakl, from hunter to being hunted though the labyrinths of a decaying city, where it is never really light. This is a true film noir, which catches the joyless atmosphere of Stalinism perfectly.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers have, in their justified grievance against the Stalinist state, made the plot rather unbelievable, by introducing a SS man, fresh out of a Siberian prison as the main helper of the Czech police. What help can the man give, when he can’t even speak the language of the country? Where did he get the information, since he came straight from Siberia? Why would the German’s swap him for a spy, since he has no value for them. There a no excuses for the excesses of Stalinist policies, their crimes against humanity are well documented. But the filmmakers don’t help their cause in making them looking worse, by introducing a SS man as their willing tool. Because we should not forget either, that the war criminals of the SS were sheltered by the West German state, helping them to avoid prosecution. And Anti-Semitism was as rife in Germany as well as in the rest of Europe, which is proven by the help of the police in all the countries occupied by Germany, helping the occupiers to organise the journeys of Jews to the extermination camps. A shame that such a visual feast depicting an important part of Czech and Jewish history is spoiled by an absurd plot. AS

Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart (2012) 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart (Laulu koti-ikävästä)

Director: Mika Ronkainen

Script: Mika Ronkainen

Producer: Ulla Simonen

Cast: Kai Latvalehto, Tauno Latvalehto, Oiva Latvalehto

Sweden Finland 90mins 2012 Doc

Musician Kai appears to have it all: A loving wife, success in ‘Aknestik’ a well-known Finnish rock band and son called Oiva. But as a Finn forced to grow up in Sweden, before moving back to Finland as a teenager, he retains a deep seated unhappiness; a sense of not belonging that runs through a great many Finns forced to do the same journey for work reasons.

Some 600,000 Finns emigrated to Sweden in the 60’s and 70’s and found their new life in a foreign country with a strange language and a less than welcoming reception. All hard going.

Now in his forties, Kai asks his father Tauno, the architect of his forced exile to take him back to Sweden to retrace the steps and rake over memories in the hope perhaps of expunging the ghosts. Suffusing this road doc is performed music, created by the same disenfranchised generation that explores what it means to be the perpetual outsider, whether in Finland or Sweden.

It’s thus a personal story between father and son, mirroring countless millions across the planet through the Ages, of being taken out of a homeland, creating a new life and then uprooting again and the inherent sense of split loyalties and identities.

The unfortunate aspect to the film is really the fact that it is So Nordic, that even with a familiarity to the country and customs, Finnish Blood remains quite hard to penetrate even if it is emotive and I strongly suspect that it will struggle to find a life beyond Nordic/Scandinavian borders despite winning the coveted Dragon Award for Best Nordic Documentary at the recent Gothenburg International Film Festival. AT

Easy Money (2010) Snabba Cash | Netflix

Dir: Daniel Espinosa | Original novel: Jens Lapidus | Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Matias Varela, Dragomir Mrsic, Lisa Henni,
Mahmut Suvakci | 124min Crime Drama

Joel Kinnaman found fame in the US version of The Killing. Here, as JW, he plays a hard-edged working-class economics student and drug-dealer, living a double life amongst the elite of Swedish society who hang out in parties like the one in Festen.

Originally called Snabba Cash, this is actually a screen adaptation of the best-selling ‘Stockholm Noir Trilogy’ by a Swedish novelist, Jens Lapidus. For some reason, the film has taken a while to come to the mainstream but you may have caught it at the London Film Festival back in 2012, in the aptly named “Thrill” section.

To fund his lifestyle JW finds a way to earn ‘easy money’ through a cocaine ring headed up by the nefarious hitman Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic, a real-life crim). His fate is inextricably linked with Jorge, a drug dealer who we meet escaping from prison in the exhilarating opening sequence.

Stylish and gripping with a dynamite score, Easy Money successfully blends edgy Nordic Noir with upmarket glamour. JW is persuasive and slick as a Swedish sociopath slipping easily between romantic dates with his chic blond girlfriend and the gritty millieu of Serbian and Spanish low-life in a thriller that blends tension, brutal violence and sympathetic characterisation to produce a winning combination that makes compelling viewing. If you only see one film this weekend, make it Easy Money. MT

EASY MONEY IS ON Prime Video | Netflix

The Hidden Child (2013) 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

Director: Per Hanefjord Writer: Maria Karlsson

Claudia Galli Concha, Inga Landgré, Jan Malmsjö and Jakob Oftebro.

The Nordic thriller is turning out to be one of Sweden’s finest exports and THE HIDDEN CHILD is no exception. Based on a true story adapted from Camilla Läckberg’s Fjällbacka novels, this is Swedish helmer Per Hanefjord’s second feature finely shot in the bleak seascape of Västra Götelands Iän. Marek Wieser’s atmospheric widescreen visuals and strong performances from leads Claudia Galli Concha (Erica) and Jan Malmsjo (Axel) will appeal to fans of ‘Borgen’ and ‘Wallander’.

It opens with a cosy family scene where young writer Erica Falck has just given birth to her first child surrounded by her policer officer husband Patrick and loving parents. Minutes later they are killed in a tragic car crash leaving the couple free to move into their Ikea-furnished home with its attractive seaside setting. But not everything in this garden is rosy: a middle-aged man named Göran turns up claiming to be her brother. Erica later discovers a Nazi medallion in the attic, along with wartime newspaper cuttings prompting her to investigate her mother’s mysterious past and a group of wartime friends who may have also been enemies.

Per Hanefjord’s good-looking but sombre thriller moves along as speedily as a SAAB; almost losing control of its pacing but confidently handling a fractured narrative told from various viewpoints with well-crafted wartime flashbacks punctuated by Magnus Jarlbo’s suspenseful, original score.

Enfused with popular themes of Nazism and the Holocaust, THE HIDDEN CHILD is a gripping and immersive insight into Swedish and Norwegian wartime history and the concentration camps of Grini and Sachsenhausen, set against the life of a modern couple in current-day Sweden. MT

THE HIDDEN CHILD IS SCREENING DURING THE 2ND NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL

Bite the Dust (2013) 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Director: Taisia Igumentseva; Cast: Sergej Abroskin, Maksim Vitorgan, Irina Denisova, Anna Rud, Ela Sanko, Luris Lautsinsh, Alina Sergeeva; Russian Federation 2013, 105 min.

With her light-hearted and sumptuously-shot debut feature, BITE THE DUST, Taisia Igumentseva has succeeding in breaking away from the grim, dark view of classic Soviet cinema she feels her country is best known for abroad. Cleverly though, the themes of ‘old Russia’ still peep through in the vibrant characterisation of this quirky ‘apocalyptic’ comedy.

When the eight inhabitants of a remote village in Russia learn that the world will come to an end in 24 hours, they react first with panic, then with an outpouring of emotions, upsetting the given order of the relationships – at least for the time being. Senia, a not particularly successful thief, is married to the beautiful Nastya, who spends her days reading, housekeeping being not one of her strengths. But Senia forgives her, his profession allows him to bribe his wife to stay with him, because he knows that his neighbour Mikkail (married to Olga with two sons), more than admirers Nastya. The zany inventor Vanya finds countless ways of nearly electrocuting himself, whilst the cinephile Nina mourns for her dead husband by finding refuge in showing the villagers arthouse films. The Lenin enthusiast Zina and the drunken Vassilych, who roams the village with his cow Candy, make up the villagers, whose reaction to the apocalypse is very much in keeping alive the Russian soul; never mind the political system.

In preparation for the meltdown everybody cooks, a table is laid out, and all the alcohol reserves of the village are put on the table. Then Nastya and Mikkail declare their love for each other in a temporary madness brought on by the threat of death. Senia tries to shack up with Olga and the kids, but he only receives a couple of towels, since it has started to rain incessantly. Nina ends her mourning, whilst the precious films are destroyed in the floods. (A metaphor that only love beats the cinema). Whilst rain and snow pour down (“it takes a long time to kill us”), and everyone cuddles together in one room.

BITE THE DUST is a gentle comedy, full of warmth for all protagonists, who are less than perfect, but are shown to be deeply human despite their faults. The camera work is outstanding: the desolation is shown in sweeping shots, the close-ups dwarf the characters even more in comparison with the force of nature. Even though the space of the action is very limited and confined to a rural riverside village, there is always something new to enjoy if it’s only the devastation caused by rain and snow in endless variations. Much imagination has gone into the sets with a good eye for the smallest details echoing Russian rural life. The acting is convincing, even Vassilych’s cow and Zina’s dog are well integrated and endearing. Far away from the modern world, the villagers represent the victory of the human spirit over the elements, emotions triumph over material considerations, their simple solidarity is more powerful than any –isms of yesterday and today. AS

BITE THE DUST IS SCREENING DURING THE 7TH RUSSIAN FESTIVAL ON MONDAY 11 NOVEMBER 18.00 AT EMPIRE LEICESTER SQUARE.

7th Russian Film Festival 2013

S E V E N T H R U S S I A N F I L M F E S T I V A L 2 0 1 3

This November sees the London Russian Film Festival return for its seventh incarnation. Celebrating modern achievements in Russian filmmaking, the festival brings an eclectic mixture of critically revered documentaries and feature films to the capital – many of which are UK premiers fresh from the Kinotavr, the largest national film festival in Russia (also known as Sochi Open Russian Film Festival). Iconoclastic filmmaking and Ostalgie have converged to fashion a new primary language in Russian filmmaking, with Academia Rossica’s annual festival providing a platform for these fresh, exciting voices to be heard. Many of these films engage in re-writing definitions of community and national identity in Russia, reconstructing history and the ideological foundations of post-Soviet society; bequeathing UK audiences with a fresh and invigorating cinematic experience.

Relocated from the faded neon grandeur of London’s Apollo cinema to the iconic Empire in Leicester Square, this year’s event exhibits a period of transformation for the festival – including the addition of a new competition strand. Previous line-ups have included a wealth of contemporary Russian cinematic talents such as; Andrei Zvyagintsev’s ELENA, Aleksei Balabanov’s Me Too and Pavel Lungin’s The Island as well as less well-known, yet more culturally specific oddities such as last year’s 207-minute sprawling epic Chapiteau Show – a brazenly charismatic film comprised of four interwoven narratives bookended with musical vignettes that acted as a beguilingly surreal examination of changing values to sex, love and friendship in contemporary Russia.

This year’s inaugural LONDON LION Award will be contested by 10 films, each hoping to be crowned ‘Best Film of the Russian Film Festival’. The festival’s opening gala film, Otdat Kontsy’s Bite The Dust, is one of the favourites for this year’s award. An apocalyptic comedy about an ominous astronomical phenomenon that threatens to wipe out humanity, Kontsy’s latest endeavour purportedly plays out in a typically sardonic Eastern European fashion. A riff on the playful question of “what would you do if you had 24 hours to live?” Bite the Dust celebrates the simple pleasures of everyday life whilst taking a caustic swipe at capitalism. The juxtaposition of the bombastic narrative framework of Hollywood blockbusters and the distinctively whimsical comedy of Russian cinema acts to show the disparity between materialism in Eastern and Western culture – albeit in a blithe and capricious manner.

Another highlight in this year’s competition strand includes Aleksandr Veledinsky’s The Geographer Drank His Globe Away. Based on Alexei Ivanov’s novel of the same name, Veledinsky’s third feature recently won the main prize at this year’s Kinotavr and is a curious romantic drama about a hopeless biologist who takes a job as a geography teacher in a provincial town before finding love under peculiar circumstances. Other promising additions to the program include Natasha Merkulova and Aleksei Chupov’s Intimate Parts, a no-holds-barred exploration of class secrets and attitudes to sex told through a series of interwoven narrative strands and Marina Migunova’s Mirrors, a dramatized biopic about Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva and her tragic trajectory through a life comprised of despair, loss and betrayal.

Three film’s competing for the festival’s LONDON LION Award have already benefited from screenings at UK Film Festivals. Kirill Serebrennikov’s clinically sterile and ironically passionless thriller about obsession and revenge Betrayal, premiered in the competition strand at the Venice Film Festival before arriving at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this year. Whilst Serebrennikov’s opaque drama may be one of the better known inclusions in this year’s program, it’s also one of the most inaccessible. Yusup Razykov’s Shame (Styd) received its UK premier at this year’s London Film Festival yet sadly went largely unnoticed: not by us. A maritime tragedy that echoes the contentious Kursk submarine catastrophe through the lives of the women left behind, Razykov’s Shame works to expose the anomalous assumptions of womankind in patriarchal Russia. Another London Film Festival premier that deserves to be seen by a larger audience is Vital Mansky’s Pipeline, a powerful exploration of the wealth divide in Russia. An ethnological observation of social cultures across the route of the Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhgorod pipeline which runs through Russia (from Western Siberia all the way to Koln, Germany) like an infected vein of capitalist greed.

[youtube id=”FZ1nBJpnaWA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Judging by the festival’s retrospective of his work, Mansky could be seen as the Russian Alex Gibney; a master documentary filmmaker whose work has been presented across the globe. His charismatically aloof persona is thankfully not reflected in his probing examination into the inchoate stage of post-Soviet Russia. Mansky is the president of Artdokfest (the Moscow Documentary Film Festival) and his works speaks passionately and intelligently about modern-day issues inside and outside of Russia. Alongside Mansky’s better known work, such as his documentary about the Dalai Lama, Dawn/Sunset, the festival will also be screening Private Chronicles; Monolog, Patria O Muerte and Broadway; The Black Sea. Mansky will also be in attendance at this year’s festival, having curated this year’s documentary strand – with Evgenia Montana Ibanes’ topical account of opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov imprisonment and hunger strike. March, March With Your Left! a noticeable highlight in an always enlightening strand. PATRICK GAMBLE

More information, including full details of the festival’s program and how to book tickets can be found on the Academia Rossica website

The Nun (2013) La Religieuse

Based on the novel by French writer, philosopher, art critc Denis Diderot (1713-1784).

The Nun has had a tough time. Conceived by Denis Didérot in the eighteenth century, the nature of the work was open to controversy as a purportedly salacious account of innappropriate goings-on in a French nunnery. Jacques Rivette’s film version in 1966, was banned by French censors at the time of its release due to its negative representation of the Catholic Church. Now, nearly 50 years later, here is Guillaume Nicloux’s adaptation with a fine cast of Isabelle Huppert, Martina Gedeck, Agathe Bonitzer and Marc Barbé.

The Nun follows the story of a young woman, Suzanne Simonin (Pauline Étienne) who is confined to a religious order of sisters, under the auspices of Madame de Moni, due to her parents’ inability to fund her dowry. Once enconsed in the convent, Suzanne is put under pressure to take her vows, against her wishes, and subsequently also discovers she is illegitimate and has been locked away to assuage her mother’s guilt and make her peace with God.

This could be a brilliant opportunity for a discretely naughty insight or even a ‘no holds barred’ exposé surrounding the confessional memoirs of the provocative Sister Suzanne Simonin. But Guillaume Nicloux’s goes to the other end of the spectrum offering a visually exquisite and stylishly sleek, part candlelit part naturalistic, masterpiece concentrating only on the ascetic aspects of Suzanne’s confinement. He highlights her disappointment with her mother’s deceit, the physical and emotional discomfort of being in spartan confines without affection, physical comfort or close friends but there is no attempt to delve further into her psyche.

Nicloux paints Suzanne as a picture of perfect introversion and blind innocence but also of passive resignation living under sensory deprivation. Although Pauline Etienne plays her part admirably, this bone dry and formal treatment lacks the necessary element of drama, tension or even empathy required to make the piece engaging in a way that Bruno Dumont achieves with Juliette Binoche in Camille Claudel 1915, which has a set of circumstances.

Isabelle Huppert lights up the screen when she finally arrives as the more motherly Mother Superior. She is captivated by Suzanne’s pale beauty and serenity, for reasons that will become evident, and gives a delicious turn with wry, comedic appeal tinged with bittersweet sadness, as only she knows how.

The Nun is a technically accomplished film with a beautiful visual aesthetic and some strong performances but lacks dramatic edge to offer really appealing insight and plods along so slowly that it requires the patient of a saint, at times, to endure. MT

[youtube id=”7qBzqv3nNkI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE NUN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 NOVEMBER 2013

Nothing But A Man (1964)

Director: Michael Roemer

Writers: Michael Roemer and Robert Young

Cast: Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Yaphet Kotto, Julius Harris.

95mins US Drama ***

First released in 1964, Nothing But A Man appears to have suffered the fate shared by so many low-budget independent films: festival success and critical acclaim, followed by a small release and a sink into relative obscurity. However, in 1993 the Library of Congress declared the film ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’ and selected the film for preservation, leading to a successful re-release in the US. Now, 20 years later, comes the film’s first-ever UK cinema release, courtesy of the BFI.

The film depicts life among the black community in a small town in 1960s Alabama, focusing upon the burgeoning romance between section hand Duff (Ivan Dixon) and local schoolteacher and preacher’s daughter Josie (Abbey Lincoln). If the romance itself follows a somewhat predictable narrative arc, the film makes up for it with its searing examination of the town’s racism, and the myriad of relationships surrounding the protagonists. In its detailed exploration of the life of Duff and Josie, and the various prejudices and troubles they face, the film questions not only the relationships between blacks and whites, but also between men and women, parents and children, friends and co-workers, and middle-class and working-class citizens. The fact that the film is able to fluidly and cohesively incorporate such a large canvas, and do so with so much wit, style and compassion, is testament to the deft hand of (white Jewish) director Michael Roemer (there’s only one sequence, towards the end of the film, which seems to ring false).

Roemer, alongside his unusually hyphenated cowriter–cinematographer Robert Young, frames the action in stark black and white images, punctuating the drama by filming the characters’ frank exchanges in powerful close ups. The film is permeated with a sense of neorealistic naturalism, its nuances and textures coalescing into a vivid portrait of 1960s Alabamian life. For all its scope, the film is tied together by Dixon’s transfixing charisma, which imbues the film with a level of charm which could easily have been absent with a lesser presence playing the protagonist. Dixon’s wry smile lends an air of charm to the proceedings, and grounds the film in a gentle, engrossing humanism. Add to this the film’s interestingly open ending and its scrupulous examination of social mores, and it’s easy to understand why the film was dubbed ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’. ALEX BARRETT

A Magnificent Haunting (2013) Now on DVD/BLU

Director: Ferzan Ozpetek Writers: Ozpetek/Federica Pontremoli

Cast: Margherita Buy, Elio Germano, Vittoria Puccini, Beppe Fiorello

104min Italian with English subtitles Fantasy drama

Ferzan Ozpetek takes a spirited ghost story, adds a delicious Fellini-esque twist and offers up a quirkily humorous tale of wannabe actor Pietro (Elio Germano) and his uninvited house-guests. Sharing his newly-rented apartment with a troupe of 1940s ‘luvvies’ could be fun; the only catch is – they don’t realise they’re dead.

A MAGNIFICENT HAUNTING is a departure Ozpetek’s edgier indie fare. It has the delightful (and much under-rated) Margherita Buy, best known for his drama Le Fate Ignoranti, and exultant here leading the kindly ghosts and giving Pietro acting advice and impromptu entertainment.

Colourful and upbeat, it certainly plays out as an appealing drama with s touch of fantasy and only a few wrong notes: an attempt to inject seriousness by delving into Fascist history misfires: better to have stuck with the light-hearted elements given the overall tone of the piece. That said, A MAGNIFICENT HAUNTING has a slick, commercial feel that will likely help Ozpetek engage with a more mainstream audience. Good luck to him with this well-crafted, cheerful endeavour. MT

[youtube id=”MUI3v9IfL1Q” width=”600″ height=”350″]

A MAGNIFICENT HAUNTING IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 25 OCTOBER 2013 AT SELECTED CINEMAS

Gloria (2012)

Dir: Sebastian Lelio | Cast: Paulina Garcia, Sergio Hernandez | 110min Drama Chile/Spain

Paulina Garcia won Best Actress at Berlin for her sunny portrayal of a mid-lifer who hasn’t reached old age but is contemplating the future and starting to see the long shadows of her mortality slowly edging into sight.

Sebastian Lelio’s third feature opens with a palm-fringed panorama of Santiago de Chile, the sophisticated capital of his thrusting South American homeland. Gloria, in her fifties, is a positive and happy divorcee looking love.

Lelio’s crisp, clear direction and a wealth of glossy locations and interiors, make this a mature and insightful drama for a director in his late thirties. Gloria offers gives plenty of positive food for thought without a touch negativity or self-doubt: a refreshing look at second-time love for the older generation. Gloria examines her hopes and reassesses her life through the encounters she experiences. Sebastian Lelio shows us the positives of his Latin culture without being judgemental or maudlin: strong family links, dancing, music and laughter, Chilean wine and socialising are the keynotes. There’s a touchingly romantic vignette of a man and woman singing a Brazilian love song round the piano. The dating scene throws up rich pickings most of which are rotten and a graduall realisation that life is good and there is future for Gloria and for Chile set against a background of political uncertainty and forty years of strife and unrest. MT

GLORIA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 NOVEMBER 2013 IN SELECTED CINEMAS

Child’s Pose (2012) Pozitia copilului Golden Bear Winner Berlinale 2013

Director: Calin Peter Netzer

Writers: Calin Peter Netzer/Razvan Radulescu

Cast: Luminita Gheorghiu, Bogdan Dumitrache, Natasa Raab, Florin Zamifirescu, Ilinca Goia

112mins Drama Romanian with subtitles

Child’s Pose is a portrait of female power and Luminita Gheorghiu’s multi-layered performance as Cornelia, a wealthy, overprotective mother whose unconditional love for her hot-housed, despondent son Barbu (Bogdan Dumistrache) knows no limits.

An age-old theme, then, but one that Netzer tackles here with brilliance and insight: this is not a film about love but about control and manipulation and ultimately about dominance. And Barbu is simply a tool in his mother’s trick box enabling her to endorse her privileged place in local society, ‘Romanian-style’.

Calin Peter Netzer is a filmmaker of undoubtable talent. His previous films of note: Medal of Honour and Maria are certainly worth watching for their fascinating stories of Romania and its customs and character, often seen with black humour. Ably assisted here by the writing talents of Razvan Radulescu (The Death of Mr Lazarescu) Child’s Pose is a weightier and more demanding beast that may not appeal to everyone with its jerky hand-held camera technique and emotional overkill.

Naturally there’s a girlfriend involved (Carmen, played by Ilinca Goia) and naturally she is to blame for Barbu’s distant attitude towards his mother. But when Barbu has a car accident killing a child, Cornelia swings back into favour, springing into action on her mobile phone, dominating the criminal procedure, pulling strings in the local community with the great and the good and shining like a beacon of salvation for her desperate son, as if this was the moment she’d been waiting for all her life and his too.

Once again the theme of Romania’s intricate and unwieldy red tape is called in to question. We’ve seen this all before in Medal of Honour, Aurora and The Death of Mr Lazarescu. But here the camera tracks the action with intrusive immediacy; transmitting expressions of anguish and a palpable and claustrophobic sense of fear and tragedy: the effect is almost nauseating. Cornelia is a woman to dread. You certainly wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her. Having riden roughshod over her husband, Luminita Gheorghiu’s Cornelia is a frustrated, scheming demon; all dressed up with nowhere to go but the corridors of corruption (which are filled with Bucharest’s society elite) and nothing left to live for but her sad, emasculated son. MT

CHILD’S POSE WON THE GOLDEN BEAR AT BERLINALE 2013

French Film Festival UK 7-30 November 2013

[youtube id=”WMomMIjco44″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

This popular festival is now 21 and celebrates its coming of age with an anniversary selection including restored versions of Jacques Demy’s LOLA, UK premieres and tributes to Maurice Pialat, Bernadette Lafont and Louis de Funès with the London screenings taking place at Cine Lumiere.

Primarily focused on bringing new French film to the provinces, the Festival highlights include Francois Ozon’s teenage prostitution drama, JEUNE ET JOLIE; Bruno Dumont’s CAMILLE CLAUDEL, 1915 starring Juliette Binoche in a tour de force as the artist in exile; Alain Gomis’ poetic goodbye: AUJOURD’HUI with its soft and sensuous visuals set in Senegal and Philippe Beziat’s rousing documentary: BECOMING TRAVIATA that follows a diva through rehearsals at the Aix En Provence outdoor opera season. MT

Shame (2013) 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Usup Razykow; Cast: Maria Semenova, Elenena Korobynikova, Helga, Filipova, Seseg Hapsasova; Russia 2012; 90 min.

Best known for his 2000 drama Women Kingdom, writer and director Yusup Razykov is a leading light in the New Uzbek Cinema movement.

His latest outing SHAME, opens with the unexplained abduction of a young woman. A symbolic introduction to a very grim film set in the Arctic Circle of Russia, Ekaterina Mavromatis screenplay sensitively depicts this study of ‘waiting women’ inspired by the case of the submarine “Kursk”, which was lost with all men in 2000. The main protagonists are the soon-to-be widows of the garrison hamlet, who are lied to by the authorities, even though the tragedy is apparent to them. Lena (Maria Semenova), is newly married to an officer of the submarine. Cold and distant, she drinks and has a one-night-stand, whilst the other women mourn; one even kills herself and her two children.

It slowly emerges that Lena has discovered passionate love letters from her husband to his former girl friend Irina, who is now in an ramshackle psychiatric hospital, after having set fire to a building, not able to take the six monthly darkness any longer. Lena saves her from the horror of this place, and promises her to take her into a clinic in St. Petersburg, her home town. The snowy landscape (more grey than white) and the downtrodden buildings, falling apart before our very eyes, the total lack of amenities and the darkness are the domineering elements of this film, the camera looks for humans, but only shows desolation. One has the feeling, that this place is a war zone and it only seems reasonable, that one woman says “that we need a war, because we do not know how to live without it”. SHAME is ruthless in its negative approach, never resorting to sentimentality. A stark reminder of a not so modern Russia, which is still ruled for and by a small minority, whilst the majority lives in places rotting quietly away. Andre Simonoviescz

[youtube id=”JJ_tpWwOKpA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

SHAME IS SCREENING DURING THE 7TH RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON FROM 7-17 NOVEMBER 2013

Blumenthal (2013) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Seth Fisher;

Cast: Lailla Robins, Seth Fisher, Mark Blum, Nicole Ansari-Cox, Brian Cox; USA 2013, 96 min.

Ethan Blumenthal, played by the director himself, is a drug rep who suffers from a mental form of constipation: all his thoughts race around in his head, but he is unable to translate them into the right words. For example, when his girl friend Christina touches him gently after making love, he gets angry with her: “You woke me up”. Next morning he apologises, but soon he feels inferior again, and breaks their relationship off. Unable to cope with this, he tries to seduce an old girlfriend and gets a hand job from another girl – being on the run from himself, but involving and hurting other women randomly.

Ethan suffers from the wide discrepancy between his inferiority complex and a male need to feel superior to his partner. In this he is the mirror image of his father Saul, an academic, who is unable to come to terms with the death of his playwright brother Harold, and whom he accuses of ripping off his own writings for his successful plays. Saul does not see the crisis his wife Cheryl, an actress, is going through – like his son, his internal dialogue is overshadowing his life, making him unable to connect with his family. His problems manifest themselves in a pure physical constipation, making him spend most of his time in the bathroom.

Whilst clearly set in a Jewish environment, from which the protagonists suffer in different ways, the problems they encounter are very much universal, one does not have to be a Jewish man to be insensible – whilst feeling exactly the opposite, listening to one owns “great ideas”. One scene is particularly revealing: when Ethan finds out a few days after their split, that Christina is pregnant, he asks her: “What are your politics on this subject ?.”

Productions values are high and Seth Fisher’s debut film has all the merits of a first film (particularly a probing curiosity) and at the same time shows restraint , never letting the subtle humour of the characters degenerate into something raucous – Fisher keeps a distance, loving his protagonists, but not adoring them. The irony is never sharp, but the director allows no sentimentality: he observes with maturity, so rare in a first timer. The acting is brilliant, the ensemble trying to work for each other and the camera gives us enough intimacy, without being to obtrusive.

BLUMENTHAL is made with love, but executed with wit and a caring, but not forgiving insight into the male psyche. AS

BLUMENTHAL IS SHOWING AT THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL ON 31 OCTOBER AT ODEON SWISS COTTAGE, 3 NOVEMBER AT SEVEN ARTS CENTRE, LEEDS; 6 NOVEMBER AT PHOENIX LONDON; 14 NOVEMBER AT FACT, LIVERPOOL. tickets here

Ballad of Weeping Spring (2013) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Benny Torati;

Cast: Uri Gvriel, Adar Gold, Ishtar, Dudu Tassa; Israel 2012, 106 min.

Torati tries to marry two genres: an Israeli form of the Spaghetti Western and a Mizrali Musical cum road road movie, scored by music played by Jews who has emigrated from Arab countries into Israel, sang in Hebrew. The episodic narrative is carried forward by the music, (rather like the recent Broken Circle Breakdown) and centred around the tar (lute) player Josef Tavila (Uri Gvriel), star of the long defunct “Tourqouise” ensemble. He has spent many years in jail, after he fell asleep at the wheel of the minibus, carrying the group. Two members were killed and his spouse Margaret (mother of his daughter Tamara) has been wheelchair bound since the accident. Since his release from prison, Jossef lives like a hermit, only visiting a pub twice a week to collect his shopping. One day, a young man asks the landlord about Jossef – it is Anram, the son of Avram, one of the surviving members of the famed group. Anram has come to see Josef to ask him to play for his dying father the composition of the title, which has never been performed.

What follows is an odyssey through the countryside, where Josef is collecting all the players of the new ensemble including his daughter Tamara, who, like her father, can drink any amount of alcohol, without showing the slightest effect – something which comes in handy when they free a blind flutist from his exploiters, Tamara drinking their boss under the table. Another musician has to be freed from his soon to be wife (who wields a huge machete) and her violent brothers. Needless to say that all goes well and the new ensemble reaches Avram just in time.

The action part of the film is executed well with many references and quotes to the Italian masters of the Western, humour and irony always helping the unbelievable incidents along. Camera work is impressive, and the actors are careful not to overdo their roles. But everything is dwarfed by the music, sad and melancholic, played on instruments very much unknown in our concert halls. Hybrid the film may be, but after seeing it, many may find that his strange and haunting music has a healing quality. AS

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL ON THURSDAY 7 NOVEMBER AT THE TRICYLE, LONDON AND ON THE 13 NOVEMBER AT THE EVERYMAN HAMPSTEAD. tickets here

Closed Season (2013) UK Jewish Film Festival

Franziska Schlotterer’s feature debut, Closed Season, is a well-crafted and visually atmospheric wartime drama that takes place in the German Black Forest. A boorish farmer Fritz (Hans-Jochen Wagner) and his wife, Emma (Brigitte Hobmeier) yearn for a child but he is infertile. When Albert, a young Jewish refugee, arrives on their doorstep, he is offered sanctuary for ulterior motives.

At first Emma is appalled at the idea of harbouring an illegal Jewish man. But once she gets to know Albert (Chrisian Friedel) and his cultured ways with literature and classical music she is seduced and acquiesces to her husband’s plan to use him as a surrogate father. Intoxicating chemistry between the three of them creates some emotional scenes (particularly when Fritz eavesdrops on their lovemaking) and much soul-searching and further suspense is provided by visits from a local Nazi friend (Thomas Loibl) of the family.

This engaging narrative s neatly enveloped inside a seventies reunion in Israel where a young German man, Bruno (Max Mauff) arrives in a kibbutz to deliver a letter from his dead mother to the father he never met. Avi (the former Albert) is reticent to accept his former life but eventually acknowledges his son.

As wartime dramas go Closed Season is a slim but nevertheless an engaging one with believable performances from the largely unknown cast. With shades of Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon and even Lore, the study of human dynamics between the desperate characters in contrast to the gentle farm setting is the most rewarding element MT

CLOSED SEASON IS SHOWING AT THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL on 6 NOVEMBER AT TRICYCLE, LONDON AND 17 NOVEMBER AT 10.30 AT ODEON SWISS COTTAGE tickets here

UK Jewish Film Festival in London 30 October – 17 November 2013

The UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL is one of the highlights of the Autumn social calendar following on from the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL with a glittering array of star-studded features. The opening gala is THE JEWISH CARDINAL, Ilan Duran Cohen’s historical drama that mixes faith and identity to focus on Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Jewish-born head of the French Church during the Papacy of Jean-Paul II.

Another highlight of this year’s s programme is IN THE SHADOW: David Ondicek’s fifties noir thriller. Set in Prague, it stars Ivan Trojan as a police chief investigating a mysterious jewellery robbery and David will be hosting a Q&A following the screening. The festival hosts an exciting selection of events and discussions and will also screen last year’s Venice Film Festival winner (2012) FILL THE VOID and an exclusive preview of THE CONGRESS, Ari Folman’s follow-up to DANCE WITH BASHIR. The festival also offers a chance to see some good old classics such as dark comedy, A SIMPLE MAN from the Coen Brothers. Book tickets here and for other Jewish film titles via VOD

Soho Cigarette (2013)

Dir.: Jonathan Fairbairn

Cast: David Galea, Andrea Padararu, Jean-Baptiste Fillon, UK 2013, 94 min.

D, a young Italian, shows tourists around Soho telling them vivid stories about Henry VIII having sex with Anne Boleyn at “this very spot”. He loses his job and girl friend Anastasia, a bar maid specialising in nicking bags. After a mysterious stranger gives him an old Mercedes, D talks to the woman who died in the backseat, sleeps in hotel kitchens and in the flat of his friend Luc, who runs off with Anastasia.

At first, the b/w photography gives hope that at least the aesthetics may save the film, but soon even the pictures becomes insipid and repetitive. The film is simply as unexciting as its main protagonists: lots of talk about nothing, pretending to be cool, but actually being boring. Everyone wanders aimlessly through the film with its unstructured ‘narrative’ and if there would be a cliché counter, it would have given up the ghost after thirty minutes. Sunglasses at night were original a very long time ago, and the actors are pretentious wannabes playing themselves. Even the score is gratingly second hand.

SOHO CIGARETTE is low on budget, but even lower on ideas, succeeding only in making Soho look uninspiring. AS

The Taste of Money (2012)

[youtube id= “M1OYs1sHPLY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Director/Writer: Im Sang-soo

114min South Korean English Subtitles Drama

This slick beast reared its tempting head in the Cannes Competition section luring us in for a potential South Korean treat. It’s the latest drama from Housemaid director Im Sang-soo and focuses on a super wealthy but dysfunctional family headed by a monstrous workaholic matriarch who runs their crooked business affairs while bedding a young adonis gofer who yearns for her divorced daughter. Sadly its grandiose goings-on and opulent visuals fail to ignite any real excitement or satisfaction beyond the sensationalism. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 25 OCTOBER AT CURZON SOHO AND CURZON HOME CINEMA

The Selfish Giant (2013) DVD/Blu

Director/Writer: Clio Barnard

Cast: Shaun Thomas, Sean Gilder, Steve Evets. Lorraine Ashbourne, Conner Chapman

93min Drama UK

The gently rolling countryside of Yorkshire is the setting for Clio Barnard’s contemporary coming of age fable of under-privilege seen through the eyes of two young lads, Arbor and Swifty. Played with extraordinary sensitivity by newcomers Connor Chapman and Shaun Thomas, these boys have similar family problems and difficulties at school that help them forge a close and compatible friendship. Arbor is the less likeable of the two, with a soft spot for his mum, rather like the Kray Twins. When they meet scrap metal dealer, Kitten, Arbor discovers his knack for dealing and with Swifty’s riding skills the pair start scavenging with the help of Kitten’s shire pony, Diesel.

Barnard’s linear narrative echoes the social realism of many current British Films but here Barnard tempers the harshness of Hudderfield’s scrapyards with enchanting images of starry skies and nature. Swifty has a way with animals and develops a strong attachment to Diesel, handling him with skill and compassion and gaining credibility with Kitten who favours him in contrast to the cocky Arbor. Clio Barnard handles the direction with great skill, evoking an unsettling underlying tension in these social dynamics that make it clear that this is a journey that will end in tears. MT

THE SELFISH GIANT SCREENS AT THE 57TH BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 14 OCTOBER AND 16 OCTOBER AT THE OWE2 AND CURZON MAYFAIR COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL EYE AND now OUT ON DVD/BLU-RAY from 27 JANUARY 2014

Luton (2013) BFI 57th London Film Festival

Director/Writer: Michalis Konstantatos Writer: Michalis Konstantatos

Cast: Nicholas Vlachakis, Eleftheria Komi, Christos Saupountzis, Connie Zikou

104min Psychological Drama Greek with English subtitles

Michalis Konstantatos’s debut feature LUTON, initially appears to have about as much going for it as its eponymous Bedfordshire town. Suffocating in the same washed-out visuals and bland aesthetic as recent Greek “Weird Wave” outing (and Venice-winner) Miss Violence, it opens rather like an episode of EastEnders on valium, Greek-style, with monosyllabic dialogue. Following the workaday lives of three unconnected people: Eleftheria Komi plays Mary, a lonely solicitor looking for more than sex in her life, Saupountzis is Makis, a newsagent in a rut and Vlachakis is teenager Jimmy, trapped by his strict parents: all give performances of considerable appeal.

The film opens with dark-haired Mary exercising in the gym. We then meet Makis riffling through the pages of a newspaper, fag on the go, as he serves a blond customer. Mary, then goes lingerie shopping for her night out. This dark lawyer is a dark horse and once inside the cubicle, she starts to fondle herself slowly. Meanwhile in a chinzy dining room, Jimmy has a stultifyingly silent dinner with his grandma and mum. Later in the park, a couple is snogging voraciously, endlessly: it’s Jimmy and his girlfriend. Mary’s evening at a nightclub ends in oral sex in the car park; no prizes for who’s the giver. And so Konstantatos continues to flesh out the ordinary lives of his sad protagonists and we wait patiently for the drama in this drama to be unleashed.

When their disparate lives eventually collide it’s almost too fast to process, given the deliberately banal build-up. LUTON is a slow-burner sharing its story cryptically, resentfully, eerily but eventually the pieces fall together in a cataclysmic meltdown leaving us mesmerised at its long-awaited denouement. Bide your time, if you can, and you will be rewarded. MT

LUTON IS SCREENING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 20 OCTOBER 2013 AT HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE.

A Long and Happy Life (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Despite the ostentatious wealth of Moscow’s elite, two films at the London Film Festival show us that modern life for ordinary Russians is still hard-going and hasn’t change much since the times of Dostoevsky. Boris Khlebnikov’s A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE is actually wishful thinking. Shot in a cinema verite-style on a hand-held camera by Pavel Kostomarov this low-budget indie drama is the tragic tale of a struggling middle class employer.

Alexander Yatsenko plays Alex Sergeevich, or Sasha, to his friends (and he hasn’t got many), a decent employer who has given up his city life to embrace the great outdoors and running a rural farm by a fast-flowing river in northern Russia. When faced with a compulsory purchase order from the local council he eventually decides to take the money and run but when his poor farm workers beg him to support of their liveliehoods and keep the farm, he has a change of heart and with their support, he prepares to stand up to the authorities.

His on/off girlfriend Anya (Anna Kotova) has ideas to lure him back to the city, where she works in local government but he feels a strong responsibility to his workers who appear to need him more until they start to show their true colours.

As typical Russian films go, A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE, is short and brutal but nevertheless wrought with human confrontation and emotional pain. The change that takes place in Sasha’s stance towards his business venture, seen as a tonal shift to sudden melodrama, does feel somewhat unbelievable though given his profile as a businessman. Worthwhile but unconvincing. MT

A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE IS SHOWING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON FRIDAY 18TH AND SUNDAY 20TH OCTOBER AT NFT1 AND CINE LUMIERE, RESPECTIVELY

Sniffer (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Director: Buddhadev Dasgupta Writer: Buddhadev Dasgupta

Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ananya Chatterjee, Pankaj Tripathy

132 mins Language: Hindi Origin: India Drama

A fruitful collaboration between the prominent Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta and the major Indian star Nawazuddin Siddiqui (recently seen in the highly-acclaimed Gangs of Wasseypur), SNIFFER begins as an amusing off-beat comedy and, by its end, becomes an almost-epic fable of magic-realist proportions. If the use of the word ‘epic’ implies length, the film admittedly feels a little stretched at 132 minutes, but the beauty of its ending makes the duration more than worthwhile.

Siddiqui plays alcoholic private detective Anwar, who lives alone with his dog in a Muslim tenement, unaware that he is being closely watched by two of his neighbours: a devout Muslim who wants Anwar evicted due to his drinking, and a young woman who has fallen in love with him. But Anwar, it seems, is haunted by thoughts of his own lost love – the one that got away.

The spectre of the past, and of a simpler more honest way of life, runs throughout the picaresque narrative, in which Anwar’s belief in the common decency of humanity becomes increasingly difficult to hold on to. Through a series of cases, the sorry state of modern society is slowly revealed, alongside religious intolerance. When a case leads Anwar away from the city, he is offered the chance to journey back to his past and reconnect with his roots.

If Anwar’s drunken monologues to his dogs occasionally fall prey to exposition, the film’s quirky, surrealist tone makes them seem all the more fitting. When Anwar takes the dog for a walk late one night, he stumbles across three wailing, ghost-like figures leaning over a bright blue railing: the first has suffered from years of constipation, the second from years with no sex, the third from years of no sleep. It’s a haunting moment which nicely encapsulates the film’s blend of dark humour, social examination and mysticism. Added to Siddiqui’s excellent performance and Dasgupta’s fluid camera, it all equates to an experience which will not be soon forgotten. ALEX BARRETT

SNIFFER IS SHOWING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON FRIDAY 18TH AND SUNDAY 20TH OCTOBER AT RICH MIX AND VUE5 WEST END LONDON respectively.

The Long Way Home (2013)

Dir.: Alphan Eseli; Cast: Ugur Polat, Nergis Ozturk, Serdar Orcin;

Turkey 2013, 112 min. Turkish with English Subtitles Drama

Alphan Eseli’s debut film THE LONG WAY HOME, a gruelling masterpiece centring on the aftermath of the battle of Sarikamis in Eastern Anatolia, in which 90, 000 Turkish soldiers were killed in the WWI battle with Russian soldiers in 1915. Eseli’s heart-felt narrative is based on long stories which his late Grandfather (a survivor of said battle) told him when he was a child. The film is dedicated to him.

Long panoramic shots open over a snowy landscape: a man tries to coax a horse pulling a carriage up a mountain, but the horse expires of exhaustion. A symbolic beginning to a film which will test the audience’s sensitivity to the limit – and sometimes beyond. The man mentioned is Saci Bey, an officer wearing civilians. He is trying to find a way to the city of Erzerum, where he is to deliver Gul Hanim and her daughter Nihan (relatives of a high ranking politician) to the authorities. The trio is forced to continue on foot and Saci Bey, always the gentleman, carries the girl for long periods of their arduous snowbound trecks. When all seems lost, they reach a village which has been set on fire and hide in one of few habitable places. Later they are joined by Coban Ali, who survived the plundering of the village, and a teenage girl from a neighbouring village.

After the glaring shots of endless snow the images change to a claustrophobic existence, only a meagre fire lightens the room where the survivors huddle. Hunger is the worst enemy, and Coban Ali tries to convince Saci Bey to start the walk to Erzerum. But the officer is reluctant: he once lost his soldiers, because he didn’t prepare them for a snow battle. The class distinction between villagers and the three members of the upper-class are subtle but always obvious, especially when Nihan gives the peasant girl her gloves, and Coban Ali reprimands her “for having airs, because the lady gave you gloves”.

The modus vivendi is eventually disrupted when two soldiers arrive with a dying officer. One of the soldiers kills the officer and this mood of nihilism makes way for the delirious finale where Nisan’s mother is forced to into the mêlée.

Eseli’s camerawork is impressive and the outdoor scenes are lively, the long panning shots always broken up with intimate POVs. The haunting music is by Mihaly Vig, a regular composer for Bela Tarr. The Long Way Home is a gruelling drama but Eseli never resorts to pure realism, creating a poetic disturbing atmosphere. AS

Looking for Hortense 2012 DVD/BLU

Director: Pascal Bonitzer

Writers: Pascal Bonitzer and Agnès de Sacy

Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Isabelle Carré, Marin Orcand Tourrès

100min Drama French with subtitles

Kristin Scott Thomas and Jean-Pierre Bacri star in this intelligent Parisian drama about a married couple who’ve lost their spark and are slowly drifting apart.

Billed as a comedy, it’s not quite up there with Bacri’s previous outings Le Gout des Autres or On Connait Le Chanson but will satisfy the arthouse crowd who enjoyed Scott Thomas’s performance in François Ozon’s recent In The House.

Here Bacri leads as Damien, a middle-aged professor of Japanese Civilisation whose relationship with his father is also causing him grief and diminishing his masculinity as a fully-fledged adult. Having discovered to his chagrin that theatre-director Iva (Scott Thomas) is contemplating an affair with one of her young actors, his ego is boosted by the delightful Aurore (Isabelle Carré), who he meets in a nearby restaurant. The local Asian community is also drawn in with a humorous subplot that offers a contemporary nod to multiculturalism.

Jean-Pierre Bacri is as sullen-faced as usual here and the script doesn’t quite give rein to his signature deadpan humour that has made previous outings so engaging so it’s a shame Bonitzer doesn’t give more time to Kristin Scott Thomas’s sublime acting skills and the development of her romantic story. But if you’re looking for solid and sophisticated French fare, well-acted and skillfully told then Looking for Hortense will fit the bill . MT

LOOKING FOR HORTENSE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9TH AUGUST 2013 AT WATERMANS ARTS CENTRE, BRENTFORD AND OUT ON DVD ON 2ND DECEMBER 2013

Le Grand Cahier (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

János Szász’s magnificently-crafted adaptation of Agota Kristof”s French-language: ‘The Notebook’ (hence the title) is a lesson in history and a treasure of Hungarian contemporary cinema which has lurked much in the shadows of late. Christian Berger’s sumptuous visual treatment almost blunts the harrowing nature of this Second World War tale of twin boys who are taken by their mother Gyöngyver Bognar, (Opium) to live in near-starvation with their tyrannical peasant grandmother (who villagers call “the witch”) deep in the countryside.

But when László and András Gyémánt’s arrive at the primitive home of their grandmother (a stony-faced Piroska Molnár), they also have to live in the shadow of a Nazi officer (Ulrich Thomsen, Brothers) who has taken up residence in her farmhouse. The twins survive by immersing themselves in study and develop a punishing regime of mutual physical abuse to toughen themselves up in the harsh environment.

The tone here is bleak and emotionally distant; Szász’offering up an objective view of his survivors and making no attempt to endear us the boys who remain stern and disciplined throughout despite their young years – in contrast to the recent appealing depiction of kids in wartime outings such as Wolfskinder (2013) and Lore (2012).

Recording their experiences in a notebook (seen and heard in voiceover), the boys provide illustrative testament to this time of suffering that has a profound effect on their psyches. In learning to stand up to their grandmother in this powerful game of wits and willpower, Szász illustrates a psychological dynamic that makes the oppressed capable of the same brutality as the Nazi oppressors and also provides intriguing psychological texture to this wartime narrative.

Despite its harsh subject-matter, Le Grand Cahier is a beautiful film to experience accompanied by its atmospheric score. János Szász has provided a rich and important account of the impact of the war on the Hungarian countryside. MT

LE GRAND CAHIER IS SCREENING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2013 AT THE CINE LUMIERE

Honey (2012) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Director: Valeria Golino Writers: Valeria Golino, Angela Del Fabbro

Cast: Jasmine Trinca, Carlo Cecchi, Libero De Rienzo

96min Italy/France Drama Italian with subtitles

[youtube id=”y6D636FLP34″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Italian actress Valeria Golino sees euthanasia as a necessary evil in her debut feature as director. Screening at Cannes ‘Un Certain Regard’ section, this is a low-budget drama about Irene, (nickname: ‘Miele’) a gamine and restless woman with a questionable code of ethics who sees it her duty to assist the terminally ill to die in exchange for money.

After a brave start where she travels to Mexico to procure animal drugs for her human use, the narrative soon descends into ‘lost souls’ territory as Irene (Jasmine Trinca – La Stanza del Figlio) joins her patients in the melée of lost souls from varying age-groups and walks of life.

On the face of it, Irene is having a reasonable time of it and plenty of sex with her vapid boyfriend Rocco (Libero De Rienzo). But she is unlikeable and tense as a character and fails to warm up despite Rocco’s avid ministerings and the attention of a suave and sophisticated retired engineer, Signor Grimaldi, (Carlo Cecchi) who wants to die but actually ends up supporting her in a surprising volte-face.

Emotionally distant but flirtatious, Irene is also unconvincing as a ‘sister of mercy’ so despite Golino’s excellent premise (based on the novel A Nome Tuo by Mauro Covacich) she appears to have cast Irene as lead in the wrong film, as if she’s wandered in from the set of the Milliennium Trilogy . To make matters worse, the edgy tone of the piece melts away in the second half where Grimaldi comes to the fore as the father figure she never had and as the ethical slant on euthanasia retreats into the background we’re left wondering: “Was this woman to be taken seriously or was she just looking for love in an extremely creative way”? If so, she certainly lucks out with Grimaldi who ends up being by far the most promising character with the wittiest lines.

This is a stylishly artistic debut from Golino, who is certainly talented as is Trinca, in her own way, as an actress; but she seems to have started with one idea and finished with another and, in the process, failed in both attempts to bring this engaging and worthwhile story to a satisfactory conclusion. Any similarities that have been drawn between Miele and Marco Bellocchio’s euthanasia-themed film La Bella Addormentata (Dormant Beauty) are misplaced here. That is quite a different beast as it deals with the real life case of a comatose girl on life-support, which occupied the Italian media for quite some time due ethical conflicts between the Catholic Church and medical establishment. MT

SCREENING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 12 AND 13 OCTOBER 2013

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2013)

Director: Felix Van Groeningen Adaptation: Carl Joos/Felix Van Groeningen

Cast: Veerle Baetens, Johan Heldenbergh, Neil Cattrysse, Geert Van Rampelberg

The Broken Circle Breakdown is a musical love story. Inspired by Johan Heldenbergh (one of the stars of “The Misfortunates”) and Mieke Dobbels, it’s cleverly brought to life by Van Groeningen in fractured narrative form, captured on the widescreen in the lush, bucolic countryside around Bruges, Belgium.

Didier (Heldenbergh), a singer and musician and his partner Elise (Veerle Baetens), a tattooist discover during a hospital visit in Ghent that their 6-year-old daughter, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), has leukaemia.

Flashing back to the moment they first met, the chemistry is ardent and their affair takes off as they instantly bond through music. Life takes its natural course, as the narrative dances back and forwards dipping into their lives in a way that feels natural and easy to follow. They move into Didier’s restored barn and create a life together. There’s a vibrant energy to Moving Circle that echoes that of Cafe de Flore (2011). Heldenbergh and Baetens attraction feels real in moments of elation and sadness and they give passionate performances especially between the sheets, and when they perform with the Didier’s local ‘Blue-grass’ Band.

As the narrative develops, the storytelling becomes more erratic and a sudden shot of Elise in a ambulance fighting for her life, feels abrupt and disorientating, as if we’ve missed a vital clue. What follows is heartbreaking and the tone becomes increasingly sinister switching from melodrama to something darker and more muffled. Didier becomes unbalanced, ranting at the television in an unmoving outburst that attempts unsuccessfully to add a political dimension to proceedings. His touching sensitivity, previously anchored by Elise’s practical nature, transforms into the realms of psychosis and she also starts to lose the plot in a personality change that lacks believability as Broken Circle finally goes into meltdown in a dispiriting denoument to a promising start. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18TH OCTOBER 2013

Love, Marilyn (2013)

Dir: Liz Garbus,

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Jennifer Ehle, Lindsay Lohan, Lili Taylor, Uma Thurman, MarisaTomei, Evan Rachel Wood,

107min USA 2012

One can say without hype that Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) is one of the most exploited women in our media age. After her mother, a cutter at RKO, could not look after her anymore due to mental health problems, Norma Jean Mortenson was bounced around between orphanages and foster parents. At the age of 16, working in an aircraft factory, she married a man whom she called “Daddy; they divorced in 1946. Her acting career started the following year as an un-credited voice of a telephone operator. Fox, who let her first contract expire, re-signed her, and she had small parts in the 1950 films Asphalt Jungle and All about Eve. But nothing prepared her or the media world for her status as sex symbol, which she cemented with Niagara in 1953.

Here in Love, Marilyn, a documentary-style biopic, Liz Garbus tries to give the late idol a voice based on diaries and personal letters previously published as ‘fragments’ in 2010 (as discovered in Marilyn’s house in Brentwood by Anna Strasberg, daughter of Lee, her acting coach). It goes without saying that the subject-matter is gold-dust, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee top marks for Love, Marilyn as a successful piece of filmmaking. Liz Garbus falls on the first hurdle in her decision to cast a selection of contemporary Hollywood actresses to recite the “different voices” of Marilyn (rather than just one lead), giving the piece a slightly disorientating feel at first as we grapple with trying to identify who’s being whom. Clearly it’s impossible to find an actress that evokes Marilyn’s multi-faceted persona, so casting a variety of actresses seemed a stroke of genius but actually it’s rather a flawed one. These moments are, however, successfully inter-cut with archive newsreel and private footage which are always going to be endlessly fascinating, no matter which filmmaker wields them. And the camera obviously loved Marilyn: possibly one of the most expressive and charismatic of all the actresses of her era. The most appealing aspect of this doc are the endless stills of her looking devastatingly beautiful, touchingly naive; endlessly sexy; happily ‘in love’ and tellingly lost; disappointed and broken.

We learn nothing really new, only snippets like Jean Russell mentioning that Monroe was frightened to leave her dressing room during the shooting of Gentlemen prefer Blondes (1953). Or the scene Monroe’s husband Joe DiMaggio made in 1954, when director Billy Wilder shot the famous subway footage over and over again, while 1500 hooting men stood by, asking for more. The same Wilder, who would call Monroe later “the mad person on the plane” during a troubled shooting schedule. Or her brave engagement for her soon-to-be husband Arthur Miller in 1956, when he was hunted down by the HUAC committee and could not get a passport (Fox told Monroe, she would be finished, if she supported Miller); the same Miller who wrote the script to Misfits, her and Gable’s last film, in which Monroe played a role she felt degraded by, whilst her husband met his next wife, Inge Morath, on location.

No wonder she was so disturbed that she agree to enter Payne Whiting Psychiatric Hospital voluntarily in February 1961, a month after her divorce from Miller. Mistreated and cut off from her friends, she smuggled a note to DiMaggio, who got her out, threatening to tear “the building down brick by brick”. Her relationship to her psychotherapist Ralph Greenson (she moved closed to his home in LA) was ambivalent too, since the doctor prescribed her in the end more or less anything having grown distant from his star patient. In May 1962, whilst on the set of the troubled Something Has To Give, she flew to Washington to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” for JFK; Fox sacked her for breaking contractual obligations, only to re-instate her days before her death on 5 August 1962.

Garbus saves us from all the theories regarding the Kennedy brothers, but the earnest declamations of the Hollywood stars do not make up for the fact that this, too, is just another vehicle on the exploitation bandwagon circling a troubled woman who was unable to put the many fragments of her life together and who wrote in her diary shortly before her death: “Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone”. AS

LOVE, MARILYN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 18TH OCTOBER AND ON DVD 28TH OCTOBER

Abuse of Weakness (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Dir; Catherine Breillat; Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jool Shen, Laurene Ursino;

France 2013, 104 min. Drama French with English subtitles

After two rather disappointing films The Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard, Catherine Breillat has returned with ABUSE OF WEAKNESS to her usual confrontational style – chronicling the gender war in films which show that women are not always the victims as commonly assumed. Sale comme un Ange (1991), in which the heroine Barbara, married to a young policeman, falls for his superior and gently coaxes him into killing her husband in an arrest gone wrong, so that she can marry him, is a good example. ABUSE OF WEAKNESS is an autobiographical film too. The protagonist, Maud (Isabelle Huppert), is a middle-aged film director, suffering from a recent stroke, which has left her impaired.

While recovering in bed, Huppert (in her usual ‘couldn’t-care-less mode’) sees gangster Vilko (Jool Shen) being interviewed on TV and decides to cast him in her next film. Vilko is a wild boy and Maud’s family and friends are very protective of her. They seem justified in their suspicions: Maud is lending Vilko more and more money – seemingly to keep him keep on board for the film project. Vilko’s introduces Maud to his young wife and baby and from then on the power structure changes. Whilst the sums of money Maud is giving him get bigger and bigger, so grows Vilko’s dependence on Maud and a worrying dependency between the pair gradually gets stronger.

Breillat’s character of the hemiplegic Maud is a challenging role for Huppert and she rises to the occasion giving a magnificent performance: suffering physically, only to get stronger mentally. Vilko starts with the upper hand but he turns out to be a real pushover, unable to see the trap Maud is setting for him: luring him into her lair like a crafty cat playing with a mouse. Vilko’s only interest in life is money and he can’t work out how Maud has managed to capture his soul. She might not be able to compete sexually with his attractive wife, put she can push the right buttons to make Vilko into her own creature, even joking “that she is doing his wife a favour”.

Breillat’s cat and mouse game develops slowly, set in the wide open seascapes of the Belgian Riviera and Brussels. The longer the films goes on, the muter the lighting becomes; the living quarter shrink and in the end Maud and Vilko are living in a quasi building-site more or less in one room. It is a perfect symbol of their relationship: the handicapped Maud imprisons Vilko in this small room, as he slowly relinquishes his masculinity. The power of money is for once defeated by a cruel but effective woman. Her weapon is not her beauty, but her sheer strength of an analytical strategy and willpower. For Isabelle Huppert lovers, it’s a film to be relished.

Andre Simonoviescz

SCREENING AT THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 14, 15 OCTOBER AT OWE2 AND 17 OCTOBER AT CINE LUMIERE

Pieta (2012) Now on DVD

Director: Kim Ki-duk

Cast: Min-soo Jo, Jeong-jin Lee, Ki-Hong Woo, Eunjin Kang, Jae-ryong Cho

104mins Drama

Pietá means mercy in Italian. And mercy is very much the central theme in Kim Ki-duk’s Golden Lion Winner that muses on the lack of this inherently human quality in the daily life of a sadistic Korean loan-shark, Gang-do (Lee Jung-jin).

Each day after devouring hand-slaughtered animals, he emerges from a bare apartment in a poverty-ridden district of Seoul, a vengeful and mercenary creature who exacts crippling injuries on his hapless debtors usually by forcing their limbs into their own machine tools, cashing in the insurance claims they’ve signed before their painful fate.

An fervent and anti-capitalist drama, Kim Ki-duk’s 18th outing is well-served by disenfranchised characters who are sinking below the poverty line at the mercy of encroaching urban development and economic hardship. Ming-Soo Jo stands out in a superlative tour de force as stranger Mi-sun, who arrives at Gang-do’s place one day purporting to be the mother who abandoned him but her enigmatic agenda offers a lethal cocktail of redemption, remorse and retribution . MT

PIETA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6TH SEPTEMBER AND ON DVD FROM 14 OCTOBER 2013

Eliza Lynch – Queen of Paraguay 57th BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Alan Gilsenan, Cast: Maria Doyle Kennedy, Leryn Franco;

Ireland 2013, 80 min.

Some films really bring something new into one’s life, and ELIZA LYNCH: QUEEN OF PARAGUAY is such a film. Director Alan Gilsenan tells the life story of the title’s heroine in many forms: part docu-drama, part interviews and quotes from Lynch’s book “Exposition, Protest made by Eliza Lynch”, which she wrote in 1876 in Buenos Aires. To say that her life was stranger than fiction, would be an understatement. Particularly for a woman of the 19^th century, she showed enormous courage under the most tragic of circumstances, which encompass most of her life.

Eliza Lynch was born 1835 in Cork, Ireland; her family fled ten years later from the Great Famine to Paris. Eliza had a failed marriage with a French officer, and might or might not have lived as a courtesan in Paris where in 1854, she met Francisco Solano Lopez, son of the President of Paraguay, who in his role as defence minister bought weapons for his country in Europe. Eliza became pregnant and followed Lopez to South America where he installed her as his mistress in the capital Asuncion. They had seven children altogether, and after the death of his father, Solano Lopez became President in 1862. Now Eliza, who was very much disliked by the old president and the upper classes, became officially the First Lady of the country, she and her husband were one of the richest landowners in South America. In 1864 Solano Lopez started a war with Brazil, and, after some early successes, found himself facing by a triple alliance of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, Instead of giving up, he continued the war, finally loosing his life (his eldest son was also killed) in the battle of Cerro Cora in 1870, which is described as a massacre. The Brazilians took cruel revenge, 90% of the male, and 50% of the female population of Paraguay was slaughtered in what could be called a genocide. Eliza was captured and later went back to Paris. In 1875 she returned to Paraguay, trying to claim her estates, but had to flee again. She died in obscurity in 1886 in Paris. In the 1950s her remains were brought back to Paraguay by the dictator General Strasser.

Maria Doyle Kennedy plays Eliza like a ghost returning to life, setting things straight. The lightning is diffuse, shadows are domineering, and the atmosphere is that of German impressionist film of 1930s. In stark contrast are the sober interviews with historians, who cannot agree if Eliza was a heroine or a wicked woman, lusting only after power. But the strongest impression from the film is Eliza’s romanticism, which seems to have conquered not only her husband, but the ordinary people of Paraguay – shades of Evita Peron. Told without sensationalism, the film opens new avenues into our understanding of a rather unknown era and the courage of a unique woman.

Andre Simonoviescz

Five Tales from Europe this Weekend at the 57th BFI London Film Festival

CAMILLE CLAUDEL, 1915 * * * *

Juliette Binoche stars as Camille in this austere and pared-down portrait, none the less beautiful for its ascetic treatment, of a woman artist who is denied her creativity due to confinement in a mental institution in the i by her family in 1915, to remain there for the rest of her life. while Renoir was living out his days in surrounded by love and attention further south in Provence. SEARCH BOX FOR FULL REVIEW

SATURDAY 12 OCTOBER AT CURZON MAYFAIR

EASTERN BOYS * * * *

Accomplished scripter, Robin Campillo (The Class, Foxfire), takes a random group of illegal immigrant young men from Eastern Europe and constructs an unpredictable and unflinching thriller set in the suburbs of Paris. It revolves around a gay Frenchman (Olivier Rabourdin) in his fifties and his unexpected adventure with one of the teenagers (Kirill Emelyanov). Watchable and absorbing, this is one of the best thrillers at Venice festival this year.

SATURDAY 12 OCTOBER AT VUE5

IDA * * * * *

As a film, Ida seems to be built upon forbears; the spirits of Bresson, Dreyer and Antonioni are all here, alive and well, not least in the film’s stunning, 1.37:1 black and white images. If those names imply an austere coldness alongside a total mastery of the cinematic medium, then all the better – when it is handled as well as this, such a tone is surely something to commend. Ida is intensely visual, impeccably performed and quietly profound – and, at a compact 80 minutes, it may even be perfect. SEARCH BOX FOR FULL REVIEW

SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER AT OWE2

UNDER THE SKIN * * * *

Jonathan Glazer’s inventively daring visual treat stars Scarlett Johansson as a femme fatale who meets her victims in the backstreets of Glasgow. Influenced by the surrealism of David Lynch, this contemporary story is both sinister and alluring with a twist of horror.

SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER AT OWE2

GRAND CENTRAL * * * *

Grand Central’s nuclear decontamination unit provides the sinister backdrop to this tense drama of friendship, love and divided loyalties from French director Rebecca Zlotowski. Gary (Tahir Rahim) and Tcherno (Johan Libereau) are two young men who become friends as they travel to find work at the plant, set in the heart of verdant countryside. A modern French thriller with a believable storyline. Lea Seydoux also stars. SEE SEARCH BOX FOR FULL REVIEW

SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER AT RICH MIX

Fandry (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Nagraj Manjule

Cast: Somnath Avghade, Syraj Pawar, Kishon Kadan

India 2012, 105 min.

Manjule’s contemporary rural drama about a Dalit (untouchable) teenager Jabya is a simple but never simplistic affair. It shows that the caste system, even though officially abolished after independence, is still claiming its victims. Jabya is an intelligent boy, who would like to go to school, but the abject poverty of his family means that he has to spend many days helping his parents with their badly paid, but exhausting jobs. Somnath Avghade gives a spirited performance as Jabya, wandering around the country side with a young friend in search of the black sparrow, who would, if caught, give him magical powers. These powers would help Jabya to conquer the girl he is in love with: Shalu, his fellow student, a member of a much higher cast, whom Jabya adores.

The film is shown from Jabya’s perspective with lively colours. Long tracking shots dominate, the camera always in motion reflecting Jabya himself. The poverty of his family is shown in hues of brown and grey light, whilst the riches of the upper castes are shot in glaringly exotic primary colours.

After a series of personal setbacks, Jabya flees into a dream world where the magic power of the sparrow unites him with Shalu. But the reality is much more cruel: as the lowest of the low, his family is forced to hunt wild pigs, who disturb the religious ceremonies, since only they are allowed to touch animals considered unclean by the caste system. The rest of the school, including Shalu, watches the family haplessly chasing the pig. This derails the boy and is cleverly shown in two perspectives: the jeering crowd on the little hill follows a slapstick spectacle, whilst Jabya and his family are running with a tunnel vision.This degradation of all this is too much for Jabya and his shame turns into violent anger.

An important film, showing that the world of rural poverty still very much exists beyond the technological advancement of the new world of the Indian metropolis, or indeed, the pure spiritual world that so many Europeans hope to discover when they travel in search of mysticism. Andre Simonoviescz

FANDRY IS SCREENING AT THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON THURSDAY 10 OCTOBER, SATURDAY 11 OCTOBER AND TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER AT NFT2, THE SCREEN ON THE GREEN AND RICH MIX.

Starred Up (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Dir: David Mackenzie, Cast: Jack O’Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, Rupert Friend

UK 2013, 100 min. Action Drama

‘Starred Up is a term used in the British prison system, where a juvenile offender, who is particularly violent is sent to an adult prison, and not a juvenile correction institution. The ‘starred up’ young man in this film is played by Jack O’Connell (The Liability). He lands in the same prison as his father Neville (Ben Mendelsohn), who was more or less absent during his childhood and has his hands full trying to curb Eric’s tendency to violent reactions at the slightest (imagined) provocation. In a turn of superb strength Jack O’Connell has to prove his over-the-top aggression from the opening sequences. Oliver (Rupert Friend), an understanding voluntary therapist, whose group Eric joins, tries to curb the young man’s tendency to violent reactions at the slightest (or imagined) provocation, but looses his distance from the men he is supposed to help. After Eric attacks a sadistic prison warden, he has to leave, and father and son embark on another string of unbridled attacks.

It goes without saying that violence is part of any prison film, but Mackenzie here overdoes his share of gratuitous violence and gradually it looses its function becoming the norm in a feature that lacks texture and tension with the dire cinema-verite style accentuating the grittiness: repeating the prison procedures over and over again has a tiring and repulsive effect that distances us from the narrative with the continuously sweary verbal exchanges, become tedious and lack style in comparison with other films of this genre such as Audiard’s The Prophet. The protagonists fall into simplistic categories and are paired up for easy recognition: the sadistic chief prison warden versus the understanding therapist; young, unformed Eric, always on the outlook for violence, versus the more mature father, trying to control himself, at least sometimes. That said, O’Connell and Mendelsohn both give their emotions full throttle in performances of considerable skill.

David Mackenzie is unable (or unwilling) to reign his ideas in and goes completely over the top, losing control of the action because he fails to maintain distance to structure his narrative. There is no grey, only black and white. STARRED UP is self-indulgent; lacks artistic direction, simply stating one argument with the same images repetitively, undermining any message the director wants to convey. The actors are the only saving element of this film, whose grimy, conventional aesthetics don’t help us to connect. Andre Simonoviescz

STARRED UP IS SCREENING AT THE 57TH BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 10, 11 AND 12 OCTOBER AT THE OWE2 AND HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSES RESPECTIVELY

Haewon, Nobody’s Daughter (2013)

Dir. Hong Sang-soo, Cast: Jung Eunchae, Lee Sunkyun

South Korea 87 min. Drama

South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo (Hahaha)) shows in his latest film NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON the unravelling of a personality: aspiring actress Haewon, played by a very impressive Jung Eunchae, has an on/off relationship with an older, married professor (Lee Sunkyn), who is the father of a recently born baby.

After her mother leaves Seoul for Canada, Haewon looses her last ‘anchor’ in life. Her personality fragments, she sleeps at day time, loses more and more contact with her acting school, drinks too much and flees into a parallel universe, in which she ‘directs’ life via a permanent inner monologue. She can’t differentiate any more between important and unimportant events and wanders off into a vacuum that only her inner voice can fill. Her often hysterical laughter is the only obvious sign of her psychological deterioration, so that her friends find her rather ‘odd’, because they are too self-centred to help and unable to commit to anything but the acute present.

The narrative develops in episodic format, so as to underline the lack of continuity in Haewon’s life. She always visits certain places: mainly a park, a motel and an old fort, as if trying to re-connect with the past, even though it is exactly this past with has thrown her life into disarray. But she is unable to find a solution,because she can’t connect the important points in her life any more and it becomes totally structureless as she drifts more and more away from herself. She wanders often and long, particularly in the rain, as if trying to purify herself. But since she can’t ask the right questions, or even worse, can’t remember what to ask, all her physical exercises take her even more away from herself.

Her relationship with the professor has issues, so does her relationship with an fellow student: everything is in flux. Haewon is the object rather than the subject of Sang-soo’s film – even though paradoxically both men in her life believe her to be strong. She drifts along in a way that makes her loose more and more of her personality. Sang-soo has selected a muted palette here and most of the drama takes place outside, with a few claustrophobic indoor shots): everything is murky and somehow diffuse, just like Haewon. There is a timeless feel to the narrative which could be set anytime between the 70s and today.

The sensation here is one of being dragged along on a slow-moving river, not unpleasantly, but somehow disturbingly. There are no dramatic incidents, everything is more or less of the same colourless grey: a permanent misunderstanding on the part of Haewon, who is floating away into near oblivion. Unable to read her own (or anybody else’) real intentions, she relies only on her internal world to direct herself. She does not say it, but one expects her at any moment to voice the obvious: “I don’t know why I am doing this”.

Hong Sang-soo’s latest treat IN ANOTHER COUNTRY is a quirky comedy drama starring Isabelle Huppert is yet to hit our screens but in the meantime this well-observed portrait of a young women fragmenting under the pressure of her loneliness, low-key but with extreme sensitivity is something worth discovering. A little gem. Andre Simonoviescz

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11TH OCTOBER 2013 IN SELECTED LONDON CINEMAS

9th London Spanish Film Festival 27 September – 9 October 2013

The 9th LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL brings a spicy selection of Spain’s latest dramas and documentaries right to your doorstep at the CINE LUMIERE, London this Autumn.

STOCKHOLM stars Aura Garrido and Javier Pereira who share a poignant night of seduction in the Swedish city. In THE EXTRAORDINARY TALE, boy meets girl in a modern humorous re-working of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ set in contemporary Seville and starring Ken Appledorn (The Imposter) and Aida Ballmann.

From Barcelona, A GUN IN EACH HAND (UNA PISTOLA EN CADA MANO is Cesc Gay’s latest comedy drama about eight fortysomething men and their mid-life crises. Led by Javier Camara (Talk to Her) and Ricard Darin (While Elephant) it’s a well-scripted affair of bittersweet moments seen from a male perspective. THE END (FIN) is a thriller with a sci-fi twist, starring Andres Velencoso (the Spanish model) and Maribel Verdu (Blancanieves) who head to the mountains for a reunion with sinister overtones. Isabel Coixet is well-known for her ground-breaking films and this UK premiere of YESTERDAY NEVER ENDS (AYER NO TERMINA NUNCA) is her metaphor for Spain’s economic and social woes, seen through a couple’s turbulent relationship, set in 2017.

On the documentary front, THE LABEQUE WAY follows the legendary French piano duo Katia and Maria Labeque as they perform across Europe with appearances from Sir Simon Rattle and Semyon Bichkov. THE EYES OF WAR (LOS OJOS DE LA GUERRA) explores the motivations behind four journalists reporting from Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and The Congo. There will be a Q&A with the director Miguel Angel Idigoras to follow.

Sumptuously set in Paris, LA BANDA PICASSO is Fernando Colomo’s entertaining comedy drama that delves into the intrigues between Braque, Gertrude Stein, Apollinaire and Picasso when the Mona Lisa is ‘stolen’ from the Louvre. THE BODY (El CUERPO) offers dark and seat-gripping thrills from Catalan director Oriol Paulo and the producers of THE ORPHANAGE and centres on the disappearance of a corpse from the local morgue.

A fifties masterpiece and one of the biggest commercial hits in Spanish film history is THE LAST TORCH SONG (El ULTIMO CUPLE, 1957) starring Sara Montiel as Maria Lujan, a forgotten diva who sings some of the best-known songs from Spanish cinema here. She went on to Hollywood to headline with the likes of Gary Cooper and Joan Fontaine.

Finally from the archives there’s Bigas Lune’s 1992 modern classic JAMON, JAMON which launched Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz and explores the complex relationship between erotic desire and food, set in the arid Zaragoza desert. I wonder if it was love at first sight for the Spanish duo who are now happily married with kids! MT

For the full programme

Side By Side (2013)

Dir: Arthur Landon, Cast: Bel Powley, Alfie Fields, Sara Stewart, Diana Quick, Mark Powley

UK 2012, 103 min Drama

Lauren, a teenager and her younger brother Harvey live with their mentally impaired grandmother, who is their legal guardian in this British film that has a ‘made-for-TV’ feel to it. Living in constant fear of her going into a care home, matters are further complicated by the fact that Lauren is a gifted runner. Her untrustworthy agent Janice is trying to split the siblings up so that Lauren can live with her (and so pay for her daughter’s university education), whilst Harvey would end up with foster parents. When the dreaded day of grandma’s sectioning arrives, Lauren and Harvey run away – with an address of a long-lost grandfather, somewhere in Scotland.

SIDE BY SIDE is an imaginatively told ‘coming of age’ family drama, but there are some questions to be asked. Harvey is obsessed with video games, he meets some adult gamers via the net, and they help the siblings on their way north. Not only that, but they split the reward for their capture with Harvey – so the two then set out again for another search at the end of the film. Should a child really be encouraged to have contact with adults, whose background and intentions are not known? And would a psychiatrist really give the siblings the address of a family member, knowing very well that the two will elope again?

But the acting of the youngsters (Bel Powley and Alfie Fields), and in particularly Sara Stewart’s blond ”witch” Janice, who is defeated by the solidarity of the children, are convincing, and the camera tries to get away from showing only the bright spots of this country. The storyline sides always with the outsiders, as in the encounter of Lauren and Harvey with a helpful tinker, who is shown in a much more positive light than all the authority figures of the film. Overall, SIDE BY SIDE a modern fairytale, told with humour and optimism, and like all good fairy stories, with lots of improbabilities. Andre Simonoviescz

Thanks for Sharing (2013) ***

DIRECTOR: STUART BLUMBERG WRITERS: STUART BLUMBERG, MATT WINSTON

CAST: Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins, Joely Richardson, Patrick Fugit

112min US Romcom

Following on from Steve McQueen’s Shame, this is not the first time sex addiction has been explored in contemporary cinema. However, although Stuart Blumberg’s Thanks for Sharing is not quite as intense or dark as the former – tackling the subject matter in a far more jovial manner; the The Kids Are All Right writer offers a picture equally as poignant with his directorial debut.

We follow three friends who meet at 12-step meetings to help combat their unhealthy addictions to sex. At the heart of our story is Adam (Mark Ruffalo) who is five years ‘sober’ and now feeling ready to meet women again and attempt to strike up a relationship. However when he meets Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow) he falls in love, but struggles to overcome his previous habits. He seeks help from his mentor Mike (Tim Robbins), who has problems of his own, as his drug-addicted son (Patrick Fugit) has just shown up out of the blue. To complete the cycle, Adam himself is also a mentor, but to a young man named Neil (Josh Gad), who is desperately seeking help, as his sexual deviance has landed him in trouble on several occasions. We intertwine between these three corresponding lives, and see how each individual relies heavily on the next to get through this challenging treatment.

Thanks for Sharing treads the line between comedy and drama masterfully, portraying sex addiction sincerely, giving it the gravitas it deserves and considering it as a genuine disease. However the often frivolous nature to the film allows for us to see the humorous elements too, easing us into understanding and appreciating the true severity of the condition. That said, Blumberg can be accused of being overly lighthearted at points, particularly at the start when introduced to Neil. He is the comedic figure of the piece, providing the film with the vast majority of its witty one liners – but he is actually a sexual predator with a dangerously perverse outlook on life, and the sexual abuse he carries out is inappropriately depicted as humorous. Though jokes are a necessity within Thanks for Sharing, sometimes they are implemented in the wrong places.

Nonetheless, the story is structured ingeniously, as we weave in and out of our lead characters’ lives effortlessly, each individual story being substantially told. We care enough about each and every character and their own personal journeys, enough so that at the end we are intrigued to see how each one will conclude. Blumberg must be commended for this, as many ensemble pieces fall at this very hurdle. Much of why we are so empathetic to the characters is as a result of the screenplay, with each role crafted beautifully and the dynamics between each varying relationship perfectly judged. There are several themes at play too, such as romance, friendship, addiction and family matters – and these are all dealt with well, with every plot-point being given enough screen-time for us to invest emotionally in each one.

Thanks for Sharing is a picture that could so easily be underwhelming, dealing with various themes we have seen done to death in Hollywood – yet this avoids cliches. It may be overly melodramatic at times, yet Blumberg manages to steer away from ever feeling mawkish or over-indulgent in the slightest. He may have crafted a reputation for himself as a valuable screenwriter, but now it seems that he is equally as adept at directing, with a bright future certainly beckoning. STEFAN PAPE

THANKS FOR SHARING IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 4TH OCTOBER 2013 at Vue Cinemas, Odeon Cinemas Cineworld and Shortwave Bermondsey

Adore (2013) (Two Mothers) 57th London Film Festival

Director: Anne Fontaine

Screenplay: Christopher Hampton

Cast: Robin Wright, Naomi Watts, Xavier Samuel, James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn

100mins Australia/France Drama

The oedipus complex provides the counterpoint to this complex drama about female sexuality and friendship. It follows two women who have grown up together in an idyllic oceanside location in Australia. Their visceral bond has kept them close through marriage, children, widowhood and separation; exploring the nature of friendship, love and sexuality from a uniquely female perspective.

Based on a short story by Doris Lessing, The Grandmothers: subversive French auteur Anne Fontaine (Nathalie, Coco Before Chanel) has refreshed the narrative bringing it firmly up to date, casting two attractive and well-maintained fortysomething ‘cougars’ as the women: they could be you or me: Naomi Watts plays Lil and Robin Wright, Roz completely dispelling the image of ‘grannies’ being old biddies with knitting. Healthy living has enabled these two to look good. A potent cocktail of emotional maturity and enduring sexual desire empowers them to enjoy young lovers in the same way that traditionally was the preserve of men. Enjoying a beach lifestyle, Roz and Lil are neighbours at work and home, living with their respective grown-up sons.

Lensed by Christophe Beaucarne, ADORE is lovely to look at but initially suffers from clunky moments on the dialogue front. Gradually this resolves as a taut drama emerges. Robin Wright is magnificent, giving one of her best performances so far as the tough but emotionally available Roz and is by far the stronger of the two. Naomi Watts is more fluffy and unsure of herself, but convincing as the ultra feminine Lil. The boys are powerfully handsome with an appealing vulnerability that ramps up the erotic value of what happens next.

Fabulously plotted by Doris Lessing, ADORE covers all the intellectual aspects and subtle nuances of female sexuality reflecting poignant biological truths and exultant moments of pleasure and insight. Anne Fontaine is at pains to point out the barren male choices available to these women that has driven them towards their eventual romantic entanglements. But their behaviour never lacks decorum, steering well-clear of the pitfalls of gratuitous over-emoting. These are women who are really worthy of praise as role models despite all. The adult male characters here are predictable: self-centred and puffed up on their own egos. Roz’s ex-husband drifts off to prioritise his career in Sydney with unsurprising results. Lil attracts a work colleague Saul, who pursues her endlessly failing the read the signs and then accuses her of being a lesbian when she fails to reciprocate. So no evolvement on the adult male characterisation there. ADORE begs to be seen by any intelligent audience, male or female. Long after the sheltering palms and sugar-white sandy beaches have faded from view, the complexity of this absorbing film will stay in your memory. MT

ADORE IS SCREENING AT THE 57TH BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON THURSDAY 10TH (VUE7), FRIDAY, 11TH AND SUNDAY, 13TH OCTOBER (CINE LUMIERE).

70TH VENICE FILM FESTIVAL Daily Update WINNERS 28 August-7 September

GRAVITY *** OUT OF COMPETITION

Seven years after Children of Men, Mexican Director Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY 3D swirled silently into Venice with a distant murmur of astronauts talking via satellite in space. George Clooney (Matt Kowalksy) gradually floats into view, as sauve in a space-suit as he is in Gucci tailoring. With his co-pilot Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), he injects much-needed humour into this claustrophobic but technically brilliant sci-fi drama that follows a stricken space-ship as it floats towards the Earth’s orbit with its surviving astronauts. The pair float helplessly amid a welter of emotionally-charged memories of the World they left behind. A pithy script and Emmanuel Lubezki’s ethereal visuals make this a worthwhile experience for the art house crowd and Sandra Bullock is surprising moving as a co-pilot who has nothing left to live for but every reason to survive.. MT

TRACKS *** IN COMPETITION

Take the Australian outback, three wild camels, a black labrador and a woman with a mission and you’ve got John Curran’s drama inspired by the true life of Robyn Davidson, who walked from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean in 1977. During this breathtaking travelogue of painful and sweaty trials and tribulations, she makes some interesting discoveries about survival and herself: that she wants to be alone. Mia Wasilowski gives an exultant performance as Robyn, not the most pleasant of characters, but certainly dogged and single-minded in her pursuit of a dream. It also has Roly Mintuma as her Aboriginal guide and Adam Driver as the photographer who fails to win her heart. Despite looking for solitude, Robyn bemoans her deep loneliness at every step of the way and although the scenery is beautiful, the woman herself remains a cypher. MT

LA BELLE VILLE **** GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI

Jean Denizot’s feature debut LA BELLE VIE is a classicly told, ravishingly-shot, rites of passage idyll set in the rolling countryside of the Loire River. Based on a true story of two boys on the run with their father, who has flouted French custody laws, it paints him as a loving but also mentally abusive man. Newcomer, Zaccarie Chasseriaud, stands out as the youngest boy, Sylvain, whose desire for a proper life and a girlfriend finally bring matters to a dramatic head.

WOLFSKINDER **** ORIZZONTI

Poignantly brutal and achingly beautiful, Rick Ostermann’s Second World War survival drama follows the plight of four young German orphans fleeing the Red Army through the stunning countryside of Lithuania. Levin Liam leads the group in the role of Hans whose innate gentleness and determination shine through against the odds in a performance of subtle complexity and depth for such a young actor.

LAS NINAS QUISPE *** SETTIMANA DELLA CRITICA Haunted by sadness, mistrust and a hostile political climate, three sisters herd goats in the high planes of seventies Chile as they contemplate their bleak future. Sebastian Sepulveda’s debut is a plaintive affair shot through with human tenderness and a captivating sepia-tinted aesthetic.

JOE ** IN COMPETITION

David Gordon Green’s last outing, Prince Avalanche, was one of the standout comedies of Berlin this year. Here in JOE he casts Nicolas Cage as a brooding ex-con with a heart of gold. And Cage doesn’t disappoint, bringing forth a performance of echoing intensity alongside Tye Sheridan’s abused teenager. But where MUD succeeded in the ‘sins of the father’ dynamic, JOE never really comes together as a cohesively absorbing drama.

NIGHT MOVES **** IN COMPETITION

A Simple plan to blow up a damn has far-reaching consequences for three environmentalists in this explosive psychological crime thriller with a moral twist from MEEK’S CUTOFF director, Kelly Reichardt. Jessee Eisenberg leads a dynamite cast of Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard. Chilling and memorable MT

PHILOMENA **** IN COMPETITION

STEVE COOGAN AND JEFF POPE WIN BEST SCREENPLAY

Stephen Frears takes this heart-rending adoption story, overlaid with Steve Coogan’s lightly comedic touch, to produce an inspiring drama that raised the roof on the fourth day of Venice Film Festival. Judy Dench plays Philomena Lee, a stalwart Irish mother who harks back to her lost son on his 50th birthday. World-weary journo, Martin Sixsmith (Coogan,who also acts and produces), takes up her story and their instant chemistry leads to a moving, funny and entertaining film with universal appeal and likely box-office success. MT

CHILD OF GOD ** IN COMPETITION The James Franco production line continues with this adaption of a Cormac McCarthy novel about an angry loner in sixties Tennessee. Scott Hare gives his all to the role of Lester Ballard in a drama that blends necrophilia, defecation (and every other bodily function) with washed-out landscapes and unimaginative camerawork depicting one man’s descent into Hell. If you like your dramas ‘warts and all’ then this is one to go for.

THE WIND RISES ***** IN COMPETITION

Another enchanting piece of Japanese Anime from Studio Ghibli, this time a delicately- drawn story of Wartime aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the amazingly effective ‘Zero’ fighter during WWII. THE WIND RISES is particularly special because its director and writer, Miyazaki Hayao, is well-known for being behind the most successful films: Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo. What starts as a largely biographical story of Jiro’s childhood, training and early career gradually transforms into an endearing love story when he finally meets his sweetheart while saving her umbrella in a gale. The two have previously met during an earthquake, (the Great Kanto disaster of 1923) wonderfully depicted in the early part of the film but now the visuals reflect lush and flowery country landscapes including almond blossoms, billowing meadows, breathtaking cloud formations and sunsets. As usual with Ghibli, the dreamy visuals often belie a heart-rending or serious storyline, and THE WIND RISES is no different, underpinned as it is by Jiro’s personal tragedy and the Wartime context of conflict and geographical disaster. Immersive from start to finish, THE WIND RISES is a stunning piece of filmmaking accompanied by a richly-textured narrative that will delight regular devotees as well as those still unfamiliar with the genre. MT

VIA CASTELLANA BANDIERA *** (A STREET IN PALERMO) IN COMPETITION

ELENA COTTA – BEST ACTRESS – COPPA VOLPI

Emma Dante is known in Italy for her theatre work. Here, she directs and also stars as a lesbian woman who won’t give way to the oncoming vehicle in a narrow street, while on the way to a wedding with her partner (Alba Rohrwacher – Sleeping Beauty). But the driver of the other car (Elena Cotta) is well-known locally for her stubbornness. A noisy and argumentative film that serves as a metaphor for Italy’s more general ills.

MISS VIOLENCE *** IN COMPETITION

THEMIS PANOU – BEST ACTOR – COPPA VOLPI

As Greek tragedies go this one is a slow-burning, pastel-tinged affair: Brooding with malevolence and bristling with suspicion from the opening sequence involving the suicide of a young girl during a family birthday, to the final half hour of shocking revelations as the toys are thrown out of the pram.

PARKLAND ** IN COMPETITION

Peter Landesman’s attempt to examine the fall-out of JFK’s death from the perspective of those involved in his final hours, fails in bringing anything new to the table with a motley selection of characters from the backstory. Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother is a particularly nasty piece of work played by Jacki Weaver. Paul Giamatti is compelling as the guy who shot the amateur footage on CIne and Zac Ephron plays an earnest young doctor who fails to save his life and Billy Bob Thornton also stars.

THE SACRAMENT ** ORIZZONTI

Based on a true story about a cult community in Georgia, Ti West’s mockumentary is a well-intentioned but unconvincing thriller with a strong central performance from Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color).

THE POLICE OFFICER’S WIFE *** IN COMPETITION

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE WINNER

This three-hour film takes an epistolary format to slowly flesh out the married life of a policeman, his wife and their infant daughter, in a small German town. Beautifully drawn, with detailed and appealing use of the local countryside to give context, it serves as testament to the subtle but corrosive effect of modern life on one couple’s relationship. Director, Phillip Grõning has served as Venice Orizzonti Jury President in 2006. MT

THE ZERO THEORUM ** IN COMPETITION

Terry Gilliam is back with a psychedelic mish-mash of mysogyny and male musings: THE ZERO THEORUM is a mathematical formula that seeks to determine whether life has meaning, as seen through the eyes of Christophe Waltz’s middle-aged geek in a dystopian town of the future. Waltz is perplexed and benign in the role as he’s badgered to settle down by Melanie Thierry’s blonde piece of fluff who taunts him to commit in various states of undress (a typical male fantasy from the warped mind of a commitment-phobe). It’s online, corporate Hell so just hope that we never get there . An acquired taste to divide audiences: I’d give it a miss unless you love his films.

LOCKE **** IN COMPETITION

Steve Knight’s in-car drama nevertheless offers plenty of action-packed thrills in this ‘one-hander’ for Tom Hardy. He plays a father and engineer whose life unravels as he races South on the M1 to meet the latest of his offspring while managing a complex building project. All conducted over the telephone from his BMW, he talks to his wife, his lover, two teenage sons and members of his building team: the traffic police would have a field day but they’d probably thoroughly enjoy this seat-clenching thriller that could be re-named ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik”. Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson and Tom Holland plays the telephone roles.

TOM AT THE FARM **** IN COMPETITION

Quebec wild child Xavier Dolan roars backs into form with this screen adaptation of a play by Michel Marc Bouchard. Set in the open prairies of Canada’s farmland, Dolan plays the main character, Tom (sporting a curious corn-like mop of blond hair), a gay man who turns up at his lover Guillaume’s funeral not only to discover that the family is unaware of his existence but also unwilling to accept Guillaume sexuality. With a great support cast that features Evelyn Brochu (Cafe de Flore) and Pierre-Yves Cardinal, this visually exciting and unpredictable thriller follows a linear narrative but otherwise challenges perceptions and reality at every step of the way as Tom becomes caught up in a web of lies, deceit and homoerotic desire.

THE CANYONS – SEE MY REVIEW.

MOEBIUS ** OUT OF COMPETITION

The human psyche is a twisted and tortured affair according to Kim Ki-duk who brought his latest outing to Venice after winning the GOLDEN LION in 2012 with PIETA. The subject is still family dynamics but there’s a father involved this time. His random infidelity gradually leads to family breakdown after his son sees him in a restaurant with his lover. MOEBIUS, whch was banned by the censors in his homeland of Korea, features just about everything from humiliation and rape to autoeroticism and demonstrates show how easy it is to unlock evil in the human mind and turn decent people into animals. Disturbing and graphic MT

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN **** IN COMPETITION

In this, the first of two documentaries competing for the Golden Lion, Oscar-winning director Errol Morris looks at Donald Rumsfeld’s engaging personal recollections of his time in office. Seen through cine footage of state tours with the Kennedy’s and his private musings with members of the administration, Morris succeeds in capturing an ‘innocence’ here that has long gone from contemporary politics. Fascinating for anyone who remembers the era or who has an interest in American political history. MT

EASTERN BOYS **** BEST FILM – ORIZZONTI

Accomplished scripter, Robin Campillo (The Class, Foxfire), takes a random group of illegal immigrant young men from Eastern Europe and constructs an unpredictable and unflinching thriller set in the suburbs of Paris. It revolves around a gay Frenchman (Olivier Rabourdin) in his fifties and his unexpected adventure with one of the teenagers (Kirill Emelyanov). Watchable and absorbing, this was one of the best films in the festival this year.

A PROMISE **** OUT OF COMPETITION

Patrice Leconte’s haunting and fabulously romantic drama with Belle Epoque overtones is set in a German industrial town before the Great War. It stars Alan Richman in a subtle performance as an ageing steel magnate whose wife (Rebecca Hall) falls for his young assistant. Based on a novel by Austrian Stefan Zweig, one of the most famous writers during the 1920s and 30s.

L’INTREPIDO *** IN COMPETITION

Billed as a comedy, Gianni Amelio’s competition entry has few laughs but some bittersweet moments. It stars Antonio Albanese as an industrious and enterprising middle-aged man who deserves the Golden Lion for his admirable work ethic and old-school values during the current economic crisis in Milan. Dogged by bad luck and a truculent son, he is a tribute to his generation, setting a shining example in this worthy, uplifting but overlong feature. MT

WALESA. MAN OF HOPE ***** OUT OF COMPETITION

What an amazing contribution Andrzej Wajda has made to Polish and World film. Here, he brings an important, well-crafted and watchable docudrama about the life of Lech Walesa and his single-minded efforts to improve freedom for ship-workers in Gdansk during the latter part of the seventies and early eighties. Skilfully editing archive footage to blend with visuals depicting police riots and clashes, it elegantly envelopes the love story of Walesa and his wife Danuta into this gripping episode of Polish political history shot through with occasional moments of dry humour. MT

JEALOUSY *** IN COMPETITION

Louis Garrel stars as….Louis Garrel in an out of love in this slim drama which also stars Anna Mouglalis and centres around a family split apart by infidelity and financial insecurity. Phillippe Garrel is a Venice regular and has one the Silver Lion twice for J’ENTENDS PLUS LA GUITARE and REGULAR LOVERS.

STRAY DOGS ** IN COMPETITION

GRAND JURY PRIZE WINNER

Taiwan is experiencing a building boom that is displacing and disenfranchising the inhabitants of Taipei, who scratch around to make ends meet. Tsai Ming Liang’s drama is set to divide critics and possibly audiences. Will appeal to the most ardent art house devotees of long, lingering shots and close-up footage.

ANA ARABIA *** IN COMPETITION

Israeli director, Amos Gitai, filmed this insight into a small community of Jews and Arab outcasts in one single 85-minute shoot. It provides a fresh and authentic slice of life in a contemporary border enclave.

THE ROOFTOPS *** IN COMPETITION

Set in his own neighbourhood in Algiers, Merzak Allouache’s lively multi-stranded narrative feature brings another modern-day look at life in an Arabic culture to the competition.

THE REUNION *** SETTIMANA DELLA CRITICA

BEST DEBUT WINNER

Actor Anna Odell’s debut feature in which she plays a striking lead, is a psychological drama that looks at the dynamics of power and bullying within friendships. Taking a class reunion meeting up 20 years after school years, it examines how individuals can be ostracised in the classroom leading to mental issues later on in life. Impressive and watchable. This film won the FIPRESCI Award at Venice 2013 for Best Newcomer.

AMAZONIA ***** OUT OF COMPETITION

AMAZONIA is Brazilian helmer Thierry Rogobert’s enchanting and eye-popping 3D docudrama set entirely in the Amazon jungle. It concerns Kong, an endearingly cute cappucine monkey, who is stranded after a plane crash deep in the rain fores of Brazilian. From the opening sequences we instantly bond with Kong and, as his bewildered little face looks up at the camera, we want to protect him on his journey to fend for himself in the wild. Apart the ambient sounds of rain and random predators, Rogobert’s film is entirely unscripted and provides audiences with a rich visual canvas of vibrantly colourful and exotic flora and fauna on which to meditate. David Attenborough eat your heart out!. MT

SACRO GRA **** IN COMPETION GOLDEN LION WINNER

Gianfranco Rosi’ documentary is a well-crafted and peripatetic affair that tells the story of a famous ring road ‘Grande A’ that surrounds Rome. Literally meaning ‘Holy Grail’, it dabbles in the lives of the many characters who live around this major highway offering a selection of random vignettes cutting across the social divide. Accompanied by an evocative soundtrack, Rosi’s observational style allows the viewer to muse and meditate on this fascinating slice of urban life.

Malgorzata Szumowska – Film Director

Having dipped her toes in international cinema, with her French based production ELLES, Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska has since returned to her native country for the poignant drama In the Name Of. In a film that depicts repressed homosexuality in the Catholic Church, Szumowska discusses her own religious background and influences in making this production. She also tells us about the varying reactions to the film, how she went about casting unprofessional actors – and whether or not she can see a future for herself as a director, outside Poland.

The film gets off to an uncomfortable start, with the young boys teasing somebody and making him eat ants – why did you decide to throw the audience in at the deep end so early on, and create this tense atmosphere from the word go?

MS: I felt from the beginning we wanted to make this feel like a documentary, to show this rural village and we used real people from the village in the film. We have only a few actors, and the rest are people from the village, like all of the boys, they are not actors. Also the movement of the camera, we were trying to follow them and we had a plan from the beginning to create a special atmosphere in this countryside, to show that the setting is also a hero of the film somehow. Myself and Michal (Englert) have made four documentaries together, including two in the same place in the countryside in Poland, so we wanted to give off a similar feeling to make this story believable and more powerful.

It’s incredible that you were using unprofessional actors, it must have been inspiring that you were able to find such raw talent in such a small town?

MS: It’s funny because a young director recently asked me how I went about communicating with these boys, because they were kind of dangerous, I mean, some of them are from pathological families and hardcore boys. So you just have to be in their skin and behave like them, and I did it. I had a very big group then I chose eight of them, and I chose them by screaming with them, dancing with them, playing football, and they started to treat me not like a lady from the big city, but a friend, older, but a friend. Then I took this group and we spent a week together without shooting, including actors, and we’d play football, drink beer, talking… Just to give them the feeling that we aren’t any different than they are, and also to observe them. Afterwards it was pretty easy to be honest, the first two weeks before shooting it was hard and I wasn’t sure if it would work out, but because we created this special atmosphere, it works.

Were you any good at football?

MS: [Laughs] I’m not, but they were! I was trying but it was more for fun.

There are several severe themes in this film, how much did you have to explain to these kids about the context, and were their parents involved at all?

MS: They were all more or less 18, we tried not to have any kids. The parents didn’t care about them, because it’s very complicated, sometimes there is only a mother, or their parents are alcoholics, it’s a really brutal Polish countryside. For them it was very good they could have some money, a bit like a job on holiday. It’s not such a civilised part of Poland, and it was a kind of experiment, but they all came to the premiere in Warsaw and it was the first time they had been there, and it was very touching.

The rural setting is so important to this film, it’s an angry place for Adam to live – was it metaphorical of the homophobia that he suffers?

MS: Yes definitely, because if I put the story into the big city the priests are in different positions and people are different in Warsaw and the provinces. The provinces are very homophobic and close-minded and the people are really focused around the church, but for pragmatic reasons more than for metaphysic ones. The people are simply poor, and I wanted to portray this part of the country because it’s like 80% of Poland. Poland is not Warsaw or Krakow, it’s just the provinces, and for me it was important to show what a Polish province is. Very important to put the priest into that setting.

As one of the biggest Polish filmmakers working today – do you almost feel a responsibility to show the world what is going on in your native country?

MS: Yes, definitely. I got the feeling that I wanted to show people what’s happening in Polish provinces, Polish churches, Polish streets, and Poland’s attitudes to homosexual people and I was concentrating on this part. However I was also concentrating on the love story. In my next film I want to say something else about Poland and maybe more deeper.

Your previous film ELLES was shot over in France, do you think that helped you go back to Poland with a new perspective?

MS: Definitely. For me it was a very hard experience. Even though I had an amazing relationship with Juliette Binoche, who I am planning on making another movie with – it was very tough for me. I didn’t speak French, I had to move to Paris, I had to work with people I didn’t know and it was a lot of pressure from production, the film has to be like this or like that, you know what I mean? Finally, it was a traumatic experience, even though I like the film. But it was such a pleasure to get back to Poland and I just wanted to make a small Polish film only with Polish people and no co-production and it gives me a perspective that I want to say something about Poland, because I was outside for a while. Now I really find myself as a Polish director, with Polish roots and I understand that for me it’s better to tell the stories that are really connected to my country of origin, because Poland is very interesting. It’s a strange country, and it’s not multicultural, which is a pity, it’s very local – we have only Poles living in Poland, which is terrible because it puts the society in a locked position. At the same time, it’s very interesting our history, like the Second World War, the German occupation, the Russian occupation, and suddenly in the 90s we had capitalism, it’s terrible and everybody freaked out and wanted money to buy all of these colourful things, and now the current generation in Poland are extremely international and speak many languages. It’s an interesting mixture and you can talk about it in the movies, more than here in the UK I think, because here or in France everything is so obvious somehow.

Another very important theme is the Catholic Church – as a Catholic growing up yourself, was religion and faith an area you always wanted to explore in film?

MS: Definitely. My parents used to be communists and they were atheists, so I didn’t grow up as a Catholic, then my father switched and then I became a Catholic when I was 14, I was very old. Then the next 10 years until I was 24, I was a Catholic. I was trying to explore religion very seriously, like all the metaphysic and mystic, but then I quite the church, and I was full of ideas. In the beginning when I quite the church I was twenty-something, and I had an obsession in my mind about making a movie of a believer, a priest or somebody who really believes in Jesus, as for me that was extremely interesting, as somehow I passed through and saw it from a close perspective.

Did you therefore have to do much research, or when writing the screenplay was a lot of the material from your own personal experiences?

MS: We did research and I spoke with a few priests. Also I met a man who used to be a priest but he got married, and is a very famous professor of anthropology and he helped a lot and he came to Berlin for the premiere and he appreciated the film. We didn’t do a huge amount of research though, and that’s why I can see that Poland really is a country of paradox, because the reaction is very complex. People from the right wing think it’s terrible, but I expected that, it’s not unique to hear this. But from the other hand, people on the left, they don’t like the film because it’s not radical enough, it doesn’t attack the church enough. Now there’s a gay priest who gave his story to a newspaper, and it’s much more violent than what we showed in the film. It’s another discussion, but he said, ‘I’m a priest and I’m a homosexual and I’m fucking around all the time. I cannot stop myself, I have five or six boys a week’. Comparing that to our film, which is like poetry! A lot of people went to see the film in Poland and we had a good box office, but we had good reviews and bad reviews, but it’s very emotional, people love to discuss it, which is good.

Did you feel any apprehensions when dealing with religion in film, knowing of the potential backlash? Or do you welcome the inevitable debate?

MS: I welcome it. I’ve never been afraid to touch the matter. Nobody did it in Poland and I’m the first one, and I’m fine with this, we should do this somehow in Polish cinema, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense to be in such a religious country. But no, I wasn’t worried.

It must be fascinating for you when travelling across the world at various film festivals, to see how different countries react to the film?

MS: Oh it’s very, very interesting. I’m not travelling that much because I have a small baby and I’m trying to work on my next films, but when I am travelling I always get completely different reactions. For example in London at a screening I went to, it was only young people, and half of them were Polish people and the other half was their English friends, but they all liked the film. Apart from this one Polish, old lady and she was yelling “This is terrible”. It’s so interesting to see their reaction.

Do you find it more interesting to speak to somebody who does like the movie, or somebody who doesn’t?

MS: To be honest, I prefer speaking to the people who love it [laughs]. To explain to somebody who really doesn’t like it, it’s very hard because we are so far away that we can’t really talk, it’s complicated. I try to avoid these people!

Talking of film festivals, you won the Teddy Award in Berlin – that must have been a great moment for you?

MS: Yeah it was amazing, especially that we kept joking with friends that we should get the Teddy Award because we go back to Poland and be like, “Yeah, look at this!” and yeah it happened. It’s a very good award and opens a lot of doors, and it’s a stamp of tolerance and I treat it very seriously. Afterwards we have collected many awards, the film now has more then 10 awards and it’s still travelling. Also, there is a nomination to the European Film Awards which is very cool.

When you win an award like this, does that help you get more creative license when you want to make your next film?

MS: For me it really helped, but from a professional perspective, the best thing was that the film was in competition at Berlin. It’s really helpful because usually it’s so hard to have a film in competition in Berlin, Venice or Cannes, because they take only 15 or 16 movies, and if you are in this selection you have an almost stamp of quality. I think this will make it easier to do the next films now. Also, Elles was very helpful because is sold out in so many countries.

Talking of Elles, both that and In The Name Of deal with corrupt worlds where sexuality are very prevalent themes – what is it about this particular world you wanted to explore?

MS: It was a moment in my life when I was interested in exploring people like this. In Elles it was women’s sexuality, and for me it was a taboo because I haven’t seem many movies about women’s sexuality, so I had a feeling maybe it wasn’t understood well because I showed it only from a woman’s perspective and not too many people understand that. If I did the film now perhaps I would be more intellectual and show more spectrum, but anyway in this, we just loved the story to In the Name Of, the idea of a priest who cannot have sex because he’s not allowed and is celibate, and yet he feels such a huge desire, and for a young man who has never had sex because he comes from a pathological family, so I wanted to show this sexuality and how it awakens. It’s easy to explain because in my experience women grow up sexually when they are around 40, and maybe that’s why all of these issues regarding sexuality were interesting to me because I am in that age group, so I wanted to explore this side of human nature. Now I’ll probably turn to another direction though [laughs].

Was it helpful to have co-written the screenplay with Michal Englert then, and to have that male perspective infused into the script?

MS: Yeah definitely, but we tried not to divide. Sometimes we were laughing because I was more male and he was more female. But yes of course it’s helpful to see how he sees and feels the erotic scenes between two men are like, so yes it was interesting to work with a man.

This film is so much about the lead character Adam, so how did you decide Andrzej Chyra was perfect for this role?

MS: He is one of the most famous Polish actors of his generation, and I used to work with him in small scenes, such as in Elles, and I was always planning on making a special part for him because I knew he deserved it because he is an amazing actor. So I wrote a scenario for Andrzej and I was thinking about him from the beginning.

Is that something you often do?

MS: I will only be doing this from now on. I wrote this part for Andrzej, another part for Mateusz (Kosciukiewicz) and all the other parts for the actors I knew from the beginning were going to be involved. Now I’m writing another script the same and I’m thinking about some actors I want to use because I don’t like casting. I think it’s too hard to judge on casting, it’s an unnatural situation.

You’ve spoken about an upcoming project with Juliette Binoche – can you tell us about that?

MS: There are two projects, one is with Juliette and it’s called SISTERS. It’s an experimental film because it’s based on documentary archives I have at my home. I have loads of archives of conversations with my sister, which was a few years ago. Out of this material I am writing a scenario, and it’s very funny – I think it will be a kind of black comedy, and I found it so interesting to transfer a documentary into a feature. Also there is another small Polish project, again with Michal, as we’re writing together. It’s going to be more about Poland, but also about how people have relations with their bodies.

Do you have any long-term plans to make a film in either the UK or the US?

MS: To be honest I’ve never thought about it because it’s not for me. The producer is always the most important, and I’m afraid the UK is the same. Also the stars… You have to have the stars, and the stars tell you what to do and I cannot imagine. I like the European art house style where you have such freedom and nobody is forcing you to do anything. At the moment I’d like to keep my art house way.

Poland have a really impressive film history – the likes of Polanski, Zanussi, Wajda… Are there any in particular that really inspired you though?

MS: Yeah all of them. Of course I admire Polanski and his work, but there are so many who are inspiring. At the same time, the younger generation are rejecting this, we want to do something different, which is typical. But we are really under the influence of all of these masters of Polish cinema, even sub-consciously. STEFAN PAPE

IN THE NAME OF is on current release at selected cinemas including the CURZON SOHO AND ODEON PANTON STREET, LONDON from 27th September 2013

In The Name Of – W IMIE (2013) Berlinale 2013

Director: Malgoska Szumowska Writers: Malgoska Szumowska and Michal Englert
Cast: Andrzej Chyra, Mateusz Kosciukieiwcz, Lukasz Simlat, Maja Ostaszewska

Malgoska Szumowska’s second outing after the acclaimed Elles centres on Adam, a celibate Catholic priest who works with delinquent teenagers in a village in rural Poland.

As Adam, Andrzej Chyra is well cast and generates a profound benevolence and warmth that’s the nearest feeling to true goodness that one can possibly imagine. He embodies unselfishness, empathy and kindness but also commands respect and authority in a really moving performance. Michal Englert’s soft summery visuals heavily mingled with striking imagery from Christ’s Passion render the hazy bucolic setting in a powerful yet soothing way as Adam’s calming presence gradually deepens into something more heavy and unsettling.

Despite sharing a resonating chemistry with one of the inmates Lukasz, a young simple country lad, Adam rejects his advances and also those of Ewa a blonde alcoholic, stating that he’s already spoken for (by Jesus). But he also experiences moments of despair, repression and lonliness in this moving portrait of confused emotions and abstinence and the journey towards self-discovery and self-acceptance.

With its atmospheric soundtrack this is an absorbing and emotional drama that echoes Brokeback Mountain in its intense and delicate subject-matter. MT

IN THE NAME OF is on general release from 27TH September 2013 AT THE CURZON SOHO AND THE ODEON PANTON STREET.

IN THE NAME OF WON THE TEDDY AWARD AT BERLINALE IN 2013

Van Gogh (1991)

Dir. Maurce Pialat | Cast: Jacques Dutronc, Alexandra London,Gerard Sety, Bernhard Le Coq, Corinne Bourdon, Elizabeth Zylberstein. | France 1991, 158 min. Drama

French director Maurice Pialat (1925-2003) was a maverick: a late starter in film-making – he directed his first feature L’Enfance Nue (Naked childhood – in 1968 at the age of 44. An antagonistic person, he thrived on controversy, on and off the set. His relationship with the French film critics was poisonous: when he received the Palme D’Or in 1987 for Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the sun of Satan) he was roundly booed and retaliated by sticking out his tongue.

Sharing his lack of aesthetic compromise with Bresson (it’s no accident that Under the sun of Satan is based on a novel by Georges Bernanos, whose Mouchette and Diary of a Country Priest were filmed by Bresson). And Pialat was a painter – albeit with little success.

Dialogue-driven and aesthetically rather underwhelming, Van Gogh is well-crafted with a strong central performance from Jacques Dutronc who portrays the last three months of the artist’s life.

In May 1890 Vincent van Gogh arrives at the station of Auvers-sur-Oise, a little village 40 miles away from Paris, where is met by his friend Dr Gachet (Gerard Sety), an amateur collector of works by Cezanne, Renoir and other contemporary French painters. Van Gogh has just left the hospital in Saint Remy, after treatment for physical and mental illness. Even though Gachet wants to look after Van Gogh and admires his works he is wary of him; with good reason as it turns out. Van Gogh stays in a cheap inn, but sees Gachet regularly, meeting and painting his teenage daughter Marguerite (Alexandra London), with whom he forms a romantic bond. Brother Theo, an art dealer, also visits with wife Jo (Corinne Bourdon) at the Gachet place, where they have fun in the garden. Van Gogh works tirelessly, only interrupting his work when friends from Paris arrive, one of them is the Cathy (Elizabeth Zylberstein), who is supposed to be the love of his life. After a night out in Paris with Theo and Marguerite, Van Gogh sinks again into a deep depression and meets a tragic end.

Pialat mistrusted all forms of psychological interpretation. His long shots show what is happening, nothing else. He demystifies Van Gogh and argues, that if the painter had really been that ill, he could not have created so many masterpieces in the last two month of his life. In common with Eustache and Cassavetes, Pialat welcomed confrontation on many levels: On set, he drove the actors mad and even came to blows with many of them.

Pialat resolves many scenes with conflict, particularly those between couples (here Van Gogh/Marguerite and Theo/Jo are arguing constantly and violently. Like all Pialat’s films, Van Gogh is rigorously structured, nothing is left to interpretation. Unsentimental it may be, but the director is not interested in romantisicing the artist: his Van Gogh is a lonely, cantankerous man, unable to express himself in words, only knowing how to confront. Whilst he is not a misogynist, his relationships with women are mainly exploitative, at home in chaos and catastrophe – not unlike the director, whose films all have an underlying autobiographical tone. AS

VAN GOGH IS OUT ON DVD/BLU and a selection of his films are now on MUBI | COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA.

Dracula (1958) *** On DVD and Blu-Ray

Director: Terence Fisher

Script: Jimmy Sangster (Bram Stoker)

Cast: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh, John Van Eyssen, Valerie Gaunt

UK 84mins 1958 Horror

Terence Fisher came to filmmaking extraordinarily late, directing his first feature at the grand old age of 43, through the J Arthur Rank Studios. And he helmed a fair few films with some notable stars such as Jean Simmons, Dirk Bogarde and Herbert Lom.

However, his big break came when in 1957, Hammer Studios asked him to direct a remake of Frankenstein, aged 52. The Curse of Frankenstein was a box office smash, sealing his fate as the horror go-to guy for the rest of his career. This Hammer debut also created bankable careers of Cushing and Lee, who reunited for Dracula the same year, made also basically for peanuts.

John Van Eyssen plays Jonathan Harker, the man on a mission to kill Dracula under the pretence of being a librarian employed by Lee’s Count Dracula to catalogue his extensive library. When the cavalry fails, it’s Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing who goes in to clear up the mess.

The film has definitely aged, in terms of style and content. The acting style is more theatrical than today’s tastes will allow for without parody and, by today’s standards, the content is staid, the effects naïve, but the power and commitment of the performances, particularly Cushing and Lee are undeniable. At the time of its release, this kind of horror with attendant bloodletting was revolutionary and caused quite a stir. Something almost unthinkable now, when one considers the gallons of blood used in Chainsaw Massacre 3D, or the Saw franchise.

It is however heartening to see that it has been singled out for restorative treatment for many more generations to enjoy. I’ve no idea what sort of condition the original was in and there are still a few places at which one can tell the film must have been in a parlous state, but in the main, it feels very fresh and clean. The two disk DVD has an armoury of extras, including alternative versions of the full film. I suspect in the end this may be one for the interested and the collector, but a fine piece of work nevertheless by filmmakers, cast and restorers alike.

A classic then, but a classic ‘B’ horror, not on a par with a Lawrence Of Arabia say, so not without interest, but it was never made to look classy. This is Hammer House of Horror’s Dracula, after all, for Satan’s Sake. AT

DRACULA IS OUT ON DVD AND BLU-RAY

FOUR BRAND NEW FEATURETTES.

DRACULA REBORN. New 30 min. featurette about the film’s creation and history, featuring, among others: Jimmy Sangster, Kim Newman, Mark Gatiss, Jonathan Rigby and Janina Faye (Tania in the film).

RESURRECTING DRACULA; New 20 min. featurette about the film’s restoration, from the BFI’s 2007 restoration through to the integration of “lost” footage, featuring interviews with key staff at the BFI, Molinare and Deluxe142. Also covers the February 2012 world premiere of Hammer’s interim restored version including “vox pop” interviews with fans after the event.

THE DEMON LOVER: CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING ON DRACULA New 30 min. featurette.

CENSORING DRACULA; New 10 min. featurette on the original cuts to the film ordered by the British Board of Film Censors.

Metro Manila (2013) ***** Sundance London 2013

Director/Script: Sean Ellis

Cast: Jake Macapagal, Althea Vega, John Arcilla, Ana Abad-Santos, Miles Canapi, Moises Magisa

90min Crime Drama UK

British director, Sean Ellis, started life as a fashion stills photographer in the nineties. His film debut was born out of a short of the same name Cashback (2006). His second feature, a critically-acclaimed psychological thriller The Broken (2008) starred Richard Jenkins and Lena Hedy.

Metro Manila contains no famous actors and although the initial treatment generated keen interest, his quest for authenticity and his desire to shoot the film in local Tagalog language made the project a hard sell to financiers. The story centres on a young couple of economic migrants with two small kids who move to the violent urban conglomeration of Metro Manila from the countryside, in a bid to survive.

Fortunately for us all, Ellis succeeded in filming and financing his endeavour and the native language adds authenticity and an exotic edge to this first rate crime drama which completely transcends its need for subtitles, such is the power of the cinematic narrative, and is one of the best thrillers I’ve seen for some time.

To illustrate the extreme measures to which the central character, Oscar Ramirez, is forced to go to, Sean Ellis took, as inspiration, the true story of one Reginald Chua whose father was murdered by rivals envious of the success of his silk factory. Eventually, their threatening behaviour to his workers became so serious that we was forced to shut the factory and go bankrupt. Facing mounting debts, he boarded a plane and forced the passengers at gunpoint to hand over their money. He then jumped out with a parachute made from the silk of his father’s factory.

Poetic in feel and sumptuously shot, Metro Manila is a beautiful thriller: Sean Ellis’s skill with his lenses, the lush tropical countryside, and the gentle-looking Philipino leads Jake Macapagal (Oscar) and Althea Vega (Mai), who give natural performances and their lovely children make this a pleasurable watch that feels refreshingly thoughtful as a counterpoint to the mounting suspense it generates.

Metro Manila starts as a quietly realistic story set amid the paddie fields as the family leave their farmland and set out on a colourful bus journey to the city. But a sinister edge soon sets in when they fall amongst thieves a few hours into their arrival they are firstly swindled by a rogue landlord and then turned out into the street. Greedy employers exploit their honest naivety, seeing them as a soft touch and setting out to take advantage of their lack of guile. It’s a sad state of affairs: Mai is working as a hostess in a lap-dancing club and Oscar partners a corrupt guard dealing with laundered cash for a security firm. They find themselves in a filthy flat on the slippery slope to hell with only their love for each other and their faith in God to redeem them.

Proceedings turn increasingly tense as Oscar’s job feels like a game of Russian Roulette due to the mercurial and unpredictable character of his shady partner Ong (John Arcilla). His lack of shrewdness threatens to land him in deep water but Oscar is no fool and manages to stay ahead of the game as the final denouement is ingeniously unwrapped in the final seat-clenching moments. You’ll never guess the ending. MT

Metro Manila won the Audience Award for best drama at Sundance Film Festival 2013 and BEST FOREIGN FILM at the BIFA 2013. It is the British submission for BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM AT 2014 ACADEMY AWARDS 2013

From Up On Poppy Hill (2011) DVD BLU

Director: Goro Miyazaki Writer: Tetsuro Sayama and others

91mins Studio Ghibli Animation

Though famed for their fantastical creations, Japanese animators Studio Ghibli have also displayed a unique ability across their 28 year history, for placing the viewer in a particular time and place in modern history within their productions. Be that World War One in Porco Rosso, or the end of the Second World War in Grave of the Fireflies, they depict a world we know so well, yet enriching it with fantasy elements and the enchantment for which they have become so well renowned. Their latest picture From Up On Poppy Hill is no different, this time taking us back to Japan in 1964, ahead of the forthcoming Tokyo Olympic Games.

In director Goro Miyazaki’s (son of co-founder Hayao) sophomore Ghibli endeavour, we begin in Yokohama, following student Umi (Sarah Bolger) as she cares for her family while her mother is away. Struggling to overcome the untimely death of her father in the Korean War, she soon starts to rediscover some meaning to her life, when she meets the anarchic and enigmatic Shun (Anton Yelchin). Focusing primarily on saving the latter’s clubhouse from the wrecking ball, the pair develop feelings for one another – although the situation grows somewhat untenable when some unexpected information is brought to light.

With a voice cast also consisting of the likes of Christina Hendricks, Jamie Lee Curtis and Bruce Dern, From Up On Poppy Hill provides a rich, political and social context to proceedings, and though the core of this story is a romantic tale, the setting adds more poignancy and substance to the narrative. Such context enhances the realism of the piece, as although this is as magical as one may expect, by placing this tale in real circumstances, it makes it seem all the more naturalistic. Such a sentiment only heightens the emotional aspects of the picture too, because the more we believe in this tale, the more invested we are. It’s certainly an easy backdrop to associate with, what with a big city gearing itself up for such a prestigious sporting occasion, and the political implications such an event can arouse. Somewhat familiar, isn’t it?

In the meantime, the animation is about as good as Ghibli have been able to boast, with beautiful scenery complementing the story. The varying, picturesque images of the clouds and vibrantly colourful skies form an alluring backdrop, adding to the romanticism of the piece. In a typical Ghibli manner, every single mundane task appears magical and bewitching, as even the scene where the family sit down to eat breakfast has an air of enchantment around it. Such scenes are embellished with a typically witty script, as a feature that carries several dryly humorous one-liners.

Though not quite reaching the heights of some of the classic Ghibli productions, this remains an improvement on their most recent title Arrietty, in that this has more originality to the story as a bewitching piece that tells a touching and heartfelt tale, and one that is masterfully dealt with. With a plethora of twists and turns, at one point Shun remarks, “this is like a cheap melodrama”: and though the narrative may indicate such a notion, Miyazaki does an almighty job to ensure this not be the case, as the themes are dealt with delicately and triumphantly. But then again, it’s Studio Ghibli: could we really have expected anything less? SP

FROM UP ON POPPY HILL IS ON DVD/BLU AND WILL BE POPULAR WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF DIRECTOR AND ANIMATION LEGEND HAYAO MIYAZAKI.

Classe Tous Risques (1964) ****

Director: Claude Sautet

Cast: Lino Ventura, Stan Krol, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sandra Milo, Marcel Dalio, Simone France

110min French with subtitles

Claude Sautet is better known for his dramas Un Coeur En Hiver and Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, but in it’s own way, Classe Tous Risques is a significant thriller of the late fifties that launched Jean Paul Belmondo, to be immediately overshadowed by his breakout hit Breathless, as the tsunami of French New Wave rolled in making him into a star after this screen debut.

Sombre in tone and impressively shot in black and white, this quietly brutal road movie with its central theme of dishonour and broken loyalty in the criminal fraternity, has Lino Venturi in the lead as Abel Davis, a square-set, hardened criminal living in Italy, who needs one last job to retire so he can take his family back home to France. And how many times have we heard that before?: he should have known better.

After losing his partner in crime (Stan Krol) in a twist of fate as they reach the French coast, he teams up with a small time thief Eric Stark (Belmondo), who drives him to Paris.

France of the fifties is grittily depicted here and Paris takes very much a central role still recovering from the hardship of the war days. Tightly written with some witty moments helping to lift the overall mood of grim inevitability, it is accompanied by George Delerue’s atmospheric score. He went on to compose the theme tunes to A Man for All Seasons and The Day of The Jackal and has just written the soundtrack to current hit: Frances Ha.

The female characters here know their place in film noir is to be cool and simmering or proud and coquettish in support roles well-performed by Simone France as Lino’s wife Therese, Sandra Milo as Belmondo’s Liliane and a wonderful vignette from Evelyne Ker as the daughter of Gibelin.

Classe Tous Risques was a screen adaption of the novel by real life crim, Jose Giovanni, who had worked with the French Resistance and was at one point sentenced to death. His particular experience lends a touch of grim authenticity to the piece, preventing it from drifting into cliche. If you’re looking for a solid French thriller of the old school then this will fit the bill. MT

The Artist and The Model (2012) ***

Director: Fernando Trueba Writers: Fernando Trueba, Jean-Claude Carriere

Jean Rochefort as Marc Cros,

Aida Folch as Mercè, Claudia Cardinale as Léa Cros, Chus Lampreave as María

with Götz Otto as Werner, Mateo Deluz as Henri, Martin Gamet as Pierre and Christian Sinniger as Emile

Marc Cros was a French sculptor who associated with Cézanne and Matisse. In Fernando Trueba’s arthouse drama, we meet him during the 1940s working quietly from his studio in an idyllic corner of the French Pyrenees and married to the vivacious and supportive Lea (an exuberant Claudia Cardinale).

Lanqourous and lushly photographed in black and white, Jean Rochefort gives a masterful performance as the ageing Cros, who slowly develops a bond with a local Catalan girl Merce (Aida Foch), who has recently escaped the Civil War in Spain and with Lea’s blessing, becomes his model. Not just a pretty face, or a naked body for that matter, she revives the old man’s dormant creativity and keeps him in his place, gradually emerging as a sharp-witted accomplice with a keen knowledge of the local countryside which she uses to help Pierre (Martin Gamet), a local resistance fighter. An an historian friend, Werner (Gotz Otto), also visits the studio to discuss work and Chus Lampreave injects a spark of comedy as the housekeeper Maria.

If you’ve recently seen Gilles Bourdos’s film RENOIR, there are similarities here in that Trueba and his co-writer, Jean-Claude Carriere, one again refuse to let any real dramatic punch intrude into the innate lanquidity of the storyline so although Daniel Vilar’s liquid velvet visuals are endlessly seductive to the senses, THE ARTIST AND THE MODEL ultimately fails to engage the emotions. MT

Call Girl (2012) *** DVD/BLU

Director: Mikael Marcimain

Writer: Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten

Cast: Sofia Karemyr, Simon J Berger, Josefin Asplund, Pernilla August, David Dencik

140mins Thriller Sweden with subtitles

This intelligent Swedish art house feature joins the recent influx of Scandinavian films to flood our cinema screens. Along with The Killing and The Bridge, Call Girl makes challenging viewing not least for its subject-matter: the grooming of young girls to work as prostitutes for top politicians in seventies Stockholm. The city emerges as a bedrock of misogynist culture and child abuse emerges in the run-up to a scandal-ridden general election.

Shifting between two plot lines, the story focuses on how Iris (Sofia Karemyr) and Sonja (Josefin Asplund) gradually find themselves the victim of Pernilla August’s shrewd business woman, Dagmar, who operates a call girl agency with clients drawn from the top echelons of the local political and police elite.

John Sandberg (Simon J Berger) is hired to look into Dagmar’s activities but gradually his operation burgeons into a full-blown criminal investigation encompassing members of his own bureau, and in so doing casts a pall over other shady aspects of society which are inexorably drawn into the proceedings. It’s a tightly-scripted and skillful piece of filmmaking underpinned by a well-put-together seventies aesthetic and some truly excellent performances particularly from the two leads.

Told in a way that’s devoid of drama or sensationalism, it cleverly portrays a society where victims from the bottoms rungs of society are left without voice or proper recourse to justice; this absorbing drama is as chilling, dark and long as January in Stockholm. MT

CALL GIRL IS OUT ON DVD/BLU FROM 28 SEPTEMBER 2013 PRICE: £15.99 courtesy of Artificial Eye.

Breathe In (2013) DVD/BLU

Director: Drake Doremus Writers: Drake Doremus, Ben Yorke Jones

Cast: Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Kyle MacLachlan, Amy Ryan, Ben Shenkman

98mins US Drama

Much like his preceding feature Like Crazy, director Drake Doremus returns with yet another well-executed romantic drama featuring a young English girl finding love in the States. However where Breathe In differs, in that it focuses in on a more sophisticated and civilised coming together of two lost souls, rather than an idealistic, naïve first love between mere youngsters. It plays out almost as a reflection of Doremus’s natural progression as a filmmaker in what is a richer and more refined piece of filmmaking than his previous endeavour.

Felicity Jones plays Sophie, a foreign exchange student hailing from England, who is stationed in an upstate New York home with her music teacher Keith (Guy Pearce), his wife (Amy Ryan) and teenage daughter Lauren (Mackenzie Davis). While the timid and somewhat precocious Sophie first catches Keith’s eye with her exceptional piano playing ability, the pair soon develop feelings for each other in a potential romance that could break up this family dynamic and change the lives of those within it forever.

Once again Doremus has managed to draw incredibly naturalistic performances from his cast, whilst a maturing Jones is as alluring as always, further enhancing her reputation as one of the more beguiling screen presences in contemporary cinema. She brings a fragility that is sincere and endearing. Pearce also impresses, as one of few actors who is efficient at moving between genres effortlessly, adapting to a low-budget romance flick as he does to the science fiction blockbusters where he has made his name.

The realism is richly enhanced by the organically implemented score, where our characters’ own musical performances dictate the tempo and atmosphere of the picture, and complements what plays out on screen. The musical vibe here is classical, and this is reflected in the contemplative ambiance that echoes the narrative. What starts as pensive, slowly gets more intense and dramatic, as in many classical pieces.

The build-up to Sophie and Keith’s romance is subtle, yet we see more than enough to believe in it, and though not much actually occurs, it’s the potential repercussions of what may happen that maintains the compelling edge. The theme of romance between a foreigner and a local is effectively portrayed, as it provides a loneliness to proceedings. Sophie is missing her family and friends and feels isolated and lost in another culture, which breeds a vulnerability to her. However it also works in reverse adding an intensity to the romance with a prevalent ‘nothing to lose’ aspect: often typical in a holiday romance that succeeds from its exhilarating spontaneity.

There is a determinable ending in sight however, and though the relationship is extremely realistic and has you drawn in completely, you hold little hope for its longevity, as a foreboding feeling sweeps over the entire picture. Though it would be intriguing to see Doremus tackle a different genre next and explore relatively new avenues, if he was to simply make another picture much like Breathe In and Like Crazy, it certainly wouldn’t be the end of the world. STEFAN PAPE

BREATHE IN IS OUT ON DVD AND BLU-RAY ON 0CTOBER 7TH 2013

Hors Les Murs (2013)

Director: Daniel Lambert Writer: Daniel Lambert

Matila Malliarakis, Guillaume Gouix, David Salles, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin

98mins French with English subtitles Drama

The recent batch of gay films has become more romantic and less sexually explicit in tone (Keep The Lights On, Weekend) and this fine example and directorial debut from Belgian writer, Daniel Lambert, tugs at the heartstrings like any classic love story. The thrust here is on the heady mix of power over tender vulnerability and makes appealing viewing for art house audiences although it’s not quite mainstream fare.

Paulo (Matila Malliarakis) is living with his girlfriend Anka but their sex life has pretty much ground to a halt. When he meets Illr (Guillaume Gouix) the chemistry is palpable and he is immediately seduced by Illr’s forcefully masculine approach. Exasperated by the lack of bedroom action, Anka throws Paulo out forcing him to move in with Illr despite a certain reluctance on Illr’s part. The two begin a convincing and passionate relationship in which Paulo very much forces the pace for commitment. As the dynamic between them reaches considerable depth and complexity the narrative develops with a well-crafted and involving plot line and authentic characterisations.

An atmospheric music selection from Canada’s Valleys band sets just the right tone for this bittersweet affair and Matthieu Poirot-Delpech’s sensual and distinctive widescreen visuals give poignancy to this indie drama marking Lambert out as a filmmaker with a promising future. MT

BEYOND THE WALLS IS ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 26TH AUGUST 2013

Circumstance (2012)

Director Maryam Keshavarz

Cast: Nikohl Bosheri, Sarah Kazemy

105mins Drama

Politics and sapphic desire go hand in hand in this coming of age drama from Iranian director, Maryam Keshavarz. It starts off as a fairly formulaic affair focusing on a group of friends kicking against the system of contemporary Iran but soon edges towards a strikingly sensual and provocative story of forbidden love between two lesbians.

Atafeh (Nikohl Bosheri) and Shireen Sarah Kazemy) are clearly in love. Both coming from enlightened backgrounds of affluent Tehran society, Shireen’s parents were victims of the strict regime, Atefeh’s are a professional couple. Thirty years ago they would have had the glamorous lifestyle of young Westerners but that was pre-revolution and nowadays they could be arrested for holding hands. But when Atafeh’s brother Mehran (Rezo Sixo Safai) turns fundamentalist as a throw-back from addiction and starts laying down shariah law with predictable consequences for all concerned, the picture becomes darker.

Strong images of female discrimination drive the narrative forward and the girls are subtle and convincing as friends and lovers but the standout performance comes from Rezo in his slow and and sinister transformation from sensitive musician to controlling religious bigot.

DVD release on 24th September 2012.

[youtube id=”leqn3HTytmg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Hors Les Murs (2012) Beyond The Walls

Director: Daniel Lambert Writer: Daniel Lambert

Matila Malliarakis, Guillaume Gouix, David Salles, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin

98mins French with English subtitles Drama

[youtube id=”qkLG3no66K8″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

The recent batch of gay films has become more romantic and less sexually explicit in tone (Keep The Lights On, Weekend) and this fine example and directorial debut from Belgian writer, Daniel Lambert, tugs at the heartstrings like any classic love story. The thrust here is on the heady mix of power over tender vulnerability and makes appealing viewing for art house audiences although it’s not quite mainstream fare.

BEYOND THE WALLS IS ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 26TH AUGUST 2013

Lovelace (2013)

Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

Script: Andy Belin

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone

92min US Drama

[youtube id=”4WeFol7PWm0″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

In this compelling account of how a vulnerable young woman becomes the porn star Linda Lovelace, there are a some dynamite performances. Amanda Seyfried takes centre stage as the delicately elfin Linda with her mop of tousled curls. The product of a dysfunctional home-life that distances her from parents (Sharon Stone is suberb as her buttoned-up, embittered mother), she is thrown into the arms of Peter Sarsgaard’s disarmingly sexy but sleazy hustler and manager, Chuck Traynor. Taking her to New York as his wife, he then peddles her legendary ‘bedroom skills’ to porn directors Gerard Damiano (Hank Azaria and Butchie Peraino (Bobby Carnevale) to create the phenomenon Deep Throat (1972): a money-spinning film that created a career for both of them and launched the era of ‘Porno Chic’, bringing pornography into mainstream popular culture.

Through a clever narrative structure, the truth behind the porn legend is gradually revealed in the second half of the film where the tone shifts from light-hearted comedy to disturbing and moving drama. We discover the extent of the abuse that Linda suffered to achieve this financial dream for all those involved (accept herself) and how she eventually manages to move on with courage and dignity. A really entertaining piece of filmmaking that really captures the spirit of the seventies made all the more memorable by its upbeat score featuring hits from T.S.O.P. and George McCrae’s ‘Rock Your Baby’ (1974). MT

LOVELACE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19TH JULY 2013

Wadjda (2012)

Director/Writer: Haifaa Al Mansour

Cinematography: Lutz Reitemeier

Cast: Reem Abdullah, Ahd, Waad Mohammed

98mins Arabic with subtitles

A hit at Venice 2012, Wadjda is a jewel in the crown of contemporary Middle Eastern film. The first full-length feature to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, it’s also directed by a woman. Despite the wealth of that country, one can only imagine how difficult it would be to raise the finance for such a venture and it was. So the funds came from Europe and the feature was backed by the Sundance Institute.

There’s nothing worthy about Wadjda. She’s a fiercely independent ten-year-old, as bright as a button and way ahead of her time. Living with her mother in a dusty suburb of Riyadh, she goes to school but sees her studies as a means to an end: to win the school prize so she can buy a bike and race the boys instead of taking the taxi provided by her father. He visits occasionally but has another ‘wife-in-waiting’, hoping that this one will provide him with the prize of a son. But Wadjda would rather be making wristbands and recording music discs and selling them for a profit than waiting to be married off to a local man.

Al Mansour’s clever script reflects every subtle nuance of Muslim society and Waad Mohammed’s charismatic turn as Wadjda is full of insight, wit and cheekiness marking her out to be a talent in the making. Supported by a cast of newcomers and seasoned actors: her onscreen mother Reem Abdullah and Ahd as headmistress Ms Hussa give performances of considerable allure. Lutz Reitemeier’s cinematography brings clarity and precision to the visuals.

The story is set against the backdrop of a society where women are the isolated chattels of men and merely exist to provide offspring. Woman are highly competitive with each other, gossiping and policing the sisterhood’s moral and r

eligious probity with an eagle eye and a sharp tongue. And whereas in Western society women compete in a machiavellian way for desirable males, in Saudi society this competition is right out there in the open and their only raison d’être in life.

Wadjda is a touching and playful portrait of a spunky little girl but more than that it’s a fascinating insight into a society with medieval values in the 21st century, and not all are to be dismissed as outdated. But even after all the dust has settled on its novelty value, this is a drama to be reckoned with on the international arthouse scene. MT

WADJDA is on general release from 19th July 2013. Haifaa Al Mansour will head the Dino De Laurentis Jury at VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2013

Satellite Boy (2012) East End Film Festival 2013

Director/Writer: Catriona McKenzie

Cast: David Gulpilil, Cameron Wallaby, Joseph Pedley, Rohanna Angus, Dean Daley-Jones

Australia 2012; 90 min English Genre: Drama

Catriona McKenzie’s feature debut, Satellite Boy, is a fine addition to the canon of Australian films and, like so many, showcases the enduringly magnetic presence of David Gulpilil. She has made several short films and indeed, directed serial television in Australia prior to this but took a while before deciding to make her feature debut.

[youtube id=”vNTl1mnW084″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Gulpilil came to prominence in Nic Roeg’s 1970 classic Walkabout and here, 42 years later, he passes the baton in another coming of age story, Aboriginal style. 12-year-old Cameron Wallaby was a boy playing in the road before this, his acting inauguration, and brings with him a naturalism and a very real sense of where Aborigines are now in their relation to ‘civilisation’.

Satellite Boy is a sensitively drawn depiction of something that could so easily have tipped over into mawkish or derivative fodder. The two young leads are engaging and their motivations and actions certainly believable in this rite of passage, à la Rob Reiner’s excellent 1986 Stand by Me. Where it differs though and, to the writer/director’s credit, travels in a different direction, is that her film is not only about the brotherhood of boyhood friendship, but about real traditions, about the land and our immutable connection to it and the danger to us of losing sight of that.

Catriona describes the film as a love letter to her father, now passed away; an effort to explain that she now understands his process and what it was he was wishing to pass onto her, too young as she was to grasp it at the time. I would say she succeeded. AT

SATELLITE BOY IS SCREENING AT THE BARBICAN CENTRE FROM 5TH JULY 2013

Tabu A Story of the South Seas (1931) DVD Blu-Ray

Director/Writer: F W Murnau and Robert Flaherty

Cast: Matahi, Matahi Hitu, Jules, Kong Ah, Anna Chevalier, Jean Jules

80min German Adventure Drama

[youtube id=”BmHQjE_YCGw” width=”600″ height=”350″]
The south sea Island paradise of Bora Bora is the setting for this picturesque lyrical love story of a Polynesian legend. F.W. Murnau invited leading documentarist Robert Flaherty (Man of Aran) to collaborate on an experiment featuring a cast of island natives (“and a few half-castes and Chinese”!!!). It won an Oscar for Best Cinematography thanks to the efforts of Floyd Crosby who delicately captures the exotic and untouched feel of this untainted territory in black and white. It turned out to be a labour of love for the director as well as those depicted in the film. In a weird twist of fate, F W Murnau was killed in a car accident before the film premiered having financed it himself and fallen out with Flaherty over script issues.

Bathed in sunshine under the sheltering palms, TABU plays like an exotic thirties travelogue with its lilting Hollywood soundtrack composed by Hugo Riesenfeld. A sultry native girl, Reri, (Chevalier) is declared ‘tabu’ and untouchable by her fellow tribespeople and promised to the local deity. But a pearl fisherman, Matahi, falls for her charms and they escape to a nearby French colony where they are forced to adapt to Western life with tragic consequences. ‘Tapu’ is a Polynesian word from which we get the English ‘Taboo”.

In 1994 The film was declared “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Scenes of nudity that had been previously banned by Paramount were reinstated in the DVD transfer which includes:

– Commentary with R Dixon Smith and Brad Stevens;

– 15-minute Germany documentary about TABU by Luciano Berriatua;

– Newly presented outtakes from the original shoot;

– An interview with Floyd Crosby;

The original story treatments written by Murnau and Flaherty for TABU

RELEASED ON DVD AND BLU-RAY FROM 24TH JUNE 2013 AT MASTERS OF CINEMA

Paradise: Hope (2012) Paradies: Hoffnung

Paradise: Hope is the second feature of the Ulrich Seidl’s trilogy of films focusing on female stories in a contemporary Austria. This one is based Teresa’s 13 year-old daughter Melanie, the 13-year-old daughter of Paradise: Love‘s character: Teresa. Like many young girls in their teens these days, she’s verging on obese and is dispatched to a health camp for teenage fatties in the Austrian Alps, while Teresa goes in search of sex in Kenya. Once there the homesick Melanie soon finds herself sharing a room with another overweight teen Verena, (Verena Lehbauer) and exchanging sweets and salacious stories about their experiences with the opposite sex. There’s nothing new here about the sex-tinged gossip, it’s much the same as it was in my day but the obesity is what really stands out in these contemporary teenagers.

Ulrich Seidl uses the same observational style here which works so well in Paradise: Love, using minimal dialogue and lingering camera shots that leave space to speculate and enjoy his darkly humorous and provocative narrative, it’s a style that works particularly well here leaving the audience to engage with the characters and the mood of his narrative which is light yet unsettling.

During the regular medical examinations, Melanie (Lenz) starts to develop a plausible yet inappropriate attraction to the in-house doctor, a man in his fifties. It’s a brilliant and highly inventive turn by Joseph Lorenz as Arzt. He doesn’t come across as a family man and could almost be a player, but Seidl leaves this very much to our imagination and in the process creates a seductive image that provides a clever counterpoint to Teresa’s tomboys in Paradise: Love.

Melanie gradually emerges as a vulnerable character with a well-developed sense of her own sexuality and ability to seduce and beguile: she an utterly normal teenager. It’s a poignant and moving portrait of first love. The strange chemistry that between her and the doctor brings an elements of suspense and titillation to the proceedings leaving us to speculate on how the story will progress; in other words: who will seduce whom? The outcome is dark and disturbing but not as you would expect.

The other male lead is the archetypal sports trainer (Michael Thomas) who is only interested in exercising his ego and comes across as rather a sad figure to whose draconian authority the girls soon subvert to with a mixture of tolerance and collective covert mockery. Nestling in its placid and orderly Alpine setting, the ‘Clinic’ is a perfectly functioning model of perfection for normal teens ruled over by dysfunctional role models. Just scratch the surface and latent rebellion lurks in every corner and corridor, pointing at some very real concerns beyond. MT

The Iceman (2013) ***

Dir: Ariel Vromen | Cast: Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, James Franco, Ray Liotta | 103min US Thriller

Every so often you get a central performance that far outweighs the overall quality of the film itself. Take Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, or pretty much any film Daniel Day-Lewis has appeared in, and now we have another entry into that exclusive list, as Michael Shannon turns in a remarkably harrowing performance in Ariel Vromen’s biopic of notorious contract killer Richard Kuklinski. A performance that does enough to ensure The Iceman, though flawed, remains a commendable crime thriller worth seeking out.

Beginning in 1986, we witness a weary and discontented Kuklinski, having finally been arrested after what is feared to be over 100 contracted murders. The ageing killer then proceeds to recount his life tale, explaining how this innocent youngster became one of the most feared assassins of all time. Kuklinski had a loving wife (Winona Ryder) and two young daughters, and while they believed he was making a success of himself in the financial world, he had in fact been recruited by crime lord Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta) to take out hits on his behalf. As the money began to pour in and Kuklinski developed a taste for it, he spiralled further into a dark and dangerous world, while managing to keep his lifestyle a secret from his adoring family.

In what is an intense character study, Shannon pulls out all of the stops in his performance, fully embodying the role at hand. He plays Kuklinski with a guarded nature, disallowing any of his emotions to filter through to the viewer, though every now and again he lets you in, which feels so precious given its rarity. Physically he is perfect casting too, as his gangly demeanour adds to the chilling aspects of the role, while he has an intensity that prevents the viewer from ever taking their eyes off our protagonist. Shannon plays him as an empathetic character, which is imperative as we need to fear and sympathise with Kuklinski in equal measure.

There is an issue, however, with the crafting of the character itself, and as strong as our lead performance is, by the time the credits roll, we still don’t feel as though we know Kuklinski particularly well. This effectively puts us in the same shoes as his wife Deborah, unable to comprehend him, or to genuinely understand his motivation. We do touch upon his childhood and relationship with his brother (Stephen Dorff), yet we merely scratch the surface, and rarely get to the bottom of these issues, perhaps proving that tackling such a convoluted character over his entire lifespan is too ambitious a task for Vromen. In a sense, this tale may have actually been of more benefit had it been told from the perspective of Deborah instead.

The Iceman struggles in that Vromen doesn’t quite know what his film is hoping to be: half mob flick, half family drama, falling carelessly between the two. In a sense this is reflective of Kuklinski’s life itself, yet the film does lack direction as a result. Although feeling like a picture we’ve seen countless times before, there remains plenty to be admired about The Iceman, with enough in here to suggest that a bright future in Hollywood beckons for our budding director Vromen. STEFAN PAPE.

THE ICEMAN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7TH JUNE 2013

Mathieu Kassovitz – Film Director

Mathieu Kassovitz is a French actor and filmmaker with several artistic and commercial successes under his belt and, at only 45, a glittering future ahead of him. He wrote and directed La Haine (Hate, 1995), a highly-acclaimed yet controversial film that delves into themes of racial hatred, violence, and police brutality. The film won the Cesar for Best Film and won him Best Director at Cannes in 1995.

He later directed Purple Rivers (2000), a police detective thriller starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel, another commercial success in France, and Gothika (2003), a fantasy thriller that enabled him to finance his more personal outing Babylon Babies. Kassovitz set up a production company MNP Entreprise in 2000 responsible for a number of co-pros including Avida (2006) in which he also stars.

Andrew Rajan spoke to him in London at the UK premiere of his latest outing REBELLION which he both stars in and directs. It’s an action-packed war film based on a true story of French commandos up against tribes in New Caledonia, a French territory.

Q How would you describe REBELLION for those only familiar with (your breakout success) La Haine?

MK As a grown up version of La Haine [laughter]. Less welcoming or accessible, still about brutality, the same kind of energy and message.

Q You seem happy to sit at odds with mainstream politics.. a revisionist view..

MK Revisionist… you need to be careful with words like that… [laughter]

Being a director is being able to tell stories and there are very many, but the true ones that you only hear one voice, one side and (then) you discover that there is another… so all of a sudden, what you have been told you find is not the whole story. There is nothing more fascinating than being able to show that to people.

That’s what historians are here for. As a director, if you take it seriously hen you become a reporter and the movie becomes like a very important piece of journalism, but the difference (with) a magazine is that a movie is here to stay.

So, when you are saying something with which you are able to revise history, or point of view, or… way of thinking, it is the best thing you can do… you cannot get a bigger kick than that. Because you aren’t only going to make a movie, but you are going to say something and reveal something and that is something very important.

Of course I feel very comfortable like that, it is how I am, not only in movies, but in everyday life; I like to confront ideas and to shock people, so movies are a great vehicle for that.

Q How has the film been received in France and on the island?

MK It’s a hard film for people to deal with, even for France. We were talking with one of your colleagues, about “Bloody Sunday”. Even now, the British are very uncomfortable with that story; the audience still has a problem with admitting that (the soldiers) went that far. I know this story.. I know it really well, but this story is 20 years ago and 25,000km away and… who gives a shit? That kind of movie requires patience and intelligence. I am trying to get the audience to be smart about it and think.. I designed a film to get the audience right into the centre of it, right into Philippe’s Legorjus’ shoes so they can experience it and say ‘what would I have done in his shoes?’

It’s a difficult movie to sell; best reviews ever, but no one went to see it in France. I understand, when you are down, you don’t want to hear the government is lying.. I don’t want to hear it all the time. And people want to laugh. I get that.

But it was really strange. I’ve never had such good reviews and (yet) no one went to see it. I thought a French audience would see it… but French people are not French any more. Five years of Sarkozy has just killed our spirit… and I don’t feel that any more. We aren’t French any more. A year and a half of (President) Hollande has not brought it back either, so.. we’re not the French people we were before…

New Caledonia is going to vote for its independence and I hope that the movie is going to be revealed then and people will think…. But you do need to sit down for two hours and think when you watch this and that is not what movies do today. Difficult and very subtle (film)… I’m a little sad… that it didn’t do well- I am very happy I did it, I am very happy with the movie- but just because it didn’t do well, it is just going to make it harder for any director wanting to do another movie like that.

Q Would you embark on another movie like that again?

MK I’m burned out right now. Ten years of my life and no one goes to see it? Why? Why would I put another ten years of my life to another project like that? That nobody cares about.

But people ask how I found it. I didn’t go out to find that story, that story found me. You stumble over it. That kind of story it doesn’t come along every day. You need to cross paths with it, be it a news article or whatever, but you need to find it, if you don’t you won’t have that kind of story to tell.

Right now, I am working on Hollywood, so I am doing the exact opposite… I am resting my brain and building a good muscle tone [laughter] and my tan.

Q How have the Kanaks reacted to it? Has it been therapeutic for them?

MK Yes, they’ve seen it. It was censored out there because the theatre owners were scared that people would burn the theatre down. And there was some politics involved there too, so that was a way to hide it and not to show it- to delay the screening yet again.

Q Did you expect these kinds of responses out there?

MK No.. No, I made a movie that didn’t show many things.. If I knew that was going to happen, I would have made a way harsher movie- for the French government. Here, I didn’t show torture, didn’t really show the violence.. I didn’t want to go that far.. I made it that it was balanced.. so I wouldn’t have those problems of censorship.

But people also say I am Partisan… people say the film is partisan and that I agree with the Kanak point of view from the get-go… the Story- with a big ‘S’, is that the French Army came a killed people. So, there are victims and in the Military too, there are victims also and you have to explain how and why it happened but there are no two sides to that story… some people can be on the side of the military. I didn’t expect that- we really worked hard… What I really want to do, when I say I want intelligent people to see the film, is have the Military see this film and the people responsible to see it I don’t want to shock them, or slap them in the face, but even by trying to be subtle and (respectful), they still can’t accept it, it’s too much for them.

Q How does Philippe feel about the film, was he involved much?

MK Very much, as soon as I started working with the Kanak, they were like, why not. I started working with them in 2001 and with Philippe from about 2003, so he was very much involved. I actually understand what he went through. He’s like a snake- he’s like a cold-blooded animal. They’re totally professional, they can’t let their emotions take over, so they don’t communicate that much. And even if he wanted to, he couldn’t really tell me much about how he felt going through it at the time because it was all happening. He realised only a few months later what happened, you know? So, he likes the film. The Kanaks like the film and he likes the film. From both sides, I have the same reaction. Both parties were so involved they knew the film they were going to get at the end.

Q Can I ask, is there a much more open culture now with the Kanaks now talking about these events? I understand they didn’t talk about it at all…

MK Well, the film is now out there. Discussions are now up in the air. If they want to discuss it they can. The film is here, so they can use it as a stepping stone.. I said I was not going to tell just their stories, I was going to tell a global story and their bad actions will be shown and the (military) bad actions will be shown but they needed something they could regroup around. It was very important for them. They wanted to be portrayed in a real way. Not in a good way, not in a bad way. What are they here for. What they are fighting for. I spent so much time with them. I love that island, that culture, that’s why they let me do it. I had the same thing with La Haine, in the projects. I’m not from there, but I could look in from a distance. If you live there, you are knee deep and do not have a perspective. You need someone to be able to come in from outside and se it for what it is.

Q You talked about Bloody Sunday being a favourite film.. What’s your view on the British in Northern Ireland?

MK I think it’s shit [laughter]. No, when I spoke about that film, I was really only talking about the way the film was made… and also the implications… he did it with people from the neighbourhood; used real people. The whole community was involved. To shoot the way he shot it was fascinating. You can feel the energy in the movie, I think. You couldn’t do riots like that if people weren’t involved. Like Ken Loach, you know, you have to be involved for the people to get involved, otherwise you cannot make films like this.

Q Injustice seems to be a common thread running through your films. Can you tell me what inspired you to become a filmmaker?

MK Very simple, my parents were filmmakers and very good filmmakers, so they taught me the craft and the love for the craft. And my father was very ethical you know, and taught me the basics, like you know, stay on schedule work under the budget, if you can do it for less then do so. Problems are solutions; you don’t need money to find solutions, you need to be smart. He knew his craft and he passed it on to me. My mother was the same, she was an editor. I always say, if they were butchers, I would have been a butcher. A very good one. I would be killing cows right now. In a very good way- without hurting them. [laughter] no, I mean, I would have been doing what my parents had taught me and with passion. I was lucky it was movies so I can hang out with beautiful people and not dirty cows, but the rest is simple.

MK Now, why political movies, I have no fucking idea. My parents- it was the Sixties, the Seventies and they were from Hungary; they escaped during a communist regime.

Making movies is difficult. You have two choices. Either you make movies because wow, I make movies and fuck(!), it’s a great way to make a living, you just want to make money and get rich, or you make movies because you have something to say and that’s where it’s really, really interesting, because its such a powerful and amazing medium to play with. I realised during this movie that when you make a movie like that, the movie is done and you said what you had to say and you say the truth, so it’s a great responsibility, but it’s also a great honour to be able to… I said the truth about that movie and what happened and that is going to influence the vote next year. That’s amazing. I am doing politics at the same time. And I did that for ten years with them.

It’s very difficult to make a movie, so it’s better to make it for a purpose other than your bank account or your next girlfriends, you know?

Thankyou Matthieu.

A Q&A AFTER THE PUBLIC SCREENING

Q&A *Contains Spoilers*

MC Thank you for a thought provoking film from beginning to end. Tell me, the story came from Philippe Legorjus’ book, I think he wrote it very soon after the conflict in 1990..?

MK I didn’t want his point of view. I didn’t read his book first, because I couldn’t trust his point of view. That story happened in 1998 around the time of the elections and all we heard in France was that 19 savages got killed cos they decapitated some militia, so they got what they deserved and then the elections went on and we all just forgot about it. So then some time after I discovered a book from the League of Human Rights they investigated for six moths. When I read that it was amazing- it was a movie by itself and the one name popping up was Philippe. So I read alot and did alot of research.

MC What do you make of Philippe’s book now?

MK I think his book is pretty close to reality and what he went through. Pretty accurate.

What I still don’t know is what he thinks about it all.. he spent alot of time buried in it and then after some time realised he simply couldn’t take it any more so he quit the military. He’s not the kind of guy that can take the wrong orders. Didn’t want to be influenced too much by him, as I knew he was the axis of this story, so I needed to get other voices first. And because he retired made me think he was an interesting character. I couldn’t have done this if he hadn’t retired.

What would I do if I ever meet these people? What would I do if I ever met Mitterand? I would go insane. I would tell them that they kill people. And Philippe just wants to understand how all this happened. Because it’s very strange when you look at the whole picture, something strange happened… How could Mitterand have made this decision? How could he have decided just to sacrifice these people?

MC You make a smart decision to show the archive footage and focus in very well and how it resonates at the top.

MK There was a decision about how much I show of Paris and the corridors of power, but I didn’t want to focus very much on the character of Philippe and focus on the issues. I’m trying to get as close to reality as possible AND would you pass on the chance to use this archive footage?! These two guys. They have ten minutes talking about New Caledonia.. if I had had the balls, I would have put the whole ten minutes in, you can see the fight that’s going on there between these two guys very interesting.

MC Research there on the island, was it easy?

MK The story itself the journalist investigation. One very important element is their culture and what they are fighting for. There is a whole civilisation there, all about listening and learning and taking time to respond and share. They tested me for ten years. They wanted to see how far I was willing to go. So I realised that I needed to be that guy.. if they had a problem, then I was the guy they could shoot.

In 2001, it was 13 years after the facts; people had their families wiped out, cousins, fathers, brothers, it’s a very small place and a very shocking story, but no one knows this story, because no one talks about it. So I heard the stories whilst I was there and from the news. It took ten years to get permission from the whole community to say yes. I mean everybody. Everybody on the island. There are different kinds of Kanaks, independence fighters, families, so, I had a friend who worked for five years full time to see everybody on that island and spent 8 hours with each of them, to explain what I was doing and get them to say yes. So that took a very long time.

We shot in Tahiti, as it was sacred ground almost in New Caledonia. It became way more than a movie. A political statement.

MC Finding actors was hard?

MK There are only five Kanak actors in the world. We are looking for the truth, so one way to do it is to work with people who could say that it is legit, or not. It is a big responsibility for them to let me do it. Of course, I could have just messed with them; told them something and then gone and made a totally different movie and it would totally destroy them. So they gave me a pass to express what they are around the world.

MC Kanaks have now seen it? That was nervous moment?

MK Yes, in needed to show the families of people who died. When I had them I knew how they would react.

It’s their and their culture- their story. They’ve never had a moment to get their own voice out. This film gives them that. They weren’t allowed to express their story. That’s very disturbing.

If I showed all the torture and the harassment going on in the villages, it would have shocked people, but I didn’t want to show that.

MC One very shocking scene we see at least two captured prisoners assassinated by soldiers. How quickly was it reported?

MK Never in a military assault do you have 19 deaths and no wounded… maybe you have 5 dead and ten wounded, some seriously… But here, no, they were all just shot. All 19. People were found with a bullet in their forehead. I didn’t want to show that. I don’t show, but if you are smart enough, you will understand. I could have shown it, they shot between 5-10 people, bullet in the head. That’s disturbing but I didn’t want to make the film about that. I wanted to make it about something more universal and tragic than just the death of 19 people.

MC How did you get large French companies and the army involved..?

MK I chose not to show too much. I didn’t want shock, I wanted to open the discussion. We went to Kanak and asked for their help and also the military also and asked for vehicles and choppers, in the hope that we could then say that look, everyone is helping here and perhaps that would start the discussion that needed to be had. Military said no. So, there is not one thing that comes from them.

The helicopter is made out of wood. We got it off the ground digitally. Cars, there is only one with an engine, the other is simply linked with chains to the first one. The two armoured cars are made of wood and dragged by another car. And we went to the politicians and they said ‘not only are we not going to help you, but it would be better if you didn’t actually make the movie.’

So no, we didn’t have any help. We got unofficial military to help. Part of the cast is military. We had both sides working with us, but in a very unofficial way, which makes the film very accurate. Concerning finances, we were very lucky, because of my career, and because I was so passionate about that story and it is so amazing, so cinematic, it wasn’t difficult to find the money. We had very good and trusting partners. It was a ten million Euro budget. Half went in to the logistics; fridges, lodging, food, everything. There are no compromises.

And we said to the army, just help us so we can start to bring people together and they just said ‘fuck you’. So we said ‘fuck you too’. [laughter]

MC Are you now a hero of the gendarmerie?

MK Am I a hero? It’s strange, officially no, and the high ranking officers, Hell no. but for the guys hat were there, I was approached by the grunts that were there not part of the GIGN, but that were here and they told me things that were too horrible to put in the movie but they were very grateful that we did the move and they needed some way to get it all off their chests. They have been living with this stuff for 20 years so for the regular army guy, we helped.

That’s the conflict of being in the army. They have to obey orders and if they don’t then the whole system collapses. But still they have brains and hearts and they can’t talk about it all, so when somebody else does, it helps.

MC The Cesars… you had a spat on Twitter with them..?

MK Yes, for those that don’t know, they are like our Bafta’s or Oscars… I have won, I think, three of them and been nominated for more, but I never went to get them. Because I don’t like them, because I think it’s tacky in the extreme. And boring and I’m not keen being seated next to these people. I would love to go to the Oscars and be seated next to Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola and all these people and these amazing directors that I built my childhood on. But I hate competition, I don’t like it.

I don’t really care about having a Cesar or not. It’s not about it being a good film or not. But if the French industry doesn’t help, doesn’t support films like that, you see, there is not another movie like that out there, so if they don’t support movies like that then we didn’t have ten political movies.. they gave Oscars to the most successful film of the year. Why? Why give a Cesar to a film that doesn’t need it? Just recognise that French movies and cinema are also (political) and if you just support comedies, then what does that mean? And why support films that are mimicking the Americans.? Fuck that. [round of applause]

We had a relationship with the Brits. But right now, we don’t have that relationship. So I made that movie because I thought the French were feisty and not any more. They aren’t concerned and they are no longer interested. I understand the public didn’t go and see it. They would rather laugh in the cinema and have a good time. I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it… but for the industry not to recognise it, I was very shocked. I gave my best. I think it’s time for me to go somewhere else.

MC We have to draw things to a close. Thank you, Matthieu Kassovitz.

In The Fog (2012)

[youtube id=”gjV9XajEkRo” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Director: Sergei Loznitsa

Script: Sergei Loznitsa, Vasili Bykov (novel)

Producer: Heino Deckert

Cast: Vladimir Svirskiy, Vladislav Abashin, Sergei Kolesov, Nikita Peremotovs, Yuliya Peresild, Kirill Petrov, Dimitrijs Kolosovs, Stepans Bogdanovs, Dimitry Bykovskiy, Vlad Ivanov

Ger, Rus, Neth, Bela, Lat 127mins 2012 War Drama

‘The Fog of War’ is a phrase coined in 1837 by Prussian Carl von Clausewitz, encapsulating the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced during conflict, be it confidence in capability, in operations, in strategy, in the campaign as a whole, or in the enemy’s strength or weakness.

It can work at any level, from the soldier on the ground all the way up to chaps in charge in the War Office, where intelligence and counter-intelligence only serve to muddle the issue, to the point where the decision maker in question feels paralysed and unable to make a choice, in case it’s the wrong one, the stakes being so high.

Director Loznitsa has made far more documentaries than fiction; his only previous drama outing being the much-lauded 2010 title ‘My Joy’, which was nominated for the Cannes Palme D’Or and winning top prizes at three other film festivals the same year.

Here, the year is 1942 and Belarus lies under a German occupation showing no sign of weakening. Civilians face a stark choice; either survive in the woods as a freedom fighter, or fold under as a Policeman or crafsman in the job you had before the war, only now working towards German objectives.

Into this pressurised environment of fear and mistrust, where your lifelong neighbour or even family member will sell you out to save their own skin, Loznitsa introduces the epitome of moral rectitude in the shape of Sushenya, in the knowledge that, in a time of war, virtue fast becomes that rarest of beasts, hunted to the verge of extinction in the opening salvo.

Vladimir Svirskiy is excellent as the epitome of unimpeachable courage and unfettered righteousness in the face of impossible odds, where everyone else has a price at which they bail out and all others are judged by that standard, not on their own merits.

In The Fog, running a shade long at over two hours, is nevertheless a fascinating and very real examination of the mechanism that so easily falls into place when a culture is placed under extreme duress and starvation is only a week away. The veneer is soon stripped away and we see what people are made of.

It would be wrong of me to go into the details of what has transpired, as the story unfolds out of chronology and much of the interest is driven by wanting to know what has happened to create the situation the characters find themselves in.

Suffice it to say it is engrossing and believable at every turn; one is made to accept the importance of a single potato, rag and sound in the woods. When life is stripped down to this basic level, it’s no wonder that any of the more elevated qualities of humanity are quickly discarded against the more practical concerns of immediate survival; morals seen as an extravagance no one can any longer afford. One is certainly a member of the masses when one chooses cowardice and compliance above and beyond what may be right and wrong. Andrew Rajan

IN THE FOG IS IN CINEMAS FROM 26 APRIL 2013

Barnaby Southcombe – Filmmaker

Barnaby Southcombe’s directorial debut, I, Anna, was released in cinemas last December, with advance showings at the BFI London Film Festival. Now, ahead of the film’s DVD release – on April 8 – we were fortunate enough to speak to man himself about his dark and delectable film noir which stars Charlotte Rampling and Gabriel Byrne, the former of which is the filmmaker’s very own mother.

[youtube id=”up2gf6vQRD8″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

We’re now in the wake of your first ever theatrical release – how has the whole experience been? Noticed any dramatic changes in your life since I, Anna came into it?

BS: [Laughs] It’s been an amazing journey to be honest, and not one that I ever quite expected it to be. I think, a bit like your first girlfriend, it’s going to be a voyage of discovery. You know, with releasing a film and it coming out and getting good reviews and some very vitriolic stuff as well, so it’s quite a thing to get your head around, then with the release of the film some reviews that were a lot better and you just understand that the people feel very differently and very passionately about film in a way that, you know, you and I do. We feel very strongly about the films that we like and also the ones that we dislike, so it’s just getting to grips with being on the end of that is a novel one, and that’s come around and it feels like now I’m doing this part of the journey with the DVD release: it’s coming to terms to feeling a bit more acceptant about that. So yeah, it’s good, and very keen to move on now. I’ve followed the film – and it’s still out theatrically and it will be until the end of March in various locations in the UK. I’ve been following it and introducing it and talking with people, so it’s been really good having made the film to see who and where it’s connecting with, and how it’s connecting.

Q: You’ve toured the world with this film having done the festival circuit – that must have been a really fun experience, particularly in seeing how different audiences react to the film?

BS: Absolutely. As you say, it started off with this incredible round of festivals that it did and to see it play in China to what I assumed would be a very small, ex-pat community, but you know, there wasn’t one white person in the cinema and very few of them spoke English, so God knows what the translation was, but there was just this kind of sign-language understanding of appreciation of the film afterwards which was kind of extraordinary, and the same in Russia and stuff. That’s the beauty of the film, is to be able to travel.

Q: The film is certainly influenced by world cinema, with Nordic noir and also the likes of François Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Melville too. Do you think such cultured influences helped in connecting with a worldwide audience?

BS: I dunno, it’s a personal thing isn’t it? I guess what you try and do is feed in to a consciousness of film and then hopefully you bring a new element to it, so you’ve got something which people can relate to: a kind of languid, formal, quite architecturally-framed film, as you say, from Melville and Truffaut, then you add what I felt was this British quality to it. You bring those things together and hopefully you have something fresh but feels familiar at the same time. It has gone down well, it was very well-received in Sydney for example, so yes, in effect, I think that it does help. But it’s difficult, I mean, what did you think of The Master?

Q: I loved it – thought it was great.

BS: It’s a difficult one to get though isn’t it? It’s not an easy one, because you’ve got no frame of reference for it. You’re looking at something which is pretty startling and new, and I think it will outlive us all as a result. It’s not the easiest one to get.

Q: In terms of adding a British quality to the film, the original story this is based on was set in America, so was moving it to London a conscious decision, or more logistical?

BS: A conscious one. I liked the premise of the novel and I liked that it was very much about this woman in a very particular time in her life, a very fragile and delicate time in her life and I found that very interesting. Then there’s this cop who becomes involved with this woman, who may or may not have committed a crime. In New York it felt like it had been very well explored and done by far bigger directors, so right from the start I wanted to give it a European flavour and bringing it to London would add that element, this new, fresh element and also keep this European flavour that I was quite keen on.

Q: What do you think it was that attracted you to this story of an older woman?

BS: Very much her. I just found her fascinating, I found these small, emotional journeys that are actually quite epic in their courage and what they have to achieve. Small things that, to the person, becomes these mountains to climb. This idea of being shelved at a certain age, that the rug is pulled from beneath your feet. You feel that you’ve paid your dues, you’ve done everything right and you feel like you can settle, and then bang, you’re thrust out into the world to find yourself again and define yourself through other people’s eyes, and I think that is a kind of scary thing to do and place to be. I don’t see a lot of that in cinema and I felt that it was something I wanted to explore, so I really connected with this older woman I guess. Also the guy as well, that’s what I liked about it, I liked these characters who have so much to give and are definitely more interesting given their life experience, and yet find it more difficult to connect and find companionship.

Q: Did you instantly think about casting your mother – Charlotte Rampling – for the lead role?

BS: It was a lightning bolt for me. I was given the novel by my producer at the time and we were developing something completely different, a teen drama, and we were struggling with the script and he told me about this book he remembered from when he was a teenager that created quite a stir in Germany and told me to have a read to see if it still stands up, and it was very much that, it just seemed absolutely right for her and no-one else. To a certain extent, when I started writing, Gabriel Byrne was the same, I wrote it with both of them in my head, I could hear their voices when writing, and that was the one compromise I wouldn’t make – those two or nothing. I really felt that I hadn’t seen that cinematic pairing and I just knew the chemistry would be great and it was something I wanted to see as a viewer so that was just one thing I wouldn’t have done any other way.

Q: Considering this is your debut feature film, how helpful was it to have people as experienced and talented as Charlotte and Gabriel on set?

BS: Oh it all makes all the difference, it defines us. I have worked a lot on television and worked with some fantastic crews, but I made a conscious decision to work with a new crew. Not because I was unhappy with anyone else but I wanted people to have more film experience than I had and I wanted people to really understand the differences and language more than I would. My editor had edited The Hours, and a number of highly-acclaimed, big feature films, and worked with great directors. Everyone really had a lot of experience, and down to the actors who you know are just going to give you so much, the smallest scene becomes this little jewell of a moment, it makes all the difference.

Q: So what was the dynamic like in directing your own mother? Is it quite comforting to have her around, and is it difficult to avoid calling her ‘mum’ and maintain a level of professionalism?

BS: Yeah that was the hardest thing, I kind of made a decision I wasn’t going to call her mum on-set, although a lot of the crew would just come up to me and say “Oh yeah your mum wants to know when you’re going to be ready”, so that was the only thing I felt that I needed to exert some sort of authority, but actually it was a very natural, very comfortable environment and one that I would certainly repeat if the subject matter was right. You know she dragged me round a lot of film sets when I was a kid so I’ve always had a fascination for film, so of all the kids, I was the one who lurked around her film sets the most, so I’ve always been hanging around, so she’s used to having me around, so it was just a nice environment. She wouldn’t necessarily race off back to her trailer as soon as we said cut, she would be hanging around on set, it just makes for a good, kind of gypsy caravan type of feeling and environment.

Q: There is a real vulnerability to the character of Anna and that was enhanced by the fact she had a broken wrist – but am I right in thinking that wasn’t a deliberate move, she actually did fracture her wrist?

BS: Yeah [laughs[ she did. About three or four days before the shoot which was an absolute catastrophe at the time, for her and for me. Having spent so long and having got this far without having had to compromise too much and then suddenly have this thing which just seemed ridiculous and completely out of the blue was something that was tough to deal with. So we explored the possibility of claiming on insurance – and we had a very valid claim – and we could have put it off, but we couldn’t really put it off for very long because Gabriel’s availability disappeared and he went off to two very long engagements, and with the film industry being the precarious house of cards that it is, there was a great risk of the film not being able to come back together so we had to make a decision as to whether we were going to find a way around this or let the whole thing go – so I spent a few days with the script and came to what ultimately I felt was a really interesting development and one that I had to hit myself for not having thought of before. Because as you say, it’s a very strange place to injure yourself to that extent and not know how you did it, and without any kind of words it becomes a very unsettling place to be for somebody and I thought that was quite effective. It was also a very clear metaphor as well of suppression, that this thing is itching away underneath and bursting, trying to get out – like the memories of the murder that she is suppressing. So it seemed to work very well in the end – so it’s a happy accident.

Q: To add to Anna’s vulnerability, there was a very voyeuristic camerawork that would follow her around as though following a man’s gaze – can you tell us about that approach and what you felt it brings to the film?

BS: Again that is very classic noir, the idea of the male gaze, and the male gaze being that of a police detective, and that’s one that fits into a very comfortable, familiar stereotype of filmmaking and the idea was to try and find ways to evolve and to work around that and to have a different kind of relationship, one that starts off as a voyeuristic one but then ultimately develops as one of connection and empathy, opposed to one of lust and obsession.

Q: You were filming on location at the Barbican, why that particular setting?

BS: I didn’t want it to be a familiar side of London, I wanted the feeling I had when I first came to London. I didn’t grow up in London, I grew up in France and I went to school in France, and I came to University here and it felt very overwhelming, the city felt so much bigger than what I knew, and it was kind of unforbidding. Although most of London is, architecturally, very small and terraced houses, the feeling of it is much more smaller and forbidding than it looks and I really wanted to capture that feeling, that feeling how in the city of London, what are the chances of two people actually meeting? Two people who are right for each other? So I was looking for an environment that would stand out and would fit into a slightly out-of-time feeling and these two characters are kind of stuck in time, they are stuck a few years back and haven’t really been able to move on, so I wanted everything to feel out-of-time to a certain extend. It’s very much a contemporary film, but all the locations just don’t quite feel of this era, and the Barbican really fitted that bill perfectly. Also, just on a geeky level, there had been a 10-year shooting ban in the Barbican, so it’s not the most familiar of cinematic landmarks and I liked the fact that we were one of the first crews to be allowed back into the Barbican to shoot.

Q: Having mentioned before that you’ve grown up around the industry and spent time on film sets as a child, do you think that that insight has inherently given you a deeper knowledge of how the whole industry works, and has put you in good stead now as a filmmaker?

BS: It’s too early to say. I mean, let’s see how I get on. The film thing is somewhere I’d like to stay, certainly for a while, and let’s see if I’m allowed to. It feels like a comfortable environment, whether that’s successful or not I don’t know. Time will tell.

Q: Is this what you’ve always to do though? Had you ever contemplated a career outside of filmmaking?

BS: Um, not really. It’s been a long road to filming though, that’s for sure. I’ve worked in TV a lot, and I was always interested in that. The directing thing came on a little bit later, after school basically. I was quite into theatre when I was in school, but then when I went to University I discovered directing and I found working with actors more rewarding than being an actor.

Q: So finally, what have you got planned next? Are you working on anything at the moment?

BS: I’m actively working with some really exciting, new, young writers – a playwright and also a filmmaker whose script I’m working on. I’m absolutely developing stuff that isn’t quite ready to go yet, but the last few months have been a very creative time in development, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to announce something soon – but I’m not quite ready to do that. SP

February 2013. I, ANNA IS OUT ON DVD FROM 8TH APRIL 2013 COURTESY OF AMAZON AND CURZON ARTIFICIAL EYE.

[youtube id=”LItOHqYys10″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Good Vibrations (2012)

Director: Lisa Barros D’Sa

Script: Colin Carberry, Glen Patterson

Producers: Bruno Charlesworth, Andrew Eaton, David Holmes, Chris Martin

Cast: Richard Dormer, Jodie Whittaker, Dylan Moran, Mark Ryder, Killian Scott, Adrian Dunbar, Kerr Logan

UK/Ireland 140mins Biopic

[youtube id=”DruhJkZU4EI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

I love this film. It’s all very well as a reviewer sitting po-faced thinking up embroidered sentences, but sometimes… you know? Already winning awards for script, Best Film and Costume at Dinard, Galway and the Irish Film & TV Awards, this is one to savour. Brim-full of life energy, Good Vibrations is the biopic of Terri Hooley, gleefully charting his childhood through the Sixties and Seventies in a world riven with hatred, mistrust and death.

For anyone growing up in Ulster during the Seventies, Good Vibrations is legendary. A record shop-turned label for young Punk kids surviving the battleground, that was living in the Troubles of Northern Ireland, where everything was shot to shit and prospects were sub zero but for the vision and grace of one Terri Hooley, a local man who decided one day to set up a record shop in the last bit of road that wasn’t a bomb crater and went on to launch the careers of a generation of Irish Punk bands.

Good Vibrations is a film that was long in the gestating; about 13 years. One might call a genuine ‘passion project’, with a pilot shot originally to raise money for the full feature. One can only imagine the journey the filmmakers went through to convince the financiers to stump up the cash. But thank the Protestant and Catholic Gods that they eventually did.

Joining a small but growing canon of brilliant Punk Movies, alongside Sid & Nancy, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and The Punk Syndrome, Vibrations is a great script, properly acted, with a superb central performance by Richard Dormer as Hooley, exquisitely shot and effervescent with spirit. In edit and direction, it’s quite simply a joyful, life-affirming film, rather as Searching For Sugarman is; a bright, brave, resilient bloom flowering in the darkest of times and a testament to the human spirit.

As the great Joe Strummer of The Clash is quoted:

“When punk rock ruled over Ulster, nobody ever had more excitement and fun. Between the bombings and the shootings, the religious hatred and the settling of old scores, punk gave everybody a chance to live for one glorious moment.”

Get maximum value for every punt you spend on a cinema ticket: go see this most excellent of fillums. A film full of heart about a man who is all heart. AT

Wojciech Marczewski, Film Director Kinoteka 2013

[youtube id=”41f-6lqo0LM” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Wojciech Marczewski, Polish Film Director, born in Lodz in 1944. Winner of the Silver Bear and FIPRESCI Prize in Berlin, Special Jury Prize, Critics Award, a Golden Lion and two Silver Lions at the Polish FF and the OCIC award at San Sebastian. Here for the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival in London.

AT I have only had the opportunity to see two of your films prior to this, due to difficulty seeing your films in this country! Shivers (Dreszcze) and Escape From The ‘Liberty’ Cinema (Ucieczka z kina ‘Wolnosc’).. Great then that you have this festival in London…

WM Ah yes. Both of these films Shivers (1981) and Liberty (1990) were made right on the cusp of the Solidarity Movement so when Solidarity first appears, only thanks to this do these films appear! Shivers, I wrote this script before Solidarity appeared..

AT But you knew that Solidarity was coming…?

WM Nobody Knew! [laughs] We sensed something Maybe would happen, but… also I would say that especially Shivers is a part of my biography, so it was important for me and also an important part of Polish history, because it was (set in) the mid-Fifties in Poland, which was the darkest of times there. So I wrote the script anyway. I didn’t believe that the film would be made right now.

AT But it was something you felt you had to write?

WM Yes, yes. So when my producer saw the script, he said ‘Are you kamikaze?! You have no chance.’ But I insisted. The procedure was that we had to send the script to be accepted… or not- to the Ministry of Culture. The first answer was ‘Are you crazy?…’ but then, in (just) two weeks, the Solidarity Movement hit and it was like a big blast, so in the meantime, I was asking the Minister for a meeting and he turned around and said ‘I am forced to meet you and say yes. I am forced’ and I said ‘what do you mean ‘forced’? Look at what is happening on the streets’. I had one year to make it and in three months, Martial Law was declared and the film was banned for more than four years. That’s the story of Shivers..

AT But the film wasn’t destroyed…

WM No. No. (You see), the film won a prize at the Polish FF and there were some German distributors and some people from the Berlinale and they said ok, we want this film and (the Ministry) said ‘ok, in a couple of months we will send you the perfect print’ and I said ‘No. You take this one right now, otherwise, no deal’. (One) sensed that, at any time, anything could happen, you know, so I wanted them to take it right then. They took the print with them (and) that was crucial. And then it was accepted into Competition at the Berlinale. So (then) the (Ministry) said they would ‘like to change the film’ to (better) represent Polish cinema at the Berlinale (ie use an alternative film, not Shivers). But the Berlinale supported me and stated ‘We have already published the catalogue with stills from this film, we cannot change them now, or tear out a page..’ but this was not true [laughs] and a German distributor also said if the film didn’t appear in the Berlinale, that they wanted to put on a limited release of the film in cinemas around the Berlinale anyway. So the Polish authorities, they had no choice and then the film won the Silver Bear.

AT And Escape from the Liberty Cinema.. What inspired this story?

WM After Martial Law came in… I felt badly, you know, I felt like a Rottweiler… that I couldn’t let it go. I hated these people that (created) this Martial Law but I felt that for some years, being in this (angry) emotional state was not the right state to make this film, so I left it a while and then one day I (realised) I needed to find a special code to say what it is I want to say, but at the same time, I don’t want to make a film where the main character simply hates everybody; that it should be a bit ironic, a bit sarcastic you know, a bit crazy and I decided the main character needed to be a Censor.

Because for any artist, any writer, any filmmaker, they are of course the biggest enemy; several films were banned- some of them were even destroyed, so I decided to make the main character a Censor, because during this Communist period, everybody was (inevitably) involved in this regime. Of course, when there was Solidarity, then that was different, but when they came at you with tanks, then, you (toed the line). (So) let’s make a film about a guy who was involved in this system, but I (wanted) to see how he became a censor and also (illustrate that he is) still a human being.

No one could predict what was going to happen, but we felt that something was going to. It couldn’t stay as it was. So I sent the script to the Censor and the Deputy Minister called me in for a meeting and he said ‘this is like something from a Gogol play, you know’, he said ‘listen, it so beautiful, the images are from a Chagall painting, wonderful this small town..’ I said ‘why is it a small town?’ And he said, ‘yes of course, in a small town there is no censorship, but it’s not necessary that your character is a Censor, he could be a clerk.. or an office worker… he mustn’t be a Censor’. But I insisted… I thought ‘Either I will wait, or I will not make this film’. History helped me; what happened politically;
The DAY we finished shooting officially, the Polish Parliament (ended) censorship in Poland. Can you imagine what kind of party we had?!?!! [laughs]

AT It’s funny isn’t it when you set out to make a film, how sometimes amazing things can conspire to help you.

WM Exactly So! Very much, yes.

AT What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

WM That’s not a simple easy answer. I was not crazy about film and filmmaking. I was much more involved… as a teenager, I painted, I wrote some simple but funny poetry. I loved theatre. Film came later. When I painted I exhibited and even got a few prizes, but I felt that the (indicates)…

AT Ceiling was quite low.

WM …Ceiling was low, yes, exactly. And the same with poetry.
But I saw more possibilities as a Director- (In film) you need many halves… you needed to have a half of talent.. (and skills in) many different disciplines: imagination, literature, drama, images, actors and humanity. Then I said (with all of) these different halves, this is interesting to put together! So I came to film school when I was 18. But it was too early. I got good grades, but it was too early (I was too young). The director has to have some (life) experience and personality. What kind of film can I make that will compare or have anything to say? You need to be able to say something personal as well, you know, because everybody lets talk about freedom about brutality but it’s all the same you know?

We all know the old plots, you know from Greek tragedy… but the tone, how you are telling it and what you are saying and how you balance your story makes a big difference. So the Directors personality is so important. So after (only) a year and a half, I left film school and went to University and studied History and Philosophy I quit, then I worked as a regular worker in the street and only then did I come back to the film school and then I studied. Before, I was a pupil but I wasn’t a student. Then I started making films and so then it becomes my dream. So it wasn’t from my childhood that this was what I wanted.

AT You grew into it.

WM I grew into it.

AT What inspires you to make a film, is it anything…

WM There are several sometimes strange sources. Sometimes it’s a book, sometimes a short news article, but very often I make quite alot of notes, nearly every day.

AT Thoughts?

WM Thoughts… observations, situations, dialogue, sometimes an image I remember and (it) is very interesting sometimes then to go through a copybook and look at these notes and ideas. Then, sometimes you can see something that later on you realise, maybe even a year later… you see that it can be important or a theme (evolving).

But very often I think much more about the characters than the plot. I believe that the plot you can invent. You sit down on your arse.. Concentrate.. And you can invent. But the characters… to feel the characters, not only know (them), that’s sort of a deeper understanding..

AT For them to be real…

WM Yeah, right. Real, unpredictable sometimes, very often…. for example when I made Escape From The Liberty Cinema When I found that the Censor (himself) could be my main character, then I tried to imagine myself being that main character.

AT And that’s what makes the film suddenly spring into being real because the Censor was originally an artist himself….

WM Right….

AT …Who then went over to the other side.

WM Exactly. When I teach, I usually advise students to shorten the distance between the author and their character; try to imagine himself as that person. Doesn’t matter who he or she is doesn’t matter if they are a bank robber… or a Minister.. try to imagine yourself to be in their position. Then, very often you escape from the cliché way of thinking.

(It is easy to say) that the Official is very tough and it is easy for him to make a decision. (But) Maybe he is frightened. Maybe he can be fired at any moment, so he is terrified to make a decision. Immediately the character becomes much more complex, more human and therefore more interesting. I think.

AT But also much more believable. So with this man (the Censor in Escape From The Liberty Cinema) he must have been full of ideals when he was young, wanting to be an artist, but he crashes headfirst into the reality of his Communist society.. those around him… and has a child he needs to feed..

WM Exactly. My main question – how to behave and how to be honest. How to survive. The Church, family, school, friends, they have a good attitude- they wish you no harm, but, at the same time they are saying to you ‘be as we are’. How (do you) survive and create your own personality?

My first nightmares.. 30s in Poland the church was strongly against this book (and) in the 70s, the church was still against this book, but I found in it this beautiful story about a child who is fighting to be free. To be himself. I envied this author (for writing) this story… that it wasn’t me. And here we are decades later and still we have the same problems, the same issues. So I decided to make this film that the church still is against. But it doesn’t matter. What can you do?

AT You made a decision to be a filmmaker, but on top of that you… were very courageous. Do you feel that there is something about filmmaking that is about more than just being an entertainer?

WM Absolutely, yes…

AT Do you believe that making a film is also making a political statement?

WM I think that, yes. We are not only obliged, we are responsible. We cannot just talk (drivel), because we then make our society rubbish..

AT And film is a powerful medium..

WM Film is an extremely powerful medium. And of course I am not against comedy or entertainment and I like some of them as a viewer as well, but I also need to know where those films are when I want to talk about important issues and things in a serious way, or listen to someone scream through the screen… that somebody wants to tell me something really important. These kinds of films need to be produced as well.

AT Talk to me about producers. How do you find working with them?

WM Now I’m not really happy that producers organise everything as well. Europe make mistakes. They see the American way of doing things and they/we accept this way without questioning it at all. Poland just accepted this method without question. But look what’s happened. I don’t know too many ‘Creative’ Producers. I fully agree to have a partner or a boss if the producer is a partner for me. If he knows what it is I want to say. If he knows what my script is about. If he knows which actor is really a great actor and not necessarily just a star at the moment. Then I will say right, ok, the producer can be in charge of this. But most of the time they think solely about the money, about distribution- and they take final cut and they change your film! I think that they’re just silly and that it is not ‘producing’.

AT So many producers call themselves ‘creative’, which actually means that they merely take creative control over the film, but don’t allow the real creatives the room to create.

WM You know, when I think about ‘creative’ producers… I once met I remember, David Puttnam; it was a private party and we talked… about theatre, music, art… but not about film. And when I left the party, I was walking down the street and I thought about it and realised that if I hadn’t known who he was and someone were to ask me ‘what job does that man do?’ I would say- maybe a writer, or a director- not a film director, but a theatre director, because they are usually far better educated than film directors… they have read more, etc., but never would I have said ‘he is a Producer’.

It’s absolutely a partnership and if (I were to) work with him, then the final cut can be his, because he is honest, he’s not stupid, he’s an educated man I respect, is sensitive…

AT Has integrity.

WM Exactly. But it is so rare. So I think that there is a need to educate the right producers and, as a matter of fact, the system needs to be more flexible than it currently is.

AT It seems to be run by the accountants, by the budget and the creative element is all but absent. There was a time when the creatives were left to go and do what they do best, but now there are so many execs all wanting a say… sorry. I’ve gone off topic.

WM No. I fully agree. Yes.

AT Do you know what’s next for you?

WM I am working on a script. But you know my problem is I am not very much interested in telling a compact, linear story.. I would like to… I am thinking about a film that would be like notes on a screen, but it is extremely difficult. if the audience accept the main character, then they are (involved) in the film, but I am a bit bored by this (kind of) fiction story-telling.

The way of telling a story… (formulaic) out of books… how to make the story Progression… ‘and there’s the Turning Point..’ so dull. Of course, it should not be boring, it has to be interesting, but this (also) does not mean that there is only one way to make something interesting.

AT Are there filmmakers that you like? Do you like Altman?

WM Yes I do, but I’m not so… I would say that I am much closer to literature than film.

AT So…

WM Some short stories. It doesn’t matter if it’s from the 19th Century, or from South American writers right now. Some Czech stories I like also right now. But life is interesting, so I am not bored.

AT I think we have to wrap up now. Thank you so much…

WM Thank you. That was interesting.

[youtube id=”uW3CbpoPwHA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

FILMUFORIA SPOKE TO WOJCIECH MARCZEWSKI AT THE POLISH CULTURAL INSTITUTE IN LONDON ON 11TH MARCH 2013 DURING KINOTEKA 2013

Shameless (2012) Bez Wstydu Kinoteka 2013

Director: Filip Marczewski

Script: Grzegorz Loszewski
Cast: Agnieszka Grochowska, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Anna Prochniak, Maciej Marczewski

Poland 81mins 2012 Drama

[youtube id=”OGruAG_2lQE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Shameless is director Filip Marczewski’s feature debut and quite a debut it is too.
Mateusz Kosciukiewicz plays Tadek, an 18 year old holding an unhealthy infatuation with his beautiful and sexually active older sister Anka. She however, has the hots for Andrzej an ambitious would-be neo-Nazi politician.

Into this already complicated mix comes Irmina, a feisty young gypsy who takes one look at Tadek and knows he is destined to be hers, if she can but break the ties that bind…

Of the many things that are refreshing about European films, one is sex. The Polish Film Festival is already yielding more than one title with not only a preoccupation with the subject but also a fascinated portrayal. No prudish, suppressed toothless American ideology here, but all the mess, the complexity, the darkness and the desperation spread out for all to feel.

This isn’t to say that Shameless is at all pornographic or gratuitous. It isn’t. In fact the sex is muted in comparison to some other films in the festival, but the adult way in which the topic is tackled is a breath of fresh air in comparison to the spotty teenage boys that rule Hollywood shenanigans.

Mateusz Kosciukiewicz is a real find and I’m sure a career beckons for his understated handsome charm coupled with juvenile Jagger-esque looks. The two women, Prochniak and Grochowska are also compelling and the supporting cast are excellent, adding a weight and authenticity to the piece.

Award-winning writer Grzegorz Loszewski has come up through television writing, but it is pleasing to see that the transition to film has not been at all difficult or lumpy. He has written a well-tuned, mature and balanced piece; a meditation on love, need and desire, with Romeo & Juliet overtones and that time worn but no less valid sentiment that you always want what you can’t have… tonally, it’s spot on.

Another strong offering from the Kinoteka then, leaving me hungry for more from this hugely exciting and so far captivating festival. Seek it out. AT

In The Bedroom – W sypialni (2012) Kinoteka 2013

Director: Thomas Wasilewski Writer: Thomas Wasilewski

Cast: Katarzyna Herman, Tomasz Tyndyk, Agata Buzek

78mins Polish with subtitles Drama

[youtube id=”ewNz0vuJPOE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

What starts with boredom and sexual frustration for Edyta (Katarzyna Herman – Changes (2003) All That I Love (2009)) soon becomes despair and oppression when she enters the uncertain world of internet dating in this watchable arthouse debut from Thomas Wasilewski shot on a widescreen in and around Warsaw and scored by an original soundtrack from Leszek Mozdzer (FInding Neverland, Unfaithful).

The pickings are slim for late thirty and fortysomethings but after meeting a man who turns out to be married she decides to lie about her age and attracts Patryk, a photographer, who is drawn to her but angry when he finds out she is older. Nevertheless he pursues her and emerges as quite a unstable character with a few emotional skeletons in the cupboard of his own.

Told with a potent visual language that evokes emotional intensity and an economy of dialogue, this uncertain love story develops into an intimate two-hander with suberb production values, crisp direction and lovely creative widescreen compositions offering an unusual insight into a dating experience from a woman’s perspective. MT

KINOTEKA RUNS FROM 7-17TH MARCH 2013 IN LONDON, LIVERPOOL, BELFAST AND EDINBURGH

My French Film Festival online – 17 January – 17 February 2013

How about a film festival you can watch from home? Entirely online and perfect for those sexy sofa suppers with a loved-one or just the dog, My French Film Festival is the antidote to going out in this bleak and blustery winter weather.

Offering ten new features at £1.99 each it’s an antidote for the January (and February) blues, so park your car and your parka and watch!

We recommend Senegalese drama ‘La Pirogue’ and ‘Early One Morning’ starring Jean Pierre Darroussian as an employee who rages against the system.

There’s only one screening at the Curzon Soho on January 19th of the French Immigration drama ‘Donoma’MT

Partners in Crime DVD

Director: Pascal Thomas

Cast: André Dussollier, Catherine Frot

104mins. French with subtitles Comedy Drama

Prudence and Belisaire Beresford fetch up in a dodgy French health retreat to investigate the disappearance of a wealthy Russian heiress in this well-made and watchable Agatha Christie crime romp directed by Pascal Thomas. It stars André Dussollier (Amélie) and Catherine Frot (The Page Turner) as a sophisticated couple of sleuths who bite off more than they bargained for but never make a meal of things when it comes to solving crime. MT

OUT ON DVD ON 7TH JANUARY COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL
1972. A young Jean-louis Trintignant (amour) and Aldo Ray are the standouts of this dark kidnap drama by frances answer to Hitchcock Rene Clement. Based on the david goodis novel Black Friday

Quartet (2012)

Director: Dustin Hoffman Producer: Finola Dwyer, Stewart Mackinnon

Cast: Tom Courtenay, Maggie Smith, Sheridan Smith, Michael Gambon, Billy Connolly

UK 97mins Comedy

Ronald Harwood adapted his own 1999 stage-play of the same name for this big screen outing. A long time in the making, Tom Courtenay originally had the desire to make this film with his long-term friend and compatriot, Albert Finney. However, the project resolutely refused to move forwards until Dustin Hoffman came aboard to direct, quite late on in the project, where most of the leads were already cast. That other inveterate irascible Billy Connolly takes Finney’s part.

Harwood deserves to be both a household name and undoubtedly a National Treasure, alongside Stephen Fry and Sir David Attenborough; his huge career has seen an Oscar and some extraordinary, enduring and diverse scripts, such as The Dresser, The Browning Version, The Pianist and The Diving Bell And The Butterfly.

It is often difficult with all-star casts to divorce the actors from the part enough to enjoy the piece in and of itself; this said Quartet is an enjoyable enough romp, funny and moving, the actors are in fine fettle, stars certainly, but I’m not convinced that I ever believed they were opera singers. There is no doubt however, that this film will have any problem finding an appreciative audience.

As Maggie Smith opined later in the conference, too few films are made for a more mature audience and, that being the case, there is a hungry mob out there who cannot wait to see their own favourites back up on the big screen again. All of the ensemble cast are ex-professional singers and musicians and they obviously still have it, so it is great testament to the film that they are given this opportunity to shine again and let’s hope more films begin to see the advantages of appealing to a more mature audience, both in terms of enjoyment, but also no doubt, returns…AT

Margin Call (2012) DVD/Blu

Director/Script: J C Chandor

Cast: Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, Simon Baker, Penn Badgley

107mins US Thriller

In the wake of the 2008 financial melt-down, Margin Call takes a saturnine view of banking when a derivatives trader discovers a fatal turn of events exposing the bank to losses greater than its worth. Senior management and compliance are called in to manage the fall-out but this well-made elegant thriller lacks the vital cut and thrust needed to drive the action forward into the real world of high octane nano-second trading not just the back office. Worth a watch though for its dynamite leads: a reflective Kevin Spacey, a suave Jeremy Irons and a mouthy Paul Bettany. The Oscar-Nominated screenplay is bang on the money. MT

OUT ON DVD/BLU-RAY

Keep The Lights On

Director/Screenplay: Ira Sachs Prod: Lucas Joaquin

Cast: Thure Lindhardt, Zachary Booth, Julianne Nicholson,

102min US Drama (Gay Interest)

Based in the early nineties Manhattan, this torrid drama has Thure Lindhardt as Erik, a wounded documentary filmmaker looking for casual sex on the rebound from a broken relationship and Zachary Booth as Paul, a lawyer he meets through chat lines. The sex is great but Paul has a girlfriend and doesn’t want to get involved. But the affair continues and becomes complicated because these two are incompatible emotionally and there are issues of sex and drug addiction.

Based on a true life experience, Ira Sachs directs with a heartfelt emotion that’s compelling, raw and full of pain. This is a tough and effecting indie drama with a grainy look and good performances, a great deal of sexual activity that feels real and an authenticity that makes the ten-year affair seem totally natural. Keep the Lights On also touches on wider issues for the gay community at that time such as the burgeoning AIDs crisis and the work of artists Avery Willard and Arthur Russell. MT

Keep The Lights On releases in cinemas across London from Friday, 2nd November 2012 at Curzon, ICA, Hackney Picturehouse and Ritzy, Cineworld Glasgow and Cardiff.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Director: Wes Anderson 94mins Drama

Tilda Swinton, Ed Norton, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand

Moonrise Kingdom opened the 65th Cannes Fesitval. This is the first time that a Wes Anderson feature has made it into the contest.

True to type, he gives us a fey and whimsical story about a bunch of New England oddballs who go in search of a couple of pre-teen lovers de-camping from a scout camp during the summer of 1965. Well played by newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Heywood they are an unappealing duo and that’s probably why they have made a love pact and scarpered for the hills but somewhere along the line the story grows more appealing.

Perhaps the reason why we start to tune into this weird adult film about children is the strong cast of Ed Norton, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray and Bruce Willis: who’s generally associated with more mainline Hollywood fare but does very well here as the local sheriff. Tilda Swinton gives a fabulous turn as a slightly unhinged social worker on overdrive in the pursuit of the ‘youngsters’. The levity of the plot line is given ballast by bizarre happenings ranging from a brewing hurricane to the freak death of a terrier assisting in the chase. A score mixing Benjamin Britten with Hank Williams further adds to the quirky feel. This cultish director’s films are abit like marmite: you either love them or hate them. Fans will certainly welcome this one but those of you who don’t know or don’t care for his work should try out this kooky love story. It strangely manages to end with more guts and glory than it had at the outset.

Meredith Taylor

Delicacy (2011) (Delicatesse)

Directors David Foenkinos, Stephane Foenkinos

Cast: Audrey Tatou, Francois Amiens, Bruno Todeschini, Pio Marmai

French/English subtitles Cert12 Rom-Com from the novel “Delicatesse”

Fans of Audrey Tatou’s cutesy look will happily spend a few hours in her company as gamine hottie Nathalie married to her hunky soulmate François (Pio Marmai) in their Parisian love nest. But as a bereaved business woman mourning his tragic death she is less convincing and the trauma and sadness associated with loss are seriously underplayed particularly when she breaks into impromptu song and French-kisses her unsuspecting gap-toothed workmate Markus (Francois Damiens). The romance that blossoms with this balding weirdo is seriously far-fetched despite giving us some welcome laughs when he comments: “I could go on holiday in your hair” in a lustful moment that borders on letchery. Bruno Todeschini does his best in a ridiculous role as her jealous love-sick boss but the other characters are trite and inconsequential. Delicacy, as the name suggests, is as wafer-thin as its heroine and drifts into whimsy by the ending. It seems that even the filmmakers got bored. MT

I Am Alive (Sono Viva) (2011)

Directed by Dino and Filippo Gentili

Cast: Massimo de Santis, Guido Caprino, Giorgio Colangeli, Emanuela Gallussi

Italy 2008 87mins

This is the first feature for these two Italian scriptwriter brothers is best described as a noir thriller. The action takes place in a single night in a seventies villa near Rome.

The story is centred on Rocco (Massimo de Santis) a decent bloke and a jobbing builder who is desperately short of money. When his business partner offers him a strange gig at a plush-looking villa he really can’t refuse although it’s nothing to do with building work. For a large sum of money they are to guard the body of a young woman for one night. She is the daughter of a rich businessman. Nice work when you can get it, but is it? As Rocco waits patiently, the painful secrets of this girl’s life gradually emerge during a series of visits by friends and family.

This is a novel idea for a film and the storyline is well thought out and suspenseful with skilful use of lighting and camera-work to great effect. The problem lies in the characterisation of the main actors. Little is done to flesh out their parts and they appear as stereotype roles that rather than real people with real personalities. As a result, we feel nothing for them or for their story particularly as they are all so unappealing characters in the first place.

Flame and Citron (Flamen Citronen)

Director Ole Christian Madsen

Thure Lindhardt, Mads Mikkelsen, Stine Stengade, Peter Mygind

2008 132 mins Cert 15

Denmark, 1944 and the Second World War is drawing to a close. Nazi troups have moved into Copenhagen and two resistance fighters are working undercover to flush out Nazi informers: they are Flame (Thure Lindhardt) and Citron (Mads Mikkelsen)

With superb haircuts and a great line in tailoring they are fearlessly dedicated to fighting for their country. They are also old friends, passionate romantics and capable of acts of extreme courage and skill with a wide range of firearms. In short these are real men.

Flame, so called because of his shock ginger hair, meets mysterious blond, Ketty (Stine Stengade) in a bar one night. His suspicions are aroused when she uses his codename and when they get back to her room it turns out that shes not only a brunette but also a courier for the other side .

They fall in love and Flame is then given orders to execute her as word has it that shes a double agent. Meanwhile Citron is grappling with the breakdown of his marriage, another casualty of the War.

Their freedom fighting is eventually hampered by poor intelligence information and it becomes increasingly difficult to know who is on their side.

This stylish film noir is beautiful to watch and absolutely riveting from start to finish. There are moments of shocking violence and poignant sadness especially in the dying moments of the film.

Genova (2008)

Director Michael Winterbottom

Starring Colin Firth, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Willa Holland, Perley Hanley-Jardine

2008 Cert 15 90 mins

From documentary to soft porn, it’s always interesting to see what Michael Winterbottom has in next in store. GENOVA is no exception especially as it stars Colin Firth as Joe, a middle class English daddy who takes his kids to Italy to recover from the tragic death of their mother in a car accident.

Taking the opportunity to teach at the University, he settles the family into a flat in the old part of town and meets up with Barbara (Catherine Keener) a friend from his days at Harvard. They settle into a routine of classes in the morning and beach in the afternoon. Pubescent Kelly (Willa Holland) discovers Italian boys. Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine) is more sensitive and youngest is Perla Haney-Jardine doesn’t cope at all. The way she really misses her mother is poignantly observed.

Right from the beginning there’s the uneasy feeling that this is no ordinary drama. It’s very much a ‘ghost’ story in the modern sense. But why Genova? The old town is just the place for this creepy tale. A hand-held camera pans the narrow medieval streets as shadowy figures loom out of the darkness and give a whiff of menace that’s reminiscent of ‘Don’t Look Now’. Prostitutes haunt the shady courtyards of the Port and birds fly out of dilapidated buildings in scenes that would be difficult to come by in a modern city such as Chicago, the family’s US home.

One minute Kelly’s disappearing on the beach or zipping precariously through the streets on the back of her boyfriend’s dodgy moped, the next Mary has gone missing in a Church causing a frantic search. And all the time Colin Firth is holding things together with that nagging expression of impending doom he does so well.

Despite Marcel Zyskind’s glossy location shots, this is very much a tale of bereavement and individual reactions to it. Mary has a wild imagination and as the youngest is most candid in her expression of sadness. It’s a very natural performance from Hannah Perley Jardine as a little girl who really misses her mother. Her nightmares start to feature Hope Davis in cameo role as her mother. Kelly resents her younger sister and as a teenager, is trying to appear cool.

But ultimately this is Colin Firth’s film. He is superb as a respectable 40-something guy who’s keeping things together for his children. Continually on the verge of tears he is by turns incredibly tender and caustically abrupt; and this is the refreshing part. His performance is so subtle, so English: there is no embarrassing breakdown – just a dignified portrayal of a man who’s making a very brave attempt to carry on and succeeding despite the interference of a friend and a nubile student. Both are desperate to get it on with him but end up just getting in the way.

Michael Winterbottom has given us realistic sex in Nine Lives. This is realistic grief and is both unsentimental yet utterly moving.

The White Ribbon | Das weise Band (2009) Bfi Player

Dir: Michael Hanneke | Christian Friedel, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaussner, Germany, Drama 145min

Michael Hanneke’s won his first Palme D’Or at Cannes for this sombre cinematic study of social subversion in small-town Germany in the prelude to the First World War.

Hypnotic and carefully measured the drama tracks the life of a rural Protestant community many of whom are still dependent on the local Baron for their livelihoods.

As we meet the various villagers, the Doctor, the Priest – a series of random and mysterious accidents occur that lead us to realise that all is not as gemütlich as we first imagined in a community where the weak and powerless are constantly engaged in acts of petty rebellion or protest against their controlling elders.

Michael Hanneke’s vision branches out vigorously as it grows beyond the seeds of Nazism with this fascinating and visually captivating film that serves not only as a mirror on a moment in time, but also as a commentary on the parlous state of society as a whole – now more that ever – in the current crisis throughout Europe in the prelude to the First World War. MT ©

Michael Hanneke’s AMOUR, HIDDEN and THE WHITE RIBBON on BFi PLAYER

Regrets (2009)

Director: Cedric Kahn

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Yvan Attal, Arly Jover

105min

Love is the central character of Regrets or rather the passion and lust of unrequited love: Love than has never run its course and comes back to punch you in the solar plexis just when you think you’re happy enough with the everyday fondness of long-term marriage. That sudden punchdrunk love that pops up from the past and makes you realise it never really went away. If you’re a love addict or even a disillusioned romantic then Regrets is for you.

Mattieu is a shy architect, married and living in Paris. When his mother dies, he goes back to his home town (Yvan Attal) and bumps into an old girlfriend, Maya (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and finds he can’t leave her alone much to the annoyance of their respective partners. A classic French psychological drama from the masterful Cedric Kahn, which shows Attal and Bruni Tedeshi at their best in passionate performances. MT

[youtube id=”mFcgTYZliq4″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

A Somewhat Gentle Man (En Ganske Snill Mann)

Directed by Hans Petter Moland

With Stellan Skarsgard, Bjorn Floberg, Jorunn Kjellsby

Norway 105 mins

This dark comedy from Norway has a feel of the Coen Brothers, an amusing and highly original script and possibly some of the worst sex scenes ever – in a good way.

Ulrik, the man in question (Stellan Skarsgard) has just come out of 12 years in prison for murder and ready to start a new life. But his former partners in crime are less keen to let him move on from the past and seem intent on helping him to gain revenge for the time he spent inside.

The strong and silent type he endures the sexual advances of his unappealing landlady and his bitter ex-wife but fails to re-kindle a relationship with his son Geir who has already told his partner that his father is dead.

Brilliant comic timing along with Skarsgard’s stoical demeanour and quiet air of resignation make this a highly entertaining drama.

Meredith Taylor

Tulpan (2008)

Dir: Sergei Dvortsevoy | Drama | Kazakhstan | 120mins

If you thought that Borat had Kazakhstan sewn up then think again. Dvortsevoy won the Prix Un Certain Regard for this endearing picture of life on the windswept southern Steppe for a family of nomadic herders.

This film is so cute you’ll want to pick it up and cuddle it but preferably with gloves on. Apart from a touching script and great performances not least from the animals it features mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with a newborn lamb and gets down and dirty with camels, a real tornado, endless sandstorms and some very grim weather indeed. Powerful wide-angled visuals combine with the cosy interiors of the yurt, the tent where the all live.

Asa, the gentle boy with a vivid imagination, has completed his navel service and wants to join his family of herders. In order to become a shepherd he must find a wife and women are thin on the ground in this part of the world. Infact the nearest one for several hundred miles is Tulpan. She doesn’t fancy Asa largely because of his ears but it may be because he talks too much. With the help of his friend Boni he tries to win her over. The alternative is a move to the city where he wouldn’t have his family’s love and support let alone a reliable job.

In contrast to the incredible hardships that the herders suffer they are entirely without anger or aggression. Their gentleness and perseverance is totally inspirational. There is no alternative but to learn to live in harmony with each other and with nature as a whole and therein lies the magic of their existence. Dvortsevoy succeeds with skill and patience in eliciting both humour and compassion in this exquisite debut feature.

WINNER | PRIX UN CERTAIN REGARD | CANNES 2008

The Absence of Love | Michelangelo Antonioni Retro

Humans are intruders in the film world of Michelangelo Antonioni: they destroy the harmony of nature and society. Only in a few cases, when they act in solidarity with others, do they have a chance to become part of something whole.

Antonioni grew up in Ferrara in the Po Valley not far from the setting of his documentary short GENTE DEL PO (1943-47). Visconti was in the throws of filming Ossessione nearby. Despite its neo-realistic moorings, this is a personal statement: an effort to interpret the world via the moving image, rather than the other way round. Antonioni’s realism is not to show anything natural, humane or dramatic, and particularly not anything like an idea, a thesis. Memory alone forms the model for his art. Memory in the form of images: photos, paintings, writing – they form the basis of his later work – an adventure, where the audience peels off the many layers, like off an onion: a painting, more than once painted over.

Antonioni was already 38 when he made his drama debut with Cronaca Du Un Amore (1950) Superficially a film noir, in the mood of Visconti’s first opus Ossessione, this expressed the overriding existential angst, loneliness and alienation that would permeate his work. Paola and Guido grew up in the same neighbourhood in Ferrara, and want to do away with Paola’s rich husband Enrico Fontana. This is no crime of passion, because Paola and Guido are unable to love, or even imagine a life together – but they both stand to profit from Fontana’s death. And the city of Milan is much more than a background: life here is a reflection of the state of mind of the conspirators: like a drug, the street life full of chaos, the neurotic atmosphere in the cafes. All this is unreal, jungle like: modern urbanity as hell, a central topic of Antonioni’s opus. And he observes his main protagonists often, when they are alone, not only in dramatic scenes. This way, he creates an elliptical structure, with two combustion points: action and echo. As Wenders said: “The strength of the American Cinema is a forward focus, European cinema paints ellipses”.

I VINTI (1952) is set in three different countries (Italy, France and the UK), and tells the stories of youthful perpetrators, who commit their crimes not out of material necessity, but just for fun. Even though the crimes are central, Antonioni is not much interested in the structure of the genre. The police work is secondary, as are the criminals themselves: Antonioni is fascinated with the daily life of his protagonists, the crimes are more and more forgotten, the investigations peter out – shades of L’ Avventura and Blow Up.

In LE AMICHE (1955) Antonioni finds the structure for his features, seemingly overpopulated with couples and friends – who are all busy, but play a secondary role to their environment, in this case Turin. Clelia who comes to Turin, to open a designer shop for clothes, falls in with four other young women, all of them much wealthier than she is. Their changing couplings with men end tragically. Set between Clelia’s arrival in Turin and her leaving for Rome, LE AMICHE is a kaleidoscope of human frailty, in which the audience is waiting for something to happen, some sort of story of boy meets girl story, but when something like it really happens, it is so secondary, so much overlaid by all the small details we have learned before, that we are as dislocated as the characters: we flounder because Antonioni does not tell a story with a beginning and an end (however much we pretend), but he tells us, that the world can exist without stories. Because there is so much more to see in the city of Turin, as there will be in Rome: Clelia is only the messenger, send out by Antonioni to be a traveller, not a story teller. In so far, she is his archetypal heroine.

Aldo, the central protagonist in IL GRIDO (1956/7) is the most untypical of all Antonioni heroes: he has been expelled from paradise, after his wife left him. His travels are romantic, because he does not let himself go, but sticks to his environment, travelling with his daughter in the Po delta. Whilst looking back on his village, towered over by the factory chimney, it is his past history, which forces him to leave. He becomes more and more marginalised: an outsider, even when living near the river in a derelict hut, he becomes the victim of the environment, of the background of landscape, seasons and the history of his live, spent all here. El Grido ends tragically, because Aldo (unlike most other Antonioni heroes) insists on keeping to his past: he does not want to cross the bridges, which are metaphorically there to be crossed. And Aldo’s titular outcry becomes a good-bye, even though he is back home. Il Grido is also Antonioni’s return to neo-realism, another contradiction, because he never really was part of it.

L’AVVENTURA (1960) has four main protagonists, three of them humans, but they are dwarfed by Lisca Bianca, a rocky island in the Mediterranean See. A group of wealthy Italians visit the island but when they want to leave, the main character Anna, is missing. Her boyfriend Sandro starts the search, but is soon more interested in Claudia, Anna’s best friend. When they all leave, without having found Anna, Claudia and Sandro are ready to start a new life together. Antonioni is often compared with Brecht. Like the German playwright, he refuses the dramatization of the narrative, because it is a remnant of the bourgeois theatre. Analogue to this comparison, L’Avventura is epic cinema. Brecht’s plays are often transparent, because the actors do not identify with their roles. The audience is not drawn into the play, but left outside to observe. The same goes for Antonioni, because, as Doniol-Valcroze wrote “to direct is to organise time and environment”. Antonioni genius is, that he first introduces time scale and environment, before he develops the narrative, via the actions and words of the protagonists. The breakers on the island, are the real music of the feature. The fragility of the emotions manifests it selves mainly in the way the protagonists talk – but mostly they are on cross purpose. Yet the overall impression is not that of a modern film with sound, but of a very sad silent movie. At Cannes in 1960, the feature was mercilessly jeered at the premiere, but won the Grand Prix nevertheless – a rarity of the jury being ahead of the public.

In LA NOTTE (1960) we observe twenty-four hours in the live of the writer Giovanni and his wife Lydia. Whilst their friend dies in a hospital, they have to accept that their love has been dead for a while. Antonioni uses his characters like figures on a chess board. They are real, but at the same time ghosts. He does not tell their story, but follows their movements from one place to an another. There is no interconnection between them and their environment. They have lost the feeling for themselves, others and the outside. Their world is cold and threatening. Antonioni offers no irony or pity. He is the surgeon at the operating table, and his view is that of the camera: mostly skewed over-head shots. It is impossible to love La Notte. Whilst Antonioni is the first director of the modern era, he is also its most vicious critic.

When L’ECLISSE (1962) starts in the morning, it feels somehow like a continuation of La Notte. Before Vittoria (Vitti) ends her relationship with Francisco, she arranges a new Stilleben behind an empty picture frame. Next stop is Piero (Delon), a stockbroker. Vittoria is like Wenders’ Alice in the City: a child in a world of grown ups, repelled by their emotional coldness. Piero, very much a child of this world, is all calculations and superficiality, his friend’s remark “long live the façade” sums it all up. Long panorama shots show very little empathy with the eternal city, particularly the shots without much noise (music only sets in after the half-way point of the film), are representative of a ghost town populated by little worker ants, dwarfed by the huge buildings. The couple’s last rendezvous is symbolic for everything Antonioni ever wanted to show us: none of the two shows up, we watch the space where they were supposed to meet for several minutes. L’Eclisse will lead without much transition to Deserto Rosso, where Monica Vitti is Guiliana, wandering the streets, getting lost in a fog on a very unlovable planet.

DESERTO ROSSO (1963/4)

Guiliana: “I dreamt, I was laying in my bed, and the bed was moving. And when I looked, I saw that I was sinking in quicksand”. Guiliana’s world is threatening, everything is monstrous, the buildings of an industrious estate are unbelievable tall. The machines in the factories, the steel island in the sea, and the silhouettes of the people surrounding her are enclosing around her. We travel with her from this industrial quarter of Ravenna to Ferrara and Medicina. She is never still, only at the end she is standing still in front of a factory gate. In Deserto Rosso objects become blurred, they seem to be alive, making their way independently. The camera never leaves Guiliana during her nightmare. We see the world through Guiliana’s eyes: “It is, as if I had tears in my eyes”. In the room of his son she sees his toy robot, his eyes alight. She switches it off – but this the only activity she is allowed to master successfully. There is always fog between her and everybody else, even her lover Corrado is “on the other side”. And the fable, which she tells her son Vittorio, who cannot move, before he is suddenly running through the room, lacks anything metaphysical. Roland Barthes called Antonioni “the artist of the body, the opposite of others, who are the priests of art”. For once, Antonioni is one with the body of his protagonist: Guiliana’s body is not one of the many others, she will never get lost.

BLOW UP (1966)

A feature one should only see once – never again. Otherwise one will suffer the same as Thomas photos: Blow Up. Antonioni to Moravia: “All my films before are works of intuition, this one is a work of the head.” Everything is calculated, the incidents are planned, the story is driven by an elaborate design. The drama, which is anything but, is a drama perfectly executed. Herbie Hancock, the Yardbirds, the beat clubs, the marihuana parties, Big Ben and the sports car with radiophone, the Arabs and the nuns, the beatniks on the streets: everything is like swinging London in the 1960ies: a head idea. Blow Up is Antonioni’s most successful feature at the box office – and not one of his best.

ZABRISKIE POINT (1969/70)

Given Cart Blanche by MGM, Antonioni produced a feature in praise of the American Cinema. Zabriskie Point is the birth of the American Cinema from the valley of the Death. Antonioni has to repeat this dream for himself. But he had to invent his own Mount Rushmore, his Monument Valley, to make a film about this country in his own image. A car and a plane meet in the desert. The woman driver and the pilot recognise each other immediately. The copulation in the sand is metaphor for the simultainacy of the act, when longing and fulfilment, greed and satisfaction are superimposed. Then the unbelievable total destruction: the end of civilisation; Antonioni synchronises both events, a miracle of topography and choreography. This is Antonioni’s dream: the birth of a poem.

Both, the TV feature MISTERO Di OBERWLAD (1979) nor IDENTIFICAZIONE DI UNA DONNA (1982) have in any way added something to Antonioni’s masterful oeuvre. The same can be said of his work after he suffered a massive stroke in 1985, leaving him without speech partly paralysation: BEYOND THE CLOUDS (1995), a collaboration with Wim Wenders, and Antonioni’s segment of EROS (2004). AS

A RETROSPECTIVE TAKING PLACE AT THE BFI EARLY IN 2019

Archive for the ‘Drama’ Category