Archive for the ‘Latest releases’ Category

Immaculate (2024)

Dir: Michael Mohan | Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Alvaro Morte, Simona Tabasco, Benedetta Porcaroli | US Horro 89’

Cecilia, a young American woman, travels to an Italian convent to pledge her life to Jesus (“what a waste!” an official sighs ruefully as he processes her through customs), joining a cadre of young nuns dedicated to helping their sick and demented elder sisters through the last phases of their journey to ‘the Lord’. Cecilia completes her vows and is welcomed into the community as its latest bride of Christ. All seems well.

Well, almost all. Sexuality is surprisingly prominent in daily life: elegantly-cut robes flatter lithe figures; one nun suggests that another’s sour demeanour is the result of “her vibrator’s batteries running down”; and, oddest of all, the building has its own well-equipped gynaecological clinic, complete with a dedicated doctor. As more warning signs accumulate, our misgivings about the convent are more than confirmed (a violent prelude has already clued us up on the extreme risks of trying to leave it).

Immaculate is the passion project of its star, Sydney Sweeney, emphasised by the prominence of her name above the film’s title. Noted for her eye-catching appearance in the video for the Rolling Stones single ‘Angry’, the actress first found fame with TV series ‘The White Lotus’ and ‘Euphoria’.

Sweeney isn’t the first actress to use the clout that comes with success to back a dark and challenging project. For instance, Olivia de Havilland was the motive force behind The Heiress (1949): selecting and securing the property, talking William Wyler into directing it, and playing a lead part at odds with her usual serene glamour.

Similarly, the narrative of Immaculate calls for Sweeney to portray a gamut of strong emotions. Cecilia begins the film cowed by the convent’s gravitas and opulence, albeit armed with a quiet, steely faith which will eventually put the institution to the test. She ends it in shrieking, blood-drenched agony, facing a poignantly fateful decision.

Immaculate is a stylish, well-made and intelligently written horror with high production values. Its vision of a malign and conspiratorial Catholicism is not new, but it manages to cast a spell (undermined at times by frequent jump-scares, heavy-handedly underlined by non-diegetic soundtrack explosions) as it builds towards a visceral climax.

The latter part of the film feels a little rushed and truncated, and some elements are under-developed: neither Cecilia’s formative near-death experience nor the existence of a sub-order of sinister, red-masked nuns are fully explored, and I’d have liked more character development for the two nuns (one supportive of Cecilia, the other stonily opposed) who gravitate to her.

But this is Sweeney’s show. The third act sees Cecilia facing her fate almost alone in the once-teeming building as she hurtles towards a starkly memorable denouement. Unlike the cold revenge enjoyed by de Havilland in The Heiress, retribution in Immaculate is served piping hot, and Sweeney throws herself into the finale with such crazed gusto that most will feel sated by her maniacal power. @IanLong @_i_a_n_l_o_n_g_

Ian Long is a writer and story consultant who teaches various aspects of screenwriting in his Deep Narrative Design workshops. ‘Stargazer’, a psychological drama feature co-written with director Christian Neuman will be released later this year, and Ian is currently developing ‘Malediction’, a supernatural feature set in southern Italy.

IMMACULATE is in UK cinemas from Friday 22 March 2024

Baltimore (2023)

Dir: Joe Lawlor, Christine Malloy | UK drama 98’

Imogen Poots is the only reason to see this faded foray into the past that seems topical merely because of the current outburst of anti-capitalist rage being expressed throughout the Western World.

In Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s character drama she plays Rose Dugdale, an aimless girl with nothing else to do but rail against a system that saw her growing up in a rural mansion in Baltimore — a village in County Cork, Ireland — where her torpid existence soon sees her drawn to the limelight – in this case the contrasting excitement of stealing her own family’s clutch of paintings, in league with the IRA.

Flashbacks show her kicking against the system from an early age in sympathising with a fox during a hunt and a Black woman in a family artwork. The heist soon gives Rose a focus and some lead in her pencil transforming her from a ‘nothing’ to a ‘something’ in her own eyes – a rebel with a cause.

Rose’s mild-mannered parents (Carrie Crowley and Simon Coury) are mystified at this transformation from ordinary teenager to political activist and dismayed when she and her boyfriend (Patrick Martins) steal from them at a fundraiser for the IRA and so its goes on as Poots steals the show with a nuanced portrait of futility and misguidedness.

With its drab visual aesthetic and lifeless characters Baltimore is a dreary trudge through Dugdale’s life and times – which eventually amounted to nothing but caused suffering to many – but for Poots’ performance it is tolerable. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 1 MARCH 2024

The Strangers’ Case (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: Brandt Andersen | with Yasmine Al Massri, Yahya Mahayni, Omar Sy, Ziad Bakri, Constantine Markoulakis | Jordan 2024 | Arabic, English, Greek, Subtitles: English, German | 97′ | World premiere | Debut film

According to the Berlinale festival blurb it was our very own bard William Shakespeare coined the phrase ‘The Strangers’ Case’ in reference to the plight of migrants all over the world. This apparently inspired first time feature director Brandt Anderson to make a film about a tragedy of  refugees.

The Strangers’ Case is a gripping if schematic film that centres on a Syrian family in Aleppo whose predicament will change the lives of five different families. In the midst of it all is Amira, an Aleppo-based paediatric surgeon and her daughter who find themselves swept into a dangerous but familiar tale when they are buried by a bomb from the civil war raging in their country.

Managing to escape the ruins of their home they secure a place on one of those un-seafareing dinghies run by a criminal trafficker/criminal (the muscular Cy ). On the same boat trip is another Syrian family who have opted to leave their place in a migrant camp in order to get to Europe. The criminal who organises their boat transfer, for a hefty fee, is also responsible for a son who he leaves behind.

The Texas born director certainly masters his material in a slick and confident debut that certainly provides compulsive viewing although the narrative tends to be simplistic with characterisations falling predictably into baddie and goodie territory and a docudrama with a predictable ending. @MeredithTaylor

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2024

 

 

 

My New Friends (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: André Téchiné | with Isabelle Huppert, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Hafsia Herzi, Romane Meunier
| France 2024 | French, Subtitles: English | 85′ | Colour | World premiere

Andre Techine was last in Berlnale with L’adieu à la nuit was screened out of competition in 2019. At that time gay sexual-awakening stories were still quite thin on the ground and his film, co-written Regis de Martin-Donos and Celine Sciamma, felt fresh and innovative.

His latest, screening in Berlinale’s Panorama sidebar, although decent  rather unremarkable as it goes over old ground although the subject matter – political activism – is still big thing in France (think ‘Gilets Jaunes’ etc). This politically-charged drama is carried by Isabelle Huppert, as Lucie, a widowed forensics detective who finds herself on the horns of a moral and ethical dilemma when a new family moves in next door.

The dramatic backdrop of the Eastern Pyrenees is once again the setting for a lowkey, human story that shows how political leanings weigh more heavily than ever before on our day-to-day relationships, threatening to disrupt even the closest of friendships. And this personal strife lies at the heart of the film.

This time around the veteran director is with his regular co-writer de Martin-Donos in a story that unfolds in the small village of Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines, near Perpignan, where Lucie’s growing friendship with the woman next door (Hafsia Herzi) is put under pressure when it emerges her troubled husband Yann (Pérez Biscayart) has a hefty criminal record in police anti-activism with an ongoing involvement in violent ant-capitalist demonstrations in Toulouse and Montpellier. Naturally Lucie finds herself at odds with Yann exposing potential divided loyalties with his wife.

Huppert once again channels all the angst of a rather lonely soul who is forced to be even-handed towards her neighbours while at the same time standing by her private beliefs and professional credentials. Political activism is now becoming more widespread all over Europe and this makes the film thematically relevant despite its rather underwhelming presentation. @MeredithTaylor

PANORAMA AUDIENCE AWARD COMPETITION  | BERLINALE 2024

 

 

In the Land of Brothers (2024) Sundance 2024

Dir: Raha Amirfazli & Alireza Ghasemi | Cast: Hamideh Jafari, Bashir Nikzad, Mohammad Hosseini | IDrama, Iran, France, Netherlands 95′

In this nuanced portrait of identity and belonging in a world full of barriers, three members of an extended family of Afghans try to find a sense of home in an increasingly unstable environment of Iran, under threat of US invasion in 2001.

The delicately interwoven stories are thoughtfully told and set against a background of menace that connects with the universal narrative of displacement that continues to resonate all round the world. Their plight is a familiar one involving police brutality, administrative mix-ups and delays – along with the everyday stresses of modern life that exist in any ordinary family. Hamideh Jafari, Bashir Nikzad, Mohammad Hosseini make for a convincing trio.

An impressive first feature for Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi In the Land of Brothers is a quietly reflective look at a situation that has international repercussions and is deeply felt by anyone of us trying to fit in with a society that strives to make our existence untenable whether it be in Iran, Europe of the United States. DoP Farshad Mohammadi’s subtle camerawork compliments the understated tone of this watchable and well-acted drama that consolidates the directing duo’s growing reputation on the international film stage. @MeredithTaylor

Sundance Film Festival – The Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic goes to Raha Amirfazli & Alireza Ghasemi for IN THE LAND OF BROTHERS. #Sundance 22 January 2024 

 

Steppenwolf (2024) IFFR 2024

Dir: Adilkhan Yerzhanov | | Kazakhstan/Russia,102′

A hyper violent civil war rages across an apocalyptic landscape where gender conventions prevail in classic Western style: the men are the killers. One traumatised woman seeks to preserve life, that of her child, predictably kidnapped by organ traffickers (a ‘nice’ modern twist).

After his exquisite 2018 feature The Gentle Indifference of Life and 2022 thriller Assault, Yerzhanov returns to a vast wilderness for another Steppe legend love story: that of a mother for her child. The intrepid Tamara is determined to sacrifice her own life and safety to safeguard that of her son. In this endeavour hires an investigator, a reformed ex-convict who goes by the name of Steppenwolf and bears a canny resemblance to the mythological character, literally the ‘wolf of the Steppes’. Complete with shaggy hair, clear blue eyes and a swaggering gait he’s not a man to be underestmated as his victims soon discover to their chagrin.

Threatening and pacifying his female companion by turns, Steppenwolf is certainly menacing but also faintly ridiculous. Committed to these endless brutal murders, tersely executed with an axe or rotary cutting device, Steppenwolf goes about his business while Tamara remains meek and submissive, reduced to a mumbling, monosyllabic communication. At one point she seems to have died, lips turning purplish, but no, this woman is the heroine of the piece, an indomitable martyr empowered to withstand endless pain and emotional suffering to achieve her aims. Stylish and formally striking, the hostile landscape mirrors the film’s bloody violence – but a little more dark humour would have been welcome. Hard-going for the faint of heart. @MeredithTaylor

PREMIERING AT ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 31  JANUARY 2024

 

The Worst Man in London (2024) IFFR 2024

Dir: Rodrigo Areias | Cast: Albano Jeronimo, Edward Ashley, Victoria Guerra, Edgar Morais, Carmen Chaplin | Portugal, Drama 122′

Charles Augustus Howell, the main character in this suggestive slow-burn drama from Portuguese director from Rodrigo Areias, was certainly a mercurial character: for some he distilled the vibrant qualities of the pre-Raphaelite era, others found him a rather a machiavellian rogue, suspecting him of blackmail and even forgery.

This is not a film about art as such, but an intriguing look at 19th century high society through a group of Victorian creatives whose aim was to see the world in a more realistic and natural light, inspired by the Italian painters of the 14th and 15th century. And while they look very Victorian through our modern day gaze, behind their often inscrutable personas, Arieas and his writer paint them as arcane, subversive and mired in intrigue in their tightly-knit, incestuous coteries, preferring to focus their attention on the allure of renaissance Italy with vibrant colours that romanticised the era, rather than on the harsh realities of industrial revolution, that was gearing up in London at the time.

Pacing-wise and with its leisurely, episodic structure The Worst Man in London recalls Eugene Green’s The Portuguese Nun. We meet the characters as if introduced to them at a cocktail party, in a series of charming vignettes and graceful set pieces, the drama glows like a jewel-box in Jorge Quintela’s imaginative camerawork.

The international cast includes Carmen Chaplin who is particularly good as Lady Posselthwaite. Edward Ashley plays Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Victoria Guerra, Lizzie Siddal and Christian Vadim (son of Catherine Deneuve) La Rothiere.

Howell, born in Portugal, was not just Ruskin and Rosetti’s agent, he also served as a model for Dante Gabriel Rossetti although he seems to have been air-brushed out of history largely due to his purported skulduggery and is brought back to life as the focus of this sumptuous period piece that unfolds as a lush and finely detailed society chronicle of the day, with Howell working his way through the ranks acquiring works and establishing relationships with the great and good. One of his celebrated coups is to persuade Rossetti to dig up and sell the works of poetry buried with his wife Lizzie Siddal. Albano Jeronimo is certainly convincing in the main role of Howell, with his elegant stature and saturnine looks. @MeredithTaylor

IFFR | WORLD PREMIERE Monday 29 January 2024

https://youtu.be/n9Ce8SucC7s?feature=shared

May December (2023)

Dir: Todd Haynes | Cast: Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Chris Tenzis, Charles Melton | US Drama 117′

May December could well be one of the masterworks about the way paedophilia impacts on relationships and family life. It is the confident latest film from Todd Haynes who began as a key figure of the 1990’s New Queer Canadian Cinema with films such as Poison, The Karen Carpenter Story, Safe and Velvet Goldmine. Working with a talented cast and crew, actor Julianne Moore and producer Christine Vachon showcase the power of a mature director in full command of his filmmaking craft.

The film is not an easy watch for those who find difficult subjects uncomfortable in an entertainment context although there is a duty for fearless artists to interrogate challenging subject matter. May December certainly does this and provides a deeply moving and affecting study of the secrets, lies and deceptions that exist even within close relationships.

The title is a play on the seasons of the year reflecting the romantic relationship between two people of different ages, and linking spring – that comes with youth – through to the eventual winter of old age. This connection with the seasons echoes Alexander Singer’s criminally undervalued 1961 film A Cold Wind in August about the relationship between an ageing stripper and a much younger man; as well as Catherine Breillet’s latest feature Last Summer (2023) that sees a married woman toy with her young stepson without serious emotional intentions.

There is a difference here. Once Haynes lifts the lid off the various themes nothing will be the same again for his wide range of players and characters. The plot is straightforward and based in reality, echoing the true 1990s story of 36-year-old Mary Kay Letourneau who left her husband and family after being convicted and jailed due to her relationship with a 13-year-old boy. On release from prison, she married the young man and formed a new family and a cosy, respectable and conventional middle-class life.

At this point in the narrative Haynes introduces melodrama. The mother (Moore) commissions an indie film that will tell her story and, hopefully, reveal honest truths about what had happened years previously. The film begins with a visit from Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) the actor chosen to play Julianne Moore’s dysfunctional character Gracie, in an attempt to understand everyone involved in this extended family life. The coming together of the first family and the children from the second marriage, during a graduation ceremony weekend, is beautifully handled with sly humour while revealing a feature of complex resonances.

The film offers a powerhouse challenge for Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman as the women involved, and recalls the work of George Cukor,  another gay filmmaker at ease working with female actors and handling themes involving women. Julianne Moore has the more grounded role as the mother/wife, enabling her to invest her character with more backstory involving childhood abuse trauma that in later life could have manifested in an arrested state of childhood as the source of her original transgressive relationship with the 13-year-old boy. Haynes heightens this with her, now adult, younger husband who is beginning to realise he has missed out on a full experience of life, and revealing that May/December relationships can bring problems later on involving missed and lost opportunities.

Natalie Portman may have the more difficult but also revealing role as Elizabeth. She has a less defined past suggestive of being mildly lonely and only moderately successful. This is all left open but heightens the contrast between both characters: Elizabeth appears to be shadowing Gracie with a form of imitation that reveals how a mix of identity issues and role-playing can be very dangerous. One sequence is particularly revealing and offers a  masterclass in skilful technique and razor-edge emotional precision: The two women face each other, seemingly stripped bare of their respective personas.

Another aspect of the film’s power involves Haynes’ well-documented understanding of the 1950s Hollywood cinema of Douglas Sirk. The visual style is mostly melancholy with muted greys and browns and none of Sirk’s expressionistic colour lighting, although there is a similar sense of framing and space involving settings and characters. Also relevant here are Sirk’s themes involving theatrical illusion, patriarchal values and forbidden love – which threaten familiar and social conventions – in a ‘let’s pretend we are all nice’ middle-class setting bringing to mind All that Heaven Allows (1955).

There are many other intriguing and poignant scenes that are best left for viewers to experience. If you are wondering why the beautiful score by Marcelo Zarvos includes sonorous chords of music in a French style, this is because the music incorporates Michel Legrand’s score for Joseph Losey’s film The Go Between. The reference may be intentional as May December is another insight into the myriad ways a child’s life can provide complex links into adult lives. @PeterHerbert

NOVEMBER 17 in cinemas and on SKY CINEMA DEC 8

PETER HERBERT is Curator Manager at THE ARTS PROJECT

Bfi London Film Festival 2023

Arts curator Peter Herbert reports from year’s Bfi London Film Festival on London’s South Bank:

THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023) has a kind  of ponderous beauty drawing parallels between the consumerism of  living and that of death as  perceived during the horrors  of war. It feels like it’s source novel by Martin Amis but is unmistakably the work of one of our most important UK directors and adds to Jonathan Glazer’s small but striking body of films.

I wasn’t a massive fan of BOOK OF CLARENCE (2023) and thought the director was more vivacious than his film which is radical at its best with a very amusing use of Benedict Cumberbatch.

RED ISLAND (2023) has lots of good elements but seemed drawn out by the end and as directed by Robin Campillo became  a bit unfocused beyond the central child’s eye view. It’s perfect Curzon fare.

James Benning’s ALLENSWORTH (2022) (above) may be one of his best. 12 chapters representing 12 months of the year.. It could be screened as an ongoing cycle like THE CLOCK and contains some of his key ideas and images in the context of a memory of a town scarred  by a historical  memory of racial horror. The use of Nina Simone’s song  Blackbird is  very haunting and moving in one sequence.

THE STRANGER AND THE FOG (above) had a very passionate introduction from a key person involved with its restoration. He described a film that on its release in 1974 was met with baffled indifference by audiences and critics at festivals, and was effectively buried by Iranian authorities. Looking at it now. it still feels largely impenetrable without knowledge of  intense  religious cultural motifs. Filmed by writer and director Bahram Beyzaie on locations used by Pasolini as sets for his final ARABIAN NIGHTS film, it lacks for me the homoerotic potential of Pasolini that it fleetingly contains  and  doesn’t develop the beautiful visual surrealism of the comparable Paradjanov . It’s a long 145 minutes with plenty of rain,fog,mud and symbolism but  is a unique one off for sure. Let’s see how its reputation develops once this restoration is released.

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM (2023) (above) may not be perfect but the rich fertile imagination of director Thomas Cailley  gets under the skin with its idea of people mutating into animals with  authorities struggling  to often violently  suppress what’s happening. There are curious parallels with Ray Bradbury and the sequence in the forest revealing a  community of mutants living a positive new life reminded me of the end of FAHRENHEIT 451 with the forest of people keeping forbidden books alive. After the film I could see people around me with a range of facial features suggesting the animal world, much as years ago the work of Cindy Sherman altered visual perceptions for days after experiencing an exhibition of her face shifting photography. This is a good sign of successful art altering  the way you can look at life around you  One for a film distributor to consider acquiring. The film with the strong combination of  Romain Duris, Paul Kircher and the possibly  underused but ascending  actress Adele Exarchopoulos could be commercially successful?

THE BLACK PIRATE from 1926 looked splendid in its 2 strip technicolor glory highlighting the wooden timbre set design. It felt a bit stolid as directed by Albert Parker until the exuberance of the last 30 mins which has more of the emotional power and beauty associated with Dwan or Walsh. There is a surprising lack of closeups of the charismatic Fairbanks as its largely filmed long /medium camera range.  Neil Brand was as exuberant as we expect from the best of the current silent film pianists.

ALL OF US STRANGERS (2023) (main pic) may be the standout so far and the more I think about comparisons between the growing body of work by Andrew Haigh and the parallel of Terence Davies in terms of literary  adaptations and gay identity may be well  worth exploring further.

POOR THINGS (2023) – last but not least – its visual originality, set design and ideas seem to overflow the confines of the screen. I was reminded at times of Cacoyannis’ similarly imaginative and  internationally funded but failed Sci-fi hellzapoppin THE DAY THE FISH CAME OUT from 1967, though this shows how far creative  Greek cinema has evolved on every level. The cast led by Emma Stone don’t hold back on anything realising the intricate female- dominated and designed energy of Tony McNamara’s script. It is possibly Lanthimos’ most fully developed work so far. A riveting finale to this years LFF.

PETER HERBERT is CURATOR MANAGER

THE ARTS PROJECT in North London’s Kentish Town

 

Made in Prague Festival 2023

The Made in Prague Festival, one of the oldest national festivals in Britain, showcases the rich tapestry of arts, cinema, music, and culture – in the broadest sense – bringing cult classics and the latest Czech releases to the UK.

The festival this year celebrates its 27th edition with a gala opening and private view of Ultra Super-Natural by Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein, an unique testimony to the fusion of various cultures and civilizations that span the globe.

The backbone of the festival will be Czech film screenings featuring many British premieres. Highlights include Il Boemo, a biopic about the little known composer Josef Mysliveček, starring Vojtěch Dyk, who will join for a Q&A

A second Gala Special will present fresh from this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Restore Point, a sci-fi neo-noir thriller about the future of humanity. The screening at IMAX of this Hollywood-style production will be joined by female lead Andrea Mohylová along with the director and producer.

The Festival will conclude with the Gala pre-release screening of One Life, a biographical drama about British humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton, starring among others Anthony Hopkins, capturing his efforts to save Jewish children from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia.

Other films to look out for:

NIGHTSIREN

+ Q&A WITH DIRECTOR TEREZA NVOTOVÁ
Saturday 11 November, 5.30 pm / The Gate

A harrowing, yet beautiful take on patriarchy and internalised misogyny awarded by Golden Leopard at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival.

THE CRUCIFIED | Ukrizovana Dir: Boris Orlicky (1921) 

Sunday 19 November, 3.30 pm / JW3

Filmed in 1921, this classic silent Czech film offers a fascinating, if troubling, representation of Jews and antisemitism in 19th Century Europe.

VICTIM | Obet | Dir: Michal Blasko (2022)

Monday 27 November 2023 / Genesis

A universal tale about two-class societies, repressed xenophobia and racism, as well as broken hopes and dreams. The Slovak Republic’s national submission for 2023 Academy Awards. More info

ARVÉD | Dir: Vojtech Masek (2022) 

Tuesday 28 November, 6.45 pm / Czech Centre at the Czech Embassy Cinema

A fascinating insight into the life and mind of Jiří Arvéd Smíchovský, a charismatic hermeticist and occultist, who in his quest for knowledge became first a Nazi collaborator, than informer and witness in communist showtrials.

MADE IN PRAGUE FESTIVAL 2023 | 14-24 NOVEMBER 2023

8 of the Best Musical Biopics

Amy (2015) Rent/Buy

Best known for Senna, his acclaimed 2010 on about late Formula One driver, Asif Kapadia garnered an Oscar for this bittersweet biopic introducing the Southgate-born jazz singer as a “North London Jewish girl with a lot of attitude”, who loved to write poetry and lyrics. Unearthing a treasure trove of photos, home movie footage and demos shared from over 100 interviews from those closest to her, he shows Winehouse as a witty, down to earth and “gobby” girl with a rich and velvety voice, who never wanted to be famous but whose inadvertent stardom let to her tragic death, aged 27.

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road (2021) – Apple TV/Prime Video

Do we need another Brian Wilson documentary? I Just Wasn’t made for These Times and Love & Mercy have already told his story, but the billion or so the super-fans will always ask for more. And The Beach Boys were America’s answer to The Beatles, back in the day, they epitomised an era and their harmonies are almost as divine – so yes, we do!.

Director Brent Wilson (no relation), veteran of music docs like Streetlight Harmonies, has tried the linear angle, confronting the images of the ‘Beach Boy’ founder with today’s survivor of schizoid-affective and bi-polar disorders, who enjoys being on tour again, even though the hallucinatory voices still haunt him – and have done for the last 60 years – when he is performing, in spite of all the medication available.

‘Rolling Stone’ editor Jason Fine, a close friend of Wilson, drives the megastar composer/singer round his favourite haunts, sadly only getting monosyllabic answers to his leading questions. Brian is very much in the shell he has created to survive. And there is more that enough pain for anybody to deal with, let alone a highly-strung artist.

Music-wise there is extensive time devoted to the iconic “Pet Sounds” and SMiLE, that came into being in the mid-1960s and finished thirty years later. There are few revelations, the bitter chapter of Brian’s relationship with fellow Beach Boy Mike Love is nearly brushed out of the picture. Only once the mask of self-defence slips, when Brian tells Jason “I have not talked to a real friend in three years.”

Miles Davis : Birth of the Cool (2019) Netflix/Apple TV

Documentarian Stanley Nelson tells it all in the usual talking heads style – Frances Taylor, Greg Tate, Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock and his final manager Mark Rothbaum all appear and a straightforward narrative structure enlivened by many photos and clips from the archives. The film luxuriates in its musical interludes which are enjoyable and plentiful making this possibly the definitive biopic of one of the most inventive jazz musicians of the 20th century. Stanley Nelson’s expansive documentary takes an entertaining breeze through the musical career of Miles Davis eclipsing Don Cheadle’s movie 2015 drama Miles Ahead

“All I ever wanted to do was communicate through music”. The iconic jazz trumpeter and composer developed smooth romantic vibes and invented a cool, sophisticated masculinity that came to be known as the ‘Miles Davis Mystique’. For over five decades Miles developed various jazz styles from bebop, cool jazz and jazz fusion working with Prestige, Columbia, and Warner Brothers despite a rocky personal life that was full of love but fraught by ill health and emotional instability.

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017)

As fabulous now as when she was in 1979 when I first experienced her at a concert in Italy’s famous Covo di Nord Est – Grace Jones still rocks. Now at 75 her voice has mellowed, wavering occasionally, but her glamour and star power are just as potent and her aura and outrageous antics as just spectacular, if not more.

After an overture of Slave to the Rhythm where Grace performs in purple regalia and a golden sunburst mask, Fiennes cuts to an autograph session with fans fawning: “I’ve been waiting to see you for 25 years” – Grace responds “so has my mother”. Suddenly we are following her through Jamaica airport for an exuberant reunion with her mother (who looks like Aretha Franklin), son Paolo and niece Chantel, and as night falls, the camera pictures a sultry moonlight gig in the torridly tropical island, drenched in lush emerald forests.

Fiennes’ punctuates the gutsy real time footage shot in her kitchen, car and dressing room – with Grace’s mesmerising Dublin stage show, but both are beguiling and cinematic. Fiennes’ shirks the traditional documentary format – there are no photos or archive footage, making Bloodlight And Bami fresh, feisty and intriguing for longtime fans who have never really experienced the woman ‘behind the scenes’. It’s also longer than most docs at nearly 2 hours. In concert footage, Grace mesmerises with performances of Pull Up To The Bumper and more personal tracks including Williams’ Blood, This Is and Hurricane. She is s force of nature, and certainly a force to be reckoned with. MT

Stop Making Sense (David Byrne and Talking Heads (1985 re-released in 2023) AppleTV/Prime Video

Maybe not the latest look at but certainly the most iconic, this is a musical biopic in the best sense of the word. In Hollywood December 1983, French director Jonathan Demme films three concerts from Scottish maverick music maker David Byrne, rolling them out without explanation or talking heads – although Talking Heads are very much part of the scene. The bands speaks for itself and we get the best seats – on stage, up close and personal and from the back of the auditorium, even loitering in the wings. Demme’s film is an energising experience made at the climax of what would be the band’s final major tour. The show starts with the beat-driven Pyscho Killer and works its way through a classic repertoire with hits such as, Take Me to the Water to This Must be the Place that scored Paolo Sorrentino’s film of the same name in 2011 and of course, Once in a Lifetime. Byrne gradually relaxes from taut jutting-faced uncertainty to a more smiling and febrile intensity, a style icon in white plimsolls and oversized concrete-coloured suits. Hypnotic to look at, his moves are as funky, smooth and syncopated as Bing Crosby or even Elvis without the sexual magnetism: Byrne is a performer more artfully ambivalent in his erotic appeal, but none the less legendary. And he feels very much at home on his own or surrounded by his family of Talking Heads. A nostalgic, diverting, happy film. MT

Rachmaninov:The Harvest of Sorrow (1998) Rent/Buy

Tony Palmer’s extensive documentary about one of the world’s most loved composers (1873-1943) is a vibrant memoire, enlivened by musical interludes and ample archive footage of his life and times in Russia, Sweden and the United States where he finally died in 1943, unable to return to his beloved homeland: “a ghost wandering forever in the world”.

Playing out as a long autobiographical letter to his daughters Tatiana and Irina, voiced by Gielgud in slightly sardonic but wistful tone, the film covers the composer’s life until his final months in New York. But it starts at a low point, with the Rachmaninoff family leaving Russia in 1917, escaping from the Bolshevik devastation of Petrograd (soon to be Leningrad) set for musical adventures in Stockholm, and thence to America. Desperate about leaving his homeland, the composer also felt at a low ebb creatively: “Nowadays I am never satisfied with myself, I am burdened with a harvest of sorrow: I almost never feel that what I do is successful”.

Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023) Netflix

Rock legend Little Richard comes alive in this new biopic from Lisa Cortes. It sees the musical icon trying to come to terms with his complex personality and explores the lack of public recognition during his lifetime. John Waters, Mick Jagger and Tom Jones – among others – help to shed light on a life so full of promise, but blighted by social reality. Sometimes verging on the hagiographic, Cortes manages a wealth of information with aplomb, a more non-linear approach might have been an alternative.

Richard Wayne Penniman (1932-2020) was born in Macon (GA) in the deep South of he USA. Black, queer and disabled he was most certainly abused in childhood. But his deep religious faith eventually led to him renouncing his gayness: “God wanted Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”.

The man who would create “Tutti Frutti”, ”Long Tall Sally”. “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and “Rip it Up” single-handedly invented Rock’N’ Roll – but the glory and the awards went to Elvis and Pat Boone: No wonder, he felt cheated. He was the architect of an art form and a social identity that became progressively clearer only later in his life.

ENNIO (2021) Prime Video

Ennio Morricone was one of cinema’s best loved and most prolific composers. Giuseppe Tornatore captures his complex romantic spirit in this warmly nostalgic tribute that also celebrates their own working relationship that started with Cinema Paradiso (1988) and continued for many years. In his lifetime Morricone scored over 500 movies, one year alone completing 18 films.

The biopic straddles film and musicology enriched by a treasure trove of excerpts and the stars that brought them to life praising Morricone’s charisma and single mindedness and describing their own experiences with a man whose modesty contrasted with his prodigious talent to amuse. The final half hour does feel repetitive with its endless clips of concert performances which add nothing to the party, and almost fly in the face of the composer’s lowkey sense of style. MT

 

 

 

 

 

Georgia on my mind…the London Georgian Film Festival 2023

The Black Sea, with its rich history and contemporary geopolitical significance, is at the heart of the seventh edition of the London Georgian Film Festival: Reflections on the Black Sea held at the Ciné Lumière in South Kensington from 28 September – 3 October. The festival takes place against the backdrop of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the fallout of which has made the Black Sea the focus of global attention.

The London Georgian Film Festival provides a rare opportunity to see 2020s Contemporary World Cinema from Georgia, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine, alongside previously banned 1920s silent films with live piano accompaniment. Through the selection of films from these countries, the festival takes audiences beyond the news headlines of the conflict to look into the lives and historical context of the people in the region. The programme features films from emerging filmmakers and writers, highlighting the experience of women and the LGBTQ+ community, and almost half of the films in the festival are directed by women. Summer Rutterford-Morley takes us through some of this year’s festival highlights.

International festival hit A Room Of My Own directed by award-winning filmmaker Ioseb ‘Soso’ Bliadze and co-written by actor Taki Mumladze. Tina (Taki Mumladze) has left an abusive marriage and moves in with hard-partying Megi (Mariam Khundadze). As Tina struggles to find her independence, she and Megi form an intimate bond which neither woman anticipated. The release of the film was a risk; similar films with LGBTQ+ themes have been met with protests in Georgia.

Snow And The Bear is the directorial debut of Turkish filmmaker Selcen Ergun. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and follows a young forward-thinking nurse called Asli, who arrives at a remote Turkish town cut off from the world by an endlessly harsh winter amidst rumours of bears awakening early from their winter sleep. The film mirrors the constant pressure of feeling unsafe as a young woman in Turkey, where just 6% of films are directed by women.

The gripping Romanian drama Miracle, directed by Bogdan George Apetri, follows the tragic journey of Cristina Tofan, a 19-year-old novice nun, caught between the man’s world she has grown up in and the repressive old-fashioned isolated convent where she seeks sanctuary. The film unfolds as an unpredictable and captivating story while commentating on Romanian society and attitudes towards women.

Let Us Flow is Sophio Medoidze’s first feature documentary, offering a nuanced perspective on the annual August festival of the Tush people, as the filmmaker records young men visiting sacred ancestral shrines not accessible to women in the community. This poetic film considers the importance of ritual, the maintenance of community ties, and how modernisation and migration are transforming rural landscapes.

Anna Japaridze’s short film Glasses Crack, Tablecloths Splinter: Salvaging Georgia’s Undigitized Home Video Cassettes begins with home video footage following her birth in Tbilisi, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Raised between Tbilisi and London, the film revisits Japaridze’s memories through footage and draws on the collective memories of many Georgians, through the time capsules of newly digitised home videos.

The Crazy Stranger by award-winning director Tony Gatlif is a fascinating classic film about World music and will be introduced by World music expert, film and music producer Joe Boyd. The film won Best Film at the Locarno Film Festival in 1997 and follows a young, passionate Frenchman on a mission to find a folk singer in a Romanian village, where he gets entangled with the life of the local Romani community and musicians.

The festival will also screen in the UK for the first time two recently restored classic silent films with live piano accompaniment by John Sweeney, highlighting historical parallels and recurring themes across generations. Banned by the Soviet authorities, The Self-Seeker is a brilliant, satirical film that follows an easy-going Kyiv opportunist as he tries to avoid the 1917-1921 civil war with the aid of a miraculous camel. The film will be preceded by a reading of a Ukrainian poem and will support Siobhan’s Trust, which is delivering assistance to Ukrainian communities on the frontline.

Against the breathtaking backdrop of the Georgian mountains, Vladimir Barskiy’s 1927 film Bela offers a deep dive into history, highlighting love and cunning in the Caucasus. Vladimir Barskiy also played Commander Golikov in Eisenstein’s masterpiece Battleship Potemkin. @Summer Rutterford-Morley

The London Georgian Film Festival: Reflections on the Black Sea will be held at the Ciné Lumière from 28 Sept – 3 Oct 2023

Maestro (2023)

Dir: Bradley Cooper | Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bradley Cooper | US Biopic Drama 130′

Leonard Bernstein was a world class conductor. He was also a conflicted personality. And this conflict lies at the heart of this astonishing biopic love story from Bradley Cooper who started his career as an actor in Hangover and Guardians of the Galaxy, and is now an Oscar class director. Maestro deserves to win an award for its exuberance, intelligence, and standout turns from Carey Mulligan and the director himself who plays the leading role.

How does an extrovert performer – such as a conductor – also satisfy his inner life as a creative composer: these are the two qualities that Bernstein struggled to satisfy and Cooper managed to bring them out into the open in his best film so far.

Bernstein was gay but he was also deliriously happy with his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), a Chilean actress who takes him on, despite his complex sexuality. Cooper’s ambitious biopic showcases Bernstein’s entire adult life from 1943 when he bursts onto the music scene as a 25 year old stand-in at Carnegie Hall, after the regular conductor drops out. He proves to be a dab hand with a baton and then falls for Montealegre at a friend’s cocktail do.

The couple’s coup de foudre is an urbane, witty affair and their onscreen chemistry sizzles, seizing the front pages in glistening black and white footage. It’s often hard to keep up with their frothy peripatetic lifestyle as careers blossom and their family grows to make them the talk of the town in all the right circles.

Occasionally veering into pastiche Cooper’s dazzling direction and script (co-written with Josh Singer) keeps us on board with Bernstein’s highs, lows and achievements in the thrilling whirlwind that gradually switches to colour in the more realistic 1970s.

And this is where dark cloud threaten the couple’s gilded lifestyle, Bernstein stealing an ill-judged behind the scenes kiss with a pretty boy (Matt Boomer) who then lurks in the background for the rest of the film, and Montealegre struggle with cancer. And Mulligan is the star turn here in one of the best performances of her career: as the gifted, tortured, adaptable Felicia. Her subtlety and sophistication is mind-blowing in some deft dialogue scenes where she spars with Cooper with exquisite precision. The subject may be Bernstein but this is Mulligan’s film. MT 

NOW ON NETFLIX | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | GOLDEN LION 2023

 

Animal (2023) Locarno Film Festival 2023

Dir: Sofia Exarchou | Greece, Drama 116′

Greek director Sofia Exarchou’s second film takes place in a family hotel in an unknown Greek Island where dancer Kalia ((Dimitra Vlagopoulou)) is doing her best to inject some fun in the rather joyless atmosphere in her capacity as an “animateur” choreographing stage shows to enthuse holiday-makers.

Looking after a young family and satisfying her partner is an exhausting business but Kalia always switches on the charm and an electric smile for the tourists and encourages her new recruits to do the same to cover versions of ‘Yes Sir I can Bougie’ and other soulless hits. But when Eva (Flomaria Papadaki) arrives Kalia sees a reflection of her younger self in the young girl’s enthusiasm and willingness to shine in a gruelling diurnal activity that feels like hard work, the muscular stresses and strains reflected in Monika Lenczewska’s close-up camerawork.

Exarchou takes a documentary approach to reflect the sheer physical grind of Kalia’s daily existence but there is dark humour too in a similar vein to Ulrich Seidl’s seaside satire Rimini .Although the Austrian filmmaker goes further down the route of lampooning his hero.

The need to be upbeat and bubbly is no mean feat when dealing with a public that is often sluggish: they’ve come on holiday for a relaxing break but also want some fun while getting fit and healthy before they return to their home environment. But Kalia too needs to get away from the forced bonhomie of her paid employment and needs to have a break of her own. And that’s when the going gets challenging in this perceptive look behind the scenes of the holiday entertainment industry. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | GOLDEN LEOPARD COMPETITION.

 

 

5 Hectares (2023) Locarno Film Festival 2023

Dir: Emilie Deleuze | Cast: Lambert Wilson, Marina Hands  | France, Comedy 94′

Lambert Wilson has been taking time out from Paris to explore the pleasures of French rural life. In A Great Friend (2023) he embraces solitude in a rustic mountain retreat, Golden Hands (2023) sees him falling in love in Calvados.

In 5 Hectares, premiering at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, Franck moves lock stock and barrel to an idyllic farmhouse in the depths of the Limousin determined to make a go of country life with his wife Lionelle (Marina Hands). But the neighbours immediately take against the sauve Parisian entrepreneur and his delightful wife, despite their best efforts to fit in. Franck soon learns that country people prefer a strictly personal approach far removed from the formality of Paris. So a change of tack is needed when Franck decides to buy a tractor. And that’s not all – Le Limousin is well known for its beef cattle.

French filmmaker Emilie Deleuze is no stranger to Locarno where she competed for the Golden Leopard two decades ago with Mathieu Demy starrer Mister V, a powerful drama set on a farm. 5 Hectares is much lighter in style playing on the ongoing theme of town versus country in a delightfully bucolic comedy with some Fawlty Towers style humour. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2023 |

 

Dammi (2023) Locarno Film Festival 2023

Dir: Yann Demange | Cast: Riz Ahmed, Souheila Yacoub, Yousfi Henine | Isabelle Adjani, Sandor Funtek | France, 16′

A woozy reflection on the nature of belonging starring Riz Ahmed as a disenfranchised man of Algerian heritage searching for his roots but never quite finding them in a nocturnal Paris. Returning here, he glides through memories of his past and surreal fragments of the present, searching for connection with his estranged Algerian born father.

Director Yann Mounir Démange, also of Algerian/French parenthood, came to fame through his breakout TV series Top Boy. With an Algerian father and French mother he understands the territory and what it means to feel like a boat swirling in the high seas looking for a safe birth – and the man will find one but it will be with a person rather than a country in this cinematic reverie… Behind Paris is Algiers. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | 2-12 AUGUST | PIAZZA GRANDE OPENING FILM

Explanation for Everything (2023) Viennale Film Festival 2023

Dir: Gabor Reisz | Cast: Gáspár Adonyi-Walsh, István Znamenák, András Rusznák, Rebeka Hatházi, Eliza Sodró, Lilla Kizlinger & Krisztina Urbanovits | Hungary, Drama

The tensions of Hungary’s polarised society come unexpectedly to the surface when a student’s exam results become the focus of a national scandal, in this slow burn sophomore feature from Hungarian filmmaker Gabor Reisz (For Some Inexplicable Reason). 

In a summery Budapest cramming for his final exams is the last thing on Abel’s mind having fallen for his studious school friend Janka who only has eyes for their happily married history teacher Jacob.

Playing in this year’s Horizons sidebar at Venice Film Festival’s 80th edition Explanation for Everything certainly takes its time in establishing the heady milieu of end of term nerves and fraught family life in the build up to the annual summer holidays. But the thrust here is the flight between tradition and the modern world in a film that contrasts the staunch, nationalistic devotion to duty, expressed by Abel’s conservative father, and Jacob’s liberal-minded take on the future with its woke overtones. Gabor Reisz creates another thematically rich and worthwhile modern classic. MT 

VIENNALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 19-30 OCTOBER 2023 | HORIZONS | BEST FILM – HORIZONS 2023 VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis (2023)

Dir.: Anton Corbijn; Documentary with Aubrey Powell, Noel Gallagher, Roger Waters, Nick Mason; UK 2022, 101 min.

Cambridge in the early 1960s: four young men set out to make history: Syd Barnett and Roger Waters would found “Pink Floyd”, meanwhile Storm Thorgeson and Aubrey Powell were re-inventing the art of record cover design with Hipgnosis’; an English design duo who created memorable cult classic album sleeves. The images would sear into our collective unconscious as a visual record of the times. Hipgnosis would go on to devise iconic covers for the likes of T. Rex, Black Sabbath, Wishbone Ash, the Alan Parsons Project, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Yes,  AC/D and many more.

First time full-length documentary filmmaker Anton Corbijn has adapted Trish D Chetty’s script chronicling the often wild and chaotic relationship between Storm Thorgeson (nomen est omen) and Aubrey Powell (*1946), the latter contributing much of the film’s material, since “Stormzy” died in 2013. Noel Gallagher, David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Roger Waters and Nick Mason give their testimony of a ground-breaking relationship.

Back in the day the HQ of “Hipgnosis” in Denmark Street (WC2) had no loo facilities – everyone used the sink, and nobody thought much of it. Then a water pipe burst in the Greek Bookshop on the ground floor below and valuable antiques were severely damaged – luckily Storm and Aubrey had insurance cover. These were just some examples of a time when art got away with blue murder.

Hipgnosis’ first cover work was for “Pink Floyd’s” 1968 album “A Saucerful of Secrets”. From then on the band would headline the Hipgnosis catalogue – together with “Led Zeppelin” . Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother” soon followed in 1970, that famous cover with “the Cow”, that resisted any attempt to be replaced by its given title. Pink Floyd’s 1973 outing “Dark Side of the Moon”, with the famous triangle glowing in a dark SF world, was so far the most ambitious attempt to elevate cover design into an artform in its own right – but it often succeeded in doing much more. Pink Floyd’s “Wish you were Here” (1975) took things a step further, avant-garde, even for those days: Few knew the stuntman risked his life in being set on fire – most people thought it was just a collage.

Hipgnosis’ 1973 cover for Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” – featuring naked children climbing on Ulster’s Giant Causeway – would never have got past the censors today. On a more playful note “Look Here (‘10cc’ 1980), pictured a lightly tranquiliised sheep on a psychiatrist’s couch – (under strict medical conditions!).

And talking of our furry friends, Pink Floyd’s “Animals” album cover (1977) featured a pink plastic pig floating over Battersea Power Station. Roger Waters considers pigs to be at the top of the social pecking order, and -in fitting tribute – the porker later broke free and ended up drifting over countryside meadows.

Perhaps much more frightening was Peter Gabriel’s cover for “Scratch” (1978), which showed the artist itching himself out of his cover cage, foreshadowing horror films to come.

When asked about Storm, all interviewed were unanimous “but he was a genius”, although Thorgeson was invariably a procrastinator – always in a bad mood and uncompromising. In 1983 things came to an end even though Peter Christopherson, also from Cambridge, had joined the duo. “Stormzy” never cared much about money, and soon the group turned their talents to producing music videos, Storm thought he was “a Hollywood director with all the money in the world to spend”. But the bank had other ideas after Powell had left. The two didn’t speak to each other for twelve years, much in the same vein as Syd Barnett and his Pink Floyd band members.

DoPs Martyn Breekhulzen and Stuart Luck give life to this tour-de-force of images. And for once, the music takes a back seat. Opening a new Vinyl and reading the lyrics printed inside the cover was a ritual for us back then. Corbijn’s overdose of nostalgia will go down a storm with fans of that magical era. Enlightening, passionate and rather sad. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 14 JULY 2023

Just the Two of Us (2023)

Dir: Valerie Donzelli | Cast: Virginie Efira, Melville Poupaud | France, drama 110′

When a woman reconnects with a guy she once knew sparks fly and a romance catches fire in this intense thriller from French director Valerie Donzelli

Starring Virginie Efira and Melville Poupaud this Cannes 2023 premiere is based on Eric Reinhardt’s award-winning novel Amour et les Forets and written for the screen by Donzelli and Audrey Diwan. The love affair between teacher Blanche (Efira) and urbane banker Gregoire (Poupaud) moves swiftly from sexual attraction to pregnancy and marriage. But we sense from the outset that something is wrong and alarm bells soon ring loudly when Gregoire introduces his new girlfriend as his ‘wife’ to complete strangers. Soon the couple are celebrating a move from Blanche’s family home in Normandy to a spacious 1960s style house in the eastern city of Metz. Later Blanche will discover that Gregoire engineered the move to separate his new wife from her twin sister (also played by Efira, wearing a wig) and her mother in an attempt to isolate her so he can dominate the relationship.

And once the champagne glasses are put away Gregoire’s controlling personality comes to the fore reducing Blanche, a confident and outgoing woman, to a near nervous wreck. So not a new idea but a tense and at times uncomfortable film made all the more so by stunning performances from two actors at the top of their game.

A clever narrative device has Blanche relating the unfolding events to her lawyer, played by Dominique Reymond in a commanding turn, and this gives the film an authentic grounding making it feel all the more chilling as a day to day reality for many women today subjected to domestic violence from their psychologically disturbed partners whose pattern of behaviour is always charming and persuasive at the outset known as ‘love-bombing’ in popular parlance. Blanche also makes the tragic mistake of seeking a release in an online dating site rather than confronting Gregoire and forcing him to seek professional help. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Asteroid City (2023)

Dir: Wes Anderson. Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Jeff Goldblum | US Comedy drama

Wes Anderson has a dedicated following but even diehard fans were put off by his 2021 film The French Dispatch, with its over-talky, complicated structure. In contrast Asteroid City is so exuberant, nostalgic and lovely to look at the sheer dynamism is sure to endear it to even Anderson sceptics although some complained, at the Cannes press screening, it lacked an ‘involving storyline’. This is a movie that is constantly on the move with Anderson’s regular A-list cast and candy-coloured eye-popping visuals that just make you gawp in amazement for two hours in a film about a play within a TV show .

Once again the narrative unfolds through multiple framing devices with Bryan Cranston introducing the show in a black and white opening scene where we meet Conrad Earp. (Norton) He is the playwright of the 1950s story we are about to watch which then bursts on the screen in a dazzling blast of technicolour transporting us to the mythical desert location of Asteroid City famous for its massive meteor crater and observatory for stargazers eager to see the Milky Way. It’s also a military testing ground for atomic weapons, pioneered by the serene scientist Tilda Swinton. There is a textbook style alien (Jeff Goldblum) whose appearance causes Jeffrey Wright’s army commander to launch an investigation. But Adrien Brody and Willem Dafoe get left on the sidelines in nondescript cameos.

But the film’s focus is Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), a melancholy, pipe-smoking photographer and recent widower who arrives with his children, and his wife’s ashes, in a retro shooting-break that promptly blows a gasket. Butch mechanic Matt Dillon scratches his head unable to mend the vehicle so Augie asks his father in law Stanley (Tom Hanks) for help, meanwhile falling for Scarlett Johansson’s luminescent but lonely Hollywood star Midge, in scenes that plays out like a psychedelic version of Psycho. The nostalgia comes from the music – Rupert Friend is the crooning cowboy – the all round aesthetic and the upbeat gaiety that recalls a time when America was great and led the way in all things cutting edge, including scientific breakthroughs and space travel, but still had decency and family values at its heart. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (2023)

Dir.: Mark Cousins; mockumentary narrated by Alistair McGowan; UK 2022, 120 min.

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock, by writer/director Mark Cousins (March on Rome), is anything but voiced and directed by the legendary British born director – as claimed at the start of this engaging compendium of Hitchcock facts – but a homage by Cousins, who comes clean at the end but not before two hours of pseudo-introspection by AH have passed. Entertaining as these hours are, in the end Cousins fails to amalgamate the contented pater familias (of wife Alma, daughter and pet dog) with the filmmaker who was perhaps most responsible for creating the “male gaze”, culminating in brutal rape scenes such as those seen in Frenzy (1972).

Captioned into six chapters (Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfilment and Height) ‘Hitchcock’ (an avuncular McGowan with Hitch’s signature East London accent) ponders his career from of a very subjective corner: the director as prime creator in a society that served merely as a backcloth in a world where women are victimised by men, to such a degree that two of his main stars (Annie Ondras’ Alice in Blackmail and Sylvia Sims’ Mrs. Verloc in Sabotage (1936) are forced to kill their torturers, both getting off scot free. Hitchcock’s later films are not only more graphic, they are also voyeuristic, to say the least, culminating in Frenzy.

Yet Cousins fails to explain the filmmaker’s position whilst directing Hollywood’s most glamorous actors of this golden era. “The evil genius” portraits have gone a long way to explain Hitchcock’s ‘dark side’ but Cousins circumvents any reflection on the psychological gap between filmmaker and family man. Only once, near the end – Cousins keeping us guessing in an ambivalent way – does this surface in the Paradine Case (1947): Peck’s lawyer Keane is so devastated by the brutality of his Lordship, the lecherous Judge (Laughton), that he leaves the courtroom after having displayed his passion for his client (Alida Valli). Hitchcock raises the camera to an overhead shot until Peck is diminished into a little boy leaving the classroom after a severe ticking off. Perhaps this is the way Hitchcock felt at end of a day’s shooting

My Name is flawed for obvious reasons, even a late 1960s critique would not have let AH get way with rape and murder, picturing the gruesome deeds with such heightened aesthetics, and leaving the camera to indulge itself in such a gratuitous way. That all said, the film will certainly prove box office catnip as fans and newcomers arrive to lap it all up. AS

ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS FROM 21 JULY 2023

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (2022)

Dir.: Nina Menkes; Documentary with Laura Mulvay, Julie Dash, Joey Soloway, Catherine Hardwicke, Rosanna Arquette; USA 2022, 107 min.

It is no an accident that British film critic Laura Mulvay leads an all-female cast of academics and filmmakers in this new documentary. Brainwashed takes a long cold look at the different ways women and men are treated, both on the screen and by the film industry. Naturally, their male counterparts were invited to contribute but declined. It proves inconclusively that patriarchy has no gender, and that Mulvay’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ is very much alive even in the most high-brow fare.

Accordingly, we are forced to take our most admired films and throw them under the bus of sexism: from Last Year at Marienbad to Vertigo, Raging Bull and Le Mepris. Even cult classics such as Blade Runner and Metropolis get the red card.

In the full frontal assault few get away unscathed. Hollywood’s early women directors Ida Lupino and Dorothy Azner are just as guilty as their contemporary counterparts, despite representing just eight percent of the filmmaking community, they have all somehow committed the ‘male gaze’ faux pas’. Even “Palme d’Or” winner Julia Ducournau, only the second female to win the award, takes the rap – for Titane, in which a young woman has sex with a car.

But what exactly is the “male gaze” and what does it consist of? It starts with the definition of the Subject/Object relationship, followed by the specific framing of female and male characters, executed in the camera movement and the lighting: Easy to see how this happens if female filmmakers and camera operators are in the minority. Women often appear naked in films whereas their male counterparts rarely so. The effect is subliminal. Yes, of course, we are all inured and conditioned to it, it’s par for the course – but how often do we actually object?

In the golden era of the studio film women’s faces were captured in 2D sheen, making them look dewy and perfect, whilst men were shot in craggy 3D, implying they had other qualities. Women were reduced to the one-dimensional stereotype of beautiful inertness. As an interesting observation: have you ever watched Raging Bull and noticed that Cathy Moriarty’s image at the swimming pool is detached from the male speakers?

Finally, let’s move on to Mandingo, a trash product directed by Richard Fleischer in 1975. The female plantation owner (Susan George) forces the black slave to have sex with her (otherwise she would accuse him of rape and he would die). His pectoral muscles are very visible, and in all other ways the table is turned too: the male body is, for once, waiting to be conquered by the powerful female.

Brainwashed is rigorous and bracing in its approach, stringent in its execution; and an eyeopener for all who thought they knew the full extent of the phenomenon known as ‘the Male Gaze’. AS

BFI Blu-ray, BFI Player Subscription, iTunes and Amazon Prime release on 17 July 2023

 

 

Book Club: the next Chapter (2023)

Dir.: Bill Holderman; Cast: Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Don Johnson, Andy Garcia, Greg T. Nelson; USA 2023, 107 min.

Bill Holderman thought he was on to a good thing when Book Club, his feature debut, hit the big screen back in 2018. This follow-up is not as funny or well-written but takes up where he left off, and with the same team of Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and their love interests Don Johnson, Andy Garcia and Greg T. Nelson. Their star power carries Book Club: the next Chapter from cover to cover.

First time around “50 Shades of Grey” was the book up for discussion. This time around “The Alchemist” provides the reading matter. But rather than reading the focus is on a trip to Italy for a last ‘hurrah’ before Vivian (Fonda) settles down with Arthur (Johnson). What could be more romantic than an Italian wedding? Well, what starts as a joyride in Rome soon turns into a catalogue of disasters.

On the plus side, Book Club: the next Chapter looks ravishing, DoP Andrew Dunn pulling all the stops out with his camerawork and plenty of frothy dialogue. But something is lacking: a spark to set it all on fire. Fonda is regal; Steenburgen mischievous; Candice Bergen sarcastic and self-deprecating and Diane Keaton hoping for a better version of Woody Allen to spar with. But the script lets these ladies down badly. Which is a shame, because so much talent deserves something brave and daring. Certainly not this orderly retreat behind bland in-jokes and telegraphed plot changes. So not much of a page-turner, just a reliable comedy blighted by the fate of all sequels. . AS

ON RELEASE FROM 12 MAY 2023

Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023)

Dir.: Lisa Cortes; Documentary with Little Richard, Mick Jagger, John Waters, Billy Porter, Tom Jones, ; USA 2023, 98 min.

Rock legend Little Richard comes alive in this new biopic from Lisa Cortes. It sees the musical icon trying to come to terms with his complex personality and explores the lack of public recognition during his lifetime. John Waters, Mick Jagger and Tom Jones – among others – help to shed light on a life so full of promise, but blighted by social reality. Sometimes verging on the hagiographic, Cortes manages a wealth of information with aplomb, a more non-linear approach might have been an alternative.

Richard Wayne Penniman (1932-2020) was born in Macon (GA) in the deep South of he USA. Black, queer and disabled he was most certainly abused in childhood. But his deep religious faith eventually led to him renouncing his gayness: “God wanted Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”.

The man who would create “Tutti Frutti”, ”Long Tall Sally”. “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and “Rip it Up” single-handedly invented Rock’N’ Roll – but the glory and the awards went to Elvis and Pat Boone: No wonder, he felt cheated. He was the architect of an art form and a social identity that became progressively clearer only later in his life.  

Michael Jackson, Prince and later David Bowie (who idolised Little Richard) profited from Richard’s fight for an identity that overcome segregation, at least for part of a younger generation, after the events of 1968. But the music industry “ignored and cheated him”. ‘It was unfair’ says historian John Branca.

Academics may try to come to terms with it, citing the ‘then’ and ‘today’ comparisons, but Little Richard needs no defenders in our contemporary world, he lived through a time which was soul-crushing, and no film can gloss over this. Little Richard was overly optimistic when he claimed “My music broke down the walls of segregation”. And later he is quoted as saying “I want to change my image. I want to come out loud and gaudy as ‘the Living Fame”.

The feature makes no connection to “Flame”; it is a nod to the Pentecostal origins of the gay disco singer Sylvester. Little Richard was really re-inventing himself, even though it was not a always a linear process. But the singer’s religious ambivalence was the kicker in later years.

There are TV interviews and concert footage galore, and alone for this selection Cortes deserves credit. She may have strayed into an intellectual wilderness of a hindsight interpretation, but she keeps his music alive. The true King of Rock’N’Roll will always have the last word when he sings, breaking down our defences like no one else. AS

NOW IN CINEMAS COURTESY OF DOGWOOF

A Thousand and One (2023)

Dir: AV Rockwell | Cast: Teyana Taylor, Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney, Josiah Cross, William Catlett | US Drama 117′

AV Rockwell has a strong premise for her feature debut that chronicles ten years in the life of a struggling black family set against the burgeoning gentrification of Brooklyn during the 1990s. And it looks fabulous with its inspired aesthetic sense and an evocative soundtrack. Sadly A Thousand and One is slight, overlong and underwhelming despite a confident central performance from Teyana Taylor who plays Inez, a bitter and difficult underdog whose only desire is to forge a stable family.

We first meet 22-year-old hairdresser Inez at Riker’s Island detention centre before she struts out into the big wide world in search of Terry, a six-year old child she left behind. Unfolding in a series of brief episodes the film soon establishes her difficult circumstances: grinding poverty and homelessness, Inez not exactly ingratiating herself with the foster family who have looked after Terry in the intervening years. The two are soon out on the streets of Harlem, Inez keen to start out again alone, before settling down with Lucky (Catlett), who appears to be a lover from the past. And the tale continues in this enigmatic vein, leaving us to fill in the gaps in a tonally uneven moody melodrama that aspires to be more momentous than it actually is, despite its justifiable pretensions.

Inez remains the same character over the decade while young Terry develops, played by three different actors (Atedola at 6, Courtney at 14 and Cross at 17). He is the most nuanced character growing from a hurt little boy – the film’s most meaningful scene sees him left all alone to amuse himself for the day – into a  thoughtful and intelligent adolescent, and eventually a disillusioned teenager.

Catlett’s Lucky eventually finds some soul after a prickly start in his new family, although he never really bonds with Inez (apart from in sex scenes) and the three of them somehow remain disconnected despite their fraught journey together. Taylor holds the film together with her vehemence and indomitable emotional power although her performance sometimes feels contrived: a little less attitude and a touch more vulnerability would have been welcome to make her character more relatable.

Oddly enough, One Thousand and One is at its most resonant in picturing the changing backcloth of New York’s gradual urban generation seen through a series of shifting aerial views of the city, brilliantly captured by DoP Eric Yue, along with carefully chosen archive clips from various speeches given by mayors Rudy Giuliani to Michael Bloomberg amongst others. This gives the film the ballast and integrity lacking in the story of Inez and her family. A worthwhile story then, in need of more depth script wise. MT

IN CINEMAS IN APRIL 2023.

Free Money (2023)

Dir.: Lauren DeFilippo, Sam Soko; Documentary with Michael Faye, John Omondi, Isaac Nyamori, Mary Anyango Songa, Jael Rael Axhieng Songa, Larry Madowo; Kenya/USA 2022, 78 min.

Kenyan director Sam Soko (Softie) and her US counterpart Lauren DeFilippo (Red Heaven) have researched the impact of fast growing Non-Profit agency GiVE DIRECTLY (GD), founded by Michael Faye and three of his fellow students from Harvard and MIT.

GD has come up with a revolutionary idea to fight poverty in eleven countries, giving participants in the scheme $22 a month for twelve years. The pilot scheme will run until 2031.

Caroline Teti, who works for GD, is aware she does not represent the emissary from the First World, promising much and delivering nothing. Near the Kenyan village of Koogutu, where GD’s recipients of UBI (Universal Basic Income) live, there are houses without roofs, financed by Kenyans who were told they could sell them for a profit after purchase, when the real estate company had installed the roofs – something that never happened.  

The men of the village are particularly sceptical, they fear that their women will grow horns and leave them – part of a satanic cult which promises money but instead takes the souls of the recipients.

Larry Madowa, a journalist with the BBC, who grew up in the area, keeps an eye on the GD activities. He is sceptical – and so is the audience, when we find out that Google is one of the the main investors in GD. Anyone in the village who is over 18 will receive the money monthly via a smart-phone transfer, itself a novelty. The directors chose to follow two participants in the scheme, John Omondi (18) and Jael Rael Achieng Songa (16). Whilst John receives the 2280 Kenyan Sterling monthly payments, Jael is the victim of a bureaucratic bungle, and is left penniless. Meanwhile her girlfriends go to school and gain an education, which will set them free. John later encounters difficulties in Nairobi, where he wants to study, but the capital is an expensive place. The villagers runs a lottery, and one day Jael is the winner, and together with help of her family she can now also start school.

At a visit at the local call centre we can see the progress the young people have made thanks to technology, after the initial shock of having to use a mobile.

There is no easy answer here. No one knows what will happen when the scheme runs out in 2031. Yes, maybe the recipients of UBI serve as guinea pigs, but GD is trying to break the charity mould, and it’s well worth a try, in spite of early pitfalls. After all, in the First World the workforce was paid to stay home during the pandemic.

Four different DoPs follow the participants in this trial and error exercise. It seems that the improvements to their homes have alone made it all worthwhile. And on the local market, UBI recipients get preferential  treatment because the traders know they will not ask for credit. AS

FREE MONEY, in cinemas and on demand, on 21st April.

Suzume (2023)

Dir.: Makoto Shinkai, Anime with the voices of Nanoka Hara, Eri Fukastu, Hokuto Matsumura, Ann Yamane; Japan 2022, 122 min.

The turbulent history of Japan comes alive in this delicately drawn and magical adventure that will resonate with a generation of young people still traumatised by the Tohoko earthquake and Tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant disaster.

Suzume (voiced by Nanoka Hara) is a clever 17-year-old orphan who lives with her aunt in Kyushu, on Japan’s southern Island, after losing her mother. On the way to school one day she meets Souta (Hokuto Matsumura) a mysterious young man with a special ability for ‘closing out’, by way of a door, an ancient demon called the Worm who can bring havoc on Earth. Together, they set out in search of the door, tramping through ruins in the countryside, and Suzume is the first to find it, accidentally unleashing the Worm that then morphs into a kitten called Daijin, and leads them on to surreal adventure across Japan during which Souta miraculously transforms into a shape-shifting stool – of the wooden variety (!) – causing hilarious scenes – with Suzume and Souta having to wait a long time, before Daijin decides to turn Souta back into his human form.

The animation is spectacular, a mixture of 2 and 3D hand drawn animation and the use of CGI, which in the case of the red super worm is rather overdone: the worm looks tame in comparison with the rest of the Anime. Loss and decay are the main subjects of Anime director Makoto Shinkai (Your Name). The past is a dangerous place to return to, particularly for Suzume, who is able to close doors to keep the beastly worm underground, while also being afraid of what she will find behind the door leading to the house she grew up in during the first few of her life. Two scenes in particular stand out, one takes place in an ancient bath house, desolated and abandoned, and another in an old-fashioned fairground which comes eerily to life.

Suzume is a potent mixture of melancholy and hilarious fun, as the girl gradually grows up during her adventures. Suzume has an impressive confrontational scene with her aunt, accusing the woman of only adopting her to avoid an adult relationship. At a later stage, Suzume takes back her accusations, but this is as a result of her falling for Souta, as her Tom-Boy identity gradually recedes. Overall, this is a mature Anime, with Shinkai using lots of kawaii cuteness, but also referentially quoting Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service with the talking cat in the shape of Daijin. A magic round-about-movie. AS

SUZUME IN UK and IRISH CINEMAS on 14 April 2023

The One that Got Away (1957)

Dir: Roy Ward Baker | UK Action thriller, 111’

The British have always prided themselves on being good losers and magnanimous in victory; with the previous war long past the opportunity came to show we were also good winners. By the mid-fifties Kurt Jurgens had already carved himself a niche in Good Germans, this time it was Hardy Kruger’s turn.

Although depicted as an abrasive character described as “a mixture of bombast and sheer nerve” – the fact he’s occasionally heard talking German gives him a sinister edge – the film is careful to assure us Kruger was never a party member, while the relationship between him and his captors is rather intimate. @RichardChatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

To Catch a Killer (2023)

Dir: Damián Szifron | Cast: Shailene Woodley, Ben Mendelsohn, Jovan Adepo | Thriller 119′

Shailene Woodley plays a modern-day Clarice Starling in this slick Baltimore-set police procedural from Argentine director Damian Szifron (Wild Tales)  It has to be said though that Ben Mendelsohn pulls rank performance-wise as her confident boss, the FBI’s chief investigator Geoffrey Lamark tasked with helping her track down a dangerous killer with the use of profiling. Usually cast as a villain Menselsohn makes for a masterful and persuasive chief who never takes himself too seriously, in the style of Carey Grant.

Profiling has long been the go-to device used in criminal investigation, alongside forensics. And Lamark (a Mendelsohn) instantly marks out the troubled Eleanor as the best detective to help solve the case. She stands up to him impressively in a gutsy street scene. And Woodley is certainly convincing in the role of Eleanor, a young police recruit whose feminine intuition and troubled past give her the tools and personal experience needed to understand the perp’s warped mind.

As the police and FBI launch a nationwide manhunt, they are thwarted at every turn by the individual’s unprecedented behaviour. Together Mendelsohn and Woodley make a poweful coupling yet Eleanor may be the only person who can understand the mind of their assailant and bring him to justice. MT

ON RELEASE ON in the US from 21 April 2023

Kindling (2023)

Dir.: Connor O’Hara; Cast: George Somner, Conrad Khan, Wilson Radjou Pujalte, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Rory J. Saper, Geoff Bell, Tara Fitzgerald; UK 2022, 94 min.

The first feature film of English writer/director Connor O’Hara is based on his short film Infinate, dealing with premature death. O’Hara tries to strike a balance between grief and optimism, but it is up to the audience to decide if he manages to avoid a rather sentimental tearjerker.

Sid (Somner) is about to die from testicular cancer, having been given two years to live, he has managed three, but this summer will be his last, and he invites his best friends to a special celebration of his leaving the planet: Diggs (Pujalte), Dribble (Khan), Plod (Saper) and Wolfie (Zajaz) to celebrate his leaving this planet.

Sid’s parents (Bell/Fitzgerald) are long-suffering, trying not to transfer their trauma on to their son. Sid then meets Lily (McKenna-Bruce), a girl of his own age who has had her own share of trauma and is unsure what to study at university – Sid makes her promise to chose English literature. The two have an ambivalent relationship, with Sid guided by his keen interest in Astrology which inspires him to ask each of his four friends to find tokens relating to Love, Home, Family, Friends and Location. They must all come up with a symbol for these objects, which will be burned at a bonfire at the end of the summer, with Sid hoping to be granted immortality.

It seems churlish to criticise such a worthwhile undertaking as this but Kindling really lacks the sufficient narrative ballast to keep us engaged for over 90 minutes in what largely amounts to a series of episodes with the main message buried in bickering and tantrums. All Sid’s friends want to make his passing a special occasion, but they are not always mature enough to find a way to express their emotions. It is no surprise that Geoff Bell and Tara Fitzgerald are outstanding as the parents, having had the opportunity to work through their loss and survivors’ guilt. In the end, Sid’s wish to be immortal may not be fulfilled, but he has made a lasting impression on his social circle.

DoP David Wright makes evocative use of the surrounding countryside to lighten the clouds of dread hanging over proceedings. Kindling is a labour of love, a way for the writer/director to work through his own experiences, and is admirable as such. AS

KINDLING IS IN UK CINEMAS AND DIGITAL PLATFORMS from 21 APRIL 2023

One Fine Morning (2022) Un Beau Matin

Dir.: Mia Hansen-Love; Cast: Lea Seydoux, Melvil Poupaud, Pascal Greggory, Camille Leban Martins, Nicola Garcia, Fejria Deliba, Sarah Lepricard, Pierre Meunier, Sarah La Picard; France 2022, 112 min.

French writer/director Mia Hansen-Love always tries to show the extraordinary in simple terms: and One Fine Morning is another story about love and loss that unfolds without sentimentality. There is poetry, but always of the melancholy kind and small details turn out to be the harbinger of change. Nothing comes easily to her main characters who feel real and relatable, and full of human flaws. To put it all into context, Hanson Love interweaves pithy insights  into her narrative as the large picture gradually emerges in the final act in this uplifting, profound and deeply affecting story of love in all its forms.

Sandra Kingsler (Seydoux) is a widow living with her young daughter Linn (Martins) in Paris where she is coming to terms with the slow demise of her father Georg, a former professor, who is suffering from a neuro-degenerative disease. Life is literally slipping away from him: “I wait for the thing to come and it doesn’t”. A care home is the only option, and Sandra and her sister, mother of two Elodie (Picard), and their divorced mother Francoise (Garcia) are searching for a suitable place.

In the middle of this family crisis, Sandra falls for a friend of her ex-husband. Clement (Poupaud) is a cosmo-chemist caught up in his own marriage and father of one. Finally, Sandra has enough of “being his mistress” and leaves Clement to make a decision. And as other characters join the story it grows ever more complex like a richly woven tapestry, each thread dependent on the other.

Going through her father’s diaries Sandra finds out that he wanted to write his autobiography, giving the film its title. There are certainly autobiographical passages from the director’s life, but they are part of a storyline explored the ongoing collision between Sandra’s attempts for happiness, and the reality. Her father’s illness sends her also back into her ambivalent childhood: even though she now idolises her father. In some ways, One Fine Morning is the reverse telling of the Hansen-Love’s earlier feature Good-Bye First Love in which the female central figure says goodbye to her past, having stepped into an identity more suitable for the rest of her life.

Sandra reflects on her past, her husband and a father who will soon will be memories. After all these years of emotional turbulence and physical abstinence she wants a passionate relationship, and she collides with Clement who does not want to spend all day in bed making love. As a translator/interpreter, she is well aware of the importance of words, and she wants to live life to the full, not content to take a back seat like her sister or mother. But Sandra is also as dependent on Clement’s return as her father is of outside help. One Fine Morning is all about hope after all – a story about the moments that make up a life. AS

IN CINEMAS IN UK & IRELAND FROM 14 APRIL | EXCLUSIVELY ON MUBI from 16 June 2023

The Last Sentinel (2023)

Dir.: Tanel Toom; Cast: Kate Bosworth, Lucien Laviscount, Martin McCann, Thomas Kretschmann; UK 2023, 117 min.

On a beleaguered Earth in the year 2063 this rambling Sci-fi thriller sees four soldiers waiting for their long-overdue relief crew on Sentinel – a remote nuclear-armed military base in the vast sea that separates two remaining continents. As weeks turn into months their patience is tested to the limit, rather like ours in having to endure the overlong running time.

Estonian director Tanel Toom had a great idea to adapt Malachi Smyth’s script about a dystopian future set on the dwindling remnants of dry land. But the story would have worked better as a theatre play given the confined nature of the location.

A storm wreaks havoc in the opening scenes of The Sentinel testing the men’s patience and setting them at loggerheads, willing to die rather than fail in their mission. Thomas Kretschmann plays their stern leader Hendricks. Kate Bosworth steals the show as Cassidy, the lone female trying to forget her past and her, now dead, family. But even she has a job saving a thriller which often feels like an over-talkie, second-hand Sci-fi yarn. Needless to say, she embarks on an affair with one of the men, Sullivan (Laviscount), who is rather an unstable character and wants to leave the ship and get home on the “Aurora”, a boat which shows up on the radar and is nearly sunk by the trigger happy Hendricks, who has a rebellion on his hands when it turns out the vessel is not an viable option. Naturally, it all ends in tears when we discover the truth about the level-headed Cassidy. Mat Ratassepp captures some striking images but the darkness, limited location and restraint of the battleship makes his job hard. An ‘A’ for effort, but rather limp in its execution. AS

Released on digital 24 April 2023

 

Sage Homme (2023)

Dir: Jennifer Devoldere | Cast: Karin Viard, Melvin Boomer, Steve Tientcheu, Tracy Gotoas | France Drama 104′

French filmmaker Jennifer Devoldere makes a comeback after more than a decade  with this didactic rather uneven comedy drama that explores the world of childbirth through the eyes of young male midwife, played by Melvin Boomer in his feature debut.

After failing the entrance exam to become a doctor, Léopold (Boomer) is relegated to midwifery, rather a come-down from his perspective, and it shows. Clearly, delivering babies is a challenging profession for a young man who comes from a hyper male background of three younger brothers and a macho father, and gets a baptism of fire in a world dominated by women, and particularly his boss Nathalie, played by Karin Viard who carries the film from start to finish. From their first meeting, when Leo makes a fuss about wearing the obligatory pink overalls, Nathalie will knock him into shape by the sheer force of her experience and personality, and challenge his misconceptions about childbirth and what it takes to bring the next generation into the world – in graphic detail – these scenes providing the film with considerable emotional freight.

Boomer gives a decent first performance but his backstory, set in the council blocks of Nancy, feels completely eclipsed by that of Viard and her patients. And the other characters: his father (Tientcheu), brothers, and girlfriend (Gotoas) seem totally irrelevant to the far more gripping and meaningful hospital scenes, dominated by Nathalie doing her vital work, while Leopold looks on as the truculent trainee – although he does in the end redeem himself.  

Devoldere covers all the birth bases: the complicated cases, the tragic ones and, ultimately, the legal ones, which gives the film its final sting. We learn a lot about being midwife and why working in the professional can be so controversial, yet so totally reliant on people who care and are prepared to give it their all. People like Nathalie, with Viard managing to ooze sensuality while being up to her elbows in blood and gore. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

The Tutor (2023)

Dir: Jordan Ross | Cast: Garrett Hedlund, Noah Schnapp, Victoria Justice, Johnny Weston | US Thriller 91′

Garrett Hedlund gives a charismatic performance as a successful private tutor for the rich in this slick sophomore feature from Jordan Ross. The opening scenes picture Ethan (Hedlund) mentoring a series of odious and precocious young adults in the palatial Southern mansions of the East Coast monied elite. We are immediately on his side and appreciate the tricky nature of the work despite the considerable financial advantages. “The Magic City” of Birmingham Alabama, home of the Civil Rights Movement, provides a refreshing setting with its neo-classical buildings and leafy avenues captured with cinematic panache by Brian Rigney Hubbard.

By night Ethan is calming his pregnant girlfriend (Justice) with his sardonic sense of humour and raspberry leaf tea and life looks rosy until the past comes back to haunt him when an opportunity to improve the family finances comes in the shape of an unusual new client whose fancy abode and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice tops anything Ethan has ever experienced before. On arrival, the butler shows him to his personal suite complete with pool table and an extensive library, and Ethan – who will turn out to be an unreliable figure of authority – can hardly believe his luck.

His new charge – the troubled young Jackson (Noah Schnapp) – proves to be challenging and is most certainly on the spectrum in the way he forms an unhealthy attachment to Ethan, throwing tantrums and generally acting out in unpredictable ways. And Jackson’s bizarre cousins – spending the summer with him – stretch our imagination with their wild antics as this imaginative psychological thriller scripted by Ryan King (Law & Order Criminal Intent) morphs – not altogether convincingly – from light-hearted to seriously sinister threatening to derail Ethan’s own existence and unlock secrets from his past. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 23 MARCH

 

The Blaze | En Plein Fer (2023)

Dir: Quentin Reynaud | Cast: Andre Dussollier, Alex Lutz | France Thriller, 85′

There have been a number of good films about the ecological disaster of wildfires in the past few years, perhaps the most memorable being Fire Will Come. Sadly, Quentin Reynaud’s feature debut feels rather underwhelming considering the dramatic potential of its subject and exciting plot elements: a forest fire that rages out of control through the Landes region in South Western France killing animals and terrifying the human population. And a father and son hoping for reconciliation.

On the plus side Quentin Reynaud uses the topical tragedy to reflect the troubled backstory of a grieving man (Alex Lutz) who is keen to reconnect with his father (the reliable Andre Dussollier). But unlike the fierce forest fire that gets The Blaze off to a tense and exhilarating start, powered forward by convincing CGI effects and a nerve-needling score, the film soon fizzles out in the glowing embers of enigma without a satisfying conclusion leaving us high and dry on the sandy beaches of the Atlantic coast. Reynaud had a great cast and some really strong plot elements to work with, he just needed to develop his script more. MT.

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE + BELGIUM

 

 

Cidade Rabat (2023)

Dir: Susana Nobre | Raquel Castro, Paula Barcia, Laura Afonso | Drama 101

Portuguese director Susana Nobre won the prestigious La Femis Scholars’ Award with her short film Provas, Exorcismos. She is back in the Berlinale with Cidade Ribat a follow-up to her unusual feature No Táxi do Jack, a part-road movie part-ethnological portrait of small-town rural Portugal.

Grief and the unsuspecting consequence of mourning are the focus of this laconic drama that centres on 40 year old Helena (Castro), a typical 21st century ‘everywoman’ who seems to take life in her stride, juggling a lover, an ex-husband, a daughter, and her elderly mother – who we meet briefly in an early vignette – and whose death is viewed as just another daily task to be dealt with: we watch her choosing a casket with her sister. Yet, despite her obvious sadness the death provides an unexpected relief for Helena who has been so weighed down with her responsibilities and can now finally let her hair down, and she does.

With its limpid colours and artful compositions Cidade Ribat is quotidian yet thematically rich as a study of just how much 21st century women have to deal with and accomplish in their seemingly mundane everyday lives. Cidade Ribat is testament to how the world has moved on for women since the days of Jeanne Dealmann, yet this liberation and freedom has brought with it infinite complications. MT

IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | BERLINALE 2023 | FORUM

 

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Dir: M Night Shyamalan | Cast: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird | US Thriller

A magical cabin in the woods becomes a scene of horror in this latest ‘apocalypse’ from M Night Shyamalan. Little Wen (Cui) and her parents Eric (Groff) and Andrew (Aldridge) are enjoying a family holiday when their rustic idyll is interrupted by four complete strangers with seemingly evil intent – judging by their weapons – although they profess otherwise, in this unusual home invasion thriller.

On of the interlopers, the meat-headed Dave Bautista, has already befriended Win in the film’s opening scene but we know he is not to be trusted. And pretty soon Dave make the bizarre request that the family sacrifice one of their members in order to save to rest of humanity.

Adapted from a novel by Paul Tremblay, the film’s initially intriguing premise soon gives way to some doom laden scenes of destruction, violence and existential menace. Saved – only just – by a solid and persuasive cast Knock in the Cabin is just another example of doom-laden fare we really could do without in the negative world we live in. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Plane (2023)

Dir.: Jean-Francois Richet; Cast: Gerald Butler, Mike Colter, Yoson An, Daniela Pinada, Tony Goldwyn;, Evan Dane Taylor, UK/US 2023, 107 min.

With a title like Plane we are not expecting anything special – and while this airborne thriller doesn’t break any new ground, it will satisfy its “Boys-Only” brigade audience who like things ‘retro’. Plane is an 80s throw-back to films like Under Siege and the Cannon Group vehicles who even made it onto the ‘Red Carpet’ in Cannes back in the day. So let’s not pretend we never saw the like of it before.

Like all Action Man features, Plane relies on a leading man at the helm, and Gerard Butler, 53, still fits the bill. Now the older statesman of the “Save the World” Brigade his hang-dog pilot Brodie Torrence (widowed, with a daughter waiting for Daddy to return for New Year’s Eve) pilots his jet with just 14 (!) passengers from New York to Tokyo. One of them, Louis Garpare (Colter), is a murderer being accompanied by an FBI agent to his new prison home. Alas, an electric storm puts an end to all communication equipment on board, and Torrence has to land the plane on a small island in the Philippines. Needless to say, his troubles have only just started.

The corporate leadership, whose penny-pinching dictates are responsible for the catastrophe in the first place, want to let Torrence and his acolytes fight it out. But ex-military commander Scarsdale (Goldwyn), who has taken a liking to Torrence (having watched a video of him putting a passenger into a headlock), alerts his ex-buddies from the Special Forces to help ‘unlikely lads’ Torrence and Colter contain the local guerrillas under the leadership of a certain wild-eyed Jummar ((Taylor), so Torrence can get his plane into the air again, in time for New Year and his daughter.

Popular spy-thriller writer Charles Cumming wrote the script with J.P. Davies, and they are as politically incorrect as possible in an outing that sees simpering women watching the men folk get on with the   business of killing – by hand, sledgehammer and rocket launchers. DoP Brendan Galvin does his level best to indulge us with close-ups and impressive panorama shots. Butler suffers multiple bullet wounds but still remains dignified, ably supported by his Korean co-pilot Dale (An). Maybe not Batman and Robin, but another successful buddy relationship. Who says men can’t bond? AS

PLANE IS IN UK CINEMAS from 27 JANUARY 2023

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Munch (2023)

Dir/Wri: Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken | Cast: Alfred Ekker Strande, Mattis Herman Nyquist, Ola G. Furuseth, Anne Krigsvoll, Arthur Berning, Lisa Carlehed, Thea Lambrechts Vaulen | Drama, 104′

Munch is a brave and ambitious biopic evocatively reflecting the many faces of Norway’s most internationally famous expressionist artist whose tortured painting ‘The Scream’ has come to represent humanity’s collective cry of pain and isolation.

Seasoned Norwegian auteur Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken clearly understands his confused countryman whom we first meet in his final months, at 80 (played by Anne Krigvoll, in an inspired casting), a reclusive and cantankerous creative worn down by years of being misinterpreted, and emotionally abused by his friends and associates.

Seen from the artist’s own perspective this sumptuously impressionistic drama then plays out in concurrent strands that picture his troubled life – at 21 (played by Ekker Strande), 30 (Herman Nyquist) and 45 (Faruseth) – to explore the confusion and loneliness that inspired the tortured sketches and canvasses that came to represent an outpouring of grief.

‘The Scream’ could be attributed to the time his entire Berlin exhibition was deemed ‘unfinished’ or ‘too moody’ for the German style at the time, and was abruptly cancelled on the night of the vernissage. We see Munch crying out in pain at the sheer perplexity of it all, although he would later become a figure of great notoriety for breaking his avant-garde style. During this time he meets August Strindberg (another female casting – Lisa Carlehed). 

Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken is not the first to attempt a film about the artist (1863-1944) – 1974 TV outing Edvard Munch was a grim affair – but he is certainly the most successful in showing Munch as a highly sensitive soul who gradually became disillusioned by a life overshadowed by illness and bereavement (of both his mother and sister, and his own near death), his father’s overbearing nature, and a series of unsatisfactory encounters, most notably in an romantic episode in Vesthold, eastern Norway where, at 21, his father takes him to spend the summer in the lush countryside to encourage his talent. Plagued by mosquitoes, he falls for married society girl Milly Thaulow (Lambrechts Vaulen) who then rejects him cruelly, adding to his emotional confusion. Later in his forties he is admitted to a private Copenhagen clinic for a psychiatric disturbance. And so begins his retreat into a world of isolation.

This is not a film flooded in abject negativity and Dahlsbakken does his best not to dwell on the dour nature of Munch’s life, and this is what makes the drama enjoyable. Despite the tragedies in Munch’s personal life, the overwhelming impression Dahlsbakken creates is one of melancholy beauty and poignance for man misunderstood.

Munch experimented wildly and eventually chose to reject the outside world, but his backstory is imaginatively fleshed out here, Dahlsbakken cleverly reflecting the descent with four different actors – all convincingly played. Acting as his own production designer in variety of styles, the well chosen episodes are captured in pristine black & white and a painterly colour palette by DoPs Pal Ulvik Rokseth and Oskar Dalhsbakken. An accomplished and impressive arthouse drama despite its often confusing narrative structure. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS IN FRANCE and UK | MUNCH OPENED THE ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2023

The Old Way (2023)

Dir: Brett Donowho | Cast: Nicolas Cage, Clint Howard, Abraham Benrubi, Ryan Kiera Armstrong | US, 95′

Nicolas Cage is back to his old way of starring in second rate material, like this pale rider of a western that rather puts the genre to shame despite is stunning settings in Wyoming. Modern day westerns really need to have another string to their bow beyond just a passable script and solid production values to compete with the multitude of titles flooding our film screens from Netflix to Amazon Prime and beyond.

During the past decade or so filmmakers have revitalised the western genre updating the original concept with refreshing stories that still remain tethered in the past: arthouse chiller The Power of the Dog (2020), the sheer dynamism of The Revenant (2015) and Oscar-winning Django Unchained (2012) have earned their place in the pantheon offering innovative twists to style that was originally defined by the AFI as ‘set in the American West embodying the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier’.

The Old Way may tick the boxes but its torpid direction and formulaic revenge theme fails to set the campfires burning entertainment-wise, and Cage, who turns in a reasonable performance as a craggy gunslinger facing up to past misdemeanours, is certainly is no Clint Eastwood. Another also ran. MT

Luka (2023) International Film Festival Rotterdam

Dir/Wri: Jessica Woodworth | Cast: Jonas Smulders, Geraldine Chaplin, Jan Bijvoet, Sam Louwyck | Drama, 94′

Luka is a dystopian desert phantasy, re-creating a Spartan military state ruled by fear and paranoia, sometime in the distant past. This striking first single outing for Belgium/American director-writer Jessica Woodworth (King of the Belgians) is based on the novel ‘Il deserti dei Tartari’ by Dino Buzzati. The focus is a talented young sniper desperate to see active service in the defence of his country in an impending invasion, the threat of which drives our anticipation forward.

Gripping in the early stages, not least for its visual allure, the film is unable to sustain this momentum for the entire running time. But the highlight is DoP Virginie Surdej’s symmetrical, architectural compositions and her sepia-tinted black & white images which make Luka a memorable and captivating interpretation of the classic novel.

Jonas Smulders is an appealingly boyish hero as Luka the young marksman who, after wishing his mother a fond valedictory in the film’s opening scenes, strides across Steppe-like open terrain to serve as sniper in the Kairos Fort, in the desert of the “North”. There’s something of David McCallum’s ‘Illya Kuryakin’ in Smulders’ feral enfin-like features, making him rather an androgynous romantic hero. But his impatience for battle gives him a steely resolve that tempers this puppyish charm: clearly he is keen to get cracking on the battlefield.

In this testosterone-charged atmosphere the sniper soon becomes close to Konstantin (Tadevossian), who is a listener, trying to detect – with his rather basic electronic equipment – any attack by ‘the North’. But Luka increasingly warms to Geronimo (Schrevens), the son of one of the military leaders. And when Konstantin detects a possible attack from ‘the North’, Luka’s superior sniping skills see him being chosen by the General and Raf (Bljvoet), the most fanatical of the leaders, to go out into the desert and destroy the enemy.

Luka has the right to select a companion, and he goes for Geronimo. The men walk into the desert where they catch sight of a horse. On their return to the fort, where Raf questions their findings. Konstantin is accused of deliberately misinterpreting his data, and Geronimo for imagining the horse. Geronimo and his father escape into the desert, while Luka is sentenced to ghosting, a sadistic punishment involving death by water deprivation and solitary confinement. Luckily, a new alarm saves his life and soon he is out in the desert again chasing phantoms, at least for a time.

Buzzati’s writing is close to Stanislaw Lem, and there are echoes of Tarkowsky’s Stalker, but the difference here is that Buzzati paints the picture of a semi-fascist military state, with the protagonists’ distinct idiosyncrasies. In this way, a narrative can develop, making the circumstances secondary – very much the opposite of Tarkovsky’s approach of a sprawling narrative with the destructive action becoming the primary point of the feature.

Geraldine Chaplin gives an enticing performance as the General, and Smulders offers intrigue as the naïve pawn in a deadly game. The film could benefit from a tighter  middle-section to make it more punchy in its appeal as a dramatic narrative and an essay on power structure relying on a mirage-like enemy. AS

BIG SCREEN AWARDS | ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Anonymous Club (2021)

Dir.: Danny Cohen; Documentary with Courtney Barnett; Australia 2021, 83 min.

Australian filmmaker Danny Cohen takes full control in this musical biopic about the singer/songwriter and ‘anti-influencer’ Courtney Barnett, who sprung to fame with her witty deadpan lyrics in an album called “I’ve got a friend called Emily Ferris”.

The whole point about Barnett is that she became a sensation not through a glossy image of self-promotion but because of a reclusive style that makes a virtue of her tortured inner conflict and deems her to be a powerful feminist voice for audiences all over the world, and a ‘mega-star in the making’. That may make her sound like a female version of Morrissey, but time will only tell if her talent matches up to the iconic 1980s superstar of the Smiths who is still going strong in his sixties.

Cohen gained access to Barnett through their many music-video collaborations, and paints an intimate picture of the 35-year-old Sydney born singer who is not afraid to admit to deep-seated low-self-image issues and occasional bouts of depression. But somehow Cohen is too overcome by the artist’s persona, and allows the feature to turn into a sort of self-help therapy session.

The film’s title is taken from Barnett’s 2013 song, which we never hear, even though her world tour (without backing band) offers ample opportunity. Starting in 2018, when Cohen told Barnett to use her dictaphone for an ongoing commentary – later used in the feature – the singer had just split up with girlfriend and musician Jen Cloher, who had taken an active part in the creative works. “Tell me, how you really feel” is a proper break-up album, words not being minced: “Tell me when you are getting bored//And I leave//I’m not the one who put the chain around four feet//I am sorry for all my insecurities// But it’s just part of me//”.

The tour takes Barnett on the road to places like Bloomington (Indiana), Oslo and Berlin, but the focus is firmly on the singer herself, and Cohen never lets her escape: “I am not your mother//I am not your bitch” she rages, shouting so loudly during performances, that she loses her voice. Barrnett is often passive-aggressive: “Sometimes I sit and think//and sometimes I just sit”. And: “You know it’s ok to have a bad day”.

When somebody new enters her life, Barnett calms down a bit, but the film’s overriding impression does not compute with the ‘girl next door image’ concocted by the networks and her PR. This would have been fine had the director left his safe spot of chronicler and admirer and posed a few direct questions. Yes, it is absolutely normal to be insecure in the music industry where dog eats dog and the other way round – but  nowadays we are all living on the edge of a precipice in a climate we have helped to create.

Barnett still has a voice – literally and figuratively speaking – but most ordinary people do not. Nobody wants to take the cuddle blanket away from her, millions are clearly waiting to buy her records. But please, save us from long shots with purring cats listening to her guitar songs: this is not a therapy session open to all. In her mid-thirties, Barnett still has the right to feel insecure, but Cohen is obliged to shoot some straight, even awkward, questions. By negligence, he is derailing his project by finishing with another version of “Courtney is just like you and me”. She is not, and the star and her chronicler know that only too well. Therapy might be free, at least in this case – but not much else. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Driving Mum (2022)

Wri|Dir: Hilmar Oddsson

Hilmar Oddsson offers up another tale of Icelandic family strife and dysfunction, a black comedy very much along the lines of his fellow countryman Grímur Hákonarson’s dour and determined tale of sibling rivalry set in a farming community, Rams.

Although here the drift is towards melancholic fantasy, it’s a brave and bracingly impressive feature proving Icelandic cinema to be one of the most offbeat and ingenious in the magnetic north.

Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson cuts a dismal figure as A son whose existence is diminished by the maternal force that gave him life – and we feel for him. His indomitable mother (Kristbjörg Kjeld) is the classic monster matriarch – feared and yet revered in equal measure and he finds himself trapped by her influence.

This son, his dog and his deceased mother – the ultimate back seat driver – take to the road in a final surreal cross-country journey. Sardonic is the watchword as long-discussed funeral plans are finally put in motion in a grim valedictory voyage. Although dead, mother still dominates from beyond the grave as a gaunt and ghoulish physical presence to ensure her wishes are followed to a tee.

Óttar Guðnason creates a saturnine sense of place with his stark black and white cinematography providing a bleak and baleful backcloth to Jon’s rumination on an unfulfilled existence and his lonely life. Revenants from his past include a solitary female figure, a group of karaoke revellers and a recurring carnival motif.

Reality occasionally rears its head in the understandable queries he receives from people he meets along the way, and this contrast between the mundane and the ephemeral provides the piece with its vein of tragi-comedy.

Although his dead mother remains tight lipped and stoical, her wishes become real-time in-car conversations that really need no voice; they are seared into Jon’s unconscious like some macabre maternal spell that bizarrely echoes from the other side. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 1 MARCH | GRAND PRIX winner at Tallinn International Film Festival 2022

The Menu (2022)

Dir: Mark Mylod | Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Janet McTeer, John Leguizamo, Judith Light, Hong Chau | Drama, 107’

A puzzle lies at the heart of this deceptively simple satirical drama from Succession director Mark Mylod. And no prizes for guessing who eventually finds their way successfully through the trial that takes the form of a puffed-up haute cuisine soiree, a sort of ‘masterclass’ lead by Ralph Fiennes’s condescending chef and his prim assistant Elsa (Hong Chau).

The Menu is the latest in the recent spate of films that lampoon the rich and privileged. But also those who slavishly follow the crowd – here it’s a brace of bankers, a washed up wealthy couple; an actor beyond his sell by date. And at the end of the meal their lives will end in tragedy – no less – as the mood shifts into horror.

Then there’s Margot (Anya Taylor Joy) a last minute stand-in date for fearful foodie Tyler (Nicolas Hoult) who is in awe of the whole set-up. The Menu is clever, amusing and very proud of its smug credentials. But Margot will call it all out and foist Fiennes’s eminence grise masterchef by his starched, shroud-like overalls. As a footnote when it comes to over-inflated food descriptions, I first heard the phrase ‘freshly harvested baby carrots tossed in creamy butter’ back in the early 1980s, on a flight to San Francisco. Who would of have known that this ridiculous food gentrification fetish would get so out of hand. MT

THE MENU IS NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Return to Seoul (2022)

Wri/Dir: Davy Chou | Drama, 115′

French Cambodian director Davy Chou has made a name for himself with his unique cinematic gaze on Cambodia and its people. His graceful prize-winning feature debut Golden Slumbers reminisced on Cambodian cinema from the 1960s to the mid 1970s.

But his latest, a drama with the apt title Return to Seoul (aka All the People I’ll never be) is a sideways glance at cultural identity seen through the eyes of its main character, a twenty five year old French woman who returns to her native South Korea to track down her birth mother.

From the start you are not going to like Freddie (Ji-Min Park). Flouncing into a bar in downtown Seoul she flirts outrageously with a Korean guy who then makes romantic overtures, only to be told, point blank, that she already has boyfriend ‘back home’ in Paris. Arrogant and extremely pleased with herself, on the face of it, she then tells another lover who has selflessly accompanied her back to Seoul for one of her business meetings, later in the film, that “she could erase him from her life at any minute”.

Of course all this hides a deep emotional wound at her core: inflicted by a biological mother who first abandons her as a baby in a Seoul orphanage, and then declines to meet her when she painstakingly tracks her down via the Seoul orphanage where she was given up.

Told in a series of off-kilter episodes tracking her life from that first meeting in the bar, until her early thirties, the film is full of awkward characters that are neither appealing nor relatable, the exception being a French businessman (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) who turns from lover to employer, All the People is a brave but not always successful attempt to explore the complexities of forging ahead with meaningful personal and romantic relationships when your heart has been shattered at birth. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS

A Lonely Island in the Distant Sea (2021) London Korean Film Festival 2022

Dir: Kim Mi-young | Cast: Park Jong-hwan, Lee Yeon, Kang Kyung-hun, Park Hyun-suk
110 mins | 2021 | South Korea

Life is what happens when you’re making plans is very much the order of the day in this inspired drama from Kim Mi-young. The story follows Yuncheol (Park Jong-hwan) who, now in his forties, has failed in his marriage, and his early promise as a talented sculptor has gone off the boil. But the winds of change bring a refreshing new boost to life when his artistically gifted daughter Gina (Lee Yeon) decides to drop out of college and enter a Buddhist temple.

Yuncheol, who himself once imagined becoming a monk, is not sure what to think of his daughter’s decision, but her confidence inspires him to explore pastures green and this leads to a romantic attachment with an independent-minded history lecturer (Kang Kyung-hun). A Lonely Island just goes to prove that even when we think are stuck in the doldrums the winds of change can suddenly blow in alter this mindset triggering a different perspective on life.

A sensitive and profound drama about the dynamics of social interaction and the meaning of life that resonates more profoundly at the narrative develops. Yuncheol’s life may seem static but his close relationships help him to develop and deepen in unexpected ways.

LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | Wed 09 Nov, 8:45pm, ICA London 

She is Love (2022)

31Wri/Dir: Jamie Adams | US Drama 83′

Ever wondered what happened to Sam Riley after his breakout role as frontman Ian Curtis in the much-acclaimed biopic Joy Division? He plays Idris in this perky romcom that sees a long divorced couple revisiting their past in a bid to salvage the good times. Idris is now in a new relationship with Louise (Marisa Abela) and running a hotel in Cornwall where Patricia (Haley Bennett) checks in for a few day’s holiday. Clearly still very fond of each other their awkwardness at suddenly meeting up again soon gives way to a fun-filled vibe touched with soulfulness as they reminisce, write songs and share the odd tear. Although She is Love treads familiar ground and brings nothing new to the party it provides light-hearted entertainment for just over an hour. MT

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 3 FEBRUARY 2023

 

 

 

 

 

Pamfir (2022)

Wri/Dir.: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk; Cast: Oleksandre Yatsentyuk, Stanislaw Potiak, Solomiia Kyrylova, Yelena Khoknahlatkina, Miroslav Makoviychuk, Ivan Sharan, Oleksandr Yarema; Ukraine/France/Poland/Chile/ Germany/Luxembourg 2022, 102 min.

Pamfir may look like the typical gangster movie, but it turns out to be quite different from any other genre outing: a noirish fairytale Western where the Indians have been replaced by wild beasts from the past. It all unfolds during the folkloric Malanka festival in the wild and inhospitable western part of Ukraine’s Romanian borderlands around where the director grew up, .

Leonid (Yatsentyuk), also known as Pamfir – which means stone returns home to his village after a stint in Poland. His wife Olena (Kyrylova) and teenage son Nazar (Potiak) have really missed him and their re-union is emotional. But not so with his father Pamfir’s (Makoviychuk), who lost an eye after a fight with his son. Victor’s grandmother (Khoknahlatkina) tries, with the help of her younger son Victor (Sharan), to bring the feuding men together, but the feud continues.

It soon turns out the whole family have been involved in smuggling contraband to Romania, with Pamfir as the ringleader, earning the nickname of “Godfather”. He now wants to go straight but his attempt to reintegrate into mainstream society are scuppered when his son Nazar burns down the local church, destroying not only Pamfir’s documents bit making his father liable to pay compensation. Working with his sidekick , “The Rat”, he continues his illegal trading with Romania unnaware of being watched by another gangster who goes by the name of Oletsa (Yarema) and his men. Oletsa not only runs the smuggling operations, but also the church. Oletsa’s men attack Pamfir, asking the crimelord to do “one last run” to pay back his debts. But, as usual, there is a snag: the tunnel, leading to Romania is narrow, and only Nazar will be able to get through.

The focus then turns to Olena whose back-breaking job at her father in law’s factory, keeping the family afloat, also contributed to the loss of her first child. She now becomes more and more instrumental in ending Pamfir’s smuggling career once and for all.

DoP Nikita Kuzmenko’s heightens the atmosphere of terror that propels Pamfir in primal almost poetic journey. The camera is constantly on the prowl in long tracking shots through foggy woods encompassing vast widescreen landscapes and ancient forests that belong in a fairytale. And this is exactly what the director is aiming for: the villagers’ straw costumes during the carnival celebrations; their wooden masks, garishly painted, bring to mind the ghastly ritual of pagan festivals and the fear generated by The Wicker Man. The ghastly brutality of this atavistic festival resurges through Pamfir’s effort to liberate himself from the violence of the modern day. Gorgeous to watch, full of twisty revelations, PAMFIR is a stunning feature debut. AS

In Cinemas 5 May 2023 |

Smile (2022)

Dir.: Parker Finn, Cast: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Caitlin Stasey, Robin Weigert, Gillian Zinser, Kal Penn; USA 2022, 115 min.

Horror flick Smile brings nothing new to the sub-genre, although Christobal Tapia de Veer’s inventive soundscape will echo eerily in your head long after the film’s forgettable mundane plot has faded; the second half is particularly absurd and surreal. Parker Finn developed the feature debut from his eleven minute short Laura hasn’t slept and borrows heavily from J-horror especially The Ring and It Follows.

Over-worked and on call 80 plus hours a day Dr Rose Cotter is barely holding down a job in the trauma department of a psychiatric ward in a large hospital where she is also receiving treatment from therapist Dr Madeline Northcott (Weigert) for the damage caused by her mother’s suicide. Backstory-wise Rose also has issues with her sister Holly (Zinser) for leaving Rose to deal with her mother. When Holly’s son celebrates his seventh birthday, he unpacks Rose’ present, only to find the dead body of Rose’ missing cat Moustache. Then comes the more recent shock of Rose seeing her patient Laura (Stasey) die before her very eyes by slicing her throat with a piece of porcelain, having confessed to being unable to cope with the strangely smiling faces of strangers hunting her down.

Soon, Rose is experiencing the same symptoms as her dead patient, and researching Laura’s past she discovers that her university lecturer also committed suicide in front of her. Rose’s fiancé Trevor (Usher), is unwilling to discuss the issue, so Rose turns to ex-boyfriend Joel (Gallner) who happens to be a cop. She has to escape the deadly curse and has only four or five days to do so.

Visually DoP Charlie Sarroff shocks with the some decent horror tropes, jump-cuts and gory set pieces. Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin) feels real as a mental health professional coming up against something no textbook has prepared her for. In the end, Smile looks convincing, but no prizes here for the unimaginative storyline. AS

NOW IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

Hidden Letters (2022)

Dir.: Violet Du Feng; co-dir.: Zhao Quing; Documentary with Hu Xin, Wu Simu, He Yanxin; China 2022, 89 min.

A fascinating new documentary sheds light on a secret language used by Chinese women to communicate with each other imprisoned in their homes before Chairman Mao’s “Big Leap Forward”

First time director, producer and co-writer Violet Du Feng has, with co-director Zhao Quing (Please remember Me) offers up a passionate expose showing how even nowadays Chinese women are still hemmed in by traditional roles despite a more commercialised society. The sisterhood’s covert means of contact away from the prying eyes of the male population was made possibly by a clandestine language – Nushu was their only way out.

Hu Xin, a woman in her mid 30s, takes lessons in Nushu from He Yan Xin, the last living Nushu mistress of the art. Xin works in the Nushu Museum in Jianyong Township, formed by seven villages where she met her ex-husband after joining the National Youth Council. Her parents were complicit in China’s male-dominated society, wanted her to marry and have children rather than a career. But her spouse was brutal and even made her abort a six-month old daughter, because he wanted a son.

Even Xin herself seems to fall in with this traditional view, seeing herself as having failed as a woman and mother. Yan Xin remembers boycotting sex with her husband for several years, talks about a time when it was impolite to look at a man while doing the housework. “We were merely slaves”, she recalls. Her husband beat her up but never touched her face, and forbade her to cry within earshot of his cousins who lived next door. Yan Xin sang Nushu lullabies to her children, and kept up a lengthy correspondence with other repressed women.

Wu Simu, a music teacher who also teaches Nushu songs and dances, thought her Shanghai-based fiancé Simu was quite progressive but it soon turned out that all he wanted was a workhorse who would hold down a job and look after the children single-handed. After all his own mother worked the land all day and did the household chores in the evening. He orders Simu to give up Nushu – seeing it as worthless hobby that detracts her from earning more in a proper job. Simu, to the great disappointment of her parents, gives him the push.

Talking about commercial values. both Simu and Hu Xin are involved in an exhibition featuring Nushu products in Macao where local politicians take the position that Nushi products would have no future without the adherence to market trends. They also considerate the language to be subversive, undermining the ideology of the state by diminishing the fundamental the female tenets of Obedience, Acceptance and Resilience.

A $300 mobile ‘phone capable of translating from Mandarin to Nishu is not exactly selling like hot cakes either. Simu confesses she is frustrated that men are still “the Heaven”. Hu Xin and Wu Simu wanted the exhibition to be called “Women for Modern Times”, but the politicians insisted on “Modern Women” ie ‘Modern’ had to precede ‘Women’. So the future of this secret language  Hu Xin and Wu Simu think about the future of Nushu at schools, the State bureaucrats prefer “Cross branding”‘ which is very popular. In their studio, Hu Xin and Wu Simu plan for participation of Nushu artists in an exhibition about Women artists – not video games.

Du Feng weaves together a rather pessimistic image of Women’s rights – past and present – in China. DoPs Feng Tiebing and Wei Gao show a technocratic state of the art, but in the country side the rules of the last century are still intact. And for all the progress in technologies: the cut-throat business of competition has no place for subtle subjects like Nushu. AS

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | 5 – 16 OCTOBER 2022

Inland (2022)

Dir.: Fridtjof Ryder; Cast: Rory Alexander, Mark Rylance, Katherine Hunter, Eleanor Holiday, Shaun Dingwall, Neil Williams; UK 2022, 82 min.

Fridtjof Ryder makes a striking but saturnine first feature, borrowing heavily from Nicolas Roeg and David Lynch, as implied by the film’s title. Ryder wrote the script before he was twenty, but filming was delayed for several years due to the pandemic.

Essentially a two hander, the film follows a young man (Alexander) whose disturbed mental state lies at the heart of the narrative and will dictate the course of his life even after longterm psychiatric treatment. One relationship in particular looms large; with garage owner Dunleavy (a saturnine Mark Rylance) who offers him board and employment in the West Country city of Gloucester (the director’s hometown). The two will circle each other like fish in an aquarium: the implications are not promising, but their interaction is never really explored. This young man has obvious lived through abandonment issues and has difficulty integrating, a flyer shows the photo of his mother, who has gone missing.

Donleavy remains the only fully fleshed out character here but his relationship with his employee is never developed beyond the surface. Alexander’s young man remains enigmatic, ephemeral even, never emerging as someone substantial. There are nods to his mother’s Romani background – but Inland asks more questions than it answers.

DoP Ravi Doubleday lets the camera roam in the dark woods and poorly-lit streets of Gloucester in a pervasive atmosphere of gloom. Dunleavy’s little house looks lost in the dark forest. Rylance tries hard to fill out his character, but struggles with the avoidance of anything factual. Alexander walks in a landscape he is supposed to know, but childhood and present always mingle, giving him no foothold in reality. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 16 JUNE 2023

 

 

Driving Madeleine (2022)

Dir/Wri; Christian Carion | Cast | Dany Boon, Line Renaud, Julie Delarme | French, Drama

Lacking the emotional punch of the Bruce Beresford’s 1989 hit Driving Miss Daisy this romanticised French version sees an elderly woman reflect on her checkered life to a down-on-his-luck taxi driver.

On the face of it, life has dealt Madeleine (Renaud) and Charles (Boon) a pretty bad hand. But the difference is their perception of things, according to the spry but cantankerous 92-year old. Time and the wisdom of age has softened Madeleine’s outlook lending a philosophical spin on her twilight years in a care home. Dany Boon’s Charles, on the other hand, is still in his prime but with money worries putting a strain on his marriage to Carine (Julie Delarme).

After an upbeat sortie in down-town Paris the film goes for darker territory without really creating a relatable backstory for Madeleine’s turbulent relationship with ex-husband Ray (Laheurte). Christin Carion and his writer Cyril Rely plunge us headlong into vivid flashbacks of her troubled postwar love life opting for sensationalism in graphic scenes of sexual and emotional abuse that fail to generate our sympathy. We feel nothing for these two or their little boy Mathieu (Hardriel Roure) despite the grim picture of a marriage that goes from bad to worse, with Ray ending up in prison and ruining Madeleine’s life. And now sixty years later all she has to look forward to is a grim nursing home. 

A rousing almost epic score accompanies the melodramatic revelations as Carion attempts to imbue the film with a dramatic weight that should really have come from the writing rather than the musical prompts, and this leaves the audience disaffected despite Renaud and Boon’s best efforts to move us.

Hearing Madeleine pour out her woes has a therapeutic affect on the gruff but soft-hearted Charles who realises he hasn’t done so badly so far compared to his long-suffering ‘fare’. Suitably chastened by listening to Madeleine’s problems he makes a furtive phone call to his wife to try and patch up their differences. Ray then offers Madeleine lunch which leads to a taxi trip round Paris and this joyride is the only highlight in a rather glib affair with its predictable crowd-pleasing ending. MT . 

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS | TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2022

 

The Son (2022)

Dir.: Florian Zeller, Cats: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Zen McGrath, Vanessa Kirby, Anthony Hopkins, USA/UK/France 2022, 123 min.

The Son is a glib and one-note second feature for director Florian Zeller after his Oscar-winning debut The Father took the film world by storm with its emotional clout and authenticity. The Son is too verbose, and too monotone to be engaging despite its slick production values, never escaping its stagey origins in a screenplay adapted by Christopher Hampton from Zeller’s play.

Anthony Hopkins again stars as a father, this time to successful lawyer Peter (Jackman) who is on the verge of a potential White House association and has left his wife Kate (Dern) for a much younger trophy wife Beth (Kirby). The couple have just had a baby son but Kate contacts him about taking on board their own teenager Nicholas (an underwhelming McGrath ) who has obvious mental problems, self-harming and playing truant from school. Peter’s relationship with his stern father Anthony (Hopkins) has not helped him bond with Nicholas and after a suicide attempt, Nicholas is sectioned in a psychiatric ward turning his parents’ world upside down. Performance wise the standout is once again Hopkins who is commanding as a tough pragmatist, against Jackman’s dignified but hamstrung lawyer, with the female characters more or less brushed aside. The Son feels too redactive in contrast to its successful predecessor, with Zeller stranded in the middle between a film and a theatrical production. The upshot is a depressing psychodrama. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 17 FEBRUARY 2023 | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE  | GOLDEN LION 2022

 

 

Blackbird (2022)

Dir/Wri: Michael Flatley | Drama, 97′

Michael Flatley’s self-financed spy thriller has a checkered history, premiering briefly four years ago, and now back in cinemas in the UK and Ireland.

The Riverdance supremo directs and also stars as a James Bond style spy turned luxury hotel owner, retired to Barbados for some peace and quiet after his fiancée is killed in a mission. But the past comes back to haunt him when another old flame (Nicole Evans) reappears on the arm of an arch villain (Eric Roberts) whose game plan is not unlike Hitler’s idea of exterminating the Jews. 

Flatley has certainly splashed out budget-wise in a story that flips between lush Irish countryside, rainy London and beachside Barbados, but although his moves may be slick on the dance floor Flatley’s directing skills are less so. Blackbird is certainly a watchable if rather predictable little thriller with its heart in the right place. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 2 SEPTEMBER

Queen of Glory (2021)

Dir.: Nana Mensah; Cast: Nana Mensah, Meeko Gattuso, Oberon K.A. Adjepong, Adam Leon, Christie Mensah, Madeleine Weinstein; USA 2021, 78 min

A first time feature for American Ghanian filmmaker Nana Mensah who directs and stars in this lively female empowerment drama, short-changed by her rather uneven script.

In “Little Ghana”, New York’s Bronx, we meet Mensah’s Sarah Obeng studying for a PhD on Molecular Neuro-Oncology at Columbia University. She has a married boyfriend, Lyle (Leon), who works in the same department, and has promised Sarah he will leave his family and move with her to Ohio. We know how this will turn out.

But then tragedy suddenly enters the picture: Sarah’s mother Grace dies of an aneurism, leaving her with a house in Accra, and a shop selling kitsch Christian merchandise run by Pitt (Gattuso), an ex-convict, whose whole body is covered in tattoos. Sarah’s estranger father Godwin (Adjepong) soon fetches up from Accra, angling for a part of the inheritance. Thwarted, he slaps Sarah and treats her like a servant, asking her to follow him to Ghana, but Sarah hits back.

Life in Ghana is very much a family affair. Sarah is sucked into back into domestic scene and has to dress accordingly, her aunts hoping she will soon produce a child. Faced with the appalling misogyny amongst the menfolk, Sarah ends up running the Cult shop with Pitt.

In an interview with ‘Vogue’, the director made it clear she had intended Sarah to be a cis-woman. But this doesn’t quite work with the acceptance of her marginal existence for Sarah – working in the shop, instead of pursuing her scientific career. Going to Ohio State, just to be with her lover was bad enough – exchanging the prestigious Columbia University for an academic backwater – but giving up her profession altogether is a bridge too far.

DoP Cybel Martin underlines the realism of the script, her images brilliantly evoke the choice facing Sarah with the “Tracey Towers” block in Pelham Parkway, Bronx, and the university atmosphere of an environment dominated by academia.

Mensah’s protagonists are cyphers rather than fully-fleshed out personalities: Lyle remains sullen and tight-lipped, and even Gattuso’s Pitt is just a caricature of a semi-reformed convict. Mensah is a committed director and a convincing actor, but even with a running time of 78 minutes and a few laughs, the reductive characters lack authenticity. AS

RELEASED IN THE UK ON 26 AUGUST 2022

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Wri/Dir: Martin McDonagh | Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, David Pearse, Pat Shortt | Ireland, Drama, 109′

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star in this big screen bittersweet dramady that reunites them with In Bruges director Martin McDonagh completing his “Aran islands Trilogy” of plays set in the early 1920s during civil war. The first two stage outings: “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” had been a great success in theatres McDonagh opted for a   film version for this final part that never quite escapes its stage bound origins, although the drole deadpan humour saves the day along with the natural beauty of the emerald island landscapes of Inishmore.

Colm (Gleason) and Pádraic (Farrell) have always been the best of buddies. But one day, out of the blue, Colm calls time on their friendship for no apparent reason apart from wanting to spend the rest of his life with his fiddle and his border Collie. There is no place for Pádraic any more. End of story. And the last straw is an incident with Jenny, Pádraic’s mini donkey.

But Pádraic is having none of it and gets his sister Siobhan (Condon), and Barry Keoghan (Kearney), the unstable son of the hated village policeman, to beg Colm to reconsider.  It all comes down to Colm threatening to cut off one finger at a time if Pádraic ever speaks to him again. Siobhan takes in these wider implications brought on by the battle raging on the mainland, but the men go, as men do, for all out victory – or nothing.

The allegory of civil war is clear, but the hostilities always take a back seat in Banshees. The focus here is on personal relationships , and about how friendship can often turn to hatred overnight, usually rippling out from a petty slight or disagreement, the fault line for deep-seated resentment, the straw that breaks the camel’s back, or this case the donkey’s. McDonagh gradually fleshes out his three main characters but never enough to explain the war of attrition between them. Regret, sadness or a simple lack of fulfilment is channelled out into the open, into hurting the nearest and dearest, and the injured party is left bewildered and bereft.

The Banshees of Inisherin met with critical success and an award for Colin Farrell and “Best script” for McDonagh in Venice 2022. The pointlessness of war comes home on a human level through the sheer inanity of the broken friendship. It’s silly, childish and without real grounding. And McDonagh showcases this vacuity through the solemnity of his drama that unfolds like a procession without any core belief. The formal brilliance of the confrontation is based on trivial home-spun philosophy. Underneath the smouldering fractures, there is a vacuum – and that is the pity of war.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Fall (2022)

Dir: Scott Mann | UK Action Thriller, 107′

British director Scott Mann Takes a shoe string budget and turns it into one of the best action thrillers of the summer with ‘a feel the fear and do it anyway’ premise.

Totally far-fetched and ludicrous it may be but certainly effectlve (and aimed at the GenZ generation) it all starts with accident when experienced climber Dan (Mason Gooding) falls to his death from a vertiginous mountain face leaving his wife Becky (Grace Fulton) and her and best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner) stranded thousands of feet above ground level, and then left to cope with his tragic loss.

Becky is still drowning her sorrows a year later when Hunter, now a unfeasibly fearless extreme sports fanatic with a massive online following, suggests they scatter Dan’s ashes in style, rather than moping around mourning his death. But what Hunter actually has in mind actually beggars belief: the two will climb 2,000 feet to the top of a rusty old pylon support – the same height as the Eiffel Tower – for the ceremony, it’s the stuff of nightmares.

Mann and his DoP MacGregor and team make terrific use of cutting edge visual effects to make us believe the girls are really up there in the skies where its searingly hot and scorching) but what’s beyond belief and most impressive is their clear-eyed vision and steely resolve to survive once things start to go wrong. Admittedly Becky is hard-nosed and cruel as we’ve already discovered in an earlier scene where she leaves a coyote to be eaten alive by vultures, relaying the spectacle to her followers, she also admits to feeling hungry when the smell of a BBQ drifts up to the skimpy metal platform they are standing on (surely the last thing on your mind on the brink of death). With its simple but effective plot-line Fall is a buddy survival movie that never outstays its welcome in delivering watchable, stylishly artful thrills – in contrast to the summer’s overblown blockbusters such as Nope and Bullet Train.

Fall is out in the UK on 2 September

 

Loving Highsmith (2022)

Dir/Wri: Eva Vitija | Doc, 73′

“I shall travel the world and still feel lonely: I am the forever-seeking”. Patricia Highsmith

The American novelist Patricia Highsmith (1921-95) is seen through the prism of her sexuality and personal life in this engaging documentary written and directed by Swiss filmmaker Eva Vitija, based on the author’s diaries and journals, and voiced by Gwendoline Christie giving an illusion of remarkable intimacy with Highsmith herself.

Patricia Highsmith is well known for her stealthily-plotted psychological novels and their various film adaptations such as Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, and The Talented Mr Ripley raising her profile to international status. But she also blazed a smouldering trail as a pioneering writer of gay literature, most notably in The Price of Salt, that found its way onto the big screen in Tod Haynes’ glossy, award-winning drama Carol. Ironically the films garnered more financial successful than her literature.

Vitija’s film reveals a sad childhood in Forth Worth Texas and New York where Highsmith was rejected by her emotionally distant mother Mary and grew up as a darkly attractive woman much admired for her stylish looks in the discrete lesbian bars of 1950s New York, yet held back by her mother’s hurtful comments about her appearance: “Why don’t you dress like a woman?”, and oppressive attempts to interest her in potential husbands.

Despite her homosexuality Highsmith was far from liberal in her outlook, veering towards racism and even antisemitism, although three of her lovers were infact Jewish. In common with many writers, Highsmith kept herself to herself, preferring the company of cats – even snails – to people, although she had several enduring relationships, most notably with Marijane Meaker, a friend, lover and biographer who is one of the film’s most enlightening ‘talking heads’. The two shared a house with their five cats in Pennsylvania at a time when women living together were assumed to be simply pooling their resources rather than satisfying their romantic needs. Highsmith’s complex dual identity is further fleshed out as Vitija explores the author’s other former lovers including Tabea Blumenschein, Marion Aboudaram and Monique Buffet.

Highsmith’s main protagonists were men, and she once claimed: “Women want to read about men and men want to read about men”. Meeker comments: “even though her mother had a career and was strong and independent, Highsmith maintained women in general still see themselves in terms of their relationships with men. Vitija puts forward the idea that the misanthropist character Tom Ripley, the protagonist of five of her books, was actually based on the author herself.

Relatives from her Texan family, on her mother’s side, talk at length about the need for women to be ultra feminine in an era dominated by masculine men. And this male prerogative is backed up by footage of rodeos and ranches that featured heavily in Highsmith’s early life, forcing the author on to an endless quest for identity. Even at the height of her international career she was eclipsed by her radio announcer cousin, back home in Forth Worth.

Highsmith also resided for a time in England where she bought a house to be near a woman only described as Caroline. But the affair ended in bitter rejection re-enforcing the self-internalised feelings of negativity projected onto her by her mother, and Highsmith later took refuge in France where gardening became an absorbing pastime providing solace for her disillusionment with love. The author would end her days in Switzerland where an architect was commissioned to design her a low level modernist house in Locarno where this biopic premiered at the 75th Locarno Film Festival.

Enriched with plentiful photographs, cine-film footage of Highsmith herself, and clips from Carol, Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, the film provides intimate access to the inner life of a highly complex writer who always considered interviews a “profound indignity”. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 7 APRIL 2023 | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2022

I have Electric Dreams | Tengo (2022) Mubi

Dir: Valentina Maurel | Cast: Vivian Rodriguez, Daniela Marin Navarro, Jose Pablo Segrada Johanning, Reinaldo Amien

A 16-year-old girl blazes a trail towards female empowerment in this sultry cinematic snapshot of contempo Costa Rica from writer director Valentina Maurel.

Impressionistic and with a lubricious eye for detail Tengo Suenos Electricos oozes sensuality in exploring every angle of Eva’s world as she struggles to make sense of her parent’s ugly separation. Held together by a stunning debut from Daniela Marin Navarra as Eva this raw but enchanting drama is one of the standouts of this year’s Golden Leopard competition lineup at Locarno Film Festival.  

Eva really gets on with her father and wants to move in with him, but all the warning signs are there in a squalid opening scene where he struts violently away from the family car leaving her mother and younger sister quaking in the abandoned vehicle.

Overwhelmed by confuson, anger and bewilderment intermingled with all the mysterious changes of puberty Eva struggles to cope before finally taking control of the jealous mistrust she feels for her mother and a love/hate relationship with her broke and mentally unstable father who is experiencing a crisis of his own and has moved into a shabby apartment with his friend Dove who will give her a first taste of lust and disappointment. Eva’s baptism of fire smoulders into an often confrontational but more confident future. At least her mother has left her in no doubt about what to expect from men, she also learns that women like to talk about the ‘sisterhood’ but are in fact just competitors vying for the same sordid male gene pool.

Daniela Marin Navarra navigates the role of Eva with instinct, developing her character from sullen vulnerability to surprising maturity until she finally calls time on her father’s behaviour in a film that drenches and scalds you with its tropical charm inculcated by Nicolas Wong Diaz captivating camerawork and Bertand Conard’s inspired editing. Valentina Maurel won the Cannes Cinefondation Award for her short Paul Est La in 2017, and with Suenos Electricos now has all the makings of a very accomplished filmmaker. MT

NOW ON MUBI LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Nope (2022)

Dir.: Jordan Peele; Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Keith David, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott, Steven Yeun; USA 2022, 131 min.

Best known for his much acclaimed feature debut Get Out, the mantle of ‘cult director’ is now sitting comfortably on Jordan Peele’s shoulders with this latest, rather confused epic, an accomplished B-movie that runs at over two hours. His backers, who budgeted a quarter of a billion dollars on his first two flics, are waiting with baited breath to see if Peele can score a hatrick with Nope – (yes, seems the answer could be there).

OJ (Kaluuya) and his sister Emerald (Palmer) live on a ranch in the Californian desert where they train horses for Hollywood productions, after their father Otis Sr (David) was killed in a freak accident when metallic UFOs rained down from the sky.

Divided into chapters named after the ranch’s horses, OJ and Em are alarmed by ‘phone and electricity black-outs, and spot some saucer-like apparitions in the night sky. Emerging from a cloud, the creatures resemble birds caught in the mist, but soon morph into a manta ray or a peculiar form of octopus. OJ treats them like animals and avoids starring at them, hoping to keep them at bay.

Meanwhile the siblings see a chance of making it big in Hollywood, and team up with a salesman (Perea) and cameraman Antlers Holst (Wincott) in the hope of capturing images of the entities with his advanced equipment.

In an unrelated plot-line, OJ sells some of the horses to Ricky ‘Jupe’ Park (Yeung), who runs a tacky Western show in the valley. Jupe has a weird backstory: he has been traumatised for life after playing a boy called Jupiter in the 1990 sitcom Gordy. In one of the episodes, a chimpanzee suddenly runs riot, killing all human cast members apart from Park.

At this point it’s worth mentioning that the Gordy massacre was telegraphed by a bible quote from ‘Nahum’ Chapter three, in which the citizens of Nineveh are threatened with punishment: “I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile and make you a spectacle”. Peele somehow connects the quote with the massacre, having the chimp pull off his garish birthday hat off and throws it to the ground. He certainly had enough.

This is certainly a Hollywood spectacle, but too far-fetched to give it much credit – it’s not even on par with the overrated Once upon a Time in Hollywood – without the historical underpinnings. There are gaps in the narrative, and some sort of structure would have helped. What makes it really worthwhile are DoP Hoyte van Hoytema’s brilliant 65 mm images (Ratio 1:2.39), unfortunately only available in Imax theatres.

Overall, NOPE is certainly a bit of fun, but the lack of depth – despite some allusions to history and politics – reduces its impact to just another fairground attraction. AS

ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 12 AUGUST 2022

Love-Lights (2022) Locarno Film Festival

 

 

Dir.: Acacio de Almeida, Marie Carré; Cast: Oscar Cruz, Sabel Ruth, Luis Miguel; Portugal 2022, 67 min.

Portuguese directors  Acacio de Almeida and Marie Carré expand their short but poignant essay on light and film into a full length feature, a poetic love letter to Portuguese cinema and romance with spectacular sequences of space.

A VoiceOver by camera man Oscar (Cruz) explains: “The main link is between all forms of light, but particularly the film camera”. Light illuminates the central character in every film. “The face of an actor is also a luminous point, full of emotions and feelings”. Bruno Ganz, Ornella Muti, Joaquim de Almeida and Marie Trintignant have all been illuminated for eternity. But, there are dangers too: Silver nitrate can ignite and obliterate everything in voracious flames.

Cinema is also a kind of jail, images are captured and locked down for eternity. It bears testament to the class struggle down the ages with archive footage of demonstrations in Oporto, during the 1974 Portuguese revolution. In a filmic obituary of Maria Cabal (1941-2017), the Anna Karina of Portuguese cinema, we see her in a dressing room, looking into a mirror, alongside excerpts of her films – a young ingénue and an old woman.

Oscar asks: what could light be if it does not reflect us? He also muses on the stars leaving messages of their death. Maria Cabal, in one of her most famous roles as Illda, reflected “The objects in film are imprisoned images. Films and settings belong to each for ever, places undergo transformations, the time of a film is a moment frozen in eternity, it will never exist again but remain in the memory for those who shared the experience”. Cabal appears again, as Illda, with Oscar observing: “We are composed of light, are an intrinsic piece of light.

The ending is rather grim: a piece of celluloid is held against a candle, Oscar talks about how “Man has invented light, which can destroy the whole planet in seconds. Light gives light, but also kills life.” All this in stark contrast to a long rural love scene where the man licks the breasts of his lover with milk just milked from a lamb.

Imaginative and always full of surprises, Love-Lights is a delight that never outstays its 60 odd minute welcome as a concise compendium of Portuguese cinema, with excerpts from films by Botellho, Villaverde, Gil, Monteiro and Paula Rocha among others. A worthwhile experience. AS

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Rifkin’s Festival (2020)

Dir/Wri: Woody Allen | Cast: Wallace Shawn, Gina Gershon, Christoph Waltz, Louis Garrel, Elena Anaya, Sergi López | US comedy 92′

Woody Allen’s latest addition to the archive needed more oomph. The weary reverie tinged with wistful melancholy reflecting on the golden age of arthouse cinema and the nature of longterm love is let down by dreary characters.

The annual San Sebastián Film Festival is in full swing and jaded novelist, the shrew-like Mort Rifkin (Shawn), is there with his hard-faced publicist wife Sue (Gershon). But their marriage is in trouble. Super busy Sue is handling press for a breakout hit directed by popular French filmmaker Philippe (Garrel) who who will inadvertently seduce her with his signature brand of self-obsessed seriousness while hot-footing it from interview to press conference.

The Basque capital positively glows in the gilded tints of Autumn (captured by Woody’s regular cinematographer Vittorio Storaro) but this drama feels dour and decidedly lacklustre, largely due to a charmless set of one-dimensional characters. Mort and Sue seem a mismatched couple from the start – hard to imagine they ever had much in common. Her lack of empathy sends his hypochondria into overdrive, and heart palpitations soon see him in the arms of local cardiologist Jo Rojas (Anaya) whose marriage to the cartoonish creative Paco (Lopez) is also on the rocks. Dreams of a putative future together and a trip round the scenic coastline provide us with cinematic relief, but all Mort needs is another neurotic – and Jo is certainly no picnic in the park – falling asleep through sheer emotional exhaustion after finding Paco in bed with another woman.

Rifkin’s Festival is certainly a highly intelligent film full of insight and spirited humour largely lost . Woody takes scenes from his own film favourites: Citizen Kane to Jules et Jim and The Seventh Seal (Christophe Waltz the standout as the grim reaper) re-staging and re-shooting them as black & white parodies representing Mort’s own experiences. The trouble is, we feel nothing for any of these people and their turgid marriages and lifeless new love affairs despite the very real and relatable nature of their problems. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

 

 

 

 

Ithaka (2021)

Dir.: Ben Lawrence; Documentary with John Shipton, Stella Moris, Ai Weiwei, Vivienne Westwood, John Pilger, Nils Melzer; Australia/UK 2021, 104 min.

The contraversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (*1971) is the subject of this new documentary that takes the first lines of the titular 1911 poem by Greek writer Constantine Cavafy as its motto: As you set out for Ithaca /hope that your journey is a long one/full of adventure, full of discovery”.

Assange could not have asked for more: his discoveries are the stuff of nightmares, and the revenge of the governments he exposed has landed him in Britain’s High Security prison Belmarsh where he has languished for the last three years, actually managing to marry while in captivity: quite a feat for most people, particularly those accused of rape. Anyone who saw Laura Poitras’ hagiographic biopic Risk (2016/7) will have made up their minds about Assange’s persuasive powers where women are concerned, but Lawrence casts no judgement here, keeping his distance. An extradition order from the USA is pending, with British home secretary Priti Patel only too willing to oblige.

We meet Assange’s wife, the lawyer Stella Moris, at the unveiling of a statue of her husband in Geneva in November 2021. “I am here to remind you that Julian isn’t a name, he isn’t a symbol, he is a man and he is suffering”.

The couple have two young children, both conceived at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange stayed between 2012 and 2019. There is CCTV footage from the embassy, showing Assange and Moris, the former skate-boarding in his room. A guard warned Moris that the footage was to be sent to the US secret service every fortnight – Moris stopped visiting Assange. She also learned there were plans to poison her husband. The UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Nils Melzer said “Torture is a tool used as a warning to others. It’s most effective when inflicted in public. In Julian’s case it’s about intimidating everyone else”. In this particular case it was Chelsea Manning, ex-US officer, who blew the whistle on Afghan war crimes by the US Army, and went to prison, to avoid talking about Assange’s part in the operation after she found out that Assange was depressed, and suffered a ‘mini’ stroke in Belmarsh Prison.

The time at the embassy coincides more or less with the Swedish Justice system accusing Assange of sexual assault, a charge bought forward by two Swedish women in 2010. In 2019 the case was dismissed, due to the long intervening period since the original accusation.

Besides Moris, Assange’s main defender is his father John Shipton (76), who travels the world in search of a positive solution to the case, neglecting his own five-year old daughter in Australia. John stepped out of Julian’s live when he letter was three, but re-entered when John was in his early twenties. John is tired, so much time is lost for him and his daughter Severine. He likens Lawrence to “Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor”. “He keeps burrowing away”.

On January 10th 2022, the UK High Court ruled Assange could be extradited to the USA, overturning a Lower Court ruling from 2021. On March 3rd of this year, the High Court refused Assange permission to appeal. On June 17th 2022 Priti Patel, UK Home Secretary, approved the extradition order. Two weeks later Assange and his team appealed against the extradition order. The war in the Ukraine has led to strong statements in the western media. It is perhaps helpful to remember that one of the WikiLeaks posted on 12.7.2007 concerned the killing of journalist Namir Noor-Eidsen and Saeed Chmagh, who were shot dead from the air by a US helicopter.

A strong score by Brian Eno helps to round off this passionate plea for a man who, according to Melzer, “never wanted to be in the spotlight”. AS

ON ITV on 21 May 2023

Paloma’s Wedding (2022) Munich Film Festival 2022

Dir.: Marcelo Gomes; Cast: Kika Sena, Ridson Rice, Ze Maria, Suzy Lopes, Samya De Lavor, Anita Souza Macedo, Ana Marinho; Brazil/Portugal 2022, 104 min.

Brazilian director/co-writer Marcelo Gomes (Waiting for the Carnival) combines the classical South American melodrama with a modern twist: In a remote village best known as Brazil’s capital of jeans, Paloma, a transgender woman with a daughter, wants to marry the love of her life in church. The tension finally erupts from all directions.

Paloma (Sena) works as a hairdresser and harvest mangoes the nearby fields. José (‘Ze’) (Rice) is very much in love with his motorcycle, but his commitment to Paloma is sometimes shaky. He tries to talk her out of wanting to marry in church but Paloma asks the local priest to perform the marriage ceremony. Jose is adamant that only the Pope can change the rules around church marriages where only a man and woman can be united in holy matrimony.

But Paloma’s not for turning and digs her heels in with a letter to the Pope, expecting a positive answer. When the priest reads the pontiff’s reply giving Paloma the bum’s rush, Paloma indulges in a one-night-stand with Ivanzilo, the driver who ferries the workers from the village to the mango fields.

Meeting up with old friends in the town of Saloa, one of them, Rikely, reminds Paloma of the wild times they used to have. Despite varies setback Paloma doesn’t lose sight of her goal and soon the local media gets hold of the story, causing more drama.

DoP Pierre De Kerchove creates vibrant images on the widescreen and in intimate closeup, the sex scenes are provocative and despite the darkness they have a poetic quality. Kika Sena’s Paloma is a brilliant portrait of a vulnerable person taking on the whole community while bringing up a child in challenging circumstances.

There is a very subtle scene featuring casual racism at a hotel swimming pool and Gomes never lets up: Paloma is always on the move, trying to fix problems – but never forgetting the dream of a church wedding. Few features have packed in so many diverse conflicts in a running time of just over a hundred minutes. Passionate and emotionally charged, Paloma is an ambiguous heroine, who wants all what heaven allows – and more. AS

PREMIERING AT MUNICH FILM FESTIVAL | 24 June 2022

Elvis (2022)

Dir.: Baz Luhrmann; Cast: Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Kodi Smit McPhee, Richard Roxburgh; US/Australia 2022, 159 min.

Elvis Aaron Presley (1935-1977) was – and still is – the most successful recording artist on this planet, so hiring Baz Luhrmann, well known for his baroque output, to make a film of the entertainer’s life, and turn in a handsome profit seemed like a brilliant idea.

But casting Tom Hanks as the singer’s gambling, cheating and lying manager Colonel Tom Parker put Austin Butler’s Presley at a glaring disadvantage. Parker, who voices the linear narrative, is also a rather unreliable witness to the story; Butler is certainly entertaining and charismatic as the titular hero, but does he do a convincing job as the hip-swivelling legend? Let’s just say few performers would have fared better opposite a behemoth like Hanks. Olivia DeJonge, as Elvis’ wife Priscilla, is even more short-changed: she brings up their daughter and suffers in silence, while her husband shags and devours pills like candies. And no mention is made of her being a teen bride; Priscilla was fourteen when she met the twenty-four-year-old Elvis for the first time in 1959.

The writers offer no real explanation as to why Elvis left for the army as a rebel in 1958, only to return two years later his bad boy instincts buttoned down. Amateur psychology is used to lay the blame on the shady Parker and his greed – we are led to believe the scrupulous manager of dubious Dutch origins had a hold over Elvis using the star as a cash cow to payoff his own mounting debts. Presley’s father Vernon (Roxburgh) was a weak role model and ended up in jail. Elvis’ actress mother Gladys (Thomson) is also just an underwritten sketch.

Luhrmann dishes up the legend’s mammoth musical history in all its glittering details weaving in a strand about his formative musical associations with the  segregated black artists Little Richard and Mahalia Jackson who lend vibrance to the story. DoP Mandy Walker, who worked with Luhrmann on Australia, pulls out all the stops in a biopic that runs for nearly three hours. Rather than zero-in on a pivotal era of the star’s career, Luhrmann merely touches on his entire life, and any depth or resonance is lost in the cacophony of flashing lights and noise.

Behind the cinematic showcase lies a hollow heart. Luhrmann, an obsessive showman himself, again goes overboard with his obsession for split screens in another sparkling montage that will satisfy the lowest common denominator. But having spent all his budget on appearances there’s nothing left for the script. The story is a classic but the straightforward chronicle approach takes away the element of surprise leaving us with an ‘all singing all dancing’ cabaret showpiece that ends in tears; a burnished biopic to please the investors rather than arthouse enthusiasts with discerning minds. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM JUNE 24TH 2022

It Snows in Benidorm (2021)

Dir/Wri: Isabelle Coixet | Cast: Timothy Spall, Sarita Choudhury, Carmen Machi, Pedro Casablanc | Spain Drama, 117′

Lost souls are marooned in an artificial ‘paradise’ in this meandering drama from Catalan writer director Isabelle Coixet.

The best thing about It Snows in Benidorm is Timothy Spall who carries the film with a permanently perplexed and world weary expression as Peter Riordan, a kindly but disillusioned bank clerk given early retirement when his ethics fall out of favour with the bank’s modern approach to lending.

Peter, also a keen meteorologist, heads off to Spain to visit his brother Daniel who he hasn’t seen for years, and who never appears either, providing the first in a long list of unanswered questions in this overlong and often farcical feature with its stagey internal scenes set against the towering skyscrapers of its panoramic backdrop of the Costa Blanca. Benidorm emerges a touristy retirement backwater for garishly dressed hysterical pensioners on their second lease of life; a sunny place for shady Spaniards, as Somerset Maugham who say, where people regularly disappear into its criminal underworld.

The dispeptic Peter does find love of sorts in burlesque dancer Sarita Choudhury who fails to bring out the humanity in the lonely ‘Pearl’ resigned to a life of displacement after a questionable past. Peter discovers his brother was embroiled in dodgy dealings in the property market, and ends up in a phoney kidnap attempt courtesy of Daniel’s business partner Esteban Campos (Casablanc) a longtime lamb butcher hellbent on making a killing of a different kind. There’s also a part for Almodovar regular Carmen Machi as the spunky seaside police chief: an awkward scene involving a tryst with her muscled young lover feels ridiculous.

Coixet has had some successes in her long career but with Snows it looks like she made a list of socially relevant themes to be incorporated into her storyline, and they crop up in offbeat scenes that sit incoherently alongside the main thrust of the narrative – the search for Daniel – robbing the piece of a much needed dramatic tension, rather like the adverts on TV. Whether It Snows in Benidorm is meant to be a dark comedy, or a comedy of manners, is unclear but it doesn’t succeed as either. And as the story draws to its cryptic conclusion we are left as uninspired and perplexed as Peter himself. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 23 `June 2022.

 

 

 

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The Princess (2022)

Dir.: Ed Perkins; Documentary about Princess Diana; UK 2022, 106 min.

Hot on the heels of Spencer, The Crown and the musical Diana, THE PRINCESS does not promise or deliver any new insight into the life and tragic death of our much loved, Princess of Wales. Instead Ed Perkins pieces together a documentary made up exclusively of television news footage and public records, once again showing the Diana we have seen in the media and watched on TV for over 40 years – 25 of them after her death in a Parisian car crash. This is a digest of what was fed to the general public – rather than a feast of new information revealing the truth what really happened.

When the TV camera spotlight first fell on Lady Diana Spencer, it was 1981, she was an innocent twenty year old nursery teacher;  Prince Charles a well-travelled, sophisticated 32 year old prince. They harding knew each other, let alone loved each other, as the first TV interview shows. The media version of what happened next was “The Fairy Story”. In the midst of social and political turbulence, a fairy story was badly needed. But the fairy tale ended when Prince Charles, even after the birth of his first son William, continued to lead the life of a bachelor – including his adulterous affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, who was also married and a mother of two.

Much later, in the scandalous TV interview with Martin Bashir,  Diana spilt the beans: her own romantic affairs; the self harm; Bulimia; and a suicide attempt. Now the second phase, a “Soap Opera” was to begin. A collision between the royal family, representing traditional values, and Diana’s 20th Century lifestyle was played out before a public. A Disney movie perhaps, but nothing to do with the fact that the couple had never been in love in the first place. The so-called heart-break was the base the relationship was built on. Once again the British media drove the narrative forward, as it still does today, serving the public with what it thought they wanted, rather than the real truth of the matter.

Writer/director Ed Perkins (Tell me, who I am) and his editors Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira have certainly cobbled together a hoard of information but for whose benefit? Certainly not the ones who have worshipped “the princess of the people”, who was clearly at the cash cow for everyone who benefitted from her tragic story. Perhaps the best use of this documentary is as material for media students – as an example of reality television of the worst kind. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 30 JUNE 2022 FOR A SPECIAL ONE NIGHT ONLY EVENT ACROSS THE UK/IRELAND

 

Fire of Love (2022)

Dir.: Sara Dosa; Cast: Documentary with Maurice Krafft, Katia Krafft; narrator Miranda July; Canada/USA 2022, 93 min.

French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft are the focus of this new documentary cum love story that records a life-changing visit to the island of Stromboli that would see them developing early warning systems for volcano eruptions from the early 1970s and lead to a worldwide research project that ended abruptly in June 1991, when they were killed, with 41 others, by a pyroclastic flow at Mount Unzen in Japan.

Sara Dosa (The Seer and the Unseen) bases her film on on a script by Shane Boris, Erin Caspar and Jocelyne Chaput that tells how the couple had met in Strasbourg and decided to devote their life to the beauty – and danger – of volcanos. Maurice maintained that rather than having “a long, monotonous life he would rather have a short, exciting one, dicing with danger in getting his legs burnt in boiling mud and risking life and limb to cross a lake in a rubber dingy containing sulphuric acid, making Katia, a chemist, incensed. Meanwhile she was famous for wearing metal helmets and walking along the edge of active volcano craters, captured in stunning camerawork by Pablo Alvarez-Mesa along with stunning images of the volcano Krakatoa, situated between the islands of Java and Sumatra.

Dosa and her writers flesh out the personal side of the couples’ obsession – just like Werner Herzog in A Fire within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft – yet their immense scientific oeuvre of over twenty publications is not even mentioned once which is a shame since the Kraffts warned the filipino president Cory Aquino about the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, allowing for the area to be evacuated. One of the Kraffts’ final publications before their death was “Understanding Volcanic Hazards and reducing volcanic risks”. In their own words, they “may have lived kamikaze existence”, but they contributed enormously to an arcane science. And like veritable pioneers they also paid the price. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL LONDON JUNE 2022

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022) Sundance London

Dir.: Sophie Hide; Cast: Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack, Isabella Laughland; UK 2022, 97 min.

Emma Thompson is the star turn in this comedy of manners between a male sex worker and a middle-aged, widowed woman – unfortunately the outcome is not as funny as planned.

Nancy Stokes (Thompson) feels rather short-changed on the sex front after a long marriage leaves her unsatisfied and determined to remedy the situation. And she hopes hunky sex worker Leo Grande (McCormack) will make her life complete, between the sheets. The two meet in a hotel room in Norwich with the aim of giving Nancy her first orgasm – although McCormack is no Richard Gere from American Gigolo, he is certainly pleasant and playful in dealing with Nancy’s technical list driven approach to intercourse which sees him coming up against barriers, and we don’t mean just on the condom front.  Soon the two are in a psychological clinch: Leo has obvious Mummy issues – being rejected for enjoying girls and drugs. The outcome is never in doubt, after all, this is a British feel-good fuck flick.

Good Luck suffers from the rather claustrophobic setting set – the hotel bedroom (and its Norwich location, bringing to mind Alan Partridge) gives DoP Bryan Mason very little to play with in a film spoilt by its rather clumsy script.

Thompson once again makes this warchable, McCormack tries his best to make his part believable. But Good Luck doesn’t flow – possibly intentionally: this is theatre, the verbal exchanges are awkward, the whole exercise hampered by the need for witty repartee. Not a big screen outing then but ideal for a rainy Sunday afternoon in front of the TV. AS

SUNDANCE LONDON | JUNE 2022

January (2022) Tribeca Film Festival 2022

Dir.: Viesturs Kairiss; Cast: Kärlis Arnolds, Avots, Alise Dzene, Baliba Broka, Aleksas Kazanavicius, Juhars Ulfsack; Latvia/Lithuvania/Poland 2022, 95 min.

Latvian director/co-writer Viesturs Kairiss recreates the turbulent days of January 1991 when Latvia – and other Baltic countries – were fighting for independence from the collapsing Soviet Union. Centred around a young student at the film school in Riga, January is shot in eight and sixteen mm, giving the feature a very intimate atmosphere. Dedicated to all the documentary filmmakers who died during the period, this is a chronicle of a lost youth set against a nation in crisis.

Jazis (Avots) is facing a crisis of a different kind: that of his own identity: he fancies himself as the new Tarkovsky, and manages to impress co-student Anna (Dzene) who is fascinated by his rather pretentious lectures, but when they end up in bed incapable of satisfying his new girlfriend, and he retreats into a depression. But the main problem in Jazis’ life are his parents: His mother Biruta (Broka) has fallen out with Communism and now activates for independence. Father Andrejs (Kazanavicius) is still a believer, even though he can see the crumbling Empire.

Then Podnieks (Ulfsack), a famous filmmaker, turns up to make matters worse for Jazis, especially when he hires Anna as his assistant. But their attraction for each other soon dies and Anna turns her affections back to Jazis who has almost lost interest in her. Everything comes to a head during the mid January demonstrations when barricades are erected in the streets of Riga and soon Jazis finds himself conscripted into the Russian army because his doctor refuses to attest to his “depression”. But when violence erupts on the streets, and demonstrators storm the Interior Ministry, Jazis problems are forced onto the back burner: “I will never find out who I am really’, he laments.

DoP Wojciech Staron frenetic handheld images capture the mayhem not only in Jazis’ mind but also in the disruption brewing around him.  January is very much a testament to the liberation movement, but the lovers are still the main protagonists: caught up in radical new ideas, but very much the victims of contradictions beyond their influence. A paean to revolutionary passion with a touch of early Truffaut.

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | WORLD PREMIERE JUNE 12

Men (2021)

Dir: Alex Garland | Cast: Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinear, Paapa Essiedu | US Fantasy horror

English director Alex Garland (Annihilation) dices with horror and comedy in his weird and wonderful hybrid set in a picturesque village in the depths of the English countryside where the male of the species appears in various guises – none of them favourable.

A secluded English country house with manicured gardens should be the perfect place to recuperate for a woman whose ex husband (Essiedu) has just committed suicide. But the Herefordshire hideaway where Harper (Buckley) seeks solace is more akin to the sinister Cornish village of The Wicker Man , and the owner, Geoffrey (Kinnear), an uppercrust oddball, is a dead ringer for TVs Harry Enfield complete with buck teeth and dandruff and a penchant for cavorting stark naked in the grounds. Other incarnations in his repertoire include the famous ‘loadsa money’ lookalike; a leery, misogynist vicar; and a schoolboy who looks like Anthony’s Hopkins’ puppet Corky from Magic.

Clearly Garland had a big budget to throw at this production that takes a tokenistic swipe at toxic masculinity, and gives lip service to domestic violence. But it does no favours for Jessie Buckley who is left incredulously hung out to dry with her character, a ballsy career woman who feels completely out of place in this meaningless ‘Midsomer Murders’ style charade, she seems to be in a different film.

For a time Buckley lends credibility to the film’s initial shock value but then our patience wears thin as Kinnear gets the more gratifying job of pulling different disguises out of his pantomime box of tricks. The overriding comedy element soon punches a hole in any vestigial tension the film has tried to instil, leaving Harper’s tragic backstory somehow diminished by the garish absurdity of the rest of the antics, and leaving us not sure whether to laugh or scream. A bizarre but watchable film. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 3 JUNE 2022 

 

The Night of the 12th (2022)

Dir: Dominik Moll | Cast: Bastien Bouillon, Bouli Lanners, Théo Cholbi, Johann Dionnet, Thibaut Evrard, Julien Frison, Paul Jeanson, Mouna Soulam, Pauline Serieys, Anouk Grinberg, Lula Cotton Frapier | Thriller 114′

Dominik Moll’s memorable arthouse drama goes to intriguing places with a realistic and richly crafted narrative more focused on the moods and motivations of its authentic characters that the whodunnit at its core. Even though The Night of the 12th is an inconclusive crime drama it leaves you with a feeling of calm satisfaction rather than jangled nerves.

On the way home from a girls’ get together Clara (Lula Cotton Frapier) is.torched to death in an otherwise peaceful village in the suburbs of Grenoble. An extensive police investigation fails to flush out her murderer but in the process we are introduced to the local French detectives Bastien Bouillon (Yohan) and Bouli Lanners (Marceau) playing a rookie and hardened duo whose personal lives add valuable insight to the police procedural by exploring the wider implications of this violent murder in the context of contemporary attitudes towards women in France.

Moll and his regular co-writer Gilles Marchand base their script on a section of Pauline Guéna’s essay novel “18.3 – Une année à la PJ, Paris” that deals with this real crime but translocates the action to southeastern France. The remoteness of the mountain setting thrusts our focus onto the intense exchanges between Marceau and Yohan, and adds a scenic allure to the internal scenes of the police procedural with its acerbic macho observations of modern life and the eternal ongoing conflict between the sexes.

Marceau, whose wife has just left him, is increasingly disenchanted by the modern world; the lack of romanticism and culture amongst the young, and their glib attitude towards relationships. This spills over into his dealings with the various suspects, and he eventually retires from the case. But Yohan is the most mesmerising of the two; a deep thinker quietly fascinated by his work and the people he comes into contact with, especially his new colleague Nadia (Soualem) who brings her female gaze to the investigation:”men are often the perpetrators and women the targets” and the local judiciary judge, Anouk Grinberg, sublime in a cameo role. MT

NOW ON BFI SUBSCRIPTION | VOTED BEST FILM BEST DIRECTOR, BEST FILM, BEST NEWCOMER, BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, BEST SOUND+ BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY | CESAR AWARDS |

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tchaikovsky’s Wife (2022)

Dir: Kirill Serebrennikov | Cast: Alyona Mikhailova, Odin Lund Biron, Yuliya Org, Miron Federov | Biopic Drama 143′

Best known for his multi-award winning feature debut The Student, the exiled Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov continues to blaze a trail with another inspired biopic drama – a first to explore the turbulent, sexless relationship between the 19th century Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky seen from the perspective of his wife Antonina Miliukova in Moscow in the late 1870s.

Tchaikovsky was homosexual and his innocent wife to be was oblivious to the fact: in her diaries she supposedly wrote: “Thank God he belongs to me and no-one else. Now he is my husband and no-one can take him away from me”. But, according to this version of events, Tchaikovsky cannot tolerate life ‘a deux’, and especially with a woman whose quite normal nubile demands eventually drive him away from his willing partner. And although our sympathies are with Antonina we are not oblivious to her faults which clearly go beyond religious insistence and eventually become tiresome in this dour and melodramatic storyline.

Those expecting a sweeping epic filled with vast tracks of the composer’s romantic music will be disappointed. True to its title Tchaikovsky’s Wife is first and foremost a lavish and lyrical but often cold-eyed portrait of a married woman’s obsessional and misguided love, it also touches on the prickliness of an artist trying to develop his talent, but this strand is less developed and takes a back seat to Antonina’s mental anguish.

Enriched by modern dance sequences, inventive camera angles and occasional flashes of Tarkovsky, each frame is a painterly portrait straight out of Manet or Berthe Morisot with the delicate detailing of an Ingres painting before the tone grows more sombre and louche with scuzzy naked sequences featuring well-hung studs, inspired by Tom of Finland staged in a rather misogynist attempt to excite the young woman and lure her away from her husband.

We first meet Antonina Miliukova in 1877 as a tender lady of fortune tentatively seeking a husband and lovestruck by her first sighting of the struggling composer. Fifteen years later she is reduced to a poverty-ridden emotional wreck unable to accept that her marriage has irretrievably broken down and her affair with the divorce lawyer has turned abusive.

What starts as hopeful story of triumph over expectation, after the couple’s marriage of convenience, soon descends into a tragedy of melodramatic proportions when Miliukova’s promise of family wealth comes to nothing: Tchaikovsky is unable to countenance a relationship with anyone but his own genius, and a few acolytes who pander to his talent.

The final scenes play out as a tragedy Miliukova having become a caricature of herself with the loss of her three children but determined not to relinquish the unique status of being the wife of a man who would eventually become one of the world’s most legendary composers. MT

AT THE ICA LONDON on 22 December 20

The Blue Caftan (2022)

Dir/Wri: Maryam Touzani | Cast: Saleh Bakri, Lubna Azabal, Ayoub Messioui | Drama 118′

The ancient craft of caftan styling is at the heart of Maryam Touzani’s sophomore feature, a slow-burning sensuous Magrebi menage a trois competing in the this year’s Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes Film Festival. 

Halim (Bakri) and Mina (Azabal) run a traditional caftan atelier in one of Morocco’s oldest medinas. Fashions are constantly changing and the married couple are aware of a need to cater for a more demanding clientele. But their decision to take on a new apprentice (Messioui) will have intriguing consequences for the business and their own relationship. Saleh Bakri and Lubna Azabal have a mesmerising chemistry as the couple at the centre of the story, but Messioui is also captivating in his feature debut performance as the gifted but impetuous young apprentice very much in tune with modern sensibilities.

The Blue Caftan is a drama as indulgent and intricately woven as the silky garments themselves. Touzani’s first feature Adam focused on love in a Casablanca bakery and this is another domestic tale of local craftsman that speaks to tradition while keeping pace with the modern world. Esentially a three-handed chamber piece the film occasionally ventures out into the sunbaked streets and hazy hammams of its coastal location, Touzani delicately teasing out her layered character study that will reveal a subtle love story that works both as a gay awakening piece and a testament to enduring marital love. And apart from the meticulous lensing the clever premise is why this sumptuous drama is so enjoyable, albeit a little over-wrought – like the old-fashioned caftans themselves – in the final heart-rending scenes. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS FROM 5 MAY 2023 |

Luzzu (2021)

Dir/Wri: Alex Camilleri | Cast: Jesmark Scicluna, Marlene Schranz, David Scicluna, Marta Vella | Drama 94′

Fisherman all over the world are under pressure in what is surely one of the most honourable professions since the time of Jesus: bringing home the catch.

Maltese American filmmaker Alex Camilleri backed by award-winning screenwriter Ramin Bahrani casts a real working fisherman (Jesmark Scicluna) in his intelligent debut feature that plays out like an agonising arthouse thriller set in a fishing Mediterranean community struggling to survive. Jesmark is one of a long line of locals making (or not making) their living from the sea. Each days he sets sails in his colourful painted luzzu – a traditional man-made wooden boat – hoping to support his newborn son who needs medical treatment. The alternative is to decommission his vessel for an EU payout and possibly getting tied up in EU red tape, or go on the black market with the island’s criminal underclass. Seemingly a no-win situation. Interestingly Malta joined the European Union in 2004 and their exotic language sounds like a cross between Sicilian and North African Arabic.

So the odds are really stacked against Jesmark who manages to look resentful, hurt and bewildered in a convincing performance that won him Best Acting award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Meanwhile, his wife Denise (Michela Farrugia) manages to make everything look like his fault, along with his mother in law. And to makes matters worse he now has to rely on a friend (David Scicluna) to help him.

Their daily catch yields a mixture of sea bream, mullet and bass, but they are forced to throw a lucrative swordfish back in the sea, although the fish is already dead,  because it contravenes EU regulations, and this is a tense moment for Jesmark who clearly feels back-footed and diminished. Clearly this is not working. So he joins forces with the unscrupulous Uday (Uday Maclean) in a soulless (!) foray that goes his integrity. This black market option requires him to go back on his tracks after dark and collect the leftover fish which can then be sold on to restaurants.

With disappointment and anger etched on his weatherbeaten face Jesmark is the embodiment of male failure. Luzzu serves a vibrant snapshot of this ancient Southern European archipelago with its age-old traditions and tightknit community dogged by global economic turndown and EU restrictions. MT

SUNDANCE SPECIAL JURY AWARD – ACTING | OUT ON 27 MAY 2022

Cannes Classics – 2022 restorations

This year’s Cannes Classics strand opens with Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore in celebrating of its restoration 50 years after shooting began in 1972. The mammoth undertaking runs for over three hours and would later go on to win the Grand de Jury presided by Ingrid Bergmann, and the Prix de la Critique, causing riots back in the 1973. A full retrospective of the director’s work will in slated for 2023 in French cinemas.

Sciuscià | Vittorio de Sica | 1946, 1h33, Italy

Presented by The Film Foundation and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. Restored in 4K by The Film Foundation and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata in association with Orium S.A. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation

Thamp (The Circus Tent) | Aravindan Govindan | 1978, 2h09, India

A presentation of Film Heritage Foundation, India. Restored by Film Heritage Foundation, The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, Cineteca di Bologna at Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd.’s Post – Studios, Chennai, and L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, and in association with General Pictures, National Film Archive of India and the family of Aravindan Govindan. Funding provided by Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd. and Film Heritage Foundation.

The Trial  | Orson Welles | 1962, 2h, France / Germany / Italy

This restoration was produced in 2022 by STUDIOCANAL and the Cinémathèque Française. The image and sound restoration were done at the Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory (Paris-Bologne), using the original 35mm negative. This project was supervised by STUDIOCANAL, Sophie Boyer and Jean-Pierre Boiget. The restoration was funded thanks to the patronage of Chanel.

If I Were a Spy… | Bertrand Blier | 1967, 1h34, France

Presented by Pathé. 4k restoration, done scanning the original negative film. A project undertaken by the Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory (Paris-Bologne). Restoration funded by the Centre national du cinema et de l’image animée (CNC).

Poil de Carotte | Julien Duvivier | 1932, 1h31, France

A TF1 presentation. New 4K restoration done by TF1 studios, with the backing of CNC, using the original nitrate negative and a combined dupe negative on non-flammable film. Digital and photochemical work done in 2021 by the Hiventy laboratory.

The Last Waltz | Martin Scorsese | 1978, 1h57, USA

MGM Studios’ The Last Waltz (1978) is presented by Park Circus thanks to a new 4K digital restoration from the Criterion Collection, approved by director Martin Scorsese.

Itim | Mike De Leon | 1976, 1h45, Philippines

A Mike De Leon presentation, distributed in France by Carlotta Films. Restoration done using the original 35mm negative and optical soundtrack, stored at the British Film Institute. This presentation is a preview of the French release of Mike De Leon’s entire restored body of work, slated 2022-2023.

Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol | Glauber Rocha  | 1964, 2h, Brazil

Presented by Metropoles.com and Paloma Cinematográfica. Restored from the original 35mm negative preserved at Cinemateca Brasileira and with a brand new 4K restoration by Estudios Cinecolor and Estudios JLS, Cinematographer Luis Abramo/Rogerio Moraes and with the supervision of Rodrigo Mercês.

Sedmikrásky (Daisies)  | Vera Chytilová | 1966, 1h14, Czech Republic

Digital restoration of this film funded by the donation of Mrs. Milada Kučerová and Mr. Eduard Kučera was carried out by Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in collaboration with the Národní filmový archiv, Prague and the Czech Film Fund in UPP and Soundsquare.

Viva la muerte  | Fernando Arrabal | 1971, 1h30, France / Tunisia

Viva la Muerte! was scanned and restored in 4K by the Cinémathèque de Toulouse using the original 35mm image negative, the original 35mm sound negative of the French version, and a 35mm interpositive element containing the end credits missing from the original negative.

Documentaries

Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman by Ethan Hawke The Last Movie Stars
Ethan Hawke, episodes 3 and 4 | 1h47, USA

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodwind enjoyed one of the most enduring relationships in Hollywood. Actor, director and producer Ethan Hawke and executive producer Martin Scorsese explore their lives and careers in a captivating, intellectual, and moving documentary. Divided into six chapters the film features Karen Allen, George Clooney, Oscar Isaac, Zoe Kazan, Laura Linney and Sam Rockwell, with archive interviews of Elia Kazan, Sydney Pollock, Paul Newman, who discuss the iconic couple and American cinema. Screened in the presence of Ethan Hawke and Clea Newman Soderlund

Romy, A Free Woman | written by Lucie Cariès and Clémentine Déroudille, Dir: Lucie Cariès | 1h31, France

Romy Schneider was a regular in Competition at Cannes, starting in 1957 with Sissi, and notably with Claude Sautet’s Les Choses de la Vie. This exceptional documentary recounts her illustrious career with passion and dedication.
Screening in the presence of Lucie Cariès and Clémentine Deroudille

Jane Campion, Cinema Woman | Dir: Julie Bertuccelli | 1h38, France

Director Julie Bertuccelli paints Jane Campion’s portrait with great sensitivity, humour and admiration, telling the tale of the first-ever woman to win the Palme d’Or in 1993.
Screening in the presence of Julie Bertuccelli.

Gérard Philipe, le dernier hiver du Cid Dir: Patrick Jeudy, 1h06, France

An adaptation of Jérôme Garcin’s novel Le dernier hiver du cid, this documentary built exclusively on archive footage and a delicate storytelling style celebrates the 100th anniversary of Cannois Gerard Philipe. His memory will flood back to the Croisette through a screening of Fanfan la tulipe.
Screening in the presence of Patrick Jeudy, Jérôme Garcin and Anne-Marie Philipe.

Patrick Dewaere, mon héros (Patrick Dewaere, My Hero) | Dir: Alexandre Moix, 1h30, France

The actress Lola Dewaere chronicles the film career and traumatic life of celebrated actor Patrick Dewaere, the father she never knew, under the watchful eye of director Alexandre Moix.
Screening in the presence of Alexandre Moix and Lola Dewaere.

Hommage d’une fille à son père Dir: Fatou Cissé, 1h11, Mali

Fatou Cissé accompanies her father, Malien director Souleymane Cissé, in a trip through his film career, painting an intimate and poetic picture of one of Africa’s most celebrated actors. Screening in the presence of Fatou Cissé and Souleymane Cissé.

L’Ombre de Goya par Jean-Claude Carrière | Dir:José Luis Lopez-Linares, 1h30, France

A restoration that rediscovers the magical language of the late screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, as he researches the painter Goya. An incredible trip through culture, emotion, cinema, painting and Spain. A French-Hispanic-Portugese coproduction: Screening in the presence of José Luis Lopez Linares.

Tres en la deriva del acto creativo (Three in the Drift of the Creative Act) Fernando Solanas | 1h36, Argentina

Last homage to the great director Fernando Solanas who came many times to the Festival En Competition and two times to Cannes Classics.  .

Screening in the presence of Victoria and Juan Solanas, and Gaspar Noé.

CANNES CLASSICS  | 17-28 May 2022

Outside the Law ( 1920)

Dir: Tod Browning | Cast: Priscilla Dean, Wheeler Oakman, Lon Chaney, Ralph Lewis | US Horror 75′

While under contract at Universal Studies Tod Browning crafted a series of melodramas featuring powerful female protagonists who stood defiantly against the men who tried to control them on the wrong side of the law. Here the leading lady is Priscilla Dean.

Although recalled today as an early Chaney collaboration with Browning – Chaney playing both a gangster and a Chinaman! – both Chaneys are actually offscreen for much of the film’s tedious mid-section where lady Priscilla Dean and boyfriend Wheeler Oakman agonise over whether or not to go straight while holed up in their Knob (sic) Hill hideout. 

Fortunately “Black Mike” Chaney finally tracks them down and actually calls Oakman “you dirty rat”! (did the line make it into Browning’s own remake ten years later in which Chaney’s role was played by Edward G. Robinson?) before a remarkably violent climax in which ferocious punches are thrown that draw blood, the aggro heightened by incredibly fast cutting that surpasses Griffith. @RichardChatten. 

NOW ON BLU-RAY COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA

Casablanca Beats (2021)

Dir/Wri.: Nabil Ayouch, Cast: Anas Basbousi, Ismail Adouab, Amina Kannan, Meriem Nekkach, Nouhaila Arif, Zineb Boujemaa, Samah Barigou, Abdelilah Basbousi, Maha Menan, Mehdi Razzouk, Marwa Kniniche, Soufiane Belali, Zineb Boujemaa; Morocco/France 2021, 101 min.

French-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch is no stranger to controversy: His feature Much Loved about prostitution in his home country was banned, and Horses of God is a sober fictionalisation of the the suicide bombing that killed 33 people in Sidi Moumen, a deprived neighbourhood in Casablanca.

Ayoch has returned to Sidi Moumen with CASABLANCA BEATS, the first Moroccan feature in competition at Cannes since 1962. An uplifting story of local teenagers, uses rap and hip hop to hit back at the male-dominated set-up, and the religious bigotry that condones it. All actors are playing out their own lives with Anas Basbousi being the central character. Basbousi is a rapper, who founded the ‘Positive School’ in a cultural centre in Sidi Moumen where he clashes with the leader who feels his progressive style of music will alienate the centre from the rest of the community. In real life, Ayouch was instrumental in setting up the cultural Centre ‘Les Etoiles’ in Sidi Moumen back in 2014, together with author Mahi Binebine, on whose novel ‘Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen’ Horses of God was based.

“Hip hop is an art form”, exclaims Anas, but not everyone shares his enthusiasm. It certainly proves to be a divisive art form, particularly for the parents of teenager Maha Menan who protest “Not for us”, as they drag their daughter out of the centre. Meriem Nekkach’s brother even tries to prevent her visits. But her counter attack makes things clear: “For you, women are slaves/It makes me sick/For you, being a man, means dominating us/look at our mother in chains/never had a voice, and never complained. While all this is happening the male religious enforcers (known at The “Beards”) patrol the streets extolling the teachings of the Quran: “Everything that lures us from God’s path is a sin”.

But the dance craze is refusing to back down. More centres along the lines of the Sidi Moumen “Positive School”, have now been stablished in Morocco, and Casablanca Beats’ main dancers, Ismail and Mehdi have now turned semi-professional. The film comes to a head with the long anticipated ‘big concert’, which should have won over hearts and minds – but ends in a violent confrontation with the “Beards” and their supporters, leaving Anas’ future in the balance.

This effervescent feature fizzes with fun thanks to the lively camerawork of Amine Messadi and Virginie Surdej. Casablanca Beats is not simply a North African version of the Bronx or Paris sub-culture, but an indigenous approach to rap/hip hop artists, defined by the fighting spirit of a youth rising up against a repressive and often violent parental and authoritarian regime. In true Middle Eastern style Casablanca Beats is a feisty but fervent hymn to music, life and love. AS

IN CINEMAS AND ON CURZON HOME  FROM FRIDAY 29 APRIL 2022

Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War (2022)

Dir: Margy Kinmonth | UK Doc, 87′

“I find it hard to say what it is to be English, but Ravilious is part of it” says writer Alan Bennett in a new film on the artist.

Eric Ravilious by the British architect Serge Chermayeff @copyright Foxtrot Films

 

Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) was one of Britain’s most iconic creative forces defining the English landscape in the British pastoral tradition with his unique engravings and prints. What other wartime painter has captured Englishness with such gentle passion. And although his short life was touched by joy and tragedy his paintings, engravings and lithographs are accessible and so easy to like. His softly nostalgic subject: the countryside during wartime, the soft rolling hills of the South Downs; the chalky fields of the Chilterns and white cliffs of Dover. But his work would soon document the war effort with fishing boats, barage balloons and a painting entitled ‘Rendering mines safe: “He’s so loved and appreciated but somehow remains a shared secret”. says Alan Bennett, one of the talking heads in this new film by the Bafta-winning director Margy Kinmonth, along with Grayson Perry and Eric’s daughter Anne Ullmann and granddaughter  Profoundly serene yet profoundly disturbing, the documentary also serves as a visual record of war.

Born in 1903 into a family that fell on hard times after the Great War Ravilious won a scholarship to the RCA where he met his mentor the artist Paul Nash. He developed his own precise but elegiac style while sharing a house in Great Bardfield in Essex with the fellow artist Eric Bawden, who he met at Morley College. Inspiration came from the nature surrounding them and was chosen for its documentary quality, the two brought watercolours back into fashion as both Eric and Bawden detested oils (too much like toothpaste).

HMS Glorious in the Arctic @copyright Foxtrot Films

 

A satirical first project in 1930 offered the opportunity of meeting his wife, fellow artist Tirza Garwood and the two started painting a mural of a seascape with parachutes raining down from the sky, an undertaking that financed the first four years of their marriage. Times were hard but Tirza made an income from marbling paper for walls while Eric combined teaching in London with his design work. Anne Ullmann explains how his boyish good looks, wit and infectious sense of fun soon led to several affairs during which time his paintings became freer and more colourful. But Tirza’s first child John arrived with a marital reconciliation and she would keep the home fires burning alone with the children for most of their married life, although Eric wrote often and affectionately, and some of his letters are interweaved into the linear narrative along with ample illustrations and personal photographs from the family collection.

What drew Ravilious to work for the War Office was the chance of excitement but also the responsibility. It gave him a salary which was welcome after struggling financially for so long. War also gave him tremendous scope to broaden his horizons, painting things he would have never dreamt of had it not been for the conflict, although much of his work was destroyed when Morley College was bombed.

Submarine Dream @copyright Foxtrot Films

 

In April 1940 Ravilious was stationed in Norway on HMS Glorious which was later to be destroyed. Ready to fight as a soldier he was also trying to paint British battleships and Germans U-boats in the deep fjords and raging seas. From then on he travelled far and wide documenting wartime in Scotland and Iceland where he found himself painting warplanes that helped to inform today’s pilots. In Newhaven his drawings were censored on the grounds of them being ‘too informative for the enemy’.

HMS Arc Royal in action @copyright Foxtrot Films

 

Two years later in 1942 Tirza’s ill health brought Eric back down to earth and he was posted at RAF Sawbridgeworth (now defunct) in Hertfordshire, where he produced a series of watercolours providing a flavour of everyday life, from the types of aircraft to the activities that took place in the interior of the airfield’s ‘mobile operations room’. He wrote to Tirza: “the weather gets finer all the time but I feel bored of pictures of planes on the ground and want to go flying”.

Eric’s affection for the watercolours of Francis Towner took him next to RAF Kaldadarnes in Iceland where he would capture ice and snow and crater scenery. In August 30th 1942 Eric went missing, aged 39, in his plane on a royal marine Air Sea Rescue patrol. These imaginative scenes are hazily recreated showing him floating down through the heavens to a watery grave surrounded by leaves from his sketch book. “From the artistic side his loss is deplorable and he will be quite impossible to replace”. Tirzah would die nine years later of cancer leaving their children orphaned.

Eric Ravilious was the first Britist artist to die on active service in the Second World War. His paintings were forgotten for 40 years until they were discovered under Edward Bawden’s bed, by Eric’s children James, John and Anne. Now how romantic is that? MT

ERIC RAVILIOUS: DRAWN TO WAR | in cinemas 1st July 2022

Atabai (2021)

Dir.: Niki Karimi; Cast: Hadi Hejazifar, Sahar Dolatshahi, Javaad Ezzati, Danial Noorvash, Yousefali Daryadel, Mahlagha Meynoosh, Masoumeh Robaninia; Iran 2020, 106 min.

The Iranian countryside is the setting for this visually vibrantly but brooding feature that sees modern and traditional values colliding for Kazem (co-writer Had Hejazifar) a middle-aged man who left university without completing his architecture studies, and is now designing holidays villas for the rich and powerful who he desperately resents.

Kazem often resorts to physical violence, his secretive past seems more meaningful to than the present and he has not moved emotionally after an unhappy relationship during his student years, although he has changed his name from Atabai. He has never forgotten Sima, the most attractive woman on campus, and has not been able to have another relationship since their break-up.

Kazem’s emotional centre is his nephew Aydin (Noorvash), but he is unaware of  repressing the teenager, who has internalised his uncle as a Super Ego. Aydin has grown fond of Jeyran (Robaninia), but  is much more interested in the much older Kazem: “Marry me and get me out of this village” she implores Kazem,  Kazem’s relationship with his own father (Daryadel) is fraught to say the least. It will get even worse, when Kazem learns, that his father has sold an orchard to the realtor Parviz, whom Kazem blames for the death of his sister Farokhlagha, who set fire to herself at the age of fifteen. Kazem explodes, blaming his father for “selling” his daughter to a man of his own age, to pay for his opium habit. Parviz has two daughters, Sima (Dolatshahi) and the much younger Simin (Meynoosh), who are on a visit to the orchard. Aydin falls for Sima, but ends up at the wrong end of Kazem’s violent tantrums: “You have disgraced the family, this man murdered my sister”. But then, the wife of Yahya (Ezzati) dies, and Kazem and the bereaved husband, best friends for a long time, have the first serious talk for years. We learn, that Yahya had a relationship with Farokhlagha, with Kazem making sure, that the two could meet in secret. When Yahya told Farokhlagha, that he would marry his cousin, she told him, that she would commit suicide by setting fire to herself; with everybody believing, that she killed herself it to escape Parviz. Both men have much soul searching to do, particularly Kazem, who is falling in love with Sima, who by coincidence, shares the first name with Kazem’s great love. But will he be able to care more for the present than the past?

DoP Saman Lotfian has created a wide-ranging palette of colours for the outside action, whilst his close-ups of the the heavy emotional battles are set against the background of a landscape, which is never idealised. Somehow, the two go together, and Kazem finds no solace in being home – still hankering for Tehran. Karimi is very self assured regarding the aesthetically choices, but she is overloading the feature with too man conflicts; ATABAI does not always flow easily, and one has the feeling of an overly constructed structure. Still, it is a well worth a watch. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 6 MAY 2022

Happening (2021)

Dir.: Audrey Diwan; Cast: Anamaria Vartolomei, Luana Bajrami, Louise Orry-Diquero, Sandrine Bonnaire, Eric Verdin, Anna Mouglalis, Pio Marmaï, Kacey Mottet Klein | France 2021, 99 min.

It was bold of the Jury at Venice 2021 to award the Golden Lion to Happening, a fervent drama exposing the mental and physical cruelty aimed at women when abortion was illegal in France.

Based on Annie Ernaux’s 2001 semi-biographical novel Audrey Diwan’s sophomore feature is a powerful, uncompromising plea for women to be in charge of their reproductive rights at a time when the pro-choice movement is being pushed back; and not only in Catholic strongholds such as Poland and Republican controlled states in the USA. Carried by a brilliant cast, the harsh realism of DoP’s Laurent Tangy’s often handheld camera makes certain scenes in the final reel nearly unwatchable – but this is a past many male politicians want to recreate.

In Angoulême 1963, Anne Duchesme (Vartolomei), 23, is a dedicated student making her way successfully out of the rut lower-middle class women were condemned to. She is forced to tolerate insults from more well to do co-students who call her “a slut”. Anne is best friends with Helene (Bazrami) and Brigitte (Orry-Diquero); the three talk a lot about sex, imagining what the real thing would look like – all fun and games – but sex is taboo.

But when it finally happens at a party with Jean (Mottet Klein) a student from another college, Anne feels underwhelmed by the experience. Her world collapses when the doctor confirms her pregnancy during a routine check-up. Jean is unimpressed by the news – believing is to be her responsibility. And none of her friends, however caring, want to get involved. Abortion is a punishable offence for all involved, including the medical establishment.

At home, her parents (Sandrine Bonnaire/Eric Verdin) are proud of their daughter being the first person in the family to go to university. Anne cannot bring herself to tell them the truth, not wanting to destroy their illusions. Even her university tutor (Pio Marmaï) notices her mind is not on her studies. 

For Anne/Ernaux the choice is still clear: reproductive choice means the same nowadays as it did back then: “to have the illness that turns French women into house-wives”. Anne contemplates her own situation: “I’d like a child one day. But not instead of a life of my own”.

The feature’s rawness is underlined by the 4:3 format, conveying Anne’s isolation from her friends, and society as a whole. A minimalist score by Sacha and Evgueni Galperine, just piano and violins, also focuses on 12 weeks of hell,  Anne going from one humiliation to another. Abortion became legal in France in 1975. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Navalny (2022) Oscar | Best Documentary Feature | Tribute

Dir.: Daniel Roher; Documentary with Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, Dasha Navalny, Zakhar Navalny; USA 2022, 98 min.

When Canadian documentary filmmaker Daniel Roher met Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev, they had different agendas in mind. But the poisoning of Alexei Navalny (*1976) on 20.8.2020 in the Xander Hotel in Tomsk, changed everything. Suddenly Roher was sitting opposite Navalny to discuss a film that could be his epitaph. And it has turned out to be for the dissident politician who languished in a Russian penal colony on bogus charges, and has now sadly died.

Navalny had led two different political organisations – “Russia of the Future” and the “Progress Party” – and neither were permitted to run in the 2018 Presidential Elections on account of “Corruption charges” as well as accusations of “Embezzlement”, according to Putin-controlled jurisdiction.

But Putin and the FSB (a new name for the old KGB) were not finished with Navalny. Agents of the FSB poisoned his boxer shorts with the nerve agent novichok (known as LP9 Love potion No. 9 in the FSB handbook). On the flight from Omsk to Moscow Navalny suffered convulsions. His life was saved by an emergency landing in Omsk where he was treated in hospital where Roher and his crew met the dissident and his wife Yulia. They declined to be photographed preferring to maintain the image of a strong and healthy politician in the public imagination. A few days later Novalny was flown to Berlin for further treatment, where the novichok diagnosis was confirmed. The recovering Navalny could only laugh about the attack: “How stupid, they can’t be so stupid”. But they were.

At home in his Black Forest retreat Alexei, his family and the film team discovered, with the help of hackers, the names of the four FSB operatives involved in the assassination attempt. In late December, Navalny put a call through to them, impersonating a leading officer of the FSB, wanting to discuss “what went wrong” during the ‘operation’. The first three agents declined to talk to Alexei, one even pointing out he knew the real identity of the caller. But the forth member, Konstantin Kudryavstev, was only too willing to talk, and confessed that without the emergency landing in Omsk, the victim would have died. A few hours more in the air, without help and the antidote “would have done the trick” according to Kudryavstev. “He is dead, the poor man is dead”, exclaimed Alexei after the end of their phone conversation. He has now shared the same fate.

On January 17th 2021, Navalny was back in Moscow. At Vnukovo airport, huge crowds gathered to welcome back their hero and his family. The authorities quickly diverted the plane to Sheremetyevo, and even though supporters crowded round the disembarking politician, the authorities prevailed and Alexei was arrested on arrival.

His original punishment for the alleged embezzlement and contempt of court was two years and eight months. But since then Putin’s regime has come up with a nine-year sentence, to be served in a maximum security prison. All the organisations Alexei belonged to have now been declared “extremist” and are therefore illegal. Despite all this, Navalny started a hunger strike, only ending when he was on death’s door. After the start of the Ukraine invasion by Russia, he sent out messages from the penal colony, condemning the war.

DoP Niki Walti uses his often handheld camera to great effect, particularly in the scenes when Alexei engages with the corrupt FSB agents. Perhaps, Roher could have forced Navalny more on the extreme nationalist part of his coalition. But overall his film is a coup extraordinaire: the audience bearing witness to living history: to a man’s courage, and the cowardliness of the murderous organisation known as the FSB. Echoes are already sounding in Ukraine on a daily basis. A remarkable document and a worthy winner at the year’s Academy Awards 2023. AS

NAVALNY WON THE 2023 OSCAR FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE | Alexei Navalny 1976-2024

The Eclipse (2022) CPH:DOX 2022 | Winner Dox:Award 2022

Dir.: Natasa Urban; Documentary; Norway 2022, 110 min.

A memoire of war-torn Serbia seems even more relevant in the light of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. What happened in Yugoslavia is clearly not an isolated case: peace in Europe is much more fragile than we thought.

Natasa Urban – who has now settled in Norway – chronicles her memoire of war-torn Serbia between the two last eclipses, 1960 and 1999. A whole country vanished, being replaced after genocide and war by new states, based purely on ethnic composition – a result only made possible by brutal ethnic cleansing.

For the Yugoslavian-born documentarian, it was a reason to dissociate herself from her country. Serbia was the principal, if not the only, aggressor during the civil wars which cost over one hundred thousand lives, and one million refugees – all in the name of ethnic cleansing. Becoming a filmmaker in 2005 was not enough for Urban, she, like thousands others, left Serbia for exile “not only to change our existence, but to become some other people; this tells a lot about the country we left, and the sate of identity we tried to relinquish”.

ECLIPSE works on two levels: there is her father’s diary, retracing his steps to the  family’s previous homes where, in the end, he loads everything, including the ‘kitchen sink’ on the top of his car and leaves the heavily controlled militia zone. The other strand consists of Urban’s diary of interviews with family and friends in what is now Serbia.

Aunt Branislava has some tales to tell: Neighbour Dara dragged every postman through the door of her house, to do what you’d expect… On a more serious note, Branislava tells stories about militia soldiers who enjoyed killing animals sadistically. And when war broke out, they played football with the heads of their enemies. Slobodan Milosevic still loved violence after being elected president with a two-third’s majority; tanks killed demonstrators on the streets of Belgrade. And after the citizens of Vukovar voted to be part of Croatia in August 1991, Milosevic destroyed the city after a prolonged siege. The same city which had been praised for the high number of marriages between Serbs and Croats.

The clerics of the Serbian Orthodox Church put oil on the flames campaigning for a Greater Serbia: “Wherever there are Serbian graves, there should be Serbian land”. One of Urban’s aunts claims that on the day, the state of Croatia was recognised by the world community: “Good luck to them, if they want it so much”. Her work colleagues got angry, shouting “Fuck you”, you are a Romanian minority, if you are not happy here, go to Romania. This is Serbia.” Even the aunt’s boss remained silent. In Novi Sad, Urban meets a girlfriend whose Croatian father had been beaten up in Vukovar by Serbians, because he was married to a Serbian woman. In the POW camp, both sides beat him up.

Nothing remains any more of the POW camp near Vukovar. People came in 1992 and transported the camp’s bricks to their own dwellings, to build extensions. There was even a weekend army: Bosnian Serbs, the ‘Chetniks’, who came to Bosnia over the weekend to share in the spoils of war. The director’s family meanwhile hiked up the mountains. “When we descended, we learned that Kraiina had fallen”. Natasa’s Dad is still questioning what went on. “I cannot understand why our troops had to kill in Srebenica.” Natasa, could not believe what she heard: “Dad, they killed over 8000 people in two days.” Natasa’s brother Igor never slept during the bombardments. Only when the empty planes returned could he fall asleep. His only link to the outside was the news on TV. But the NATO planes destroyed the nearby TV tower. He begged his parents to let him go to Vukovar, but they refused.

The last chapter is the titular solar eclipse of 11.8.1999. Serbian TV and media had warned the population to stay inside because the solar radiation was particularly harmful during the eclipse. Having planted this paranoia, the streets were deserted and people literally locked themselves in.

DoP Ivan Markovic follows both the travels of father and daughter with clear images of the impressive landscapes, and the citizens’ ruined souls. Natasa is asked by relatives “why couldn’t you say something good about Serbia, like mentioning the beautiful Obedska swamps or the Laguna book store”

Meanwhile, since 2012, Serbia has been ruled by former allies of Milosevic, who died three years before the trial verdict in Den Hague was passed. “This new circle of nationalism stops the painful process of the Serbian public addressing its involvement in the war crimes”. AS

WINNER DOX:AWARD CPH:DOX COPENHAGEN DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Boulevard! A Hollywood Story (2021) Bfi Flare

Dir.: Jeffrey Schwarz; Documentary with Gloria Swanson, Dick Hughes, Richard Stapley, Brooke Anderson, Elizabeth Wyler, Barbara Fixx, Steven Wilson, Alan Eichler, Carl Beauchamp; USA 2021, 85 min.

Veteran documentarian Jeffrey Schwarz unearths a musical version of Sunset Boulevard (1950) and a 1950s love triangle that pictures three victims of the Hollywood system where ageism and homophobia played a dominant role.

The three were Gloria Swanson, star of Billy Wilder’s original 1950 feature,  Dick Hughes, and his lover Richard Stapley (aka Richard Wyler).  Hugh was the composer of the musical “Swanson on Sunset”, with Stapley responsible for the lyrics. It ran for six weeks at the “Cinegrill” in Los Angeles, from November 1994, with revivals until 1997.

The original version dates from 1955 when two young artists and lovers, Dick Hughes and Richard Stapley met Gloria Swanson (still smarting from being pipped to the post by Judy Holliday for the Best Actress Oscar in 1951). During the early fifties , the trio worked on “Swanson and Sunset”, but a lack of finance, as well as Paramount’s refusal to grant Swanson the rights to the Wilder classic, eventually nuxed the project.

Swanson then fell for Stapley and his relationship with Hughes came to an abrupt end. Stapley re-invented himself, becoming a popular actor: The Girl from Rio, and the TV series The Troubleshooters and a bit part in Frenzy being highlights of his career. The film’s focus then swings to its gay theme with Richard’s second wife Elizabeth being well aware of his sexuality, just another ploy to hide his gayness for the Hollywood system. She was prepared to share the limelight and the two remained “just good friends”.

But Dick Hughes could not let go of the musical that never was, and remained obsessed with the feature until his death. He continued to play the piano in exclusive clubs and later became a conductor. Gloria Swanson also remained fixed on the project. According to her granddaughter Brooke Anderson, she never forgot the music written by Hughes, “it never died for her”. Yet, curiously, Swanson never mentioned the Sunset project or even Hughes or Stapley in her autobiography “Swanson on Swanson”. In 1990 Hughes revived “Swanson and Sunset”, playing the role of his younger self despite being well into his sixties. And when he heard about the success of Lloyd Webber’s 1994 musical “Sunset Boulevard”, he reconciled with Richard, who had morphed back from Wyler into his Stapley identity.

Despite their up and downs the two completed the musical for its 1994 premiere at the “Cinegrill”. With the help of Steven Wilson, from the University of Texas in Austin, Schwarz cobbles together enormous amounts of material but the story of the (probably unconsummated) love triangle is never quite divorced from film history, Schwarz clearly felt empathy for his subject and avoids voyeurism at all costs sticking to a mostly conventional approach with multiple talking heads enlivened by animated cartoons of the trio in action. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE 2022

Mujde (2021))

Dir.: Alphan Eseli; Cast: Lale Mansur, Salim Kechiouche, Onur Bilge, Erdeniz Kurucan; Turkey 2021, 48 min.

MUJDE shines a critical light on Turkey packing a pithy story into an hour unlike so many features nowadays that drag on interminably relying on atmosphere to carry a paper thin narrative.

Recently widowed Mujde (a brilliant Lale Mansur) rightly suspects her son Okan (Kurucan) and his estate agent friend Berat (Bilge) of having ulterior motives in persuading her to sell the large family house and move to a poky flat in central Istanbul. But she goes ahead nevertheless and employs three Syrian immigrants to help with the move. One of the them, Sayyid (Kechiouche), has lost his son in the Syrian conflict, and his vulnerability leads to romance with the lonely widow. The two make an odd couple, Mujde’s friends disapproving either on the grounds of jealousy or general hostility towards Syrian immigrants who are seen as second class citizens by the local Turks. An unexpected turn of events leads to tragedy on Shakespearean proportions when Sayyid is called back to Syria leaving Mujde in the lurch.

Set amongst Istanbul’s colourful shops and bazars and domestic interiors that bring to mind Fassbinder’s Fear eats up the soul, Mujde is an affirmation of contemporary cinema, proving a strong script is still central to successful filmmaking. Best known for his critically acclaimed drama The Long Way Home (2013) Alphan Eseli is also co-founder of the Art and Culture platform ISTANBUL’74. AS

NOW ON MUBI

 

Murder Party (2022)

Dir: Nicolas Pleskof | Cast: Alice Pol, Eddy Mitchell, Miou Miou, Pablo Pauly, Pascale Arbillot, Zabou Breitman, Adiren Guionnet | France, Comedy 93′

With the jaunty wit of US TV sitcom ‘Caroline in the City’ and the colourful look of Wes Anderson’s this inspired comedy drama is the feature debut of TV writers Nicolas Pleskof and Elsa Marpeau.

It follows Jeanne, an architect and engineer, whose latest scheme is the redesign of a 19th century mansion and home to the Daguerres, a strange family at the head of a board game empire. Enlisting the help of her mother Josephine (Miou Miou) to put the final touches on the model Jeanne motors into the countryside to meet the scion Cesar Daguerre, a morose moustachioed monster decked out in tartan whose fortune comes from toys and games. 

But Jeanne’s presentation doesn’t go down well and Cesar challenges her to a round of Russian roulette that goes mysteriously wrong, the whole family finding themselves locked in the walled and crenellated confines of their home to play the ludicrous ‘murder party’. This involves a series of announcements over the tannoy goading them to decipher the riddles in a bid to track down Cesar’s ‘murderer’ before they in turn ‘die’.

Jeanne is the only dispassionate player and has no time for all the hysteria that ensues. Alice Pol is brilliant as the spunky Jeanne striking just the right balance between kookiness and steely control. Joining forces with his Cesar’s son Theo (Pauly) she finds herself dealing with a family hellbent on settling long-standing scores, bringing to mind the mischievous playfulness of Francois Ozon’s Eight Women set in a scenario reminiscent of Bruno Podalydes’ Le Perfume de la dame en noir. The riddles are entertaining and take their inspiration from Agatha Christie, Cluedo or even Trivial Pursuit but the repercussions are often sinister so it’s down to outside Jeanne to save the day. Driven forward by a furious percussive score and some artful camerawork from Gilles Porte and Jeremie Duchier’s set design this is an amusing tragicomedy that doesn’t pretend to be anything deeper. MT

ON RELEASE IN FRANCE from 9 March 2022

 

Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

Dir: Ahmir ‘Questlove” Thompson | US Doc, 118’

The 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival is the subject of this dynamite documentary from Ahmir ‘Questlove” Thompson ‘proudly’ showcasing that musical celebration of Black culture, fashion and history.

Back in the day – and we’re talking about the Sixties (and even the 1920s, 30, and ’40s) – everyone loved Black music, not because it was Black but because it was rhythmic, soulful and cool. But maybe that’s because I had a father who hummed, danced and played on the piano those heady tunes from Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw and more.

Soul followed on in the same effervescent way, the syncopated jazz of his era becoming the sinuous and sensual soul of my student days: music from Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight, Marvyn Gaye, Mahalia Jackson and the Supremes.

Thompson revisits this darkly glamorous era in a New York concert that coincided with the much higher profile of Woodstock just down the road. Now that was my brother’s territory: The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and Joni Mitchell. The Harlem affair somehow got buried under the weight of Woodstock, but why, when the music was just as fabulous – I never thought about ‘Black’ music – just music I liked…and I would been there like a shot given the opportunity…years later.

In Harlem’s Mount Morris 300,000 – mostly Black- fans gathered to enjoy a series of free ‘gigs’ and Thompson has assembled a treasure trove of archive footage that tethers the era to the present with just a smattering of talk heads that enrich rather than diminish the musical experience. MT

OSCAR WINNER FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE | BEST DOCUMENTARY EE BAFTAS 2022 | NOW IN CINEMAS

Return to Dust (2022)

Dir: Li Ruijin | Cast: Renlin Wu, Hai-Qing | China, Drama 131′

“Love is not about staring at each other, but looking in the same direction”

The sun shines and each frame glows with painterly charm in this modest but momentous story of love and adversity for two people rejected by their family after an arranged marriage, and forced into a humble existence on their isolated homestead in rural northwestern China, 

Return to Dust is the latest from Chinese independent director Li Ruijin who scores subtle political points behind his perfectly pitched storyline that speaks volumes about the China’s rapid urban shift. The focus is farming couple Ma (Renlin Wu) and Gui (Hai-Qing) as they face the odds together in the rugged landscape with only their livestock for company. Tenderness contrasts with dark humour as Ruijin depicts the crass materialism of modern China with the poetic honesty of the past: one scene features their donkey alongside a flash new BMW signalling that time, inevitably, must move on. 

Each day a new challenge presents itself and Ma and Cao seem to cope without drama fronting up placidly seemingly unsurmountable hardship in the haunting beauty of the remote setting. Li Ruijun – best known for his 2015 feature River Road – focuses on the growing strength of their relationship as it transforms from initial diffidence to enduring love. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY | BERLINALE 2022 | GOLDEN BEAR COMPETITION 

 

Cinema Made in Italy 3 – 7 March 2022

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY is back in a live edition to kick off the Spring with the latest crop of Italian releases. The 12th edition takes place at Cine Lumiere, in London’s South Kensington, and is supported by Istituto Luce Cinecitta and the Italian Cultural Institute.

 

THREE FLOORS (Tre piani) | Director: Nanni Moretti

Nanni Moretti pictures everyday life in a Rome apartment in his latest domestic drama in which he also stars alongside an stunning cast of Adriano Giannini, Margherita Buy, Riccardo Scamarcio and Alba Rohrwacher. Enjoyable if rather conventional this is solid entertainment, the pithy plot turning on a series of events that will have a far reaching impact on all concerned: the women are the peacemakers; the men the troublemakers. Beautifully written and well performed Three Floors had its world premiere at last year’s Cannes film festival and is released in UK cinemas on 18 March

CALIFORNIE | Directors: Alessandro Cassigoli, Casey Kauffman

The five-year journey of a young woman from Morocco who tries to find her place in the sun after moving to a village near Naples: her dreams, her disappointments and her loneliness.

FREAKS OUT – Director: Gabriele Mainetti

Franz Rogowski is the reason to see this needlessly violent drama that follows the lives of three circus performers in 1940s Rome.

FUTURA | Directors: Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, Alice Rohrwacher

A portmanteau travelogue that travels the length and breadth of Italy focusing on teenagers’ hopes and dreams for the future.

THE PEACOCK’S PARADISE (IL PARADISO DEL PAVONE) | Director: Laura Bispuri

After her impressive debut Sworn Virgin  and follow-up Daughter of Mine Laura Bispuri’s latest feature is an underpowered domestic drama that drifts around aimlessly despite its impressive cast led by Veteran star Dominique Sanda who plays a mother celebrating her birthday with daughter Caterina (Maya Sansa) and daughter in law Adelina (Alba Rohrwacher who won Best Actress for her central role in Sworn Virgin.

AMERICA LATINA | Director: Damiano D’Innocenzo, Fabio D’Innocenzo

Stylishly empty psychodrama that starts with promise but rapidly goes downhill from the much feted D’Innocenzo brothers who brought us Berlinale winner Bad Tales and wrote the multi-garlanded Dogman it sees a happy and successful man brought down by his own paranoia.

A CHIARA | Director: Jonas Carpignano

The Guerrasio family and their friends gather to celebrate Claudio and Carmela’s oldest daughter’s 18th birthday. There is a healthy rivalry between the birthday girl and her 16-year-old sister Chiara, as they compete on the dancefloor. It is a happy occasion, and the close-knit family is in top form. However, everything changes the next day when Claudio disappears. Chiara starts to investigate; as she gets closer to the truth, she is forced to decide what kind of future she wants for herself.

THE TALE OF KING CRAB (RE GRANCHIO | Directors: Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis

Italy, nowadays. Some elderly hunters reminisce about the tale of Luciano together.
Late 19th century, Luciano lives as a wandering drunkard in the Tuscan countryside. His lifestyle and constant opposition to the despotic local prince have turned him into an outcast for the community. In an ultimate vengeful move to protect (from the lord) the woman he loves, Luciano commits the unforgivable. Now an unfortunate criminal, he is exiled to Tierra del Fuego.
There, with the help of ruthless gold diggers, he seeks a mythical treasure, paving his way towards redemption. Yet, little but greed and madness can grow on these barren lands.

WELCOME VENICE | Director: Andrea Segre

Two brothers are in conflict over the way the Venetian lagoon has been transformed, and the identity of the city and its residents has drastically changed.

COMEDIANS | Director: Gabriele Salvatores
Theatrical adaptation: a group of aspiring comedians at a Manchester evening school reunite for their last rehearsal before performing for an agent from London.

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | 3 -7 March 2022

 

The Souvenir: Part II

Dir/Wri: Joanna Hogg | Cast; Honor Swinton Byrne, Tilda Swinton, James Spencer Ashworth, Richard Ayoade | UK Drama

Joanna Hogg continues the impressionistic reflection on her twenties in The Souvenir Part II that sees her coming to terms with the abusive relationship that ended in tragedy for her boyfriend, Anthony (an archly sardonic Tom Burke) the first part.

There’s a strong feeling that Julie (Swinton Byrne) invested far more in the relationship than did Anthony. Somehow his caddish manner, pinstriped suit and ‘foreign office’ job made her believe he was worthy of consideration, love even; yet behind it all he was a fantasist and a drug addict who undermined her (“you’re lost and you’ll always be lost”) and stole from her to fund his habit. Hogg brilliantly epitomises this kind of fucked up weirdness of the 1980s that many repressed middle class girls still tolerated in the name of love, and the decent straightforwardness of her comforting parents (Tilda Swinton and James Spencer Ashworth) who provide a welcome sense of equilibrium that kept her going off the rails. But Julie resolves to go back to her London flat where the ‘love story’ forms the more authentic ‘autobiographical’ narrative for her graduation film, after the bogus script about poverty stricken Sunderland is vehemently rejected by her tutors.

Anthony remains the glowering elephant in the room, her colleagues, friends and family tiptoeing around the issue, not wanting to offend Julie who continues to elevate his memory with a solemn respect when secretly he was despised by everyone else accept his long-suffering parents, who gradually fade into the background. At one point Julie tentatively asks her flighty filmmaker friend Patrick (a standout Ayoade): “do you think Anthony worked for the Foreign Office?” He firmly bursts her bubble with: “he was a junkie – move forward”.

Still processing her feelings of grief Julie understandably lacks the conviction to take charge and direct her cast and crew with the confidence they desperately need, and Hogg deftly handles the ‘film in a film’ structure with its scenes of naturalistic on-set mayhem between all of them. Ably supported by her real life mother (Swinton), Honor Swinton Byrne glides through her performance with decorum avoiding histrionics yet imbuing Julie with all the pent up anxiety and hurt her upbringing has forced her to internalise. MT

THE SOUVENIR II IS IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 4 FEBRUARY 2022

 

 

Lingui, The Sacred Bonds (2021)

Dir/Wri: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | Achouackh Abakar Souleymane, Rihane KHALIL ALIO BRAHIM Youssouf DJAORO FANTA Briya GOMDIGUE | Chad, Drama, 87′

Visual storytelling at its most resplendent Lingui is a simple tale gracefully crafted by a director at the top of his game and brought to life by his talented cast.

In a landlocked Muslim country Lingui (The Sacred Ties) follows Amina an observant single mother living on the margins of a male-dominated society with her teenage daughter Maria. The men not only hold sway, they hold themselves above the law, laying it down harshly for their womenfolk. So the women are forced to play them at their game as we discover when Maria falls pregnant and cannot, by law, have an abortion.

With his vibrant compositions and exquisite framing the director keeps dialogue to a minimum in this filmic ‘whodunnit’ relying on strong cinematic language and a propulsive occasional score by Wasis Diop to show how pleasure occasionally breaks into the harsh realities of life in Chad’s main city of N’Djamena, where a tribal society has given way to strictly enforced Islam with mosque attendance ‘de rigueur’. Woman are expected to be subservient and cover themselves up in public, ritual circumcision is routinely practiced and performed by the women themselves when the girls are still very young. To be an unmarried mother is considered sinful whatever the circumstances and so for Maria the future looks especially bleak. And rumours spread fast.

Amina makes metal household equipment which she sells for a pittance by the roadside, but not enough to pay for illegal medical intervention. Maria is a typical young teenager: proudly defiant and living by her own modern standards, but her pregnancy will take her back to the dark ages of backstreet abortions. Worse still, she won’t reveal the truth until circumstances suddenly point to a solution. MT

Born in Chad, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun first won critical acclaim for his short films before directing his first feature, Bye-bye Africa (Best First Film, Venice Film Festival 1999). In 2010, the Venice Mostra gave him the Robert Bresson Award for his complete works and in 2013, the Fellini Medal awarded by UNESCO.

ON MUBI FROM 4 FEBRUARY 2022

Love it was Not (2020)

Dir.: Maya Sarfaty; Documentary with Helena Citron, Roza Citron, Frank Wunsch; Israel/Austria 2020, 86 min.

Israeli writer/director Maya Sarfaty builds on her award-winning graduation short film The Most Beautiful Woman (2016) with this ‘impossible love’ story that took place in Auschwitz-Birkenau  between Helena Citron, a Slovakian Jew, and one of her captors, Viennese SS Unterscharführer (Sergeant) Franz Wunsch. Although the title suggests otherwise, witness reports from seven close female camp survivors claim ‘he loved her to the point of madness”.

And somehow Sarfaty helps, however involuntarily, to cement this statement. True, Wunsch, born in 1922 like Helena, was a sadist who beat male prisoners to death and helped at the infamous ‘Rampen’ selections. But he also risked his life to save Helena and her sister Roza (1932-2005) from certain death, literally storming into the corridor leading to the infamous “Shower Rooms” to free Roza, although he could not save her two children, much to Helena’s chagrin.

Helena and Roza were amongst several thousand Slovakian Jews deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, before the Death Camp was fully functioning. The women helped with the demolition of older buildings and many were killed during the TNT explosions, where they were literally at the ‘coal face’. “We had become animals, ready to push our best friends to the front, just to survive ourselves”.

Helena first met Franz Wunsch on his birthday when he asked the women prisoners to sing a song in his honour. Helena chose the titular German hit song “Liebe war es nie” (Love it was Not) and Franz politely asked her for an encore. This was the beginning. Soon afterwards Helena caught typhoid, which was usually fatal, but Wunsch instructed the camp medics to look after her, and she recovered.

In an interview in 2003, Wunsch shares his memories of Dr. Josef Mengele who warned him “we are all going to be persecuted’ and promised not to denounce Wunsch, who had been wounded at the front and walked with a limp before being assigned to guard duty in Auschwitz. He found himself in active service again after the camp internees were sent on a death march. Helena and Roza were amongst the few who survived.

After the end of WWII Wunsch tried to pursue the relationship, but his letters were ignored and eventually he gave up. In 1972, Helena, who had emigrated to Tel Aviv in Israel, got a letter from Wunsch’s wife, pleading her to come to Vienna, where her husband was on trial for murder. “I know the two of you had been close, and I want you tell the court about it”. Under pressure to stay put, Helena still made the journey to Vienna and told the court about Wunsch’s crimes, but also how he saved her sister’s life. Wunsch was acquitted, the jury members, in an interview, claimed to have been on his side. “It was difficult in Austria to get a guilty-verdict in cases of concentration camp guards” said the state prosecutor of the Wunsch inquiry, very much resigned to the fact.

Wunsch’s daughter Dagmar also has her say, indignant that her father wore a medallion with two only photos: that of Helena and himself. “It should have been Mutti’s photo” says Dagmar, visibly upset. Bizarrely Franz Wunsch cut Helena’s face out of one of the photos, and superimposed it onto that of another woman, adding himself into the collage to make out they were just ordinary lovers in real life.

Artists Shlomit Goper and Ayelet Albeuda assemble a multilevel 3D photo montage together with the cuttings of Wunsch superimposed on the reality of the death camp. DoPs Itay Gross and Ziv Berkovich have taken great care filming the survivors, two of them having died before the feature was released. Helena Citron died in 2007, Franz Wunsch two years later. Their relationship in the hell of Auschwitz was a sort of ‘follie a deux’, unimaginable in the real world, rather like the death camps themselves. AS

FROM 26-28 January 2022 | JW3 Cinema LONDON NW3 | HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY

 

Boris Karloff: The Man behind the Monster (2021)

Dir: Thomas Hamilton, Wri: Ron MacCloskey | With Caroline Munro, Guillermo del Toro, Ron Perlman, Christopher Plummer, Peter Bogdanovich, Stephanie Powers, John Landis, Joe Dante, Roger Corman, Sara Karloff | US Doc, 99′

Ron MacCloskey has poured 23 years of his life into this comprehensive 99 minute romp through the life and times of Boris Karloff, directed by co-writer Thomas Hamilton and based on the 2010 biography ‘Boris Karloff: More Than A Monster’ by Karloff’s official biographer Stephen Jacobs.

Enlivened by copious clips and archive material, the film takes us through the early years of Karloff’s debut in the 1920s, his breakthrough as Universal’s ‘monster’ Frankenstein during the 1930s and ’40s, up until to death in 1969, after a dazzling career as one of the icons of horror cinema – along with Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney and Vincent Price.

Although best known for his ‘monster’ roles Karloff was also a fully fledged actor of stage and radio: his mellow bass voice, saturnine looks and striking bone structure lending itself well to a multitude of characters. Far from just a sinister, terrifying screen presence Karloff also exuded masterful integrity, and even managed to be vulnerable in many of his horror roles, notably in Frankenstein itself where as a creepy but kindly creature he is befriended by seven-year-old Maria (Marilyn Harris) who he subsequently throws into the lake.

A little top heavy on talking heads: the most entertaining here are Joe Dante, John Landis, and Roger Corman although a laconic Peter Bogdanovich, Guillermo del Toro, and Christopher Plummer also have their say sharing their extensive knowledge on the subject of Karloff’s career which spanned 150 films. Clearly Karloff made a big impression on his audiences; daughter Sara waxes lyrical with gratitude to her father’s considerable fan base: memorabilia and personal letters continue to flood in, 50 odd years after the actor’s death.

Film-wise most intriguing of Karloff’s appearances are in The Black Cat (1934), The Body Snatcher (1945) Isle of the Dead (1945); Howard Hawks prison thriller The Criminal Code (1930) and George Schaefer’s made for TV version of Joan of Arc, The Lark (1957) in which he stars as Bishop Cauchon alongside alongside Eli Wallach, Basil Rathbone and Denholm Elliott.

The Man Behind the Monster serves as a vigorous and definitive tribute to Karloff himself and traces back through the history of horror cinema in the early part of the 20th century, and although production values could have been stronger, the meat on the bone is certainly enjoyable. MT

NOW ON SHUDDER

Parallel Mothers (2021)

Dir.: Pedro Almodóvar; Cast: Penélope Cruz; Milena Smit, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Israel Elejalde; Spain 2021, 123 min.

This so-called women-centric drama from writer director Pedro Almodóvar promises more than it delivers –  many of the Spanish director’s features it peters out into a soppy soap-opera, overstaying its welcome like an overdue baby after a self-indulgent running time of over two hours.

Janis (Cruz) a fortyish fashion photographer meets teenage run-away Ana (Smit) in the maternity ward, both giving birth at the same day. They are going it alone: Janis’ love-interest Arturo (Elejalde) wants to say with his wife who is undergoing chemotherapy, and Ana has been blackmailed by two men into having intercourse. The baby mix-up is telegraphed, and Ana loses ‘her’ child to cot death. Meanwhile Janis has confirmed her suspicion regarding the baby’s identities, having done maternity tests on the sly. Janis then gets Ana involved as a babysitter: she jumps at the opportunity to escape her overbearing actor mother Teresa (Sánchez-Gijón) and emotionally distant father – and is only too ready to accept Janis as a replacement mother. But will Janis spill he beans? And will Arturo, a forensic archaeologist, leave his wife after her recovery?

In the lush interiors Penélope Cruz takes centre stage, dominating the cast, particularly Smit, who is the sacrificial lamb. Almodóvar even finds time for a political lecture with Arturo leading an excavation of a mass grave of victims of the Spanish Falange of the Spanish Civil War, among them members of Janis’ family. DoP JoséLuis Alcaine conjures up decorus images on the widescreen but fails on the close-ups which somehow come across as wooden and artificial.

Parallel Mothers is on par in the context of Almodóvar’s prolific output a minor work – a showcase of everything he is good at – but falls between entertainment and serious satire, leaving the audience disappointed on all accounts. AS

Nationwide from 28 January 2022

The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021)

Dir.: Peter Middleton, James Spinney; Documentary narrated by Pearl Mackie; UK 2021, 114 min.

Writers/directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney (Notes on Blindness) have tried with co-writer Oliver Kindeberg to explain the dualism between Chaplin’s professional and personal identity without the use of “talking heads”. A great idea but a flawed one – as it turns out – what we get instead is Pearl Mackie’s incoherent narration (Pearl Mackie) that takes the form of a “flow of consciousness” over-didactic commentary, without any inner artistic logic. The directors have also taken on more than they can chew. How do you do justice to an icon like Chaplin in under two hours? – his life deserves a mini-series. Middleton and Spinney do their best but the time factor makes mistakes unavoidable.

It begins in 1916, the first height of Chaplinmania. Across the US a hunt for the real Chaplin is on, whilst Chaplin-look-alike contests are very popular. The idol itself, Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London in 1889, his drunken father soon made a runner, and Charlie had to witness his mother succumb to mental illness. The room in Kennington was re-created later in The Kid. A female voice tells us that the woman – played by an actor in one of many re-enactments -, is Effie Wisdom, who in an interview in 1983 – she was 92 years old at the time – talks about the late 19th century, when she used to play with Chaplin in the alleys, the latter promising to never forget her.

Chaplin joined Fred Karno’s comedy troupe, who later toured the US. Chaplin was a man of the Vaudeville theatre and considered film work beneath his aspirations – until the producers trebled his salary. In a 1966 “Life Magazine” interview he explains the haphazard creation of the ‘Tramp’ personality in February 1914: discarded costume parts of his own, the boots of a college and Fatty Arbuckle’s pants. But behind the camera Chaplin left nothing to chance. In City Lights he drove everyone mad with a 534 days long chase for the perfect pivotal take. Extended clips from The Kid, Gold Rush and Modern Times lead to The Great Dictator, when Charlie finally talks. Chaplin’s sad 1952 expulsion from the USA, J Edgar Hoover and Hedda Hopper combining, is not given enough space, the documentary comes to life again in the Swiss exile, with interviews with the children Chaplin sired with Oona O’Neill, who was seventeen when she met the 52-year old – a rather common age gap for Chaplin’s relationships with women. Jane and Geraldine speak of the loneliness their mother must have suffered, because their father was cool and distant. “I imagine it would be lonely being the wife of Charlie Chaplin”.

All the so-called revelations about Chaplin’s personal life were known during his life time, leaving the re-enactments of his work as director/writer/composer/editor as the most enjoyable elements. Paul Ryan is Chaplin age 58, Jeff Rawle portraits the 77-year old maestro. DoP James Blann finds just the right aesthetic for the dramatisations, whilst composer Robert Honstein’s aggressive score underlines the directors’ gutsy approach for a “kaleidoscopic documentary collage”, which is another way of admitting to a lack of structure. Still, there is so much archive material, new and old, that everyone will find something to enjoy. AS

ON RELEASE IN UK and IRELAND FROM FRIDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2022

Funeral in Berlin (1966) Prime video

Dir: Guy Hamilton | Cast: Michael Caine, Oskar Homolka, Eva Renzi, Paul Hubschmid | UK Thriller 102′

Probably the least familiar these days of the original Harry Palmer trio, brought to us by Len Deighton, it shows just what a difference a director makes.

Michael Caine returns as “that shrewd little cockney” from the original, transplanted from Blighty to Berlin, the presence of Oscar Homolka anticipates Billion Dollar Brain, and this time we get to see Major Ross doing the garden with his missus (“How can you work for that dreadful man?”).

The directors of the other two Deighton’s were show-offs; the helmsman on this old pro Guy Hamilton (earlier an assistant on The Third Man – and it shows – and recently in charge of Goldfinger), which ensures a film less flashy than the two that bookend it, but is still good fun nevertheless; and Palmer’s objection to his alias bears a suspicious resemblance to the gang quibbling over their colours in Reservoir Dogs.@RichardChatten

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road (2021)

Dir.: Brent Wilson; Documentary with Brian Wilson, Linda Perry, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Jason Fine; USA 2021, 95 min.

Do we need another Brian Wilson documentary? I Just Wasn’t made for These Times and Love & Mercy have already told his story, but the billion or so the super-fans will always ask for more. And The Beach Boys were America’s answer to The Beatles, back in the day, they epitomised an era and their harmonies are almost as divine – so yes, we do!.

Director Brent Wilson (no relation), veteran of music docs like Streetlight Harmonies, has tried the linear angle, confronting the images of the ‘Beach Boy’ founder with today’s survivor of schizoid-affective and bi-polar disorders, who enjoys being on tour again, even though the hallucinatory voices still haunt him – and have done for the last 60 years – when he is performing, in spite of all the medication available.

‘Rolling Stone’ editor Jason Fine, a close friend of Wilson, drives the megastar composer/singer round his favourite haunts, sadly only getting monosyllabic answers to his leading questions. Brian is very much in the shell he has created to survive. And there is more that enough pain for anybody to deal with, let alone a highly-strung artist.

There is the Hawthorne home of his childhood, where his father Murry (who died in 1973) played sadistic games while managing the bank with Brian and his brothers Carl (who died of lung cancer in 1998) and Dennis, who drowned in 1963. The two then visit the house Brian shared with his wife Marilyn, and their two children Carnie and Wendy.

They even take in the darker times: The “Malibu Prison” where Brian spend the 1980s under the influence of psychiatrist Eugen Landy, whose infamous 24-hour therapy led to a total inter-dependency, and was only solved when Landy started to mingle in the music business. Landy too was responsible for Brian breaking up with Melinda Ledbetter, but the two then married after Brian’s ‘release’ from Landy – the couple have adopted six children, and Melinda still works hard as Brian’s business manager. Brian insists today “that Landy saved me”.

Music-wise there is extensive time devoted to the iconic “Pet Sounds” and SMiLE, that came into being in  the mid-1960s and finished thirty years later. There are few revelations, the bitter chapter of Brian’s relationship with fellow Beach Boy Mike Love is nearly brushed out of the picture. Only once the mask of self-defence slips, when Brian tells Jason “I have not talked to a real friend in three years.” At the Beverly Glen Deli, where Brian and Jason stop for lunch, Brian devours his ice cream sundae with almost childlike enjoyment: and its with this same soulful devotion that he plays the piano (again) for an audience who adores him. Oh yes, about the surfing: “Yeah, Dennis surfed, I never learned it”.

The movie poster says it all: the young Brian looking over the shoulders if his older self at the piano. But this is not a psychoanalytical study, but a love letter to the music of Brian Wilson. As Bruce Springsteen says of “Pet Sounds”: “The beauty of it carries a sense of joyfulness even in the pain of living. The joyfulness of an emotional life”. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE | UK and Eire

Here Before (2021)

Wri/Dir: Stacey Greggs | Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Jonjo O’Neill, Niamh Dornan, Eileen O’HIggins | UK Drama 83′

Andre Riseborough always choses interesting roles and here she once again proves her talents as grieving Belfast mother Laura in this inventive thriller written and directed by Stacey Gregg who is best known for his TV work.

Profound grief is not only about depression. Tragic loss can play tricks with the mind inducing nightmares and even thoughts of reincarnation for the recently bereaved. And this is exactly what happens to Laura. Greggs clearly had Don’t Look Now in mind when writing the lead character who can’t get over the loss of her little girl in a car accident when her husband Brendan (O’Neil) was driving.

In the rainy rural outskirts of Belfast Laura lives in a semi with Brendan and their preteen son Tadhg (McAskie). Their next door neighbour’s daughter Megan (Dornan) bears a striking resemblance to her own little girl, and soon Laura is giving her lifts to school and even dreaming about her, but it soon turns out her suspicions are justified. What happens next is pivotal in this surprisingly tense thriller with surreal undertones and more than a few skeletons in its chilly cupboard. Greggs’ strong narrative keeps us intrigued in a story that doesn’t rely on atmosphere to carry the plot forward, as it so often the case with inexperienced filmmakers, and although the denouement teeters on melodrama the emotional fallout feels more than justified in the circumstances. MT

OUT NATIONWIDE ON 18 FEBRUARY 2022

Lynx (2021)

Dir/Wri/DoP: Laurent Geslin | Swiss/French Doc, 82′

In the heart of the Jura mountains, a raucous call resounds through the forest. The perfectly camouflaged Eurasian lynx creeps through the trees in search of a mate. After its release into the wild, cinematographer Laurent Geslin has spent the past few years tracking the daily life of this elusive and endangered beast as it forms a new family in the remote Alpine region that stretches between France and Switzerland.

In this full length feature documentary, a follow-up to Geslin’s pursuit of the London-based urban fox, the award-winning cinematographer enchants us with poetic almost Disney-like wonder in his self-narrated study that softens the act of killing without ever sentimentalising the subject matter, making it feel entirely in keeping with the delicate ecological scheme of things as the lynx goes about its seasonal struggle in often hostile terrain.

This is Northern Europe so the Alpine fauna is familiar to most of us but somehow magical and enchanting in Geslin’s limpid lens: owls, stoats, woodpeckers, eagles and mountain goats are so daintily captured in their natural daytime habitat or in the moonlight of starry time-lapsed nights that there are none of those awful ‘lookaway’ moments when the lynx – or any other animal – takes out it prey, as it inevitably does to survive. The feline’s only natural predator seems to come in human form: poachers are still active despite being illegal, and cars are getting faster. Absolutely mesmerising. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 17 JANUARY 2022 | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Onoda (2021)

Dir.: Arthur Harari; Cast: Yuya Endo, Kanji Tsuda, Yuya Matsuura, Testsuya Chiba, Issei Taniguchi, Taiga Nakano, Shinsuke Kato | Action drama, 2021, 165 min.

French director/co-writer Arthur Harari collaborates with Vincent Poymiro and Bernhard Cendron in chronicling 29 years in the life of the titular Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda (1922-2014), who for nearly thirty years hid in the jungle of the Philippine island of Lubang, fighting a war which ended in September 1945.

Towards the end of WWII, young Hiroo Onoda (Endo) is chosen to be a Kamikaze pilot. But Hiroo – in contrast to many of his peer group – does not want to die, and he refuses to fly, citing vertigo for his decision. This brings him to the attention of Major Taniguchi (Ogata), who runs a school for secret war activities: Hiroo is told never to commit suicide, or surrender to the fast advancing American troops.

On the Philippine island of Lubang, Onoda is witness to the overwhelming power of the American army. But true to the promise he has given to Taniguchi, he refuses to concede defeat, and gathers a motley crew of three other soldiers embarking on a guerrilla war against the island’s population: “The four of us can kill hundreds”. One of the resisters, Akatsu, deserts in 1949 but Onoda battles on in his own private war still believing the islanders are in alliance with the Americans.

History this may be, but Onoda would be very much at home today: refusing to believe that the war has ended, despite all signs to the contrary. Everything signalling the truth is hailed as ‘Fake News’; even Hiroo’s father speaking with a loudhailer to make his son accept reality. For Hiroo, it is not the voice of his father, but an actor paid by the Americans. And on New Year’s Day in 1950, Onoda and Kozuka await a rescue party after they have “decoded” leaflets and other written material left for them by the population.

Harari tells the story from the POV of Hiroo: we live in his head, hear his inner dialogue, and apart from the overwhelming running time of nearly three hours, there is much to appreciate: Kanji Tsuda as the older Onoda is outstanding amidst an impressive cast. And there is always humour and irony: when Hiroo and Kozuka make a map of the island, they use names from their pre-war life experiences. And, strangely, there is sometimes a sort of beauty in the wild phantasies of a man who cannot give up his dream of becoming a hero, the guilt of his refusal to sacrifice himself as a pilot driving himself on. AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

 

Licorice Pizza (2021) Best Original Screenplay BAFTA

Dir/Wri: Paul Thomas Anderson | Cast: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Will Angarola, Ben Safdie, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Skylar Gisondo | US Comedy Drama,131′

The excitement and enthusiasm of being a teenager in search of the American Dream is captured in this satirical trip down memory lane set in the early 1970s during the politically turbulent years of Vietnam and the Watergate scandal.

Paul Thomas Anderson follows a string of memorable and diverse classics: Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love, Phantom Thread and There Will Be Blood with a soulful romantic comedy that unfolds in California’s San Fernando Valley where Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour) is a chubby spirited high school actor experiencing first love with his much older crush Alana Kane (Alana Haim), a gutsy Jewish girl with plenty of chutzpah and an overbearing father.

Much more than just a punchy coming of age story Licorice Pizza is a nostalgic journey through America in the Nixon era with echoes of Taxi Driver and The Graduate – and the same grainy look – and a soundtrack of iconic recalling a time where opportunities were endless and brushing up against Hollywood stars was still possible in the everyday scheme of things before they became a protected species. And the teenage realisation that they are just flawed, ordinary people, not gods to be aspired to gives the film some of its most enjoyable scenes.

Gary is not held back from pursuing Alana despite his puppy fat and pubescent acne. His inherent self-belief and entrepreneurial flair soon sees him capitalising on ‘start-ups’ involving pinball machines and the famous craze for water beds: a doomed endeavour involving a celebrity client in the shape of Bradley Cooper’s egocentric Jon Peters is one of the funnier detours the film takes, and there’s a surprisingly sinister undertone to Alana’s episode with Ben Safdie’s aspiring political candidate. This adds a dose of tension to her on/off relationship with Gary making it feel all the more genuine in its avoidance of sentimentality both in sunny and sombre moments – the two of them always feel real and endearingly human in their spiky single-minded belligerence. A bit of an odd couple at first Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman’s gradually emerging on screen chemistry is why the film is so compulsively watchable.

The film goes to unexpected places but always keeps us onboard with its compelling teenage love story that is charming, quirky and totally unpredictable – just like real life. We are drawn further and further into Gary and Alana’s world with its soap-opera elements in a narrative so rich and surprising it could go on forever.

Another part of the film’s success – and a great deal of the subversive fun – comes from trying to guess the real people behind the made up names (apart from Jon Peters): Sean Penn’s character Jack Holden and John Michael Higgins’ Jerry Frick are so familiar yet there’s a inclusive quality that makes them feel absolutely right for the era, whoever they are. Featuring a seemingly endless cast of well-tuned interconnecting characters Liquorice Pizza builds an entire world in the Valley that is both intimate and far-reaching in its scale. MT

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY EE BAFTAS 2022

Yamabuki (2022) Rotterdam International Film Festival

Dir.: Juichiro Yamasaki; Cast: Kang Yoon-Soo, Kilala Inori, Yohta Kawase, Misa Wada; Japan/France 2022, 96 min.

Japanese writer/director Juichiro Yamasaki has set this fraught drama in his hometown of Minawa, a multicultural mining community where the influx of foreign workers has added a radical vibe to the once rural backwater.

The story revolves around two South-Korean immigrants Chang-Su (Yoon-Soo) and motherless teenager, the titular Yamabuki (Inori). Chang-Su once had a privileged life in his homeland, but when his father went bankrupt, he not only had to give up riding (he was one of the top national equestrians), but had to leave the country in order to pay back considerable debts. He lives with his partner Minami (Kawase) and her daughter Uzuki (Wada) and works at the local quarry as an extractor driver, where he is promised a full-time position.

But fate intervenes: Yamabuki, a rebellious teenager, who demonstrates at street corners against the attacks on foreigners, takes a mountain hike with her father, a senior police officer and his colleague. Whilst digging out a Yamabuki flower, the father sets off an avalanche of stones, which hit Chang-Su’s car, causing an accident. In the hospital with a broken leg, he learns, that his full-time job is gone. But worse is to come in a feature with some deeply affecting elements: in one scene Yamabuki watches a Zoom conversation she had with her mother, a war journalist killed at the Syrian/Turkish border. Her desire to be independent often affects her relationship with her conservative father. Her boyfriend Yusake is not much help and is off to join the army. Ironically, the two alienated protagonists meet accidentally at a street corner, not knowing anything about each other, with Chang-Su not particularly impressed with Yamabuki’s protests.

YAMABUKI is not an easy watch: too often the protagonists talk at cross purposes, and neither the teenager nor the immigrant have any clue about the powers they face – they are just uprooted to this foreign town with totally different expectations. Yamasaki leaves the audience to work out much for themselves. DoP Kenta Tawara films the harsh settings in grainy 16mm, achieving a documentary effect and evoking a society very much at unease with itself. Yamasaki avoids sentimentality and didactic undertones, featuring off-beat emotional turmoil with poetic interludes. AS

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | TIGER COMPETITION 2022

The King’s Man (2021)

Wri/Dir: Matthew Vaughn | UK, Action Comedy, 130’

Ralph Fiennes and Rhys Ifans lead a magnificent cast in this entertaining if occasionally ridiculous romp, a historical re-write riffing on an eponymous secret spy organisation active in preventing global conflict during the First World War .

Don’t worry if you haven’t followed the other episodes this stand alone comedy sees Fiennes’s back again as the dapper aristo Orlando Oxford, a patriotic pacifist war veteran who rapidly converts to killer mode when his family is slowly decimated by the war effort.

After his wife is killed by a stray bullet in the opening scenes Oxford actively discourages his only son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) from enlisting in the army – but boys will be boys. Aided and abetted by his game comrades Djimon Hounsou (who plays the token black guy) and Gemma Arterton (the token female with an unfeasible Yorkshire accent), Fiennes plays a chivalrous James Bond-style gentleman hero, impeccably suave in Savile Row suiting, and dashingly daring til the end.

Tonally off-kilter for most of its running time – patriotically reverent melodrama making an awkward bedfellow to ‘boys own’ rambunctiousness and silly humour, there are some rip-roaring set pieces, notably the hair-raising hike up a stratospheric mountain-side to find the home of a storied cashmere-bearing goat.

Rhys Ifans is terrific as the anti-hero Rasputin – although the accent is definitely more Gary Oldman’s 1992 Dracula than the sinister Russian mystic. There are various subplots that feel totally redundant to the main thrust of the narrative – a resentful Scotsman whose identity is only revealed at the end (who even cares?). A bit of a mess then, but a really enjoyable one. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Minyan (2021)

Dir.: Eric Steel; Cast: Samuel H. Levine, Ron Rifkin, Christopher McCann, Mark Margolis, Brooke Blom, Alex Hurt, Carson Meyer; USA 2020, 119 min.

Eric Steel’s documentary The Bridge was a shockingly realistic study of suicide attempts from the Golden Gate Bridge. Here he turns his camera on a more sentimental subject, a gay coming of age drama set during the winters of 1986 and 1987 the rapidly changing milieu of Brighton Beach, NYC. Based on David Bezmozgis’ tale about Holocaust survivors from Europe, the title refers to a Jewish prayer meeting, requiring the quorum of ten men to go ahead.

David (Levine) is a seventeen-year-old yeshiva student at an ultra-orthodox institution, and wants nothing more than to leave his parents, an abusive father and over-protective mother (Blum) to start a new life at a state school. Close to his grandfather Josef (Rifkin), whose wife has died.

Josef wants to leave the flat he shared with his wife understandably because there are too many memories there. He and David try to get an apartment in a block of flats subsidised by a Jewish charity. David gets on much better with his grandfather’s generation, is drawn to Itzik (Margolis) and his partner Herschel (McCann), who share a flat, their relationship sanctioned by the other tenants.

With David discovering his sexual orientation, despite attention from the attractive Alicia (Meyer), he feels more and more out-of-synch with his family background. His first lover, super macho Bruno (Hurt), is a revelation for David, but also introduces him to the raging death count in the gay community as the AIDS epidemic claims many victims. More and more liberated, David joins a school in Greenwich village and is properly introduced to the writing of James Baldwin (who died in December 1987) having found out that Bruno used Baldwins’s “Giovanni’s Room” simply as a calling card for pick-ups. After Itzik’s death, his son selling all his furniture, Herschel is left homeless with David drawn into the complex undertaking to find flats for the two homeless old men.

There are too many flaws in what could have been a stunning feature: to start with the running time of two hours is indulgent, since there is no proper story, just a series of episodes. Steel wanted DoP Ole Bratt Birkeland to use images which could have been at home in any up-market Hollywood feature. Dull brown and grey colours give the proceedings an artificial background. And Steel, like many before him, does not do justice to the survivors of the Holocaust, whose lives are blighted by traumata and survivors’ guilt. Like many features set in the death camps, the post-life of the survivors cannot be caught in any way realistically – there is always too much of a chasm between reality and film set staging.

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 7 JANUARY 2022

Ailey (2021)

Dir.: Jamila Wignot; Documentary with Alvin Ailey, Judith Jameson, Carmen de Lavallade , Robert Battle; USA 2021, 90 min.

Alvin Ailey (1931-1989), founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre (AAADT), remains pretty much a mystery in this lyrical portrait of the dancer and choreographer – a black, closeted gay man. Cicely Tyson called him the “Pied Piper of modern dance”, and when Ailey received his award during the Kennedy Honours ceremony in 1988, ironically presented by Ronald whose policies had punished the gay community.

In her first outing as solo writer/director, Jamila Wignot works with Ailey archive interviews often as a commentator, escaping the ‘talking heads’ malaise which blights many documentaries. Alvin Ailey was born in 1931 in rural Texas, he never met his father, but his mother worked on the cotton fields and as a cleaning lady for white homeowners. In 1941 they moved to Los Angeles where their relationship became the corner stone of Alvin’s psychological world for the rest of his life. Later, when he suffered from Bi-Polar disorder and was institutionalised in a psychiatric ward, it was his mother who took him home and looked after him. Alvin was very protective of his mother, right to the end, when he made his doctor sign the cause of his death as a result of a blood disorder, so that she would not be stigmatised by him being a victim of AIDS.

Ballet was for Ailey a form of escape, he was captivated by the Ballets Russes Monte Carlo and Catherine Dunham even though his football coach at High school tried in vain to interest him in the sport. Alvin was taught by Martha Graham, among others, and founded the AAADT in 1958 at the age of only twenty-seven, after having moved to NYC, where he replaced Lester Horton as choreographer at his last engagement.

Perhaps Ailey’s most famous ballet, “Revelations” (1960) was called a “re-enactment’ of life, a mixture of passion and sorrows” by members of the ensemble. In 1970, AAADT was nearly bankrupt, and the Foreign Office sent the ensemble on a tour of Asia and Europe. They were extremely popular, particularly in Stuttgart (Germany) “where the sell-out crowd hollered and stomped, like they had an orgasm”. The audience called the troupe for 80 curtain raisers. But Alvin remained an enigma even for his closest collaborators, he was just another person when he left the building after performing. His work was sometimes criticised for not being political enough in the wake of the rising Civil Rights movement, but he answered “that his protest was on the stage, not the streets”.

Further successes were “The River” (1970) and a year later, “Cry”, a birthday present for his mother, and a solo performance for Judith Jameson. There is interesting footage from an interview of Alvin with Harry Belafonte, where they discuss race integration, which for Alvin did progress too slowly. After the death of close collaborator Joyce Trisher, he was shocked and honoured her with “Memoria” (1979). But the experience in Texas stayed with him forever: after successful performances in Paris, he claimed that he could not adjust to such different experiences, and left. He soon returned with “Fever Swamp” (1983). Alvin Ailey spent the last days of his life on a sofa, watching his troupe rehearse.

Apart from archive footage and Newsreel snippets, Wignot uses rehearsals by the new artistic director, Robert Battle, of “Lazarus” by Rennie Harris, to celebrate 60 years of the AAADT, with Masazumi Chaya, another co-director of the company, also commenting on the continuation of Alvin Ailey’s work.

AILEY flows like a dream, languid and indulgent. Perhaps Alvin Ailey was too much of a contradictory personality to have everything revealed in one feature. But Wignot has achieved enough, to make us curious to get to know him better. AS

IN CINEMAS AND ON DEMAND from 7 JANUARY 2022

Petrov’s Flu (2021)

Dir: Kiril Serebrennikov | Cast: Semyon Serzin, Chulpan Khamatova, Yulia Boris and Yuri Kolokolnikov | USSR, Drama

Petrov’s Flu unites Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov with Semyon Serzin, the star of his 2018 drama Leto. His standout thought-provoking religious drama The Student (2016) screened at Un Certain Regard. It won that year’s Francois Chalais Award.

Based on the novel “The Petrovs In and Around the Flu” by Alexey Salnikov this film version is a deadpan, hallucinatory romp through post-Soviet Russia. With the city in the throes of a flu epidemic, the Petrov family struggles through yet another day in a country where the past is never past, the present is a booze-fueled, icy fever dream of violence and tenderness, and where – beneath layers of the ordinary – things turn out to be quite extraordinary. Set somewhere between reality and imagination, Petrov’s Flu is a visually captivating: rough, funny, violent and psychedelic, and yet at the same time tender and poetic. It’s not quite a good as The Student .but its ideas and striking visual aesthetic make it well worth watching. MT

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 11 February 2022

Taming the Garden (2021)

Dir.: Salomé Jashi; Documentary; Germany/Netherlands/Switzerland/Georgia 2021, 91 min.

Georgian writer/director/co-DoP Salomé Jashi (The dazzling sight of Sunset) has portrayed her fellow Georgians justified but remorseless: whilst ex-premier Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Dollar billionaire, robs the country of its natural beauty, the ones directly concerned take the money and moan. Ivanishvili, who also has a private zoo with with kangaroos, penguins and zebras in one of his many villas near the Black Sea, has decided to re-plant old trees near his country mansion, overlooking the capital Tbilisi, were flamingos mingle near lakes. Jashi follows the re-planting on a 135-year old tulip tree, weighing 650 tonnes, on its journey to its new home.

The beginning is surreal, Fellini and Herzog could not have done it better: two men fish at the banks of the Black Sea, when suddenly a tree a tree floats along the waves, only when it comes closer, we make out the barge, which carries it. Cut to to the village of Tsikhisdziri in western Georgia, were the tree, “legally bought” by Ivanishvili, “because giant trees are my hobby, I am developing a park, I think tis is all appropriate”, is dug out from the ground, to go on a journey of forty km along the Black sea coast. Workers use diggers of all sorts and seizes, drills and pipes to extricate tree and roots, and load it on two coupled up HGVs, to drive to the coast.

The job will take about three months, and the crew of workmen compare the current enterprise with other jobs of the same kind, which they have done for Ivanishvili in the past. Planks are laid out, a new road is being constructed, leading to the coast of the Black Sea, where the tree will be loaded on to a barge. It goes without saying, that there will be collateral damage: trees in the neighbourhood of the prize object will be cut down or severely trimmed. The same goes for the trees of the neighbours, next to dirt street, where the tree will be transported. Five hundred Lai is the price per tree. The recipients of the compensation are muted about their response: “Never mind, what sort of villain Ivanishvili is, he is doing something. People never gave a shit about the trees.” One man, slightly drunk swears “I’ll never give way to the transportation workers, I am going for death”. When the deed is done, their is some regret, but also optimism: “The trimmed trees will bloom again in two years”, to which an elderly lady answers “But will I be alive then?”

Celia Stroom’s choral score ends the feature with close-ups of barge and tree, before we cut to Ivanishvili’s new park, were a bamboo forest is next to the newly up-rooted trees’, leaving the audience with the question if this is home or prison.

In foregoing the usual commentary, which tells the audience the obvious, Jashi concentrates on the images and Vox populi: the harsh realism of the work environment clashes with the poetic lyricism of he Black Sea travel. Taming the Garden is harbinger of a world to come, where not only the souls of trees will be up for sale. AS

In UK & Irish cinemas 28th January 2022

House of Gucci (2021)

Dir: Ridley Scott | Cast: Adam Driver, Lady Gaga, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, Camille Cottin, Jack Huston, Salma Hayek | Drama, 157′

Ridley Scott’s tragicomedy about the downfall of the Gucci family is a real epic: flawed, flamboyant but highly entertaining. A perfect clash between style and bravado. Adam Driver is the driving force behind it all. And he’s brilliant as the starchy patrician lawyer Maurizio Gucci seduced and ultimately murdered by Lady Gaga’s buxom firecracker, Patrizia Reggiani, the daughter of a haulage contractor, whose elbows are as sharp as her husband to be’s tailoring.

Maurizio is the son of suave Gucci scion Rodolfo played by Jeremy Irons whose well-tuned antenna has already spotted Gaga as a gold-digger. And predictably it all ends in tears when Rodolfo dies leaving Maurizio as the majority shareholder whose ideas for the family business conflict with those of his cousin Paolo Gucci – Al Pacino knows all the ropes here as the New York cousin who kept the brand exclusive offering his celebrity clientele loafers lined with gold leaf.

So the social side and the business story go hand in hand in a patchy drama that careers all over the place tone-wise – the bits with Jared Leto as Paolo’s idiotic son are awkwardly painful – but it speeds along like a Ferrari when Driver and Gaga are in the frame, their chemistry and glitzy lifestyle providing most of the fun, Pacino giving one of his best performances in recent years as the savvy businessman who finally loses out when Maurizio, and ultimately the Arab investors gain control. And Rodolfo’s predictions come true, and Maurizio eventually tires of his little wife’s unbridled ambition, and he moves onto the elegant charms of Paola, a woman from his own background in the shape of Camille Cottin (there’s a lovely scene where she shimmies, fireside).

House of Gucci is largely about a clash of cultures, and House of Gucci (based on a book by Sara Gay Forden) is spot on in its retelling of how the once chic emblem of the 1970s – anything by Gucci back then was considered highly desirable – is soon tarnished by family disagreements and over-exposure, so eroding the core values it represented as a brand. But never mind all that, House of Gucci is flamboyant fun. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2021

Rebel Dykes (2021)

Dir.: Harri Shanahan, Siân A. Williams; Documentary with DEBBIE, ROZ, FISCH, SIOBHAN, SEIJA, BAYA, DEL, LULU; UK 2021, 82 min.

The collective of Harri Shanahan, Siân A. Williams and producer Siobhan Fahey serve up a slice of subversiveness from the 1980s centred round a group of women activists who got together at Greenham Common, then decided to spice up the not-so-exciting London scene, taking over Women’s Centres and Gay Bars. In Brixton where squatting was not entirely legal, the DYKES started a vibrant underground culture with an SM club.

It was a time of revolt against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s administration: to create a Lesbian Fetish Club was in itself an open protest against the government’s ‘mishandling’ of the Aids Crisis and the introduction of Section 28, which basically forbade any mention in school curriculums about the existence of non hetero-sexual activities. The animated title sequence leads the audience into wild discussions and graphic descriptions of sexual scenes. The group was constantly under homophobic attack in the streets, so they just lived by night. But the danger came also from another front: mainstream feminists picketed the club and forced entrance with crowbars and axes. They accused the Rebel Dykes of anti-feminism and violence. The Rebel Dykes counter with action: invading the BBC News and chaining themselves to the furniture; they also founded sex-toy businesses and erotic Magazines – often having to fight the incriminating laws.

1981-1991 was a pivotal time in the history of alternative culture: kink, fetish, hedonism, music, drugs and political activism developed, leading to the formulation of trans rights and black queer life. It should be mentioned, that The Rebel Dykes were an international set-up: Seija came from Finland, Baya fled repressive East Germany, and Lulu was a San Francisco based photographer. Music plays a central role in the feature: Britpop artist guitarist Debbie Smith, the “most celebrated Black female guitarist”, is the film’s leading narrator. The archive music used is of precious cultural importance since women musicians rarely signed contracts in a male dominated business. The film’s composer, Ellyott, who works with ‘Sister George’ and ‘Night Nurse’, is the founder of Rebel Dyke and Queercore. The archive, consisting of mini-discs, digitised cassettes and VHS tapes, will be house permanently in the Bishopsgate Archive, London. Overall, the story-telling has multiple viewpoints, not a singular perspective.

Co-director/co-editor/animator Harri Shanahan, who studied filmmaking at university and produced post punk/experimental music videos, wanted “to tell the story of the Rebel Dykes because they “felt a kinship with their punk rebelliousness and their DIY approach to art and culture. It has been an amazing experience to meet these trailblazing, kickass people and to have the opportunity to be part of telling their story”.

The Rebel Dykes’s have virtually been written out of the history of the Queer movement, but it is a true revolutionary movement of female, non-binary and trans voices, celebrating direct action. So far unseen archive footage shows the Lesbian Strength March (1988) and the “Lesbian Avengers” who ab-sailed into the House of Lords, the night when ‘Section 28’ was passed into law, not to be revoked until 2003. AS

In cinemas and on BFI Player and Bohemia Euphoria from 26 November

Dying to Divorce (2021)

Dir: Chloe Fairweather | UK Doc, 84′

This grim but worthwhile documentary – the UK’s Oscar Academy hopeful – greets us with the news that one in three Turkish women experience domestic abuse.

Yes. And we meet two of them now living with life-changing injuries, merely for wanting a divorce on entirely reasonable grounds. One husband had openly taken a lover, and reduced his wife Arzu to a wheelchair-bound invalid leaving her unable to care for their five kids. Another,  caused catastrophic head injuries during a petty argument, leaving his wife Kubra – a former presenter for Bloomberg – virtually ‘gaga’, quite literally. And nothing to do with that famous celebrity.

English filmmaker Chloe Fairweather follows a typical day in the life of Istanbul lawyer Ipek Bozkurt who supports these courageous women in court standing up to their husbands in a male-dominated authoritarian regime that is modern day Turkey. At one point we actually see the Turkish president Recep Tayep Erdogan extolling the virtues of child-rearing as women’s only purpose in life in his increasingly authoritarian regime that continues to crack down on all forms of opposition since the attempted coup in July 2016. There is also ample archive footage showing how protestors demonstrated in the streets of the capital on International Women’s Day in March 2019, Police dispersing what looks like teargas into the crown.

We genuinely feel devastated by these women’s horrific injuries and humbled at their perseverance in seeking justice in a climate where men have the upper hand. Without the support of their families these women simply could not carry on.

Dying to Divorce is not a pleasant film but a vital document in the battle to raise awareness that femicide, toxic masculinity and domestic abuse is still an ongoing  occurrence in all societies where women are treated as second class citizens. MT

DYING TO DIVORCE – In UK cinemas from 24th November | Official UK Entry for the Academy Awards for: Best International Feature Film

Playground (2021)

Die: Laura Wandel | Drama, Belgium, 62′

Bullying and the casual cruelty of children is the focus of this schoolground psychological thriller – Belgian’s Oscar hopeful in next year’s academy award.

Everyone remembers a school bully or being at the receiving end of acts of nastiness that caused emotional if not physical pain. The old adage “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” was regularly trotted out by parents attempting to rationalise the situation but offered scant comfort as the next day at school loomed with trepidation.     

Playground launches us straight into the tearful time seven year old Nora is having when her father (Karim Leklou) drops her off at the school gates. And we feel for her, and it’s a touching and impassioned and astonishingly subtle performance from Maya Vanderbegue. She will gradually toughen up during the course of Laura Wandel’s debut feature but you get the impression there is a steely, not altogether, healthy resolve behind her wilful behaviour in the finale stretch, the camera lingering at the kids’ eye level, as the adult world seems far away, irrelevant, any grown up authority unable to intervene or limit the taunts and vicious outbursts of a playground transformed into a gladiatorial arena from the scared children’s’ perspective .

Nora clings to her elder brother Abel (Günter Duret) who soon becomes an unreliable ally: he’s got his own adversaries to deal with in the schoolyard pecking order, and resents Nora’s babyish demands for sibling allegiance when he has to protect his own interests and not appear weak, or involve her by association. Seen through the naturalistic gaze of Frederic Noirhomme’s camera kids are just as complex as fully grown adults but not yet capable of guile and disingenuousness in their facial expressions, making them fascinating subjects to watch.

Eventually Abel will turn the tables on his child tormentors in this impressive first feature which explores how kids separate from the parental comfort zone and learn to fight their own battles – quite literally. MT

PLAYGROUND wins the Grand Prix in Tallinn’s Just Film | FIPRESCI prize for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and the Sutherland Prize for Best First Feature at the London Film Festival.

 

 

 

The Great Freedom (2021) MUBI

Fir: Sebastian Meise | Drama 104’

Franz Rogowski is the dynamite that burns through this outré arthouse portrait of illicit homosexuality in post war Berlin from Austrian filmmaker Sebastian Meise.

Arrested for cottaging in the grubby confines of a public lavatory in the claustrophobic early cine-camera scenes he is Hans Hoffmann, a man who will spend the remainder of the film in prison surrounded by murderers and thieves, before homosexuality was decriminalised in 1969.

Meise makes no attempt to make his characters likeable in this sordid slice of social realism but Rogowski always brings an appealing sense of vulnerability that softens the hard edges of this overlong sober prison drama with its flecks of brilliance. The final scene is a memorable masterstroke.

The narrative unfolds across three interlinking timelines seeing Hans in a series of sexual encounters in the same sordid prison where he often finds himself in solitary confinement for doing so. The touchstones are 1945, 1957 and 1968 where he forms a close relationship with homophobe Viktor (Georg Freidrich) who is serving time for murder but whose sexual yearnings are for women, not men.

But Meise plays on the theme of sexual fluidity here in a story that very much explores sex as a physical release as much as an emotional need in a pivotal part of the storyline that leads to the men’s relationship soon developing into a close bond of friendship and reliance that touches on love but never speaks its name.

Hans dabbles in other affairs in the story’s most poignant scenes and here he gives full throttle to his signatory romantic sensuality in a gutsy performance that carries the film through its rather low-key narrative where tighter writing in the middle act could have made this more intense.

Nevertheless this is a nakedly unflinching look at a time when men weren’t allowed to show their love for each other and a worthwhile warts of all expose of the German prison system of the era. MT

ON MUBI FROM 11 MARCH 2022

Best Austrian Film, VIENNALE 2021:
GROSSE FREIHEIT (GREAT FREEDOM), Sebastian Meise, Austria/Germany 2021

Dune (2021)

Dir.: Denis Villeneuve; Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Stellan Skarsgard, Javier Bardem, Charlotte Rampling, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa; USA/ Canada 2021, 155 min.

The forth realised adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 cult novel Dune, directed by Québécoise filmaker Denis Villeneuve (2049) is big news – with a budget of 165 million dollars Warner Brothers have taken a gamble in the hope that streaming on their platform HBO Max and good receipts at the cinema box office will guarantee a sequel covering the second half of Herbert’s book.

After the David Lynch version of 1984 was butchered by the producers (from 180 to 137 minutes), and two TV mini-series, Villeneuve’s almost two hour version could be seen as a mere set-up for the all-revealing two-and-half hour denouement – or even part of a new franchise. But Part Two is not a certainty at all, if you cast your mind back to the troubles Alejandro Jodorowsky had in the early 1970s, when even Salvatore Dali failed to get the Chilean helmer’s project off the ground, spawning only Frank Pavich’s 2013 doc exploring its contingent failure.

To their credit, Villeneuve and co-writers Eric Roth and Jon Spaiths, have played down only the background of the saga, so that non-aficionados of the Herbert novel can enjoy the more entertaining intrigues and endless battles: in the far, far future humankind has conquered the universe due to a super, life-enhancing spice that super-charges the brain endowing humans with preternatural powers of rapid mobility in space travel, that today would take millions of years. The downside is that this super-dust, called Spice, is only found on the planet Arrakis, aka Dune, where giant sandworms contribute to a very inhospitable environment.

The indigenous population known as Fremen (read Free Men) are engaged in an ongoing battle to combat the colonisation of the Emperor’s armies. Enter the House of Atreides, a noble family who is ordered by the Emperor to take charge of Dune and its rebellious population. They take over from the House of Harkonnen, but it is not clear if the Atreides are getting a promotion, or are just a toy in the hands of the Imperial ruler. Duke Leto (Isaac) of Atreides, his concubine Jessica (Ferguson) and their son Paul (Chalamet) arrive on Dune, only to be ambushed by evil Baron Harkonnen (Skarsgard). Paul’s mother belongs to a tribe of women known as the ‘Bene Gesserit’,who have been engaged for centuries in creating “The One” – but it’s still uncertain if Paul is really this long-awaited saviour.

Jessica trains her son in the art of “Voice”, which allows its user total mind control. Paul is being prepared for battle by Gurney (Brolin) and Idaho (Momoa), so he can lead the stranded family on their way to salvation on Dune, whilst taking the Spice and dreaming of Chani (Zendaya), a Fremen woman, whom we only see in Paul’s dreams. Will the enigmatic Paul and Jessica become allies of the Fremen, or is this just the start of hostilities with the black-clad Harkonnen?

The two-part script structure is clearly flawed but Villeneuve, DoP Greig Fraser and PD Patrice Vermette have created a totally unique universe where sandstorms (aka climate change?) pose an even greater threat than the mayhem caused by human armies. This is brutalist futurism where helicopters fly like birds with insect wings, and the Harkonnen army, with their hairless, pale faces bring to mind the SS ‘Angels of Death’. But the graphic descriptions of the battle scenes often feel  repetitive and gradually lose their power to shock, becoming ineffectual. DUNE is certainly a visual masterpiece, so let’s hope the producers’ pay-as-you-go strategy pays off with Part II. Shame though the the whole thing couldn’t have been down in one go. AS

NOW In CINEMAS

 

Prayers for the Stolen (2021)

 

 

Dir/Wri: Tatiana Huezo | Cast: Ana Cristina Ordonez Gonzalez, Marya Membreno, Norma Pablo, Mayra Batalla, Eileen Yanez, Emeo Villegas Olivia Lagunas | Drama 100′

A lush and haunting tale of friendship and survival draws us into the vortex of oppression and fear felt by three girls growing up during wartime in rural Mexico. Recent figures from Amnesty suggest that around ten women and girls are killed in Mexico alone, every day.

Based on the 2014 novel by Jennifer Clement this is the latest human drama from Tatiana Huezo who has been quietly raising the profile of social and personal abuse for woman all over Latin America – from Civil War in El Salvador (in El Lugar mas pequeno in 2011) to human trafficking in Mexico (Tempestad (2016)). This is her third and most accomplished feature to date.

In a tight-knit community nestled in the Mexican mountains, we first meet eight year old Ana (Ordonez Gonzalez), digging a hole in the ground with her mother Rita (Batalla). Ana will ‘bury’ herself here when the guerrilla soldiers come to kidnap the local girls who will be turned into captives and slaves. In the bosky remote hillside violence is an everyday part of growing up for young Mexican girls. So Ana and her two friends create their own impenetrable parallel universe where they play at being women, comforting each other with an affectionate bond of friendship, singing and painting their lips with beetroot. Soon Ana’s long hair will be cut into a boyish crop to avoid detection. On lonely days she hides out in the empty houses of villagers who have long disappeared or fled, such as Juana and Don Pancho, whose abandoned flock of cows now roams free in the village.

Strong on atmosphere the film is cinematic study of what it means to grow up as a girl in a hostile environment where men are almost constantly the enemy. Ana’s father is supposedly working on the other side of the valley, but he has not sent money back for several years, and so Ana and her mother are forced to fend for themselves on the brink of poverty. One surreal scene pictures Rita desperately trying to get a mobile signal on the top of a mountain, along the other abandoned women whose ‘phones light up the darkness like mini torches glowing in the gloom.

Five years later, at thirteen, the girls become teenagers as they face the harsh reality of what being a woman really entails in this toxic climate of war and macho culture. Abstract danger becomes an inescapable threat, as a Russian roulette plays out one day when soldiers arrive to take Ana, forcing her into the dugout as her mother is threatened with death.

Some films are moving but this rich character drama is actually harrowing too, as we become emotionally invested in the girls’ story fleshed out in Huezo’s richly textured script, joining them in their descent into traumatised hell as a daily experience. The casual involuntary abuse from Ana’s mother is echoed by the disorientating fear she feels from the outside male threat. Ana – both as a child and a teenager – is impressively performed by two newcomers (Ordonez Gonzalez and Membreno), and is matched by Huezo’s assured direction and luminous camerawork by Dariela Ludlow.

IN CINEMAS FROM 8 April 2022, and exclusively on MUBI from 29 April 2022 | San Sebastian FILM FESTIVAL | Latin American Prix HORIZONTES WINNER

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | UN CERTAIN REGARD SPECIAL MENTION AWARD

 

Copilot (2021)

Dir.: Anna Zohar Berrached; Cast: Canan Kir, Roger Azar, Ozay Fecht, Julia Roth, Ceci Chuh; Germany/France 2021, 118 min.

German director Anna Zohra Berrached is the daughter of an Algerian immigrant who grew up in the GDR. Her sophomore feature, a complex character study, follows a Muslim couple in late 1999s Germany before the world was changed forever by the turbulent events of 9/11. Based loosely on one of the pilots (Ziad Jarrah) who actually took part in the atrocity (Ziad Jarrah), the film asks the question: how much do we really know about people close to us?

Asli (Kir) is a brilliant medical student, shy and insecure. She falls for a Lebanese student Saeed (Azar), whose dream is to be a pilot, but his wealthy traditional family refuse to support him, Asli’s Turkish just wanting her to marry the ‘right’ husband. Saeed is certainly not on this list partly because of his Arabic background. so the lovers will later marry in secret, but not before Saeed becomes more radical in his views, giving up alcohol and avoiding sex with Asli, telling her: “I don’t want to be like the Germans, who sleep around”.

But there are warning signs from the beginning. Saaed’s anti-Israel remarks soon make the two of them social outcasts amongst their group of friends as Saaed starts proselytising Islam to them and eventually Saeed disappears off to Yemen for a while. And when he comes back his behaviour has changed radically. Suddenly, he decides to take up his pilot licence in Florida, the cheapest and quickest way possible. Asli joins him and they fly together as she gradually becoming his titular co-pilot. Returning to Germany for an operation, Asli comes round from the anaesthetic to see breaking news about the 9/11 disaster on her beside TV. But Saeed’s mobile is switched off.

With its multi-lingual cast and differing cultural touchstones Copilot had quite a laborious scripting and filming process, and as the story unfolds hope gradually fades as Asil loses her focus on reality, preoccupied with work. As for Saeed, he lived in a dream world, sustained by a nightmare: his final letter to his wife is proof of his ghastly fantasy: “The world will be a different one, and happier for all”.

RELEASED IN UK & IRELAND IN CINEMAS 10 SEPTEMBER 2021

Marceline. A Woman. A Century. (2021)

Dir.: Cordelia Dvoràk; Documentary with Marceline Loridan-Ivens, Simone Veil, Judith Perignin, Jean-Pierre Sergent; France/Netherlands 2018, 76 min.

Cordelia Dvoràk’s biopic about the life of filmmaker and author Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928- 2018) is an example of the triumph of opposition: Fourteen year-old Marceline Rozenberg was imprisoned in Bollène (Vaucluse) then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 13.4,1944, having worked with her father Szlama for the resistance. She did not only survive Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Terezin (Theresienstadt), but became a filmmaker, working with her husband Joris Ivens (1898-1989) in Vietnam and China.

Loridan-Ivens was one of only 2500 French Jews who survived deportation, just under three percent of the total of 76 000 victims. After watching Loridan-Ivens signing copies of her auto-biography ‘Et tu n’es pas Revenu’, she meets co-author Judith Perignon in her Parisian flat, a cheerful place with flowers everywhere. This sets the tone of an upbeat documentary: the old Marceline talking to her young self. “Hunger, beatings, thirst. People die, and you instantly forget them. No soul is left. I can see her clearly, that little girl that is still inside me to this day. She is fairly shy”. Marceline met Simone Veil in Block 9, and the once Minister of Culture makes a (too) short visit.

After her liberation by the Red Army in May 1945, she returned to Paris where her mother “wanted her daughter to marry into Jewish families, have children and erase the past”. But “sexuality was a form of disobedience”, and Marceline, who never wanted children on her own, preferred to visit the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris and sit in bistros to discuss the past and present. This is how she met documentary filmmakers Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, whose star she became in Cronique d’un Ete (Chronicle of a Summer) in 1961. It also led to a liaison with 18 year-old journalist Jean-Pierre Sergent, who was supposed to teach Marceline all about Philosophy so that she could prepare to study at the university. But the two became lovers and later filmmakers in their own right, having discovered that filmmaking was not that difficult. The duo was very much a supporter of the FNL, Marceline even carrying suitcases for the FNL. The result was the documentary Algeria Année Zero. Today, Loridan-Ivens is very critical of herself: “We thought the FLN was led by progressive militants, little did we know the majority had their roots in Islamic fundamentalism.”

She met Joris Ivens whilst watching his feature A Valparaiso. He was impressed by Marceline, sending her flowers, but then disappearing for months. When they met again, they stayed together until Ivens’ death. The couple lived like vagabonds, Ivens being “very macho” at the beginning, but Marceline “imposed her will on him.” The past suddenly becomes the present, when Mrs. Phuong arrives from Vietnam to invite Marceline for the 50th Anniversary screening of The 17. Parallel, the couple’s iconic Vietnam documentary, with Mrs. Phuong not only doing the translating, but was also offering technical support. Next for the filmmakers was China, then ostracised by the whole world, after their split with the Soviet-Union.

Joris and Marceline documented the last two years of the cultural Revolution in the 763-minute epic How Yu Kong moved the Mountains (1976), which was to be shown in twelve parts. With “The Band of Four” making a power-grab, Premier Zhou Enlai told the filmmakers to leave the country immediately. Jean Bigiaoui, who worked with the crew, gives a lively commentary on the (film)adventure. We watch clips from Franck Leplat’s 2015 documentary Marceline Loridan-Ivens racontant sou passage a la prison de Sainte-Anneavant (2015). Loridan-Ivens is, for once, very bitter on the commentary. She remembers singing for her father, whose cell was near to her own. But this sets her off into an angry monologue about “never forgiving” the perpetrators.

Marceline is the only Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor who returned to the camp and made her own feature film about her incarceration there: La Petite Prairie aux Bouleaux (The Birch Tree Meadow) 2003. Anouk Aimée plays Marceline’s Alter Ego, who meets a German photographer and questions him about his motives for taking photos in the ruins of the camp. Marceline was not quiet satisfied with her effort: “The concept of a documentary was not enough, because I wanted a representation. I should have played myself.”

Marceline Loridan-Ivens died on 18.9.2018, six weeks after this documentary was finished. She wanted to be buried, even though it frightened her. “But everything is better than being burned”. AS

NOW ON TRUE STORY at all leading platforms | From September 17

Django and Django (2021)

Dir.: Luca Rea; Documentary about Sergio Corbucci with Quentin Tarantino, Franco Nero, Ruggero Deodato; USA/Italy 2021, 80 min.

Italian director/co-writer Luca Rea (Cacao) pays tribute to compatriot director Sergio Corbucci (1926-1990), who, with Sergio Leone, dominated the short era of the Italo-Western in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Corbucci, who made 63 feature films, is usually shunned by mainstream critics, even though he directed huge box office successes with Adriano Celantano and Toto, as well as the later Terence Hill and Bud Spencer Western comedies. Quentin Tarantino is the main source, leading us through Corbucci’s career in seven chapters.

Sergio Corbucci, like Leone, started out as a film critic, and via screen writing became an assistant director. In 1959 Leone and Corbucci worked for Mario Bonnard in The Last Days of Pompei and their valuable contribution set them both up for a great future, even though both Sergios’ insisted the glory belonged to Bonnard alone. Tarantino maintained that Corbucci’s ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ were a settlement of his scores with Fascism, since the young Sergio grew up under the Mussolini dictatorship and WWII. He even had the ‘honour’ – as a member of the Fascist Youth Choir – to be five feet away from Mussolini and Hitler he visited Rome. Corbucci’s villains rode roughshod through all his features as sadistic, misogynist and racist monsters, in love with spilling blood – particularly the one of innocents.

Romulo and Remo (Duel of the Titans) 1961 was Corbucci’s first attempt to show a prototype of the violent men which would later dominate his Westerns. His first, Minnesota Clan (1964) was shot in the same year as Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood. The shooting of Django (1966) didn’t go to plan: all the horses bolted, and nobody was sure which of the film lots they were shooing on. Nevertheless, the Kurosawa-inspired revenge story (nearly all Corbucci Westerns fall into this category), “was the most violent film, before Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch came along in 1969″.

Corbucci’s Mexican Revolution trilogy of The Mercenary (1968), Companeros (1970) and What Am I Doing in the Middle of a Revolution (1972) is perhaps his most popular, but the most violent by far is The great Silence (1968). The role of Gordon, the mute avenger, was meant for Franco Nero but he decided to go to Hollywood, making an angry Corbucci cast Jean-Louis Trintignant. Klaus Kinski acted the sadistic killer Tigero, who survives, whilst Gordon is killed. Shot in an eerie, snowy landscape, The great Silence also featured another re-occurring theme of the Corbucci’s Western: the cowardly citizens of the hamlets, who would rather obey the repressor than take the side of the avenger. “It feels like Corbucci is taking a swing at John Ford. The latter’s films show the town building and solidarity of the citizens, whilst Corbucci’s folks are rather meek and cowardly”. One of Corbucci’s last Western was Sid & Jed (1972), a Bonnie and Clyde story set in a Western milieu.

Tarantino offers a clever solution to an unsolved riddle in Django. When the titular hero arrives, we see him laying flowers on the grave of a certain Mercedes. Tarantino conjures up an explanation, in which Django is a soldier who has fought the Confederates, and now returns to give a keepsake to Mercedes, the wife of his black friend who was killed in the war. He then encounters the hooded KKK, who have done away with the black population, and are targeting the Mexicans. All set in Missouri, where slavery was not abolished.

Filmmaker Ruggero Deodato, once Rossellini’s assistant, who worked with Corbucci on 13 films, gives insight into the director’s work, as do many private videos sharing some hilariously funny and candid incidents during shooting. They also show a director who certainly enjoyed his work, and who was always ready for a good laugh – even at himself. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX | Premiered at VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Spencer (2021)

Dir: Pablo Larain | Wri Steven Knight  Cast: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins, Sean Harris | Drama 113’

An imagined Christmas at Sandringham is the latest showcase showdown in the tortured saga of Princess Diana’s fated marriage to Prince Charles.

Pablo Larraín’s Venice competition hopeful Spencer makes for extremely painful viewing as an atmospheric arthouse portrait of isolation and emotional disintegration. But the fact that it portrays two well known figures representing the British royal family makes it all the more poignant. A story of two of unhappy people struggling within the confines of tight security and rigorous protocol was never going to be joyful especially when each one is a mannered caricature of their putative selves.

Chilean auteur Pablo Larain has become somewhat of a dab hand at painting marginalised characters: from Jackie Onassis to a group of distressed priests in his 2015 feature The Club. And those who hate the monarchy will have a field day with how dreadful a royal weekend is made to look.

Diana  – who died 24 years ago – is victimised to within an inch of her life by the regal system, eventually falling victim to her psychosis in Sandringham’s splendour during a visit that would send anyone screaming for a taxi to Norwich, if they didn’t have their own Porsche parked outside. The film’s timing is even more significant in a year where Her Majesty the Queen has had enough to contend with, not least the death of her husband.

Kristen Stewart couldn’t be more suited to her role as Diana, her wan pallor and delicately chiselled features mirror those of the tragic Princess who doted on her boys and wanted a normal life despite her wealth and privilege. That said, she lacks the vivacious charisma of the princess – who I once met. It’s a performance that plays to the crowd rather than the cognoscenti. Spencer will prove divisive: Some will find it brittle, glib and shallow; others will delight in its sullen melodrama.

The film starts with Diana literally losing her way in the depths of the Norfolk countryside, the film was actually shot in Germany, on a bleak winter’s day. Pitching up at a roadside cafe to ask directions, she eventually finds herself in the safe hands of Sean Harris’ Sandringham chef Darren who guides her back to face the music over her late arrival.

Larrain draws clever but rather chilling comparisons with Diana’s situation and that of Anne Boleyn (Manson). Dream sequences picture the hapless wife of Henry VIII drifting through Sandringham’s gilded corridors. In fact, there’s a great deal of drifting and floating in this often haunting tragedy, as Diana frequently goes awol in frosty nights and foggy mornings, in a bid to avoid the strictures of this regimented family ‘holiday’.

Playing out as a series of grim episodes during the festive break, Diana gradually implodes:.And if she’s not hounded by equerries (Timothy Spall makes for a ghastly bully) and dressers (her only trusted aide is Maggie played by Sally Hawkins), then the press are on her tail with their long distance lenses. Forced into wearing a series of specially selected twee outfits (Christmas lunch, boxing day tea etc) Diana erupts in anguish, biting into a rope of pearls that clatters into her pea soup – a scene that leads to a bulimia attack. The pearls were a gift from Charles (played by Poldark’s Jack Farthing) who offered the same jewels (known as a symbol of tears) to his lover Camilla Parker-Bowles. Only Diana, Maggie and Spall’s equerry are fully fleshed out, the other characters are cyphers only there to serve the narrative.

Diana is seen making the most of joy-filled moments with her boys (played gamely by Jack Nielen and Freddie) and eventually there is a happy ending to this particular episode which culminates with a liberating car ride to Mike and the Mechanics. A dismally depressing, washed out watch, fraught with sorrow. A terrible tribute to the real people it depicts. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Nitram (2021)

Dir: Justin Kurzel | Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Judy Davis, Essie Davis, Anthony LaPaglia, Sean Keenan, Conrad Brandt | Australia: Drama 118′

Justin Kurzel blows us away with this scorching arthouse psychodrama commemorating the Port Arthur tragedy, exploring the milieu that created a murderer (Martin Bryant) who would kill 35 people on that fateful day in 1996.

Not since Snowtown has a film engendered such utter terror through its central character – the titular Nitram – played by a coruscating Caleb Landry Jones – as a fully formed enfant terrible who lives with his long-suffering parents (Judy Davis and Anthony LaPaglia) in the sleepy seaside town.

Snowtown writer Shaun Grant again shows how long-term parental abuse and a casually toxic environment turns Nitram ((Martin backwards his hated school nickname) into a vulnerable, isolated loner who wreaks havoc wherever he goes. A display of his anti-social behaviour opens a story driven forward by an unpredictable behaviour even more frightening than his brutal strength: like a firecracker he goes off without warning, but is also capable of loving affection for his mother who diminishes him with constant putdowns.

But his unpredictability is nerve-shredder here. And the film open with a typical episode of antisocial behaviour when Nitram sets off firecrackers  from the rooftop of his parent’s house in a bid to dispel his sense of ennui and hopelessness – there’s nothing else to do here but surf, and we watch him floundering in the waves, driven to tears by another failed attempt to stay onboard.

Port Arthur feels more like an English seaside town in the 1960s, charmingly down-at-heel and raffling. Redolent of its faded but questionable glory as a colonial outpost, basking in the lush green landscapes leading down to the sea. But when Nitram meets ditzy local heiress and Gilbert & Sullivan fan Helen (Essie Davis) things are set to change. An offer to mow the extensive lawns of her rambling mansion with its menagerie of dogs leads to a touching friendship, Nitram finding acceptance and a contentment of sorts as the misunderstood misfits rub along together in a ‘folie a deux’ before thunder clouds once again gather and his fate is finally sealed.

Kurzel and Grant show how Nitram is unable to empathise as a result of his dysfunctional family dynamic. Davis and LaPaglia are charismatic as his callous mother and depressive father, Nitram’s flawed emotional touchstones as the story seethes towards a devastating finale. All this contrasts with the serene shambolic beauty of the painterly settings – particularly of Helen’s home. This is a mesmerising look at mental illness made all the more pitiful by the tragedy that could have been avoided. As a master of quirky psychological dramas Kurzel is back at the top of his game. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 1 JULY 2022

The Innocents (2021)

Dir/Wri” Eskil Vogt | Cast: Rakel Lenora Flottum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim, Sam Ashraf, Ellen Dorrit Pedersen, Morten Svartveit, Kadra Yusuf, Lise Tonne | Norway, 117′

The Omen meets Jack Clayton’s 1961 titular original in this haunting arthouse horror trip from Eskil Vogt who explores the parallel world of children in his chilling second feature.

The Innocents follows his eerie experimental drama Blind with this textured thematic look at casual violence and subversive behaviour in a group of young friends growing up in small-town rural Norway.

Seen entirely from the children’s point of view this is a deeply sinister and often violent film, at times frighteningly so, but subtle as a whisper. A sense of terrible dread seethes as the plot unfolds, Vogt spending rather too much time establishing the milieu of a modest domestic set-up before hitting the jugular in full blown psychological horror that dives deep below the surface of ordinary young lives.

Freed from the mundanity of running their lives kids are free to let their imaginations wander. And wander they certainly do in a serene suburban idyll surrounded by pine forests and sparkling blue skies that create an oppressive sense of isolation for the blonde-haired angel-faced Ida, played by Rakel Lenora Flottum, her autistic and mute older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad) and their kindly but ineffectual parents (Ellen Dorrit Pedersen and Morten Svartveit).

The kids are free to roam far and wide and soon become firm friends with tousled-haired Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim) and the levantine Ben (Sam Ashraf impressive in debut) whose background is more troubled, in one violent scene he throws Ida’s pet kitten from the top of the stairs and crushes the crippled animal’s skull – without any remorse. Ben also develops telekinetic powers not unlike Danny in The Shining but Ben’s are put to nefarious use in sending a boiling pan of water over his single mother (Lise Tonne) while he carries on oblivious.

An eerie soundscape from Gustaf Berger and Gisle Tveito ramps up the tension as Ben’s powers come into conflict with Anna’s benign psychic sense as a turbulent battle of wills plays out completely beyond the radar of the adult world.

As the film edges towards its startling finale Vogt creates a distinctive and highly-tuned alter universe in a lushly cinematic supernatural horror that remains tethered in reality while sending out shockwaves of terror with lowkey but chilling affect. MT

Now ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

 

Everything Went Fine | Tout est bien passe (2021)

Dir: François Ozon | Cast: Sophie Marceau, André Dussollier, Géraldine Pailhas, Charlotte Rampling, Éric Caravaca, Hanna Schygulla, Grégory Gadebois, Jacques Nolot, Judith Magre, Daniel Mesguich, Nathalie Richard | France 98′

Francois Ozon always has a cheeky grin in his films. And Everything Went Fine is no exception. This candid end of life drama is a delightful follow-up to the darkly drole Summer of 85, a funny version of The Father with the same piquancy and sharp attention to detail. It could be anyone’s family story once parents get to ‘un certain age’. It could even be yours.

Charlotte Rampling is back, along with his regular collaborator the late novelist Emmanuèle Bernheim who wrote Under The Sand, Swimming Pool and 5X2 and on whose book this new story is based. Refreshingly honest and laced with Ozon’s classic subversiveness, André Dussollier plays the classic stroke-ridden 84 year old with an arch naughtiness and poignancy. The relationship with his long-suffering middle-aged daughters Emmanuelle and Pascale is spiky, to say the least. There’s even a cameo role for veteran Hanna Schygulla who advises on euthanasia.

What elevates this from trite comedy territory is the cast who really capture the essence of fraught family life with an honesty that tonally transcends sentimentality. Some may call it a ‘love hate relationship’ but this is exactly what happens with life and death, and Ozon craftily navigates these prickly relationships making us believe that he’s really been there himself.

Emmanuèle’s father André Bernheim is a cultured man with an ego not unlike Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Meyerowitz Stories that premiered at the festival in 2017. A rather selfish gay art collector who rediscovered his sexuality after marrying the girls’ sculptress mother – a cool-handed Charlotte Rampling – he keeps on the ball despite his stroke leaving him physically challenged.

Many may baulk at the humour Ozon playfully uses to convey a desperate family tragedy but this is really how it is – as those affected can frankly testify. And it’s this complete authenticity that keeps you glued to the screen and nodding in agreement, rather than the cardboard worthy scenario many may envisage.

Euthanasia is also thoughtfully handled, offering the film a morally meaty maze with plenty to chew on. This is a satisfyling mouthful that will make you laugh to self rather than out loud. A light-hearted comedy that unflinchingly faces reality with heart and humanity. MT

ON RELEASE from 17 June COURTESY OF CURZON | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

Freaky (2020)

Dir: Christopher Landon | US Comedy Horror 98′

A fun and freaky body-swap film that sees a bullied beauty become the target of a serial killer on the run whose mystical dagger sets in motion an unlikely switcheroo. Worse still the young schoolgirl has only twenty four hours to return to her original form before she is stuck as the hideous “Blissfield butcher” forever.

Vince Vaughn is astonishingly complex in his teenage girl guise carrying this film through a largely predictable storyline with some inspired gore-filled set pieces echoing Freaky Friday in a comedy slasher that’s more weird than scary, but certainly entertaining and confidently put together by Landon who is best known for his 2017 outing Happy Death Day.

Meanwhile Millie (Kathryn Newton) recruits her friends (Misha Osherovich and Celeste O’Connor) to help her get back to normal and garners considerable emotional and physical power as a 6.5 foot man – offering some food for thought with the boot on the other foot. There’s also a flirty frisson going on in the background between Vaughn’s teen transformation and Millie’s high school crush (Uriah Shelton). And you don’t often see that kind of subplot is this kind of movie. MT

OUT IN CINEMAS FROM 1 July 2021

Wildmen – Vildmaend (2021)

Dir/Wri: Thomas Dakeskov | Denmark Drama 101′

Another amusing absurdist Danish comedy along the same lines as male midlife crisis films Klown and Another Round.

Written and directed by Thomas Dakeskov it sees married man Martin escape to the wilderness of Norway – aka his ‘man cave’ – in a bid to escape growing up in the modern world and reverting to ‘hunter-gather’ mode, regretting the loss of his bankcard when the going gets tough.

Although somewhat derivative in its narrative pretensions, this is guaranteed to make you laugh – especially the scene where a ‘people carrier’ collides with a moose – and the animal comes out on top. There are some hairy moments, quite literally, when Martin dons an animal skin for a shopping trip to the supermarket – an episode which ends, inevitably  in tears – of hilarity.

On the run from life in the Norwegian mountains Martin (Rasmus Bjerg), freely engages in acts of supreme physical prowess which contrast wildly with his normal humdrum existence, but goes on to confront uncomfortable truths about the masculine reality. The film pokes fun at his macho attempts to look butch in the wild, as opposed to mild-mannered and sophisticated in his urban habitat. And while his ludicrous antics are clearly entertaining to the audience, the humour points a rather derogatory finger at Martin, making him into a pathetic figure of fun, rather than a renaissance renegade. That all said this inventive caper doesn’t aim to plumb the depths of the human psyche, merely to entertain and upliFt. And it does so admirably despite its obvious limitations, never taking itself too seriously. A little gem. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE \ Tribeca Film Festival 2021

 

 

In the Heights (2020)

Dir.: Jon M. Chu; Cast: Anthony Ramos, Melissa Barrera, Leslie Grace, Corey Hawkins, Jimmy Smits, Gregory Diaz IV, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Stephanie Beatriz, Olga Merediz; USA 2021, 143 min.

Director Jon M. Chu (Filthy Rich Asians) is behind this dizzying adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights (written before Hamilton, when Miranda was still a student), based on the script of the original writer Quiara Alegria Hudes.

Released a year late due to the Pandemic, Heights is a musical extravaganza, combining Hollywood, hip hop and pop, with the narrative serving primarily as a bridge between the dance numbers, brilliantly choreographed by Christopher Scott.

The titular Heights are in Washington Heights, a 40-block ‘hood in New York City, that starts at 155th Street. Originally home to Jewish and Irish immigrants, and is now dominated by Latinos; with Miranda writing very much about his own experience. There is a permanent carnival atmosphere, spiced by social commentary – the fight for the much coveted “Green Cards”, while avoiding the clutches of the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), commonly known as ‘Dreamers’.

The action is centred around two couples: bodega-owner Usnavi de la Vega (Ramos) is supported by his sidekick Sonny (Diaz IV), and madly in love with Vanessa (Barrera), who works for fierce real-life couple Daniela (Rubin-Vega) and Carla (Beatriz). Vanessa dreams of moving downtown and becoming a designer, but can’t get the finance.

Then there is Benny (Hawkins), a black guy who is dating Nina (Grace), the daughter of the cab company owner Kevin Rosario (Smits), Benny’s boss. Kevin is helping his daughters through law school at Stanford University, But Nina is unhappy at the ‘posh’ place of learning when she is mistaken for a waitress at faculty meetings. Nina decided to quit to the chagrin of her father.  Benny wants Nina to stay for his own sake, and the knowledge, that she help the fight against the authorities. Finally, there is Abuela Claudia (Merediz), the community ‘matriarch’, who, like many of her generation, wonder whether the sacrifices made for their kids have really helped in realising the American Dream.

Powerful songs”Carnival del Barrio” and the jubilant “96,000 Dollars” really set the night on fire along with a dancing couple in the sizzling set piece outside a tower building, the tenants looking down in disbelief. But the visual highlight captures the spirit of Busby Berkeley and Esther Williams, with 500 extras celebrating summer in the local lido.

In the Heights is intoxicated by its permanent carnival atmosphere, a barely disguised feeling of melancholia permeates this need for make-believe, best symbolised by Usnavi, an unreliable narrator, who relates the story to a small group of children at a more than perfect beach in the Dominican Republic. But overall this is a big party, the plot a side-show with its sleek social commentary, vibrant visuals provided by DoP Alice Brooks. The film strikes just the note for the re-opening of cinemas. It might be overlong, overdue, and still threatened, but relentless in spirit, nevertheless. AS

Shiva Baby (2020)

Dir.: Emma Seligman; Cast: Rachel Sennott, Polly Draper, Fred Melamed, Molly Gordon, Danny Deferrari, Dianna Agron; USA 2020, 77min.

Rachel Sennott is the star turn in Emma Seligman’s inspired featured debut Shiva Baby. She is Danielle, a Jewish woman caught up in her parents’ plans to get her a husband – or at least a job – in this hilarious comedy.

During happier times we see Danielle in bed with her sugar daddy, Max (Deferrari), who will save her from the woes the world has in stall for her. But that was then. A Jewish funeral get-together (Shiva) provides an ideal networking opportunity for the family’s machinations, never mind that one of their loved ones has actually died.

So parents Debbie (Draper) and Joel (Melamed) head off to the Shiva, Danielle making a last unsuccessful attempt to learn the name of the deceased. Still not having made her way in the right circles, her parents are well aware of the seriousness of the task that lies ahead: Danielle is earning a pittance as a ‘babysitter’ but the fruits of her labours seem to stem from another, more dubious source. Professional ambitions are still unclear university-wise, and her parents are covering all the bills.

Friendships are fraught – she had a stormy relationship with Maya (Gordon) who is also at the Shiva. Debbie warns her daughter “not to experiment today”. But before Danielle has time to internalise this parental guidance and critique (“You look like Gwyneth Paltrow on food stamps, and not in a good way”), enter Max, followed by his wife Kim (Agron) and baby daughter Rose. The lovers can’t agree on their opening gambit, “where did the two of you meet”, finally settling for ‘schul’ (the synagogue). It soon turns out Kim is the major breadwinner in the family, and she carps half-jokingly about her husband’s penchant for expensive restaurants.

Meanwhile, Daneille’s parents have cornered Max in the hope of an internship for their daughter. Kim joins the conversation, expressing the need for a babysitter – Debbie praising her daughter’s (non-existent) experience. Danielle mislays her ‘phone number in the bathroom, having sent Max a rather daring selfie. Maya finds the phone but promises to keep schtum: “I don’t want your parents to know their daughter is a whore.” After much bickering and desert-guzzling, nervous exhaustion finally takes over as furtive hands find each other in the back of a crammed car.

Seligman gets away with her not very likeable heroine in a mishmash of sharp-elbowed characters trying to get into pole position on the back of each other. Danielle hasn’t the slightest idea what she wants from life – apart from not ending up like the rest of the Shiva crowd. Her only virtue is a foggy idea about feminism – something that doesn’t follow through in her relationship with Maya.

DoP Maria Rusche takes her lead from Robert Altman in crowd scenes that zero in on the individual players, a bleached-out aesthetic echoing Danielle’s efforts to stay sane. Editor Hannah A. Park keeps the encounters lined up, the interplay amusing and insightful. Shiva Baby is funny, but the humour is as sharp as the lemons the characters chew on, Seligman bringing the curtain down while the going’s still good. AS

IN SELECT UK CINEMAS FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY
WITH SPECIAL Q&A
9 JUNE 2021  ON MUBI FROM 11 JUNE 2021

Zebra Girl (2021)

Dir.: Stephanie Zari; Cast: Sarah Roy, Jade Anouka, Tom Cullen, Daisy Mayer, Isabelle Connolly; UK 2021, 79 min.

In leafy suburbia Catherine (Roy) lives a seemingly blissful life with husband Dan (Cullen) when suddenly she stabs though the eye with an eight-inch knife in the opening scenes. Not altogether surprising when we later learn the same thing happened to her father who abused her as a teenager. All this is all delivered in ‘comic mode’.

Based on the one-woman-play “Catherine and Anita” performed by Roy to apparently rave reviews at Edinburgh Festival Fringe and King’s Head Theatre in London, Zari’s film debut is not so successful, mixing ultra-realism, horror elements and psychological traumata into an awkward narrative,

Catherine Derry’s stirring camerawork keeps things interesting from a visual point of view: dicing with inventive changes of perspective and frightening dolly-zooms. Derry also makes affective use of rush cuts, signalling that Catherine is clearly schizophrenic. Meanwhile Caspar Leonard’s score keeps the unsettling atmosphere alive.

But horror and real trauma do not make good bedfellows – apart from in gothic masterpieces – and Zebra Girl is set very much in a realist present where Catherine’s suffering is equally real. There is also an uneasy humour at play, particularly between Catherine and her friend Anita, which is far too flippant in the context of narrative. And these contradictory elements reduce Zebra Girl to a superficial, good-looking horror flic undermining the heroine’s tragic history. AS

David Hockney: the Arrival of Spring in Normandy 2020

David Hockney ‘Britain’s most expensive living artist’ (1937-) made a snap decision at the outbreak of Covid. Travelling to Normandy from his home in California his express intention was to capture the arrival of Spring – nature couldn’t be cancelled by the pandemic. 

Staying in a small wattle and daub house surrounded by four acres of countryside, he observed the blossoming of a new year frame by frame as spring emerged and took hold with all its drama and glory.

Hockney had first depicted this ‘most classical of subjects’ in his native Yorkshire in 2011 in a fifty two part work. This was the first time he took to his iPad and a show was later organised at the RA. Two years later he was back again working this time in charcoal on paper.

The Arrival of Spring in Normandy sees him taking to his iPad again but this time with a new app, adapted and developed to his specific requirements, allowing a freedom of expression and mobility to capture the fresh zinging elements in a ‘naif’ style that perfectly compliments foliage and flower, from March until July 2020. Working very much like the French Impressionists two hundred years ago, his pictures are captured ‘en plain air’, just like Monet in nearby Giverny. There is also an animated work featuring gentle rain falling a meadow. At 86 the much loved painter is still inspired and inspiring. MT

The Arrival of Spring in Normandy – is now showing at London’s Royal Academy of Arts 

 

Surge (2020)

Dir.: Aneil Karia; Cast: Ben Whishaw, Jasmine Jobson, Ellie Haddington, Ian Gelder, UK 2020, 100 min.

Director/co-writer Aneil Karia shows how easy it is to lose our grip on reality in these gruelling Covid times. Ben Whishaw is a man in flight, running away from himself and caring less and less about the consequences, or anyone he meets.

The story takes place over 24 hours in London where Joseph works in a soulless job in security at Stansted Airport. We first meet him enjoying a cake with his colleagues – only later do we get to know that this is Joseph’s birthday celebration. Unsatisfied and disillusioned for all sorts of reasons, not least his unresolved relationship with a colleague Lily,  Joseph’s life soon spins out of control after a minor incident involving a broken glass.

On the run again and making a bid to help Lily (Jobson) with some computer issue, Joseph soon loses control due to another minor setback. The narrative here is familiar, Karia focusing on mood and atmosphere to create a palpable feeling of desperation and disorientation in her first feature film.

Whishaw gives a flawless performance as the disenchanted Joseph who seems less and less affected by the unfolding mayhem. The graver the situation, the more nonchalant Joseph becomes as he disconnects from reality. Karia brings her feature to a soft landing, Joseph’s outburst of manic anger having run out of steam. DoP Stuart Bentley’s handheld camera follows the path of the tornado, a needling electronic score by Tujiko Noriko underlining the chaos of Joseph’s everyday life. A few cuts would make the result even more impressive, but Karia’s debut is nevertheless a confident tour-de-force. AS

SURGE WILL BE RELEASED IN UK CINEMAS AND ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS FROM 28TH MAY 2021.

Wall of Shadows (2021)

Dir/Wri: Eliza Kubarska | Polish Doc 98′

As Buddhists, Sherpas are very respectful of spirituality of their mountain habitat as we discovered in Jennifer Preedom’s award-winning documentary Sherpa. Their habitat of the Himalayas has long been exploited by an increasing number of tourists who they depend on for their livelihood, offering expert knowledge of the unique mountain range in return. But recently things have got out of hand with tourists expecting an increasingly luxurious experience that has led to overcrowding of the region that often results in tailbacks and risk-taking.  

The focus here in Wall of Shadows, that took a prize at the Bergen International Film Festival in Norway, is once again the intrinsic spirituality of this visually stunning but highly treacherous part of the world, where the weather can change in minutes leaving climbers stranded and in danger.

The film takes place in Nepal’s Kumbhakarna Mountain, the 32nd highest in the World and an outlier to Kangchenjunga, the 3rd highest peak with some highly challenging weather conditions and steep ascents. This is home to a Sherpa family who agree, against their better judgement, to take some experienced climbers who push the guides to uncomfortable emotional limits in order to reach the top. The Sherpas continually voice their concerns, but equally realise they won’t get paid if they don’t complete their contract, forcing them between a rock and a hard place. Meanwhile the Sherpas are clearly uneasy but continue to pray to the mountain spirits.

Their clients are three leading alpinists, the outstanding Polish climber Marcin Tomaszewski and two-time winners of the climbing Oscar (Golden Ice Axe) Dmitry Golovchenko and Sergei Nilov from Russia, take part in the expedition on the eastern face of the mountain which, at 7,400 metres, is one of the most difficult challenges in alpinism today. This is the first time they’ve worked as a team and tensions start to emerge surrounding their different strengths and weaknesses.

DoPs Piotr Rosolowski (who also co-wrote the script) and Keith Partridge conjure up a real sense of awe in the majesty of the locations making this feel like a spiritual journey while at the same time a highly dangerous one. Barbara Toennieshen creates a sense of slowly building tension with her clever editing which never cuts corners in allowing the unique serenity of the place to beguile the audience. To this day, Kumbhakarna’s East Face (7710m) remains unconquered. MT

The film is the third collaboration between director Eliza Kubarska and producer Monika Braid and is a Polish-German-Swiss co-production. MT

IN CINEMAS in the UK and Ireland on Friday 22nd April 2022.

 

Spring Blossom (2020) Curzon

Dir/Wri | Cast: Suzanne Lindon, Arnaud Valois, Frédéric Pierrot, Florence Viala | France, Drama 78′

A delicate sensuous coming of age story from Suzanne Lindon who stars as the film’s subversive heroine who is also rather a dark horse.

In her directing and acting debut Lindon has clearly inherited her parents’ talents – she’s the 20-year-old daughter of Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain, but wrote the film when she was only 15. They clearly said: “write about what you know” and this is exactly what’s she’s done, Spring Blossom has a freshness of touch that perfectly compliments its subtle narrative.

Spring Blossom is slim but evocatively recherché – avoiding gauche thrills or flirty silliness it feels its way intuitively forward. There’s a palpable sensuality to the heady taste of first love that slowly simmers and smoulders between the stylish but vulnerable high-school girl and her older crush Raphaël (Arnaud Valois), an actor performing in the local theatre and experiencing the ennui of performance fatigue. In a sun-dappled Southern France the amorous feelings gradually well up in her teenage heart but Suzanne remains dignified and secretive around her parents, sharing the odd complicit tete a tete with her younger sister.

There’s a sense that Suzanne will grow up to be subversively sensual like Jacqueline Bisset or Charlotte Rampling, still retaining that edgy sexiness that sets women like her apart from the crowd. And in a way Lindon’s slight narrative plays to the film’s advantage, hinting at the mysteries of female sexuality as Suzanne’s febrile imagination considers the art of seduction.

There’s something provocative but eminently natural about this suggestive love affair that seems grown-up and plausible, each character possessing calm dignity and an alluring sense of self. Seen from the young woman’s perspective, there’s nothing smutty about the concept of a teenager with an ‘older’ man, although you’d hardly notice the age different, Raphaël not coming across as a lothario,  but a ‘bon chic bon genre’ type of guy. The pairing has very much the clean-cut top drawer allure of Joanna Hogg’s recent The Souvenir, but the brittle cruelty of Tom Burke’s Anglo Saxon public school boy turned roguish love rat contrasts with the rather lowkey laidback loucheness of Valois’Raphaël. This is very much a French love story with a hint of Louis Garel’s early films about it all. MT

ON CURZON ONLINE FROM 23 APRIL 2021

 

Aviva (2021) Curzon

Dir.: Boaz Yakin; Cast: Zina Zinchenko, Tyler Philips, Bobbi Jene Smith, Or Schraiber; USA/France 2020, 116 min.

This fluid, romantic drama from American-Israeli writer director Boaz Yakin explores a fluid relationship between Parisian Aviva and her New York lover Eden. Dance and sex scenes dominate but the standout here in that the couple are in reality a quartet: Aviva has a male double, Eden a female one. They interact on all levels and in all combinations.

It all starts with a film-in-film scene where Aviva (Zinchenko), declares her love for the camera that follows them in their most banal and intimate moments. Her love object is Eden (Philips), the two are very intimate online – but after Aviva has moved to New York, their love-making is awkward, to say the least, Aviva complaining that Eden doesn’t look at her. Closeness, it seems, it much more easily achievable online. The couple’s gender alternatives are surprising: Eden’s female identity is acted out by Bobbi Jene Smith, Aviva’s male soul partner is Or Schraiber; with Smith and Schraiber, who are connected to the Israeli dance company Batsheva, responsible for the feature’s choreography.

An early rather enigmatic chapter, titled “Anatomy of a Kiss” deals with Aviva’s childhood: a montage of babies and fathers, parents having sex and lots of giggling teenagers. Eden’s backlog memories are a little more to the point with the little boy discovering that his boy friend is actually a little girl. “Paradise is lost” for Eden.

But there is a hint to adult Eden’s inability to come to terms with Aviva and his own female self. Dancing (and lovemaking) dominate: Eden’s history is told in flash-backs where lively kids dance and play in Coney Island. Eden has the most problematic rapport with his female self: his sullen behaviour while flat-hunting with Aviva is typically male (as well as the boy he was). When not the centre of attention, he shouts at his inner woman. This all constitutes a form of misogyny, which has so far not been shown on screen.

The wedding scene is therefore, logically, acted out by the two female selves. Unfortunately, the love story is rather gloomy with banal dialogue, Eden coming across as more and more insecure. Aviva is much more able to come to terms with her dual existence. A rather morbid injury to the titular heroine and a late announced pregnancy propel the action forward – until the audience has to guess the identity of the ‘couples’ walking off in the park.

Yakin has difficulty developing the threadbare storyline into a two-hour feature, edging dangerously near to pretentiousness. DoP Arseni Khachaturian saves the day with a dreamlike atmosphere that somehow softens the sex scenes, creating something wild and other-worldly heightened by Asaf Avidan’s, enthusiastic score. Zina Zinchenko leads an inspired cast, transforming the rather tepid script into something extraordinary. AS

CURZON HOME CINEMA | 30 April 2021

The Red Kimona (1925)

Dir: Walter Lang | Wri: Dorothy Arzner, Adela Rogers St Johns | Cast: Priscilla Bonner, Nellie Bly Baker, Carl Miller, Mary Carr, Virginia Pearson | US Silent 76′

One of the most sought after missing Hollywood silents is Human Wreckage (1923), a drama about drug addiction that was the first of three crusading independent productions produced by and featuring the actress Dorothy Davenport under the name “Mrs Wallace Reid”.

Number Three was The Crimson Kimona which manages to pack an incredible amount of plot into under eighty minutes while addressing the thorny subjects of prostitution and the rehabilitation of offenders; and, like Human Wreckage, was banned by the British Board of Censors. Unlike the former this happily still survives.

The surprises start early with the name of Walter Lang – whose debut feature this was – prominently displayed as director. For 25 years from the mid-thirties until the early sixties, Lang was a competent ‘A’ feature workhorse for Fox whose name adorns such bland big budget fodder as The King and I without his name ever on its own account ever exciting much interest among scholars. Lang gets solo credit on The Red Kimona (Mrs Wallace Reid getting a separate supervisory one), and does a remarkably good job, aided by excellent photography by James Diamond and uniformly good performances, not all of them credited. (Tyrone Powers Sr, for example, plays Gabrielle’s brutish father, but the pinched-faced actress playing her mother is uncredited). In order to sugar the pill of the earnest Sunday school nature of the subject (complete with biblical quotations), The Red Kimona is replete throughout with blandishments that keep the audience attentive, ranging from coloured inserts of the eponymous Red Kimona (presumably designed to symbolise the heroine’s fall from polite society) to an invigorating car chase through Santa Fe.

Making much of being based on a genuine criminal case in New Orleans in 1917, and scripted by Adela Rogers St. Johns and Dorothy Arzner, the film begins and ends with Mrs Wallace Reid speaking directly to camera, her words conveyed by subtitles; a device routinely used in sound films and on television, but which I’ve never before encountered in a silent film.

Gabrielle’s suitor Howard Blaine (played by Carl Miller) is so repulsive – significantly a bruise can be seen on her upper arm in one scene, and the only kindness she receives later is from the prison matron – one suspects a diatribe against men is in the offing; but socialite Mrs. Fontaine, her Mrs Danvers like housekeeper (played with crow-like malice by Emily Fitzroy) and her coven of clucking lady friends get equally short shrift (another eye-catching performance by an uncredited performer is by the actress who plays Mrs. Fontaine’s cynical maid). Gabrielle meanwhile finds her knight in shining armour in a chauffeur’s uniform in the form of Mrs. Fontaine’s chauffeur Freddy, engagingly played by Theodore Von Eltz.

As Gabrielle herself, Priscilla Bonner’s performance grows on you as the film progresses (which is not in straight chronological sequence) and her character evolves as she rolls her big round eyes lovingly filmed in close up. (Like historical detective fiction author Anne Perry when the release of Heavenly Creatures [1994] outed her forty years after the event as the fifties teenage killer Juliet Hulme, the real life Gabrielle Darley was less than thrilled at having the spotlight again turned on her without her permission using her real name; and in 1931 she successfully sued Mrs Wallace Reid for substantial damages.) @Richard Chatten

 

Palm Springs (2020)

Dir: Max Barbakow | Cast: Andy Sandberg, Cristin Milioti, J K Simmons, Peter Gallagher | US Romcom 90′

As romcoms go this is a blast of sunshine at a grim time when cheerful moving pictures are just what you need when you can’t be bothered with anything deep. Well that’s not exactly fair – Groundhog Day-style buddy movie with a time-loop conceit is probably the best way to describe a film that seeks to escape the infernal repetitiveness of you know what, powered forward by the frisky frolics of a dynamite duo that is Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti whose budding romance feels real and adds meaning – although nothing surprising – to the party as wedding guests forced to go through the same day again and again. There are laughs to be had and it doesn’t overstay its welcome, perfect for an easy night in (again!). MT

NOW ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS

Symphony of Noise (2021) CPH:DOX

as

 

Dir.: Enrique Sanchez Lansch; Documentary with Matthew Herbert; Germany 2021, 93 min.

Spanish director Enrique Sanchez Lansch has followed British composer Matthew Herbert for ten years to record his experimental sounds in this rather experimental film that plays out like a performance.

Herbert’s credo is that mankind should listen more closely to sounds, if they want to topple right-wing governments – even though the Kent born composer admits that this target may be too fanciful. The genre-breaker Herbert has a proven track record: over 30 albums, film scores, among one for Ridley Scott, and an Oscar for the score of A Fantastic Woman (although the opening track was actually Alan Parson’s Project classic ‘Time’. 

Whether underwater or in outer space, Herbert feels entirely at home, composing even for audiences who are asleep. But it all started much closer to home when Herbert recorded the noises of his newly-born piglets for the rest of their lives – even during their slaughter. He is tired of the repetitive approach to piano and violin, so has learned to play both instruments from scratch, transferring his critique to the cooking of an omelette.

Forty-four eggs are first selected, a bared-footed woman then crunches the shells, the sound creating a sort of entirely new sounds while the omelette is being made. Other sound mixes include people having sex; forests being cut down; and an over-ground train in Berlin. Having lived in the city, Herbert has created a sound Symphony of people dying (79) and being born (183), with his “orchestra” performing the applicable noises like the final breath and first cry.

Mahler’s music is certainly appropriate for a staged funeral, with the composer combining this performance, and discovering that Mahler had to use a flute for a birdsong, whilst the teenage boy Herbert could use a recorder to catch the original sound of the birds.

In the RIAS Berlin radio station, Herbert rehearses his BrexitBig Band“, to protest against the vote in favour of leaving the EU. “Leave all the fuckers and their hatred behind” is one of the refrains. Having watched Emma swim for 14 hours in the English Channel, we then imagine a love song between an English and French person on the shores of the English channel aka ‘La Manche’.

Tree cutting sounds remind the composer that “we are all living in an emergency situation. Nevertheless, he still has time to deep-fry his trumpet in a Fish and Chip shop, before ending in space with “the impossible sound of solar winds” and “the sound of virgin lights hurtling through space.”

DoPs Thilo Schmidt and Anne Misselwitz use appropriate images for this cacophony of sounds. And although Sanchez Lansch starts to feel like a mischievous magician pulling too many rabbits to pull out of a hat with his myriad exotic recordings Symphony is certainly inventive and full of weird ideas that occasionally stun and surprise the audience. AS

CPH:DOX COPENHAGEN 2021

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) Prime Video

Dir: Anthony Mann | Cast: Christopher Plummer, Sophia Loren, James Mason, Alex Guinness | US Action drama

Samuel Bronston’s answer to Heaven’s Gate is usually dismissed as inferior to El Cid, but The Fall of the Roman Empire still has recent Desert Island Disks castaway Sophia Loren in it (according to George MacDonald Fraser the historical Livia was “a murderous adultress who tried to assassinate her brother”, so maybe Lollobrigida should have played her after all); plus the inevitable Finlay Currie clinching this film’s credentials as a bona fide vintage historical epic. There is also the bonus of Alec Guinness and James Mason.

The late Christopher Plummer meanwhile hit his stride as a screen actor as the seriously mad Emperor Commodus. (He and director Anthony Mann had a such a blast working together they were keen to do another picture together; but Mann sadly died only four years and one and a half films later before that could happen.)

The fact that it was a colossal financial (and critical) flop simply enhances its grandeur and the money is certainly all there up on the screen, with impressively wintry location work shot outside Madrid; while the recreation of the Forum in Rome made it into the ‘Guinness Book of Records’ as the largest set ever built for a movie. (There is none of that fake-looking CGI or wobbly steadicam that ruins 21st Century epics. And what colours!)

Robert Krasker and composer Dimitri Tiomkin both surpassed their work on the previous film, and although like most epics it’s at least an hour too long, Plummer comes into his own in that final lap; his emergence from a giant hand worth of Brigitte Helm flaunting herself in Metropolis and Dietrich shedding a gorilla skin in Blonde Venus. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

 

Bellum – The Daemon of War (2021) Visions du Reel 2021

Dir.: David Herdies, Georg Götmark; Documentary with Bill Lyon, Fredrik Bruhn, Paula Bonstein, Aisha Lyon, Sweed, Karolina Bruhn; narrated by Johannes Anyuru; Sweden/ Denmark 2021, 87 min.

War is in the DNA of humans, always has been. The Romans were masters of conquering countries on more than one continent. Their motto was “War pays for itself, so soldiers do not need to be paid, there is always plenty to plunder”. Statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BC) was an early warmonger, ending his speeches in front of the Senate for years with the call for war: “Anyhow, I am of the opinion, that we should destroy Cartago”. After a few years, his peers got the message and the African city, capital of a kingdom, was indeed conquered.

This essay film from Swedish director duo David Herdies and Georg Götmark traces the history of war, present and future: veteran war photographer Paula Bronstein delivering some cruel images from Kabul.

But amidst the doom and gloom AI scientist Fredrick Bruhn has a surprisingly upbeat theory about the end of armed conflict, and US veterans Sweed and Bill Lyon are the living examples of survivors of the recent outings of the US war machine.

Not that far from Los Alamos in New Mexico, where Robert Oppenheimer and his team developed the first nuclear bomb in the State of Nevada (his prophetical warnings open the feature) is the location of the US Army’s Drone Operations and Training Base – AFB. Demonstrators with placards protest outside the gates, while veterans Sweed and co, cheer on every car leaving or entering the compound, making fun of the demonstrators. “I bet she borrowed the baby”, comments Sweed on a mother carrying her child.

Later we listen to Sweed and his friend Bill Lyon talking about their active service experience that destroyed people rather than buildings. In training, the drones attacked the simulated town of Kandahar, creating the atmosphere of an arcade game. The images are not just circles any more, but human forms, the intention is to blur the lines between the lines between practice and real actions. But for the veterans, the question is just survival: “When your compound has been hit, you are either dead, or you go back to sleep. For most people this is crazy, but I loved it. It was boring when you get home.”

Meanwhile Bronstein shows the photos of the Kabul victims she asks a boy to give her a smile. He refuses. Paula explains” I want to put some beauty into my photos, some life. To make the victims human. Meanwhile AI developer Fredrik Bruhn is hopeful about the future: “We are twenty years away from the point, when a computer can build the next generations of AI himself, he will replicate human brains, but goes much further than the 500 billion synapses of our brains. I do not see that we can have a world without war, as long as humans are in control. But robots do not have our DNA inheritance, they do not need to act like us. In the end the question will be about human existence, or the survival of digital humanity.

Bellum is perhaps too complex for its limited running time. But it certainly shows the existential question flagging up the need to write humankind out of the script. The documentary is dedicated to Bill Lyon, who, like Sweed, passed away. AS

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM COMP | VISIONS DU REEL 2021

Iorram | Boat Song (2021) Glasgow Film Festival 2021

Dir: Alistair Cole | UK Doc 96′

The first ever film in Scots Gaelic and none the worse for it, the native tongue – which has possibly only a year to live in its native setting – adding considerable atmosphere and poignancy to this impressionistic and informative portrait about fishing past and present before globalisation, climate change and Brexit decimated the stock. This film will certainly be meat ‘n bread (and possibly fish?) for dear old Nicola Sturgeon who is very much the poster girl for her country’s fishing industry. Livelihoods are at risk, not to mention the Scottish cultural heritage.

Back in the good old days fishing was the main industry up in the Western Isles around Barra, Vatersay and Cape Wrath, over a hundred miles North of Glasgow where the film screens at this year’s festival. The inhabitants of the islands today are observed on land and on water going about the business of fishing, while the ghostly voices of their ancestors tell stories and sing songs about life at the mercy of the sea.

In the mid-20th century, with the advent of portable sound recording, researchers started visiting the Outer Hebrides to preserve the voices of the islands for future generations. These were the first recordings to capture the oral history of Scottish Gaelic culture which stretches back thousands of years, and once covered the whole of Scotland, but now survives mainly in the island communities off the west coast.

Iorram is a second feature documentary for Alistair Cole whose work explores the link between language and the environment, as here where the evocative seascapes of the Outer Hebrides light up every frame. Music and fishing go very much hand in hand with being a sailor, songs and shanties keeping up the spirits and camaraderie during long or arduous forays into the blue yonder, and award-winning folk musician Aidan O’Rourke provides the film’s entrancing soundscape. Interestingly the word for rabbit sounds similar to the Spanish ‘conijo’.

Gaelic was once spoken across most of Scotland, but sadly Scottish Gaelic has now only around 11,000 habitual speakers, mainly in the Outer Hebrides, according to a recent study by the University of Highlands & Islands. Ironically, interest in Scots Gaelic is booming, with Gaelic schools flourishing in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and world interest in learning the the language has come via the internet and a ‘phone app (Duolingo has more than 560,000 registered learners worldwide signed up to Scots Gaelic).

Alistair Cole works as his own DoP to create stunning 4k observational footage of island life today. While the sailers prepare their creels to set out for the lobster and langoustine catch, and these action sequences are combined with imaginative land and seascapes captured on the widescreen. Meanwhile the film’s narration is composed of archive sound recordings of Gaelic speakers in the Outer Hebrides from the 1940s to 1970s reminiscing about the past when fish were so plentiful that the boats were often out all summer, and the locals time on land was spent busy with the harvest and looking after livestock. Holidays were never even considered, let alone taken. Other filmed footage shows local woman going about the meticulous preparation of the prized catch destined for restaurants all over Europe and these contrast with the lilting voices of the past sharing magical tales of fairies, mermaids and patron saints of the islands keeping the folklore alive.

Over the past decade, the School of Scottish Studies Archives has digitised and restored these recordings. Cole has selected the most emotional and lyrical voices in exploring the often fraught relationship between the fishing community and the stormy Atlantic Ocean.

World Premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival on February 28th 2021, followed by a virtual UK theatrical release from March 5th 2021 via the Modern Films ( in collaboration with key independent cinemas across the UK, and other partner organisations.

 

 

 

Breeder (2021) Digital/Bluray

Dir: Jens Dahl | Cast: Signe Egholm Olsen, Sara Hjort Ditlevsen | Thriller, Denmark

This brutal survival horror outing from Denmark’s Jens Dahl’s – who actually wrote Nic Winding Refn’s drug thriller Pusher – is set in rather sophisticated surroundings in a smart part of Copenhagen.

‘Women beware women’ is very much the order of the day here as female themselves are the victims of a curious bio-hacking experiment, run by a ruthless businesswoman (Signe Egholm Olsen) who is using her health supplement company as a front for selecting and abducting them as part of an experiment to reverse the ageing process, which most of the female population could end up benefiting from if only they could survive.

The central character Mia (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen, Borgman) tries to get to the bottom of it all and ends up trapped, branded and tortured in a grim underground facility. Familiar faces start to appear, and Mia realises she is not alone in all this. But does she have the will to survive and escape from the nightmare? Or do we really care?

Dahl has some interesting ideas but lacks the directing experience to pull it all off successfully, and despite his considerable talents as a writer he relies on a  script by Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen. Slack pacing and an unremarkable cast are supported by Nikolai Lok’s camerawork that certainly looks impressive, but you can’t rely on images alone to make a gripping horror film.

Clearly Dahl is harking back to the New French Extreme films at the turn of this century from filmmakers such as Gaspar Noé’s, Catherine Breillat and Leo Carax but Breeder is rather a pale rider in comparison to Polar X, Baise Moi or even Trouble Every Day. MT

NOW ON BLURAY & DIGITAL from MONTAGE PICTURES

The Lesson | Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2021 | 18-26 March 2021

Dir: Elena Horn | Germany, Doc 60′

It is often said that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. At the age of 14 every school child in Germany is taught about the atrocities that occurred under Nazi rule. Filmmaker Elena Horn returns to her hometown in rural Germany to follow four of these children as they first learn about the Holocaust.

Five years in the making (2014-19), the film touches upon important social and political issues including the resurgence of the far-right, xenophobia, the fractured, disparate collective memory of National Socialism, and the surprising lack of intimate knowledge of the younger generations on the subject.

Screening at this year’s HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL the documentary opens as the camera pans over the summer countryside where a girl from a village in West Germany (where not much has changed since 1932) recalls talking to a tall, dark athletic American after an evening out with college friends. He turns to her and says: “your grandparents killed my grandparents” this was her first meeting with a Jewish guy and she was 21.

Screening during this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival, the documentary goes on to explore with archive footage and clips from the contemporary German classroom how despite the perceived exemplary educational system, new generations are growing indifferent to their nation’s dark past and unwilling to apply the lessons learned to the realities of today. Filmed against the backdrop of changing political scenery during five years of production, in Germany and across the world, the film subtly suggests the urgency and importance in tackling the uncomfortable modern reality of truths therein. MT

Elena Horn is a young German filmmaker who started her career as a media psychologist researching the framing effects in the news coverage of the Iraq War in the US, Britain, and Sweden. Today she is working as a story producer for ZDF, WDR, SKY and SPIEGEL TV Wissen. Elena’s films focus on questions around education, migration, working culture, love, and ethnic conflict, employing visual inspirations from the world of music and dance. As a director, Elena is a fellow of the Logan Non-Fiction Program in New York. Her short documentary Pizza, Democracy and the Little Prince, co-directed with Alessandro Leonardi, earned the “Best Short Documentary Award 2019” at the Sedona Film Festival. Currently Elena is working as a director for ARTE, a French-German culture channel.

SCREENING DURING HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021

ALL FILMS AVAILABLE TO SCREEN 

 

The Great Adventure | Det stora äventyret (1953) Netflix

Dir: Arne Sucksdorff | Cast: Arne Sucksdorff, Anders Nohrborg, Kjell Sucksdorff, Gunnar Sjoberg | Sweden, 93′

The Great Adventure is a lyrical Swedish cinema verite drama that pictures a year on a farm in remote Sweden seen through the eyes of the family who live in the heart of the forest, the director doubling up as the pipe-smoking father.

 

Arne Sucksdorff’s film won prizes at Cannes (1954) and Berlin, appropriately taking a Silver Bear for the poetic way he combined truly magical wildlife photography with a gripping storyline and evocative score to create a nature tale that plays out like a thriller with touches of humour and sadness  – the feel is a cross between Tarka the Otter, My Life as a Dog and Mikhail Kalatozov’s Letter Never Sent. And all the time Arne is offering us a fascinating nature study with the most beautifully observed shots of owls, otters, pine martins, rabbits, squirrels and lynx, in their natural habitat, ever committed to celluloid film in the depths of 1950s Sweden.

Working with his composer Lars-Erik Larsson, and it took Arne two years to film and edit the material for his Berlin winner. Mysterious yet majestic the sly vixen is pivotal to the narrative, somehow emerging the tragic heroine with her family of cubs. Arne’s agile contre-jour camerawork following her antics from Midsummer’s white nights through to the snowbound winter, stealthily slinking through moonshine or broad daylight – one scene shows her toying with silk stockings on a washing line. Always fleeing at the last minute with a plump chicken she darts across swaying curtains of corn or flowery meadows, to feed the cubs.

Man is the villain in this rural adventure, determined to kill the beast, his shotgun poised at the ready. One scene sees the old fisherman springing a vicious iron trap, then opportunistically tracking an otter with an axe. As the otter bobs away across the twinkling snow drifts, the chase gains momentum, a fox cub joining in the chase. Eventually the kids come to the rescue (Kjell is Arne’s son) saving the otter from a burrow and keeping it as their secret pet. Sometimes the mood is upbeat, others more sinister, the animals unwitting players in this often nightmarish murder story, that often ends in tragedy, but there are surprises in store in this incredible journey. MT

THE GREAT ADVENTURE IS ON NETFLIX

MLK/FBI (2020)

Dir.: Sam Pollard; Documentary with Clarence Jones, Charles Know, James Comey, Donna March , Beverly Gage, Andrew Young; USA 2020, 104 min.

Seasoned documentarian Sam Pollard takes a deep dive into the FBI’s surveillance on Dr Martin Luther King (1929-68) in this searing study  proving that systemic racism is still alive and kicking in the USA today.

Enriched by newly released material, Pollard’s findings are inspired by David Garrow’s book ‘The FBI and Martin Luther King’ and cleverly put together by editor Laura Tomaselli and Benjamin Hedin.

There’s still more to this story because the actual wire tapes of the FBI surveillance of MLK won’t be be released until 2027 – but what emerges is a fervent obsession with the subject on the part of the FBI’s director Edgar J. Hoover (who headed the agency from 1924 until his death in 1972). It tells how the cross-dressing Hoover invested at least as much energy in the Civil Rights leader’s political activities as in his sexual conquests.

Hoover directed William Sullivan (for ten years the chief of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Operations) to wire tap King, not only at home, but during his hotel stays on the campaign trail throughout America. Hoover wanted to probe MLK’s extra-marital affairs to discredit his leadership and his campaign. He and his G-men used the white man’s prejudice with Black male sexuality, to denigrate ‘Black Men’ as animalistic beasts, endangering the sexual purity of white women and the racial integrity of the white race as a whole. This racist pathology, as shown in Griffith’ Birth of a Nation, is still alive today, with White Supremacists storming the Capitol on 6th of January. Back in the 1960s, all polls showed the popularity of Hoover’s agenda: the majority of the nation wanted him to defeat King and his movement.

Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, made him a household name, Hoover and MLK met only once, in November 1964, but sides reported the meeting as amicable, although many supporters on both sides, had a different opinion. Even though MLK was instrumental in the 1956 Montgomery (Alabama) Bus Strike, the FBI did not pay special attention to him back then. MLK only emerged as a one to watch, at least for the FBI, in 1963, when he led the March to Washington and the events of that same year in Birmingham (Alabama)  when Governor Wallace, a supporter of KKK, provoked an uproar.

It was unfortunate that one of MLK’s closest advisers, the NY lawyer Stanley Levison, who had faced HUAC trials and was supposed to help communist front organisations, gave Hoover the excuse to build King up into a “Black Messiah” figure, who wanted to destroy the USA with the help of the Communists. Footage of McCarthy-era Hollywood films Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) and I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951) show a real paranoia since the CPUS hardly played any real role in the political arena.

But Hoover and the FBI declared, that Black men and women were particularly suggestible to Communist propaganda. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, the Attorney General, authorised the FBI wiretapping King and his inner circle. This led to the discovery of King’s extra-marital affairs.

In 1964, President LB Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, and MLK was awarded the Nobel Price for Peace, meanwhile Hoover sent ‘salacious’ material to King’s wife Coretta Scott King suggesting her husband consider suicide before Hoover made the material public – including a sort of ‘hit list’ of his sexual conquests.

The FBI’s actions did not stop with wire-tapping: they had two very influential sources in the MLK campaign who reported back daily on his moves. One was Ernest C. Withers, the “un-official” photographer of the Civil Rights movement, who worked for the FBI for 18 years. Then there was James D. Harrison, who gave the FBI all details of MLK’s personal and political assignations.

In 1965 protests against the Vietnam War become more numerous in the US and President Johnson is quoted as saying “we can’t be defenceless”, while accelerating the USA involvement in the war. King meanwhile was engaged in Southern Christian Leadership Conference ( SCLC), which led to the “Poor People’s Campaign” and the March to Washington in March 1968.

King was very much against the Vietnam War, but he was also aware of a need to support President Johnson. He broke his silence after 18 months of deliberations, stating “silence is traitorous”. At the same time, in March 1968, Sullivan began preparations for “Rape Allegations”, which were supposed to be made public.

On 4th of April 1968 MLK was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. The perpetrator James Earl Ray was convicted of his murder, even though many questioned how Ray could have acted alone, with the area swarming with FBI agents.

MLK/FBI leaves a bitter taste particularly in the light of the current political situation in the US after the storming of the Capitol. White Supremacis violence threatens the existence of a democratic USA. With the Republican Party hell-bent on destroying the very Constitution, their former President Trump was supposed to be guarding just please supremacist supporters happy, the nation has clearly reached a point when, 43 years after Martin Luther King’s murder, racism is threatening the country in an even more existential way. AS

DOGWOOF RELEASES THIS BAFTA-LONGLISTED DOC TO DVD and BLURAY on 22 FEBRUARY 2021

The Dog Who Wouldn’t be Quiet | El Perro que no calla (2020)

Dri: Ana Katz | Argentina, Drama 73′

A dreamy absurdist meditation on life with man’s best friend seems well-pitched for this time when many increasingly rely on their pets – particularly dogs – to see them through loneliness and crisis. Screaming kids are part of life but not everyone tolerates a barking dog. But our canine friends can often highlight the general mood better than humans.

In her offbeat debut feature Argentinian filmmaker Ana Katz offers a gentle lowkey reflection of the life and times of Sebastian and his canine companion, that gradually opens out to touch on wider concerns. Set in a community struggling to survive economic turndown, Sebastian is struggling to hold down a job but his dog Rita spends her lonely days howling, much to the annoyance of his neighbours. Watching calmly and intelligently as Sebastian deals with the negative comments  about her at his place of work, the realisation dawns that he will have to leave his job. But on a walk through the surrounding countryside, the decision is made for him. And this is delicately conveyed in a series of black and white sketches that carry a poignant sorrowful message.

The dog’s anxiety ripples out into a widespread ‘cri de coeur’ expressing the collective concern of a population lacking in agency and forced into passive endurance of their uneventful daily lives.

Essentially this is a series of episodes in Sebastian’s life as he goes from place to place gamely looking for work, while also playing an active part in his mother’s days with her sophisticated friends. This all culminates in a romantic meeting on the dance-floor and a family of his own.

A comet disaster, shown again in drawing form, provides an ecological watershed and the film’s lowkey Sci-fi twist that sees the Earth’s atmosphere become contaminated above ground level. Sebastian, who is now working in a farming collective, is forced to adapt to the confusing changes, including wearing a glass bubble mask (you can appreciate the social resonance here). This new normal situation becomes a routine that Sebastian and his fiends will have to accept. But it somehow is the making of him.

Filming in black-and-white film with an inconsequential original score, this is a promising debut that doesn’t quite manage to hang together despite some strong ideas, and the comedy angle is amongst them. Ana Katz get some naturalistic performances from her cast, and Daniel Katz makes for a likeable Sebastian in the central role. Rita is rather underwritten, and it’s a shame her role is so truncated as she could have provided the link to bringing the narrative together and garnering empathy from dog lovers everywhere. MT.

ON CURZON HOME CINEMA | 21 MAY 2021

ROTTERDAM FILM FEST | WINNER – BIG SCREEN AWARD 2021

Black Medusa (2021) Mubi

Dir: Ismael & Youssef Chebbi | Drama, Tunisia, 95′

The Black Medusa Nada is in some ways emblematic of her home town of Tunis in this enigmatic fantasy thriller portrait of contemporary North African womanhood.

In this first feature Tunisian filmmakers Ismael and Youssef Chebbi are clearly supportive of their embittered main character – who choses not to communicate verbally – investing her with the power to hit back at the male-dominated Arab society where she has grown up in the aftermath of the revolution. Nour Hajri makes for a mesmerising Nada – the aptly named Black Medusa – who modestly goes her about her daily routine before diving into the nighttime shadows to prey on unsuspecting suitors.

Nada’s modus operandi is a ritual of revenge unfolding over nine. First, she poses as a sympathetic confidante to her male suitors – then she stabs them viciously, and seemingly with impunity. But her murderous behaviour soon rouses the suspicions of her workplace colleague Noura, who discovers a knife used in the attacks, and die is cast.

Underwritten characters and a slim but suggestive premise are clearly the result of the filmmakers budget constraints in a feature shot at lightening speed, and scripted in only two weeks. Enigma somehow works to their advantage here but not in the way they had anticipated with Nada serving the narrative as a beguiling counterpoint to the film’s much stronger (and in some ways more interesting) character – Tunis itself, gradually emerging in the nocturnal odyssey through this intriguing capital.

Stylistically brave in its striking black and white beauty and eclectic soundscape, the film makes for a slow and sinuous study of the nighttime antics of urban Tunisians in a voyeuristic expose of this classic coastal city with its ancient medinas and modern architectural flourishes and broad palm-fringed boulevards that will eventually lead to Carthage and Sidi Bou Said.

The directors meld Noir and Giallo styles satisfyingly in a memorable revenge thriller that serves as a sophisticated showcase to a siren-like capital city where a serial killer is on a voyage of discovery to liberate herself from the past. MT

ON MUBI FROM 25 January 2022

 

 

 

Madalena (2021) Mubi

Dir: Madiano Marcheti | Thriller Brazil 85′

More transexuals are killed in Brazil than anywhere else in the world and this sobering thought provides the touchstone to Madiano Marcheti’s assured feature debut that premiered exactly a year ago at Rotterdam’s film festival’s 50th celebration.

Madalena is a murder mystery that is never solved. We see a broken body lying in a field of lushly swaying soya, but we never discover much more – this is not a crime procedural or a whodunnit. What Madalena does provide is a haunting and unsettling snapshot of the cultural and societal references that support intolerance in this deeply religious, patriarchal and macho part of rural Brazil that remains connected and influenced by the modern world and yet at the same time, tethered in the past. In this sense the setting (where the director himself grew up) is very much a character that influences what has gone before. In this eerie tropical landscape, ostriches strut like creatures out of a Sci-fi thriller and drones trawl the skies patrolling the vast acres of farmland. Meanwhile monsters are being bred in the frivolous disco-dancing, vape-smoking, body-conscious urban hinterland, and they’re called men.

Capturing the vast open skyscapes and deathly silences of the spooky agrarian setting Marcheti stealthily explores the aftermath to Madalena’s death through three protagonists who are unknown to each other as they gradually become aware of her disappearance. The details are left unclear and we never find out how the death eventually leaks out into the news.

Club hostess Luziane calls round at Madalena’s simple village home several times, her mother pressurising her to borrow money, but Madalena is nowhere to be found. The narrative then shifts to body-builder Cristiano who works for his land-owning father, spending his time smoking drinking and injecting himself with hormones. He can’t forget what he’s seen in the soyafields, so he takes his friend Gildo back to where he originally saw the body but it’s a hostile and inhospitable terrain that keeps its secret well hidden.

In a mellow and soft-centred finale it’s left to trans woman Bianca and her girlfriends to pack up Madalena’s possessions as they share memories of happier times with their friend. Marcheti never passes judgement on his characters, they are merely there to serve the narrative – but none is particularly likeable, leaving us to reach our own conclusions on this sinister story and the hostile and unknowable place where it all unfolds. MT

NOW ON MUBI I TIGER COMPETITION

Berlinale 2021 | Jury Announced

Six Golden Bear winning directors will head up this year’s Berlinale main competition jury and decide on the prizes in Competition at the 71st Berlinale.

The festival’s Aristic Director Carlo Chatrian announced there would be no president this year. But expressed his gratitude to the jury members:

They express not only different ways of making uncompromising films and creating bold stories but also they represent a part of the history of the Berlinale. In this moment in time, it is meaningful and a great sign of hope that the Golden Bear winners will be in Berlin watching films in a theatre and finding a way to support their colleagues“,
The members of the 2021 International Jury:

Mohammad Rasoulof (Iran)
Director of the Golden Bear winning-film There is No Evil, 2020

Nadav Lapid (Israel)
Director of the Golden Bear winning-film Synonyms, 2019

Adina Pintilie (Romania)
Director of the Golden Bear winning-film Touch Me Not, 2018

Ildikó Enyedi (Hungary)
Director of the Golden Bear winning-film On Body and Soul, 2017

Gianfranco Rosi (Italy)
Director of the Golden Bear winning-film Fire At Sea, 2016

Jasmila Žbanić (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Director of the Golden Bear winning-film Grbavica, 2006

Summer Special

From June 9 to 20, the festival offers a Summer Special featuring numerous physical cinema screenings and the opportunity to experience a large portion of the films in the presence of the filmmakers themselves. The start of the Summer Special on June 9 will be celebrated with a festive opening event.

BERLINALE 2021 | MARCH & JUNE 2021

Mighty Flash (2021)

Dir: Ainhoa Rodrigues | Spain, Fantasy Drama 90′

Life in Southern Spain hasn’t changed much for the God-fearing and deeply suspicious repressed but dying to burst out from their in rural communities in Extremadura. And women are the keenest to break free. Or at least that’s the impression we get from Ainhoa Rodriguez’ deliciously dark and delightfully observed first feature that unfolds with a cast of non-pros on the widescreen and in intimate – often voyeuristic – closeup.

Mighty Flash is an amusing story of country folk and their sexual frustrations and ethnographical portrait of a remote group of people, spiced up with magic realist touches. These country dwellers may be cut off from the rest of Spain but they are as thick as thieves amongst themselves, supporting one another and sharing tales of farming exploits, folklore and strange happenings in the surrounding countryside – not to mention vicious social gossip. Like Dickens’ Mr Micawber they are constantly waiting for something to turn up, not just the Second Coming or the Madonna at the local Semana Santa processions. 

Isa records suggestive messages to herself that speak of strange events: “A mighty flash of light will appear above the village, which will change everything”, she hears herself say. “It is magnificent. We will all get a headache, we will lose our memories and we will disappear.” Cita is a deeply unsatisfied with her life and one morning leaves her warm matrimonial bed and heads to the church to pray, all dolled up in a mini dress and blow-dry. This naturally sparks criticism and wagging tongues amongst the other women: “nothing will come of her” they chunter conspiratorially. 

Although the womenfolk are frustrated in the deadbeat backwater, the men seem more contented with their daily grind. Nothing happens but actually everything happens. High hopes are met with unrealised dreams. But the tone here is drole and upbeat, always positive, never bitter.

Loneliness has no place in this community, despite its lack of potential. Days are fraught with the social round. All done up in pearls and fur coats – not to mention high heels – ladies lunch together and talk of sexual desire and personal fulfilment – and their dissatisfaction with the menfolk is fully realised in scenes enlivened by surrealist flourishes. María mourns her deceased husband, Paco. Sometimes, someone hears a sound that escapes everyone else. Can it be real or just a fantasy.? Female imagination catches fire while the men simply hunker down with their mates and animals – especially the little goat farmer who describes tricking a female goat into bringing up a kid from another litter.

Cleverly observed, pert and well-paced with its punchy electronic soundtrack and touches of magic realism deftly woven into the narrative, Mighty Flash is a real one off. Working hard – and successfully – to build a bond of trust with her cast Rodriquez’ first feature fizzes with intrigue behind its zipped-up facade. A brilliantly observed portrait of modern Spain that could be from the dark ages. Ironic, inspired and in the delicate spirit of Victor Erice. MT

NOW ON MUBI | ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | TIGER COMPETITION | VILNIUS FILM FESTIVAL | EUROPEAN DEBUT COMPETITION Best Director: Ainhoa Rodríguez

 

 

 

The Dig (2021) Netflix

Dir.: Simon Stone; Cast: Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes, Archie Barnes, Monica Dolan, Johnny Flynn, Ken Stott, Lily James, Peggy Piggott; UK 2021, 112 min.

This tender and touching tale about loss and the fragility of life takes place in the soft landscape of Suffolk just as England is entering another World War in 1938.

The Dig is ostensibly about the discovery of an ancient burial site at  Sutton Hoo but its historical significance pales into insignificance and the human story is what we remember, sensitively brought to life by Moira Buffini’s skilful adaptation of John Preston’s novel, and Carey Mulligan’s deeply affecting performance as young world-weary widow Edith Pretty who lives at the Hoo with her young son Robert (Barnes).

The repercussions of the Great War are still being felt even in rural Suffolk where Edith maintains a noblesse oblige approach despite her life-limiting heart condition brought on by rheumatic fever. Robert is gently traumatised by the thought of losing another parent, in a household where everyone is crying silently but putting a brave face on things. Ralph Fiennes gradually becomes an unlikely saviour as the stern, pipe-smoking amateur archeologist Basil Brown who Edith hires to investigate mounds of soil on her land. Robert takes very well to the individualist Brown, but it gradually emerges he is married to local lass Mary Brown (Dolan) and that’s another sad story.

Naturally being England, emotions are well buttoned-up despite the balmy summer setting; director Simon Stone possibly had LP Hartley’s The Go-Between in mind with his imagining of events, Buffini making Mrs Pretty decades younger than the book, thus adding a frisson between her and Basil.

But that’s not the only touch of romance going on. There’s a low key flutter between Edith’s cousin Rory (Johnny Flynn) and Lily James -who is curiously underpowered as Peggy, the sexually starved wife of a (gay) RAF officer (Ben Chaplin, looking worried) – although it certainly provides light relief from the rather underwhelming burial discovery which brings with it a motley crew of ‘official’ specialists from London headed by British Museum expert Ken Stott. Pulling rank he places the site under Government control, although Edith is adamant that Brown should finish what he started, especially as he is nearly killed in a landslide.

Drama also comes from the looming shadow of war. A plane crashes in a nearby lake, Rory trying in vain to rescue the pilot. And although Edith is fading away slowly she still lights up every scene with her understated class and decorum, keeping up “a good show”, and trouncing Peggy’s discrete ecstasy with Rory – yes, they do get a coy minute of passion just before he leaves to join the RAF. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

 

 

My French Film Festival | Online festival 2021

 

Now in its 11th year, MyFrenchFilmFestival shines a spotlight on new generation French-language filmmakers and gives audiences around the world the chance to share their love of French cinema. The 2021 Festival runs from 15 January – 15 February with screenings online and in cinemas around the world. Audiences in the UK can watch these 11 features from this year’s Festival on BFI Player on Prime Video Channels, free to subscribers:

ADOLESCENTES (Sébastien Lifshitz, 2019)
CAMILLE (Boris Lojkine, 2019)
ÉNORME (Sophie Letourneur, 2019)
FELICITÀ (Bruno Merle, 2020)
FILLES DE JOIE (Frédéric Fonteyne, Anne Paulicevich, 2020)
JOSEP (Aurel, 2020)
JUST KIDS (Christophe Blanc, 2019)
KUESSIPAN (Myriam Verreault, 2019)
LES HÉROS NE MEURENT JAMAIS (Aude Léa Rapin, 2019)
MADAME (Stéphane Riethauser, 2019)
TU MÉRITES UN AMOUR (Hafsia Herzi, 2019)

MY FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 15 JANUARY – 15 FEBRUARY 2021

The White Tiger (2020) Netflix

Dir: Ramin Bahrani | Wri: Aravind Adiga, Ramin Bahrani | Cast: Priyanka Chopra, Rajkummar Rao, Adarsh Gourav | Drama 125′

This stylish snapshot of modern india glints with cynism and snarky humour its sharp social contrasts bared like the titular tiger’s teeth.

Netflix has the pleasure of hosting this little brute from 99 Homes’ Ramin Bahrani, adapting Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker Prize-winning novel that sees a poor guy from rural India rise from servitude to success as a global entrepreneur in Bangalore. The wider world opens up through his experiences along the way as a driver for the spoilt and privileged son of a corrupt local industrialist.

The first person voiceover brings to mind Slumdog Millionnaire but that’s where the similarities end – this is a much edgier beast powered forward by the appealing character of young Delhi tea-maker Balram (Adarsh Gourav), who one day lands a job far beyond village life, ferrying round US educated Ashok (Rajkummar Rao) and his liberated wife Pinky (Chopra). This lowly gig leads Balram to a rocky but glittering future by keeping his nose to the grindstone and his eyes to the stars.

Bahrani’s focus is very much on bumpy road ahead as his hero Balram navigates potholes in this journey of self-awareness and nouse-gathering. And this angel-faced servant soon has to toughen up if he’s to survive and thrive. Rather like Balzac’s rags to riches hero Eugene de Rastignac, Balram is a socially challenged but highly intelligent young ingenue equipped with guile, charisma and a low cunning as he wades through a morass of corruption, deceit and betrayal of India’s myriad social divide. Adarsh Gourav is entertaining to watch as he masters Balham’s dextrous human complexities, ducking and diving and wising up through the exotic ever-challenging landscape that lies before him.

Bahrani shows a real understanding of the delicate social structures at play, conjuring up the dark continent convincingly with its intoxicating chemistry of sights, sounds and contemporary social scenery which is magically conveyed by Paolo Carnera’s dazzling camerawork and set to an original soundscape from Oscar-tipped Danny Bensi and Saunder Juriaans. MT

Available on Netflix worldwide Jan 22.

 

The Dissident (2020) Bfi player

Dir: Bryan Fogel | Wri: Mark Monroe, Bryan Fogel | US Doc, 119′

Academy Award winner Bryan Fogel’s latest doc dives into the ghastly murder of Washington Post journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.

It offers a comprehensive and sobering an account of the execution as one could possibly imagine. Fogel won an Oscar for Icarus (2017), a look into the Russian sports doping scandal, and has now assembled this immersive investigation in an impressively short amount of time; Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, but one feels no stone was left unturned in researching and conveying the story in grim horror. As the crime famously implicates the Saudi ruling family at the highest levels, there will be a keen interest in this riveting work across the globe.

Anyone who follows world events knows that Khashoggi, a member of the Saudi royal family who had moved to the United States and wrote for The Washington Post, went into the consulate early in the afternoon on the date in question to obtain a marriage licence. But he never came out. The Saudis denied, delayed and dissembled as long as they possibly could, but finally had to admit that Khashoggi had died on the premises. This resulted in great embarrassment for the royal family and diplomatic distancing by many countries, at least for a while. Eventually 11 men were tried in Saudi Arabia, with three acquitted, three others sentenced to prison terms and five given the death penalty.

Fogel’s investigation is vigorous, thorough  and comprehensive. It centres first on one of Khashoggi’s closest friends, fellow dissident Omar Abdulaziz, who lives in Montreal in a state of near paralysing fear of being tracked down by Saudi agents. We then meet Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who waited outside the consulate all afternoon for him to come out. Both of these intimates stand as living testament to their friend’s resolve, the wages of exile and the high anxiety all too plausibly connected with any opposition to the all-powerful ruling authorities.

The Dissident is cut and scored like a dramatic Hollywood thriller, making impressive use of suspense-engendering editing techniques, mystery-building music and other devices to tease out all aspects of the drama, with the entirely reasonable objective of drawing in viewers who might otherwise not readily watch a political documentary. There is absolutely nothing lost with this technique, especially as the film tends to its essential business of revealing the nature of the Saudi regime and its refusal to countenance any dissent.

In a shrewd and discreet way, the film casts a bigger and stronger net as it progresses. References to other comparable events in the Arab world, such as those in Egypt some years before, are useful, as are comments about liberation movements in other countries. It charts the sacrifices made in becoming an outsider in middle life after having so long been an insider in an insular country. And there are extraordinary random sights, such as the crown prince’s commercial-sized private plane being accompanied by six fighter jets flying alongside when he travels.

Building his case as shrewdly as a skilled lawyer, Fogel finally, and shockingly, offers conclusive evidence that Khashoggi was treated like “a sacrificed animal,” cut up with a bone saw after apparently having been suffocated. The deep penetration of the Saudis’ surveillance and, especially, their hacking of private phones and computers, is brought to startling light; it even compromised Jeff Bezos. Especially impressive are the statements by United Nations special rapporteur Agnes Callamard in which she accused the Saudi government of “premeditated extrajudicial killing by high-level authorized agents.”

This is a documentary both tragic and poignant, not to mention maddening – in that only a few acolytes, rather than the perpetrators themselves – will pay for the crime committed in Istanbul. The evidence is all here for the world to see. AS

NOW ON BFI PLAYER | AMAZON PRIME | premiered at Glasow Film Festival 

 

The Last Warning (1928) *** Bluray

Dir.: Paul Leni; Cast: Laura La Plante, Montague Love, Roy D’Arcy, Burr McIntosh, Margaret Livingston, Carrie Daumery, John Boles)Bert Roach, D’Arcy Corrigan; USA 1928, 89 min.

Universal intended The Last Warning as a companion piece to Leni’s more famous (and superior) The Cat and the Canary (1927), and it was also German born director Paul Leni’s final: he died at the age of forty four eight months after the film’s premiere, contracting sepsis from an untreated tooth infection.

Based on the novel by Wordsworth Camp, the Broadway play by Thomas F. Fallon and then adapted for the screen by Alfred A. Cohn, The Last Warning is a mystery-thriller ‘who-done-it’, with a clunky and complicated narrative dominated by Leni’s direction and Hal Mohr’s jerky camerawork. Charles D. Hall’s art direction is inspired by German expressionism, with Leni’s Das Wachsfigurenkabinett/ Waxworks (1924) perhaps his greatest achievement.

Leni made use of the Phantom of the Opera (1925) set for his last outing which begins with one of the actors (Woodford’s D’Arcy Corrigan) being electrocuted on stage. There is rumour Woodford was part of a menage-a-trois, but more confusion occurs when the body disappears without trace. The theatre is closed but five years later producer Mike Brody (Roach) re-opens the place to catch the murderer by staging a re-run of the play with the original cast members.

During the rehearsals falling scenery, a fire and frightening noises occur, and the purse of leading lady Doris (La Plante) is stolen. Stage manager Josia Bunce (McIntosh) receives a telegram,  signed by John Woodford, telling him to abandon the play and this sets the stage, quite literally, for a series of disasters, involving a 400 volt cable electrocution and worse was to come.

After the shooting, some spoken dialogue and audio effects were added, but this version has been lost. We are left with great moments of camera work, such as in a scene where veteran actress Barbara Morgan leaps from the stage and plummets to the ground, with the camera taking on her POV. Whilst Phantom of the Opera would play a great role in future Universal canon of horror features, The Last Warning, with its masked killer, is a prelude to the Italian ‘Gialli’ features of directors Dario Argento and Mario Bava. AS

ON EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA 15 FEBRUARY 2021

The Capote Tapes (2020) VoD

Dir: Ebs Burnough | With Dick Cavett, Kate Harrington, Lewis Lapham, Andre Leon Talley, Jay McInerney, Sally Quinn, Dotson Radar, John Richardson, Sadie Stein, Colm Toibin| US, Doc, 91′

“A society that is the sum of its vanity and greed is not a society at all: it’s a state of war” (Mark Twain), and this is the society of Truman – Lewis Lapham

Cinematic catnip for all voyeurs, this new documentary about Truman Capote plays out like a thrilling cocktail party.

A first film Ebs Burnough – who once served as social secretary to Michelle Obama – the broad-brush biopic chronicles Capote’s life and times with his novels forming the background to a glittering social scene that was his lifeblood, and in the end his downfall.

Burnough focuses on interviews conducted by George Plimpton, the most intimate and revealing coming from his ‘protege’ Kate Harrington (the daughter of his “manager” – and lover, as she later discovered), who later moved in with the Manhattan-based author describing him as “calm and nurturing”. He taught her the requisite social graces for operating in New York Society (“you can be a big deal in Boise, Idaho, but the only place that matters is New York”).

Harrington (a costumer designer on The Thomas Crown Affair) describes how the author rose early to write for three hours before embarking on gossip-fuelled rendezvous. There are pithy commentaries from literary luminaries Jay McInerney, Lewis Lapham and Dotson Radar and the late John Richardson (Picasso’s biographer), along with chat show host Dick Cavett (all looking smooth-faced and soigné) who wittily chart Truman’s progress from society darling and ‘court jester’ to social pariah whose writing eventually suffered from his inadvisable over-sharing of gossip, and substance abuse.

Many claim that his obsession with convicted killer Perry (In Cold Blood) was the source of his downfall, but Burnough persuades us that the grandes dames of NY eventually put the boot in to the diminutive blond writer with an extraordinary vocal delivery. In fact, Harrington describes his speech as so bizarre on first meeting him (as a teenager) that she was forced to run from the room for fear of laughing in his face. And the self-deprecating Truman was fully aware that he came across as “a freak”, proclaiming that people only laughed in his company out of sheer horror at his strange voice. It soon emerges that Truman thought little of the socialites in his midst, and harboured resentment over they way he was apparently treated as a “servant” (according to Lapham). These rumours partly led to the suicide of his mother Nina Faulk Capote (1905-54), despite the fact she herself had tried to terminate her prenancy (ref: Capote: A Biography/Gerald Clarke) eventually bringing him up in Monroeville, Alabama where Truman grew close to his childhood friend Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird).

But on a lighter note, this fizzing cocktail of a film is not meant to be the definitive Capote biopic but serves as an endlessly amusing tonic in these days of the ‘doom documentary’, adding frothy context to Truman’s literary works capturing the zeitgeist of the era in which they were penned.

The Capote Tapes is further enlivened by archive clips featuring Norman Mailer and Truman’s ‘best friend’ the socialite Barbara”Babe” Cushing Paley (whose husband William founded CBS Records) and there are quotes from his various novels, ‘Other Voices, Other Rooms’ (1948); ‘Breakfast in Tiffany’s’ (1958); his ‘non-fiction’ effort ‘In Cold Blood’ (1965) which gets the lion’s share of Burnough’s attention on the book front, which was considered pivotal to Truman’s emotional unravelling, along with the repercussions of published excerpts from the author’s unfinished work ‘Answered Prayers’ (published posthumously in 1987 in the US) which was substantially delayed by the infamous Black and White Ball of 1966 – more later – and also purportedly led to his downfall.

The film them flips back to detail the Truman’s assignment with the New Yorker hat would take him away from the rigours of keeping up with the ‘NY Joneses’ to spend six months in Kansas covering the murder case that would form the basis for his ‘non-fiction’ classic ‘In Cold Blood’. On the downside, it also led to his fascination with Perry making it difficult to maintain distance from his source material (an aspect that really jumps out in Douglas McGrath’s 2006 screen adaptation of the novel Infamous .

Burnough culminates his expose by fleshing out the events surrounding the divisive 1966 ball that Truman threw at the Plaza Hotel, publishing a list of those invited in the papers (so that no-one could pretend to have been invited that wasn’t). The gossip columns shared salacious secrets the socialites has shared with Truman  – Babe Paley never spoke to him again, much to his chagrin. So the exclusive party that was in part intended to provide source material for a book backfired on its precipitating the end of his writing career, . Jay McInerney comments, quite harshly, that from then on Truman became more a ‘talk-show celebrity’ than a committed author, and was assigned to a life of ‘drugs and disco hopping’ rather than consorting with New York’s beau mode. A rather poignant film but certainly one of the most fascinating you’ll see this year. MT

The Capote Tapes will be available at www.altitude.film and on all digital platforms across the UK and Ireland from 29 January.

Assassins (2020) VOD

Dir: Ryan White | US Doc 104’

In an extraordinary story of deceit and subterfuge Assassins travels from Pyongyang to Indonesia, Vietnam and Kuala Lumpur to investigate what really happened to Kim Jong-nam, the older half brother of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un who lost his life nearly fours years ago.

This story of a public murder, filmed in the grainy footage of CCTV at Kuala Lumpur International airport on 13.2.2017 is as bizarre as it is mysterious. American director/writer Ryan White (Ask Dr Ruth) has chronicled the murder case and the ensuing trial, the upshot is no   cause celebre but a very human story, involved a calculating dictator and two ordinary women.

Photos show a middle-aged man in the airport hall, suddenly being attacked by two young women seemingly rubbing some substance into his eyes before running off, openly looking at the CCTV monitors. The man stumbles on and is taken away by airport security, the two women taking separate taxis back to the city. The victim was Kim Jong-nam. He would die twenty minutes after having been smeared with the deadly nerve gas agent VX. The two women are identified as Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong (28) and Indonesian Siti Aisyah (25), who would soon be arrested for the murder, facing a trial and a certain death sentence by hanging, if found guilty.

Kim Jong-nam (*1971), the oldest son of former North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, was seen as his eventual successor. But after a scandal regarding his visit to Disneyland Tokyo in 2001, his brother Jong-un took over the regime after the death of his father. Kim Jong-nam, who had renounced any participation in the government of his country, had survived at least two assassination attempts, one at Ferihegy airport in Budapest in 2009, another one in 2012.

Both women “assassins” came from a rural background, where the director visited their distraught parents. Doan had moved to the capital Hanoi, went to college and moved in search of fame to Kuala Lumpur, wanting to become an actress. Siti’s CV is much more dramatic: she had worked in a clothing factory in Jakarta, married the boss and had a daughter at age seventeen, which she lost to her husband after a divorce custody battle. She became a sex worker, still dreaming of fame. Both met a chauffeur called John who promised the women easy work: Video pranks, reminiscent of the “Jackass” trilogy. The payment of nearly 100 US Dollar was good, and preferable to sex work. What happened next is recounted by journalists Hadi Azmir (Bloomberg), and Anna Fifeld, chief of the ‘Washington Post’ in their Bejing office. The operation was masterminded by Mr Y, also known as Hanamori, and a chemist Ri Jong Chol, as well as the Godfather OJong-Gil, all members of the North Koran Secret Service. An airport employee Kim Uk Il was also part of the deadly plot, all operatives got away to North Korea, leaving the two women to fight for themselves.

Their mobiles did not contain any links to North Korea, just rather sad accounts of video pranks which were anything but professional. But the Malaysian government was only too happy to have found two scapegoats who fitted the bill. The trail began on 2.10.2017. The court judge was clearly biased, and Siti and Doan feared for their lives, but what happens next is hardly outlandish but certainly emotionally overwhelming.

DoP John Benam’s camera adds to the tension fly-on-wall camerawork, the ‘Talking-Heads’ often reduced by voice-overs. Although the outcome is positive it could have been quite the opposite. What is shocking is the audacity of the North Korean agents who blithely set people up for the death penalty, with scant regard for their human rights. “They treated us as if we were nothing” comments Siti, in a fitting last word. AS

VOD NOW AT WATCH.DOGWOOF.COM

 

I Comete: A Corsican Summer (2021) IFFR Rotterdam Film Festival

Dir: Pascal Tagnati | France, Drama 124′

Warm, light-hearted and drôle : this free-wheeling cinema verite take on Corsican village life dances away from a formal narrative capturing the gentle offbeat nature of the Mediterranean island in summer. The first feature film from Corsican ‘theatre-maker’, actor and author Pascal Tagnati plays out in a series of quirky inconsequential vignettes – some of them quite risqué – that picture the locals at play, swimming, flirting, arguing (and even crying) as they enjoy the sumptuous scenery of this hilly island paradise at a time where villagers get together to enjoy the last days of the summer holidays.

Beautifully composed and refreshing, Tagnati’s observational approach cleverly combines drama and fiction, relying on a natural soundscape of birdsong and breeze, occasionally traditional folksongs are heard in the distance, sung in Corsican dialect (which sounds a bit like Italian, unsurprisingly), culminating in the heartrending ‘La mort de Filicone’.

I Comete is very much a collaborative effort between Tagnati and the local villagers in a cast of predominately non-pros – apart from the major roles – ad-libbing most of the way, it certainly offers an essence of the island and its people for those who’ve never been there, it works as an accidental travelogue stimulating an interest to discover more about the place. Franje, appears to be the only black resident of the village, and the kids make an older character the butt of their jokes although he seems a kind and resourceful type, and we feel quite sorry for him in his undeserved role as the ‘village idiot’. In other more downbeat moments Theo reflects on the possibility of the less happier times in his life, and Lucienne talks of freedom.

At the end of the day, the Corsicans are just like everybody else in Europe where daily life centres on friends, football, infidelity and fertility, family traditions probably loom slightly larger here than in Northern Europe but the pace is certainly slower, Tagnati lulling us into a pleasant reverie about his home, that brims with a sense of national pride and a collective joie de vivre. MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 1-7 FEBRUARY 2021 | TIGER COMPETITION | SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

In Cold Blood (1967) DVD

Dir: Richard Brooks | Cast: Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, John Forsythe, Tex Smith, Paul Stewart, Jeff Corey, Gerald S O’Loughlin | US Crime Thriller, 130′

Truman Capote’s celebrated reporting of a Kansas murder case, In Cold Blood, is the basis for Richard Brooks’s disturbing docudrama. The film opens as a Greyhound bus roars into the darkness of a desolate prairie night, bound for Kansas City. Black silhouetted figures stand out, one is a man with a guitar. A girl passenger sees a boot with the famous catspaw soles (‘catspaws won’t slip’), and this is the clue that will eventually lead to the murderer – and the Capote’s nemesis.

Formally ambitious yet elegantly restrained the film crisply evokes the small-town Sixties Kansas in Conrad Hall’s stylish black and white visuals with a classy score by Quincy Jones. New Yorker Capote had spent over six months getting to know the Kansas locals for his ‘non-fiction novel’, and one local in particular would be his unravelling. He trusted Brooks to transfer his own ideas to the screen, and they were both sold on black and white, Hall creating a gritty true crime feel, and some stunning Wild West style panoramas, Brooks carrying the authenticity through by filming in the town and the exact house where the murders actually happened, but Capote became mesmerised by one of the perpetrators, Perry Smith.

The events of the case grippingly unfold in a chronological narrative 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 the remote  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 modest 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 detectives 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 sordid criminals, although Brooks a scintilla of sympathy for Perry Smith who seems to have been led on. Robert Blake and Scott Wilson give chilling and resonant portrayals in the leading roles. MT

ON DVD | REMASTERED COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS FILMS.

 

Six films to look out for in 2021

2021 promises a bright new slate of films – here are six of this year’s most anticipated releases to get us through the next few months until the jabs bring freedom again. 

DEAR COMRADES | releases 15 January 2021 nationwide

Veteran Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky uncovers a little known episode of the Nikita Krushchev era – the Novocherkassk Massacre of June 1962 – in this elegant and restrained black and white feature filmed on academy ratio and starring his muse (and wife) Yuliya Vysotskaya. A follow-up to his last Venice offering – Sin – an imagined drama about Michelangelo – this is a more down to earth film but its refined gracefulness captures the gravitas of the incident with a lightness of touch and even a dash of sardonic humour. MT

TRUFFLE HUNTERS | releases 5 February 2021 nationwide

When it comes to the ancient art of truffle hunting dogs are worth their weight in gold, according to a new documentary that shows how man’s best friend is also a canny breadwinner. Truffles are prized delicacies in gastronomy. These ugly-looking tubers are part of the mushroom family but actually grow underground, and only dogs have the delicate skills to root them out. A single truffle can sell for thousands of euros. The sumptuously crafted doc plays out as a devotional tribute to these knobbly delicacies, elevating the earthy foodstuff into a food for the Gods in an appreciation for those who painstakingly dedicate their lives to tracking down the truffle and cherishing its storied gastronomic potential. MT

THE CAPOTE TAPES | releases 5 February nationwide

More from Truman Capote, this time in documentary form. A deep dive into the archives and fresh interviews, especially one with Kate Harrington who is introduced as Capote’s adopted daughter, (born to Capote’s “manager”) and who became his protege, living with him in Manhattan and learning the ways of New York society. The film explores the legendary writer’s fascination with this beau monde and then visits the many haunts where the good and the great hung out. An informative  companion piece to both Truman dramas: Capote (2005, with Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Infamous (2006, with Toby Jones). MT


ANOTHER ROUND | releases on 5 February 2021 nationwide

Vinterberg’s latest is a freewheeling comedy that trades on false bonhomie to reveal the hollow desperation at its core. Set in affluent semi-rural Denmark, the Mads Mikkelsen starrer has a wise and worthwhile look at a community sleep-walking into mediocrity, in a haze of alcohol. Like Festen and The Hunt before it, there is a deeper message to the gently imploding farce. The focus is a close-knit circle of friends united by their common ground as teachers in the local school. The drama ponders a reliance on alcohol and drugs in a bid to find meaning in comfortable but aimless lives. MT

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN | 12 February 2021

Killing Eve’s Emerald Fennell is behind this sardonic female revenge flic but the firepower comes courtesy of Carey Mulligan. The writing is spot on in its feminine guile and intelligence but Mulligan takes it a notch even further adding gutsy gravitas to her outwardly ditzy blond lead. She plays 30 year old part time coffee barista Cassandra who seems to have her sh*t together despite being half-cut most of the time: what is her secret?. Much like the sparky heroine of Fleabag, Cassie is a mistress of the putdown, toying with her male suitors while being bored rigid by their facile advances. But there’s vulnerability too behind her sassy facade – and we soon find out why in the film’s tragic volte face. MT

APPLES |  releases 19 March 2021 nationwide

When it comes to films about pandemics nothing could be more appropriate than this lucid and gently-crafted Weird Wave debut drama from Greek director Christos Nikou, not to say that Apples isn’s subversive in a charming way.  The idea came to Nikou long before the coronavirus crisis outbreak and yet it perfectly captures the disarming effects of its character’s gradual meltdown. Aris (Aris Servetalis) becomes a victim of amnesia that slowly spreads through his local community and beyond. An interesting reflection on the creeping hysteria that has forced us into ‘limited personality syndrome’ over the past 6 months, all set to Alexander Voulgaris’ magical soundscape. MT

Konchalovsky and Vysotskaya | copyright BSS/AFP, Venice

SIX FILMS TO LOOK OUT FOR | January – March 2021

The Woman Who Ran (2020) Silver Bear for Best Director Berlinale 2020

Wri/Dir: Hong Sang-soo | Cast: Kim Min-hee, Lee Eun-mi, Song Seon-mi | 77′ S Korea Drama

Love and attraction is explored through the eyes of three very different women in this quirky but sage domestic drama from prolific South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo.

Once again his muse Kim Min-hee (as Gam-hee) is the focus of this female centric affair that revolves around a get together with old friends while her husband is away travelling. The tentative conversation is pleasant and banal occasionally spiced by a quirky humour unique to this veteran filmmaker. Gradually the pleasantries and layers of her character’s quiet neuroticism are stripped away to reveal serious concerns for her marriage. What emerges is unexpected but also amusingly familiar.

The Woman Who Ran is not as funny as his best drama In Another Country (2012) that had Isabelle Huppert in a lost in translation merry-go-round in a beachside resort. Many find these films tedious but others thrill to the subtleties of the writing and the hidden depths in the seemingly slight encounters.

Each new meeting involves Gam-hee divulging her marital secrets until gradually she’s answering her own questions. Her feelings are at odds with husband’s needs and desires but she has unwittingly submitting to his rather controlling behaviour, until gradually the penny drops.

The various encounters feel slightly awkward and gauche, the parties retreating to safe ground at the first sign of potential conflict, and this is particularly the case with the first visit. Gam-hee is invited to supper at the house of recent divorcee Young-soon (Seo Younghwa) and her roommate Youngji (Lee Eunmi). The three women discuss the topic of eating meat, and discuss Youngji’s grilling skills before finally exploring the possibility of going vegetarian. There is a difficult doorstep discussion with a neighbour who comes round to address the issue of their feeding his cat. They all pussy foot around the subject before elegantly stepping away from any slight contretemps, the neighbour backs off gracefully having achieved nothing, but making it clear he not best pleased.

Gam-hee then goes to visit her slightly older friend Suyoung (Song Seonmi) who talks about a potential new boyfriend in the flat above. Later she confesses her fear of him finding out about her one night stand with another neighbour, who is now pestering her for more. But it is the final meeting that leaves us in the dark as to the film’s title. Woojin (Kim Saebyuk) says she has something important to tell Gam-hee but she never reveals what it is. The film’s enigmatic approach feels rather unsatisfactory, appearing to have been given a random title. The Woman Who Ran is engaging while it lasts but ultimately forgettable once we have left the cinema. MT

The Woman Who Ran is out Friday CURZON curzoncinemas.com/bloomsbury/films

 

The Bee Gees: How Can you Mend a Broken Heart (2020)

Dir: Frank Marshall | Wri: Mark Monroe | Musical Biopic |  HBO Documentary Films

In this new biopic on HBO Frank Marshall takes on a mammoth task in charting the rise to fame and fortune of the legendary brothers Gibb. The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart shows how three guys from Manchester via the Isle of Man and Australia went from crooning popular ballads to the pulsating falsetto phenomenon that was Saturday Night Fever, as the ‘Kings of Disco’. The band were active for several decades generating one hit after another – over a thousand, including 20 No. One Hit singles – across a wide variety of genres.

In all started when brothers Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb made up the trio taking over from The Beatles. The Bee Gees were Britain’s answer to the Osmonds and the Jackson 5, writing, harmonising and performing their own repertoire of songs and folksy ballads that included: Massachusetts, Words, and I’ve Just Gotta Get a Message to You. They had big hair and big teeth to match, and megawatt smiles.

A simple low budget disco hit of 1978 was the turning point of the ‘boys’ career. Masterminded by their producer Robert Stigwood and starring a snake hipped John Travolta, it captured the imagination of the New York press and set fire to a sizzling string of chart-topping, best-selling hits that had everyone jiving. Suddenly we were all rocking a Kevin Keegan haircut, and wincingly tight Satin trousers (the girls drawing the line at hairy chests). The Bee Gees music was percussive and dance-worthy but always deeply tuneful and their harmonies were made in heaven.

After a brief sashay through the 1960s and early 1970s, the film dedicates most of its running time to how band’s music achieved its famous sound after the producers arrived in the wake of the disco fever. We hear from Eric Clapton  whose input proved vital in moving the brothers to America in the mid 1970s and whose band Cream was also managed by Stigwood. Stateside they discovered a revitalising vein of creativity. Producing gurus Karl Richardson, Arif Marden (Atlantic Records), and Albhy Galuten emerge as the major musical facilitators behind the scenes providing engaging insight, particularly for those unfamiliar with their talents, and that included the lesser known band member Blue Weaver.

Barry Gibb is now the sole survivor of the Bee Gees and provides a thoughtful spokesman for the family’s eventful trajectory. From his home in Miami he comes across as a sensitive soul seemingly unaffected by superstardom, and reflecting poignantly on a past touched by the bitter rivalry of his younger (twin) brothers Maurice and Robin. Another clan member in the shape of Andy enabled the band to generate teenage fans with his own material, but he sadly lost his battle with addiction at only 30 (in 1988).

Enriched by interviews and archive footage, the only missing element is the romantic counterpoint so familiar in musical biopics (where were the groupies, the wives and the lovers? only Maurice’s first wife Lulu appears in interviews). The only surviver Barry Gibb emerges a unexpected musical hero who is still musically active and was awarded a Knights Batchelor for his services to the industry in 2018.

Surprisingly The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is the first feature length doc about the band. An intensely enjoyable experience the film contains some cracking musical performances, and there’s much to discover about the brothers’ tremendous output even before they sang one falsetto note in their disco days and beyond. An ideal collectors item, then – to be revisited time and time again for the sheer dynamism of this musical archive. MT

NOW ON SKY DOCUMENTARIES | 13 December 2020 | DVD and DIGITAL DOWNLOAD | 14 December 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

Limbo (2020)

Dir/Wri: Ben Sharrock | Cast: Amir El-Masry, Sidse Babett-Knudsen, Vikash Bhai, Ola Orebiyi, Kwabena Ansah, Kenneth Collard | UK Drama, 103′

A group of refugees fetch up on a remote Scottish island in this artful and darkly amusing comedy drama lampooning the migrant crisis.

The common denominator is their single, masculine status. If they were married with kids they would be placed in a stylish new-build in the centre of Edinburgh, or even London. But it’s a grim lot for the single male of the species who arrives in these rain soaked islands looking for a home. And the Scotts director shows the same sober look and lugubrious humour as Pablo Stoll’s cult classic Whisky (2004) or Aki Kaurismaki’s Berlinale winner The Other Side of Hope (2017). However, his visually imaginative style and symmetrical framing also make this a sumptuous treat.

The migrant crisis is certainly no joke. In fact it has become somewhat of a political hot potato as the lost and disenfranchised arrive here hoping for the legendary streets of gold and find instead cold tarmac, wind-lashed landscapes and little to comfort them in their time of need. Sticking out like proverbial pork pies at a Jewish wedding these likeable and nice-looking men are jeered at and taunted as they make their way through chilly seascapes in search of something to keep their minds occupied in the inclement weather.

The painterly piece unfolds in the sparsely populated Western Isles of the Outer Hebrides (North and South Uist) under smoky grey clouds and gentle hilltops stroked by softly wavering grasses and purple skies. “If you’re lucky enough to be here in Winter you may experience the Northern Lights” says their English teacher as he instructs them on the past imperfect, asking for an example of its use in a sentence: one bright spark suggests: “I USED to have a home until it was destroyed by allied forces”.

Essentially a series of carefully crafted episodes – each playing out like an individual comedy vignette – the story follows Syrian Oud musician and war victim Omar (Amir El-Masry) who left his older brother still fighting; Afghani Farhad (Vikash Bhai) and two West African brothers suffering from sibling rivalry. Wasef (Ola Orebiyi) and Abedi (Kwabena Ansah) bicker the hell out of the squalid damp-ridden cottage the men share, warmed only by a two-bar electric fire. They all have convincing backstories and are ridden with guilt and worry about the families they have left behind. Poor internet coverage makes matters worst.

Writing and directing this second feature, Sharrock calls on his own life experience working in a refugee camp in the Middle East where he was inspired by the sorrowful characters he met, all hoping against hope for a positive outcome. Here at least they get “cultural awareness” lessons hosted by a well-meaning couple, Helga (a strangely underused Sidse Babett-Knudsen (The Duke of Burgundy) and Boris (Kenneth Collard). But the even-handed narrative eventually gives way to a grudging mutual respect with their pale-skinned hosts who recognise they are well-educated and versed in the ways of the world. And the tone darkens when a crisis arrives for the sheep farmers during a snowstorm, and Omar is required to pitch in.

The sheep incident unleashes a disturbing magic realist reverie for Omar, transporting him back to his roots in scenes that hint at a gravitas the film does not possess compared with the levity that has gone before. But despite the slight tonal flaw Limbo is a highly accomplished and thoughtful film that cements Sharrock’s place as a promising British talent on the international scene. MT

In Cinemas from 30 July | The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Award: CAIRO FILM FESTIVAL 

 

 

 

Beanpole (2019) **** MUBI

Dir: Kantemir Balagov | Writers: Kantemir Balagov, Aleksandr Terekhov | Drama | Russia 114′

A bitter bond of revenge and inter-dependence keeps two Russian women viscerally entwined in Leningrad after the Second World War comes to a close.

Beanpole is Kantemir Balagov’s follow up to his kidnap thriller Closeness which took the FIPRESCI prize in Un Certain Regard two years ago. Based on a story from The Unwomanly Face of War by Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexeievich, it sees the two women brought to their knees physically and mentally after the war has devastated their city. But life goes on for Iya, a tall rangy blond known as Beanpole (Miroshnichenko), and her friend Masha (Perelygina) who served together on the front, Iya returning early due to a neurological condition, bringing back with her Masha’s little son Pashka (Glazkov) in the autumn of 1945.

This gruelling slow-burner is softened by its gorgeously vibrant aesthetic that lends a jewel-like radiance to the girls’ misery, captured in Kseniya Sereda’s brilliant camerawork. Masha is wilful, mercurial and playfully charismatic – Perelygina is simply mesmerising to watch as she plots her way forward, emotions floating across her face like clouds on a winter’s day – Beanpole is a sullen and introverted soul but the two have no one left in the world but each other, and a terrible tragedy that threatens to destroy or deepen their fraught friendship. This close friendship contrasts with the sheer scale of the horror they have experienced on the front. Confined to stuffy interiors and hospital wards   the enormity of their emotional pain and suffering swells to bursting point. In the late Autumn of 1945 Iya is a nurse in a local hospital and her neurological affects hermivement. But Pashka is her pride and joy and their closeness is deeply moving. 

By the time Masha returns from the front, a dreadful event has taken place. Balagov explores the shifting dynamic between these two women with impressive maturity for a filmmaker still in his twenties, particularly with this female centric story, men taking a backseat – the world-weary head doctor Nikolai Ivanovich (Andrei Bykov) and Masha’s irritating suitor Sasha (Igor Shirokov) who is the son of a Communist party official. Somehow Sasha’s mother and the doctor get drawn into the complex web of need, revenge, and power.

Leningrad is almost romantic in its postwar atmosphere and Sergei Ivanov’s set design adds a homely folkloric touch to the interiors. Memorable scenes are those outside Sasha’s family dacha, and Masha’s tram ride in the final moments of this striking, intense and emotionally resonant drama. MT

NOW ON MUBU : UN CERTAIN REGARD | BEST DIRECTOR | FIPRESCI 2019

Sundance 2021 | 28 January – 3 February 2021

2021 gets off to a lowkey start with Sundance film festival announcing a mostly virtual edition, along with Rotterdam that follows in its footsteps on February 7th.

Sundance welcomes fewer features to this year’s line-up with 72 feature films as apposed to last year’s 118,  but nearly half are female directed and 15% from the LGBTQ+ community.

Themes of retreat, regeneration and renewal are the touchstones to this year’s programme and this seems entirely appropriate given our global experience since March 2020. The world has taken stock of itself but not necessarily come up with the answers. Many film festivals are congratulating themselves for ‘increased attendance record’ with a boost from their online community. Watching films, and attending festivals online works as a complementary form of entertainment in extremis, but make no mistake, the vast majority of viewers still prefer the buzz of the festival experience and the human element that it brings.

As we stand of the brink of 2021 most of us are experiencing some sense of disconnection with our previous existence, and Robin Wright echoes this sentiment in her directorial debut, in which she also stars ,as a woman who seeks a life off grid after bereavement. Very much in the same vein as the Venice 2020 triumph Nomadland, Wright’s film Land is one of the most apposite and  buzz-worthy films in the premiere lineup at this year’s Utah festival.


Sundance Institute founder and president Robert Redford is deeply aware of this social and emotional disenfranchisement and comments “Togetherness has been an animating principle here at the Sundance Institute as we’ve worked to reimagine the festival for 2021, because there is no Sundance without our community,”

And this sentiment resonates through the competition line-up. with other narrative features directly alluding to the tragedy that has affected, possibly more than we realise going forward.

A list of films confirmed for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival are as follows.

World Cinema Dramatic Competition

The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet | Argentina (Dir: Ana Katz, writers: Ana Katz, Gonzalo Delgado | World Premiere

Sebastian, a man in his 30s, works a series of temporary jobs and he embraces love at every opportunity. He transforms, through a series of short encounters, as the world flirts with possible apocalypse. Cast: Daniel Katz, Julieta Zylberberg, Valeria Lois, Mirella Pascual, Carlos Portaluppi.

Passing / UK/US (Dir/wri: Rebecca Hall | World Premiere

Based on the 19th century novel by Chicago born writer Nella Larsen, this first feature for Rebecca Hall sees two high old school friends reunited in a  mutual obsession that threatens both of their carefully constructed realities.

El Planeta / US/Spain (Dir/Wri Amalia Ulman | World Premiere

Amid the devastation of post-crisis Spain, mother and daughter bluff and grift to keep up the lifestyle they think they deserve, bonding over common tragedy and an impending eviction. Cast: Amalia Ulman, Ale Ulman, Nacho Vigalondo, Zhou Chen, Saoirse Bertram.

Fire in the Mountains / India (Dir/Wri: Ajitpal Singh | World Premiere

A mother toils to save money to build a road in a Himalayan village to take her wheelchair-bound son for physiotherapy, but her husband, who believes that an expensive religious ritual is the remedy, steals her savings. Cast: Vinamrata Rai, Chandan Bisht, Mayank Singh Jaira, Harshita Tewari, Sonal Jha.

Hive / Kos, Switzerland, Macedonia, Albania (Dir/Wri: Blerta Basholli | World Premiere

Fahrije’s husband has been missing since the war in Kosovo. She sets up her own small business to provide for her kids, but as she fights against a patriarchal society that does not support her, she faces a crucial decision: to wait for his return, or to continue to persevere. Cast: Yllka Gashi, Çun Lajçi, Aurita Agushi, Kumrije Hoxha, Adriana Matoshi, Kaona Sylejmani.

Human Factors / Ger, Italy, Denmark (Dir/Wri: Ronny Trocker | World Premiere

A mysterious housebreaking exposes the agony of an exemplary middle-class family. Cast: Sabine Timoteo, Mark Waschke, Jule Hermann, Wanja Valentin Kube, Hannes Perkmann, Daniel Séjourné.

Luzzu / Malta (Dir/Wri): Alex Camilleri | World Premiere

Jesmark, a struggling fisherman on the island of Malta, is forced to turn his back on generations of tradition and risk everything by entering the world of black-market fishing to provide for his girlfriend and newborn baby. Cast: Jesmark Scicluna, Michela Farrugia, David Scicluna.

One for the Road / China,Hong Kong, Thailand (Dir: Baz Poonpiriya, Wri: Baz Poonpiriya, Nottapon Boonprakob, Puangsoi Aksornsawang, Wong Kar Wai) | World Premiere

Boss is a consummate ladies’ man, a free spirit and a bar owner in NYC. One day, he gets a surprise call from Aood, an estranged friend who has returned home to Thailand. Dying of cancer, Aood enlists Boss’ help to complete a bucket list — but both are hiding something. Cast: Tor Thanapob, Ice Natara, Violette Wautier, Aokbab Chutimon, Ploi Horwang, Noon Siraphun.

The Pink Cloud / Brazil (Dir/Wri: Iuli Gerbase, | World Premiere

A mysterious and deadly pink cloud appears across the globe, forcing everyone to stay home. Strangers at the outset, Giovana and Yago try to invent themselves as a couple as years of shared lockdown pass. While Yago is living in his own utopia, Giovana feels trapped deep inside. Cast: Renata de Lélis, Eduardo Mendonça.

Pleasure / Swed/Neth/France (Dir,Wri: Ninja Thyberg | World Prem

A 20-year-old girl moves from her small town in Sweden to L.A. for a shot at a career in the adult film industry. Cast: Sofia Kappel, Revika Anne Reustle, Evelyn Claire, Chris Cock, Dana DeArmond, Kendra Spade.

Prime Time / Poland (Dir: Jakub Piątek, Writers: Jakub Piątek, Lukasz Czapski | World Premierę

On the last day of 1999, 20-year-old Sebastian locks himself in a TV studio. He has two hostages, a gun and an important message for the world. The story of the attack explores a rebel’s extreme measures and last resort. Cast: Bartosz Bielenia, Magdalena Poplawska, Andrzej Klak, Malgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik, Dobromir Dymecki, Monika Frajczyk.

World Cinema Documentary Competition

Faya Dayi / Ethiopia/US (Dir/Wri: Jessica Beshir) | World Premiere

A spiritual journey into the highlands of Harar, immersed in the rituals of khat, a leaf Sufi Muslims chewed for centuries for religious meditations — and Ethiopia’s most lucrative cash crop today. A tapestry of intimate stories offers a window into the dreams of youth under a repressive regime.

Flee / Den/Norway/Sweden/France (Dir Jonas Poher Rasmussen | World Premiere

Amin arrived as an unaccompanied minor in Denmark from Afghanistan. Today, he is a successful academic and is getting married to his longtime boyfriend. A secret he has been hiding for 20 years threatens to ruin the life he has built. W

Inconvenient Indian | Canada (Dir/Wri: Michelle Latimer | International premiere

An examination of Thomas King’s brilliant dismantling of North America’s colonial narrative, which reframes history with the powerful voices of those continuing the tradition of Indigenous resistance.

Misha and the Wolves

United Kingdom, Belgium (Dir/Wri: Sam Hobkinson) | World Premiere

A woman’s Holocaust memoir takes the world by storm, but a fallout with her publisher turned detective reveals her story as an audacious deception created to hide a darker truth.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World / Sweden (Dir: Kristina Lindström, Kristian Petri | World Premiere

Swedish actor/musician Björn Andresen’s life was forever changed at the age of 15, when he played Tadzio, the object of Dirk Bogarde’s obsession in Death in Venice — a role that led Italian maestro Luchino Visconti to dub him “the world’s most beautiful boy.”

Playing With Sharks / Australia (Dir/Wri: Sally Aitken | World Premier

Valerie Taylor is a shark fanatic and an Australian icon — a marine maverick who forged her way as a fearless diver, cinematographer and conservationist. She filmed the real sharks for Jaws and famously wore a chainmail suit, using herself as shark bait, changing our scientific understanding of sharks forever.

President / Denmark/US, Norway (Dir: Camilla Nielsson | World Premiere

Zimbabwe is at a crossroads. The leader of the opposition MDC party, Nelson Chamisa, challenges the old guard ZANU-PF led by Emmerson Mnangagwa, known as “The Crocodile.” The election tests both the ruling party and the opposition — how do they interpret principles of democracy in discourse and in practice?

Sabaya / Sweden (Dir/Wri: Hogir Hirori | World Premiere

With just a mobile phone and a gun, Mahmud, Ziyad and their group risk their lives trying to save Yazidi women and girls being held by ISIS as Sabaya (abducted sex slaves) in the most dangerous camp in the Middle East, Al-Hol in Syria

Taming the Garden / Swit/Ger, Georgia (Dir: Salomé Jashi | World Premiere

A poetic ode to the rivalry between men and nature. World Premiere

Writing With Fire / India (Dir/Wris: Rintu Thomas, Sushmit Ghosh | World Premiere

In a cluttered news landscape dominated by men, emerges India’s only newspaper run by Dalit women. Armed with smartphones, chief reporter Meera and her journalists break traditions on the front lines of India’s biggest issues and within the confines of their own homes, redefining what it means to be powerful.

The Blazing World / U.S.A. (Dir: Carlson Young, Wri: Carlson Young, Pierce Brown | World Premiere

Decades after the accidental drowning of her twin sister, a self-destructive young woman returns to her family home, finding herself drawn to an alternate dimension where her sister may still be alive. Cast: Udo Kier, Carlson Young, Dermot Mulroney, Vinessa Shaw, John Karna, Soko.

Cryptozoo / US (Dir/Wr: Dash Shaw) | World Premiere

As cryptozookeepers struggle to capture a Baku (a legendary dream-eating hybrid creature) they begin to wonder if they should display these rare beasts in the confines of a cryptozoo, or if these mythical creatures should remain hidden and unknown. Cast: Lake Bell, Michael Cera, Angeliki Papoulia, Zoe Kazan, Peter Stormare, Grace Zabriskie

First Date / US. (Dir/Wri: Manuel Crosby, Darren Knapp | World Premiere

Conned into buying a shady ’65 Chrysler, Mike’s first date with the girl next door, Kelsey, implodes as he finds himself targeted by criminals, cops and a crazy cat lady. A night fueled by desire, bullets and burning rubber makes any other first date seem like a walk in the park. Cast: Tyson Brown, Shelby Duclos, Jesse Janzen, Nicole Berry, Ryan Quinn Adams, Brandon Kraus.

Ma Belle, My Beauty / US., France (Dir/Wri: Marion Hill | World Premiere

A surprise reunion in southern France reignites passions and jealousies between two women who were formerly polyamorous lovers. Cast: Idella Johnson, Hannah Pepper, Lucien Guignard, Sivan Noam Shimon.

R#J / US (Dir/Wri Carey William | World Premiere

A reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, taking place through their cellphones, in a mash-up of Shakespearean dialogue with current social media communication. Cast: Camaron Engels, Francesca Noel, David Zayas, Diego Tinoco, Siddiq Saunderson, Russell Hornsby.

Searchers / US. (Dir: Pacho Velez | World Premiere

In encounters alternately humorous and touching, a diverse set of New Yorkers navigate their preferred dating apps in search of their special someone.

Strawberry Mansion / US (Dir/Wri: Albert Birney, Kentucker Audley | World Premiere

In a world where the government records and taxes dreams, an unassuming dream auditor gets swept up in a cosmic journey through the life and dreams of an aging eccentric named Bella. Together, they must find a way back home. Cast: Penny Fuller, Kentucker Audley, Grace Glowicki, Reed Birney, Linas Phillips, Constance Shulman.

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair / US (Dir/Wri: Jane Schoenbrun | World Premiere

A teenage girl becomes immersed in an online role-playing game. Cast: Anna Cobb, Michael J. Rogers.

Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir / US. (Director: James Redford | World Premiere

Amy Tan has established herself as one of America’s most respected literary voices. Born to Chinese immigrant parents, it would be decades before the author of The Joy Luck Club would fully understand the inherited trauma rooted in the legacies of women who survived the Chinese tradition of concubinage.

Bring Your Own Brigade / US. (Dir/wri: Lucy Walker | World Premiere

A character-driven verité and revelatory investigation takes us on a journey embedded with firefighters and residents on a mission to understand the causes of historically large wildfires and how to survive them, discovering that the solution has been here all along.

Eight for Silver / U.S.A., France (Dir/Wri Sean Ellis | World Premiere

In the late 1800s, a man arrives in a remote country village to investigate an attack by a wild animal but discovers a much deeper, sinister force that has both the manor and the townspeople in its grip. Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Kelly Reilly, Alistair Petrie, Roxane Duran, Aine Rose Daly.

How It Ends / US (Dir/Wri Daryl Wein, Zoe Lister-Jones | World Premiere

On the last day on Earth, one woman goes on a journey through L.A. to make it to her last party before the world ends, running into an eclectic cast of characters along the way. Cast: Zoe Lister-Jones, Cailee Spaeny, Olivia Wilde, Fred Armisen, Helen Hunt, Lamorne Morris.

In the Earth / UK (Dir/Wri: Ben Wheatley | World Premiere

As a disastrous virus grips the planet, a scientist and a park scout venture deep into the forest for a routine equipment run. Through the night, their journey becomes a terrifying voyage through the heart of darkness as the forest comes to life around them. Cast: Joel Fry, Ellora Torchia, Hayley Squires, Reece Shearsmith

In the Same Breath / US. (Dir: Nanfu Wang) | World Premiere

How did the Chinese government turn pandemic coverups in Wuhan into a triumph for the Communist party? An essential narrative of firsthand accounts of the novel coronavirus, and a revelatory examination of how propaganda and patriotism shaped the outbreak’s course — both in China and in the U.S. World Premiere, Documentary. DAY ONE

Marvelous and the Black Hole / US (Dir/Wri Kate Tsang, Producer | World Premiere

A teenage delinquent befriends a surly magician who helps her navigate her inner demons and dysfunctional family with sleight of hand magic, in a coming-of-age comedy that touches on unlikely friendships, grief and finding hope in the darkest moments. Cast: Miya Cech, Rhea Perlman, Leonardo Nam, Kannon Omachi, Paulina Lule, Keith Powell.

Mass / US (Dir/Wri: Fran Kranz | World Premiere

Years after a tragic shooting, the parents of both the victim and the perpetrator meet face to face. Cast: Jason Isaacs, Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, Reed Birney.

My Name Is Pauli Murray / US (Dirs: Betsy West, Julie Cohen |World premiere

Overlooked by history, Pauli Murray was a legal trailblazer whose ideas influenced RBG’s fight for gender equality and Thurgood Marshall’s landmark civil rights arguments. Featuring never-before-seen footage and audio recordings, a portrait of Murray’s impact as a nonbinary Black luminary: lawyer, activist, poet and priest who transformed our world.

Philly D.A. / US. (Dirs: Ted Passon, Yoni Brook | World Premiere

A groundbreaking inside look at the long-shot election and tumultuous first term of Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s unapologetic district attorney, and his experiment to upend the criminal justice system from the inside out.

Prisoners of the Ghostland / US. (Dir: Sion Sono, Wri: Aaron Hendry, Reza Sixo Safai | World Premiere

A notorious criminal is sent to rescue an abducted woman who has disappeared into a dark supernatural universe. They must break the evil curse that binds them and escape the mysterious revenants that rule the Ghostland, an East-meets-West vortex of beauty and violence. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes, Bill Moseley, Tak Sakaguchi, Yuzuka Nakaya.

The Sparks Brothers / UK (Dir: Edgar Wright | World Premiere

How can one rock band be successful, underrated, hugely influential and criminally overlooked all at the same time? Take a musical odyssey through five weird and wonderful decades with brothers Russell & Ron Mael, celebrating the inspiring legacy of Sparks: your favorite band’s favourite band.

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street / US. (Dir/: Marilyn Agrelo | World Premiere

How did a group of rebels create the world’s most famous street? In 1969 New York, this “gang” of mission-driven artists, writers and educators catalyzed a moment of civil awakening, transforming it into Sesame Street, one of the most influential and impactful television programs in history.

Midnight

Censor / UK  (Dir/Wri: Prano Bailey-Bond, Aris: Prano Bailey-Bond, Anthony Fletcher | World Premiere

When film censor Enid discovers an eerie horror that speaks directly to her sister’s mysterious disappearance, she resolves to unravel the puzzle behind the film and its enigmatic director — a quest blurring the lines between fiction and reality in terrifying ways. Cast: Niamh Algar, Nicholas Burns, Vincent Franklin, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller, Michael Smiley.

Coming Home in the Dark / NZ (Dir: James Ashcroft, Wri: Eli Kent, James Ashcroft | World Premiere

A family’s outing descends into terror when teacher Alan Hoaganraad, his wife Jill, and stepsons Maika and Jordon explore an isolated coastline. An unexpected meeting with a pair of drifters, the enigmatic psychopath Mandrake and his accomplice Tubs, thrusts the family into a nightmare when they find themselves captured. Cast: Daniel Gillies, Erik Thomson, Miriama McDowell, Matthias Luafutu.

A Glitch in the Matrix / US (Dir Rodney Ascher | World Premiere

A multimedia exploration of simulation theory — an idea as old as Plato’s Republic and as current as Elon Musk’s Twitter feed — through the eyes of those who suspect our world isn’t real. Part sci-fi mind-scrambler, part horror story, this is a digital journey to the limits of radical doubt.

Knocking / Sweden (Dir: Frida Kempff, Wri: Emma Broström | World Premiere

When Molly moves into her new apartment after a tragic accident, a strange noise from upstairs begins to unnerve her. As its intensity grows, she confronts her neighbors — but no one seems to hear what she is hearing. Cast: Cecilia Milocco.

Mother Schmuckers / Belgium (Dir/Wri: Lenny Guit, Harpo Guit | World Premiere

Issachar & Zabulon, two brothers in their 20s, are supremely stupid and never bored, as madness is part of their daily lives. When they lose their mother’s beloved dog, they have 24 hours to find it — or she will kick them out. Cast: Harpo Guit, Maxi Delmelle, Claire Bodson, Mathieu Amalric, Habib Ben Tanfous.

Special Screenings

Life in a Day 2020 / US/UK. (Dir: Kevin Macdonald | World Premier

An extraordinary, intimate, global portrait of life on our planet, filmed by thousands of people across the world, on a single day: 25th July 2020.

Sundance Film Festival | 28 January – 3 February 2021

 

Il Mio Corpo (2020) ****

Dir.: Michele Pennetta; Documentary with Oscar, Roberto and Marco Prestifilippo, Stanley Abhulimen, Blessed Idahosa; Switzerland/Italy 2020, 81 min.

In 2012 Italy had the highest child poverty in Europe and the struggle for these kids to survive and seek a better life is the focus of Italian filmmaker Michele Pennetta. Following in the footsteps of his award-winning compatriot Gianfranco Rosi (Fire at Sea), this thoughtful approach examines lives shattered by conflict, for very difference reasons.

After Pescatori di Corpi, which looked at illegal Syrian fisherman in Italy, Pennetta’s full length documentary hybrid chronicles two parallel lives: teenagers Oscar and Stanley. Stanley hails from Nigeria and is living on a limited visa. Oscar’s mother left his overbearing father Roberto with four children, who are looked after by her sister. Oscar takes the brunt of his father’s anger while his younger brother Marco is the favourite, the family making a meagre living from collecting scrap metal from illegal dumping sites.

The poetic opening scenes see Marco unearthing a miraculously unscathed Madonna in a dump site. They heave her up onto the road, a close-up looking very much like the Jesus statute transported by the helicopter in Fellini’s Otto e Mezzo. Labels are everything in Italy and Oscar hopes to gain social traction with a t-shirt emblazoned “Member of the Club Prive”. But the magic doesn’t rub off. He remains subdued by his father’s animosity and threat to “exchange him for a black man”. An insult as mean as it is racist.

We soon learn the secret of the Prestifilippo family: Roberto accused Oscar of siding with their mother when she snitched on him to the court. The two older brothers (a boy and a girl toddler are always in the background) defend themselves: “Mother beat me, there were no toys promised, no Super Mario, she said ‘I kill you if you don’t obey'”. Roberto relents in the end: “My fault was always caring too much for you guys, your mother’s mistake was leaving for this bastard. If she loved you, she would come back.” But the family dynamics are set in stone, and Oscar will not forgive either of his parents. Later, Roberto tells his oldest son: “The truck is our breadwinner, not you!”

On the other side of the island, life is on hold for Stanley and his Nigerian compatriot Blessed. Both are affected by their visa status and Blessed’s case in still pending. Blessed is critical of Stanley: “If I had a visa, I would leave Sicily immediately”. Stanley’s response is adamant: “You are a parasite, you will be a beggar for the rest of your life.” Stanley has a point: he is eking out an existence doing jobs for the local priest, Blessed just waits for a decision to be made. Eventually the two fetch up at the local tribunal which doesn’t end well for Blessed, Stanley reluctant to translate the  the verdict. Blessed is never seen again in a poignant final sequence.

We end on a scripted passage that finally brings Oscar and Stanley together in a dilapidated farmhouse. DoP Paolo Ferrari takes major credit for the success of this melancholic story: his softly lensed images of the rugged countryside where the sun shines mercilessly, will stay in the memory for a long time afterwards. The strength of the feature lies in the contrast between the magic of this island paradise and the tragedy of its broken inhabitants, locked in a cycle of enforced indolence and resignation. Marginalised, for very different reasons, characters like Oscar and Stanley are wasting their lives away, unable to find a meaningful existence beyond hope and brief interludes of joy garnered from youthful bravado. In this craggy mountain idyl their future will be an uphill struggle. AS

IN CINEMAS AND EXCLUSIVELY ON CURZO HOME CINEMA | 11 DECEMBER 2020

The White Reindeer | Valkoinen Peura (1952)

Almost entirely dialogue-free and relying on a spellbinding score from Swedish composer Einar England to drive the narrative forward, it sees a beautiful young bride Pirita – the director’s own wife Mirjami Kuosmanen, who also co-wrote the script – fall prey to a tragic curse when she seeks advice on her love-life from a macabre Norse shamen.

Capturing the ethereal beauty of Finnish Lapland’s panoramic snowscapes, and picturing real herdsman at work in the icebound countryside, The White Reindeer is a magnificent example of low budget effectiveness and magic neo-realism in a simple but thematically rich storyline. Starting out in an upbeat mood Pirita is seen in full Nordic costume riding a sleigh alongside her lover and soon to be husband. But after their wedding night he is frequently absent.

Longing to capture his affection, she takes the shamen’s love potion and is transformed into an elegant white reindeer by night, drinking the blood of local hunters. This lyrical parable is both intriguing and mesmerising melding documentary footage with exquisite lighting techniques and elegant framing to produce a film that echoes Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers and Dreyer’s Vampyr with potent references to Norse mythology and themes of longing, loneliness and fear of abandonment. MT

THE WHITE REINDEER (Masters of Cinema) https://youtu.be/ECyp3fJBI20

Amazon https://amzn.to/2RUdXON

 

David Byrne’s American Utopia (2020) ***

Dir: Spike Lee | US Doc, 105′

Artists crave new audiences. So Spike Lee has filmed David Byrne’s Broadway stage-version of his solo album American Utopia in a bid to attract a younger following. Will it work? Memorable tunes capture moments in our life, and this is true for all ages who will forge new memories from these golden classics. Byrne created a string of them with his famous Talking Heads band in the 1980s and this musical trip down memory lane will have appeal for all audiences. Playing out in a slick re-showcasing American Utopia looks fresh and funky while also appealing to a loyal fanbase.

Agile as a silver fox Byrne sashays across the stage, an eminence gris on acid with his familiar gunmetal tailoring (and this time bare feet) recalling his Stop Making Sense concert movie directed by Jonathan Demme back in 1984 (now on BFI player).

Distant and slightly surreal the quixotic quirkiness is still there as he juts around in perfect symmetry with his musical acolytes: Glass, This Must Be the Place, Once in a Lifetime,  Concrete and Stone and many more number are there for your enjoyment in this trippy nostalgia-filled extravaganza. Even the Black Lives Matter box is ticked and dovetails neatly into the narrative with a version of Janelle Monáe’s Hell You Talmabout, Byrne exhorting the audience to recall those who  have lost their lives in police conflict.

Byrne is a star. Stars are there to capture our imagination. His allure lies in his unreachability. If he suddenly started sharing his problems or consumer bleats you’d be sadly disappointed. Luckily he remains distant. As he leaves the stage the camera sees him warming to colleagues in his dressing room, and riding home on his bike. For a moment he’s human. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM MONDAY 14 DECEMBER 2020

Personal Shopper (2016) MUBI

Dir: Olivier Assayas | Cast: Kristen Stewart, Nora vonWaltstätten, Anders Danielsen Lie | 101mins | Fantasy drama | France

Paris has always had a sinister side inspiring Balzac to write his famous ‘Pere Goriot’, a stark story of social realism set near the Pierre Lachaise Cemetery, and Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Murders in The Rue Morgue. French literature is redolent with macabre tales conjured up by the dark side of the capital. So it feels fitting that Olivier Assayas should add other chilling chapter to this spectrally-charged city with his ghost-themed story Personal Shopper.

Similar in tone to Joanna Hogg’s recent outing The Lost Daughter, this surreal outing is creepy, charismatic and quirky. Assayas’ films are always diverse and this is his first ever ghost story. Kristen Stewart shimmers in a sombre turn bringing a gamine insouciant sensuality to her role that feels both menacing and intriguing in its sexual ambivalence. She is Maureen Cartwright, a 27 year old American girl working as a stylist to a bitchy German media figure Kyra (Nora vonWaltstätten) while mourning the death of her twin brother Lewis.

Paris is the centre of the fashion world and Assayas works this elegantly into the plot as Maureen glides through a series of glitzy ateliers selecting hand-made garments and jewelled accoutrements from Chanel and Cartier to meet the needs of her demanding boss. This is a job that fills Maureen with ennui as she considers herself worthy of better things. So she spends her free time sketching and researching her yen for the supernatural, exploring the Victor Hugo’s psychic experiments and the avant garde Swedish artist Hilma af Klint. On the sly, she guiltily slips into Kyra’s couturier gowns and fetishistic footwear.

Maureen is also developing her psychic skills in trying to contact her brother Lewis who died of a congenital heart condition in a dreary nearby fin de siecle mansion where they both grew up. Spending several spooky nights there Maureen is aware of a ghostly presence who whispers inaudibly in scenes that are genuinely scary and plausible given the undercurrent of glowering spitefulness that sets the tone for this  increasingly dark narrative. Maureen believes she may be instrumental in conjuring up the devil’s work or there is there something more sinister at play. Olivier Assayas’s wickedly inventive vision is one of his most exciting so far. MT

PERSONAL SHOPPER IS NOW ON MUBI | Best Director for Olivier Assayas Cannes 2016

Murder me, Monster (2018) ***

Dir Alejandro Fadel. Argentina. 2018. 106′

Murder Me Monster’s widescreen solemnity might bring to mind the murder investigation in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia – and there are vague echoes of Amat Escalante’s The Untamed, but that’s where the similarity ends. This brooding Andes-set crime mystery is the gruesome work of Los Selvajes director Alejandro Fadel, and it is certainly not for the feint hearted with its bestial themes and deformed zombie-like characters. Infact everyone in this stomach-turning horror fantasy is on edge and whispering morosely, for one reason or another. And a series of macabre murders, where heads are torn from bodies, seem to be the reason why.

The opening scene sees the dying moments of a woman whose throat has been severed. As a herd of sheep and some other livestock are slowly make their supper of her remains, a blind man mumbles on about the murder. A feeling of unease creeps over proceedings when it transpires that the bloodshed is connected to a feral beast on the prowl and out of control in this desolate and remote corner of Argentina where the sun rarely shines.

Rural police officer Cruz (Victor Lopez) is tasked with investigating the murders and the finger seems to point to local thick-lipped weirdo David (Esteban Bigliardi) who claims that a savage creature is using certain phrases to commune with him, as if through telepathy, with a ‘silly’ voice that repeats ‘Murder Me, Monster’.

Cinematographers Manuel Rebella and Julian Apezteguia evoke nightmarish visuals often using the same technique as the painter El Greco – where the characters’ faces are often starkly backlit against a murky darkness. There’s a garish otherworldly quality to the outdoor mountain scenes in a film that takes on an increasingly Lynchian feel as the plot thickens. Pus-yellow, murky mustard and puke green make up the colour palette of costume and set designers Florencia and Laura Caligiuri. An atmospheric ambient score keeps the tension brewing.

This is intriguing stuff, if rather too enigmatic for its own good, eventually leaving us stranded in its own mysterious backwater. This study of fear and perversion in a Pampas backwater will certainly made you feel nauseous and bewildered by the end. MT

UK releasee to stream or download or own | 4th December 2020 AVAILABLE

 

LIBERTÉ (2019) Bfi Player

Dir: Albert Serra | Cast: Cast: Helmut Berger, Marc Susini, Iliana Zabeth, Laura Poulvet, Baptiste Pinteaux, Théodora Marcadé, Alexander García Düttmann | Drama | Spain 132′

Catalan auteur Albert Serra was born in 1975 in Girona and is known for his delicately drawn and exquisitely mounted historical dramas such as La Mort de Louis XIV (2016); Honour of the Knights (Quixotic) 2006; and Story of My Death (2013). And there’s a great deal of mounting in his latest feature which stars veteran arthouse star Helmut Berger and competes in last year’s Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes Film Festival.

The theme in Liberté  is essentially voyeurism. If you should find yourself in Hampstead Heath on a balmy afternoon you will notice male figures darting surrepticiousy in the shady vegetation. You may even chance upon a secret tryst (if you are unlucky enough while walking your dog). Take this image and sashay back to the 18th century, somewhere between Potsdam and Berlin, and you bring to mind the scenario in Liberté – only here both male and female characters are taking part.

The year is 1774, shortly before the French Revolution. Madame de Dumeval, the Duc de Tesis and the Duc de Wand, all libertines expelled from the puritanical French court of Louis XVI, and seeking the support of the legendary Duc de Walchen, a German seducer and freethinker in a country where hypocrisy and false virtue reign. Their mission is to export libertinage, a philosophy of enlightenment founded on the rejection of moral boundaries and authorities. Most of all they are looking for a safe place to pursue their quest for pleasure.

This louche cruising amongst elegantly attired courtiers and aristocrats sounds fascinating, and it is for a while  Slightly more portly but nevertheless soigné individuals duck and dive in the undergrowth, in various stages of undress, their white linens contrasting with tanned breasts and buttocks, larded legs and bloated beerguts. Very much like Sade, Serra explores the darker side of human desire but always with graceful discretion. The louche antic gradually become more and more explicit to the point where they actually gets a little close for comfort, eventually verging on the pornographic. Suggestive but never lewd Liberte is a clever game of subterfuge that plays on our curiosity and makes use of a richly textured soundscape to create a atmosphere of sultry expectancy. There is no narrative as such just a series of enigmatic vignettes that take place during the hours of darkness one balmy summer night.

Arriving in painted palanquin borne by his henchmen the Duc de Wand (Baptiste Pinteaux) is recalling the execution of an unfortunate individual whose limbs were pulled one by one from his body. Obsessed by bestiality and golden showers, he loves to salivate over his lascivious encounters, that often involve dogs or farm animals. Fortunately were are spared the most lurid encounters due to the bosky nocturnal shadows as Artur Tort’s roving camera spies voyeuristically on the other outré encounters taking place in the semi-darkness of the eucalyptus trees (eucalyptus trees in the 18th century? – check continuity).

Decadence is the watchword here as none of the trysts is particularly joy-filled unless you are into sado masochism or subjugation. The tone is subdued rather that lascivious, poe-faced even. The film’s enigmatic title suggests that these aristos have too much time on their hands and nothing left to lose as they skip the light fantastic in the lush setting of a midnight night’s dream: Serra’s film may not appeal to everyone but it is certainly a brave and visually alluring meditation on permissiveness. MT

NOW on Subscription at BFI Player  | UN CERTAIN REGARD 2019 | SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

 

Falling (2020) ***

Dir/Wri: Viggo Mortensen | Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Lance Henriksen, Laura Linney, Sverrir Gudnason, | US Drama, 112′

In his first foray into filmmaking Viggo Mortensen writes and also stars in this insightful, semi-autobiographical story of family dysfunction. It sees an irascible old farmer (a feisty Lance Henrikson) gradually losing his grip to dementia as his bewildered gay son grapples for largely unwanted control of the family.

The subject of dementia is so increasingly widespread nowadays it almost needs a genre of its own. And as such this could have been more humorous in the style of Bruce Dern’s Nebraska, or even poetic and whimsical like Miroslav Mandic’s recent arthouse gem Sanremo, but that’s not the point. Falling is a well-made if sombre family drama exploring the fallout of this dread disease, and a decent debut for this seasoned actor. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Evolution (2015) **** MUBI

Dir.: Lucile Hadzihalilovic | Cast: Max Brebant, Roxanne Duran, Julie-Marie Parmentier France/Belgium 2015, 81 min.

Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s memorable debut feature Innocence 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 by an eerie seashore with their mothers, 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 this 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 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 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 beyond 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 a true original revealing a totally new world in just 81 minutes. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Cape Fear (1991) **** Blu-ray

Dir: Martin Scorsese | Wri: Wesley Strick from the novel by Joh D MacDonald | Cast: Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, Juliette Lewis,

J Lee Thompson’s cult classic 1961 thriller is undoubtedly a more sober and classy reflection on recidivism with its serious and starkly realised legal procedural, you cannot deny the appealing immediacy of Martin Scorsese’s version, its characters are certainly more relatable in our contemporary gaze. The 1991 Cape Fear  has  four colourful central performances to enjoy, as well as cameos from key characters from the original, including Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck (in what would be his final film). As a piece of entertainment the 1991 version has everything, including Freddie Francis behind the camera, although some may argue its melodrama and schlocky sensationalism verges on the extreme. It’s a thriller and a fiery one at that, Scorsese finding a brilliant way of bringing things to a climax in the coruscating final act.

Scorsese’s decision to stage the final denouement during a tempestuous rainstorm on the bayou was a masterstroke, the turbulence of the rushing water serving as a magnificent metaphor for the emotional turmoil felt by all the characters, and for different reasons: Nolte’s defence lawyer is hellbent on protecting his family (Lange’s histrionic wife, the innocence of her daughter (Lewis). And a felon just keen to survive as the waves gradually claim the psychotic victim.

Scorsese leaves us in no doubt that his married couple are still enjoying each other, whereas the Peck and his staid onscreen wife Bergen seem to have veered off that avenue of pleasure, despite their relative youth. Robert De Niro makes for a terrifying villain as bible-bashing Max Cady; all quietly persuasive and self-righteous, he emerges a viciously twisted misogynist when riled, and a chilling sociopathic monster in a finale that will remain seared to the memory, alongside Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men (2017). In preparation for the role De Niro paid a doctor USD 5,000 to grind his teeth down and then USD 20,000 to have them restored after shooting had finished. He also used vegetable dyes for the horrific tattoos, that faded a few moths later.

In contrast Robert Mitchum’s 1962 Cady is a standard nasty piece of work, but he doesn’t make our blood run cold, certainly not from a woman’s point of view, coming across moreover as a suave operator who just happens to be a sadistic small time criminal. But Mitchum comes up trumps in the Scorsese version as the heavyweight Lieutenant Elgart. In contrast J Lee Thomson’s womenfolk are twee coffee morning folk, particularly Polly Bergen’s prissy housewife, Peggy. Admittedly it was early Sixties Georgia in America’s staid Deep South (where race riots were still raging).

Martin Scorsese regular casting director Ellen Lewis makes a wise choice with Juliette Lewis for the role of Danielle Bowden, and both she and De Niro garnered Oscar nods for their performances. She gives a great deal of texture to the flirty vulnerable teenager: on the cusp of adulthood, and  hormonally charged, she is sexually curious yet still possessing of a young girl’s fragile charm.

Nolte’s Bowden has clearly put a foot wrong in his legal judgement by suppressing evidence that may have kept De Niro’s Cady out of jail, and he continues to blot his copybook on this misdemeanour, flirting with Douglas’s unstable Lori Davis rather than making amends with a decent apology to Cody.

Casting and performance-wise Gregory Peck comes across as a morally superior Bowden, with his finally chiselled jawline, matinee idol demeanour and clean-suited integrity, as against Nolte’s rather scuzzy married man nursing a nascent midlife crisis and sniffing around before the inevitable onset of sexual disfunction. Bernard Herrmann’s thundering score also unites these two films (remastered for the 1991 version), it’s a magnificent and memorable musical calling card to what will follow. As an elegantly realised moral drama the award goes to J Lee Thompson, but as a rip-roaring riveting thriller Scorsese wins with Cape Fear. MT

CAPE FEAR IS NOW ON BLU-RAY | 14 DECEMBER 2020 | COURTESY OF FABULOUSFILMS.COM

 

 

Rotterdam Film Festival 2021 – a hybrid two-parter

 

The 50th celebration of Rotterdam Film Festival (IFFR) will take place in two parts, kicking off in the first week of February followed a physical event from June 2-6, 2021,

A light-hearted comedy opener seems fitting for this special edition: Anders Thomas Jensen’s Riders of Justice  stars Mads Mikkelsen and Nicolaj Lie Kaas. The first week of the festival is dedicated to The Tiger Competition this year feature 16 titles (a larger competition line-up for the future) , Big Screen Competition and its Ammodo Tiger Shorts and Limelight sections which will see 60 titles taking part. Other talent in competition includes Benoît Jacquot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Mosese, Dea Kulumbegashvili and Nicolás Jaar.

The Tiger Competition winner will be announced on 7 February by a (virtual) jury headed this year by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese joining IDFA’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia, visual artist and filmmaker Hala Elkoussy, critic Helena van der Meulen and film producer Ilse Hughan.

Taking over from IFFR’s artistic director Beyro Beyer, Vanja Kaludjercic has faced a challenging year where filmmakers “have gone above and beyond to complete works in challenging circumstances, and there has been no shortage of great films looking for a home at IFFR”.

Once again the selection aims to ‘encapsulate IFFR’s spirit as a platform for the discovery of visions that pique our curiosity and capture our imagination. The sheer determination of these striking new voices is exhilarating, and I’m proud that we can bring an outstanding selection to our film-loving audiences in new ways that captivate the collective spirit.”

This is reflected in the one-off festival re-design in response to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which is expected to keep much of Europe under full or partial lockdown in the early months of 2021. In a very welcome move, IFFR has awarded US director First Cow director Kelly Reichardt the festival’s honorary Robby Müller Award named after the late Dutch cinematographer and granted to a filmmaker who has ”created authentic, credible and emotionally striking visual language throughout their work”. The festival has been a platform for her features Old Joy, Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy And Lucy. 

TIGER COMPETITION |  1-7 FEBRUARY 2021

Agate Mousse (Lebanon) world premiere
Dir. Selim Mourad

Bebia, à mon seul désir (Georgia, UK) world premiere
Dir. Juja Dobrachkous

Bipolar (China) world premiere
Dir. Queena Li

Black Medusa (Tunisia) world premire
Dir. ismaël, Youssef Chebbi

A Corsican Summer (France) world premiere
Dir. Pascal Tagnat

The Edge of Daybreak (Thailand/Switzerland) world premiere
Dir. Taiki Sakpisit

Feast (Netherlands) world premiere
Dir. Tim Leyendekker

Friends and Strangers (Australia) world premiere
Dir. James Vaughan

Gritt (Norway) international premiere
Dir, Itonje Søimer Guttormsen

Landscapes of Resistance (Serbia/Germany/France) world premiere
Dir. Marta Popivoda

Liborio (Dominican Republic/Puerto Rico/Qatar) world premiere
Dir. Nino Martínez Sosa

Looking for Venera ( Kosovo/Macedonia) world premiere
Dir. Norika Sefa, 2021

Madalena
Dir. Madiano Marcheti

Mayday (US) international premiere
Dir, Karen Cinorre

Mighty Flash (Spain) world premiere
Dir. Ainhoa Rodríguez

BIG SCREEN Competition

Archipel (Canada) world premiere
Dir. Félix Dufour-Laperrière

Aristocrats (Japan) international premiere
Dir. Sode Yukiko

As We Like It (Taiwan) world premiere
Dir. Chen Hung-i & Muni Wei.

Aurora (Costa Rica, Mexico) world premiere
Dir. Paz Fábrega

Carro Rei (Brazil) world premiere
Dir. Renata Pinheiro

The Cemil Show (Turkey) world premiere
Dir. Bariş Sarhan

Drifting (Hong Kong) world premiere
Dir. Li Jun

The Harbour (India), world premiere
Dir. Rajeev Ravi

The Last Farmer (India) world premiere
Dir. M. Manikandan

Lone Wolf (Australia) world premiere
Dir. Jonathan Ogilvie

The North Wind (Russia) world premiere
Dir. Renata Litvinova

El perro que no calla (Argentina) European premiere
Dir. Ana Katz

Sexual Drive (Japan) world premiere
Dir. Yoshida Kota

Les Sorcières de l’Orient (France) world premiere
Dir. Julien Faraut

The Year Before the War (Latvia) world premiere
Dir. Dāvis Sīmanis

Limelight (World Premieres)

Dead & Beautiful (Netherlands, Taiwan) world premiere
Dir. David Verbeek

Mitra (Netherlands) world premiere
Dir. Kaweh Modiri

IFFR | 1-7 FEBRUARY | 2-6 JUNE 2021

 

Sing me a Song (2020) ****

Dir.: Thomas Balmès; Documentary with Peyangki, Ugyen Pelden, Pemba Dorji; France/Germany/Switzerland 2019,101 min.

In a follow-up to an earlier documentary, French director Thomas Balmes returns to a village in Bhutan to explore the impact of modern technology on a once-sheltered society.

Ten years ago French director/DoP/producer Thomas Balmès had visited the remote village of Laya at the foot of the Himalayas. Electricity was coming to the village, and everyone was excited, including eight-year old Peyangki, a monk, who became the star of Happiness. Ten years later, Balmès returned to Laya for Sing Me a Song, probing what TV and internet had done to the village, and Peyangki in particular.

We start with footage from Happiness, with Peyangki frolicking in the fields and looking forward to the electrification of the village but, at the same time, being adamant it would not interfere with his religious study in the monastery. We cut to the classroom of today and see all the monks, including Peyangki, emerged in prayers – but when the camera pans out again they are all stuck into their mobiles, the chanting just enough to cover the din of the devices.

Peyangki, who has now found an admirer in Pemba Dorji, a young monk about the same age as Peyangki was in Happiness, is “moving away from Buddha”. Like his fellow monks he is sold on the internet, particularly WeChat, which opens their world to female companionship. When visiting the local market, the young men find a basket with plastic weapons and start a hilarious war game, with firecrackers replacing life ammunition.

Sadly neither Peyangki’s teacher, not his mother can stop the young man from leaving the monastery for the capital Thimpu where his ‘girlfriend’ Ugyen Pelden is pictured singing with three other young females in a bar. Peyangki has made enough money by selling medical mushrooms (which he has harvested with his sister) to start a new life with Ugyen, who – unknown to the monk – already has a baby daughter from a previous marriage, and plans to emigrate to Kuwait, leaving her daughter behind.

Peyangki is taken back by all this, and Pemba, who has been sent by his teacher to convince his older friend to return to the monastery, is forced to return home alone. Peyangki is consoled by one of the other singers who fills him with positive thoughts, but for Peyangki the world has come to an end

The message of this delightfully poignant coming of age story is clear: devices which help us to connect, can easily tear us apart and destroy our sense of self and alter our identity. Peyangki feels obligated to join modern and his nativity leaves him unprepared for the Pandora’s box, and is unable to rediscover his innocence. The reaction of his fellow monks, their easy way of dealing with consumer goods as well as armed conflicts, show the regressive nature of the online world, where everything is levelled out to mean more or less nothing. For Peyangki, who had once been called the “re-incarnation of a Lama”, the choice is clear: the safety of isolation or the unstructured life of an empty gratification in a world where everything is replaceable at a moments notice, including the people closest to you.

Happiness won a cinematography award at Sundance. The results of this return odyssey are less positive although equally beautiful in their visual allure, the immaculate scenes in the monastery contrasting starkly with the hustle and bustle of the  urban environment. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s One World International Human Rights Doc Film Festival. AS

On Demand from 1 January 2021

News of the World (2020) ***

Dir: Paul Greengrass| Cast: Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Marvel, Ray McKinnon, Helena Zengel | US Drama 114′

The American Civil War has come to a close and in Texas a virulent epidemic is sweeping through the panhandle. Tom Hanks and German newcomer Helena Zengel star as two lost souls drawn together in the aftermath of the tragedy, this once happened 150 years ago but Greengrass gives a contemporary feel with its migrant central characters.

Set on the wide open panoramas of the Southern desert yet intimate in its personal story of survival, the theme of storytelling is at the heart of this ambitious Western adventure, both for Greengrass and his lead, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd. The soldier has seen active service during the war but several years later has turned to ‘newscasting’ – making a crust out of telling spirited, often didactic stories that connect his audiences with the wider world. As he makes his way across the vast desert landscape, Hanks is believable and appealing as the strong and benign warrior.

Piqued with lively action sequences, News of the World is contemplative rather than swashbuckling but impressive nevertheless, wearing its burnished period detail on a war-torn sleeve, this is a well-mounted and poetic frontier adventure, and a departure from the director’s usual slick modern thrillers such as The Bourne Ultimatum and United 93. 

Greengrass quickly establishes his statesman-like hero’s credentials in the opening scenes, a respectable horseman now down on his luck but making the best in his reduced circumstances, he still cuts dash spinning his newsy yarns with languorous dignity during long evenings in candlelit hostelries. One topical item relates to the opening of a new railway line from the Kansas border all the way to Galveston, that was the Pacific Railway’s first foray across Indian reservations.

Essentially a two-hander though with the occasional side-lining vignette, the slow-burning storyline carries a distinct whiff of cultural diversity, the Captain journeying through this lawless territory with a blond 10 year-old he meets while hitching up his waggon in the frontier town of Wichita Falls. And this relationship sets the reflective tone of their odyssey; he is mentor, protector and father-figure, a role Hanks pulls off with a respectable swagger, though the two lack a noticeable chemistry: Johanna is sullen, unreachable, but turns out to be a German orphan raised by a Native American tribe. Hanks finds himself tasked with relaying her to blood relatives in another part of Texas, against her will.

Writing with Bafta-award winner Luke Davies, Greengrass bases his script on Paulette Jiles’ 2016 bestseller that centres on two unlikely companions who gradually develop a mutual bond. Shooting took place in the magnificent scenery of New Mexico by Dariusz Wolski, his jerky intense handheld ‘urban’ scenes contrasting with the feral beauty of big desert countryside where the two encounter all kinds of surprises during their eventful escapade.

It soon emerges that Johanna is subject to some kind of kidnapping and is bound for San Antonio, so Kidd’s wings are clipped by the presence of the minor, who becomes his responsibility in the hostile terrain. The child has been let down by so many adults she proves unruly although vulnerable and lost in this turbulent country where settlers are at war with Native Indians and vice versa. And this milieu of conflict and danger provides a heady atmosphere to the couple’s journey. One episode sees their carriage involved in a terrible accident when the horse loses control over a mountainside. Another involves an ugly skirmish with some Confederate former soldiers (Covino, James and Lilley) who try to ‘buy’ the little girl, and have to be fended off. Johanna’s upbringing in Indian culture brings a spiritual and folkloric element to the Western adventure showing Hanks at his best in a gritty role of guardian for this tough but also thoughtful kid in a surprisingly lyrical piece of Americana. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

 

 

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) ***

Dir: Patty Jenkins | Gal Gadot, Kirsten Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Chris Pine | US Action Drama, 151′

Women are the superheroes of this Amazonian flight of fantasy that soon crashes down to earth in an over-bloated final hour. As blockbusters go Wonder Woman 84 is tremendous fun, swinging us back to the Eighties in a blousy, big haired way, and with a heroine who is clever, kind, gorgeous, and vulnerable – but not a fool for love, as we soon discover.

That’s Gal Gadot in the title role of Diana Prince. Since her last appearance in the 2017 original there are new tricks up her sleeve: the ability to make mincemeat out of cheesy dialogue, and add emotional ballast to the splashy set pieces that see her young self defying gravity as the pint size heroine (Lilly Aspell) in the film’s opening sequence. Learning life’s lessons early, she cheats and gets a ticking off from her mother Hippolyta (Nielsen) “No hero is born from lies”. All well and good, so far.

This sequel to brilliant original epic is set in greedy mid-1980s America. This time around, there’s a plot device involving a mysterious crystal that will grant a single wish to its possessor, but that works both ways too – life’s never easy, even for wonder women.

Diana now finds herself gainly employed at the Washington’s Smithsonian where her most cherished wish is the return of the – now dead – love of her life  – Steve (Pine), although the chemistry has certainly fizzled out of that affair. She also meets the geeky be-spectacled Barbara (a fab Kirsten Wiig), who is a dashing blond beneath her bookish exterior. And must contend with a power-crazy profligate Maxwell (Pascal) an overblown twat looking to dominate the world wearing a wig and false teeth (not to mention ‘too much info’ trousers). Naturally good triumphs over evil in a happy ending, but one which ends up confused, strung out, and far too excited to keep us entertained for two and a half hours. . MT

Wonder Woman 1984 is now on release

Cat in the Wall (2019) Locarno

Dir: Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova | Drama | 

Award-winning Bulgarian duo Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova are no strangers to controversy. Their popular award-winning documentary Uncle Tony, Three Fools and the Secret Service was widely condemned by the authorities for exposing the corrupt totalitarian regime in their homeland.

Undeterred, they have pushed on with another potential firecracker in the shape of Cat in the Wall, this time based on real events in a Peckham council estate as experienced by a professional Bulgarian single mother trying to make it in London. This English-language sink-estate drama playfully deals with inflammatory themes such a Brexit, gentrification and the pitfalls of home-owning through the endearing tale of a wayward cat who also reserves his right to roam into pastures new.

Atanasova plays the main character Irina, an architect who has bought and renovated a council flat in a Peckham Estate where she lives with her young son Jojo (Orlin Asenov) and her brother Vlado (Angel Genov), a well-qualified historian who has turned his hand to installing Satellite dishes. Hoping to leave the corrupt post-communist set-up in Bulgaria to start a new life in Britain she soon discovers the grim reality of ‘playing the game’ in Britain.

Naturalistic performances from a cast of non-pros and experienced thesps and a refreshing script are the strengths of this light-hearted bit of social realism, piqued by dark humour. Utterly refusing to cow-tow to the usual Loachian style of Tory-bashing, this film still exposes some uncomfortable truths in a storyline that builds quite a head of steam and some set-tos that make it tense but also thoroughly grounded in reality. Unsurprisingly it never got a release in Britain.

Irina, Vlado and Jojo inject a much-needed breath of fresh air into a hackneyed scenario, where they uncover the usual set-backs to living in social housing – the urine-drenched lift is a classic example. But soon they find themselves face to face with a ginger tabby cat, and after adopting it for Jojo they are soon accused of animal theft by a neighbouring family.

As an educated immigrant who is well-placed to comment on Bulgaria and Brexit-Britain, Irina comes across as sympathetic and thoroughly likeable, eking out an existence that sees her pitching for architectural schemes while supplementing her meagre salary with bar work. Meanwhile she notices how most of her neighbours are living on generous state benefits that make finding paid work nonsensical.

“I didn’t come here to be a leech,” says the politically-savvy Irina who may well prove unpopular with diehard socialists in the audience. The recent words of Trump also echo: ‘if she doesn’t like it she can go back home”. And then there is her little son Jojo who is trying to make the best of his rather isolated existence as an immigrant child with no local friends, but who thinks he has found one in Goldie.

The directors maintain their distance, serving up all this ‘near the bone controversy’ with such a lightness of touch that it is difficult to take offence in a social satire that mostly feels even-handed. The character of Irina’s neighbour Camilla is a case in point. Played by veteran actress Camilla Godard she brings a gentleness to her part as a drug-smoking depressive who, it later emerges, bought the cat as a present for her special needs granddaughter, another example of the more hapless denizens of the estate. And while we feel for Camilla she also conveys an ambivalence that somehow cuts both ways. We can sympathise but also condemn her. Cat in the Wall is a clever and highly enjoyable drama that really shines a light on some shadowy issues in the home we now call post-Brexit ‘broken Britain’. At least we have our ‘Sovereignty’ despite losing our freedom of movement. Full marks to Irina and those pioneers like her, she will be sorely missed. MT

NOW FREE TO WATCH ON ARTEKINO | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL premiere

Harmonium (2016) | Fuchi Ni Tatsu **** Mubi

Dir.: Koji Fukada | Cast: Mariko Tsutsui, Kanji Furutacki, Momone Shinokawa, Taiga, Tadnubo Asano | Japan | 120 min.

The habitual genteel family set-up is turned upside down in Koji Fukada’s noir thriller Harmonium where a Japanese home becomes an unsettling place fraught with underlying guilt from  which resurfaces when a strange figure from the past disrupts the domestic harmony of one small family.

The Japanese title Fuchi Ni Tatsu alludes to the edgy atmosphere that envelopes the lives of Toshio (Furutacki) a regular church-goer who runs a small engineering workshop from home where he lives with his wife Akie (Tsutsui) and young daughter Hotaru (Shinokawa).

Life is fairly uneventful, Hotaru is learning to play the harmonium, her musical talent eclipsed by her pretentious and argumentative nature. But when Toshio takes pity on a old friend Yasaka (Asano) who has just been released from jail for committing murder, not only employing him, but also giving him a room in his house, the story takes a sinister turn for the worst.

The reason for Toshio’s generosity appears to stem from their collaboration in the murder, but Yasaka initially seems to have turned over a new leaf, making himself an affable guest, even offering to help Hotaru with her music studies. Can a leopard ever change his spots? This is the premise on which the narrative unfolds. And without giving too much away, it seems –  as ever – that this is unlikely.

What makes Harmonium so remarkable is that all the adult protagonists are terrible ordinary, banal even: there is no whiff of any sculduggery, just smalltime folk going through the daily grind – we see Toshio toiling in his workshop and Akie sewing – they only speak to each other at mealtimes; Toshio seems totally detached from the other members of his family, and has more in common with Yasaka, his guilt for having avoided prison appears to be his only emotion.

DoP Ken’ichi Negishi’s camera closes in on the characters, underlining their isolation from each other. This is a tense and cleverly misleading thriller with some impressive performances, particularly from Tsutsui who feels betrayed by the men, and yet helpless in her attempts at making her daughter’s life meaningful. A clinical study of the banality of evil. AS

NOW ON MUBI

Persian Lessons (2020) ****

Dir: Vadim Perelman. Russia/Germany/Belarus. 2020. 128mins

A war of attrition plays out between Belgian Jew and Nazi in this clever and darkly amusing ride to hell and back from Ukrainian born director Vadim Perelman (House of Fog).

Set in occupied France in 1942 and based on a short story by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, a young Belgian prisoner of war is forced to change his nationality and invent an entire language – pretending to being Persian – in order to escape the clutches of an ego-driven commandant who saves him from the firing squad – simply because he has a penchant for learning the lingo (Farsi).

The physical tortures of war are one thing, but the psychological effects can be equally painful, and this film makes a nonsense of the popular saying: “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. The young Belgian is played with considerably aplomb by (man of the moment) Nahuel Perez Biscayart. As Reza he not only has to lie but also remember the lies. The payback of these mental gymnastics comes in the film’s stunning reveal that is almost as moving as the final scene in Polanski’s The Pianist.

These were the tortuous hoops that people had to jump through during the Second World War. And Persian Lessons is another astonishing angle on conflict, and another tribute to our collective memory of the Holocaust. Meanwhile the gruelling tension of the folie-a-deux between Commandant and POW is lightened by a deliciously salacious undercurrent of flirtatiousness that burbles away between the Nazi staff running the camp. And although there is a slight longueur towards the final stretch in a story that requires a leap of faith, the strength of the performances and of Ilya Zofin’s brilliant writing combined with the impressive mise en scene blow these minor flaws away.

Reza is an extremely smart young guy and while he quivers in his boots, he also works out how to massage Commandant Koch’s fragile ego. And Lars Eidinger – in one of the best performances of his career – is deeply sinister as the vain and deeply insecure Commandant, who has no access to the internet or even a smart phone to check the Farsi words and phrases, so the plot pivots between his desire to trust Reza and his deep fear of leaving himself exposed to ridicule by his peers and his young teacher, who is living his life on a knife edge.

Elegantly framed and lit by DoP Vladislav Opelyants, the only flaw is the irritating score that incessantly needles away when silence would occasionally be preferable. But even that can’t detract from this really gripping and intelligent wartime thriller. MT

On DIGITAL 22 JANUARY and DVD on 8 FEBRUARY

 

 

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Toni Erdmann (2016) Tribute to Peter Simonischek 1946-2023

Director: Maren Ade| Cast: Peter Simonischek, Sandra Huller, Michael Wittenborn, Thomas Loibl, Trystan Putter | 142min | Comedy | Germany

This quirky and hilarious satire from German filmmaker Maren Ade is a European arthouse  classic that celebrates the intergenerational gap with humour rather than strife. The film is led by a fine comic performance from Peter Simonischek who would go on to star in The Interpreter.

Maren Ade explores whether comedy is the right way to fix family issues – or whether we should just try to be more sympathetic and understanding. In a film that runs just short of three hours, she achieves a blend of situational comedy, embarrassing incidents, pervy sex scenes and even a good old German nudist party in the style of Ulrich Seidl or even Aki Kaurismaki .

TONI ERDMANN‘s hero is Austrian: Peter Simonichek plays Winifried, a divorced music teacher who loves playing inappropriate practical jokes on his friends but his latest pranks involve his adult daughter Ines  (Sandra Hüller). We first meet Winifried in the throes of arranging a surprise musical tribute to an old colleague’s retirement. But not everyone likes surprises or to be part of this harmless fun, least of all his serious-minded daughter who has to be at the top of her game as management consultant in the competitive macho world of Romania. When she realises her father has been up to his tricks in a bid to poke fun at her childless state and perceived loneliness, it’s already too late to block his impromptu visit in Bucharest, after the death of his dog Willi leaves him footloose and a bit down in the dumps.

As a little girl she loved his tomfoolery, but his casual arrival at her offices in fancy dress, makes her extremely irritated. Rejecting his bid to offer fatherly appreciation, Winifried then starts to behave like a stalker, popping up at Ines’ dinner dates pretending to be his alter ego ‘Toni Erdmann’ complete with wig and grotesque false teeth which he claims are from cosmetic dentistry “I wanted something different – fiercer”.

Only a woman can appreciate the intricacies of life in the competitive corporate world where women are supposed to “go on shopping trips” when they travel with their CEO husbands. Rather than hanging with the guys after work, poor Ines is forced to show the women round the shops while the men ‘kick back’ over drinks. Extremely galling. At one point she tells her boss “if I was a feminist, I wouldn’t tolerate guys like you”. Ade’s script is really spot on, brilliantly manipulating this father daughter relationship and drawing some subtle and intricately-played performances from Simonischek and Huller, who start as polar opposites in their frosty stand-off but gradually grow more sympathetic and human during the course of the film. Beneath Winifried’s silliness lies a heart of gold, he appreciates the real world but has withdrawn from it to reflect  and his daughter emerges to be far more caring and worldly than he gives her credit for.

Winifried’s old dog Willi sets the furry leitmotive for rest of the film, and he pops up in various shaggy wigs and even a full blown Bulgarian scarecrow outfit. The irony comes from the way Ines intuitively manages her difficult colleagues and local friends; her secretary Anca is the only sympathetic female character and there are some really poignant scenes at the end where Ines and her father finally let their guards down to acknowledge that blood really is thicker than water. MT

PETER SIMONISCHEK 1946-2023  | WINNER OF THE FIPRESCI AWARD CANNES 2016

The Exit of the Trains (2020) DocLisboa

Dir: Radu Jude, Adrian Cioflânca | Doc, România 175′

Screening as part of the So Many Stories Left Untold strand in DOCLISBOA’s 18th Edition (14-20 January, 2021), this essay film directed by Radu Jude and first timer Adrian Cioflânca makes use of extensive archive material to reflect on the Romanian genocide of June 26th, 1941, in the town of Iasi, near the Moldovan border. It’s a gruelling testament to man’s inhumanity towards his neighbour, and makes for grim viewing not least for its rather overlong treatment.

The pogrom lasted four days and wiped out most of its  Jewish male population. Although occupying German forces had a hand in the tragedy the main perpetrators were actually locals who looted their Jewish neighbours’ property after killing them.

Jude opts for a similar, minimalistic style to his 2017 essay film Dead Nation  to chronicle this sudden outbreak of wartime ethnic cleansing. Playing out as ‘an exhibition of the dead’, a voice-over commentary by relatives or neighbours of the victims accompanies the grim images. There are also witness reports of the few who survived. The final segment shares an array of photos of the pogrom itself, shown in chronological order.

The heat of that June morning in 1941 was in stark contrast to the chilling events that would unfold in the Eastern Romanian town. Jewish citizens were assembled in front of the police station where they were beaten and kicked, some were shot. Later the perpetrators sent women and children home,  deporting the men in airtight cattle trains (150 per sealed waggon) to Podulloaiei, or Targu Frumos, whence the few survivors were taken to the labour camp of Ialomita.

The witnesses reflect on their next-door neighbours’ role in the genocide, their focus was to steal from the victims, stripping them of their flats, jewellery and money, having already exhorted money for failing to fulfil clemency appeals. Some of the photos are gruesome: particularly the face of a Mr. Lehrer, who was slaughtered right in front of his shop. One women was ordered by the authorities to pay a military duty for her soldier son, even though he had been killed. She was forced to sell her only means of livelihood – a Singer sewing machine. Most of the victims died of asphyxiation: “He died of his injuries and lack of air”. It’s a chilling mantra that resonates with the mass suffering going on today.

Survivors talk about the hours endured with the bodies of the dead or dying, before any escape was possible. The trains were transformed into mortuaries and some of the images are particularly harrowing. Finally, we see a photo of a ‘normal’ passenger train which stopped during the mayhem. It shows the carriages with bodies bundled together, like wood or bricks, before a mass burning – only a few were buried in the Jewish cemetery of Targu Frumos.

The Exit of the Trains is far more than a mere documentary: it is a witness report of how humans suddenly lose their humanity and descend into depravity. What sort of people put petrol into water bottles, then charge inflated prices to revel in the pain and slow death of their captives. AS

DOCLISBOA | 2021 | SO MANY STORIES LEFT UNTOLD | Berlinale 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under the Tree | Undir Trenu (2018) **** Mubi

Dir.: Hafstein Gunnar Sigurdsson; Cast.: Steinthor Steinporsson, Edda Bjorgvinsdottir, Sigurdur Sigurjonsson, Lara Johanna Jonsdottir, Pornsteinn Bachmann, Selma Bjornsdottir; Iceland//Denmark/Poland/Germany 2017, 89 min.

In this urban satire, Hafstein Gunnar Sigurdsson (Rams) pulls off a comedy feat, making us laugh at our own small mindedness. A great ensemble showcases this tour-de-force of middle-class nimby-ism with much the same dark humour as Rams.

It all starts with male embarrassment: husband Atli (Steinporsson) is surprised by his wife Agnes (Jonsdottir) in the early morning, masturbating to pornographic images of himself on his laptop  – or so he claims. Agnes throws him out, not realising that his next place of residence back home with his parents – will soon be a war zone. Meanwhile Atli’s brother is heading for suicide, and his mother Inga (Bjorgvinsdottir) – suffering from depression – has chosen the next-door neighbours Konrad (Bachman) and Eybjorg (Bjornsdottir) as the butt of her deflected self-hatred. Konrad and Eyborg, not unreasonably, want the huge tree on his parents’ property trimmed, at it blocks the sun from their front porch. While Inga’s husband Baldvin (Sigurjonsson) is ready to compromise, Inga herself does not want to sacrifice a leaf – she goes on the warpath blowing a gasket of pent up emotion. So Atli moves into a tent in the garden, his parent’s Persian cat disappears without a trace and Inga is convinced the neighbours have abducted the puss.

Since said neighbours own a proud German shepherd, Inga takes matters in her own hands: impersonating Eybjorg opts for extreme measures with the animal. And when husband Baldvin criticises her for being over the top, she tells him “at least they know where he is, unlike me” – referring to the missing body of her son. Then Konrad, in the middle of the night, takes his saw to the tree in question, setting in motion a bloody Shakespearean tragedy.

Violence simmers under the suface: Atli cannot stand the thought of Agnes getting custody of their four-year old daughter Asa: who he abducts from Kindergarten. later smashing his wife’s mobile and threatening violence. Unlike his mother, Atli is too phlegmatic to escalate the conflict, listening to his father’s solution for compromise  – the apple never falls far from this tree either.

The film never takes itself too seriously: at a tenants’ meeting in Agnes’ flat, she complains about him being there, blurting out at the meeting “Atli masturbates to his girlfriend’s pictures. That’s not right, is it?”, to which the male half of a couple, whose nightly lovemaking keeps the neighbourhood awake, responds with a curt “why not, it’s okay”.

Under the Tree is chock-full of witty one-liners as hilarious as they are absurd: but underneath there lurks a nimbyism and an intolerance of anyone not sharing their own values (while also claiming to be ‘liberal’). By the end, Sigurdsson, fed up with  humans, leaves the last word to the cat. AS

NOW ON MUBI

Mother (2019) Locarno

Dir.: Kristof Bilsen; Doc with Chutimon Sonsirichai (Pomm), Elisabeth Röhmer, Maya Gloor, Walter Gloor; Belgium 2019, 82 min.

People are living longer but not always enjoying a healthy or happy old age in Western Europe. Kristof Bilsen tackles the alarming truths behind our care home crisis in his heart-breaking documentary that sees a Swiss family sending their mother across the world to live out her final years with perfect strangers.  

But before you jump to condemn them, just consider this. Many Thai women come to the UK each year to enjoy the benefits of our strong economy that allows them to make a living by offering their unique talents as masseuses and alternative health professionals. Their kids are left with their extended families back in the East, and see their mothers only one or twice a year. Meanwhile UK care homes charge extortionate amounts of money just for bed and board ( BUPA charge a basic £100,o00 per annum in central London), while bosses cream off the profits and pay their care staff a pittance. Many of them are not trained carers, and are unable to communicate adequately with older residents due to their poor English skills. Often they have little aptitude or interest in their badly paid jobs. It’s a critical situation that seems to indicate that this Swiss family could be doing their mother a favour, and even saving her money, into the bargain.

In Thailand, Pomm looks after Alzheimers patients from German-speaking countries in the Baan Kamlangchay hospice near Chiang-Mai. Her own three children are looked after by her husband and extended family. She too is badly paid but infinitely more compassionate, working an eight hour shift, with another job to make ends meet, her relationship with her husband is strained.

In this tranquil sanctuary, Swiss citizen Elisabeth Röhmer is in the final stages of Alzheimers, but Pomm remembers when she loved to do the crossword and helped the carers learn English. After Elisabeth’s death, Pomm will be responsible for Maya, a mother of three from Zofingen in Switzerland. Her husband Walter and three daughters Joyce, Sara and Tanya are struggling to find suitable care for grandma Maya, so the clinic in Thailand seems the best solution. ”It would be selfish to keep her here so we could see her all the time. She gets much better care in Thailand”. And this true because Maya, like Elisabeth before her, will have three carers working round the clock.

Once she arrives with her family in Thailand Maya takes time to settle down in her new environment, awoken by exotic birdsong on her first morning. She is clearly not as happy about the move as the Gloor family would have us believe as they share their last Christmas together far from home. On a boat trip, they discuss how to say goodbye to Maya. Super 8 mm family films show a younger Maya in happier times. Back home in Switzerland, the Gloors Skype Maya who is still affected by their departure but adapting to her new circumstances.

So is there such a difference between East and West? Clearly in the Far East there is far more respect for adults, their wisdom and experience is highly valued both by the family and society as a whole. This extends to the process of dying as we saw in Locarno winner MRS FANG. It seems like a double whammy when elderly members of the family lose their dignity and need our care and patience while they remain critical, controlling and difficult, as in the case with dread diseases such as Alzheimers. Their dehumanisation process is disorientating, their loss of dignity strangely infantalises them in the eyes of those who once looked up to them and respected their seniority. We expect to look after our kids, but not our parents. And England has now become a child-centric culture, where children have become the objects of desire, admiration and wonder. Rather than wise elders we puts the young on a pedestal, as was seen recently in the case of Swedish teen, Greta Thunberg.

Bilsen remains objective in his fascinating and thought-provoking film, Pomm reflecting that her job has shown her the difference between rich and poor. Really? Maya has three care givers because the Swiss family can afford it, yet the carers in both countries are badly paid. The difference is that over here in the UK the care is poor even when you throw money at it; clearly compassion cannot be bought and that is reflected back in the attitude we have regarding the elderly, who also are our elders. Pomm wonders (as do we all) what will happen to her if she becomes a victim of Alzheimers. Who will care for her? All over the world we are relying on others to care for our loved ones because we are too busy looking after ourselves. MT

LOCARNO WORLD PREMIERE | AVAILABLE ON VOD ITUNES, AMAZON & GOOGLE | 11 JANUARY 2021

Archive (2020)

Dir/Wri: Gavin Rothery | Cast: Theo James, Stacy Martin, Rhona Mitra, Toby Jones, Peter Ferdinando, Richard Glover, Lia Williams

Just before my father died I thought about how brilliant it would be if I could download his personality along with all the vast knowledge and experience gathered during his eventful life, and save it for posterity. Gavin Rothery has taken that idea and made it into an impressive AI Sci-fi drama, and it’s the human element that makes Archive so appealing.

It persuades us that sex and romance still exist in 2038, and so does humour. It’s also got Toby Jones which is always a good thing. And the robots are surprisingly intuitive, with acute sensibilities, and also enjoy listening to rock music.

Theo James plays George Elmore, an American computer working on a  human-equivalent AI. Holed up in a remote Japanese facility deep in a snowbound forest he has been tasked by his draconian boss Simone (Mitra) with finessing the model of a rudimentary female robot, who has also cleverly sussed Simone out (“I don’t like her, she’s a bitch”).

But he’s actually more focused on another state of the art humanoid prototype which is at a critical stage, and this personal and highly secretive project will reunite him with his late wife Jules (Stacy Martin) who he speaks to through a system called ‘archive’ that allows the living to communicate with the dead for a brief space of time. Her personality and memories have been downloaded into the robot’s shell. It’s a brilliant idea and the ideal solution for preserving the essence, vast experiences and knowledge of the people we’ve loved. But woman are complex, especially robot ones, and so Elmore really has his work cut out. Then Toby Jones arrives to inspect the archive and George realises his days are numbered.

Archive is the feature debut of Gavin Rothery who also wrote the script. Rather like the recent Sci-fi outing Ex Machina it looks stylish and wizzy largely because Rothery is also a graphic designer and special effects guru but it’s his plotting and a strong cast that makes this enjoyable, although Elmore doesn’t get the happy ending he’s hoping for. MT

ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FROM 18 JANUARY 2021

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Comrades! (2020) **** VOD

Dir: Andrei Konchalovsky | Drama, Russia 120′

Veteran Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky uncovers a little known episode of the Nikita Krushchev era – the Novercherkassk Massacre  of June 1962 – in this elegant and restrained black and white feature filmed on academy ratio.

A follow-up to his last Venice offering – Sin – an imagined drama about Michelangelo – this is a more down to earth film but its refined gracefulness pictures the seriousness of the incident with a lightness of touch and even a dash of sardonic humour.

Dear Comrades! plays out during three days and is viewed through the eyes of a working woman played often vehemently by the director’s wife and regular collaborator Julia Vysotskaya. Lyuda is divorced and living with her daughter and father in the Southern city where she is a committed Communist Party official who yearns for the days of Stalin, despite its abuses which would lead to millions of Russians losing their lives. We instantly connect with her from the opening scene where she is in a rush to leave her married lover’s bed, keen to get in the supermarket queue before the shelves are emptied – due to the political regime rather than Covid19 shortages.

A strike is later announced at a local factory where Lyuda’s wilful teenage daughter Sveta (Julia Burova) is a worker and desperate to join her co-workers as they mass for the protest. Lyuda is watching the crowd swell from the balcony of her spacious offices but when the workers surge forward and break into the building she and her colleagues are advised to leave through the basement. Soon thousands are joining in the protest and the following days sees a KGB sniper shoots indiscriminately into the crowd and many civilians are killed and injured as they scatter for cover. .

The balanced script uncovers some fascinating contradictions about the Soviet era: Konchalovsky and his co-writer Elena Kiseleva are keen to point out that  the army are odds with the KGB and the forces end up taking the rap. The authorities crack down immediately ordering the main roads to be resurfaced with fresh tar macadam to hide the indelible bloodshed which has seeped into the cracks and dried in the searing sun. There is a rapid cover-up: locals are forced to sign non-disclosure agreements and sworn to secrecy upon pain of death. Meanwhile, Sveta has disappeared and Lyuda urges a KGB captain Viktor (Andrei Gusev) to help track her down.

In many ways Lyuda is a conflicted character not only for her political ideals but also for her personal ones: “Are you ashamed to share a bed with another woman’s husband?” complains her daughter when Lyuda complains about her daughter’s tarty habit of not wearing a bra.  Lyuda supports a crack-down on the protesters but when Sveta upholds her own constitutional right to protest, Lyuda tells her she should be disciplined. And the following vignette involving her father (Sergei Erlish) is a telling one as he dresses up in his military uniform and dusts down a religious icon of the Virgin Mary while reminiscing over past state abuses.

After a dignified irritation in the early scenes Lyuda start to let her emotions out of the bag in the final act, her anxiety bubbling to the surface but also her nihilistic acceptance of life under a regime which she has both aided and abetted, and is now suffering under. The final reveal topples over into a romantic sentimentalism bordering on melodrama that sits awkwardly with her stiff upper-lipped persona of the early part of the film, but this human drama is richly rewarding snapshot of life in 1960s Russia that doesn’t appear to have moved under Putin nearly sixty years later, according to Andre Konchalovsky. MT

NOW ON CURZON VOD from 15 January | Venice Film Festival 2020  | SPECIAL JURY PRIZE 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cocoon (2020) *** VOD, Bluray

Dir.: Leonie Krippendorff; Cast: Lena Urzendowsky, Lena Klenke, Jella Haase, Elina Vildanova, Anja Schneider, Bill Becker; Germany 2020, 99 min.

Over a decade ago Celine Sciamma burst onto the scene with her refreshing look at lesbian romance in Water Lilies. Native Berliner Leonie Krippendorff’s seductive spin on teenage love is a contempo coming-of-age story that just manages to avoid symbolic overdrive and sentimentality.

Set in the sweltering summer heat of Kreuzberg, the capital’s answer to Hackney, the story revolves around Nora (played by an impressive Lena Urzendowsky, with already has over twenty screen credits to her name). Hanging out with her older sister  Jule (Klenke) and friend Aylin (Vildanova) and her boozy mother Vivienne (Schneider) who appears to be somewhat of an intellectual who come to life when she gets a birthday present of Judith Butler’s novel ‘Bodies that matter’, dedicated to her by a certain Twiggy, a friend from a happier chapter in her life.

Nora’s curiosity is woken when she meets the older Romy (Haase), who comes to her aid during an embarrassing poolside incident, and the girls become instant best friends bonding over boyfriends, but Romy’s not just interested in boys, or so it seems. A good deal of hazy camerawork seems appropriate for the lust-fuelled summer reverie, not unlike Pawel Pawlikovski created in My Summer of Love.

Cocoon is not that revealing, or particularly noteworthy in its love story, what stand out is the social background, showing how the girls prefer Muslim boyfriends because of their apparent faithfulness, nearly all of them repeating “I swear on the Koran”!. Perhaps this successful integration is overdone, but nevertheless, some progress has been made.

DoP Martin Neumeyer is clearly influenced by Spring Breakers, although sadly Berlin’s public swimming pools are a far cry from Florida’s beaches. Still, he captures the uniqueness of the borough of Kreuzberg which retains a certain bohemian charm in an otherwise gentrified capital city. AS

DVD, BLURAY and VOD release from 25 JANUARY 2021

Crash (1996)

Dir.: David Cronenberg; Cast: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Deborah Kara Unger, Elias Koteas, Rosanna Arquette; Canada 1996, 100 min.

Crash certainly broke ground on its release in 1996. Cronenberg adapted the screen hit from the 1973 novel by JG Ballard’s 1973 who was declared “beyond any psychiatric help” by a publishing house critic back in the day.

The thriller won the Special Jury Prize “for Audacity” at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, where it was talk of the town, Crash feels rather trite in the age of the Pandemic, twenty five years later.

James Spader plays Ballard, a TV producer ‘enjoying’ an open relationship with his wife Catherine (Unger). The two entertain each other with salacious titbits from their extra-marital affairs. But even this kinky variation does not satisfy them – there is still something missing.

The ‘something’ is rather shockingly (at least at the start) a love for car crash related sex. After one such incident Ballard just pulls through although the other driver is killed. He gets together with the female accident survivor Dr. Helen Remington (Hunter) and she introduces him to fellow crash fanatic Vaughan (Koteas), a veteran of staged accidents, and James is entranced by their post crash sex.

Poor Catherine has to wait for her own crash before she can join the elite circle of sex-crash survivors. Vaughan meanwhile re-stages the 1955 deadly crash which killed James Dean, complete with Dean’s ‘Porsche Spyder’. Not satisfied with his endeavour, Vaughan plans for the re-construction of the Jane Mansfield decapitation. After Catherine finally had her own collision – not a particularly impressive one – she can join her husband again. But this time Rosanna Arquette joins the party in a chrome body suit and leg braces, and the re-united couple and Helen can have a three-some of sorts. 

DoP Peter Suschitzky shows a barren, snowbound Toronto in keeping with Cronenberg’s habitual bleak dystopian world inhabited by these  hybrid characters. For once the director shares a different view: “Even though people think the movie is cold, I don’t think it’s cold. It begins cold, but gradually fills with emotions. It is subtle and not delivered the normal way it’s delivered in movies.” Viewers might find it difficult to come to terms with this new subculture where the addicts seek “to re-experience the mortality they so narrowly escaped by purposefully getting into more accidents where the only goal is to have sex with fellow survivors”. Cronenberg paints the small elite “of people who understand the crash epiphany, which allows them to relate each other”. By definition, there is a whole outside world, where everyone is irrelevant to the self-styled elite of death-seekers – Freud would have had his fun with analysing them. But Cronenberg seems unaware of his closeness to Nietzsche’s postulate of “Mensch and Übermensch: “The subject of the film is there is no moral stance that you can take. And if impose my own art artificial standards, then I am completely spoiling my experiment, which is to let these creatures have their head and try to re-invent all these things they are trying to re-invent”.

Some films are made to be just for a particular moment, that’s were Crash belongs, a piece of utter decadence, great to look at, but ultimately driving on empty. AS

CRASH IS NOW A DIGITAL RELEASE ON 30 NOVEMBER 2020

The Son’s Room (2001) La Stanza del Figlio | MUBI

Dir: Nanni Moretti | Drama, Italy 89′

Nanni Moretti’s portrait of tragedy is an emotionally intelligent and cumulatively moving drama that won him the Palme d’Or in 2001. Naturalistic, unsentimental yet eventually quite shattering the film unpicks the slow and surprising way the sudden death of a close relative can completely change the way we see each other and the person we lost.

In the first half-hour or so this family is living life as normal in the pleasant coastal town of Ancona. The Sermontis are a happily married professional couple: Moretti plays the psychiatrist father Giovanni, Laura Morante is Paola his wife. Their teenagers Irene (Trinca) and Andrea (Sanfelice) are going through the usual teenage ups and downs at school. But when Andrea dies suddenly in a diving accident, his parents and sister find themselves so lost in sadness, anger and confusion their world is blown apart. But then the bombshell – there is another person involved in the equation: a girlfriend they never even knew existed. Nothing surprising – yet this stranger is pivotal in a drama so strangely gripping and psychologically profound, it forces each member of the family to re-examine life up to the event and going forward. Some films make a big impact but are instantly forgettable, this moving story will stay with you for a long time. MT

NOW ON MUBI | BLU-RAY, DVD & DIGITAL

 

The Father | Bashtata (2019) Oscars 2021 | Glasgow Film Festival 2021

Dir: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Vlachanov | Bulgaria Drama 87′

The Father is the third collaboration for Bulgarian auteurs Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov. This superbly scripted psychological drama follows in the wake of The Lesson (2014) and Glory (2016/7) and explores a son’s attempts to rescue his father from the hands of an unscrupulous psychic healer.

Fraught with darkly piquant humour this comedy will resonate with anyone experiencing similar issues with their own ageing parents, the judicious mixture of farce and satire intertwining to deliver an enjoyable watch while skewering the situation down to a tee.

The Father in question is a dreadful dominating demon. Vasil (Ivan Savov) has no respect for his respectable married middle-aged son Pavel (an appealing Ivan Barnev) who is almost diminished to a blithering idiot in his presence, despite being a successful businessman.

During his wife Valentina’s funeral, Vasil behaves in a disgraceful manner by asking Pavel to take some final photographs of his mother’s corpse in its coffin. When Pavel refuses, Vassil berates him in front of the assembled mourners and insists on doing it himself, belittling Pavel in the process, who later deletes the macabre snaps.

But it doesn’t end there. Vasil becomes obsessed with the idea that his wife is trying to contact him from beyond the grave (by mobile) and decides to consult with a local medium, Dr Ruvi, involving Pavel in the process. Pavel feels responsible for his father, while not liking him terribly much: thoughts of getting back to his wife and business are subsumed by those of guilt; somehow he feels drawn into Vasil’s web of madness, unable to extricate himself from the parental ties that bind. Very much in the same vein as Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, Vasil exerts the same vulnerable power as Bruce Dern’s paternal figure. Clearly Vasil needs protecting from the strange requests made by Ruvi, but in helping him, Pavel takes on an irritating and undignified mission.

Pavel is also consumed by latent anger and constantly back-footed by his father’s unreasonable demands. Meanwhile Vasil become more and more absurd and desperate – the interplay between the two men providing a rich vein of humour. This entertaining two-hander (we never actually meet Ruvi or Pavel’s wife) cleverly sees Pavel emerging as the ultimate hero of the piece, Grozeva and Valchanov adding plenty of textural grist to the duo’s convincingly volatile relationship. MT

NOW SCREENING AT GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL ONLINE | THE FATHER IS BULGARIA’S OFFICIAL ENTRY TO THE OSCARS 2021

CRYSTAL GLOBE WINNER | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Overseas (2019) Locarno 2019

Dir: Yoon Sung-a | Doc, 90′

It you are bored with the daily grind of working from home in these tedious Covid times then spare a thought for Filipino domestic workers in the Far and Middle East. In this startling expose of modern slavery that brings us up to speed on the acceptable ways of serving lunch to a Singaporean lady, or cleaning a lavatory in a Dubai household, there are some shocking revelations, tears and sadness for these young women who are often 0ver-worked and badly treated by their employers. But their training instructors urge them: “Never cry in front of your boss, it’s a sign of weakness and Filipinos are not weak”.

Overseas is the sophomore documentary of South Korea’s Yoon Sung-a, and makes for compelling viewing although it often lingers too long on each repetitive scene. There has been a long tradition of employing Filipino workers and these women are often treated as members of the family throughout Europe. But Yoon concentrates on those destined for the Middle and Far East where the working conditions are considerably more harsh, and employment laws less kind. Clearly the financial incentives to work abroad are worthwhile and makes sense, despite the hardships. Working mothers in the Far East are fully accustomed to leaving their kids with members of their own family while they pursue the financial incentives available overseas in order to provide a home of their own when they finally return retire.

Some of the workers are lucky, but many are made to work long hours in poor conditions: one girl talks of sleeping on the kitchen floor and being woken at 5am to start her day; another was constantly given orders even while eating her meals. There is also talk of sexual abuse in a household in the Middle East.

Overseas resonates with Davide Maldi’s recent feature The Apprentice that examines the service industry in Italy and the ongoing attitudes of those employed in the sector, while Lila Aviles has explored the life of a hotel worker in Mexico City in her darkly amusing, award-winning film The Chambermaid (2018). Throughout the Europe domestic workers are more in demand than ever with middle class families paying to having help at home – both parents are often out working and their adult (working) offspring are still in residence. In the Far and Middle East the class system is more rigidly in place but times are changing and these domestic workers are justifiably become more dissatisfied with their lot. These girls are caught in the crosswinds of change.

Yoon adopts a quietly observational approach to demonstrate how the collective experience of these women is broadly negative – yet is at pains to show that they are individuals rather than just a collective mass known for their placid and obedient nature. MT

NOW ON VOD PLATFORMS

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | COMPETITION | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

Billie (2020)

Dir: James Erskine | US Biopic, 97′

James Erskine’s documentary about one of the greatest jazz legends of all time pays exuberant tribute to its focus: Billie Holiday. Born Eleanor Fagan in Philadelphia, 1915, she would go on to enjoy a career spanning 47 years. Perhaps ‘enjoy’ is not the best way to describe Billie’s Holiday’s often troubled existence echoed through her plangent vocal style and sensual ability to manipulate phrasing and tempo. What lives on is her extraordinary talent in singing the blues through these unique recordings.

Erkine bases his impressionistic film on a stash of recording interviews by the late Washington based writer Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who dedicated eight years during the ’60s and ’70s to her informative book about Billie Holiday. And these interviews and recordings breathe new life into our knowledge of a talented jazz singer who rose to fame in the Harlem of the 30s and 40s and lost her life at just 44 after several decades of heartache.

Heartache is a soulful motif that floods Billie’s repertoire with 30′ tunes ‘If You Were Mine’ and “You Let Me Down” with band accompaniment from Count Basie, Teddy Wilson or Artie Shaw. But there were also more upbeat tunes about love such as “I’m Painting The Town Red to hide a Heart that’s Blue”. And the lively ballads “Twenty Four Hours a Day”; ‘Yanky Doodle Never Went to Town’. and the chirpy “Miss Brown to You” with Teddy Wilson’s wonderful orchestra (from the album ‘Lady Day’).

Through Linda’s recordings Erskine shines a light on a time fraught with poverty, misogyny and racism where women certainly got the rough end of the deal particularly in the music business. Billie inhabited these times with gusto and courage, lamenting them in her songs that reflect back on her deep need to be loved by men – and women, using drugs and alcohol to numb her emotional pain. Living in the fast lane also took its toll: “We try to live one hundred days in one day”. Her story was a sad one, recorded here for the first time from the other side of the microphone – through the memories of those who knew and loved her.

Harsher memories contrast with the warmth of these tribute echoing the exuberance of those early days of jazz, and the darker times – we hear from a vicious pimp who remembers beating the women under his power in an era where such events were commonplace in the backstreets of New York. But the police were often as venal in their approach to Billie, pursuing her day and night throughout her life because of her success as a black woman. “Wasn’t she entitled to have a Cadillac?” says drummer Jo Jones. But often Billie couldn’t even get service when dining in a restaurant. After leaving the Count, she was a black singer in a white band. Eventually she served time for drug abuse but on her release still filled Carnegie Hall with queues round the block.

Erskine doesn’t hero worship or quail away from controversy surrounding  the ‘false memory’ of many talking heads, reflecting how time can alter the perspective. Linda Lipnack Kuehl doesn’t let her interviewees off the hook, demanding they justify their recollections. A case in point is Jo Jones’s strident claim that producer John Hammond sacked Billie from Count Basie’s band for not sticking to the blues. Hammond vehemently claims the sacking was for financial reasons.

What emerges is the soulful emotion of a talented artist who by definition was subject to highs and lows in giving of herself to her art and this comes across in visceral archive footage – particularly of ‘Strange Fruit’ – and live recordings that celebrate this timeless singer whose talent will never diminish.

It eventually becomes clear that one of her biggest fans was Linda Lipnack Keuhl who was there throughout her career, feeling a close affinity with Billie and her struggle to succeed, despite their different backgrounds at a time of racial segregation and strife. As Linda points out – the musicians were black but the critics, agents and managers were white. Thanks to Linda’s inquisitive style of journalism this tribute to Billie comes alive. MT

BILLIE is available, on demand, from 13th November on BFI, IFI, Curzon Home Cinema, Barbican. There is a live Q&A with James Erskine on 15 November as part of EFG London Jazz festival and it will be available to buy on Amazon and iTunes on 16 November.

THE QUINTESSENTIAL BILLIE HOLIDAY | Volumes 1,2,3 accompanied by Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra. 

Silent Running (1971) ***

Dir: Douglas Trumball | Cast: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vinterberg | US Sci-fi, 86′

Douglas Trumball’s ecological Sci-fi outing s now nearly 50 years old yet feels more relevant that ever despite its slightly wacky mise-en-scene and a score performed by Joan Baez.

The year is 2001 and 36 year old fresh-faced blue-eyed Bruce Dern plays an evangelical botanist adrift in space in a Garden of Eden. His message is loud and clear, re-working that of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Trumbull was in charge of the special effects): The planet needed saving – and humans were the ones to do it. The Garden planet ‘Valley Forge’ has been carefully nurtured by Dern’s Freeman Lovell to nourish and preserve plant specimens rescued before Earth’s apocalyptic meltdown during nuclear war. But afterwards Lovell defies orders to destroy his nurtured slice of paradise, instead taking off for a spin around space (with Drone robots Huey and Dewey), on a mission to save the Earth in perpetuity.

Working with Deric Washburn, Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues) and The Deer Hunter‘s Michael Cimino, Trumball’s feature debut is a fabulous ground-breaking idea full of fun and fantastic visuals. Dern brings a  febrile intensity to the part keeping things weird and wonderful, striking the perfect tone for a fantasy thriller with more up its sleeve than just space travel. MT

OUT ON DVD | 9 NOVEMBER 2020

The Vigil (2019) ****

Dir: Keith Thomas | Cast: Dave Davis, Lynn Cohen, Menashe Lustig, Malky Goldman, Fred Melamed | US Horror, 89′

A malevolent spirit is the suggestible unseen character in this Keith Thomas’s unique horror debut set amidst Brooklyn’s Hasidic community.

A religious practice known as ‘sitting shiva’ is the premise of the claustrophobic funereal spine-chiller. Jewish family members are required to provide comfort and protection to the deceased by sitting with the body and saying prayers for a seven days and nights. Sometimes a ‘shomer’ is paid to do the honours, as is the case here with Yakov (a convincing Dave Davis) a young Jewish guy who is ingratiating himself back into the tightly-knit community and finds this a respectable and fairly easy way of making money. But clearly a deeply unsettling if redemptive one, as we soon find out.

Thomas creates a palpable sense of terror with his seriously spooky soundscape and nauseous colour palette soaked in ghastly dried bloods and neon greens all shrouded in deathly shadows. Much of the dialogue is in Yiddish adding an exotic twist to proceedings delivering a unique cultural experience. It soon turns out that the deceased, Ruben Litvak, a Holocaust survivor, was himself haunted by a dybbuk (or evil spirit) who followed him back from wartime Buchenwald. Meanwhile his ageing wife Mrs Litvak (Lynn Cohen) is a menacing character who has also suffered in concentration camps and is now scratching around on the foothills of Alzheimers. All this feeds on Yakov’s own mental instability over a tragic event in his past forcing him to make a midnight call to his psychotherapist for some emotional support. Or at least he thinks he’s talking to Dr Kohlberg.

DoP Zach Kuperstein must get some of the credit with his spooky camerawork and lighting techniques during this night of terror and spiritual retribution. This is an intelligent piece of filmmaking that shows how trauma can feed on itself and actually perpetuate mental anguish and paranoia until eventually this scenario becoming hard-wired into the brains of those affected and their descendants. MT

THE VIGIL WILL BE RELEASED ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS ON 30TH NOVEMBER AND ON DVD ON 4TH JANUARY IN THE UK AND IRELAND

 

Luxor (2020) ****

Dir/Wri: Zeina Durra | Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Janie Aziz, Michael Landers | Drama, 85′

A war zone doctor’s inner turmoil gradually surfaces in this serene second feature from British director Zeina Durra (The Imperialists are Still Alive!).

Never before has heartache appeared so muted and contemplative than in Andrea Riseborough’s portrait of post-traumatic stress disorder. She plays Hanna, a thirty-something aid worker who has just completed a stressful tour of duty in a wartorn corner of the Middle East. In Luxor, she finds herself physically and emotionally depleted, quietly contemplating her next move in the gentle faded splendour of the legendary Winter Palace Hotel on the banks of the Nile.

The genteel location is the stuff of dreams providing solace and a sanctuary for exhausted minds, damaged souls or simply those seeking a seasonal break in Eygpt’s pleasant climate. Luxor also lends a luminous spiritual dimension of this portrait of midlife crisis. A professional woman who has seen things “no human should have to witness” finds herself slipping down a path of increasing melancholy bordering on misery with the gradual realisation that normality and nurturing is now the order of the day, rather than more frontline trauma. Recuperating on quiet days of solitude amongst the ancient sites, she comes across a lover from a more light-hearted era. The passage of time – some twenty years it soon emerges –  has not dimmed the candle she once held for Sultan (Karim Saleh), an archaeologist from America. Quite to the contrary, it now burns even brighter leaving the void inside her soul crying out to be healed rather than temporarily satisfied.

Surrounded by the pharaonic tombs and towering temples, Luxor is very much the star turn. The peaceful city exudes a majestic energy empowering the film with an ethereal feeling of calm beneficence. Hana’s hotel companions, predominantly female, are genial and considerate, the only awkwardness comes after a one night stand she meets in the bar (played gamely Michael Landes) and provides a twist of humour rather than annoyance. Durra keeps dialogue to a minimum focusing on mood and feeling to sublime effect. Days spent reconnecting with her ex-lover soon expose a desperate longing that sees Hana quietly dissolving into tears, a raw nerve he unwittingly triggers in moments that are palpable in their intensity. 

Riseborough is gloriously lowkey at first, her perfect manners and placidity belying the simmering turmoil that gradually makes her more inhibited. She gives an understated physical performance, all blue-eyes, loose limbs and creamy complexion. Luxor has echoes of Columbus its scenic settings and philosophical discussions providing the peaceful backdrop for Hana’s story to unravel. And although the final scenes feel trite in contrast to the film’s thematic concerns the redemptive journey has been a beautiful and illuminating one. MT

NOW AVAILABLE online from next week | LUXOR PREMIERED AT SUNDANCE and KVIFF 2020 | KVIFF Competition returns in 2021

Looted (2019) ****

Dir: Rene van Pannevis | Charley Palmer Rothwell, Morgane Polanski, Tom Fisher, Tom Turgoose | UK Drama 90′

Looted is a refreshing departure from those run-of-the-mill British  indies made under the UK Tax haven purely to serve a purpose. Based on the director’s own experience as a troubled teen growing up in Hartlepool on the North East coast, it feels real and is often genuinely amusing despite the sombre storyline.

Set against a background of industrial decline – Hartlepool was a major centre for fishing – there’s a poetic poignance to the troubled wasteland where young sensibilities are beautifully brought to life in Aadel Nodeh-Farahani’s limpid camerawork.

Teenager Rob (Charley Palmer Rothwell) lives with his father Oswald, a retired sailer dying of asbestos poisoning. During the day Rob cares for Oswald (a gently humorous Tom Fisher) or hangs out on the docks with his mouthy friend Leo (Thomas Turgoose). Morgane Polanski is terrific as Rob’s knowing Polish girlfriend Kasha, adding cachet and integrity to the piece despite her limited role. When night falls Rob and Leo hit the streets of the seaside town for a spot of car-jacking, until their luck turns sour. With a solid script and convincing performances Looted takes a thoughtful look at the complexity behind criminal life without condoning it or seeking to pass judgement. MT

FIPRESCI PRIZE WINNER | TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS 2019 | NOW on all major VOD platforms including Curzon Home Cinema. 

 

 

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Two of Us – Nous Deux (2020)

Dir.: Filippo Meneghetti; Cast: Martine Chevallier, Barbara Sukowa, Lea Drucker, Jerome Varanfrain, Muriel Bemazaref, Augustine Reyes; France/Lux/Belgium 2019, 95 min.

Filippo Meneghetti’s first film tells an unusual love story, somewhere between realism and fairy tale. Nina and Madeleine are neighbours in a small town in the Moselle region of France. But the ladies have been lovers for decades although coming out will be problem, particularly for Madeleine (Mado), whose children Anne (Drucker) and Frederique (Varanfrain) are self-righteous conformists.                                  

German émigré Nina (Sukowa) is the driving force in the relationship: she is keen for Mado to sell her flat and move to Rome. But Mado is only too aware of divorced hairdresser Anne’s feelings, and her son is a misogynist at the best of times, and takes her property off the market angering Nina.  But things deteriorate even further when Mado suffers a stroke and is rendered speechless and immobile needing a full time carer in the shape of Muriel (Benazaref), who is quietly possessive of her new charge. Although Anne tries to take over but love eventually finds a way – via Bingo of all things.

Beautifully crafted and sensitively performed Two of Us is a worthwhile and unique lesbian love story that joins films such as in in showing that Love and emotional intimacy is so important at any age and this mature love affair feels fresh and authentic despite its bourgeois provincial setting that gives the drama its glorious settings.

Although the script suffers inexperience plot development wise, veering between fairy-tale comedy and a dramatic critique of Mado’s blinkered children who stay in the way of the elderly couples’ happiness, this is an intelligent film pointing out how small town values are not necessarily ageist ones. That an un-offensive couple like Nina and Mado should live in fear of being ostracised for being lesbians is very dernier siecle – particularly since it would stay in the family, a family Mado would love to leave despite her visceral connection to her children. There is much to enjoy and admire here, but a much clearer approach on genre identification would have been welcome. AS

ON BFI | JW3 NW3 |SELECTED FOR THE 2021 ACADEMY AWARDS.

     

Mogul Mowgli (2020) ***

Dir: Bassam Tariq | UK Drama, 90 min

Riz Ahmed is screen dynamite as a British Pakistani rapper afflicted by a wasting disease in this dazzling and deeply personal portrait of racial identity and the ties that bind.

Bassam Tariq takes a thematically rich subtext based on Ahmed’s background and sideline in the music world, and winds it into a trippy visual experience with a throbbing soundscape but less punchy script fuelled by the inner turmoil of its main character.

Ahmed plays New-York based rapper Zed on a visit to his parent’s modest London home in the wake of a European-wide concert tour. The homecoming drudges up disorientating memories of racial and religious tension and a longing for the warmth of home life in the light of his imploding romantic relationship with girlfriend Bina. Suddenly he is a brother and son again (to his devout and hard-working father Bashir (Alyy Khan) rather than just a music star with a growing fanbase.

Worryingly Zed also experiences signs of physical weakness and is admitted into hospital for tests which reveal an autoimmune condition, possibly a metaphor for his suffocating family. Despite his family’s religious concerns Zed decides to take up the offer of a promising clinical trial which may however threaten his fertility.

His time in hospital is fraught with anxiety and tension and Tariq channels this into febrile hallucinatory sequences that tap into the social and cultural heritage that Zed left behind him in his struggle for musical and material success. Although this all looks exciting the script fails to mine the dramatic potential to any affect, leaving us constantly on the outside looking in. The constant repetition of ‘Toba Tek Singh’ – a phrase Zed chants obsessively with his father in the final scene – will leave most viewers baffled, given the film’s Muslim sensibilities.

Ahmed is extraordinary to watch lighting up every frame with his febrile intensity, particularly in the scene where he tries to persuade Bina to help him with a ‘sample’. Clearly heartfelt and well-intentioned this portrait of a sensitive artist also occasionally feels self-indulgent and contextually bewildering due to the complexity of the issues involved, but that is clearly the nature of the world we now live in, and the root of society’s modern malaise. MT

OUT ON 30 OCTOBER 2020

 

 

 

 

 

Apostasy (2017) ***

Dir.: Dan Kokotajlo; Cast: Siobhan Finneran, Sacha Parkinson, Molly Wright, Robert Emms; UK 2017, 96 min

Dan Kokotajlo’s debut feature is an intelligent  study in emotional fascism based on his own experiences. It tells the heart-breaking story of a family in Oldham where three women fall victim to the dogmatic pressures of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, an evangelic organisation with no empathy for its members, and certainly not if they are female.

Ivanna (Finneran) is a middle-aged woman living with her two daughters, college student Luisa (Parkinson) and Alex (Wright) who is still at school. The father is never mentioned, and Ivanna has made sure that both of her daughters are committed to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose ‘Elders’ are, unsurprisingly, all male.

Ivanna embraces every word preached down to her from the institution’s dogmatic Elders and belittles the Catholic Church – hardly a liberal institution – as “airy-fairy, they believe in something like the soul”. Whereas the Jehovah’s Witnesses credo is that the blood of its members is the pure manifestation of the Master God – and should not be messed with, particularly not by medical staff trying to save life.

Apostasy (meaning abandonment of belief) begins in a hospital where a nurse is secretly offering the anaemic Alex a much-needed blood transfusion knowing very well that she has already been stigmatised for having a blood transfusion as a new born. Alex is shy and full of self-doubt largely because she too believes her blood is not “pure” anymore. 

Meanwhile, Luisa not only falls in love with an “unbeliever”, but also gets pregnant by him. This causes a great deal of friction between between the sisters and provides most of the film’s dramatic tension. Luisa’s mother’s darkest fears have come true and Ivanna is only too ready to have her oldest daughter thrown out of the church: in an act euphemistically called a “disfellowship”.  In reality this means that her family is forbidden to communicate with Luisa.

Ivanna is only to ready to follow these orders, and making sure that the same ‘misfortune’ does not befall Alex, finds immediately a suitable husband for her in Stephen (Emms) a shy, insecure young man with hardly any social manners. He, like Ivanna, repeats the church’s dogmas in everyday life, and seems the perfect partner for Alex, who tries hard to be the perfect little soldier for Jehovah. All members wait for the Armageddon to happen soon (even though there was false alarm in 1975), the new system will replace everything known today, and, needless to say, only true disciples of the church will survive to live in this new paradise.

A shocking event then intervenes to slightly destabilise and dilute this rich character study between the women, as the narrative then focuses largely on the church and its influences, which are nonetheless intriguing, but somehow manage to carry the film through.

This is true horror (Kokotajlo grew up in a household of Jehovah’s Witnesses), and impressively acted, particularly by Finneran. It seems unbelievable that the earnest members of the church, who we all encounter at tube stations or at the front door, are capable of such emotional warfare against anybody who disobeys their commands.  Adam Scarth’s images are sparse and lean like the whole production, proving again, that one can create a small masterpiece on a minibudget. AS

NOW ON BBC IPLAYER

The Other Lamb (2019) **** MUBI

Dir: Malgorzata Szumowska | Wri: Catherine S McMullen | Cast: Raffey Cassidy, Michiel Huisman, Denise Gough | Ireland-Belgium, US. 92′

Malgorzata Szumowska’s first English language film has a striking visual aesthetic and a storyline that bears a distinct resonance with Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Szumowska’s regular cinematographer Michal Englert creates a heady mystical feel that magics up a sinister sense of place in the wild, windswept landscapes of this quirky dreamlike horror feature.

The Other Lamb is a young girl who refuses to kowtow Michael Huisman’s butchly pretty cult leader ‘The Shepherd’ who rules over his flock of febrile females deep in their forest commune. The women followers compete cattily for his favours in a way that makes this movie, directed by a woman, vaguely unpalatable with its themes of toxic masculinity and hero worship. But Szumowska has a string of cultish fantasy dramas under her belt, amongst them In the Name of; Body and Mug. marking out her distinct talents as a pioneering filmmaker with a unique offbeat style. The latest is Never Gonna Snow Again (2020).

The subject of cults has long been a source of inspiration for filmmakers  (Midsommar and Mandy are recent outings), and the women’s devotion to their leader feels akin to Vanessa Redgrave’s adoration of Oliver Reed in Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971). Australian writer Catherine S McMullen gives an otherworldly twist to this female centric set-up that thrives tucked away from modern civilisation in an enduring fairytale that speaks to the past, present and future. The dank misty murkiness of the setting adds to its doom laden morose atmosphere.

Two groups vie for attention, the children are clad in blue, and the wives in red, but when they grow older the Shepherd gives them the pushover. Selah (a glowering Raffey Cassidy) is one of the children born into the community. Wayword and bewildered by the cult worship of The Shepherd she forms her own opinion – partly due to fear, and partly due to ignorance of what is happening to her changing body as she reaches womanhood – and The Shepherd turns his attention on her like a search light in the fog. Visions of dead birds, hostile rams and stillborn lambs haunt her daytime reveries and at night she experiences strange longings for The Shepherd, willing her to take action. Slowly it dawns that Selah represents women everywhere who not only question but are also minded to disrupt and dismantle the accepted patriarchy, male domination and misogyny of any kind.

THE OTHER LAMB is available on MUBI from 16 October 2020

 

 

Limbo (2020) **** Bfi London Film Festival 2020

Dir/Wri: Ben Sharrock | Cast: Amir El-Masry, Sidse Babett-Knudsen, Vikash Bhai, Ola Orebiyi, Kwabena Ansah, Kenneth Collard | UK Drama, 103′

A group of refugees fetch up on a remote Scottish island in this artful and darkly amusing comedy drama lampooning the migrant crisis.

The common denominator is their single, masculine status. If they were married with kids they would be placed in a stylish new-build in the centre of Edinburgh, or even London. But it’s a grim lot for the male of the species who arrives in these rain soaked islands looking for a home. And the Scotts director shows the same sober look and lugubrious humour as Pablo Stoll’s cult classic Whisky (2004) or Aki Kaurismaki’s Berlinale winner The Other Side of Hope (2017). However, his visually imaginative style and symmetrical framing also make this a sumptuous treat.

The migrant crisis is certainly no joke. In fact it has become somewhat of a political hot potato as the lost and disenfranchised arrive here hoping for the legendary streets of gold and find instead cold tarmac, wind-lashed landscapes and little to comfort them in their time of need. Sticking out like proverbial pork pies at a Jewish wedding these likeable and nice-looking men are jeered at and taunted as they make their way through chilly seascapes in search of something to keep their minds occupied in the inclement weather.

The painterly piece unfolds in the sparsely populated Western Isles of the Outer Hebrides (North and South Uist) under smoky grey clouds and gentle hilltops stroked by softly wavering grasses and purple skies. “If you’re lucky enough to be here in Winter you may experience the Northern Lights” says their English teacher as he instructs them on the past imperfect, asking for an example of its use in a sentence: one bright spark suggests: “I USED to have a home until it was destroyed by allied forces”.

Essentially a series of carefully crafted episodes – each playing out like an individual comedy vignette – the story follows Syrian Oud musician and war victim Omar (Amir El-Masry) who left his older brother still fighting; Afghani Farhad (Vikash Bhai) and two West African brothers suffering from sibling rivalry. Wasef (Ola Orebiyi) and Abedi (Kwabena Ansah) bicker the hell out of the squalid damp-ridden cottage the men share, warmed only by a two-bar electric fire. They all have convincing backstories and are ridden with guilt and worry about the families they have left behind. Poor internet coverage makes matters worst.

Writing and directing this second feature, Sharrock calls on his own life experience working in a refugee camp in the Middle East where he was inspired by the sorrowful characters he met, all hoping against hope for a positive outcome. Here at least they get “cultural awareness” lessons hosted by a well-meaning couple, Helga (a strangely underused Sidse Babett-Knudsen (The Duke of Burgundy) and Boris (Kenneth Collard). But the even-handed narrative eventually gives way to a grudging mutual respect with their pale-skinned hosts who recognise they are well-educated and versed in the ways of the world. And the tone darkens when a crisis arrives for the sheep farmers during a snowstorm, and Omar is required to pitch in.

The sheep incident unleashes a disturbing magic realist reverie for Omar, transporting him back to his roots in scenes that hint at a gravitas the film does not possess compared with the levity that has gone before. But despite the slight tonal flaw Limbo is a highly accomplished and thoughtful film that cements Sharrock’s place as a promising British talent on the international scene. MT

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2020

 

 

 

African Apocalypse (2020) ***

Dir.: Rob Lemkin; Documentary with Femi Nylander, Amina Weira; UK 2020, 88 min.

This new documentary sees Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ from the natives’ perspective. Oxford University student Femi Nylander goes on a real voyage of discovery to illuminate the bloody massacres in Niger at the end of the 19th century when the French government to unite the French colonies in West Africa backfired with tragic consequences and costing over 15,000 African lives.

Following in the footsteps of French officers Captain Voulet and his adjutant Lt. Julian Chanoines were tasked with unifying the colonies of what is now Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso, to fend off British colonial forces. After Voulet’s worst massacres in Birnin Konni, word of Voulet’s depravity and violence reached Paris, and Army Command sent Lt. Colonel Jean Francois Klobb to relieve Voulet. On Bastille Day in July 1899 Klobb confronted Voulet and was later killed.

Lemkin accompanies Nylander and his co-researcher and translator Amina Weira on their journey through West Africa, where they discover written material relating to Voulet’s massacres and his descent into madness, declaring: “I have become an African, and would be the King of Paris”. They also dredge up a tape recording from the 1970s narrated by an old women retelling the gory details, which was tantamount to genocide, and would land Voulet in front of the Den Hague Court.

Nylander feels like in outsider in the old Etonian world of Oxford, and he is also to made to feel a stranger once in Africa: his interviewees challenge him on his lack of empathy with the victims’ grand children. DoPs Claude Garnier and Shaun Harley Lee sustain a fly-on-the-wall presence, keeping a welcome intimacy; whilst their panoramic impressions of he river landscapes are of exceptional beauty. Lemkin’s attempt to integrate Nylander with his current BLM activities is not always successful, since the ‘retelling’ of the Conrad narrative can very much stand on its own. But the African images are much stronger than contemporary, middle-class dominated UK protest meetings, which feel anaemic in comparison. AS

SCREENED DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2020

 

 

 

    

Supernova (2020)

Dir/Wri: Harry Macqueen | Cast: Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci, Lori Campbell, James Dreyfus, Ian Drysdale, Pippa Haywood

Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci play long-term lovers on holiday in the Lake District in Harry Macqueen’s gently poignant follow-up to his first film Hinterland.

Colin Firth (Sam) and Stanley Tucci (Tusker) have an easy chemistry that makes this two-hander all the more enjoyable even though tragedy is the order of the day. On a romantic break in scenic Cumbria it soon emerges that the quietly amusing Tusker is suffering from early-onset dementia overshadowing their future together as a successful professional couple who are still in love.

Many actors have gone from Britain to the US but Stanley Tucci has done the reverse and already made several features together with Colin Firth: Conspiracy (2001) and Gambit (2012). Meanwhile Mcqueen cements his career as a writer and director joining fellow creative talents from Leicester including: Stephen Frears, Michael Kitchen, Una Stubs, and the Attenborough brothers. Firth and Tucci perfectly compliment one another’s star power with Sam being the more thoughtfully anxious of the two and a perfect foil for Tusker’s sardonic charm.

Whether or not Firth entirely suits a beard as a renown semi-retired concert pianist Sam, is up for question, but he is deeply enamoured of novelist Tusker and their warmth and genuine feeling for another is what really powers the film forward – along with Tucci’s caustic sense of comic timing.

The brooding hills and dales of the Lake District give this soberly-toned piece an added chill of encroaching winter – not only thematically but visually – in Dick Pope’s painterly camerawork. Old age, lasting love and mental decline are issues of universal concern, even more so in these pandemic days that have rocked our emotional wellbeing to the core.

After the jokey, love-affirming scenes of the camper van journey and the bonhomie of a shared evening with friends and family, the tone becomes more downbeat as the two plummet the depths of despair in their tortured soul-searching. But Mcqueen does not labour the point, taking a less is more approach and focussing on the wit and repartee that makes these two so close as a couple. All we need to know is conveyed by the emotional weight of the performances, and Tusker’s comment : “I want to be remembered for what I was, and not for who I’m about to become”, putting the focus on the positive side of their relationship. It is a dreaded phrase that speaks volumes for those affected by illness and has a uniquely 21st century ring in these days of dread disease. Sam retorts: “You’re not supposed to mourn somebody when they are still alive” But sometimes this is the best way.

Mcqueen also addresses a less obvious aspect of mental illness showing how an unexpected change in dynamic can derail the most stable of relationships and put the status quo into question. And this is the dark stain that slowly spreads across the film as the pair consider the future. Mcqueen’s deft scripting handles these dark night of the soul moments with a lightness of touch that hints at the trauma while avoiding a full blown meltdown. And this is where Firth and Tucci really come into their own, giving the film a textural richness and humour that is vital to make it all watchable and enjoyable, rather than mentally exhausting. Firth has the emotional range to explore the issues and Tucci the dexterity to deliver tenderness with just the right gravitas.

After the spectacular countryside of the expansive early scenes the film becomes more of an introspective chamber-piece as it gradually closes in on an intimate finale. Supernova brilliantly exudes a sense of Englishness: decent, noble, restrained and strangely satisfying. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS 2021

 

I Am Woman (2020) ****

Dir: Unjoo Moon | Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Evan Peters, Danielle Macdonald | Biopic Drama 116′

There are two iconic feminist anthems that stand out in the memory: one is Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, the other is I Am Woman.

Written and sung by the not quite so famous Seventies singer Helen Reddy, her theme tune nonetheless comes from a place of calm confidence. Is not strident, desperate or defiant but sure of its positive message. Yes, I am a woman but I’m also warm, approachable and secure.
Of course Reddy – played here by a fabulously feline Tilda Cobham-Hervey – was an accomplished artist who made a number of hit records during the late 1960s and 1970s. And Unjoo Moon’s fond but enjoyable rags to riches debut biopic shows how she made it from nowhere to become one of the most popular singers of her generation.
Her story starts in 1966. The mother of a 3 year girl Tracey, she arrives in New York from Sydney hoping for a recording contract from a major music producer who immediately patronises her in a film fraught with the ingrained prejudice of the era: “you really flew over from Australia all by yourself?” He denies her a contract claiming the trend is for male bands  “the Beatles are all the rage”. Trying to make her way, she is later denied equal pay as a nightclub singer on the grounds of her status as an illegal alien. But she is not deterred. And with Emma Jensens’ script painting her as a purring lowkey diva, Cobham-Hervey’s Reddy has to figure out how she can keep her canny charisma and move on from being just another talented female vocalist to an assertive, no-bullshit ballbreaker – just like a man – to get to the top. But the Seventies is the era of the singer-songwriter (with a selection of gracefully performed numbers featuring here, dubbed by Chelsea Cullen) so Helen has come to America at just the right time.
Based on Reddy’s own memoirs The Woman I Am, Moon and Jensen do their best to tether the feature to the current upswell of gender parity issues. But it’s not only fame and success as a female Reddy has to conquer but also several tricky relationships, not least her budding romance with potential agent Jeff Wald (Evan Peters), who becomes Helen’s second husband, putting his own life first along with the other high level clients in his portfolio, mostly notable being the rock band Deep Purple. The two form a feisty partnership Jeff spurred on by his wife’s calm determination to pioneer her gently feministic easy listening style. The couple are now living in California where Reddy has bought a poolside mansion with cash.
Meanwhile, the ego-driven Jeff is proving a handful and needs to be managed with an iron fist. Reddy’s other key relationship is with her compatriot Lillian Roxon (Danielle Macdonald), who is making her way in music journalism and is known for the first rock encyclopedia in 1969. But both these relationships will falter: Jeff turns into a belligerent, megalomaniac coke head running through all the couple’s money, and Lillian dies of an asthma attack.
The film’s focus is very much Reddy’s invidious relationship with Jeff but fails to examine why the singer stuck to easy listening style in a career that was successful (Angie Baby, I don’t know How to Love Him and Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady) but never really had a narrative arc of its own or a progression beyond her female-centric ballads. We do see her attempting to break into the Jazz style she had always been keen on, but this desire is stymied by Jeff and her advisors who control her activities to secure their own profits. And the sheer will and perseverance of making it anyway must have taken up most of her emotional energy, with two children to rear and a mercurial misogynist husband and manager to deal with.
Dubbed “the queen of housewife rock” by Alice Cooper, Reddy is clearly a symbol of female empowerment but more in the style of Phyllis Schlafly than her fellow chanteuses of the era Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon or Carol King. Cleverly the film never comes across as women’s lib story – and in a one certainly doesn’t get the impression Reddy was a ‘bra-burner’, more as a tribute to a woman whose talents as a singer is showcased in Cobham-Hervey’s sinuously stylish performances that make her really appealing to watch and listen in the film. Yet looking back on her music as a teen of that era Reddy was never on the radar as being remotely ‘cool’ or ground-breaking in the style Mitchell and Simon.
Superbly lensed by Oscar winning DoP Dion Beebe, the film’s final scenes therefore come across as an afterthought and tonally out of kilter with what has gone before. That said, this minor flaw does nothing to detract our enjoyment of Cobham-Hervey’s performance that carries the film through with an astonishing tour de force of grace, poise and fervent femininity. MT
IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER 2020

 

 

 

 

 

Stray (2020) Bfi player

Dir/DoP/Editor: Elizabeth Lo, Doc 78′

In Istanbul every dog has its day. Especially the city’s stray dogs who enjoy an almost charmed existence in this luminous documentary debut from newbie Elizabeth Lo.

The best thing about Stray is that no dogs loses its life, at least not during filming. There are fights and skirmishes but these take place between the beasts themselves, the locals showing a keen almost kindly affinity with their canine city companions. In her finely calibrated camerawork Lo shows how these dignified dogs take centre stage in widescreen panoramas of the ancient capital as well as close-up, and their soulful expressions will melt even the hardest heart, hinting at a life of hardship and uncertainty. Night and day they navigate urban highways and byways foraging for food and forging bonds of friendship with their canine compatriots. Meanwhile, ordinary city dwellers’ lives go on in the background, the petty contretemps and snippets of conversation are greeted with nonchalance by the dogs whose higher concerns for food and survival add a touch of deadpan irony along the way.

Intertitles highlight Turkey’s compassionate attitude towards their street dogs who, for decades, were subject to widespread culls. Today the authorities take a more laissez-faire attitude and it is now illegal to capture or euthanise the strays. Lo keeps her agile camera near to the ground as the dogs scamper through parks and along the banks of the Bosphorus, scavenging for food and water is their main occupation. .

Although usually pack animals, these noble-looking dogs live independent lives of dignity as we see them going about their business – real and figurative – in the early scenes that follow Kartan, Nazar and Zeytin. All three are big enough to look after themselves, but also take a keen interest in each other and the humans they befriend. Contrary to expectations the locals are very kind to their urban fauna and watching them all interact is enjoyable and sometimes amusing, the odd canine tiff adding texture to the otherwise freewheeling proceedings.

Six months in the making, Lo’s thoughtful doc is one of several recent animal-themed outings – Gunda at Berlin in 2020, and IDFA Special Jury awarded Chilean indie Los Reyes (2018) that followed a pair of canny canine caretakers living in Santiago’s largest skatepark. All three challenge us to reconsider preconceived ideas about our lives with man’s best friend. The most heart-rending sequence here involves a little black and white puppy who is picked up as a companion by a young Syria refugee. What seems like a kindly gesture at first soon feels rather sad for the little mite as it looks sadly around for the family pack, eventually unable to keep its eyes open from exhaustion.

In a poetic twist Lo peppers her self-edited piece with apposite quotes from Diogenes and other ancient philosophers. On a comedic note, two copulating dogs interrupt proceedings in a Women’s Day demonstration, clearly these canines would rather make love not war. Lo leaves us with a tenderly haunting final scene that shows that strays may be loners but they are still very much part of the community, atuned to spiritual awareness, just as much as they are to the more banal aspects of everyday life in Turkey’s capital. MT

NOW ON BFI player

 

 

Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint (2020) ****

Dir.: Halina Dyrschka, Documentary with Iris Müller-Westermann, Julia Voss, Josiah McElheny, Johan af Klint, Ulla af Klint; Germany 2019, 93 min. 

The life of abstract artist and mystic Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) – who purportedly created the first abstract work in 1906 – is the subject of this impressive first feature from German director Halina Dyrschka.

Painted out of art history by male supremacists, it shows how the pioneering Swede was creating colourful visionary works – inspired by her interest in Theosophy – five years before Kandinsky, who is supposed the first in this field – the dubious circumstances of which add a controversial twist to this informative arthouse documentary.

They tens mainstay IV (1907)

When Hilma af Klint died at the age of nearly eighty-two, she left 1200 paintings and 26 000 pages of diary to her nephew Erik, with the clear proviso that nothing should be sold from a body of work that would only be exhibited twenty years after death, because she felt the world was not ready for her groundbreaking ideas. She was dead right – the first major exhibition had to wait until 2013, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm having refused to take her paintings as a gift from the Hilma af Klint Foundation during the 1970s. 

In 1882, at the age of twenty af Klint was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, where she set about successfully creating traditional portraits and landscapes earning substantial sums. At the Academy she met Anna Cassel, the first of four women who would join her in the collective The Five (De Fem), the others being Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman and Matilda Nilsson. But there was another more spiritual side to her life and she was actively involved in Theosophy, participating in séances, a normal pastime for middle class Avantgarde intellectuals at the turn of the century.

Theosophy was the only spiritual movement which allowed women to be ordained as priests, teaching the oneness of all human beings. Af Klint’s interest in the theories of fellow Theosophist Madame Blavatsky led her to geometrical paintings where: “the pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings and with great force. I had no idea what the the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless, I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke.”  

In 1908 Af Klint met up with her longterm friend Rudolf Steiner, but her abstract work made little impact on the Swiss anthropologist. He would later show her paintings to a fellow Theosophist Kandinsky who claimed his 1910 “Untitled” to be the first ever abstract work ever produced. Nobody will ever know if af Klint’s paintings had influenced  Kandinsky.

The Ten Largest: Adulthood No 7 (1907)

Steiner’s rejection of her work led to a four-year-long creative block for af Klint, lasting until 1912. Her confidence had been battered, but her work on the Temple series carried on and was prodigious, counting 193 paintings divided into sub-series. One theme gave rise to massive canvasses in a series entitled, ‘The Ten Largest” (1907) describing the various stages of life (childhood, youth, adulthood, old age etc).

Clearly af Klint’s work is still an influential creative force over a hundred years after her first foray into the art world. Looking at Warhol’s quartet of Monroe paintings, we find an exact duplicate in af Klints’s oeuvre, showing four identical portraits of an elderly woman. The experts and the film’s Talking Heads agree: Art History has to be re-written to find a place for Hilma af Klint, a courageous woman who only unveiled her abstract talent once during her lifetime: at ‘Friends House’ in London, 1928. AS

IN CINEMAS from 9 OCTOBER 2020

 

 

Beginning (2020) MUBI

Dir: Dea Kulumbegashvili | Cast: Ia Sukhitashvili, Rati Oneli, Kakha Kintsurashvili, Saba Gogichaishvili | Drama, Georgia/France 125′

Dea Kulumbegashvili won the top prize at San Sebastian 2020 for her serenely self-assured yet sorrowful portrait of dispossession that ripples out into wider concerns for her native Georgia and the world in general.

Seen through the eyes of a disenchanted woman living in provincial Georgia this debut feature is a sensual and stunningly cinematic exploration of all that is wrong with society from religious intolerance to misogyny and the erosion of rural life pictured in the film’s devastating scorched earth finale.

On the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Georgia is an independent country and of the most ancient Christian nations dating back to the 4th century. The film opens in a small town in the Caucasus Mountains bordering on Azerbaijan where, as the wife of a Jehovah’s Witness leader, Jana (Sukhitashvili) must play a rather subservient role to her husband David (Oneli). This film opens during a chapel service which is firebombed by an explosion, causing the frightened congregation to flee into nearby countryside. The incandescent blaze glows on silently for a while afterwards igniting Yaha’s own inner turmoil that will smoulder through this slow-burn Tarkovskian drama, delicately touching on its thematic concerns in a way that nevertheless speaks volumes for the audience.

 

Light plays a vital role in Beginning. Playing out as a series of vivid tableaux vivants, the jewel-like frames are often glow with a viridescent pool of light, Arseni Khachaturan’s fixed camera scrutinises the main character in each frame who is often bathed in a shaft of light, or closely observed while the speaking character is out of sight. One sublime take sees Yana lying in a bed of autumn leaves, the ambient bird song slowly dying out as she is transformed into a bliss-like state. Captivating for some viewers (it lasts for around 7 minutes), it may however test other’s powers of endurance. What Dea achieves here is a meditative intimacy with her character. And as we are drawn more closely into Yana’s orbit, we feel a deep affinity with her state of mind; the affect is quite astonishing and deeply calming.

Yana emerges tolerant and forbearing, inspiring our sympathy despite her inner discontent; she is never angry or histrionic even when the children she is preparing for their first religious communion collapse in a fit of giggles. She exudes an almost saint-like endurance except when talking to her self-absorbed husband who professes his deep neediness of her despite his inattentiveness. Shutting down her feelings of futility, he responds patronisingly during a conversation early on in the film: “Let’s find you a job”. Yet as she toils away in the kitchen, Sukhitashvili’s Yana is a luminously compelling heroine, resembling a latter day Jeanne Dielman, a woman who carries on calmly amidst gruelling domestic trivia, a loving mother bewildered by the lurid sexual abuse meted out on her by a visiting police detective come to investigate the chapel fire.

There is one scene where David and Yana appear to be on the same page in their tender pillow talk although David’s chief concern is rebuilding the chapel so his career path is not derailed despite his wife’s calmly-voiced inertia, her own work as an actor having been on the back-burner since their son’s birth.

The film’s painterly views of nature evoke Dea’s appreciation of her homeland and concerns for a rural existence threatened by the future. In a scene towards the end of the film a uniformed hunter looks menacingly into the camera possibly hinting at Georgia’s ongoing tricky relationship with Russia. One more puzzling scene contrasts a violent rape attack (Yana and the detective?) with the wild beauty of its rocky riverside setting where two figures tussle violently at the extreme right of the frame where they are almost indistinguishable from the flow-strewn purple and white undergrowth.

A visit to her mother reinforces Yana’s feelings of subjugation and disempowerment as a woman. Recalling her own difficult marriage, her mother warns Yana not to mention the incident for fear of rocking the boat. Yana is clearly alone in the world with two males who depend on her but never consider her own emotional well-being.

Finally, on a drive home one night David discusses their future in small-town Georgia. A move to Tbilisi is on the cards but David sees it from his own perspective as the camera looks out onto a dark and rainy road ahead. Yana remains locked in silence, a receptacle for everyone’s needs but her own. MT

NOW ON MUBI | San Sebastian | WINNER OF THE GOLDEN SHELL AWARD 2020

 

Capital in the 21st Century (2020) ****

Dir.: Justin Pemberton; Co-Dir.: Thomas Piketty; Doc with Rana Foroohar, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, Ian Bremmer, Francis Fukuyama; France/New Zealand 2019, 102′ 

Justin Pemberton makes economics anything but dry in his thrilling – and frightening – screen adjunct to Thomas Piketty’s ground-breaking book. Brisk and entertaining like a filmic history lesson, some 400 years are condensed into a palatable mouthful that lacks somehow the depth of the page.

The New-Zealander has raided the archives enlivening Capital in the 21st Century with TV clips as well as graphics and archive footage of newsreels, financial ‘experts’ adding their pennyworth in a bid to clarify the mess we are in. According to Piketty – who also appears as a talking head – nothing has changed since the 17th century when feudalism ruled and the medium life expectancy was seventeen. So what does that tell you?

Feudalism saw one per cent of the population own seventy percent of land. Back then the only way of earning a living (apart from servitude) was itinerant farm work. In films terms, the world was like just like Elysium (2013), where a charmed few lived in splendour and the rest in grinding poverty. The French  Revolution tried to break the mould but the real change came with the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century when machines took over the manual work but the power structure was the same: workers being in hock to their employers (who took all the risks), strikers ending up in jail.

Many Europeans emigrating to North America for a new start soon discovered that hard land-based work was still the order of the day, the small family unit unable to compete with land-owners, who bought in slaves and exploited them on the cotton fields of the Deep South. Meanwhile Europeans were out colonising and exploiting the natural resources of the newfound territories, finding unchallenged markets for their products and building fortunes and empires into the bargain.    ,

European workers’ resentment  increased between 1870 and 1914, while an emerging Middle Class got used to a new term: fashion. In the US meanwhile, the class struggle was much more vicious, employers hiring their own militia, backed by a Federal Army who quelled many strikes. The outbreak of World War I channelled class envy into a national identity, the aftermath saw the suffragettes making inroads into male dominance with their fight for the right to vote.

Pemberton then leads us through the more erratic midsection of the documentary which deals with the 20th domination by banking power, nationalism, Depression, war, the welfare system and workers rights. Working class lives improved immeasurably during the late 1950s when prime minister Harold Macmillan proclaimed: “You’ve never had it so good”. He was probably right. The establishment of a Welfare State led to a vigorous middle class which would become the backbone of society, but that backbone has since been severely tested by an erosion of values that has polarised society, particularly now as the gulf widens again between rich and poor. Since the 1970s Oil Crisis, middle class income has sharply declined in the US, where ‘stagflation’ soon became the order of the day.

In the 1980s, President Reagan dismantled the welfare state, and Wall Street and Main Street diverged: what was good for the City and the big corporations (with Joseph Stiglitz’s ideas of trickle down economics) was not seen as a benefit to Main Street with its mainly family-owned small businesses. The US was suffering from competition from Japan and Europe, and Reagan’s battle cry “to make America great again” created a war against trade unions, and native workers disgruntled by a growing number of immigrant labourers. With the slogans like “Greed is good” dominating, more deregulation was supposed to facilitate a “trickle down” of wealth, which never happened. The result is that the bottom 90% of the population has suffered a loss in family income, and the real wages (purchasing power) are on a level last experienced in 1960.

The credit boom, another contributing factor of the 2008 crash, camouflaged a dire situation: since 1970 wages have increased for 90% of the population by 800%, but for the top ten percent the increase in capital was 2000%. This has led to the Super Rich not re-investing their capital in production, but in keeping their wealth in an endless loop, where the same people buy and sell capital commodities, bringing a 4.5% average return. This compared with 1.6% return on investments in industry or other productive enterprises.

When all is said and done, the super rich will always be able to employ the best legal advice to fight their way out of taxation. In 2015, Google Alphabet had made a profit of 15.5. billion USD – offshore in Bermuda. shell companies and numbered accounts for the Elite keep them free from punitive taxes.

Meanwhile, new technologies create new jobs. More than ever ,individuals are setting up companies and gaining financial freedom and clout. But when robots replace humans, humans will slide down the pecking order. Vehicle drivers now make up the second largest group of people in employment. With the advent of the driverless car, what will eventually happen to them?

So the outlook is grim. But it always was. The rich will always be rich, and the poor will always be poor, but the disadvantaged have more opportunities that ever before. Pemberton includes a psychology experiment that exposes a sinister side to human nature suggestive of a positive mind set that also comes into play.

The consequences can only be controlled politically. But who will be controlling capitalism? Certainly not the middle classes, if their erosion continues. The film tries to end on a positive note: “Creating a more equal society is possible from a technical standpoint”. But in reality we all know this is unlikely to happen due to the inherent flaws of human nature. AS

NOW ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS | 25 SEPTEMBER 2020

                                               

7 Films to look forward to this Autumn | LFF 2020

This Autumn’s scaled down Covid special has some treasures to look forward in a real/online melange that plays out across the UK from October 7-18.

Undine, Ammonite and Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand, are films to look out for in this slimmed down version which opens with Steve McQueen’s latest Mangrove.

In this strange and subdued year for the cinema world, the virtual premieres will play at a set time and have the bonus of an introduction or Q&A with the talent or programmers. But it won’t be quite the same as the usual jamboree which fills the streets of Soho with a jubilant crowd of cineastes.

UNDINE (2020) Berlinale premiere

Christian Petzold’s fantasy love story reworks the myth of Undine, the water nymph, wrapped up in a contemporary story that reflects on the history of Berlin. Petzold’s latest muse Paula Beer is united with her star-crossed beau from Transit Frank Rogowski in this tone-shifting tale interlacing romance with suspense.

GENUS PAN (Lahi, Hayop) 2020 Venice premiere

Philippine filmmaker Lav Diaz is know for his valuable contribution to the slow cinema movement and this latest drama (a mere 150 minutes) is another colourful human story involving murder and mayhem – set on the island of Hugaw during the Japanese occupation.

THE DISCIPLE (2020) Venice premiere

Arguably the definitive film about Indian Hindustani classical music The Disciple explores creative endeavour and perseverance in our climate of quick fix celebrity and overnight success, through the life of an earnest  young musician in modern Mumbai. Chiatanya Tamhane imbues his story with the same intensity and sense of detail as his 2014 debut Court, but ironically the film works best in the freewheeling scenes picturing ordinary life.

NOMADLAND (2020) Venice premiere

Chloe Zhao’s indie breakout hit The Rider (2017) followed a modern day cowboy in his search for a new identity in America’s midwest. Nomadland does this again from a female perspective and the phenomenal, flinty performance of Frances McDormand as the sixty-something Fern who embarks on a cinematically reflective journey this time in a white camper van.

NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN (2020) Venice premiere

Malgozarta Szumowska’s latest is a flawed but fabulously entertaining Polish-set social satire with a score that makes it all worthwhile. Alec Utgoff is hypnotic and quietly muscular in the leading role as an enigmatic guru-like dark horse drawing us in to a story that is both intriguing and unsatisfying.

NOTTURNO (2020) Venice premiere

Award-winning documentarian Gianfranco Rosi (Fire at Sea) turns his compassionate camera on ordinary lives in the wartorn Middle East. Banal and tragic, the film’s intensity lies in the raw intimacy of these everyday moments. Luminous camerawork gives the piece a poetic quality.

AMMONITE  (2020) Toronto premiere

Francis Lee set gay hearts a flutter with his earthy tale of Yorkshire farming folk, God’s Own Country. Cut from the same cloth, this sumptuous-looking 1840s costume drama soon gets down and dirty in telling the lesbian story of paleontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) and her close companion Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan).

And one to avoid…

SIBERIA (2020) Berlinale premiere

A raddled old swinger looks back on his life and concludes nothing from his self-indulgent navel gazing in this turkey from veteran talent Abel Ferrara. Not so much a feature, more a series of random widescreen sequences, Siberia is a drama without any meaningful dramatic arc, let alone any heft in addressing a cliched and well-worn theme.

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2020 | 7 – 18 OCTOBER 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Petite Fille (Little Girl) 2020 ****

Dir.: Sebastien Lifshitz; Documentary with Sasha; France 2020, 90 min.

French filmmaker Sebastien Lifshitz is particularly interested in gender issues (Les Invisibles) and his latest documentary explores Gender Disphoria (GD), through the eyes of a girl who was born a boy living in provincial France.

Sasha is now seven year. Her mother explains the ramifications of her GD to a psychologist. It all started when she was just a toddler: “if I grow up, I want to be a girl”. She was mortified when told this was not going to be the case. Her school head is unwilling to work with the family so a referral to a specialist in Paris seems the only way forward. Problem is, Sasha wants to stay with her friends. The only time Sasha can dress up is in her ballet lessons but at school she still has to keep up the pretence of being a boy.

A great deal of soul-searching goes on for her mother. Naturally she feels responsible in some way, because she actually wanted a girl. But the Paris specialist Dr Bargiacci allays her fears. Surprisingly Sasha’s father and brother supports Sasha desire to be male and so a series of hormone treatments is on the cards in preparation for puberty. Once this happens there is no going back. Sasha goes on her summer holidays, armed with a bikini and new dresses. Then comes the breakthrough the family were waiting for: the school will allow Sasha back, as a girl, beginning her After the holidays, finally the break-throw the family was waiting for: The director, after having talked to the specialist from Paris over the phone, will allow Sasha back to school. She is now eight. But there is bad news too: the Russian ballet teacher literally shoves her out the class, telling her mother: “such things do not happen in her homeland”. The child is naturally dismayed by all this and her mother fears a lifetime of abuse for her child, but at the same time supports her. “We all have a mission in life, and mine is to look after my daughter”.

Moving and passionate, Little Girl is simple but not at all simplistic. DoP Paul Guilhaume’s camera is not intrusive option for a fly-on-the-wall approach. What emerges more than anything is the Sasha’s innocence and nativity in contrast to the prejudice shown her by adults. Do they know better? Will she change her mind? These are the salient issues the film raises. But the overriding feeling is that of Sasha’s confidence in her achievement, staying true to herself and telling the director proudly, after showing him photos of her when she was much younger: “You can see, how much I have changed”. A fascinating snapshot of modern times. AS

IN CINEMAS NOW and INCLUSIVELY on CURZON HOME CINEMA from 25 SEPTEMBER 2020 | UK PREMIER AT CURZON X CAMDEN MARKET ON 17 SEPTEMBER 2020

 

The Painted Bird (2019)

Dir.: Vaclav Marhoul, Cast: Petr Kotlar, Stellan Skarsgard, Harvei Keitel, Udo Kier, Julia Vidrnakova, Nina Sunevic, Jitka Cvancarova, Julian Sands, Czechia/Ukraine/Slovakia 2019, 159 min.

The Painted Bird is inspired by Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel based on on real interviews with holocaust survivors in Poland makes for grim viewing with some of the most horrific scenes ever committed to celluloid. Don’t be seduced by the colourful title – the film is shot in black and white, more appropriate in conveying the stark nature of its contents. 

Some might accuse the Czech director of anti-Polish sentiments – but Poland has actually faced enormous difficulties coming to terms antisemitism during WWII. And that’s not only based on the violence and racism shown in this drama. The Polish government recently legislated to make it a crime to talk about Polish collaboration in the Holocaust. The law had to be withdrawn, but the unease remains.

It sees a young Jewish boy Joshka (Kotlar) whose parents have left him with a relative (Martha/Sunevic) in the belief he will be safer in the countryside. But after Martha dies the boy starts an epic journey of deprivation. Eventually captured by the Germans, he manages to escape his elderly ambivalent guard (Skarsgard) whose mournful eyes shows he has seen enough of death. He then witnesses German soldiers killing a group of Jews trying to escape from a cattle train, heading for  an extermination camp. A sick old priest (Keitel) saves his life but Garbos (Sands), the man charged with looking after him, brutally rapes him, and suffers a particularly gruesome death: the boy has learnt his lesson and is able to be as savage as the others.

The horrific violence continues when Joshka is befriended by a miller’s wife who saves him from drowning. But worse is to come at the hands of her husband (Kier). When he eventually finds sanctuary with Labina (Vidrnakova), it seems his luck has turned. But the young woman needs a lover, not a boy. Soon it becomes clear he has switched allegiances in this descent into hell.

Vladimir Smutny creates a devastating landscape where the characters cling to life stripped of any capacity to care or love in an apocalyptic orgy of destruction and self-destruction echoing scenes from Hieronymus Bosch. AS

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

Apples (2020) Curzon online

Dir: Christos Nikou | Drama Greece, 90

When it comes to films about pandemics nothing could be more serene than this lucid and gently crafted weird wave debut drama from Greek director Christos Nikou.

Not to say that Apples isn’s subversive in a charming way.  The idea came to Nikou long before the coronavirus crisis and yet it perfectly captures the disarming effects of its character’s quiet meltdown. Aris (Aris Servetalis) becomes a victim of amnesia that slowly spreads through his local community and beyond.

There’s nothing of the mass hysteria experienced through the globe just recently. Here the treatment is not a vaccine but involves a series of exercises to re-build his memory. And at first Aris submits willingly the tasks under the care of his amiable medical consultant. Every single event must be dutifully recorded on a camera  – visits to the cinema or shops, even amorous encounters. Everyone submits to the same regime but Aris slowly starts to object to this authoritarian situation.

There are subtle echoes of Yorgos Lanthimos here: Nikou actually trained under the director so it comes as no surprise. But the wry and slightly soporific tone makes this pleasurable to watch allowing languid time out for our own thoughts and feelings. MT

Exclusively on Curzon Home Cinema from Friday 7 May | Apples will also be available to cinemas nationwide as they reopen from lockdown closures | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | HORIZONS 2020 review

Ava (2019) ****

Dir.: Sadaf Foroughi; Cast: Mahour Jabhari, Shayesteh Sajadi, Bahaar Noohiaw, Sarah Alimoradi, Vahid Aghapoor, Leili Rashidi, Houman Hoursan, Mona Ghiasi; Iran/Qatar/Canada 2017, 103 min.

Born in Teheran in 1976, writer/director Sadaf Foroughi later went on to study in France and now lives in Canada. Her first feature Ava, is a coming of age story that won the FIPRESCI Discovery Prize at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival for its depiction of teenage life in today’s Tehran.

Brilliant newcomer Jabhari plays the main character Ava, a girl from a comfortable background who rebels against her professional parents and her all girls school, where she is encouraged towards Science rather than the Arts, ironic as her father (Aghapoor) is an architect. She is keen on music and is competing for a place at the capital’s Conservatoire.

School days are never easy for teenagers and particularly in Iran’s restrictive society where young women are scrutinised at every turn. This provides plenty of dramatic potential for Foroughi to make the most innocent behaviour seemingly outlandish. Ava and her friends Melody (Sajadi) and Shirin (Alimoradi)  are no different from Western teenagers, and her parents’ marriage is clearly coming under strain like any modern marriage with today’s pressures.  The school’s supervisor Ms. Dehkhoda (Rashidi) is a bit of a martinet, who makes Ava’s life particularly difficult.  Her father is the more liberal of the parents, but he too claims not to understand his daughter and there is no physical contact between them, not even as basic as holding hands.

Ava has much in common with the features of Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015): Sina Kermanizadeh keeps his camera static, the protagonists moving slowly around the frame, sometimes even leaving. Ava, is stubborn and wilful, very much like Ema in de Oliveira’s Vale Abraäo, based on the Portuguese version of Flaubert’s Emma. Foroughi is clearly influenced by de Oliveira, her heroine subject to the paternalistic constraints of Iranian society where women will always be under the control of their parents. In one scene, her parents discuss Ava’s failings – and their own marital conflicts, Ava meanwhile is packing her rucksack for school – only a thin wall separating them, but the teenager may as well not exist. Many of the authoritative admonishments are made in the third person: teacher and parents making announcement indirectly. A case in point is Dekhoda’s insinuation to the whole class, that “over-eating” is taking place in her school: “girls getting up at night, while everyone is sleeping and sneaking over to the fridge”.  

Passionate but aesthetically restrained, Ava is a mature debut from a talented and assured newcomer. AS

OUT ON 21 AUGUST 2020 | BFI PLAYER

Wonders in the Suburbs | Merveilles a Montfermeil (2019) **

Wri/Dir: Jeanne Balibar | Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Beart, Ramzy Bedia, Bulle Ogier | Comedy | France, 109′

Seasoned actress turned Jean Balibar first satirised France in Par Example, Electre, starring and directing alongside Pierre Leon. Six years later her stylish but structureless solo attempt at anarchic comedy is far from wonderful but certainly colourful. Shot on location in the Parisian suburbs of Seine St. Denis and Montfermeil, it features over seventy locals and a star-studded cast, but sinks under the weight of conflicting ideas.

Kamel Mrabti (Bedia) and his wife Joëlle (Balibar) are a divorcing couple at the centre of the unfolding political farce. As active members of a new task force they are working to revitalise the locale with some exciting ideas, and although their marriage is over and new lovers have already entered the fray, the two must support their latest mayor Emmanuelle Joly (a fine Beart) in implementing a set of initiatives that include the new Montfermeil International School of Languages with the teaching 62 local languages; the ‘slowing of urban rhythms’; the introduction of a ‘Nap programme’; and social support for sexual satisfaction.

Marijuana is not only legalised under this new regime, it’s actually provided by the council, along with fresh vegetables. Naturally this is all very New Age and exciting. But behind the scenes chaos rules: the Mayor is losing it slowly, undermined but a more senior government official, and Kamel is suspected of being in league with Paris – the big enemy of devolution. Meanwhile, Joly’s secretary is learning Mandinka to keep up with her Malian lover, and the Army is lurking in the woods nearby, ready to strike.

DoP Andre Chemotoff’s visuals vamp up the histrionic mayhem in a production that looks slick and very professional. And although Amalric, Beart and Balibar shine in the leading roles they can’t rescue Balibar’s rather flawed script: breaking eggs on a sculpture of President Macon is, like the whole affair, not particularly original or impressive. MT

NOW ON MUBI | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 7-17 AUGUST 2019   

 

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) | New 4k Restoration | Poetry

Dir: Michael Powell | Writer: Emeric Pressburger | Cast: David Niven, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Abraham Sofaer, Robert Coote, Joan Maude, Kathleen Byron, Bonar Colleano, Richard Attenborough | UK / Fantasy / 104min

Although by general consensus it is now accorded the status of a classic, it actually took quite a while for this beautiful and unique film to be considered as such. Lindsay Anderson at the time actually used it as his yardstick for mediocrity when he despaired in ‘Sequence’ of audiences that “allow themselves to be diverted by A Matter of Life and Death, but confess themselves too lazy for Ivan the Terrible“, while as recently as 1973 it had been dismissed by Angela & Elkan Allan in ‘The Sunday Times Guide to Movies on Television’ as “[e]xtravagantly awful… told not as a comedy, but as a serious, ludicrous drama”.

Matter-870When it first appeared plenty of critics grumbled at its lack of realism, although director Michael Powell himself took great satisfaction in the fact that everything in the film was psychologically explicable as a hallucination on the part of the hero, Peter Carter (engaging played by a young David Niven). The light-hearted backdrop of fantasy, however, made palatable the graphic depiction of the violent death of two of the film’s characters (we first see Bob Trubshawe [Robert Coote] looking very realistically dead with his eyes open), since within the context of the film’s narrative they are both soon depicted jauntily bounding back to life, when in reality at the film’s conclusion they would both have been very much dead, and remained so for all eternity.

 Under the baton of maestro Michael Powell, A Matter of Life and Death is an enormously satisfying exercise in organisation, with the many components that make up  a feature film – Emeric Pressburger’s literate script, the enthusiastic performances by a uniformly fine cast, Jack Cardiff’s Technicolor photography, Allan Gray’s music, Alfred Junge’s production design, Reginald Mills’ editing and so on – smoothly coalescing into a sublime whole, which Powell himself prided himself on making it all look so easy, when it had been anything but.  It was typically audacious that the film chose at so early to reverse the convention already emerging in cinematic fantasy by depicting real life in Technicolor and Heaven in black & white. The transitions are smoothly organised, although some took exception at Marius Goring’s line – breaching the fourth wall – that “One is starved for Technicolor up zere…!”  Depicting Heaven in black & white was perceived by Raymond Durgnat as satirising the welfare state, and in an odd little book published in 1947 called ‘The World is My Cinema’ E.W. & M.M. Robson heaped page upon page of abuse on the heads of Powell & Pressburger accusing them of being unpatriotic fascist sympathisers (although it’s worth noting that nobody from the Axis Powers is anywhere to be seen, the Chief Recorder is a woman (Joan Maude) and The Judge is played by an Asian actor [Abraham Sofaer]).

matter-4A remarkable amount of Britain’s imperial dirty linen indeed receives a very public airing during the heavenly tribunal (including a laugh-out-loud moment depicting the introduction of an Irish juror in standard IRA uniform of trilby and trenchcoat) led Richard Winnington of the News Chronicle to suppose it was there just for “American box-office purposes”, which ironically attests to the artfulness with which Powell & Pressburger’s company The Archers had camouflaged their propaganda, since the whole reason for the film’s existence had been a request from the Ministry of Information to make a film stressing Anglo-American friendship (relations between the Allies were becoming strained even before Germany surrendered). Anyone else would have simply obliged with a conventional romance between a Brit and a Yank, but The Archers didn’t do conventional, and only they would erect such a formidable edifice to get their message across.

It’s hard to imagine any other national cinema or filmmakers combining such technical and philosophical ambition with such boundless exuberance in its telling. The whole film looks so extraordinary, it’s easy not to notice the skilful use of sound throughout – from the hollow, echoing acoustics of the opening scene narrated by John Longden taking us on a tour of outer space, through the ominously ticking clock in the control room at the air base, to Allan Gray’s exquisite and atmospheric score, his last for an Archers production.

A Matter of Life and Death represents both the culmination and conclusion of The Archers’ first phase, since as their later productions became more ornate they in the process lost much of the gusto and graceful good humour which had characterised their earlier productions. ©RChatten

The film also inspired Alan Price to compose this poem:

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946) 

No one has ever dramatised a brain seizure like you guys. 

An airman hallucinating on earth and its WW2 ‘heaven.’ 

Pilot Peter Carter, so English a fighting poet. One moment 

in a three-strip Technicolor village, the next on a staircase 

to a monochrome beyond. Blaze of aircraft crashing down. 

A beach. Her cycling. You meet; grab the falling handlebars, 

embrace and kiss. Not some visionary sight of a nether world. 

Nor a surgeon spying the street with his camera obscura. 

Nor the French messenger who lost his head. Nor the smell 

of fried onions can change my mind: the idea of a sacrifice

for love. June got her man. Peter got his woman. Emeric and 

you Michael got the film you wanted. AMOLAD determined 

my fantasy after-life. I was born premature three years later: 

taken out of my pram; nurtured in a cinema, entranced by 

black & white pearls with the option for wide screen rainbows. 

Hovering betwixt and between, knowing I’d never starve.

©ALAN PRICE

My Rembrandt (2020) *****

Dir: Oeke Hoogendijk | Doc, 97′

Oeke Hoogendijk (The New Rijksmuseum) once again delves into the art world in her visually ravishing new documentary that plays out like a thriller. Set amidst the world of the elite in a multi-stranded narrative that grows more exciting by the minute My Rembrandt is a story of art dealers, connoisseurs and collectors whose lives revolve around the sale and acquisition of masters old and new.

Hoogendijk certainly knows how to build suspense and has a good nose for a story. It also helps to be on first name terms with her illustrious characters: The Duke of Buccleuch; Dutch art scion Jan Six, Baron Eric de Rothschild; and billionaire philanthropist Thomas S Kaplan. She finds herself in a discrete Scottish castle, Champs Elysses apartments, and canal houses of Amsterdam where this fascinating film takes place. Ironically there’s not an ounce of avarice in the faces of these extraordinary collectors who are genuinely charming and pleasant. My Rembrandt is a seductive film with a surprising finale whether the subject is of interest of not.

We meet businessman and philanthropist Thomas Kaplan, who is a passionate Rembrandt collector who set himself the noble task of making these works available in the public domain and who has buying up canvases for the past few decades. Kaplan is an appealing man Kaplan who confesses to having actually kissed a Rembrandt portrait of a woman. Clearly well-connected he goes about his business amongst world leaders at media events connected to his pastime. The Duke of Buccleuch is more lowkey in his approach and we see him celebrating his looking his Rembrandt, Old Woman Reading, in the privacy of his sitting room. Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits helping him to select a safe place to hang the portrait in order to involve the old woman in everyday life as a true member of the family.

Meanwhile Baron Roschild is a kindly man who has reluctantly parted with two Rembrandts – the wedding portraits of Marten and Oopjen – which have been in the family for generations, in order to help his brother pay taxes. The sale of these masterpieces threatens to derail the entente cordiale between the Louvre in France and Holland’s Rijksmuseum as they each bid for paintings.

All these titbits are brought together by the work of Dutch art dealer Jan Six XI, the ancestor of a 17th-century art dealer whose portrait was actually painted by Rembrandt and stills hangs in the family home. The film opens with his discovery of an as yet unknown canvas by Rembrandt, and a second follows shortly after the first. Jan Jnr is not just a pretty face but a Rembrandt expert, and what he doesn’t know about the painter could be written on a Holbein miniature. Jan has also made a career out of the old master. He recently spotted both canvases at a Christies auction and snapped them up for a relatively low price. But he needs to prove these paintings are actually by Rembrandt and not just one of his disciples. And this is where Rembrand authority Professor Ernst van de Wetering comes in. The ‘Fake or Fortune’ twist then takes over as we are compelled to discover whether Jan has made a clever purchase or bough himself a proverbial ‘pup’. And the finale is spiced up by a fellow trader coming into the fray, accusing Jan of cheating him.

What is remarkable is that Rembrandt’s paintings have lost none of their appeal in the 350 years since his death. Collectors worldwide relish the Dutch master’s work. My Rembrandt offers insight into what makes the work of this Dutch master technically so extraordinary, and why people are so passionate about paintings in general. In her brilliant documentary Hoogendijk shows how the sober art world can be a source of drama and gripping plot twists. MT

ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS and ON DEMAND from  on 14th August.

The Woman in Black (1989) **** Blu-ray

Dir: Herbert Wise | Cast: Adrian Rawlins, Bernard Hepton, Pauline Moran, David Ryall, Clare Holman | UK Horror Thriller, 100′

Originally made for TV and screening on Christmas Eve 1989, Herbert Wise directed this well made and effective thriller that takes us back to the Gothic tradition of storytelling in a Victorian ghost fantasy based on Susan Hill’s original 1983 novel. The Woman in Black follows the same formula as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, minus the blood-sucking Count who is replaced by an equally menacing woman in black, and the boxes of earth by a trunk full of evil trappings.

On the request of his crusty old boss young lawyer Arthur Kipps (Adrian Rawlins) travels from London to the North Eastern coastal town of Crythin Gifford, and out across the eerie salt marshes to attend the funeral of a friendless old widow, Alice Drablow. During the church service a be-hatted, black-robed woman appears to be watching Arthur Kidd from a distance and reappears on the marshes later that day, her face set in a ghastly grimace.

Wise’s film is chockfull of ghastly horror tropes. The wind moans and gulls screech as Kipps makes his way in the swirling mists to Eel Marsh House, only to discover a mournful legacy of untimely death and ghostly appearances in this miserable corner of Victorian England. A talented British cast includes Bernhard Hepton who plays a kindly professional Sam Toovey a sort of Devil’s advocate in explaining away the terrifying sounds and occurrences. The other locals are a sceptical bunch. And no one can explain how a ball comes to be bouncing and a little boy’s voice greets Kipps laughingly in a room that has apparently been locked since Alice’s death. Not to mention a recurring sound of a carriage crashing amid blood-curdling screams outside the house. All this has been recorded on a phonograph by Mrs Drablow herself. Meanwhile, Kipps seems to be losing his mind – not surprisingly. And things don’t improve when he returns to London, freaked out by the whole affair which continues to haunt him in the film’s shocking finale. Made in the late 1980s this reliable horror story  still has an undeniable kick thanks to Wise’s able direction. MT

https://youtu.be/wYfKkf_0Pnc
The worldwide Blu-ray debut of The Woman in Black is available exclusively from the Network website on 10 August 

The Plot Against America (2019) HBO Series 1-6

Dir.: Minkie Spiro, Thomas Schlamme; Winona Ryder, Morgan Spector, Zoe Kazan, John Turturro, Caleb Malis, Azhy Robertson, Anthony Boyle, Jacob Laval, Kristen Sieh, Eleanor Reissa, Michael Kostroff, Caroline Kaplan, Ben Cole, Graydon Josowitz); USA 2020, 360 min.

This ground breaking six-part HBO TV series is outstanding. Written by David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire) and based on Philip Roth’s 2004 alternative history novel of the same name, it shows how Fascism came to America in 1940. A brilliant cast, imposing re-creation by PDs Dina Goldman and Richard Hoover, who, like the directors Minkie Spiro (Jessica Jones) and Thomas Schlamme (Westwing) share the six episodes of this staggering production of alternative US history: “It Could Happen Here”.

Many will remember the theme tune “The Road is open Again”, an old Warner Brother’s short film score promoting Roosevelt’s New Deal episodes. This ushers in the Levin family in their home in Weequahic, Newark/New Jersey in the summer of 1940, a few months before the Presidential Election in the autumn of the year. ‘Its a done thing’, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt will be elected, at least for his staunch supports Hermann Levin (Spector), selling life insurance for a living, and his wife Bess (Kazan), who keeps the family tightly organised. Their oldest son, teenager Sandy (Malis) has a talent for drawing but disagrees with his father’s outlook on life, that only Jewish affairs matter. The youngest, Philip (born like the author in 1933), is much more interested in his friends than in politics. Hermann has just given up the idea of a promotion which would enable the family to move into a bigger house, having seen beer-slurping members of the Fascist “German-American Bund” in what would have been his new neighbourhood.

Opposing Roosevelt in the election is the pilot-hero “Lindy” Lindbergh (Ben Cole) of ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ fame, who is a believer in eugenics, a supporter of ‘America First’ and a vicious Anti-Semite. The real Lindbergh, who shared the political outlook of his fictional double, was not selected as candidate of the Republican Party. Lindbergh put a simple phrase forward and repeated it at nauseam: “This is between Lindbergh and War”, implying that President Roosevelt would ‘drag’ the USA into the European War. Lindbergh won in a landslide.

Meanwhile Bess’s sister Evelyn (Winona Ryder back and better than ever) is looking after their mother (Reissa), and has fallen for conservative Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (Turturro), an avid supporter of Lindbergh. A grateful president gives Bengelsdorf the leadership of the “Office of American Absorption”, a scheme designed to evict Jewish families from their homes on the East Coast, to the American “Heartland” of the South, where the KKK and other racist organisations hold sway supported by the authorities. This brings about another conflict between Sandy and his father, the teenager claiming to not having seen KKK members when he spent six weeks in Kentucky with a farmer. Cousin Alvin (Krumholtz) is a small-time gangster and clashes with Hermann, but gets the thumbs up from Sandy. Alvin finally flees to Canada, where he joins the Army, losing a part of his leg. In a bid to bury their differences Hermann invites Alvin (“family is family”) to live with them again.  Alvin is able to gain the attention of his boss’s daughter, helping her father to fight off a gang robbing his arcade machines, and setting up a lucrative future and marriage, thanks to his skills as radar operator acquired in the in the war. 

But Lindbergh has changed the political climate: with slogans such as “the USA will not be part of the war in Europe, because it was caused by Jews”, the Jewish minority is victimised, Anti-Semitic attacks having become common. Hermann is hassled by FBI agents for offering a home to a ‘criminal’ like Alvin: the young man has contravened the American Neutrality Act which forbids any involvement in the War.

Philip is ‘introduced’ by his wealthy friend Earl Axman (Yosowitz) to the world of female underwear. Meanwhile the father of his friend Seldon (Laval), the Levin’s next door neighbour suddenly dies. Jews start to emigrate to Canada, including Hermann’s best friend Shepsie (Kostroff), the projectionist of the newsreel cinema in Weequahic, where the two watched Hitler’s rise in Europe. The Levins are now put on a list for a new “home”, Hermann has been “transferred” to Kentucky by his company. He resigns and works for a greengrocer. Bess insists on emigrating to Canada, after begging her sister Evelyn in vain to be taken off the list for the ‘exile’ in Kentucky. Seldon and his mother Selma (Sieh) are not so lucky, they have been put on the list for Kentucky, because Philip told his aunt Evelyn that he would miss Seldon, if only the Levins would have to move. One day, the troubles rising, Bess gets a phone call from Seldon: his mother is missing. Hermann and his two sons drive to Kentucky, only to learn that Selma has been burned alive in her car by the KKK. Even though the roads in the South are full of patrolling KKK members, Hermann brings Seldon ‘home’. Then, in the midst of a looming civil war in the country, President Lindbergh, flying his own plane, is reported missing.

There is so much to enjoy and admire in this series: Turturro’s operatic appeaser; Evelyn’s social climbing – she even dances with Nazi Foreign Secretary Joachim von Rippentrop at the White House during his visit; history unfolding as Hermann and Shepsie watch from the projection room at the cinema; the entire social dynamic of the Levin family.

Put at its simplest, The Plot Against America is an eye opener: the ‘America First’ and White Supremacist movement has always been virulent – but it takes a populist president to give them credence and light the fire. Never has history been so cleverly and affectively foretold. AS

ON SKY ATLANTIC | NOW TV

 

     

 

Vision Nocturna | Night Shot (2019) ***** FID Marseille

Dir.: Carolina Muscoso Briceño; Documentary; Chile 2019, 80 min.

Pain, Rage and Acceptance: the various stages of rape. Chilean first-time director/co-writer and DoP Carolina Muscoso Briceño has dared to go where very few have gone before her: having been a rape victim almost a decade ago while studying at the Film School in Santiago, she has since made a film diary of her life still rocked to this day by the rape trauma. Intercut with her reflexions on the assault – and not only her own experience – Night Shot is a testament to gradual liberation.

“Rape victims are ashamed of what happened to them. The first thing that mobilised me was to break with that shameful legacy and to think of a way of exposing it to cross that barrier” says the director.

Everyday life go on, in various formats. Her experiences about the attack itself and the bureaucratic engendered are set mostly against a black background. On the beach near Santiago, Carolina became separated from her friends, and came across Gary. The two decided to go for something to eat nearby, but on the way he raped her. “Afterwards I did as he told me. I stayed motionless in the bushes. He said he would kill me if I followed him. I cleaned the blood off my face, picked up my ripped shirt and headed for the highway”.  The distress was further compounded by her father’s comments when he picked her up in his car: “a friend of mine got raped by her father. That’s much worse.”

Carolina went to a hospital, and was examined two hours after the rape. But the Catholic female doctor was against offering her a morning-after-pill, on the grounds of being against aborton “on principle”. What follows adds insult to injury and later Gary Raul Lopez Montero categorically refused any connection with Carolina. “I never knew anybody called Carolina. I met no one that night. I have a one-year-old daughter, I deny any involvement in this event” His brashness compared with Carolina’s answers still under the influence of the rape, made the DA drop the case.

Eight years later, Carolina makes another attempt to get justice, seeking advice from her lawyer friend Slvio who describes recourse as an uphill struggle for the victim, particularly where they refused to complete  hospital tests and seemed to lack conviction about their own role in the matter. Chile’s systemic structure of ‘justice’, in which the rape victim had to prove the guilt of the attacker, is common in most countries. Carolina’s first psychologist had told her “You are in the middle of an emergency landing”, and whilst she talked, Carolina imagined the different ways of falling.

Later Silvio has even worse news: The time limit for prosecution of rape is usually ten years, but since Gary was a minor at the time of the attack, the limit is just five years. Carolina eventually returns to the scene of the crime: “To be back feels like a big fire, this fire accompanies me, as well as the feeling that Gary is right here. That nine years later, he never has left this place”. She films and photographs the terrain, and is asked by a rider on horseback, why she is taking the photos. Her response is candid: “I am recording this place here, because something has happened here. Yes, here in Papudo. A long time ago, seven or eight years.” The rider asks: “Something good or bad”. Caroline’s answer is “good and bad”, before stating that she did not know her feelings are ambivalent. and: “I don’t know why I think I’ll find the wallet I lost that day”. Breathtakingly honest, Night Shot is an absolute masterpiece of form and context. AS

FID MARSEILLE 2020 | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION.

Homeland (Domovine) (2020) **** FID Marseille

Dir.: Jelena Maksimovic; Cast: Jelena Angelovski, Trifonas Siapalinis; Serbia 2020, 63 min.

Jelena Maksimovic is inspired by her own life experience in this feature debut, a lament about loss but above all, a feminist reckoning dedicated to the filmmaker’s grandmother Elina Gacu (1928-2017), evacuated from civil wartorn Greece to what was then Yugoslavia, now North Macedonia.

The stark winter setting makes this all the more foreboding: A car approaching a wild mountainside, a young woman behind the wheel, a banal, romantic song on the car stereo. Not the best of welcomes for the ‘homecoming’ of someone who has never set foot in her country before.

The changing seasons mark a year’s stay in this village, and her growing unfulfilled longing to find a place which connects to her grandmother who has lived here since being exiled from her homeland during the Civil War (1946-1949), the first proxy war of the global Cold War.

This young woman is a visitor but not a tourist, wanting to claim something of the place for herself. Fragments of war of are everywhere: in fortifications, ruined houses and the reminiscences of old men who recall partisans coming from the mountains to fight government troops before vanishing back into their hideouts.

The woman befriends a restaurant owner, they cook together, he and his friends perform an old folk dance. But for the most part she tries to connect with the inhospitable terrain where animals are her only friends.  Hidden traces of the combat are everywhere. Finally, after so much silence she breaks into a final poetic outburst, accusing the men of bringing warfare to the place and repressing women. She claims the trees in the woods are the only true communists, and mourns the fate of her grandmother.

DoP Dusan Grubin makes an unobtrusive foray into this melancholy setting  – his harrowing panorama shots are just a foretaste of what is to come in a paean to lost identity. The main unnamed character is a victim of fragmentation and alienation: her trial to find anything like home is hampered by the silence around her. The past is the past – whatever the partisans stood for – or whatever the war was about. Her grandmother is a bridge to this past and will lead her back to herself. Homeland is for every soul searching for a place to call their own, moored somewhere in their dreams. AS

FID Marseille | 2020 | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 

The Rifleman | Dveselu Putensis (2019) *** Digital and DVD

Dir.: Dzintars Dreibergs; Cast: Otto Brantevics, Taimonds Celms, Martin Vilsons, Greta Trusina; Latvia 2019, 104 min.

The Rifleman pays stark witness to the horrors and brutality of the First World War, as seen through the eyes of an innocent 17-year-old farm-boy turned soldier and the tragic fate of his family.

Written by Boris Frumin and based on the 1933/34 novel by Aleksanders Grins, which was forbidden in the USSR, its author shot down in 1941. This lushly mounted historical drama was, not surprisingly, a huge success at the box-office in Latvia, and an impressive first feature for Latvia’s Dzintars Dreibergs, who made his name as sports documentarian.

The Rifleman is an unashamedly male and patriotic affair, filmed as an eyewitness report from the POV of 17-tear-old Arthurs Vanags (Brantevics), it opens in 1914 giving full emotional throttle to the murder of the young man’s mother by German soldiers, who, for good measure also kill the family’s dog. Arthur’s father (Vilsons) has served in the Russian Imperial Army, and burns down the farmhouse and shoots the cattle, before enlisting with Arthurs and his brother Edgars (Celms) in Latvia’s first National Battalion, part of the Russian forces overrun by the Germans.

Wounded in a skirmish, Arthurs soon falls for Marta (Trusina), a nurse in the field hospital. But more tragedy follows when Arthurs is asked by Red Army commanders to shoot Latvian soldiers who have disobeyed their Russian officers. Returning home, Arthurs catches up with Marta who is now working as a farmhand in Latvia, before setting out to liberate his homeland from “Tsars, Red Army and the Germans who all want to repress Latvian independence.”

DoP Valdis Celmins does a great job with his grizzly images of foggy snowbound battles, the frozen bodies reduced to ghostly spectres. Lolita Ritmanis’ evocative score is in line with this heroic approach to war, providing the emotional underpinnings to this rousing feature (1917 it is not) depicting a grim episode in Latvian history. AS

In the Showcase Cinema circuit nationwide | Sunday 26th July  
On Digital from 10th August | On DVD from 24th August 
 

Las Ninas Bien | The Good Girls (2018) Mubi

Dir.: Alejandra Marquez Abella; Cast: Ilse Salas, Flavio Medina, Paulina Gaitan; Mexico 2018, 93 min.

Alejandra Marquez Abella’s flawed sophomore feature is a social anthropologist’s dream: based on characters by Guadelupe Loaeza, a group of bitchy competitive Mexican wives whose the crowning glory is having Julio Iglesias for dinner. Sofia, leads the cast of mere cyphers in an episodic narrative that drains out patience even with the modest running time.

Sofia (Salas) is desperate to deny her Latin American heritage. Sending her three children off to summer camp, she warns them “don’t hang out with Mexicans”. A European background is what she and her female rivals long for. In the social whirl, Sofia’s parties are epic productions,  funded by her husband Fernando (Medina) whose   family is of Spanish heritage. Everything is a competition for Sofia, the smallest bum note could lead to a loss of face among her female friends. But we are in the early 1980s, and the Mexican Peso suddenly bottoms out. As Sofia and her circle rely on imported goods, this is a major catastrophe all round. So when credit cards get politely refused and the servants don’t get paid, doom is imminent. To make matters worse, Sofia’s arch rival, the noveau-riche Ana Paula (Gaitan), is still quids in. Her default-position is resigned acceptance, but with the Peso tumbling further, even this seems beyond the pail.

Salas is always brilliant, cool and contained, she carries the film as much as possible. DoP Daniela Ludlow succeeds in conjuring up this lush environment of petty mini-me’s in meltdown, keeping everything close and personal, despite the widescreen format. As a chick-flick study of vanity and self-deceit this is promising but lacks emotional depth and an absorbing dramatic arc. AS

NOW ON MUBI

They Came to a City **** (1944) | Dual format release

Dir.: Basil Dearden; Cast: Googie Withers, John Clements, Raymond Huntley, Renee Gadd, Mabe; Terry-Lewis, Fanny Rowe, A.E. Matthews; UK 1944, 77 min.


Basil Dearden (1911-1971) was one of the most undervalued of British directors. His films featured the persecution of homosexuals (Victim, 1961) and the not so latent racism in Sapphire (1959). No surprise therefore that J B Priestley’s little known but worthwhile play They Came to a City (premiered 1943) should capture his imagination in the final days of the Second World War. Taking its title from the Walt Whitman poem ‘The City’, it is a Sartre-like scenario set in a transient underworld, ever more relevant in the current climate.

Nine characters, picked from every stratum of British society, are stranded at the entrance to a city; the huge door is locked, and the protagonists feel unsure of the way ahead. But after the door opens and they are (unlike the audience) allowed into the ‘magic’ city, and soon recover their mindsets, very much the product of their individual places in society. It emerges that this city offers the option of social equality, but  only two will stay. The rest, for whatever reasons, will return to the life they had. 

Of the minor characters, Sir George Gedney (Matthews), is every inch the upper-class gentleman, kept away from his game of golf, and only too ready to forget all the arguments arising from their encounter. Lady Loxfield (Terry-Lewis) is his equal, but her daughter Philippa (Rowe) finds enough strength to cut loose from her over-bearing mother, who is too stunned by her daughter’s sudden resistance, to react. Malcolm Stratton (Huntley) is a bank manager, who looks through the charade of the hierarchy he is working for, calling the chairman of the bank a pompous idiot. But his wife Dorothy (Gadd), totally dependent on him, is fearful of any change, and even promises to be more outgoing if Malcolm returns with her to their middle-class existence. The main couple, barmaid/shop girl Alice (a sparkling Googie Withers) and the explosive seaman Joe (Clements), might be falling in love with each other but nevertheless argue non-stop. She reacts against his aggressive masculinity, and talks of the sexual harassment she encounters at work. He raves on about this new opportunity but has no idea how to make it happen. These two soon become aware that neither they, nor society as a whole, is ready for change.  

Using most of the original stage cast, Dearden directs thoughtfully, letting all the characters explore themselves as much as their hopes for a future. Whilst this often feels stuck in its stagey setting, and would have possibly worked better as a radio play, DoP Stanley Pavey (Home is the Hero) brings a certain poetic realism to the proceedings. In many ways, the doomed affairs of French films such as Quai de Brumes, are re-enacted through a British gaze. Needless to say, They came to a City was a disaster at he box-office, and it is to the credit of Ealing supremo Michael Bacon, that the brave feature came to be be produced at all. MT

ON RELEASE ON A NEW 2K FORMAT FOR THE BEST SURVIVING 35 mm ELEMENT  COMPLETE WITH AUDIO NFT LECTURE BY MICHAEL BALCON IN 1969 | BFI

 

 

 

 

 

Maborosi (1995) **** Blu-ray release

Dir.: Hirokazu Kore-eda; Cast: Makiko Esumi, Takashi Naito, Gohki Kashima, Tadanobo Asanao; Japan 1995, 110 min.

Born in 1962, Hirokazu Kore-eda studied literature at university with plans to become a novelist, later establishing himself as a documentarian in the late 1980s, working in television, were he directed several prize-winning programmes. Maborosi brought him and his DoP Masao Nakabori international acclaim, winning awards at Venice film festival. He would later win the Palme d’Or at Cannes with Shoplifters (2018).

Maborosi is a mature, poetic discourse on the meaning of loss and longing. Scripted by Yoshihisa Ogita and based on a novel by Teru Miyanoto. Maborosi takes its title from the Japanese word for mirage, and resonates with Feu Follet, Louis Malle’s feature about a suicide. Kore-eda was 34 when he shot Maborosi; contrasting modern and traditional life, rather like Japanese master Ozu.

In Osaka, Yumiko (Esumi) is content with her easy-going husband Ikuo (Asano) and their baby-boy Yuichi. One morning she finds the police on her doorstep: Ikuo has been killed on the nearby railroad tracks. Yumiko is shattered, the tragedy bringing back memories of the disappearance and death of her grandmother Kyo, when Yumiko was twelve years old. For a long time Yumiko lives in limbo, not able to accept the death of her husband. An arranged marriage brings her to the remote windswept coast of Uniumachi on the Noto peninsula. Her new husband Tamio (Naito) and his daughter live with an extended family and Yuichi (Kashima) bonds easily with the two. But Yumiko takes time to adjust to her new life, unable to forget her the deep affectionate love she shared with Ikuo. And when she returns to Osaka for a visit, all the old wounds open – particularly when she re-connects with Ikuo’s friends about the circumstances of his death. She goes back to Uniumachi but the past stays with her.

The hustle and bustle of city life in Osako contrast with the tranquil setting of the fishing village. Although in both places Kore-eda shows the warmth and humanity of close neighbours and the daily routine. Yumiko’s anxiousness and the barriers she puts between herself and a new life are palpable: for most of the film we see her as an observer, looking in from outside. The languid tempo also brings to mind Ozu, as do the frequent near static shots, featuring the rough landscape around the village. The feeling that fate could once again We observe this grieving process with a shared feeling of ambivalence: Yumiko has lost confidence in happiness, doom is constantly waiting round the corner. She is not yet ready to say goodbye to her former life and the limbo between the past and an unknown future, where “she brings death to the ones she is close to” – like her first husband and her grandmother.

Moborosi is a story that also paints an emotional portrait; music, light and weather express the heroine’s sate of mind while her serene persona is also deeply troubled. The spoken word is often replaced often by an inner monologue. In the end she has to make up her mind whether she, like Ikuo, wants to ‘listen’ to the siren songs in the light of death, or whether she is ready to progress with her life and new family. Like his compatriot Hsiao Hsien Ho, Kore-eda takes care of every frame: nothing is superfluous, everything is stripped down to the minimum. Kore-eda’s whole oeuvre is about using the screen to paint poetry, his protagonists seek to overcome their banal reality with something more meaningful which, as in this case, can also be destructive. AS

NOW ON BLU-RAY

 

Clemency (2019) Prime Video

Dir.: Chinonye Chukwu; Cast: Alfre Woodard, Aldis Hodge, Richard Schiff, Danielle Brooks, Michael O’Neill, Wendell Pierce, Richard Gunn, Vernee Watson; USA 2019, 113 min.

Director/writer Chinonye Chukwu certainly knows her subject. The founder of a filmmaking collective dedicated to teaching incarcerated women, she has also worked as a volunteer on many clemency appeal cases. But despite a towering performance by Alfre Woodard in the lead role, Clemency is surprisingly under-whelming.

Bernadine Williams (Chukwu) is the chief warden of a High Security prison, facing the twelfth execution of her tenure. The previous one was a botched job, the anaesthetic injection and lethal substance just didn’t work. So Williams was forced to close the curtains between the execution chamber and the witness booth to the chagrin of family members.

Case number twelve is a certain Anthony Woods (Hodge), on death row for more than a decade after  killing a police officer – even though he maintains his innocence. The proceedings will test Bernadine to the last: Defence attorney Marty Lumetta (Schiff), also a fighter, and like Bernadine, on his final job before retirement. He’s hoping for a reprieve for his client. Meanwhile her deputy (Gunn) is going for another job in a prison without an execution facility. The Prison Chaplain (O’Neill), is equally disenchanted and opting for a transfer.

Bernadine is somehow left high and dry, her co-workers making her look cold and over-efficient. Her school teacher husband (Pierce) is sententious but not unsympathetic. Reading Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ to his students, he clearly considers himself special and somehow shames his wife into re-examining their marriage, driving her to the bottle with his prim attitude. Bernadine also has to deal with histrionics from the dead policeman’s mother (Watson), and by now we have come to understand Bernadine is fighting a one-woman battle, the writer/director letting her down badly, somehow making her look incapable. Meanwhile Woods’ discovers he is now a father, and the demonstrators outside the prison are getting louder as the day of execution approaches.

Clemency is a heavy film to watch not because of its subject matter but because it is seriously down on its heroine despite her diligent and likeable personality. Eric Branco provides stylish, if somewhat over-symbolic, widescreen images and Kathryn Bostic’s score is subtle. Despite all this it feels as if Chukwu has abandoned the quietly thoughtful heroine Bernadine in favour of those who question the system. AS

GRAND JURY PRIZE | Sundance Film Festival | FRIDAY 17 JULY 2020 | CURZON HOME CINEMA  

Parasite (2019) **** In Black and White

Dir: Bong Joon Ho | Cast: Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Chang Hyae-jin, Park So-dam, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Jung Ziso, Lee Jung-em, Jung Hyeon-jun | Drama | Korea 131′

The black and white cut of this wickedly thrilling upstairs downstairs social satire Korean-style seems even more resonant, relevant and appealing in its monochrome format.

This scabrous story is the latest in a line of hits from the South Korean master along with The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja. But this time the gloves are off as Boon Joon offers up shameless social reality and makes no bones it, dishing the dirt on the rigid class system in his homeland.

Thematically rather too similar to last year’s Plane d’Or winner Shopkeepers to offer any big surprises about South Korean life, this is nonetheless startling in its candour. The characters are ordinary people making their way as best they can. But this is a flashier film that wears its satire on its slick sleeve for all to access, and there’s nothing subtle about its social message. The ‘parasites’ are sharp individuals who cunningly see their way to the main chance. Bong Joon calls the film “a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains.” Yet in the natural world, parasites live off their hosts, depending on them for survival, but often causing disease or harm. This certainly was the case in The Servant, but does it happen here?

Head of the family Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) lives with his wife Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin), son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) and daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dam) in a squalid slum, grafting a living by preparing cardboard pizza boxes. Through his backstreet contacts, young Ki-woo inveigles himself into a wealthy household of a captain of industry Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun) where he is tasked with tutoring his teenage daughter Da-hye (Jung Ziso). Her mother Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) is a typically vacuous trophy wife who prances around their pristine modernist mansion all day, doing a spot of shopping when she occasionally ventures out with . Without giving any clues away, the Ki-woo’s entire family are drafted into the vast mansion, taking various guises, and booting out the old guard. As the narrative spools out with a series of plot twists, the tension gradually mounts and the gulf between rich and poor is ramped up to the maximum. No one comes out a winner after a lavish garden party where they all take part in some form or another, as blood mingles with the champagne.

Winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019 and four Academy Awards in 2020, including the Oscar for Best International Feature, this is a confident and entertaining drama that beats as it sweeps, its production values as smooth as silk and laced with a dread-laden score. The kids give as good as the adults performance-wise and leave us pondering which is best: North Korea with its oppressively restrictive communist regime or the South with its dog eat dog capitalism based on the law of the jungle? MT

PARASITE WON THE PALME D’OR 2019 | ACADEMY AWARDS FOR BEST DIRECTOR, BEST MOTION PICTURE, BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY, BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE.

NOW in Black and White COURTESY OF CURZON ARTIFICIAL EYE | IN CINEMAS from 24 July 2020

 

 

 

Villa Empain (2019) **** MUBI

Dir: Katharina Kastner | Doc, Belg/France/Ger/ 25′

Katerina Kastner’s impressionistic documentary debut captures the essence of the Villa Empain, one of the most beautiful architectural masterpieces of Art Deco in Brussels. In 1930, at the age of 21, Baron Louis Empain commissioned the building of a private mansion in 55 acres on the prestigious Avenue de la Nation which was later on renamed as Franklin Roosevelt Avenue.

Using the finest materials available in those interwar years (marble, bronze and precious wood), the luxurious house consisted of four polished granite facades, surrounded by a large garden with a pergola and swimming pool. A collector and curator, Louis Empain eventually decided that the property was better served as a museum of decorative and contemporary art, and it was donated to the Belgian Nation in 1937. But the Second World War changed everything and the villa languished until 1943, when it was requisitioned by the German army, eventually becoming an embassy for the USSR in peacetime when Empain recovered his property in the beginning of the sixties, before reselling it in 1973. For nearly ten years it was rented to the TV channel RTL then falling to semi-rack and ruin during the 1990s. It was eventually saved by a wealthy family who set up the Boghossian Foundation in 2007, transforming the building into an East West cultural centre and guaranteeing the revival of its fortunes.

Shot in 16mm this is a sensual creation that resonates with the passage of time, showcasing the the house’s former glory through its trials and tribulations to its present reincarnation. The clever editing brings an eerie and fleeting sense of human presence drifting through the empty rooms and light-filled gardens where leaves swirl and valuable materials shimmer in shafts of sunlight. This short but ravishing documentary takes us on a dreamy distant journey to the coast where the family once enjoyed beach holidays in a space reflected by evocative fantasies and haunted by the war years. A century of memories recorded in a treasured place in time. MT

COMES TO MUBI ON 15 JULY 2020 |

Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2019)

Dir: Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky | Doc 87′

In her latest eco-documentary Baichwal finds a breath-taking way of showing how humans are destroying the planet. We started off with good intentions, and admirable causes: Carrara Marble gave us the Sistine Chapel and Michaelangelo’s David, but now it mostly provides bathrooms. Teak from the forests of Southern India provided us with oceangoing boats to fight off the Spanish Armada. But enough is now enough. Our burgeoning populations have created an insatiable need for raw materials. This cycle of pillage and endless destruction has overtaken production: our seas are nearly empty, our woods and forests increasingly bare, this untold environmental depletion is even taking its toll on the air we breath.

Rather like Michael Glawogger did in his time, Jennifer Baichwal (Watermark) and her team travel all over the world’s far flung corners to highlight the bizarre and the intriguing. Breathtaking images make us stare in disbelief, mesmerised by the sheer scale, beauty or  dreadfulness of it all. In Russia’s most polluted city, huge mines produce smelted metal used to construct machinery that plunders more minerals from the earth. Germany makes mammoth machines weighting thousands of tons, capable of tearing down a church steeple in seconds to provide space for more mining activity (known as Terraforming, apparently). In the arid salt flats of the Atacama Desert neon-green pools of lithium brine desiccate in the punishing glare of the sun. The batteries will power our electric cars. A doom laden narration from Alicia Vikander feels redundant, anyone can understand the implications of this sinister story without making it even more dour.

So despite some alluring photography Anthropocene offers no positive angles, and we are left feeling hopeless and helpless. Once we built a civilisation, now we are tearing it all apart. MT

ANTHROPOCENE | NOW ON BFI PLAYER

 

Litigante (2019) **** Curzon | Edinborough Film Festival 2020

Dir.: Franco Lolli; Cast: Carolina Sanin, Leticia Gomez, Antonio Martinez, Vladimir Duran, Alejandra Sarria; France/Columbia 2019, 95 min.

South America is delivering some really good films at the moment and Colombian filmmaker Franco Lolli (Gente de Bien) continues the trend with LITIGANTE. Aiming successfully for psychological hyper-realism it centres on an upper-middle class family where mother and daughter, both top-lawyers, argue each other, quite literally, to death.

Middle-aged Silvia (Sanin) is having a hard time: as chief lawyer for the public works department in Columbia’s capital Bogota, her boss has implicated her in a scandal. On the local radio she holds her own against the host Abel (Duran), and then bumps into him later at a party where he apologises. The two end up in bed, but other conflicts threaten to overwhelm Silvia: her controlling mother Letitia (Gomez) is dying of lung cancer, but is still very much in fighting mood as far as her daughter is concerned, even from her deathbed. When Letitia complains about her relationship with Abel: “he took you down in front of the entire population of Bogota in that interview”, exasperated Silvia exclaims: “You never want me to have a life that’s independent from yours”.

Then Silvia’s pre-school son Antonio (Martinez) has a tantrum, destroying toys and endangering other children. Apparently the other kids are bullying him about not having a father. And this is all because his mother refused to admit that his biological father, a high-ranking judge, actually sired her son. Silvia doesn’t even get on with the family’s housekeeper  ‘Majo’ and so her budding relationship with Able collapses even before getting off the ground.

Lolli manages the turmoil with great aplomb, creating a scenario where high octane emotional output is the norm. We watch Silvia and Letitia competing for the role of victim, trying to make each feel guilty in a classic family dynamic. Their sparring is the raison d’être of their lives – in a perverse way, they enjoy it. 

Litigante is not only much more honest than Cuaron’s Roma, it also has a stronger dramatic impact and a more convincing cast, led by the indomitable Carolina Sanin, who seemingly conquers all. DoP Pablo Romero Garcia uses handheld close-ups of the warring factions and his panoramic shots of Bogota evoke the chaos of a family in crisis.

LITIGANTE IN NOW STREAMING ON CURZON WORLD | 10 JULY 2020

Au Bout des Doigts | In Her Hands (2019) *** Curzon Home Cinema

Dir: Ludovic Bernard | Cast Karidja Touré, Lambert Wilson | Kristin Scott Thomas | Jules Benchetrit | Drama French, 106 minutes
Music is the redeeming force in this Parisian prodigy drama from Luc Besson’s former assistant director Ludovic Bernard (Lucy).
Social realism clashes with the soigné world of the National Music Conservatory in an elliptical story that sees a disadvantaged young man develop his hidden talent thanks to a well-meaning protegé inspired by a tragedy of his own. Lambert Wilson is Pierre Geithner the director of the music college where Kristin Scott Thomas is draconian piano teacher, La Comtesse. Both will help Mathieu Malinski (Benchetrit) to become a concert pianist in this French riff on ‘My Fair Lady’.
As French dramas go this is solid rather than inspiring. Both Geitner and Malinski have the most scope as characters with their troubled backstories which are well-sketched out – although Benchetrit doesn’t always make the most of his complex role. The reverse is true for Scott Thomas, who tries hard to add nuance to her rather one dimensional Countess. Fortunately she has enough experience and talent to flesh out this severe woman, not so Malinski’s mother, a rather weak performance from Else Lepoivre. Karidja Toure is a breath of fresh air as Mathieu’s girlfriend Anna, a talented musician who possesses enough carefree elan to give Mathieu the confidence to believe in himself, in this casebook study of young male empowerment.
Jean Nouvel’s slick contemporary culture complex provides a slick counterpoint to the scenes in the down-at-heel banlieu where Malinski hangs out with his gang. In flashback we see him being inspired by a kindly old relative before the chic Countess swings in with her no nonsense approach, that often clashes with Malinski’s laid back style. And although she almost gives up in the end, Geitner’s continued passion for his discovery offers the most surprising reveal. MT
UK Release Date | 10th July 2020 | On Curzon Home Cinema

The Garden Left Behind (2019) *** SXSW 2020

Dir.: Flavio Alves; Cast: Carlie Guevara, Ed Asner, Michael Madsen, Miriam Cruz, Tamara M. Williams, Anthony Abdo, Alex Cruz; USA/Brazil, 88 min.

Brazilian-born first time director/co-writer Flavio Alves, granted asylum for political reasons in the USA, has created a moving but structurally erratic portrait of a Mexican transgender woman, who lives with her grandmother as an undocumented immigrant in New York. Shot elegantly in the Bronx and Brooklyn by DoP Koshi Kiyokawa with support of the local transgender community, The Garden is carried by debutant Carlie Guevara in the central role.

Tina (Guevara) is walking along a deserted street at night when she is accosted by a carload of belligerent men shouting insults. Walking towards the camera, we sense trouble for Tina, but Alves cuts to tell her story in flashback. Tina lives with her grandmother Eliana (Cruz) in a small apartment, making money as a Uber driver. Her gender reassignment has been an expensive process, psychiatrist (Asner of ‘Lou Grant’ fame), supporting her through the different stages of the treatment. Tina has a longstanding boyfriend, Jason (Kruz), who is still ashamed to be seen with her in public, particularly in their favourite bar, tended by Kevin (Madsen). Her best friend Carol (Williams) drags Tina into the local activist scene which becomes the main focus of the feature. Support characters include a strange young man, Chris (Abdo), he seems to be negatively obsessed by Tina, scowling angrily at her during shopping trips to the local supermarket. The day-to-day scenes are strongest, we see Tina buying Eliana a new hoover, and her lovemaking scenes, to which grandma listens attentively. Both Guevara and Cruz give understated, naturalistic performances, newcomer Guevara is particular convincing, looking backwards to a past she hardly remembers, whilst being afraid of the future. Unfortunately, Alves decides on a shock-horror ending, and one which is amply telegraphed at that.

Raising the profile of escalating violence towards the transgender community, features like the The Garden Left Behind are certainly worthwhile, if not vital. In times of unrest,  these vulnerable members of society often suffer disproportionately, along with other minorities, and Alves succeeds by only featuring local members of the community – which should be a given, but is not part of the Hollywood standard. It is therefore disappointing the filmmaker lets everyone down with a melodramatic ending, attempting to tug on heartstrings in a double whammy of “revelation”. Guevara and the transgender community deserve a more subtle approach that feels real in today’s developing crisis. AS

SXSW AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER 2020
     

Let it Burn | Dis a era due me via Chorar (2019) *** Mubi

Dir.: Maira Bühler; Documentary; Brazil 2019, 81 min.

In her remarkable documentary Brazilian filmmaker Maira Bühler follows the residents of a hotel turned hostel for crack addicts trying to put their lives together again.

The original title Tell Her That She Saw Me Cry is actually much more suitable. What we are really dealing with here is a domestic drama about lost souls whose emotions are so raw that they can only be released in forceful, often self harming, ways often counterproductive to their recovery. In 28 rooms on 7 floors, 107 residents live out their grim existence in the centre of Sao Paulo. Not that we see very much of Brazil’s capital – only the noise of passing trains reminds us of the vast metropolis outside and the brutal streets where hope was decimated long ago for these hapless inhabitants in their lost ark of social abandonment. But at least a den of iniquity is preferable to the jungle outside.

A trade mark of today’s Brazilian documentary style is the obsession with detail combined with an objectivity that captures an out-pouring of emotions often frightening to witness. A man shouts into his phone, desperately declaring his love for a woman who might not even be listening – but his cri de coeur is at the same time proof of him being alive. A lonely woman in a deserted dormitory waits for a lover who might never return. The longing for company is what keeps the majority of the tenants alive. The camera searches out the human links and reveals little groups clinging on to each other for survival. An aching love song reminds us what this is all about: love, however fleeting, is vital for survival.

The social gulf between film crew and their subjects is enormous. But when the crew has installed a tripod in the lift and starts filming, one woman reveals to the director that she is completed uneducated. But even though there is an uncomfortable feeling of voyeurism, the woman never prevents the camera from intruding into her misery. The strength of the film is that it allows ambiguity to develop without letting fragility and vulnerability mask the gradual humanisation. Sadly, this last chance saloon of salvation has now been shut down as part of the cutbacks in psychiatric support instigated by President Bolsonaro’s far right government. AS

SCREENING DURING SHEFFIELD DOC FESTIVAL 2019

 

War of the Worlds (1953) **** Blu-ray release

Dir: Byron Haskin | Wri: H G Wells (novel) Barre Lyndon | Cast: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Robert Cornthwaite | US Fantasy/Sci-fi 85′

Although a brash travesty of H.G.Wells’ original 1898 novel, and despite Steven Spielberg’s 2005 ‘upgrade’ and last autumn’s well-received TV version, George Pal’s original big screen version is still for many the last word in fifties Technicolor destruction on the grand scale (blessed as John Baxter described it with “the smooth unreality of a comic strip”).

With Oscar-winning special effects (which took so long to complete the award went posthumously to Paramount special effects veteran Gordon Jennings), the elegant fire-spewing war machines like dragons based on manta rays by Japanese-American designer Albert Nozaki bring a touch of eastern elegance to their menace, while the sophisticated use of sound throughout to mount up suspense at key moments remains exemplary.

In all it adds up to a film with a power that remains in the words of critic Richard Mallett “in places quite hypnotic”. And it can now be savoured in all it’s pristine glory on Blu-Ray! Richard Chatten

OUT ON BLU-RAY FROM 7 JULY 2020

Anne at 13,000ft (2019) MUBI

Dir/scr: Kazik Radwanski. USA/Canada | 75 mins

Deragh Campbell is terrific as a troubled nursery school teacher at the centre of this often raw and intimate look at mental illness. Kazik Radwanski’s fractured narrative and dizzy handheld camerawork gives a close up and personal feel to this evocative third study of people in challenging situations. This time the focus is Anne whose work in a children’s daycare centre comes under scrutiny from her colleagues who start to object to her random behaviour. Her best friend and colleague Sarah (Dorothea Paas) is supportive but busy with preparations for her wedding.

One of the key issues is Anne’s tendency to trivialise matters to mask her inner turmoil and she often plays around when she should be taking her work around special needs kids more seriously. Life in the school interweaves with Anne’s first experience of skydiving which presents an opportunity to disengage from the sober world and set herself free. Sarah’s wedding is another difficult occasion for Anne who makes a heartfelt speech before drinking too much and ending up in the arms of Matt, a lovely, light-hearted guy (Matt Johnson) who looks after her when she gets post party food-poisoning. Radwanski keeps the lid on Anne’s mental status but it’s clear she is on the verge, or has recently emerged from some kind of crisis.

Matt is particularly good in the way he gradually becomes part of Anne’s day to day life and the scenes when they visit her family fizz and feel good in contrast to the fraught and buttoned-up interactions with her colleagues. But when she later meets her mother things spin out of control as Anne becomes increasingly neurotic over a trivial issue. This is clever filmmaking and Radwanski shows considerable aplomb in the way he shows Anne being ultra-patient with kids but is reduced to tears after relating her pet cat story to them later completing losing her cool in the car despite Sarah’s kindness and support. But the natural chemistry between Anne and Matt are what makes this so lovely as a snapshot of a woman coping with the past and the man who is loves her, against the odds. MT

NOW ON MUBI

True History of the Kelly Gang (2019) ****

Dir: Justin Kurzel | Cast: George MacKay, Essie Davis, Nicholas Hoult, Thomasin McKenzie | Biopic 124′

Australian thrillers are usually brutal and anarchic, emblematic of the scorched earth savagery of their remote and often desiccated homeland. Justin (Snowtown) Kurzel’s latest foray into fiendishness is adapted by Shaun Grant from Peter Carey’s novel, and inspired by the infamous Ned Kelly, who raged through the bush in a melodramatic meltdown during 19th-century English colonial occupation. 

This incarnation of Kelly is a tightly muscled racier beast that Carey’s animal, bred out dysfunction to become a macho psychopath of the worst order, and obsessed by an abusive mother Ellen (Essie Davis) who sold him as an apprentice to local bandit Harry Power (a scabrous Russell Crowe ) who taught him the tricks of the trade. Kurzel excels in creating vicious villains. Here he shows us the how Ned Kelly (an outlandish George MacKay) became such a hell-raiser, through a serious of episodic accounts that link the past with his criminal activities as leader of the gang. These encompass a weirdly mixed-up sexual ambivalence and a predilection for homoeroticism and cross-dressing. 

Kelly emerges a weak-willed brothel-creeper from the outset, unable to avenge his mother’s sexual abuse at the hands of an English sergeant (Charlie Hunnam), and drawn to the company of other low-life members of the English regiment. One is Nicholas Hoult’s Constable Fitzpatrick who frequents a local brothel, where Kelly falls into the clutches of Mary (Thomasin McKenzie) and morphs into full-blown insurgency against the British (The Nightingale here we go again). And it’s at this stage that film starts to visually resonate with Kurzel’s 2015 outing  Macbeth and there are also echoes of Snowtown (2012) but it’s also here that is starts to unravel into something unhinged but also hypnotic, breaking free from its period drama into a psychedelic thriller.

Mesmerising for the most part, True History is an ultimately an uneven experience unable to maintain the sheer pace of its early scenes. But its vehemence, passion and visual allure burn bright, and the final part of the film descends into extraordinary surreal psychodrama. Kelly is a chameleon character who always knows where his bread is buttered, and is able to ingratiate himself with the right people at the right time – and George Mackay once again shows his amazing talents in this transformative role. A psychedelic and shatteringly violent experience but one that is compelling despite its flaws. MT

LIVE YOUTUBE Q&A WITH DIRECTOR & CAST 28 JUNE 2020

 

WITH DIRECTOR JUSTIN KURZEL

AND ACTORS GEORGE MACKAY, ESSIE DAVIS, AND EARL CAVE

 

Shepherd: The Hero Dog (2019) *** Digital

Dir.: Lynn Roth; Cast: August Maturo, Ken Duken, Ayelet Zurer, Victoria Stefanovsky, Victor Denes; USA 2019,93 min.

Filtering the darkest, most dramatic period of modern Jewish history through the instinctive gaze of a dog was an ambitious idea for the best selling Israeli author Asher Kravitz. So Lynn Roth’s efforts to accommodate a young audience in her screen version are laudable but the upshot often cringeworthy.

In 1930s Berlin the Schoenmann family are excited by the arrival of a litter of German shepherd puppies. The kids Joshua (Maturo) and Rachel (Stefanovszky) want to keep the dogs but their mother Shoshona (Zurer) has her hands full, and the recent Nuremberg Laws mean the Schoenmanns must say goodbye to even Joshua’s favourite Caleb, who is collected by his new owner. Kaleb will later abscond and find his way to the family flat of but by now even they have been evicted.

But Caleb is the lucky one and finds a home with SS officer Ralph (Duken), who becomes really attached to the dog, training him to attack Jews. Joshua and Kaleb meet again in a concentration camp where Kaleb recognises his former owner, and helps him and other prisoners to escape. After some adventures, dog and boy are send by partisans on their way to the British protectorate Palestine.

DoP Gabor Szabo uses Budapest as a stunning background to this canine wartime drama, but some concentration scenes are naturally grim, Joshua the only child among male adults. Caleb’s dreaming sequence involving the Schoenmanns and then Ralph, is another questionable device. And the filmmakers should have known that SS uniforms were black, not green or grey. Overall, perhaps romanticising and simplifying would have helped the course, whatever the target audience. Maturo is convincing as a plucky survivor, and Stefanovsky, makes a wonderful mother; the only member of the family who sees the Shoah coming. Over fifty thousands dogs served during the Second World War, and for them it is a worthwhile tribute. AS

ON DIGITAL HD FROM JUNE 29 2020

   

  

Summertime | La Belle Saison (2015) *** MUBI

Dir: Catherine Corsini | Cast: Cecile de France, Izia Higelin, Noemie Lvovsky, Benjamin Bellecour | 104min  | Drama | France

Catherine Corsini brings a sizzling energy to her lesbian love story set in Paris and the glorious landscapes of Le Limousin. Summertime will appeal to arthouse lovers and the LGBT crowd alike with its fresh and feisty turns from Cécile de France and Izia Higelin as unlikely bedfellows who come together during the French feminist uprisings in 1971.

Izia Higelin plays Delphine, a simple country girl arriving in Paris from her parents’ farm to seek her fortune in the capital. Feeling gauche and naive she soon gets caught up in the vortex of female political activism attracted by the strong and earthy women who appeal to her nascent lesbian leanings. Working at that well known grocery store Félix Potin, she falls in love with 35-year-old Carole (Cécile de France) who is dating the dishy writer Manuel (Benjamin Bellecour). After an awkward first act focusing on the feminist fervour of the time – which sadly feels embarrassing and rather contrived – the two begin a torrid affair that takes them back to the countryside where Delphine’s father becomes seriously ill and her mother Monique (Noemie Lvovsky) is left to run the business. They all get on like a house on fire in this sunny second act that serves as a genuinely delightful introduction to  daily life on a small working farm. Here we meet Antoine, a family friend and Delphine’s intended – according to her mother – and he immediately takes on the role of a sexual voyeur, tuning into couple’s romantic vibes, while giving Carole a wide berth. Delphine’s heart is in the ‘terroir’ but her love for Carole grows. Cécile de France gives a gutsy go at being Carole, torn between her life in Paris with Manuel and her budding feelings for Delphine.

Corsini conveys the strong physical urges of her lovers with scenes of earthy nudity and splashy sex. And although the two are a potent match, it’s clear Carole is experimenting while Delphine is  committed. Higelin brings a natural vulnerability to her part, not dissimilar from that of Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue is the Warmest Colour. The younger of the two, she exudes a natural affection for Carole as well as a healthy lust, but Carole is a more complex girl whose ego demands to be worshipped.

Corsini is no stranger to big-screen lesbian love affairs, best known in this context for her 2001 Cannes competition hopeful Replay, featuring a gutsy yet tragic relationship between Emmanuelle Beart, a successful actress, and her less accomplished partner. Here the focus is more on innocence versus experience.  In a welcome twist, Delphine pursues Carole initially in a cat and mouse chase that spices up the storyline. But tradition starts to take over as the family responsibilities take over, throwing her back into Antoine’s orbit.

Although the film struggles for a feminist political agenda this often feels forced and less convincing than the scenes in the traditional farmstead. Lvovsky is a natural as Delphine’s mother whose straightforwardness and feral protection of her daughter and farm provides lush contrast to the more liberated Parisian style of Carole. Azais’ character masks an emotionally buttoned-up man, hesitant to pursue his personal agenda, a quality her shares with his object of affection Delphine.

Jeanne Lapoirie’s widescreen cinematography is resplendent but doesn’t idolise the Rubenesque voluptuousness of the naked women making love in the meadows, and Gregoire Hetzel’s occasional score adds a zeitgeisty ’70s twang to the soundtrack. MT

On MUBI THIS WEEKEND | 19 JUNE 2020

Radioactive (2020) ***

Dir: Marjane Satrapi | Wri: Jack Thorne | Cast: Rosamund Pike, Sam Riley, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jonathan Aris, Simon Russell Beale, Aneurin Bernard,

Iranian director Marjane Satrapi’s film about Nobel prize winner Marie Curie may be flawed but it’s certainly not boring. Hampered by Jack Thorne’s sprawling script, Radioactive isn’t sure whether it wants to be a love story about a woman’s fight for professional recognition, or a costume drama about the discovery of radium – with plenty of ideas flying around. In the end we get an over-ambitious but fascinating film that starts in the 1890s and continues to the present day and beyond. 

Radioactive opens in 1934 just as an ageing Marie Curie (aka Maria Skłodowska ) is living out her final days. Death comes with a message from the grave in the moving bedside finale which shows how love impacted on the amazing mind of the celebrated Polish scientist. She was much maligned by her male peers, but reached her professional potential, and had a crack and love and motherhood into the bargain: quite an achievement back in the day.

The story then swings back to the 1890s where the febrile but earnest young Maria Sadowska (Pike) is having a hard time with her crusty old colleagues in a Paris laboratory where she is desperate to make her way in the world of science. After being given the professional heave-ho from the lab by Simon Russell Beale’s Professor Lipmann, Marie comes across a fellow scientist Pierre Curie (played convincingly by Sam Riley) and the two fall in love despite her efforts to repel him and forge her own path. Motherhood will eventually prevent her from triumphing over Pierre, who steals her professional fire, but then falls prey to tuberculosis and a roadside tragedy, his death recreated in a captivating dream sequence. This is an emotional setback for Marie (“I don’t want be strong, I want to be weak”) but she still goes on indomitably to save lives with her X ray discovery and cancer radiation therapy – and although it isn’t all plain sailing, her perseverance and brainpower win through.

Marred by its over-ambitiousness and an eerie electronic score that doesn’t quite gel with the early scenes, Radioactive is informative but often bewildering as it romps through Marie Curie’s ground-breaking work. Rosamund Pike is stunning as the steely medical pioneer, her allure keeps us captivated throughout the sprawling storyline with its tonally awkward twists and turns. The science is carried along by the couple’s tender love story bonding them as they form a joint venture, discovering radium and polonium by condensing soil samples. Their life-saving discoveries not only made medical history but also captured the imagination of the public: polonium and radium were found to emit rays that started a craze for all things radioactive – even a dance in Parisian nightclubs called the “pif paf pouf”.  

Satrapi goes for an art nouveau aesthetic throughout, not always pulling it off – the scenes with the legendary Loie Fuller (The Dancer) work best in conveying the fin de siecle mystique in Paris and beyond. Despite its setbacks on a critical level this is an enjoyable romp through medical history with some inspired visual wizardry. The pic also visits the 1950s with a focus on cancer therapy; the First World War where Curie’s X-rays saved thousands from amputations; Hiroshima and even Chernobyl. What emerges through all the pioneering strife is the Curie’s love for each other, and Marie’s fierce commitment to science that won her respectability as one of the key figures in modern medicine. As Pierre Curie comments: “There are things to be scared of, but so much to celebrate” and Marie Curie’s legacy continues to save lives and help all of us still today. MT

ON RELEASE FROM June 19 2020

 

The Bigamist (1953) *** MUBI

Director: Ida Lupino. Screenplay: Collier Young. Cast: Edmond O’Brien, Joan Fontaine, Ida Lupino, Edmund Gwenn, Kenneth Tobey, Jane Darwell. Drama / United States / 80′.

Ida Lupino directs and stars in  this final feature for her production company The Filmakers before moving into television.

The blunt title serves as a massive spoiler from the word Go. There’s no doubt as to where the plot is going, but strange as it may seem today, bigamy was surprisingly common at the time, as this film is at pains to point out.

A British film called The Bigamist had been made as early as 1916; but during the 195os the subject was usually treated light-heartedly as a subject of comedy (as in the same year’s The Captain’s Paradise, with Alec Guinness, Celia Johnson and Yvonne de Carlo). But when children are involved – as is the case here – it really becomes significant; and bigamy is just one of a whole raft of issues – including unplanned pregnancy and adoption (where do most adopted children come from in the first place?) – the film explores in just eighty minutes.

With so many people raising kids these days without bothering to get married, the mores of this era seem rather quaint and as remote as the silent era. The earnest tone of the film rather recalls the silent ‘social problem’ films of pioneer women directors Lois Weber and Mrs Wallace Reid in whose footsteps Lupino was following.

The Bigamist is rather like a silent film in the way Lupino’s pregnancy is implied to be the result of the sole occasion she had slept with her lover (O’Brien) as a “birthday treat” for him. And she becomes pregnant the very first time she had slept with a man since she got a ‘Dear Phyllis’ letter from a previous boyfriend several years earlier. O’Brien never squares with her that he’s married; but the thought must have crossed her mind.

It was brave of Edmond O’Brien to take on such an unheroic role, and interesting that Lupino chose to cast herself as the Other Woman rather than the wife. Under any other circumstances it would have been refreshing to see Joan Fontaine as the wife so confidently holding forth on technical matters at the dinner table were she not shown immediately afterwards to be neglecting O’Brien’s need for physical intimacy by immediately turning her back on him in bed (they sleep in separate beds and have been unable to have children).

Could there have been some way of engineering a happy resolution by having O’Brien present Lupino’s child to Fontaine to raise as their own? Perhaps. But Lupino probably wasn’t seeking a tidy resolution, and instead it all ends messily in court with O’Brien getting his knuckles sternly but regretfully rapped by a judge. Richard Chatten.

THE BIGAMIST IS now SCREENING ON MUBI

Phantom Thread (2017) **** Blu-ray release

Dir: Paul Anderson | Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville, 130′ | US | Drama

The latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson is quite unlike anything he has done before. PHANTOM THREAD is a deliciously thrilling love story with a slow-burning tight-lipped tension bred partly out of the discrete haute couture world of its gracefully dapper central character Reynolds Woodcock. Played peerlessly by Daniel Day-Lewis in his ‘swan song’, Reynolds is a Hardy Amies-style fashion designer who lives and works in London’s Fitzroy Square where he presides over a celebrated 1950s fashion house specialising in dressing high society and the Royals.

This stylishly buttoned-up affair is all about control, power and prestige in maintaining a veneer of respectability through discipline, dedication and duty that drives Reynolds forward, preventing him from acknowledging the hole in his soul, left by the death of his dear mother, and the absence of true love in his life.  Anderson constructs a world of superlative elegance where the daily round involves the pristine almost priestly preparation of his dress, coiffure, floral arrangements and particularly his breakfast: “I can’t begin my day with a confrontation.” Says Reynolds primly as he goes through the motions of his morning tea ceremony (lapsong, please) and silently buttered toast. “Nothing stodgy”. And no “loud sounds”. His sister Cyril (Lesley Manville at the top of her game), trundles in all red-puckered lips and seamed stockings. She rules the roost with utmost decorum, helping Reynolds as his business advisor and mentor. Reynolds is a disillusioned romantic, a bachelor in his fifties secretly yearning for love, but unable to let it into his tightly-corseted schedule. So his lust for carnal pleasure is channelled into luscious food – runny egg yolks and jugs of cream – until the real thing comes along to unleash his passion in the shape of a scrubbed up waitress named Alma (Luxumbourgeoise actor Vicky Krieps).

In his weekend retreat, he delicately delivers a breakfast order to her: poached eggs, butter, bacon, and jam – but not strawberry, raspberry…and some sausages –  is the verbal equivalent of an orgasm. And beneath Reynolds’ fussy exterior there really does lie a highly sensual man capable – we feel – of giving sexual pleasure to a woman, as well as tailored perfection, and this is the fine line that prevents Day-Lewis’ performance from being too prissy, although it sometimes veers in the direction. Alma is slightly gauche but also sensuous – like a ripe peach that won’t yet yield its stone. And so love gently blossoms in the autumn of Reynolds’ life while storm clouds linger on the horizon.

PHANTOM THREAD feels like a perfect metaphor for the well-known adage: AISLE ALTER HYMN (I’ll alter him, for the uninitiated) and this is just what the innocent-looking Alma has in mind when the two start working together in the West End atelier. This is a drama that sums up the utter dread many men feel about losing control of themselves to a woman. Reynolds will not cede to Alma’s charms and refuses to sacrifice his precious craft by allowing her control of his inner sanctum – the House of Woodcock – which represents his heart and life blood. She remains tough but loving – the perfect replica of his beloved mother, tempting him yet repulsing him by equal measure. Day-Lewis is adamant as the tortured artist, every subtle nuance flickers across his face in a display of mesmerising petulance. It’s impossible not to admire his gentle delivery and his chiselled, tousled allure. As an actor his economy of movement is unparalleled; he possesses the feline grace of Roger Federer and the innate style of breeding of George Sanders. During a delirious night of Alma-induced food-poisoning, Reynolds reveals his deep love attachment to his mother (whose ghost appears to him in her wedding dress)  and somehow her power is magically transferred to Alma, who from then on gets to wear the tailored trousers.

PHANTOM THREAD is Anderson’s eighth feature, and refreshingly is not based on anything but his own inventiveness. It perfectly suits its 1950s setting, an era where England was still on its knees after the war and rationing, and duty and pride in one’s work was paramount – people were so glad to have a job – and this is conveyed by a team of first rate unflappable seamstresses (with names like Biddy and Nana) who understand implicitly when a deadline looms, and a wedding dress must be tweaked or repaired for the following morning at 9am.

There is an erotic charge to PHANTOM that cannot be underestimated despite its immaculate and primped aesthetic. And the acerbically brittle Reynolds is no high-performing borderline psycho. He can transform at the doff of a cap into an amorous and extremely tender lover.  As in “The Master (2012) this is a film about the power and control dynamic between man and woman, and who eventually wins. It moves like the well-oiled engine of Reynolds’ blood red Bristol he drives down country lanes to his retreat. “I think you’re only acting strong,” says Alma, to which he replies, “I am strong.” And the two continue their power play in a way that never resorts to extreme physical or extreme verbal displays, although there is an extremely sinister side to Alma’s methods that make her the perfect antiheroine of the piece, Reynolds, like some overtly powerful  men, emerging the weaker of the two.

Jonny Greenwood’s music is the crowning glory, setting a tuneful rhythm of piano and strings for the soigné scenario that often feels quite claustrophobic, particularly in the final scenes, where we find ourselves shouting: “Don’t!” (you’ll soon see what I mean). At one point Reynolds says: Are you sent here to ruin my evening? And possibly my entire life?” These are the long-held suspicions of the committed bachelor who desperately longs for love, but constantly suspects the worst from his loving mate. Regretfully PHANTOM THREAD is our last chance to see Day-Lewis on the screen. He will be much missed from the films that he has graced. And this is possibly his best. MT

PHANTOM THREAD IS ON Blu-ray

On the Record (2020) **** Streaming

Directors: Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering | Cast: Drew Dixon, Si Lai Abrams, Jenny Lumet, Tarana Burke, Kierna Mayo, Joan Morgan, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw | USA, 96′

More #MeToo stories, this time from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering whose controversial new documentary puts the spotlight on women who have come out to denounce hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. The focus here is Drew Dixon.

This is the filmmakers’ third foray into #MeToo territory and Drew Dixon takes centre along with  two other victims – out of twenty – who have filed sexual assault and rape charges against record producer and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. The incident became a news story before the film premiered at this year’s Sundance Festival. Oprah Winfrey, one of the executive producers, withdrew from the project she had fostered for a long time, thus destroying any chances of it being acquired by Apple+. The reasons are very opaque: there were threats from Russell, film critic and Ava DuVernay allegedly told Winfrey, that the documentary did not accurately flesh out the hip-hop world of the setting. Finally, Winfrey decided “there were inconsistencies in Dixon’s story that gave me pause” and the feature had been rushed to appear at Sundance. What ever the true reasons for Winfrey’s jumping ship, HBOmax won the screening rights for what turns out to be a worthy companion to Leaving Neverland, Surviving R. Kelly and Untouchable.

Drew Dixon (*1971) is the daughter of former Washington DC mayor Sharon Pratt and went to Stanford University. Becoming a record producer for Def Jam, a label led by mogul Russell Simmons, was her dream job. She overlooked the fact that Simmons would often come into her office, showing his member. In a milieu where the culture of celebrity “bad-ass” men was celebrated, Simmons’ behaviour did not seem to be totally out of place. Dixon became an A&R executive, responsible for the soundtrack of the 1995 documentary “The Show”, helping to build the careers of Method Man among others, whom she later paired with Mary J. Bilge. It all came crashing down for Dixon, when Simmons invited her to his apartment after a party. He appeared naked with a condom and asked her in a very harsh voice “to stop fighting”. Later, the writer Sil Lai Abrams would report a similar incidence with Simmons. After leaving Def Jam, Dixon worked for Clive Davis at Arista, but CEO L.A. Reid started to harass her. Out of spite, to destroy her career, he passed on signing a new talent, a certain Kanye West. Dixon left the industry all together, and it took her until 2017 to pen an article in the New York Times, to make the public listen to her story.

There are two issues which make the case of the three black women appearing on the documentary (Dixon, Abrams and Jenny Lumet) complex: until now, any public critique of the black community, by fellow blacks, is seen by the majority as treachery – helping the enemy, ie. the white majority. Secondly, black women still feel excluded from the #MeToo movement. Dixon claims she felt enormous pressure to denounce somebody of the standing of Russell Simmons. It took her twenty years – being alone with her trauma – to overcome the barriers.

As for Simmons, he decided not to appear in the documentary but send a written statement, issuing countless denials of he false accusations: “I have lived an honourable life as an open book for decades, devoid of any kind of violence against anybody”. In 2018 he nevertheless emigrated to Bali, Indonesia, a country which has no extradition arrangement with the USA. Reid too repudiated all allegations. He left his position as CEO of Sony Epic, and raised 75 $ Million to form a new company. Drew Dixon has recently gone back to the drawing board with a new career in the music business, working from her flat. AS

ON STREAMING PLATFORMS FROM 18 JUNE 2020 | Available on iTunes, Apple TV, Amazon Video, BFI Player, Curzon Home Cinema, Dogwoof, Google Play, Rakuten TV, Sky Store, Virgin Media, YouTube

 

Cross of Iron (1977)

Dir: Sam Peckinpah | US War Drama, 132′

How many English language films, realised by an American director, portray German combatants in trenches and dugouts during the first and Second World War? At first four films spring to mind depicting the German army at the end of the two wars. For the First World War there is All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). For the Second World War we have The Young Lions (1958); Cross of Iron (1977) and Inglorious Besterds (2009.) Yet there are really only two films that deal with the practicalities of German combatant warfare, solely from the viewpoint of approaching defeat, and remaining resolutely determined in their anti- war stance. They are All Quiet on the Western Front (the 1980 remake could be included but that poor film is negligible) and Cross of Iron. The other films I’ve mentioned, that potentially stand alongside the German-centred The Eagle Has Landed (1976) or Where Eagles Dare (1968), may show German soldiers over-heroically or ineptly fighting, but don’t attempt to describe the day to day life of an army trying grimly to survive. 

Cross of Iron deals with a German platoon involved in the 1943 retreat from the Russian front. The ordinary soldiers and officer class are equally disillusioned and realise they have probably lost the war. An aristocratic Prussian officer Captain von Stransky (Maximillian Schell) arrives as the new commander of the platoon. The regimental commander Colonel Brandt (James Mason) and his adjutant Captain Kiesel (David Warner) express surprise that Stransky deliberately applied for transfer to the Eastern front, as he had a greater chance of winning the Iron Cross from this standpoint. What he fails to mention is his lack of loyalty to the Nazi state, a medal will serve as a symbol of pride for his family. The arrogant Stransky immediately clashes with Corporal Steiner (James Coburn) who disrespects officers and appears to conduct his own form of anarchic warfare. The conflict between the ambitions of Stransky and the cynicism of Steiner takes centre stage.

This was the only war film made by Peckinpah but he directs with the aplomb of a war veteran. Cross of Iron contains some of the best staged minor battles in any WW2 film. The sound design captures explosions and gunfire with an intensity not fully developed until Speilberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) which is a precursor, sound-bombardment wise, to Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017). Yet because Cross of Iron is not aiming to be an immersive experience (As Ryan and Dunkirk often are) an argument for realism can be credited to it more than the other films. Peckinpah has an instinctive feel for the relentless bombardment of war – true, you could argue that his slow motion killing effects (apropos The Wild Bunch) has a stylising effect on proceedings, somehow Peckinpah manages successfully to integrate these slow-mo sequences and the noisy hell of battle into a plausible and intelligently written storyline. 

Ultimately, the all too human clash of class conflict, military authority, ambition and personal freedom is what makes Cross of Iron so engrossing. As in Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) the film attempts to be analytical about a military power structure and the questioning of motivations and needs. Stransky wants his cross, Brandt wants to maintain a semblance of order, and Steiner seems to escape into his own bitter anti-authoritarian war game.

“Do you know how much I hate this uniform and everything it stands for? 

“I believe God is a sadist but probably doesn’t know it.”

“What will we do when we lose the war? Prepare for the next one.”

All these utterances are from Corporal Steiner, who rejects his promotion to Sergeant when in arrives, continuing to act as a partly shell-shocked outsider. James Coburn is very good and very watchable in this part but sometimes appears to  respond like an outlaw or renegade in a Western, rather than a war film. Is he fighting a private war against the Nazi war machine (that he’s part of) or merely being self- destructive? Arguably a bit of both. Cross of Iron depicts Steiner hallucinating about a Russia boy soldier whom he saves and sets free, only for him to be mistakenly shot by the Russian army. The splits in Steiner are only an exaggeration of conflicts to be found muted in Brandt and sadistically expressed by Stransky who would lie, cheat, blackmail – he discovers two gay soldiers in his platoon – and have men killed in order to get his iron cross.

Cross of Iron has strong performances from not only Coburn but Maximillian Schell (who makes a repellent aristocrat seem sympathetic) and James Mason (the General’s hurt and shock at Steiner’s disrespectful behaviour is superbly conveyed.) I’ve mentioned the soundstage but the editing by Michael Lewis and Tony Lawson is terrific whilst John Coquillon’s photography has a dusty war-weary beauty. There are weak episodes: Steiner’s convalescing and subsequent brief relationship with a nurse (Senta Berger) at the hospital fails to convince and feels all a bit hurried and undeveloped. The sequence when the platoon captures an all-female Russian detachment certainly raises a familiar accusation made about Peckinpah’s films that he’s a misogynist. And powerful though Coburn’s performance is, his character has an untrammelled and violent energy that feels too much at odds with the film. But perhaps I am wrong here. Steiner is certainly not a despicable Rambo action man. Steiner’s character is much more reflective and intelligent. Not a brute, but a crazed, even philosophic force?

All Quiet on the Western Front ends with that unforgettable shot of a German soldier reaching out for a butterfly, just beyond his trench, only to be shot down by an enemy sniper. There is no such poetic ending for Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron. In fact, it doesn’t quite appear to have an ending,  more an abrupt, though perfectly satisfying, anti-conclusion; the film’s producers ran out of money and had to halt filming prematurely, but this proves an aesthetic bonus. For at its ‘end’ the bitter laughter of James Coburn is heard off-screen, scornfully indicating that this hellish defeat of the German army will be a recurrent bad dream. It would be a shame to disclose the finale. Let’s just say that Cross of Iron’s final bleak sense of a death-trap has none of the tragic ‘release’ of the young soldier’s death in All Quiet on the Western Front. 

 “Don’t rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

Those lines from Bertolt Brecht’s play about Hitler, The Resistible Rise of Aturo Ui appear in the end of the film’s titles sequence. However a line before that has been cut out, “This was the thing that nearly had us mastered”. I wonder if Peckinpah dropped that line because it was another reference to Hitler, and by losing such specificity he wanted to generalise more about men in war fighting on madly and uncontrollably, to erase the ‘heat’ of their own private all consuming war? Certainly in the figure of James Coburn as Sergeant Rolf Steiner he looks, at the ‘end’ of Cross of Iron as if he has lost, along with the war, the plot (his sanity) and can only self-destructively fight on.

Cross of Iron reminded me of a Brechtian experience at London’s Riverside Studies in the 1980s while watching “The Berliner Theatre Ensemble” reciting Brecht’s poetry, in German, on stage. I had an English language translation sheet in my hand but what gave me most pleasure that evening was listening to the harsh, rasping sound of an East-German dialect. The sounds of that all male ‘chorus’ had an unforgettable and meaningful sting of anger, compassion and political concern. This memory resonated with the considerable sting of Peckinpah’s remarkable film. Alan Price

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On a Magical Night, Room 212 (2019) ** Curzon World

Dir Christophe Honoré  | France, Drama 93′

What happens when a marriage goes plutonic? Christophe Honoré covers familiar ground in this Parisian drama that turns an old chestnut into a half-baked potboiler despite its arthouse pretensions and an award-winning turn from his regular muse Chiara Mastroianni as the leading star.

She is self-possessed and feisty as Maria married to Richard (her one-time partner Benjamin Biolay). Their relationship is as stale as an old baguette and nothing can warm things up between the sheets on frigid nights in their apartment in Montparnasse. Refreshingly, it is Maria who has strayed from the marital bed rather than Richard. And not just once: Maria has played the field with half a dozen handsome young studs during the course of her 25 year relationship with uber faithful Richard. After he discovers incriminating texts on her ‘phone, they have a low-key bust up that sees him crying into his cups, while she moves into the hotel opposite (hence the titular Room 212) to text pouty paramours who are then paraded before our eyes in an upbeat playful way as Maria revisits the past in this rather twee chamber piece.

On a Magical Night is Honoré’s follow-up to his sombre Sorry Angel, a gay melodrama that screened at Cannes 2018 in the competition section. Although Magical Night attempts to explore the theme of marital stagnation it doesn’t do so in a meaningful or entertaining way, actually looking more like a cheeky drama from the late 1970s. Mastroianni tries to liven things up but Briolay is rather tepid as her husband – this no melodrama – he simply mopes about tearfully as she secretly watches him from the 2 star hotel opposite.

Vincent Lacoste plays a younger puppyish version of Briolay, and his piano teacher ex, Irene, is Camille Cottin, who also breaks into charmless impromptu song. Decent at first this soon becomes tedious, leaving us checking our watches after an hour of frivolous nonsense, Mastroianni parading in various states of undress and in different positions as she attempts to straddle Lacoste in faux love-making. An interesting idea, but forgettably frothy in execution. MT

CURZON WORLD | CANNES UN CERTAIN REGARD WINNER – BEST ACTRESS

 

 

The Ornithologist (2016) **** BFiplayer

Dir: Joao Pedro Rodrigues Cast: Paul Hamy, Xelo Cagiao, Joao Pedro Rodrigues, Han Wen, Chan Suan, Juliane Elting | Fantasy Drama | Portugal | 118min |

Portuguese auteur Joao Pedro Rodrigues won the main prize at Locarno for his avantgarde fifth feature. Good and evil collide during a Hearts of Darkness style odyssey through the verdant landscapes and lush forests of Northern Portugal.

The journeyman is gay birdwatcher Fernando (Paul Hamy) who is undertaking research, although his attitude to wildlife appears somewhat ambivalent. Paddling his kayak through the limpid waters of the River Douro, he is surprised by sudden rapids and disappears under water until he is later found and rescued by two Chinese girls (Han Wen, Chan Suan) purporting to be devout Christians on a pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago (in Spain). But there is a price to pay for  saving his life. Clearly they pari have lost their way literally and metaphorically. But they are not the only untrustworthy people Fernando is to come across during his trip. A deaf mute shepherd called Jesus; a group of exuberant Careto revellers and a trio of Latin-speaking Amazonian girls on horseback, all appear to be have dubious intentions. Although Rodrigues’ film is a modern gay-themed version of the parable of Saint Anthony of Lisbon (and of Padua) patron saint of lost things and devotion to the poor and sick, this stylish arthouse offering could also serve as a metaphor for our journey through the 21st century’s pitfalls.

A visionary freethinker and consummate storyteller, Rodrigues brings a resonant stillness and contemplativeness to his film along with bursts of joie de vivre – as in the scene where Jesus drinks milk straight from a goat’s teet. Animals play a significant part here from exotic birds to dogs and local fauna. Cinematographer, Rui Pocas, cleverly evokes the interaction between man and beast. Fernando becomes irritated when a white dove he has tried to cure – possibly representing the Holy Spirit – then seems to be following him. Rodrigues leads us into all sorts of blind alleys with an immersive narrative full of textural richness that also echoes the journey seen in the recent Embrace of the Serpent. Those flumuxed by Miguel Gomes Arabian Nights will be encouraged to hear that The Ornithologist is also a great deal more accessible than the Inebriated Chorus of Chaffinches segment in the trilogy.

There does seem to be some poetic licence over geography in the piece: the Chinese girls are heading for Santiago de Compostela but somehow have wandered into Portugal and the film ends up in Padua, Italy presumably in reference to St Anthony dying there, although this is initially bewildering unless you know the religious background. The gay elements of the film feel entirely in the natural in the milieu and Fernando’s transformation into Saint Anthony dovetailing elegantly into the final scenes show we are never far from salvation. MT

FREE ON BFiPLAYER |

https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-the-ornithologist-2016-online

 

Camagroga (2020) **** Sheffield Doc Fest 2020

Dir/Wri: Alfonso Amador, | Doc, Catalan, Spain, 111′

If you’ve ever enjoyed the Spanish milkshake “horchata de chufas” this is a simple story well told. By the end we know everything there is to know about the tiger nut.

Spanish filmmaker Alfonso Amador’s lush cinematic tribute to the humble ‘chufa’ glows with local colour – as much a piece of social, political and agricultural history as it is a pictorial guide to how the crop is grown, nurtured and finally turned into a Vitamin E rich snack or foodstuff in the village of Alboraya in the fertile region of “La Huerta (the orchard) near Valencia. Originally a small farming community, the region has expanded in recent years with the Valencia’s development as a metropolitan city. La Huerta was originally cultivated with irrigation canals at the time of Spain’s Moorish invasion, and its fertile soil later provided food for the Roman armies who occupied Iberia. Nowadays this fertile plain is divided into three areas bordered by the Mediterranean Sea.

The film, co-scripted with Sergi Dies, follows the tiger nut growers, particularly Antonio and Inma Ramon, as they work their way through the farming year starting with Winter (Inverno) and ending with Autumn (Tardor). Elegantly captured on the widescreen and in vibrant personal close-ups, most of footage is silent but occasionally a pithy dialogue breaks through in Valencian dialect, very close to Catalan: to discuss lunch (sometimes a lavish get together, or simply a sandwich and swig of local wine) or past methods of growing or – on a broader canvas – the reasons why and how the world has impacted on this small but indomitable farming corner of North Eastern Spain, that continues to produce fine vegetables – particularly artichokes and potatoes – thanks to its rich soil, fine weather and near maritime climate. The tiger nut crop is alternated with onions.

One elderly farmer has been involved in tiger nut farming all his life – since the age of 8 – and shows us his trusty equipment that includes a dung basket and hundred-year old shovel. But women take part in the growing too. Another farmer who works land tirelessly with this wife, explains his life’s work to his grandson: “La Huerta catches you, and there’s nothing more beautiful, because you live the land, you live life”. Tiger nut farming even has its own vocabulary: “Sao” refers to the ideal state of soil humidity for planting. The definition of plowing is “the art of unravelling the earth”.

Sadly, as a result of mass globalisation the farmers are struggling to survive because all the added value there was when the goods used to be sold at market has now dissipated. The large corporations have taken over and stock pile the tiger nuts, choking prices, and thus taking the profit margins. Migrant workers are useful but don’t have the same inherent sensitivity towards crop cultivation and handling as the locals. There is also talk amongst the locals of the land being sold to build a large commercial shopping centre – the idea being of creating more jobs. Pressure groups are encouraging locals to gather together and protest against this commercialisation but sadly time marches on. Camagroga is a sombre but dignified portrait of a struggling community: as the old generation dies out, a new one emerges keen to till the soil of their ancestors, and continue their heritage with the slogan: “Land for those who work on it”. MT

SHEFFIELD DOC FESTIVAL | INTO THE WORLD STRAND | JUNE 2020

 

 

 

 

Prince Avalanche (2012) **** MUBI

Dir/Wri:: David Gordon Green | Original: Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson | Cast: Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsch, Lance Le Gault, Joyce Payne | 94min  Comedy  US

David Gordon Green plunders the Icelandic comedy original Either Way (2011) for this deliciously quirky re-make of male bonding and reflective melancholy. It all kicks off when an unlikely couple of friends spend the summer of 1988 Texas repainting traffic lines on a Texan country highway ravaged by wildfire.

Prince_Avalanche_1_PUBS copy

Ostensibly a recipe for disaster: Lance (Hirsch) is an insecure extrovert looking for casual weekend hook-ups and conversation, Alvin (Rudd) is shy and self-contained but, crucially, dating Lance’s elder sister and is corresponding with her by letter, it being the eighties. A rich vein of comedy lies in their gradual falling out and re-grouping as they discover weird and wonderful things about themselves and about each other that creates a strange and appealing chemistry. Occasionally wandering into whimsey with the arrival of a local elderly woman who lost her home in the fire, and an old man who offers them a slug of the local hooch, the film maintains an offbeat feel true to Gordon Green’s indie roots.

Tim Orr’s cinematography focuses on the stunning natural environment picking out the local wildlife to stunning effect. An evocative original score from David Wingo and Explosion in the Sky (The Kite Runner) really captures the hazy, mood. MT

ON MUBI FROM 13 JUNE 2020 | Best Director Silver Bear Berlinale 2013

Seasons in Quincy: The Four Portraits of John Berger (2016) *** MUBI

Dir.: Colin McCabe, Christopher Roth, Bartek Dziadosz, Tilda Swinton; Documentary/Essay with John Berger, Tilda Swinton; UK 2016, 90 min.

To call the novelist, art historian, painter and poet John Berger a Renaissance man is for once no hyperbole. In 1972 he won the Booker Prize for G, and in the same year was the main contributor to the influential BBC series “Ways of Seeing” – at a time when television tried to edify audiences rather than anaesthetising them.

Berger, who died in January 2017, aged 90, also wrote film scripts during the mid 1970s, notably for the Swiss auteur Alain Tanner (La Salamandre, Le milieu du Monde, Jonah who will be 25 in 2000). He left London for good in 1973 to spend the rest of his life in the French mountain village of Quincy in Haute-Savoie. Seasons is an omnibus edition of four short films that illuminates his way of thinking.

The first sequel, “Ways of Listening”, directed by McCabe, was shot in 2010 when Tilda Swinton (who wrote the script) visited Berger in Quincy just before Christmas. It is a discourse about friendship and art. Berger and Swinton not only share a birthday (34 years apart) and place of birth (London), but also fathers who had been active soldiers, fighting in WWI and WWII respectively – and would never talk about their experiences, in spite of being severely wounded. While Swinton peels apples for a crumble, Berger sketches her. They also talk about his “Bento’s Sketchbook” to explain the workings of his mind – a deeper diver into this would have been welcome!.

Christopher Roth’s second part “Spring” is mainly a discourse about humans and animals – no surprise, since Berger’s work is often centred around the relationship between the two. Some of Berger’s texts on the subject are read out, and we see samples of his TV work. But the episode is very much coloured by grief: Berger had recently lost his wife of nearly forty years, Beverly, to cancer and Roth’s mother had also died. Feeling like a collage, “Spring” is the most emotional chapter of the quartet.

“A Song for Politics”, directed by McCabe and Bartek Dziadosz (also editor and cinematographer of the other parts and director of the Derek Jarman Lab, which co-produced Seasons), consists mainy of a black-and-white TV style discussion between Berger, McCabe, and the writers Akshi Sing and Ben Lerner, about the plight of today’s Europe. Berger bemoans the fact that a society which only exists “to do the next deal” lacks historical input. They agree that old-fashioned capitalism is dead, But a discussion is needed about what has replaced it. There are rousing songs from the early years of the 20th century when ‘Solidarity’ was the slogan. Ironically, Berger states, “solidarity is only needed in Hell, not in Heaven”. Paradoxes and contradictions are flying around, and it’s no surprise the come to no conclusions.

“Harvest”, directed by Tilda Swinton, is filmed in Quincy and Paris – Berger had to move for health reasons to the French capital where he would later die. Swinton takes her teenage twins, Xavier and Honor to Quincy, to meet Ives, Berger’s son of his marriage with Beverly. There is a resonance from “Ways of Listening”, as far as father/son relationships are concerned, Ives being an artist. But it is also a tribute to Beverly who planted a huge raspberry garden, the children enjoy the fruit “giving Beverly pleasure”. In Paris, Berger, in spite of his frailty, is keen on teaching Honor how to ride a motorbike, whilst her mother looks on in horror. But “Harvest” feels like a long goodbye between Berger and Swinton: not sentimental, but deeply felt.

Seasons is proof that you only need some existential ‘old-fashioned’ ideas, and a mini-budget to produce something worthwhile. In spite of its small faults, this essay/documentary makes the audience curious – and if it ‘only’ encourages us to find out more about the work of John Berger, it has fulfilled its purpose. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 23 JUNE 2017 | CURZON CINEMAS

Acasa My Home (2020) **** Krakow Film Festival 2020

Dir.: Radu Ciorniciuc; Documentary with Gica Enache, Nicolina Nedelcu, Vali Enache, Rica Enache; Romania/Finland 2019, 86 min.

The Enache Roma clan are the subject of this powerful ethnographical portrait from Romanian first time filmmaker Radu Ciorniciuc.

The wilderness surrounding Bucharest’s Lake Vacaresti has for the past eighteen years been home to a couple and their  nine children on the banks of a former reservoir dwarfed by tower blocks. Four year’s in the making Cioroniciuc has followed their existence which is so radically unconventional compared to the average Romanian lived through decades of change as Bucharest moves into the 21st century.

We meet parents Gica Enache, a former chemistry lab assistant, who left the ‘wicked’ city with his wife Nicolina Nedelcu 18 years ago. Their nine children frolic around unsupervised, taking advantage of the beautiful countryside, particularly the lake. The family survive despite their financial poverty, putting a meal on the table from the farm stock that shares their dilapidated shack (we see the offscreen slaughter of a pig).

Social services has long tried to get hold of the children, and we witness another unsuccessful attempt by the authorities, when Gica asking the oldest, Vali, to take his younger siblings into a hiding constructed specifically for this purpose. Meanwhile Gica prefers to lounge around smoking rather than being involved in family matters, which are left to emaciated Nicolina, who is totally overwhelmed by the lack of amenities. Her husband is the model of an authoritarian patriarch playing the role of a free-wheeling hippy. But their days in anarchic freedom are limited: The Romanian government declares the Bucharest Delta a Nature Reserve, the Prime Minister and Prince Charles (!) appear on the scene to celebrate the occasion – followed by the bulldozers. 

The clan has no alternative but to agree to a move to the nearby capital, where they are housed and the children integrated into the school system – a traumatic event for most of them, because their contemporaries are far more sophisticated. Only Vali, soon to be eighteen, has a go at fitting in and this brings him into conflict with his father who burns the books the younger children have been given. Vali moves out to live with his girl friend, who is soon pregnant. With great insight he tells her they should not have a child “because then we would be three children”. On a visit home, Vali listens to his father who, in his usual long-winded speeches, blames everybody else for the family’s plight. He excludes his wife: “Only Nicolina has given me any hope” which Vali counters with “and what have you given her?”. The ending is melancholic: the family, who has not looked after the flat, is put into inferior accommodations’, whilst Vali works in the new Nature Reserve, which was once had been his play ground.        

Lyrical and poetic despite the challenging topic, Acasa is a powerful and passionate long term study about was freedom really means. Their upbringing in mother nature certainly appealed to the young kids, but poverty and isolation had a greater impact on their upbringing. As Vali shows, there is an alternative to strict ideological-based country living. As for his younger siblings, integration meant discovering a whole new world. Ciorniciuc maintains a detached approach never letting the growing familiarity with the clan cloud his judgement. A labour of love and a memorable one. AS

60th KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020 | CINEMATOGRAPHY AWARD WINNER | WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY SUNDANCE 2020

Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983) Mubi

Dir.: Nagisa Ôshima; Cast: David Bowie, Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kitano, Jack Thompson, Johnny Okura; Japan/UK/New Zealand 1983, 123 min.

David Bowie is the star of this emotional rollercoaster from Japanese New Wave director Nagisa Ôshima (1932-2013) also known for Empire of Passion.

Mr. Lawrence has aged very well and has lost nothing of its impact as an analysis of male short-comings. Adapted from Laurens van Der Post’s The Seed and the Sower, the film takes place in a Japanese POW camp during the Second World War and is centred on four men: British POWs Major Jack ‘Strafer’ Celliers (Bowie) and Lt. Col. John Lawrence (Conti), and two Japanese soldiers, camp commander Capt. Yonoi (Sakamoto, who also composed the score) and sergeant Gengo Hara, a brute with a softer side.

Group Captain Hicksley (Thompson), the camp’s highest ranking officer and the spokesmen for the prisoners plays a minor, but catalysing role. Celliers’ stubbornness sees him locked in a battle of wills with the camp’s new commandant, a man obsessed with discipline and the glory of Imperial Japan. Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence (Tom Conti) is the only inmate with a degree of sympathy for Japanese culture and an understanding of the language, and attempts to bridge the divide through his friendship with Yonoi’s second-in-command, Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano), a man possessing a surprising degree of compassion beneath his cruel façade. Celliers is also living with a guilty secret: he has betrayed his younger brother at boarding school. Captain Yonoi is also secretly ashamed of himself for being part of a military uprising in 1936, but unlike his comrades-in-arms, he escaped execution. Yonei develops a homo-erotic crush on Celliers, provoking him into a duel with the salve: “if you kill me, you will be free”. Celliers declines.

When a secret radio is discovered at the base, Yonoi makes Celliers and Lawrence take responsibility, sentencing them to death. But on Christmas Day, Hara frees the two prisoners, wishing Lawrence a titular “Merry Christmas”. Hara gets a light ticking off for showing mercy. But when Group Captain Hicksley learns about Yonoi’s plan to replace him, a fracas develops with the Japanese camp commander ordering Hicksley to have all men stand up on the parade ground, including the sick. When Hicksley refuses, Yonoi wants to kill him, but Celliers kisses him on the cheek. With his honour in tatters, Yonoi retreats and is replaced as camp commandant who doesn’t give Celliers such a wide birth, “unlike my predecessor, I am not a romantic” and buries Celliers up to his neck in sand as a punishment.

At an epilogue set in 1946, Lawrence makes a trip to visit Hara who has been sentenced to death. Yonoi has already been executed, and Hara tells Lawrence that Yonoi gave him the lock from Celliers hair to place in a shrine in Yonoi’s home village.

David Bowie commented later that during the shooting he had been surprised Ôshima only showed the perimeters of the prison camp – yet when he saw the film afterwards he was able to appreciate how much more terrifying the threat of the compound was in contrast to the detail of the camp itself. DoP Toichiro Naushima (Double Suicide) shows how the mens’ emotions reflect the harshness of their surroundings (filming took place on the Polynesian island of Rarotonga) by continuously changing the angles of close-ups and the long tracking shots. Merry Christmas avoids the moral judgements made by David Lean on Bridge on the River Kwai.  In his valedictory chat to Hara, Lawrence makes a shrewd observation: “there are times when victory is very hard to take“. Ôshima always keeps the balance, avoiding sentimentality, without shrinking from this very emotional conflict. AS  

NOW ON MUBI 

                                        

   

 

 

Magic Mountains (2020) **** Cannes Market 2020

Dir: Urzula Antoniak | Thriller, Holland/Poland 82′

Poland’s Urzula Antoniak follows her enigmatic displacement drama Beyond Words with another spare and haunting psychological thriller that relies on magnificent mountain settings, evocative lighting and intense atmosphere to explore the complex aftermath of love and longing for a couple whose relationship lies in tatters.

Dutch actors Thomas Ryckewaert and Hannah Hoekstra play Lex and Hannah, still on speaking terms despite their recent break-up, instigated by Hannah for reasons unknown. In order to lay his own emotional demons to rest, Lex makes the unusual request of asking Hannah to join him in a final climbing holiday, led by Voytek (the Polish actor Marcin Dorocinski (Anthropoid, 2016) whose unsettling presence lends a sinister vibe to this doomed emotional exploration fraught with vertiginous moments of its own.

Quite why Hannah decides to continue on this challenging odyssey is anyone’s guess. But mesmerised by Voytek’s mysterious allure and Lex’s ambivalent motivations, she presses on increasingly disturbed by her strange companions and the dizzying surroundings. Magic Mountains is a simple but effective metaphor for our troubling times. Antoniak’s enigmatic storyline and Lennert Hillege’s atmospheric visuals provide the needling tension fuelling this complex mood piece that takes us to the unknown reaches of the human mind with a  devastating finale. MT

The Vanishing | Spoorloos (1988) **** Blu-ray release

Dir: George Sluizer | Gene Bervoets, Johanna Ter Steege, Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu | Thriller | 107′

A simple plot grows into a suffocatingly desolate psychodrama exploring the depraved wickedness of the human mind. Although Stanley Kubrick claimed it was the most terrifying film he’d ever seen, George Sluizer was unable to find distribution for his film that screened at the Sydney film festival to critical acclaim. And it’s not difficult to see why. A group of singularly unappealing characters fill a narrative so bleak and uncharitable it leaves you utterly dejected by the time the credits roll. What starts as a tender love story in the sun-drenched South of France ends in an autumnal Amsterdam as leaves fall on human tragedy.

A young Dutch couple, Rex and Saskia  (Bervoets and Ter Steege) are on their way to her French holiday home, in a battered old Peugeot. After stopping for drinks and petrol at a service station near Nimes, Saskia vanishes into thin air. A protracted and febrile search by Rex draws a blank. Scripted by Tim Krabbe from his own novel The Golden Egg, a parallel narrative introduces Raymond Lemorne, a devious and conceited father of two who starts to contact Rex claiming to know the whereabouts of Saskia, via taunting postcards that reveal a disturbed mind.

In this portrait of obsession and frustrated desire, Sluizer focuses on Rex’s desperation but also on Donnadieu’s conniving Raymond who makes for a cynically asexual psychopath with his immaculately trimmed goatee beard. He lives a banal quotidian existence with his two daughters and pleasant wife, who starts to question his protracted lone visits to the family’s country house.

Rex, by contrast, cannot move on emotionally after losing Saskia and is tortured into an angry mess of a man by his troubled dreams, despite a supportive new girlfriend. Eaten up by his desire for closure, Rex confronts his nemesis and ends up in a Faustian pact, submitting himself to Raymond’s unfeasible requests just to satisfy his inner demons. Clinically plotted and devoid of any humanity after the upbeat opening sequences Sluizer’s thriller makes for a critically watertight but thoroughly unpleasant watch.MT.

ON VOD, EST and Blu-ray from 8 JUNE 2020

 

Vampir Cuadecuc (1971) **** BfiPlayer

Dir: Pere Portabella | Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda | Sound Design: Carles Santos, Jordi Sangenis | Horror | Spain 67′

Made in 1970 by the Catalan avant-garde filmmaker Pere Portabella (1929-), Vampir Cuadecuc is a weirdly effective experimental slice of ‘Hammer’ horror that rides on the back of the filming of Jesus Franco’s Count Dracula (El Conde Dracula) that styles Christopher Lee as a grey-haired blood-sucker who is seen rocking sunglasses like some 1970s version of Karl Lagerfeld.

Almost entirely dialogue-free and driven forward by a sinister and occasionally seductively languorous soundscape, the film is curiously watchable, its silent moments as beguiling as the discordant outbursts that threaten to dominate proceedings, even more than Count Dracula himself, who remains and elusive but mesmerising presence throughout. Filmed in lush black and white on a 16 millimetre camera, it almost feels as if Portabella and his crew where lurking in the bushes like a posse of predatory voyeurs. .

Impressionistic and highly suggestive the film swings between deranged docudrama and heightened melodrama, Bram Stoker’s storyline running along the same lines as F W Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu (1922), but lacking the lyrical romanticism of Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu the Vampire (1979). The narrative here is fractured by the scenes being played in different sequences and often repeated, but Cuadecuc (which apparently means ‘worm’s tail in Catalan) still retains an hypnotic fascination because we all know the storyline and the vicariousness actually adds allure to the original, Portabella creating a piece of cinema verite. The final scene featuring Christopher Lee is the icing on the cake of this highly original curio. MT

NOW ON BFiPLAYER 

 

La Frontière de nos Rèves (1996) | A Bridge to Christo | Tribute (1935-2020)

Dir.: Georgui Balabanov; Documentary with Christo, Jeanne-Claude, Anani Yavashev; Bulgaria 1996, 72 min.

In his thought-provoking biopic, Bulgarian director Georgui Balabanov (The Petrov File) portrays two very different brothers who have been living apart for 26 years on the opposite sides of the iron curtain. Christo (1935-2020), who died on 31 May 2020, travelled abroad to become an celebrated environmental artist and his actor brother Anani Yavashev, who deeply regrets his wasted years in Bulgaria under Stalinist censorship. Two destines embody the hopes and illusions of two different worlds.

Balabanov’s documentary flips between Gabrovo, the village where the brothers grew up, and the Paris flat Christo shared with Moroccan born Jeanne-Claude, whom he met in Paris in 1958. Both not only share the same birthday (13.6.1935), but a passion for art, while understanding that their work is transient – apart from one installation, the 400k oil barrels at Mastaba, all their projects have vanished: the wrappings of the Berlin Reichstag and the Pont-Neuf Bridge as well as The Gates of Central Park in New York.

The busy Paris flat, with Jeanne-Claude chain smoking whilst organising their projects, is in great contrast to Anani’s inertia shared with his artist friends. The Sofia theatre they called home for decades is being torn down and even if they are not too fond of their memories, it is still their past lives, which are bulldozed to the ground. Anani could never play Lenin, since he was “politically not trusted”. The brother’s father Vladimir, a former business man, was imprisoned at the beginning of the Stalinist regime of terror, for “sabotage”. As an old “Class Enemy” he took the punishment for a drunken worker, who burned the cloth production for the whole week. His sons were suspects too, Anani got into drama school only with the help of a benevolent friend in the bureaucratic system.

1957 was the year of decision for Christo, who went to Prague and was smuggled in a locked train-compartment to Vienna. The rest is history – but Anani and his friends, paid heavily for their compromise with the system. Modernism in all art forms was tantamount to treason, painters and playwrights had to smuggle progressive elements into their work – hoping all the time that the censors would overlook it. But they are also honest enough, to admit they had a free reign in their private lives: long, passionate nights are mentioned. One feels sorry for this resigned bunch, and can sympathise with their plight: it comes as no co-incidence that only a few escaped the artistic prisons of the Soviet Block: risk-taking is seen as a virtue in the West either – human nature is preponderantly opportunistic.

Shot in intimate close-up by DoP Radoslav Spassov, La Frontiere is very much a celebration of artistic work represented by Christo and Jeanne-Claude – and a “Trauerarbeit” for the lost souls who staid behind, sharing with others the loss of artistic identity. AS

Tribute to Christo who died in May 2020

MS Slavic 7 (2019) ***

Dir.: Sofia Bohdanowiez; Cast: Deragh Campbell/co-dir, Aaron Danby, Elizabeth Rucker; Canada 2019, 64 min.

MS Slavic 7 is an intriguing title for a film. It refers to the catalogue number of a collection of 25 letters archived in Harvard University’s Houghton Library, and written by the director’s great-grandmother, the Polish poet Zofia Bohdanowieczowa, to her fellow poet Jozef Wittlin during their exile after the Second World War.

This melancholic essay film is a paean to poetry and displacement, and the filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowiez and co-director/lead actor Deragh Campbell do their best to bring the correspondence  to life. Wittlin (who lived in NY City) wrote between 1957 and 1964, first from Penrhos in Wales, then later from Toronto, Canada. Sofia is the literary executor of her great-grandmother’s output, and in this function she visits Houghton Library, meets a Polish scholar (Danby) and has a few contretemps with a Polish lady (Rucker), whom she has meets at a get-together of elderly Polish exiles. 

The trauma of permanent exile is documented in Zofia’s letter to Wittlin after she arrives in Toronto: “I still don’t write, I am still exhausted by the change, and feel like a fish out of water. I have always been terribly provincial and sedentary. Even in Poland, each trip to Warsaw terrified me, and only when coming back to Grodno where the crew changed and a train inspector had asked me melodiously: ‘tickets, please’, it felt like home”. In another letter she thanks him for sending her a photo comparing his gesture “with Polish bees”. Late she sends him “a hastily and confused letter” after the sudden death of her husband; with hopes that Wittlin “would be spared from parting and loneliness”. Later, she still complains about alienation in Toronto: “I sense a hostility in the grey city. The movement of the people and the traffic feels at once absent and menacing. Still, I hope that my stupid and sterile period is going to end soon”. When they meet for the first time “it is like an apocalypse”. 

Sofia is rather less expressive when it comes dealing with her great-great grandmother’s letters, her discussions with the scholar (who ends up in her bed – both of them reading the letters) show her difficulty in grasping the poet’s personality – Sofia can only imagine what exile meant for ‘Zofia’.

One of Zofia’s last letters to Wittlin is very much like a testament: “Still, you are right indeed. There was a veil of sadness over our meeting. That might have been because Toronto (in my opinion) is a sad city. Or even because everyone has sadness in themselves – how could it be otherwise for people without their homeland nor families?. And then came this meeting along with the uncertainty if we would ever see each other again”.  

Although the director’s own input is somehow hit-and-miss, Zofia’s letters provide compulsive reading with their thoughts from one permanently displaced person to another, piecing together their musings on a new place that is alien to both of them. Their homeland becomes a distant and poignant fading memory as they waste away slowly in the cold climate of exile. A valuable and worthwhile film that will offer comfort and context to all those living forced to live away from their families or in exile.AS

NOW ON MUBI 4 JUNE 2020 | BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | FORUM 7 -17 FEBRUARY 2019

 

 

The Dead and the Others (2018)| New Brazilian Cinema | Mubi

Docudrama | 114’ | Brazil/Portugal

Brazilian cinema is entering a new era in the wake of the country’s unprecedented political turmoil. Several new films are now available online along with this look at the Directed by Palme d’Or winner João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora, The Dead and the Others is a haunting docudrama based on their experiences of living for nearly a year in Pedra Branca, a village inhabited by the indigenous community of the Kraho people in Northern Brazil. The Kraho very much want to continue their way of life and traditions in their rural community, striving to be self-sufficient. Their plight connects with a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

Fifteen year old Ihjãc has been suffering from nightmares since he lost his father and in the opening scene he walks through the rain forest in the light of the moon. A distant sound of chanting comes through the palm trees. His father’s voice calls him to the waterfall. It is now time to organise the funeral feast so his father’s spirit can depart to the village of the Dead and mourning for him can come to an end. Although his baby son Tepto was born in the local hospital, Ihjãc still spends most of his life with his family in the remote forest and although the village elders are urging him to fulfil his duty to undergo the crucial process of becoming a shaman, Ihjãc escapes back to the local town to avoid the transition. There, far from his people and culture, he faces the reality of being an indigenous native in contemporary Brazil.

With its themes of loss, displacement and cultural identity this eerie and woozily impressionistic piece that has a poignant urgency in its message, glowingly conveyed in vibrant, high contrast cinematography. MT

NEW BRAZILIAN CINEMA | UN CERTAIN REGARD JURY PRIZE 2018 | LET IT BURN

Woman at War (2018) **** Mubi

Dir.: Benedict Erlingsson; Cast: Haldora Geirhardsdottir, Johann Sigurdason, Juan Camillo Roman Estrada; France/Iceland/Ukraine 101 min.

Benedict Erlingsson’s follow-up to Of Horses and Men is an energetic eco-warrior drama that sees a feisty woman taking on the state of Iceland with surprising results. Lead actress Haldora Geirhardsdottir has an athletic schedule, running all over the rugged  countryside, with helicopters and drones circling overhead.

Halla Haldora (Geirhardsdottir) lives a double life: one minute she is a mild-mannered physical therapist and choir leader, the next she’s roaming the countryside, bringing down electricity pylons with a bow and arrow and wire cutters. The only person aware of her war against the multi-nationals’ new technology is Sweinbjorn (Sigurdason), who works for the government and sings in her choir. She gets support from a local farmer, who could be a distant relative, and has a sheep dog called ‘woman’.

But her adventures have more severe repercussions for Juan Camillo (Estrada), who is under suspicion himself for bringing down the pylons. Another running gag in this amusing drama involves three women wearing the Icelandic national costume, who stand at the wayside during Halla’s adventures; a trio of musicians playing drums, the tuba and accordion. Halla’s twin sister Asa, also played by Geirhardsdottir, is a yoga teacher and is about to set off for an ashram in south-east Asia, when Halla gets the news that her adoption application has been granted. As a result four-year old Nika, whose whole family has been wiped out in the Ukraine conflict, is now waiting for Halla to pick her up. But misfortune intervenes.

With a magnificent twist at the end, Woman at War is a stormy but often amusing affair. There are echoes of Aki Kaurismaki, with the dead pan humour taking away some of the tension of the countryside hunt for Halla. And Erlingsson makes a refreshing break from tradition in the super hero genre, by casting a super-fit middle-aged woman in the central role.

Making good use of the stunning country side, DoP Bergsteinn Björgulfsson’s widescreen images and towering panorama shots are truly magnificent, along with the road movie sequences that showcase Iceland’s wild scenery. Perhaps a little too generous on the running time, this feature combines hilarious scenes with a well-structured narrative and a convincing female heroine. AS

FROM FRIDAY, 3 MAY 2019 | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL SACD WINNER 2018

Only the Animals (2019) Netflix

Dir.: Dominik Moll; Cast: Damien Bonnard, Bastien Boillon, Laura Calamy, Denis Menochet, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Roger ‘Bibesse’ N’drin, France/Germany 2019, 116′.

German born director Dominik Moll has been sadly neglected of late. Best known for his psychological thrillers Harry He’s Here to Help and Lemming and the hilarious News from Planet Mars (which never got a UK release) he came to Venice last year with one of the best features in the Venice Days line-up . Adapted from Colin Niel’s 2014 novel of the same name, this is an intense non-linear study of human behaviour, showing greed and possessiveness as the motivator that drives us all forward in the belief we are in love.

Most of the action takes part in a remote snowbound part of the French Massif Central, but the drama opens in the port city of Abidjan in Ivory Coast. There Armand (N’drin) sets in motion a sort of Ariadne trail, with one woman paying with her life for the sins of others. Armand is a small time grafter who finds photos of Marion (Tereszkiewicz) on the net, setting her up as bait for the French farmer Denis (Menochet), who is married to insurance saleswoman Alice (Calamy).

She has fallen for one of her clients, Joseph, an unstable farmhand in Denis’ employer who has been disturbed by hallucinations since the death of his mother: “I only talk to the animals”, he tells Alice. Meanwhile back in Abidjan, Armand has succeeded in making Denis fall for Marion, extracting the first tranche of the money transfers from the farmer. Armand, who nicknames Marion ‘Armandine’ – even though he has never met her – then invents a precarious story making Denis fall into the trap of wanting to rescue Armandine – whatever the cost. But the real Marion in in a relationship with Evelyne (Tedeschi), who shares a holiday home with her husband Guillaume just down the road from Alice and Denis.

This is a complex plot, intricately put together by Moll and his co-writer Gilles Marchand (who worked with him on Harry). Suffice to say it keeps up absolutely glued to the screen, enthralled by a seductively simmering plot line, Patrick Ghiringhell’s camerawork providing plenty of visual thrills including panoramic images of the magnificent mountain region and the lively African port city. A spine-tingling score of strings primps the moments of tension.

The saying “money makes the world go round”  has never been so true, and in this particular drama it is spot on: internet and money transfers connect every part of the globe. And every character wants a part of the action. Apart from Joseph, who leaves no clues to his disappearance from the scene in this enigmatic mystery thriller. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX
https://youtu.be/5HYJ6CjOzi8

Take Me Somewhere Nice (2019) *** MUBI

Dir: Ewa Sendijarevic | Drama | 91′

In her impressive debut feature, Ewa Sendijarevic takes a fresh and playfully cinematic approach to this semi-autobiographical expression of ‘positive experience of loneliness’ for the average multi-cultural person. To put it more simply, her central character Alma has grown up in Holland from Bosnian parentage and returns there to visit her father for the first time, with the gaze of an alien. Although this theme has been done before, most recently in a radical way by Jonathan Glazer in his mystery thriller Under The Skin, Take Me Somewhere Nice is a much more down to earth affair, enriched by its stunning visual approach and minimal dialogue. Alma is an Alice in Wonderland like character who goes on a Kafkaesque journey to visit her origins. She is accompanied by her cousin and his best friend, both from Bosnia, both unemployed and just as “care free” as Alma herself.

This triangle of characters represents a West-East European power balance between the privileged, and those left behind; the bitter and the opportunistic, the ones who would like to join the West and the ones who actively turn their back to it. This tension between the three bright young things occasionally becomes recklessly sexual, at other times gently attempts to forge a meaningful connection. Each frame completes the brightly coloured jigsaw of Alma’s eventful story, and even when it ventures into darker themes – a road kill incident and beach attack – still feels hopeful and energetic, in contrast to the clichéd portrayals of migrant misery and put-upon womanhood in the beleaguered Balkans.

Sometimes Sendijarevic inverts expectations, making us uncomfortable in a Brechtian way, and more acutely aware of traditional approaches the buzzy subject matter. TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE is also a film about using our contact with nature and the animal kingdom to celebrate being alive and being present in our world, wherever we lay our hats. Spirited performances and a lively colour palette make this journey fun and highly watchable. Sendijarevic believes in the Romantic – and laudable – idea that in “the moments we spend alone, preferably in nature, we can connect to our true selves in a spectacular way”. a sentiment that holds true now more that ever. A delightedly inventive and lively first feature. MT

NOW ON MUBI from 21 MAY 2020 | THE SPECIAL JURY AWARD WINNER | ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2019 |

 

Heat & Dust (1983) **** Curzon World

Dir.: James Ivory; Cast: Julie Christie, Greta Scacchi, Shashi Kapoor, Christopher Cazenove, Zakir Hussain, Charles McCaughan, Patrick Geoffrey; UK 1983, 132 min. 

Heat and Dust was the twelfth (of twenty-seven) collaborations between director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Based on the Booker Prize winning novel, the screen adaptation is a break with the social realism of the trio’s earlier features such as Shakespeare Wallah (1965). Its visual opulence made it by far their most successful feature at the box office to date.

Heat and Dust is a lush evocation of the sensuous beauty of India, sashaying between the 1920s and the 1980s in an epic of self-discovery, starring Julie Christie, Shashi Kapoor, and Greta Scacchi in her breakthrough role, with a strong supporting cast

When BBC researcher Anne (Christie) inherits the writings of her great aunt Olivia in 1982, she travels to India to find out more about the ‘scandal’ Olivia caused in 1923. The narrative tells the parallel story of both women. Olivia was married to the naïve and conventional Colonial Civil Servant Douglas Rivers (Cazenove), who had no clue about Olivia’s emotions. Bored by the stifling narrow-mindedness of the ex-patriate community, Olivia soon meets the sophisticated maverick Nawab (Kapoor) who, in his role as Viceroy, runs his private army, often indulging in violence on a grand scale. Olivia falls in love with him, but when she gets pregnant, decides on an abortion for fear of the obvious repercussions. Running away from the British hospital and the reactionary Chief Medical officer (Geoffrey) after the botched surgery, she flees to Kapoor, spending the last years of her life in a villa in the mountains where Kapoor, now deposed by the British, rarely visits her.

Anne traces Olivia’s steps, meeting on her way a young boisterous American would-be-monk (McCaughan), who is only interested in sleeping with her. But his body cannot cope with the foreign lifestyle and diet: Anne puts him into a train back to the USA. In her rooming house, she falls in love with Indor Lai (Hussain), her landlord. She too becomes pregnant, wanting to abort the baby at first, but changing her mind and planning to give birth in a hospital, near the villa, where Olivia lives out her lonely days.

Very much influenced by the writing of E.M. Forster – whose novels would be filmed later by Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala – Heat and Dust is a not so nostalgic look back to the days of the Raj, carried by the spirited Scacchi, who injects a feeling of joie de vivre to the role, growing increasingly melancholy. The 1980s segments are comparably less remarkable. But the feature belongs to DoP Walter Lassally, who not only shot the New English Cinema (A Taste of Honey, Tom Jones) but also won an Oscar for Zorba the Greek. The languid but vivid images of British rule in India would go on to inspire a generation of cinematographers, taking their cue from Walter Lassally. Heat and Dust, whilst not as stunning as the more mature Howards End, is nevertheless a trend setter: The legendary David Lean finished his career with the Forster adaption Passage to India in 1984. AS

NOW ON CURZON WORLD AS PART OF THE James Ivory series. 

      

To the Stars (2019) **** Streaming

Dir: Martha Stephens | Cast: Kara Hayward, Jordana Spiro, Tina Parker, Shea Whigham | US Drama 101′

Oklahoma is the setting for this retro rites of passage drama that transports us back to Bible Belt country of the 1960s where segregation was still in force, and poverty from the Dust Bowl years not such a distant memory.

In her fourth feature, Stephens soon establishes the film’s East of Eden vibe that blends  with the saccharine cattiness of this female-focused story: Kara Hayward is Iris a repressed and be-spectacled late developer who is taken under the wing of the spunky Liana Liberato (Maggie). The girls’ hopes and dreams are the same, but Liana is more able to express her feelings in God-fearing Wakita where narrow-mindedness contrasts with the wide open spaces, and men and women are at still at odds with each other, unable or unwilling to meet on common ground.

But this flourishing female friendship is the driving force of a drama that soon becomes compelling with its familiar terrain of bitchy schoolgirl hierarchy well sketched out in Shannon Bradley-Colleary’s slightly uneven script that oscillates between poetic and pulpy, Andrew Reed’s faded aesthetic giving the piece a soft-edged nostalgic wholesomeness boosted by Heather McIntosh’s perky score of popular hits.

The 1960s was a time when women where proud to be housewives – as most of the them were – looking after their families, covertly competing for male attention, while pretending to support one another. And this is very much the case for Iris whose mother Francie (Spiro)) is desperate to keep her daughter down, even flirting with her boyfriends. The film opens as the bibulous Francie is finishing off a frothy ballroom dress for Iris, who looks on disdainfully; clearly the two don’t see eye to eye, and we feel for Iris – although her father Hank is much more understanding of his daughter’s timid disposition and urinary incontinence that has made her somewhat of a social pariah.

Iris develops a crush on a local boy Jeff (Lucas Jade Zumann) – a solid choice, as it turns out. Most of the boys jeer at her, but Maggie comes to her defence during another early scene that will see them warm to each other in their teenage trauma. And gradually we discover that Maggie’s shiny family is not all it’s cracked up to be either – the two share secrets and lies that will deepen their friendship as much as challenge it.

Meanwhile, Maggie’s father (Tony Hale) is not the soigné character she’s cracked him up to be, and her mother has a haunted look (Malin Akerman) that suggests the move to Wakita came as a result of skeletons in a previous cupboard. Maggie is an urbane, intelligent girl who rapidly outgrows the strictures of her new surroundings. And this brings out the nascent rebel in Iris as the two are forced to accept this petty female environment that cramps their style. Gradually  inspire each other to survive and thrive against the odds in a hopeful human journey where despair is often just below the surface in small town Oklahoma. MT

ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FROM 1 JUNE 2020 ON iTUNES, AMAZON, GOOGLE PLAY, SKY, VIRGIN, CHILI

Revenge (2018) **** Blu-ray release

Wri/Dir: Coralie Fargeat | France, Thriller 106′

Dirty weekends don’t come any dirtier than the one in this ferocious indie revenge thriller that has ravishing locations, a twisty storyline, and a female lead who is not just a pretty face.

Revenge is the impressive debut from French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat. This is a movie that will resonate with women everywhere with its feminist humour, from the dreaded chipped nail polish to the unwelcome male attention, especially the unwanted male attention. Bathed in garish technicolor and pulsed forward by a pounding electronic soundscape, Revenge snakes its way through the Moroccan desert where its heroine, the cheeky bummed hottie Jen, fetches up with her smugly married lover Richard (Kevin Janssens) for a sexy sun-drenched ménage à deux. But this French woman (Mathilde Lutz) is not just gorgeous, she is also extremely cute. And although she can play the seductive siren at will, she can also be as tough as old boots. And when two of Richard’s friends suddenly appear on the scene, their company is distinctly ‘de trop’.

Revenge is a playful film that teeters on the brink of fantasy: combining surreal Grande Guignol with down to earth horror in a gore fest so stylishly achieved it actually becomes vital to the plot line in the incendiary finale laced with spurts of subversive humour, along the lines of I Spit on Your Grave. Jen is seen rocking raunchy tops and a seductive smile that makes up for her monosyllabic part, she is just there to perform on the shag carpet which is perfect for soaking up the bloodshed that will follow.

Meanwhile the misogynist love rat Richard makes disingenuous phone calls to his wife back in France, discussing the canapés for a forthcoming event, and pretending he’s there just to enjoy some downtime with pals Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchede), who are later seen leering at Jen through the enormous windows of the glamorous modern villa.

Fargeat makes brilliant use of the local flora and fauna echoing the over the top, tongue in cheek decadence of it all: insects crawl over a rotten apple core, as Dimitri urinates over a scorpion emerging from the sands. But it all turns nasty when Stan takes a shine to Jen and ignores her clear rejection of him. Just because Jen presents herself as a purring sex kitten it doesn’t follow that these men can stroke her at their own volition. What comes next will set this cat amongst the pigeons in a prolonged showcase showdown that sweats out between the foursome in the dazzling desert heat. A woman behind the camera allows a licence for extremes, and Fargeat pushes her story to the limits in a thriller with appeal for every sexual persuasion. And the moral of the tale: if you have a secret lover, keep them strictly to yourself. MT

LIMITED ADDITION BLU-RAY FROM 11 MAY 2020

https://youtu.be/YTJrztVvmx0

A Paris Education | Mes Provinciales (2018) **** DVD

Dir.: Jean-Paul Civeyrac; Cast: Andranic Manet, Diane Rouxel, Jenna Thiam, Gonzague van Bervesseles, Corentin Fila, Valentine Catzeflis, Sophie Verbeck, Christine Brucher, Gregori Manoukov; France 2018, 137 min.

Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s passionate cocktail of Sex, cinema and politics is a seductive distillation of what it means to be French. Based on the novel Lettres Provinciales by Blaise Pascal, it follows the adventures of Etienne who arrived from Lyons to study filmmaking in Paris, Saint-Denis, leaving his family and friend Lucie (Rouxel) behind. Shot in ravishing black-and-white by Pierre-Hubert Martin, A Paris Education feels very much like La Maman et la Putain by Eustache, transported into contemporary times.

Etienne (Manet) is a shy, immature young man – and extremely naïve – he’s looking for a mother/father figure. Shacking up with a new flat mate Valentina (Thiam), he soon falls under the spell of the enigmatic Mathias (Fila), a fellow student and troubled provocateur who would rather criticise than actually put himself out there and make a film. Then there is Jean-Noel (Bervesseles), who is just the opposite: caring and balanced – Etienne’s two new friends could not be more different. Yet he seems to be more passionate about Mathias than anybody else – even though he hardly knows him. Meanwhile Valentina moves to Berlin and is replaced by fierce eco-warrior Annabelle (Verbeck). Etienne tries to get close to this vulnerable woman but she falls for Mathias, until his violent outbursts jeopardise their love, Mathias turning his aggression on himself; Etienne has lost both his friends – and he is literally picked up by Barbara (Catzeflis), who was only briefly introduced to him by Annabelle in the flat.

Etienne appears vulnerable but he is primarily a non-committal, both in love and work. He sails through the film like a ship without a flag: his only constant concern is to make films, people come second in every way – with the exception of Mathias. Even his relationship with his parents (Brucher/Manoukov) is far from straightforward. When they visit him in Paris he seems embarrassed and aloof. The endless discussions with his friends and co-students seem to be a way to avoid growing up, and also full-time work. In a sad epilogue, we see him gradually withdraw from Barbara: how can he commit when he only loves himself.

Music plays a central part in this affecting drama; editor Louise Narboni has worked in opera, and Bach and Mahler dominate (particularly his 5th symphony that scored Death in Venice), and underline how marginalised Etienne has become since leaving provincial life made him a big fish in small bowl.  In Paris his lack of real identity and commitment turn him into Musil’s titular hero in A Man without Attributes. A Paris Education is a tour-de-force of art and psychology, and for once, the running time of over two hours is appropriate. AS

NOW ON DVD FROM 11 MAY 2020  

The Assistant (2019) ** Bfi Player

Dir: Kitty Green | Drama, 87′

The Assistant follows the day to day life of an office worker during her trial period in a new company. The film captured the imagination of critics in Berlin this year when a rumour went round it was based on the empire of one Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced film producer, and so plausibly chimed with the #MeToo movement. Although the setting here is New York.

Jane is a rather glum and introverted character who never smiles or shows a spark of enthusiasm or enterprise when she lands her dream job, beating hundreds of others to the post as a production company assistant. We first see her outside her Queens apartment, where a cab is waiting to drive her to the office in the early morning. Shot in a subdued colour palette, this is a tonally subdued affair that sees the film’s executives deeply involved in their workload; not a sparky creative atmosphere – so clearly the action takes place in the ‘backroom’ ie the legal or administrative side of the business – although this is never made clear.

Jane is a diligent and dedicated worker who maintains a sombre presence, rarely smiling and rocking a drab teeshirt, and dowdy trousers as her work outfit, her pop-socks drifting down to show her bare ankles as she goes about the daily routine of checking travel itineraries, photocopying, and making refreshments in the large office she shares with two other more senior assistants who are mostly absorbed in their own work. Her own poker-face certainly doesn’t invite a positive dynamic between them, and none of these characters has any chance to inject a sardonic twist to their performances given the dumbed down almost monosyllabic dialogue.

Although clearly a film with a serious and worthwhile message to offer, as a piece of entertainment  The Assistant is light years away from its obvious companion drama The Devil Wears Prada, a more sparky affair with some fireworks and fun and games up its sleeve, although roughly the same agenda.

Jane’s boss, Tony Torn, never appears but we certainly get a jist of his iron fist on his staff through various ‘phoncalls. But this could be any office, in any town, in any country with a strong hierarchy and a bottom line driven by profit and a need to deliver. And besides, Jane has no backlife, as far as we’re led to believe, apart from the final scene where she receives a loving phone call from her father, just as warm and convincing as the rest is cold and alienating. This brief scenes is the only tonal shift in the narrative. Other moments like this, amid the buttoned down drabness, could have added dramatic tension – and a more enjoyable outcome.

The fact that Jane is chauffeur-driven to work is a perk that many office workers would welcome, as they tool in from the suburbs to put in the hours in another gruelling day. This is what work is like for most people. It is not a party, but a hard graft to the top – and the only thing that can make it enjoyable is the positive attitude and determination that you bring with you to work. And Jane seems an isolated character whose simmering discontent comes to a head when a new assistant Sienna (Kristine Froseth) appears on the scene and appears to receive a more favourable reception. Sienna is just as pretty, but perkier, and brings a breath of fresh air to proceedings. Although Jane assumes that – wrongly or rightly – through a few randoms clues, that the young girl from Boise, Idaho, is a product of the casting couch. But because Jane has no confidents – in or out of the office – this strand cannot proffer any grist to her character’s mill to empower her. And this is the big flaw in Green’s script. Although our sympathies should be with her, she emerges an irritating morose, moaner by the end of the story: is that really what Green intended? Certainly a film to set tongues wagging. MT

NOW SHOWING ON BFI PLAYER

The Whistlers (2019)

Dir/Wri: Corneliu Porumboiu | Cast: Vlad Ivanov, Catrinel Marlon, Rodica Lazar, Antonio Buil, Agusti Villaronga, Sabin Tambrea, George Pisterneanu | Thriller, 97′

This Noirish Romanian arthouse thriller is not the first to use whistling as a vital part of its storyline. Last year’s Locarno Critics’ prize winner Sibel showed how vital this ancient style of communication is in isolated parts of the World. And La Gomera is one of them. The craggy hideaway in the Canaries is where a dark and sinuous double-crossing drama plays out. It also travels to the Romanian capital Bucharest, and Singapore. Swinging backwards and forwards in time tense The Whistlers is a rather forboding film with a retro feeling of the Sixties and another saturnine performance from Porumboiu’s regular Vlad Ivanov (who appearing in Tegnap and Sunset).

He is Cristi, a detective under surveillance from his colleagues who is rapidly finds out that this special language from local Spanish-speaking gangsters can keep him under the radar. Porumboiu’s clever lighting techniques and a ravishing score of modern classics and operatic arias keeps the action pumping to a surprising finale.

You may find the plot rather complicated and the crooks hard to identify (I did), but basically it goes as follows: Vast wads of illegal euros are being laundered in a mattress factory outside Bucharest whence they’re transported to the crime ring in Spain and Venezuela. The factory owner and middle-man is a petty criminal called Zsolt (Sabin Tambrea) and his girlfriend Gilda (Catrinel Marlon) seduces Cristi in the sexually-charged opening sequence (which takes us back to Basic Instinct). Meanwhile Zsolt’s boss Paco (Agusti Villaronga) instructs another honcho Kiko (Antonio Buil) to teach Cristi the whistling lingo. The place is riddled with surveillance cameras and no one can really be trusted in this edgy atmosphere of uncertainty so the arcane hissing comes in handy as a form of covert communication.

Meanwhile, Cristi’s sidekick Alin (George Pisterneanu) and their boss Magda (Rodica Lazar) make up the Police contingent. All these characters are out for themselves. La Gomera takes a leading role   with its inaccessible stony beaches, crystal waters and dense wooded hillsides. The final coda in Singapore doesn’t quite dovetail into the film and has a whiff of being added just to spice things up for the glamorous reveal in a light show taking place at the Gardens by the Bay.

In true noir style The Whistlers is not a long film and slips down easily – there are no deep messages here – despite its rather intractable plot. An ambitious and intriguing addition to the Romanian filmmaker’s oeuvre. MT

ON CURZON WORLD FROM FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020

 

 

Magic Medicine (2018)

Dir/Writer: Monty Wates | UK Doc | 79′

In 2012 a team of medical researchers explored what would happen if psilocybin was given to long term depressives.

Four years in the making, Monty Wates’ intriguing documentary chronicles the progress of the first ever medical trial offering the psychoactive ingredient of magic mushrooms to three volunteers suffering from clinical depression. We also meet the pioneering staff running the trial.

The hope is that this controversial substance will have the power to transform millions of lives, by scrambling and re-setting the brain’s function and enabling patients to identify what happened, to process it and, crucially, to move on. As David Lynch put in the recent biopic The Art Life (2016) “there has to be a big mess, before something can change”. The main setback has been government controls that strictly limit human testing.

Monty’s ground-breaking film reveals what happens when each of the candidates undergoes a supervised “trip” in a darkened room. During the short procedure, each is taken back into the deep recesses of their childhood to unlock trauma that has affected their lives and caused them to suffer deep sadness, impinging their ability to function at an optimum level. One of the trail volunteers had felt rejected and unwanted by his father, another was lost in a state of insecurity waiting for others to tell him what to do. The third feels generally worthless in his life.

Wates adopts an observational approach and a linear narrative, always maintaining a humanistic approach to the subject matter. With deeply moving footage of the “trips” the patients experience, this intimate film is an absorbing portrait of the human cost of depression, and the inspirational people contributing to this unique psychedelic research. The results are remarkable, varied and often lasting, suggesting the treatment is positive. So far. And certainly more effective than with conventional drugs. But whether the substance will be licensed for general use remains to be seen. MAGIC MEDICINE is an instructive, absorbing and fascinating piece of filmmaking. MT

A 2021 study led by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), found that the drug can be safely administered in up to six patients using doses of either 10mg or 25mg.

 

The Man with X-Ray Eyes (1963) **** Blu-ray release

Dir/Wri: Roger Corman | Cast: Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vils, Harold J Stone, John Hoyt | Sci-fi Thriller UK, 79′

Drawing comparisons with Jack Arnold’s Incredible Shrinking Man this gripping foray into Sci-fi showed Roger Corman capable of inventive storytelling as well as horror in this enterprising low budget thriller with a razor sharp wit that stars Ray Milland in the leading role. It even has a forward- thinking female role in the shape of Diana Van der Vils who plays a vampish pearl-rocking blond Dr Diane Fairfax, who also provides the romantic twist.

Space exploration had captured the collective imagination of the cinema-going public for all things scientifically ground-breaking in the early 1960s and The Man with X-Ray Eyes buys into this vibe. There’s also ‘something of the night’ about Ray Milland, despite his sparkling blue eyes, and these take on a superhuman power for his character Dr James Xavier who has invented a serum for championing human vision.

Set in Las Vegas, Nevada – we get to see blue skies and palm trees – but the action mainly takes place in the confines of labs and domestic interiors (aka the studio). At first his vision leads to cheeky revelations about women’s underwear and even their spines! Twisting with a blond who picks him up at a party he comments on her (hidden) birthmark and underwear: “Remember I’m a man”: he jokes lasciviously, and she quips back:”Remember I’m a woman” taking him off guard, realising he has been successfully pulled, and gets his coat.

But things get serious when he discovers that his serum has a cumulative affect, giving him the ability to see inside a patient’s body to their veins and organs during an operation, and his colleague threatens him with malpractice. But Xavier is not afraid: “Soon I’ll be able to see what no man has ever seen”. And this knowledge is power. So much power that he accidentally throws his colleague out of the window during the ensuing contretemps.

Forced to go on the run, Corman gets the chance to cast the brilliant Don Rickles as Dr Xavier’s stooge/compare when he embarks on a foray as a fortune teller in a bizarre turn of events. And soon he’s seeing to much for his own liking, donning an enormous pair of dark glasses that give him a striking resemblance to Ricky Gervais.

Overnight he becomes a miracle worker, treating the sick but also seeing the downside of his gift, which works both ways, showing him the sinister, seamy side of humanity warts and explores the ethics of power: In the process he loses his empathy for the common man.

Corman avoids sensationalism creating some rather clever visual affects that are in keeping with the integrity of the performances and thematic strength of a story that explores the moral side of Xavier’s powers, and the nature of what it is to be human. Corman was forced into a studio-dictated ending which is nevertheless reasonably satisfying, Ray Milland carrying the film from start to finish. And whatever the question was at the beginning, love was always going to be the answer. MT

NOW ON BLURAY from 4th May 2020 COURTESY OF SECOND SIGHT FILMS

 

A Russian Youth (2019) *** on Mubi

Wri/Dir: Alexander Zolotukhin, Russian, 72 min | with: Vladimir Korolev, Mikhail Buturlov, Artem Leshik, Danil Tyabin, Sergey Goncharenko, Filipp Dyachkov

A poetic and lyrical First World War trench memoir set to a live orchestra playing Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 Op. 30 (1909) and Symphonic Dances Op. 45 (1940).

A Russian Youth sees its freckled hero blithely setting out for the ‘Great War’. But the pastural romance of the early scenes soon gives way to the terrors of trench warfare. Our vulnerable hero loses his accordion, and then his sight. But his keenness to continue the battle keeps him at the front and deployed to listen out for enemy planes at the giant metal pipes that form a kind of early-warning system. Talk about using the difficulty!

Capturing the evocative poignance of Wilfrid Owen’s poetry, especially his keen ear for sound and his instinct for the modulating of rhythm, this small gem certainly conveys the “pity of war”. Its faded images transport us back to the greatest tragedy of the early 20th century: life would never be the same again. But there’s also a stylised, abstract quality to the grainy sepia-tinted footage. The camera follows the febrile action with an atmospheric, jerky quality, so reminiscent of the age. Cutting away frequently from the action slightly spoils the narrative flow of this delicate fragment of yesteryear, re-ignited by contemporary relevance. MT

NOW ON MUBI

The Carer (2016) *** Vimeo on demand

Dir.: Janos Edelenyi; Cast: Brian Cox, Anna Chancellor, Emilia Fox, Coco König | UK 2016, 88 min.

Veteran Hungarian director/co-writer Janos Edelenyi (Prima Primavera), who has mainly worked for Hungarian Television, misses the beat in this rather simplistic comedy – despite Brian Cox as the main character.

He is Sir Michael, a Shakespearian actor in the final stages of Parkinsons, living on his opulent estate in Kent where he rails against “the dying of the light”. His daughter Sophia (Fox) and ex-flame Milly (Chancellor) try to be kind and sympathetic, but he has no time for either of them, or any of his carers, who have left after falling out this him.

Then a young Hungarian women called Dorottya arrives (König). She is trying to make it on the British stage, but eventually wins Sir Michael over, even discussing his incontinence openly. His rather scheming daughter Sophia feels threatened by the newcomer and dismisses her. Declaiming King Lear in anger, Sir Michael suffers a heart attack, but that brings Dorottya back on the scene: taking him to an award ceremony in his honour, and thwarting Sophia’s plans for a million pound donation.

The end credits contain photos and extensive information about happy-endings for all concerned. What could have been an enjoyable romp is, at best, a show-case for Cox and at worse a cliché-ridden, rather soulless and confused primitive farce. DoP Tibor Mathe’s visuals aim to convey an emotional story: but that would require a texture he doesn’t bring to the aesthetic. Using digital cameras to convey emotion has been successfully tried with the use of vintage lenses or post-productions means. Neither were applied in this case, and the result is a smooth, undefined and damp image. The overall result brings nothing to the care-giving merry go round, a theme that has endless potential yet to be mined. AS

OUT ON VIMEO ON DEMAND

Ema (2019) ** Curzon World

Cast: Mariana Di Girolamo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Paola Giannini, Santiago Cabrera, Cristian Suarez, Catalina Saavedra

Director: Pablo Larrain | Drama Chile 102’

Music is the only star of Pablo Larrain’s story of parental irresponsibility that unfolds amidst the cool vibes of seaside Valparaiso. This South American idyll is also home to the pumping sounds of the reggaetón dance world that is only authentic element of this glib story. 

Back in the present after his lush 1960s drama Jackie, Larrain casts newcomer Mariana Di Girolamo and a reliable Gael Garcia Bernal as a couple who clash due to their immaturity and lack of life experience when juggling their artistic collaboration with a desire to have a child.

Taking on such an emotive theme exposes Larrain’s ineptitude in handling the delicate subject matter, and questions whether he has personally been affected by the issues involved – clearly not, otherwise he would have have given it more thoughtful treatment.  And although he brings his edgy cinematic talents to the party, the experiment fails. Ema is a drama that is neither engaging nor convincingly performed, even Gael Garcia Bernal cannot inject any depth to his character, apart from his incendiary outburst at Ema and her dancing troupe.

After a dynamic opening sequence featuring a massive fire at a traffic lights junctions, the film scatterguns into a series of stilted episodes as Larrain attempts to establish the storyline using the rhythm of his pulsating score as the driving factor. It’s a clever idea that fails in a drama that never gains a satisfying momentum.

Ema (Di Girolamo) is a bleached blond dancer in her early twenties who has recently adopted a 7 year old orphan from Columbia, named Polo (Cristian Suarez), because her choreographer husband Gaston (Bernal) has been declared infertile. Coming from a troubled start in life Polo soon becomes too much of a handful for his naive parents and sets their home on fire, leaving Ema’s sister with facial injuries.

So back Polo goes into the system, Ema and Gaston bemoaning their loss as if the boy was a psychopathic pet rabbit, with Ema blithely declaring she’ll ‘pick another one’, laying the blame squarely at Gaston’s feet. Gaston is the less irritating of the two but even his star-power fails to makes this rewarding or meaningful, remaining cold and distant throughout. And the visually arresting dance sequences and pumping vibes just feel incongruous, somehow reducing this to a trivial soap opera, rather than offering tonal relief from the couple’s fraught situation. A simpering social worker (Catalina Saavedra) who had pulled strings to get the couple a child, just adds to the woeful mistreatment. Is this an inditement on Chilean youth, a lowkey expose on the perils of adoption, or a novel way of raising awareness of reggaeton, either way, it does feel mildly offensive. Larrain’s co-writer Guillermo Calderon did some brilliant work on The Club and Neruda so hopefully this is just a bum note for this duo. MT

NOW ON DIGITAL RELEASE | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL Review 2019 

Becky Sharp (1935) Blu-ray release

Dir Rouben Mamoulian | Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Frances Dee, Cedric Hardwicke, Billie Burke | US Drama 84’

The first feature film shot entirely in the newly perfected Technicolor process, Becky Sharp – which had cost an estimated $950,000 – was dismissed at the time by Otis Ferguson as “As pleasing to the eye as a fresh fruit sundae, but not much more”. Unlike The Jazz Singer – which had blazed an equivalent technological trail eight years earlier – Becky Sharp was not a box office hit, and colour was to take another thirty years to become the cinema’s default setting the way sound did; more associated with historical rather than contemporary subjects.

Becky Sharp was in fact the third film version to be made of Thackeray’s sprawling 1847-48 novel (which had originally appeared in serial form) set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. This version was based upon the hit 1899 Broadway dramatisation by Langdon Mitchell, and as meticulously designed by acclaimed theatre designer Robert Edmond Jones. The rigours of early Technicolor filmmaking resulted in an extremely stagy and studio-bound experience which whizzes in just 84 minutes through an originally very long and convoluted narrative under the punishingly hot lights that made early Technicolor films such a trial to act in. (Mira Nair’s 2004 remake with Reece Witherspoon, by comparison, clocks in at 141 minutes!)

The men at whom Miss Sharp sets her cap are all inclined to be pompous middle-aged caricatures (with the honourable exception of Alan Mowbray as Rawdon Crawley), since she is after financial security rather than romance. Opinion continues to remain divided over Miriam Hopkins in the title role, whose stature as an actress has dimmed considerably since she received an Oscar nomination for this film; but she does bring sparkling blue eyes to the part, seldom apparent in her other movies. Although the most eye-catching moments involve red British army uniforms, much of the rest of the film actually employs blue (a hue hitherto absent from the Technicolor palette) to attractive effect. The credits, for example, are in blue, and the first shot of the film itself is of a blue stage curtain being pushed aside.

For over forty years the film languished in the public domain in a cheap 67 minute 16mm Cinecolor travesty until finally restored in 1984. It subsequently received only one British TV screening ten years later; but now be enjoyed on BluRay as the “triumph for colour” Graham Greene declared it on its first appearance. Richard Chatten

BECKY SHARP (1935) NOW AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

Kwaidan (1964) **** Blu-ray release

Dir.: Massaki Kobayashi; Cast: Michiyo Aratama, Misako Watanabe, Renaro Mikuni, Tatsuya Nakadai, Keiko Kishi, Katsuo Nakamura, Tetsuo Tanba, Takashi Shimura, Hanuko Sugimura, Osamu Takizawa, Ganjiro Nakamura, Noburo Nakaya; Japan 1964, 183 min.

Japanese director Massaki Kobayashi (1916-1996), best known for his Human Condition trilogy, adapted writer Yoko Mizuki’s script based on four short stories by Lafkadio Hearn, into a sumptuous, eerie and beguiling horror feature, with the images of DoP Yoshio Miyajima of carrying the sometimes rather slim narrative. To use the term horror is perhaps a little misleading since the storyline often focuses on supernatural forces invading the human sphere and re-creating a balance, which was disturbed by the protagonists. The quartet are more or less fairy-stories, all told with a didactic undertone. 

In The Black Hair (Kurokami), a poor Samurai (Mikuni) leaves his loving wife (Aratama) because he can not stand the poverty any more. He marries the daughter of a wealthy family (Watanabe), but soon tires of her, telling the lday-in-waiting he had only married for her inheritance, sending her back to the family in shame. After years of wandering around, the Samurai returns to his first wife’s house, finding it in disrepair. She surprisingly takes him back and, before falling asleep, the re-united couple make plans for a happy future. When the warrior wakes up next morning he discovers, he has slept next to her rotting corpse and tries to run away in horror, but the titular hair of his wife keeps him back.

The Snow Maiden  (Yukionna) is the tale of two woodcutters who seek refuge from the cold in a fisherman’s hut. One of them, Mosaku is killed by a Yuki-Onna (Keiko Kishi), a ghost-like creature. When it is Minokishi’s (Tatsuya Nakadai) turn, the spirit spares him because he is so handsome. But she tells him never to share her secret. Minokoshi returns home, and obeys her. One day she meets a beautiful woman, called Yuki, another incarnation of the Yuki-Onna. When she stitches a kimono at night, he sees the resemblance and tells her. Yuki forgives him for breaking his word because of their two children, but leaves him behind, heartbroken.

In Hoichi the Earless (Miminashi Hoichi no Hanashi), a blind musician/monk, Hoichi (Nakamura) is an accomplished biwa player. He is singing about the battle between two clans at the height of the Genpei War. One night a Samurai (Taba) visits him in the garden, asking him to play for his master, the Warlord. The High Priest of the monastery (Shimura) finds out about Hoichi’s nightly adventures, and tells him he is in great danger. The monks paint the text of the war ballad all over Hoichi’s body, but forget the ears. This has dire consequences for Hoichi, but there is still a happy-end waiting for him.

The last episode, In a Cup of Tea  (Chawan no naka) is rather tame in comparison with the previous trio. A writer (Takizawa), who is also the narrator, hears the story about the attendant Sekinai, who sees the face of un unknown man in a cup of water. Even though he refills the cup many times, the face will not go away. Later on, the person’s face comes alive, calling himself Shikibu (Nakaya). He brings two friends with him, the trio trying to kill Sekinai. The writer leaves the end of the story open, leaving the solution to the imagination of the readers.

Kwaidan went on to win the Special Jury Price at the Cannes Festival in 1964. Today it is mainly considered a masterpiece due to Miyajima’s masterly photography. The whole set was located in a huge aircraft hangar, with the hand-painted sets reflecting the changing seasons and settings. Kwaidan needs to be watched, not seen or interpreted. It has all the qualities of a Grimm fairy-tales, coupled with a specific Japanese form of angst and fatalism. AS

NOW ON BLURAY COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA | 27 APRIL 2020

Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer (2013) *** Streaming with Q&A

Dir: Mike Lerner/Maxim Pozdorovkin | Cast: Mariya Alyokhina, Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin, Ekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. | 90min  Documentary, Russian

Three young women face seven years in a Russian prison after an explosive performance at Moscow Cathedral in 2012

Along with Andrei Gryazev’s Tomorrow, Pussy Riot furthers the dialogue on freedom of speech and the individual in the Russian Federation with this stirring and well-crafted documentary.  Even if you don’t like the band’s particular brand of music: a blend of early British Punk Rock with jazzed-up ecclesiastical overtones, you have to give the Pussy Rioters top marks for raising awareness of the country’s current social and cultural climate.

Opening with an apposite Bertholt Brecht quote, this snapshot of modern Moscow kicks off with one of the trio, Nadya Kolonikova, airing her feelings in a pleasant and gentle way about the cause she fervently espouses, stating candidly that her hatred of Putin stems from his overzealous nationalism on the World stage. Meanwhile on the Church stage in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ, the band sport brightly coloured ‘fluor’ balaclavas. They look like jokey bank-robbers but their only crime is violating the Church’s dress code, genuflecting with guitars and offending local worshippers with their insulting riff, along the lines of “Occupy Red Square”; and “Rid Us Of Putin”.  This leads to forcible arrest.

The film has an experimental feel: A handheld camera yields dizzying footage of the streets of Moscow intercut with timelapse sequences of the skyline at night, contrasting with the drab interiors of the court room and the detention centre where the girls are taken on their arrest in February 2012.  The tone of the piece is calm and inquiring rather than dramatic or subversive and interviews with the girls and their families are measured and informative without a hint of bitterness or anger.  Nadia speaks softly and convincingly of her plight and love for her father.  He decided to support her musical talent and gives insight into her rebellious streak, hinting at his divorce from her mother as possible grounds for her need to seek recognition in this way: it’s a portrait of a loving and affectionate dad.

To Western eyes there’s nothing scandalous about these girls in hooded balaclavas rampaging around with guitars, albeit in a Church. It all rather feels like a storm in a teacup. What is serious though is the image that emerges of modern Russia as an old-fashioned society full of traditional and draconian figures and a repressive legal system that forces petty criminals to give their evidence from within metal cages in the city court rooms, while outside frenzied protesters chant slogans for freedom amid the whirring of cameras from the Press pack . For his part, in dour interview mode, Putin claims he has a duty to protect the views of the orthodox mainstream. As a result, two of the girls are sentenced to serve seven years in a penal colony.

In a flash of glamour, Madonna wades in to Moscow to lend her support or maybe just to garner publicity for yet another physical transformation: it’s difficult not to be cynical but it feels as if the Russian Federal Republic, from a human rights perspective at least, is still hiding behind a rather dishevelled ‘Iron Curtain’ of sorts, despite its pretensions as a 21st century World power. MT

Watch Pussy Riot – A Punk Player on BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, Youtube, iTunes, or Google Play.

Then watch the DocHouse Q&A with co-director Mike Lerner here.

PUSSY RIOT: A PUNK PRAYER TOOK THE SPECIAL JURY PRIZE AT SUNDANCE 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sense of an Ending (2017) ****

Dir.: Ritesh Batra | Script: Nick Payne | Cast: Jim Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walker, Michelle Dockery, Freya Mavor, Billy Howle, Emily Mortimer, Joe Alvyn, Matthew Goode UK | Drama | 108 min.

The past is how we choose to remember it. Sometimes significant events are forgotten or edited out. This is the premise of Julian Barnes’ 2011 Booker Prize winning novella that explores the psyche of a quintessential Englishman and his selective memories of youth.

Thoughtfully adapted for the screen by Nick Payne, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING is a dispassionate film in many ways, not least because the characters are so repellent, thornily portrayed by the subtle support trio of Rampling, Walter and Dockery with a nuanced Jim Broadbent as Tony Webster, the main focus in this amusing drama from Indian director Ritesh Batra who is so clever at making this feel so classically and insightfully British. The story is certainly gripping and keeps us invested in Barnes’ intricate storytelling but the flashbacks, so vital to informing the plot, are actually key to understanding the main character’s motivations and there is a strand of sardonic humour that makes this another brilliant observation of emotional suppression that often follows a false start in youth. The 1960s scenes are teasingly repressive and so representative of how damaging an unsatisfactory first relationship can be, particularly for sensitive souls such as young Tony.

The story revolves around Tony Webster, divorced and busily keeping life at bay as the proprietor of a small speciality camera shop in leafy North London. This unfruitful foray into passionate love during his college years has sent him scurrying for cover, and after coasting through his marriage to QC Margaret (a brilliant Walter), which produced a (now pregnant) lesbian daughter Susie (Dockery), he has managed to avoid emotional entanglements of any kind. And although he enjoys Margaret’s caustic company over dinner he still doesn’t get why their marriage is over.

But the past returns to bite Tony when he is left a strange bequest in a will, encouraging him to track down his enigmatic first love Veronica Ford who is still as evasive as ever in responding to his requests. Their eventual meeting drudges up an unfortunate episode that Tony had chosen to forget and reveals how the Young Tony (Howle) fell for the ambivalent Veronica (Mavor) during an awkward weekend at her family home in rural England, where he is entranced by Veronica’s mother Sarah (played by a winsomely suggestive Emily Mortimer).

Tony discovers subsequently that Veronica has taken up with his maverick friend Adrian (Alvyn), who fancies himself as a cool Camus-quoiting intellectual (later committing suicide). Disillusioned by love and bewildered by his feelings for Veronica, Tony is forced to confront a past that offers the key to his future.

According to Margaret and Susie, Tony has become an emotional avoidant dinosaur, a ‘curmudgeon’ who regards the modern world with disappointment and disdain. Having successfully cleansed his memory of any wrongdoing regarding Veronica – and subsequently Margaret – his self-glorification shows him up to be exactly the same person he was as a young man: an arrogant but misunderstood bystander, proud to have chosen a life in his shell.

Suicide, sexual repression and unrequited love are themes of incendiary dramatic potential, and this film, with its thoughtful musical choices, trades passion for emotional restraint and typical English poignance. Clearly, Tony has lost contact with his feelings and shut the door on romance without even realising the effect this has had on his wife and family. But his emotional day of reckoning will strangely be the making of him. MT

ON BBC IPLAYER

 

Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2017)

Dir: Sara Driver | Doc | US | 78′

Sara Driver’s first documentary Boom for Real is a lively loose-limbed look at the high octane force of nature that was Jean-Michel Basquiat – arguably one of America’s most mercurial and influential artists of late 20th century, whose work is now more valuable than ever, a painting selling for USD 81 million in Christie’s New York in May 2021.

Under a pseudonym SAMO (which was originally the duo of Basquiat and Al Diaz) Basquiat was barely out of his teens when he sprang to fame in the Lower East Side art scene by means of sharply sardonic graffiti epigrams that were posted on school walls – US Bansky-style, announcing his critical talent to amuse, for want of a gallery to sponsor him. And it’s through Basquiat’s prodigious teen and twenty-something output that Sara Driver chronicles the early days of hip hop, punk and street art, brought to life with sparky commentary from his friends and collaborators. With its choppy editing style and blitzy soundtrack, Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat  sketches out a life pulsating with vim and vitality that soared like a meteor but would eventually crash and burn in New York’s Neon nightclubs and graffitied backwaters.

Chipping in with wit and repartee there is Jim Jarmusch, Fab 5 Freddy, and Patricia Field who offer intimate access to Basquiat’s electric personality and creative energy and the effect it had on the contemporary art scene. This impressionistic documentary catapults us right into the era, picturing the pivotal sociocultural switch from the 70s to the 80s. Driver invigorates her film with a plethora of paintings, posters, audio recordings, original film and archive footage.

Intriguing and entertaining, Driver’s film captures the free-wheeling, chaotic intensity of a time in history where she was also a protagonist working as a director in her own right, and an actor featuring in Jarmusch’s Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise. Despite its rather scattergun approach, actually working to its advantage, Boom for Real is chockfull of insight and pithy commentary, conjuring up the sporadic nature of this drug-fuelled creative geyser.

Serving as the perfect companion piece to Celine Danhier’s Blank City (2010) Sara Driver’s doc further fleshes out that Neo-expressionist era, with a highly personalised and first hand testament to a time of gritty uncertainty – danger even – when the New York’s power structures and politics where artistically critiqued by the clever creative genius of this legendary wild child. MT

NOW ON AMAZON PRIME

Talking About Trees (2019) **** Digital release

Dir|Writer|DoP: Suhaib Gasmelbari

Director Suhaib Gasmelbari scripts and photographs this sorrowful love letter to the demise of Sudanese cinema that explores the efforts of a group of retired directors hoping to revive their country’s love of film.

Talking About Trees is also about the impactful and collective experience of watching films in the cinema, sharing the buzz of humour or sadness, and the cultural exchanges that come through the medium of sight and sound on the silver screen.

The Sudanese Film Club consists of a group of directors: Ibrahim Shadad, Manar Al Hilo, Suleiman Mohamed Ibrahim and Altayeb Mahdi, who have been forced into retirement against their own volition. Efforts to reopen a cinema in their city of Omdourman, near of Khartoum, have been unsuccessful to date. The country’s dominating Islamist regime and its restrictions has put paid to any enjoyment film-wise taking place in the public domain.

These filmmakers were trained outside the country and they share clips of their impressive oeuvres throughout the documentary. Clearly influenced by French New Wave and Soviet montage, their visual language is muted and reflective of political regimes that conflict with the current status quo in Sudan. After a military coup in 1989, the government fell under the control of Islamic fundamentalists, and Sharia law has prevailed since the early 1990s.  Khartoum still has a few theatres showing mainstream fare, but indie features are banned.

Shadad and his friends host free screenings in their town squares, and these are massively popular and stimulate interest with young and old alike. But red tape soon strangles their efforts, even before the finances run out. The country’s culture becomes moribund before our eyes: it’s akin to seeing someone losing their life right in front of you as you look on powerless to intervene.  “We are smarter, but they are stronger,” is the comment one of them makes. But they persevere, upbeat and full of hope tinged with remorse. A tragic and deeply moving experience. Let’s hope Martin Scorsese comes to the rescue, as he has done before. The film ends with a salient takeaway that says it all. “Seeing a movie with friends is better than watching one alone at home.” MT

ON RELEASE from 27 APRIL | Curzon HOME CINEMA

 

 

White God (2014) | Bfi Player

Dir/Wri: Kornél Mundruczó | Cast: Zsofia Psotta, Sandor Zsoter, Lili Horvath, Szabolcs Thuroczy, Lili Momori, Gergely Banki, Karoly Ascher | 119min  Drama/Thriller  Hungary

Hungarian director, Kornél Mundruczó’s art house thriller is also a revenge flick with a touch of the “Pied Piper of Hamlin’ about it. Serving as an elusive parable on human supremacy, it scratches the edges of fantasy with some bizarre and brutal elements.

Dogs, or more correctly, mutts are the stars of the story which opens with a little girl cycling through the mysteriously empty streets of Budapest, followed by a pack of barking beasts. With is canine cast of Alsations to Labradors, Rottweilers and even little terriers, WHITE GOD also brings to mind The Incredible Journey with a darkly sinister twist. Is she escaping a virus, or a human enemy?

These dogs are clearly well-trained and credit goes to the Mundruczo for his ambitious undertaking, but then Magyars have a reputation for their horsemanship and this clearly extends to the canine species. It transpires that Lilli (Zsofia Psotta) the girl on the bike, has adopted a large street dog called Hagen. Lilli’s mum is off on a business trip with her new boyfriend, leaving her in the care of her emotionally distant but rather sensitive father who ironically works as an abattoir inspector.

Their relationship is not a close one and Lilli becomes even more distant from him when he insists on her getting rid of her loveable pet. Budapest is a city full of street dogs and the Hungarians appear to be a great deal less keen on animal welfare than most European countries. Hagen is soon picked up by a new owner, an unscrupulous dog fighter, who sets about turning him into a savage warrior-dog, before he escapes and ends up in the Police dog pound, where he stages a mass canine uprising. The transformation is both sad and frightening but there are also poignant moments as Hagen as his ‘mate,’ a sweet Jack Russell, desperately try to evade re-capture by their enemies – human beings. And it is this balance of power that underpins Mundruczó’s unique drama transforming it from an animal adventure to a satire with universal appeal. WHITE DOG is quite literally, a tale of the ‘underdog’ rising up and claiming his rightful place in society: on a more sinister level it could represent the masses over-taking society. A captivating and provocative piece of filmmaking. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER | Dedicated to the late Miklós Jancsó, WHITE GOD won PRIX UN CERTAIN REGARD in Cannes 2014.

They Live By Night (1948) **** Blu-ray release

Dir: Nicholas Ray | Cast: Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell | US, Film Noir 95′

Legendary director Nicholas Ray began his career with this lyrical film noir, the first in a series of existential genre films overflowing with sympathy for America’s outcasts and underdogs. When the wide-eyed fugitive Bowie (Farley Granger), having broken out of prison with some bank robbers, meets the innocent Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), each recognizes something in the other that no one else ever has.

The young lovers dream of a new, decent life together, but as they flee the cops and contend with Bowie’s fellow crims, who aren’t about to let him go straight, they come to realise there’s nowhere left to hide. Ray brought an outsider’s sensibility honed in the theatre to this debut, using revolutionary camera techniques and naturalistic performances to craft a profoundly romantic crime drama that paved the way for decades of lovers-on-the-run thrillers to come.

Available on Amazon from 20 April 2020

The Church (2020) *** Streaming

Dir: Anat Tel | Anat Tel, Naom Amit | Israel, Doc 52′

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is more than a place a worship for many Christians, it is also a spiritual and physical home according to this wry new documentary from Israeli provocateur Anat Tel (Mom, Dad, I’m Muslim).

Concise and pithy, this colourful film is narrated on camera by Samuel Aghoyan, the Superior of the Armenian Church, who takes us through a potted history of his own arrival as a child in the Holy City, and gives a sardonic take on the internecine tiffs that add spice to the daily life of this legendary ecclesiastical HQ sitting proudly in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Today the Church also serves as the main office of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, while control of the place itself is shared among various Christian denominations and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for over 160 years, and some for much longer. The main denominations partaking in the property are the Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodoxy and Armenian Apostolics, and to a lesser degree the Coptic Orthodoxy, Syriac Orthodoxy and Ethiopian Orthodoxy, who have actually been given the bum’s rush, and are now relegating to the roof.

According to traditions, dating back to at least the fourth century, the building houses the two holiest sites in Christianity: the site where Jesus was crucified, at a place known as Calvary or Golgotha, and Jesus’s empty tomb, where he was buried and resurrected. The tomb is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicula. According to the history books, Jerusalem has had a chequered and controversial religious past. But eventually 260 years ago, the English were back in town and set up ‘The Status Quo’, an understanding between religious communities that must be respected across the board.

The upshot of this agreement is that each of the six denominations has a two-hour slot in which to conduct their services, leaving the poor Ethiopians to do their stuff on the roof. The iron key to the site is held by two Muslim families, who argue the toss about who is the real custodian: each day a smiling, besuited Muslim makes it his duty to open the doors, and as soon as he does, the onslaught begins, as worshippers are seen fighting their way towards the entrance. Meanwhile, Jonny, an Arab Christian policeman, is responsible for making sure things go according to plan. Enriched by vibrant camerawork, this is a lively and lyrical look at the latest modus Vivendi in this ancient monument to Christianity. MT

Now streaming on Go2Films

 

 

 

Woman in Chains (1968) | Classic Clouzot on Mubi

French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-1977) is best remembered for his dark thrillers and some of the greatest films of the 1950s.  The Wages of Fear won him the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the Berlinale Golden Bear in 1953, and rounded off the hat trick with a BAFTA two years later.

Even Alfred Hitchcock docked his hat to his French contemporary whose documentary Mystere de Picasso records the legendary artist painting various canvasses for the camera, allowing us to understand his creative purpose at work.  Le Corbeau is now available to watch at home, together with Elizabeth Wiener’s distinctive performance in Woman in Chains  (aka La Prisonniere, Clouzot’s last film and his only one in colour). Quai des Orfevres, completes the trio, of stylish films from the French Master of Suspense now emerging from the shadows to watch online at MUBI. With striking visuals and an unforgettably tense style, Clouzot’s films make classic noir viewing.

Le Corbeau (1942)

A stylish masterpiece of French cinema, Le Corbeau is a dark and subversive study of human nature starring Pierre Fresnay and Ginette Leclerc. In a nod to the Vichy regime of the era (not to mention Nazism), a wave of hysteria sweeps the small provincial town of St. Robin when a series of poison-pen letters signed ‘Le Corbeau’ (The Raven) begin to appear, denouncing several prominent members of society. The slow trickle of unsettling letters soon becomes a flood, and no one is safe from their mysterious accusations. Upon its release in 1943, Le Corbeau was condemned by the political left and right and the church, and Clouzot was banned from filmmaking for two years.

Woman in Chains (1968)

Josée (Elizabeth Wiener) is the wife of an artist whose work is exhibited in Stan Hassler’s modern art gallery. Stan (Laurent Terzieff), impotent and depraved, satisfies himself by photographing women in humiliating poses. Josée is fascinated by the man and soon falls completely in love with him.

Quai des Orfèvres (1947)

A marriage that has fallen on hard times is further tested by the couple’s implication in a murder. Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair) is a music hall chanteuse married to her pianist husband Maurice (Bernard Blier). Keen to get ahead, Jenny leaps at the chance when an ageing wealthy businessman (Charles Dullin) offers her the chance of some gigs. However, when she agrees to a meeting at his home and he is found dead later in the evening – Maurice’s untamed jealousy is in the frame. A Maigret-esque detective, Antoine, played by Louis Jouvet, leaves no stone unturned in his exceedingly private investigations of the down-at-heel showbiz couple’s sad, tempestuous life.

Henri-Georges Clouzot Focus now on MUBI.com

 

 

 

 

Moffie (2019) Digital release

Wri/Dir. Oliver Hermanus. South Africa/UK. 2019. 103 mins.

The last time South African director Oliver Hermanus was in Venice was for his Golden Lion hopeful Endless River. He returned last summer with MOFFIE, a magnetically intense drama that explores the sexual awakening of a young white male soldier conscripted into the army during early 1980s apartheid.

Based on the fictionalised memoir by André-Carl van der Merwe, this sumptuously cinematic film stands in contrast to the depiction of brutal army training in a ruthlessly homophobic Afrikaner platoon tasked with keeping the borders safe from neighbouring Angola, and the moffies – or gay cadets – at bay, homosexuality is considered a crime again God and the Christian nation.

Kai Luke Brummer is the driving force of the drama, convincingly showing how Nick develops from a shy ingenue to a confident and fully- fledged soldier. It traces his emotional arc making use of flashback to explore his incipient leanings towards gayness as a young boy in the local ‘whites only’ swimming club. Hermanus makes use of an evocative classical score lending a poignant undertone to this drama of stark contrasts. The film opens as 18-year-old Nicholas van der Swart is saying goodbye to his family before reporting his journey over inhospitable terrain to the army boot camp. His divorced father hands him a girlie magazine, as a private joke while his mother gives him a last cuddle in the chintzy home she shares with her new Afrikaner husband.

He soon makes a friend of the sympathetic recruit Sachs (Matthew Vey) who shares his views about the draconian training methods – bearing a glancing resemble to those in Full Metal Jacket – intended to prepare the men for a Communist enemy across he border but Nick is also drawn to a dark adonis in the shape of Stassen (Ryan de Villiers), who nuzzles up to him one stormy night during a training exercise when the two recruits are forced to share a sleeping bag. Nick is also forced to contend with the vicious and sweary Sergeant Brand (Hilton Pelser) who makes no bones about disciplining using violence on every occasion.

Hermanus leaves Nick’s sexuality fluid throughout although it is clear he has homosexual feelings for Stassen but needs to keep these under wraps for his own survival. Apartheid is illustrated on several scenes where the recruits verbally abuse a lone black man on a station platform but their own humanity is keenly brought to the surface demonstrating the ambivalent climate of their own masculinity and vulnerability. Music from Detroit artist Sugar Man provides a touchstone to the times – the USmusician was ‘discovered’ in Johannesburg and became the emblem of the young white South African music scene.

Dominated by a cast of talented non-pros obviously recruited for their striking physicality, Moffie makes for absorbing viewing. Jamie D. Ramsey’s lush camerawork captures the spectacular beauty of the Cape where Nick’s final encounter with Stassen in the ice cold waters of the Atlantic reminding us of the ambiguous nature of life and attraction. MT

SCREENING ON CURZON HOME CINEMA

Henri-Georges Cluzot | Mubi

LA PRISONNIЀRE (1968)

Josée (Elizabeth Wiener) is the wife of an artist whose work is exhibited in Stan Hassler’s modern art gallery. Stan (Laurent Terzieff), impotent and depraved, satisfies himself by photographing women in humiliating poses. Josée is fascinated by the man and soon falls completely in love with him.

LE CORBEAU (1942)

A veritable masterpiece of French cinema, LE CORBEAU is a dark and subversive study of human nature starring Pierre Fresnay and Ginette Leclerc. A wave of hysteria sweeps the small provincial town of St. Robin when a series of poison-pen letters signed ‘Le Corbeau’ (The Raven) begin to appear, denouncing several prominent members of society. The slow trickle of sinister letters soon becomes a flood and no one is safe from their mysterious accusations. Upon its release in 1943, Le Corbeau was condemned by the political left and right and the church, and Clouzot was banned from filmmaking for two years.

QUAI DES ORFEVRES (1947)

A marriage that has fallen on hard times is further tested by the couple’s implication in a murder. Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair) is a music hall chanteuse married to her pianist husband Maurice (Bernard Blier). Keen to get ahead, Jenny leaps at the chance when an ageing wealthy businessman (Charles Dullin) offers her the chance of some gigs.

However, when she agrees to a meeting at his home and he is found dead later in the evening – Maurice’s untamed jealousy is in the frame. A Maigret-esque detective, Antoine, played by Louis Jouvet, leaves no stone unturned in his exceedingly private investigations of the down-at-heel showbiz couple’s sad, tempestuous life.

MUBI | 14 April 2020 |  BLURAY, DVD AND DIGITAL | STUDIOCANAL

La Soledad (2016) **** Free online

UnknownDir: Jorge Thielen Armand | Writer: Rodrigo Michelangeli | Docu-Drama | 89′ | Venezuela | Canada

A crumbling old villa in contemporary Caracas is haunted by seething resentment from occupying former retainers providing a fitting metaphor for Venezuela’s current economic crisis. Jorge Thielen Armand’s poetic paean to his grandparents home is a mournful one full of exotic birdsong, plants peeping through cracks in the walls and old photo albums covered in the dust. Cine footage shows the filmmaker playing in the gardens of La Soledad back in the 1960s, now only memories remain as ghosts of the past. A plan to restore the villa has been abandoned leaving handyman Jose and his 72-year-old mother Rosina (a former housekeeper), wife and daughter homeless as the economic situation worsens each day. Jose combs the streets for his mother’s medication and even food is hard to come as the empty shop shelves testify.

Amand avoids bombastic statements about his country’s woes preferring this softly softly approach. The cinema verite drama remains tethered to the local neighbourhood making no attempt to broaden its view of Venezuela’s political woes beyond the concerns of the poorest people here in Caracas. And although Amand is respectful and sympathetic towards the current occupants, it soon emerges that only Rosina has a right to live in the property. Her family – as she points out herself- should really only be there on a temporary basis. But Jose’s only hope of work is re-building the villa whose history dates back to a time when valuable coins were purportedly buried in parts of the building. He taps the peeling walls and hires a metal detector in the hope of making a quick buck. Some of his friends are considering kidnapping as a way to raise funds; others are leaving to look for work in Colombia and Ecuador, including his wife. But like a Venezuelan Mr Micawber, Jose has no desire to move on preferring to stay put in the hope that his boss and co-worker Jorge will offer him a future. But even bosses have to move on when crisis is the order of the day. MT

FREE ONLINE | THIS WEEKEND ONLY

 

 

Storm Boy (2019) ***

Dir: Shawn Seet |Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Trevor Jamieson, David Galpilil, Finn Little, Jai Courtney, Eric Thomson | Drama Aus 95′

Geoffrey Rush and Trevor Jamieson are the stars of this tender-hearted tale of animal magic between a boy and his pet pelican. Trevor Jamieson plays kindly beachcomber Fingerbone Bill who joins forces with a kindred nature boy Mike (Finn Little) who lives with his reclusive widower father (Jai Courtney), known locally as “Hideaway Tom.”

Based on Colin Thiele’s popular children’s novel that originally found its way on to the screen in 1976 courtesy of Henri Safran’s able direction, this less vaunted version turns into a damp squib rather than an uplifting message of hope, due to Seet’s messy direction.

The wild and windswept beaches of Australia’s Coorong National Park lend luminosity to the bittersweet boyhood saga that sees retired property developer Michael Kingley (Rush) as the grown-up version of the book’s child character, recounting his version of events to his schoolgirl granddaughter Maddy (Morgan Davies) who lives in a modernist beach villa, adding property porn allure and making it all the more easy on the eye.

But storm clouds loom over this seaside idyll in the shape of a proposal from Kingley’s old property firm to lease land on the untrammelled eco-lagoon to a mining company. Kingley is against the deal, his son-in-law Malcolm (Eric Thomson) all for it, as the new MD. But that’s not all. Nasty poachers are threatening to shoot down Mr Percival the Pelican, adding to the family’s saucerful of sorrows.

Little Mike has formed a close bond with Mr Percival having raised the sea bird and its fellow chicks when its mother was killed by the very same poachers. Gradually they have become inseparable, as is the case with many lonely or isolated kids, Mike describing Mr P as “the best friend I ever had” the bird nestling affectionately into his arms. But as you can imagine, it doesn’t end well, although the ecological upshot takes the sting out of this crowd-pleaser which also welcomes back the original Fingerbone Bill in a great cameo from David Gulpilil. MT

ON DIGITAL RELEASE FROM 6 APRIL 2020

 

 

Calm with Horses (2019) ****

Dir: Nick Rowland | Wri: Joe Murtagh | Cast: Cosmo Jarvis, Barry Keoghan, Niamh Algar, Ned Dennehy, David Wilmot, Kiljan Moroney 

This ultra violent Irish crime thriller is a tale of love lost and vehement revenge that starts well but shoots itself in the foot slightly with a smaltzy ending. The wafer thin plot is a lowkey version of Mean Streets bulked out by shed-loads of atmosphere and a seething central performance by Cosmo Jarvis as an addled ex-boxer stuck between raising his son and serving as a mob enforcer for the dreaded Devers family. The drug-dealing Devers are a fearful bunch of thugs and interpersonal skills are parlous.

Calm with Horses is Nick Rowland’s feature debut adapted by Joe Murtagh from a selection of stories by Irish author Colin Barrett. The terrific Irish cast are what makes this so compelling: all seasoned pros you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night, or even a sunny day, for that matter. Douglas Armstrong (Jarvis) is a dim-witted explosive henchman for drug-runner Dymphna (a nose-picking Keoghan) and his family, headed by the monstrous Paudi (veteran Ned Dennehy), for whom loyalty is the watchword. ‘Arm’ also has an autistic son from his ex Ursula (Niamh Algar) who wants him to help finance the boy’s education. They’re a heavy-drinking, snooker-playing mob who speed around this remote rural backwater of Ireland. It’s the sort of  downtrodden place where an abandoned settee is left rotting in the High Street.

The title refers to a nearby horse-training farm where Ursula’s boyfriend Rob (Welsh) is teaching the boy to ride, but Calm With Horses works best in the scenes involving the Devers family and their sculduggery. Efforts to make this into a love story revolving around Arm and Ursula fall flat, that’s for another film, and thus the final misjudged scene takes the sting out the thriller’s tail. Rowland sets up a superb showcase showdown in a country house deep in the wilds, but then spoils it all by turning it into a sob story. But for those who like a happy ending of sorts this is an impressive start to a promising career. MT

UK & Irish Digital release available on a broad range of VOD platforms including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Sky Store, Virgin Movies, Talk Talk, BT TV, Curzon Home Cinema, BFI Player, Rakuten TV and Volta  from 27th April 2020.

2020

 

Le Mans 66 (2019) ***** Home Ent

Dir: James Mangold | Cast: Christian Bale, Matt Damon, Caitriona Balfe, Jon Bernthal, Josh Lucas, Noah Jupe, Tracy Letts. | US Drama 152′

A dynamite duo of Christian Bale and Matt Damon powers this petrolhead portrait of the feud between Ford Motor Company and Ferrari at Le Mans in 1966. They play racing legends Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby in James Mangold’s finely crafted high octane vehicle. 

Back in the 1960s motor racing was still a raw and dangerous game. But James Mangold makes it into a meaningful drama for all the family, exploring the real lives and loves behind the dynamic days of Formula One.

In those days Ferrari dominated the circuit, combining speed with stylish design. But as the film opens Ferrari is experiencing financial problems and Henry Ford II and his lieutenant Lee Iacocca – famous for the Mustang – see a gap in the market to make a racing car that could compete with the Italians – and win.

Straighforwardly told by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller, this is a well-paced and suspenceful piece of kit that revs up from the start with some magnificent widescreen camerawork, a cast of likeable and dastardly characters adding sparky dynamics to the action drama’s historic underpinnings. From the riveting race scenes to the poignant personal stories this is enjoyable and intensely moving.

James Mangold adds steely humour in constrasting the rival’s corporate culture. Boring old Ford’s budget for lavatory paper alone exceeds stylish Ferrari’s spend on show cars. And it’s the attention to detail and personal touch that wins through for the charismatic Enzo Ferrari who presides over his empire like a feudal Medici. And these scenes are a breath of fresh air when compared to the posturing ego of Tracy Letts’ flaccid Ford and his simpering sidekick Leo Beebe (a suitably mincing Josh Lucas).

Ford is bored with his beige output and desperate to make his name with something more interesting that can compete on the racetrack. He puts his money on the table and sets his minions to finding a winning solution. But at the heart of the film is a more thoughtful story: the strong working friendship between former Le Mans winner turned designer Shelby and maverick mechanic Ken Miles. The winning focus for Shelby is to create a hot car for Ford, and get Miles – who has already rubbed up against Beebe – behind the wheel.

Bale brings a breath of fresh air in the shape of lone wolf mechanic Miles who is an awkward and unpredictable perfectionist tempered by his appealing wife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe) and intelligent son Peter (Noah Jupe). The share a mutual respect for one another but aren’t afraid to air their differences, ending up at one point in a punch-up. and this all adds grist to the film’s feisty dramatics.

The nerve-shedding third act takes us through the gruelling 1966 24-hour French marathon that sees the drivers pit their wits against the harsh conditions in a competition that never fails to impress with its viciousness and verve. But Shelby and Miles are past masters in an endeavour that doesn’t always end well. The crucial element here is the Ford car’s breaks which have been subject to failure. Bale and Damon’s energetic chemistry provides for a thrilling watch with a fair share of tear-pricking tenderness and angry set-to’s. The male centric cast showcases an era when men were men and women watched on, encouragingly. What shines through here is their courage to achieve or to fade into the background. MT

ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD 9 MARCH | ON 4 K ULTRA HD, BLU-RAY, DVD and VOD 23 MARCH 2020

The Ponds (2018) Netflix

Dirs: Patrick McLennan, Samuel Smith | UK Doc | 76′

“If you can face the water at 5 degrees, you can face anything”  

Hampstead is still reeling from the unauthentic romcom that took its name in 2017. So hurrah for this  documentary that reflects the real Hampstead, London’s hilly heartland and home to 320 hectares of woods and pastures. Hampstead Heath also has several fresh water ponds where all year round visitors can wallow and frolic or simply just swim.

The Ponds is Patrick McLennan’s debut as co-director/producer along with Samuel Smith, and he also wrote the script. Drone footage captures the changing seasons chronologically, beginning with early Spring. We meet regulars Dan, David and Jim who extol the virtues – and rigours – of this open air communal bathing experience. There are even some local swimmers in their 80s who consider it a must for their health and social life – even though at times the water is a spine-tingling 2 or 3 degrees. But the endorphin rush is addictive and life-affirming.

From the 1880s these ponds were regulated for the local community. Tom is part of a hard core of 60 or so bathers who take a dip at least once or twice a week in the chilly brackish waters. He considers it his place of ‘religious’ worship. From the 1920s local women got their own segregated pond which is regarded by the female regulars as a spiritual place to reunite against life’s hardships, and maintain confidence in their bodies – even though they may not even know each other names. And although the men’s ponds see more nude swimmers, some female interviewees gives us a flash of their assets, just to be going on with.

Tom forms the connective tissue of the film with his eventful life story. He sees his swim as a chance to disassociate from the “silliness of life”. This was particularly important when he was nearly killed in a road accident in Oxford Circus. Another regular Carrie, has battled cancer and found the Ponds invaluable for keeping her hope alive. And she doesn’t get so many colds!

Oliver completely fell in love with the Heath and its ponds and when his romance finished. He felt bereft moving back to Camberwell. He now returns to the Heath every day. Another keen bather suffers from degenerative blindness and describes how his daily fresh water exercise is a life-saver.

Whilst the older swimmers talk of the spirituality, social and health benefits of pond swimming, the young express their joy of escaping the city to enjoy the open air with their friends in the heat of the summer. It’s a melting pot for rich and poor, old and young, gay and bisexual, families and singles. David now prefers the open-air freshness to his local gym experience and he’s incorporated his workout into his swimming time. In his youth he even used to wear a weighted vest to improve his strength and endurance.

Made on a shoestring budget, and none the worse for it, The Ponds is a graceful and cinematic documentary that shows how the trend for fresh water swimming can provide a bonding experience, enriching and supporting the local community. The film ends on a high note at the end of the season – with a competitive swim for Christmas. Keeping up with the zeitgeist, some locals air mixed feelings about trans-gender bathing, but a more burning issues is why the women’s pond has no diving board. “We want to bounce ourself in”, said one feisty female. I’ll second that. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

Rio Grande (1950) ** Bluray

Dir.: John Ford; Cast: John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Claude Jarman jr., Ben Johnson; USA 1950, 105 min.

John Ford’s Rio Grande is the final part of the “cavalry” trilogy that started with Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and continues in the same vein: the Indians are dastardly, real men – when on the right side – are above the law, and women get to see what’s good for them, even if it takes them a long time.

Colonel Kirby Yorke (Wayne) is fighting the Indians at the titular river, but the cowards always decamp into Mexico when things get rough. And the high command allows him not to go in hot pursuit, since Mexico is a foreign country. Enter Jefferson Yorke, a son Kirby hasn’t seen for fifteen years. Jeff’ has just flunked West Point, but still wants to be a good soldier under Dad’s command. Hot on his heels comes mother Kathleen (O’Hara) – who has also has not seen Kirby since the latter burned down her family mansion during the Civil War. Kathleen wants to buy her son out of the army, but Jeff is hellbent on following Dad, and earning his spurs. Up comes trooper Tyree (Johnson), who is on the run for manslaughter, but is given a helping hand by the Colonel and his mates. Eventually, the Colonel finds a way to track the Indians down – even if it means breaking the law. But hell, if a certain Lt. General Sheridan is your best friend, you can take a chance or two.

Rio Grande now seems so dated, not only in look but also in theme. And there are many little ‘Trumps’ at work: misogynists for whom the law means nothing. The Indians are shown as a wild bunch who need to be killed lest they further endanger white women and children. The script by James Kevin McGuiness is as vapid as a plume of pipe-smoke, the downtime between fighting scenes filled with songs by the Sons of the Pioneers. DoP Bert Glennon (Stagecoach) does his best, but General Sheridan didn’t need to worry  (“I wonder what history will say about this”): all is now being revealed in the White House today. AS

NOW ON BLURAY COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA | APRIL 6TH   

  

 

Portrait of a Lady on fire (2019) **** Curzon Home Cinema

Dir: Céline Sciamma | Adèle Haenel, Noemie Merlant | Drama, France 120′
Sciamma is back with a enigmatic and delicate drama that glows like a jewel box in its pristine settings yet feels pure and confident at the same time. Turning her camera from the contemporary (Girlhood and Tomboy) she also shows a talent for classical fare in this latest drama set in a chateau in 18th-century Brittany. Here a member of the Italian upper classes (Valeria Golino) has commissioned a portrait of her daughter Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) so she can marry her off to a wealthy suitor abroad.
Rather than risk a male painter becoming too close to her convent-educated offspring, the mother invites artist Marianne (Noémie Merlant) to be her companion, and she arrives at the seaside location in a boat rowing, almost losing her prepared canvasses during the journey. What develops is a tentative friendship between the women that slowly grows into something more ardent. Intimate glances and long walks lead to candlelit evenings where passion burns over their needlework and literary discussions. Or is Héloïse imagining things?
Isolation is to important as it distances their story from the rest of the world. Sciamma relies on the hush of the sea and some subtle sound design, instead of a formal score. Soon the portrait painting becomes secondary to the girls’ relationship. All this is handled with a lightness of touch and the utmost decorum. And the painting sessions turn from taciturn encounters to warmer and more meaningful tetes a tetes. There are shades of Choderlos de Laclos here and the sensuality is undeniable. A faint eeriness comes into play when Marianne has repeated visions of Héloïse in her white wedding dress – luminous for a while, she then disappears. We’re used to seeing lesbian love affairs in the present day so this hark back to the 18th century is refreshing and entrancing. And their mesmerising on screen chemistry gives the film a life of its own. MT
NOW ON RELEASE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 14-25 MAY 2019 | Winner: Best Screenplay

The Green Fog (2018) **** Now on Vimeo

Dir.: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson; USA 2017,63 min.

Guy Maddin’s’ love letter to San Francisco and Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a montage of clips from features shot in around the Californian coastal city: around one hundred or so – no new material was filmed. Aesthetically, Green Fog settles somewhere in between Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010) and another Maddin/Johnson collaboration, Forbidden Room from 2015. There’s no real narrative to speak of, but Green Fog will appeal to those who like their film history served with a dizzy twist of the insane.

Oblique and opaque, Green Fog shows an overbearing obsession with Hitchcock: morbid and melancholy, we follow Scottie and Judy on a drive through the city, morphing into a hell-raising ride, where love turns to disillusionment. Novak and Stewart are played by various actors: Faye Dunaway, Susan Saint James, Gina Lolabrigida; Anthony Franciosa and Dean Martin. As one actor melds into another, one forgets that they look different in this headlong rush, on foot and in automobiles, as they’re drawn to the Golden Gate Bridge and oblivion.The film’s quotes range from the thrilling (The Lady from Shanghai, 1947) to the downright bizarre (Confessions of an Opium Eater of 1962 and So I married an Axe Murderer of 1993), via obscure gems such as Obayashi’s Take Me Away! 1978, and Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983). The common thread is their Vertigo locations; if not directly then metaphorically. The titular fog, which saturates Judy from the neon street sign, re-appears throughout: under water, most menacingly in a hospital corridor. And there are even in the clips from The Great Fire, – which was started by a film fan no less.

Hitchcock’s obsession with voyeurism is celebrated in many scenes, from surveillance rooms, to men gazing at the screens, unsure of their targets – rather like Rock Hudson, on being quizzed “what are we looking for, Sir?” by a tape operator, to which Rock retorted: “I don’t know, but at this point I’ll take anything”. Karl Malden and Michael Douglas from The Streets of San Francisco are frequently found in their search for more contemporary perpetrators. Green Fog is a ghost story, a collage of landscapes and rooms (echoing Un Chien Andalou) which are haunted by loss and death, their doom underpinned by a Hermannesque score from Jacob Gavchik. Despite of the gravity of it all, Maddin still manages to be playful and impish throughout. AS

NOW AVAILABLE ON VIMEO

 

Beat the Devil (1953) *** Bluray release

Dir.: John Huston; Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Edward Underdown, Peter Lorre, Robert Morley, Ivor Bernhard, Marco Tully; USA 1953, 95 min.

Beat the Devil is based on a novel by James Helwick, written by Claud Cockburn and a 28 year-old Truman Capote.  What would become the first Camp movie, started out as an earnest endeavour about the evils of colonialism. But when the location was switched from France to Italy, with Capote writing the script in daily instalments, putting in a call to his pet raven in Rome, the narrative became secondary. Bogart had put his own money into the project but thought ‘only phoneys’ would like the box-office flop. Meanwhile, Huston told Jennifer Jones she would be remembered much longer for Devil than for her previous role in Song of Bernadette.

Billy and Maria Dannreuther (Bogart/Lollobrigida) and Harry and Gwendolyn Chelm (Jones/Underdown) play two couples down on their luck but pretending otherwise. They team up with four villains, O’Hara (Lorre) Peterson (Morley), Major Ross (Bernhard) and Ravello (Tully) to exploit uranium resources in British East Africa, biding their time in an Italian resort while their decrepit ship is made seaworthy. Then on the voyage to Africa, Major Ross tries to kill Harry, but Billy thwarts him. Once in Africa they are arrested by Arabian soldiers; Billy convincing the troops to send them back to Italian shores, where they are interrogated by Scotland Yard. The crooks are charged – Peterson for the murder of a British Colonial officer, who had discovered his scheme – Harry buys the land containing the uranium and sends a telegram to Gwendolyn, forgiving her for her affair with Billy.

There are some corny jokes, like the Major exclaiming “Mussolini, Hitler – and now Peterson” after the latter appeared to have been killed in a car accident. Overall the chaos of the shooting has a liberating effect in the finale, nobody grasping what was going on. Things are made murkier by the Hays’ Office insistence that no extra-marital sex should be shown on set. The grainy black-and-white images of British DoP Oswald Morris are very evocative, and the self-written dialogues by Morley and Lorre often hilarious. Ironically Beat the Devil looks more modern today than it did at the premiere when neither the public nor the critics saw the funny side of things. AS

BLURAY/DVD RELEASE | 16 MARCH 2020 WITH SIMULTANEOUS RELEASE ON BFI PLAYER, iTUNES and AMAZON

 

 

 

 

Aether (2019) **** Visions du Reel 2019

DIR: Rûken Tekes | Doc, Turkey 82′

Time is up for the past in Hasankeyf. This ancient town in southeastern Turkey, declared a conservation area in 1981, is now at risk of being flooded due to the completion of the controversial Ilisu Dam.

Many have known exile, but to lose an entire homeland forever without trace is an unimaginable tragedy. But that is what will happen to the 20,000 or so inhabitants who will be displaced forever, torn from their roots by the project. In her debut feature, Rûken Tekes uses a lightness of touch to raise the profile of this eco-tragedy, distilling the unique mysterious essence of this ancient city doomed to disappear forever.

With over 12,000 years of rich history behind its location in the valley of the Tigris River, in the Kurdish part of Turkey, Hasankeyf will soon sink beneath an artificial lake, in order to allow for the construction of the hydroelectric dam. Tekes doesn’t try to explain the details of this annihilation but instead creates a space in which the spirit of the place can express itself in its final months. A space that transcends time and reveals the natural cycles of creation, and destruction that lie at the heart of the film.

History transcends mere words and explanations. So her portrait is a dialogue-free sensory one told through a series of exquisite widescreen tableaux vivants accompanied by an ambient , Tekes reflects on the meaning of a past so primordial and unimaginable to our modern eyes we can only watch with awe and wonder as the images unfold the ambient sound of birds and nature enhancing an experience that feels otherworldly yet very much connected to this unique place. This is a remote corner of the earth where centuries of inbreeding has taken its toll on those who have struggled to survive. A death mute woman expresses her tangible disdain for the project in the only way she is able, her lack of words enhancing the emotional pain expressed in her whole body. Another mute man attempts with sign language to convey his feelings about the movement of strategic monuments to another location so that the future can take over. Some resort to playing folkloric music, or even performing ritualistic dances.  Others just sit silently in bars, their facial expressions signalling deep sadness and disappointment for their forthcoming loss. Rather than listing the treasures that will soon be lost, the film transmit a palpable sense of doom as the heavy machinery arrives in silence in preparation for the translocation. But soon whirring engines signal the start of construction. Aether is a delicately drawn, awe-inspiring love letter to loss. MT

VISIONS DU REEL | 5 -14 APRIL 2019

Vitalina Varega (2019) Golden Leopard Winner Locarno

Dir: Pedro Costa | Cast: Vitalina Varela, Ventura, Manuel Tavares Almeida, Marina Alves Domingues, Francisco Brito, Imidio Monteiro | Portugal 124′

Portuguese director won Best Director in Locarno five years ago with Horse Money. He makes his return with Vitalina Varela a dour and enigmatic portrait of grief that has a certain resonance with his previous Golden Lion winner.

Not helped by a fractured narrative the drama drifts around but certainly looks impressive in Leonardo Simoes’ striking Tourneur-esque chiaroscuro cinematography that enriches the mostly nocturnal setting in a Lisbon backwater. The morose foreground activity of its intense and self-assured heroine (played by Vitalina Varela herself) plays out against a reassuring lowkey background hum of voices and music. It soon emerges that Varela originally fetched up in the capital from the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde Islands after her husband had left her many years previously to return to Lisbon, dying shortly after her arrival in Portugal. But the mystery surrounding her current existence is shrouded in more enigma – she very much embodies the Fado tradition – finding it hard to adapt to her reduced circumstances in Lisbon,, and she clearly regrets leaving. But eventually Varela finds meagre solace in another lost character, a lapsed Christian played by Ventura. Varela holds her own as a series of desultory characters occasionally enter the fray in this spectacular Demi-monde. MT

NOW ON RELEASE | WINNER OF THE GOLDEN LEOPARD and Best Actress Award for  Vitalina Varela| LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL

 

 

 

 

 

Sea Without Shore (2015) ****

Dir.: André Semenza, Fernanda Lippi | Cast: Livia Rangel, Fernanda Lippi | Sweden/UK/Brazil 2015, 89 min.

Set in the 19th century on a remote rural island in Sweden, Sea Without A Shore is a choreographed love poem featuring two nameless women whose intense relationship is abruptly terminated.

First premiered at Glasgow Film Festival five years ago the film finally finds its way onto general release. Directors André Semenza and Fernanda Lippi (who worked together on Ashes of God (2003), the latter setting up the Anglo/Brazilian ballet company ‘Zikzira Physical Theatre’, have brought to life this unique combination of ballet, images and words. Defying categorisation, it is absolutely stunning in its gloomy intensity.

The two women, one in a lace dress (Rangel), the other one with long, black hair (Lippi) move gracefully through a spooky fin-de-siècle setting, until forced apart by mythical forces. We see them in a house, resting on a sofa, then writhing around on the floor. They cycle in the woods, float in the water, holding hands – their bodies are on the back of two horses who carry them through the fields and woods, led by the women of the forest. Their dialogue, voiced by Marcela Rosas and Fernanda Lippi quoting from works by Charles Algernon Swinburne, Renée Vivien, and 17th century Lesbian poet Katherine Philips, is a stream-of-consciousness about love and loss. With the narrative slidin backwards and forwards in time, the couple seems caught in a vicious circle from which there is no escape. Their approach to love is all-or-nothing, oscillating between ecstasy and abject loneliness; haunted by their future, even when they are ‘in love’. The landscape, brilliantly photographed in cinema-scope by Marcus Waterloo, is the third character in this two-hander: the two women seem to be always in contact with the ground or the water, echoing their emotional bond. Carrying the weights of the women solemnly, the horses seem integrated in this procession of doomed love. The sound is supervised by multi-award-winning Glenn Freemantle (Gravity).

This is a unique piece yet there are echoes of Gabor Body’s NÁRCISZ ÉS PSYCHÉ. Sea Without A Shore stands alone as a commingle of poetry and ballet, painted with images to create desire and loss in a most absolute form. AS

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

 

Push (2019) ****

Dir.: Fredrik Gerrten; Documentary with Leilani Farha, Saskia Sassen, Roberto Salvino, Michael Müller, Joseph Steglitz; Sweden, Canada, UK 2019, 92 min.

Swedish writer/director Fredrik Gerrten (Bikes vs Cars) explores the urban housing crisis in his latest film which won the audience award at one of Europe’s major documentary festivals CPH:DOX last year.

It centres on one of the UN’s Housing Reporters Leilani Farha who sets out to investigate and implement one of organisation’s basic Human Rights tenets: to be housed adequately and affordably. What emerges is a fight between David and Goliath. Farha relies on the help of local political figures to stem the tide against a housing market which excludes more and more citizens in urban centres all over the world, making it impossible for them to remain in their chosen environment. 

The global property market is worth a cool £ 176 Trillion – more than twice the worldwide GDP. Farha tries to have a meeting with one of the giants of international properties, the Private Equity firm Blackstone. They were one of the main beneficiaries of the financial crisis of 2008, and spent about £ 7.75 billion buying up properties around the USA. One of these projects was in Harlem, were Farha interviews a tenant who spends 90% (2920 $) of his income on monthly rent. But this being a global economy, Blackstone has reached out as far as Sweden, where it is the biggest private owner of low-income housing. Farha visits an estate in the university city of Uppsala, where Blackstone is “upgrading” – the net result is that tenants will not be able to live in their properties any more. Shades of Michael Moore’s Roger and Me are apparent, when Blackstone cancels the meeting with Farha, wishing her a “productive time in New York.”

It would be wrong to condemn companies like Blackstone for the housing market crisis. Sociologist Saskia Sassen blames the whole of financial sector, “selling something they do not have, having invented brilliant instruments facilitating the move into other sectors”. Economist Joseph Steglitz explains that “companies do not want inexpensive real estate. They want to pay as much as possible to be able to hide more money.” Because offshore money does not always come from the Royal Family and the like, but from profits in the drug and slavery market. Italian author Roberto Saviano (Gomorrah), under police protection and riding in a bullet proof car explains how offshore companies work in laundering money: “You buy things with legal money – restaurants, hotels, houses – then you sell those properties to your companies in a tax heaven. If you want to bring your dirty money back into your country, you simply buy it from yourself at a much higher price than you paid”.

It is not surprising that London is one of most sought after cities for such schemes. The empty houses and office blocks are not loss-making – on the contrary, even without much maintenance their rising value offsets any lack of rental income. One of the 2019 projects on Blackstone’s book is to buy up the properties from what was once Network Rail. Under the railway arches in central London there are 5200 rental units, mainly small businesses and entrepreneurs. 

Local authorities in Barcelona and Berlin try to stem the flood, deciding not to sell any properties.  Farha talked with Michael Müller, mayor of Berlin and a bakery owner in Kreuzberg. Both were adamant they would fight, but the baker had to put up prices to compensate for the rent rise of over 600 Euros a month – and although he knows his customers might comprehend his situation –  but they too have a budget.

Push illuminates some controversial issues in a meaty film enlivened by location shots as it travels round the globe. The conflict between rights and profits is uneven, and Farha might have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights law on her side, as quoted in the International Covenant on economics, Social and Culture Rights of 1966. You can read up on it. AS

https://vimeo.com/324962587 

ON RELEASE FROM 28 FEBRUARY 2020 

     

Hope (2020)

Dir: Maria Sodahl | Drama, Norway/Sweden, 122′

Tragedy proves the turning point for a woman and her long term partner in Maria Sodahl’s raw and resonant semi-autobiographical second feature starring Andrea Bræin Hovig and Stellen Skarsgard. No fireworks here just good, well-crafted storytelling.

Sodahl started her career as a casting director before turning her talents to writing and directing and this stylish film which has a way of making the morbid subject appealing and somehow full of hope, as the title suggests.

The story revolves around Anja (Hovig) who runs a dance company and has just returned from a successful international tour to spend Christmas with her extended family. A meeting with her doctor suggests a need for further investigation which reveals an inoperable brain tumour, possibly connected to the lung cancer she had overcome the previous Christmas. Anja is faced with only months to live. Stellan Skarsgard once again provides solid ballast finding new expressions for his concern, supported by the couple’s various kids and Anja’s likeable father. She gradually works her way through the trauma in a way that is compelling and full of insight, humour and courage. Maria Sodahl drew on her own life experience of the disease which she faced with her husband, Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland (Out Stealing Horses also starring Stellan Skarsgard). The couple’s grief has a transformative affect on their relationship and the ending is surprisingly moving and well thought out. MT

In CINEMAS FROM 10 DECEMBER 2021 | Berlinale Premierr

Servants | Sluzobnici (2020)

Dir.: Ivan Ostrochovsky; Cast: Samuel Skyva, Samuel Olakovic, Vladimir Miculcik, Vladimir Obsil, Vlad Ivanov, Martin Sulik, Vladimir Strnisco; Slovakia/Romania/Czech Republic/Ireland 2020, 78 min.

Slovakian director/co-writer Ivan Ostrochovsky creates a Bresson-like study of resistance set in a religious seminary in 1980 Bratislava (which back then was the capital of the Slovak Socialist Republic in  Czechoslovakia).

Shot in luminous black-and-white by DoP Juraj Chipikin in the old-fashioned 4:3 ratio, The Servants is a tightly-scripted Noirish portrait of temptation and belief.

The 1980s was a tough time for the Catholic Church whose religious freedom came under threat from the draconian cosh of the continuing communist regime. The clergy was divided into the regime-critical “catacomb church” which maintains contact with the Vatican and Western media, and the “ecclesiastical hierarchy” which cooperated with those in power and was represented by the state-sponsored priests’ association Pacem in Terris. (1971-1989).

Two young seminarians, Juraj (Skyva) and Michal (Polakovic) enter the Catholic institution in Bratislava to take the priesthood. Each must decide whether to collaborate with the regime or whether to remain faithful to their idealist views, and submitting to the surveillance of the secret police.

Most of the priests in the seminary are members of the Pacem in Terris group. Unfortunately for the two newcomers, their confessor is even worse: not only has he killed a man in a hit-and-ran accident, he is also an informer for the local Secret Service, led by Frantisek (Sulik), a medic who is in league with the Dean, Tibor (Strnisco).

Coufar (Obsil) meanwhile has been disciplined by the authorities but still organises secret meetings with scholars in his house and reports incidents to Radio Free Europe. Frantisek kills him, making it look like a road accident. But nobody is fooled and Michal joins the resistance group. Juraj is then threatened with being drafted into the army by Frantisek, but withstands the temptation. Michal, who does not know that Juraj has been interrogated, posts a leaflet on the noticeboard asking the seminarians to join a hunger strike in support of Coufar’s murder.

Ostrochovsky and his co-writers are particularly scathing about the collaborators in Pacem in Terris. The Dean and Frantsisek have a relationship founded on mutual collaboration – as Frantisek puts it: “if we fail to find the ringleader of the revolt in the seminary, both our heads will roll”. Coufar is the more cynical of the two: he produces Michal’s Secret Police File and tells him “You need to understand that we are not here to be happy”.

This is an austere but laudable drama enhanced by its stunning visual allure: there are astonishing shots of the inner courtyard of the seminary, showcasing an arena which serves both as a football pitch and a place for collective punishment. The Noirish atmosphere prevails, underlined by the protagonists’ long shadows, the night scenes artfully shot with one single light source. Servants is true to the spirit of Bresson whose hero Francois Leterrier from Un Condamne a Mort s’est Echappe is recreated in the resisters. AS

On Curzon Home Cinema on May 14th. As a virtual cinema screenings at HOME Manchester and ArtHouse, Crouch End as well as IFI@Home in Ireland | BERLINALE premiere in 2020

                                    

       

Paris Calligrammes (2020)

Dir.: Ulrike Ottinger; Documentary; France/Germany 2020, 129 min.

German painter, photographer and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger (Joan of Arc of Mongolia) a “Berlinale Kamera” in 2020 for her oeuvre. The  biographical documentary Paris Calligrammes is a lively inventory of her artistic roots, starting in 1962 when she left her hometown of Konstanz at the age of 21. In Paris she meets other German artists forced to emigrate due to the Nazi scourge. 

Ulrike arrives in the French capital as a hitch-hiker after her car breaks down, Paris in the Sixties providing her with enough creative inspiration to drive her own ambitions. And where better to start an artistic journey than the second-hand bookshop run by Fritz Picard in rue de Dragon in the Sixieme? She helped curate his book collection from street vendors. These were traded along with other works acquired from German emigrants of the 1930s and 40s who had been forced to travel light.

It was here that Ottinger discovered the titular Calligrammes: Poemes de Paix et de la Guerre by Apollinaire. Dada and the surrealist movement were her next discovery, she also met authors and artists including Anne Kolb; Hans Arps; Erich Jünger and Franz Jung – all of them had been forced to leave Germany, for their part in the Weimarer Avantgarde. The filmmaker Hans Richter and the writer Walter Mehring were also  acquaintances, the latter bemoaning the death in exile of Ernst Toller, Kurt Tucholsky, Joseph Roth, Ernst Weiss, Walter Hasenclever and Carl Einstein, whose books were still sold by Picard.

Back in Konstanz, Ottinger’s paintings were gaining repute. Meanwhile in Paris, in the atelier of Johnny Friedländer, she mastered the art of eau-forte, aquatint and etchings. Living in a small unheated attic in Saint German des Pres, she joined more famous artists: Simone Signoret, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. They worked in well-heated cafes, where a cup of coffee was enough to buy a place for a whole day. She also met Jean Rouch who was shooting Chronology of a Summer. On the streets Ottinger talked to the “Universal genius” Raymond Duncan, who wandered around in his toga telling everyone to “make everything you need, yourself.” She also visited the “temple of books” La Hune. 

But it wasn’t all rosy. Back in Konstanz she had met some French soldiers who had deserted the army so as not to serve in Algeria. She had stolen a suit from her father and given it to one of the deserters. On the night of the 17th October1961 the Parisian police, under the control of Maurice Papin (who had led the deportations of Jews to the death camps) butcher over three hundred Algerians near the Grand Rex Cinema. The government stopped the news reaching the headlines, even opposition newspapers failed to report the killings.

Jean Genet brought the carnage to life in his 1964 play The Screens. It was finally allowed staged in 1966, directed by Jean-Louis Barrault. By this time, Ottinger had moved to the Latin Quarter, near the many art-house cinemas, and Pop Art was now her thing, making Comic strip paintings in 3D. She also visited the American galleries showing Warhol, Rauschenbach and Wesselmann. But all the time she was confronted with the history of her homeland, bumping into the painter Lou-Albert-Lasard, whose pictorial tribute of the Gurs camp reminded her of her own internment past.

Ottinger did not overlook the bloody French colonial history, visits to the Musee Colonies or the Jardin Colonial were a sight for sore eyes. With Jean Rouch she toured the Musee d’ Homme, while he was preparing his films on ethnographic developments. Ottinger found a home, at least three times a week, in the Cinematheque Francaise, which had just moved to the Palais de Chaillot under its director Henri Langlois. Opened by Pompidou and Malraux, the new home had a film museum where Langlois showed off the Mummy from Psycho, donated by Hitchcock. But the German connections always re-surfaced: well known Berlin film critic Lotte Eisner talked about the founding of the Cinematheque, when Langlois was young and slim. Finally, Ottinger reports from her visit to a Goya exhibition which inspired her feature film Freak Orlando.

An extensive and exhaustive documentary about the artist as a young woman – always haunted by the Germany of her childhood. The theme of displacement would continue to feature in many of her films. AS

PARIS CALLIGRAMMES will open on 27 August 2021at Bertha DocHouse, Ciné Lumière, ICA Cinema and JW3 in London and at independent cinemas throughout the UK and Ireland.

PARIS CALLIGRAMMES celebrated its world premiere at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival. where the director was awarded the Berlinale Camera by the festival.

 

 

         

My New York Year (2020)

Dir: Philippe Falardeau | Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Margaret Qualley | Canadian Drama, 101′

Most people have heard of Catcher in the Rye and its intriguing author, J D Salinger. Canadian filmmaker Philippe Falardeau choses to focus on the 2014 memoirs of Joanna Rakoff who served served as an intern to Salinger’s literary agent, and Sigourney Weaver does her utmost to breath life into her character in this rather flaccid adaptation of even though she gives its a certain a damn good try.

My Salinger Year – now renamed  My New York Year – presumably to give it a push into more mainstream audiences – run along similar lines the The Devil Wears Prada without the chutzpah: country girl goes to the city and is given a jolly good hiding by an urbane sophisticate, triumph and then to move on. Joanna has to deal with the writer’s fan mail, with a concise and polite generic response.

Margaret Qualley plays Joanna, the college graduate in question, as socially gauche but spunky enough to snare this rather plumb job that puts her in phone contact with the urbane novelist, but gives her a rough ride from the mercurial Margaret who enjoys upstaging Joanna and toys with her like a cat with a mouse. We are treated to dramatised excerpts from the rather idolatrous fan letters, and a subplot involving Joanna’s love interest Don (Douglas Booth) and her trials and tribulations of being a newcomer in the New York metropolis.

The problem here is really Falardeau’s lacklustre script that doesn’t stoke the kind of incendiary sparkle Anne Hathaway shared with Meryl Streep in Devil. In fact, quite the reverse happens here and the writing – faithful to the introspective nature of Rakoff’s page memoirs – represses the women into a dignified torpor rather than feisty fun and repartee. And we experience nothing of Salinger himself – after all the most intriguing character – not only for literary fans but anyone who has vaguely heard of the book. MT

IN CINEMAS 20 May 2021 | BERLINALE FILM premiere 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

The Twentieth Century (2019) MUBI

Dir.: Matthew Rankin; Cast: Dan Beirne, Sarianne Cormier, Catherine St. Laurent, Mikhail Ahooja, Louis Vegin; Canada 2019, 87 min.

This first feature by Canadian writer/director Matthew Rankin tries to follow in the footsteps of his compatriot Guy Maddin – without his flair and quirky idiosyncratic style. Rankin’s ‘autobiography’ of Mackenzie King, who was Canada’s Prime Minister for 22 years between 1921 and 1948, is a mad-cap race with animation showing the politician as an arrant dilettante, in love with his mother and Doc Marten boots.

King (Beirne) is one of the candidates for the position as Prime Minister. Acid tests are conducted, among them butter churning, endurance tickling and baby seal clubbing. King ends up joint second, but his nemesis, the good-looking sunny-boy Bert Harper (Ahooja), will win outright. After talking to a TB-suffering girl and her rather masculine mother (Vegin) at an orphanage, King falls for the beautiful Ruby Elliot (St. Laurent), neglecting his own mother’s nurse Lapoint (Cormier), who he is the real love of his life.

An exploding cactus and many pairs of Doc Martens later Harper wins Ruby’s heart and the trio fights a battle to the death with some whales in the frozen waters of Canada, King surviving alone. Meanwhile, Ruby and Bert scarify their lives for Canada, ending up like pieces of meat on a skewer tied to a whale.

Shot completely within the confines of a studio, this absurdist drama is full of innovative ideas but lacks the glue to hold them all together. DoP Vincent Biron and the actors enjoy themselves, but the free rein given to them by Rankin makes the outcome look more like a shambolic school play. AS

NOW on MUBI

First Love (2019) ***

Dir.: Takashi Miike; Cast: Masataka Kubota, Nao Omori, Shota Sometani, Sakurako Konishi, Rebecca Eri Rabane, Takashiro Miura, Mami Fujioka; Japan/UK, 108 min.

Japanese director Takashi Miike, who will be sixty this year, has made over a hundred films in a career spanning 28 years. Many have gone straight to video, but there are standout treasures like Ichi the Killer and 13 Assassinst offering Miike cult status amongst an avid fanbase who love his fast and furious style. His latest, First Love was shown at last year’s Director’s Fortnight in Cannes. Written by Masaru Nakamura, it explores the changing world of the Yakuza who are under threat from Chinese triads.

Leo (Kubota) a young boxer who has just lost an easy fight, discovers he has an aggressive brain tumour. His parents had dumped him in a box as a baby giving him rather a negative outlook on life, so he seems resigned to his fate. Wandering on the streets, he meets a woman who cries for help: Juri has been abused by her father for as long as she can remember, and now she is making up for his debts, being used as a sex worker for the Yazuka. She is also an hallucinating drug addict, often seeing a half-naked man in a bed sheet following her.

Leo beats up her attacker without knowing that it is Otomo (Omori), a corrupt cop. Otomo is in league with Kase (Sometani) who is stealing drugs from his Yakuza gang. The baby-faced killer has just killed Yasu (Miura) who came close to finding out what Kaso was planning. With Otomo and Kase scheming, Yasu’s girl friend Julie (Rabane) is on her way to revenge Yasu with her huge sword. Leo and Yuri (her work name is Monica) try to get away from it all, but the Chinese triad  Chiachi (Fujioka) appears on the scene. During the showdown in a warehouse Leo gets a phone call from his doctor, arms and heads flying around during a rising body count.

This is strictly for committed fans. That said, you have to admire the choreographed action sequences, particularly the car chases. And when all fails, Miike makes use of state of the art pop-art style animation to show a car turning into a plane. The acting is convincing, and the innocent leads Kubota and newcomer Konishi win our sympathies among the professional baddies. Somehow Miiki manages not to take himself too seriously. Slick production values make for a brilliant rollercoaster ride, but like sushi, an instantly forgettable one, and the next Takashi Miiki feature is just around the corner. AS

ON BLURAY AND IN CINEMAS FROM 14 FEBRUARY 2019

Little Joe (2019) ****

Dir. Jessica Hausner | Sci-fi Drama | Austria, UK, Germany | 105′

Austrian auteuse Jessica Hausner creates films that are intelligent and refreshing. And none more so than her recent Cannes competition entry Little Joe. A challenging, coldly humorous hyper-realist Sci-fi that explores the unique human condition known as happiness.

Sometime in the future Emily Beecham plays Alice, an emotionally buttoned up ‘plant designer’ who develops a scarlet thistle-like flower whose scent makes people happy, and is sure to catch on  commercially. But there’s a snag: the plant also makes subtle changes in the personalities of those who inhale its pollen. It also causes seems to destroy neighbouring plants in the laboratory.

Little Joe is a mesmerising film to look at: its brightly synthetic colour schemes, geometric framing and slightly off-kilter performances are undeniably eye-catching and entirely appropriate given the subject matter: genetic modification. This is not a film to love but a film to admire, the strange storyline keeping us agog in fascination until the surprising finale.

Once her pioneering plant is in full flower Alice names it Little Joe, and brings a sample home for her teenage son Joe (Kit Connor) to tend – she’s a rotten workaholic mother hooked on Deliveroo dinners, but hopes the plant will bring out her son’s nurturing side.

Meanwhile, in their slick laboratories and mint green uniforms, Alice and her colleague Chris (Ben Whishaw) are certainly more commercial scientists than traditional plants people, but Chris is the more appealing and emotionally intelligent of the two. Their chief designer Bella is an earth mother and soon notices that her beloved shaggy dog Bello has undergone a complete change of personality since sniffing pollen from the odd-looking thistles. The staff put this down to Bella’s mental health issues and move swiftly back to their microscopes. But these weird changes cannot be ignored for long.

Sound plays an important role throughout this unsettling story and Japanese composer Teiji has devised a spooky electronic soundscape for each phase of plant development. Hausner has seemingly gone out of her way to assemble an eclectic multi-racial cast and this certainly adds flavour to this exotic con concoction but Beecham, Wishaw, Kit Connor and his dad (Goran Costic) are particularly affective in striking the right mood. And if you think Little Joe bears a strange visual resemblance to another recent Austrian chiller you’d be right: DoP Martin Gschlacht also filmed Goodnight Mommie (2014). MT

ON RELEASE FROM 21 FEBRUARY 2020

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | Best Actress Emily Beecham
https://youtu.be/eKy7Iaco_rU

Mr Jones (2021) Ukrainian Relief

Dir: Agnieszka Holland | Cast: James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaard, Joseph Mawle, Fenella Woolgar, Kenneth Cranham, Celyn Jones, Krzysztof Pieczyński, Michalina Olszańska, Patricia Volny | Poland, United Kingdom, Ukraine 2019 | Cinematography: Tomasz Naumiuk, Editing: Michał Czarnecki | Music: Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz | 141′

This riveting romp through Russian history follows a young Welsh journalist who ventured into the Soviet Union in 1933 to discover the sinister background to Stalin’s Communist regime. Stalin was feeding Moscow while millions of Ukrainians were dying of famine due to forced state control of their farms and food. Andrea Chalupa has been developing the script for 14 years, conflating the story with that of Animal Farm, based on her own book: Orwell and the Refugees: The Untold Story of Animal Farm.

The man in question is Gareth Jones (Norton), a respected attache of Lloyd George (Cranham) who sets off for Moscow where he comes up against pro-Stalin press supremo and Pulitzer prize-winner Walter Duranty (a cold-eyed Sarsgaard) tasked with keeping the famine under wraps from the World.

During his stay, Duranty invites Jones to luxuriate in the excesses of the State budget, but the Welsh gentleman gracefully declines, preferring the intellectual stimulation of one Ada Brooks, a journalist for the New York Times, and in thrall to Duranty. Against advice from all sides, Jones then makes a perilous journey south and nearly dies himself of hunger- and Holland makes this second act a gruelling one to impress upon us the suffering endured by the rural population, women and children. Jones then exposes the story to the World, via Randolph Heart, putting Sarsgaard’s nose out of joint. But tragedy is to follow – as it often does when Russian secrets are shared.

Holland’s ambitious attempt to pull the various strands together leaves a subplot showing Orwell writing Animal Farm slightly adrift, and the use of montage to invigorate the various train journeys is rather hammy. But the entertainment factor rides over the structural imperfections and superb performances make this a really entertaining romp. Norton is simply brilliant as Jones, a decent and persevering professional gifted with integrity and a pioneering spirit. Kirby also shines as the conflicted woman at the centre of the furore. In thrall to Duranty, she shuts down Jones’ romantic advances, unable to develop them, despite their chemistry. There is great support from Fenella Woolgard; Kenneth Cranham does Lloyd George with a charming Welsh accent; and Sarsgaard seethes with shifty antagonism tempered by a veneer of supercilious charm.

Shot in Poland, Scotland (not Wales) and in original locations in the snowbound Ukraine, the homecoming scenes in Barry with Jones and his father are particularly poignant. Chulapa’s script and dialogue shows an acute English sensibility. It’s a mammoth achievement. Agnieszka Holland works with her Polish craftsman to make this a thoroughly engrossing experience which flashes by despite a running time of over two hours. MT

LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY HOSTS SPECIAL FILM SCREENING FOR MR JONES  | TO HELP RAISE FUNDS FOR UKRAINIAN RELIEF  |TUESDAY 10TH MAY | 5:45 FOR 6:05PM START | LSBU KEYWORTH CENTRE  KEYWORTH STREET LONDON SE1 6LN

Show Me the Picture: The Story of Jim Marshall (2019) ****

Dir: Alfred George Bailey | With: Amelia Davis, Anton Corbijn, Michael Douglas, Bruce Talaman, Michelle Marghetts | Editor: Adam Biskupski | US Doc 

 “Jim Marshall held up a mirror to a white hot era that will never come again”. B Talaman

George Bailey’s immersive documentary tells the story of the photographer behind some of the music industry’s most evocative images. Jim Marshall was a true maverick who elevated some of music’s lesser known players to star status with his inspired professional shots. And naturally HE snapped the greats: Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Dinah Washington and John Coltrane all trusted him to join them on stage where he created some of the most enduring black and white images of the 20th century. He also captured The Beatles fated last concert at Candlestick Park in August 1966.

Copyright Jim Marshall Photography LLC On Tour with the Mamas and Papas 1967

Marshall  (left) never left home without his Leica camera strung over his shoulder. But he was also a self-destructive man who could be his own worse enemy. He even served time for his occasional use of guns. Cars and cameras were also the lifetime obsession of this ebullient guy with a magnetic personality who was also described as a “little malevolent gnome” by Sicilian writer Michelle Marghetts who would become his girlfriend, and goes on to share some of the most salient revelations in this enjoyable biopic.

Born into an immigrant family in 1930s Chicago, James Joseph Marshall was of Syrian Catholic origin – according to Michael Douglas who got to know him on The Streets of San Francisco series and who is one of the film’s most insightful talking heads. Another is Amelia Davis, his assistant for a dozen years until his death in 2010. According to her Marshall sniffed more cocaine than the Rolling Stones when he joined them for a Life magazine shoot. He communicated with her through scrawled notes pinned to his front door, these became the barometer of his psychological state – “no work today Davis”. Close to Marjorie, his mother, Jim had a troubled relationship with his distant, womanising father, who left when he was 10 and died when he was 15. Jim remembers him making a delicious pancake one day, and then bashing Jim’s head against the table the next, knocking two teeth out.

Rather like its acid-tripping subject, the biopic flips backward and forward to highlight different phases of Marshall’s career. After an early time in New York’s early 1960s, where he became close to Bob Dylan, Marshall moved to San Francisco in the thick of the Haight-Ashbury era for the Summer of Love, and stayed there. A consummate professional he was proud of his talents: “people think they can copy my pictures, but it’s taken me half my life (to learn how) to do them” He captured impromptu moments in turbulent careers, but had to work hard to win his subjects over – Miles Davis is seen relaxing; Coltrane is pictured as “a quiet genius”.

Johnny Cash flipping the bird at San Quentin Prison 1969. Copyright Jim Marshall Photography LLC

Other famous photographers also join the fray: Bruce Talaman explains Jim’s lensing style, and Anton Corbijn posits:  “no matter how good you are, if you don’t have the access, you don’t have the pic.” “People trusted Jim, but not immediately” says Graham Nash — who went to LA and never came back.

But it wasn’t just the guns and drugs that saw Marshall’s glittering career crash from the starry rock n roll firmament. There were outside reasons. Stars became more aware of their fame, and employed people to guard it: those famous PRs who often stand in the middle of artists and those that chronicle them.

Show Me the Picture is a fascinating snapshot of the jazz, soul and rock n roll era showcasing a brief moment in time “when you could still say and do what you wanted before the world became controlled and politically correct”. The final act covers Marshall’s efforts to document the ‘Peace’ symbol. Clearly he had a highly inventive mind and an inquiring one. He also stressed the need for artists to hold on to their copyright at all costs, a wise step that bankrolled his life even after his commissions dwindled and left something tangible for Davis. Show Me the Picture jumps around bit like its acid-tipping subject – but for aficionados of  rock and roll, jazz and soul of the 1960s onwards, it’s an hour and a half of unmitigated bliss. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 31 JANUARY 2020

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) ****

Dir: Armando Iannucci | Cast: Dev Patel, Hugh Laurie, Ben Wishaw, Peter Capaldi | UK. 2019. 116mins

Armando Iannucci brings a wonderful exuberance to this nimble adaptation of the novel Dickens considered his favourite. The autobiographical account of an author’s formative years unfolds in a dazzling swirl of engaging vignettes and enduring characters. Often riotously funny, the drama never lose sight of the novel’s underlying central themes of poverty, class, and importance of friends. It also conveys Dickens’ sense of humour, whether dark or upbeat, that permeates nearly all his novels. Personal History Of David Copperfield should also appeal to new and younger audiences put off by the weighty and worthy tomes lining their parents books shelves. Dev Patel is wonderful in the central role, his dark looks and vivaciousness lighting up every scene.

Many directors have mined the rich dramatic potential that David Copperfield offers to the big screen and TV. Most notable is the 1935 version that perfectly showcased W.C.Fields talents and portliness in the role of Mr. Micawber. Iannucci brings an effervescent energy to his film, which feels thoroughly modern while retaining its old worldy aesthetic. New is the idea of sentences literally written across the screen, and it works due to the manic pacing and visual busyness, colours and characters vibrate with enthusiasm.

David Copperfield relied on the kindness of strangers after a childhood of abuse at the hands of his wicked stepfather. And he runs the gamut of gruelling jobs and uncomfortable dwellings remaining chipper and optimistic throughout. He is a role model for children nowadays channelling that well known phrase: through hard work, to the stars. His philanthropic nature is also to be applauded. Copperfield grows up clever, self-aware and a skilled judge of character; traits that will go on to serve him well in this great writings.

Sumptuously mounted the film looks like a jewel box and is equally uplifting with its elegant costumes and beautiful frocks. An all star cast includes Tilda Swinton as a febrile Betsey Trotwood and Ben Whishaw’s ‘everso humble’ hand-wringing Uriah Heep. Hugh Laurie’s is also back from the US with a droll and debonair Mr. Dick. A delightful  film and the perfect tonic for January. MT

NOW OUT ON RELEASE FROM 31 JANUARY 2020

 

Filles de Joie | Working Girls (2020) Rotterdam International Film Festival 2020

Dir: Frédéric Fonteyne | Wri: Anne Paulicevich | Cast: Noemie Lvovsky, Jonas Bloquet, Sara Forestier | Drama Belgium 91′

Belgian filmmaker Frédéric Fonteyne (1968) studied film at Institut des arts de diffusion in Louvain-la-Neuve. He realised several successful short films before his two acclaimed features, Max & Bobo (1998) and Une liaison pornografique (1999), which were both screened at IFFR. This drama about sex workers starts on a light note but soon develops into a more dejected tale of life and death. An excellent cast cannot always overcome Paulicevich’s uneven script.

Sarah Forestier’s thirty-something sex worker Axelle (aka Athena) lives with her three unruly children and a cantankerous mother in a council flat. Every morning she joins neighbour Conso (Legronne) and Dominique (Lvovsky) in a battered car to drive over the border to Belgium, where they ply their trade. Conso, a long legged black women has to run a scary racist gauntlet from the youth of the estate. Axelle is separated from her husband Yann, who still has his fingers in the pie. Their their youngest son is caught in a violent incident at Kindergarten, shouting ‘Allah Akbar’ before his attack – even though he is not a Muslim. Conso meanwhile has a boyfriend, Jean-Philippe, who gives her an expensive pendant for her birthday, raising her hopes for a way out of her depressing life.

But the women’s light hearted banter soon gives way to darker developments. Axelle’s husband Yann trails her, and confronts her as a ‘customer’, threatening to take the children away from her. Then Conso is invited to a special party by Jean-Philippe. It turns out that he is celebrating the very recent birth of his first child. The devastated Conso nearly overdoses, and Dominique and Axelle decide to teach J-P a lesson. Meanwhile, the former is appalled to find her daughter Zoe (Dewaels) “earning some pocket money”, but the real drama starts when Yann attacks Axelle in a domestic set-to defused with the help of a hammer.

Suddenly this bitter-sweet comedy gets serious morphing to a real life and death scenario in a sobering and awkward tonal shift. But these feisty women have learnt to deal with their work related ups and downs – quite literally – so anything else is all in a day’s work.

DoP Juliette Van Dormael’s nimble camera-work captures the raucous near heart-breaking hysteria. Lvovsky is the leader of the pack, looking after ‘her’ girls like a lioness with her cubs  – but failing to keep her own domestic life on track. Forestier is the most ambivalent, often attacking Conso for not being ‘serious’ enough. Working Girls doesn’t always succeed in conveying the complexities of life for sex-working parents. But Fonteyne has a good certainly crack of the whip at it nonetheless . AS

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2020

 

 

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) ***

Dir: Terry Gilliam | Cast: Jonathan Price, Adam Driver, Stellan Skarsgard, Jason Watkins and Olga Kurylenko | Drama, UK 133′

Terry Gilliam’s struggle to film Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote has been as epic as the title itself. The finished version of his fantasy adventure – that sees a disillusioned advertising executive mistaken for Sancho Panza – was beset by legal potholes as it fought its way stoically towards the Red Carpet in Cannes two years ago, with a beleaguered but indomitable cast of Jonathan Pryce, who stars as El Don himself, Adam Driver, Stellan Skarsgard, Jason Watkins and Olga Kurylenko.

Miguel de Cervantes crafted a likeable story with everlasting appeal – its simple premise: that Chivalry should not die out in the ‘modern age’, a timely tenet that very much applies today. Even back in the 17th century, it was Don Quixote’s bee in his iron helmet, and he was said to be rendered mad by reading too many books on the subject of good manners. So he sets off with his trusty squire Sancho Panza and his lady Dulcinea, to make things right in the world from his titular hometown in La Mancha – where clearly he was stumbling on the foothills of dementia. During his confused and eventful journey, his worried family desperately try to get him home.

Terry Gilliam’s passion project has been two decades in the making. He had no idea that the saga would develop into its own quixotic tragedy. Keith Fulton’s 2002 documentary charts Gilliam’s doomed attempt blighted by the well-known chestnut the ‘rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain” – filming was abandoned when the set was flooded. This put the mockers on Gilliam’s cherished dream, but he pushed on undeterred and blissfully unaware that his passion project would soon develop into a nightmare.

Over the years, several actors have been attached to the film including John Hurt, Ewan MacGregor and even Robert Duvall. But not all attempts to bring Cervantes’ legendary novel to the screen have been so problematic. Some have been roaring tributes. In 1926 Danish director Lau Lauritzen cast the leading comedians of his era in the main roles: Carl Schendstrom and Harald Madsen were Denmark’s answer to Laurel and Hardy. Then Georg Wilhelm Pabst chose the esteemed Russian actor Feodor Chaliapin Sr to play the chevalier in Adventures of Quixote (1933), which appeared in three languages (German, French and English). Rafael Gil successfully followed, filming the story as a comedy in 1947 with Rafael Rivelles in the saddle as Quixote, and Juan Calvo as Sancho Panza. Orson Welles then made a valiant stab in his (unfinished) 1972 endeavour that followed a similarly tortuous path as Gilliam’s, starting in 1957. Typically, Welles run out of money and was forced to abandon filming, the project was later developed by Jesus Franco who released the dubbed version in 1992 to uninspired reviews. Robert Helpmann directed and also starred in the main role of his 1973 ballet version, with Rudolf Nureyev as Basilio. And David Beier’s 2015 version actually starred James Franco, but the less said about this one, the better. Needless to say, there have been numerous TV adaptations.

The curse continued to blight other films in Cannes 2018 when Quixote was finally screened. In a strange twist, Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov had won the Don Quixote award at Locarno for his film Yuri’s Day (2008) but was placed under house arrest, forbidden to attend the 71st Cannes festival to accompany his competition title Summer (Leto). And Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi shared the same plight. He first appeared in Cannes with his debut White Balloon (1995) which went on to win the Camera d’Or, the first major award won by an Iranian film at the world’s most famous film festival. He was forced to stay at home while his drama Three Faces screened in the main 71st competition. Luckily The Man Who Killed Dox Quixote survived its arduous journey and finally makes it to the Croisette but shlepped home empty handed, but has since won Spanish and Belgian awards for its production and make-up. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 31 JANUARY 2020  | FESTIVAL DE CANNES

 

Fidelity | Vernost (2020) **** Rotterdam Film Festival 2020

Dir: Nigina Sayfullaeva | Drama, Russia 82′

Nigina Sayfullaeva’s erotic drama makes a brave and unbridled bid to explore and unravel the complex nature of human desire through the story of young Russian obstetrician and her husband whose relationship has hit the buffers.

They say sex – or the lack of it – is the barometer of a healthy relationship. And Lena is not getting anywhere with her actor husband Stergey despite her best efforts to cajole him into some action between the sheets – and this is a drama that doesn’t hold back on scenes of an explicit sexual nature – despite its endorsement from the Russian authorities announced as the opening credits role. Russia has always been keep to promote (same sex) marriage, and actively encourages procreation – so the sexual taboo is clearly out of the bag now and this ratification is as an intriguing and welcome prelude to what follows in this raunchy affair.

Obviously Lena suspects Sergey (Pal) of having an affair, particularly when she notices a palpable chemistry with one of his fellow actors, but she decides to keep her own counsel – and Evgeniya Gromova gives a teasingly guarded performance in the lead, but one that gradually builds to a head of steam. The lack of sexual attention from her husband eventually drives her to a series of one night stands in an effort to satisfy her pent up natural urges in the summer heat.

Comparisons with Steve McQueen’s Shame are ill-founded: Lena is not an avoidant, not is she a nymphomaniac – she is just driven to distraction by her husband’s lack of interest in her. Gromova’s performance makes it amply clear that she still loves Sergey and would prefer to have sex with him rather than the muscled lifeguard who pays for a room in a local hotel, an tepid encounter that leaves her amused and ambivalent. But when she meets Ivan beachside, things heat up. Is it his top of the range 4X4 that attracts her? The two enjoy a lusty encounter before the Police arrive and Ivan scarpers along the dunes.

Writing again with Lyubov Mulmenk (Name Me was their feature debut in 2014) Fidelity at times has the feel of a Russian-style telenovela but it is a courageous and sensitively thought out for the most part, with some convincing characterisations as well as some more cartoonish figures – Ivan is a case in point and is clearly just there to serve the rather snaky plot which eventually sees these saucy scenarios jeopardising Lena’s job at a plush private clinic in a western Russian coastal town. And the film does shed light on a woman’s point of view – and should be celebrated as such. Lena is not immoral, she is just forced to breaking point, and that happens to women as well as men. Although, as surveys keep telling us: Women only tend to cheat when they are being ignored and by inattentive partners. Just saving. The film has its international premiere here in Rotterdam Festival. 

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2020 

Cosh Boy (1953) ***

Dir: Lewis Gilbert | Cast: James Kenney; Joan Collins; Betty Ann Davies; Hermione Baddeley, Bob Stevens Robert Ayres | UK Crime Drama

Lewis Gilbert’s searing slice of British neo realism sees a juvenile delinquent commit a swathe of brutal robberies on innocent victims, aided and abetted by his rather puny sidekicks. Cosh Boy was a tamer, noirish version of what was to follow teenage crime-wise with Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Alan Clarke’s Scum (1979). And although it all seems fairly quaint nowadays, the film scandalised audiences back in post war days when kids mostly respected their parents and were glad of a return to normality after the war, despite the simmering social tensions provoked by the years of privation.

Roy (Kenney) is a brash, chain-smoking thug who bullies his friends into subservience (including Rene, played by a luminous young Joan Collins). He and his gang are not died in the wool criminals but possess a certain hard-nosed opportunism, and things get increasingly dangerous when their behaviour escalates, with tragic consequences.

Best known for his more upbeat fare: Alfie and The Spy Who Loved Me, Gilbert’s punchy direction certainly gives the crime drama some gritty wellie, providing an acerbic and sinister portrait of the backstreets of South London, although the film was actually shot at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith W6.

On 20 January 2020, Cosh Boy will become the 40threlease in the BFI Flipside series, released in a Dual Format Edition with extras including short films by Lewis Gilbert and more. It will be launched with a special screening event and discussion with Flipside founders at BFI Southbank – details below.

Dual Format Edition (Blu-ray/DVD), release on 20 January 2020, with simultaneous BFI Player, iTunes and Amazon Prime release

Flipside at 40 – Special event & discussion, Wednesday 15 January, 18:30, NFT1 at BFI Southbank – special guest actor Caroline Munro

 

No Fathers in Kashmir (2019) ****

Dir.: Ashvin Kumar; Cast: Zara Webb, Shivam Raina, Ashvin Kumar, Shushil Dahiya, Natasha Mago, Abdul Rashid; UK/India 2019, 108 min.

Oscar-nominated writer and director Ashvin Kumar (The Forest) is well known for his active support of Kashmiri independence. Claimed both by Pakistan and India, the region has recently lost its autonomous status inside India, and is now governed with an iron fist by the nationalist Indian government who is fighting militants in the region, often sponsored by Pakistan. But this is really a proxy war between Hindu nationalism of India and Muslim annexation orientated Pakistan – with the local population caught between the two nuclear powers.

The film centres in sixteen year old British Kashmiri teenager Noor (Webb) who is wedded to her mobile like most of her generation, and lives with her grandparents in a Kashmiri village. Her mother Zainab (Mago) is trying to convince her missing husband’s parents to sign his death certificate so she can marry politically well connected Wahid (Dahiya). Said husband was arrested by the Indian army and never returned home. Noor has fallen for the slightly younger Majid (Raina) whose father has also disappeared. Noor, unaware of the tensions in the village, challenges her grandparents and mother, wanting to know more about her father’s fate. Zainab finally manages to get the old couple to declare their son dead –  Wahid helps by offering to secure them a good pension – but then Noor strikes up a friendship with a Arshid (Kumar), who seems to be collaborating with the Indian army, and at the same time hiding militants from the authorities. 

There is a telegraphed solution to it all when Arshid tells the village teacher Kharbanda (Rashid) that his son. along with his fellow fighters, were “just revolutionary romantics. What kind of freedom would this have been for Kashmir without the Muslim faith?” Noor pushes on, and talks Zaina into a nighttime trip into the mountains bordering Pakistan where the political prisoners like her father had been interrogated. When they are captured by the Indian soldiers, the adults’ lies unravel – in spite of Noor’s release – thanks to the powerful Wahid.

Kumar, also co-editor and co-producer, needed crowdfunding for this project and also had to be sanctioned by the Indian Central Board of Film Certification, more or less a censorship agency. He directs with great skill but his script is an awkward mix of coming-of-age love story and political rant. There are just too many programmatic speeches. Neither Noor nor Majid are really at an age to be spouting these moral lessons, and particularly not Noor, who is a total stranger. DoPs Jean Marc Selva and Jean Marie Delorme make good use of the overpowering landscape all captured impressively on handheld cameras. Overall, No Fathers is more worthy than convincing, but held together by a brilliant cast. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 24 JANUARY 2020

 

Present. Perfect (2019) ***

Dir: Zhu Shengze. USA/Hong Kong. 2019. 124mins

Live-streaming in China is big business. The severely disabled, wheelchair-ridden and low-paid have finally found a nifty way of making an extra yuan. Sharing their everyday lives on the internet brings them an income as well as garnering support and emotional inter-dependence. It works both ways as the streams establish a mutually beneficial connection.

Present.Perfect makes for compelling viewing – up to a point. It’s a strong premise but the execution is flawed.  What initially seems intriguing to watch eventually becomes tedious. And by the end the doc does its worthy subject matter a disservice, playing out as a laborious and repetitive slog, without any kind of narrative or real explanation. Zhu Shengze made the film from more than 800 hours of filmed footage taken from an output of 12 ‘anchors’ (sharers of their footage) over a period of 10 months. Tighter editing would have made the film more pithy and enjoyable. What we do learn is that 2016 was apparently “Year Zero” for live streaming – and now the industry has expanded exponentially. In 2017, over 422 million Chinese shared streamed films on the internet. But it’s not all doom and gloom, content-wise.

The segments from each showroom are often overlong, and the content can be extremely dull, made more so by the black and white camerawork. Do we really want to watch a woman’s gruelling trip down the road – wheel-chair bound, while she stares pitifully into the camera? Or a physically challenged guy do his washing? And then there’s a man showing his wounds bleeding, clearly he’s into self-harm. But clearly these Chinese audiences do, and they’re prepared to pay for it, finding comfort in these banal everyday lives fraught with trauma (Eastenders, anyone?). Besides the obvious need for recognition, fostered by all types of social media, there is the loneliness and alienation out there, and the streamers have tapped into this rich vein of income, benefiting in more ways than one from the comfort-seeking connection with others. Our hearts go out to the ‘anchors’ but most of us don’t need to experience their pain to understand their suffering. despite their cheerful perseverance. But that’s not the point. For those who become invested in their daily struggle to survive, the film tells a valuable story. One of mutual support, and even entertainment. Distances in China are vast and many peoplelive alone in remote locations miles away from any form of social contact. These ‘anchors’ are actually their keeping them on the straight and narrow, emotionally at least.  

Other anchors have used the streaming device as a way to drum up business. A case in point is a farmer keen on branding his particular form of labour as ‘agritainment’. There is a bored crane driver, who invites us to visit him way up in his cab that towers above a vast building site. Another, a woman, is tooling away at making men’s underpants. She shares the trials and tribulations of her love life with all her followers, as she peddles away at her gruelling work. The more you watch the stories the more you understand how compulsive the experience becomes in providing a vital support system for those reaching out from the desperation of their own lives. In the end, the banal almost becomes beautiful; providing comfort and consistency: we need never be alone. MT

ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | ICA CINEMA from 24 January.

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | TIGER AWARD WINNER  2019

Lucian Freud: A Self-Portrait (2019) ****

Dir: David Bickerstaff | Writers: David Bickerstaff/Phil Grabsky | With: William Feaver, James Hall, Tim Marlow (RA Artistic Director 2014-19, Jasper Sharp, Curator, Kunthistorisches Museum Vienna | Andrea Tarsia (Head of Exhitibitions RA) | Doc, 85′

“I wanted to shock and amaze” says Lucian Freud in faintly-accented English. Sitting in his workshop where he fought, struggled and experimented tirelessly with his craft – Freud was well into his eighties when he died in 2011 – the renowned Berlin-born portraitist is an intense and furtive figure in the early scenes of this new biopic by David Bickerstaff. The filmmaker’s previous subjects have included Van Gogh, Picasso and Monet. Co-written by Phil Grabsky, the doc interweaves filmed interviews with Freud in his final years, with the usual talking heads approach. Curators and specialists add valuable insight, although a few of the contributors bring little to the party.

The former artistic director of the Royal Academy Tim Marlow takes us round Lucian Freud’s first and only exhibition at the London gallery (until 26 January 2020). Although Freud is seen as a modern artist his work is very much connected to that ‘old master’, painterly tradition of Titian and Rembrandt: Few modern artists have explored the human body with such intensity, and such determination. Of course, he was a gambler, a playboy and a bon viveur, but few artists spent as much time in their studio as Lucian Freud. The RA’s Andrea Tarsia explains how he pitted his developing style against his personal life, scrutinising himself as much as his subjects. His single-minded passion focused on self-portraiture as much as on those his was painting:. “Everything is a self-portrait”. Often his subjects are not even named: what mattered more to him was the immediacy of the situation, the spontaneity of the gaze. Accompanied by a jazzy score the doc conveys the energy and charisma that seems to spin off each hypnotic portrait, even a small canvas can dominate a room.

Born into an eminent but non-religious Jewish family on the 8th December 1922, Lucian Freud’s father was an architect and the youngest son of the analyst Sigmund Freud. The middle son of three, Lucian was his mother’s favourite and as such he was deeply resented by his brothers. His biographer William Feaver (The Lives of Lucian Freud) reports how as a popular teenager he was taken by surprise when the family came under scrutiny by the authorities and had to move to London in the autumn of 1933. He was sent to the progressive Dartington school where he developed an interest in plants and horses, and thence Bryanston whence he was expelled for mooning in Bournemouth High Street, on a bet. A stone sculpture of a horse secured him a place in a London art school in 1937 but this was also short-lived. Eventually Freud fetched up in what he told his parents was “the only decent art school” of the time run by Sir Cedric Morris in East Anglia. Subversive to the last, Freud once again disgraced himself and “burnt the school down”.

But Morris had by this time instilled some discipline into the 18 year old Freud and he produced his first work – a tight and rather flattened oil painting simply entitled ‘Self-portrait,1940′. An ability to draw was the first step on the ladder and led to commissions for various book covers but impetuosity led to Freud joining the Navy for a spell. Returning to London he shared a St Johns Wood flat with fellow painter John Craxston who introduced him to an influential circle of friends. For nearly ten years he and John experimented with architects sample pots producing glossy-looking abstracts and portraits.

In the early 1940s Lucian Freud moved to the more seedy area of Paddington and settled down to a more committed painting style, ‘Man With a Feather’ (1943) was exhibited at his first solo show at London’s Lefevre Gallery. Now in his early twenties, women fell for Freud’s mesmerising allure and powerful presence, and he was able to navigate his way round English society marrying Kitty Garman. But he made a hopeless husband; although he could be sensitive and sociable, focusing on you with an intense gaze, he could also be callous and cruel.

In Paris in 1946 he met Picasso and soon realised the dedication that painting required. By now he was using oils and honing his style of self-portraiture, his face creeping into the frame with surprise, suggestion or a quizzical expression that calls to mind the ‘fourth wall’.  ‘Still Life with Green Lemon’ was a case in point, painted during a visit to Greece in 1946. Ostensibly these were self-portraits – Freud’s face only just intruding into the edges of a work dominated by another subject – he was already displaying the prickly illusiveness that was to become his style. ‘Startled Man’ (1948) ushered in a period of clean, conte-work. This is an extremely accomplished drawing that really flaunts his capabilities. ‘Sleeping Nude’ (1950) and the surrealist ‘Interior at Paddington’ (1951) were actually hyper-realist paintings. By this time John Minton had become a friend, and Freud had also met and painted Francis Bacon. His marriage to Lady Caroline Blackwood saw her being incorporated into various works, and she appears in bed in his self-portrait ‘Lucian Freud, 1949’ which was exhibited at the Venice Biennale that year. She left him four years later due to his infidelities. Like most artists Freud wanted his life to be his work, and it was impossible for him to be committed to any woman. His only focus was himself and whoever he was painting at the time.

A sensuality entered the artist’s work in the late 1950s and early 1960 where an emphasis on touch starts to appear. This is most noticeable during a trip to Ian Fleming’s Golden Eye when he painted a Flemish style portrait on a small scrap of copper. It sees him putting his finger on his lips and was the start of this sensuous awareness. The 1960s also marked a switch to hog-hair brushes with ‘Man’s Head’ (1963) and the restless associated portraits, smooth backgrounds allowing the face to stand out. Although Freud admired Francis Bacon’s style of working in a gestural way, his own work increasingly gained a more structural, almost architectural element, as he slotted colours together with pasty brushstrokes, trying to make the paint tell the story.

The film’s focus then switches from Freud’s own work to visit Amsterdam where he often visited the Rijksmuseum to study Rembrandt and understand his approach. Back in London at the Royal Academy’s Exhibition, the film shows how Freud’s portraits  actually hold and dominate the room. ‘Man with a Blue Scarf’ (2004) was a canvas that required exactitude, the sitter under as much pressure to perform as Freud himself. This portrait of art critic Martin Gayford offers further evidence of the Freud’s obsession with detail. The relationship was intense and required the sitter to be totally committed and, crucially, to return to the studio for sittings that went on several times a week for at least a year. But during this time Freud engaged in avid conversation: highly entertaining he was a raconteur who was as focused on the sitter as he was in himself. But Freud was certainly not an expressionist painter.

Lucian Freud’s large 1993 self-portrait is defiant – he was 71, but still emanated power and excitement; his greatest fear was losing his mind, but he was also concerned about his physical vigour. ‘Benefits Supervisor Sleeping’ (1995) sold in 2008 for 33.6million dollars – the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist. Freud carried on painting voraciously until his death on 20 July 2011. He was 88. “Being with him was like being plugged into the National Grid for an hour” said one sitter. “Freud was one of the great European painters of the last 500 years. He’s one of those big figures across the centuries, rather than representative of an era or a movement” says Tim Marlow. “Tradition is a big word but Lucian challenged tradition constantly”. Jasper Sharp adds him to a list that goes back to Holbein; Durer; Cranach and Rembrandt. And he goes on: “Freud gives that list a little shuffle, making us look at Rembrandt a bit differently and Holbein a bit differently through his eyes, and through himself”. And that is a remarkable achievement for any artist. MT

LUCIAN FREUD: A SELF PORTRAIT | ON RELEASE FROM 14 JANUARY 2020 | SEVENTH ART PRODUCTIONS | ROYAL ACADEMY LUCIAN FREUD 

Dracula (2020) BBC mini Series ****

Dirs: Jonny Campbell, Paul McGuigan, Damon Thomas | Writers: Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat | Cast: Claes Bang, Dolly Wells, Morfydd Clark, John Heffernan | UK Drama | 270′

The BBC rejuvenates the Dracula story with this bracingly biting blood-splattered three parter that references all the usual iconography: crucifixes, coffins and cloaks – but adds multiracial underpinnings and fluidly sexual characters that include a strong female lead in Sister Agatha van Hellsing. The story wanders peripatetically through a Romanian castle, a nocturnal sea voyage aboard a ancient schooner and the nightscapes of contenporary London.

Writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat create a modern masterpiece that feels fresh, complex and surprisingly witty, sending up the vampire legend led by the dazzlingly daunting and dishy Danish actor Claes Bang who terrorises the living cast with a performance that blends condescending camp with arch horror. The cunning count doesn’t seem to mind whether his victims are male or female as long as they invite him to sink his vicious gnashers into their fresh supply of warm blood and tap their credentials into the bargain.

Dolly Wells is simply magnificent as the faithless Hungarian nun who in the opening scenes interviews the (by now) undead and decrepit Jonathan Harker about his experiences with the Count while in thrall to his dubious hospitality. The action cuts back to Transylvania 1897 where Dracula was  planning a move to Victorian London from the turreted terror of his creepy castle where he had perfected his English at every bite of his unsuspecting guest. The dark dungeons light up their sparklingly glib repartee: “You’re a monster”, screams Harker, the count retorts: “And you’re a lawyer, nobody’s perfect”. The following episode takes place on board the HMS Demeter bound for England and introducing fresh blood in the shape of a Romanian crew, a professor from Calcutta, a German Arch Duchess (whom he ravages, having perfected his German on another  deckhand titbit), and a lavender married couple, the husband falling prey to Dracula’s masterful charms. Needless to say, the Count “ absorbs” all their cultural attributes feeding off their jugulars with glib satisfaction only to wash up 123 years later on a Whitby beach in the present day where a tousled haired special branch Agatha meets him with all guns blaring from her Police vehicle.

Once in 2020 the narrative suffers a couple of blips with a collection of millennial characters that don’t pass master with what’s gone before. A Savile Row besuited Prince of Darkness minus his gothic backdrop struggles to retain his chilly persona, but Bang’s towering physique and his suave and sardonic allure restores our belief in his predatory nature, tempered with a cheeky line when he is momentarily confined to a Perspex prison cell: “I’m a vampire: why have you given me a toilet? Writer Gatiss finally gets his on scene moment of glory as Dracula’s dapper and deferential lawyer, a role he also created. The character of Lucy is less inspiring as a modern day source of sustenance for the Count, in the guise of a smug, selfie-seeking psychopath whose millennial magnetism and dusky draw is proved to be only skin deep, after she survives the grotesque cremation scene (most audiences will be crossing this off as an option in their own funeral arrangements). And Zoe (as Agatha’s great great niece) makes for a convincing modern day cancer victim, wasting away before our eyes, her wan charms creating soulful chemistry with the Count as she poisons him with her diseased blood in an inspired plot-twist. She throws down the gauntlet to her doomed lover, taunting him with the steely words: “You seek to conquer death but you cannot until you face it without fear”. So he capitulates by actually facing up to the challenge, walking into the brilliant sunlight his features flooded with its golden rays.  The final scene is both surprising and ultimately satisfying, serving both Agatha’s latent fantasies and Dracula’s atavistic longings. It’s a triumph that creates new hope for the legend while maintaining his gothic allure. MT

 

 

 

The Miracle Worker (1962) **** Blu-ray release

Dir: Arthur Penn | Cast: Anne Bancroft, Patty Dukes | US Drama, 106′

The Miracle Worker is a Southern Gothic melodrama about the remarkable life of Helen Keller (1880-198), who was born deaf and blind but went on to achieve great things in the world of literature and politics. Directed by Arthur Penn and based on William Gibson’s Broadway play, the film avoids sentimentality achieving a rare emotional power due to its raw and uninhibited performances from Patty Duke (Keller) and Anne Bancroft as her Irish governess Anne Sullivan whose patience and dedication helps her overcome her physical and emotional setbacks and live a full life. The Academy Award-winning story is set in 19th century Bible Belt Alabama where Helen is born into a middle class family who are frightened and devastated when they realise their newborn daughter is unable to see or hear. The real Helen Keller’s illness was attributed to meningitis – or possibly Scarlet Fever at the age of seven, but in Penn’s version Keller is afflicted from birth. Hope arrives in the shape of Anne Sullivan, a 20-year old specialist teacher from Boston whose empathy comes largely due to her own recently regained ability to see. Anne responds to Helen through the power of touch —the only tool they have in common—and leads her frightened pupil on a challenging journey from fear and isolation to enlightenment and self-determination. MT

The Miracle Worker on UK Blu-ray for the first time | EUREKA

Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018) ****

Dir/scr: Bi Gan | Cast: Huang Jue, Tang Wei, Sylvia Chang, Lee Hong-Chi, Chen Yongzhong, Luo Feiyang | Music: Lim Giong, Point Hsu | China/France. 2018. 130 mins.

A lush and painterly visual poem that loses much of its allure to enigma. Chinese director Bi Gan’s Noirish second feature is nonetheless a captivating fantasy reverie in the style of Wong Ka Wai.

It concerns a man’s spiritual and physical odyssey to recapture his lost love. It all takes place in Gan’s rain-soaked sub-tropical hometown of Kaili in Southern China. The resonance with his 2o15 debut Kaili Blues is clear, but this is an even more languorous drama that sizzles with regret and longing scored by a dulcet electronic soundscape and crowned by a final 3D sequence, shot in one take by DoP David Chizallet (Mustang).

Long Day’s Journey into Night shares the same title as Eugene O’Neill’s  play but there the similarities end. This drama explores the soul-searching of the main character (Huang Jue) who yearns for his former lover Wan Qiwen (Tang Wei). We first meet him in a restaurant where his father was purportedly murdered a decade previously. Luo is guided to a women’s prison where he learns that Wan stole a green book of fairy tales that somehow provides further clues to the mystery through a series of charms and spells.

Gan spins his story into a shadowy cyclical affair full of smoke and mirrors, infused with memories, incantations and seductive sequences in a surreal backwater that was again referred to in Kaili Blues – Dangmai. Here the natives speak Kaili rather than Mandarin.

In this dizzy and dazzling dance through time, water and clocks also feature heavily as Luo’s obsession eventually leads him through a post-apocalyptic industrial setting in search of his dream. This is not a film to understand but an experience to wallow in. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

Un Certain Regard section of the 2018 Cannes festival

 

 

Top Films of the Decade | 2010 – 2020

The past decade has seen independent film grow from strength to strength: Arthouse theatres are now more sophisticated than ever, offering lush surroundings and state of the art facilities. Streaming services Netflix and Amazon have also broadened the reach of mid-budget films to a wider audience who are now able to access films without paying expensive ticket prices: Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman in the comfort and your own home.

Here is another selection of art house gems from across the decade from 2010 to the end of 2019.
AMOUR (2012)  Michael Haneke, Austria
Surviving well into old age – or not dying – has become a timely topic in the past decade as our parents’ and grandparents’ generation live well into their nineties and beyond thanks to medical science and a lean wartime diet. Michael Haneke conveys all this with grace and subtlety in his Cannes Palme d’Or Winner which saw Jean-Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva united once again (since their 1959 Last Year in Marienbab) in this spare and understated portrait of enduring love, commitment and companionship.
PARADISE TRILOGY (2012-13) Ulrich Seidl, Austria 
Ulrich Seidl’s lays bare the human race and all its foibles in this darkly amusing and often tragic trilogy of studies, Paradise: Love (2012); Paradise: Faith (2012); Paradise: Hope (2013). With wicked humour and a sinister twist, Seidl and his long-time collaborator, Veronika Franz, have tapped into a raw nerve of the female psyche with three interlocking stories based on Odon von Horvath’s 1932 play ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’. The “Paradise” trilogy eloquently and provocatively probes the trans-generational experiences and differing concerns of a contemporary Austrian family of three women: a young girl, Melanie; her mother, Teresa and aunt Anna Maria. These focus on teenage issues, sex and religion. The first in the trilogy, Paradise: Love, follows Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel), a voluptuous but matronly blonde in her forties who has disappeared below the search radar of most men on the local dating scene. When she heads off to Kenya for a much needed blast of sun, her prospects seem to improve.

20 FEET FROM STARDOM | Morgan Neville, US (2013)

Winning an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2015, it’s clear to see why Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet From Stardom (2014) was triumphant as a compelling, heartwarming and unaffected exploration into the fascinating world of backing singers. From the contentiously salacious vocals on Ray Charles ‘What’d I Say’, to the graceful arrangement of ‘Lean on Me’ by Bill Withers, backing vocals are integral to our enjoyment of music across the decades. Having spent years in the shadows of some of the finest, most prominent recording artists of all time, now the likes of Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer and Darlene Love are given the platform to shine, and showcase their unique, and somewhat breathtaking abilities.

THE GREAT BEAUTY |  Paolo Sorrentino, Italy (2013)  

The heart and soul of Italy leaps off the screen in all its beauty and decadence in this cornucopia of delights. Paolo Sorrentino’s sensual Italian overload transports us to Rome for a paean to pleasure and pain, gaiety and melancholy seen through the eyes of writer and roué, Jep Gambardella, played exultantly by Sorrentino regular, Toni Servillo (The Consequences of Love). This is possibly Sorrentino’s best film, a satire capturing the essence of his homeland’s beauty and culture with an appealing and bittersweet languor that was first experienced in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita,  and now in the context of the 21st century.

WINTER SLEEP (2014) Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Palme D’Or Winner is, in spite of its considerable length, a densely discursive and often 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, Aydin sees himself as an enlightened feudal lord; spending his days in the hotel where he writes a daily column for the local newspaper. Ceylan pays homage to Bergman and Bresson in the long, vicious arguments between Aydin and his wife and sister, the camera catches the protagonists in shot/contra-shot movement, the close-ups showing the hurt on the faces of the women, who are treated with contempt and often impudence.

UNDER THE SKIN (2014) |  Jonathan Glazer, UK

Glazer developed Under the Skin for over a decade; he and co-screenwriter Walter Campbell pared it back from an elaborate, special effects-heavy concept to a sparse story focusing on an alien perspective of the human world. Most characters were played by non-actors, and many scenes were filmed with hidden cameras. With a total worldwide gross of £5.2 million, Under the Skin was failed at the box office. With its timely themes of migration, sexual politics and safety, it received critical acclaim, particularly for Johansson’s performance, Glazer’s direction, and Mica Levi‘s score. It garnered multiple awards for its groundbreaking visual allure and was named one of 2014’s best films by several publications. It ranks 61st on the BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st century.

Indiewire ranked it the 2nd best film of the 2010s.

POSTMAN’S WHITE NIGHTS (2014) | Andrey Konchalovsky, USSR

The best work happens in the quieter, contemplative moments of this reflective fable from  Russian master Andrey Konchalovsky. A moving scene captures a village elder’s funeral, where 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 humble fishermen in rural villages for their fish, rather than modern, faceless dragnet fishing, as one sequence 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.

THE ASSASSIN (2015) | Hsiao-hsien Hou, Taiwan

Taiwanese director Hsiao-hsien Hou’s spectacular drama is a graceful 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, but it is also exquisite. 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 questions the Emperor’s authority. The task involves a moral twist: not only is the governor her cousin, but also her first love.

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (2015) | Ciro Guerra, Colombia

Colombian writer|director Ciro Guerra’s third feature is a visually stunning exploration to a heart of darkness that brings to mind Miguel Gomes’ Tabu or Werner Herzog’s Cobra Verde or even Nicolas Roeg’s Belize-set drama Heart of Darkness (1993).

Serving as a backlash on organised Religion and Colonialism, the film’s slow-burn intensity has a morose and unsettling undercurrent that threatens to submerge you in the sweaty waters of the Amazon River whence its token German explorer, Theodor Koch-Grunberg (Jan Bijvoet) meanders fitfully in search of a rare and exotic flower with restorative powers.

FIRE AT SEA (2016) Gianfranco Rosi, Italy 

Gianfranco Rosi’s spare yet absorbing documentary offers an important and non-judgemental portrait of the immigration crisis facing Southern Italy, where both immigrants and islanders are given ample weight in story of their struggle to survive. Pictures can tell a thousand words and that’s the way Rosi leaves it: we must draw our own impressions and conclusions from this poignant human story.

PHANTOM THREAD (2017) Paul Thomas Anderson, US

This is arthouse drama at its best. Exploring the negative impulses of love, it is a delicately drawn tale about man’s fear of  losing control to a woman. The man in question, a fashion designer played by Daniel Day-Lewis, is captivated by a young woman’s grace and charm but refuses to let her into his business life, which is really his heart and soul. She remains tough but loving – the perfect replica of his beloved mother, tempting him but paradoxically also repulsing him. Day-Lewis remains adamant as the tortured artist, every subtle nuance of his adamance flickers across his face in a subtle display of petulance. Day-Lewis gives another remarkable performance this time as the classic gentleman artist delivered with finesse and his idiosyncratic  allure. His economy of movement is admirable capturing the feline grace of Federer and the innate style and sardonic humour of Cary Grant. When his resistance is lowered by a bout of illness, Reynolds’ reveals a deep weakness for his mother (whose ghost appears to him in her wedding dress) and her power is magically transferred to his assistant Alma, who then gets to wear the trousers – immaculately tailored – of course. MT

BEST INDIE FILMS of the Decade | 2010 – 2020

Catherine the Great (2019) **** Home Ent

Catherine the Great is a sweeping, romantic epic masterpiece series following the power, politics, and passions of the legendary monarch. In the sumptuous bonkbuster Helen Mirren is magnificent and still seriously sexy at 74, with Jason Clarke as a raunchy Grigory Potemkin riding roughshod over Nigel Williams’ frigid script. In reality, Catherine was decades younger when she came to the throne, yet Mirren carries it all off with graceful allure as the monarch in her final years. She became  Empress in 1762 after her husband Peter III was murdered by her lover, Count Orlov (Richard Roxburgh) – who she refuses to marry – and his brother, Alexei (Kevin McNally).

Surrounded by untrustworthy men: her son, Paul (Joseph Quinn), a weak and conniving dipstick; her adviser, Minister Panin (Rory Kinnear) and even Count Orlov, Catherine feels vulnerable yet she is also wise and steely. Then along comes Potemkin whose role was pivotal in the coup that brought her to the throne. She has possibly one ally in the shape of Countess Bruce (Gina McKee). But McKee cleverly paints herself into the background as an amusing and helpful ally. 

The tete a tetes with Potemkin sound louche rather than witty and urbane in the awkward script:. Mirren is a Russian version of le Roi de Soleil surrounded by disappointing acolytes, although Clarke and McKee do their best to add piquancy to the lacklustre dialogue, along with Rory Kinnear.

The small screen doesn’t do justice to the sumptuous recreation of the era and the grandiosity of it all. But Catherine the Great still manages to be an amusing snapshot of Russian history thanks to its performances rather than its mise en scene

Catherine the Great out now on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2ltnpih 

Alva – White (2019) ***

Dir.: Ico Costa; Cast: Henrique Bonacho; Portugal 2018, 98 min.

Renowned Portuguese short-film director Ico Costa creates an impressive first feature which he also wrote. It tells the story of Henrique Bonacho who has been abandoned by family and driven delirious, punishing the ones he held responsible. 

We first meet Henrique (a very intense Henrique Bonacho) as a shepherd, living in a dilapidated  hovel in the mountains. Uncommunicative, he also looks unkempt and lost. We later learn that his wife Vitoria and his two daughters have left him. Driving into the local village he kills a woman psychologist and puts her male college into a coma, punishing the people he holds responsible for the break-up of his family. He then threatens Vitoria’s mother, demanding to see his daughters. When she calls the police, he flees into the mountains where he cannot live with with the unbearable isolation for long and, so he soon returns to his home. This time he decides to put on his best clothes: a beautiful white suit. But Henrique’s problems are not over.

Alva plays out in an elliptical way, the title stands for Henrique’s re-birth: the white suit representing the old, unspoiled self. In between he looks more like a hunted animal than a human. DoP Hugo Azevedo makes imaginative use of the wild woods and mountains crafting glorious images as a hideout for the fugitive. The colours in town are more subdued, the streets become a labyrinth for Henrique. Only at the end, when he has found his place again, do we get some sunlight. But there is a powerful impression that this happy-end will not last forever. Alva is a study in loss, and eventual redemption. A small gem told in a minimalist cinematic language, with a towering performance by Bonacho. AS

NOW AT AT THE ICA LONDON

WatchAUT | Austrian Film weekend 13 – 15 December 2019

London’s Picturehouse Central will play host to a weekend of Austrian cinema from 13-15 December 2019. WatchAUT provides a glimpse of the world as perceived by the current generation of Austrian filmmakers. 
 
The festival opens with a special gala preview of LITTLE JOE, director Jessica Hausner’s foreboding tale of genetically modified flowers starring Emily Beecham (a role that won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival), Ben Whitshaw and Kerry Fox. Emily Beecham and Kerry Fox are both due to attend and take part in a post screening Q&A.
 
Festival titles focus on today’s hottest issues including the environment, women, and migrationOther acclaimed Austrian features to watch out for include multi-award winning STYX followed by a Q&A with director Wolfgang Fischer, plus other female-focused films THE GROUND BENEATH MY FEET and MADEMOISELLE PARADIS. The documentary programme comprises CHAOS, a compelling story of three Syrian women exposed to war, while EARTHWELCOME TO SODOM and THE GREEN LIE explore the many environmental issues that afflict our planet.
watchAUT | 13 -15 DECEMBER 2019

Aquarela (2018) *** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir: Viktor Kossakovsky | Doc | UK | 89’

A picture tells a thousands words when it comes to climate change. And this new eco doc on the subject literally drenches us in water in its mission to drive the point home. Aquarela is  the aquatic version of Jeff Orlowski’s remarkable Chasing Ice (2012).  delivering its vital message with any dire warnings or preachy dialogue. 

Russian filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky has shot hours of footage aiming, in a structureless but gloriously visual way, to portray the global tragedy of climate change. His vehement eco doc demonstrates how the havoc caused by the melting ice-cap in the Arctic Circle  cascades down to provoke events in Siberia’s Lake Baikal; Angel Falls in Venezuela and tornado strewn California, as nature and humanity clash in a monstrous eco-war. Put simply: while man is slowly destroying nature, the planet is hellbent on destroying us.

Cinematographer Ben Bernhard works with the latest high-tech stabilisation equipment and waterproof cameras at a rate of 96 frames per second, and these HD images record the gushing, cascading floods of glaciers, magnificent ice mountains, crashing icebergs, crumbling glaciers, tumbling waterfalls and fierce waves that mercilessly bring to mind Nicholas Monsarrat’s novel The Cruel Sea. 

Accompanied by a pounding electronic score that lends a certain chaotic gravitas, there are moments that will remain seared to the memory. The film would work more effectively with a clearer narrative arc and tighter editing despite its slim running time And although some of the sequences are over-played –  this is an engaging and informative film. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Valley of Souls (2019) MUBI

Dir|Wri: Nicolás Rincón Gille | Doc 136′ | Columbia, Belgium

Valley of Souls revisits a devastating chapter in Colombian history when locals were killed or forced out of their own country by right-wing militia. Belgian director Nicolás Rincón Gille makes the social realist drama even more haunting by casting Colombians who were directly affected by the tragedy back in 2002.

This Neo-Western sees its hero Jose on a quest for the truth, his striking features and epic intensity burning fearlessly against the rain forest and riverbanks of this subtropical paradise.

Jose has returned from a day’s fishing to discover the forces have killed his two sons Rafaele and Dionisio, and thrown their bodies into the river. These thugs are known locally as the United Self-Defenders of Colombia (AUC) – but worse – they have sprayed the slogan “Death and Purification” onto Jose’s fishing hut.

Honourable in the face of anger and sadness, Jose must find their bodies and give them a decent Christian burial. So he sets off fearlessly into the unknown on a journey that some may find rather too slow-burning, but echoes of Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent and even Argentinian drama Rojo are clearly felt. Survival with be difficult in this hostile territory and, even if he finds his children, removing their bodies from the water is an act punishable by death. The river he once loved and relied upon for his livelihood is now transformed into a place of horror and mourning and the macabre backdrop to his sons’ final moments.

He finds Rafael very soon after setting off and the young man’s body becomes a weirdly comforting companion in his canoe as he continues his odyssey into the heart of darkness. One encounter sees him bravely confronting two violent paramilitaries who goad him into stripping the hapless body of a dead friend of his, just to give them the watch and necklace. Another finds him face to face with the head honcho who force feeds him a thin soup until he manages to slip away as the soldiers are celebrating a win for their sporting hero on TV.

D0P Juan Sarmiento G. shoots on an Arri mini Alexa his magnificent widescreen images doing justice to the enormity of the situation and offering up a visual masterpiece even when the story starts to slow down midway.

But Jose is certainly a tragic hero who perseveres indomitably even when this involves digging up an entire graveyard of fresh corpses to see if his son is amongst them. Naturally, this is done with gravity and respect; he even uses his own green and yellow Brazilian football T-shirt as a shroud in an act that carries with it an almost poetic sense of dignity.

Colombian cinema has really taken off recently and Valley of Souls is just another in the vast wealth of films coming out of South America today. MT

ON MUBI 15 APRIL 2021 | MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | Winner ETOILE D’OR 2019

Britain on Film

As part of The National Lottery’s 25th birthday celebrations, British comedian and broadcaster Paul Merton hosted a funny video countdown of the top ten most watched films on BFI Player’s Britain on Film.

Made possible directly through funding from the national lottery, the BFI’s ambitious Britain on Film project saw the mass digitisation of over 10,000 films from the BFI and regional and national archive partners with titles representing all corners of the UK and spanning 120 years of film and all types of filmmaking, from home movies and news footage to feature films, travelogues, educational documentaries and government sponsored films. A truly national success the films on the platform have received over 75 million online views on BFI Player since 2015, with 78% audience reach outside London and the South East, transforming the level of free public access to our shared film heritage across the UK.

Aberdeen

Belfast no way out

Changing face of Camberwell

Chichester tour

Christmas in Belfast

Day in Liverpool

Milton Keynes and the Area

Portsmouth Charlotte Street

Sunshine in Soho

Train Rides through Nottingham 

For the US: https://www.youtube.com/user/BFIfilms/playlists?view=50&sort=dd&shelf_id=65

 

Last Visit | Akher Ziyarah (2019) **** Prix du Jury Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Abdulmohsen Aldhabaan; Cast: Mousaed Khaled, Fahad Alghurariy, Osama Alqess, Abduallah Alfahad; Saudi-Arabia 2019, 74 min.

Times are changing in Riyadh. Abdulmohsen Aldhabaan’s realist portrait of father and son conflict serves as a moving metaphor for the underlying clash between past and present in the Arab world.

Nasser (Alquess) is a respectable middle-aged business man who has moved with the times in Riyadh. His teenage son Waleed (Alfahad) is introvert, sullen and – like most teenagers – critical of his father. But his grandfather’s sudden illness causes him to take stock of his life back in the village where his father grew up. Waleed is passive-aggressive, and initially makes it clear – without words – that he’d rather be anywhere else than at his grandfather’s bedside. When he arrives in the village with his father, there is a police roadblock – several days previously a young boy disappeared from his home and the search for him has so far proved unsuccessful. Waleed is introduced to his uncles and his cousin Faisal (Alshahrani) for the first time. The family is gathered around the dying patriarch, interrupting the wake only for prayers. Nasser expects Waleed to join in but the boy feels the need to pose as the ‘obedient son’ overbearing. His upbringing has been traditional, although their life in Riyadh is secular. In some ways this has been a poisoned chalice, his cousin seems to be having a more entertaining time in the countryside but there are clearly differences. And soon enough Waleed discovers past traumas from his father’s life in the village as the boy’s disappearance  comes to a head making their drive back to Riyadh a morose one.

DoP Amine Messadi pans faces and objects with great care reflecting the mens’ fleeting thoughts and emotions in this documentary-style drama, where the camera is on the outside, observing. Just before Waleed and Nasser leave, the camera traces back symbolically over a few cracks in the room they shared – this and the total absence of women works as a solemn critique of a society caught between a religious yesterday and a commercial present. Significantly too, Aldhabaan keeps dialogue to a minimum, only the confrontation between father and son burns bitterly in this sombre and tight-lipped drama. AS

MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL | PRIX DU JURY | GOLDEN STAR AWARD 2019

 

A Son (2019) ****

Dir: Mehdi Barsaoui | Cast: Sami Bouajila, Najla Ben Abdallah, Youssef Khemiri, Noomen Hamda, Slah Msadda | Drama, 95′

Meriem and her husband Fares seem to have it all – a carefree lifestyle, supportive friends and most of all a lovely little boy, Aziz. Meriem has just been promoted in her managerial job for a Human Resources conglomerate. Life is sweet for this privileged couple. Until tragedy strikes during their drive back from a day out in the countryside. Shots are fired from nowhere and hit the family car, amid shouts of “Allah Akhbar”. Aziz is injured. A blinding rush to the nearest hospital sees the tone shift from upbeat breeziness to heart-pumping terror.

Mehdi Barsaoui’s tense and tightly scripted melodrama makes for a stunning debut feature and subverts our expectations. Films about terrorist attacks are usually set in non-Arab countries so this brave attempt to stage a terror attack in a  Muslim country show courage and a innovation on the part of this Tunisian director, and won him the Orizzonti award for best director at Venice 2019.

But what happens next is both shocking and bewildering. The trauma of Aziz fighting life is compounded by a startling revelation that sends the family into meltdown. Blood tests to work out which parent is most suited to give the child a transfusion reveal that Fares can’t possibly be Aziz’s biological father. Naturally this is devastating: Meriem is aware of her infidelity during a difficult time in their marriage but she had no idea Aziz was not her husband’s child and so she is forced to keep this dreadful fact to herself. This complicates the already fraught scenario as Islamic law forbids organ donations from outside the nuclear family. A long waiting list is their only option as the gruelling nightmare unfolds.

At this point a rather dubious character enters the fray. Mr. Choukri (Slah Msaddak) is the sort of man you wouldn’t trust to post a letter but he attempts to support Fares forcing him into an intractable dilemma and one that money will not necessarily solve. A excellent cast act out this remarkable debut but Bouajila is particularly strong as a successful man of integrity whose masculinity is challenged by a seemingly impossible set of circumstances. MT

Marrakech Film Festival 2019

 

Scattered Night (2019) **** Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Dir: Sol Kim and Jihyoung Lee | S. Korea dram 90′

Sol Kim and Jihyoung Lee’s first film captures the trauma of family break-up seen through the eyes of two small children in this austere cinema verite drama that gradually builds into a convincing conclusion.

Little Seung-ah Moon (Sumin) is at the centre of it all. Barely ten, she intuitively taps into the imploding relationship of her increasingly alienated parents, searching in vain for guidance, assurance or a hint of stability as she struggles to understand how her parents still care for each other but now want the family to live apart. The questions she asks are basic and natural, but she never gets a proper replay, let alone any love or attention – apart from the occasional platitude and a throwaway comment: “you’ll understand one day”.

Scattered Night is an intense experience, the camera never leaving the child’s face through its entire running time in a compelling natural performance for one so young and vulnerable as Seung-ah Moon. But the filmmakers are not interested in Sumin’s ordinary parents, who carry their own emotional baggage from the past, influenced by society’s expectations of them, fleshed out in a sequence where grandma comes to stay. The focus here is the Sumin (Moon Seung- a) and her brother Jinho (Choi Junwoo) who are barely coping with the emotional confusion of the separation. Using sustained takes and languid pacing the filmmakers carefully observe the children’s reactions to their parent’s non-committal body language, avoiding sentimentality or melodrama in crafting a subtle and resonant snapshot that shares its tragic story full of complexity, uncertainty and pain. MT

SCATTERED NIGHT | Marrakech Film Festival 2019 

 

So Long My Son | Di jiu tian chang (2019) ****

Dir Wang Xiaoshuai | Cast: Wang Jingchun, Yong Mei, Qi Xi, Wang Yuan, Du Jiang, Ai Liya, Xu Cheng, Li Jingjing, Zhao Yanguozhang | China, Drama 185′

This delicate and deeply affecting melodrama explores one tragic couple’s life during thirty years of China’s one-child policy (1979-2013).

Wang Xiaoshuai’s So Long, My Son (Di jiu tian chang) is intimate in style but ambitious in its storyline that straddles three decades of Chinese social history during an absorbing three hours. It all begins with two young boys eager to join their friends messing about in a reservoir a northern town in 1986. Xingxing can’t swim and is nervous; Haohao tries to persuade him but eventually runs off alone. The next scene sees a family enjoying their supper. Xingxing, his father Yaoyun (Wang Jinchung) and mother Liyun (Yong Mei). But back at the reservoir again, all hell breaks loose as one of the kids appears to be lying in the mud. A frantic chase to the hospital ends in distress – clearly a child has lost his life, and it appears to be Xingxing. The story then jumps forward to the 1990s where the couple are arguing with a teenage boy called Xingxing. Did he miraculously survive the drowning or is this another boy altogether?. Reality will be revealed in a deftly devised subplot.

But from the moment they lose their first child, Yaoyun and Liyun will never be the same, the tragedy bonds them as they live a quiet existence marked by sadness – and we feel for them. One of the grace moments is a silent scene on a bus where Liyun stares ruefully into the distance while another woman chats away to her, oblivious of her pain.

Yaoyun and Liyun are close to Haohao’s parents, mother Haiyan (Ai Liya), the factory line manager, and father Yingming (Xu Cheng), but tragedy strikes again when Liyun becomes pregnant with a second child, the state policy cruelly forcing her to have an abortion. Meanwhile Yaoyun grew close to Yingming’s sister Moli (Qi Xi), who holds the key to this heart-rending social saga.

Performances are tender and utterly convincing from the lead couple, winning them prizes at the Berlin where the film premiered in 2019. This is a sumptuous slow-moving feast for the eyes that also feeds the soul with its resonant storyline. The revolutionary changes provide a subtle backdrop to this social drama with its brooding texture and grace notes that will resonate with anyone affected by their plight. MT
NOW IN CINEMAS from 6 DECEMBER 2019

Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! (2019) ***

Dir: Morgan Spurlock | US Doc 93′

Fifteen years after his ground-breaking expose on the fast food industry Spurlock is back with Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! that sees him on the other side of the debate – as a fast food restaurateur.

This fast flowing and informative film explores an US industry dominated by franchises, and glibly-named eateries – mostly based in industrial parks rather than on the high street. Here Spurlock sets out to make a crispy chicken sandwich with healthy credentials.

Spurlock is seen talking to marketing experts and involved in preparations to open his own restaurant, choosing a chicken sandwich made from his farm’s birds to appeal to changing tastes. Fast Food has gone through a vast transformation since Spurlock sat down to a table at the Golden Arches for his 2004 breakout. Nowadays consumers demand better-for-you cuisine, but there’s also a great deal of spin going on – and legal experts spill the beans on what we think we’re being offered, and what producers actually get away with in the name of decency. “Free range” just means that chickens get an option to step into an outdoor pen in the fresh air, but most stay inside, particularly in the sweltering heat of Alabama where Morgan sets up his Morganite chicken shed whence his chicks will eventually end up in his crispy (fried is a negative word) Southern Chicken sandwiches.

But some scenes are hard to swallow particularly those that show the appalling cruelty of the food industry. We see baby chickens from the time they break out of their shells to their deaths, six weeks later, from overweight, heart attacks and the sheer exhaustion of supporting their over-sized bodies on legs that have not had time to develop any strength. A troubled farmer from Alabama also talks about the unfair system in the US which leaves the smaller concerns under pressure to produce often sub standard fare.

But for the most part Super Size 2 is slick and entertaining with the chipper filmmaker flippantly joking around as he travels up and down the US taking on the advice of advertising gurus, lawyers and spin-doctors in the name of his cheerlessly ‘foul’ venture. MT.

SUPER SIZE ME 2: HOLY CHICKEN! is released On Demand from 9th December 2019

https://vimeo.com/goldwynfilms/ssm2-trailer

Betrayed (1988) *** Blu-ray release

Dir:Costa-Gavras |Screenwriter:Joe Eszterhas Cast: Tom Berenger, John Heard, Ted Levine,Jeffrey DeMunn, John Mahoney, Betsy Blair, Debra Winger | Thriller UK 127’

With its universal themes of alienation and racial division, comes a particularly timely re-release that highlights the continuing issues surrounding anti-semitism in the Labour Party thirty years on, and nearly fifty years since the Holocaust.

After the Chicago killing of a controversial radio talk-show host by right wing extremists, FBI agent in the shape of Debra Winger goes is tasked with investigating the prime suspect (Tom Berenger). A thanks to his moves on the dance floor, and tousled haired charm, it doesn’t take long before she is seriously smitten by this outwardly clean living widower despite nagging feelings of doubt.

But it all goes pear-shaped when this appealingly earthy guy takes her on a night time  hunting expedition of a very sinister kind, one involving human beings. Clearly Winger is not impressed but her boss and ex-lover (John Heard) forces her to keep on his trail, one that reveals serious crime involving a white supremacist conspiracy against Jews, blacks and the LGBT crowd in the heartlands of America’s tradition-bound midwest that serves as a thorny counterpoint to her own ambivalent feelings about her new lover. Highly intelligent she may be as a detective, but we are sometime fools for love.

The strength of this thriller is undoubtedly in the performances. Winger and Berenger skilfully navigate Eszterhas’ flawed script, riding over the potholes to make this convincing and often gripping viewing, with its highly corrosive subject matter. MT

On 2 December the BFI will bring Betrayed to Blu-ray for the first time in the UK. Special features include a new audio commentary and audio interviews with Costa-Gavras and Joe Eszterhas.

 

The Two Popes (2019) *****

Dir: Fernando Meirelles | Wri: Anthony McCarten | Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Anthony Hopkins | Drama, Brazil 125′

Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins add weight and sophistication to this soigné and sumptuously mounted tale of Papal spirituality and responsibility. As the two great minds on the opposite ends of the spiritual debate they chew over and elegantly digest Anthony McCarten’s witty and thoughtful script that imagines the conservative Pope Benedict (Hopkins) paving the way for the liberal Pope Francis (Pryce) to forge a new future for the Catholic Church.

Pope Benedict XVI quotes from Plato when he makes his unprecedented decision to abdicate into order to guide Pope Francis into his vacant chair: “Those who don’t want to lead are the best leaders”. Yet the pontiffs couldn’t be more different, Francis is a warm, generous and garrulous soul who enjoys football and travelling to visit his vast congregations. Benedict is a detached and fastidious intellectual who dines alone and plays classical music on the papal piano.

The two are first seen meeting for a private tete a tete in the peaceful gardens of the Castel Gandolpho – and we are transported there by Cesar Charlone’s impressive widescreen camerawork that also captures the intimate spaces and vast crowd scenes in this thoughtful and and surprisingly moving drama.

They discuss world poverty, the migrant crisis and climate change and these are skilfully woven into black and white flashbacks picturing Pope Francis as a young Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio (played convincingly by Juan Minujin), who found himself receiving the calling just before his intention to marry.

Hopkins is steely and often vituperative as Benedict. He stresses their crucial conflicts and is dour in his discussions – although he occasionally lightens up with acerbic one liners: “It’s a German joke. It doesn’t have to be funny.” Pryce adopts an gentle, over-awed expression and sometimes appears back-footed as Francis, and we genuinely warm to him – this is Oscar level stuff.

And we see him journeying to the backstreets of Lima and Lampedusa, cooking in soup kitchens and visiting the needy and poverty-stricken. At this point Meirelles delves into striking archive footage of mid 1970s Chile showing the desperation on the streets when people where disappearing during the Coup d’Etat.

Eventually the two reach a common agreement cleverly conceived in the spry and intelligent script. And Benedict gradually shows the silver lining to his heart of stone as a really warm friendship develops. Hopkins gives luminous and considered performance full of quiet integrity in fitting with the Pontiff’s perceived wisdom. After all, these are two players at the zenith of their game – and it shows – in this highly enjoyable and inspirational piece of filmmaking. Let’s hope God approves. MT

COMING TO NETFLIX

 

 

 

The Nightingale (2018) ****

Dir. Jennifer Kent. Australia. 2018. 136′

Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent is best known for her chiller The Babadook. Here she turns her camera to focus on Australia’s colonial history with the premise: “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”.

Nightingale is a sprawling and furious foray into the wilds Tasmania fuelled by a passion of a woman driven to defend her honour to the utmost. Aisling Franciosi brings vehemence and a surreal luminance as the central character Clare. And while Nightingale is certainly impassioned, lushly mounted and ambitious, it often gets waylaid by plotwists on the narrative front: from the outset the outcome is more or less predictable, although its odyssey into the heart of Australia’s colonial darkness certainly has us gasping for breath.

Anyone would be enraged if not extremely distraught to be subjected to gang rape and the killing of their baby and partner. And this is exactly what happens to Clare, forcing her to embark on a perilous and highly-charged quest for revenge taking as her guide a single-minded young aboriginal man. Their journey into the dark heart of Tasmania will be a perilous and eventful experience – and an extremely gruelling one for the audience. But what is undoubtedly a great premise for an epic saga, gets far too excited and over-heated plot-wise for its own good under Kent’s direction. And that’s a shame. Ultimately though, The Nightingale is a respectable auteurist enterprise.

Back in 1825, Tasmania was known as Van Diemen’s Land and that is where the young Irish woman fetches up after a career of what is now euphemistically known as stealing ‘to survive’. As a servant to the British occupying forces she is married to another ex-convict Aidan (Michael Sheasby), and has a tiny baby. But the man who has saved her – commanding officer Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin) – also fancies his chances with her and after she perform the titular Irish folk song to entertain the troops one night, he calls her to his quarters where he brutally rapes her. But it doesn’t end there, and by the end of the evening her entire family is dead, and Clare is determined to get her own back on the feckless man and his vicious collaborators Sergeant Ruse (Damon Herriman) and Ensign Jago (Harry Greenwood), following them to a their new posting in the town of Launceston, where Hawkins hopes to get a promotion.

Aboriginal Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) is not keen on the idea of accompanying a young white woman, but the oddly-matched couple eventually set off through the dense forest, their spirited exchanges fuelling what is otherwise a predicable journey. Their accompanying animals will invariably come off worst, along with their English overlords, who are invariably depicted as the same one-dimentional arch villains we will soon meet in Black 47 (2018). 

Nightingale triumphs as a robust cocktail of female oppression interwoven with anti-colonial overtones and laced with a folkloric twist (not to mention the Gaelic and the Palawi kani banter). Clare’s rendition of the ballad ‘Nightingale’ and other melodies is tunefully mellow in stark contrast to the ultra-brutal violence that eventually becomes as tedious as the repetitive plot reversals, and have the same affect as commercial breaks in subtracting dramatic heft from what could have been a succinct and infinitely more immersive historical drama, despite the rather trite denouement.

Along with terrific performances from the lead duo, Radek Ladczuk’s camerawork does Nightingale proud – all those vigorously verdant forests and burgeoning bushes giving way to the vibrant lushness of the Tasmanian widescreen landscapes. The Nightingale is a worthwhile exploration of a lesser known, but horrific episode in Antipodean colonial history. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 29 NOVEMBER 2019

Atlantics (2019) **

Dir: Mati Diop | Wri: Olivier Demangel | Cast: Traore, Mame Sane, Aminata Kane | Drama 104′

Mati Diop, now 36, was one of the four women, and the only black female director in this year’s Cannes competition line-up with this fabulous but flawed surreal love story. With a French mother and Senegalese father, she grew up in Paris and rose to fame with Simon Killer going on to film, direct and write several short films. Her Dakar-set debut feature Atlantics sees a young girl trapped by her love for an unpaid construction worker and her arranged marriage to a glib entrepreneur.

Similar in many ways to Diop’s short film Atlantiques (2009) it also echoes Alain Gomis’ Aujourd’hui (2012) in its glorious setting by Dakar’s Atlantic coast, atmospherically shot by Claire Mathon. Mame Sane makes for an impressive lead as the feisty but vulnerable central character Ada, but there are tonal inconsistencies and Diop’s attempt to fuse the social realism of the early scenes with the magic realist elements of the final half feel unconvincing and may leave many viewers bewildered.

A confident beginning sees construction workers on the rampage. They have been building the tall skyscraper that gives the city the skyline of a smaller version of Dubai, but are owed  three months’ pay. Assurances from the foreman that the boss, Mr. N’Diaye (Diankou Sembene) will pay up, fall on deaf ears. One of the worker, Souleiman (Traore), meets up with with 17-year-old Ada and the two share passionate embraces on the beach. But this doomed romance is bound to fail: Ada has been betrothed to Omar, a rich man who shuttles between Dakar and Italy, and the wedding is in a few days Meanwhile Souleiman has decided to take off in a pirogue with his mates hoping to find better luck in Spain.

Ada finds out about all this when she meets him later in a bar on the beach run by her friend Dior (Nicole Sougou). Her other friends Fanta (Amina Kane) and Mariama (Mariama Gassama) will be bereft now that the men are leaving town. They have all used their feminine wiles to get ahead financially and this is described by Diop as “Afro capitalist neo-feminism.” And when they see Ada’s new home they are deeply envious, she is utterly unimpressed and actively rebels against the wedding .

Luckily for Ada, someone deeply objects to the horrendous white polyester Louis XV bedroom and set fire to the whole property, although no-one is harmed. The police officer assigned to investigate, Issa (Amadou Mbow), proves unworthy of his job and seems to be suffering unexplained blackouts as proceedings take on a surreal twist with some of the characters developing white, zombie like eyes.

The supernatural soon invades reality as the film morphs into horror mode and the pacing slurs to Al Qadiri’s eerie score that mixes electronics with African instruments. This tonal shift feels odd and take us by surprise with the action moving predominantly into the night and Diop making great use of the raging Atlantic sea as a surging malevolent undercurrent . Her inventive visual ideas mingle well with the film’s undertones of Islamist misogynism, post-imperialism and witch doctors; although these remain rather unwritten, along with the enigmatic love story, despite an ample running time of nearly two hours. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | JURY Grand Prix WINNER CANNES 2019

 

Shooting the Mafia (2019) ***

Director: Kim Longinotto | With: Letizia Battaglia, Maria Chiara Di Trepani, Santi Caleca, Eduardo Rebulla, Franco Zecchin, Roberto Timperi | UK, 94′

Kim Longinotto chronicles the work of the very much alive photojournalist Letizia Battaglia in this moving but rather hagiographic affair. 

A Sicilian to the core, Battaglia has a visceral connection with Palermo where the Mafia was particularly active during the 1970s and ’80s. Her keen eye for a poignant picture captures everyday life in the impoverished capital. But she is best known for her photos of the Mafia’s brutality and, crucially, the affect it had on the victims concerned. Shocking snapshots reveal dead women and children bathed in their own blood; the startling aftermath of a street shooting, the victim’s wife tortured in agony at the scene of the crime. The documentary particularly highlights those fighting for justice, retribution and an end to the reign of terror: Judge Giovanni Falcone and his successor Paolo Borsellino who both lost their lives.

English documentarian Kim Longinotto won the World Cinema Directing Award at Sundance 2015 for Dreamcatcher her illuminating film on prostitution in Chicago. Clearly she is impressed with Battaglia, now 83,  who comes across as confident, hard-bitten and down to earth. Pink-haired and smoking her way through her story Shooting the Mafia is enlivened by TV footage, archival material and her own photographs. The film culminates with the important Mafia trial in 1986. The judge Giovanni Falcone was blown to bits in 1992. She talks of his fearless honesty and dedication. In some ways he is the hero of the piece.

Battaglia’s early life took place behind closed doors, her highly protective father shielding her jealously from the gaze of his friends and associates. This was quite normal back then. And so was an incident where a man exposed himself to her, leaving her bewildered and bemused. She married at 16 to the first man who asked, and had two daughters. Her story is interwoven with clips from Italian films the ’50s starring a blond Silvana Magnano, adding an upbeat vibe to an otherwise depressing tale of poverty, corruption and violence. Divorced in 1971, Battaglia fell into journalism, preferring to take photos rather than write for the liberal newspaper L’Ora. Her job was her life and she gradually worked her way through a series of impressionable – often much younger – lovers attracted by her earthy nonchalance and solid sense of self.  Two men, in particular, take part as her long term partners, both of them photographers who worked alongside her. And these men seem to feature more heavily in her world than her family: “I could talk about it but I don’t want to,”

There’s an impression that photography was a given rather than an ambition, almost as a default position due to her being employed by the paper. Mafia violence was an everyday occurrence in Palermo and someone had to go and record it for the paper. Although competently captured, there’s no evidence of any aesthetic behind the pictures. Indeed, she soon drifted from journalism and into politics as a Green Party local councillor, which is where she came across Giovanni Falcone. She felt too connected to the killing to take photos after his death, but this is the only time she discusses the equivocal nature of the photographer’s role. Her only relevant comment is personal: “When I look at my photos, I just see blood, blood, blood.”

The sensationalist nature of the subject matter is clearly the compulsion here. We experience a certain detachment to the photos of Mafia killings, and this is due in part to our familiarity with a theme that is so much a part of cinema history, with films like Goodfellas, The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America. The most affecting segments of the film are those featuring the real victims and particularly the clip where the wife of one of Falcone’s bodyguards breaks down during the funeral. That said, this is a surface affair that often lets the peripheral life of its protagonist dominate the important nature of her work. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | PANORAMA

 

 

 

Kamchatka Bears: Life Begins (2018) ****

Dir: Irina Zhuravleva, Vladislav Grishin | Writers: Dmitry and Igor Shpilenok | 52′ Doc, USSR

South Kamchatka Federal Sanctuary is often called bear paradise. This magnificent wild countryside lies on a peninsular to the far east of Russia on the Northern Pacific seabord. And this is where Irina Zhuravleva and Vladislav Grishin took their cameras to film the early years of life for a brown bear family.

Only the ambient sounds of the wild can be heard in this desolate but spectacular northern region where the newborn cubs’ early months play out. In this instance, the mother stayed with her cubs for three years, but often they have a much shorter time together. The directors seek out innovative camera angles, aerial shots and time lapse photography in their attempt to reveal the lives of their impressive animals and their exotic habitat . From flighting for territory and foraging for wild salmon in the lakes, to hunkering down in the closeness of their pack while foxes, and rabbits watch respectfully from a distance.

This is a far cry from Werner Herzog’s 2005 bear chronicle Grizzly Man that followed the tragic life of bear activist Timothy Treadwell and Arnie Huguenard who were killed by bears they had ‘befriended’ on the other side of the ocean in Alaska. Here the directors make no contact with the furry mammals, although their intimate close-ups certainly offer us a feeling of being apart of the wild bear pack through the spring, summer and the first snows of autumn.

Seven months in the making the extraordinary story unfolds as a meditative experience free of any commentary, bookended only by a brief introduction and epilogue accompanied by delicately drawn animations and an informative inter-titles outlining the tragic facts about bear survival. Pavel Doreuli studio’s sombre sound design accompanies this final act explaining that the main threat to Kamchatka’s wildlife is the change of habitat due to mining, construction of hydroelectric stations near the spawning streams and gas pipelines, a hazard of modern life and growing populations. The film very much connects with the narrative of disappearing animal communities all over the world. MT

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | London 2019

The Last Faust (2019) **

Dir.: Philipp Humm, Dominik Wieschermann; Cast: Stephen Berkoff, Martin Hancock, Glyn Dilley, Yvonne Mai, Edwin de la Renta, Scarlet Mellish Wilson; UK 2019, 107 min.

Philipp Humm came to filmmaking from a background at Amazon, Deutsche Telecom and T-Mobile USA. He got together with DoP Dominik Wieschermann and the result is this stylish and stagey but flawed imagining of Goethe’s Faust One and Two.

It took Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 60 years to finish his tragic magnum opus -the original stage play can run for anything between 14 and 21 hours. Here the  filmmakers have distilled it into a 107 minute film transposing the 500-year old allegorical tale of Faust’s pact with the Devil to Silicon Valley in the year 2059. Humanity is on the brink of extinction as Artificial Intelligence (AI) heralds a new dawn of technological superiority.

Faust One is straightforward, God betting Mephistopheles (Glyn Dilley) that he cannot tempt Dr. Faust (Martin Hancock) to do evil. But after seducing young Gretchen (Yvonne Mai), the good Doctor is drunk on power. So for the second part, Humm introduces Dr. Goodfellow (Berkoff), a Tech wizard who is Dr. Faust’s successor, and probably the last one. 

It all begins with a Star Wars- like exposition (minus scrolling text) which explains that an artificial neural network is taking over and will overpower humankind sooner than later. Dr. Goodfellow is in the only safe place not connected to his vast network: his mother’s home, where he tells the Superhuman machine robot AI Paris the original Faust story.

Goethe introduced diverse cultural styles for the second part, comprising opera; ballet; Greek tragedy and medieval mystery plays. Here Berkoff opts for contemporary dance, overwhelming music (Yello), comedy costumes and a great deal of partially digested philosophy centred around Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ubermensch (Supermann) theories from his opus: Also sprach Zarathustra.

Somehow the story gets lost under all this ballast, and even the Weinstein parallel can’t save it. You can see what Humm has in mind with his reductionist action and poetic interludes, but it comes adrift with Dr. Goodfellow’s narration of the storyline. The play-in-play structure is another inspired departure – with Humm using Faust dressed as Steve Job – but overall these individual strokes of brilliance diminish the strength of the endeavour as a whole, and we are left high and dry by the Sorcerer’s apprentices Humm and Wieschermann. AS

AVAILABLE 2 DECEMBER ON ALL MAJOR DIGITAL PLATFORMS (AMAZON, iTUNES, and SKY STORE

 

What’s New Pussycat (1964) *** Bluray

Dir: Clive Donner | Cast: Peter O’Toole, Romy Schnieder, Capucine, Paula Prentiss, Woody Allen, Ursula Andress | 109′ France/US Comedy

What’s new Pussycat? Is a light-hearted often hilarious comedy farce thanks to a witty script by Woody Allen (who also stars) and its fabulous cast. Nowadays it will be criticised for its perceived misogyny, but back in the 1960s this is how life was. So the film is certainly not laudable ethically or aesthetically but that doesn’t mean it’s not highly entertaining, and not least because of its performances and jazzy score from Burt Bacharach.

The opening sequence sets the tone for what is a flagrant but lush satire and outlandish behaviour from both the sexes, and everyone seems to play by the same rules, the men never upstaging the women. 

Clive Donner would eventually go on to direct Peter O’Toole in Rogue Male (1976). Here he plays Michael Voltaire James, a rogue of a different kind. One who is dating Romy Schneider’s “Pussycat” but is giving out clear signals that he doesn’t want to be tied down. “Marriage is forever, like concrete”. The other women is his life enjoy his attentions but are never degraded or hurt by him. 

So off he goes to seek the advice of Peter Sellers’ dementedly camp psychoanalyst who is himself not exactly averse to the odd extramarital affair, causing his wife (Eddra Gale) to inquire: “is she prettier than me? “Prettier than you?”, he replies “I’m prettier than you”. 

Donner’s skilful direction plays down some of the film’s more slapstick sequences but still allows his prodigious cast free reign to style their own idiosyncratic roles, and this makes for some inspired and enjoyable vignettes from the likes of Capucine, Paul Prentiss, Romy Schneider, Ursula Andress, and Sabine Sun, although Peter Sellers shouts far too much for everyone’s enjoyment. Peter O’Toole is incredibly debonair as the philandering chain-smoking lead character who never seems able to curtail his romantic attentions.

Pussycat does have a happy ending and and brilliant finale – and Allen’s script provides plenty of memorable one-liners to make this a cult classic worthy revisiting. MT

NOW ON BLURAY | EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA | 2 December 

Heimat is a Space in Time | Heimat ist Ein Raum aus Zeit (2019) ****

Dir.: Thomas Heise, Documentary; Germany/Austria 2019, 218 min.

Writer/director Thomas Heise, born 1955 in —what was then East-Berlin — shares his personal history of his homeland  and Austria from 1912 to the present.

His distinctive voice shines  through as he digs into family archives, testimonials and remnants of the indescribable horrors and upheavals of 20thcentury Germany. This an epic work that serves a memorial to those who are no longer with us, and an opportunity for future generations to visit the grim past of the holocaust.

His narration is measured but engaging, and accompanied by extensive black-and-white travelling shots, showing the places of remembrance as they look today. There is something quietly contemplative about these sequences that explore trains, railways and stations, woods and lost places, almost like forgotten parts of a ghost town. Told in five chapters (with decreasing lengths) Heimat is extremely German in flavour, melancholic in tone and with a pedantic tendency for detail – hence the running time of nearly four (rewarding) hours.

Heimat starts in vibrant colour, then eschews it for good: the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood is shown as a taster for the family conflicts to come: the greedy wolf looking for his victims. The cut-outs in the wood ask questions: why did the mother send the little girl out into the dangerous woods?, and who is the good hunter who made rebirth possible. Here, as later, the camera shows people (and art-objets) from their feet travelling upwards, sometimes surprised that there is actually a head – one sculpture is even missing its cranium.

It all begins with a school essay by Heise’s grandfather Wilhelm, fourteen years old in 1912. He  he outs himself as a radical pacifist. He later climbs out of poverty into the safe middle-class position of teacher, but his marriage to Edith, a Jewish socialist from Vienna, brings him “Berufsverbot” under the Nazis. His early retirement at forty, seems to fly in the face of his letters claiming loyalty to the regime. Edith, a sculptor, would later find herself in a concentration camp, but this was nothing compared to the fate of the rest of her family in Vienna.

In letters to Berlin we learn how the family is forced from their generous flat, into a cramped  one room, with no coal to heat the freezing winter of 1941/42. A good day is when, “the postman does not bring the feared letter, stating that the family has to come to the “Sammelstelle”, where they are forced into wagons meant for animals, and deported to Poland, mainly Lodz. Edith’s father Max runs out of tobacco, also forbidden to Jews, and is forced to suck his pipe. When their long deported friends and neighbours, stop writing, Max and his family hope they are just too busy in Lodz. Heise reads these grim letters as the Vienna deportation lists appear before our eyes: in alphabetical order, the right-hand header stating the name of the extermination camp. Just reader these lists is sheer torture. And the trains, the ordinary ones, are still running all the time, before and after the name of the victims are unveiled.

Edith and Wilhelm saws their two sons deported: Wolfgang and his brother are sent to the Forced Labour Camp Zerbst, which looks today like a desolated airfield, a “Kulisse” for the DEFA-Documentaries of Thomas Heise, who all ended up in the “safety” of the archive. Then there is the decade-long letter exchange between a certain Udo, who lives in West-Germany, and tries to convince a certain Rosemarie Balker – he had kissed her twice before emigrating –  to join him in the West. Their exchange is illuminating: neither of them is convinced they are getting the ‘real deal’ in their different sides of Germany. Udo can see the footprints of all the high-ranking Nazis whereas Rosemarie (who would go on to be a Romance scholar and marry Thomas’ father Wolfgang, a lecturer of Philosophy) experiences the widening gulf between propaganda and reality in the GDR. Both parents became victims of the Stasi – even though Rosemarie had informed herself at the beginning – and they became friends with the playwright Heiner Müller, the writer Christa Wolff and the singer Wolf Biermann, one of Wolfgang’s students. With his father dead, and his mother dying, Thomas Heise now feels safest in the past.  

Heimat is a Space in Time is history, cultural and personal: when Marika Rökk sings a morale-boosting song during the first years of the war, we cannot get the Vienna deportation lists out of our heads. Despite its extensive running time, the documentary becomes compelling: we wants to read more letters, to learn more about what happened. The tragedy of the two Germanys in unification is clear for all to see: twins bound together, now forced to come to terms with their past. Heise’s intensity often belies the aesthetic form. And even though he denied in an interview that the film is his “Trauerarbeit”, it is exactly that. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE | PREMIERED AT DOCLISBOA 2019 

    

The Street (2019) ****

Dir.: Zed Nelson; Documentary; UK 2019, 94 min.

Ugandan born filmmaker Zed Nelson, best known for his work as photographer, has created a portrait of Hoxton Street in the London Borough of Hackney, spanning four years. This area is symbolic of a certain type of gentrification that leaves the old and poor literally in the cold. People who have spent their whole lives here are suddenly forced to leave because their neighbourhood is within spitting distance of the City of London, and therefore property values have increased. Luxury apartment blocks are swallowing up people and a way of life that has served the community well for more than three generations.                                      

Oscillating between melancholy and absurdist nightmares, The Street shows how parts of society are falling away. Since the 1950s Hoxton’s close-knit neighbourhood has absorbed  waves of immigrants. The newly arrived have bought the shops and flats as well as paying exorbitant prices for the encroaching luxury apartment blocks. Some are young urban hipsters who have set up stylish restaurants, digital media start-ups and corporate property developers. All this has brought with it a deepening social and financial divide.

A priest has lived in the area seemingly forever now finds himself a victim of the changing  circumstances: he will have to retire at seventy, which is next year, and cannot afford to live in his old parish. He talks about hatred and resentments which is already poisoning the community

Another culprit has been the 2016 EU referendum which has divided society with its 52.0% divide of leavers. As one of the store owners point out, “the bicycle shop opposite is owned by Frenchmen” – a fact that deeply offends him. The carpet shop, in family hands for over fifty years, is gone, the garage will be next. The pie shop is living on borrowed time: their customer base has moved on. The era when local shops where meeting-places, hubs of the community are no more.  

An estate agent bemoans the situation: “gentrification is going to amplify and increase my business, there’s no doubt about it. But the negative impacts on the community should be looked at by the government, otherwise market forces will gentrify everything”. And the Art Gallery owner is equally observant: “Aviva has bought up most of Hoxton Square. Mono-culture can’t be right, other things – the more interesting shops and locales just disappear and die. But it’s true, where artist’s go the corporates will follow.”

The ex-trader, who bought a warehouse comments: “There wasn’t change for a long time, and then a lot of change took place very quickly. Artists, bankers, came along and saw these amazing warehouses and Victorian industrial buildings, and realised they could get live-work permission on these things but never intended to work there, so they weren’t creating any jobs, they just turned them into warehouse apartments. But it takes that sort of policy, which Hackney never had, to maintain control of a rampant gentrification.” To which one wants to add, that the government with its austerity measures, including cuts in the grant support for the councils, has not helped either.

Which only shows, that not all ‘intruders’ are neo-liberal beasts, but have compassion and a brain – but how is this going to help 82-year old Colleen, who has lived through the Blitz in Hoxton Street, “when we knew that we would survive, all of us together”. Her flat is falling to pieces, and soon she will join the forced exodus of the many, who have spent their lives in this model of a society, which is no longer sustainable. 

ON RELEASE FROM 29 NOVEMBER 2019

 

La Belle Epoque (2019) ****

Dir.: Nicolas Bedos; Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Guillaume Canet, Doria Tillier, Fanny Ardant, Pierre Arditi; France 2019, 115 min.

Nicolas Bedos has set his stall out writing light-hearted and clever dramas. He follows his popular debut Mr. & Mrs. Adelman with this well-crafted and rather old-fashioned screwball comedy that sees a disgruntled 60-something man revisit his past to discover why he fell in love with his wife in the first place.

Parisians Victor (Auteuil) and Marianne (Ardant) have been married for forty years. But their marriage has hit the skids due to Victor’s disillusionment with life after losing his job as a newspaper cartoonist. Psychologist Marianne has also lost her mojo. She treats her patients like objects on a conveyer belt, and only looks forward to riding in her self-driving Tesla car. Their two sons are very much in step with their millennial generation. But even they are shocked when Marianne tells them that she has a new lover (who predictably is only interested in a place live). Victor gets the bums rush.

As this point Bedos adopts a similar premise to Herzog in his Family Romance, LLC. Victor calls on family friend Antoine (Canet), who runs a stage company organising time travel for a range of wealthy clients. You can explore the era of Marie Antoinette or even reinvent yourself as Hitler. So Victor opts to be beamed back to the Lyon of 1974, when he first fell for his wife, played by young Margot (Tillier), who is also in an on-off relationship with the unfaithful Antoine. While ‘directing’ behind the scenes, Antoine is well aware that Victor is falling for his own lover. The script dictates they go to bed on day four, but Antoine makes sure this date is never reached.

Always inventive, DoP Nicolas Bedos creates delightful scenes in front and behind the camera, very much in the style of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. The prompting alone is hair-raising, and Antoine gets into such a bad mood that he immediately replaces actors who fall foul of his directions. And since it is France, the actors performing the orgy scene, are only too happy to do some unpaid overtime. It is a chaos of situations and emotions, and although Bedos brings nothing new to the party Belle Epoche is a lively and enjoyable comedy. AS

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 22 NOVEMBER 2019

    

Permission | Aragh-E-Sard (2018) ****

Dir.: Soheil Beiraghi; Cast: Baran Kosari, Amir Jadidi, Sahar Dowlatshahi, Leili Rashidi, Hoda Zeinolabedin, Abbas Moosavi; Iran 2018, 88 min.

Best known for her debut feature Me, Soheil Beiraghi’s second film is based on real events: in Iran, a husband has the legal right to stop his wife from travelling abroad. And this is the case no matter how high profile or successful the woman becomes. At least eight prominent female athletes have fallen foul of this law – not to mention the countless numbers of ordinary women.

Permission plays out like a thriller Beiraghi setting the tone from the opening scenes. The supervisor reminds the national team members about the zero tolerance policy on exposure of female hair or skin – they will be banned if they break this rule. After winning the final qualifier for the finals, the captain of the Iranian Women’s Futsal (indoor football) team, Afrooz (Kosari), joins the players at the airport for the flight to Kuala Lumpur, only to discover she has been grounded: her husband Yaser (Jadidi), a TV presenter, has invoked the law to stop her from travelling. The couple are separated, the relationship irreparable.

Together with her best friend and co-player Masi (Zeinolabedin), Afrooz discusses a strategy to convince her ex to change his mind. This seems to have worked: the suave, reptilian Yaser has signed a document permitting his wife to travel – but in exchange she must give up her half her divorce settlement. Then outside the court, he rips the document to shreds forcing Afrooz to seek help from a feminist lawyer Pantea Aledavood (Rashidi). They argue with Yaser in front of an (unseen) judge, but Yaser is adamant: he simply wants to destroy his wife.

Mostly shot during the hours of darkness Permission sees Afrooz and Masi drive around, hotly pursued through the streets by the angry Yaser: a nightmare of medieval proportions set in the present. For Afrooz the car becomes her home – quite literally, after Yaser throws her belongings out of her flat, changing the locks. She is reduced to an animal in fear of its life. Beiraghi avoids a happy-ending, staying with what is the reality of a society where women are owned by their husbands. Kosari (now blacklisted by Iranian State TV) is brilliant. And there have been few more unlikable villains than Amir Jadidi’s slimy, whining creature who turns into a despicable bully when cornered by his wife.

When Permission opened in cinemas across Iran, Hozeh Honari, a large cultural institution affiliated with the Islamic Propaganda organisation, boycotted the feature. It was not shown in any of Hozeh’s 100-branch cinema chain. And the Iranian State TV, controlled by hard-liners, did not broadcast the trailer. The only consolation for the filmmakers is that the film has gone viral on social media, and has now become a protest watch for vast number of Iranians, and not just women. AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | 22 November 2019

  

  

Marriage Story (2019) ****

Dir.: Noah Baumbach, Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Azly Robertson, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta;ion, the running time USA 2019, 135 min.
Writer/director Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha) has produced his version of Scenes from a Marriage, mostly funny, but in the end veering of into something altogether more sinister. The stellar cast keeps us engaged for over two hours in what seems like an overindulgence on Baumbach’s part, especially as the film will end up on Netflix – making it even less likely to sustain an audience.
Nicole (Johansson) and Charlie (Driver) have been married for a decade and have a son, Henry (Robertson), who is at pre-school age. Charlie is the director of an avantgarde, off-Broadway theater group, Nicole his star. For a long time she wanted to direct herself, but is always thwarted by the narcissistic and overbearing Charlie, who likes to control her life like the classic patriarch men often are. The son is spoilt and even gets presents for going to the bathroom.
When Nicole finds out Charlie has slept with a colleague, the dam bursts and she goes for a divorce, taking Henry to her family home in LA. Before Nicole met Charlie, she had success as a mainstream actor, and she takes up her professional life in the same circles. At first, Charlie does not take his wife seriously, hoping that “she will come to her senses”. It soon dawns on him he will lose her, and also his son. Soon they are both getting legal advice. Nicole engages the fiery Nora Fanshaw (Dern), who makes Charlie go back to his first choice lawyer (Liotta), who is equally as expensive and as dirty as his female counterpart.
Despite the heavy subject matter, Baumbach brings a lightness of touch in the form of witty one-liners and slapstick. One scene takes place in Charlie’s LA flat, where he tries to prove to the state evaluator that he and Henry are happy. But there are darker moments, and the tone grows more hysterical – and soon sparks fly.
DoP Robbie Ryan turns out the usual cliched images of New York and LA. Hollywood’s town is a colourful circus, unlike sober, intellectual NY. Baumbach is skilled in this kind of territory – it’s clearly a subject he knows well, and lays bear the subtle nuances that lead to the end of love. Although he brings nothing particularly new to the party. This has a richer texture than his previous films, as he reworks and embellishes an already rich tapestry of replays in this sub-genre with its universal appeal. The Randy Newman score is unobtrusive, but effective. Performance wise this is a winner. Marriage Story is a tale we all know too well. AS
NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL  REVIEW 2019

UK French Film Festival (2019)

The French Film Festival UK is the only festival dedicated to French and Francophone cinema, embracing French and Francophone cinema in all its diversity, featuring a bumper programme bursting with variety and vitality. The 27th edition runs from 1 November to 15 December 2019, showing over 50 films in 35 towns and cities across the UK. 

Nana | Nana (N/C 12A+)

Dir Jean Renoir | Scr Pierre Lestringuez | based on the Emile Zola novel | Music Baudime Jam | 1926 | France | 170 mins |

This special screening of Jean Renoir’s full-length silent film includes two magnificent set pieces – a horse race and an open-air ball – accompanied live by Prima Vista Quintet 

A Paris Education | Mes Provinciales (N/C 15+)

Dir Jean-Paul Civeyrac | 2018 | France | 136 mins |

Pure love of cinema inhabits every frame of Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s sensitive and sophisticated portrait of Etienne, a provincial boy who moves to Paris to attend film school. 

By the Grace of God | Grâce à Dieu (15)

Dir François Ozon | 2019 | 137 mins |

When Alexandre learns that the priest who assaulted him decades earlier at a scouts’ camp still works with young people, he tells his family what happened and seeks out other victims so that the Church will take action.

Happy Birthday | Fête de Famille (N/C 15+)

Dir Cédric Kahn | 2019 | France | 101 mins |

Family relations unravel to wonderfully excruciating comic and dramatic effect in this all-star ensemble piece from versatile French writer-director and here, co-star, Cédric Kahn. 

Oh les filles ! | Haut les filles (N/C 12A+)

Dir François Armanet | 2019 | France | 79 mins |

Telling the untold story of French female rock stars from sixties pop to today’s gender-indifferent anthems.

The Salamander | La Salamandre (N/C 18+)

Dir Alain Tanner | 1971 | Switzerland, France | 123 mins |

Two self-proclaimed writers attempt to retell how a young woman shot her uncle. 

Yves St Laurent: The Last Collections (N/C 15+)

Dir Olivier Meyrou | 2007 (release: 2018) | France | 73 mins |

Olivier Meyrou’s controversial yet exquisitely drawn portrait of France’s last great fashion designer, Yves Saint Laurent, has finally seen the light of day.

For full listings: https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/

 

 

The Report (2019) ***

Dir/wri: Scott Z Burns | Cast: Annette Bening, Jon Ham, Adam Driver, Ted Levine, Carey Stoll, Linda Powell | Drama | US 119′

The saving grace of this polished but rather plodding political potboiler is the engaging performances from its cast. In a quiet, deliberate but forceful way it tells how the CIA embarked on an intensive post-9/11 programme that bordered on torture, but actually revealed very little in the way of intelligence.

Adam Driver plays a pioneering investigator who is tasked by his boss Senator Dianne Feinstein (a convincing Bening) to uncover the truth. What follows is a speechy, preachy affair that almost sinks under a weight of dates and data but will appeal to lovers of court room procedurals that eschew dramatic flourish but are compelling nevertheless. What emerges is a deliberate attempt on the part of the US government to subvert the law and bury evidence in one of the most appalling attempted cover-ups in recent US history. It won’t set the night on fire but is certainly serious, reliable filmmaking from the man who made Contagion and The Bourne Ultimatum. 

NOW ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2019

 

2040 (2019) ***

Dir: Damian Gameau | Doc, Australia 92′

In his well-intentioned eco documentary Australian filmmaker Damon Gameau puts a positive spin on climate change by exploring ways to avoid the meltdown of our planet. With his 21st birthday of his our-year-old daughter in mind, he envisages a sustainable way to retain world resources and preserve our oceans, forests and fauna.

This fast moving doc certainly looks spectacular but often plays out like a glossy advertisement for a future utopia. Gameau combines the usual expert talking heads approach – anthropology professor Geraldine Bell and economist Dr Kate Raworth adding grist and insight – with a series of comic vignettes, info-graphics and glossy widescreen images of how the future could look if we stop destroying the planet and lived sustainably.

It may well be a romantic vision but Gameau has invested time and energy in his investigation which is both informative and laudable, aimed at an audience of young people, but also suitable for adults. Gameau lays out his ideas and information in a concise and cohesive way despite occasionally coming across as over-excited. His narration also puts a saccharine spin on proceedings with his use of phrases such as “my excellent wife”. 2040 eschews a formal three act narrative, opting instead for an episodic full-on approach overlaid by an overbearing score, making this feel like an agitprop.

That said, the ideas he explores are refreshing and grounded in reality. Some of the eco-friendly scientific developments Gameau looks at are still in their infancy. He visits Bangladesh where one man has divised a brilliant method of harnessing and sharing energy from the power of the sun. Meanwhile in Australia a visionary farmer is re-educating other food providers in the ways of soil regeneration that are quite literally ground-breaking. Most of these take the focus away from animal protein in favour of vegetarianism as a way of food for the world’s growing population. He also looks at electric self-driving cars in Singapore, and way of avoiding ocean acidification that are being explored in the waters off the US East Coast.

But a strand about the urgent need to empower and educate women globally feels flimsy and out of context in a doc dedicated to climate change. Gameau’s relentless energy and constant bonhomie lacks detachment occasionally becoming irritating. This is not helped by a manic intrusive score that interferes with our ability to calmly process the importance of the points he is making. And the comic interludes projecting himself – with a grey thatch of hair – into the future are faintly ridiculous, as are the trite Vox pops of kids talking about their own private utopias. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 16 NOVEMBER 2019

 

The Good Liar *** (2019)

Dir: Bill Condon. US. 2019. 110mins | Helen Mirren, Ian McKellen, Russell Tovey  

Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen clearly had fun filming this over-baked conman melodrama with its ludicrous twists and turns. It’s enjoyable. But you can’t take it seriously.

They first meet on the internet. A couple of old timers back in the dating game again, the usual platitudes aired in a swanky restaurant on their first meeting: “You look better than your photo” that kind of thing. Ian McKellen is rain-jacketed old roue Roy. Mirren, a well-preserved grand dame called Betty (hardly!) with a penchant for pussy bows – or that’s what we’re led to believe. You see how it’s all shaping up once Roy gets to grips with Betty’s financial credentials. And wonder how soon he’ll get his paws on her loot. Mirren and McKellen are mildly entertaining – but that’s not enough to justify a running time of nearly two hours.

Adapting Nicholas Searle’s novel, Condon and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher get to work on establishing Roy’s modus operandi when ripping off rich clients, with his financial partners. He’s clearly schmoozing Betty along the same lines but with romantic overtures – and a gammy leg – in the hope of appearing a charming old geezer just looking for love. Betty appears to be falling for Roy but she’s no fool. And neither is he, despite their genteel appearances.

The fly in the ointment is Betty’s doting grandson Stephen (Russell Tovey), a specialist in German history who develops an amusing animosity towards the crafty old gent. Especially when Betty offers Roy the spare bedroom after seeing him max out on his limping routine.

The two then embark on a misjudged mini-break to Berlin, on one of Betty’s dodgy dividends. And here the story gains another string to its bow, and a pretty contrived one at that. So much so that it beggars belief when Condon weaves a wartime plot line into the mix leading to an unfeasible finale. For the whole thing to work, Condon should have made a more sinister, hard-nosed drama rather than this archly curious comedy. As Roy so cleverly points out, “this feels like drowning in beige” MT

ON RELEASE FROM 8 NOVEMBER 2019

 

 

Femmes Fatales of Fashion | London Fashion Week 2021

The sinister crime-laden dramas that came out of post war Hollywood were the visual expressions of anxiety. Film Noir featured venal antiheroes, mysterious femme fatales, and rain-soaked urban settings where shadows and intrigue played upon the inner consciousness. The tightly scripted stories were also richly thematic, compellingly seductive and wonderful to look at. And that iconic look was often created by women designers. 

Based on hard-edged detective stories from the likes of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Cornell Woolrich, ‘Crime Noir’ was spiced up by the wartime influx of sophisticated European craftsman such as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Jacques Tourneur and Robert Siodmak whose edgy expressionism and Avantgarde lighting techniques added zest to the predominantly black & white post war genre. 

By the mid 1940s Film Noir reigned supreme. Nightly screenings – and each night was different – saw the stars of the day strutting their stuff but also looking amazing into the bargain: Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogarde, Gene Tierney and June Vincent all had their particular allure. And some Noir actors also directed the genre such as The Big Combo‘s Cornel Wilde with Storm Fear (1955). But while the narratives were unsavoury the costumes were quite the opposite: the elegant couture, hairstyles and even jewellery made style icons of these scheming antiheroes, adding charisma to their public profiles in stark contrast to the characters they played. By association, film noir became arguably the most strikingly seductive genre in the film firmament.   

But while the filmmakers arrived from Europe, the costume designers were often American woman with noirish backstories of their own to the bring to the party. Universal’s head of costume design for twenty years VERA WEST (1898-1947), met a tragic death drowning in her own swimming pool, dressed in one of her signature silk dressing gowns (ironically her designs for Virginia Grey had the been the star turn in Charles Barton’s film-noir Smooth as Silk the previous year ). Although the evidence pointed towards suicide as a result of a troubled past, there have since been rumours that her husband was to blame.

West had trained in Philadelphia and worked as apprentice to the pioneering British catwalk designer Lady Duff Gordon (Lucile) before being hired by Stanley Kubrick to create Ava Gardner’s look in The Killers (1946). She also designed for June Vincent in Roy William Neill’s Black Angel (1946); for Teresa Wright in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and the outfits for Lewis D Collins’ Danger Woman (1946). Despite these high-profile commissions, she never received an award until finally winning the Costume Designers Guild Hall of Fame in 2005. 

Another female Hollywood designer shrouded in intrigue was IRENE LENZ GIBBONS – known simply as Irene (1900-1962), whose private life was as colourful as her gowns. A shrewd business woman she ran a series of boutiques and was also appointed head of costume design at MGM, replacing the well-known legend Adrian. Her Noir credentials included couture for Katherine Hepburn, Robert Taylor and Robert Mitchum in Vincente Minnelli’s Undercurrent (1946) based on a story by Thelma Shrabel.

She also was credited for the couture creations in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) where a married Lana Turner and her lover plan to kill her husband (Cecil Kellaway). Other Noir and thriller projects included Roy Rowland’s Scene of the Crime (1949) and Gaslight (1944). Reports of her long-standing love affair with Gary Cooper were never confirmed but she committed suicide after slashing her wrists and jumping out of Los Angeles’ Knickerbocker Hotel a year after his death. 

One of the most successful female designers of film noir was undoubtedly BONNIE CASHIN (1915-2000). Cashin was already making dresses from the age of 8. By 16 her talent was making her a living as designer for the chorus line based in Los Angeles which led her into theatre work in New York. Returning West in the early 1940s she signed with 20th Century Fox where she made a name for herself with the gowns in Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944) and Fallen Angel (1945); Robert Siodmak’s Cry of the City (1948) – Shelley Winter’s leopard skin coat would have the activists up in arms, but back then it certainly made her stand out in the sleazy night scenes.

Cashin’s style worked wonders for Signe Hasso in Hathaway’s Oscar-winning The House on 92nd Street (1944) and for Gene Tierney in Laura. Nightmare Alley (1947) gave her the opportunity to work with a leading cast of Tyrone Power (as antihero Stan Carlyle), Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray and Helen Walker. Power’s untimely death of a heart attack aged 44, saw the film gain wider circulation over the years due to his popularity, and Cashin’s costumes lived on into the late 1950s and beyond. MT

London Fashion Week 2021

LAURA is now on Bluray courtesy of EUREKA (MASTERS OF CINEMA) 

The Irishman (2019) *****

Dir: Martin Scorsese | Wri: Steven Zaillian | Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Bobby Cannavale, Jesse Plemons | US Crime Drama, 2019, 208mins

Much of the hype surrounding The Irishman has focused on the fact that it reunites Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci for the first time since 1995’s Casino. It also throws Al Pacino into the mix, and marks a return to the mob-infused crime dramas with which Scorsese made his name. The excitement is understandable – Scorsese made a string of iconic hits while working with De Niro, and it was through these that he established himself as one of the great American filmmakers. 

And yet… Scorsese’s body of work has a depth and breadth to it which is often obscured by a focus on certain titles (notably GoodFellas, 1990), and there was, perhaps, a fear that Scorsese’s return to this world might present if not a step backwards, at least a retread of ground already covered. 

Fortunately, such worries prove to be unfounded: the world of The Irishman may be familiar – it even touches on the mob’s involvement in Las Vegas, which formed the backbone of Casino – but the tone is something new: though not without Scorsese’s trademark humour, the film trades the baroque exuberance of his earlier work for a more reflective pace, closer to the ruminations of Silence (2016) than the crashing excess of Casino. 

Spanning multiple timelines set over several decades, The Irishman spends as much time examining the wiles of old age as the wilds of youth. In parts, the film almost plays like a eulogy: throughout, Scorsese uses titles to tell us how characters will die, and the film’s focus on death and aging seems like a lament for the end of an era – of a certain type of lifestyle, and a certain type of cinema. In the past, Scorsese has faced accusations that he glamorises mobsters, but here everyone seems to end up worn out, tired or dead, as if those are the only possible outcomes. The religious angst which has fuelled Scorsese’s work since Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967) has here transmuted into a nihilistic acceptance of life as it is.

The story itself is drawn from the nonfiction book I Heard You Paint Houses, by former investigator Charles Brandt, and follows Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran’s career as a hitman for the mob, painting houses with other people’s blood. After being introduced by head mobster Russell Bufalino (Pesci), Sheeran becomes right-hand man to Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and a loan-shark to the mob, supplying them with funds from the Union’s pension fund. As the decades pass, the mob’s machinations extend from the union to the White House, installing and removing presidents to suit their needs – an offhand remark about one of the Teamsters’ love of golf makes for some interesting contemporary commentary. 

Throughout the years, Sheeran’s conscience is troubled by disapproving glances from his daughter (for Sheeran has a personal family as well as his mobster family), but it is Sheeran’s friendships with Bufalino and Hoffa that really form the heart of the epic narrative, and which drive it towards its tragically moving conclusion. Given that the film serves, in so many ways, as a family reunion, it’s a fitting thematic thread and one which, thankfully, weaves a powerful tribute to the legacy of what’s come before it. Alex Barrett

NOW ON NETFLIX

 

The Invitation (2016) Bluray release ***

Dir: Karyn Kusama | Wri: Phil Hay  | US Thriller 100′

In this hypnotic psychological thriller Karyn Kusama creates a cocoon of tension that slowly implodes during a friends’ evening get together in the Hollywood Hills.

Grieving father Will (Marshall-Green) turns up to visit his ex-wife Eden (Blanchard) who has clearly put their tragic past behind her. But an unsettling vibe seems to haunt this shadowy get-together where everyone is behaving in a bizarre fashion while secrets and desires slowly muddy the familiar water. Will gradually becomes convinced there is a hidden agenda at play behind the invitation to join the people he thought he knew and loved. The tension mounts amid an increasingly unsettling atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion as the evenings turns decidedly hostile – and friends soon become enemies. Kusama’s taut pacing, spooky sound design and suggestively ambiguous narrative combine to make this impressively tense thriller well worth a watch. MT

ON BLURAY FROM SECOND SIGHT FILMS | 4 NOVEMBER 2019

 

Doctor Sleep (2019) **


Dir.: Mike Flanagan; Cast: Rebecca Ferguson, Ewan McGregor, Emily Alyn Lind, Kyliegh Curran, Zahn McClanon; USA 2019, 151 min.

As sequels go, this is par for the course: in other words, a bitter disappointment. Mike Flanagan is known for his horror outing Gerald’s Game and has now misguidedly embarked on a screen adaption of Stephen King’s 2013 novel Doctor Sleep that follows the troubled life of Danny, the young boy from his 1975 novel The Shining, famously adapted for the screen by Stanley Kubrick in 1980.

Doctor Sleep is just not up to standard despite Flanagan’s best efforts to emulate the style of Kubrick’s original. The inflated running time of two and half hours makes matters even more tedious, extending a simplistic plot to breaking point. The result is a torpid, confused and second rate addition to the King adaptation saga.

It sees Dan Torrance (a decent McGregor) suffering the aftermath of his childhood traumata during a wintry stay in The Shinings’s Overlook Hotel, and on course to replicate his father’s uneasy journey through life as an adult. Alcoholism has already derailed his career before he finally fetches up in a small New Hampshire town where he works in a hospice to help the dying. But the past raises its ugly head in the form of Rose (Ferguson) the cultish leader of ‘The True Knot’, a group of immortals living in huge luxurious caravans. They kidnap young people who possess the well-known gift of ‘shining’, torture them and prolong their own lives with the potent dying breath of their victims. The charismatically evil Rose is amply supported by her deputy Crow Daddy (McClanon) and Andi (Lind), whose nickname ‘Snakebite’ refers to her powers of putting her victims to sleep. But Dan is soon joined and supported by teenager Abra (Curran), whose ‘shining abilities’ outperform the rest of the crew. They combine forces to quell this evil band in a climactic finale based on re-rendered original shots of the Overlook Hotel and its adjacent maze.

DoP Michael Fimognari tries his best to come up with an inspired visual look to enhance Flanagan’s pedestrian script. But everything is so mediocre he can’t help but fail. The same goes for the actors whose characters are terribly one-dimensional with lines that makes us cringe in despair, despite their best efforts, so much so that we actually welcome the appearance of a fluffy, blue-eyed cat who seems the only creature able to fathom out the predictability of it all. Performance-wise McGregor is particularly good as an adult Dan, but the young Danny (Roger Dale Floyd) looks nothing like the original Danny Lloyd, making us unconvinced this has any bearing on its source material. That said, Carl Lumbly makes for a rather good Scatman Crothers as does Alex Essoe as Wendy.

Despite Flanagan’s protestations in a pre-screen interview, we are left wondering whether Stephen King has really given his blessing to this – at best – unimaginative affair. After all, he more or less disowned Kubrick’s film, executive producing his own script of the novel for a TV miniseries in 1997.

All things considered directing-wise, Flanagan isn’t worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Stanley Kubrick’s table despite his best efforts to emulate his hero in this sequel. To compare the two films is like comparing an Aston Martin with a Reliant Robin – both will get you from A to B but offer a completely different experience. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 31st OCTOBER 2019

 

 

Uzak | Distant (2002) ****

Dir/DoP:  Nuri Bilge Ceylan | Cast: Muzaffer Ozdemir, Mehmet Emin Toprak, Zuhal Gencer Erkaya, Mazan Kirilmis, Feridun Koc, Fatma Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan | Drama Turkey

In his third feature Uzak you can sees Ceylan gradually transitioning from the social realist cinema verite style of his early two works to something more like an urban arthouse drama. Spare on dialogue and score, Mozart’s Symphony Concertante (K364) accentuates the feeling of displacement and alienation in this thoughtfully sober two-hander.

At this stage Ceylan is still writing, photographing, editing and producing his own features and this melancholy depiction of loneliness and isolation is set in a dour and wintry Istanbul where Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Topak) fetches up from the country in order to find work on the banks of the Bosphorus. He moves in with Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir) a distant relative and successful photographer whose flat over looks the harbour. Keen on arthouse cinema, particularly Tarkovsky, he enjoys the company of various women friends or hanging out in a jazz-filled local cafe. The contrast between the rough-edged young blade and the louche yet faintly sophisticated older man makes Distant compellingly watchable as the two ruffle each others feathers in a low-key but extremely masculine way. Ceylan’s static camera observes their daily life from a detached point of view: eavesdropping on casual conversations, laconic encounters and familiar comings and goings in the block of flats where they live out an uneventful existence.  .

Mahmut is often pictured in front of the TV, his feet up on a poof, enjoying a film while in the background distant conversations emanate from the concierge downstairs. His wife Nazan has left him and he has grown accustomed to his state of isolation almost relishing it as a badge of honour and with a comforting pride. But he still mourns hiss loss. Meanwhile his mother is forever leaving urgent messages on the ‘phone which he ignores as a matter of course.

Yusuf, on the other hand, is uneasy and restless, out of sync with his newfound urban freedom. He spends his days idly wandering around the locale, trying to meet women in the hope that something will give without much effort on his part, in the style of Dickens’ Mr McCawber. A poignant moment sees him worrying about the suffering of little mouse which Mahmut has tried to poison. The country boy still has a feeling for nature, lost to the man inured to harshness of city life.

Stunningly visual, leisurely and slow-burning but not to the extent of his later films Winter Sleep and The Wild Pear Tree, this is very much a tale from the city that relies on an atmosphere and takes the viewpoint of a detached observer allowing plenty of scope for our imagination to wander and even enjoy the subtle situational humour created by the growing friction between these uneasy flatmates who are clearly both lonely but also loathe to come to any satisfactory modus vivendi. The only moment of real drama is when Mahmut berates Yusuf about not flushing the lavatory. And this leads to a contretemps with the older many suddenly tiring of this young feckless loser who expects to be handed things on a plate, a conversation which highlights Ceylan’s ongoing preoccupation: the contrast between town and country; the old and the new. MT

NOW ON DVD/BLURAY COURTESY OF NEW WAVE FILMS | 11 NOVEMBER 2019

 

 

The Forum (2019) *** DOK Leipzig 2019

Dir.: Marcus Vetter; Documentary; Germany/Switzerland 2019, 116 min.

DOK Leipzig opens with this fly on the wall look at the the World Economic Forum, a not-for-profit organisation that takes place in Davos aiming to improve the state of the world through dialogue between leaders across all areas of society. The film centres on Klaus Schwab, the 81-year-old founder of this get together. 

German filmmaker Marcus Vetter follows Schwab annual world get together is dealing with burning issues such as climate change, Brexit, the  ‘gilets jaunes’ protests in Paris, and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest among others. Trying to get inside so-called clandestine meetings, And while we learn a great deal, Schwab actually seems ambivalent about the merits of these secret get-togethers of the world’s elite – and for good reason. 

The Forum is intended to redress the imbalance between rich and poor, but history tells us that during the 50 years of the WEF’s existence, the gap between the haves and have-nots has grown exponentially – the middle classes, once the heartbeat of any society, are being slowly eroded.

Vetter sees the annual Davos meetings in a critical light, although Schwab claims he has always invited candidates seeking to question the way things are run by politicians and business leaders. There have been cancellations in the past by the self-acclaimed elite: a case in point was when Schwab invited a Brazilian Catholic leader, whose opinion were very left-wing. And while we watch Donald Trump being fawned over at the 2018 meeting, Greta Thurnberg and Jennifer Morgan of Greenpeace have much to say. The rainforest discussion between the Al Gore and the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro must also have been worthwhile.

Vetter obviously likes Schwab but he maintains his detached approach: “I believe he has achieved a lot, but that does not mean the meetings are not questionable affairs”. What is most interesting is the role of the invited CEOs. Discussed issues involving imported cotton, they dictate the terms and the many head of states concur. It is clear who is in charge and who is simply the executor of big business. The protests against climate change, Brexit and the rise of populists all over the world are directed against the current head of states, but it would be much more honest and efficient to discuss these burning issues with the CEO instead of the politicians. They can hardly be more intransigent than Donald Trump.

DoP Georg Zengerling’s images of Davos feel like a parody; the head of states arriving in their helicopters; the security details – like something out of a James Bond movie. And the small talk of the self-styled elite is no more lofty than that of a group of provincial business men. Clearly, this is not the tenor of a debate Schwab might have had in mind fifty years ago when he dreamt about how to discuss future problems and reflect; it is just an opportunity for big business, to cultivate new contacts and deals, whilst the politicians look on, waiting to be replaced without any one noticing. AS

DOK LEIPZIG DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL 2019

Sorry we missed you (2019) ***

Dir: Ken Loach | UK Drama 100′

Ken Loach is back with his regular writer Paul Laverty and another slice of social realism whose title will resonate bitterly if you’re still waiting for that parcel. SORRY WE MISSED YOU takes Loach back to the North East and the streets of Gateshead and Newcastle where hard-up grafter Ricky and his family have been facing an uphill struggle against debt since the 2008 financial crash and the rise of the gig economy and zero contract hours. An opportunity to get back into the black again comes in the shape of a shiny new van and a chance for Ricky to run his own business as a self-employed delivery driver. But things don’t quite work out as expected despite his best efforts, and we feel for him as he desperately tries to make things gel. Laverty’s script flows along as smoothly as the Tyne in scenes that showcase Loach’s talent for bringing out the best in new talent in a cast that includes Kris Hitchen and Debbie Honeywood with Rhys Stone and Katie Proctor as their son and daughter. This time humour and honesty keep sentimentality low key. The locale is very much a character too: Shields Road and Byker which we get to know like the back of our hand in this enjoyable tale of woe. Regular DoP Robbie Ryan does his stuff to perfection in what is oddly a much better film than his 2015 agitprop Palme d’Or winner I  Daniel Blake. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 1 NOVEMBER 2019

 

Campo (2018) ***

Dir: Tiago Hespanha | Doc, Portugal 106′

At first a vast expanse of verdant pasture seems a bucolic paradise buzzing with bees, grazing sheep and deer. But appearances can be deceptive. Only a handful of people live here under strictly controlled conditions – for reasons that soon become obvious. At first Bees go on making honey and the lambing season also seems oblivious to the combative nature surrounding them. This is Alcochete, home to Europe’s largest military base, on the outskirts of Lisbon.

Clearly this place is not the rural idyll it appears to be. Quite to the contrary. Soldiers are  preparing for active combat:Bombs explode, shots ring out across the fields, and troops undergo mock incursions, often with fake blood. And their impact on the local environment gradually starts to take hold. Bees are dying, not in their hives, but because they cannot get back to them. Something in the atmosphere is adversely affecting their ability to navigate. Ironically, scientists have finding a way to create man-made bees who are capable of joining the war effort, and being used in combat missions. At the same time, a sheep is found dying, unable to give birth to her stillborn lamb. This is also seems counterintuitive to what nature originally intended when the gods looks down from the starry obsidian skies and created humanity in all its entirety.

Bringing his architectural sense of framing, lighting and visual awareness,  Hespanha directs a documentary feature with thematic concerns that feel atavistic yet totally contemporary in exploring the origins of the word ‘campo’. Often abstract and abstruse, Campo is nevertheless a spell-binding and often mundane film that contemplates the transcendental wonder of the universe and nature while also considering the baseness of man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man. Etymologically speaking ‘Campo’ is both a simple field (in Italian) and a perilous battlefield: the Campus Martius was an area of Rome dedicated to Mars, the God of War, who was parodoxically also the patron of agriculture. So this natural breeding ground where flora and fauna innocently thrive and procreate is also a place of warfare and death. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 1ST NOVEMBER 2019 |  PREMIERE Cinéma du Réel 15 – 24 MARCH 2019 | PARIS.

Five Films by Samuel Fuller | Bluray release

A towering figure of American cinema, Samuel Fuller was a master of the B-movie, a pulp maestro whose iconoclastic vision elevated the American genre film to new heights. After the major success of The Steel Helmet, Fuller was put under contract by Twentieth Century Fox after being impressed by Darryl F. Zanuck’s direct sales pitch (other studios offered Fuller money and tax shelters; Zanuck simply told him, “We make better movies.”).

Over a six-year period, Fuller would produce some of the best work of his career, (and therefore, some of the best films in American cinema), an uncompromising series of masterpieces spanning multiple genres (the Western, the War film, film noir, the Crime-Thriller) that would establish the director as a true auteur, whose influence continues to be felt today.

Five of the films from this fruitful period, are now presented on blu-ray from stunning restorations. The impossibly tense Korean-War drama Fixed Bayonets! (1951); the outrageous and confrontational spy-thriller Pickup on South Street (1953); the Cold War submarine-actioner Hell and High Water (1954); the lushly photographed, cold-as-ice film noir House of Bamboo (1955/main picture); and the audacious Western with a feminist twist, Forty Guns (1957). Also included is Samantha Fuller’s 2013 documentary, A Fuller Life, featuring friends and admirers of the great director reading extracts from his memoirs.

ON BLURAY | 28 OCTOBER 2019 | EUREKA 

 

Monos (2019) ***

Dir: Alejandro Landes | Thriller, Colombia 102′

This mesmerisingly mad thriller from Colombian film-maker Alejandro Landes sees a dysfunctional Lord of the Flies style family of teenage guerrillas roaming the unnamed mud-soaked South American landscape armed and dressed to kill, and death comes easily. In their crazed state of mind anything can happen – and it does. The tense survivalist narrative is driven forward by a clashing metallic soundscape making it all the more unsettling. Fending for themselves in the middle of nowhere, the kids are controlled by the “organisation” a faceless control centre that has lent them a cow to provide nourishment. As you can imagine, the cow dies very soon afterwards, shot by a stray bullet.

Critics have compared Monos to Apocalypse Now but that is a far better film with some gravitas and resonant characters, unlike this rowdy, rather faceless mob. Cinematically though this is a fantastic undertaking, and Landes’ imagination runs riot, both on the widescreen and in intimate close-up making Monos is one of the most visually striking films of the year, despite its rather one note narrative. The Monos themselves (it means monkeys in Spanish) are apparently named after the Mono Grande, South America’s answer to the Loch Ness Monster – a giant monkey rumoured to roam around somewhere on the continent. These kids don’t have a mission as such, although they have been entrusted with a hostage, an American engineer called Doctora (Nicholson) and her child. Their days are spent in military style manoeuvres, their nights hedonist orgies.

Mystify: Michael Hutchence (2019) ****

Dir.: Richard Lowenstein; Documentary with Michael Hutchence, Kylie Minogue, Helena Christensen, Michèlle Bennett, Tina Hutchence, Rhett Hutchence, Martha Troup; Australia 2019,

As writer and director Richard Lowenstein is more than qualified to put together this melancholic portrait of his endearing, snake-hipped compatriot Michael Hutchence (1960-1997), whose career as singer and frontman for INXS put him into the pantheon of rock music. Lowenstein not only shot most of the group’s music videos between the mid 1980s and the early90s, he also directed the singer in his only feature film appearance Dogs in Space (1986). Lowenstein certainly succeeded in “wanting to leave a legacy that was not the cliché rock star legacy”.

Low on musical performances but informative about Hutchence’s romantic interludes, these clearly shaped a life affected by the fault-lines of his childhood. There is a short interview with some close friends of Michael’s at primary school which informs the narrative early one:. “He did not seem to want to go home, he just lingered around”. When the future rock star’s parents, Kelland, a businessman, and Patricia, a model turned make-up artist, split up, Patricia took Michael with her to the USA, leaving Rhett with the father. Rhett later developed a drug problem which Michael thought was caused by his separation from his mother. His guilt complex went untreated, but later incidents, banal as well as dramatic, show that Michael’s personality was very much damaged from the outset.

His music was very much that of an undomitable hero, his relationships with women were full-blooded but short-lived – apart from the the relationship with Michèlle Bennett, today a film producer, which lasted seven years. Bennett was the only person who still knew him by the end of his life: ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ was a song which followed their breakup. There is a charming home movie of Michael and Kylie Minogue, lovers for two years, holidaying on a boat. Michael tried to explain to Kylie the motives of the murderer in Patrick Süskind’s Perfume, a dark, obsessional novel, which collided very much with Michael’s sunny music stage personality.

His relationship with Danish model Helena Christensen was overshadowed by an incident in 1992, when Michael suffered an unprovoked attack from a taxi driver in Copenhagen. The singer hit his head on the kerb, fracturing his skull. For one month Hutchence lay in a dark room, vomiting and eating next to nothing, before Helena was able to convince him to look for medical help. As it turned out, he had lost his sense of smell and taste. This lead to a personality change: Michael became moody, showing bi-polar symptoms, and spurts of aggression.

His relationship with Paula Yates started late in 1994, even though they were intimate long before. Yates, a famous writer and TV presenter, was married to the Boomtown Rats lead singer Bob Geldorf, the pioneer of “Band-Aid’. The couple had two daughters, and Geldorf took their divorce two years later very badly. After Yates gave birth to Michael’s first and only child Tiger Lily in the same year, Geldorf started a legal campaign trying to get custody of all three daughters. Geldorf was a celebrity, and Yates and Hutchence were hounded by the popular media. When Hutchence returned to Australia in preparation for an INXS concert tour at the end of 1997, he hoped Paula would visit him in Australia with the three daughters. But Geldof won an injunction, and the court case was adjourned to December. Hutchence was unable to bear being separated from his daughter, and committed suicide by hanging himself on 22nd November 1997. Yates died of an overdose in January 2000, her daughter Peaches in 2014, at the age of 25. Bob Geldorf adopted Tiger Lily, against the will of the Hutchence family.

Apart from Bono and Hutchence’s manager Martha Troup, we listen to the testimonies of band members Andrew, Jon and Tim Farris, as well as bassist Gary Beers, with Kirk Pengilly being not available. There are nine tracks from Hutchence and INXS, courtesy of Tiger Lily’s intervention with the copyright holders, who had blocked Lowenstein’s approaches before. Although their youthful faces appear on film, the comments we hear are the contemporary voices of the musicians. DoP Andrew de Groot mixes Hutchence’s own films, the home movies of his childhood and concert clips, avoiding Talking Heads as much as possible. We are left with a profound sadness, as Michael Hutchence, like most really gifted performers, was never sure of his talent, often believing he only “got the applause, because I wiggled my arse”. Lowenstein’s documentary is a true testament to sorrow.AS

IN CINEMAS 18 OCTOBER 2019

Non-Fiction | Doubles Vies (2018) Bfi player

Dir.: Olivier Assayas; Cast: Guillaume Canet, Juliette Binoche, Vincent Macaigne, Norah Hamzawi, Christa Theret, Pascal Gregory, France 2018, 107 min.

One of France’s most inventive and diverse directors returns to the theme of alienation  with a classically styled drama set in contemporary Paris. Non-Fiction analyses the detached charm of the intellectual bourgeoisie, seem through the lives of two middle-age couples who are losing their place in the sun thanks to the digital age. Knowledge and experience is replaced more and more by market strategies; and personal relationships turn out to be as fraught as the digitalisation of culture.

Alain (Canet), editor-in-chief of a successful publishing house is meeting one of his writers, Leonard (Macaigne) over a rejection lunch. Alain will not be publishing his new book. The reasons are purely commercial, but the situation is made more difficult by their family friendship. In the end, Alain has to spell it out, and Leonard, looking very much like his younger, unkempt student self, in contrast to the well-groomed Alain, takes it badly. At home he complains to his over-worked wife Valerie (Hamzawi), PA to a leading politician engaged in an election battle. When the couples meet later on, nothing is said about the rejection, instead everyone is ganging up against against Valerie – who is in fact the only likeable protagonist – for her engagement in politics. They all believe in the future of e-books and the power of algorithms. But their world will soon crumble: Alain is summoned to Marc-Antoine (Gregory) the owner of the publishing company, who nonchalantly admits to selling up, putting Alain out of a job. Alain’s young lover and colleague, the even more ambitious Laure (Theret) is leaving him to take up a post in London. Luckily Alain is unaware that his wife Selena (Binoche), a TV actress, has long been involved with Leonard – who has a penchant for writing for including his private life in his book – and not always well-disguised, at that.

On the surface, this is a verbal war, rich in dialogue where Adorno and Lampedusa are often quoted, but beneath the intellectual surface lies growing insecurity. Alain over-estimates his power, he is totally unaware that he is a play-ball of forces he cannot control. Selena, trying to put some gloss on her mediocre career, will soon live under the threat of Leonard’s next book, whilst Leonard himself is still playing around like a teenager, not wanting to adjust to reality – even though he confesses his affair eventually, he really does not deserve his faithful but self-focused wife. 

Non-Fiction can sometimes feel overly verbose, Assayas keeps up our interest by involving the audience in his protagonists’ subterfuge. Apart from Valerie, everybody is an out and out opportunist, trying to hide behind ideas which have completely lost their meaning for them: they have become slaves of ratings and sales figures. The only humour is self-inflicted and involuntarily. The betrayals are in the end self-betrayals, but these people are too far gone to distinguish between feelings and façade: they only believe in perception. The polished aesthetics are workmanlike with a grainy indie feel that seems to suit this bookish study of greed and lust. AS

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

 

The Deathless Woman (2019)

Dir/Wri: Roz Mortimer | With Iveta Kokyva, Loren O’Dair, Oliver Malik | UK Doc 89′

British filmmaker Roz Mortimer has poured her heart and soul into an important new documentary that uncovers another grim episode of persecution, this time of the Roma people in Poland and Hungary. Crucially, it highlights the continuing hatred of the Roma, who are still being victimised in scandalous acts of violence across the region.  

Mortimer’s documentary explores the myth behind the story of The Deathless Woman, a Roma matriarch who was buried alive in the forest by German soldiers in 1942. This leads to the discovery of widespread genocide in other sites of Roma persecution such as Birkenau and Várpalota in Lake Grábler.

Here just before the end of the Second World War on 4th April 1945, 118 women and children were massacred by Nazi occupying forces, deep in the forest. Back then there was no lake, just a clearing where the dead were thrown into unmarked graves. Some time later the area was flooded and became Lake Garbler.

Mortimer clearly feels so strongly about her efforts to uncover the truth behind the genocide that she has decided to take part in her own documentary, talking us through the process of her findings, and occasionally presenting her case to a voiceless interrogator, as she tries to make sense of the lack of evidence despite sensing a strong ‘residue of emotion’ left by these unfortunate victims. “What do you do when there is nothing visible left?” she asks.

Eventually her archive research leads her to the scene of the crime in Lake Grabler where things start to come together. She meets a number of locals – amongst them is Josef, who describes how he was forced to dig a mass grave on that dreadful Spring day 75 years ago – a tough undertaking due to masses of tree roots clogging the ground.

She talks to locals Christina and Anna who in 1943 lost most of their family there. Mortimer stresses the aura inhabiting the windswept, rural area and describes being filled with a haunting sense of dread. Later, a woman called Zofia takes her to the scene of the atrocities, and shows her the indentation in the soil where there lies the skeleton a tiny bird. This serves as a tangible reminder and comes to  symbolise the souls of the ‘gypsy’ women and children who perished there.

One of these was the mythical “Deathless Woman”. Zophia describes how the Germans killed the gypsies because they had apparently stolen a pig from the village, so desperate was their hunger. According to a Roma woman who describes herself as a second generation Holocaust survivor, the mythical ‘Deathless Woman’ refused to die with the rest despite being shot at several times, until eventually she gave in only to leave a curse on the village. The Deathless Woman apparently scrambled out from under the other bodies and lived to tell her tale. As a tribute, the locals hung the clothes of the dead on the surrounding trees. 

But the hatred continues today. In Tatárszentgyörgy, Hungary, it emerges that neo-Nazis murdered a Roma family in 2009. Mortimer’s internet research uncovers hate speech and video games where players are invited to gun down unarmed Roma as they run through the streets.

Enriched by archive footage, macabre dramatised re-inactions and gruesome reconstructions of the bodies in the lake – that actually look rather ghastly and only serves to cheapen the experience – the filmmaker also suffuses this grim and slightly overworked ethnographic tribute with a ghostly atmospheric soundscape that suggests The Deathless Woman woman is going to be haunting the village for some time to come. MT

The Deathless Woman – the first film about the Roma holocaust in the Romani language – on UK tour 21 May-3 July

 

Gemini Man (2019) **

Dir.: Ang Lee; Cast: Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, Benedict Wong; China/USA 2019, 117 min.

Director Ang Lee has turned a screenplay by David Benioff, Billy Ray and Darren Lemke into a technical extravaganza without heart or soul.

Not even the combined firepower of Lee and his three writers can make a decent fist of this ham-fisted affair. The script has been on the back burner since 1965. In the Nineties, the late Tony Scott was supposed to direct it; Harrison Ford is one of many stars attached to the project. In the hands of producer Jerry Bruckheimer, it has now become a star vehicle for Will Smith, but why did Ang Lee – whose credentials include such classics as The Ice Storm – need to attach his name to such an undemanding, farcical pot boiler? 

After having killed 72 citizens for the Defence Intelligence Agency (thinly disguised acronym for CIA), Henry Brogan (Smith) is tired at 51 and looks forward to retirement. Needless to say that boss Clay Verris (Owen) does not like the idea, and sends Junior, Henry’s cloned double, a mere stripling of 23, to finish him off. Verris is not only into ordering assassinations, he is also a bio-tech tycoon who has assembled an army of AI fighters, who are superior to humans – apart from Henry. With fellow assassin Danny Zakarweski (Winstead) and pilot Baron (Wong), Henry fights his younger Self in Columbia, Budapest and finally Georgia, where the showcase show-down takes place, whilst Junior has the un-inviable task of determining who his father his: fellow assassin Henry or Bond super villain Verris.

The digitally rejuvenated Henry fighting his older self is interesting for about five minutes, then it goes the way of all gimmicks. The same goes for the 120 frames per second pace and the high-resolution 3D widescreen technique. As we experienced in Lee’s last outing (Billy Lynn’s long half-time Walk, 2016), the overall effect is like watching an old beta-max tape on a modern wide-screen TV. What ever DoP Dion Beebe’s contribution may be worth, this is a dumb, depthless and moronic spectacle. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 OCTOBER 2019

Joker (2019) **** Golden Lion Winner Venice 2019

Dir: Todd Phillips | Cast: Joaquin Pheonix, Robert De Niro
Joaquin Phoenix coruscates with desperate anger as a tortured mentally ill loner in Todd Phillips’ tale of the age old arch-nemesis. Imagine Taxi Driver ten years on without the heart and soul of Scorsese or Bernard Herrmann’s iconic 70s score; add some hyper violence and a dose of livid desperation and you have Joker, another rich character study not for the feint-hearted.

Robert De Niro also stars as a glib gameshow host Murray Franklin but this is Phoenix’s film and he is a firecracker as the disgruntled and delusional Arthur Fleck tending his ailing mother whilst trying to juggle various jobs, gradually losing his sanity. He is also cursed with a corrosive condition forcing him to cackle with laughter – uncontrollably and mostly inappropriately – whenever he is stressed or put upon. One such incident occurs in the opening scene where he is chased down and beaten up by kids who steal his sale placard.

Shocking in its sheer intensity, Joker is a film for everyone who has ever been scorned or short-changed, so that’s just about everyone. Joaquin Phoenix looks as if he nearly died preparing for the role, his emaciated body and strung out demeanour testament to the sheer dedication of an actor at the top of his game – thoughts of quitting should now be way behind him.

Phillips and Scott Silver’s script is not based on any of the DC Comics oeuvre, but its resonance will delight an eager fan base. In Gotham City, inspired by New York of the same era, Fleck is also fond of his role as a clown, and he is good at it. Strutting his stuff in the local children’s hospital but also imagining himself performing as a stand-up comedian – one of his jokes is “let’s hope my death makes more cents than my life”.

After the street punch up Fleck is lent a gun by a workmate, but foolishly incorporates it in his act at the hospital, a mistake that leads to his sacking and final down-spiralling. One night in the tube he becomes trigger happy when taunted by some City workers and is soon running for his life, the sheer payback exhilaration infecting the audience with complicit delight as he becomes everyone’s misguided ‘have a go hero’.

Without revealing the rest of the plot, let’s just say Arthur makes one bad choice after another. And when certain facts come to light about his family and background, he morphs into a fully fledged psychopath not caring what happens next – to him, or anybody else’s for that matter.

Phoenix brings a scathing humanity to a tragic soul in crisis. Even a romance with a neighbour Sophie (Zazie Beetz) seems to be a figment of his shattered psyche as he descends into a hellish underworld of his own making. Although technically brilliant you have to question the sheer level of the gratuitous violence. That said, this cuastic moral tale will leave everyone with a vague sense of satisfaction and sadness as Joaquin struts his stuff to Gary Glitter’s 1972 hit Rock and Roll, part 2. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 4 OCTOBER 2019

The Prey (2018) **

Dir.: Jimmy. Henderson; Cast: Gu Shangwei, Vithaya Pansringarm, Dy Sonita, Nophand Boonyai, Byron Bishop, Sahajak Boonthanakit; Cambodia 2018, 93 min.

Italian born director, co-writer and producer Jimmy Henderson (Jailbreak) may well lay claim to have delivered the first Cambodian action movie, but The Prey is a second rate blend of Irving Pichel’s The Most Dangerous Game, Predator and Hard Target. Henderson never avoids a cliché, if he can help it – making this debut at times rather tedious.

Chinese undercover cop Xin (Shangwei), is investigating a ‘phone scam involving Mainland Chinese customers in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. Captured by local police in a raid he is sent to a faraway prison with the Warden (Pansringarm) is less interested in rehabilitation, and more in hiring out his prisoners to be hunted down and killed Hunger Games style.

Released into the jungle Xin and the other victims are hunted down by Payak (Boonthanakit), Mat (Bishop) and Ti (Boonyai). Fortunately, and to keep the plot rolling, Xin is able to send off a signal to his superiors, who send in a rescue team which includes Li (Chinese supermodel Dy Sonata). There is a sub-plot with a rebel village controlled by the The Warden, but this narrative strain is quickly forgotten. Instead, booby traps; gruesome injuries; snapping twigs as well as unbelievable braveness and sadistic brutality takes over, to deliver a predictable outcome. 

The production values, including DoP Lucas Gath’s lively images and original angles, make this old-style slaughter feature slightly more bearable than the more recent, CGI controlled models. But that’s not saying not too much. AS

AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FROM 7 OCTOBER 2019  

 

Werewolf (2018) ***

Dir.: Adrian Panek; Cast: Kamil Polnisak, Sonia Mietielica, Danuta Stenka, Nicolas Przygoda; Poland/Netherlands/Germany 2018, 88 min

Inspired by real-life, historical events, writer and director Adrian Panek turns the nightmare of the Holocaust onto a motley group of children who are still alive in the last knockings of the war. One-part survival horror, one-part wartime thriller with a dash of coming-of-age drama, Werewolf is an unconventional yet haunting contemporary dark fable. But its use of young Concentration Camp survivors – in what is basically a horror film featuring vicious German Shepherd dogs – is rather questionable.

In the final days before liberation by the Red Army, the guards in the Gross-Rosen Camp in South-west Poland kill some of the survivors, others are bitten to death by the Alsatians. Young Wladek (Polnisak) is a prisoner who ingratiates himself with the guards, voluntarily throwing himself to the ground and jumping up shouting Auf (Up) and Nieder (down), to please his masters. After he survives along with seven much younger children, they are taken to the the sinister cottage belonging to enigmatic Jadwiga (Stenka) deep in the woods where Jadwiga is killed under mysterious circumstances. The children soon start to run out of food but are forced to remain in the remote house under the leadership of twenty-year old Hanka (Mietielica), due to the wild dogs circling outside, baying for blood. When one of the invading Russian soldiers tries to rape Hanka – with the clear acquiescence of Wladek who is jealous that Hanka prefers the outsider Hanys (Przygoda) to him – he saves the young woman. Wladek seems to be able to communicate with the dogs, before Hanys removes his striped uniform, making the dogs obey him.

Panek clearly objectifies the survivors, with Wladek becoming more mean as the films goes on. Survival depends on living by their wits and the victims cannily comply with their captors. But Werewolf goes a step further, and denounces Wladek as completely wicked. Unfortunately, many Poles were complicit in the murder of their Jewish countrymen – one estimate by the historian Grabowski talks of over 200 000 cases, ending with the deportation or death of Jews. But between the liberation of 1944 and 1946, over 2000 Jews, often Camp survivors, were murdered by Poles – some forty at the first post-war pogrom in Kielce in July 1946. The nationalist government of today has tried to block out any discussion, making it a crime to speak about Polish collaboration, before rescinding the law. Panek’s treatment of Wladek and the other survivors (relegating them to fairground objects) is just another example of the difficulty Poland has with its Jewish history. AS

Werewolf is out on 30 September 2019 (UK & Ireland) 

https://youtu.be/ZmLmbij1W0s

Nationwide from 20 September 2019

The Birdcatcher (2018) ***

Dir.: Ross Clarke; Cast: Sofie Boussnina, Arthur Hakalahti, Jacob Cedergen, Laura Birn; Norway/UK 2019, 100′.

Ross Clarke has adapted Trond Morten Venaasen’s script in this gripping thriller that uncovers a relatively unknown slice of Norwegian Second World War history. It follows an enterprising Jewish teenager who takes refuge in a farm belonging to a Nazi sympathiser in a bid to escape persecution and deportation. From collaboration to resistance, the local population’s reaction to their Nazi conquerors was not always clear-cut. And while some of the action pieces here feel unconvincing, strong performances make this an absorbing drama.

In 1942 Trondheim, Esther (Boussnina) dreams of becoming a Hollywood actress despite her humble beginnings. Her father has planned their escape to the USA, but Nazi raids on the Jewish population condemn Esther to a lonely struggle in the remote countryside, after escaping a deportation convoy.

She ends up at a farm house, dressed as a boy and calling herself Ula. Although the owner Johann (Cedergen) supports the Nazi occupation, he does little to help his son Aksel (Hakalahti), despite his disabilities. The only person who rumbles Esther is Johann’s wife Anna, who is having a affair with a Nazi officer, and keeps quiet about the girl in defiance of her husband. During a bloody shoot-out between Johann and his wife’s lover, Esther and Aksel try to escape on a sleigh over the frozen sea to Sweden. An epilogue set in Trondheim after the war delivers the final surprise.

Clarke uncovers some original takes on Nazi politics during the occupation. Johann goes with Esther to the local cinema where German propaganda films are casually screened alongside dance-features and bogus propaganda newsreels showing unanimous Norwegian support for their German occupiers. Boussnina is outstanding as Esther, and the rest of the ensemble offers convincing support. DoP John Christian Rosenlund creates an impressive sense of place, with glorious widescreen images and realistic shots of Nazi Party meetings. AS

ON RELEASE in Cinemas, Digital HD & DVD from 4th October 2019

 

 

 

Kaleidoscope **** DVD Bluray

Dir.: Rupert Jones; Cast: Toby Jones, Anne Reid, Sinead Matthews, Cecilia Noble; UK 2016, 100 min.

Debut director/writer Rupert Jones has crafted a sublime psychological thriller, enhanced by yet another standout performance from (his brother) Toby Jones as the tortured anti-hero.

Set in a large London Housing Estate, Carl (Jones) lives in a pokey 1970s style flat after being released from prison the year before. One morning Carl wakes up, and finds the body of a young woman he vaguely remembers as Abby (Mathews), in his bathroom. He seems to recall how they ending up dancing together before he possibly locked her in the bathroom. The stairs outside his flat become a kaleidoscope, strangling him in always new twits and turns. The police show up, and so does a helpful neighbour, Monique (Noble). Toby is convinced that he has done something wrong – but can’t work out exactly what or why. When his mother Aileen (Reid) invites herself over – very much against his will – images of Abbey and Aileen co-mingle, Toby certainly suffers from displacement activity – a repressed guilt complex, which will revealed in the final reel.

This is 10 Rililngton Place meets Kafka’s The Trial: Jones even looks spookily very much like Richard Attenborough as the murderous landlord. The grimy atmosphere in the flat is another parallel – but whilst Attenborough’s John Christie was sheer evil, Carl is suffering from a trauma. He is hectically trying to cover up the traces of whatever he might have done; objects, he wants to destroy or find, becoming his enemies. Carl is paralysed, whenever he meets authority, be it the police, or his boss at the garden centre. His anxiety increases the longer his mother stays in his flat, and when she reveals that’s she has bone cancer and wants to spend a lottery win on a last family visit to Canada with him, Carl is close to breaking point.

Let’s just be clear over one thing, and director Jones underlines it – “Kaleidoscope is a psychological thriller, a tragedy, but not a horror feature”. The score, using a harp concerto by the German/American composer Albert Zabel, really intensifies Carl’s desperate state of mind.  There are also echoes here of Bernhard Hermann’s score for Hitchcock’s Vertigo: But whilst Scottie was suffering from Vertigo (and love sickness), Carl is haunted by a past, that remains partly an enigma. DoP Philipp Blaubach (Hush) creates elliptical camera movements, showing Carl permanently fleeing from himself, whilst the long tracking shots mark him like a hunted animal. Overall, Jones has made the most of his limited budget, avoiding any gore, and staying consistently within the parameters of unsettling psychological drama. AS

On DVD/BD release 23 September 2019

London Spanish Film Festival 2019 | 25 – 29 September 2019

London Spanish Film Festival is back again for the 15th time around bringing the latest Spanish releases to central London over five days in September. There will be the usual chance to meet the directors and talent in Q&As, offering exclusive insight and background on their craft.

BUÑUEL EN EL LABERINTO DE LAS TORTUGAS  | Buñuel in the Labyrinth of Turtles

dir. Salvador Simó, with Jorge Usón, Fernando Ramos, Luis Enrique de Tomás | Animation | Spain | 2019 | 80 min | cert. PG| in Spanish with English subtitles

Paris, 1930. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí are the figureheads of the Surrealist movement. Their masterpieces An Andalusian Dog (1929) and The Golden Age (1930) have caused intense scandal for their shocking, violent imagery. Penniless, Buñuel must postpone his next project, a documentary focused on one of the poorest regions in Spain: Las Hurdes. Yet in a stroke of bizarre, miraculous luck, his best friend Ramón Acín wins the lottery, and together they set off to film this unreported hardship. Tempers flare, however, for whilst Acín prefers an unvarnished, pared-back, no-frills approach, Buñuel manipulates reality to achieve his intended political, often manufactured effects. Based on a true story, this animated “making of” of Buñuel’s Land Without Bread (1993) asks, with a healthy dose of humour, whether the camera is always, to some extent, a partisan, prejudiced device, exploring the curious complexities of ‘fact’ and ‘accuracy’ within taped, captured footage.

Wed 25 Sep | 6.30pm | Ciné Lumière | £13, conc. £11

OLA DE CRÍMENES | Crime Wave

dir. Gracia Quejereta, with Maribel Verdú, Juana Acosta, Paula Echevarría | Black Comedy | Spain | 2018 | 98 min | cert. 12A | in Spanish with English subtitles

Leyre (Maribel Verdú) is a well-heeled divorcee enjoying a comfortable life at her villa in Bilbao. However, her world is turned upside down when her son Asier, threatened with a shotgun and nasty insults, kills her ex-husband stone-dead. In an instant, Leyre will transform from aspiring cupcake entrepreneur to protective mother, going to absurd lengths to save her son and hide the crimes from the police. As the mayhem piles up and up in this fresh, hectic, and hysterical comedy, Leyre is forced to navigate the amorous attentions of Asier’s friend Julen, the tax-fraud schemes of her ex-husband’s widow, and the volley of frank, hilarious opinions from her ageing, no-nonsense mother.

Thu 26 Sep | 8.30pm | Ciné Lumière | £13, conc. £11

TRINTA LUMES  | Thirty Souls 

dir. Diana Toucedo, with Alba Arias, Samuel Vilariño | Documentary | Spain | 2018 | 80 min | cert. 15 | in Galician and Spanish with English subtitles

Set in the sparsely-populated village of O Courel, Galicia, Thirty Souls is a mysterious, magical, and haunting meditation on the life-cycle of birth and death in rural Spain. Deeply embedded in local folkloric tradition and the fragile balance between innocence and experience, two children, Alba and Samuel, explore abandoned homes in search of missing names and vanished livelihoods. They expose the sheer power of the Galician landscape with its echoing, menacing mountains and sublime sense of imminent threat. This oneiric love-letter to a remote, enchanting region of Spain – which took a full six years to shoot – is painted through daily rhythms and cadences, exposing life at its most tender and brutal, inviting and savage.

Followed by a Q&A with the director | Sat 28 Sep | 4.00pm | Regent Street Cinema | £12, conc. £11

ABUELOS | Grandfathers

dir. Santiago Requejo, with Carlos Iglesias, Roberto Álvarez, Ramón Barea | Comedy | Spain | 2019 | 108 min | cert. PG | in Spanish with English subtitles

Isidro (Carlos Iglesias) has suffered heavily from the Spanish financial crash. He is unemployed at the age of 56, but nobody wants to hire a senior — even one with 30 years of relevant experience. His friends Desiderio (Ramón Barea), a writer of romantic fiction, and Arturo (Roberto Álvarez), a retiree desperate to be a grandfather, feel similarly out of place and behind the times in a globalised world in which image, youth, and technology reign supreme. Even so, the trio refuse to give up, joining forces to prove that they still have something to offer. Side by side they launch a modern, forward-thinking (or so they think) business from scratch: a nursery for toddlers. What could go wrong!? The first full-length feature from director Santiago Requejo, Abuelos is jam-packed with warm-hearted, feel-good humour — and a sharp critique of cultural assumptions about the elderly.

Followed by a Q&A (tbc) | Sat 28 Sep | 6.15pm | Ciné Lumière | £13, conc. £11

LITUS 

dir. Dani de la Orden, with Jorge Cabrera, Belén Cuesta, Miquel Fernández | Comedy-Drama | Spain | 2019 | 85 min | cert. PG| in Spanish with English subtitles

Three months ago, young Spaniard Litus was killed in a car accident. Now, for the first time since his death, his brother Toni gathers his friends together to reminisce about old times and find closure from the tragedy. However, Toni brings unexpected news: Litus left a series of mysterious letters of farewell, one for each companion. As hidden secrets and furtive riddles come tumbling out beyond the grave, director Dani de la Orden provides a complex, layered study of the crushing heartbreak, and tender humour, of a group in mourning.

Sun 29 Sep | 8.30pm | Regent Street Cinema | £12, conc. £11

CATALAN WINDOW

LA FILLA D’ALGÚ / LA HIJA DE ALGUIEN | Somebody’s Daughter

dir. ensemble of 4th-year students at ESCAC (Cinema and Audiovisual School of Catalonia), with Aina Clotet, Pep Ambròs, Marta Aguilar | Drama | Spain | 2019 | 72 min | cert. 18 | in Catalan with English subtitles

At the age of 30, successful Catalan lawyer Eli (Aina Clotet) has it all: the career, the boyfriend, the family (she is heavily pregnant with her first child). However, on the day of a major, high-profile court case, her father suddenly disappears, throwing the entire business into jeopardy. After several frantic calls to her nearest and dearest, Eli postpones the meeting as long as she dare, racing around Barcelona to unravel myriad, mysterious secrets that have, until now, been kept under wraps. The camera never leaves her side in this intense psychological thriller played out breathlessly in real-time, as Eli’s comfortable, bourgeois stability gradually crumbles before her very eyes… Winner of the Movistar+ award for best full-length film in the Málaga Festival’s ZonaZine, this beautifully balanced work is shot by a wide array of graduates from the Barcelona film school (ESCAC), displaying a wisdom and maturity far beyond their tender years.

Wed 25 Sep | 8.30pm | Ciné Lumière | £13, conc. £11

YO SOY LA RUMBA  | Peret: My Name Is Rumba

dir. Paloma Zapata, with Pepita Becas, Miliu Calabuch, La Chana | Documentary | Spain | 2018 | 92 min | cert. U | in Catalan and Spanish with English subtitles

The title makes it clear. Pere Pubill Calaf – Peret – is rumba. This documentary traces the life and work of an enigmatic singer and guitarist who, raised in the humble, gypsy neighbourhood of Sant Antoni, Barcelona, would be universally hailed as the ‘King of Rumba’ for his fusion of flamenco song with Latin American beats and rhythms. In a career spanning six decades, from the mid-1950s to his death in 2014, Peret rubbed shoulders with Pérez Prado, sang with Elvis Presley, and released global smash-hits such as ‘Borriquito’. From his enforced performance at Eurovision, to his long break from stardom to become an Evangelical pastor in the USA, to his triumphant return at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Peret provides a warm, intimate portrait – through heartfelt testimonies from grandchildren and friends (Petitet, Justo Molinero) – of a musician full of contradiction and paradox but also, and most importantly, a deep kindness and an irrepressible love of song. A must-see for music lovers, Peret won Best International Film at the MUVI Music Film Festival 2019.

Thu 26 Sep | 6.30pm | Ciné Lumière | £13, conc. £11

LA DONA DEL SEGLE | The Woman of the Century

dir. Sílvia Quer, with Elena Martín, Nora Navas, Àlex Monner | Drama | Spain | 2019 | 90 min | cert. PG | in Catalan and Spanish with English subtitles

Barcelona, 1919. A city awash with workers’ strikes, criminal gangs, and social divisions. Consuelo, a young woman raised in an orphanage, is mistaken for a seamstress at department store El Siglo – the exemplary bourgeois establishment of the era. Yet, rather than point out the error, she simply completes the job to an excellent standard, and is soon offered a full-time contract. However, her lowly background and lack of proper documentation, at a time of entrenched class-based prejudice, threaten to shatter her feminist dreams of empowerment and emancipation. When all seems lost, a possible lifeline emerges: might she be the daughter of famous painter Isidre Nonell and his gypsy muse? A film dedicated to all those women who bravely stirred the winds of revolutionary change at the start of the twentieth century.

Fri 27 Sep | 8.30pm | Regent Street Cinema | £12, conc. £11

PETRA (main picture)

dir. Jaime Rosales, with Bábara Lennie, Alex Brendemühl, Joan Botey | Drama | Spain | 2018 | 107 min | cert. 18 | in Spanish with English subtitles

Artist Petra arrives at the home of celebrated sculptor Jaume Navarro, ready to begin a creative residency. However, nothing is as it seems in this Catalan countryside. After the death of her mother, she is desperate for answers regarding identity and place, suspecting the boorish Jaume of being the father she never knew. Petra is soon embroiled in a series of intricate, spiralling secrecies, as the lives of Jaume’s wife Marisa, their photographer son Lucas, his housekeeper Teresa, Teresa’s husband Juanjo, and their son Pau forcefully collide in a malicious, absorbing battle of lies, myths, and broken memories. A Greek tragedy Spanish-style, complete with eerie, non-chronological shifts of time, Petra is the sixth feature from art-film director Jaime Rosales, a regular at Cannes for many years.

Followed by a Q&A with Bárbara Lennie with Prof. Maria Delgado (Royal School of Speech and Drama) | Sun 29 Sep | 4.00pm | Regent Street Cinema | £12, conc. £11

ENTRE DOS AGUAS | Between Two Waters

dir. Isaki Lacuesta, with Israel Gómez Romero, Fransisco José Gómez Romero, Óscar Rodríguez | Drama | Spain | 2019 | 136 min | cert. 12 | in Spanish with English subtitles

When filmmaker Isaki Lacuesta released The Legend of Time in 2006, part-fiction and part-documentary about gypsy brothers Isra and Cheíto, Spain’s daily El País labelled it a ‘miracle’. Fast-forward 12 years, and Between Two Waters finds the impish boys now matured into adult men with pressures, duties, and responsibilities. Having gone their separate ways since childhood, the pair are reunited once more in their hometown, the island of San Fernando. Isra is recently released from jail, desperate to win back his wife and three daughters, and Cheíto, having just finished a long mission with the marines, hungers to settle down with his family. As the brothers’ reunion sparks memories of their father’s violent death, a series of candid, piercing conversations reveals a profound sense of reconciliation, redemption, and fellow-feeling.

Sun 29 Sep | 4.00pm | Regent Street Cinema | £12, conc. £11

BASQUE WINDOW

EL INCREÍBLE FINDE MENGUANTE | The Incredible Shrinking Wknd

dir. Jon Mikel Caballero, with Iria del Río, Adam Quintero, & Nadia de Santiago | Drama, Time-Travel | Spain | 2019 | 93 min | cert. 18 | In Spanish with English subtitles

To celebrate her 30th birthday, Alba and her friends rent a woodland cottage for the weekend, eager to clink glasses, let loose, and live it up to the maximum. However, the festivities turn sour when Pablo, Alba’s boyfriend, unexpectedly breaks up with her, claiming that he needs time. In a neat sci-fi trick, Alba is suddenly frozen in her own time-loop, transported back to the car journey and condemned to relive the separation over and over – but with one hour less each time. Can she avoid the inevitable and persuade Pablo of her love, before it’s too late? It’s a countdown – and time is running out.

Written and directed by Jon Mikel Caballero, The Incredible Shrinking Wknd is a dark, poignant reimagination of Groundhog Day – but for break-ups.

MUDAR LA PIEL | The Spy Within 

dir. Ana Schulz, Cristóbal Fernández, with Juan Gutiérrez, Mingo Ràfols, Frauke Schulz | Spy Documentary | Spain | 2018 | 89 min | cert. PG | in Spanish with English subtitles

Juan Gutiérrez is a negotiator who strove to generate peace between ETA and the Spanish government during the most violent years of Spanish political conflict (1980s-90s). Roberto Flórez is his best friend and confidant – but also a double-crossing spy, who kept him under secret surveillance at all times. This is the first of countless betrayals, discrepancies, and misgivings at play in this captivating, slippery work – a documentary, but with a healthy dose of fiction – featuring intense, candid interviews with both men in turn. Winner of the 2017 MECAS Award at Las Palmas International Film Festival, first-time directors Cristóbal Fernández and Ana Schulz (Juan’s own daughter) create a deeply personal, moving film, exploring the powerful bonds of affection between parent and child, double-agent and mediator, traitor and comrade… and the best of friends.

Sat 28 Sep | 2.00pm | Regent Street Cinema | £12, conc. £11

70 BINLADENS | 70 Big Ones

dir. Koldo Serra, with Emma Suárez, Nathalie Poza, Hugo Silvia | Thriller | Spain | 2018 | 104 min | cert. 18| in Spanish with English subtitles

When little Alba is kidnapped, her mother Raquel has 24 hours to find €35,000 – or 70 €500 bills, known in Spain as binladens because everyone talks about them but never sees them. After a long, gruelling search, she finally locates a bank willing to loan the money, but halfway through the transaction two robbers suddenly burst in, taking everyone hostage and throwing her plans into disarray. Raquel must think fast, outfox her rivals, and save her daughter’s life – no matter the price. This third full-length feature from director Koldo Serra is a pulsating watch, with thrilling performances from female leads Emma Suárez and Nathalie Poza.

Sat 28 Sep | 8.45pm | Ciné Lumière | £13, conc. £11

LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL | CENTRAL LONDON | 25 -29 SEPTEMBER 2019

Normal (2019) ****

Dir.: Adele Tulli, Documentary; Doc, Italy 2019, 70 min.

Tulli makes a real visual impact with her sophomore feature that examines gender specific behaviour through a series of vignettes picturing everyday scenes in Italian life. Normal asks the question: how is male and female determined? Is it built on childhood expectations, or does it arise out of a need to confirm to society’s rules.?

Certainly, obedience is expected from females from an early age onwards: a little girl has her ears pierced and earrings inserted, whilst the man performing the task calls her brave, because she does not cry. Her mother confirms expectations: “Now you have earrings like Mummy”. Images of underwater gymnastics for pregnant women and girls keeping fit, contrast with little boys copying the “Alpha Male” role model on their mini motor-cycles, and encouraged by instructors not to show any fear. On the toy production line, pink plastic is formed to make irons, sold with iron boards for the girls. Much later a woman lectures brides-to-be: “there will be a big change in their lives after marriage: they will have to do the cleaning, cooking and shopping themselves.” And a warning to mothers with children not to neglect their husbands, or themselves. “This must NEVER happen”, the stern lady makes it clear.

Meanwhile, little boys play war games in the arcades, and semi-army instructors tell teenage boys that “the gun is an extension of your body”. A young man tells a younger male how to interview females. “Always lead the conversation, alpha males bite back, particularly with women who are bitter, you have to be able to stand-up to a woman”. In a church, the message for young brides, which we’ve already heard from a woman earlier, is reinforced by a priest: “Virginia, take care of him and yourself every day”. At a CD signing, the artist Antony has his hands full with under-age girls, overly enthusiastic to snog him. And at the ‘Miss Modena’ competition om the beach, twenty-year olds have learned to give the right answers, whilst parading in mini-bikinis and high heels. We watch two very different weddings: Illiana in her early twenties has a raucous party, with the wedding cake in the shape of a penis, whilst enormous dildos are everywhere. In contrast, a middle age couple marries in a beautiful theatre in Ferrara, in a retro 1950s affair. And finally, young mothers, pushing their prams while doing gymnastics to stay fit – are all heeding the warning given to them, not to neglect themselves or their hubbies. Ever.

Normal keeps a cool distance from its subject, playing out as a candid collection of images. In an interview Tulli said: “I consider documentary to be a “performative act” between images and the reality that they are supposed to represent. My approach to non-fiction does not necessarily pursue objective truths, but instead subjective perspectives. In other words, for me, documentary forms can be used to provoke a critical interpretation of the reality they observe. In my film, I aim to present a disorientating portrait of accepted ideas of normality, and to generate critical and open-ended perspectives to counter heteronormative narratives.” So there. AS

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2019      

Churchill and the Movie Mogul (2019) ****

Dir: John Fleet | Cast: Stephen Fry, David Thomson, Charles Drazin, Jonathan Rose and David Lough | UK Doc

Churchill was not only a politician and writer he was also an avid film buff. And he used his knowledge of the cinema as a political tool to further Britain’s interest in the Second World War, according to this new documentary by director and writer John Fleet.

Archive footage shows how Churchill – down on his luck in the ‘wilderness years” of the early 1930s – made a fruitful alliance with a Hungarian Jew who had started life penniless but went to be one of Britain’s most celebrated film producers. Alexander Korda took Churchill on as a screenwriter and historical advisor in his production company London Films. Churchill had already honed his writing talents in books and newspapers but also proved to be creative in other ways providing script notes for Korda’s productions and an epic screenplay.

When war broke out in 1938, this politician filmmaker collaboration would be significant in bringing victory for Britain and the Allies. US support was vital in overcoming the Germans and Churchill knew a radical approach was needed. Korda by this time was wealthy on the profits of his rousing historical dramas made in Hollywood and Europe. The Academy Award-winning Private Life of Henry VIII established him on the international stage.

By 1940 Churchill was Prime Minister and appealed to his friend Korda to make a film that would boost pro-British sentiment and strengthen the resolve against Hitler. “Many Americans saw Britain as an old-fashioned imperial nation,” remarks Sir Winston’s secretary, John Peck. So Korda offered to turn the whole of Denham Film Studios’ resources over to making a propaganda movie that would screen in the US and put Britain not only on in the map but also in America’s hearts. Korda set off to Hollywood on a mission to complete his silent epic The Thief of Bagdad. While there he directed That Hamilton Woman (1941) another rousing patriotic drama based on Nelson’s sea victory, starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh – the couple of the moment both on and off the stage and screen – with spectacular results.

John Fleet makes a convincing case and a lively documentary enriched by treasures from the archives, previously undiscovered documents and photographs – including one stunner showing Americans supposedly watching the crucial film in an enormous drive-by. Informative talking heads include Stephen Fry. MT

CHURCHILL AND THE MOVIE MOGUL on BBC FOUR at 9pm 25 SEPTEMBER 2019

 

 

 

 

The Dark Half (1992) *** Bluray release

Dir: George A. Romero | Horror 

George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) adapts his intelligent chiller from the bestselling novel by Stephen King, who wrote the novel as a nod to his own literary pseudonym, Richard Bachman. It stars Timonthy Hutton as small town tutor author and horror writer Thad Beaumont who kills off his own literary doppelgänger as a publicity stunt to distance himself from the killings in his own novels and from George Stark, the pseudonymous name he has used to author them. But things don’t go according to plan. And when people around him start dropping dead in macabre scenarios – and his own fingerprints appear at the crime scenes – Beaumont is bewildered until he learns that Stark is back with a vengeance.

The Dark Half is now on Blu-ray

Eureka Store https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/the-dark-half/

Amazon https://amzn.to/2MYjqph

Shock of the Future **

Dir: Marc Collin | Music Drama, Biopic | France 84′

A girl reacts with nonchalance, petulance and finally flirty self-assurance when hired to compose a jingle for an advert in late 1970s Paris. Not much of a role model for aspiring female music-makers – especially when the sleazy old geezers that rally round to help her are clearly after one thing – which is why Marc Collin’s film is such a missed opportunity.

The Shock of the Future works best as a riff on the genesis of electronic funk and synthesised music from Pink Floyd to Michel Jarre and French disco drummer Cerrone (nice to revisit his one hit wonder ‘Supernature’) during the late 1970s early 1980s. Collin is a French musician and producer so has a keen feel for the vibe and the pioneering women who made it happen: Delia Derbyshire, Laurie Spiegel and Wendy Carlos. But he is clearly over-awed by Alma Jodorowsky – granddaughter of Alejandro – who plays sultry Ana, a chain-smoking budding composer whose sexy attributes ensure oodles of assistance from the men who swing by her humble bedsit where she idly twiddles knobs – sadly not theirs – on an impressive early synthesiser. The threadbare narrative and shallow characterisations don’t do the film a favour – especially for Jodorowsky’s subtle talents, but it’s short and sweet at only 84 minutes running time and provides a pleasurable heads up for that heady era. MT

OUT THIS FRIDAY, 13 September 2019

 

 

Honeyland (2019) ****

Dir: Tamara Kotevska/Ljubomir Stefanov | Doc/drama, 87′

Bees are one of the most vital elements in our delicate ecosystem. But rather than tell another preachy tale about disappearing ways of life, these two Macedonian filmmakers have spent three years making their revealing debut documentary exploring the art of wild beekeeping and a Turkish woman who is keeping the tradition alive against all odds in a remote corner of the Balkans.

In her mid fifties and caring for an half-blind bed-ridden mother, Hatidze is a cheerful and enterprising soul. She struggles on alone in this inhospitable terrain sharing her life with a menage of dogs and cats, and the vituperative insects who provide her with a living, her father having put paid to any chance of a husband or children. It’s a story that will ring true with those still working hard and looking after ageing parents as they approach the lonely coalface of their own mortality.

“Half for you, half for me” she says generously, sharing the honeycomb with the bees to assure their continued survival. and often climbing to hazardous rock-faces to locate and nurture the crucial queen bee that brings the swarm with her. After nurturing the swarm and culling the precious nectar, Hatidze then makes a perilous journey on foot to Skopje  where she barters with local market holders to sell the honey for as little as 10 euros a kilo.

 Honeyland is a remarkable  vérité study of loneliness and endangered tradition. As Hatidze soldiers on in harmony with nature but without power or mod cons, a jet plane soaring into the blue is the only reminder of the 21st century.  Bee-keeping is not just a quaint outdated pastime but vital to our survival and the pollination of plant life that feeds the world.  Hatidze is said to be the only woman in Europe still carrying on the practice in the traditional way.

Neighbours are often an intrusive nuisance – and particularly here when a large group of rowdy herders arrive to graze on the land with their cattle and noisy kids. Hatidze does her best to get on with them but their own swarm of bees poisons the ones she has carefully cultivated; the chief herder is only interested in instant results and it clear to see the filmmakers’ analogy with mass globalisation,

Fejmi Daut and Samir Ljuma capture this extraordinary place with its rocky terrain, sweltering summers and snow-swept winters when the wolves howl all night. Hatidze is at one with nature a harsh but rewarding life which she accepts with grace and fortitude    as she walks out alone into the wilderness – both metaphorically and physically – determined to continue alone and at peace with her dog and her bees. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2019

 

 

The Criminal (1960) **** Home Ent release

Dir: Joseph Losey | 97′ UK Crime drama

Stanley Baker was once of the most unusual romantic heroes during the 1950s. His stock in trade was a mean masculine allure and leopard-like physique and he triumphs in this British gangster thriller that has become a cult classic with Losey fans. Baker leads a sterling British cast of Sam Wanamaker (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold), Grégoire Aslan (Cleopatra), Margit Saad (The Saint) and Jill Bennett (For your Eyes Only), as an angst-ridden loner and recidivist criminal whose self-destructive personality sees him locked into a life of crime. Ricocheting between empowerment as a kingpin behind the prison walls run by a sadistic chief warder (Magee) and the underworld of a gangland boss (Sam Wanamaker) who has his eyes on Baker’s crock of gold, THE CRIMINAL is a jagged, violent film that gleams in Oscar winner Robert Krasker’s camerawork, complemented by Johnny  Dankworth’s jazzy score. Losey’s direction gives it the edge on many other British crime thrillers of the time. MT

THE CRIMINAL from director Joesph Losey which will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray and Digital Download on September 16 2019.

Gloria Mundi (2019) *** Venice Film Festival | Best Actress winner

Dir. Robert Guédiguian. France/Italy. 2019. 107mins

Veteran director Robert Guédiguian knows his audience, his cast and muse: he makes politically aware films about ordinary working class people facing crisis in his native Marseille. The Last Mitterand and The Army of Crime are exceptions but his domestic dramas are consistently appealing to a certain type of viewer. In Gloria Mundi he jazzes things up a bit with some cinematic flourishes and a script that goes down and dirty but it is largely predictable in a solid, decently crafted sort of way.

Gloria Mundi belongs to Gérard Meylan’s Daniel, a likeable and grounded dark horse who has done time in Rennes for killing a man in self-defence. We meet him in the mellow autumn of his life, content with his own company and happy to have found a certain modus vivendi as he wiles away his post-prison days writing Haiku poetry and contemplating a soulmate who – conveniently – lives only in his dreams. He was once married to Ariane Ascaride’s salt of the earth night cleaner Sylvie who went on to enjoy a more enduring relationship with bus driver Richard, an equally mellow Jean-Pierre Darroussin, who took on her daughter Mathilda (Anais Demoustier). The couple then had Aurore (Lola Naymark) who runs a shop with Bruno (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet). Mathilda is seen giving birth to the titular Gloria as the film opens.

The appealing thing about this Midi-set drama is the way these ordinary people have come to accept their lives without rancor or resort to bitterness or despair. There is something of the Emile Zola’s about these characters: Life is tough for them but they put their backs in to earning their living, never shirking or relying on criminality to bring home the bacon. Guédiguian, like Zola, is interested in temperament here rather than character, and he tells his story straightforwardly without any gimmicks or flashbacks. Marseille is very much a character too, its stunning skyline and maritime feel suffusing the drama with a certain charm that diehard fans will find comforting, although others might consider it all a bit pedestrian. The plot is nonetheless satisfying and well thought out, reaching a surprising conclusion and avoiding the ubiquitous and nebulous enigma that it so commonplace nowadays in place of a solid – if minor – narrative.

The family fortunes take a turn for the worse after little Gloria is born. Mathilda and her husband Nicolas (Robinson Stévenin) have invested in a shiny black limousine so he can work as an Uber driver, while she goes back to helping in a clothes shop. But Nicolas has his arm broken by thieves who steal the car, and Richard is suspended from his job after the police catch him on the ‘phone while driving a bus.

Daniel then shows his true colours stepping out of the shadows to support his estranged daughter Mathilda and reconnect with Sylvie who has refused to strike with her co-worker at the cleaners’ union, and is looking after Gloria while holding down her punishing nocturnal schedule. Meanwhile, Aurore and Bruno are about to open their second shop and are enjoying a raunchy sex life fantasising about a three-some with Mathilda, who Bruno is already sleeping with, unbeknownst to Aurore and Nicolas, who is slowly losing the plot, sitting at home with a broken arm.

Guédiguian often feels like the French version of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. And here again he crafts a tale of domestic dynamics showing how economic setback can rapidly put a strain on family life. He did this first with his best known work Snows of Kilimanjaro and more recently with The House by the Sea. This is a less subtle affair that triumphs because of its engaging story of Marseillaise life and its quality performance all set to an unobtrusive Ravel score. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 2019 | Best Actress Ariane Ascaride

Lingua Franca (2019) *** Venice Film Festival

Dir.: Isabel Sandoval; Cast: Isabel Sandoval, Lynn Cohen, Eamon Farren; USA/Philippines 2019, 94′ 

Philippines born US-based Isabel Sandoval is the director, writer, actor, editor and co-producer of this semi-autobiographical labour of love. Her portrait of Olivia, a New York trans woman living in permanent fear of deportation by the ICE, tackles a worthwhile subject with boring results.

Olivia (Sandoval) is a post-op trans Filipina working as a live-in home help for Jewish matriarch Olga (Cohen) in Brighton Beach, New York. Olga is scrambling on the foothills of Alzheimers, but when her big family clan meets, she dominates the proceedings just like in the olden days. With no Green Card Olivia is haunted by her fear of deportation, and has pinned all her hopes on marriage to her boyfriend who she pays in instalments. But her man has found a better offer, and the money has been spent in vain. Then along comes 29-year old Alex (Farren), Olga’s grandson, fresh out of rehab, but still an alcoholic drifter. He works, on and off in his uncle’s grim slaughterhouse, but is not ready to adjust to adult life. He moves in with Olivia and Olga, even though his caring efforts are not particularlyj successful. In spite of their very different psychological make-up, Olivia and Alex fall in love. Alex, an out-and-out macho, is at first unaware of Olivia’s sexual identity, and when the truth finally emerges he reacts with verbal and emotional violence. Sandoval leaves an ambiguous ending, somehow between hope and realism. Lingua Franca feels rather flaccid both plot wise and in its bland aesthetics, which are more suited to a documentary feature. Alex and Olivia make unconvincing bed-fellows: more experienced actors may have been able to ride over their stilted dialogue and lack of chemistry but this is another flaw in the film. Lingua Franca is an admirable undertaking, but sadly a wasted opportunity. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI 2019

    

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Triology of Life (1970s) ****

Dominating Pier Paolo Pasolini’s work of the 1970s, is a trio of exuberant dramas that explore three literary classics: Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (1971), Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1972) and The Thousand and One Nights (1974) (often known as The Arabian Nights). These came to be known as his ‘Trilogy of Life’.

Challenging consumer capitalism and celebrating the uncorrupted human body while commenting on contemporary sexual and religious mores and hypocrisies, Pasolini’s scatological humour and rough-hewn sensuality leave all modern standards of decency behind.

Full of bawdy, earthy spirit, The Decameron romps through its tales of sex and death – of lusty nuns and priests, cuckolded husbands, murdered lovers and grave-robbers – with five of the stories linked by the character of an intriguing artist, played by Pasolini himself.

Plunging with gusto into some of the blackest and bawdiest of The Canterbury Tales, Pasolini celebrates almost every conceivable form of sexual act with a rich, earthy humour. A particular delight is the use of a largely British cast, including Hugh Griffith, Jenny Runacre and Tom Baker, and Pasolini takes the part of Chaucer.

Arabian Nights was two years in the making. The locations – Yemen, Ethiopia, Iran and Nepal – form a rich, exotic backdrop to these tales of slaves and kings, potions, betrayals, demons and, most of all, love and lovemaking in all its myriad forms. Engrossing, mysterious, profound and liberating, Arabian Nights is an exquisitely dreamlike, sensuous and adult interpretation of the original folk tales.

Available on Blu-Ray from 9 September, courtesy of BFI | High Definition masters | Special features in the set include Notes for an African Oresteia(1970) and an interview with Robin Askwith about Pasolini.

 

 

Scarborough (2018) ***

Writ/Dir: Barnaby Southcombe |Cast: Jodhi May, Jordan Bolger, Jessica Barden, Edward Hogg | UK Drama | 84′

Freed from the confines of the stage, for which it was written by Fiona Evans, Barnaby Southcombe’s seaside love story soars and never loses its footloose fun reflected in Ian Leggett’s energetic hand-held camera and limpid widescreen seascapes. It’s a more lightweight film that his standout noir I, Anna that starred his mother Charlotte Rampling as an enigmatic femme fatale. But his work is always charismatic and entertaining.

Intimate in scope but universal in its subject matter, SCARBOROUGH is a sensory exploration of love through a series of flirty and at times moving vignettes rather than a gripping narrative, and some of the dialogue feels cliched-ridden, but its lightly touching and thoughtful in its modest running time. And when people are coupling up or falling out, glib cliches often pour out volubly through guilt or even lack of imagination.

It sees two couples pursue impossible love stories. Both are generations apart and its clear from the offset that neither will be enduring. In love, longevity often trumps passion, and both the older lovers are in committed relationships that have stood the test of time, despite their downfalls, that seem connected to infertility on both sides.

The narrative sashays between the two couples. Jodhi May is lithe and luminous as a 45 year-old teacher in love with her muscular pupil Daz (Jordan Bolger), whose puppy-like naive enthusiasm could clearly wane. They’ve only actually spent 22 hours together during their snatched lunches and afternoon escapes. But she’s tried for years to get pregnant, and when the result comes through her demeanour changes. May brings considerable complexity to her role, despite its confines. His enthusiasm seems to dampen her ardour, and her maturity as a woman is shown through her skill as an actor.

The other two, Jessica Barden (Mindhorn) and Edward Hogg (Jupiter Ascending), are celebrating her birthday. He’s much older than the giggly twenty-something. Barden has a more difficult role and still feels slightly unconvincing. One always gets the impression she’s a kid and her duplicity makes things worse, especially with lines like “get her off the ‘phone, she’s proper ruining my day”, when he tries sensitively to split up with her girlfriend Chris over the ‘phone. This also seems to be the catalyst for some passionate love-making, yet great sex doesn’t always lead to commitment. Daniel York is particularly amusing in as the hotel manager in this extremely watchable drama. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE. | PREMIERED DURING WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL | 12-21 October 2018

 

 

The Souvenir (2018) *****

Dir/Wri: Joanna Hogg | Tilda Swinton, Tom Burke, Honour Swinton Byrne | Drama UK | 100′

Joanna Hogg is the only living female filmmaker who portrays a particular English contemporary milieu. Usually creative, invariably white and well-educated, these characters are liberal in outlook and mostly live in London. With such unique sensibilities and vision she is able to understand and convey as certain type of middle class angst (borne out of having to do the right thing, irrespective of personal choice). She did it gracefully in Unrelated (2007), Archipelago (2010) and Exhibition (2013), And she does it peerlessly again here with The Souvenir, a nuanced and delicately drawn story of addiction and strained relationships that very much echoes its time and place: the late 1980s – although it was inspired and takes its name from  Fragonard’s painting, a motif that runs through the film.

This all revolves around Julie, a dark horse and an English rose (earnestly played by Tilda Swinton’s daughter Honour Swinton Byrne) who is tentatively making a career for herself in film school while awkwardly becoming involved with her first proper boyfriend. Clearly she is talented but lacks real confidence – both in love and in life – largely due to a repressed English background. Although her mother is loving and wonderful there are clear hints that certain things were simply not discussed at home, but still waters nevertheless run deep on the feelings front. Hogg relies on an improvisational approach, stripping away clichés to distill the emotional content of each scene, often with minimal dialogue and relying on body language and atmosphere. 

Women of that era will remember the silent voids during a date where the silence spoke volumes, often marking the beginning or the end of another tortuous romance with a man who could not express himself, and chose merely to back away and then reappear with pleadings and desperate often incoherent bids to meet again. Often covering this with bluster and demeaning put-downs, Tom Burke gives a priceless performance as Anthony, a man whose emotional range does Attila the Hun a disservice when it comes to affairs of the heart. “You’re a freak. You’ll always be last,” he tells Julie. And Hogg is clearly mining these fraught memories too with this doomed romantic pairing.

Julie presses on undeterred, internalising her feelings, and clearly drawn to public school Anthony through some atavistic genetic link. Because he purports to be ‘from the right background’ – he is clearly approved of by her parents – the very mild-mannered Tilda and her on screen husband.William. One of of the best scenes sees Richard Ayoade playing a ‘cutting edge’ filmmaker and deftly spilling the beans that Anthony is a heroin addict. “I find doing heroin to be mainstream behaviour,” he jokes to a rather bewildered Julie. And we discover she’s funding his habit with donations gleaned from her mother, who does seem alarmed at Julie’s rising expenditure for film-school supplies. In a caddish moment Anthony even roughs up Julie’s Notting Hill flat, faking a burglary to raise funds for his addiction. Drugs make psychopaths and monsters of addicts. And Julie is a victim too, of love. But she keeps a stiff upper lip. Endearing scenes with her parents are a triumph in their candid intimacy, and make us reflect on the placid generosity of the British. 

Julie and Anthony share a deceptively satisfying sex life behind closed doors, shown in 16mm-styled footage that follows them on an impromptu romantic break to Venice, funded unflinchingly by Julie. She epitomises the female lack of confidence of that era, back-footed by her desire to appear cool and inclusive when pitching for a film school project, and desperate to fit in with the others. She emerges lonely and rather misunderstood, though keen to do the right thing. And the comforting presence of her concerned on screen mother resonates throughout, you stifle a snigger when she utters the words: “Anthony was taken ill in the Wallace Collection”. 

Joanna Hogg will soon embark on the second part of this semi-biopic affair with Robert Pattinson joining the cast. The story of a young filmmaker finally making her way is something to look forward to. MT

OUT ON 30 AUGUST 2019 AT CURZON CINEMAS

Pain and Glory (2019) ****

Dir: Pedro Almodovar | Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas | Drama, Spain 117’

Pedro Almodóvar has never won the coveted Palme d’Or but here he gets another chance to prove his impressive talents at portraying with probing insight and humanity a variety of tortured characters both male and female. Pain and Glory is a uniquely piquant and personal portrait that takes us into his own heart through the story of another struggling filmmaker. Once again, as we enjoyed in Julieta, this is a confident and passionate affair resonating with the work of many great auteurs before him, Fellini springs to mind, and the film is seductively set to a score by Alberto Iglesias. But this is one of his most subtle almost sensitive works to date that feels convincingly honest and spontaneous, while quailing away from theatricality it is elegant and self-assured. Maybe the Spanish director has finally let down his guard and bared his soul in this rather delicate drama. It follows one Salvador Mallo (his longtime collaborator Antonio Banderas who plays his alter ego with feeling) a filmmaker who has lost his way and now reflects mournfully on his past in lonely solitude as the present quietly collapses around him. And we feel for his quiet pain in every scene as the narrative unfolds in the context of other minor stories. Finally the fourth wall is broken and we discover the truth, in rather an abrupt finale. Mallo opines “a great actor is not the one who cries, but the one who knows how to contain his tears”. Pedro Almodovar has finally come home, but ironically Banderas wins the award. MT

Cat in the Wall (2019) **** Locarno Film Festival 2019

Dir: Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova | Drama | 

Award-winning Bulgarian duo Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova are no strangers to controversy. Their popular award-winning documentary Uncle Tony, Three Fools and the Secret Service was widely condemned by the authorities for exposing the corrupt totalitarian regime in their homeland.

Undeterred, they have pushed on with another potential firecracker in the shape of Cat in the Wall, based on real events in a Peckham council estate as experienced by a professional Bulgarian single mother trying to make it in London. This English-language sink-estate drama playfully deals with inflammatory themes such a Brexit, gentrification and the pitfalls of home-owning through the endearing tale of a wayward cat who also reserves his right to roam into pastures new.

Irina Atanasova plays the main character Irina, an architect who has bought and renovated a council flat in a Peckham Estate where she lives with her young son Jojo (Orlin Asenov) and her brother Vlado (Angel Genov) a well-qualified historian who has turned his hand to installing Satellite dishes. Hoping to leave  the corrupt post communist set-up in Bulgaria to start a new life in Britain she soon discovers the grim reality of Britain.

Naturalistic performances from a cast of non-pros and experienced thespians and a refreshing script are the strengths of this light-hearted bit of social realism, piqued by dark humour. Utterly refusing to cow-tow to the usual Loachian style of Tory-bashing this film still exposes some uncomfortable truths in a storyline that builds quite a head of steam and some set-tos that make it tense but also thoroughly grounded in reality.

Irina, Vlado and Jojo inject a much-needed breath of fresh air into a hackneyed scenario, where they uncover the usual set-backs to living social housing – the urine-drenched lift is a classic example. But soon they find themselves face to face with a ginger tabby cat, but altering adopting for Jojo they are soon accused of animal theft by a neighbouring family.

As an educated immigrant who is well placed to comment on the Bulgaria and Brexit-Britain, Irina comes across as a sympathetic and thoroughly likeable, eking out an existence that sees her pitching for architectural schemes while supplementing her meagre salary with bar work. Meanwhile she notices how most of her neighbours are living on generous state benefits that make finding paid work nonsensical.

“I didn’t come here to be a leech,” says the politically-savvy Irina who may well prove unpopular with diehard socialists in the audience. The recent words of Trump also echo: ‘if she doesn’t like it she can go back home”. And then there is her little son Jojo who is trying to make the best of his rather isolated existence as an immigrant child with no local friends, who thinks he has found one in Goldie.

The directors maintain their distance, serving up all this near the bone controversy with such a lightness of touch that it is difficult to take offence in a social satire that mostly feels even-handed. The character of Irina’s neighbour Camilla is a case in point. Played by veteran actress Camilla Godard she brings a gentleness to her part as a drug-smoking depressive who, it later emerges, bought the cat as a present for her special needs granddaughter, another example of the more hapless denizens of the estate. And while we feel for Camilla she also conveys an ambivalence that somehow cuts both ways. We can sympathise but also condemn her. Cat in the Wall is a clever and highly enjoyable drama that really shines a light on some shadowy issues in the home we call ‘broken Britain’ . MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy (2018) ***

Dir/Wri: Justin Kelly | Cast: Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, Diane Kruger, Jim Sturgess | US Biopic Dram | 108′

The story behind the literary persona JT LeRoy, created by American author Laura Albert, has certainly had some cinematic mileage. Albert took part in the documentary Author: The JT Leroy Story (2016) that screened a few years ago at the BFI Flare’s Film Festival, Here she is played by Laura Dern in Justin Kelly’s slick and lively re-imagining of one of the most brazen literary hoaxes known to mankind. Albert published three books in the early years of the 21st century, under her nom de plume JT LeRoy. They explored the life of a sexually confused teenage boy, abused in childhood. A gamine Kristen Stewart plays her sister-in-law, Savannah Knoop, who comes to stay and ends up being persuaded by Albert to pose as JT for a promotional photo session. And it doesn’t end there. Dern and Stewart give luminous performances in this seamlessly pleasurable and darkly amusing drama that explores themes of gender fluidity, moral ambiguity and fraud. MT
NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | premiered at BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL | 21 -31 MARCH 2019

Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019) ****

Dir.: Alexandre O. Philippe; Documentary with Diane O’Bannon, Roger Corman, Ben Mankiewicz, Carmen Scheifela-Giger, Tom Skeritt, Veronica Cartwright; USA 2019, 93 min.

 After 78/52, a dissection of Hitchcock’s famous shower scene from Psycho, writer/director Alexandre O. Philippe turns his attention to another gruesome classic, Ridley Scott’s Alien – and in particular the chest-busting scene, when John Hurt gives birth to a fleshy foetus with silver teeth. But Memory is not only the genesis of the Alien, but an interpretation which involves Greek mythology and the work of Francis Coppola.

To start with: what would have happened had Walter Hill directed Alien, as originally planned? Instead he chose Southern Comfort, Ridley Scott taking over the helm. Roger Corman originally offered to work with O’Bannon on a much smaller budget, if Fox agreed to abandon the project but they had blockbuster in mind after the success of Star Wars. Dan O’Bannon (1946-2009) then abandoned his script of 29 pages, because he could not see how Alien could get on board the spaceship Nostromo.

The name ‘Alien’ was a nod to Joseph Conrad whose Heart of Darkness had been filmed by Francis Ford Coppola as Apocalypse Now – nothing but a horror film set during the Vietnam War. O’Bannon was also responsible for bringing the Swiss artist RH Giger (1940-2014) back on board, who had been fired by Fox: his artwork was deemed as “sick” by the studio bosses. Both widows, Carmen Scheifele-Giger and Diane O’Bannon appear in Memoir; Diane claiming that her husband did not steal from anyone in particular but cherry-picked from Greek mythology, the works of Francis Bacon, Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon, the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky and the writings of HP Lovecraft. The body of the Alien itself gave the team the most headaches, earlier versions were simply too cute or unimpressive. Cast member Veronica Cartwright called the final version a giant penis. O’Bannon suffered from Crohn’s disease (which killed him eventually) and used his illness for the “birth of the Alien”, a vile being that sprung from John Hurt’s stomach, after two failed attempts.

DoP Robert Muratore integrates his work with the Alien excerpts, and even his talking-head shots are sometimes created with lighting and angles which channel the horror of the Alien scheme. But where was Sigourney Weaver in this fascinating piece of detective work which will fascinate film fans and newcomers alike? Her vital input would provide the final key to this chamber of horrors. AS

IN UK CINEMAS 30 AUGUST, ON DVD/ON DEMAND FROM 2 SEPTEMBER 2019

Oroslan (2019) Locarno Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Matjaz Ivanisin; Cast: Bela Ropoa, Margit Gyecsek, Erzebet Ropos, Micka Ropos, Ferenc Rogan, Ilonka Braunstein; Slovenia/Czech Republic 2019, 72 min.

Writer/director Matjaz Ivanisin follows his critically acclaimed documentary Playing Men with a haunting portrait of loss in a small town Slovenia. Adapted from Zdravko Dusa’s short story ‘And That is Exactly How it Was’ Ivanism slowly pieces together the events leading up to the recent demise of a villager in a mystery that plays out like game of Poker, his life story seeping out despite the blank faces and evasiveness of his fellow townsmen.  

Ivanisin sets the scene in the slow-burning opening sequences gradually building up a picture of this tight-lipped community: in a community kitchen, meals are prepared in huge thermos flasks which are carefully put into a delivery van. A driver then drops these off at the various different houses. And slowly they are taken in – all apart from one household. Not long after a local woman knocks at the door of the house in question and her suspicions are aroused when she gets no answer. Dropping round at the pub to see what gives, she raised the alarm and several men trudge round to the house to make further enquiries.

This is a remote and close-knit village where news travels fast, and soon we see a body being removed from the house. It later emerges that Oroslan had a son and he starts to share his grief with the others revealing more information about his father’s private life with a woman called Irwanka, who could have become his stepmother. “But I made sure that they could not marry, and my father never forgave me”. More and more seeps out: his father’s alcoholism and epileptic fits.  A neighbouring woman tells the story about Oroslan passing out one day after a fit, and waking up to imagine himself in Heaven, because the woman was wearing white. Anecdotes and more snippets of information gradually seep out about his work and love life. Poignantly, an Alsatian waits outside the old man’s house waiting ruefully for his return.

Oroslan is brief but affecting despite its compact running time, certainly living up to the title of the short story: in just seventy-two minutes, a whole life is captured. Gregor Bozic’s grainy 16mm camera sketches out the intimate character of the narrative. Bold and sensitive, this is a little gem. AS

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

Opus Zero (2019) **

Dir.: Daniel Graham; Cast: Willem Dafoe, Andres Almeida, Cassandra Cianherotti, Irene Azuela; Mexico/Germany 2017, 84 min.

Despite its ravishing Mexican setting, Daniel Graham’s first film is a tired, episodic and empty pseudo-philosophical non-starter that tries to copy Antonioni and completely wastes Willem Dafoe (rather like Padre did recently).

Dafoe plays a composer called Paul who arrives at the Mexican village of Real de Catorce, where his father recently died of a heart attack. His efforts to finish a symphony by a more or less unknown early 20th century composer have failed, and with the help of a real-time translation device invented by his father, he tries to locate a certain Marianne, a young Romanian whose photo his father bequeathed to him. His mission leads to him meeting Maia (Azuela), who gives him a guided tour of the village. They visit a make-shift cinema where Paul falls asleep while watching a Western. Three filmmakers then arrive in the village, led by the director Daniel (Almeida) and his assistant Fernanda (Ciangherotti). They interview Paul, but suddenly the camera gives up its ghost – possibly because of an abandoned magnet factory.

Pretentiously told in two chapters, a prologue and a coda, Opus Zero is the of story of an old man trying to find the meaning of life. It is the worst example of a kind of arthouse cinema that became obsolete in the 1950s. DoP Matias Penachgino fails, understandably, to breathe any life into this stillbirth of a film. Why Carlos Reygadas, one of the associate producers, got involved in the project is a complete mystery.  Even at a modest 84 minutes, it seems to last an eternity. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 16 AUGUST 2019

   

Echo (2019) Locarno Film Festival 2019

Dir/Wri: Rúnar Rúnarsson | Drama, Iceland, 80′

Rúnarsson gained international recognition with his multi-award-winning drama Sparrows  which took the FIPRESCI prize at Gotenburg 2016. His latest feature, Echo (Berg­mál), competing here at Locarno, sees Iceland getting ready for Christmas in an unconventional and seriously un-Christmassy series of vignettes.

Some of them are distinctly grim, others just downright bizarre, as a peculiar atmosphere settles over the country and the hours of light rapidly diminish, shrouding the country in darkness. An abandoned farm is burning, an open coffin stands in the church, chicken carcasses parade through a slaughterhouse, and a drug addict stocks up at his local medical centre.

Echo juxtaposes the joyful, banal and downright weird – in other words, just a normal country preparing for the festivities through 56 unrelated scenes. From the festive: a children’s rousing Nativity play; a firework shop doing a roaring trade; to the down to earth: a bloke has some highlights done while moaning about his love life. Humour also comes into the equation: a farming couple argue bitterly while their sheep rut energetically in front them;  a political argument threatens to derail a family party. Some scenes are quietly moving: a girl dissolves in tears after finishing with her boyfriend; a woman gives birth joyfully, and a choir sings Silent Night round a towering Christmas tree resplendent with lights; Meanwhile a whimpering dog doesn’t know what to make of the fireworks, and scuttles under the settee.

Ultimately what makes Echo so enjoyable is its sheer element of surprise and contrariness: we just don’t know what’s coming next – yet each scene is beautifully shot and composed whatever the subject matter. Iceland emerges a nation like any other: with hope, fears and vulnerabilities all exposed at the often fraught Christmas season.

Producer Lilja Ósk Snorradóttir added: “Echo is artistic, bold but at the same time extremely beautiful and intertwines so many things like humour, grief and beauty. I allow myself to say that no film like this has ever been made and surely not a Christmas film.” It’s certainly true and thoroughly entertaining.

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

Maternal | Hogar (2019) Locarno Film Festival 2019 | Special Mention

Dir: Maura Delpero | With Lidya Liberman, Agustina Malale, Isabella Cilia, Alan Rivas, Livia Fernan, Marta Lubos, Renata Palminiello | Italy, Argentina | 91′

There are so many worthwhile features coming out of South America at the moment, particularly by women filmmakers, and Maternal is just one of them making its debut here at Locarno. With a cast of newcomers and a predominantely female crew, Delpero delicately explores the importance of secure start in life, and shows how this need not necessarily come from the birth mother.

Elegantly framed and quietly moving, Maura Delpero’s female centric story revolves around a group of frustrated teenage mums Lu and Fati who live in the calm confines of a religious shelter in Buenos Aires where novice Sister Paola has recently arrived from Rome to take her final vows.

Delpero quickly establishes the contrast between the lives of the nuns and their unruly counterparts who live upstairs. While the ‘morally loose’ girls have clearly fallen on hard times, and are unable to support their kids on their own, the nuns avoid judging them but are by now means easygoing, spending their time quietly in prayer, providing a stable environment where the kids can be looked after and given a Christian start in life. Pregnant Fati tries to keep herself to herself in the room she shares with the promiscuous tattooed Lu who has clearly gone off the rails and shows little interest in her adorable little daughter Nina. The other girls are vulgar, rowdy and competitive and although they are allowed to let off steam at ‘party nights’, they often come to blows which each other, to the exasperation of the nuns.

A bond soon develops between Nina and Paola who steps into to fill the maternal vacuum left by Lu’s absence – she is more interested in sexual exploits outside the Convent and leaves one night. Nina is very much in need of love and attention and a unsettling atmosphere gradually develops as she grows more attached to Sister Paola – now ordained – who has a moral obligation to stay neutral, particularly as Lu resents the growing closeness between the nun and her daughter when she returns.

As the story reaches its stunning denouement Delpero relies less and less on dialogue eliciting convincing naturalistic performances from her largely inexperienced cast. And the final scenes play out with extraordinary serenity given the brooding tension, as once again Sister Paola is put to the test. MT

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 7 -17 AUGUST 2019  | SPECIAL MENTION AWARD

Adolescentes | Adolescence (2019)

Dir.: Sebastien Lifshitz; Documentary; France 2019, 135 min.

Five years in the making Sebastien Lifshitz’ longterm observation of two unrelated teenagers from the small town of Brive-la-Gaillarde (Corrèze) is an illuminating study of human development, and through their personal stories, a snapshot of life in France between 2013 and 2018.

Emma and Anaïs come from very different backgrounds: middle-class Emma lives with working parents who are always stressed-out by the demands of their jobs, particularly her mother who hothouses her at school, pushing for top marks in a conflict that runs through the whole film. Plump Anaïs has an obese mother who tries, unsuccessfully, to make her daughter diet. With two younger siblings to look after Anaïs rarely sees her father due to his shift work. Schoolwork dominates their lives: Both teens spend most of their time worrying about exam results. The French education system has many cut-off points, like the old 11plus in the UK, forcing the kids to pass endless tests to qualify for the next stage. Emma has her eye on being in dance or theatre; Anaïs hopes to become a Kindergarten teacher.

In the summer holidays, Emma is packed off to her family’s holiday home to skate-board and enjoy the time off. But for Anaïs there is no time for play – domestic work taking the place of her studies – she has to help her mother whose health gradually deteriorates due to cancer. In January 2015, France is rocked by the killing of Charlie Hebdo journalists. Anaïs reacts in a mature way to the killings, defending ordinary Muslims, and citing the Muslim supermarket clerk who saved Jews by hiding them from the Islamist attackers. She is adamant that organised religion is to be blamed for many wars.

Meanwhile, both teenagers do well at school, passing their exams. Although she was worried about failing, Anaïs gets better marks than Emma. Both chose vocational careers, and Anaïs is interested in teaching infants, there is a warning not to get too close to the kids. She will later change course and chose geriatric care: ”having grown up a lot”. Affairs of the heart are similarly traumatic for both girls with both suffering in their first attempts at dating.

The Balaclan concert massacre in November 2015  brings shock waves through their school life once again. Emma is slacking a bit– and her mother is not pleased – Anaïs’ grandmother dies, and she is caught in the crossfire with her brother Tiimeo. Meanwhile Emma and her mother continue their slanging matches, although her acting is going well. She gravitates towards becoming a Director of Photography, or film director – driving her to despair. The reaction to Macron’s election victory in 2017 is very different in both households: Emma’s father talks about Mitterand’s victory in 1981, and the great political involvement of his generation;  Emma is less enthusiastic “As long as it is not Le Pen, it’s OK”. But there is despair in Anaïs’ household: father and daughter slumping onto the sofa claiming “It’s all for the Rich”.

With the final examinations round the corner, Anaïs mother makes a last attempt to prevent her daughter from leaving – but in vain. The results again show Anaïs getting better results than Emma, finishing with Merit. Emma only has one offer – from a university in Paris – to study film, her mother showing her disappointment in the strongest possible way. The girls meet up for a goodbye chat near the lake. Both complaining that the “Fourteen-year-olds of today seem to have slept with half the South/West coast”. They both even contemplate moving back to Brive to bring up their kids.

This personal history lesson is luminously photographed by Antoine Parouty and Paul Guilhaume, with director Lifshitz always looking over the shoulder of the main protagonists, picking up every detail and nuance in a naturalistic tour de force. Despite its lengthy running time of over nearly three hours, Adolescence is an engrossing and valuable endeavour, documenting adolescence from a female perspective, informing and entertaining in equal parts. AS

GRAND JURY PRIZE WINNER | MY FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE | SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE AUGUST 2019     

 

 

 

Magari | If Only (2019) Locarno Film Festival 2019

Dir: Ginevra Eklann with Alba Rohrwacher, Riccardo Scamarcio, Brett Gelman | Italy, France  ·  2019  ·  100′                                

Kids are the victims of Ginevra Eklann’s sentimental saga of divorce and disarray. Opening this year’s LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL, this breezy upbeat drama sees three siblings  desperately hoping their parents will get back together again – ‘if only’.

The family’s tensions finally come to a head during Christmas when their disorganised dad Carlo (Scamarcio) whisks them off for holidays that will end in sadness and sexual awakening. But before they go Alma (Oro De Commarque), Jean (Giustiniani) and Sebastiano (Roussel) arrive in Rome with their Russian Orthodox mother Charlotte and her new boyfriend. Carlo is one of those dads who is great fun but not one for detail. He is more interested in his latest script and in his co-writer Benedetta (Alba Rohrwacher) than taking care of his children. And while they’re on holiday – at the seaside rather than the usual family trip to the mountains – his only preoccupation is work.

The story is seen from the kids’ point of view. How they cope with being part of a broken marriage. And they soon catch on to the holiday romance under their noses. Seba is keenly aware of the sexual vibe going on between Carlo and Benedetta, but he’s also burdened with being the eldest, while the other two feel homesick for their mother but find their father fun and exciting – it’s a well known dynamic.

Carlo and Benedetta seem well-matched. She is flirty and fun, but a bad influence on the kids with her pot-smoking and stealing from the local market. Seba clearly fancies her but also disapproves – a heady mix that will see them having a bit of a sub-fling on a cheeky Sunday trip to church – while Carlo is busy writing. It’s a shame Eklann relies on the cliched dramatic trick of having Carlo’s dog disappear in a gimmick that we know will end in tragedy. Why do so many indie filmmakers do this?

Scamarcio and Rohrwacher are effortlessly the stars of this well-crafted family affair which is both light-hearted, sentimental and firmly tethered to reality. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back (1967) | Tribute to D.A. Pennebaker

DYLAN-Dont-Look-Back-DROPDirector\Writer: D A Pennebaker

With: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Donovan, Alan Price, Marianne Faithfull, Allen Ginsberg

96min | Documentary | US

Although it may not have meant much back in 1967, D.A. Pennebaker’s full-length documentary DON’T LOOK BACK now offers an absorbing and resonant tribute to a handful of folk heroes of the ’60s and particularly Bob Dylan who it follows on his 1965 British tour.

This freewheeling and voyeuristic trip down memory lane offers a rare and real portrait of the recalcitrant singer songwriter performing impromptu in hotels and more formal venues showcasing his laid back but often prickly approach which won the hearts and minds of his young audience of the time, Dylan went on to capture the imagination of many and achieve iconic cult status. Whether the film pictures the real Dylan or just his facade is a matter for consideration but Pennebaker makes us feel the intimacy of these encounters.

Surrounded by an entourage of contempo cronies: his rebarbative manager Albert Grossman; his long-term companion Joan Baez; the Scottish balladier Donovan; helmer of The Animals, Alan Price, the film offers behind the scenes glimpses of their convivial gatherings offering up ad hoc renditions of their work: Dylan strums and sings “The Times They Are A-Changing,” and Donovan ‘To Sing for You”. There is a chance to see Baez’ gentle beauty and spiky humour in offguard moments that capture her feral beauty.

The awkward approach of some of the interviewers – particularly a journalist from Time Magazine – is very amateurish, and it’s a wonder that Dylan didn’t punch him in the nose – but he adopts his usual acerbic style, hiding behind a public persona, ruffled hair and sunglasses, refusing to be riled but engaging nevertheless.

D. A. Pennebaker has since made several impressive biopics: Monterey Pop (1968) and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars being among the best. His handheld camera offers a grainy indie feel with jump cuts that keep the pace lively despite the relaxed tone that often hints at an underlying anger, that eventually seeps out in a scene featuring an ugly encounter between Grossman and a hotel manager. The film’s finale sees Dylan kicking backing after a successful concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, happy to be seen as an artist peddling no particular message and who no one understands. MT

OUT ON CRITERION UK | Amazon BLURAY

 

Weapon of Choice (2018) *** Home Ent release

Dir: Fritz Ofner and Eva Hausberger | Doc | Austria | 91′

How the man who invented the world’s most popular gun ironically became the victim of contract killers and a multi million dollar fraud in a story of corruption and fetishisation.

In 1981 Austrian engineer Gaston Glock (1929) invented the handgun that bears his name and would eventually become the gun of choice for criminals, law enforcement and private citizens in the United States. What started in a small Austrian village as a struggling firearms business soon became a multi-billion dollar concern after the company rebranded from a gunmakers to manufactorers  of ‘‘law enforcement equipment’ with a weapon that never blocked.

Little is known about the reclusive cultish 89-year-old which is probably why the filmmakers decide to focus most of their film on the ‘piece’ and its pistol-packing public, rather than than Glock himself and his rise to success, via tragedy. All we know is that he’s recently become a father again with his decades younger wife. But you’ll have to wade through over an hour of perifera to get to the real meat of the movie: the story of the elusive Mr Glock himself. 

Plastic except for its barrel, the topselling Glock handgun’s claim to fame is that “it never fails”. As such – along with the car-manufacturer Mercedes – it has piggy-backed onto one of the US’ most successful pop-cultural references – gangster rap. The Glock is also the weapon of choice for the average US citizen in a nation where guns are important everyday accessories, just as mobile phones are in the UK. 

This tonally uneven investigation at times feels like a paean to the Black community and its sad history of violence, at others like an advertisement for the Glock firearm and its wide-ranging enthusiasts, as it weaves through well-researched episodes that start in US neighbourhoods and gradually move on to distant war zones: we meet Black rappers, little old ladies and their trainers, gun-sellers and the Police force – all rave about their Glocks. The unifying message here is a depressing one: in the US there is widespread acceptance of firearms as an everyday accessory: like a phone or even an umbrella. When one woman’s dog died, she brought a gun to keep her company.

Eventually the Austrian filmmakers delve into even darker territory to uncover a sinister trail of politics, power, and corruption which sees crooks, politicians and industrialists using the same weapon of choice to defend themselves. Weapon of Choice is both intriguing and depressing. MT

NOW ON AMAZON PRIME

The Incident (1967) **** Bluray release

Dir: Larry Peerce | Cast: Martin Sheen, Tony Musante, Beau Bridges, Thelma Ritter | US Thriller

Larry Peerce’s raw and intense urban tension thriller offers a snapshot of 1967 New York City in all its seedy, black-and-white glory, The Incident also features an iconic 60s cast that must be seen to be believed. Martin Sheen makes his feature film debut as one of two small-time hoods – the other is Tony Musante (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) in one of his earliest roles – terrorising a subway car full of trapped passengers, portrayed by an ensemble cast including Thelma Ritter (Rear Window), Beau Bridges (The Fabulous Baker Boys), Ed McMahon, Donna Mills (Play Misty for Me), Jack Gilford (Save the Tiger), Brock Peters (To Kill a Mockingbird), Ruby Dee (A Raisin in the Sun), and a host of other instantly recognisable faces from NYC films and television of the era.

After mugging an old man for a few dollars, thugs Artie (Sheen) and Joe (Musante) hop a subway deep in the Bronx, and proceed to threaten and intimidate the Sunday night commuters all the way to Times Square. The terrified riders are a mixed group – an elderly Jewish couple, a family trying to protect their 5-year-old daughter, an alcoholic, two teens on a date, two military Privates, a bigoted African-American man and his wife, etc. – but they are united by their fear and sense of helplessness as switchblade-wielding Joe and Artie block the subway doors from opening at stops, and prevent the riders from leaving. Will any of them have the courage to confront the two maniacs?

A high-velocity “home invasion”-styled hostage drama on rails, The Incident is a NYC transit suspense film that precedes the better-known The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by seven years. When director Larry Peerce (Goodbye, Columbus) and cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld (Young Frankenstein) were denied permission to shoot in the NYC subways, they did it anyway, using concealed cameras for some footage, providing a gritty time capsule of the 60s Big Apple as it begins to rot. Review courtesy of Eureka.

WORLDWIDE DEBUT on Blu-ray in a Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) edition as part of the Eureka Classics range from 12 August 2019 | Eureka Store  https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/the-incident/

Amazon https://amzn.to/2MGREz5

 

Holiday (2018) ****

Dir/Writer: Isabella Eklöf, Wri: Johanne Algren| Cast: Thijs Romer, Victoria Carmen Sonne, Lai Yde | Thriller | Danish | 112′

If you’re worried about the current state of male empowerment this film from Denmark will adjust the skewered perception, in this year’s BFI London Film Festival showing, that women are somehow pulling rank in the pecking order and getting too big for their boots.

HOLIDAY certainly makes for uncomfortable viewing and there are some shockingly sadistic pornorgraphic scenes that are by no means gratuitous, and are actually pivotal to the plot. It’s the debut feature of writer and director Isabella Eklöf who co-wrote Cannes winner Border and also worked on Tomas Alfredson’s lugubrious vampire standout, Let the Right One In. Her third outing at the LFF is a stunning looking but savage satire that explores sexual abuse and domination.

Some may say HOLIDAY overplays its hand in its overlong preamble, making us wait nearly a hour before the feisty finale kicks in. But this torpid first hour allows Eklof and her co-writer Johanne Algren to set the scene for a devastating denouement by slathering her thriller with rich layers of texture, establishing the lowlife criminal ethos of the humans to just how boring and beastly they have become. The venal antihero Michael (Lai Yde) plays a Danish drug baron who has taken call-girl Sascha (a well-cast ectomorph Victoria Carmen Sonne) for a break in a Villa in Bodrum. While he does ‘a bit of business’, she suns herself by the pool with a motley crew of family members and hoodlums. Crude is very much the watchword in HOLIDAY. These mindless meatheads are be-decked in timepieces the size of telephones, garish trainers and vulgar designer labels such as Philip Pleinn.

In the opening scenes Sascha rocks up at the Turkish airport wearing a platinum hairpiece showing more black roots than Kunta Kinte. Her personality could be best described as vacant, she is an symbol of female submission, and for most of the film she is as naive as Bambi. But something is clearly ticking away in her reptilian brain that makes her strike out like a cobra when we’re least expecting it. Once ensconsed in the villa, Sascha has her work cut out dealing with the macho Michael who flexes his muscles with regular psychotic outbursts that end in abusive sex. This is the school of hard-knocks and not even Michael’s henchman escape a bloody good hiding when they overstep the mark. The only sights Sascha sees in the ancient Turkish port are expensive jewellery shops and lap-dancing clubs. She is there as an extension of Michael’s ego: when he’s feeling good she gets a hug or some emerald earrings (“they’re more expensive than diamonds”); when he’s feeling bad she gets a punch in the nose or even worse. But never is there meaningful sex.

On the contrary, the two have no emotional bond, but control freak that he is, Michael soon asserts his authority when Sascha strikes out on her own, and is drawn to an attractive Dutchman, Thomas (Thijs Romer), whose yacht is moored in the marina. At first it feels like she’s looking for a life raft, and escape route from Michael – but not a bit of it. Sasha flirts with Thomas, but her goal is to garner the emotional strokes she craves, feeding her latent narcissism.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Michael takes another bad mood out on Sascha, roughing her up and then abusing her sexually on the cold marble floor. The violent release gives Michael a psychopathic high and he falls asleep feeling totally fulfilled in her annihilation. Sascha soaks up the intended rejection that enforces her own lack of self esteem: the two are one. Victorious, Michael now has to lift his leg, metaphorically speaking, on Thomas. Arranging a quiet tête à trois, with the subtext of discussing yachts, Michael invites the unsuspecting Dutchman to join him and Sascha for dinner. In an act of vicois bravado, he then flagrantly humiliates both of them, and Thomas rapidly gets his coat.

The material in this uncomfortable but brilliant film could to be developed into others of the genre, if Eklöf so desires, and let’s hope she does. As female writers go, she is certainly on a par with Patricia Highsmith in her ability to create psychological complexity and conjure up tightly-plotted thrillers in glamorous surroundings, as demonstrated in this dynamite debut. MT

ON RELEASE from FRIDAY 2 August 2019

 

 

 

Photograph (2019)


Dir:Wri: Ritesh Batra | India, 110′

See Mumbai and slowly fall in love. Seems like a dream but it’s a dream come true in Ritesh Batra’s latest drama that sees two worlds collide and then gradually come together. The Mumbai-born director is back with a slowburn snapshot of this ancient city making its way into the modern world and beyond.

Here a photograph taken one summer afternoon in the Gateway to India forms a tenuous link that will unite two people across the barrier of religion, class, and culture as poignant impossibilities gradually becoming certainties due to education and entrepreneurial spark. 

Street photographer Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) gets by snapping tourists. He has a simple sales pitch: but one that’s captured the imagination of his punters and will one day serve him well. Or at least that’s what’s we’re led to believe in this leisurely look at contemporary India, and the power of possibility that had motivated the nation into the fast lane. But the detailed world around Rafi is what makes this languid romantic comedy so richly enjoyable.

Miloni (Sanya Malhotra) is a timid intelligent student training to be a chartered accountant. One day she comes across Rafi and has her photo taking in a chance meeting that provides the starting point to fragrant possibilities. Rafi is silently struck not her gentle presence, but is pressurised by his social status and his grandmother to marry. Miloni agrees to pose as his potential bride when his grandmother arrives and gradually this delicate date becomes a lasting connection that sees them meeting every day while the old woman stays in Rafi’s modern accommodation he shares with a motley crew of unmarried men.   

The films glows on the widescreen where DoP Ben Kutchins captures the chaotic cacophony and sun-dappled boulevards of Mumbai and its delightful street carts selling all kinds of cuisine and produce. Ambient sounds transport is into the centre of this action making this a tangible and highly visual, sensual travelogue

Batra gives us time – and many may say too much time – to get to know his characters; to glory in the sensuousness of it all. And this sensitivity is part of the drama’s lushness. Rafi and Miloni are quietly beautiful to look. Even her housemaid’s  jewellery russles as she pads barefoot to serve dinner and assure Miloni of her discretion when she sees the two of them waking in the square. This attention to detail makes the film pleasurable along with its languorous dramatic arc.

There are long affectionate glances but few words as the couple’s relationship takes shape. And Batra luxuriates in the rich textural influences of the characters around them: Miloni’s teacher and her parents. But most of all Rafi’s grandma whose wise words and chiding bring the film its comic moments. Batra judiciously doesn’t allow these two the power of touch until the the final scenes, and even then we’re left expectant but convinced there can be a future. But that is left to our own imagination with the tangible facts in place. And this slowly looms into perspective in the final act when we become more attuned to the directors modus operandi. 

The class distinctions are subtly alluded to through comments on skin colour. Rafi is refered as a “black raisin,” according to his grandmother, due to his street job. Other class tags are noted in the way the higher castes interweave English into their conversations. When Miloni goes to meet a potential marriage partner who immediately talks about international locations for setting up home. Miloni – not keen on him at all – hints at her desire to ‘live in a village and farm before taking a nap in the afternoon’.

The desire for a concrete culimination to their union has left some unsatisfied with the film. But that is the very nature of the piece and why Batra doesn’t need to spell it out for us. The ending is fully formed by what has gone before in subtle gestures and intimations. It is what it is. A mature and ravishingly rewarding experience MT

NOW ON BFI Player |

 

Le Sang d’un Poète | Le Testament d’Orphee – re-mastered on Bluray

Jean Cocteau – poet, playwright, novelist, designer, visual artist and one of the avant-garde movement’s most inventive and influential filmmakers was born in 1889, and grew up in Paris, immersed in the theatre and art world. He published his first volume of poems at just 15 and began mixing in bohemian circles becoming known as the Frivolous Prince.

He associated with Marcel Proust, Maurice Barres, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and numerous other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated. At a time when society condemned it, he was openly homosexual and homoerotic undertones, imagery and symbolism pervade all aspects of his writings, art and films. Despite financial constraints he continued to work even through the war years when he was forced to ad-lib often making do with bric-a-brak and bed sheets as part of the scenery in Le Belle et la Bête (1946). It still looked ravishing.

Made thirty years apart, these two recent 4k restorations effectively frame his filmic career and are both considered masterpieces of the avant-garde movement. 

LE SANG D’UN POÊTE – is an exploration of the tortuous relationship between the artist and his creations. LE SANG D’UN POÊTE, seeks to explore the feelings within a poet’s heart and soul, beginning in an artist’s studio where an unfinished statue comes to life. The lips of its androgynous face move, pressing a kiss to the artist’s hand. At the statues demand, he plunges it into a mirror.

LE TESTAMENT D’ORPHÉE brings full circle the journey made in 1932, the first part of the ‘Orphic’ trilogy LE TESTAMENT D’ORPHÉE (1960)

This last film is a truly abstract piece of work. Portraying an 18th century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom, it is another finely crafted, surreal and magical piece set in a mysterious, post-apocalyptic desert where Cocteau meets a series of enigmatic characters, joining them to muse about about the nature of art. Often gently poignant and whimsical in tone, this ethereal drama resonates with his Spanish roots – he settled in Andalucia for a while, in common with Picasso. Cocteau assembles an eclectic cast that includes vignettes with  Pablo Picasso himself, Jean Marais, Brigitte Bardot, Charles Aznavour, Roger Vadim and Yul Brenner in a piece that veers between gentle irony and low-key pessimism. Cocteau admirers will probably find it very moving.

LE SANG D’UN POÊTE (The Blood of a Poet) and LE TESTAMENT D’ORPHÉE (The Testament of Orpheus) will be released on ON BLU-RAY, DVD AND DIGITAL DOWNLOAD – 5TH AUGUST 2019

Pre-order now: http://po.st/TestamentOrphee; http://po.st/SangPoete.

https://youtu.be/qW84uNnNv0Y

Animals (2019) ****

Dir.: Sophie Hyde; Cast: Holiday Grainger, Alia Shawkat, Fra Fee, Dermont Murphy, Amy Molloy, Dermont Murphy; UK/Australia/ROI 2019, 109 min.

In her sophomore feature Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde (52 Tuesdays) directs Emma-Jane Unsworth’ script of her own novel. It centres on two close friends Laura (Grainger) and Tyler (Shawcat) in Dublin who spend most of their time in being drunk and high on drugs. Well at least that’s the way it’s seemed for the past ten years. But now in their thirties, things are about to change.

Their story unfolds from the perspective of Laura, a struggling writer whose novel progresses a line a week – meanwhile she works as a barista in a coffee shop, to make ends meet. Her sister Jean (Molloy), once a wild child herself, announces that she has now chosen adult life and motherhood. Laura reacts with panic: suddenly casual boyfriend Jim (Fee), a very serious pianist, becomes a plausible alternative to her living the life of Riley with Tyler. But then along comes uber-pretentious author Marthy (Murphy) and Laura soon sees the error of her ways. And somehow the never fully explained cloud over Tyler’s life (some trauma in the past) becomes more important – or is it just the realisation, that their friendship is much more of a love story then they want to admit. Most features are built on the rock of a happy-ending with friendship being replaced by the great love conquering all – but Hyde raises doubts: is it really inevitable that all women should spend their life with the opposite gender just because mother nature and a concept called adulthood dictate it – or can Goethe’s Elective Affinities overcome the norm – at least sometimes?

Grainger and Shawkat carry the feature – their relationship is anything but ideal – but at least it is honest, and we are never allowed to forget it. Hyde directs with great sensibility, athough there are more than enough emotional episodes to go round. DoP Bryan Mason has a fine feel for the Dublin scene, even though the film actually takes place in Manchester. Animals is full of surprises and never resorts to the banal. It is a brave attempt at trying to align the impossible, but it manages to remain sincere: when Jim calls Laura Tyler’s wife, he is not too far off. AS

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 2 AUGUST

       

For the Birds (2018) ****

Dir.: Richard Miron; Documentary with Kathy Murphy, Gary Murphy, Sheila Hyslop; USA 2019, 92 min.

Over five years in the making, Richard Miron’s debut documentary is an astonishing portrait of a very special kind of hoarder: Kathy Murphy’s love for her feathered friends started with a helping hand to a baby duckling ten years ago –  now over 200 ducks, chicken, geese and turkeys invade the family’s mobile home in Warwasing, up-state New York.

No wonder husband Gary feels upstaged by the animals: “With her, you don’t seem to get anywhere”, he confesses to the filmmaker. And while Kathy feels a unique closeness to the feathered members of her family, it soon becomes clear that she uses them as a barricade between herself and Gary: “He knows I’m attached to them, but not just how much I’m really attached to them. I would die for them”.

Things boil over when her case is referred to the Woodstock Farm Animal Society, where manager Sheila Hyslop shares Kathy’s love for animals and tries to keep an amicable relationship going. That is not always easy, since Kathy’s “feathered children” are not only destroying the couple’s home, but also their marriage. Gary plays Bob Dylan blaring through the night, to get to sleep, before the start of an early shift. 

To save the animals, Nicole and Ted, two volunteers of the Bird Sanctuary, have to trick Kathy into letting some of her “children” go. But success is limited, and finally we get a court trial. Gary is caught in the middle: he teams up with the Sanctuary’s team, which makes him a traitor in Kathy’s eyes. Her lawyer, William Brenner, a tax attorney, fits in well: he has an office, which resembles Kathy’s home – minus the animals.

Eventually tragedy will reconcile Kathy with her daughter and grandchild – and some money to make a new start. The more we learn about her, the more we realise how Kathy uses the birds to block off the rest of her life, affecting her mental health. Her ability to connect with the animals is part of a deep-seated emotional fear of humans – and it takes a long time to save Kathy and the birds.

Miron tries to avoid a deeper context, and stays focused on Kathy. His intimate portrait illustrates how the animals are just vehicles for her to postpone a mental breakdown. 

Miron’s cinema vérité style is enlivened by old photos and Super Eight family films, which show Kathy emotionally well-connected with her family. And even at the end, the audience has no idea what drove her to isolate herself from humankind. A very sensitive and emphatic case study AS

ON DEMAND WORLDWIDE FROM JULY 30 2019 | Amazon Prime Video; Apple TV; Google Play; iTunes, Chili TV; Microsoft; Sky Store

     

One Deadly Summer – l’Eté meurtrier (1983)**** Blu-ray release

Dir: Jean Becker | Wri Sébastien Japrisot | Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Alain Souchon, Suzanne Flon, Jenny Clève, Michel Galabru, François Cluzet, Edith Scob | France 133’

Isabelle Adjani plays a sensual pert-bottomed coquette in Jean Becker’s flirty revenge thriller based on Sébastien Japrisot’s script from his novel of the same name. In true petulant form, Adjani originally rejected the part but after reconsidering she came back to play Elle, kicking Becker’s second choice Valerie Kaprisky into the long grass.

It doesn’t take much to get French men going, so when Elle prances into a small French village in the Vaucluse the locals are predictably hot to trot. But the tone soon shifts when it turns out the lusty long-legged temptress is more interested in getting her own back rather than conquering hearts in this increasingly unsettling and complex drama.

The action unfurls through the eyes of the various characters as elements of trickery, lies and exploitation all come into play in this vivid yet surprisingly subtle film “du look”. Japrisot’s bold characterisations reveal multi-layered personalities in a sinuously gripping storyline where nothing is black and white amusingly played by a cast led by the seductive Adjani in luminous form. MT

CultFilms presents One Deadly Summer on dual format Blu-ray and DVD 29 July

https://youtu.be/IOd_NBTqjnA

The Candidate | El Reino (2018) **

Dir.: Rodrigo Sorogoyen; Cast: Antonio de la Torre, Barbara Lennie; Spain/France 2018, 121 min.

Even Antonio de la Torre can’t save this far-fetched, fast-talking made for TV crime thriller that eventually runs out of steam due to its outlandish lack of credibility. As the reprobate politician Manuel Lopez-Vidal, he tries to cover up for the embezzlement of a party college, but the fraud soon turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg – Lopez-Vidal himself has siphoned off much more public funding than anyone else in the party, and he’s soon unceremoniously dropped by his cronies. Sending his wife and daughter off to Canada, he invests their money to pay for information which will incriminate his party’s upper echelons. With his family out of the way, he then takes up with  an old flame, TV reporter Monica Lopez (Lennie), and takes it upon himself to do the dirty work, including murder. When he finally has all the proof of his party’s criminal involvement, he is interviewed by Lopez live on television, still trying to come across as the gentleman he never was. Sadly, The Realm is a story which has been told many times before and better, and the resonance with Scorsese’s Goodfellas is clear from the start. De La Torre is at his reptilian best as the arch villain, but we can’t quite see his fat-cat politician suddenly turning into an action man, and all the other characters are one-dimensional. Overall, The Realm is nothing more than an unremarkable B-picture, dressed up with slick production values.  AS

In cinemas and on HD from 2 August 2019

The Chambermaid (2018) ****

Dir: Lila Alviles | Cartol | Drama | Mexico | 90′

The Chambermaid plays the same thematic tune as two other festival winners this Summer: Golden Lion winner Roma and In A Distant Land which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno. They highlight the isolated and lonely lives of ordinary working people, often migrants – in this case, a Mexican national whose job in the capital detaches her from her loved ones. There is a distinct chilly humour to this acutely observed feature debut from Mexican actress, filmmaker and opera director Lila Alviles. It follows the daily grind of a hotel worker in one of the Mexico City’s 5 star hotels. Cartol (La Tirisia) plays Eve with infinite grace and good humour – in one astonishing scene she stands for seemingly ages outside a lift during one of those awkward silences – catching a hotel guest’s eye several times with an expression that speaks volumes.

Pristinely executed in the zen-like interiors of this palace of interior design, the film pictures an upmarket public as they often are behind the closed door of their luxury suites: ill-mannered, demanding and crude. Bereft of their clothes they also take leave of their humanity – never mind their courtesy. This is social politics laid bare. The Chambermaid also examines the crafty interactions between the low-level workers themselves: the cunning soft sales techniques of her colleague in the laundry who is trying to supplement her low-paid job by selling hand cream and Tupperware. Or just trying to con her into sharing the latest fad – in this case, a gadget that delivers a shock to stimulate a feel-good rush of endorphin. Like a some ghastly face to face equivalent of FarmVille.

The Chambermaid is set in Mexico City’s Presidente Intercontinental. Eve is hard-working and diligent, but if she tries harder she’ll be allocated the stratospheric, newly refurbished 42nd floor with views to die for and even infinity pools. Pinning her hopes on the promotion, she improves her efficiency but to no avail. The only bonus here is in the lost property cupboard. In one of her rooms Eve has found a red dress and hopes to take it home, if the owner doesn’t claim it. But her gruelling schedule leaves no time to be with her child, let alone meet a partner. Outwardly timid, Eve shows her true colours in one scene involving a window cleaner who has taken a shine to her – along with his windows. Eve acknowledges him at a distance. Her reaction is plausible – a little light relief in a sea of sameness. But Alviles restrains herself and keeps this convincing.

Stunningly captured by Carlos Rossini’s creative camerawork, this sealed and sanitised world has a strange beauty. Loosely based on the book Hotel, by Sophie Calle, The Chambermaid is a contemplative but well-paced cinema verité piece that resonates with a powerful message from both sides of the equation. Eve’s humdrum existence is piqued by moments of insight that show her in a different light as she endure the indignities of her role with calm forbearance and subdued silence. The magnificent skyscapes are hers to see but never to enjoy in her closeted existence, locked in an eternal bubble with no respite, until the final scene where the ambient sounds of exotic birdsong replace the refrigerated buzz of musak and air-conditioning.  MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Marianne and Leonard (2019) Netflix


Dir. Nick Broomfield; Documentary with Leonard Cohen, Marianne Ihlen, Judy Collins, Helle Goldman, Aviva Layton; USA 2019, 97 min.

Veteran filmmaker Nick Broomfield (Whitney: Can I Be Me?) tries to unravel one of the greatest love stories between artist and muse: Leonard Cohen and Norwegian Marianne Ihlen met 1960 on the Greek Island of Hydra, a sunny place for the counterculture of hippies who wanted to get away from a cold, organised northern hemisphere, where emotions were as cold as the weather. Whilst their relationship lasted seven years, they lived with each other’s shadow until the very end: they died within three months of each other in 2016, and Cohen’s beautiful farewell message to the dying Marianne makes up, at least a bit, for his lifelong philandering.

Cohen came from a well-to-do family of Jewish emigrants from Lithuania and Poland who had settled in Quebec, Canada. Aviva Layton, married to the poet Irving Layton (“Poets don’t make great husbands), the latter taking Cohen – who started off as a writer and poet – under his wings on Hydra, classifies Leonard’s mother Marsha as “Mad as a hatter, Oedipally mad.” It became soon clear that poets were not the only artists who were useless husbands. Ihlen was also looking after her son Axel, from a failed marriage with a violent Norwegian writer, and was quiet happy being Cohen’s muse he insistered on having his sexual freedom – like many males (not only in the hippie environment). A much older Cohen can be quoted saying “I was always escaping, I was also trying to get away.”

After the total flop of Cohen’s first novel Beautiful Losers (1966) he turned to music, but he was so insecure abut his voice, that, as Judy Collins reports “He would at first only come on stage with me”. A year later, Cohen was off to on a “hedonistic odyssey”, the excesses well documented by band members and tour organisers. We can see Cohen literally wading into his female admirers, who were waiting for him after the concerts. We do not know when exactly Marianne said her farewell but she returned to Oslo, took a secure job, married (the same man twice) and looked after Axel, who had to spent long periods in institutions.

Broomfield skips over chunks of the 1970s and 80s, and takes up the story in 1994, when Cohen became a monk in a Buddhist monastery in California. After leaving, he found out, that his business manager (and friend) had spent all five million of his retirement account, and Cohen went back to touring, earning well over USD per year. He sent Marianne first row tickets for his concert in Oslo, and we see her singing “So long, Marianne”: a wise woman who had not lost her love for a man who hardly deserved it.

Broomfield, who spent some time on Hydra with Marianne and Leonard, certainly knows his subject and the era of free love – too often an excuse for men to be promiscuous – while their female muse looked after their domestic needs. Leonard Cohen’s oeuvre, the work of a low-level depressive, has certainly influenced a generation, and it is only fitting that Marianne & Leonard tells the story of the woman who influenced him – and who, even on her deathbed, puts her feelings for him into words. After being read his farewell message, in which he mentions that he ‘is just behind her on the way’, she exclaims: “This is beautiful; but, poor Leonard, he has no Sue to massage his feet”.  AS

ON NETFLIX

 

 

 

The Current War (2018) ***

Dir.: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon; Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Nicolas Holt, Katherine Waterstone, Tuppence Middleton; USA 2017, 107 min.

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (The Town that dreaded Sundown) has adapted Michael Mitnick’s unconvincing script into a likeable oddity charting the battle for supremacy between US power giants Edison and Westinghouse.

Chung-hoon Chung’s dramatic camerawork really brings to life the brazen rivalry between the two inventors in the early 1880s: Thomas Edison (Cumberbatch) was responsible for inventing the DC (direct current), while tycoon George Westinghouse was in favour of AC (alternating current) seen by Edison as a dangerous, athough cheaper, alternative. To prove his point, he has a horse electrocuted – at least we are spared the killing of an elephant in Coney Island. Oh yes, the Electric Chair also makes an appearance.

Edison is a snobbish intractable character – and we don’t warm to him even when his wife Mary (Middleton) dies young leaving him with two children, communicating with them in Morse code. Michael Shannon takes a break from being a psychopath to be a decent-minding Westinghouse. And then there is Nicola Tesla (Hoult), who works his socks off for Edison, but is fired, only to re-emerge as Westinghouse’s new partner. Marguerite Erskine-Westinghouse (Waterstone) is for once a wife who is more radical and competitive than her other half.

The Current War was premiered in Toronto in 2017, but fell foul of the Weinstein scandal. Lantern Entertainment bought TWC stock, lock and barrel, and is distributing the feature in the UK. Oldboy’s Chung-hoon brings a twist of horror to the proceedings with canted angles and fish-eye lenses underlining an operatic approach, bringing to mind Visconti’s The Damned. Panoramic shots dominate, CGI is brought in to underline the tension. PD Jan Roelfs succeeds in rebuilding historical New York and the Chicago World Fair in the UK. There is not much scientific explanation – this is first and foremost a dramatic bio-pic drama – neither triumph nor disaster, it will appeal to a visually-minded audience. AS

https://youtu.be/zTSaSilyhlI

Die Tomorrow (2017) ****


Dir.: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit; Documentary/Fiction; Thailand 2017, 75 min.

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit (Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy) has turned her attention toward the big taboo: death.

It may surprise you to learn that two people die every second on this planet. And by the time this languid hybrid essay is over, 8442 people will no longer be with us. Her candid unsentimental approach seeks to normalise death as completely natural event. After all, it will happen to all of us. As Pink Floyd said: “I’m not afraid of dying, any time will do”. What we fear is pain and suffering. But Thamrongrattanarit assures us not to be afraid and soft piano music accompanies her gently lit filmic musings.

Nawapol intercuts her film with drole statistical interludes and documentary footage that informs six vignettes, each shot in a single unbroken take and filmed in 1:1 aspect ratio. These are based on real life cases reported in the Thai press. This is all intended to show how banal our lives can be – just hours away from the end. Even more dramatic is the suicide of a young man, who takes his own life – unbeknownst to his girlfriend who is talking to friend on her mobile about where they should go and have dinner. Fate is fickle and we can never be certain of when our time will be up. This is cleverly illustrated in the case of a young women, waiting in hospital for a heart transplant. “I’ll die before you,” she says, but then finds out he has booked a ticket on that fateful Malaysia Airlines flight that leaves the same afternoon. Another interviewee – a young schoolboy – claims to have been reassured about death after reading the internet site Reddit. We don’t actually see anyone die during the film. The closest we come to it are TV clips from the Challenger shuttle. 

What seems to interest Nawapol is the way one person’s death may affect their friends or loved ones. Die Tomorrow’s most poignant interviewee is a man nearing the age of 102 whose wife and children have already died. More recent footage sees him celebrate his 104th birthday. And one young school boy interviewed claims to have been reassured about his eventual after reading up on the subject in Reddit.

Thamrongrattanarit wanted to achieve calmness, “to give the audience the space and time to look thoughtfully at it”. She has certainly succeeded in making death just another process in life this thoughtful essay contemplation about how to take life seriously, and live it to the full – and above all to see death as another stage in our existence.  

ON GENERAL RELEASE IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS from 26 July 2019

    

 

Locarno International Film Festival 2019

New artistic director Lili Hinstin unveils her eclectic mix of films for the 72nd Locarno Film Festival which runs from 7 until 17 August in its luxurious lakeside location. Locarno is known for its edgy profile and this year will be no different: Films by established auteurs Koji Fukada, Asif Kapadia, Kiyoshi Kurosawa will screen alongside an inventive array of undiscovered newcomers and sophomore cinema in a selection that embraces traditional stories and more experimental and avantgarde fare.

Hinstin takes over from Carlo Chatrian, who served as artistic director of Locarno since 2013 and now returns to the Berlinale. Hinstin is the 13th artistic director of the Locarno Festival since it was founded in 1946 and is only the event’s second female artistic director following on from Irene Bignardi (2000-5).

The largest open air cinema space in Europe, the Piazza Grande, will welcome up to 8,000 viewers for 19 full-length, 2 short films, and 6 Crazy Midnight, a total 11 world premieres. The magnificent state of the art Grand Rex cinema will pay host to this year’s Retrospective BLACK LIGHT conceived by Greg de Cuir Jr. showcasing international 20th century black cinema with stars such as Pam Grier, Ousmane Sembene, Spike Lee and Euzhan Palcy who will introduce his restored print of Rue Cases-Negres.

There will be another chance to see Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Luebbe DeBoer’s Sundance breakout Greener Grass and Kapadia’s Cannes documentary Maradona, along with the Joseph Gordon-Levitt-starring hijack thriller-drama 7500, Carice Van Houten-starring Instinct, and British comedian Simon Bird’s directorial debut Days Of The Bagnold Summer. Making its world premiere is also the  intriguing Italian horror feature The Nest from Roberto de Feo whose 2010 short film Ice Scream was one of the most awarded worldwide during the year of its launch.

Films in the main competition vying for the Golden Leopard include the latest crop of South American stories: The Fever from Brazilian director Maya Da-Rin sees a disillusioned man hovering between reality and a dreamlike existence; from Argentina Maura Delpero’s Hogar (Home) is set in present day Buenos Aires where two homeless teenagers are bringing up their kids in a religious institution run by Italian nuns. Icelandic director Runar Runarsson (Sparrows) will be there with his latest Echo. The first ever Locarno competition film in Gallego entitled Longa Noite (Endless Night) is a second surreal feature from Spanish director Eloy Enciso; and previous Golden Leopard winner Pedro Costa (Horse Money) is back with a Cape Verdean set drama Vitalina Varela. Activist and award-winning animator Mina Mileva and her Bulgarian co-director Vesela Kazakova have filmed their realist drama Cat in the Wall in Peckham, London. It follows the trials and tribulations of a mother and her daughter.

This year’s Cineasti del Presenti, a sidebar dedicated to original and Avantgarde cinema, includes works from acclaimed actress Jeanne Balibar – Merveilles à Montfermeil, and Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter’s Space Dogs explores the work of Laika, the first canine astronaut. Matjaz Ivanisin’s debut drama Oroslan shows how traditional mourning rituals help to heal the community’s grief in a village in Slovenia. From the magical midsummers of American teenagers in Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye to Klaudia Reynicke’s surreal female-centric drama Love me Tender– these are just some of the films in a programme full of daring inventiveness.

The President of the main competition jury will be Catherine Breillat, and she is joined by this year’s guests: Mathieu Amalric, Bi Gan, Bong Joon-ho, Denis Cote, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Maren Ade, Jake Perlin, Bi Gan, Aline Schmid, Alba Rohrwacher, Hilary Swank and Bela Tarr and John Waters whose will receive a Leopard of Honour for his daring, outrageous, often hilarious work: “Somehow I became respectable…What the hell has happened!”

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 7 -17 AUGUST 2019

 

The Night Has Eyes (1942) **** Blu-ray release

Dir: Leslie Arliss | Cast: James Mason, Wilfred Lawson, Tucker McGuire, Joyce Howard | UK Gothic Horror 79′
Although he directed some of the biggest British box office successes of the 1940s, Leslie Arliss‘s contribution to British cinema remains under-celebrated. He was born Leslie Andrews in London on 6 October 1901, and started life as a journalist in South Africa, returning to London in the late 1920s to take up a job as a screen writer during the 1930s, turning his hand to various genres from comedy to historical epic dramas such as William Tell (1958); The Wicked Lady (1945) and Idol of Paris (1948). One of his most successful scripts was for Ealing studio’s The Foreman Went to France directed by Charles Friend in 1942.  
Based on the novel by Alan Kennington The Night Has Eyes sees James Mason at his most suave and sinister as a troubled ex-soldier from the Spanish Civil war. Schoolteachers Marian (Howard) and Doris (McGuire) are looking for their friend Evelyn who has gone missing in the Yorkshire dales (actually filmed at Welwyn Garden City Studios, an overflow for Elstree). Retreating during a storm to a remote cottage for the night they soon fall under the seductive thrall of the owner, a reclusive pianist Stephen Deremid (Mason) who is strangely appealing especially to Doris who soon senses some connection between this cool customer and the disappearance of her friend. Gunther Krampf’s evocative camerawork does wonders with shadows and light while Arliss keeps us gripped with his tortuous storytelling. MT
NOW OUT ON Blu-ray at AMAZON.CO.UK
https://youtu.be/lwts14_PIlc

Varda by Agnès (2019) ****

Dir: Agnes Varda |Writers: Agnes Varda, Didiet Rouget | Doc France

Agnès Varda’s final film plays out as a masterclass, the maverick 90-year old filmmaker talking us through her life and legacy, in no particular order, giving fresh insight into her the methods behind her genius as the pioneer of the French New Wave movement, in a meaty two hour documentary. Composed of reels of archive footage, clips from her films and newly shot material – we also get to meet the star of her Venice awarded Vagabond, Sandrine Bonnaire, the two sit in a field sheltered by plastic umbrellas, a sign of her determination to take the rough with the smooth. You could call it providence.

Born in Brussels as ‘Arlette’ Varda in 1928, she would go on to make 55 films in her fruitful career. Sitting comfortably in a classic director’s chair on a stage before her audience, Varda comes across as modest and approachable and despite her ardent feminism and trenchant intellect, amiable and quietly self-assured. Her canvas was always the familiar or domestic, filming subjects she knew about or felt deserving of attention. On her documentary style she muses: “The idea was to film people, whether they realised it or not, Nothing is trite if you film people with empathy and love”.

There are plenty of quintessentially Varda moments in this final adieu. At one point she is seen sitting on a beach surrounded by cardboard seagulls: “we love to talk to birds, but of course they don’t understand”. And her fear of playing to an empty cinema, or not engaging with the audience have enforced her belief that cinema is very much a two-way process. And Varda By Agnès is a film that is both introspective and expansively outward-looking at the same time. And with her previous outing Faces, Places having had an Oscar nomination last year Varda is pretty guaranteed to reach wider audiences beyond Europe.

Varda started life as a photographer and her pictures are testament to her frank and witty approach to life. The film takes us through the last century and into the present day starting with The Gleaners and I that showcases the freedom of digital. Her personal life is very much integrated into her work as an artist and there is much candid and unsentimental mention both vocal and visual of her partner Jacques Demy, making it all the more appealing particularly during his failing health.

Music features heavily in all her films: “Early on, I realised that contemporary composers were my allies.” And Varda certainly made plenty of allies in her work in the cinema and outside it. Her career as a visual artist has given rise to impressive installations and performance art, most noticeably in Faces Places –  and she often turned up to events dressed as a potato – her voluptuously rotund figure ideally suited for the long-running joke.

It seems both apposite and poignant that this informative career retrospective should be her last hurrah. Perfectly timed and with a sense of completion and hope Varda By Agnès is a memorable auto-biopic from the grand dame of cinema herself. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 19 JULY 2019

https://youtu.be/IcpnEMCx-7g

 

Making Noise Quietly (2018) **

Dir.: Dominic Dromgoole; Cast: Matthew Tennyson, Luke Thompson, Barbara Martan, Geoffrey Streathfeild, Trystan Gravelle, Deborah Findlay, Orton O’Brien; UK 2019, 95 min.

In his screen debut, theatre director Dominic Dromgoole explores the importance of communication through three different stories told in shadow of war. Based on the play by Robert Holman, the drama never really breaks free from its stagey setting, often feeling clunky and embarrassing unfunny.

The first story ‘Being Friends’, is set in 1944 in a Kent village where a conscientious objector called Oliver (Thompson) meets a young, openly gay writer Eric (Tennyson). The two outsiders quickly become friends, roaming the countryside and baring their souls. Eric advises Oliver to enlist, before they undress and have a bath in a lake.

‘Lost’ is set in Redcar, Yorkshire in 1982. Naval Officer Geoffrey (Streathfeild), visits the mother of his dead friend (and husband of his sister) “to talk things over”. Unfortunately, the Naval Office in Portsmouth has not notified May of her son’s death in the Falkland War,  the conversation is  awkward, to say the least. May oscillates between hurt pride and anger towards the authorities responsible for the war. Old wounds are re-opened, because Ian was very much estranged from his parents, whom he held more or less in contempt. To make matters worse, May is also expecting a birthday visit from her grandchildren.

But the titular ‘Making Noise Quietly’ is by far the most cumbersome episode. Set during the mid 1990s in Germany’s Black Forest, Holocaust survivor Helene (Findlay), is in the middle of painting  the landscape near her home when out of the blue comes Sam (O’Brien), a troubled autistic boy with his combattive step-father and soldier Alan (Gravelle). The two have come to stay with Helene – for reasons which are not made clear. Sam is also a kleptomaniac, and Alan punishes him frequently, and shares with Helene his fear “that he will kill his step-son accidentally. Helene tells them about her time in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Finally, Helene succeeds in making Sam speak, substituting words for his unarticulated cries.

Not helped by the irritating original piano score composed by Stephen Warbeck, Making Noise Quietly feels limp and aesthetically outdated, DoP Nick Cooke’s quaint images echoing the stillness supporting the noxious atmosphere. Opaque and meandering, this is an anachronism.AS

ON RELEASE FROM 19 JULY 2019

Gwen (2018) ***

Dir.: William McGregor; Cast: Maxine Peake, Eleanor Worthington-Cox, Jody Innes, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith; UK 2018, 88 min.

This Gothic coming of age folk tale is the big screen debut of TV director William McGregor, who is well known for his character based dramas such as Poldark. Gwen is a long version of his 2009 short film, which was shot in Slovenia. Falling between ultra-realism and English Gothic horror in the style of Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England, Gwen never quite lives up to its early promise, in spite of an evocative setting and haunting images by DoP Adam Etherington.

Set in 19th century Snowdonia during the industrial revolution, the story centres on 17-year old Gwen, her younger sister Mari (Innes) and mother Elen (Peake), an authoritative woman suffering from a epilepsy. Elen and Gwen look after the family’s small-holding, in the absence of the patriarch, who is fighting a far-away war. But doom and gloom overwhelms them from the start, with a series of tragic events: their sheep are slaughtered and have to be destroyed; the pack horse bolts at the stormy weather and has to be put down, and the local quarry owner puts in a bid to buy their farm, supported by the village elders. But Elen stubbornly resists, wanting to preserve the land for her husband’s home-coming (although she has been informed of his death).

Gwen’s life becomes increasingly difficult with her only male support being Dr Wren (Holdbrook-Smith). And just before gothic horror takes over completely in a bloody finale, we learn that even the good doctor is on the side of the evil-doers rather than our tragic heroine.

But McGregor then shifts from realism to full blown gothic horror with the introduction of jump scares and other well-worn horror tropes. Bloodletting and ghostly images of the missing father feel really superfluous – as are symbolic gestures, such as the rotten potato in the ground. Eleanor Worthington-Cox saves the day with a terrific performance as Gwen. She starred in the title role of the stage musical Matilda and is now in her late teens. Together with Maxine Peake she carries this hybrid feature to a devastating conclusion, bailing out the director and his simplistic over-the-top approach. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASES FROM 20 JULY 2019

 

My Friend the Polish Girl (2018) ***

Dir.: Ewa Banasziewicz, Mateusz Dymek; Cast: Aneta Piotrowska, Emma Feldman-Cohen, Daniel Barry, Max Davies; UK 2018, 87 min.

Ewa Banasziewicz and Mateusz Dymek have directed written and produced this sometimes uneven cinema verite style mockumentary that explores whether the documentary form can ever be objective: or does the filmmaker always influence the outcome with their own subjectivity? Shot mostly in black-and-white by Dymek, with enchanting animation by Mathieu Rok, My Friend is aesthetically much more convincing than its sometimes questionable narrative.

New York filmmaker Katie (Friedman-Cohen) lives in London where she picks the Polish actor, thirty-something Alicja (Piotrowska), as the central focus for her Brexit-themed documentary. But nothing goes to plan: first of all Alicja, (who is living with her boyfriend (Barry) in the Edgware Road), tells Katie that he is suffering from terminal cancer. Michael then denies the gravity of his illness and moves out, not wanting to be filmed by a very intrusive Katie. The two women have not always got on together so Katie decides “to change” Alicja’s life, by introducing her to a group of filmmakers at the Groucho Club. Alicja is going to play a Russian prostitute (her seventh casting in this role), and shooting is due to commence, but when it does, Michael’s condition worsens with Alicja trying in vain to stop the cancer by buying expensive alternative medicines from a Harley Street doctor. To no avail, he dies and at the rather embarrassing wake for Michael, she meets his friend Max (Davies), who stays the night. By now, Katie has moved in with her girlfriend, both declaring they are misfits. But when Alicja is suddenly fired from the film set, she also runs away from Katie who is forced to use a false ending (Alicja’s suicide) to finish her film. 

Despite their best intentions the portrayal of the complicated relationship between documentary filmmakers and their subjects sometimes falls victim to rather bad taste, such as in the faux-sex scene between the two women in Alicja’s bedroom. But the female leads are so convincing in portraying their obsessive relationship they somehow manage to overcome this setback. Overall, My Friend is a brave attempt to discuss the essence of documentary filmmaking, and, in spite of everything, it is a very worthwhile watch. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Noël et sa Mère (2019) **** FID Marseille 2019

Dir.: Noël Herpé; Documentary with Noel Herpe, Michelle Herpé; France 2019, 103 min.
Writer/director Noel Herpé (Fantasmes et Fantômes) stages a soul-searching duel with is mother Michelle, translator, theatre director and actress. Noël is also known for his work as a film historian, particular on Eric Rohmer. In front of the camera the two wrestle with their love for each other, the quarrels often turning vitriolic. He calls Michelle a witch with the face of human mother.
Michelle Voslinsky was in Paris in 1940, being Jewish, she had to hide from the Germans. After losing her mother the age of nine “she felt not entitled to a life like others, meaning no marriage, I was sure, nobody would love me”. Her much older husband Henri (father of Noël b. *1965), was bi-polar, and capable of strange behaviour, often offering his wife to visitors. And sometime Michelle did not need his encouragement, “motherhood was not my strength”.
She raised Noül as a girl, the odd couple produced an old doll, and immediately an argument breaks out as to whether the object could be defined as a doll. Next up is an accident in a pool, when Noël nearly drowned. Although his mother insists he mistook the adult pool for the children’s one, Noël insists on an early suicide attempt at the age of four. This leads to him lamenting the lack of motherly love in general, whilst his father Henri always repeatedly told him:” I love you”.  They then discuss psychological neglect: “We are in a different film”.
Noël casts his mind back to the first film he even saw, running out frightened from the café in Avignon. I was afraid of everything that moved. No wonder I became a film-historian, it is the stillness of the past that attracts me.” The family had bough a property in Poudrigne, and Noël spend many holidays with older half-brother Olivier in the countryside and when he was five, he heard his his mother crying behind closed doors, “so I opened the door”. Since then, he has tried to forget the images – but was at the same fascinated by them. For once, Michelle is contrite: “It was harmful for you, I have to love with the guilt”. Both agree, that Henri was a repressed homosexual. His son Noel would follow in his footsteps, after taking in interest in his mother’s tights, he also borrowed her clothes and jewellery. For Noel it was life-changing: “I felt like becoming my mother”. Michelle comments: “the tights look better on your friend Cyril, who is much slimmer than you”.
A short film “Man” documents young Noel’s entrance into the life of a fetishist. But he rejects the idea of being an exhibitionist: “I am just saying I am my mother. A ghost of my mother”. After Michelle left her husband at he age of 37, Noël moved in with Henri, to look after him. Henri’s mental health was deteriorating. Mother and son agree – for once – that Michelle loved her husband, whose death was never totally explained. Michelle admits still feeling love for him today. Both mother and son worked at the theatre: “it was a period to re-connect with her. We shopped together for dresses”. But soon they argue about details of their stage collaboration, she accusing her son “of being like Trump”. Noel directed his first gay play in 1988, even though both agree that he is “a non-practising gay man.”He later confesses to  “lack any carnal dimension”. They finally come to the conclusion that he will miss her when she is gone, but he ends positing: “I set out dreaming of absolute love”.
Filmed either on a couch or on the stage of an empty theatre by Nils Warolin and Tao Favre, with family photos and old newsreels interrupting the talking heads, Noël et sa Mere, is a psychological striptease, fascinating and disturbing at the same time. Acting much more like frustrated lovers than mother and son, it is a portrait of mixed signals and double-binds. Unique and haunting. AS
FID MARSEILLE | 9-15 JULY 2019

The Dead Don’t Die (2019) ***

Dir: Jim Jarmusch | Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray | 103′ US Fantasy Horror

The peaceful town of Centreville finds itself up against it when the (un) dead start rising from their graves in Jim Jarmusch’s first zombie escapade.

THE DEAD DON’T DIE sees most of the starry cast ripped apart or thoroughly the worst for wear by the time we get Sturgill Simpson’s catchy title tune on the brain for the journey home. But this audience pleaser will certainly go down in history with the best of them – but my money’s still on Shaun of the Dead for sheer deadpan weirdness of the cult classic kind.

The police are the first to notice untoward goings on. Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) and Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) are alerted to local power cuts and watches going awry in sleepy Centreville. And Jarmusch brings the same deadpan humour to bear as did Edgar Wright, the dead coming alive in the eerie torpor that many claim is due to climate change.

The town’s cop trio is made up by token female Mindy Morrison (Chloe Sevigny), and Danny Glover’s Hank Thompson is the token black resident who makes it possible for Buscemi’s Farmer Miller to add the requisite element of racial abuse. Other denizens include Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton), who gets to flex her Scottish credentials with a hefty samurai sword. The younger generation are there in the shape of Caleb Landry Jones, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler and Luka Sabbat who roam around their numbers gradually multiplying as the story staggers on. Then there’s a classic village loner (Tom Waits) who seems to go under the zombies’ radar, perhaps because he’s so like them.

But a wry nonchalant bonhomie permeates this dozy undead drama and maybe Jarmusch is alluding here to the dumbed-down society we live in nowadays – their unaware, don’t care attitude is the most darkly worrying aspect. Crafty old Jarmusch is using his zombie outing as a wrapper to satirise all our current ills. Even the authorities seem brain dead with Tilda giving the only sparky thrill to the piece as the slightly unhinged oddball. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Our Time (Nuestro Tiempo) ****

Dir.: Carlos Reygadas, Cast: Carlos Reygadas, Natalia Lopez, Phil Burgers; Mexico/ France/ Germany/ Denmark/Sweden 2018, 173 min.

Carlos Reygadas is one of the few auteurs who have kept their independence and their unique style, Our Time is the story of a ménage-à-trois set high up in the Mexican mountains, where a Bunūel-like, surreal narrative develops in this fresh and original feature. which Reygadas also stars.

Reygadas stars as Juan living with his wife Ester (Lopez) and their three children on a huge farm, where they breed bulls to fight in the arena. Ester seems very much in charge of the enterprise, whilst Juan is more interested in writing poetry and libretti for operas. Enter horse breeder Phil (Burgers), who falls for Ester and upsets the equilibrium of family and work life. Juan is upset when he finds out about Ester’s liaison: he is not at all the man he pretends to be and Juan reacts with jealousy and temper tantrums, before a visit to a dying friend changes him: he starts to communicate with both Ester and Phil, but also wants to be near them when they make love. He begins to see the affair as a stage play where he takes part but also directs; and while he’s in control the situation is bearable, mitigating the emotional effect of the fallout . The parallels to the actual shooting of the feature eventually become obvious.

Reygadas contrasts the various strands of the narrative: Juan and Esther go to Mexico City to participate in cultural events, where he is feted. The rather long preamble shows the couple’s two younger children hanging out with friends near a lake on their farm. Meanwhile the oldest son gets a taste of first love, not wanting to return to boarding school at the end of the summer. All this is obviously dwarfed by the marriage crisis. Reygadas’ lets his zany sense of sense of humour lose in the way he allows the five-year old daughter to read out a running commentary on the state of her parent’s marriage. 

DoP Diego Garcia’s rain-soaked foggy landscape contrast poetically with the urban chaos and glittering nightime panoramas. Reygadas’ inventive narrative snakes its way to a surprising denouement, leaving the interpretation open and showing that he is still in very much in love with filmmaking in a playful way. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 12 JULY 3019

Kursk: The Last Mission (2018) **

Dir.: Thomas Vinterberg; Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Lea Seydoux, Artemy Spiridonov, Colin Firth, Peter Simonischek, Max von Sydow; France/Belgium/Luxembourg 2018, 117 min.

Based on the true story of the Kursk submarine tragedy of 2000 in which 188 men lost their lives, Kursk: The Last Mission is a rather surprising choice for Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt), whose adaption of Robert Moore’s factual story A Time to die, written for the screen by Robert Rodat (Private Ryan), has all the hallmarks of a Luc Besson inspired would-be Hollywood production. This narrative of the nuclear-powered submarine disaster which befell the Kursk in August 2000 in the Barents Straight, is short on truth and rather overbearing of masculinity and clichés.

In this mega European disaster feature we meet the hero Mikhail Kalekov (Schoenaerts) on home ground: pregnant wife Tanya (Seudoux) and son Mischa (Spiridonov) are the lively family who play around, not knowing that disaster lurks around the corner. The crew of the Kursk is introduced as a good natured bunch – only interested in getting the alcohol for a team members wedding, which Mikhail organises, paying part of the bill with his watch. On August 12th disaster strikes: two explosions (caused by a faulty weld) occur, leaving only 23 of the 115 men crew alive. Stonewalling by the Russian authorities – they even invented a collision with a Nato submarine as a course for the accident – meant that the survivors died a slow death, since the help of British and Norwegian rescue teams were postponed, until it was too late.      Unfortunately, Firth as British naval attaché David Russell has more in common with a Victorian counterpart, and Russian Admiral Grudzinsky (Simonischek) ”is on the outlook for an enemy”, but does not now his identity. President Putin gets away “with being on holiday for most of the time” – even though he clearly had a hand in the avoidable tragedy, but particularly in the incident with the wife of one of the victims.

DoP Anthony Dod Mantle tries his best to save the heavy handed direction, his images are halfway between apocalyptic and eerie-romantic. Particularly the oxygen-cartridge retrieval scene is a masterpiece – the photographer is the only production crew member who can hold his head high. Overall this feature is mostly interested in simple male moral boosting: songs more at home on the terraces of a football stadium replace any analysis of this technology disaster, which was the result of scandalous political motives. AS

Kursk: The Last Mission in Cinemas and on Digital HD 12 July 2019

      

Midsommar (2019)

Dir: Ari Aster | US Fantasy Horror 147’

Ari Aster’s cult thriller has some inventive ideas about euthanasia and cultural differences in an avant-garde and violently disturbing re-imagining of Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic The Wicker Man.

Misommar is his follow-up to the weird but equally unsettling horror debut Hereditary. It again uses facial disfigurement, social dysfunction and emotional alienation as its tropes to scare the living daylights out of you.

Four young American dudes set off to Sweden for a remote, drug-fuelled summer folk festival. It’s not the trip they had in mind. The friendly welcome of white-clothed blonds frolicking wholesomely in the land of the midnight sun soon give way to a sinister, soul (and body) destroying experience when their own cultural references and expectations are completely shattered by those of this uncanny pagan community of Harga.

British actress Florence Pugh is terrific as a woman suffering a bizarrely gruesome family bereavement that plays out in the opening scenes. Dani then discovers her relationship is beyond its sell by date and her boyfriend Christian (Reynor) has already made summer plans that don’t include her. Unwisely she tags along on a trip that soon turns to dread, horror and tragedy as the smorgasbord of bizarre festivities take their toll on the uninitiated outsiders.

Joining Christian and Dani is former community member Pelle (Blomgren), Phd student Josh (Harper), and Mark (Will Poulter). After taking drugs, they are intrigued to join in the joyful celebrations involving May Tree dancing, Wotanism, medieval paganism and fertility rights.

Interestingly, while the Americans are shocked to the core at the commune’s way of dealing with old age, the residents find it all entirely acceptable – raising the interesting question of cultural diversity or, to put it literally: ‘different strokes for different folks”. But Aster often gets too excited with his ideas, losing sight of the bigger picture while disappearing down folkloric rabbit holes amidst languorous pacing and trippy tonal shifts.

Pawel Pogorzelski creates a visually startling feast with his bleached out colours, hair-raising camera angles and claustrophobic interior sequences, and Pugh and Reynor are remarkable in their ability to generate psychological angst. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

 

Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) ****

Dir.: Robert Altman; Cast: Sandra Dennis, Cher, Karen Black, Sudie Bond; USA 1982, 102 min.

The terrible box-office receipts for Popeye forced director Robert Altman to sell Lion’s Gate and his Malibu home in 1981. He took his family to New York to begin his “minimalist’ decade. The French, always helpful when it came to Hollywood misfits of all sorts, gave out the official Altman line that he “was trying the small format as a means of circumventing the traditional film distribution circuits” – but in reality the retreat was nothing but a final effort to mend his now nearly defunct relationship with the major studios. On a personal level, he felt isolated and paranoia had got the better of him. His supporters believers had to listen to rants about old and new enemies – one of them, director Alan Rudolph was singled out for crossing the line to the enemy, by asking MGM to produce his next feature – never mind that only a few years later, Altman would do exactly the same.

At this point, the theatre was the logical stepping stone. He directed two one-acters for the Los Angeles Actor’s Theatre. One of them, Two by South was re-staged in Manhattan in the autumn of 1981 and taped for TV, after good reviews. When Altman staged Come back to the five and dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean in New York, the reviews were quiet unfavourable. Never the less, a new recruit to the Altman ‘family’, the former sports reporter and documentary filmmaker Peter Newman, set up a deal for cable TV. The budget was USD 850 000, when backers pulled out, Altman had to put USD 200 000 of his own money into the production. 

Written by Ed Graczyk and based on his stage play, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy is just another soul searching expedition in the Tennessee Williams mode. It is set in a rundown Woolworth store in a small Texan town called McCarthy (sic!). James Dean disciples are commemorating the 20th anniversary of their idols death in 1975. The flashbacks show his arrival in a near-by town, where Giants would be shot. Sandra Dennis is Mona, asthmatic and hyper sensible. Cher, at a low point in her singing career, is Sissy, a waitress with artificial breasts whose wisecracks hide a secret. Finally, there is Karen Black’s Joanna, who comes late and gets of the attention in Juanita’s (Bond) restaurant. At the end all is revealed: Joanna (who had a sex change operation) is the father of Mona’s son, who steals a Porsche – putting an end to speculation that he might be Dean’s son.

Apart from the brilliant female cast, PD David Cropman and DoP Pierre Mignot (who would shoot the rest of the Altman pictures in the 80s) take most of the credits. Cropman built a set of two identical dime store stage sets, separated by a two-way mirror. This way, the audience was looking at a self-reflecting front store. Mignot’s 16mm camera captures the anguish in very intimate shots, creating an atmosphere not unlike Streetcar Named Desire.

Altman took the film (literally) with him to any festival who would pay his flights and hotel. His credit cards were often rejected, and whilst Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean made a small profit, Altman was back where he started before: drinking on long flight and waxing nostalgically, oblivious to the fact that he had launched Cher’s film career, self obsessed as always. A Hollywood rebel without a cause. AS

ON DUAL FORMAT DVD AND BLURAY FROM 22 JULY 2019

Patrick | De Patrick (2019) Bfi Player

Dir: Tim Mielants; Cast: Kevin Janssens, Josse de Pauw, Hannah Hoekstra, Jemaine Clement Katelinje Damen, Ariane van der Velt, Pierre Bokma; Belgium 2019, 97 min.

Peaky Blinders’ Tim Mielants won the directing prize at Karlovy Vary for this subversive tragicomedy that takes place in a Belgian nudist camp fraught with scheming machiavellians.

In his late thirties the naive main character Patrick (Janssens) is still living with his father Rudy (de Pauw) and blind mother Nelly (Damen). They run a summer camp fraught with  scantily dressed, middle-aged holiday-makers. Rudy is on his last legs but his son has no aptitude for business, and so he relies on Herman (Bokma), whose wife Liliane (Van Welt) projects her lust on the undersexed Patrick.

Into this bizarre environment comes Natalie (Hoekstra) whose unfaithful musician boyfriend Dustin (Clement) immediately strikes up a relationship with another adoring female. So Natalie decides to turn her attentions to Patrick whose sideline as a joiner now becomes central to the narrative, and the tool of his trade, a hammer, one of the main protagonists. When Rudy dies, Herman and Liliane plan to take over the place, declaring Patrick ‘not fit for purpose’, in running the camp’s affairs – not least because his hammer was the weapon of choice in a catastrophe that cost the commune their entire funds. It soon emerges that the hammer was also the weapon used in a murder in Brussels.

Even though the naturalists proclaim to be progressive, they are really straight out of the 1950s. Mielants’ humour does not always come off, and De Patrick often feels repetitive – the running time could be tightened up a tab. But there are enough contradictions to keep the show on the road, and Janssens makes for a brilliant anti-hero. AS

NOW ON IPLAYER | BEST DIRECTOR WINNER | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Half Sister (2019) Polsestra **** Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Damjan Kozole; Cast: Ursa Menart, Liza Marijina, Jurij Drevensek, Peter Musevski; Republic of Macedonia/Serbia/Slovenia; 105 min.

Another tightly controlled and intriguing drama from veteran documentarian Damjan Kozole, who won best director at Karlovy Vary with Nightlife in 2016 . 

Irena and Nezha, the titular half-sisters hate each others guts – but when push comes to shove, blood proves thicker than life-long animosities. Irina (Menart) works in the local hairdressers: she is protected from the outside world by a half-open jalousie. And it soon emerges why. 

Separated from her violent husband Branco (Drevensek), she is looking for a place to stay and visits her mother. Clearly moving in with her mother is no option, the two have a fractured relationship and the same goes for her father handball coach Silvio (Musevski) who ran off with an Albanian woman when Irena was a little girl. But one of her half-sisters Anisa (Marijina) is moving to Ljubljana to study for an MA in communications, so she asks her father if she could live shares the flat with her rival Nezha, a tomboyish aggressor, who has a knife handy wherever she goes. Nezha immediately blames Silvo (who pays the rent) and Irena for setting her up. But blaming everybody – apart from her dog Jimmy – is Nezha’s default position in life. A vegan (for environmental reasons) she attacks Irena full on: “If Dad wasn’t such a pussy, he’d put you in a nuthouse”. Irena answers with well trained passive-aggressiveness. But when Branco assaults Irena, breaking her nose, the dynamic changes, Nezha going on the attack to defend Irena to the last.

Half-Sister is a brilliant character study, the near-perfect script an exception in today’s landscape of ‘atmospheric non-narratives”. DoP Miladin Colakovic’s intimate camera conveys the emotional range of the rollercoaster, and despite of the antagonistic characters involved, one cannot help but smile. Finally, Menart and Marijina gives remarkable performances, playing off each other like the real thing. AS

Karlovy Vary FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | Until 7 July 2019

 

 

El Hombre del Futuro (2019) *** Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Felipe Rios Fuente; Cast: Antonia Giesen, Jose Soza, Maria Alche, Roberto Farias; Chile 2019, 96 min.

Director/co-writer Felipe Rios Fuente’s debut feature is beautiful to look at, but based on a rather misplaced ideology. Somehow his melancholic defence of absent fathers, caught up in their so-called independence, sticks a the throat: even in Chile, country of machismo, a little more honesty would be welcome.

We meet Elena (Giesen) at high school in Cochrane, north Chile, were she discusses her future with a friend. Not much of an academic Elena has set her heart on professional boxing. Sadly this becomes a pipe dream when she heads down south to a match in the wilderness of Patagonia. Meanwhile her biological father Michelsen (Soza), whom she has not seen since her childhood, is coming to the end of his life. He seems resigned to his fate setting off on his final trip taking sheep to Patagonia and on the way picks up a young hitchhiker, Maxi (Alche). At the same time Cuatro Dedos (Farias) picks up Elena. ‘Four Fingers’ is a younger version of Michelsen, he knows that Elena is Michelsen’s daughter, whom he holds in near mythical regard. Somehow, via the hauler’s radio system, Elena sends a message to her father. He arrives in time to see her beaten up in the ring by Patagona, a much heavier woman, who is supported by the local crowd. Elena and Michelsen now travel together, deliver the sheep, and try to come to terms with their relationship. Michelsen insists he never gave up being Elena’s father, but she reminds him he never knew her at all. Fuente insists on a reconciliation, but his pleas are hollow.

The beauty of the wilderness of Patagonia is captured on spectacular widescreen images by DoP Eduardo Bunster. Fuente’s opaque choice of the title is as superfluous as his insistence that old men should be forgiven for leaving their families. Four Finger and his hero Michelsen want their freedom and independence to roam the country, but leave the responsibility of childcare to the abandoned wives. They might talk about love for those left behind, but the words are empty. Elena’s dislocation is a result of her father’s negligence, and however hard Fuente tries to romanticise their relationship, his choice of independence has certainly created her emotional insecurity. AS

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | IN COMPETITION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EAST OF WEST COMPETITION | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2019

The Last Autumn | Sidasta Haustio (2019) Bergamo Film Meeting

Dir.: Yrsa Roca Fannberg; Documentary with Ulfare Eyjolfsson, Oddny Snjolang Bordardottir; Iceland 2019, 78 min.

Icelandic writer/director Yrsa Roca Fannberg follows Salome with this thematically related story set in the Icelandic arctic ocean village of Norourfjordur where a couple are getting ready to sell their sheep. This is their last autumn on the farmland they have occupied all their lives, and their daughter and grandchildren, who live in Reykjavik, come and pay their final farewells.

The black and white footage of the opening sequences reflects their contented past, the rough landscape and the sea, making an imposing background where humans are dwarfed by mother nature. Soon we switch to colour and intimate domestic interiors where Ulfar and Oddny are listening to a radio broadcast about the ecological tragedy that led to the entire population of Iceland being evacuated to Denmark after a volcano eruption during the18th century.

The old sheep dog Loppa watches Ulfar bottle-feed two lambs. Later, he drives out to sea in his fishing boat coming back with a decent catch, then cutting wood to repair the barn wall – even though he knows very well that there will be no more sheep to shelter there. His daughter arrives on a small plane and they reminisce about the barn repairs: “It is beautiful to sustain life, even if it is not for yourself”.

This honest existence has been the mainstay of their lives together, but eventually the day arrives for them to round up the sheep. Loppa, his master and some other farmers go into the mountains to collect the animals, about 75 of them, herd them into the barn, and then huge travel containers. Ulfar seems to live in the past, his only contact with the outside world is the radio which brings news of those who have recently passed away. Afterwards Ulfar gives his granddaughter a ride on the tractor regaling her with an old fairy tale about Vera, a woman who fell down the cliffs.

Focusing on long panoramic panning shots, and connecting with the narrative of surviving communities and rural existence this is a melancholic journey. Carlos Vasquez’ images focus on the close interaction of humans and nature, showing that animals are far more intelligent than we often give them credit for. The relationship between Ulfare and his dog is particularly close. Dialogue is sparing reflecting the importance of action and reflection rather than ideas. Fannberg handles this slow-burner with care and patience, every shot has a function – an enchanting portrait of another disappearing world. AS

BERGAMO FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | KARLOVY VARY 2019 PREMIERE

Don’t Look Now (1973) *****

Dir: Nicholas Roeg | Writers: Alan Scott, Chris Bryant | Cast: Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania | Fantasy Horror, UK 110’

Nicolas Roeg based his achingly tragic supernatural drama on a short story by Daphne du Maurier. It sees a grieving couple burying their sorrows in Italy after their small daughter drowns at home in Suffolk, wearing a shiny new mackintosh. John, an architect, has been commissioned to restore a church and Venice is eerie and beguiling in the out of season mists. But soon a doom-laden warning from a two English women, one of them a blind psychic, takes them off guard shrouding their bereavement in fear and but bringing Laura (Christie) a strange sense of hope in the shape of premonitions. But soon further torment seems unavoidable as the past and the future collide.

 As a wave of killings haunts the city, Laura returns to England to visit their son after an accident at his school. But the premonitions don’t stop: John suffers a near-fatal accident high on the church scaffolding, and then he glimpses his wife, supposedly hundreds of miles away, on a private launch flanked by the two mysterious sisters. The local police are intrigued by and even sympathetic to his story, but cannot help. As Venice and his fate closes in on John, illusion, reality and sudden terror spiral the story to its grotesque climax, as the design in director Nicolas Roeg’s mosaic becomes unforgettably clear.

Don’t look now is a richly romantic and deeply sorrowful story of love, longing and quiet desperation Imbued with ominous motifs and Roeg’s evocative visual style. Fate seems inescapable in this  dreamlike place where time stands still and unsettling silence is occasionally broken by a bird in flight or a banging door. A whiff of atavistic evil lurks at every lonely corner undermining the power of love and casting a dark pall over the couple’s attempts to discover the truth as they are gradually drawn into a web of mystery and horror. It’s a dignified, discreet and well bred terror, but it’s terrifying all the same.

Christie and Sutherland exude a captivating chemistry drowning in this kindgom of the senses the mood gradually escalating in into a mood of horror and disbelief surrounding their dead daughter. MT

4K ULTRA HD RESTORATION BACK IN CINEMAS JULY 5 COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL | AVAILABLE ON BLURAY, DVD, COLLECTOR’s EDITION and EST JULY 29

https://youtu.be/xXP8OaJGxrM

Venezia (2019) Edinburgh Film Festival 2019

Dir: Rodrigo Guerrero | Cast: Paula Lussi, Margherita  Mannino | Drama Argentina, France, Italy 75’

At the start of Rodrigo Guerrero’s atmospheric drama VENEZIA, Sofia (Paula Lussi) lies on a bed in a hotel room, sobbing gently and utterly alone. Her mobile buzzes, but she doesn’t answer. Later, as we see her pace through the winding, narrows streets of the eponymous city, the cause of her tears and solitude is slowly revealed, her loneliness signalling an absence in her life – and an absence felt in the film itself, for the story begins in media res, with a slow-burning sense of uneasy mystery.

As such, the opening raises a string of active questions whichwould not feel out of place in a thriller, but Guerrero instead uses these intrigues as hooks by which to propel an engrossing character study – a portrait of a lost woman attempting to find solace and understanding for what life has thrown her way.

Thankfully, and in contrast to so many other recent films, the opaqueness gradually lightens, allowing us a rich understanding of the problems faced by Sofia, as wonderfully conveyed through Lussi’s hypnotic performance. Indeed, the film’s only slight misstep is the inclusion of a scene which takes the focus momentarily away from Sofia, to give us an unnecessary insight into the life of Francesca (Margherita Mannino), one of several characters who Sofia encounters as she drifts through the city – for this is Sofia’s story, and it’s in following the minutiae of her journey (physical and emotional) that the film excels.

Filmed in striking 1.33:1 images, Venezia‘s evocative, observational style follows in the arthouse tradition which is too often described as ‘detached’ – it would be better, and more accurate, to say that Guerrero’s engrossing, tender film is unsentimental and devoid of emotional manipulation, and that it’s all the more impactful as a result. Understated and light on dialogue, Venezia reminds us that, so often, less is more – and, with a slender runtime of just 75 minutes, it also offers a further rejoinder to the bloated nature of much contemporary cinema. A real, subtle gem.

Elsewhere in the programme, Sasha Collington’s LOVE TYPE D offered a very different, and much more light-hearted, portrait of a lonely woman: Frankie (Maeve Dermody), who has just been dumped for the 11th time in a row. Discovering a scientific theory that suggests her run of bad luck may be the result of genetics and, more specifically, a ‘loser in love‘ gene, Frankie sets about trying to cure herself. Slightly more high-concept than your average rom-com, Love Type D offers plenty of laughs and entertainment, frivolous though it may all be. ALEX BARRETT

EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 19-30 JUNE 2019

Support the Girls (2018) ****


Dir.: Andrew Bujalski; Cast: Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Shyna McHayle, James Le Gros, Brooklyn Decker, Lea DeLaria; USA 2018, 89 min.

Andrew Bujalski  pays homage to working class feminism in his raucous comedy caper.

Set in a joint called Double Whammies, run by a largely absentee owner, it features a cast of skimpily clad women waitresses although the real work is done by Lisa, who keeps staff and customers at bay. We meet Lisa Conroy (Hall) already distraught before her day begins. She has too much on her plate: a rotten marriage, an interfering boss and a rapid staff turnover. Her deputy Dannyelle (McHayle) and the boisterous Maci (Richardson) have to keep staff and customers happy, they range from flirtatious to downright rude, and get two minutes attention per table, and you may touch a customer, but not squeeze him – one of the rules Lisa tries to get over to the ingénues of the day.

One of the waitresses has problems at home, another was mixed up in an attempted robbery of the place. And today, they discover a would-be robber in the ventilation pipes. He is wedged in, and Lisa has to call the cops to have him freed – and arrested. Then the sound system breaks down. But that it is not the end of Lisa’s woes: the TV system is down too, and there will be no wrestling matches on ESPN for the mainly male clientele. But Lisa puts the angst of the future behind her – at least for the time being – because the present has too many problems. All the male characters are a misogynous bunch, let alone a butch lesbian (DeLaria) who supports the crew.  

DoP Matthias Grunsky’s camera is very intimate, but also conveys Lisa’s isolation. The feature is dedicated to ‘Mothers’ – and while Lisa may be childless, the rest of her crew definitely qualifies, all shouting their frustration from the roof of the ManCave building: they remain indomitable and Regina Hall is outstanding in this breezy and understated comedy of survival. AS

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 28 JUNE 2019

 

Never Look Away (2018) **

Dir.: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; Cast: Tom Schilling, Sebastian Koch, Paula Beer, Saskia Rosendahl, Oliver Masucci; Italy/Germany 2018, 188 min.

After The Life of Others Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck makes another ambitious but deeply unfilmic foray that tackles three decades of his country’s history from Nazi Germany of the late 1930s right through to the GDR, and finally the FRG. The focus is an anti-hero and his sympathetic counterpart. 

In Dresden 1937 the young Elisabeth May takes her young nephew Kurt Barnert to see an exibition of ‘Entartete Kunst’, showing paintings by Picasso, Kandinsky and others forbidden in the Third Reich. The guide tells Kurt that he could do better than said works of art. But Elisabeth, a free spirit, tells the boy “never to look away” from beauty. Soon she is playing the piano naked. Her desperate family send her to Prof. Seeband (Koch), who is in charge of the local Euthanasia programme, thence to a special hospital where she is gassed with other citizens who are not “worth being kept alive”. 

Seeband is later captured by the Russians but helps to deliver the baby of a high-ranking officer who offers him a career in the GDR. The story then flips forward to see Kurt (Schilling), now in his twenties, falling in love with Ellie Barnert (who very much resembles Elisabeth), the two men begin an uneasy relationship. And when Ellie gets pregnant, her father carries out an abortion, making sure his daughter can no longer produce and have the Barnert family poison his own bloodline: Kurt’s father had committed suicide. 

Ellie and Kurt, both fed up with social realism at university, flee to West Berlin, and later settle in Dusseldorf where Kurt studies with a Beus-look-alike, professor von Verten (Masucci). Here Kurt finds his artistic calling, and also the true identity of his father-in-law, who had also settled very sucessfully in the FRG.

Von Donnersmarck is spot on in picturing life in Nazi Germany and the GDR, but his vision of the FRG, where the majority of ex-Nazis made a career, as far too easygoing. After all, cultural institutions such as the Art Academy in Dusseldorf, were unique places of artistic refuge. Where the film really falls down though is in the bland description of life. Considering Kurt is a painter, the cinematography is unimpressive and stale, calling to mind the “Alfred Weidemann” films of the late 50s and set in the FRG, where UFA veterans where still shooting in the style of the 1930s. Furthermore the acting is patchy, Beer the standout in a sea of rather hammy male performances. Despite a narrative spanning nearly thirty years nothing seems to change, the action is caught in a permanent time-warp where even Kurt’s final liberation feels unconvincing and artificial. Never Look Away is an uninventive saga that drags laboriously feeling even longer than its 3+ hours, AS

ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | PREMIERED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

In Fabric (2018) ****

Writer/Director: Peter Strickland | Cast: Sidse Babett Knudsen, Gwendoline Christie, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Julian Barratt, Leo Bill, Fatma Mohamed, Richard Bremmer | Horror | UK | 118′

Peter Strickland follow-up to his lesbian frolic The Duke of Burgundy is a sinister 1970s sartorial satire which gets sillier the more it wears on. This fourth bizarre entry is another of those richly entertaining and quirkily fascinating films we’ve come to expect from the British director, now at the top of his game.

A dress is the antiheroine of IN FABRIC. Vampishly voluptuous in scarlet silk and satin, it is a garment to die for, and that is both a blessing and a curse for those who slip it on. For the dress in question possesses strange qualities that no-one can vanquish, because no-one is clever enough to interpret its power. This dense but simply plotted Giallo-inspired erotic thriller conjures up dread, horror and even disgust through its inventive visual aesthetic, and a signature atmospheric soundtrack that recalls Berberian Sound Studio and channels the bizarre human obsessions of sales shopping and stag nights.

It all starts in Dentley & Soper’s fashion emporium back in the day where the January sales were a post Christmas bonanza. In a choppy collage of archive photos of garish retro ad campaigns, Strickland quickly establishes the furore of price slashes and the adrenaline rush of queue barging – the public baying for bargains in anticipation of the fray, long before couch-based internet shopping saw daily discounts.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays 50 year old Sheila who’s back on the dating scene, through the small ads – fraught with weirdos, even back then. Sheila is sick and tired of her teenage son’s in-house love-ins with Gwendoline Christie’s woman twice his age, so under the spiky guidance of a crinoline sporting sales woman (Fatma Mohamed speaking in Romanian-accented riddles) she is tempted and then urged to buy ‘the dress’.

Although her date is a disaster, strange things start to happen to Sheila once she gets the red dress which takes on a slinky life of its own, hovering over her bed at night and causing her washing machine to self-combust. The garment’s next owner (Leo Bill) gets to wear it at his stag party, and the next morning his irritating wife (Hayley Squires) takes a fancy to it too and rapidly develops a skin rash. Meanwhile, in the backroom after hours, Fatma Mohamed turns weird and witchy, wearing a wig and wickedly caressing her shop mannequins to the erotic delight of the Dracula-like manager Mr Lundy (Richard Bremmer). The humour lies in the contrast between the banal and the bizarrely erotic – or just plain weird. Images of sumptuously stewing peppers in Sheila’s kitchen give way to those of sexy underwear in her son’s bedroom; Julian Barratt’s hilarious turn as Sheila’s boss is as cliched as Fatma Mohamed’s grotesque Victorian vendeuse is uncanny.

The sad hope that a mere garment will satisfy in our human need to be loved and unique (and if not, recycled to the next person) is echoed in the film’s themes of obsession, superficiality and consumerism. Sidse Babett Knudsen, the submissive lover in The Duke of Burgundy, is revealed as the dress’s original owner, who modelling the garment in the shop’s catalogue, under the lofty spiel: “ambassadorial function dress, canapé conversation” – a promise that aspires more to James Bond rather than the Thames Valley. But by the time the victims begin to realise that the dress is damned, it’s already too late. And as much as we aspire to creating a good impression, we’re also guilty of judging a book by its cover. Meanwhile Peter Strickland will be saying at the Q&A: “the film means nothing, I was just having a bit of fun”. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 28 JUNE 2019

Vita & Virginia (2018)

Dir-Scr Chanya Button | Evangelo Kioussis. With Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isabella Rossellini. UK-Ireland 2018. 110min.

How can a film about two of the 20th century’s most colourful female characters be so underwhelming? Drawing from Eileen Atkins’ 1993 play, Chanya Button’s biopic explores the lesbian relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf without ever mining its incendiary dramatic potential. It is a drama without  drama, lacklustre and trivial despite its lush, unconventional pretensions.

Elizabeth Debicki is suburb as the rather awkward blue-stocking Wolfe. And she towers above Arterton’s impishly pedestrian portrait of glamorous socialite and gardening expert Sackville-West (doyenne of Sissinghurst Castle, whose Grade I listed gardens is one of the most famous in England). Sadly, the only reference to horticulture is a rather odd attempt at magic realism that sees CGI ivy sprouting out of the floors.

Vita & Virginia looks absolutely sumptuous in its rich 1920s Arts & Crafts settings (including medieval Knole House) but the film plays out like an insipid soap opera, its lacklustre characters simply going through the motions. There’s a great deal of pouting and misty close-ups of lips; but in the end nothing vaguely illuminating happens, and we left in the dark about these avant-garde women. Director Chanya Button has had a promising career so far with several awards for her filmmaking. Yet this most fascinating of themes: LGBTQ, horticulture and literature fails to ignite on any level.

Part of the problem is the script – written by Button and Atkins – which simply traces the steps that lead to Woolf’s sexual awakening in rather tepid bed scenes, rather than probing the depths of their intellectual attraction. In fact, Vita emerges a rather bored, housewife with a faux posh accent, rather than a highly creative aristocrat and free-thinking intellectual. The two exchange excerpts from twee love letters bringing nothing constructive to the party. And to cast Isabella Rossellini as Arterton’s on-screen mother, Baroness Sackville, is a grave mistake – the two couldn’t be more different. Rossellini exudes charisma in her role, threatening to cut off her daughter’s allowance if she doesn’t behave.

Vita is married to a suave bisexual diplomat Sir Harold Nicholson (Rupert Penry-Jones in fine fettle) and Woolf is supported by her loving husband Leonard (Peter Ferdinando) who recognised her need for stability. Vita worships her from afar and the women finally meet at a bohemian Bloomsbury party. From then on a friendship develops – although the two share no chemistry to speak of. Vita is 30, Virginia 10 years her senior. Debecki adds subtle layers of depth to her character, including an impressive accent, redolent of the era. Her sister is the painter Vanessa Bell (Emerald Fennell) who lives with a gay artist Duncan Grant (Adam Gillen).

Although this is essentially Vita’s story, the emotionally delicate Virginia steals the show as a highly enigmatic character who is in the process of penning the radical 1928 novel Orlando, an experience that appears initially to thrill her far more than her lesbian dalliance with the “Sapphic” Sackville-West, and encapsulates the male/female duality of her character. Virginia gradually becomes more involved in the relationship which eventually destabilises her (she in fact went on to commit suicide) and this is shown through convincing CGI rooks sweeping down in the gardens of the Knole.

Button certainly exposes the lesbian relationship between her characters but that’s really all the film does. Vita & Virginia is a missed opportunity to offer something more invigorating about the women themselves, and what attracted them to each other in the first place. MT

ON BFI SUBSCRIPTION FROM 24 May 2022

https://youtu.be/mPHxrdIneP4

Alice (2019) ** Edinburgh Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Josephine Mackerras; Cast: Emelie Piponnier, Cloe Boreham, Martin Swabey, Jules Ferrand, UK/Australia/France 2019, 103 min.

ALICE sees two sex workers frolicking around in Paris and looking very much like Celine and Julie go Boating from Jacques Rivette’s New Wave classic. One says to the other “We are in control, you will see how easy it is”.

So what did Josephine Mackerras have in mind with her story of modern day Parisian sex workers? Alice (Piponnier) and Francois (Swabey) seem to be happy as a couple: we first meet them at a party where Francois quotes large chunks of Racine and kisses his wife passionately. But soon we learn that he has been seeing high class prostitutes and frittered away the money in their joint bank account, and, worst of all, has not paid the mortgage for twelve months: Alice learns that their flat will be re-possessed if she cannot pay the the arrears and worries about her little son’s Jules (Ferrand) future. Then, finding the contact number of an escort agency on Francois’ mobile, she attends an interview session, and gets the job. She meets Lisa, who shows her the ropes, and they become best friends. Clients are as worst odd, but usually very understanding. Then Francois comes up with a sob story about how his father took him to a prostitute age thirteen. He begs for forgiveness, so Alice uses him only as a babysitter. Then the worm turns, and Francois threatens to take Jules away from her mother. Mackerras ends her dubious tale with a kitsch, over-the-top happy end.

DoP Mickhael Delahaie’s idyllic Paris images would look better with a tourist advert – Alice and Lisa wandering around ‘romantic’ Montmartre is one example of the escalating cringe factor. Francois is the only convincing character, the women leads have to deal with simplistic dialogue; and Alice seems pretty clueless as a woman too dumb to check her bank accounts for a whole year. But the main problem with ALICE  is the director’s attempt to romanticise a profession which destroys both body and soul. AS

EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 19-30 JUNE 2019

 

 

Vagabond (1985) Bfi Player

Dir Agnès Varda | Cast: Sandrine Bonnaire, Macha Méril, Yolande Moreau | 106′ | France | Drama

Venice Goldenn Lion winner Vagabond is haunting story about loss, loneliness and defiance expressed through its remarkable central character played by one of French cinema’s most intriguing talents, Sandrine Bonnaire, who had made her first appearance in Maurice Pialat’s À nos amours. Here she gives a captivating performance as the freewheeling rebel Mona who spends her days wondering aimlessly through the South of France, her death in the opening scenes of this melancholy human story allowing Varda to explore and us to reflect on society’s preconceptions about women and the disenchfranchised. Despite its 1980s setting, Vagabond feels every as relevant in today’s shifting sociopolitical climate. A simple narrative but one with everlasting appeal and universal resonance.

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

Ruben Brandt, Collector (2018) **** Edinburgh Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Milorad Krstic; Animation with the voices of Ivan Kamaras, Gabriella Hamori, Zalan Makranczi; Hungary 2018, 96 min.

Milorad Krstic (66), director, designer and script-writer of his debut animation feature, won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlinale in 1995. Premiering here at Locarno Film Festival Ruben Brandt is mostly hand-drawn with some CG elements and very much resembles in style and narrative of the recent Folimage animation feature A Cat in Paris , even though the tone is much darker.

Psychotherapist Ruben Brandt (Kamaras) suffers from dreams and hallucinations: He is attacked by figures from famous paintings like Velazquez’ “Infanta Margarita” and Botticelli’s “Venus”. Nevertheless, Brandt goes on treating his four patients, through role-plays of stories such as Little Riding Hood. They are all highly skilled burglars; so is Mimi (Hamori), who puts Ruben’s plan into action; he wants to possess thirteen famous paintings, so Mimi heads first to the Paris Louvre, hotly pursued by detective Kowalski (Makranczi), who has been hired by various insurance companies, who put a 100million dollar bounty on Ruben’s head. But Brandt becomes increasingly desperate, his dreams growing ever more violent. We see little Ruben, his neurologist father making him watch cartoons, a favourite is Rusalocka in “The Little Mermaid”. The thieves embark on a world cruise to steal Van Gogh’s “Postman Roulin”, Titan’s “Venus of Urbino” and Picasso’s “Woman with Book”, visiting the Uffizzi, the Hermitage, Tate and MoMA. There are flying cats, and the pictures start to interact with Ruben. In the Pantheon, Ruben is asked to participate in a Western duel, before being whisked off in a plane to Arles in Provence. Matters become even more complicated it emerges that Kowalski is Ruben’s half-brother. Their father Gerhardt was a Stasi spy who defected to the USA and worked for the CIA on neurological research. He has just died, and Kowalski’s mother tells his son, “ I had to leave your father, so you could have your own dreams”. Ruben meanwhile is meeting the painter Renoir, and is trying to unravel his father’s life. After a wild hunt, when the six are hunted down by two oil-tankers and a helicopter, the chase ends in Tokyo, during the attempted theft of the last painting, Warhol’s “Double Elvis”.

On one level Ruben Brandt is a haunt caper, one the other a trip through European film history from ‘Caligari’, Eisenstein, Hitchcock to Wenders. Krstic is clear about his intentions: “To be haunted by ghosts or zombies in nightmares is a cliché, it’s more exciting to be haunted by Velázquez’s ‘Infanta Margarita’ or Botticelli’s ‘Venus.” And paraphrasing Godard he explains his aesthetic concept: “For me drawing is imagination, and animated film is imagination twenty-four times a second.” His attempt at an ‘audio-visual symphony’ might be strange at times, but is always fascinating, and even in its most absurd moments Ruben Brandt is utterly compelling. A unique, magical, trippy experience, a throwback to the Sixties with its echoes of Pink Panther.

EIFF 19 JUNE – 30 JUNE | ANIMATION STRAND | PREMIERED AT LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Summer 1993 (2017) Bfi player

Dir/Writer: Carla Simón | Drama | Spain, 2017 | 96′

Tears will well up within the first few minutes of this tender tale about a little orphaned Catalan girl coping with grief and uncertainty after her parents’ death. Cast your mind back to the panic and fear of losing sight of your own mother in the supermarket when you were six. And that coupled with the realisation that she’s never coming back is the feeling Simón inspires in debut that won Best First Feature award at Berlinale 2017.

Shooting at waist level the director manages to convey life from Frida’s perspective, and Laia Artigas gives a determined performance, mature for one so young. She views her new family set-up with a certain feral mistrust tempered with the anger of abandonment brought on by insecurity and steely pragmatism. Frida is not sure how to respond to her changed circumstances as she goes about her daily routine in the limpid naturalistic light of the family’s home in rural Girona. It’s only in quiet moments that she allows herself to dissolve in tears.

Life couldn’t be better with her uncle Esteve (David Verdaguer, 10,000km), aunt Marga (Bruna Cusi), and toddler cousin Anna (Paula Robles), and Simón’s quietly observant treatment takes a ‘less is more’ approach as she tells her story, for the most part without dialogue, allowing us to contemplate and revisit our own childhood through Frida’s innocent eyes.

Marga is clearly on her best behaviour, often chiding Anna as she strains to protect Frida with kid gloves. Clearly, Frida’s bereavement is not going to be as simple as we thought. Simón brings her own experiences to bear in a story that has an certain unsettling feel throughout its well-paced running time making SUMMER 1993 – although not entirely surprising – engaging and quietly memorable. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER SCREENING AS PART OF THE FOCUS ON SPAIN STRAND | EIFF 19-29 JUNE 2109

 

Korean Film Nights | Love Without Boundaries

Korean Film Nights continue with a second season for 2019 ‘Love Without Boundaries’ – a programme of titles exploring Korean cinema’s bold exploration of romantic relationships existing on society’s margins.

Love, in its many guises, has always been a central concern in cinema. From the long-established vision presented in Hollywood studio pictures to the local dialect of any national cinema, romance has always had a place on film. Outside of cinema’s mainstream however, many exemplary filmmakers have long strove to represent a range of transgressive love stories in their work, bucking the idealised view codified in typical cinema fare. Delving deep into the key works from Korean cinema that have pushed against socially-accepted views of love and relationships, our season seeks to offer a snapshot into a diverse range of people and attitudes not typically seen on screens.

Comprised of six unique works from some of Korean cinema’s boldest voices from the past two decades (plus one remarkable early feature from 1956), our season explores representations of love located on the fringes of the cinematic landscape of their time. Challenging preconceived notions of what love should be, these films push up against societal views of what’s considered ‘normal’ to depict a variety of romantic relationships and the powerful human emotions they elicit. Encompassing taboo-busting depictions of same-sex romances and other marginalised individuals, the season offers a range of perspectives on bold, challenging subjects, offering a rare fully-realised and compassionate vision of people struggling for acceptance.

In our current social climate, past norms concerning gender, sexual orientation, and race, are increasingly being questioned and we’re seeing a sustained fight for diversity and inclusion in the film industry, both behind the camera and in front of it. ‘Love Without Boundaries’ aims to show how Korean filmmakers have pushed against societal norms by giving voice to characters who are not out to change the world, but are trying to live their lives and embrace their passions as best they can.

A Girl at my Door 도희야 / Thursday 4th July, 7pm / KCCUK

Screened in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2014, July Jung’s directorial debut follows lesbian police officer Young-nam (Bae Doona, The Host) after she is stationed to a quiet provincial town following a personal scandal.

No Regret 후회하지 않아 / Thursday 11th July, 7pm / KCCUK

Regarded as the first South Korean feature from an openly gay filmmaker, No Regret follows the complicated love and working life of a young man after he heads to Seoul and finds work at a factory and as a ‘taeri’- a designated driver for wealthy patrons after a night of drinking.

The Hand of Fate 운명의 손 / Thursday 18th July, 7pm / KCCUK

This melodramatic spy-thriller utilises a visually striking, film-noir style, and acts not only as anti-communist propaganda, but also as a commentary on the shifting roles and expectations of Korean women.

Love Without Boundaries: Shorts Night / Thursday 25th July, 6:30pm / Birkbeck Cinema

Love Without Boundaries presents Queer Love: Loving Outside the Mainstream, a night of short films, revolving around a strong central theme of LGBTQ+ struggles within South Korea.

Wanee & Junah 와니와 준하 / Thursday 1st August, 7pm / KCCUK

Wanee is a disenchanted animator living in the city with her scriptwriter boyfriend Junah, but cracks begin to show in their outwardly peaceful relationship when childhood friend So-yang visits in this taboo-breaking forbidden love drama.

Oasis 오아시스 / Thursday 8th August, 7pm / KCCUK

Burning director Lee Chang-dong won Venice’s Silver Lion for his challenging portrayal of the relationship between a woman with cerebral palsy (Moon So-ri, Little Forest) and a man (Sul Kyung-gu, Memoir of a Murderer) fresh out of jail for manslaughter.

Information supplied by the Korean Cultural Centre | Screenings take place at the Korean Cultural Centre UK and Birkbeck Cinema and are free to attend. More info here

 

The Captor (2018) **

Dir: Robert Burdeau | Cast: Ethan Hawke, Noomi Rapace, Mark Strong | Drama 90′

Ethan Hawke dominates this strangely placid bank robbery drama spiked by absurdist humour and based on a real event in 1970s Stockholm that gave birth to the medical condition (Stockholm syndrome). It was back in 1973 that criminal Jan-Erik Olsson (Hawke) donned a jaunty cowboy hat and strolled cockily into the main branch of Kreditbanken. Clearly on drugs, he has a field day as the Easy Rider robber and even finds love with the unlikely bland bank clerk Bianca (Repace is a real discovery in the role).

The capable cast desperately try to enliven this curious caper eking out their thin characterisations – but to no avail. Boring and monotonous for the most part the humour almost succeeds but eventually even that starts to run out of steam. Burdeau seems happy to let Strong and Hawke run wild as the shouty criminals but there’s no real dramatic heft in this hammy heist. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 21 JUNE 2019

The Flood (2019)***

Dir: Anthony Woodley | Cast: Lena Headey, Iain Glenn, Ivanno Jeremiah | Drama 98′

Inspired by the growing issue surrounding immigration Anthony Woodley has put together a moving drama that examines both sides of this tragic human crisis.

Crowned by three tremendous central performances The Flood centres on the plight of a doe-eyed Eritrean man Haile (a stunning Jeremiah) who has had a traumatic time getting to England in the back of a lorry. The action flips back and forth between the official interrogation in stifling government offices and Haile’s eventful journey, his doe-eyed gentleness making it clear that he is certainly no criminal despite the unfortunate circumstances of his discovery by police.

Lena Headey makes for a convincing world weary immigration official wading diligently through the tears and excuses while drowning in a personal crisis of her own. “Everyone has their story” she posits sarcastically, while swigging water from a plastic bottle (that we later discover is vodka). Iain Glen plays her exhausted boss bowing under pressure to meet government targets.

Refreshingly The Flood is a cinematic, understated and sleek-looking film full of decent well-intentioned souls trying to survive rather than the hard-nosed characters we’ve come to expect in the growing ‘immigration’ genre. Helen Kingston’s script is based on Woodley’s own accounts during his time volunteering in the Calais Jungle. But one can’t help wondering too about the UK housing crisis, as one of the successful imigrées opens the front door of her new council home. MT

THE FLOOD is in UK cinemas and on demand from 21st June

Amin (2018) ***

Dir: Philippe Faucon | France | Drama | 97’

Without resorting to outrage or dour social realism to convey his indignation, respected filmmaker Philippe Faucon draws on his lifetime experiences in Africa for this visually limpid ans gently humanist story of a Senegalese immigrant grafting to provide for his family back home, where the sun shines all year but life is as tough. The difference is that in France he can earn much more money, despite the increasing problems of unemployment, but his marriage starts to suffer.

AMIN is a watchable if rather predictable drama that joins other similar eye-opening interracial romances such as Laurent Cantet’s Vers Le Sud and Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise: Love in illustrating the plight of those with restrained financial or emotional circumstances and how this weakens their moral resolve and as they reach out to those who share their emotional pain from the other of the social or geographical divide.

Amin does his best to succeed with dignity and respect for his fellows in the noisy hostel they share on the outskirts of the big city. He is a proud and decent father of three but is growing increasingly distant from his wife who pressures him to bring the family to France. Faucon spends over half of the film slowly building a poignant picture of emotional and social strife for immigrant newcomers to France. Almost all of them have been short-changed by the system despite working hard to build up the country. Amin soon meets Emanuelle Devos’ single mother while working with some other builders to renovate her house. She has fallen out with her husband and has a little girl to support (Fantine Harduin from last year’s Happy End). The denouement is fairly formulaic but AMIN is a beautifully crafted drama that captures the zeitgeist in a charming and human way.

NOW ON GENERAL 21 JUNE 2019 | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT  CANNES 2018

 

 

Mari (2018) **

Dir.: Georgia Parris; Cast: Bobbi Jene Smith, Phoebe Nicholas, Madeleine Worrall, Peter Singh, Paddy Glynn; UK 2018, 94 min.

In her fraught and morose debut drama, writer and director Georgia Parris explores a woman’s identity crisis through the medium of modern dance.

We first meet Charlotte (Smith) in rehearsals for a new dance production with the rest of the troupe. She then sets off to Dorset to join her family which consists of mother Margot (Nicholas); her sister Lauren (Worrall) and husband Rohan (Singh). While Charlotte is coming to terms with an unplanned pregnancy, Margot had just had a miscarriage. But while Rohan tries to be the peacemaker between the two women, Lauren criticises Charlotte’s obsession with her dancing career: “When does Granny have to die, to fit in with your plans?” Clearly he has sympathy for Charlotte to the chagrin of his grieving wife. Meanwhile Mari (Glynn) is seen gradually slipping away in the local hospital.

Parris relies too heavily on the overbearing sullen atmosphere in this drama devoid of any drama. It is all well and good to do away with a narrative, but it has to be replaced by something – not just a brooding silence and darkened, sombre rooms. The dancing sequences are delightful – but Mari has no dramatic arc or any significant character development  – even Charlotte’s pregnancy is couched in a moody cocktail of indifference. 

DoP Adam Scarth echoes the general feeling of misery in the semi-darkness with medium shots, his images are more or less unremarkable. Maxine Doyle’s choreography  instills a much needed passion and originality highlighted by the atmospheric original score. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 21 JUNE 2019    

Romeo and Juliet (1968) **** Tribute to Franco Zeffirelli

Director: Franco Zeffirelli  Screenplay: Franco Brusati, Masolino D’Amico | Cast: Olivia Hussey, Leonard Whiting, John McEnery, Milo O’Shea, Pat Heywood, Robert Stephens, Michael York, Bruce Robinson

138min  | Romantic Drama | Italy

Franco Zeffirelli’s ROMEO AND JULIET captures the innocent rapture of teenage love when hormones spill over to create an intoxicating cocktail of lust and longing. Full of life and perfectly cast, newcomers Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey were absolutely exquisite as the star-struck pair, evoking a sweetly innocent sexuality that has never been seen again in cinema history. Their beautifully spoken prose and mesmerising chemistry completes this idealistic yet achingly romantic depiction of tragic love between Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, who came from different warring families.

And although D’Amico and Brusati’s screenplay dumbs things down in the classic speeches, each character is superbly cast: Milo O’Shea as the kindly indulgent yet dignified Friar Laurence; John McEnergy’s fiesty Mercutio, and Pat Heywood’s jovial Nurse all make their memorable mark and are still fresh and familiar nearly 50 years later, in this sparkling restoration. Zeffirelli makes good use of the original settings of the play in the medieval ‘struscio’ of Perugia, Viterbo, Siena and the Palazzo Borghese in Rome, and where Pasqualino De Santis’ stunning set pieces luxuriate in an around the rolling countryside of Gubbio (Umbria) and rural Siena (Tuscany), winning him an Oscar for cinematography. Danilo Donati won another for his richly beautiful costumes, and also a Bafta.

Nino Rota’s romantic score “What is Youth” will also flood back to the memories of those who first saw it in the late ’60s or ’70s. He made his name in The Leopard and would go on to write music for The Godfather, Part I and II. The script plays up the relationship between friends Mercutio and Romeo. And Robert Stephens is suave and wise as the Prince of Verona. Romeo and Juliet’s bedroom scenes are quite raunchy in a sensual way – Hussey was almost 16 and Whiting 17 – but they show their tenderness when they break down in tears in the touching final scenes and win Golden Globes for Most Promising Newcomers. MT

A BRAND NEW 4K RESTORATION is now available |  PART OF THE SHAKESPEARE LIVES SEASON: CELEBRATING THE WORKS OF THE BARD over 400 YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH.

 

 

La Ronde (1950)

 

Dir: Max Ophüls | Arthur Schnitzler | Cast: Anton Walbrook, Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Simone Simon, Daniel Gelin, Danielle Darieux, Fernand Gravey | France, Drama 93′

Max Ophüls (1902-1957) creates an avant-garde merry-go-round full of subtle sexual vignettes based on Arthur Schnitzler’s play from 1920. Using the same technique and narrative structure as in Lola Montez (1955), this delicately dreamlike pot pourri of romantic rendezvous takes place in Vienna in the last decade of the 19th century and is set to a melodious score by Oscar Strauss.

Led on by the Master of Ceremonies (Anton Walbrook), talking directly into the camera, he changes the proceedings symbolically, altering the outcome of the encounters – not unlike the ringmaster of the circus in Lola Montez.

Leocadie (Signoret) and the soldier Franz (Reggiani) enjoy a romantic interlude under a bridge. This sets off a carousel of rather casual affairs in which the lovers treat the person they come across like a runner in a relay race. First of all, Simone Simon (Marie) is seduced by her employer (Daniel Gelin), and so the affairs continue until the Count (Philipe) closes the circle, falling for Marie.

There are echoes of von Sternbergs’s romantic comedies, particularly Shanghai Gesture, that played out like a roulette wheel. Both directors make use of irony and wit as well as well as farcical moments. The female characters are often victims of male society, they are courtesans or bourgeois women who have failed to fit in with the hypocritical standards of their class. The male characters strut around like peacocks in their dandy-like attire, and soldiers in highly decorative uniforms. Songs and music are key elements in the work of both directors, driving the narrative forward, as here with Strauss, the “Waltz King”.

The highly fluid camerawork of Christian Matras (Lola Montez, Grand Illusion) is crucial in maintaining the flirty lightness of touch in compositions which roll along in an elliptical scroll, the camera reflecting the changing thoughts of the characters.

La Ronde is a nostalgic look back to a world which had been destroyed by the social changes of the First World War. Ophüls’ films yearn to re-create this lost world of gentility, reflecting moral codes and social mores that no longer apply. AS

SCREENING AS PART OF SAVE CURZON MAYFAIR

Diego Maradona (2019) ****

Asif Kapadia | Doc, UK 120′

Asif Kapadia completes his trilogy about child geniuses and how they handle fame with this portrait of star who is still very much alive. The trio started with Senna (2010) that depicted the life and death of the Brazilian motor-racing champion. His biopic Amy went on to win an Oscar and became the highest grossing British documentary after its Cannes premiere in 2015, and was even more popular than his debut doc. Himself a football fanatic Kapadia is clearly fascinated by the Argentine soccer legend’s charisma, low cunning and leadership, but mostly by his sheer ability to bounce back from the lows in his career: “He was always the little guy fighting against the system, and he was willing to do anything to use all of his cunning and intelligence to win.” This all footage foray blends over 500 hours of grainy media coverage with home video material to transform Maradona’s story into an adrenaline fuelled two hours that sees the cheeky mummy’s boy from a poor barrio in Buenos Aires transformed into a charismatic winner whose undiluted hubris was bound to send him Icarus-style on a meteoric mission to the sun. Crucially Kapadia’s film is about both sides of the megastar’s personality: the affectionate insecure slumdog and the epic hero who would finally crash to earth. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019

Sometimes Always Never (2018) ****

Dir: Carl Hunter | Writer: Frank Cottrell Boyce | Cast: Bill Nighy, Jenny Agutter, Sam Riley, Tim McInnerny, Alice Lowe | UK Comedy Drama | 97′

Bill Nighy, Sam Riley and Jenny Agutter star in this stylishly amusing comedy-drama that explores love, loss and communication – or the lack of it – for one English family. The title refers to the tailors’ code to buttoning a suit jacket.

Nighy is terrific as Alan, a retired but sharply suited Merseyside tailor who still enjoys a game of scrabble and his nighttime strolls, always hoping to bump into his son who disappeared years ago. Grief has seen Alan retreat into the comfort of lexicography, and this obsession for scrabble enables him to showcase his broad knowledge of words in a killer ability to play a world-class game. Yet beneath Alan’s dapper exterior and  nonchalance lies a deep sadness and disillusionment, and a longing for the son he will never forget, and who left in a huff after a scrabble contretemps erupted over the word “Zo”.

A gentle rain falls as we first meet Alan on the beach in Crosby where he joins his other son Peter (Sam Riley) for one of their regular visits to identify an unclaimed body. Deciding to make a night of it, they head to a nearby hotel where they come across another scrabble-loving couple in the shape of Agutter and McInnerny in a scene that’s a real pleasure to watch, performed with consummate ease, and yet riven with subtle psychological insight and deadpan humour.

Sam Riley gives a stunning turn as the dejected ‘also ran’ Peter, who lives contentedly with his pleasant wife Sue (a superb Alice Lowe) and their secretive son Jack (Louis Healy). But it’s Alan’s dedication to scrabble that forms the nub of the narrative and the dramatic touchstone that drives the plot forward. Staying at Peter’s house after the morgue visit Alan gets the chance to share some local family history: “your aunt was a part-time, freelance coal miner”, he also comes across an online Scrabble opponent who appears to fit the profile of his missing son, sending Alan into a fierce all-nighter trying to track down the mystery internet player.

Scrabble is the cement that holds this family together in this poignant but enjoyably petillant paean to communication. Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s intelligent script is fraught with witty and wise dialogue and is stylishly directed by cinematographer Carl Hunter who brings artistic flair to the idiosyncratic domestic interiors and the widescreen images that reflect the loveliness of the luminous Lancashire landscapes. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE.

The Hummingbird Project (2018) Mubi

Dir: Kim Nguyen | Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Skarsgard, Salma Hayek, Michael Mando, Sarah Goldberg | Tech thriller | US 111′

In Kim Nguyen’s ambitious financial thriller Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard are New York tech wizards working for Salma Hayek’s Stock Exchange trading magnate.

Meanwhile the two cousins have a secret money-making plan of their own. It involves the construction of a high speed fiber-optic cable that allows information to travel in a nanosecond (the beat of a hummingbird’s wing) so stockbrokers can beat their competitors hands down.

Although it sounds rather highfaluting, this is a slick and intelligent film that explores the humanity in a high octane premise, even finding humour in those dark nights of the soul. Salma Hayek is Eva Torres, a wacky but believable City whizz babe with roots as dark as Kunta Kinti. Her ironic approach to her uptight character is one of the highlights here along with. Jesse Eisenberg whose suave sales patter barely hides an existential angst of his own and in his element as a man under pressure, fronting up a dicey operation with considerable aplomb while everything around him  is in doubt. Meanwhile Anton (Alexander Skarsgard) is the hypochondriac nerd helping him to pull off the scheme with conviction — and even though we know the project is outlandish – it very much buys into the zeitgeist. There’s a angsty atmospheric score by Yves Gourmeur that primps the tension and then mollifies it in all the right places.

Half way into the story, Vincent decides they should both resign from Torres’ employ and focus on their own project, finding investors for their new-fangled cable, and trousering the profits. But this is easier said than done, and Vincent’s tip-top negotiating skills are soon compromised by his deteriorating health.

The seemingly unfeasible project involves drilling a line horizontally under private land, a logistical nightmare that involves endless red tape and deep pockets on the financial front. Vincent schmoozes the home-owners, contractors and drillers, while Anton disappears into the world of computer coding, hilariously oblivious of his wife’s increasingly histrionic  demands. Clearly on the spectrum, Anton is mesmerised by his work,  Skarsgard fashions a fascinating portrait of emotional detachment that almost borders on autism.

Clearly Hummingbird has issues quite apart from its outlandish premise and tonal flaws, but this is an engrossing study of ambition, perseverance and the human desire to make one’s mark, however challenging, or unfeasible. Nguyen manages to humanise the much maligned world of finance and technology by deconstructing those struggling with their demons both physical and mental. He does so with a quirky vein of humour making The Hummingbird Project an enjoyable and original watch. MT

 

Mother (2019) **** Sheffield Doc Festival 2019

Dir.: Kristof Bilsen; Doc with Chutimon Sonsirichai (Pomm), Elisabeth Röhmer, Maya Gloor, Walter Gloor; Belgium 2019, 82 min.

People are living longer but not always enjoying a healthy or happy old age in Western Europe. Kristof Bilsen tackles the alarming truths behind our care home crisis in his heart-breaking documentary that sees a Swiss family sending their mother across the world to be looked after by strangers in her final years.  

But before you jump to condemn them, just consider this. Thai women come to the UK in their droves every year to enjoy the benefits of our strong economy that allows them to make a living by offering their unique talents as masseuses and alternative health professionals. Their kids are left with their  extended families and see their mothers only one or twice a year in some cases. Meanwhile UK care homes charge extortionate amounts of money just for bed and board (at BUPA you pay a basic £100,o00 per annum in central London), while bosses cream off the profits and pay their care staff a pittance. These substandard employees are sometimes unable to communicate with residents due to their poor English skills, and often have little aptitude or interest in their badly paid jobs. It’s a critical situation that seems to indicate that this Swiss family could be doing their mother a favour, and even saving money into the bargain.

In Thailand, Pomm looks after Alzheimers patients from German-speaking countries in the Baan Kamlangchay hospice near Chiang-Mai. Her own three children are looked after by her husband and extended family. She too is badly paid but infinitely more compassionate, working an eight hour shift, with another job to make ends meet, her relationship with her husband is strained.

In this tranquil sanctuary, Elisabeth Röhmer is in the last stages of Alzheimers, but Pomm remembers when she loved to do the crossword and helped the carers learn English. After Elisabeth’s death, Pomm will be responsible for Maya, a mother of three from Zofingen in Switzerland. Her husband Walter and three daughters Joyce, Sara and Tanya are struggling to find suitable care for grandma Maya, so the clinic in Thailand seems the best solution. ”It would be selfish to keep her here so we could see her all the time. She gets much better care in Thailand”. And this true because Maya, like Elisabeth before her, will have three carers working round the clock.

Once she arrives with her family in Thailand Maya takes time to settle down in her new environment, awoken by exotic birdsong on her first morning. She is clearly not as happy about the move as the Gloor family would have us believe as they share their last Christmas together far from home. On a boat trip, they discuss how to say goodbye to Maya. Super 8 mm family films show a younger Maya in happier times. Back home in Switzerland, the Gloors Skype Maya who is still at odds with their departure but adapting to her new circumstances.

So is there such a difference between East and West? Clearly in the Far East there is far more respect for adults, their wisdom and experience is highly valued both by the family and in society as a whole. This extends to the process of dying as we saw in Locarno winner MRS FANG. It seems like a double whammy when elderly members of the family lose their dignity and need our care and patience while they remain critical, controlling and difficult, as in the case with dread diseases such as Alzheimers. Their dehumanisation process is disorientating, their loss of dignity strangely infantalises them in the eyes of those who once looked up to them and respected their seniority. We expect to look after our kids, but not our parents. And England has now become a child-centric culture, where children have become objects of desire, admired and put on a pedestal, as we saw recently in the case of Swedish teen, Greta Thunberg.

Bilsen remains objective in his fascinating and thought-provoking film,. Pomm reflecting that her job has shown her the difference between rich and poor. Really? Maya has three care givers because the Swiss family can afford it, yet the carers in both countries are badly paid. The difference is that over here in the UK the care is poor even when you throw money at it; clearly compassion cannot be bought. Pomm wonders (as we all do) what will happen to her if she becomes a victim of Alzheimers. Who will care for her? All over the world we are relying on others to care for our loved ones because we are too busy looking after ourselves.

THE WORLD PREMIER OF MOTHER SCREENS AT SHEFFIELD DOCFEST 9 JUNE 2019 

Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 – New Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) is taking place between 19th and 30th June. This year the Festival will screen around 121 new features, including 18 feature film World Premieres from across the globe.

This year the focus is Spain and there will be a particular emphasis on genre films from women directors from around the world, ranging from gothic romance and Western chills through to science fiction and old-fashioned horror. All this set alongside a tribute to French filmmaker Agnès Varda, a woman who has inspired generations of directors.

There will be guests including one of Britain’s most successful directors, Danny Boyle, award-winning actor and producer Jack Lowden, British documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield and Scottish writer, director and actor Pollyanna McIntosh who also brings her latest film, Darlin’ to this year’s EIFF, and director, actor, writer and producer Icíar Bollaín. 

The festival will screen the world premiere of Adrian Noble’s Mrs Lowry & Son, starring Timothy Spall as the iconic painter L S Lowry, and Vanessa Redgrave. The Black Forest described as a ‘love letter to Europe’ from writer-director Ruth Platt; and coming-of-age supernatural love story Carmilla from director Emily Harris.

The EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES strand features: Elfar Adalsteins’ End of Sentence where a bickering father and son from America take a road trip in Ireland; The Emperor of Paris starring Vincent Cassel will receive its UK Premiere at the Festival alongside Rudolph Herzog’s amusing How to Fake a War starring Katherine Parkinson and Aniara, an epic science-fiction drama about a passenger spaceship lost in the void, as well as titles including Barbara Vekarić’s Aleksi from Croatia; Susanne Heinrich’s Aren’t You Happy? from Germany and Swiss psychological drama Cronofobia. Audiences can also look forward to the return of France’s favourite Gaul in Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion.

This year’s WORLD PERSPECTIVES strand offers audiences an exciting and challenging array of new works by talented filmmakers from around the world. Highlights include: the World Premieres of Astronaut, starring Richard Dreyfuss as a lonely widower who dreams of a trip to space and Rodrigo Guerrero’s Venezia. Australian cinema features prominently this year with the acclaimed Acute Misfortune, a striking, brilliant and unconventional portrait of one of Australia’s most acclaimed and idiosyncratic painters, Adam Cullen; Other highlights include two South Korean action-adventure masterclasses in the form of Unstoppable and box office smash Extreme Job.

This year’s DOCUMENTARIES programme reflects the ability of documentary film to amaze, inspire, challenge, provoke and fascinate audiences, offering them the unique chance to travel the world and see strange and unusual sights. Strand highlights include:Memory: The Origins of Alien, a fascinating documentary about the making of Alien from the very beginning; This Changes Everything which examines the problems faced by women filmmakers and features interviews with Hollywood greats including Geena Davis, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Taraji P. Henson, Reese Witherspoon and Cate Blanchett; Loopers: The Caddie’s Long Walk narrated by former caddie Bill Murray and Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, from Nick Broomfield, giving audiences an insight into Leonard Cohen’s love affair with Marianne Ihlen. 

This year’s retrospective strand entitled ONCE UPON A TIME IN SPAIN, will explore Spain’s rich cinematic history through three strands: A Retrospective Celebration of Modern Spanish Cinema; A Retrospective Selection of Cult Spanish Cinema and an in-depth celebration of the work of legendary Spanish writer, actor and filmmaker, Icíar Bollaín. Designed to begin where the retrospective ends, FOCUS ON SPAIN features a selection of brand new Spanish cinema by some of the country’s most promising directors. Highlights include: Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles from Salvador Simó, an accomplished and fitting homage to the great master of surrealist cinema; the directorial debut from Nicolás Pacheco Cages and gripping sci-fi thriller h0us3 from Manolo Munguía, inspired by the mysterious ‘insurance files’ famously employed by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. 

The Festival will screen a number of films by the late great Agnès Varda across a retrospective strand entitled THE FEATURES OF AGNÈS and Varda by Agnès, her final film which will be introduced by Honorary Patron Mark Cousins.

Audiences can look forward to a whistle-stop tour of the latest ideas and techniques being explored in the world of animated film in the International Animation selection, as part of the Festival’s annual dedicated ANIMATION strand, as well as a screening of an anthology of anime shorts from the Japanese Studio Ponoc – the anticipated successor to Studio Ghibli – in association with Scotland Loves Anime.

If the weather holds there will be a free open-air cinema event, Film Fest in the City with Edinburgh Live, at St Andrew Square Garden, running from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th June 2019.

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 19-30 JUNE 2019 

 

We The Animals (2018) ****

Dir.: Jeremiah Zagar; Cast: Evan Rosado, Isaiah Kristian, Josiah Gabriel, Sheila Vand, Paul Cashillo; USA 2018, 93 min.

Jeremiah Zagar’s debut feature is a dreamlike portrait of the artist as a (very) young man, and a total repudiation of macho behaviour. Shot brilliantly on 16mm by DoP Zak Mulligan, We The Animals is a unique undertaking.

Based on a novel by Justin Torres, this is a wild ride of sexual awakening told from the perspective of nine-year old Jonah (Rosado) the youngest of three brothers who live with their parents in a dilapidated house in rural New York. Their Mum (Vand) a white woman from Brooklyn, who works at a bottling plant and her husband (Cashillo), a Puerto Rican security guard, are either fighting or fucking passionately, so the three boys are left to themselves; the two older ones, Manny (Kristian) and Joel (Gabriel) looking out for their little brother. A lakeside incident sets the tone: Dad, all macho bravado, throws Jonah into the water – and he is lucky to survive. His furious mother is soon the victim of more violence from her husband. After that, the father disappears only to re-appear suddenly, wanting to be part of the family, like nothing has happened. Mum asks Jonah “to stay my little boy” – no wonder, because her older sons copy their dad’s obstreperous  behaviour. As a form of escapism, Jonah starts sketching, under the bed at night. After his drawings are discovered, he has to make a choice.

The human side of the outside world takes a back seat to the adventures in the forest, but the neighbour’s emotionally immature son makes a dramatic impact on the three siblings with his amateur porn videos, one of which features a homosexual act – and something in Jonah stirs.

Whilst the adult’s relationship is too often clichéd, the children’s games are full of magic and poetry. Jonah’s self-discovery comes in leaps and bounds, and the languid images are a perfect foil for it. The crude drawings and illustrations by Mark Samsonovich are somehow fitting as a “Contra-Point” to the overall dreamlike mood. Cruelty and imagination live cheek by jowl, and Jonah’s inner life is as volatile as his parent’s relationship. We the Animals is freewheeling and genre-less, an innovation in itself, like Jonah’s coming of age in a world of permanent contradictions, using art for self-determination. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE 2019 | ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE COURTESY OF EUREKA from 14 JUNE 2019    

   

The Kid (2019) *** Home Ent release

Dir: Vincent D’Onofrio | Wri: Andrew Lanham | Cast: Ethan Hawke, Leila George, Dane DeHaan, Jake Shur | Western US 100′

Vincent D’Onofrio’s first foray behind the camera is a good-looking Western that keeps the camp fires burning with some top tier performances and a contemporary look. The Western genre is still popular, the classics packing some punches with their tales of macho males and simmering molls created by the heavyweights John Ford, Sam Peckinpah and Walter Hill. Some of themes seem outdated and politically incorrect in today’s modern world, but perhaps that’s why they still strike a cord with some nostalgic audiences. The only modern ones that shake a stick at the cult classics are Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), Kristian Levring’s The Salvation (2014) and John Mclean’s Slow West (2015).

The Kid reworks the story of a young boy called Rio (newcomer Jake Schur) who witnesses Billy the Kid’s encounter with Sheriff Pat Garrett – Dane DeHaan and Ethan Hawke playing the respective roles with skilful aplomb. After an unnecessary voiceover introduction we see Rio (Jake Schur) killing his father to prevent him doing for his mother, then scarpering in the direction of Santa Fe with his older sister Sara (Leila George) to avoid reprisals. The pair get holed up on the way in an abandoned house with the charismatic Billy, in a terrific turn by DeHaan, Hawke allowing him all the glory and holding back with a rather stylish performance. Andrew Lanham plays fast and loose with the Garrett/Bonney story and the whole thing looks rather fresh with a cinema vérité twist to proceedings, while still maintaining its traditional tropes. It’s decent but not memorable, if Westerns are your thing. MT

NOW ON RELEASE | DVD, BLURAY AND DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

https://youtu.be/LNUlXRp0Ax0

Last Summer (2018) ***

Dir: Jon Jones | Richard Harrington, Nia Roberts, Robert Wilfort and Steffan Rhodri | UK 97′                                          

Four boys are looking forward to their summer holidays in the Welsh valleys when the adult world intervenes to spoil their fun. Instead of playing and discovering the joys of barn owls and and a sheep dog Rex, they are faced with the police and the social services as reality strikes. Catapulted into the adult world, they decide to take matters into their own hands – and who wouldn’t with a mother like Davy’s, freaking the boy out with the threat of some impending fate. Getting the melodramatic bits over early, means this well-paced drama can then unfold gradually, from the perspective of the boys.

Set during the 1970s in the stunning countryside of South Wales, and chockfull of authentic ’70s detail (right down to the anaglypta wallpaper), Last Summer is certainly  powerful emotional coming of age drama exploring the nature of growing up in a small rural community. There’s an appealing purity and an innocence to it making a refreshing change from the hardbitten sweary slices of social realism we’ve grown to expect from British filmmakers nowadays. It also introduces an outstanding cast of young Welsh actors including Gruffydd Weston, Rowan Jones and Christopher Benning with an astonishing performance from Noa Thomas as Davy. Best known for his TV fare such as Cold Feet and Northanger Abbey, this is Jones’ feature debut and he really pulls it off. The cast includes Richard Harrington (Hinterland), Steffan Rhodri (Gavin and Stacey) Robert Wilfort (Peterloo, Wolf Hall) and Nia Roberts (Keeping Faith, Rillington Place, Hidden).

ON RELEASE FROM 7 JUNE 2019

Dirty God (2019) **

Dir: Sacha Polak | Wri: Susie Farrell | Cast: Vicky Knights, Eliza Brady-Girard, Rebecca Stone, Dana Marineci | Drama, 114′

Random acid attacks reflect the expression of generalised angst and have been recorded since the late 19th century throughout European cities. DIRTY GOD, the first English language feature by Dutch director/co-writer Sacha Polak (Hemer), is daring and questionable in equal parts.

Told uncompromisingly in a style that somehow blurs the boundaries between openness and voyeurism, it incorporates the looks-obsessed instagram polemic that sees a London based woman disfigured by chemicals. Fiesty first timer Vicky Knight plays Jade, the woman in question. Her looks prior to the attack are the main currency for her existence as a young young mother with limited education and opportunities. So predictably Jade (Knight) seeks solace in the precarious world of online liaisons where she soon finds the passion and connection she’s craved for so long. But there is a downside to these internet meetings and her personal life soon starts its downhill progression, as family life and friendships start to be affected by her change of circumstances.

We first see parts of Jade on the day she is released from the hospital in London. Her face and upper body scarred, the camera does not leave any doubts as to the extent of her injuries, and she returns to the East London council estate where her mother Lisa (Kelly) awaits her with her little daughter Rea (Brady- Girard), the latter screaming in fear when her mother tries to cuddle her. Jade’s best friend Shami (Stone) is now with Jade’s ex, Naz (Robinson), yet the relationship between the Jade and Naz stays unresolved. Jade takes to chat rooms, leaving her face in the dark. To get money for a ‘miracle’ operation in Morocco, she works as a telemarketer, having to put up with some nasty comments about her appearance. As we all knew, the Morocco ad was a con, and we follow every step of Jade’s trip to Africa – used by Polak to get to a constructed ending.

DoP Ruben Impens is unsparing, relentlessly sharing every detail.  And alhough some of the dream sequences are clumsy, we have to admire newcomer Vicky Knight who suffered scars from burning when she was a child, and acts with great passion. But overall this an uncomfortable film to watch: when does honesty becomes an embarrassment? After all, Knight is a real victim, but a feature film is still a work of fiction. It is not easy to decide where to come down in this argument. At best, the ambiguity is open to interpretation, with the audience making up their minds. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7 JUNE 2019 NATIONWIDE.

Halston (2019) London Fashion Week

Dir/Wri: Frederic Tcheng | With: Tavi Gevinson, Liza Minnelli, Marisa Berenson, Joel Schumacher, Pat Cleveland, Bob Calacello, Carl Epstein, Lesley Frowick, Sassy Johnson, Naeem Khan, John David Ridge | US Doc, 120′

Well known for his insightful portraits of the fashion world: Dior and I (2014); Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011), which he co-directed; and for Valentino: The Last Emperor, (2008), which he co-produced, Tcheng gets top marks for this exposé on Roy Halston Frowick the all American boy from De Moines, Iowa who put America in the frame with his flare for flattering the female form.

After the boxy styles and artificial fabrics of the Sixties, Halston’s voluptuous dresses enveloped and caressed curves and cleavages as they “danced around you” according to Liza Minelli, one of his biggest advocates and a firm friend. All this was in part thanks to his master tailor Gino Balsamo whose clever crafting created single-seam clothes that ‘freed the female body” and swirled and seduced due to the unique simplicity of their genius bias-cut.

Apart from its length the only slight criticism of this biopic is the gimmicky structure that sees actor Tavi Gevinson as an innocent bystander, sleuthing through the Halston company archives and VHS tapes to needlessly sex up the sinister nature of Halston’s final fall from grace. It’s a device that feels tacky and counterintuitive to the sophisticated slimline slinkiness of the designer’s raison d’être.

Born during the Depression in 1932, Halston was an ordinary gay man who instinctively knew how to re-invent himself as a suave mover and shaker. Starting out in the 60s as a milliner to Bergdorf Goodman famous clients (Jackie Onassis wore his pillbox hat), he rapidly moved on to create his own brand through celebrity endorsement in New York’s 70s and 80s. Sashaying onto the dance floor of Studio 54 with his beautiful entourage, known as the Halsonettes, he moved on with movie stars, and invented “hot pants”. Andy Warhol and Elizabeth Taylor were amongst his friends and clients. He also dressed the American athletes at the ’76 Olympics, the girl scout leaders, the NYPD and Avis car rental staff, as well as the Martha Graham dance troupe.

His all American freeform fashion parade at Paris’ Palace of Versailles in 1973 featured black American models and set the night alight with a fizzing floor show, despite French domination of the event. China was the next step and we sample previously unseen footage from NBC visiting a silk factory where workers got a chance to try on creations made from their own fabrics.

But Halston was to grow too big for his own boots. Soon he moved offices to the glamorous mirrored interiors of New York’s Olympic Tower. His keenness to develop the brand saw high signing a multi-million dollar deal with conglomerate Norton Simon. This took away his rights to his designs and name, while offering him continued creative control, allowing him to jump into bed with the likes of Max Factor, facilitating the launch of his first fragrance, Halston, with a bottle designed by longterm collaborator Elsa Peretti. The brand was soon on sheets, towels, even leather goods. But gradually new bosses with scant appreciation of fashion or design would take over, and one by the name of Jacob Epstein would be his nemesis.

Halston launched a worthy endeavour to dress mainstream America through a deal with JCPenney (a sort of US Marks & Spencer). Termed “From class to mass” the venture focused on volume rather than artistry, and did not go down with well with Bergdorf Goodman, or his high-net-worth clientele, many of whom cancelled orders.

By this time Halston’s lavish lifestyle was also becoming financially exhausting, along with his on-off Venezuelan lover Victor Hugo, who had arrived on the scene purely for his looks (“One night Halston dialed a dick”) and then became involved in the business, upsetting several members of his team. The final segment sees Halston re-connecting with his family and employing his niece, Lesley Frowick, who emotes on his HIV/AIDS demise rather too copiously.

Halston works best as a chronicle of his fashion design artistry with its eye-catching footage and fascinating characters of the era. The business side of things often feels over-laboured and detailed. But it’s still an entertaining biopic to watch. Clearly Halston was a force to be reckoned with, totally redefining the fashion world, and bringing America to the forefront with his fabulous legacy. MT

ON RELEASE On various platforms including Dogwoof.com

 

 

 

 

When a Stranger Calls (1979) **** Blu-ray release

Dir: Fred Walton | Wri: Steve Feke | Cast: Carol Cane, Steve Beckley, Rachel Roberts, Charles Durning, Colleen Dewhurst | Thriller | US, 1979 | 97′

A sinister soundtrack, the camera playing on ordinary objects in a shadowy sitting room, a neurotic woman, and our own pavlovian response to a ringing phone all coalesce to inspire terror in WHEN A STRANGER CALLS. Fred Walton’s astute psychological thriller starts with a 20-minute scene that gradually develops into something altogether more horrific and a showcase showdown. The second act explores the criminal mind through two scary looking specialists in the shape of Rachel Roberts’ Dr Monk, who has let the killer escape from her mental asylum, and Charles Durning’s hard-eyed police investigator who has himself become unhinged in his determination to catch up with the felon. Infact, the entire cast of this urban thriller look pretty unsavoury – but Tony Beckley tops the bill as the psychopathic murderer who terrorises a lonely babysitter, savagely rips apart her two charges with his bare hands and then returns to menace her again, seven years later with the chilling phrase “have you checked the children?”.

After Beckley (the killer) has done time, he escapes the asylum and fetches up on the streets of Downtown Los Angeles where he chats up a confident woman (Colleen Dewhurst) in a bar, and is later duffed up by another barfly – he really strikes an unnerving chord in the scenes that follow. As much a portrait of social alienation and emotional disintegration in the seamier side of Los Angeles, as a spine-chilling thriller, this auteurish arthouse shocker is one of the best, and certainly the most atmospheric. Beckley brings out the pitiful humanity of his character who is both vulnerable and deeply hateful. It’s an astonishing performance and his last. He died six months after the film was released. MT 

Along with its recently released WHEN A STRANGER CALLS/WHEN A STRANGER CALLS BACK: LIMITED EDITION and the rarely seen, short THE SITTER. Brand new interviews; a 40-page perfect bound booklet; Original Soundtrack CD; reversible poster featuring new and original artwork; reversible sleeve featuring new and original artwork | 1 July 2019 |

 

The Last Tree (2019) *** Sundance London 2019

Dir.: Shola Amoo; Cast: Sam Adewunmi, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Denise Black, Tai Golding, Nicholas Pinnock, DemmyLadipo; UK 2019, 100 min.

Writer/director Shola Amoo explores a conflicted teenager at odds with his environment in modern Britain, with his roots in Nigeria.

We meet Femi (Tai Golding) as a happy eleven-year old in rural Lincolnshire where he runs wild with his white school friends during the day, before returning to loving foster Mum Mary (Black) in a middle class area. But Femi is suddenly uprooted when his birth mother Yinka (Ikumelo) demands his return to her tiny flat in one of many high-rise blocks in South-London. Femi is stranded: on the phone he calls Mary ‘Nan’, but refuses to admit how much he is alienated by the black ghetto, and his authoritarian Mum. She punishes him physically, telling him “I did not raise you, to be rude”. To which Femi answers “You did not raise me”.

Sixteen-year old Femi (Adewunmi) has nothing but his memories, but he makes up for it by presenting himself as a proud African. Meanwhile, many of his mates are much more assimilated, and bully him. For a short while, he fells under the spell of the local mini-gangster Mace (Ladipo), but an upright teacher helps him to free himself from the clutches of petty crime. A romantic interlude just goes to enforce his alienation. But this all changes in the third act when his mother introduces him to his birth father in Nigeria.  A wealthy Christian, he rejected Yinka and his son because she believed in the old mysticism of the country and “was not ready to submit like a Christian woman.”

The structure of the feature underlines Femi’s conflict. There is only one scene when past and present interact positively and this involves his foster mother Mary. DoP Stil Williams uses a peachy pastel palette for the Lincolnshire scenes, than switches to hyper-realism for the South London interlude, before prime colours show his re-awakening in Nigeria.

THE LAST TREE (the title remains opaque) has not the narrative strength of Sally El Hosaini’s My Brother, the Devil, but relies on emotional power. Femi is black, African and disenfranchised British, but at the same time rejected on all three levels. He is not able to connect his childhood memories with anything in his adult life, and the question remains if he will find acceptance in Nigeria, or if the fragmentation will continue. Amoo’s feature has certainly structural fault lines, but he makes up partly for it with a radical passionate approach, showing a picture of unreconciled loneliness. AS

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL LONDON | 30 MAY – 2 JUNE 2019

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) ***

Dir.: Michael Dougherty; Cast: Kyle Chandler, Vera Famiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Ken Watanabe; USA 2019, 132 min.

Godzilla goes out for walkies for the 35th outing for Godzilla since Japanese director Ishiro Honda created the dinosaur’s debut feature in 1954. Nowadays, Godzilla doesn’t only trample all over global cities, but has morphed into humankind’s helper – luckily still destroying everything in sight.

Michael Dougherty (Krampus) works hard with his co-writers Shields and Borenstein to find a storyline that joins up the intervals between Godzilla’s fights with less human-friendly titans, like the three-headed King Gidorah, but his family-friendly plot is dwarfed by the mammoth action set pieces.

Doctors Mark (Chandler) and Emma Russell (Famiga) have co-invented the Orca sonar device, which enables them (and their employer Monarch, a worldwide technology giant), to synthesize the cries of various titans, so that they can communicate with them. Their teenage daughter Madison (Brown), complains about their parents, still hankering after her older brother, who died in some titan related accident. Her parents are divorced and Madison lives with her mother, a firm believer that the titans should “clean up the world”, so that the planet can heal itself – never mind its denizens, who are after all responsible for the mess!.

This sounds like Thanos from the Avenger, but eco-terrorist Alan Jonah (Dance), wants the same, and it is not quite clear why he has to kidnap mother and daughter. Anyhow, the latter escapes, and via the sound-system of Fenway Park Baseball Stadium in Boston, communicates on her own with the titans, Dad leading a team of international scientists to help Godzilla in his fight against his enemies like Rodan, the dragon and Morah, a larvae, who turns into a luminous super moth.

With Godzilla down and out on the bottom of the ocean, Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Watanabe) takes it on himself, to save humankind, getting Godzilla back to life with a shot of nuclear radiation. Well you might guess where all this is leading…

The family saga not withstanding, this is a great action feature, which has to be seen on a very big screen. The production values are as stunning as the logic of the scientific troupe. And to make everyone happy, we overhear the scientists whispering to another,  “thank heavens, Godzilla is on our side – but for how long?” Might this lead to the return of the bad monster of old in the next instalment?  For everyone reliving their childhood an absolute must! AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

The Holy Mountain (1933) Blu-ray release

Arnold Fanck’s THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, the greatest of the German ‘mountain films’ and the film which launched the career of Leni Riefenstahl, digitally restored in 2K and presented on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK as a part of The Masters of Cinemas Series from 17 June 2019.

German filmmaker Arnold Fanck made this beautifully photographed Bergfilm, or ‘mountain film’, in 1926. Written in three days and nights – especially for Leni RiefenstahlThe Holy Mountain took over a year to film in the Alps with an entourage of expert skiers and climbers.

Ostensibly a love triangle romance – between Riefenstahl’s young dancer and the two explorers she encounters – Fanck relishes the glorious Alpine landscape by filming death-defying climbing, avalanche dodging, and frenetic downhill ski racing.

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (Masters of Cinema) New & Exclusive HD Trailer https://youtu.be/Ny47rsWx2GE

Available to order via the Eureka Store: http://bit.ly/2TUWZBd Amazon https://amzn.to/2VulzdN

The Men’s Room (2018) **** Krakow Film Festival 2019

Dir. Petter Sommer, Jo Vemud Svendsen, 75 min., Norway

This watchable award-winning tribute to male friendship and vulnerability positively glows with a lowkey charm so redolent of its Northern European origins, and so real it could never quite work as a drama, avoiding sentimentality and cliche to achieve something rare. 

It sees a group of 25 Norwegian men in their prime getting together every Tuesday to sing and drink beer. The joke is that they have promised to sing at each other’s funerals and it soon looks like the choir’s conductor will prove the first one to go. It turns out that one of them is diagnosed with cancer and the doctor has given him just a few months to live. Naturally he feels fine. But it’s roughly the time that the choir has to prepare for its biggest gig to date: a warm-up job for Black Sabbath before their concert in Norway 2016. . The countdown has started, and the cancer-stricken conductor and desultory band of ‘choirboys’ try to keep their spirits high with songs about the hardships of middle-age, while they also prepare to say farewell. Soft-peddling over their feelings for the opposite sex, their irreverent banter is always respectfully playful and well-received in this middle-class milieu of contemporary Oslo. The  mood is kept buoyant by their community singing that provides the vehicle for sharing their thoughts and opening up, joshing with each other as they do. Rarely has a film been so quietly amusing, and surprisingly moving. The Men’s Room goes straight to the heart and stays there. MT

KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL | 26 May – 5 June 2019

Van Gogh & Japan (2019) ***

Dir: David Bickerstaff | Doc, 90′

Van Gogh was one of the most influential and prolific artists of the 19th Century so it seems reasonable that another biopic should be dedicated to him, this time looking at his influence in Japan.

David Bickerstaff once again directs with a similar format to Van Gogh, A New Way of Seeing using the artist’s personal letters from close friends and his brother Theo to reveal Van Gogh’s deep connection to Japanese visual culture, and its importance in understanding his most iconic works. 

Although the Dutch artist never infact visited to Japan, his work had a profound impact on his contemporaries there including calligrapher Tomoko Kawao and performance artist Tatsumi Orimoto, and film provides a modern perspective on the rich, symbiotic relationship between Van Gogh and Japan.

Dramas such as At Eternity’s Gate and Loving Vincent have helped to flesh out what the Dutch artist was like as a man. Van Gogh & Japan shows how the European avant-garde went hand in hand with Japan art in the 19th century, and how artists such as Hokusai, Utagawa Kinuyoshi and Hiroshige captured the imagination of those painters who laid the foundations of modernism in Europe, on the other side of the world: Manet’s American friend Whistler was influenced by Japanese artwork in his painting Nocture: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge.

Bickerstaff films in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam where there is perhaps the most direct example of how Van Gogh was influenced by Hiroshige’s prints, The Residence with Plum Trees at Kameido, 1857; and he went on to paint his own version in 1887, Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige).

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As the Edo period came to an end in 1860s and Japan opened up to the West, Paris became awash with all things Japanese in the form of decorative objects and colourful woodcut prints called ‘ukiyo-e’. This was known as ‘Japonisme’. And whilst Van Gogh was not tempted to visit, he became fascinated with elements of Japanese visual culture and studied Japanese works carefully, learning from their compositional fluidity of line. He also acquired a large quantity of Japanese prints which he tried to sell without success, although they did provide a great source of inspiration. Van Gogh always brought his own unique style to his paintings even when directly copying and duplicating the imagery of the Japanese originals. There’s a full-bloodied richness, a vibrancy that is often oppressive, violent even.
In 1888, Paris became too much for Vincent and he left for the South of France, in the pursuit of new subject matter and a healthier life. In Provence, he discovered a beautiful landscape, powerful light and exotic people which spoke to his idealised vision of Japan – his Japanese dream. The productive yet fraught years that followed produced some of the most unique works in Van Gogh’s oeuvre such as ​The Sunflowers​ and his series of iconic portraits.

Other later self-portraits further underline his own unsettled state of mind. Infact, the exhibition only goes to accentuate Van Gogh’s own alienation. The Buddhist calm is in contrast to his own desperation as he flails around unreconciled with his own life. He clearly sought emotional refuge in this Zen influence.

One of the final paintings, Rain at Auvers (from the Museum of Wales), completed just before he killed himself in 1890, is the saddest comparison between East and West, and was possibly inspired by Hiroshige’s Night Rain at Karasaki. But it feels more like an interpretation of Munch’s The Scream in its depiction of the dark desperation of man who has finally lost his way.

Although these influences fascinated him for a while, his own style was always prominent in his work, the sheer force of his personality producing a passion not only in his bold strokes but also in his striking colour palette with marks that made his work significant and highly personal. They vibrate with allure and transmit the strength of his charisma, whilst the Japanese works often feel tepid in comparison. Van Gogh pours his heart and soul into his work. And that is why it resonates with his admirers. MT

Van Gogh & JAPAN 

Lillian (2019) **** Cannes Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Andreas Horvath; Cast: Patrycja Planik, Chris Shaw, Albert Lee; Austria 2019, 130 min.

Austrian filmmaker Andreas Horvath (Earth’s Golden Playground) has restaged the journey of the real Lillian Alling, who in 1926/27 tried to walk all the way from New York to her homeland country Russia. Debutant Patrycja Planik plays the gritty modern day heroine, who crosses the sub-continent without saying a single word.

We meet Patrycja, a woman in her early thirties, when she gives her photos to an ‘adult’ film producer, who declines the offer. “These are photos for modelling, we do hard core, your visa has run out and you don’t speak English”. In the background we see graphic examples of his trade, they could be straight out of one the documentaries of the feature’s producer Ulrich Seidl. “Go back to Russia” is the producers advise, and Patrycja takes him by his word. She breaks into a house near New York, finds a map and a huge jar with cheese balls, and sets off for her journey across he USA and Canada. When her shoes are ruined in a stream, she steals a pair from one of the many flea markets she visits, as well as from an abandoned laundrette. She sleeps in dilapidated houses and odd dwellings on the way.  She even manages to bed down in drainage pipes and under viaducts, greeted in the morning by stray cats. Scavenging for food, she steals a watermelon and eats pizza from a garbage can, and joins the kids in picking up sweets from the 4th of July parade. Hardly anybody bothers her: she looks so needy and poor, nearly always flying under the radar.

There are two encounters which are stand out: In Iowa she accosted by an elderly would-be rapist (Shaw), who chases her in vain across a corn field. Alone again, she steals a scarecrow’s shirt. In Nebraska, a sheriff (Lee) picks her up for vagrancy and treats her like a hardened criminal: she has to put her hands on the hood of his car, whilst he searches the meagre content of her bag. Later he relents, even giving her his warm sheriff’s jacket. This is the only kindness she ever experiences, before he drives her to the boundary of his county.

Whilst the landscape is breath-taking beautifully, Trump’s heartland seems emotionally dead. Somehow time has stood still in the mid-Fifties of the last century. Most people have fled to the cities, the remainers adamant to keep to the lifestyle of the era long gone by. We watch a parody of a rodeo, and a demolition derby with cars who were unfit to drive even a century ago. There are lots of religious slogans everywhere: “Smile, your Mum chose life” or “Where is your family?”. Instead of mobiles, old-fashioned two-way walky-talkies are still en vogue. After a hail storm, which she survives in an ambulant toilet, Patrycja again freshens her wardrobe up in a cloth donation bank.

Her journey comes to an end at the Yuka river, were she tries in vain to drag a canoe into the river, to continue her journey. This enigmatic ending works well with an allegoric story about men and whales: we never find out who Patrycja really is, there is no background, just a very very determined young woman, bashing on again and again with a spirited resistance to nature and everyone she meets: untouched through her ordeal, like a woman who fell from the sky.

Horvath’s photography is always dazzling, accompanied by a sparse musical score to replace the dialogue, which never materialises. Lillian is a triumph of a spirited, enigmatic women, wandering through a society, where emotions and ideas have long died.  AS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | QUINZAINE DES REALISATEURS

 

 

Homeward (2019)

Dir: Nariman Aliev. Ukraine 97 mins

Nariman Aliev’s feature debut is a powerful cri de coeur for his homeland Crimea exploring the fractured relationship between Ukraine and Russia. The young director is only in his mid twenties but already manages his material with confidence and maturity to create a gripping and thoughtful story about family responsibility and the ties that bind.

Mustafa (Akhtem Seitablayev) has driven to Kiev to collect the body of his son who has been killed in the war with Russia. His mission is simple, to bury Nazim in the family’s home in Crimea. But the journey will be eventful and fraught with difficulty. It will also bring him closer to his teenage son Alim (Remzi Bilyalov), who joins him on the journey.

And the two are not on great terms. Mustafa is an aggressive disciplinarian father who doesn’t pull any punches, least of all with his youngest boy. His simmering rage is partly due to the needlessness of Nazim’s death – in his eyes – marrying a non Muslim woman Olesya (Dariya Barihashvilli) he set up home in Ukraine, and clearly Mustafa was never going to approve of the match.Mustafa’s intention was to leave the family farm in Crimea to his boys so clearly his nose has been put out of joint with this marriage. To make matters worse, the two have a violent confrontation when he refuses to include Olesya in the funeral arrangements, leaving her locked in her own bathroom, oblivious to her feelings, or even her survival. This mere act displays an extraordinary disregard for his late son’s wishes, and makes a broad reference to his misogynist tendencies which will again rear their head later on. The British phrase “a bit of a Tartar” certainly comes to mind with this implacable man.

Alim has also made plans that don’t involve returning to the family farm. On the drive through Kiev he points out the university where he is studying journalism and his father remains stony-faced refusing show any interest. The journey continues with the usual checkpoints and border controls and Mustafa is truculent and surly with local officials. He then gives Alim a crash course in how to defend himself with a knife and this comes in handy later on when they are robbed, and Alim is able to gain his father’s grudging respect.

Akhtem Seitablayev manages shows us a chink of humanity in Mustafa – clearly he loves his son, and death often brings out the worst in family dynamics. Alim evidently respects his father, and is totally under his thumbl: when the boy gets a chance to swim in the river with some locals, including an attractive blond girl, Mustafa later slams down his wallet on the dinner table and suggests Alim goes his own way. This is a man who has lived by his wits and his courage and we feel a strange respect for him, and his desperation to keep the family together.

Homeward is a film that looks stunning and has that extraordinary resonance of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s work. Anton Fursa captures the burning sunset and the bucolic pastures of the vast flat landscape with its wide dusty roads and fast flowing rivers that really evoke that sense of belonging for Mustafa and his family have fought for. MT

New Wave Films digital release from 23 April 2021 | PREMIERED CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | UN CERTAIN REGARD 2019

 

Nuestras Madres (2019) *** Semaine de la Critique 2019

Dir: Cesar Dias | Guatemala/Bel/France | 75′  | World Premiere | Competition Feature Film

Guatemalan filmmaker Cesar Diaz is known for his documentary Why Do Humans Burn? (2010) commemorating the massacre of 32 Guatemalan civilians during the country’s 1980s Civil War, and his work on Jayro Bustamente’s multi award-winning drama Ixcanul (2015).

Diaz returns to the subject of civil war in his debut drama Nuestras Madres that screens in the Semaine de la Critique sidebar during Cannes Film Festival 2019. During the first ten years of the civil war, the victims of the state-sponsored terror were primarily students, workers, professionals, and opposition figures, but in the last years they were thousands of mostly rural Mayan farmers. More than 450 Maya villages were destroyed and over 1 million people became refugees, or were displaced within Guatemala. Diaz sets his drama against the backdrop of the ongoing trial of the military officers accused of inciting unrest and causing the death of these ordinary villagers. As testimonials pour in from neighbouring villages, Ernesto (Armando Espitia/Heli), a young anthropologist at the Forensic Foundation in Guatemala City, is tasked with taking statements from the victim’s families and identifying people who have gone missing. But when an old lady’s turns up, claiming to have lost her husband Mateo, Ernesto thinks he has found a lead that will allow him to find his own father, a Marxist guerillero who disappeared during the war and who has never been put to rest. His fight for the truth is vehemently apposed by his boss at the Foundation, who wants the past to stay in the past. But it also helps Ernesto to grow closer to his mother (Emma Dib). Part ethnographical study, part drama Nuestras Madres is set in and around the country’s magnificent mountain and volcanic countryside (Guatemala has 37 volcanos, of which 3 are active), Nuestras Madres is a straightforward but affecting story about the plight of thousands of Guatemalans who went missing, and whose story has never been told. MT

SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE | 21 May 2019 | Cannes Film Festival 2019 

Frankie (2019)

Dir: Ira Sachs | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jérémie Renier, Marisa Tomei, Brendan Gleeson, Greg Kinear | US, Drama 104′

Ira Sachs makes his Cannes Competition debut with this sedate drama set amongst the balmy hillsides and fairytale castles of Sintra which is very much the star of the show. Pleasant and well-paced it has Isabelle Huppert in the title role as a terminally ill actress who gathers her family around her for a final – occasionally fraught – summer break.

This languorous drama explores the intimate interlocking stories between the nine friends and family style. Frankie (Huppert) is a luminous presence throughout the film with her dry sense of humour and effortless allure  remaining serene and very much in control despite the anxiety of her loved ones.

Writing and his regular scripter Mauricio Zacharias Sachs doesn’t look for easy connections between these rather sedate showbiz types, the pencil-slim narrative ticking all the right boxes and gradually finding its way to an unspectacular conclusion.

From the outset, Frankie hums a Schubert tune which pretty much sums up the slumbering tone of the narrative. After a winning scene that sees her diving into an aquamarine swimming pool surrounded by lush gardens, her step granddaughter Maya (Nenua) reminds her there are guests in the hotel who might take photographs: “It’s alright, I’m very photogenic.” she cooly responds. And this sardonic wit flows throughout.

Frankie is stoical about her illness as she puts her affairs in order with the family: husband Jimmy (Gleeson in lowkey affectionate mode) his daughter from an earlier marriage, Sylvia (Robinson), and Ian (Bakare), the husband she is on the verge of leaving. There’s also Frankie’s son Paul  (Renier) and his father Michel (Greggory), who married a man after Frankie left him. Frankie’s best friend New Yorker Ilene (Tomei) joins the party with docile cameraman boyfriend Gary who is eager to propose to her – a nice touch in these non-committal days – she nevertheless damns him with faint praise. Sachs adds another strand involving Tiago (Cotta), a local Portuguese guide hired to show them the sights.

Cinematographer Rui Pocas, who photographed the fabulous arthouse films Zama and The Ornithologist, captures the splendour of the setting At usual, Huppert reigns supreme throughout, even in the fading days of her life she eclipses everyone. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

 

 

Thunder Road (2018) ****

Dir.: Jim Cummings; Cast: Jim Cummings, Jocelyn De Boer, Kendal Farr, Nican Robinson, Chelsea Edmundson | Comedy Drama | USA 2018 | 92′.

Director/writer/star Jim Cumming’s debut feature is a symbolic portrait of the white American middle-aged, middle-class male about to lose it all. Its anti-hero, Officer Jim Arnaud, is coming apart in every sense – and he doesn’t even know it.

The first take – unbroken, ten minutes long – sets the tone: police officer Jim Arnaud (Cummings) gives a eulogy to his newly-deceased mother at the funeral. Well, it is supposed to be a eulogy, but Arnaud loses his thread pretty rapidly: the speech is more and more about himself, his failures, his fears – of which there are many. He becomes a parody of himself when he tries in vain to play his mother’s favourite song, Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road on the pink toy-boom box of his daughter Crystal, making things worse by dancing to the non-existent music. Finally, he grabs Crystal (Farr) from her mother Rosalind (De Boer), and cuddles her helplessly crying in a back row.

Jim is in trouble: his wife is suing him for a divorce, he is partly suspended from work – all because he finds communicate difficult. He tries out phrases from a self-help book, such as “this means a lot to me” – but he gets in the way of his best intentions, always ranting on about his bad luck, great plans and guilt, loosing who ever he is talking to – with the exception of fellow officer Nate Lewis (Robinson) who has the patience of a saint. But it is not just only the dyslexia and dyspraxia which undermines Jim: his anger about his diminishing status turns into violence, and finally he throws a tantrum at work, drawing his gun on his fellow officers, and is lucky to escape with a dismissal. There is not much family life either: his sister Morgan (Edmundson) is also deeply depressed, and daughter Crystal is showing signs of male-adjustment disorder at school where Jim, talking to her teacher, is again unable to relate to the topic, reacting with another violent scene. The final tragedy will leave him with too much responsibility to carry and the audience rightly fears for his future.

Jim Arnaud is unaware of himself and his destructive narcissism, which might even be in the lower range of the Autism spectrum. But he shares his anxieties with too many around him: this is just not Jim coming apart, but a whole spectrum of white America, fearful of losing their middle-class status, getting poorer, suspecting (rightfully) that their children will have a worse life than themselves. It’s the end of a dream: the American Dream. His ranting is like that of a wounded animal, who does not understand what is happening to him.

Cummings is brilliant in all his triple roles, and the ensembles acting is very convincing. Lovell A. Meyer’s camera moves around furiously: his images portray the emotional roller-caster Jim finds himself on. Carefully avoiding a sentimental approach, but always with poignant humour, Cummings’ excels himself. AS.

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

X Y Chelsea (2018) ***

Dir.: Tim Travers Hawkins; Documentary with Chelsea Manning; UK 2019, 92 min.

Tim Travers Hawkins’ documentary debut is a work progress – rather like the main character – Chelsea Manning, a trans woman who was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment for leaking military “secrets” to Julian Assange’s Wikileaks. The secrets were mainly images of the USA’s covert war in Iraq, including the murder of two Reuters journalist.

Chelsea was born Bradley Edward Manning in 1987; her parents were alcoholics. The relationship with her father was particularly difficult. Even though she was only 1.57 m, she joined the army in 2007 and worked as an intelligence analyst from 2009. She garnered a slew of decorations (among them the National Defence Service Medal) but was still critical of the US engagement and the 750 000 plus classified documents leaked were known as ‘Iraq War logs’ and ‘Afghan War Diary’. They showed the ‘dirty’ combats the Pentagon would have rather kept under wraps. After an online contact reported on her, she was jailed in 2010 in the Army Correctional Unit in Quantico, Virginia, where she was kept in Solitary confinement from July 2010 to April 2011. After pleading guilty during the 2013 military trial, she was sentenced to serve 35 years at the High Security Military Correctional Facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which happened to be an all-male prison. On 17. January 2017, President Obama commuted her sentence to seven years, dating from her first imprisonment in 2010. Since 2013, she received hormone replacement therapy after choosing to identify as a female.

On her release, lawyer Nancy Hollander found a safe house f so she could slowly adjust to her new freedom. In prison, she had struck up correspondence with Lisa Rein, who had also tried to help her. But Chelsea made in clear she wanted a life as as a public person, claiming those who sent her hate-mail would never go away. She wanted to fight them head on. She challenged the democratic Maryland Senator Ben Cardin for the nomination in 2018, coming second with 5.7%. But an ill-timed appearance at an alt-right meeting cost her support; many did not understand that she simply wanted “to spy on the enemy”. In March 2019 she was arrested again for contempt of court, refusing to testify against Julian Assange. Manning objected to the Secrecy of the Grand Jury process, and the fact, that she told the court everything about Assange in her trial. She is currently held in a jail in Alexandria City.

Hawkins does a great job of showing Manning’s vulnerability and impetuousness: she is truly as naïve as she claims. But for the most part we are left frustrated by too many unanswered questions. The director fails to analyse her many contradictions in his rather ad-hoc approach to her own scattergun fight for survival and recognition in the real world. AS

ON RELEASE from 24 May 2019 IN SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES

       

Oleg (2019) Mubi

Dir.: Juris Kursietis; Cast: Valentin Novopolski, Dawid Ogrodnik, Anna Prochniak, Guna Zarina; Latvia/Lithuania/Belgium/France 2019, 108 min.

Director/co-writer Juris Kursietis (Modris) has created a spare but thrilling feature about a Latvian emigrant in Belgium, who falls under the spell of an evil smalltime gangster from Poland. Long takes and agile handheld camerawork along with some poetic under-water scenes make for an affecting verité drama. A twist of subversive humour lifts Oleg out of the   ‘grim and depressing’ category often associated with realism.

Oleg (Novopolksi) recalls how he was deeply affected as a child by his grandmother’s tale of the sacrificial lamb. Broke and in debt he feels just like that lamb in real life. A vision of him trying to breaking through the ice as he struggles under water occurs frequently throughout the film. Eventually he lands a job in a meat processing plant in Ghent where his training as a butcher comes in handy. Unfortunately, one of his illegal co-workers is maimed in one of the machines, blaming Oleg for the accident. His mates force him to take the rap in order to avoid an investigation. Back home – and jobless Oleg again – he meets the gregarious and charismatic Andrzej (Ogrodnik), who organises a motley crew of East-Europeans, hiring them out to do various jobs.

But Andzejs turns out to be a conman, who hardly ever pays his men. Oleg runs away, even though he fancies Andrzej’ girl friend Margosa (Prochniak), who is in thrall to her sadistic boyfriend. Alone in the streets at Christmas time, Oleg walks into a Latvian restaurant and is mistaken for an actor by rather posh Zita (Zarina), who runs the place. After a night of lovemaking, Oleg confesses he’s not really an actor, and is thrown out. Briefly returning to work for Andrzej things don’t improve and so he goes to the police, and informs on the gangster, having asked his grandmother to do the same in Latvia. Now at a lose end and with his freedom back, Oleg buys a plane ticket to Riga, but the night before his flight, he meets Margosa.

Despite of the underlying harshness of the narrative this is a bracing account of life as an immigrant. Andzejs gives Oleg a ‘forged’ Polish passport, calling him a “Novopolski” and the scenes in the meat factory are extremely brutal – and if you’re still not a vegetarian, you might now change your mind. The bleached-out aesthetic seems to mirror the hollowed out lives of these illegal workers, and the underwater sequences reflect Oleg’s feelings of desperation and powerlessness: struggling to survive in every way.  Kursietis seems to have re-invented social realism, or at least put a new appealing face on the genre. AS

NOW ON MUBI | PREMIERED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | Quinzaine des Réalisateurs 2019

 

The Best Years of a Life (2019) **** Cannes Film Festival 2019

Dir: Claude Lelouch | France Drama, 90′

Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant are back together again 53 years later in Claude Lelouch’s sequel to Un Homme et Une Femme. 

Claude Lelouch’s cult classic with its breezy romantic score by Francis Lai is one of the most popular French films ever made. Even the title harks back to that “ou la la! moment when your French lover sweeps you off your feet in a cosy bistro savouring a post prandial Cointreau.

Well that was back in 1966 but this sequel feels surprisingly slick and contemporary. Now in his 80s, ex racing driver Jean-Louis Duroc (Trintignant at 89, for the un-initiated) is in a swish Normandy care home – infinitely more appealing than the ones BUPA charges £100k a year for, even the staff are sexier.

The Best Years of a Life (Les Plus Belles Années d’une Vie)sees Jean-Louis considerably more dishevelled but the cheeky twinkle in his eye is still there as he flirts with his carer and wanders around the foothills of dementia – or is he just having us on?. Meanwhile his long-lost love, a well-preserved Anne Gauthier (Aimée, an amazing 87) is running a small shop and enjoying her daughter and granddaughter. His son Antoine (Antoine Sire, now grown up since his childhood role) persuades Anne to visit his father. Jean-Louis pretends not to recognise her at first – she is still the diffident one, and he is still a bit of a rascal. Lelouch, now 81, clearly understand Jean-Louis, and his script is insightful and extremely convincing for anyone who has a father of this age. And as the two go back down memory lane, Lelouch cleverly splices extracts from the original film: the lovers cavorting on the beach and laughing with their kids. Lelouch has even added footage of an exhilarating drive through Paris in the early hours of the morning, and layered it over images from his other films. In a way this is the director’s chance to bring his 1966 film back to life and offer a plausible and authentic conclusion to the story, attracting nostalgic older audiences – and even inquisitive new ones. And although the previous sequel, A Man and a Women: 20 Years Later (1986), was not a success, this seems to have considerably more depth and understanding.

A great deal of the film is pure nostalgia, but there’s humour too and it flows along pleasantly without any awkward moments – the flirty bits do happen as men of this generation get older. You have to remember – they grew up in a completely different century.

The Best Years of a Life was made in just under two weeks, showing how the veteran director and his ageing stars are still capable of being impressive. And with its timely themes and the impressive car sequence it competes favourably with anything in the competition line-up. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 14-25 May 2019

LIBERTÉ (2019) **** Un Certain Regard 2019

Dir: Albert Serra | Cast: Cast: Helmut Berger, Marc Susini, Iliana Zabeth, Laura Poulvet, Baptiste Pinteaux, Théodora Marcadé, Alexander García Düttmann | Drama | Spain 132′

Catalan auteur Albert Serra was born in 1975 in Girona and is known for his delicately drawn and exquisitely mounted historical dramas such as La Mort de Louis XIV (2016); Honour of the Knights (Quixotic) 2006; and Story of My Death (2013). And there’s a great deal of exquisite mounting in his latest feature which stars veteran arthouse star Helmut Berger and competes in the Un Certain Regard sidebar.

The theme in Liberté  is essentially voyeurism. If you find yourself in Hampstead Heath on a balmy afternoon you will notice vague male figures wandering around in the shady vegetation. You may even come across a secret tryst (if you are unlucky enough while walking your dog). Take this image and sashay back to the 18th century, somewhere between Potsdam and Berlin, and this is the scenario in Liberté – only here both male and female characters are taking part.

The year is 1774, shortly before the French Revolution. Madame de Dumeval, the Duc de Tesis and the Duc de Wand, libertines expelled from the puritanical court of Louis XVI, seek the support of the legendary Duc de Walchen, German seducer and freethinker, lonely in a country where hypocrisy and false virtue reign. Their mission is to export libertinage, a philosophy of enlightenment founded on the rejection of moral boundaries and authorities, but moreover to find a safe place to pursue their errant games, where the quest for pleasure no longer obeys laws other than those dictated by unfulfilled desires.

This louche cruising amongst bewigged courtiers and aristocrats sounds fascinating, and it is for a while. Soigné and slightly porkier individuals duck and dive in the undergrowth, in various stages of undress, their elegant white linens contrasting with tanned breasts and buttocks, larded legs and bloated beerguts. Very much like Sade, Serra explores the darker side of human desire which gradually becomes more and more explicit to the point where it actually gets a little close for comfort, verging on and eventually becoming explicitly pornographic. There is no narrative as such just a series of vignettes that take place during the hours of darkness one summer night.

Arriving in painted palanquin borne by his henchmen the Duc de Wand (Baptiste Pinteaux) is recounting the execution of an unfortunate individual whose limbs were pulled one by one from his body. Obsessed by bestiality and golden showers, he loves to salivate about his lascivious encounters, often involving dogs or farm animals. Fortunately were are spared the most lurid encounters due to the bosky nocturnal shadows as Artur Tort’s roving camera spies voyeuristically on to various other outré encounters in the semi-darkness of the eucalyptus trees (eucalyptus trees in the 18th century? – check continuity).

Decadence is the watchword here as none of the trysts is particularly joy-filled unless you are into sado masochism or subjugation. The tone is also rather mournful as body fluids are shed and shared. The film’s enigmatic title suggests that these aristos have too much time on their hands and nothing left to lose: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Serra’s film is brave and extraordinary well made. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | UN CERTAIN REGARD 2019 | SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

 

Cordillera of Dreams (2019)

Dir: Patricio Guzman | DoP: Samuel Lahu | Chile, 97′

Patricio Guzman completes the trilogy on his native Chile with this follow-up to The Pearl Button (2015) and Nostalgia for the Light ((2010).

Since moving to Paris over 40 years ago, well-known documentarian Patricio Guzman admits to feeling an outsider on returning to the country of his birth. This latest Cordillera de los Suenos is probably the most politically engaged of the trio with echoes of his seminal work The Battle of Chile (1975-79), but also possibly the least engaging. The mournful reminiscence touches on the relationship between Chile’s history and the natural world but the lively interviews with sculptors and artists whose work focuses on the Andes, soon give way to video footage of the brutal Pinochet years recorded by the prolific photographer Pablo Sala who first began his work in the 1980s and has been filming public life in Chile ever since.

The Cordillera of Dreams is certainly a sad reflective film and once again enjoys Guzman’s serene and measured narration which muses on the links between the country’s extraordinary geography and the human tragedy that Chileans experienced since the fateful coup on 11 September 1973, when Guzman left the country and moved to France. He now dreams of returning to his homeland and restoring the dilapidated house where he grew up in Santiago.

“It doesn’t even smell the same” says Guzman of his beloved country tucked away behind the Andes, describing it as a “chest full of poetic dreams”. Like most of the world, Chile has now moved into the 21st century and now enjoys a stable and prosperous economy that welcomes foreign investment. Samuel Lahu’s extraordinary overhead shots of Santiago are magnificent; fuzzy clouds scudding by to reveal the grid pattern of a white city walled by huge snowy mountains — the Andes – stretching far away to the East. But still the director yearns for the past and his happy childhood – like most of us. Sadly the future has arrived in Chile without him. Capitalism has brought prosperity but on one can bring back the home he once known.

We see overhead footage of the ‘ghost trains’ silently transporting Chile’s wealth of copper to the ports to be transported abroad. These privately owned mines are nowhere to be scene and no public roads have access to them. Along with wine, this precious national resource is one of Chile main exports. The Pearl Button was fascinating in that it raised awareness of the object that came originally from the shirt of a political victim, and was discovered years later at the bottom of the sea. But this film makes no such amazing discoveries, nor does it ask new questions.

We already know that Pinochet was a genocidal maniac who held the country in his thrall from his imposing tower block in Santiago – and we get a tour of the empty building echoing with the ghosts of corrupt generals. And there is ample footage of public beatings and water cannon roving the streets during his bloody regime, thanks to Pablo Salas. In his precious trove of videos, he even shows us footage of the column of men, (between 15 and 65 who were removed from their homes), filing off in a large line into the football stadium, that same ground that bore witness years earlier to Chile’s triumph in the World Cup.

But while Guzman fled abroad to the peace and prosperity of France, Pablo Salas remained to face the music, however funereal it was. So perhaps Guzman feels twinges of guilt for abandoning his homeland, and senses that Chile has possibly turned her back on him for disloyalty. Salas, now in his late fifties, is an sympathetic man who is philosophical about his country, swearing he could never leave. In his studio surrounded by boxes and boxes of video material, he is the one who has made it “impossible to erase history” and for that Guzman is grateful. MT

GOLDEN EYE DOCUMENTARY PRIZE Cannes 2019 | ON RELEASE 7 OCTOBER 2022

 

 

 

Pain and Glory (2019) **** Cannes Film Festival 2019

Dir: Pedro Almodovar | Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas | Drama, Spain 117’

Pedro Almodóvar has never won the coveted Palme d’Or but here he gets another chance to prove his impressive talents at portraying with probing insight and humanity a variety of tortured characters both male and female. Pain and Glory is a uniquely piquant and personal portrait that takes us into his own heart through the story of another struggling filmmaker. Once again, as we enjoyed in Julieta, this is a confident and passionate affair resonating with the work of many great auteurs before him, Fellini springs to mind, and the film is seductively set to a score by Alberto Iglesias. But this is one of his most subtle almost sensitive works to date that feels convincingly honest and spontaneous, while quailing away from theatricality it is elegant and self-assured. Maybe the Spanish director has finally let down his guard and bared his soul in this rather delicate drama. It follows one Salvador Mallo (his longtime collaborator Antonio Banderas who plays his alter ego with feeling) a filmmaker who has lost his way and now reflects mournfully on his past in lonely solitude as the present quietly collapses around him. And we feel for his quiet pain in every scene as the narrative unfolds in the context of other minor stories. Finally the fourth wall is broken and we discover the truth, in rather an abrupt finale. Mallo opines “a great actor is not the one who cries, but the one who knows how to contain his tears”. Pedro Almodovar has finally come home, but ironically Banderas wins the award. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 14-25 MAY 2019 |Winner Best Actor for Antonio Banderas

 

 

 

Ama-San (2019) ***

Dir.: Claudia Varejão, Documentary with Matsumi Koiso, Mayumi Mitsuhashi, Masumi Shibahara; Portugal/Japan 2016, 113 min.

Claudia Varejão (No escuro do cinema os sapatos) writes, directs and photographs this unique form of ethno-fiction that follows three women divers in their perilous daily foray to catch shellfish and pearl oysters without modern diving equipment.                      

Living in the fishing village of Wagu on the Ise peninsula in the Pacific Ocean, they are locally known as Ama-sans which – broadly translated – means ‘diving mermaids’, and this particular art of fishing first started two millennia ago. The women descend fearlessly into the depths of the ocean simply wearing water-proof  balaclavas over their traditional headscarves. The trio: Matsumi, Mayumi and Masumi are part of a 50-strong band of female fisherwomen in Wagu who work during the summer months, in the winter they work in the fields. Often the main breadwinners in the families, their headscarves are emblems of their spirituality, and they are bound by sisterhood. 

When the fishing season kicks off after a large celebration at the start of the year, they clamber into a boat called Minemaru, and once again take issue with the captain about their diminishing financial returns. Although have been fishing for thirty years, each year seems to see them earning less, despite the dangers involved. The three women represent three generations and each has their own particular style which very much identifies their age. After the catch is hauled it, they relax on karaoke nights with their families. Ama-san is very austere documentary, making even Fred Wiseman look self-indulgent and over-elaborate by comparison. Whilst this form of ethno-fiction resonates most closely with the style of Jean Rouch, the length of the documentary, and consistent lack of sub- and inter-titles, makes identification often difficult for the audience. AS

ON LIMITED RELEASE AT THE ICA, LONDON W1        

Rocketman (2019)

Dir: Dexter Fletcher | Taron Egerton, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jamie Bell, Harriet Walter | Fantasy Musical | UK, 121′

The Elton John biopic ROCKETMAN is an all singing all dancing affair with Taron Egerton performing the classic numbers and Dexter Fletcher behind the camera. Feeling rather like Ken Russell directing Roger Daltrey in Tommy without the cinematic qualities: this is just one big theatrical number after the other.

Told through a clever framing device, written by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot), this is a proper musical with fantasy sequences sharing an extraordinary human story of the shy but talented schoolboy Reginald Dwight from Pinner who found fame and fortune as one of the most iconic figures in pop culture, only to land up in drug therapy and finally accept his sexual orientation after a failed marriage.

Fletcher has Elton recounting the story looking back through a lens clouded with drug and alcohol abuse, and this gives the film its fantasy element, although although there is very little about what actually makes Elton John tick, and maybe that was a conscious decision to concentrate the narrative on his showman-like qualities, avoiding a warts and all approach. Egerton has a good voice; he performed a version of I’m Still Standing in the comedy animation film Sing (2016). With a nice fat budget of 40 million, Rocketman actually looks glamorous too although but like a great deal of show business, it has no heart or soul. MT

NOW ON BBC iPlayer

Solo (2019) *** ACID at Cannes 2019

Dir: Artemio Benki | Doc France/Czech Rep/Arg/Austria

Psychologists have identified strong links between creativity and mood disorders such as bipolar disorder and even schizophrenia. Some of our most famous writers, artists and musicians have suffered from mental instability: Virginia Woolf was dogged by depression, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide after treatment, Robert Schumann died in a mental home and even Steven Fry admitted to bi-polar when he famously walked away from a role on the London stage.

Producer and director Artemio Benki explores mental affliction in his serene and sensitive documentary screening in the ACID sidebar at Cannes this year. Solo centres on Martín P. a young Argentinean piano virtuoso and composer who has been receiving treatment for his breakdown four years ago as a patient in the controversial psychiatric hospital of El Borda, the largest and most noted of its kind in Latin America. As a child Martin was hailed a musical genius and went on to be the most talented composer of his generation. But for the past four year he has been struggling to get back to the concert stage while composing his latest work Enfermaria. Solo tells his unique yet relatable story, his fight with creativity and his obsession with being the best in a world where perfection and talent require confidence and persistence to thrive. Martin’s essential focus is to find that safe place between ‘insanity’ and ‘normality’ so he can move on and develop his career and his life. MT

SCREENING IN ACID Sidebar | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019

 

5B (2018) **** Cannes Film Festival 2019

Dir: Dan Krauss, Paul Haggis | US, Doc 95′

A new documentary from Oscar nominee Dan Krauss (The Kill Team) and Paul Haggis delves into the history of the first ward in the world for people with AIDS, at San Francisco General Hospital. The film focuses on the unsung heroes, a small collection of nurses and caregivers who banded together to provide courage, compassion and, crucially, touch to those devastated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the early 1980s. Even pets were allowed to visit their afflicted owners and partners were invited to make the ward their home. 

Spiking their film with moments of sharp humour, the result is a poignant tribute to this tragic time in American history, and a celebration of the quiet heroes worthy of renewed recognition, although the directors do demonise those medical professionals who exercised prudence in their treatment of the patients. Particularly, top orthopaedic surgeon and head of the San Francisco surgical team, Dr Day, who decided to wear protective garments because she wanted, quite understandably, to avoid being infected from the spurting blood of infected patients. Also unpopular was President Reagan who introduced a raft of measures to protect those working in AIDS care. Reagan even considered exiling the sick to their own private island – as the Venetians did to stamp out the plague – and one AIDS sufferer jokes: “we’d be happy to go if it was Santa Catalina island”. Yet it was an era were America was just not ready for people coming out, let along dying at the same time, so these draconian measures were hardly surprising.

Combining archive footage and interviews with those involved and affected, Krauss and Haggis explain that those people first infected with the virus in the late 1970s went downhill rapidly, often dying within months, even weeks. As fear spread throughout the community of San Francisco and beyond, AIDS sufferers lost their jobs and were kicked out of their apartments. One dying caretaker’s desk was even burnt in the parking lot of his building. In contrast, those pioneering individuals, who offered loving support, talk of their own memories: Rita Rockett even staged parties once a week in the ward, offering musical entertainment and food. Grateful patients were allowed to say: “they loved her to bits, but not to death!”

With the arrival of protease inhibitors – antiviral drugs that block the disease – fatalities eventually went into decline in the late 1990s. And many of the talking heads featured in the documentary have lived to tell their tearful tales. Well-paced and informative, 5B is a fascinating film that could have even added a positive twist in the fight for AIDS. These point towards immunity and even the possible eradication of the disease in the not too distant future. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | GOLDEN EYE DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

 

Beanpole (2019) **** Un Certain Regard 2019

Dir: Kantemir Balagov | Writers: Kantemir Balagov, Aleksandr Terekhov | Drama | Russia 114′

A bitter bond of revenge and inter-dependence keeps two Russian women viscerally entwined in Leningrad after the Second World War.

Beanpole is Kantemir Balagov’s follow up to his kidnap thriller Closeness which took the FIPRESCI prize in Un Certain Regard two years ago. Based on a story from The Unwomanly Face of War by Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexeievich, it sees the two women brought to their knees physically and mentally after the war have devastated their city. But life goes on for Iya, a tall rangy blond known as Beanpole (Miroshnichenko), and her friend Masha (Perelygina) who served together on the front, Iya returning early due to a neurological condition, bringing back with her Masha’s little son Pashka (Glazkov) in the autumn of 1945.

This gruelling slow-burner is softened by its gorgeously vibrant aesthetic that lends a jewel-like radiance to the girls’ misery, captured in Kseniya Sereda’s brilliant camerawork. Masha is wilful, mercurial and playfully charismatic – Perelygina is simply mesmerising to watch as she plots her way forward, emotions floating across her face like clouds on a sunny day – Beanpole is a sullen and introverted soul but the two have no one left in the world but each other, and a terrible tragedy that threatens to destroy or deepen their fraught friendship. The sudden intimacy of the girls’ life contrasts with the sheer scale of the horror they have experienced on the front, and the drama is confined to stuffy interiors and hospital wards that seem to stifle the enormity of their emotional pain and suffering. Iya is now a nurse in a local hospital in the late autumn of 1945 and her neurological complaint renders her incapable of movement for several minutes at a time. But Pashka is her pride and joy and their closeness is deeply moving. 

By the time Masha returns from the front, a dreadful event has taken place. And Balagov insightfully explores the shifting dynamic between these two women with impressive maturity for a filmmaker still in his twenties. The men in their life take a backseat to proceedings but are vital to the narrative: the world weary head doctor Nikolai Ivanovich (Andrei Bykov) and Masha’s irritating suitor Sasha (Igor Shirokov) who is the son of a Communist party official. Somehow Sasha’s mother and the doctor get drawn into the complex web of need, revenge, and power.

Leningrad is almost romantic in its postwar atmosphere and Sergei Ivanov’s set design adds a homely folkloric touch to the interiors. Memorable scenes are those outside Sasha’s family dacha, and Masha’s tram ride in the final moments of this striking, intense and emotionally resonant drama. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | UN CERTAIN REGARD | BEST DIRECTOR | FIPRESCI

Atlantique (2019) ** Cannes Film Festival

Dir: Mati Diop | Wri: Olivier Demangel | Cast: Traore, Mame Sane, Aminata Kane | Drama 104′

Mati Diop, now 36, is one of the four women, and the only black female director in this year’s Cannes competition line-up. With a French mother and Senegalese father, she grew up in Paris and rose to fame with Simon Killer going on to film, direct and write several short films. Her Dakar-set debut feature Atlantics sees a young girl trapped by her love for an unpaid construction worker and her arranged marriage to a glib entrepreneur.

This Palme d’Or hopeful is similar in many ways to Diop’s short film Atlantiques (2009) and also echoes Alain Gomis’ Aujourd’hui (2012) in its glorious setting by Dakar’s Atlantic coast, atmospherically shot by Claire Mathon. Mame Sane makes for an impressive lead as the feisty but vulnerable central character Ada, but there are tonal inconsistencies and Diop’s attempt to fuse the social realism of the early scenes with the magic realist elements of the final half feel unconvincing and may leave many viewers bewildered.

A confident beginning sees construction workers on the rampage. They have been building the tall skyscraper that gives the city the skyline of a smaller version of Dubai, but are owed  three months’ pay. Assurances from the foreman that the boss, Mr. N’Diaye (Diankou Sembene) will pay up, fall on deaf ears. One of the worker, Souleiman (Traore), meets up with with 17-year-old Ada and the two share passionate embraces on the beach. But this doomed romance is bound to fail: Ada has been betrothed to Omar, a rich man who shuttles between Dakar and Italy, and the wedding is in a few days Meanwhile Souleiman has decided to take off in a pirogue with his mates hoping to find better luck in Spain.

Ada finds out about all this when she meets him later in a bar on the beach run by her friend Dior (Nicole Sougou). Her other friends Fanta (Amina Kane) and Mariama (Mariama Gassama) will be bereft now that the men are leaving town. They have all used their feminine wiles to get ahead financially and this is described by Diop as “Afro capitalist neo-feminism.” And when they see Ada’s new home they are deeply envious, she is utterly unimpressed and actively rebels against the wedding .

Luckily for Ada, someone deeply objects to the horrendous white polyester Louis XV bedroom and set fire to the whole property, although no-one is harmed. The police officer assigned to investigate, Issa (Amadou Mbow), proves unworthy of his job and seems to be suffering unexplained blackouts as proceedings take on a surreal twist with some of the characters developing white, zombie like eyes.

The supernatural soon invades the story as the film morphs into horror mode and the pacing slurs to Al Qadiri’s eerie scores that mixes electronics with African instruments. This tonal shift feels odd and take us by surprise as the action moves predominantly into the night with Diop making great use of the raging Atlantic sea that provides a malevolent background. Her inventive visual ideas mingle well with the film’s undertones of Islamist misogynism, post-imperialism and witch doctors; although these are not developed sufficiently, along with the enigmatic love story, despite the ample running time of nearly two hours. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 14-25 MAY 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Les Miserables (2019) Cannes Film Festival 2019 ***

Dir: Ladj Ly | Drama France 102′

Not to be confused with Victor Hugo’s 1862, Les Miserables is in a way a 21st update of the milieu where the French classic took place. With echoes of TV’s Law & Order Ly channels the anger and malaise of modern city life into his contemporary story, that kicks hard against the system.

Opening with documentary footage showcasing the national unity leading up to France’s 2018 World Cup victory, to the headline “There are no bad plants or bad men; there are only bad cultivators,” is an apposite one that could apply to dogs and children as well.

This good cop, bad cop urban thriller follows a day in the life of officer Stéphane (played by Damien Bonnard), who’s recently fetched up the backwater of Montfermeil from the almost genteel by comparison town of Cherbourg. Ly – who directed and co-wrote the debut feature from his own short film – grew up in this badass council estate and we soon find out that the cops are as venal as many of the locals they victimise. This soon emerges when Stephane is tasked with shadowing two Anti-Crime Squad officers, Chris (played by the distinctly unappealing (co-writer) Manenti, a really nasty piece of work, and his black sidekick Gwada (Djebril Zonga) who, interestingly, also abuses his power, and almost manages to corrupt Stephane’s straightforwardness and strong sense of public duty. The trio roam around the neighbourhood where drug dealers are free to peddle their wares and kids run wild. Meanwhile the local Muslims try to go about their business, and a petty criminal called Issa, who has stolen a baby lion from the circus, nearly loses his eye when Gwada fires a flash-ball gun further adding to mayhem. Clearly Ly is playing things up for dramatic effect but it also transpires that this community has more or less been abandoned by the authorities for so long that it has developed its own dog eat dog existence. And this sad fact is portrayed with a great deal of humour and humanity by Ly and his co-writers Alex Manenti and .Giordano Gederlini.

Julien Poupard’s camera captures the area warts and all with his brilliant images, often from the officers’ moving car and this is amplified by drone footage, adding considerably to the gritty allure of this everyday story of life in a place where little has seemingly changed in nearly 200 years. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 14-25 May 2019

The Unknown Saint (2019) **** Semaine de la Critique 2019

Dir.: Alaa Eddine Aljem; Cast: Younes Bouab, Salah Bensalah, Bouchaits Essamak, Mohmed Naimane, Anas El Vaz, Hassan Ben Bdida, Abdelhaini Kitab, Ahmed Yarziz; Morocco/France/Qatar/Germany, Lebanon; 100 min.

Alaa Eddine Aljem’s debut feature is a little gem: filmed with great confidence, it is the story of a thief in a small Moroccan desert village trying to recover his loot, while the villagers pray for rain. In tune with its sun-baked environment the tautly inventive narrative unfolds in a languid style in scenes showcasing the fleshed out characters and talented cast.

On the run from the police, a young thief Amine (Bouab)has just time enough to bury his booty on a desert hill, camouflaging the scene as a modest grave. Ten years later, Amine and his accomplice, simply called “The Brain” (Bensalah) for his lack of the grey matter, return to discover a Mausoleum for an unknown Saint has been built over the grave. No rain has fallen for over a decade and the villagers are desperate; one of them, Hassan (Essamak) wants to go elsewhere, but his father Brahim (Naimane), the religious leader of the village holds him back. Then there is Aziz (Kitab), the self-appointed mausoleum guard who treats his son with contempt, his life revolving around his Alsatian dog. For some unknown reason, the new doctor (El Baz) is only getting women patients at his surgery. His long suffering nurse (Ben Bdida), who survives on alcohol and weed, explains that the women use the surgery as a “hangout”, while collecting their prescriptions. Meanwhile, Amine and his helper wonder how to tackle Aziz so they can recover the loot. This is a sinuous and slow-burning drama with just enough irony not to reduce it to a farce. The characters are larger than life, appealing despite their foibles and full of humanity and charm. Even the two criminals come across as incompetent bunglers rather than hard-edged thieves. DoP Amine Berrada uses the desert as a majestic background, his panoramas are impressive, particularly the night shots. Judging by this impressive debut, Aljem is a filmmaker with a bright future ahead of him.  

SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE | Wednesday 15 May 2019 |11.30am

 

     

   

Too Late to Die Young (2018) ****

Dir/Writer: Demian Hernandez, Antar Machado, Magdalena Totoro, Antonia Zegers, Martias Oviedo | Chile | Drama | 110′

Chilean auteur Dominga Sotomayor follows her debut Thursday ’til Sunday with a freewheeling, semi-autobiographical cinema vérité story that soft-peddles through the winds of change expressed during a family New Year holiday on the cusp of Chile’s transition to democracy in 1990.

Themes of love, loss, belonging and owning are teased out through a lithe and loose-limbed interlude that takes place in the hills above Santiago where the outbreak of forest fires on the tinder dry landscape signal the death of the old and the ushering in of new forces for freedom that marked the nation’s break with Pinochet’s dictatorship.

But nothing could be less political than this woozy woodland reverie for teenagers Sofia and Lucas (16) and little Clara who now face fears of a more organic kind when their dog Frida suddenly disappears and their parents decide to part in the wake of the environmental tragedy.

Pictured in Inti Briones’ bleached out images the desiccated Summer landscape seem ready for some kind of regeneration and this gently embodied in Sotomayor clever writing and a select choice of musical hits that hark back to the era. Demian Hernandes makes her thoughtful debut as the musically-gifted and lovelorn Sofia leading a cast of mostly non-professional actors of all ages selected by the filmmaker and her casting director mother. Antonia Zegers (Elena) is the only well-known actress outside Chile.

If you’re looking for punchy plot lines, this female centric drama can at times feel a tad too enigmatic, and most of the characters, particulars the males, are suggested rather than fully developed. This sketchiness can be part of the film’s charm, providing you’re in the mood to surrender to the dreamy, bemusing complexities of young love and complicated relationships. The disappearance of the dog Frida/Cindy gives the film some direction and drama and also some of its wry humour as the outcome of this strand actually ends up being rather amusing. Delicately drawn, thoughtful and always perceptive, Sotomayor

Dominga Sotomayor made history by winning the Leopard for Best Director at the 71st Locarno Festival, making her the first female director to receive this award. She has that rare gift of lightness of touch, letting her drama take shape naturally marking her out as a real talent to watch out for. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 24 MAY 2019 

The Dead Don’t Die (2019) Cannes 2019 ****

Dir: Jim Jarmusch | Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray | 103′ US Fantasy Horror

The peaceful town of Centreville finds itself up against it when the (un) dead start rising from their graves in Jim Jarmusch’s first zombie escapade.

THE DEAD DON’T DIE is the first festival opener to also vie for the Palme d’Or in the main competition this year at Cannes. Jarmusch has won all sorts of awards in previous editions – The Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award (Broken Flowers); Best Artistic Contribution (Mystery Train); The Golden Camera (Stranger than Paradise); and Coffee and Cigarettes III was awarded the Best Short film in 1993 , but he’s never actually taken home the top prize. And it’s possible he will with this flip but fun affair with its slim but subtle undercurrents.

Most of the starry cast are ripped apart and end up thoroughly the worst for wear by the time we get Sturgill Simpson’s catchy title tune on the brain for the journey home. But this audience pleaser will certainly go down in history with the best of them – but my money’s still on Shaun of the Dead for sheer deadpan weirdness of the cult classic kind.

The police are the first to notice untoward goings on. Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) and Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) are alerted to local power cuts and watches going awry in sleepy Centreville. And Jarmusch brings the same deadpan humour to bear as did Edgar Wright, the dead coming alive in the eerie torpor that many claim is due to climate change.

The town’s cop trio is made up by token female Mindy Morrison (Chloe Sevigny), and Danny Glover’s Hank Thompson is the token black resident who makes it possible for Buscemi’s Farmer Miller to add the requisite element of racial abuse. Other denizens include Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton), who gets to flex her Scottish credentials with a hefty samurai sword. The younger generation are there in the shape of Caleb Landry Jones, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler and Luka Sabbat who roam around their numbers gradually multiplying as the story staggers on. Then there’s a classic village loner (Tom Waits) who seems to go under the zombies’ radar, perhaps because he’s so like them.

But a wry nonchalant bonhomie permeates this dozy undead drama and maybe Jarmusch is alluding here to the dumbed-down society we live in nowadays – their unaware, don’t care attitude is the most darkly worrying aspect. Crafty old Jarmusch is using his zombie outing as a wrapper to satirise all our current ills. Even the authorities seem brain dead with Tilda giving the only sparky thrill to the piece as the slightly unhinged oddball. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 14-25 May 2019 | IN COMPETITION

Go Where You Look! Falling off Snow Mountain (2019) Directors’ Fortnight 2019

Dirs: Laurie Anderson, Hsin-Chien Huang Virtual Reality Creation | US/China

Anderson and Hsin-Chien collaborate in three virtual reality installations presented together for the very first time at this year’s  Quinzaine.

If you’ve not experienced virtual reality it really is a transformative experience: Rather like diving you enter a whole new world, but with VR you can’t actually see your body during the process.

Laurie Anderson is a musician, filmmaker, writer, digital arts creative pioneer and, ultimately, a storyteller in the broadest sense. She discovered VR only recently and her new way of exploring narrative territories is a good way to start. New media artist Hsin-Chien Huang, who has a background in in art, design, and digital entertainment. His VR collaboration with Laurie Anderson was awarded the Best VR Experience in at Venice Film Festival in 2017. But they first worked together in 1995 on the CD-ROM Puppet Motel. 

AloftChalkroom and To the Moon, are three poetically linked and complementary pieces presented together, and each lasting around fifteen minutes. The sensory, poetic and technological dimensions of these three pieces are tightly intertwined and and considerably amplify our cinematic experience, and this one takes place in Le Suquet morgue, just to add a  surreal twist to the proceedings.

Rocking a very soigné Issy Miyake rigout, Anderson explains that there are no cameras or lenses involved in Go Where You Look and it all feels very physical and interactive, as the audience very much influence the outcome of each tour. You sit on a stool, pop on a headset and the show takes off. 

ALOFT is the nearest thing to experiencing a place crash – in the most serene way possible. As the sole passenger in the airline you begin to notice some shafts of light appearing in the ceiling and floor near the cockpit. Gradually the plane starts to fall apart, in a gentle way. Suddenly you’re floating in your seat towards what looks like a town with to connected rivers. The black box floats by, and soon other objects come into view and float by as you head towards a luminous vortex. If you grab them with your gloves paws, Laurie’s voice then tells a story. There’s a lily, a mobile ‘phone and a lump of coal. If you snatch the coal it turns out to be Mars and soon you’re hovering above the Martian landscape. A typewriter appears and you can write your name as the letters floats high up into the black stratosphere. Other experiences include a placid lake. Your hands soon turn into horses legs. 

TO THE MOON uses images and tropes from Greek mythology, literature, science, sci fi space mo- vies and politics to create an imaginary and dark new moon, and a more formal narrative structure. During the 15-minute VR experience, you take off from Earth and soar up towards the blackness which then becomes the surface of the Moon. The eeriest thing is being able to see Earth revolving with Europe stretching before you. You can then climb a lunar mountain before returning – eventually – to Earth, your two handsets guiding you forward, or even speeding you up. You see the Constellations, the Great Bear etc evaporating before your eyes. In Snow Mountain you actually climb the mountain before your virtual body dramatically tumbles away into deep space, Laurie Anderson’s voice chanting about not knowing where we all came from. In the Donkey Ride you the viewer trot along on the back of a donkey through the lunar landscape. Eventually you float up and away into a universe of stars that begins to explode like fireworks.

Certainly different and worth experiencing. Maybe one day virtual reality will be able to re-create experiences that are more personalised. For example you could embark on a world tour, or even be united with a long lost lover or a a friend of family member who has passed on. MT

QUINZAINE | 15 -24 May 2019 | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019  

 

John McEnroe: In the realm of Perfection (2018) ***

Dir: Julien Faraut | US Doc 95′

In the Realm of Perfection showcases tennis star John McEnroe at his very best – or worst – as some may say. Arguably, the enfant terrible of the tennis circuit was also one of the world’s finest and most charismatic players, his coiled force and balletic movements captured in fluid slow motion by specialist DoP Gil de Kermadec in Julien Faraut’s entertaining documentary.

John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, was shot on 16mm during the French Open at Roland-Garros in the early 1980s when de Kermadec had determined that champions played in a different way when under pressure (in competitions) than when simply knocking a ball about during practice sessions. Using early 1980s computer animation he explores the intricacies of McEnroe’s techniques and particularly his unpredictable serve and killer backhand. The film considers the power and intensity of McEnroe’s physical prowess and dexterity combined with his highly-tuned reflexes and skilful strategies for outwitting his opponent. All this is scored to the music of Sonic Youth’s “The Sprawl” and narrated by Mathieu Amalric.

For those who were positively invigorated by the American athlete’s feisty temperament his puerile petulance and childish outbursts, this film is a must. Clearly from early childhood, McEnroe’s personality was founded on an egocentricity so keen that he was unable to see anything from any perspective other than his own. This coupled with a sheer disdain for the professional opinion of the linesman, umpire and other employees makes for hilarious often incredulous viewing. “You must be kidding” was one of his stock expressions.

Cleverly, Faraut gives us only once chance to watch the footage, leaving the ball firmly in McEnroe’s court and leaving the jury out, creating an onscreen tension which builds gradually in the film’s mesmerising final sequences when we watch McEnroe pitting his wits against Ivan Lendl in the 1984 men’s final at the French Open.  Force of nature and force to be reckoned with, McEnroe was certainly one of the powerhouses of international tennis. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 24 MAY 2019 NATIONWIDE

 

 

Memoir of War (2018) ****

Dir: Emmanuel Finkiel | Cast: Melanie Thierry, Benoit Magimel, Benjamin Biolay | France, 127′

Memoir of War (La Douleur) was France’s entry to the Oscars this year. It didn’t win but is eminently worth watching for Melanie Thierry’s hypnotic performance as Marguerite Duras in an elegant adaptation of the writer’s semi-autobiographical novel “The War: A Memoir”, set in Paris during German occupation.

Emmanuel Finkiel (Voyages) takes a conventional approach to this stunningly filmed cool classic that dramatises the writer’s life in Paris under German occupation in the final years of the war. After her husband Robert Anselme, a major figure in the Resistance, is arrested and deported, she is forced to live by her wits in order to get him back. And this involves a cat and mouse game with a French Nazi agent collaborator called Rabier (a stout Benoit Magimel with a dark wig).

Duras, who wrote the Oscar-nominated script for Alain Resnais’ drama Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), was an intellectual of the highest order, and this is reflected in Thierry’s contemplative, nuanced gaze, as she chain-smokes her way through one of the best performances of the Oscar nominations. Finkiel completely eschews melodrama in taking us into Duras’ intimate thoughts and recollections, often blurring the focus to suggest enigmatic events, and using her own stream of consciousness to drive the narrative forward as she struggles to survive the intrigue going on around her. Tortured by self-doubt and anxiety, she yearns for Robert but emerges obdurate and determined to find him.

Meanwhile, Robert (Emmanuel Bourdieu) barely makes an appearance despite the anguish surrounding him. The first hour deals with Duras’ efforts to keep Rabier onside, although clearly finding him rather repellent in many ways — and she may even be wasting her time. He is rather taken with her bluestocking beauty and literary credentials, and two enjoy a series of clandestine tête à têtes in discreet venues. But Finkiel’s film flows impressively as the focus shifts away from the couple and increasingly on to Duras’ fraught and internalised musings about Robert, as she gets closer to his colleague Dionys (Biolay).

The final denouement is as unexpected and it is slightly unsatisfactory. Robert is liberated and brought back to Paris by the skilful negotiations of Francois Mitterand and the film is suddenly brought to a conclusion that some may find brusque given the slow-burning nature of the early scenes. That said, Thierry is mesmerising to watch in a graceful tour de force of controlled anguish. This is Finkiel’s second feature with Thierry, and he clearly knows how to make the most of her. MT

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | 15 May 2019

 

Float like a Butterfly (2018) ***

Dir: Carmel Winters | Drama | Ireland | 104′

Carmel Winters second feature is a poetic and gorgeously redolent coming of age drama set in the Emerald Isle of the 1960s where a young Irish Traveller has to contend with the death of her mother and an abusive father as she follows her dream of becoming a boxer like her idol Muhammad Ali.

Hazel Doupe gives a stunning performance as tomboy Hazel whose daily life in a wooden caravan with her younger brother and wayfarer father Michael (Dara Devaney) is fraught with altercations not only with the local Garda but also members of this feisty family and their old-fashioned attitudes towards gender roles that hamper her own natural pugilist talents.

With its universal themes Float Like A Butterfly has the rare quality of being utterly relevant today and yet quaintly traditional, its placid pacing capturing the slow-burning essence of a bygone era. Auteuse Carmel Winters’ writing and directing has a distinct lightness of touch which brings both gentleness and integrity to her storytelling. This is a drama that glows with the lush beauty of its verdant Irish setting untrammelled by time and enlivened by stirring folk music, suddenly catching fire in its final denouement. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE from 10 May 2019 | FIPRESCI PRIZE Winner | TIFF 2019

Searching for Ingmar Bergman (2018) ****

Dir.: Margarethe von Trotta; Documentary with Liv Ullmann, Olivier Assayas, Jean-Pierre Carriere, Mia Hansen-LØve, Julia Dufvenius, Daniel Bergman, Ruben Östlund, Stig Björkman, Katinka Farago; France/Germany 2018, 99 min.  

Of the two Bergman documentaries at Cannes last year – now on release – this is the most appealing. German director Margarethe von Trotta (Die Verlorene Ehre der Katherina Blum) tries desperately not to make Bergman a hero in her glowing love letter to the Swedish director (1918-2007): she succeeds on a personal level, but falls short when it coms to his artistic output. Perhaps understandably, given that The Seventh Seal was the first film that inspired von Trotta to become a director herself during her time in Paris. But Bergman returned the favour: she was the only woman director to feature on his list of eleven of his favourite films (dominated by legends like Kurosawa, Dreyer and Chaplin) for her Venice winning opus Marianne and Juliane (1981).

Written by co-director Felix Moeller, Searching opens with scenes from The Seventh Seal, set on the rugged Swedish coast, which it then revisits in the present day, to find that little has changed since the 1950s. Bergman was a life-long prisoner of a loveless childhood enforced by his father, a vicar. Jean-Pierre Carriere posits “In all his films there is a conflict between his strict upbringing and the present”. Bergman ran his life on a tight schedule, even his funeral was planned down to the last detail, only friends and family being invited. But he was also a suggestible and compulsive man, very much in believing the ghosts in his films, such as Hour of the Wolf. And filmmaker Mia Hansen-LØve senses this is his private life too :“you could feel the ghosts in his house”. 

Bergman’s hero was his Swedish compatriot Victor Sjöström whose 1921 feature The Phantom Carriage became a regular favourite, Bergmann watching it every year of his adult life. He also cast Sjöström in his first great success, Wild Strawberries (1957).

Promiscuous, he went on to father nine children with various different women, including his favourite actor Liv Ullmann. His son Daniel (*1962) from the marriage with Käbi Lareti, is not particularly fond of his father, calling him by his Christian name. Daniel does not miss his parents now they are dead, but it frightens him to think that his nine-year-old daughter Judith might feel the same way about him. On his 60th birthday, Bergman’s children eventually met up, many for the first time. And Daniel is not the only one to feel that his father was just “a big child”, unable to related to his kids. Although he clearly enjoyed sex, Bergman intensely disliked watching other people’s love scenes during Hollywood movies, asking the projectionist to fast forward through those in Pearl Harbour.

In 1976 Bergman spent some time in prison for tax evasion, then fled Sweden for Hollywood (although he never made a film there) and later Germany where his anti-Nazi feature the Serpent’s Egg (1977) was rather a flop. Bergman had a passion for Hitler before the outbreak of WWII, calling him a saviour. But most of his films are dominated by strong men, who are not necessarily evil. After a ten year exile, Bergman returned to Sweden.

As is often the case, Bergman was more popular abroad than at home, where the public and critics preferred more down to earth directors such as Bo Widerberg. Von Trotta cuts short the discussion with Swedish director Stig Björkman who claims that Bergman has fallen from popularity with today’s filmmakers.

And while Bergman was a narcissist, he was also a control freak with his favourite seat in a café opposite the theatre, so he could watch actors leaving, and work out “who is sleeping with whom”. Even his script adviser for 30 years, Katinka Faragó, reports that Bergman used to stay in bed, holding hands with her for twenty minutes, before he found the nerve to start directing. Von Trotta and her then husband, director Volker Schlöndorff, also claimed that Bergman liked to hold hands at the table, when they met.

Ingmar Bergman was certainly a man of many contradictions, but he should be allowed to have the last word: “I have always felt lonely in the world, and that is why I escaped into filmmaking, but the feeling of community is an illusion”. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 10 MAY 2019 AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS   

High Life (2018) ****

Dir Claire Denis. Germany/France/US/UK/Poland. 2018. 110 mins

Women filmmakers are fascinated by Sci-Fi. Back in 1995 there was Kathryn Bigelow with Strange Days, Mimi Leder followed with Deep Impact, and Karyn Kusama with Aeon Flux (2005. Meanwhile in Europe, Lucile Hadzihalilovic brought us Evolution (2015) and Jessica Hausner has made this year’s Cannes Competition line-up with her thriller Little Joe (2019).

Claire Denis’s first foray into science-fiction is a cold, violent, enigmatic affair. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey springs to mind and so does Solaris but this is more brutal and provocative despite its lush colour spectrum and virtuoso visuals that come courtesy of Yorick Le Saux. Human desire and pent up sexual energy is expressed with a baleful malevolence that occasionally erupts into livid outbursts. But many will struggle to comprehend its fractured narrative, arcane motives and curious timeframe, despite it being Denis’ first English language feature, you come away none the wiser but bemused and enriched and by its visual allure.

Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche anchor an eclectic cast which includes Agata Buzek (The Innocents). He plays the most sympathetic, accessible character – Monte – who is stranded in a spaceship after a gruelling mission that has left him with a gurgling baby daughter who needs to be cared for. And this he does well. The spaceship has a lush vegetable garden, the only natural environment to speak of, with juicy courgettes and cabbages kept alive by an ambient mist.

There is a strange sense of danger brought on by the feeling that something tragic has happened leaving the rest of the crew to stifle and repress their bitter resentment and lightly veiled hostility towards one another, made worse by their claustrophobic surroundings. Flashbacks vaguely allude to this sense of unsettlement but no explanation is offered.

The space ship is bound on a journey to reach the nearest black hole to planet Earth. Binoche plays Dibs and has clearly asked Denis to give her a complex and foxy role and she excels with her black glossy tresses and zip-up uniform that reveals plenty of cleavage. There’s an odd scene where she mounts a steel phallus, having careful slipped a Durex over it, her muscular body girating in feral pleasure. She seems to be conducting some sort of sexual reproduction experiment on the crew, and is called “the shaman of semen” as she’s tasked with injecting the women with semen produced by the men in a cubicle. None of them seems very keen on the idea or why it’s being done in the confines of the spaceship. She even forces the slumbering Monte to capitulate by mounting him and then extracting the fluid with a large pipette and injecting it into another sleeping inmate.

As Monte gets rid of a growing mound of corpses, we realise that the crew’s mutual hostility has actually ended in tears. As he pushes the bodies out of the craft the sound of silence is one of the gratifying high points, courtesy of Stuart Staples (Minute Bodies). The scenes in Space are straight out of 2001, or even Gravity (2013). Robert Pattinson and his child who eventually reaches puberty during  are the only sympathetic characters in a film which is clever and daring but ultimately leaves you empty. Such is Space. MT

HIGH LIFE IS ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 17 MAY 2019

 

Arctic (2018) **

Writer-Dir: Joe Penna | Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Maria Thelma Smaradottir | Drama | 93’

A macho Mads Mikkelsen is marooned in Arctic nothingness in Joe Penna’s dialogue free survival saga. You could almost call ARCTIC a road movie, but there isn’t a road to speak of. And this is not really a two hander either because the woman Mads tries to save – when her own aircraft crashes trying rescue him – is just a concussed and grunting victim he feels duty bound to take with him on his mission to reach safety in the snowy wilderness of craggy peaks and perilous caverns.

Moving mountains to get her to hospital is an experience as gruelling for Mads as it since for us viewers, if you haven’t already drifted off in the opening stages. If you do remain awake, there is no backstory or attempt at characterisation to make you care whether either of the travellers makes it home. Barren of landscape and of narrative, ARCTIC follows Mads as he moves in a slow circle, due to his poor map-reading skills, after etching an enormous SOS in the snow. The only brief moment of drama is derived from seeing a Polar bear deprived of his dinner when our hero hides in a cave.  Meanwhile Mads develops clever ways of catching and eating raw fish, a sight almost as unpalatable as Joseph Trapanese’s screeching score. 

Even Stakhanov would be proud of the work Mads puts in, and his perseverance in getting the injured woman out of danger as he drags her up hill and down dale without a by your leave, and certainly no encouragement from his human bundle. Yet he never gives up hope until the final showdown where he sets off a flare which is totally ignored, leaving him to trudge on tirelessly through the elements. Mikkelsen’s grunting performance has a strange humour to it, matched only by the moment when he catches sight of an artic flower and then rapidly disappears through a pothole. Marvellous stuff. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 10 MAY 2019

Woman in the Window (1944) **** Blu-ray release

Dir: Fritz Lang | Wri: Nunnally Johnson | Cast: Edward G Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey | US Film Noir 107′

One of legendary director Fritz Lang‘s first noir films, The Woman in the Window is also rightfully considered one of the most important examples of the genre, a landmark movie that became one of the initial representations of noir first singled out by French critics after WWII. A triumph for Lang, legendary writer/producer Nunnally Johnson (The Grapes of Wrath), and leading man Edward G. Robinson (shedding his earlier gangster roles to portray a love-struck obsessive), the mysterious melodrama remains a classic American nail-biter.

Johnson’s loose adaptation of J H Wallis’ novel Once Off Guard sees Robinson as Richard Wanley, a successful psychiatrist biding his time while his wife and children are on vacation. Lamenting the loss of his salad days, along with his drinking pals Raymond Massey and Dan Duryea, he is surprised and delighted to be picked up in the street by a foxy femme fatale in the shape of Alice (an alluring Joan Bennett dressed by Vogue illustrator and couturier Muriel King), who bears an uncanny resemblance to the subject of a portrait he had just admired in a gallery window. When Richard and Alice retire to her home, her wealthy, jealous boyfriend intrudes, and is killed after a struggle. Alice convinces Richard to cover up the crime, but as Richard’s district attorney friend (Raymond Massey) investigates and the boyfriend’s bodyguard (Dan Duryea) begins to apply pressure to Richard, the walls begin to close in…

With a darkly drôle climax years ahead of its time, The Woman in the Window is suspenseful film noir at its most seductive, elegantly captured and lit by Milton Krasner (who would go on to win the Oscar for Three Coins in a Fountain in 1955), the thriller also serves as an excellent companion piece to the following year’s Scarlet Street, which reunited Lang with Robinson, Bennett, and Duryea in strikingly similar roles.

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (Masters of Cinema) | 20 May 2019 

 

 

 

How I Won the War (1967) *** Blu-ray release

Dir: Richard Lester | Writer: Charles Wood | Cast: John Lennon, Roy Kinnear, Michael Crawford, Michael Hordern, Jack MacGowran | UK Comedy 109′

In 1967 John Lennon took a break from the band and travelled down to Almeria in Southern Spain where he still managed to write the lyrics for Strawberry Fields Forever while starring in Richard Lester’s surreal comedy. Aside from its merits, the film was always going to be a talking point and would ultimately become a cult classic and one of the most appealing anti-war satires. Based on Patrick Ryan’s book, Charles Wood’s script sends up the British Army in a way that is both harmless and enjoyable.

John Lennon exudes an easy charisma as the bespectacled Private Gripweed, eclipsing Michael Crawford in his role as the incompetent Lieutenant Goodbody leading his troupe of hapless soldiers into active service in Europe and North Africa during the Second World War. Roy Kinnear, Michael Hordern and Jack MacGowran complete the wonderfully witty and watchable cast. MacGowran also polished off another dark comedy role that year starring in Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers. Lester’s direction often misfires but in a way that is retrospectively endearing given the nostalgic nature of the subject matter – cricket. A lovely, amusing walk down memory lane. MT

AVAILABLE ON DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY from 20 May 2019 COURTESY OF THE BFI

 

Terminus (1960) Talking Pictures

Dir.: John Schlesinger; Documentary, UK 1961, 33 min.

This was John Schlesinger’s last documentary, having started his career as a TV director for ‘Monitor’. His first feature A Kind of Loving (1962) was part of the New British Cinema, but Schlesinger would soon find a place in Hollywood, where he would cast Julie Christie in the classic Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and go on to secure an Oscar for Midnight Cowboy (1969), amongst other successes in a muscular body of work that encompassed 50 years of the 20th century. Schlesinger’s gift to cinema was his varied depiction of gender relations and his ability to convey complex emotions sensitively and eloquently through multi-layered characterisations. And this is picked up here in the passengers’ comings and goings, their greetings and goodbyes, their anticipation, elation and anguish, in particular, seen through the little boy who gets separated from his mother, a situation that resonates for everyone. Set to Ron Grainer’s mellow original score there is a rhythmic quality to Kenneth HIggins’ black and white camerawork.

Terminus was shot in one day in Waterloo Station in the style of the cinema verité, and won him a BAFTA and the Golden Lion at Venice. Ken Higgin’s black-and-white images are grainy, but even today have lost none of their poignant meaning; together with the direct sound (and no-commentary or voice-over) they encapsulate British society at large on its way into a decade of technology, youth culture and liberation. Other little stories emerge – the woman who’s lost her umbrella – the camera often ‘finds’ different people again, before losing them in the turmoil. The three-class system in carriages had been reduced to two after nationalisation, but nevertheless, the rigid segregation is still visible. The stories of marriage, work and petit crime allow a kaleidoscopic view. Train journeys, in life and in the cinema can be a real life changer, as in Schlesinger’s second feature Billy Liar. There is a seriousness in Schlesinger’s approach, which can be seen on the faces of the travellers: the close-ups say very much about those involved. Schlesinger never objectifies his protagonists, always leaving them in control.

Terminus was one of 140 short documentaries produced by Edgar Anstey, a protégé of the great John Grieson. Anstey not only worked, like in this case, for the British Transport Film, but also for the BBC.

ONE OF THE BRITISH TRANSPORT FILMS now on TALKING PICTURES | Blu-ray FROM THE BFI

British Transport Films | Blu-ray release 2019

What could be more romantic than a train journey? Even if it feels more like a boys own adventure, as many of these British Transport films do. Escaping into the unknown with a promise of excitement and discovery – or just a trip back in time to revisit childhood holidays in the 1960s and 1970s, where the English landscape stretched far and wide from the window of the pullman out of Waterloo, or even Paddington, and not an anorak in sight! 

This year celebrates the 70th anniversary of the British Transport Films with twenty one films representing the cream of the celebrated BTF collection.

Classics including John Schlesinger’s Terminus (1961)and Railways forever! (1970) John Betjeman’s eulogy to his favourite form of transport, have been newly digitally remastered on 2k, while Geoffrey Jones’s legendary homage to progress, Rail (1967), has been restored in 4K by the BFI National Archive.

British Transport Films was established in 1949 to focus a spotlight on transport as a nationalised undertaking. Over a period of more than 35 years, BTF produced an unrivalled documentary film legacy for generations of film and transport enthusiasts.

The Films (disc 1)

Farmer Moving South (1952)

Train Time (1952)

This is York  (1953)

Elizabethan Express (1954)

Snowdrift at Bleath Gill (1955)

Any Man’s Kingdom (1956)

Fully Fitted Freight (1957)

Every Valley (1957)

A Future on the Rail (1957)

Between the Tides (1958)

Disc 2

A Letter for Wales (1960)

They Take the High Road (1960)

Blue Pullman (1960)

Terminus (1961)

The Third Sam (1962)

Rail (1967)

Railways For Ever! (1970)

The Scene from Melbury House (1972)

Wires Over the Border (1974)

Locomotion (1975)

Overture: One-Two-Five (1978)

This collection will be launched with a special screening at BFI Southbank. Moving Millions: British Transport Films Blu-ray Launch + Q&A takes place on Tuesday 14 May at 18:00 in NFT1. It will be introduced by BFI Curator of Non-Fiction, Steve Foxon and followed by a Q&A with special guests. This event is also part of the Department for Transport’s Centenary.

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/movingmillionsbritishtransportplusqanda

 

 

Beyond the River (2018) ***

Dir.: Craig Freimond; Cast: Lemogang Tsipa, Grant Swanby, Emily Child, Kgosi Mongake; South Africa 2017, 110 min.

Beyond the River is a conventional real-life sporting feature, with redemption written all over it. Director/co-writer Craig Freimond (Material) doesn’t ignore the social inequalities in today’s South Africa, but his emotional pathos and seductive sentimentalism reduces any realism to a minimum.

Based on the true story of canoeists Siseko Ntondini and Priers Cruickshanks –  played as Duma (Tsipa) and Steve (Swanby) – who won Gold medals in the 2014 Dasi endurance race, Freimond develops a formulaic structure, showing the emotional struggle both men have to overcome. Duma, in his twenties, lives with his family in a dilapidated hut in a black poor, crime-ridden neighbourhood. After the death of his mother, he had to give up on his ambition. Steve is more than ten years older than his partner, and lives in a middle class flat in the capital – but is unhappily married to Annie (Child). We later learn that Steve wa partly responsible for the accidental death of their son, and has since repressed any memory of him, forcing Annie to leave him. The canoe races are a splendid spectacle even though  Freimond uses a great deal of 70s style slow-motion, in keeping with genre rules.

Spectacular visuals save this from being just another humdrum human interest story fuelled by male testosterone and empty gestures. Tsipa and Swanby share a compelling on screen  chemistry and this fuels the rather overblown narrative, Child taking to the role of cheer-leader, like in some 50s boys own feature. Beyond the River just about passes as decent entertainment even though the male heroics feel old-fashioned and repetitive. AS

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTION ARTHOUSE CINEMAS from 27 April 2019     

Pond Life (2017) ***

Dir.: Bill Buckhurst; Cast: Tom Varley, Esme Creed-Miles, Angus Imrie, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Abraham Levis, Ethan Wilkie, Gianluca Galucci, Sian Brooke; UK 2017, 100 min.

Bill Buckhurst sets his feature debut in a mining village near Doncaster, South Yorkshire in 1994. Based on scriptwriter’s Richard Cameron play of the same name, it On the surface it’s a gentle comedy, but beware there are unknown depths, and not just in the pond.

Trev (Varley) is spending his last summer in the village where his best friend Pogo (Creed-Miles) is acting strangely, even for a teenager. Cassie (Edgar-Jones) on the other hand, is a fully fledged adolescent, all strops and tantrums if she does not get her way, and in she’s fallen for Maurice (Levis), a rather dubious figure. To make matters worse, her Ex, Malcolm (Imrie) has not come to terms with things, and is stalking her. Two pre-pubescence boys, Dave (Wilkie) and Shane (Galucci) are also suffering from hormonal changes, and spend their time watching Cassie and Maurice in the high grass, or nicking Cassie’s stockings and suspenders. Adults play a secondary role in Pond Life, like Pogo’s Mum (Brooke), who is suffering from a depression. 

Meanwhile Tom is an expert fisherman, and come nightfall, takes them all out fishing to catch the mystical beast, they call Nessie. When Pogo’s line pulls, she decides – against the odds – to put the fish back into the water. And the  following morning, finds out that Trevor had already left, and all is not well with Maurice.

There’s nothing really happening in the village, except for some slot machines and and a ropey old cafe. The adults tend to meet up in the Miners Club, where they reminisce about a weird guy called Tony Blair, who has just become leader of the Labour Party, and wants to live in Number Ten. “Fat chance”, is the overwhelming comment of the crowd.

Although watchable enough Pond Life still feels rather stagey and this somehow limits its filmic scope on the big screen. DoP Nick Cooke, struggles to find innovative angles in this rather down beaten environment whose dilapidated settings hark back to the mining crisis which has cast a  deep melancholy on everything that moves, (and doesn’t). And whilst this atmosphere of total abandonment is captured rather well, the threadbare narrative strains to keep our attention for the full running time. Pond Life wants very much to be liked, but in the end, tries too hard. AS

ON RELEASE ON 12 APRIL 2019

 

Canada Now Week 2019

CANADA NOW festival brings a selection of new Canadian films to the United KingdomLaunching on the 24th April 2019, nine films will play across five days at the Curzon Soho and Phoenix East Finchley cinemas, followed by a nationwide tour

As always, the 2019 CANADA NOW celebrates the independent spirit that has always been a hallmark of Canadian cinema along with its cultural diversity and twist of French heritage.

The festival opens with the London premiere of Keith Behrman’s LBGTQ+ drama GIANT LITTLE ONES, a refreshingly original and emotionally powerful coming-of-age drama. And the festival closes with Barry Avrich’s PROSECUTING EVIL, a feature biopic of Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor and life-long human rights activist. CANADA NOW expects many of the filmmakers and cast to be in attendance.

Alongside eight U.K. premieres, CANADA NOW also includes a performance from Canadian filmmaker Daniel Cockburn of his surreal, autobiographical show HOW NOT TO WATCH A MOVIE.

The full programme is listed below, and tickets are now on sale:

http://canadanow.co.uk/

Donbass (2018) ****

Writer/Dir: Sergey Loznitsa | Cast: Valeriu Andriuta, Boris Kamorzin, Sergey Kolesov | Drama | Ukraine/Ger/France/Neth/Romania/Russia | 110

Donbass today is a conflation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, and an important mining region since the late 19th century, when it became heavily industrialised. Sergey Loznitsa’s drama set in the region opened this year’s Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes.

In March 2014, following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Russian military intervention, large swaths of the Donbass seethed with unrest that eventually erupted in a war between pro-Russian separatists affiliated with the self-proclaimed unrecognized Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, and the post-revolutionary Ukrainian government. Until the ongoing war, Donbass – which borders Russia – was the most densely populated of all the regions of Ukraine, apart from the capital city of Kiev. Before the war, the city of Donetsk (then the fifth largest city in Ukraine) had been considered the unofficial capital of the Donbass.

And it is during this troubled period of history that the Ukrainian born filmmaker sets his follow-up to last year’s Cannes title A Gentle Creature (he has made a film every year since his 2012 In The Fog: The Letter; Maidan; The Event and Austerlitz. Elliptical and visually striking, DONBASS does lack a certain warmth, focusing on its formal rigour and an evocative sense of emptiness, it is a piece that will certainly appeal to the diehard arthouse crowd.

The narrative follows but does not focus on any particular character, as a series of interconnecting vignettes gradually unfold that will be more engaging for audiences intimately familiar with the situation, rather than to outsiders looking in. There is a haunting scene where a prisoner (Valery Antoniuk) gets lynched by a crowd of locals who believe him to be a member of a Ukrainian execution squad. But nobody seems safe in this combattive, hostile and unpredicatble environment fraught with sudden explosions as gunfire rumbles continually in the background. The director conveys a palpable sense of generalised chaos and desperation.

Loznitsa collaborates again with DoP Oleg Mutu (who also lensed A Gentle Creature). This is a muscular and intelligent piece of filmmaking, but one that will have the most appeal to keen historians and ardant fans of this accomplished and fascinating director.MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | UN CERTAIN REGARD 2018

 

 

Prosecuting Evil (2018) **** Canada Now 2019

Dir/Wri.: Barry Avrich; Documentary with Ben Ferencz; Canada 2018, 83 min.

Best known for his Shakespeare adaptations, Barry Avrich turns his camera to his Jewish heritage with this moving portrait of international lawyer Ben Ferencz, who worked tirelessly to bring justice to those who had suffered because of their faith. As prosecutor for the first Nuremberg Trials, and Chief Prosecutor for the Einsatzgruppen Trials after WWII in Germany, Ferencz later worked on the establishment of The International Court of Justice in De Haag in 2007.

Ferencz was born in 1920 in Transylvania, which changed hands between Romania and Hungary during the post-war period. Because of rising Anti-Semitism, his parents emigrated to the USA where he grew up in Hells Kitchen, a poor district of New York. His school grades enabled him to gain scholarships at High School and later Harvard, where he studied law. He was recruited very late into the Army, and was sent to General Patton’s HQ, and later the War Crimes Department. Returning to the USA in his late twenties, he found himself being recruited by Telford Taylor as one of prosecutors for the Nuremberg Trials. Afterwards, Taylor appointed him as a successor to Robert H. Jackson, as Chief Prosecutor for the Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1947/48. 

The Einsatzgruppen were a special SS unit who often worked with the regular German Army to murdering Jews, Roma, and communists – they were basically a group of killers and never encountered armed resistance, murdering only civilians. Otto Ohlendorf, leader of Einsatzgruppe D, which operated in Ukraine and the Crimea, was one of 24 defendants, of whom 13 were sentenced to death.

The defendants were highly educated. One of them, Otto Rasch, leader of Einsatzgruppe C, had a double doctorate. Ohlendorf was an economist and worked with Ludwig Erhardt (later ‘Father of the West German Economic miracle’ and Chancellor in the 1960s) in the SS economic department, planning for the future of National Socialism after the war.

During the trial, he claimed self-defence stating his prosecutors knew nothing about the threat the Soviet Union and Jews posed for Germany. He vowed that Jews would suffer in the US if he and his co-defendants were convicted. Ohlendorf also insisted, “that he would do it all over again, even killing my sister, if I had to.” Ohlendorf, like his boss Heinrich Himmler, saw himself as decent and humanitarian. He told the court about his advice to the Einsatzgruppen when dealing with a mother holding her baby: “Do shoot the baby, this way the mother will also be killed, this is much more human”. Ferencz had to admit that Ohlendorf was quiet a gentleman – apart from being a mass murderer.

Ferencz stayed on in Germany after the Nuremberg Trials and with Kurt May he set up a reparation and rehabilitation programme for victims of the Nazis, later helping to establish the reparation agreement between Israel and Germany, and the German restitution law in 1953. He returned to the USA in 1956, and worked in partnership with Telford Taylor.

But the fight to help and set up an International Court of Justice took him until 2002. Unfortunately, neither the USA, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel and most of the Arab countries, are not part of the 120 nations, who have signed up to the genocide laws. Therefore, so Ferencz, at the age of 99 still as busy as ever, fights to convince the international community to sign up, because “War makes mass murderers out of otherwise decent people. And I have seen it again and again.” 

This documentary is the portrait of one of the giants in the history of law, a true humanitarian who helped to pave the way for an international law, which needs more signatories at a time when wars seem to multiply. AS

SCREENING DURING CANADA NOW  | 24 -28 April 2019

  

Steel Country (2018) ****

Dir.: Simon Fellows; Cast: Andrew Scott, Bronagh Waugh, Denise Gough, Christa Beth Campbell, Andrew Masset; UK 2018, 90 min.

This taut UK thriller, also known as A Dark Place was filmed in the US, where autistic Donald turns detective to find out the fate of a little boy who has supposedly drowned. Not so much a who-done-it, but an atmospheric journey into America’s dark heartland, where time seems to have stood still for the last half century.

In small-town Pennsylvania, Donald (Scott) drives a garbage truck with his colleague (Bronagh Waugh). Alcoholism has ruined the family, destroying his father and leaving him to care for his God-fearing wheelchair-bound mother. Donald is a decent guy but totally immature and unable to move on from his ex-partner  (Gough). When a local boy is found drowned in a nearby creek, Donald suspects foul play. The sheriff and his officials try to keep him off the case, but Donald is stubborn. He digs up the boy’s body and takes it to Pittsburgh to an old school friend who is now a forensic pathologist school. It turns out that the boy was molested and Donald thinks about taking revenge on the main suspect, the boy’s paediatrician, Dr. Pomorowski (Masset). His ex does not take him seriously, and even his eleven-year-old daughter Wendy (Campbell) is unimpressed by his concern and just wants to talk about the Pittsburgh Steelers, an American Football team.

This is very much Jim Thompson territory: the red-neck shabbiness, the corrupt police and the emotionally regressed anti-hero living in in a world of his own and disregarding the rules because the outside world means nothing to him. Thompson’s world of the middle 1970’s is everywhere, reflected in DoP Marcel Zyskind’s brilliant images, and brings to mind Seidelmann’s 1975 picture Child of Rage. Not much has changed in this neglected backwater, a world of dead-end jobs and alcoholism, where sexuality is as perverted as the pervasive power structure of state and police. The garbage truck Donald is driving is a clear metaphor for this fragmented society, held together by greed and a virulent, aggressive fear of everyone not deemed to be part of the claustrophobic set-up. Violence seems to be the only way out of any conflict. Steel County is a little gem, a perfect B-picture, perhaps destined to be a cult classic. MT

OUT ON 19 April NATIONWIDE

  

Cannes Film Festival –

Thierry Frémaux (now general delegate) has unveiled the 2019 official selection. And this year’s Cannes looks to be a glittering number with plenty of real stars gracing the Croisette (Elton John, Isabelle Huppert, Tilda Swinton and Claude Lelouch), four female filmmakers in the main Competition line-up which strikes a good balance of well known auteurs and new filmmakers – and some promising British Films: Dexter Fletcher’s biopic Rocketman; Asif Kapadia new documentary about his hero Diego Maradona, and another dose of dour social realism from Ken Loach. Cannes and Netflix are still at loggerheads – in the best possible way – but where would Cannes be without a little controversy to hit to headlines…

The four Palme d’Or hopefuls directed by women are— Mati Diop’s Atlantique (she was memorable in Simon Killer);Jessica Hausner’s Sci-fi-ish debut Little Joe stars Ben Whishaw and Emily Beecham in a story set in the world of genetic engineering (left); Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (with its all female cast) and Justine Triet’s Sibyl a psychotherapist themed drama which has distinct echoes of Ozon‘s l’Amant Double. Infact, 13 of the 51 filmmakers (about 25%) are women. And Thierry intends to continue with the trend.

Alejandro González Iñárritu, who won the festival’s directing prize for Babel in 2006 will head up the jury. This year’s official poster (above) pays tribute to the director Agnès Varda, who died last month at age 90, and features an image from her final film La Pointe Courte. And for the first time ever, the opening film Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die will also play in competition. Styled as a zombie comedy is has a superb cast: Adam Driver, Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny and Tilda Swinton.

Also in the main competition is Pedro Almodovar with Pain and Glory described as a fictionalised auto-biopic. He’s be nominated before but never won the Palme so it would be a feather in the Oscar winner’s cap. Canadian Xavier Dolan is back with a Quebec-set drama Matthias and Maxime. Il Traditore is Marco Bellocchio’s drama about Tommaso Buscetta the first mafia informant in 1980’s Sicily. Ira Sachs’s Frankie is set in the bewitching town of Sintra which will add another dimension to the story starring festival doyenne Isabelle Huppert along with Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear and Jérémie Renier. Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu tries his hand at comedy with The Whistlers which unites him once again with Vlad Ivanov (Hier and Sunset). Ladj Ly is the only first time filmmaker on the comp list and he brings a drama expanded from his 2017 short entitled Les Miserables about the Seine-Saint-Denis anti-crime brigade. Veteran favourites The Dardennes Brothers will be there will Muslim-themed Young Ahmed. Malick’s A Hidden Life (aka Radegund) explores the life of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector to the Third Reich who was executed in 1943 and contains final performances from Michael Nqyvist and Bruno Ganz, sadly no longer with us.

Other directors returning to competition include Oh Mercy, a Roubaix-set crime drama from Arnaud Desplechin and a family drama from South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho (Okja). And Cannes regular Kleber Mendonça Filho co-directs his latest (with Juliano Dornelle), a horror film entitled Bacurau.

Un Certain Regard sidebar has films from Catalan auteur Albert Serra – Liberté – and The Wild Goose Lake, a Chinese thriller by Diao Yinan (Black Coal, Thin Ice). Bruno Dumont’s follow up to Maid of Orleans story Jeannette (2017) is simply called Joan of Arc. 

And where would Cannes be without the megastars of the Riviera? Double Oscar-winning Claude Lelouch claimed the Palme d’Or back in 1966 with the iconic Un Homme et Une Femme. And he follows this up with the same classic duo in The Best Years of a Life (Out of Competition) uniting Jean-Louis Trintignant with Anouk Aimée. Veteran heavyweights Abel Ferrara and Werner Herzog also join the party.

TV-wise there will be a chance to sample Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s 10-parter  Too Old to Die Young. Venice started the TV-streaming service trend, and Cannes has now joined the bandwagon.

Thierry Frémaux left the press conference with his usual cheeky promise that other titles will soon be announced. And everyone was excited to hear that these could include Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood exploring the final years of the Golden Era with a starry line-up of Al Pacino, Leonard DiCaprio, Dakota Fanning and Margot Robbie.

For the time being no Netflix films will be included in the Palme d’Or competition, indeed the streaming giant does not have a film ready in time to be presented this year. Martin Scorsese has declared that special affects have delayed his entry of The Irishman which was very much on the cards for Thierry Frémaux and Pierre Lescure, and will now most likely appear at Venice.

Other regulars and possible contenders are Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems and the latest from Noah Baumach and Ad Astra from James Gray. So watch this space. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 14 -25 MAY 2019

Jury

Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Elle Fanning

Maimouna N’Diaye

Kelly Reichardt

Alice Rohracher

Enki Bilal

Robin Campillo

Yorgo Lanthimos

Pawel Pawlikowski

 

The Blue Angel (1930) ***** Bluray

Dir.: Josef von Sternberg; Cast: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, Kurt Gerron, Hans Albers; Germany 1930, 106 min.

One of many Germans who would later emigrate to Hollywood, UFA boss Erich Pommer wanted to raise the profile of German cinema, feeling it had not adapted well to sound. So he  engaged Hollywood director Josef von Sternberg (Undeworld) to direct Heinrich Mann’s 1905 novel Professor Unrat at Babelsberg. 

Set in 1924, Emil Jannings played the anti-hero, Professor Rath, who is a strict teacher, and a very repressed man. When is comes to his attention that his High School students are visiting a rather notorious establishment called Der Blaue Engel, to meet the well-known singer LoLa-Lola (Dietrich), he is hell bent on destroying their fun. But instead, he falls in love for the first time in his life. After a night with Lola, he asks for her hand, and is immediately dismissed from his position. With his new wife, he tours small towns, and even takes part in the stage acts: the cabaret owner Kiepert (Gerron) asking him to crow like a cockerel. But Lola is not the faithful type, preferring the young and athletic Mazeppa (Albers) and Rath soon becomes disillusioned and turns to alcohol. When the troupe arrives in his home town, where a large crowd awaits his appearance on stage, Rath has a nervous breakdown. And after trying to strangle Lola, he runs off to his old school to meet his maker.

Dietrich’s songs: “Ich bin die fesche Lola”, dominate the feature: Von Sternberg took her to Hollywood, where she starred in six of his films, becoming an American citizen in 1939, and, for a while, an international star. Siegfried Kracauer, for whom Fritz Lang’s M and The Blue Angel were the most significant German films of the the Weimarer Republic, called the feature “sadistic”. And it is true: Rath is tortured in every way possible after he sets eyes on Lola – he is no match for her, or the milieu he has chosen to live in. He is a victim of what Kacauer called the “Street films”, where the middle class man attempts to follow his passion, but is brutally punished. Rath is one of many tragic screen heroes who can only function in a restricted lower middle-class environment due to his emotional regression. For Kracauer, the majority of German men fell into this category.

Dietrich’s casting proved to be a turning point in the life of two German actors – just six months apart by birth – who aspired to convince Von Sternberg to cast them. The other was Leni Riefenstahl was already an established film star who had had great success in ‘Mountain’ films, a popular sub-genre in Germany. Dietrich on the other hand, was not much more than a singing extra both in films and on stage. Riefenstahl dined with Von Sternberg hoping to get a part in The Blue Angel, but after she heard that he had plumped for Dietrich, she told the newspapers that she had recommended her rival, in order to save face. But according to a another version she shouted “Okay, let the whore play the whore, who cares”. The rest, as they say, is history – and much more than film history. AS

Eureka and The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to bring The Blue Angel back to big screen once again from 31 May 2019, when it is released in selected cinemas nationwide (UK and Ireland) to coincide with the centenary of the Weimar Republic and the BFI Southbank’s major two-month season Beyond Your Wildest Dreams: Weimar Cinema 1919-1933                      

Dragged Across Concrete (2018) ***

Dir: S Craig Zahler | Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn | Thriller | US, 16o;

S Craig Zahler’s latest thriller lacks the slick, pared-down momentum of his previous outing Brawl in Cell Block 99. Overlong and often ponderous it nevertheless carries some weight in the social message it pushes forward. But two hours and 40 minutes is pushing it too far.

Mel Gibson (Lurasetti) and Vince Vaughn (Ridgeman) are cops who decide to play some criminals at their own game by disturbing a suspect’s love nest during a drug raid, giving him a bloody nose. Their boss (Don Johnson) gets to hear about it from a neighbour’s video footage, and decides to suspend them. Both have major family commitments so they turn the tables on the law to raise some much needed spondulix. Ridgeman’s plan is to make a quick buck by staking out a local safe house, and stashing aside some filthy lucre. Lurasetti is not keen on the plan, but goes along for the ride.

Suffice to say, it all goes pear-shaped and there follows a rather drawn out denouement involving another strand to the storyline. The action sequences are entertaining, particularly the one involving the slow dissemination of their vehicle. And it’s quite clear, once again, where Zahler’s sympathies lie. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 19 APRIL 2019

Greta (2018) Netflix

Dir. Neil Jordan. US/Ireland. 2018. 98 mins.

Neil Jordan’s latest drama Greta has the basis to be something much greater, but  chooses the silly route, becoming creepy too soon. Luckily Isabelle Huppert’s blood-curdling turn as a lonely widow saves the day.

Falling between comedy and horror this enjoyable pulp thriller throws a spanner into the works of seriously gripping psychodrama  – instead we get an over-baked absurdist potboiler with one or two electric shocks that will have you screaming out loud. The moral of the story is: one good turn doesn’t lead to another.

Jordan and Ray Wright (The Crazies) have co-written a script that melds Hollywood slickness with European arthouse subversiveness deftly rendered in DoP Seamus McGarvey’s eye-popping visual wizardry, with a small role for Stephen Rea. Chloë Grace Moretz is naive Ivy League graduate Frances who shares a comfortable Brooklyn brownstone with her more savvy friend Erika (Maika Monroe). One days she finds a smart-looking handbag on the subway and duly heads to the home of its owner – one Greta Higed – who inhabits a small secluded house in a Manhattan backwater. A soignée Isabelle Huppert (Greta) opens the door to a cosy French country interior, although it later transpires she is originally from Hungary.

It turns out that well-meaning Frances has recently lost her mother and is feeling isolated emotionally and unhappy with her father’s new relationship. She is instantly drawn to Huppert’s faux bonhomie and the two bond, Greta missing her own daughter, who apparently lives in Paris. A few espressos later they are swearing undying allegiance to each other, all too much too soon. To add further credibility to her caring side, Greta adopts a dear old dog (Morton) on his last legs in a nearby sanctuary. Alarm bells ring. Huppert does her best not to let this descend into a schlocky psycho-scenario but it does, and she knows it, but is having a lovely time with her role. She is also the only woman with normal lips, the others having blown theirs up with fillers. Jordan is having fun with his soundtrack – a blend of classics from Vivaldi to some smaltzy French chansons, just the right background for a ‘girls only’ night in where the femme fatale cooks up some recipes Frances hadn’t bargain for: “Good, no?” says Greta, an evil glint in her eye as she morphs into mean mummy – spouting fluent Hungarian – just to add menace to the mix.

Jordan occasionally makes some bad decisions disrupting Huppert’s subtly crafted character performance and misjudging the mood. One example is the restaurant scene that starts with chilling elegance and is ruined by cack-handed melodrama. Greta is a surprising departure from Jordan’s usual fare and will certainly appeal to the mainstream crowd with its devilish humour and slap in the face thrills. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

The Caretaker (1963) **** Bfi Flipside

Dir.: Clive Donner; Cast: Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence, Robert Shaw; UK 1963, 105 min.

A play that changed the face of modern theatre and made Harold Pinter’s name, The Caretaker remains one of Pinter’s most famous works. Featuring original production cast members Donald Pleasence and Alan Bates, the film adaptation is sensitively directed by Clive Donner (Rogue Male) and was shot by Nicolas Roeg. It will be released by the BFI in a Dual Format Edition on 15 April 2019, presented with a variety of extras, and on iTunes on 29 April.

The Caretaker was also an early version of celebrity crowdfunding, with Elisabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Noel Coward among the co-producers. With clear echoes of Joseph Losey’s The Servant from the same year (Pinter also scripted, based on a novel by Robin Maugham), The Caretaker is a power play as well as a psychological menage-a-trois. But whilst the titular servant in the Loosey film wins the battle with his master and his fiancée, the title character in The Caretaker looses out against the alliance of two brothers.

Hobo Mac Davies aka Bernhard Jenkins (Pleasence) is picked up from the street by Aston (Shaw), who takes pity on him on a frosty night, and invites him into the dilapidated home he , shares with his brother Mick (Bates). But having set foot in his bedsitter room, which has been used as a dumping ground for broken domestic appliances, Davies turns out to be opportunistic and aggressive at the same time: bullying the hyper-sensitive Aston, who has been the victim of electro-shock treatment during his teenage years. Davies also spins him a porkie about having to get to  Sidcup, to retrieve his ‘papers’ – a bogus excuse which provides a rich vein of humour. Despite being a tramp with no possessions or any way of financing him life, he has a high opinion of himself, and is extremely demanding and choosy finding fault in Aston’s generous attempts to accommodate him: particularly with regards to footwear. Alan Bates plays Aston’s cocky older brother Mick (Bates), who dreams about tuning the ramshackle house into a luxury penthouse – whilst Aston had mentioned a much more realistic project to Davis: the building of a shed in the garden, where Aston could use as a workshop. But Davis soon enthrals Aston with his stories of follies de grandeur – and the need to get to Sidcup to fetch his ‘references’. Private Eye’s column ‘Great Bores of Today’ could have been based on Pinter’s hilarious road references.

Even though, Mick throws a few coins at Davies feet, which the in the room is a small Buddha statue, which Aston cherishes. Trying to get to grips with Davies, Mick smashes the stature, whilst the former tries to get Aston to give him control over the household, relegating his brother. A knife suddenly turns up, but slowly the brothers form an alliance against Davies. Aston throws him out of the house, but even though Mick picks him up in the morning, after a Davies is shivering from the cold, Aston turns his back literally on Davies, who has returned to the house: Aston keeps out the light blocking from the window and condemns Davis to the darkness he came from.

Richard Donner (Here we go around the Mulberry Bush) directs the sparse action with great sensitivity, but DoP Nicolas Roeg steals the show, using all tricks in the trade to conjure up always new light and shadow games, in which the three protagonists are caught like in a spider’s web. Pleasance is really creepy as the ever-changing Davis, and Bates acts out his his psychotic tendencies with menace. But Robert Shaw makes the strongest impression, as the permanently tortured victim of intrusive medical treatment, which has robbed him of any idenity. AS

Dual Format Edition (DVD/Blu-ray) release on 15 April 2019, and on iTunes on 29 April

   

One, Two Three (1961) **** Bluray

Dir: Billy Wilder | Wri: I.A.L Diamond | Cast: James Cagney, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Comedy | US,

One of director Billy Wilder‘s most frenetic comedies, the madcap Cold War and corporate politics satire One, Two, Three has to be one of the only films almost capable of making its Wilder predecessors Some Like It Hot and The Apartment seem sedately paced in comparison. Featuring a hilarious lead performance by James CagneyOne, Two, Three hasn’t always been as famous as Wilder’s other comedies, but it’s among his best.

Cagney is C.R. “Mac” MacNamara, a top soft drinks company executive shipped off to (then West) Berlin and told to keep an eye on his boss’ 17-year-old Atlanta socialite daughter Scarlett (Pamela Tiffin) while she visits Germany. Scarlett’s tour seems endless, and Mac discovers she’s fallen for a (then East) Berlin communist agitator and the young couple are bound for Moscow! Mac has to bust up the burgeoning romance before his boss learns the truth, all the while dealing with his wife Phyllis (Arlene Francis) and her own impatience with German living.

With One, Two, Three, Wilder set out to make “the fastest picture in the world.” Mission accomplished, so hang on and try not to miss too many gags if this is your first viewing of this knockabout comedy penned by Wilder’s long-time screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present yet another Billy Wilder masterpiece on Blu-ray for the first time ever in the UK.

Billy Wilder’s ONE, TWO, THREE, a witty and energetic comedic showpiece starring James Cagney, presented on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK as a part of The Masters of Cinemas Series from 15 April 2019, featuring a Limited Edition slipcase [2000 copies ONLY]  https://amzn.to/2IfCLl5

Red Joan (2018) ****

Dir.: Trevor Nunn; Writer: Lindsay Shapiro | Cast: Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Tereza Srbova, Tom Hughes, Stephen Campbell-Moore, Ben Miles, Freddie Gaminara, Stephen Boxer; UK 2018, 101 min.

Best known for his theatre work, Trevor Nunn tackles a meaty wartime spy thriller set in the present day, and adapted from a novel by Jennie Rooney. Old-fashioned but thoroughly enjoyable, Red Joan tells the story of real life KGB operative Melita Norwood, a sensational Judi Dench, with an enigmatic Sophie Cookson playing her younger self.

Norwood who was finally arrested in her eighties, starts out at a physics student in 1930s Cambridge. Nunn’s construct of parallel action between a five-day interrogation by MI5 in 2000 and the past works seamlessly, leaving the audience time to reflect.

Joan Stanley (Cookson) is a rather timid and over-adjusted student, but after meeting German immigrants Sonia (Srbova) and and her handsome cousin Leo (Hughes), she is drawn into the world of communist sympathisers – mainly because she has fallen in love with the tousle-haired Leo. She is critical of Leo’s absolute subordination to the Stalinist dogma, but she is on “his side” – after all, the Soviet Union was an ally of Britain and the USA. During the war Joan is recruited into a highly secret project: Britain’s attempt of building the atomic bomb. Whilst Leo and Sonia, working undercover for the KGB, are pestering her to reveal secrets to them, Joan resists, and falls in love with the head of the project, a married Max Davis (a convincing Campbell-Moore). Max, gallantly, refused to have an affair with Joan, and wants to wait for a divorce. This throws Joan back to Leo, and she starts to give him photographed copies of he research documents. During a search of the laboratory, Kierl (Boxer) based on the real life life spy Klaus Fuchs, is caught; whilst the officer searching Joan’s bag is too embarrassed to go further after finding her (deliberately placed) sanitary towels. William Mitchell (Gaminara), who will later make a career in the Foreign Officer and leads MI5 to Joan, is another one of the ring. There are personal secrets to be discovered, like the real relationship between Leo and Sonia, and finally Joan admits all to Max, who is wrongfully accused of being a spy. His reaction will alter Joan’s life for good.

DoP Jack Nicholson and PD Christina Casali have combined in creating a picture perfect Cambridge in the 1930s and the world of laboratories and secret hiding places. Nunn always directs with great nuance – never straying into melodrama or cliché: Joan’s inner life is enough to go by. The overall message is of romantic intrigue, a turmoil of souls and an entanglement into history, not so much by choice, but by circumstance.

 Dench brings out Joan humanity, she is neither a hero nor a villain: just an ordinary woman influenced by personal experience – rather than dogma – and an emotional yearning to belong. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs (seen in archive footage) finally push her over the edge, but so does the death of her beloved father. Growing up in a man’s world, she is diminished and demoted to a tea lady (in spite of her first class degree in physics). Nunn shows her at the coalface of men’s emotional immaturity, bulldozing their way forward – whatever the ideology or the workplace. Her barrister son Nick (Miles) is ready to decry her, questioning her motives for a while. But Joan explains how convinced she was back then of ensuring peace by creating nuclear deterrence between the superpowers, placing a bomb in both their hands. To her it seemed the most logical solution. And Joan’s actions emerge a triumph of emotional individualism over (any) form of male inspired nationalism or ideology. AS

SCREENING NATIONWIDE FROM 14 APRIL 2019   

Passion – Between Revolt and Resignation (2019) **** Visions du Reel 2019

Dir.: Christian Labhart; Documentary; Switzerland 2019, 80 min.

Christian Labhart was only fifteen in 1968 but he dreamt of changing the world. And that society would transcend into a utopia of human brotherhood. Fifty years later he reflects on episodes from his own life, trying to understand how they fit—if they do at all—with the major changes of the world. And what happened to his Marxist pretensions?.

Told in chapters to the music of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, and quotes from Brecht, Kafka and Guy Debord among others, Labhard feels his dreams have come to nothing.  Starting with police forces guarding the G20 meeting in Hamburg in 2017, Labhart remembers how he demonstrated against the Vietnam War back in 1968, and swore he would never end up like his bourgeois parents. But contemporary images of the glitzy entertainment world show examples of what Guy Dbord calls “the empire of modern passivity”; alienation and fragmentation having replaced human interaction.

Labhard goes back to 1977 with the protests against nuclear power stations, the rise of violence with the Baader-Meinhof Group; Ulrike Meinhof describing four years in solitary confinement as “akin to being in a house of mirrors, the skin being torn off, and even visits leaving no trace”. Only the once weekly bath gave some relief. In 1980, Labhart was disillusioned with the way things were going, and so with some friends he moved to the countryside, “where they were very tired from work”, but still could not make a living.

After Chernobyl, Labhart and his wife abandoned their farm to become teachers, job-sharing making it possible to rear two kids who then became the entire focus of their lives. After the fall of the wall in 1989, the director visits Bulgaria, his images of deserted communist party buildings are akin to the relics from ‘Planet of the Apes’: the remains of a culture long lost. With communism dead in the water, Labhart reflect, along with the poet Dorothee Sölle: “This cannot have been all”.

The fall of the Twin Towers in 2001 finds the director in a rather sanguine mood in his home in the leafy suburbs: the kids have given the couple a new outlook in life. Starting out as a filmmaker, he asks: “Can I change reality by representing it?” Then quoting Arundhati Roy “How deep shall we dig, to find the courage to dream”.  The big cities are full of impressive but austere architecture, a built environment of post-industrial waste. The Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2008 falls at a time when the children leave home – Labhart is bereft.

Across five continents he still tries to find a way out of the capitalist jungle that has swallowed up his world. Global warming, war, overconsumption, refugee crises, inequality. Between Revolt and Resignation grows more or more despondent anew conflicts explode nearly every day. In a chapter about Poetry and Uprising, Franco Bifo Berardi is quoted “is useless to burn down a bank, as financial power is not in the physical building, but in the abstract connections between numbers and algorithms.” The chapter about 2011-2015 is entitled “What to be done?” and features the Syria War and the Arab Spring which brings to mind the director’s feelings in 1968.

After this, everything starts to break down, with brutal images in a Buenos Aires slaughter house, ads for Land Rovers, claiming that “Real Life is the greatest adventure”. The closing line is from Brecht “What an age, when to speak of trees is almost a crime. But how can I eat and drink, when my food is snatched from the hungry?”

Whilst Labhart ends on a defensive note “I don’t question the goal, only because we have not reached it”. Puo Corradi and Simon Guy Fässler’s visuals tell a different story: the planet has become the image of a society hellbent on self-destruction. Labhart’s essay is very much a long goodbye to hope. AS

 

VISIONS DU REEL | 5 -13 APRIL 2019

Kiruna – A Brand New World (2019) Vision du Reel 2019

Dir.: Greta Stocklassova; Cast: Timo Vilgats, Abdal Rahman Josef, Maja Jannock Björnström; Czech Republic 2019, 87 min.

The first feature documentary by Czech writer/director Greta Stocklassova is emotional, but well-structured: a work-in-progress report on the Swedish town of Kiruna, 200 km above the arctic circle, which is being moved three km to the east. The 17,000 inhabitants of the 2840 sq/mile city have very different reactions to the move. 

Kiruna has lived off its mining industry, but finally it it has caught up with it: The LKAB company is moving Kiruna because the ground underneath is about to give way. The project of relocation will last until 2100; the movement of zone 4 now under work, will be finished by 2033. We watch houses being transported on huge lorries: classic buildings of all sorts will be saved this way.

In the Philosophy Club we meet Timo Vilgats, an elderly gentleman, a sort of town historian. He is appalled by the relocation, filming the ruins of his house with his mobile and pointing out out where the rooms in the house had been, where his children were born and grew up. Others take the move in their stride: a woman the same age as Vilgats sits down with a planner and tells her where she wants to have the plugs in her new home.

Meanwhile, in the home for asylum seekers, Abdal Rahman Josef is waiting for an interview which will decide his future: he is from Yemen, and his life would be in danger if he was to be sent back. Abdal complains about being left behind, whilst others are processed much quicker. In the end he is granted asylum and tells a fellow immigrant he is looking after his career and does not want to have a girl friend. Maja Jannok Björnström, seventeen years old, is finishing High School. Her school reports are good and, at an interview about her professional choice, she tells the interviewer “ I will always be a Sami”, perfecting the language of her ancestors, and wearing traditional costumes. Samis are still under threat, hate crimes against them are common. At the graduation ceremony, the last one held at the old Town Hall, Maja is just one happy student, like the rest. Meanwhile, at a meeting with the developers of the new town, Vilgats talks at length about the destruction of the old – but others, even the older ones, contradict him, and hope for the best. In the end, we see Vilgats with his dog wandering along the fence, the demarcation line between the old and the new town: deep fog fits his melancholy mood.

DoP Stanislav Adam uses his images to show the beauty of the old and the new. Like the director he is impartial, finding little incidents, like the detonation of yet another part of the old town, directed by the finger tip of a shy young boy who presses the button to show that planning might not solve everything. There is an input for the community, however limited. AS

VISIONS DU REEL | 5 -13 APRIL 2019

La Vida in Comun (2019) **** Visions du Reel 2019

Dir.: Ezequiel Yanco; Cast: Isaias Barroso, Pablo Chernov, El Apoyo De, Uriel Alcaraz, Yuliana Alcaraz; Argentina, France 2019, 70 min. 

This lyrical rather eclectic coming-of-age documentary is set in the remote indigenous settlement of Pueblo Nacion Ranquel in Northern Argentina, where animals and the past play a central role. A puma is stalking the community and a group of young boys start tracking the animal, as part traditional rite of passage. La Vida En Comun is imbued with an atmosphere of transition, as if the whole colony is waiting and watching for something to happen. And Yanco captures this transitory nature of this temporary set-up with its Avantgarde houses that seem to be part of another world. Infact, Pueblo Raquel is decisively otherworldly – the buildings are from the future, but the teenagers live in the ancient world, where animals and humans lived side by side.

Apart from a few teachers, there is an absence of adults and so the unobserved teens are left to their own devices. The action is narrated by one of the girls who relates how, in an act of bravado to impress a girl, one of the youngest boys Isaias (Barroso) defied the older ones by hunting down the mighty puma, and maybe even killing him. Well, that’s what we’re led to believe.

Everything seems opaque, ephemeral, ready to disappear at any second. These are the reflected emotions of a land where expropriation was (and is) rife; where the natives who once owned this country are pushed back into a reservation where they are marginalised by the interlopers. The lyrical tone often betrays this savage past, but it is always there, hovering over the living souls.

Yanco creates his own world where teenagers hunt animals and look for an identity that remains elusive. La Vida en Comun is like a huge question mark: is it a mirage, or reality? The only thing that is certain is mighty puma. We can only watch in wonderment, looking at a unique world in-between. AS

VISIONS DU REEL | 5 -13 APRIL 2019

 

        

The Wind. A Documentary Thriller (2019) **** Visions du Reel 2019

Dir.: Michal Bielawski; Documentary; Poland/Slovakia 2019, 74 min.

This poetic essay plays out like a thriller set in the mountain region of Podhale in southern Poland. Although the Tatra mountains are well known as a paradise for winter sports, Bielawski focuses on the cruel and unpredicable natural phenomenon of the ‘halny’ winds. These often terrorise locals but also cause rapid changes in atmospheric pressure strongly influencing the wellbeing of both people and animals and wreaking havoc with their habitat. Bielawski shows how the communities organise themselves to fight back.

A poetess, a female ambulance driver and old farmer, all unnamed, are the main protagonists of this tour de force eco-doc. The farmer is trying to batten down the barn hatches where a cow has just given birth to a baby bull. The storm is so strong that only planks nailed to the door will prevent them blowing open by the strength of the wind. Meanwhile the ambulance paramedic takes a call from a gentleman who says he wants to report a suicide. “Yours, or someone else’s” she asks him. “Mine” comes the strange reply. She remembers a long journey to a town far away where she had to deal with the corpse of a person hanged for his crimes. Meanwhile, the poetess emerges as the one most ‘in tune’ with the wind’s forces. A very fit woman in her fifties, she enjoys reciting her verses in the woods, hugging the trees, many of which have been felled in the recent storms.

The film then tracks back to the farmer who, with his friends, erects a small pylon, later fitting it with a windmill. The farmer and some children decide to go up to the mountain on the cable car, but the old man starts to feels sick. He later visits a doctor, who runs an ECG. Far away, we see a Ferris wheel, like a fata morgana. The poetess collects wood from a fallen tree, she saws it in little pieces and tells the forester she wants to buy a small part of the woods. The ambulance driver meanwhile deals with a drunkard and a victim of epilepsy, while his colleague fails to resuscitate a patient. The poetess sings in the woods where the snow storm is blowing a gale, trees are blocking the road, the windmills are devastated and a fire breaks out in the farmhouse, spreading to the barn and killing two cows before he can open the door. After the storm, the poetess saws off a piece of a fallen tree, takes out a piece of paper, and writes a new poem on the tree. Meanwhile, the old farmer, repairs the windmill as the children watch on.

Bielawski develops an elliptical rhythm as humans permanently try to mend what nature has destroyed. But ironically they don’t blame the storm, or even think of leaving the area: they have accepted their lot, but go on loving the mountains. DoP Bartek Solik’s fly on the wall images, particularly the close-ups, show us a rich emotional life. Most impressive is the poetess who is happy to be a witness to the living and the dead, animal and nature. A unique study of how an ongoing struggle has strangely becomes a rewarding way of life. AS

VISIONS DU REEL | 5-13 APRIL 2019

 

 

 

Sheep Hero (2018) **** Visions de Reel 2019

Dir: Ton van Zantvoort | Doc, 81 Holland

Being a shepherd sounds an idyllic existence. But the bucolic opening scenes of Ton van Zantvoort’s gorgeously cinematic arthouse documentary soon give way to the harsh realities of modern herding as a profit-making business.

The film’s focus is traditional herder Stijn Hilgers who starts of with a romantic view of life, enjoying the peace and freedom that comes with caring for a flock of sheep, as one of the last remaining sheepherders in the Netherlands. We see him waking up in the morning mist as he heads out for another day in the flower-strewn summer meadows. But his idealism soon clashes with the difficulty of being a modern freelance entrepreneur. Confusingly, the next scene sees him in a spacious living quarters, with a partner and child (and a hair cut!) as they furiously crunch numbers to see if they can eke out another year in this precarious, but ancient trade.

Along with many people nowadays who give up lucrative jobs to enjoy the freedom of self-employment in cottage-style businesses, Stijn’s freedom has come at a price. Ironically, he has had to strive year after year against mechanisation, competition, lower farm subsidies and administrative hurdles. When he then sets off to Utrecht to discuss his main grazing contract, he finds out it will not be renewed following year, seeing him risk bankruptcy or worse. And he now has a growing family to support.

So is there really such a thing as freedom as a shepherd. Apparently not. Even when you’re unafraid of hard work. Stijn’s world is now dominated by market forces and arcane laws. And you can see the gradually irritation creeping into his expression as he unwillingly transformed into a modern entrepreneur, taking not only his wife and sons with him, but also his parents as well. There are moments of humour as Stijn is forced to herd his entire flock through a neighbouring village to the consternation of locals who bombard him with complaints about sheep turds. This engaging documentary shows how a man’s fight to makes a success of his life somehow turns into a Kafka-esque nightmare as the freedom of the early scenes give way to nights of the dark soul-searching in his external and internal struggle to survive. MT

VISIONS DU REEL | 5 -13 APRIL 2019

 

Loro (2018) ****

Dir: Paolo Sorrentino | Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello | Cast: Toni Servillo, Elena Sofia Ricci, Riccardo Scamarcio, Kasia Smutniak, Euridice Axen, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Roberto De Francesco, Dario Cantarelli, Anna Bonaiuto, Alice Pagani, Mattia Sbragia | DoP: Luca Bigazzi |Biopic Drama 151′ 

Director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) exposes the hedonistic emptiness of Italian mainstream culture in this entertaining and sumptuously scenic sensual satire on Silvio Berlusconi. 

And once again Toni Servillo is the star turn and spot on as the man himself. Bringing his colossal charisma and a chink of humanity to this ebullient portrait of a leader who is foremost a salesman. It’s a film about the much-devalued power of seduction. We first meet Silvio after his government has been blown out in the elections and he needs to win back his prime position. This will be achieved by his superlative seduction technique and prepares to persuade six senators to join his party, so he can to be top dog again: “In love, you betray. In politics, you change your mind.” And this proves to be a piece of cake.

The international version conflates the director’s original two-parter into a parade of preternatural vulgarity. But there’s something compelling about the way it all plays out that is gripping until the finale. This is no dry old political pot-boiler, but an all-singing all-dancing affair where the flamboyant, flirtatious four times president (and now leader of Forza Italia) loves to party at all times. And Sorrentino knows that Italian audiences love to party too. And so the thrust of this biopic is party-time in Italy as never before (and never mind the debut-ridden economy or the Mafia): bare-breasted babes and buff boys gyrate in vertiginous coastal villa: Sardinia is seen at its most glamorous and recherché. Meanwhile, Berlusconi, when not partying or indulging in his famous Bunga-bunga games, likes most Italians, loves to seduce. And there’s an extraordinary scene where he does just that – and nobody even takes their clothes off.

Toni Servillo, has already tucked caricatures of Giulio Andreotti (Il Divo), and a compulsive gambler Gorbaciof under his belt. As ‘Berlusco’ his disingenuous perma-smile is a legend in its own lunchtime. Meanwhile his wife Veronica Lario (Elena Sofia Ricci) looks on disdainfully as cool and calming as pistachio ice-cream. Luca Bigazzi’s luscious cinematography and Stefania Cella’s spectacular interiors compliment Carlo Poggioli fabulous costume design.

The condensed cut brings a better clarity to the prostitution ring run by Sergio Morra (Riccardo Scamarcio)and his wife Tamara (Euridice Axen) and Berlusconi’s subtle distancing from his boring long term marriage to the supercilious Veronica. But it also brings into focus a narrative whose slackness contrasts sharply with the endless pertness of the bottoms and boobs on show. But this surfeit of uproarious partying eventually feels sad and vacuous also emphasising  the delusional qualities of Berlusconi’s own ego, showing him to be a narcissist and showman who deep need to be loved and admired is eventually laid bare by the fully dressed object of his ongoing affections (Alice Pagani).

We are fully aware that modern European mainstream culture is a vision of x-factor trashy tawdriness but at least in Italy there’s a certain style and enjoyment to the gaudiness. And for the most part Sorrentino’s tongue is firmly in his cheek as he showcases the endless marketing of sex as the best way to achieve the ends on the slippery pole to riches and success. There is no suggestion in any way that these girls don’t know what they are doing. They’re actually empowered by their looks and that sexiness is propulsive in a world where youth, fitness and beauty is the key to success. And it’s still the way the world goes round, whatever anyone else might suggest, a machiavellian mind and a killer instinct is the icing on the cake. Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello’s script still points out that it’s not what you know, but who you know, and laugh in the face of Veronica’s claim that her long term-husband is “pathetic”. And we do too. However depressing that may be.

Sorrentino brings us firmly back to reality with sequences showing the earthquake that destroyed the city of L’Aquila where a statue of Christ is solemnly lifted to safety from a ruined church. This is clearly a link to the real ‘them’ and seems an appropriate way to close this bacchanalian feast. MT

LORO IS OUT ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 19 APRIL 2019

 

The Sound is Innocent (2019) **** Visions du Réel

Dir.: Johana Ozvold; Documentary with Francois Bonnet, Steve Goodman, Julian Rohrhuber, John Richards, Hanns Hoelzl, Albert Decampo; Czech Republic/France/Slovakia 2019, 68 min.

Johana Ozvold, a graduate of the FAMU Film School in Prague, explores electronic music from conception to performance, narrating and directing this impressive debut.

Kicking off with a big table full of old printers, CD players, radios and computers that gradually tumble onto the floor, she shows how easy it is to make electronic music (EM) from disused gadgetry. Next, archive clips from pre-WWII show how an accident (a needle getting stuck on vinyl) led to a revolution in music.

Charting its progress from the pioneers of the Iron Curtain, to the French avant-garde composers, and the post-modern creators of digital sonic artefacts, Ozvold’s approach borders on Sci-fi and is both visually alluring and eerie. Past and future commingle in a complex and multi-layered way, as she meddles with analog equipment and digital recording techniques challenging preconceived ideas to produce a unique scenario where weird but exciting sounds that feel fresh and exhilarating.

Frenchman François Bonnet, director of INA GRAM (National and audio-visual Institute) explains developments in music both before 1945 and going forwards. Crucially EM allows the composer complete control of all stages of the process, unlike conventional music. This raises a number of questions: When does sound actually become music? And because technology has its own history, there are distinct stages of development (before and after the invention fire) and all these stages led to new connections in the human brain, allowing EM to develop as mainly cerebral music, in which the material (instruments) are the message.

The electronic sound is omnipresent: back in the 1950s, the audience treated EM as a music form of the future. This is the reason why EM found its way into Sci-fi features, fantasy films and animation. During this era, and well into the 1960s films formed a new concept with EM: the earth was gone, it had never existed. EM and avant-garde formed a new science that could manipulate the waves. Then came the Sputnik era when EM composers in the old Soviet block had to be careful not use certain forms of EM, in case they were labelled as bourgeois formalists.

Steve Goodman (UK), producer and founder of the Hyperdub Label, takes us back to the 1920s, when people were actually afraid that the earth would be invaded from outside, analogue to this, DJs after WWII made their EM music change the space, in which teenagers listened, including high frequencies, shattering glass. With the advent of computer, the programmers became poets. Julian Rohrhuber, a German computer scientist and philosopher, talks about the creation of new instruments, were codes of the computer interfaces are like poetry, open to be written and rewritten. During the performance of EM, the musicians form and transform the sound using microphones, electronic filters and volume control. The transformed sound is played by loudspeakers and is mixed with the direct sound. 

John Richards who performs on his own inventions, compares composers of EM with soldiers and archivists. He insists on the group playing together in a spontaneous, improvised way. Composers and media activists Hannes Hoelzl and Alberto Campo go a step further: for them it is the audience that makes the decisions, not the conductor on the podium.  Their view is that computers are democratic, the music played by the machines is like a partnership. Their group is based on ‘musicians’ with a Visual Arts background, rather than conventional music training.

The Sound is Innocent is an avant-garde and challenging film that requires some effort to engage with. But it also a worthwhile documentary that opens up new avenues not only in understanding EM, but also appreciating the way it is played, both for the individual and as a group experience. AS

WORLD PREMIER | 10 APRIL 2019 | Visions du Réel, NYON, SWITZERLAND

 

 

   

   

Many Undulating Things (2019) **** Visions du Réel 2019

Dir: Bo Wang, Pan Lu | Doc 125′ US, South Korea, Hong Kong SAR of China

This rhythmic ode to globalised capitalism is driven forward by the very nature of its subject matter. Industriously moving on and constantly swinging between the East and the West, as the title suggests, Many Undulating Things has an elliptical structure that begins and ends in a shopping centre in Hong Kong.

Serving as a kind of dehumanised documentary counterpart to Locarno Golden Leopard 2018 winner A Land Imagined it explores, through the burgeoning built and landscaped environment, how cities respond to the growing needs of the capitalist system that attracts and accommodates both serving and enslaving in its unrelenting march forward. Just as nature ebbs and flows with the changing seasons, capitalism too brings its own inexorable rhythms into our world from the whirr of lifts and escalators to the relentless coming and going of people in an apartment building or corporate headquarters. Each island of industry creates and enables its own ‘eco-system’ in the complex scheme of things.

Zeroing in on the 2o10 universal exhibition as its talking point, the film explores how the event generated a massive local transformation. This took the shape of a built environment accommodating port warehouses, glazed galleries and overstuffed tower blocks all built by a restless industrious urban population of traders and enterprising minds looking to make money and expand financial horizons. Hong Kong is a distillation of all that is acquisitive and about a population motivated for gain. And Many Undulating Things is a psycho0geographical and sociopolitical look at how man has adapted his environment to respond to his own growing needs.

VISIONS DU REEL | NYON, SWITZERLAND |  Compétition Internationale Burning Lights

Kiruna – A Brand New World (2019) **** Visions du Reel 2019

Dir: Greta Stocklassova | DoP: Stanislav Adam | Doc, Czech Rep, 87′

 

Fugue | Fuga (2018) Kinoteka 2021

Dir: Agnieska  Smoczynska | Cast: Gabriela Muskała, Łukasz Simlat, Małgorzata Buczkowska, Zbigniew Waleryś, Halina Rasiakówna, Piotr Skiba, Iwo Rajski | Poland/Czech Republic/Sweden 2018, 100 min.

Agnieszka Smoczynska re-unites with DoP Jacub Kijowski and actor Malgorzata Buczkowska who together made The Lure an international success. In Fugue, they are joined by writer Gabriela Muskala, who also  plays the lead role of Kinga, a woman suffering from severe post-traumatic amnesia.

We first meet Kinga staggering onto the platform of a station where she promptly collapses, having urinated infront in full view of the other passengers. Clearly she has lost her mind, and spends the next two years in a psychiatric ward in a Warsaw hospital, where she makes a brief appearance on TV, in the hope that someone might identify her. And they do. She is soon re-united with her husband Krystzof (Simlat) and four-year old son Daniel. Her name is Alicja, but strangely, no one appears happy to have her back, least of all Daniel. The only thing she is sure of is her credit card PIN number she and immediately makes an application for a new Identity Card. Her mysterious family friend Ewa (Buczkowska) is clearly so much more that than this, but Smoczynska keeps her cards close to her chest, revealing little in this enigmatic but captivating mystery drama. Eventually Alicja starts to re-adjust to home life with her husband, but a sudden accident in their car seems to trigger   Alicja’s memory and gradually a whole picture slowly develops of their life before the train incident. It emerges that her husband had successfully divorced her and wanted sole custody of Daniel.

In her follow up to The Lure, Smoczynska offers another convoluted and enigmatic drama: there are moments of supernatural evidence, where Alicja’s home environment appears completely alien to her. Particularly the green bathroom looks eerily like a fish tank (drawing comparisons with The Shining’s Room 237). The country house has a weird and haunted feel to it, and Alicja seems to be a prisoner within its walls, he family and even her son treating her with hostile suspicion.

Fugue is an allegorical story of a woman who is unsure of her position in the world, retreating from motherhood, and drifting between various states of being. Gabriela Muskala gives a brilliant tour de force in the leading role of this unique and beguiling Polish arthouse drama. AS.

KINOTEKA 2021 | Premiered during UN CERTAIN REGARD | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 8-19 MAY 2018

The White Crow (2018) ***

Dir: Ralph Fiennes | Writer: David Hare | Cast: Oleg Ivenko, Adele Exarchopoulos, Ralph Fiennes, Raphael Peronnaz, Chulpan Khamatova, Sergei Polunin, Calypso Valois, Louis Hoffman, Olivier Rabourdin | UK | Biopic Drama | 122′

Ralph Fiennes’ third feature – in which he also stars – is an ambitious and classically-styled biopic of the Russian ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev’s defection to the West in 1961.

Quite why David Hare decided on a fractured narrative to tell the maverick Russian dancer’s life is not clear. And it certainly doesn’t intensify the storyline. The dancer’s life had so much dramatic heft that a straightforward chronicle would have seen it steaming ahead rather than shunting occasionally into the sidings. Drama is also provided by the sheer verve of Nureyev himself as played by professional dancer Oleg Ivenko in an extraordinary screen debut as one of the 20th century’s most celebrated dancers whose rise to fame was justified by his remarkable talent and legendary status. At the helm, Ralph Fiennes captures the zeitgeist and stultifying atmosphere of a Soviet Russia still languishing behind the Iron Curtain. He also conveys the elegantly sleek conservatism of France during the 1960s. France may have invented ballet but the East provides the energy and gusto and this comes through in Ivenko’s ballet sequences that echo the spirit of Nureyev and enliven this graceful but sober drama. Fiennes’s performance as ballet master Alexander Pushkin is immaculate and exudes a calm dignity that is delightful to watch, he also appears to be proficient in Russian. This together with a strong support cast and mise en scène more than compensate for the flawed narrative structure. Adèle Exarchopoulos brings allure and intensity to her rather buttoned down role as Chilean heiress Clara Saint, who announced herself as a friend of André Malraux, and  who comes to Nureyev rescue in the final scenes. And Olivier Rabourdin (Taken) makes for a mesmerising chief of Police during the heart-pounding denouement at Le Bourget Airport in Paris when Nureyev dramatically claims political asylum.

Those from incredibly harsh beginnings with nothing to lose often rise to fame and fortune. And Nureyev was no exception. We are appraised of his background in the film’s early scenes where his mother gives birth to him on a train in Siberia in 1938. But despite his remarkable talent as a dancer it was unlikely that he would ever have made it to the international stage without his ego, utter determination and bloodymindedness, showcased to ample and often darkly humorous effect in The White Crow, along with his cultural voraciousness: once in Paris he devours every bit of local culture he can lay his hands on from the Louvre to the Follies Bergères. Wilful in the extreme, he ignores his superiors, rails against everyone in authority and no Westerner seems to bat an eyelid in letting him have his way, with the exception of Clara who stares him down in icy disdain after a restaurant debacle. But his communist ‘handlers’ still shadow him everywhere (and this still happens today in communist China) and his wilfulness leads to him not being allowed to dance on opening night in the Champs Elysees theatre.

On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditions for the Bolshoi and gets in but then picks holes in their classical techniques, decided to try instead for the Mariinsky Ballet school in St Petersburg where he becomes a protegé of Alexander Pushkin, the eminence grise of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet. Pushkin invites him to stay in the apartment he shares with his wife, who discovers the only way to disarm the young man’s insolence. All in all this is an accomplished and entertaining arthouse drama and hopefully lead to Fiennes handing the script of his next film as well as the direction. MT

SCREENING NATIONWIDE 7 April 2019

 

 

 

Amazon Adventure 3D (2017) ***

Dir: Mike Slee | Carl Knutson, Wendy MacKeigan | Cast: Calum Finlay, Ed Birch, Billy Postlethwaite, Robert Daws, Louis Partridge | Docudrama 46′

A new science detective story shows how a naturalist and explorer from Leicester provided the vital proof to help Darwin finally publish his controversial theory of natural selection, the greatest scientific explanation for the development of life on Earth.

Aimed at all audiences but particularly suitable for children this colourful, concise award-winning film combines an eco-documentary with an appealing true story that sees two young Englishmen follow their passion into the depths of the unknown, 15o years ago in the Victorian era.

Henry Bates grew up in Leicestershire where his family ran a stocking factory. But Bates’ dream was to pursue his interest in insects and how they managed to survive their often hostile environment with its many predators. Together with his friend Alfred Wallace he raised finance from a local insurer Sami Stevens and the two set off to the Amazon jungle where for 11 they risked life and limb to find out how species changed.

After a month at sea the men finally arrive at the Brazilian coast where they head for the Amazon river. In order to pay for their expenses they compile a daily catalogue comprising hundreds of butterflies. But their quest to find evidence that species can change wouldn’t be quick or easy. Si they decided to split up in order to cover more of the massive rainforest. Gradually evidence began to emerge. They soon discovered the sloth, and insects camouflaged as snakes. Infact, almost every living creature seemed to be in a disguise to avoid being eaten while it got to eat more. The expedition was fraught with difficulty as Bates suffered from malaria and Wallace eventually returned home after being shipwrecked in the North of the Brazil. But he managed to continue his work in the Far East, thanks to the insurance money from his accident. Meanwhile, Bates hired a native guide who introduced him to locals, who we meet face to face.

Impressive camerawork and 3D effects plunge us into the heart of the jungle, with detailed maps guiding us along the way. After six years Bates finally discovers a Longwing butterfly with six legs rather than four. It avoided being eaten due to its bitter taste. For every Longwing there was a matching mimic. The black, red and yellow colours marked it out a species in flux. And once back in Leicester in 1869 Bates was able to provide Darwin with enough evidence to prove how each had changed to constitute a new species in order to survive. In all, 8000 species were discovered by Bates. He never went back to the Amazon but his legacy lives on. Today scientists have finally been able to discover the genetic process involved in the mutation of species. MT

AMAZON ADVENTURE 3D at the BFI IMAX, and at the Cineworld IMAX in Glasgow from 15th April. Amazon Adventure is an epic and inspirational true story of a British explorer set in the heart of the amazon rainforest.

Shakespeare Wallah (1965) **** Bluray

Dir.: James Ivory; Cast: Shashi Kapoor, Felicity Kendall, Madhur Jaffrey, Geoffrey Kendall, Laura Liddell, Jennifer Kapoor; India 1965, 115 min.

This is the second feature of writer/director James Ivory and producer Merchant Ivory, co-scripted by the latter’s wife Ruth Prawar Jhabvala; the trio would go on with opulent productions like Heat and Dust and Howard’s End, describing the fate of strong women in male-dominated, authoritarian societies.

This is about change and belonging: The Buckingham parents Tony (G. Kendall) and Carla (Liddell) tour India with a travelling group of players, including their daughter Lizzie (F. Kendall),  bringing Shakespeare to a country changed beyond belief after the British left for home. But the change is not only a cultural one; Indians are saying goodbye to their own heritage in a post-colonial era that replaced Shakespeare with Bollywood and old palaces of Maharajas with hotels. Lizzie, who plays Ophelia and Desdemona on stage, falls for Indian playboy Sanju (Kapoor), who also has a mistress: Bollywood actress Manjula (Jaffrey). While the Buckinghams and their plays become more and more tacky, Manjula represents a modern India, which is aggressively taking the place of the old – be it Indian or British. Manjula commits a faux-pas on purpose: she arrives at the theatre with only ten minutes of Othello to go. But the nomadic players have no recourse, they are redundant in a country where they don’t belong any more. They are rootless, like Ruth Wilcox in Howard’s End. “Everything is different when you belong to a place. When it’s yours’, says Carla Buckingham wistfully. Her daughter has never set foot on her “home” country.

Kendall’s and Lidell’s experience with their own touring company have been an inspiration for the feature, stage and reality overlap. When Tony (as Othello) talks endlessly to himself, before facing Desdemona for a last time and in the real world, Manjura enters with aplomb. Finally, with Feste’s song in “Twelfth Night”, the “rain raineth”everything away, it becomes not only a summing up for the play, but the fate of the actors, swept away by history.

The misty black and white images express the evocative fragility of the narrative, there is much to admire, apart from the acting – Madhur Jaffrey would win the Prize for Best Actress at Berlin Film Festival in 1965. The score is by none less than Satyajit Ray. His long-time collaborator, DoP Subrata Mitra, conjures up sensitive images of a  group of Thespians who are lost, languidly suffering a maudlin nightmare. Ironically, Shashi Kapoor’s marriage to Felicity Kendall’s sister Jennifer (who made an uncredited appearance) was one of long-lasting happiness until her death aged 50. AS

NOW ON BLURAY from 15 April 2019 COURTESY OF THE BFI

iTUNES RELEASE ON 29 APRIL 2019

Yuli (2018) ***

Dir: Icíar Bollaín | Carlos Acosta, Santiago Alfonso, Carlos Enrique Almirante, Keyvin Martinez, Laura De la Uz | Biopic Drama 104

Cuba is the dazzling backdrop to this ‘all singing all dancing’ traditionally-styled biopic that vivaciously explores the rags to riches route to the international stage of its best known living export Carlos Acosta, now an celebrated ballet dancer. Based on his 2007 memoir No Way Home, it stars Acosta himself looking back on a career that has gone from minor to major striking nearly every thematic chord in life’s libretto from childhood poverty to paternal domination, racial discrimination, political turmoil and self realisation through artistic endeavour, under the glare – and glory of Castro’s regime.

Teaming up for the third time with her English husband and scripter Paul Laverty (I, Daniel Blake) Spanish director Icíar Bollaín (The Olive Tree) creates the irrepressibly vibrant milieu of modern Cuba where Acosta is seen rehearsing for a show that chronicles his life in the medium of dance. He is then transported back – by means of a red-bound scrapbook – to memories of his childhood where as ‘Yuli’ the cheeky young Acosta (Nuñes), named after the Cuban Santéria religion, is growing up in an impoverished barrio of Havana, with his white mother Maria (Perez) and his black father Pedro (Alfonso) who we first meet dragging Yuli away from a brilliant break-dancing routine with his pals.

The draconian Pedro has set his sights on better things for the wayward whippersnapper, and soon he is forcing him into a formal training despite the boy’s natural inclination to join a football pitch rather than the stage of the respectable Cuban School of Ballet where he soon fetches up, his talent capturing the imagination of his teacher Chery (De la Uz), who encourages him into a strict regime of training.

The years go by and the grown-up Carlos (Keyvin Martínez) finds himself travelling to London to take up an offer he soon manages to refuse, missing the warmth of his native Cuba which is by now in political meltdown. Back home, his father and Cheryl point him in the direction of dance rather than ballet – despite an approach from the Royal Ballet.

Laverty’s script tiptoes lightly over Maria of the rest of the family – alluding to mental illness for his older sister Berta (Doimeadíos) – but no love stories for Carlos, despite his popularity with the opposite sex. Knowing how well-received father/son relationships are (Boyhood, Field of Dreams etc) maybe Laverty and Bollain have decided to put Carlos and Pedro in the limelight of a story of male inspiration, particularly as it is a black one, although the decision to have Pedro give a diatribe on the slavery question in Cuba seems awkward, and strangely misplaced.

Bollaín injects plenty of joie de vivre into this sun-filled optimistic portrait with its terrific dance routines and sweeping cinematography. And although Laverty’s script sometimes follows a schematic road the performances overcome this, with Olbera Nuñes and Acosta himself the standouts. Yuli provides flamboyant entertainment for ballet lovers and mainstream audiences alike, enlivened by the presence of Acosta having so much fun. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 8 April 2019 | WORLD PREMIERE SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

One, Two, Three (1961) ***

Dir.: Billy Wilder; Cast: James Cagney, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Lilo Pulver, Horst Buchholz, Howard St. John; USA 1961, 108 min.

When Wilder adapted Ferenc Molnar’s stage play from 1929 with his regular writing partner I.A.L. Diamond, he wasn’t to know that real life would interfere dramatically with his film set in the divided German capital. But on the day after filming a scene at the Brandenburg Gate in August 1961, when Wilder was putting his feet up at the Kempinski on the Kurfurstendamm, the Wall went up. And Wilder and his team had to scramble over to Munich, where the Brandenburg Gate was re-erected in a studio for a cool $200 000. No wonder, the feature bombed at the box-office: nobody could see the fun any more.

Cagney is CR McNamara, boss of Coca-Cola in West Berlin, but angling for a return to the HQ in Atlanta. Top dog Hazeltine (St. John) entrusts him with his 18 year-old daughter Scarlett (Tiffin), who comes to stay with McNamara and his wife Phyllis (Francis) in their West Berlin home. After Scarlett asks Phyllis “if she had ever made love to a communist”, Phyllis answers in the negative, but adds “I once necked a Stevenson Democrat”. So Scarlett goes on to make sure she’s succeeds, falling in love with communist agitator Otto (Buchholz). CR is successful in having the relationship terminated, “torturing” Otto with American hit songs. But it then turns out Scarlett is pregnant, and CR’s new task is to re-model Otto into a good capitalist, before the Hazeltine parents arrive.

The change from a comedy to a tragedy killed the film off. At its premiere in West Berlin it was slaughtered in the press, the chief critic of the “Berliner Zeitung” writing “our hearts are crying out, but Wilder only sees the funny side”. But when the feature was re-released in 1985, it went on to play for a whole year in West-Berlin’s cinemas.

This was supposed to be Cagney’s last film (he returned with Ragtime in 1981), and his staccato voice delivered the gags memorably. DoP Daniel L. Fapp (West Side Story) films the divided city impressively in black-and-white and Andre Previn’s score underlines the fricative heel-clicking of the Germans, who see in CR just another “Leader”. It may not be Wilder’s finest hour, but it’s very much worth a look in. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 15 APRIL 2019 courtesy of EUREKA

Khrustalyov, My Car (1998) ***** Bluray

Dir: Aleksei German | Wri: Joseph Brodsky | Comedy Drama USSR, 147′

Named after the apocryphal exclamation of Soviet security chief Lavrentiy Beria as he rushed to Stalin’s deathbed, this raucously, rip-roaring ride through Soviet history captures the anticipation and anxiety in the Moscow air, as the Soviet despot lay dying.

In January 1953, the Vladimir Ilin’s camera thrusts us right into a surreal snowbound Moscow where Stalin still rules like the ‘man of steel’ of his nickname. An alcoholic military surgeon, General Yuri Georgievich Klensky (Yuri Tsurilo), finds himself a target of the “Doctors’ Plot”: the anti-Semitic conspiracy accusing Jewish doctors in Moscow of planning to assassinate the Soviet elite. Captured, arrested and marked for the gulags, Yuri enters an Hieronymus Boschean hell where characters abuse each other, one stubbing a cigarette out on another. Sexual acts are degenerative and ubiquitous but caught off camera, dialogue random as the characters come and go, fight and wrestle in the dizzying dystopia. At one point Yuri wipes his nose and moustache on his wife’s fur coat. The fractured narrative of this demonic, chaotic, histrionic yet delicately poetic dark comedy captures the madness of a desperate era where everyone had lost the plot.

Filmed in high-contrast monochrome by Vladimir Ilin and directed by Aleksei German (Hard to Be a God), Khrustalyov, My Car! went on to win multiple awards long after its premiere at Cannes where it picked up the Palme d’Or. wildly provocative when it was screened at the 1998 Cannes film festival, despite being championed as the best film of the festival by the president of the Cannes jury that year, Martin Scorsese. A one-of-a-kind collision of nightmare and realism, German’s film is presented here in a new restoration with a wealth of illuminating extras. MT

ON BLURAY 29 APRIL 2019 COURTESY OF ARROW 

Vladimir Ilin won Best Cinematographer at the NIKA Awards 2000

 

The Song of Bernadette (1943) **** Bluray release

Dir: Henry King | Writer: George Seaton | US Drama 156′

The Song of Bernadette is a perfect film for Lent. And while Jesus Christ is wandering about in the wilderness having his faith tested, so is Sister Bernadette in this rare Hollywood film that explores the thorny theme of spiritual belief and religious conviction. Clearly one for the believers, then. But this earnest classic went on to win no less that four Academy Awards and Golden Globes for Best Drama and Best Director for Henry King (Love is a Many-Splendoured Thing), and made a star out its leading lady Jennifer Jones.

Based on the best-selling historical novel by Franz Werfel, the film chronicles the life of 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, who began seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France in 1858. When news of Bernadette’s vision first spreads through the town, there are those who decry her as a nutter, while others wholeheartedly believe –particularly when the spring that erupts near the grotto that housed the visitations contains water that seems to have miraculous healing properties. Eventually her priest (Charles Bickford) and the Roman Catholic Church become convinced of her beliefs and welcome her into a convent.

The film has an interesting cast: alongside Jones there is Vincent Price, Lee J. Cobb, Charles Bickford, and Gladys Cooper. It also enjoys the sumptuous visuals and lighting techiniques of Arthur C. Miller (How Green Was My Valley) who won the Oscar for Best Art Director and Interior Decoration.

Whatever your personal feelings on the matter (and please suspend them and cast your mind back to the 1940s) The Song of Bernadette is an earnest attempt to capture the essence of conviction: not only its power to heal mind and body, but also to inspire leadership. And King’s attempts to convey this do occasionally wander into the realms of melodrama (not helped by Alfred Newman’s ridiculously over-bearing religious score – needless to say he won an Oscar). That said, this is a touching and intimate portrayal of a young French girl’s spiritual journey from her vision to the healing spring at Lourdes. Her gentle strength of purpose provides a leading light and succour to many others. The film version also puts a positive spin on Franz Werfel’s rather reverent novel on which George Seaton’s script is based.

The Song of Bernadette tempers raw realism to offer up a soft-edged and dignified religious narrative. This mammoth undertaking had a cast of 104 actors including five doctors (one aptly named ‘Dr LeCramps’). Rene Hubert’s does wonderful things with the black and white ecclesiastical robes. And Gladys Cooper is particularly convincing in her intense portrayal of  Mistress of Novices, Marie-Therese Vauzous. In her screen debut as Bernadette, Jennifer Jones is perfectly cast as an innocent, wide-eyed wonder. There is also a role for Vincent Price as the vehement Prosecutor Vital Dufour. MT

Amazon https://amzn.to/2BBlQU9  | 8 APRIL 2019 

 

Ether | Eter (2018) **** Kinoteka Film Festival 2019

Dir/Wri: Krzysztof Zanussi | Cast: Jacek Poniedzialek, Zsolt Laszlo, Andrzej Chyra, Ostap Vakulyuk, Maria Ryaboshapka, Stanislav Kolokolnikov, Malgorzata Pritulak, Rafal Mohr, Victoria Zinny

Krzysztof  Zanussi dissects a sinister episode from early 20th century medical history in this gripping, classically-styled drama that sees a disgraced doctor (Jacek Poniedzialek) abusing science to gain control.

The theme is topical enough, that of dumbing down and confusing the population while the major powers take control. Since the era of communism, the ‘Polish Great’ directors have been well-versed in couching their political messages in subtle ways, as here in this rather genteel arthouse drama stylishly photographed by DP Piotr Niemyjski, whose lighting gives ethereal touches in just the right places.

The opening scene explores in detail Hans Memling’s 1467 tryptich ‘The Last Judgment” hinting at the haunting religious undercurrent to the storyline. But the main narrative focuses on the debonair doctor who is running a series of experiments with ether, a safer anaesthetic replacement to the drug, chloroform. During the process he decides to casually rape his female patient after knocking her out with the new-fangled substance. Leaving her for dead, he escapes but is captured, arrested and eventually committed to exile in Siberia, whence he takes up a post for the military on the border of the Ukraine and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Poniedzialek plays his role with icy detachment and deadly dedication showing how nothing will stand in the way of his scientific research. Clothed in either white overalls or black leather with gloves to match, he cuts a sinister figure in this remote backwater, pushing his patients beyond their pain thresholds with his new drug, far from the prying eyes of decency. All this to the tune of Wagner’s opera Parsifal, as the doctor hunts for his own holy grail.

This doctor is a entirely focused on his methods for domination. An ascetic, detached character he clearly has a God complex subjecting his patients to pain and bewilderment, mirroring the atrocities of the First World War (that was on its way). The doctor here is in complete contrast to the dedicated medic in Aleksey Balabanov’s Morphine (2008) who was using a drug to bring relief to the agony of his patients 150 miles north of Moscow, during the Bolshevik revolution. Our Polish doctor also makes use of the services of a poor devout Catholic boy called Taras (Ostap Vakulyuk) who gives up his father’s corpse for medical science then discovers him later embalmed in the doctor’s museum.

Some of the scenes are deeply disturbing. In one the doctor delivers a tiny crying baby only to smother it minutes later, telling the mother it would have died anyway. In another, he injects a soldier with a substance that makes him a fierce and fearless fighter, biting his wrestling components, until the doctor calls for a straight-jacket.

The final scenes comes with an explanation: “The Secret Story” that tracks back to the religious aspects of the story and introduces a previously low-key figure who appears to be the grim reaper himself. Ether ends in the rain-soaked mud of WWI where Zanussi examines the question “Does suffering have a meaning?”. Clearly the doctor has made a pact with God but has lost his soul in the meantime. MT

KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL | 4 -18 APRIL 2019

 

Mr Topaze (1961) **** BFI Flipside

Dir: Peter Sellers | Wri: Pierre Rouve | Cast: Herbert Lom, Billie Whitelaw, Leo McKern, Peter Sellars, John Le Mesurier, John Neville, Joan Sims | Michael Gough | Comedy Drama | 97′

Peter Seller’s debut as a director is a rather lyrical bittersweet 1960s version of a Marcel Pagnol play adapted for the screen by Pierre Rouve with wit and insight. Playing the lead with a drôle debonair melancholy, Sellers is a well-meaning provincial teacher desperate to do the right thing and marry his love Ernestine (a foxy Whitelaw). He prides himself on his integrity but puts his foot down at giving higher marks to the grandson of a wealthy baroness (Martita Hunt). He is fired (by Leo McKern) as a result, and then led astray by Herbert Lom’s snide and corrupt government official, Castel Benac, who with his mistress and actress Suzy (Nadia Gray cutting a dash in a series of soigné rigouts) intend to set up a dodgy financial business using Topaze  (“He’s an idiot I like him”) as the malleable managing director. The moral of the tale is that money is power. And Topaze eventually discovers this.

At the time Sellers was going through a divorce and relied on the film to keep him said. But despite his time of trauma, the film’s success lies in its happy ending that confirms what many have discovered. It’s not the money that makes you happy but the freedom it offers: So when Topaze is asked “Has money bought you happiness? he answers “I’m  buying it now!”.

First entitled I Like Money (a song by Herbert Kretzmer gracefully performed by Nadia Gray swathed in furs) the film was chosen by the British public in an online vote in 2016 to be digitised by the BFI National Archive. It certainly proves its crowd-pleasing qualities with some enjoyable performances from Gray, McKern and Le Mesurier, although Sellars sadly reigns himself back too much leaving Lom to shine as the comedy standout. MT

DUAL FORMAT EDITION (BLURAY/DVD) ON 15 APRIL 2019 

Pet Sematary (2019) Netflix

Dir.: Kevin Kölsch/Denis Widmayer; Cast: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, Jete Laurence, Hugo and Lucas Lavoie, John Lithgow; USA 2019, 101 min.

Stephen King’s Pet Sematary is not by his most enduring novel by chance: Even 36 years after publication it is still quietly overpowering. Directors Kölsch and Widmayer have triumphed (with writer Jeff Buhler) where Mary Lambert’s 1989 film version failed. They have taken out the cheese, included some wry humour and concentrated on the overlaying guilt and redemption theme. Apart from a ten-minute hiatus of near parody at the end, this would have been a neo classic.

Dr Louis Creed (Clarke) and his wife Rachel (Seimetz) move away from their hectic life in Boston to a rural home in Maine. Their two children Ellie (Laurence) and Gage (H. and L. Lavoie) just as enchanted as their parents with the rural idyll. Louis even jokes that it beats the graveyard shift at Boston General – but soon the graveyard for pets,  in the grounds of their 50-acre property, takes over their lives. Having watched a procession of children bury their pets, the Creed’s cat Church (short for Churchill) is run over by a speeding truck, and Rachel, still traumatised by the death of her sister Zelda from spinal meningitis, tells her daughter their feline friend simply ran away.

After Church’s burial, the purring pussy comes back as an aggressive predator. And their neighbour Jud is reminded that the native Americans deserted the area because the reincarnations of their own dead. But tragedy strikes again on Ellie’s birthday when she is run over by a petrol tanker. Once again, Louis buries her in the cemetery, ignoring what happening to Church. Ten minutes of spectacular schlocky bad taste nearly ruin this stylish arthouse horror, before the closing shot resets the tone and saves the day.

British DoP Laurie Rose works magic with his overhead shots to produce intense images of the woods, conjuring up terrifyingly claustrophobic shots of the Creeds’ house. Particularly gruesome are the scenes with Rachel’s sister Zelda, who gets stuck in a food lift. Rachel is somehow the main protagonist and catalyst, guilt makes her overprotective of her daughter and drives the action on into the past. Somehow, the American dream family comes unstuck, as it often does with Stephen King. John Lithgow again convinces with a truly frightening performance, with solid support from the others. AS 

NOW ON NETFLIX

https://youtu.be/zK0LNzU2TQI

 

The Walker (2015) **** Taiwan Film Festival 2019


Dir: Singing Chen | Doc, Taiwan 147′

Renowned Taiwanese choreographer Lin Lee-Chen has devoted her life to a slow and studied form of dance that embraces modern techniques with ancient religious ritual. Chen’s impressive Taiwanese documentary explores the origins of her method, showing how stealth rather than speed is the essence of the calming dance movements. Lin channels her own inner tranquility and potent physical strength into routines that share her powerful dexterity and calming creativity.

This epic study starts with a deep rumble of drums as the underworld opens and a mystical pearly white Sea Goddess Mazu gracefully emerges leading her dusky spirits forwards. This is one of the eerie yet mesmerising dances Lin has created and is performed by her Legend Lin Dance Theatre. Her work is borne out of a desire to express and share her own inner calm.

Ten years in the making the documentary is an impressively meditative endeavour that illustrates the difference between the Lin’s slow oriental aesthetic and that of the West which focuses on speed. The dance excerpts are visually exquisite, blending calmness with richly vibrant colours and an emphasis on pools of light that highlight the ritualistic dance routines. Another sequence takes place on the seashore and is one of the most sinuous and graceful performances in the repertoire, the costumes billowing and swirling as they gently contour the dancers’ elegant forms. If you’re looking for a comprehensive visual history of Taiwanese dance then this is probably the most appealing so far. MT

SCREENING AT BERTHA DOC HOUSE during the London Taiwanese Film Festival 2019 | 3 April 2019

The Keeper (2018) ***

Dir: Marcus H Rosenmüller | Biopic Drama, 120’

This worthy attempt at Anglo-German entente cordiale is a film of two halves, rather like the game at its heart. The Keeper is not sure whether it wants to be a wartime love story, a football drama or a tepid tale of karmic revenge. In the end it’s all three – but far too long: after the first hour, the tension has died down and we can’t imagine what remains to be said: The heroine has met her match, and scored.

The Keeper tells the true story of Nazi paratrooper Bert Trautmann (Kross) who became Manchester City’s goalkeeper just after the Second World War. But when he arrives at a PoW camp at St Helen’s just outside Manchester, the mood is hostile and the locals are traumatised by loss. The young German soldier is also suffering emotionally, haunted by the images of a little boy whose life he failed to save. But when he sets eyes on the football manager’s daughter Margaret (Mavor), who is already spoken for by a local lad, the chemistry between them sizzles, and he decides all is fair in love and war. And  Trautmann certainly has some ball skills – not to mention his blue-eyed good looks – which warm the cockles of Margaret’s heart, and the rest is history.

Having established Trautmann’s credentials as a goodie, with him (almost) becoming ‘one of the boys’, the second half of the film concerns his signing to Manchester City where he fetches up in October 1949, accompanied by his wife. It soon emerges via journalists digging around for dirt, that Trautmann was awarded the Iron Cross, a medal that had become a Nazi symbol during the 1930s – so the German footballer once again finds himself back-footed in the community, despite his crafty footwork on the pitch. Ironically, he then strikes up a solid friendship with the local Rabbi, who is inspired by Margaret’s efforts to speak up for her husband amid local hostility. Gradually Trautmann gains popularity as he bonds with local players and wins matches. The football scenes are the strongest element of this second half, with seamless CG crowds creating a rousing atmosphere for the likeable goalie. But then the film goes off in another direction to focus on the tragedy of Trautmann, the family man. And although this brings us full circle, by tying in this personal tragedy with that of the little wartime boy, somehow the drama fails to score top marks structurally with its lack of a real focus. Despite its flaws, Rosenmuller creates just the right atmosphere in postwar Lancashire with its glorious surrounding countryside. Performances are solid across the board, and Freya Mavor and David Kross – who smoulders in an Aryan way – make convincing lovebirds. Even if football isn’t your game, this is a watchable and good-looking wartime story. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

 

Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowyck (2018)

Dir: Kuba Mikurda | Wri: Marcin Kubawski, Kuba Mikurda |

Love Express. The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk by debut documentarian and academic Kuba Mikurda explores the career of the Polish controversial cult filmmaker who rose to international recognition during the 1970s with his erotic arthouse fare. A brilliant opening sees Borowczyk accused of being “a complete pervert” by his French interviewer. His smart rejoinder is that everyone indulges in subversive thoughts but he gives them life in his films.

Mikurda captures the Avantgarde weirdness of it all by patching together clips from the Polish surrealist’s films interpolated by the emotive musings from other filmmaking luminaries – the late Andrzej Wajda, Terry Gilliam, Patrice Leconte, Slavoj Zizek, Neil Jordan, Bertrand Bonello and Mark Cousins are overlaid by pithy quotes and comments made by Mr B himself who is now considered one of the 20th century’s most significant animators and auteurs. Several call him naive: Lisbeth Hummel (who appeared in The Beast) and Cherry Porter who also claims he became less lyrical about women in his later years. British critic Peter Bradshaw admits to being totally bemused by his stuff as a teenager back in the 1970s, but also confesses they were very male films: men were both the filmmakers, and the consumers – well done Peter!.

The cult classic clips include many of the maverick filmmaker’s best known features and Mikurda and his writer Kubawski divide these into chapters devoted to Goto, Island of Love (1968), Immoral Tales (1974) and The Beast (1975), accompanied by Stefan Wesolowski’s fricative occasional score, which gives the piece a scattergun rhythm.

And although they all have a great deal of interesting observations to make, the talking heads take up the lion’s share of the film rather than the great man himself who remains an enigmatic figure, although open-faced and amiable enough, speaking perfect French in a TV interview back in 1984. We learn nothing of his early life in Poland and the relationships that shaped him and his self-imposed exile from his homeland?. This background could have informed his delicately drawn erotic films with their distinct cultural and historical flavour.

Naturally the segment on Sylvia Kristel and Emmanuelle V (1986) gets a great deal of screen time with worthwhile input from the film’s co-director Thierry Bazin (who claims Mr B only ate potatoes during their daily lunches together). But this feature also marked his gradual decline, dealt with rather abruptly as the doc runs out of steam.

So Mikurda’s debut is a welcome attempt to shed light on the intriguing world of Walerian Borowczyk leaving ample room for more insight, particularly from a female point of view. MT

NEW EUROPE FILM SALES

 

Last Breath (2018) ****

Dir: Richard da Costa, Alex Parkinson  | UK Doc, 90′

Playing out like a thriller Last Breath, examines the dramatic true story in a way that cleverly keeps us guessing right through to the final credits. Told through first-hand accounts of the people affected it combines archive and black box footage together with underwater reconstructions of the fatal events.

For Chris Lemons it was just ‘another day at the office’. As a commercial diver in the petrochemical industry he was going through his customary procedure of descending 262ft underwater for a routine inspection of a drilling structure at the Huntington oil field, 115 miles east of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. At the same time Parkinson and da Costa add dramatic poignancy to the party by featuring emotional input from his colleagues and his wife-to-be, busily making preparations back home for their wedding celebrations in Scotland.  

But the tone is doom-laden while we wait for inevitable in a day where nothing went according to plan. Lemons’ vessel started to drift due to a systems failure causing his “umbilical” line, supplying both air and heat, to twist and then sever, leaving him with only his emergency air tank –and about 5 minutes of breathing gas to keep going, the rescue team was half an hour away. Parkinson records extraordinary underwater footage of the events, keeping our nerves on fire in this moving and informative documentary that explores one man’s fateful fight for survival in the cruel sea. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 5 APRIL 2019.

 

Happy as Lazzaro (2018) *****

Writer/Dir: Alice Rohrwacher | Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, Luca Chikovani, Sergi Lopez | Italy | Drama 125′

Al Rohrwacher brings tenderness and curiosity to her delicately compelling fables set amongst rural communities in her homeland of Italy. Her latest Lazzaro Felice has clear resonance with the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini and won Best Script at Cannes in 2018. Her previous a languid pastoral The Wonders (2014) followed a family of beekeepers in 1970s Tuscany. In her debut Corpo Celeste (2011)  a young girl challenges religious morality in the southern town of Reggio Calabria.

Happy as Lazzaro is time-bending tale that uses poetic realism to enliven the rather depressing theme of corruption and crime in contemporary Italy. Again Rohrwacher uses Super 16mm to establish a retro aesthetic of sepia and muted senape and to re-create a nostalgic feeling for the past and times gone by in the dilapidated village of Inviolata where a traditional family of sharecroppers still serve the Marchesa Alfonsina de Luna. Although sharecropping has been illegal since the 1980s, their loyalty to their corrupt mistress is born out of habit, and because it suits them to maintain the status quo: It’s what they’ve always done. This recalls a past (and possibly a present in some areas) where a feudal system of sorts still exists, and Italy’s now decadent royal family (Vittoria Emanuele) are still acknowledged, paid homage to and addressed by their titles. So the villagers go about their leisurely business lacking the imagination or motivation to move on, and respecting the powers that be in this remote, sun-baked backwater that seems stuck in the past. And Lazzaro is the man with a heart of gold who is simply too good for this world, let along for this job. A saintly soul, Lazzaro is almost too good for this world, is left with the duties no one else wants to do, such as picking giant guarding the chicken coop from wolves. The Marchesa’s fecklessly lazy young son Tancredi, decides to play a trick on mother, for not giving him his inheritance early, and he sees that Lazzaro’s gentle nature and naive nature will make him perfect for a plan to defraud her. Lazzaro is naturally in thrall to the boy, out of deference, to his status. Tancredi then fakes his own kidnapping, hiding out in the undergrowth around the village expecting his mother to cough up the million lire ransom he has demanded. Naturally things don’t go according to plan and Lazzaro falls through a time-warp – in a tonal shift that Rohrwacher pulls of with aplomb – ending up in another world, set against a corrupt urban sprawl where he wanders dreamlike (and there is a certainly a surreal quality to these sequences) amongst unscrupulous characters as a nightmarish future unfolds around him. Lazzaro at this point takes on the semblance of a Christ-like spiritual figure – it’s a performance of great subtlety and luminance that has to be seen to be believed. This transformation to saint, or even ghost seems to represent the soul of the Italian nation overcome by decadence and the perils of modernity. It also raises the everlasting conundrum: how long can a person continue to be good when continually challenged by evil. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 5 APRIL 2019 NATIONWIDE

 

Making Montgomery Clift (2018) **** BFI Flare 2019

Dir: Robert Anderson Clift, Hillary Demmon | With Montgomery Clift, Brooks Clift, Ethel “Sunny” Clift, Patricia Bosworth, Jack Larson, Judy Balaban, Robert Osborne, Eleanor Clift, Lorenzo James; Joel Schumacher, Tucker Tooley, Vincent Newman, Michael Easton, Mollie Gregory, Woody Clift, Eddie Clift | US Doc, 88′

Montgomery Clift’s nephew sets out to debunk the theory that the Hollywood actor’s life was a conflicted tragedy. Apparently, it was quite the opposite. As you may have guessed from the title, this is not a chronicle of his film career but an exploration of his personality and the rumours that haunted his starry life.

Co-directing and narrating this eye-opening documentary, Robert Clift (who never knew Monty) digs into a treasure trove of family archives and memorabilia (Brooks recorded everything) to reveal an affectionate, fun-loving talent who loved men and dated and lived with women, according to close friends. Monty chose his roles carefully during the ’40s and ’50s, declining to sign a contract to retain complete artistic independence from the studio system with the ability to pick and chose, and re-write his dialogue. This freedom also enabled him to keep much of his private life out of the headlines, although his memory was eventually sullied by tabloid melodrama with his untimely death at only 45. His acting ability and dazzling looks certainly gained him a place in the Hollywood firmament with a select filmography of just 20 features, four of them Oscar-nominated.

Edward Montgomery Clift was born on 17th October 1920 in Omaha Nebraska, with a twin sister Roberta, and older brother Brooks. Privately educated, his wealthy parents struggled during the Depression years and he travelled with his mother extensively in Europe and grew extremely close to his brother. An early role as a teenager on Broadway saw him spending over a decade on the New York stage before Hollywood beckoned, due in part to his friendship with the older and fluidly sexual star Libby Holman, who was apparently instrumental in his decision to decline roles in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and High Noon (1952). His film debut was Red River (1948) alongside John Wayne. This was followed by The Search (1948), The Heiress (1949); the Wartime epic The Big Lift (1950); A Place in the Sun (1951) with his great friend Elizabeth Taylor (who helped him from the scene of his accident); his only Hitchcock collaboration I Confess (1953); Vittorio De Sica’s Indiscretion (1953); From Here to Eternity (1953), Raintree County (1956). Post accident: The Young Lions (1958) alongside Dean Martin and Marlon Brando; Lonely Hearts (1958) alongside Myrna Loy; Wild River (1960); The Misfits (1961) alongside Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable and Judgement at Nuremberg (1961).

Particularly interesting are Brooks’ conversations with Patricia Bosworth, one of the film’s talking heads and the author of a 1978 biography of Clift that inspired later biographies, but has so far become the accepted version of events, although she apparently got many details wrong and certainly lost out to Jenny Balaban in the Monty relationship stakes, when Barney Balaban (President of Paramount) invited the young actor to join them on a family holiday. He is seen messing around on the beach where he cuts a dash with his good looks and exuberance.

Two men who enjoyed significant relationships with Monty have since died but they recorded for posterity on the film: they are Jack Larson who remembers a full-on and unexpected French kiss from Monty, the night they were introduced. And Lorenzo James, who was living with Monty when he died. James sounds a reasonable and honest character on audio tapes and Robert Clift confirms the family’s acceptance of him in the words “my uncle through Monty.”

Clearly Monty resorted to painkillers after his tragic car accident on his way home from a night out in 1956, during the filming of Raintree County. But the directors play this down and downsize the rumours that he became unreliable, a sort of ‘male version’ of Marilyn Monroe. Yet many claim his post accident performance in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) to be his finest hour. Others state that Nuremberg was actually a “nervous breakdown caught on film”. Instead they claim his mental anguish at the time was the result of a lawsuit by John Huston relating to the film Freud, suspending his from working for four years, and naturally leaving him distraught, as any working person would be. Others state that his disfigurement actually made him a better actor.

Brooks is now dead, but his ex-wife, a prominent Washington journalist Eleanor Clift, states that he was on a mission to correct subsequent editions of Patty Bosworth’s biography using the phrase “Sisyphus battling the myth-making apparatus.” And although Brooks more or less failed in his mission, Robert and his wife have made a decent and worthwhile documentary that aims to reveal the brighter Montgomery Clift. Clearly he will always remain an enigma paving the way for many more insightful biopics.

BFL Flare | ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 7 JUNE 2019

Cujo (1983) *** Bluray release

Dir: Lewis Teague | US Horror 88′

A loveable family pet becomes a ferocious killer in this terrifying cult horror outing from Lewis Teague. Atmospherically adapted for the big screen from Stephen King’s novel, the film sees parallel’s between wounded male pride and a rabid St Bernard who turns on its family after being bitten near their pleasant suburban home in California. In the meantime, the dog’s owner has gone off to lick his own wounds having discovered his wife’s affair. Who knows why dogs get such a bag time in small independent films. Whenever a dog appears, it is almost certain to have a tragic ending, and this is certainly the case for the titular St Bernard Cujo who is all friendly and bushy-tailed in the opening scenes and gradually descends into a raving monster after sticking his head into a bat cave. Ironically, a we feel pity for the dog rather than the family – had Teague picked a pit-bull or a Rottweiler things may have worked out entirely differently, and perhaps this was the reason for the film’s poor box office. That said, Teague pulls out all the stops on the terror front, keeping the bloodied mother and child trapped in a car being menaced by the angry dog for most of the film’s mileage. MT

Making its UK debut on Blu-ray on 15 April 2019 , with over 7 hours of extra content, Eureka Classics on a special Limited Two-Disc Blu-ray Edition, featuring a Limited Edition Hardbound Slipcase, with artwork designed by Graham Humphreys, a Limited Edition Collector’s Booklet and Bonus Blu-ray disc [4000 units ONLY].

Amazon  https://amzn.to/2GxdRvj

 

Your Face (2018) ***

Dir: Tsai Ming-liang | Doc, Taiwan 77′

Tsai Ming-liang’s work is very much an acquired taste. You will either love his   minimalist mode or find his slow-burning method intolerable. With Your Face (Ni de lian) he once again offers an acute observational experience, this time reflecting on the faces of twelve ordinary people whose candid reality is expressed in intimate close-up.

The characters he choses have all lived their lives, more or less. The camera contemplates their expressions often in freeze-frame and often in silence or calm discussion. And the ravages of time and their experiences – whether positive or negative – have marked their faces with characteristic lines and wrinkles. What stories do they tell or hide behind those sad eyes or emotive glances, taken from a single angle. The conceptual artist marks out another chapter in his cinematic journey seen through the dwellers of a flat in Stray Dogs or the Buddhist monk in Marseilles from in his Journey to the West.

Painstakingly he strips away extraneous detail to draw us in to these personal tales of woe or reflections of a life well-lived. Questions persist, doubts prevail, thoughts are laid bare. This is not for the faint-hearted but an immersive, often challenging proposition. But compelling, none the less, as we look into the windows or their souls in Zen-like tranquility.

Particularly engaging is the women who confesses to enjoy making money. What transpires is a tale of a twice married, business women who has a definite appeal. But it feels like she’s hiding something. Another woman expresses her regret at not spending more time with her parents, due to her work. A man owns up to his obsession with ‘pachinko’.

The final face belongs to Tsai’s young muse and collaborate Lee Kang-sheng, who appears in all his films. He shares his memoirs of student days and fatherhood. The final scene involves a long-held shot of an empty ballroom, but a human presence has either been there are may still appear. Somehow the camera reflects things that we don’t notice ourselves. It presents another view of our reality of ourselves. We have a best side, and a worse side: each project a different facet of our personalities. And this reflection shows that people are multi-faceted and richly diverse. As the camera observes them, even their stillness reveals hidden depths and throws up questions that challenge those who really observe.

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s occasional original score adds a certain integrity and dimension that very much compliments this richly meditative experience. MT

NOW SCREENING DURING TAIWAN FILM FESTIVAL UK 3-14 APRIL 2019 | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

A Clockwork Orange (1971) 4K restoration

Dir.: Stanley Kubrick; Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Warren Clark, James Marcus, Michael Tarn, Adrienne Corri, Carl Duering, Miriam Karlin, Michael Gover, Anthony Sharp; UK/US 1971, 136 min.

Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s 1962 decline-of-civilisation novel, A Clockwork Orange, remains a chilling, thrilling and unsettling cinematic vision of nihilistic violence and social control.

The brutal socio-political satire was a big success for Kubrick taking £618K at the UK box office on its opening weekend in January 1972. Burgess’s oeuvre of over thirty novels is overshadowed by A Clockwork Orange. The author claimed writing was merely a “jeu d’esprit, just for money, finishing the novel in three weeks”. But during WWII his first wife Lynne had been raped by American soldiers, which led to a miscarriage.

Set in a futuristic Britain, teenager Alex DeLarge (McDowell) is the leader of a teenage quartet called the ‘Droogs’. Brutal and psychopathic, they enjoy wreaking havoc after school. Alex is the gang-leader keeping Dim (Clarke), Georgie (Marcus) and Pete (Tarn) under the cosh: disobedience is immediately repressed with violence. After a fight with a rival gang, they break into the Hertfordshire home of writer Alexander (Magee), reducing him to a cripple and raping his wife Mary (Corrie) while warbling “Singing in the Rain”.

Next day, Alex, a keen Beethoven fan who lives with his parents in a garish high-rise, plays truant from school. Later the Droog break into the house of “Catlady” (Karlin), a yoga freak, who Alex kills with the bust of his beloved Ludwig. Arrested and imprisoned in a masterfully performed series of scenes demonstrating just how draconian the authorities were back then, Alex is offered the chance of submitting himself to a new-fangled therapy “the Ludovico treatment”, which aims to ‘reset’ his mind, making him averse to violence and sex. The therapy has the desired effect. But in one of the films, selected by Dr. Brodsky (Duering), Beethoven’s Ninth is played, making Alex feel nauseous when he hears the music. After a demonstration by the Interior Minister (Sharp), during which Alex faints at the sight of a naked woman, he is released. But his parents do not want him back, they have rented his room to a male lodger, who now fulfils their parenting needs. So Alex is forced onto the streets for a touch of his own medicine.

Attacked by an old hobo, whom he had punched up in his Droog days, he is saved by two policemen – Dim and Georgie. They drive him into the countryside, beat him senseless and leave him for dead. Half-crazed, Alex finds himself once again on the doorstep of Mr. Alexander’s house, who is wheelchair-bound, and widowed. Strangely, Alexander does not recognise Alex without his Droog outfit, instead he publishes articles in his defence, claiming he is a victim of the government’s inhuman treatment. But when he hears Alex crooning that same song of the original attack, his trauma resurfaces and he finds a way of getting his own back by playing Beethoven’s music. Alex jumps out of the window. The fall resets the therapy, and soon Alex returns to his evil ways.

The minister promises to help, accusing Alexander of cruelty, and uses Alex in his campaign to quieten down critics of his government. Alex wakes up in a hospital with broken bones. While undergoing a series of psychological tests, Alex finds he no longer abhors sex and violence. The Minister arrives and apologises to Alex, offfering to take care of him and get him a job in return for his cooperation with his election campaign and counter-offensive. As a sign of goodwill, the Minister brings in a stereo system playing Beethoven’s Ninth. Alex then contemplates violence and has vivid thoughts of having sex with a woman in front of an approving crowd, and thinks to himself, “I was cured, all right!”

So what is the message behind A Clockwork Orange? Obviously it’s a film open to individual interpretation but there a few clear themes running through the narrative: crime and retribution; personal responsibility; the nature of forgiveness.

DoP John Alcott widescreen images, using frog eye lenses, show the bad taste of the 1970s aesthetics in all its glory, presenting us with a dystopia of mind-blowing crassness. McDowell is the prince of darkness, his long false eyelashes giving him a satanic look. With gang violence erupting in Britain on a large scale – Kubrick himself received death threats and asked Warner Brothers to withdraw the film from circulation for  good. One victim of this ban was the famous repertoire cinema “Scala” in Pentonville Road, which showed A Clockwork Orange in 1993 and had to close the same year for good, after rising rents and the prohibitive legal costs of Kubrick’s legal team led to insolvency. AS

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE | 4K RESTORATION | IN CINEMAS from 17 September 2021

 

 

 

Lizzie (2018) **** | Bfi Flare 2019

“Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”

Dir: Craig William Mcneill | Bryce Kass | Cast: Chloë Sevigny, Kristen Stewart | Drama | US

The story of Lizzie Borden has always fascinated with its macabre murder story that over time has spawned numerous TV series the best starred Elizabeth Montgomery as the New England axe murderer who was tried and acquitted in 1893 of slaughtering her father and stepmother. This claustrophobic domestic drama directed by Craig William Macneill from a script by Bryce Kass, persuades us that it was actually due to her gender that she was let off: the jury couldn’t believe a well-heeled gentlewoman could do such a thing. But there are many downsides to being Ms Borden in the late 19th century. LIZZIE not only imagines an intriguing and plausible lesbian twist to proceedings, it also reveals how her draconian and misogynist  father was partly responsible for his own demise by dominating her, serially raping her housekeeper (Kristen Stewart is mesmerisingly glum) and then leaving her repugnantly obnoxious uncle (Denis O’Hare) in charge of her inheritance. No wonder Mr Borden got wacked.

Kass adopts a fractured narrative that opens in the aftermath to the twin murder, then traces back to reveal a story that informs the final scenes. And although this is a traditionally-crafted and rather bland-looking affair, its slowly draws you in to its compelling storyline mainly due to the brilliance of its international cast. We have Chloë Sevigny in the leading role: an unmarried, wilful but sympathetic pigeon-fancier. She gives a commandingly confident performance and we really feel for her because of the calm and intelligent way she handles herself, never giving in to histrionics or melodrama, despite suffering from epilepsy – quite the opposite – in the final denouement she appears unaffected by what she has done. She warms immediately to Kristen Stewart’s Irish housemaid Bridget who is respectful and diffident, tolerating Mr Borden’s nighttime visits with sombre forbearance. Their lesbian chemistry is convincing but quite why the filmmakers contrived it is questionable. There’s scant evidence that the real Lizzie was a lesbian, but due to being closeted away it’s quite possible that it was the only sexual outlet available, and the two are clearly very protective of one another. Ruth Shaw has a small role as Lizzie’s dour stepmother, but she makes a decent go of it.

There’s a dark wittiness to Sevigny’s brushes with the menacingly pompous Mr Borden (Jamie Sheridan), and their intellectual sparring makes us root for her, as he emerges a brutish coward rather than a family man of integrity with one of the “biggest fortunes in New England”. And although Stewart seethes with a quiet rage, Sevigny excels in a more difficult role, exerting a calm allure as the troubled Lizzie.

Although the ending is hardly a mystery, the film maintains an powerful air of suspense as it moves to the inescapable finale, adding another dimension to this true crime story, by attempting to examine the whys and wherefores. LIZZIE is certainly harrowing to watch, and although we don’t see the murders, we hear them as the violence provides a much-needed cathartic release after all the injustice that’s been witnessed. A sad and rather mournful drama that certainly bring greater understanding to this almost mythical episode of American social history. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 14 DECEMBER 2018

Sunburn *** BFI Flare 2019

Dir. Vicente Alves do Ó. Portugal. 2018. 82 mins

This sexually fluid and visually lush love-in has shades of François Ozon La Piscine to it- except Ozon’s sizzling storyline puts this tepid affair distinctly in the shade.

In the heat of a languid Portuguese summer four beautiful people are languishing in a fabulous villa, sunning themselves and salivating over the next meal. A phone-call disrupts their placid naval-gazing to announce an absent friend, now back in town will shortly pay them a visit. David’s call sends unnerving ripples through the tepid torpor. Clearly he has touched their lives in different ways. His imminent arrival now creates waves of tension in this becalmed backwater as they cogitate and speculate over the outcome.

Ricardo Barbosa plays Simao a beardy, pale-skinned script-writer prone to wearing skimpy white trunks. Vasco (Ricardo Pereira), a tanned adonis with striking come-to-bed eyes has unrequited romantic yearnings, while tousled-haired Francisco (Nuno Pardal) swings both ways with the bronzed and brooding Joana (Oceana Basílio), who is keen to have his child.

Their laconic exchanges over lunch are laced with nervous insinuations as the memories of David come silently back to haunt them. Cocktails on the terrace take a more sinister turn; their after dinner sambas seem more urgent, as distant sirens announce a far away fiasco in the cool of the night.

David’s imminent arrival casts a pall over their pleasure, both individual and collective, as they remember how he slighted them each in his own special way. Yet they seem to savour the betrayal and the hurtfulness it caused them, secretly fostering hopes for a positive reunion, why ruminating over his motives, as he talks to them, unspecifically, in voiceover.

At the end of the day, this is a story that sounds much more interesting than it actually ends up being on the big screen. These beautiful people feel strangely empty in the picture perfect place they inhabit, each possessing a curious lack of personality and certain, spontaneity. Sunburn is has a brilliant premise, poorly executed, a missed opportunity for the something really stunning. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Mélo (1986) *** Bluray release

Dir: Alain Resnais; Cast: Sabine Azéma, Pierre Arditi, André Dussollier, Fanny Ardant; France 1986, 112 min.

Mélo, based on the play by French author Henri Bernstein (1876-1953), has already been filmed three times, before Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, mon Amour), adapted it for the screen in a theatrical version, which proved again that the director prefers style over contents.

This doomed love story sees married couple Romaine (Azéma) and Pierre (Arditi) live in the Parisian suburb of Mont Rogue, where they invite Marcel (Dussollier), Pierre’s friend from the conservatoire, for supper. Since their youth, the men’s careers have taken very different directions: Pierre is a member of a not all to prestigious orchestra, while Marcel is a violinist of some renown. But when it comes to their love life, roles are reversed: Pierre is happy with Romaine, but Marcel doesn’t really trust women with his heart, making happiness impossible. The kittenish Romaine, much more mature than her husband, in spite of him treating her like a child, falls for Marcel, and after a musical beginning in his posh Parisian flat, they begin a torrid affair. The naïve Pierre closes his eyes to everything, and even after Marcel returns from a tour, he still overlooks his wife’s absences. It is unclear whether Romaine tries to poison her husband, but cousin Christiane (Ardant) appears on the scene, and the desperate Romaine commits suicide. An epilogue desperately tries to make Marcel admit the truth.

Renais is known for his stagey approach and love of theatrical formats. Before every new scene, there is a curtain opening, and no fourth wall: Resnais reminds us that he is directing a play: the film outings by German director Paul Czinner (Germany 1932, UK 1937), seemed dated at release, but fifty years later, the conflicts are even more arcane. But Resnais’s aesthetic rigour, and Charles Van Damme’s static, long shots echo Last Year in Marienbad  and Manoel de Oliveira’s films, keep the audience interest until the final denouement. Azéma (who would marry Resnais twelve years later), is the centre of attention, her confusion makes her much more sympathetic than Arditi and Dussollier, who both are somehow wooden and one-dimensional. Ardant brings in some rigour, certainly a woman who knows what she wants. Mélo is very much a melodrama from a bygone era. AS

ON BLURAY FROM 8 APRIL 2019 COURTESY OF FETCH.FM

 

 

Long Time No Sea (2018) **** Taiwan Film Festival UK 2019

Dir: Heather Tsui | Drama | Taiwan, 93′

This stunning family film blends drama with an ethnological portrait of the indigenous Tao people who have lived on Orchid Island, Taiwan for nearly a century. Long Time No Sea has a convincing ring to it because it’s based on the real life experience of director Heather Tsui whose strong message very much connects with the narrative of survival for small traditional communities all over the world, while also bringing a lightness of touch.

What makes this story of a young teacher who arrives from the city so appealing is its vibrant cinematography and engaging way of putting across the challenges facing these people in a low-key and delicately drawn way, and through preparations for a dance competition which both informative and entertaining. The cast of mostly non-professionals from the Tao community add authenticity to the mix. We watch them at play and at work in the gloriously scenic settings, although it’s a pity that girls seem more or less absent from proceedings.

The story revolves around Manawei (Zhong Jia-jin) who lives with his strict but loving grandmother (Feng Ying-li). It’s traditional in the Far East for parents to work abroad for financial reasons, and this is the case here. Manawei’s father (Ou Lu) has a job on the mainland, so the boy often feels lonely and slightly deprived in comparison with the other kids. Shang He-huang plays the attractive teacher Chung-hsun, who is looking for experience before he moves on to a more senior role. He immediately hits it off with the boy, and when he learns about the bonus offered to teachers willing to coach kids for the national dance competition in Kaohsiung, he pricks up his ears. And soon there’s a love interest coming his way in the shape of Chin-yi (Zhang Ling), a local radio host.

Tsui’s script mines the dramatic potential of the competition but never feels  sentimental or overwrought. The underwater scenes are impressive, particularly  touching is the one where Manawei dives with his father into the Love River and is transported to Orchid Island. Occasional music from award-winning composer Cincin Lee and traditional Tao folklore songs make this impressive debut a memorable experience MT.

TAIWAN FILM FESTIVAL UK 3 – 14 APRIL 2019

 

 

Winterlong (2018) ***

Dir: David Jackson | UK Drama | 90′

TV director David Jackson’s bleak look at dysfunctional Britain sees a mother abandon her son to live with her lover.

Sixteen year old Julian (Harper Jackson) is left with his estranged father Francis (Francis Magee), an ageing hippie who lives in a caravan, scratching out a living doing ‘odd jobs’. A fragile bond develops between them but is soon blown apart when tragedy strikes a second time.

Winterlong is tonally all over the place: drifting from social realism to quasi- romantic comedy, with a set of facile caricatures and dialogue to match. We feel sympathy for Julian as the most relatable character, despite his young years, having to contend with puerile adults when strong parenting is what he needs. He feels like a bewildered bystander, while the adults take centre stage with their nonsense. Not much backstory is provided for either father or son, but Francis is clearly a mess, a selfish womaniser who rocks a battered deerstalker and takes pot shots at wildlife, fancying himself as an 18th century highwayman who’s wandered onto the set of Midsomer Murders. And as Winterlong plays out that’s what it reminds us of. How can any sane adult in Britain have a line like: “I’m out here on my own because it’s safer that way”. Where does he think he is: Afghanistan?

Once Francis’ girlfriend Carole appears the story starts to take shape. With a positive outlook and her head screwed on, she demands Julian has a proper roof over his head (well, a plastic caravan one), then disappears back to Belgium, wearing a coke can ring – all Francis can offer from his forages through the ‘dangerous’ woods. Then in wanders batty Barbara (Doon Mackichan), the new neighbour and soi-disant ‘opera singer’ whose desperation for Francis puts all middle-aged women to shame. A weak romance rears its head between Julian and Taylor (Nina Iceton) serving the final melodramatic scenes, but never really coming to anything. Despite its tonal inconsistencies, Winterlong makes a strong statement: It’s a sad reflection on adults seen through innocent children’s eyes – clearly they deserve better. Atmospherically filmed in the Sussex environs of Rye, and accompanied by Rob Lane evocative occasional score, Winterlong is a wake-up call for modern parents. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 29 MARCH 2019

Eaten by Lions | Edinburgh Film Festival 2018 ***

Dir.: Jason Wingard; Cast: Antonio Aakeel, Jack Carroll, Sarah Hoare, Natalie Davis, Kevin Eldon, Vicky Pepperdine, Asim Chaudhry, Hayley Tammaddon, Neelam Bakshi, Johnny Vegas, Tom Binns; UK 2018; 99 min.

British director Jason Wingard (In another Life) has assembled a multicultural absurdist comedy featuring two teenage half brothers: one looking for his father, the other simply following big brother where ever he goes. Their madcap journey from Bradford to Blackpool ends in the bosom of a large, wealthy Asian family, where histrionics are the rule.

Omar (Aakeel) and Pete (Carroll), are alone again after the death of their Gran. Having already lost their parents in a freak accident in Africa, where they had met their demise in the jaws of a lion. The idea of living with reactionary and repressive relatives (Eldon/Pepperdine) does not appeal to the brothers, so Omar sets out to find his genetic father, a certain Malik, whose name is on his birth certificate. In Blackpool they meet punky Amy (Hoare), her campy uncle Ray (Vegas) and a fortune teller (Binns) who turn out to be useful providing them with the address of the Choudray family. Ruled by two matriarchs Sara (Tamaddon) and Tazim (Bakshi), it turns out that Malik is not Omar’s father, his progenitor is actually Irfan (Chaudhry), Malik’s younger brother, who is about as mature as Omar himself. Pete falls into the arms of young Parveen (Davis), a teenager who doesn’t speak to her family, but is very verbal with Pete, who also has a slight walking disability. When Parveen and Pete set out in grandfather Choudray’s pristine Rolls Royce, picking up oddballs from the waterfront, the scene is set for a raucous wedding finale.

Told this way, one might expect a run-of-the-mill comedy, but every character feels rather a parody, and the clichés pile up like papadums. Everyone seems to be  OTT so the lack of straight versus crazy, the very essence of any comedy, is therefore missing.  funny numbers, but not much cohesion. DoP Matt North overdoes the colourful palette making everything as saccharine as the candyfloss on the beachfront. Humour is always highly personal affair. Let’s just say that Wingard’s lack of subtlety veers on the embarrassing, and the rather undeveloped characters and storyline make for disappointing viewing. AS

EATEN BY LIONS celebrated its World Premiere on 21June at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2018 | On release from 29 March 2019 

Out of Blue (2018) ****

Dir.: Carol Morley; Cast: Patricia Clarkson, Mamie Gummer. Toby Jones, Jonathan Majors, James Caan, Jackie Weaver; US/UK 2018, 110 min.

Carol Morley (Dreams of a Life) is a British auteur who brings so much more to her films that just the narrative. Her screen version of Martin Amis’ novel Night Train is a genre hybrid– noir in this case – and existentialism. Out of Blue is as enigmatic as its title and New Orleans is the shadowy setting where detective Mike Hoolihan (Patricia Clarkson) investigates the murder of astrophysicist Jennifer Rockwell (Gummer).

Rockwell is found dead in a planetarium where she’d given a speech the day before about Black Holes. Early clues lead to two main-suspects: Ian Strammi (Toby Jones) manager of the site, and Duncan Reynold (Majors), Rockwell’s lover and co-worker. But Hoolihan feels instinctively that the solution to the crime will lead her back into the past where Space will offer clues. A recovering alcoholic with a captivating cat (who steals many a scene) Mike nevertheless loses it completely when cornered by her own past, and performs a drunken semi-striptease on a bar table. Rockwell’s parents are also involved: Colonel Tom (Caan) – who may or may not be the suspect of a past murder spree – and her mother Miriam (Weaver), who has her own dark guilt complex, are not helping Hoolihan, neither are Rockwell’s twin brothers. When the tragedy unravels, more questions emerge, and even physical identities start to look questionable: as Jennifer says in her final lecture “our nose and our hands may not be from the same galaxy”.

The film’s main characters’ identities seem to emanate from a different past, and nothing fits any more. Out of Blue is very much Nicolas Roeg territory: his son Luc is also a producer. Morley’s narrative leads gradually leads us ‘out of this world’, where Rockwell felt much more at home than on this planet – never mind her rather dysfunctional family set-up. And Hoolihan herself is hiding behind her policeman’s (sic) mask, denying both gender and past. DoP Conrad W. Hall’s images play on tones of the colour blue: we race through the film like the night train of Martin Amis’ novel (on which it is loosely based): from the night sky to the cream receptacle found at the crime scene, and the murky metallic-grey of crimes past, everything leads to the indigo blue of cosmic Black Holes.

Morley is clearly interested in the who-done-it, but she also asks questions about human nature; and all her protagonists have something significant to hide. And she never lets them get away with it – the raison d’être of their life (or death) is always more important than the circumstances of the discoveries. To paraphrase the feature title: Blue is the new Noir. The director never gives in or compromises: the existential ‘why’ is her reason for filmmaking, the result may not be to everyone’s taste, but it satisfies an audience hungry for answers outside our immediate Universe. AS

IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 29 MARCH 2019 

Pet Sematary – the novel and the film versions

Stephen King’s terrifying novel, Pet Sematary was written back in 1983 and King then collaborated on the script with Mary Lambert directing a big screen adaptation in 1989. To celebrate the 30th anniversary release of the original Pet Sematary (1989) film, we’re looking into the key differences between the novel and the movie adaptations. With the latest film version out on March 29th  – how do they differ, and which is better?

Ellie or Gage Creed

In Stephen King’s terrifying novel and the 1989 version of Pet Sematary, the youngest Creed, Gage, is killed by a monster truck. This is a crucial element to the narrative as the loss of their son is the catalyst for the haunting events that unfold later. However, in Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s 2019 version of Pet Sematary, Gage’s older sister Ellie is the one to be hit by the truck. 

In many ways this has a marked effect on the storyline, as Dennis Widmyer explained in a recent interview: changing the death to be that of the older child adds more psychological layers to the narrative. Ellie Creed understands what she becomes whereas Gage in the novel and the 1989 version is unaware, making it more unsettling and haunting. 

Zelda, Rachel Creed’s Sister 

Rachel Creed’s sister is a significant and haunting character in all versions of the Pet Sematary story, yet she is portrayed in different ways. In both Stephen King’s novel and the upcoming film adaptation, Zelda is described and portrayed as a 10-year-old girl with spinal meningitis. However in the 1989 version, Zelda is played by an adult male actor, which is debatably one of the most hair-raising elements in the film. Either way, Zelda’s horrific deterioration and lonely death is one of the most terrifying elements of the story.

Timmy

Timmy Baterman is a 17-year-old boy killed during World War II and then affected by the curse of the Micmac burial after his father laid him there. Timmy appeared ‘normal’ at first, but then we soon find out that Timmy didn’t return from the dead with a soul. Timmy’s tale is only alluded to in the novel and the 1989 adaptation, although it’s not mentioned in the upcoming adaptation. Instead we get to know the protagonists a little better.

Regional Accents 

A smaller yet crucial difference in terms of being true to the novel is the loss of the Maine accent. Stephen King clearly details in the novel that the Creed’s neighbour and keeper of the Micmac burial ground, Jud Crandall, has a very heavy Maine accent.  However, in the 2019 version, Oscar-nominated actor John Lithgow (Jud) whom does not take on the Maine accent. He recently stated in an interview that he believes Jud has evolved into “a more serious character” since the novel, casting a distinct slur on regional accents.  

THE 2019 VERSION IS IN CINEMAS ON 29 MARCH 2019 

PET SEMATARY (1989) is on 4K ULTRA HD AND BLU-RAY™ MARCH 25.

At Eternity’s Gate (2018) Netflix

Dir: Julian Schnabel | Cast: Willem Defoe, Oscar Isaac | US Drama | 111’

Julian Schnabel’s training as an artist informs another of his portraits of creativity like Basquiat, Reinaldo Arenas and Jean Dominique Bauby. With At Eternity’s Gate he turns his camera on the tragedy of Vincent van Gogh with this luminous vision of the artist’s final days in Provence.

There have been many broad brush insights into the painter’s troubled life recorders on the big screen; the most recent, Loving Vincent (2017) attempted a living painted drama of the Dutchman, while Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing (2015) explored the prodigious correspondence with his brother Theo. The reason to see this one is Willem Dafoe’s fabulous fleshing out of the artist in his febrile, sun-drenched final days after the breakdown of his fraught friendship with Gauguin (an unremarkable Oscar Isaac).

Schnabel captures the glowering intensity of Van Gogh’s desperate descent in paranoia but also portrays the artist as a gentle introvert who was as much misunderstood as maligned by the petit parochialism of his Provençal neighbours.

Benoit Delhomme’s hand-held camera hovers around feverishly and vivid yellow predominates. Intense and intimate close-ups pan out into flaming widescreen vistas vibrating in the summer heat. The worst element is Tatiana Lisovskaya’s screeching score that will make you run for the exit. It over-eggs the already over-baked picture of dismay and despair..

Jean Claude Carriere writes with Schnabel and Louise Kugelberg (the latter also his co-editor) to sketch out the broad strokes of the narrative which opens in Paris in the late 1880s where van Gogh is an already an outsider amongst the Artistes Independents du jour. His financier and brother Theo (a well-cast Rupert Friend) cannot sell his avant-garde works, Vincent opining: “God made me a painter for people who are not born yet”. Only Gauguin appreciates his talent but the two are incompatible as housemates. 

“Go south, Vincent,” Gauguin tells him when van Gogh complains of rainy skies and fog, whereupon he moves to Arles where he discovers his yen for landscapes which glow and shimmer in the heat as Delhomme’s visuals capture the textures of roots, earth, leaves as well as the soft windswept pastures. We feel for Vincent when a schoolteacher (Anne Consigny) openly mocks his work in front of her kids, and after a violent outburst he is sent away from the town, admitting his fear of going mad – but it could be that he just hates people and prefers solitude, which is understandable amongst these cackling idiots.

With Gauguin he enjoys a companionable time until success takes him to Paris whereupon van Gogh starts to unravel emotionally with the famous ear incident. A doctor (Vladimir Consigny) suggests some therapy, that merely confines the artist to a straitjacket. Ironically this comes at the same time as an influential Paris art critic praises his work as uniquely sensual. Meanwhile a priest (Mads Mikkelsen in thoughtful mode) damns his vision and calls his work ugly. 

This sensuous re-imagining of the artist’s final days belongs to Dafoe whose craggy features and piercing blue eyes convey a lost and melancholy soul whose  sensitivity and artistic genius have now made him a household name . MT

NOW ON NETFLIX. TRAILER courtesy of Curzon Cinemas | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 Winner Best Actor: Willem Dafoe

3 Faces (2018) ****

Dir: Jafar Panahi | Drama | 100’

Even though Jafar Panahi’s latest 3 FACES tries to challenge Iran’s massive macho culture with a feminist film, the feeling that remains after the curtain has fallen is of a deeply ingrained male-dominated society where women are still quietly championing the male of the species, while giving lip service to feminism. 

Jafar Panahi was unable to leave Iran to present his thoughtful drama which was made on a shoestring, and none the worse for it, beautifully reflecting the arid mountain landscapes of the Turkish-Azeri speaking area of Iran, where he drives, as himself, with actor Benhaz Jafari, trying to find the girl, Marziyeh Rezaie, who appears to have killed herself in mobile footage witnessed in the film’s histrionic opening scene, and sent to Mrs Jafari the night before.

The title refers to three women, actresses from pre revolution Iran, the present and the future. With 3 FACES Panahi hopes to deliver a feminist message to encourage women to be positive about their choices. The modern world challenges traditions in this rural backwater where men are virile and women remain behind close doors. When the pair arrive in the mountain village, it soon emerges that the girl was actually crying wolf. But she is distraught that her family have forbidden her from taking up a place at a prestigious conservatory in Tehran, and she apologises profusely to Mrs Jafahi for the upset caused.

The tone is solicitous and rather worthy, and we are then treated to various local twee vignettes that demonstrate male supremacy and female submission. What works best here is the footage of farm stock, being herded, and the plight of a prize bull who has collapsed on the road while on his way to inseminate a load of horny heiffers. Once again this demonstrates how grateful females should be to exist in the world of male strength and virility.

Meanwhile back to young Marziyeh who has been forced into an engagement to dampen down hopes of an acting career (“we don’t want any entertainers here”). The third face, former actress, dancer Shahrazade, active during the Shah Pahlavi’s reign, now lives alone in a tiny hut outside the village never gets any screen time. Apparently bitter and twisted, she is now a reclusive artist who is pictured the following morning painting in a distant field. 

There is a great deal to enjoy in all the performances: Panahi is laid back and louche as the soigne man from the big city; Behnaz Jafari (A House Built on Water) is an impulsive emotional woman with a hot temper that quickly gives way to tactile warmth. Little Rezaie is a sparky, confident girl who wears her heart on her sleeve. This is a captivating little film that glows with an upbeat message of hope. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 29 MARCH 2019 | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | JOINT BEST SCRIPT WINNER  2018

 

Chasing Einstein (2019) *** CPH:DOX 2019

Dir.: Steve Brown, Timothy Wheeler; Documentary with Barry C. Barish, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss; USA 2019, 82 min.

In this user-friendly film Steve Brown and Timothy Wheeler celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity by probing deeper to challenge his long-held notion, and explore what actually constitutes gravity’s invisible ‘dark matter’.

With the help of a scientist, and no less than three Nobel Prize winners of Physics, they conclude it may take fifteen years before Einstein is proved right or wrong. Four institutions lead the research in to one of the greatest open questions about our universe: the largest particle accelerator LHC at CERN, the largest underground labs (XENON), the largest telescope arrays, and the LIGO gravitational wave detector. Satellites are also being employed to create a 3D map of the universe. And research is taking place on a global scale to prove if Einstein’s theory stands the test of time. In Leiden (Netherlands) Laura Baudis and Margaret Bower are in contact with Columbia University, another institute participating in the project. We watch scientists conducting field trips, the Atlas experiment and the Xenonit, an ‘unblinding’ instrument. Finally we see Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne receive the Nobel Prize for Physics in Stockholm in 2017.

It was Einstein himself who originally stated, “if a theory is not understood by a six-year old, it is not clear enough”, because “the eternal mystery of the universe lies in its comprehensibility”. When you consider this, the whole thing is pretty mind-boggling. But there is hope, as one of the scientists remarked: “if your idea doesn’t sound crazy to begin with, there is no hope for it”. 

So we must continue to wait with baited breath for the overall outcome. It may well emerge that we live in a totally different universe than the one we imagined.

CHASING EINSTEIN will have its CPH:DOX premiere on Saturday March 23 and a UK Premiere on Sunday 19th May, 1pm at Stratford Picturehouse

www.chasingeinsteinfilm.com

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)

Dir: Tsai Ming-liang | Writer: Sung Hsi, Tsai Ming Liang | Cast: Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Chun Shih, Tien Miao | Drama, Taiwan 82′

Voyeurism is the thread that runs through Tsai Ming-liang’s eerie drama Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Of all his minimalist observational outings it’s probably the most fast moving yet enjoyably languorous, not to mention darkly humorous, if your sense of humour is wickedly drôle.

All and sundry from the low-key gay cruising community drop by for the final night of opening at a cavernous crumbling Taipei cinema, where the crippled usherette goes through her rounds like an attractive female version of the hunchback of Notre Dame. There’s a haunting quality to the place with its echoing corridors and vast empty vestibules, the Noirish shadows making it perfect for explorative camera angles and inventive overhead shots. Tsai has found a way to combine a love letter to Chinese cinema with a meditation on the quality of alienation, loneliness and awkwardly tentative communication between those looking to hook up in the drabness of a rainy afternoon or in the garishly-lit cinema lavatories, where the protagonists linger expectantly. The director also explores the cinema going experience as a community activity, years before Netflix: we want to be transported away to our fantasies, but are usually made painfully aware of the irritating person behind us slurping their Pepsi, picking their teeth, or resting their foot within millimetres of our shoulder-blade.

In his long fixed shots, minimal action plays out, but nothing escape the furtive camera – the pink neon light reflects on a woman’s face turning her into an instant femme fatale. Shadows cast on the profile of a debonair denizen transforms him into a mysterious matinee idol enjoying an evening alone (it is Shih!). Meanwhile, in the brightly lit entrance, the tupping sound of the usherette’s artificial limb is the only sound apart from torrential rain. The silent cinema-goers pay little real attention to the film on the screen even though it’s King Hu’s 1967 martial arts epic Dragon Inn. It slowly emerges that two lone members of the empty stalls starred over 50 years ago in the film they’re watching, Miao Tien and Shih Chun, the latter shedding quiet tears in memory of a glittering career. They later meet in the foyer, exchanging pleasantries as Miao Tien lights up a cigarette looking out despondently at the pouring rain.

Dialogue is minimal, the tone morose but never is it maudlin. We’re left with a feeling of poignant regret as the shutters go down for the last time, the two solitary employees making their way out into the night alone. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

London Turkish Film Week | 24-30 April 2019

London Turkish Film Week is back for a second year running in the luxurious surroundings of the Regent Street Cinema and various other well-known venues across the capital. From 24 -30 April a selection of recent dramas and documentaries will be accompanied by talks and a chance to meet the directors and cast.

Turkish cinema is known for its captivating widescreen dramas that reflect the cultural diversity and magnificent scenery of a vibrant nation that stretches from Europe to Asia.

The festival opens with Can Ulkay’s epic TURKISH ICE CREAM (2018) a rousing, rather clichéd melodrama inspired by real events that took place in a small Australian town in 1915 during the Gallipoli landings. Two Turkish nationals are trying to get back to their homeland with their families. Seen from a Turkish point of view – and naturally depicting the Allied Forces as inveterate baddies – the brutal action scenes depict the futility of war, from both sides. The emphasis here is on action rather than characterisation: so although nearly everyone dies, we don’t really care, as we never got to know them in the first place. Carrying on the war theme there is CICERO (2018) a drama based on Ilyas Bazna, one of the most famous WWII spies who worked for Nazi Germany while employed as a butler to the British Ambassador, Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull Hughessen, in neutral Turkey during the mid 1940s.

The Golden Tulip winner 2017 YELLOW HEAT (Sari Sicak) sees an immigrant family desperate to survive in their traditional farm amid encroaching industrialisation. The multi-award winning drama YOZGAT BLUES (2013), set in small town Anatolia, is one to watch for its outstanding performances and smouldering cinematography. Banu Sivaci’s THE PIGEON (main image) won best director at Sofia Film Festival 2018 and is another impressive arthouse tale of a boy finding peace with the animal kingdom, away from the dystopian world in small-town Adana, Southern Turkey. And finally MURTAZA another beautifully crafted and resonant parable about the importance of traditional values in the mountains of Malatya.

Other features and shorts reflect the usual Turkish themes of town versus country, tradition versus the modern world, and the role of women in enlightened society. Another highlight will be Ahmet Boyacioglu’s latest film THE SMELL OF MONEY a tense and startling exposé of financial corruption in contemporary Turkey. And last but not least, a panel of industry professionals will debate the future of the big screen At the Flicks of Netflix? at the Regent Street Cinema on 26th April.

LONDON TURKISH FILM WEEK | 24 – 30 APRIL 2019

The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019) *

Dir/Wri: Daniel Farrands | Cast: Hilary Duff, Jonathan Bennett, Lydia Hearst, Pawel Szajda | Horror | 87′

Which ever way you look at it, The Haunting of Sharon Tate is a dreadful film, and a bad idea. Not only does this schlocky drama insult the memory of Tate and her former husband Roman Polanski, it also re-imagines her tragedy as a surreal flight of fancy, changing the course of its terrible reality.

Sharon Tate is made out to be a loopy, histrionic lightweight prone to fantasising about her own murder on a regular basis, and obsessed by thoughts of her husband’s putative infidelity. Infact, she was a promising actor who had made a name for herself in The Man from U.N.C.L.E (1965), Valley of the Dolls (1967) and Twelve Plus One (1969) alongside Orson Welles (1969). Polanski was in London at the time finishing off a script so he could join his wife for the birth of their first child together. She was 26. It was one of the most gruesome Hollywood events, and another shocking time for Polanski who had lost his parents during the Holocaust. He has now been married for 30 years to French actor Emmanuelle Seigner.

As Quentin Tarantino found out a few years ago with his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, making a feature film about Tate’s demise was always going to be a tricky endeavour. And we all remember the disaster that was Oliver Hirschbergels’ Lady Diana, despite Naomi Watts’ sterling effort. Well this is actually worse because it demeans Tate, and those who also died on that fateful August in 1969 in Benedict Canyon. Hardly surprising then that her sister has distanced herself from the whole project. At least a documentary form could have re-examined the facts and made some intelligent contribution to the events, told evocatively in Vincent Bugliosi’s book Helter Skelter.

Here Daniel Farrands uses a fractured narrative to question Tate’s presence of mind by exploring the idea that she (played here by Hillary Duff) was experiencing premonitions about her own slaughter in a series of horrific re-occuring nightmares. And that her final hours did not result in death at the hands of the Mansons, but in some kind of aggravated break-in which sees her walking away into the countryside. Meanwhile the Mansons are pictured as baleful zombie-like killers, peering through windows before they eventually made their move. You couldn’t make it up – but Farrands did, with a feature that’s clearly intended for a teen audience who may not appreciate the gravity of the source material.

Apparently, Farrands gets his title from a throwaway quote Tate gave in an interview where she reportedly said: “Yes, I have had a psychic experience – at least I guess that’s what it was – and it was a terribly frightening and disturbing thing for me”. She went on to say that the dream featured Jay Sebring or herself “cut open at the throat”.

Well, we all have bad dreams about losing our own body parts, or people we love – sometimes in tragic ways. But you’ve got to be pretty crass to make a second rate horror flick about such things actually happening in the light of a real and dreadful calamity. The film is not cinematic or remotely compelling. Most of the action takes place in semi-darkness, the flashback scenes repetitive to the point of boredom – the whole thing is uninspiring. Duff, Jonathan Bennett and Lydia Hearst do their best with a threadbare script, in a film that deserves to be haunted by the ghost of Charles Manson himself. MT

AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FROM 8 APRIL 2019

Teddy Pendergrass: If You Don’t Know Me By Now (2019) ***

Dir: Olivia Lichtenstein | Biopic | 106′ US

Teddy Pendergrass was such a loved and wanted child, success would always follow him. Born in Philadelphia to a proud mother who had suffered six miscarriages that made her cherish him all the more, the two grew close after his father left home shortly after he arrived. Powerful both musically and physically, he had an electric smile and a rich and melodious voice. And women in their droves would flock to his sexually-charged performances, while men were attracted by his power. Lichtenstein chronicles his story but somehow misses a vital chapter, playing down a sinister but clearly significant crime side-story involving the local Phili mafia. And that somehow eclipses the high notes of this essentially celebratory film.

Much the same as Aretha Franklin, Pendergrass started singing in his local Gospel church where he would be ordained. He soon joined Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, only to leave  in 1977  – under a cloud – for a spectacular solo career, that would result in a clutch of platinum discs: an impossibly handsome, virile man with a rich and sensuous voice. But in 1982 tragedy would touch his life when a car accident turned him into a cripple. He flirted with suicide but pulled back from the brink thanks to his family and friends. One of the film’s most moving moments is seeing Pendergrass performing from a wheelchair at Live Aid at Philadelphia.

In 1977, one of the most important woman in his life was shot dead. No one has ever been convicted of Taaz Lang’s crime but Teddy was devastated. And clearly the split from Melvin had left him with enemies too, not least the local police, yet to play this up would diminish the overall impact of his own success and recovery from near death. And, at the time his career was taking off and he was positioned to be a major crossover artist, a Black Elvis even. But the crash takes over in the final scenes changing the mood of the film and leaving us wondering what really happened and why.

The murky world of organised crime in pop music is a real issue, but Pendergrass’s inspirational comeback story forces a different narrative arc on the film, leaving questions unanswered. It’s a remarkable story, but way more complicated than this makes it sound. MT

DVD RELEASE DATE 29.03.19

NATIONWIDE SCREENINGS

moviehouseent.com/films/teddy-pendergrass

A Trip to the Moon (2018) **

Dir.: Joaquin Cambre; | Writer: Laura Farhi | Cast: Angelo Mutti Spinetta, Leticia Bredice, German Palacios, Angela Torres, Micela Amaro, Luis Machin; Argentina 2017, 87 min.

A teenage boy struggles with his traumatic past in Joaquin Cambre’s rather hit and miss feature debut which looks spectacular but is let down by implausible plot-lines and tonal flaws. The main character Tomas (Spinetta) is keen on astronomy and Space travel and manages to escape his dysfunctional childhood and fraught family life in with the help of a vivid imagination and anti-psychotic drugs. But things start to improve when Tomas claps eyes on  Iris (Torres) thanks to his trusty telescope, and after the usual setbacks, the two fall in love. Suddenly everything changes and reality and fantasy being one: Tomas packs his family into a spaceship and they all fly off to the Moon, where the secret of his trauma gradually unfolds. Cambre illicits strong performances from his able cast but sadly the abrupt shift between social realism and sci-fi leaves the audience stranded in ‘outer space’. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 22 MARCH 2019 NATIONWIDE

 

  

Minding the Gap (2018) ****

Dir: Bing Liu | Doc US, 83′

Skateboarding is the lifeblood and unifying element for a group of young guys in Bing Liu’s terrific Oscar nominated debut.

They all grew up together in Rockford, near Chicago, where Liu began filming their adventures as the boys moved into early adulthood. It seems they all had difficult backgrounds, in one way or another. But Minding the Gap skates over these in its joyful kinetic playfulness.

Bing Liu’s fluid camera keep pace with the sporty action as the boarders refuse to be diminished by their setbacks, each scene froths with energy and alacrity. And even though the stories of family dysfunction and continuing anxiety are shared there is always at positive feel to the encounters. Clearly boarding is a hobby that makes their adrenaline flow with its mix of risk, dexterity and joy de vivre. In the meantime what emerges is a rich social tapestry of contemporary working class youth in all its pain and glory.

Each story slowly emerges through the wizardry of the skateboarding sequences as Zack Mulligan and his girlfriend Nina, Keire Johnson and the Liu himself share a common experience of camaraderie and togetherness that gets them through the days and offers focus on their lives and futures.

Keire had a controlling father who is now dead. Liu’s life was dominated by a coercive bullying father who manhandled his mother and took away his confidence. Zack has just become a father with his girlfriend Nina, but they are too young and marked by their own difficult childhoods to fall into parenthood easily, and there are trust and vulnerability issues at play, which gradually become resolved in the final segment.

There is a freshness and an appealing innocence to all these encounters. And  combined with the upbeat tone of the documentary Minding the Gap makes for a satisfying and enjoyable experience. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 22 MARCH 2019

Sharkwater Extinction (2018) ****

Dir/Wri: Rob Stewart | Doc | 88′

Did you ever feel sorry for a shark? You will after watching Sharkwater Extinction. This follow-up to the acclaimed 2006 documentary Sharkwater, is a powerful and persuasive film that pleads us to ponder the fate of sharks. Asian nations are now the main predator of the mostly docile creatures due to the extensive popularity of shark fin soup which is driving a cruel and illegal trade in their body parts.

In the opening scenes we see a man holding a freshly caught baby bluefin shark and then cutting its dorsal fin and re-releasing to certain death in the water. As Woody Allen once said, “a relationship is like a shark, if it doesn’t move forward, it dies” and that – joking apart – is the essence of Stewart’s film.

Director, writer and conservationist Rob Stewart dedicated his life to raise awareness of this eco-issue. His documentary serves both as a heads-up for their continuing plight and a gorgeous-looking cinematic tribute to his own efforts to bring it to our attention. Rob lost his life in 2017 at 37 in a diving accident while working on what would have been his third and final film.

“I met my first shark when I was 9,” Stewart tells us proudly, and from then on it was more or less a love story about this amazing breed of fish that makes a vast and important contribution to the ecosystem. It soon emerges that a small loophole in the system allows shark-fingers to transfer their booty (often worth billions) to refrigerated container vessels which are not checked for cargo contents. One of the film’s most sobering statistics is that the shark population has dropped 90 percent in the last 30 years.

Rob Stewart takes us on a global journey to visit points of exploitation: Panama, Costa Rica, Cape Verde and shamefully even the Californian coast and Miami Florida where one fisherman rejects the idea that sharks are endangered. But we see with our own eyes shark carcasses being loading into vast vessels. Meanwhile, Stewart and his collaborators secretly film fishermen in Catalina whose drag nets are illegally trapping and drowning the animals. Shots are fired and they quickly make it to safety. Clearly this lucrative trade is well-protected.

It also emerges that many of the fish products available in the supermarket contain shark. Over thirty percent of pet foods tested positive for shark, and they’re also found in fertilisers, livestock feed and even beauty products. “We’re smearing endangered super-predators on our faces without knowing it,” comes Rob’s ironic observation.

The last laugh is on the predators themselves though. It turns out that shark is a dangerous food to eat. Due to their age, and diet, the fish themselves contain large amounts of mercury and other toxic elements which will be far more concentrated in the body parts.

Made on the hoof, the marine underwater scenes are absolutely breathtaking and we get to see some of the World’s largest seaports. By the end we really feel for these animals and their plight as we experience, up close and personal, their dying throes as they are caught in nets or bump startled to the bottom of the seabed and die, completely unable to navigate.

The final scenes are ominous but really tragic to behold as we see the title “The Last Dive” appearing on the screen. It then transpires that Rob lost his life trying to share with us images of sawfish sharks. His film is a revelation of a life well-lived. More people die from falling in their slippers than being eaten by sharks. But after watching this you will no longer fear them. MT

NATIONWIDE FROM 22 MARCH 2019

The Crossing (2018) **

Dir.: Bai Xue; Cast: Huang Yao, Ka Man Tong, Elena Kong, Sun Yang, Ni Hongjie; China 2018, 99 min.

In his flawed feature debut Bai Xue does a great job of exploring activities on the border between mainland China and Hong Kong. But the convincing cast is hampered by a clichéd script with almost no dramatic heft – the usual verve of a first film seems to be confined to production values.

The story revolves around a young Chinese student Peipei (Yao) who has just turned sixteen. Everyday she crosses the border to Hong Kong from her home in Shenzhen. Feeling diminished by the more affluent students in the former British colony, particularly her best friend Jo (Tong), and keen to travel with her on a much-dreamed of  trip to Japan, PeiPei joins a smuggling ring headed by a female version of Fagan in the shape of Mrs. Hua (Kong). But things don’t go according to plan. Jo’s boyfriend Hao falls in love with her, and then Peipei falls foul of the border police.

DoP Piao Songri offers a surprising contrast between small town China and the glitter and lights of Hong Kong and Peipei is caught between the two. Her  workaholic father and hard-drinking and gambling mother (Hongjie) are busily involved in their own lives. Every time Peipei crosses the border, Xue freezes the frame: the demarcation zone is set. Peipei is a danfei, that is the child of a Hong Kong citizen and a Chinese national, but she juggles her identities without really overcoming the naivety and spontaneity of adolescence. Clearly she is no match for the scheming Mrs. Hua, who preys on her young thieving victims, soon making them reliant on her for a decent income. But Xue dwells too long on the teenagers’ aimlessness, which is repetitive and unimaginative, along with the love triangle, which is never really explored and too conventional to go with the free-flowing camera movements, and the accelerated tempo of the action. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 22 March 2019

           

Human Rights Watch Festival | 15-22 March 2019

Creating a forum for courageous individuals fighting worthwhile causes on both sides of the lens, this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival returns to the Barbican, BFI Southbank and Regent Street Cinema with an international line-up of 15 award-winning documentary and feature films from Venezuela, South Africa, Palestine, Thailand and more.

The festival will open at the Barbican on 14 March with Hans Pool’s Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World, which follows the revolutionary rise of the “citizen investigative journalist” collective known as Bellingcat, dedicated to redefining breaking news by exploring the promise of open source investigation. 
 
Among other topics highlighted in the festival are: modern-day slavery in the fishing industry, South African students’ #FeesMustFall movement and the call for the decolonization of the education system; ‘boys will be boys’ rape culture; the impact of non-consensual gender assignment surgery on intersex infants; urban displacement; and a behind the scenes access to the trial of Ratko Mladić. Many filmmakers, protagonists, Human Rights Watch researchers and activists will take part in in-depth post-screening Q&A and panel discussions, some of which are detailed below:

UK Premiere: Screwdriver Mafak
Palestine-USA-Qatar 2018. Dir Bassam Jarbawi. With Ziad Bakri, Areen Omari, Jameel Khoury. 108min. Digital. EST. 15

Shot entirely on location in the West Bank, award-winning Palestinian director Bassam Jarbawi’s debut feature film tackles the physical and emotional toll of one man’s return home after 15 years in an Israeli jail. This mesmerising drama examines the trauma of reintegration after imprisonment, together with the unpredictable set of challenges faced in modern-day Palestine.

FRI 15 MAR 20:30 NFT3 | SOUTHBANK

UK Premiere: Facing the Dragon 

Afghanistan-Turkey-Germany-Australia 2018. Dir Sedika Mojadidi. 81min. Digital. EST. 15 

Afghan-American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi pursues two awe-inspiring women on the front lines as the United States withdraws from Afghanistan and the Taliban regains their hold. As the country’s fragile democracy shakes, threats of violence increase against Shakila, a journalist, and Nilofar, a local politician. They are soon forced to choose between duty and love for their country, and their families’ safety. 

SAT 16 MAR 18:10 NFT3 | SOUTHBANK

UK Premiere: Roll Red Roll 

USA 2018. Dir Nancy Schwartzman. 81min. Digital. 15 

In small-town Ohio, USA, a sexual assault involving members of the beloved high-school football team gained global attention. With unprecedented access to a local community struggling to reconcile disturbing truths and the journalist using social-media evidence to reveal them, this true-crime thriller cuts to the heart of debates around engrained rape culture, and unflinchingly asks: ‘Why didn’t anyone stop it?’ 

SAT 16 MAR 20:30 NFT3 | SOUTHBANK

UK Premiere: The Sweet Requiem Kyoyang Ngarmo
India-USA 2018. Dirs Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam. With Tenzin Dolker, Jampa Kalsang Tamang, Tashi Choedon. 93min. Digital. EST. 15

At the age of eight, Dolkar fled her home with her father to escape Chinese armed forces, and faced an arduous journey across the Himalayas. Now 26, she lives in a Tibetan refugee colony in Delhi, where an unexpected encounter with a man from her past awakens long-suppressed memories, propelling Dolkar on an obsessive search for the truth.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on 12 February 2019. Members of BFI Southbank can purchase tickets from 5 February and members of the Barbican can purchase tickets from 6 February.

The Snatch Thief (2018)

Wri/Dir.: Agustin Toscano; Cast: Sergio Prina, Daniel Elis, Leon Zelarrayan, Liliana Juarez, Camila Plaate, Pila Benitez Vibart; Argentina, Uruguay, France 2018,  Drama, 93 min.

Set in his home town of Tucuman in northern Argentina, Agustin Toscano’s twisty tale of a thief and his victim is spiked with mordant humour.

Social services have broken down in this poverty stricken town, the police are on strike, and Miguel (Prina) is at the end of his tether. His six-year old son Leon (Zelarrayan) lives with his mother Antonella (Plaate), waiting for child support. So Miguel and his friend Colorao (Elias) turn to crime, out of sheer desperation, using Miguel’s motorbike for a snatch-job. But their victim clings on to her bag and is dragged along for several minutes, behind them. Leaving her for dead the two run off and split the money. But Miguel feels bad and decides to visit the woman in hospital, finding her identity card in the stolen purse. Elena is alive – just, but has lost her memory. Posing as a nephew Miguel inveigles himself into her life in an clever conceit that Toscano pulls off with aplomb, his convincing plot-line playing on its plausible characters caught in a folie à deux: Miguel is a master of avoiding responsibility and Elena uses him, fully aware of his guilt. The pair make an odd couple, driving the plot forward with their intransigence and childish temper tantrums. In a way, they are both kids living in a world of wishful thinking.

DoP Arauco Hernandez Holz handheld camera searches the dark interior of Elena’s flat for every source of light, but somehow it always stays dark – like the murky world of the crime-fuelled encounter. Toscano manages a last twist – ending his humanistic play on a high note. A strong cast and imaginative direction of this simple but never simplistic storyline proves once again that a low budget need not stand in the way of a really gripping drama.  

THE SNATCH THIEF | BEST FILM, FIRST PRIZE | BERGAMO FILM MEETING 2019 | UBI BANCA

 

 

 

A Decent Man | Un Om La Locul Lui (2018) *** | Bergamo Film Meeting

Dir.: Hadrian Marcu; Cast: Madalina Constantin, Bogdan Dumitrache, Arda Gales; Romania 2018,93 min.

Hadrian Marcu’s debut feature sees a man very much out of his depth emotionally when it comes to women, and especially the two women in his life. Somehow this guy finds himself in an impossible situation and retreats into the background, hoping that the women take charge. Marcu cleverly shows how  professional women often end up drawing the short straw in their emotional choices.

Based on a novel by Petru Cimpuescu, this is a classic example of how men can be highly competent in the workplace but fall apart when it comes to their private lives. And the main character does just that. And this being Romania it’s unlikely to end well. Petru, an engineer, has got involved with two women: Laura (Gales) is a doctor and pregnant with his child, and Sonia (Constantin) is the wife of his colleague who dies when the car they are travelling in goes off the road, in the film’s early scenes. Feeling stressed out and guilty Petru puts Sonia first. Soon enough, nurses in the hospital inform Laura of Petru’s infidelity, and she throws him out of her flat. Clueless and adrift, Petru hides behind Sonja, hoping for the best.

This is a very confident debut by Marcu, who never lets the action get out of hand, avoiding sentimentality as well as histrionic scenes. Dumitrache is ideal for the role of the rather hesitant Petru, who cannot do right for doing wrong. Yes, he is decent, but his emotional intelligence is limited, he wants to have his cake and eat it. When confronted by Laura, he is like a little boy who wants the teacher to let him off failing his exam. The genders seem to live a very segregated life in contemporary Romania: Petru enjoys the company of co-workers, but when he is with Laura or Sonja, or even his mother, he becomes emasculated and insecure, avoiding conflict. keeping the women apart, compartmentalising their existence, living a double life, which crashes down, when Laura learns the truth. But he has still not learnt from his mistakes, and hopes that the decision will be made for him.

DoP Adrian Silisteanu uses a handheld camera for intimate effect, keeping close to the protagonists. Even their homes tell the storyline: Petru lives in a mess; whilst Laura is a proper homemaker – even though her work is as challenging as his is. Overall, it seems Marcu has re-invented the sub-genre of male malaise, but his careful detailing and string construction of the narrative arc marks him out to be a filmaker with a future. AS

WINNER | BEST DIRECTOR | BERGAMO FILM MEETING 9-17 MARCH 2019

 

Red Earth, White Snow (2019) *** Bergamo Film Meeting 2019

Dir.: Christine Moderbacher; Documentary with Joseph Moderbacher, Alois Doppel, Sabinus; Austria 2017, 71 min.

Christine Moderbacher serves as her own DoP in this insightful debut feature that explores her change of attitude towards the Christian missionaries at work in the Eastern Nigerian village of Nkwumeatu.

Red Earth, White Snow (Rote Erde Weisser Schnee) is very much as journey into the past. Civil war was raging when she first went to Nigeria during the late Sixties. And things have clearly moved on. But Moderbacher has changed too and is longer that God-fearing little girls she used to be. Back in the village with her father Joseph, and his Catholic helpers, the intention is to help with the harvest. But she is faced with nagging  questions about herself and the role of the Austrian Catholics, who still see themselves as saviours, sent by God.  

Joseph Moderbacher might be ageing, but he he still has the drive and optimism of he had during the Civil War when Biafra split from Nigeria for a time. But all is not well: during this time in the adopted village of his Catholic crew he really starts to feel his limitations. The tractor they need for the harvest, has broken down, and Joseph and his college Alois are unable to get it going again. Moderbacher senior is, however, the star of the show: the villagers and Sabinus, the priest, pay homage to him. Daughter Christine compares past and present and nails down the common factor between Blacks and Whites: under the guidance of a Male God, Nigerian and Austrian men cooperate to repress females, making them into second class citizens. White women are patronized, black women are treated like slaves. Catholic ideology helps to keep the status quo. The clips from the Civil War are still traumatic: so much violence, and the helplessness of the ‘civilised’ nations.

The director questions past and present: the role of a Christian ideology, which so clearly segregates race and sex now feels outdated in its ability to promote change and still offer hope and salvation. Male chauvinism is still the dominating factor. And the need to re-examine the mythos of Christian volunteer work, when Moderbacher sen. and his friends are skiing in the Austrian mountains, where they  are “so near to God”.

There are structural questions, but Moderbacher’s approach helps to lift the hypocritical cover from the Good Samaritans, who are celebrating not equality but an exercise in superiority. A sharp irony permeates the whole feature, deconstructing and re-assessing the real motivations behind do-gooders or all kinds.

BERGAMO INTERNATIONAL FILM MEETING | 9-17 MARCH 2019 | CLOSE-UP STRAND

      

The Kindergarten Teacher (2018) ****

Dir.: Sara Colangelo; Cast: Maggie Gyllenhall, Parker Sewak, Gael Garcia Bernal, Daisy Tahan, Sam Jules, Michael Chernus, Ajay Naidu, Rosa Salazar; USA 2018, 96′.

Director Sara Colangelo (Little Accidents) won a Sundance directing award for this spry psychological thriller that takes constantly surprising turns.

Adapted from Nadav Lapid’s script of his French/Israeli feature of the same name (Haganenet), this is no Hollywood re-make – in fact, it was Lapid who approached the producers. By a stroke of luck, Maggie Gyllenhall (who also produced) was cast in the lead, and the result is a fascinating character study, full of ambivalence and obsessive longings.

Lisa Spinelli, having just turned forty, feels unfulfilled on many levels. Travelling to work every day on the ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan, she looks forlorn and lost in her daydreams. Husband Grant (Chernus) is a bear of man, but lazy of body and mind. Her teenage children Laine (Tahan) and Josh (Jules) are an obvious disappointment to Lisa: Laine is just interested in the latest fads, and thinks her mother’s a dinosaur. Josh is even worse, and is giving up school to join the US-Army. To counter all this, Lisa has joined a poetry group – but alas, her talents are limited, and teacher Simon (Bernal) expresses his doubts politely. Enter five-year old Jimmy (Sewak), one of Lisa’s pupils, who suddenly spouts lines of poetry, which are well beyond his tender age. Lisa is thrilled, asking Jimmy to phone her, whenever a poem is ready, and the little boy responds eagerly. And it’s not difficult to understand why: he is neglected by his divorced father Nick (Naidu) who runs a shady nightclub, and his lackadaisical  babysitter Becca (Salazar), who got the job because she gets laid by his father.

In her poetry class, Lisa passes off Jimmy’s work is her own, which leads to a quick romp with Simon (Bernal), who is suitably impressed. To get more access to Jimmy, Lisa tells Nick that Becca is often late for picking-up time, and Nick fires her, only too happy that Lisa is volunteering to look after Jimmy until he fetches him in the evening. But Nick also makes it clear he expects his son to excel in sports and business, rather than try to pursue an artistic career, like his impoverished relatives. Then everything slowly unravels towards a tense finale.

Colangelo traces Lisa’s growing obsession step by step. Creativity is her only way of escape, but it’s hard for her to realise that she is dilettante –  as Simon puts it blandly. She channels all her yearnings into Jimmy, in an effort to save both him and herself. Family and society, dominated by social media, are a great disappointment to her, and Jimmy’s father Nick, is just another materialist ignoramus. Throwing all her past life away, she has to save Jimmy from the same fate that has destroyed her. She ignores her responsibilities as a teacher (and as a human being) and becomes obsessed with Jimmy being a prodigy. Lisa, who has been so gentle and rational all her life, suddenly sees Jimmy as an embodiment of herself – and is determined that he won’t suffer the same fate as she has.

DoP Pepe Avila del Pino pictures Lisa’ descent with his subtle camerawork. The rides on the ferry are a study in melancholy, and her classroom is a real work of art, light and shadows creating a nuanced moodiness. But this is Maggie Gyllenhall’s feature: she never puts a foot wrong, going seemingly unobtrusively forward from an ideology of art as a saviour, to a a full blown psychosis. Colangelo supports her aptly, particularly with a great solution at the ending: she never denounces Lisa or the relationship between her and Jimmy, which somehow survives. Kindergarten Teacher is not perfect, but portrays a specific ambiguity which is as endearing as it is dangerous. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 8 MARCH 2019       

   

                                     

                       

Under the Silver Lake (2018) **

Dir: David Robert Mitchell | Cast; Sibongile Miambo, Riley Keough, Jimmy Sampson, Andrew Garfield | Fantasy Comedy  | US |

David Robert Mitchell rose to international fame with his breakout horror hit It Follows which showed at Cannes several years ago. His latest is a trippy fantasy neonoir dream with the same feel and disturbing undertones as David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive but none of the brilliance, and far too much indulgent navel-gazing. What carries you through the druggy hotch potch of wacky vignettes is Andrew Garfield’s captivating turn as a down on his luck LA creative, who resorts to voyeurism and sexual shadow-play as his mind wanders lazily through the backwaters of LA’s Silver-Lake area. But after a promising opening the film’s fascinating potential disintegrates into an incoherent and sprawling mindfuck punctuated by Hollywood references. There is far too much unfocused creativity gushing from Mitchell’s gifted pen in UNDER THE SILVER LAKE, and it ends in a messy gloopthis time. That said, he’s certainly a filmmaker worth watching out for. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 15 MARCH 2019

 

Sebastiane (1976) ** Home Ent release

Dir: Derek Jarman, Paul Humfress | Score: Brian Eno | UK Drama 86′

Derek Jarman aimed to dignify his voyeuristic gay romp on the beach by basing it on the legend of a martyred Catholic saint 17,000 years ago. His Sebastiane is a lowly Roman soldier exiled due to his religious beliefs to a remote Sardinian outpost along with a small platoon of buff but bored fellow combatants, and he falls foul of his gay commander’s advances, and eventually the rest of the men. Jarman tries elevate Sebastiane to almost Christ-like proportions yet there is nothing in the story, as he tells it, that is remotely worthy of such. Religious beliefs aside, Sebastiane rejects his suitor simple because he doesn’t find him appealing.

Back in the 1970s this was ground-breaking stuff, as gay porn – or any other kind of porn – was almost not-existent: the opening scene at Emperor Diocletian’s Christmas party sees the all male revellers rocking massive phalluses and festive masks; then beachside in Sardinia with full erections, lots of slow-mo snogging and close-ups of naked bottoms and rippling muscles. They certainly must have had fun on that shoot which was filmed naturalistically in three and a half weeks by a professional crew and largely non-pro cast. Brian Eno’s minimalist sound design now feels rather dated, as does the gay subject matter, but it’s easy to criticise in hindsight because the world has obviously moved on, and Peter Middleton’s photography and Jarman’s mise en scene still remain spectacular and evocative. Shame then, about the slim narrative. Sebastiane flopped at the box office all over Europe, and lost the Stones’ their money.

Yet there are important themes at play in this remarkable piece of independent filmmaking: religious intolerance is of course the most important one; but there is also submissiveness versus domination; the role of the outsider and the underdog. And Jarman sees Sebastiane as the eternal victim of society. Quite why the dialogue is in Latin is an anomaly. Ordinary soldiers would speak Italian, as Latin was spoken only by scholars and dignitaries at that time. Is this another attempt to elevate the characters, or simply to make them sound more exotic and alluring?

Nowadays Sebastiane might be criticised for animal cruelty: at one point the soldiers chase down a small piglet, taunting and butchering it savagely with sticks. There are also racist taunts mocking Jews and Christians alike. But it is the storyline that is the least adventurous aspect of the feature, with Jarman overplaying the voyeurism at the expense of telling us a fascinating and little known tale about another man who suffered for his religious conviction. A missed opportunity despite its artistic merit. MT

SEBASTIANE IS ON BLURAY AND ITUNES FROM 18 MARCH 2019

 

 

 

Mifune: The Last Samurai (2019)

Dir: Steven Okazaki | Wri: Stuart Galbraith IV, Steven Okazaki | With: Wataru Akashi, Kyôko Kagawa, Takeshi Katô, Hisao Kurosawa, Shirô Mifune | 77′ Doc

Mifune: The Last Samurai shines a light on both the man and the actor, director and producer in Steven Okazaki’s fascinating biopic of the legend of Japanese cinema Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997). Enlivened by archive footage and reminiscences from family, friends and collaborators such as the actress Kyoko Kagawa and Kanzo Uni, a sword-fight choreographer who took him through his paces.

The documentary chronicles Mifune’s childhood after his birth in Tsingtao China, through to his early career in the film business and his longtime partnership with Akira Kurosawa and the string of masterpieces they made together: Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai, Rashomon and Red Beard, and also those with Hiroshi Inagakim – Samurai Saga and Machibuse.

The film provides a fascinating history of Japanese samurai cinema and also highlights Mifune’s private life and the things he enjoyed, such as cars and alcohol, often together. Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg also give their two penny worth, Spielberg talks about the similarity between the Western tradition and the Samurai culture “Film is the single language on this planet that makes us all the same”, he also describes Mifune’s extraordinary sense of stillness and commanding emotional power. Scorsese comments on the very real danger of the stunts he undertook, and the tense atmosphere on set during a Kurosawa shoot.

Off set, Mifune was a colossal star and idol who enjoyed the highlife and Spielberg talks of his keen sense of humour despite his dour roles. As a producer he worked on Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion (and also starred) and set up a film studio which made successful mainstream titles. Toshiro Mifune was clearly a mercurial maverick whose influence still resonates throughout world cinema. MT

KUROSAWA: To complete the retrospective of Akira Kurosawa more that 20 titles are now live on BFI Player 
 

 

Girl (2018) ****

Dir: Lukas Dhont | Drama | Belgium | 97’

Adolescence is a terrible time of bewildering choices, sexual urges and obsession with appearance. Those ardently drawn to find a mate are the most cruelly punished, as others keep quietly buttoned down by insecurity or jealousy. Who knows what is happening physically at puberty, especially when bodies and minds feel confused about gender.

No one has expressed this better and more naturally than Belgian director Lukas Dhont with his latest feature GIRL, about a boy who wants to be a ballerina. This gender fluid teenager is played with thoughtful ease by 15 year old cisgender actor Victor Polster in a down to earth gem that rivals a A Fantastic Woman in every way.

Lara (Polster) has moved with her French-speaking father Mathias (Arieh Worthalter) and younger brother (Oliver Bodart) to study at Belgium’s most famous dance academy. So there are two important episodes that the teenager must face: preparing for transition, since she was born in the body of a boy, and working to become a professional ballet dancer. But Lara has all the support of her entourage including her family and new friends, and this is underlined in a tricky moment when the female students are asked whether they mind sharing their dressing room with their new colleague. This is all handled with consummate skill, and Lara soon settles in.

Dhont rose to fame with his titles Headlong and L’infini also set in the dance world and here he conveys Lara’s struggles through subtle body language and looks – there is a fascinating scene where Lara uses white tape to flatten her pelvic area in preparation for a skin tight ballet costume. While Lara is excited about the upcoming surgical operation, having been prepared by a Flemish psychiatrist (Valentijn Dhaenens), who does not want Lara to suffer any longer in the wrong body, his father Mathias is actually more nervous about his son’s hospital visit and the risks it involves.  

A tense tone sets in in the film’s second half where Lara suspects the hormones are not working, but this is down to impatience more than anything more serious.“You want to be a woman straight away,” Lara’s father says, “but you are an adolescent too”. The two then share one of the film’s most touching tête a tête’s. The film works best during these tender moments when we feel for the characters and their dilemma. These are crucial in preparing the audience for the startling finale, and Girl could have done with more of them. That said, Dhont manages to dovetail Lara’s physical transformation with her emotional adaption – no mean feat. 

This is very much Polster’s film and although the support cast feel natural and well-prepared, what really makes this enjoyable is the actor’s strong background in dance which is elegantly captured by strong visuals from DoP Frank van den Eeden, who focuses on the physicality and agility of the dance moves.MT

In cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema FROM 15 March 2019 

Children of the Snow Land (2018) ****

Dir.: Zara Balfour, Marcus Stephenson; Documentary; UK/Nepal 2018, 93 min.

This is a remarkable labour of love by first time writer/directors Zara Balfour and Marcus Stephenson. They have risked everything to accompany three teenagers from a boarding school in Kathmandu to their inaccessible mountain villages, where they meet parents and family for the first time in twelve years. Along with stunning images, they bring back passionate stories of loss and recovered identities.

Nima, Jeewan and Tsering are sixteen. They have spent the last twelve years in a Buddhist boarding school in Kathmandu, often wondering why their parents gave them away. They have more or less forgotten the hard life in the mountains, and acquired an educational standard unschooled families are unable to grasp. But before they get back to their villages, they have to endure a 14-hour bus ride, a long flight, and on top of it a steep climb in the mountains, taking up to ten days. Nima is looking forward to seeing his father, he has lost his mother and has already mourned her death. Jeewan’s father is a bee keeper, his mother taking care of the house and their local land. But Tsering has suffered most from the separation from her parents and is convinced they did not love her. The greatest disappointment is in store from Nima, who has developed a talent for poetry. He finds out from the rest of the family that his father is now an alcoholic, and has moved far away to another mountain region. Jeewan is particularly fond of his grand mother, and remembers her best. Tsering’s parents home is comfortable compared with the other families’ dwellings. While her mother runs the house, her father is a lama, and, like most men in these mountains villages, sits around with his chums and drinks tea all day long. Tsering’s mother was keen for her daughter to have a better life, and although Tsering is grateful she still criticises her mother for the lack of hygiene, but helps with some weeding in the garden, and later joins in the hunt for the Yarsagumba plant whose magic powers are considered “more precious than gold”.

While the get back to normal at home, Nepal is wrecked by an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale. 9000 people are killed, 800 000 are made homeless. And when the three of them return to Kathmandu, they discover their school has partly been destroyed. This gives the students an opportunity to give back to the local community by helping other children who have been made homeless. Neema is now studying Travel and Tourism, whilst Jeewan has chosen Fashion Design, wanting later to employ local crafts people. Tsering is going to study law, to become a Human Rights lawyer on issues concerning the Himalayan communities.

Never sentimental or didactic, this is a moving and extraordinary journey on many levels, supported by stunning panoramic images of the towering mountains. AS 

IN CINEMAS AND ON DEMAND FROM 14 MARCH 2019

Ray and Liz (2018) ****

Dir: Richard Billingham | Cast: Justin Salinger, Ella Smith, Patrick Romer, Deidre Kelly, Tony Way, Sam Gittins, Joshua Millard-Lloyd | UK | Drama |107′

Turner prize-nominated Richard Billingham doesn’t miss a trick in portraying the squalid splendour of his early life in Birmingham during the early Seventies in his debut drama RAY & LIZ, premiering here at Locarno Film Festival.

Five years in the making, this impressively-tooled arthouse piece is not for the feint-hearted: In one scene the family dog makes quick work of some vomit spewed out after an enforced drinking spree. But this all adds to the glorious texture of his childhood experiences in the Black Country recorded fondly for posterity and in tribute to his parents, from collected photographs.

The Political undertones of the era are not swept under the grimy council house carpet but hardly forced in your face either. The Seventies were desperately difficult years for Britain, both politically and economically, and although Harold Wilson got the country back to work, it came at the price of inflation at almost 30%, the decade ending with Jim Callaghan’s humiliation at the hands of the unions in the Winter of Discontent and Margaret Thatcher taking over as prime minister in 1979.

We first meet Ray (Patrick Romer) sipping some kind of lethal home brew out of a plastic bottle after a night’s sleep, fully clothed, in his dismal bedroom. It’s a pitiful sight and we feel for him, yet he seems content enough although lost in his thoughts. As the narrative slips back and forward from Billingham’s early years to this final memory of his father, still in a council property and separated from his mother, there are poignant moments but also those that are painful to watch, such as when his “soft” uncle Lol is beaten senseless by his mother (with her shoe). And the cockroach-ridden mildewed walls and filthy ‘front room’ in their council flat makes grim viewing, as does the disgusting sight of bloated and chain-smoking Liz on one of her shouty outbursts. But the film is never maudlin. Welcome bursts of cheeky humour occasionally lurk round the corner even in this God-forsaken highrise hovel with its menagerie of invited and uninvited animals, such as the time when little Jason poured chilli powder into his father’s mouth while he was asleep. 

There are also echoes of Terence Davies in this social realist memoire. Ray lost his job when the kids were small and his reduced masculine pride sees him making himself scarce or – even useful – around the place in contrast to his surly, stroppy wife who spends her time flower arranging. The period detail here is extraordinary, almost to the point of cliché. It’s as if Billingham has sat down and made a list of every single item he remembered from his upbringing, and then painstakingly placed it on the set and in the dialogue which is rich in local expressions recalling the era. Not an appealing film to watch but an honest, authentic and heartfelt reflection of a point in time and place. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE | PREMIERED AT LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

https://vimeo.com/281967728

Border (2018) *****

Dir : Ali Abbasi | Fantasy Drama | Sweden | 104’

BORDER is one of those bracingly original films. Melding fantasy and folklore while teetering on the edge of Gothic horror it manages to be cleverly convincing and unbelievably weird at the same time. Fraught with undercurrents of sexual identity and self-realisation this gruesome rites of passage fable is another fabulous story with enduring appeal for the arthouse crowd and diehard fans of low-key horror. Based on a short story by Let the Right One In creator John Ajvide Lindqvist it is Ali Abbasi’s follow up to Shelley and his first with writing partner Isabella Ekloff.

Tina (Melander) has always been an outsider because she suffers from her neanderthal physical appearance of flaring nostrils and a facial gurning movement that marks her out to have the heightened sensory perception of an animal. She feels a particular affinity to the wildlife near her comfortable cabin in the heavily forested woods between Finland and Sweden, and can sense when deer or moose are about to cross the country road. As a customs officer, she also has a keen awareness for criminality but feels diminished by her ‘otherness’ and is desperately lonely, Meanwhile, her live-boyfriend Roland (Jorgen Thorssen) treats her like a pair of old carpet slippers and is more interested in his pack of dobermans.  

One day Tina spots an unusual traveller going through customs. He looks like her male double and Tina feels a palpable attraction to Vore (Eero Milonoff). Judging from the contents of his luggage he could be an entomologist, but on further examination this is not all he appears to be. Has Tina found love for the first time, or just somebody who feels familiar? There’s a tone of optimism on the romantic front, and also workwise as Tina’s sensory talents see her becoming the key investigator in the hunt for a local paedophile.

Abbasi masterfully manages the subtle strands of his storyline while keeping the tension taut and a dark humour bubbling under the surface. Melander’s Tina is a gentle and almost submissive character who keeps her tale between her legs, and we feel for her even when her confidence makes her more assertive after meeting Vore. This confidence enables her to confront her elderly father – who has clearly duped her since childhood – and her useless boyfriend. A rare curio that keeps you guessing all the way to its unexpected finale. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 8 March 2019

Scotch: The Golden Dram (2018) ***

Dir: Andrew Peat | 89′ Doc, US

If you ever wanted to discover whisky then Scotch: The Golden Dram is the film. Awash with tweedy talking heads and wistful views of the lochs in the  gloaming, this is a well-crafted documentary that presents a romanticised view of the luscious liquor it explores and an industry that has retained much of its handmade credentials, unlike many of the other tipples in your booze cabinet.

Placidly-paced and as comforting as the Scotch-grown barley that goes into the barrel, this is a film made entirely by a non-Scottish crew: the aptly-named director Andrew Peat is American, the DoP is Indian and the production company is from Taiwan – which incidentally is the world’s fourth-largest importer of Scotch  (apart from producing a fine quality whisky in its own right). But this small point is all too symptomatic of British industry that has sold its soul to the rest of the World, along with many others: Cadbury’s, Wedgewood and Jaguar. Today, Scotch is a multi-million pound business enjoyed in more than 200 countries, generating over $6 billion in exports each year.

Completely shot on location in Scotland The Golden Dram offers fascinating insight into traditional production methods while telling the story of the Gaelic Uisge beatha or “water of life.” For more than a century, Scotch whisky has been the premier international spirit of choice. While Irish whiskey is triple-distilled, Scotch undergoes only two distillations and uses peat-smoked and wholly-malted Scotch barley before it is blended or bottled as a single malt – although age doesn’t always confer smoothness. According to one expert, old barrel can give the spirit a bitter tang. So buying an expensive bottle is just about the rarity value. 

Far from being a dry documentary about how whisky comes into being, this is a tightly edited tale of the characters who make the amber nectar such as Jim McEwan, the distiller and master blender, a 52-year industry veteran, who guides us through the story. Just as wine-winemaking is an art and a science, so too is whisky distilling. Although they prefer to call it “alchemy”. And the handmade whiskys are literally that – with men mulling over the process and deciding when to take the clear alcohol produced during distillation and transfer to oak barrels where it gains its flavour and aroma, depending on their origin. We meet Richard Paterson, a master blender who nose alone is insured for $2.5 million, and even the Duke of Argyll has his say.

And the packaging is one of the crucial aspects of the business. A high class whisky demands luxurious packaging – after all it’s going to take pride of place on the sideboard or in the glitzy showcase of a 5 star hotel. Glasstorm, a company specialising in hand-made bottles for rare whiskies can sell for thousands of pounds.

Occasionally verging on the elegiac in the final scenes, where it overdoes the personal touch, this is a pleasurable and engrossing film that will appeal to connoisseurs of the liquor and those wishing for a more in-depth look at the characters behind the dream. The DVD would make a perfect gift for those Christmas stockings or grandpa’s birthday – look who’s getting personal now?. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 8 MARCH 2019

Everybody Knows (2018) ***

Dir: Asghar Farhadi | Cast: Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Barbara Lennie, Ricardo Darin | Drama

Penelope Cruz is the star turn of the off kilter drama. Returning to Spain from Argentina with her two teenagers, Laura is back to celebrate her sister’s Irene’s wedding. Husband Alejandro (Ricardo Darin) soon follows, and she also reconnects with an old boyfriend (Bardem) as events take a less sunny turn.

Farhadi (A Separation) directs from a script written in Farsi and translated into Spanish, which he learnt phonetically.Tepid as a psychological thriller with a telenovela-esque twist, the film’s strength and most of its attraction lies in the three dynamic central performances and the picturesque 16th century setting in the town of Torrelaguna (Madrid) which is very much a character in itself, gloriously brought to life in Jose Luis Alcaine’s zinging images. Everybody Knows provides fascinating insight into traditional Spanish country life, exposing deep fault-lines of internecine resentment, provincial pettiness and mean-spirited grudges.

The plot revolves round a secret “everybody knows” (except Laura herself) about former flame Paco (Bardem) who was devastated when she left. The whole affair seems connected to a local kidnapping that took place years previously, revealed in some newspaper cuttings that just happen to be left around in Irene’s bedroom. Soon, menacing letters start to arrive demanding money, and threatening Irene not to contact the police. This unpleasantness also lays bare a long-standing dispute between Laura’s curmudgeonly father and Paco going back years.

Laura’s absence has kept all this at bay but now it comes into full focus, re-opening old family wounds that had never really healed. Strangely nobody seems to acknowledge or discuss the perpetrators of the original kidnapping, and although this slight plothole is glossed ovrr by the polished performances of the strong cast, still remains a nagging question mark in our minds.

This is a mildly intriguing drama that rolls on despite its narrative flaws which are significantly diminished by the undeniable slickness of Farhadi’s confident direction and complemented by the lead trio in brilliant form. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 8 MARCH 2019

Sink the Bismarck (1960) **** Bluray release

Dir: Lewis Gilbert | Cast: Kenneth Moore, Dana Wynter, Carl Mohner, Laurence Naismith | UK, Wartime Drama 97′

British post-war cinema was fraught with films depicting how we triumphed with our Allies. And one of the most successful and stylish was this 1960 epic featuring actual combat footage. Lewis Gilbert bases his spectacular action thriller on real events that took place when British warships set off to eliminate the pride of the German fleet, the Bismarck, in the North Atlantic. Kenneth Moore is the star turn as the British naval officer tasked with leading the 1940s mission, and putting duty first when still recovering from his wife’s death in an air raid. Sink the Bismarck depicts the human story behind the war effort, showing respect for the enemy, and commemorating the courage of our own brave soldiers, and the unsung ‘backroom heroes.’ This thrilling and authentic adventure drama also features the cruiser HMS Belfast (now preserved on the Thames in London) which was used to depict the cruisers involved in Bismarck’s pursuit. MT
ON RELEASE FROM 11 MARCH 2019 COURTESY OF EUREKA FILMS 

Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration Live (2019) ****

With Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Krall, James Taylor | Music

Canadian singer songwriter Joni Mitchell takes a back stage for her birthday celebration  tribute concert which features some of the World’s best known singers. Arriving on the arms of her escorts, she sits down to enjoy her own work performed by others. And it’s a motley crew – a bit like asking Polanski to direct a Scorsese film – it’s just not the same classic, but the original elements are still there. So if you’re expecting to hear Joni sing, you’ll be disappointed but entertained royally, nevertheless.

Most Memorable of all is Graham Nash who strikes out with the only song not written by Joni – but for her – Our House, simply and poignantly performed on the piano (and what a fabulous strong voice still – at 77). The two lived together for several years in their twenties in California. Diane Krall also shines with her husky voice of warm treacle. Seal sings softly (but then spoils it with a wimpish comment “I worship the ground you walk on”). But Chaka Khan brings a welcome vitality to the stage after Emmylou Harris’ dreadfully bland rendition of a song about Irish convent girls. Awful too, is Rufus Wainwright who really ruins Joni’s stunning song Blue, and then talks about his husband, thanking him profusely, for some reason. No Rufus – not your platform, thanks. He does a slightly better job with “I am on a lonely road and I am travelling….” Although no one could sing it like Joni. Brandi Carlile has the voice most similar to Joni, but more bassy and without the subtle complexity.

James Taylor and Norah Jones are also welcome. During the concert, there are archive clips of Joni on stage and birthday greetings come live via video from Elton John and Peter Gabriel, who gives creative expression to Joni’s iconically complex tunes and lyrics describing them “sparkling like jewels on a trampoline”.

The voluminous LA venue is hung with Van Gogh style artwork of Joni and photos by Henry Diltz, Nurit Wilde and Norman Seeff whose recent Joni: The Joni Mitchell Sessions, is being released in the US on hardback.

Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration Live | The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, California | NATIONWIDE FROM 4 MARCH 2019

 

 

The Prisoner (1955) **** Blu-Ray

Dir: Peter Glenville | Wri: Bridget Boland | Cast: Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness | UK, Drama 95′

Jack Hawkins and Alec Guinness are the dynamite duo driving this intellectually daring and morally complex thriller forward. With its themes of pride and betrayal, The Prisoner is based on Irish Catholic novelist Bridget Boland’s play of the same name, embellished by a rousing minor love story that bubbles along under the surface of its main plot line involving an inquisition between Guinness’s ‘Cardinal’ and Jack Hawkins ‘Interrogator’ that takes place in solitary confinement in an unspecified totalitarian Eastern European country under siege. The outdoor scenes are pure social realism, but the interiors benefit from John Hawkesworth’s elegant set design. Guinness exudes a peerless subtlety as the breathtakingly sinuous man of God interrogated, tortured and broken – with equal finesse – by a charismatic Jack Hawkins. Benjamin Frankel’s sinister occasional score compliments the slow-burning narrative directed with stylish aplomb by Peter Glenville (Becket, Term of Trial) and photographed by DoP Reginald H Wyer in velvety black and white. This is a fine British film ripe for rediscovery. MT

OUT ON BLURAY 11 MARCH 2019 |

Phantom Lady (1944) ****

Dir: Robert Siodmak | Wri: Bernard C Shoenfeld | Cast: Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Aurora Miranda, Elisha Cook, Regis Toomey, Fay Helm | US Noir Thriller 87′

This was Robert Siodmak’s first American success, a Noir thriller based on a book by Cornell Woolrich who would seed the storyline for a series of similar titles. Woody Bredell’s moody camerawork and Siodmak’s jagged angles echo German expressionism heightening the suspense of this twisty whodunnit. The wife of an unhappily married engineer (Alan Curtis) is murdered and his only alibi is a woman with a distinctive hat who disappears without trace after the two spend an impromptu evening together. But no one can remember the woman after their soiree so Curtis faces the chair, depressed and losing faith in his own judgement. His only hope is his faithful secretary (a vampish Ella Raines).who is determined to save him, along with a cop called Gomez (Burgess) who adds psychological insight into the criminal mind. As they work through the clues and the evidence together, the woman and the hat eventually emerge. Taut and tightly scripted, Phantom Lady seems to pack a great deal into its modest running time. Stylish costumes are by Vera West (Shadow of a Doubt) and musical choices are evocative. There’s also a racy jazz scene, the instruments filmed up close, adding a frenzied feel to the affair. MT

OUT ON BLURAY FROM 4th March 2019 | with extras Dark and Deadly: 50 Years of Film Noir a documentary with insight from Edward Dymtryk, Dennis Hopper and Robert Wise. 

 

Wall (2017) ***

Dir.: Cam Christiansen; Documentary/Animation with David Hare, Elliot Levey, Nayef Rashad; Canada 2017, 82 min.

When Canadian producer David Christensen listened to David Hare’a 2009 Podcast Wall, a monologue about Israel building a wall between them and Palestine, he knew that animator Cam Christiansen would be the right person to tackle the project. The result, a mixture of 3D motion capture technology, documentary and hand drawn animation, is an aesthetically stunning portrait of the 708 km long wall, so far amounting to 4 Billion US dollars since building began in 2002. The political and human cost cannot be put into figures, and Hare’s script does not always allow us to come to terms with the numerous contradictions.   

Hare, who wore a Lycra suit for his first outing as an actor at the Pinewood Studios where the motion-capture footage was shot; is – symbolically – accompanied by the English/Israeli actor Elliot Levey and his Palestinian counterpart Nayef Rashad. Levey wants to stage a co-operation, something Palestinians are not fond of, because it would legitimise the status quo between Israel and Palestine. Hare visits the Israeli novelist David Grossman, who is critical of his state’s policies, but admits that there must be a place where Jews feel safe. Driving along the monstrous wall from Jerusalem to Ramallah and Nablus, we see the damage the continuous war has done. Nablus, once the trading centre of Palestine, is a ghost city. The most famous cafe, where guests once fought for one of the 500 places, is a ghostly place where Hare and his friends are the only customers. Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian administration has had better luck: mainly because it is one of the few places not mentioned in the scriptures of the main religions in the area. We learn that Hamas is not popular, they have won elections because the PLO is totally corrupt. Then there is the story of a man who has worked as in informer for the Israelis. Hamas, imprisoning him, then invented an innovative form of torture: on the wall of the cell, they have drawn a picture of a bicycle, asking the prisoner to fetch it, or risk torture. The journey is always interrupted by senseless controls by the Israeli forces, whilst a parallel road, fifty years in the future, will be reserved for cars with Israeli number plates, the traffic flowing uninterrupted. And the settlements, some even unlawful under Israeli law, overlook the West Bank in a very menacing way. But, the wall has stopped eighty percent of Palestinian terror acts in Israel. At the end, the black-and-white transforms into the colourful graffiti on the wall – not unlike those on the Berlin Wall.       

Whilst the aesthetics are brilliant, the political agenda is questionable – but perhaps, this is only to be expected. Nearly seventy years of permanent war has destroyed any kind of hope. For Israel, this means the most powerful military force in the region has no influence on the state of mind of its citizens: Grossman mentions that most Israelis feel vey insecure. Perhaps the repressed diaspora thinking has returned, but whatever the arguments on both sides, the founding father of Israel, Theodor Herzl, did not envisage a Sparta in the desert.  AS

WALL opens MARCH 1st | BERTHA DOCHOUSE | 6pm screening Q&A |Cam Christiansen

Irma la Douce (1963) **** Tribute to Andre Previn (1929 – 2019)

Dir.: Billy Wilder; Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Jack, Lemmon, Lou Jacobi, Bruce Yarnell; USA 1963, 149 min.

Three years after The Apartment, Wilder re-united Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon, along with his DoP Joseph LaShelle and PD Alexander Trauner (Les Enfants du Paradis) for this funny, endearing feature, set in Paris. Irma looks dated with its stagey Sixties settings and florid interiors, and it’s not quite as biting as the black-and-white New York satire, but Irma La Douce was nevertheless Wilder’s last original work: re-makes and self-indulgence dominated the last, rather shallow seven films until 1981.

Andre Previn won the Oscar for Best Music Score for his original compositions. Irma La Douce is based on the play by Alexandre Breffort, Wilder and his regular co-writer I.A.L. Diamond tell the story of sex-worker Irma (MacLaine), who falls for disgraced ex-cop Nestor Patou (Lemmon), whose attempts to reform the local call girls lose him his job.  Irma’s pimp  His aim in life was to reform the district’s call-girls. But after losing his job, he tries to make an honest woman out of Irma, who gives all her earnings to her pimp Hippolyte (Yarnell), who Patou beats up. angry about this state of affairs that he floors the pimp – and is terrible surprised that Irma now wants to work for him. Bartender Moustache (Jacobi) lends him 500 Franc, so he can play his own double, an English Lord, who only wants to sleep with Irma. But whilst Patou spends the nights with Irma, he has to work during the day in an abattoir, carrying dead pigs. Finally, he has to kill the Lord off – but now, his ex-colleges are wanting him for murder.

Today, Irma is a little quaint, and certainly a little too long at two-and-a-half hours running time. But at the time, it was very brave. The Hays Code was not fooled, and called the feature “a coarse mockery of virtue”. And the Catholic Church send priest to the shooting, wanting to make sure, that no blasphemy happened during the wedding scene. But apart from the above mentioned production values – including Andre Previn’s score – the feature belongs to MacLaine and Lemmon, who just have enough empathy which each other, to pull the unbelievable story off. As for Wilder, he was, for the last time the “Bürgerschreck” (the bogeyman of the establishment) he so badly wanted to be. AS

Amazon  https://amzn.to/2S2SA23 Zavvi http://po.st/Zbg2UO

RELEASE DATE 18 MARCH 2019

https://youtu.be/spQpwM97ea0

Schindler’s List (1993) *****

Dir: Steven Spielberg | Writer: Steven Zaillian | Cast: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Embeth Davidz, Caroline Goodall | US Biopic Drama, 195′

Based on a novel by Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s List is possibly Spielberg’s most noble arthouse classic, and certainly as memorable as Jaws. In German-occupied Poland, 1939, an opportunistic German businessman turns humanitarian hero by saving his Jewish workforce of some 1100 after witnessing their persecution by the Nazi Germans. Certainly this was Liam Neeson’s finest hour in the lead role of Oskar Schindler. Nothing he has done since has quite reached the heady heights of his break-taking performance as the Czech factory owner, who ends up penniless. The grainy camerawork gives an immediacy to the tragedy of brutal, casual slaughter of innocents. Kingsley, too, is tremendous as Stern, the crafty accountant; and would go on to better things, as would Fiennes as Goeth, the steely leader of Plaszow camp. Spielberg’s direction is masterful in bringing clarity to the incomprehensible darkness of the Holocaust unfolding bleakly in this black and white chronicle of wartime wickedness. Crucially, Schindler’s List brought the Holocaust to younger, mainstream audiences, many of whom would witness for the first time the grim fate of victimised Jews, and would be shocked to the core, Janusz Kaminski’s images seared to the memory. MT

SCHINDLER’S LIST 25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION | NOW OUT FOR THE FIRST TIME ON 4K ULTRA HD, BLURAY AND DVD | 25 FEBRUARY 2019 | includes bonus features.

The Aftermath (2018) ****

Dir: James Kent | Cast: Keira Knightley, Jason Clarke, Alexander Skarsgård | UK Drama 108′

Best known for his coming-of-age love story Testament Of Youth James Kent offers another ravishingly stylish tale of love that explores tangled emotions of guilt, lust and pride in a post war ménage à trois. In an elegant Belle Epoque villa in the environs of bombed-out Hamburg in 1945, Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, and Jason Clarke come together as unexpected bedfellows. And Clark is surprisingly the most romantic of a trio dealing with the complexities of loss, both of the people and the places they hold dear. Adapted for the screen by Anna Waterhouse and Joe Shrapnel from Rhidian Brook’s novel, one of the strongest elements of The Aftermath is its rounded critical gaze on both the Germans and British characters who emerge initially as an unlikeable bunch, but grow more appealing as we appreciate the tragedy that has touched them all, in different ways. And this lush characterisation is also one of the most engrossing aspects of the film, along with its immaculate period detailing, the visual glamour coruscating amid the dour deprivation and devastation of war and human brutality.

Keira Knightley plays Rachael the spiky and staunchly anti-German wife of war-weary Colonel Lewis Morgan (Clarke) and they meet again as she steps off the train in the opening scene. Not having seen him for years and not particularly excited to be re-united: they share the loss of their only son killed in a bomb blast in London, and Lewis clearly holds her responsible. Not consoled at the prospect of living in a luxuriously appointed mansion full of Avantgarde artworks and Art Deco objets, she greets the buff former owner, architect Stephan Lubert (Skarsgård), with barely concealed disdain. They are to share his family’s opulent residence, and Lewis graciously offers him the attic whence he retires with his little daughter, Frieda (Flora Thiemann). Frosty exchanges and flare-ups are to follow. Both Knightley and Skarsgård’s characters are sexually frustrated and when Col. Lewis is called away for a few days, they fall into each other arms to enjoy a lustful but unconvincing encounter between the sheets. It’s understandable: Lubert has lost his wife and Rachael is continually donning sexy underwear (and one of her girlish grimaces) only to be rebuffed by her husband’s need to attend to his duties, which include cross-examining prisoners or war. One of these is (Albert) who feels a particular resentment to the occupying forces and Lewis himself, and this hatred provides the key to a satisfying narrative twist in the final stages. Colonel Morgan is up to his neck in negotiations with the German resistance Nazi ‘88’ movement, without much support from his bibulous, unpleasant sidekick Major (Martin Compston) who is typical of the kind who inhabits these situations, along with his prissy wife (Kate Phillips) who will soon pick up on Knightley’s frisky new demeanour and follie à deux. Meanwhile, Albert (Jannick Schumann) has also become close to Lubert’s difficult, dark horse of a daughter who steals Lewis’s treasured cigarette case bearing a photo of his son, and offers it to Albert as a keepsake.

The Aftermath gradually builds to a tumultuous and convincing final act where we really start to care about the characters and their future. Jason Clarke is the eponymous alpha male who emerges victoriously, through integrity and commitment, to bear a heart of gold. Skarsgård provides solid eye candy as the loving father and soul mate manqué, and Keira is just as she always is, gracefully distant. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE 1 MARCH 2019

The Hole in the Ground (2018) **

Dir: Lee Cronin | Writer: Lee Cronin, Stephen Shields | Cast: Kati Outinen, Seana Kerslake, James Quinn Markey | Horror, 90′ Ireland

The fabulous Finnish actor Kati Outinen lends her screen presence to this rather threadbare thriller about mother and son’s search for a fresh start in life.

A Hole in the Ground certain looks atmospheric but Lee Cronin and his scripter’s slim storyline makes it feel more like an extended short than a full blown horror feature, A more imaginative narrative would have lend this the life blood to wake up and scare us senseless, but not even Kati and an able can re-animate this tired corpse with not enough meat on its bones, so we have to contend with the usual clichés, a hackneyed score and jump scares that have been round the block too many times before.

Mother Sarah (Kerslake) and her son Chris (Marley) fetch up in a village but fail to heed a strange woman’s warnings of doom and gloom. When things go bump in the night, Chris runs off to hide in the titular hole in the woods, but that’s not the only void. Sarah is told that “her child does not belong to her”, and soon finds out this is true. She fights to get her son back – we don’t know where from exactly, but all’s well that ends well (apart from the feature). MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 1 MARCH 2019

 

Starring Barbara Stanwyck | Retrospective | BFI 2019 | February – March

The STARRING BARBARA STANWYCK season offers a chance to see one of Hollywood’s most successful and memorable actors of all time, whose career spanned more than four decades. The season will include an extended run of Preston Sturges’ hilarious comedy The Lady Eve (1941), also released in selected cinemas by the BFI on Friday 15 February. During March, the season will highlight the breadth and depth of Stanwyck’s characters, whether in classics or in less familiar, rarely screened titles.

Diva, grande dame and femme fatale, Stanwyck adapted to any genre, be it comedy, melodrama or thriller. Her natural wit and raw emotion was particularly resonant in her Westerns, where she played  resourceful, confident women holding their own in a male-dominated world. The BFI are screening 3 examples in March. Her first western Annie Oakley (George Stevens, 1935) was based on the life of ‘Little Miss Sureshot,’ one of the most famous sharpshooters in American history; Stanwyck oozes confidence in her portrayal of the determined and spirited protagonist. Cecil B. DeMille brought a characteristically epic sense of scale to the western with Union Pacific (1939), about the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad. Mixed in with the historical elements is a love triangle between a troubleshooter, a gambler, and a train engineer’s daughter played by Stanwyck. The director was mesmerised by her performance, and she became one of his favourite stars. In Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller, 1957), a late-career highlight for Stanwyck, she portrays a wealthy landowner exerting influence over an Arizonian township by commanding a staff of 40 men. Beautifully shot and packed with psychosexual subtext and directed with bravura, Samuel Fuller’s western influenced a generation of filmmakers, including Godard.

In the delightful screwball-mystery-romance The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason, 1938), a scatty but canny heiress (Stanwyck), whose claims to have discovered a murder are dismissed by the police, enlists a working-class journalist to help prove her case. Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941), follows a nightclub dancer who needs to lie low, and a house shared by eight professors provides the ideal hideout. Inspired by the story of Snow White and boasting razor-sharp dialogue and perfect Hawksian comic timing, Ball of Fire is another classic screwball comedy. Written by a master of screwball – Preston Sturges – Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen, 1940) sees a New York attorney (Fred MacMurray) take pity on a shoplifter he’s prosecuting. He gets her out on bail and invites her to his family home for Christmas – which somewhat complicates their relationship. There is genuine chemistry between Stanwyck and MacMurray in their first film together, an amusing and affecting blend of courtroom drama, road movie and romance. The pair reunited for another tale of adulterous temptation There’s Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk, 1955); he’s a toy manufacturer feeling neglected by his family, and she is the ex-employee whose return to Pasadena reignites illicit passions. Forbidden (Frank Capra, 1932) sees her playing a librarian falling for an unobtainable man.

Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, Ralph Bellamy, Dorothy Peterson

Two more Frank Capra films will screen in March – in The Miracle Woman (1931) Stanwyck plays a minister’s daughter who, following the death of her father,  teams up with a conman to stage evangelical shows in which she performs ‘miracles’. Meanwhile Meet John Doe (1941) sees her play a journalist who invents a story about a tramp planning to commit suicide in protest of the state of the world. The resulting interest forces her paper to get someone to fit the role and the man they find (Gary Cooper) instantly becomes a celebrity – and a political pawn. Completing the season will be screenings of Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948), a noir thriller adapted by Lucille Fletcher from her acclaimed radio play, focusing on a wealthy, rather complacent, bedridden woman who overhears a conversation involving a planned murder. (All images are strictly the property of the BFI, and not to be copied)

SCREENING AT THE BFI, SOUTHBANK | FEBRUARY – MARCH 2019 | BFI WEBSITE

Oscar Foreign Language Academy Awards 2019

Nine films were on the short list for the coveted Academy Awards Foreign Language title at the end of last year: Some are well known (COLD WAR, CAPERNAUM, SHOPLIFTERS) but AYKA comes from a country where there is hardly any structure let alone financing available for filmmakers, so Kazakhstan’s entry should be particularly applauded.

Denmark: The Guilty (Gustav Möller)

Möller’s feature debut premiered at Sundance in January 2018, winning the audience award in the world cinema dramatic competition. The entire film takes place in the claustrophobic confines of a Copenhagen emergency services station, where a former police officer (Jakob Cedergren) has to deal with gruelling telephone calls from a kidnapped woman.

Germany: Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

von Donnersmarck is very well thought of in German cinema circles and has a previously won in the category back in 2007 for his Cold War spy thriller The Lives Of Others. His latest sees an art student involved in a difficult situation at his college. We reviewed the film at Venice where it premiered in August 2018.

Poland: Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski)

Pawlikowski’s film opened in Cannes Competition in 2018 and won him a best director prize. Searingly beautiful, it chronicles a love story between two people from different walks of life, set against the backdrop of the Cold War in the 1950s in various cities in Europe. Pawlikowski has previously won this award back in 2015 for his war-themed drama Ida – but his multi-faceted films have been arthouse staples since he started out in the 1980s with his TV fare (Open Space and From Moscow to Pietuschki in 1990), his first feature was The Stringer (1998).

Colombia: Birds Of Passage (Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra)

An arthouse title that explores the narco-trafficking industry and its profound effects on Columbian society. Gallego and Guerra’s film opened Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2018 but their breakout success was with Embrace Of The Serpent (with Guerra directing, Gallego producing).

Mexico: ROMA (Alfonso Cuarón)

WINNER ACADEMY AWARDS 2019

Cuarón’s latest is a semi-autobiographical take on his own Mexico City upbringing, focusing on a middle-class family and their live-in housekeeper. With so many interesting stories coming out of Mexico, this is Cuarón’s first nomination in the category, although he has been nominated for six Oscars previously, winning best director and best editing for Gravity in 2014.

Japan: Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)

Kore-eda’s cheeky story of a family living on on its uppers won the Palme d’Or in 2018.

Kazakhstan: Ayka (Sergey Dvortsevoy)

Living in abject poverty in Moscow, a young Kyrgyz woman tries to survive after abandoning her newborn, to return to her job. It premiered in the official Competition at Cannes in 2018.

Lebanon: Capernaüm (Nadine Labaki)

After her lively social drama Caramel, Labaki’s Cannes 2018 Competition entry is a more heavyweight but enjoyable story for its humanity and insight. Shot on the streets of Beirut using non-professional actors, the story follows the fate of a precocious but endearing 12 year-old boy who takes his parents to court.

South Korea: Burning (Lee Chang-dong)

Lee’s Cannes Competition title was the favourite amongst the critics at Cannes last year. It’s a psychological thriller but also a subtle love story based on Haruki Murakami’s short story Barn Burning.

THE AWARDS TOOK PLACE in Los Angeles on 24 February 2019 

Sauvage (2018) ***

Dir.: Camille Vidal-Naquet; Cast: Felix Maritaud, Eric Bernard, Marie Seux, Philippe Ohrel; France 2018, 99 min.

Felix Maritaud blazes through this stunning sortie into the life of young rent boys in Strasbourg, focusing on their aimless, dangerous and lonely lives. The harsh psychological realism is complimented by explicit sexual encounters, which often border on the abusive.

He plays Leo a rent boy in his early twenty who lives purely for the moment, using drugs, clients, petty crime and lots of day-dreaming to get through each day. That changes when he meets Ahd (Reinard), a fellow male prostitute and falls in love with him. Leo is not worried that Ahd is actually looking for a ‘sugar-daddy’ long term, and asks Leo to do the same: “That’s the best that can happen to us”. But Leo is stubborn, chasing Ahd down and endangering his relationship with an older man. After being sexually assaulted by two others who cheat him out of his money to boot, Ahd does Leo a last favour, beating up one of them and stealing his money, which he shares with Leo. But all the stress has taken its toll on Leo’s health, and a female physician (Seux), one of the few women in the feature, consoles him with maternal affection. This scene stands out in contrast to the film’s opener, when Leo is examined by a ‘doctor’, who turns out to be a client working for the IRS, who enjoys the role play. After Ahd has left for Benidorm with his lover, Leo finally follows his advice- after a particularly brutal (off-screen) encounter with a client known for his sadistic tendencies. His middle-class ‘protector’ Claude (Ohrel) wants to take him to Montreal for a new start in life – but does Leo really wants to be saved?

Leo shows all the symptoms of emotional regression due to neglect: he is a doleful child looking for love in all the wrong places, because society has marginalised him. Sauvage is not just about sex: it also shows the tenderness in a gay relationship, particularly when Leo goes with a man old enough to be his father: Leo cuddles him, both men getting more out of the encounter than penetration alone would have provided. But Leo is already a very fragmented character: he spends hours alone in the woods near the male gang’s pick-up place, and then over-compensates with hectic behaviour at parties and in dance clubs. His day dreams of emotional security are shattered in reality – and he has himself to blame. Solitude is his way back into childhood, while his waking hours are a nightmare of humiliation and deception. Leo doesn’t know how to connect these two selves, and the lack of concurrent identity makes him alien to himself.

SAUVAGE is an impressive first feature for writer and director Camille Vidal-Naquet. DoP Jacques Girault contrasts Leo’s dual existence with nightmarish images of the time spent with his clients, the aimless wandering in the streets, and the haven of tranquillity in the sunny woods. Vidal-Naquet is always non-judgemental, avoiding sentimentality at all costs. The result is a rather melancholic walk on the wild side. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 1 MARCH 2019 NATIONWIDE

Hannah (2017)

Dir: Andrea Pallaoro | Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Andre Wilms, Jean-Michel Balthazar, Luca Avallone | Drama | Italy | 95′

Charlotte Rampling gives an extraordinary performance in this intimate portrait of a woman coming to terms with her loss of identity after her husband (Andre Wilms) is sent to imprison for a crime that has caused the breakdown of her family.

Andrea Pallaoro’s sophomore feature keeps us wondering what has happened to cause such emotional devastation all round. Hannah battles to face an uncertain future late in life and at a time where she feels unable to bounce back with the positivity of youth, and has lost her former place in society. Soul-searching her way forward from a past that is ambiguous and unresolved. The status quo has been devastated, and we are intrigued to discover the image portrayed in the photographs she is seen destroying.

Her marriage is clearly over, and her son will no longer speak to her due to circumstances beyond her control after events she had noting to do with, and she has also lost her connection with grandson Charlie (Savinin), who is told not to speak to her in a devastating scene where she brings him a homemade cake for his birthday party. Unable to cope she  dissolves in floods of tears. Later her swimming club membership is revoked without explanation. And she is left humiliated. She clearly knows the reason why.

Rampling carries the film through each slow-burning scene. Wandering aimlessly through streets in Brussels and along a beach in Knocke she is a picture of broken a life. And we feel for her. Shattered by  anguish and pitiful in her loneliness, Rampling makes the film both compelling and quietly devastating. In an effort to keep going and survive what has gone before, Hannah joins a self-help group practising the Alexander Technique, and keeps house for a woman whose own son appears to be blind. Despite this work, Hannah seems to be highly intelligent and full of graceful manners suggesting she has somehow come down in the world, from a well-to-do household. Her son is well-spoken and her own behaviour suggests good breeding.

Clearly Pallaoro had something in mind along the lines of Chantal Ackerman’s Jeanne Dielman. Hannah’s emotional fragmentation leads to her to a (symbolic) meeting with a beached whale on the beach at Knokke Heist – showing a helplessness on Pallaoro’s part, which cannot be overcome by Chayse Irvin’s stylishly cold and forbidding visuals. They show a wintry landscape, forlornly mirroring Hannah’s state of mind. MT

Andrea Pallaoro was born in Trento, Italy. He received his BA from Hampshire College before going on to study film directing at the California Institute of the Arts. His credits as director include the short Wunderkrammer (08) and the feature Medeas(13). Hannah (17) is his latest film.

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES | premiered at VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Foxtrot (2017) ****

Dir: Samuel Maoz |Drama | Israel, Germany, France, Switzerland / 113’ | cast: Lior Ashkenazi, Sarah Adler, Yonatan Shiray

A grieving father experiences the absurd circumstances around the death of his son, in this latest critical reflection on military culture from Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz (Lebanon). Foxtrot is a story of bereavement and denial of guilt, played against the background of a middle-class Jewish family in Tel-Aviv.
Michael Feldman (Ashkenazi) and his wife Dafne (Adler) live in a spacious, expensively decorated apartment in the midst of the capital. When they learn of the death of their soldier son Jonathan (Shiray), Dafne faints, whilst her husband is cold and aggressive, even kicking the family dog, who wants to console him. When it later transpires that Jonathan is alive after all, Michael still behaves like a psychotic, showing no relief that his son is coming home. He insults his wife, daughter, brother and army officers, and insists on seeing his son again. With the help of a general, Jonathan is whisked away from a road block where he and three others soldiers has just shot four innocent Palestinians in their car; the young soldiers mistaking an empty beer can for a grenade.
The general who orders Jonathan’s release is also in charge of the “cleaning-up” operation: the Palestinian car is literally buried by a bulldozer: Jonathan’s final sketch, which ends up on the wall of his parent’s apartment, shows the operation. Later his mother will interpret the drawing as herself (the car) being swept away by her bulldozing husband. Which, in a way is true, since Michael is hiding a terrible secret from his family: when he was an officer in the army, he was guilty of causing the death of many of his men, causing him to remain emotionally detached from his family, and letting his frustration out on Max, the dog, who suffers from internal bleeding from his master’s frequent kickimg. But Michael is not able or willing to come clean – only a late and tragic twist will allow him him to confess his guilty secret to his wife.
The Feldman’s are representative of many Israeli families in a country at war for nearly 70 years. “This is war, and shit happens in war” says the general to the soldiers after the incident. Moaz captures the absurdity of this permanent conflict in amusing scenes at the roadblock, mixing phantasy with reality, and contrasting the hell of war, with the Feldman’s  sombre family dwelling: both existing in a parallel universe that has seemingly nothing in common. But it is the denial of emotional connection to those at home that forces Israeli soldiers to keep on killing and being killed. This schizophrenic situation has gone on for so long that it is seen as the new normal. Foxtrot is a passionate appeal to a whole country, to put an end to the situation. Samuel Maoz’s debut feature, Lebanon (which won the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival), was set during the 1982 Lebanon War, and shot almost entirely inside of a tank. Foxtrot, his second feature, steps away from that fevered claustrophobia to tell another maddening story of war and conflict, but this one on a much broader canvas. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Cinema Made in Italy 2019 |

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY is back in London to kick off the Spring with the latest crop of Italian films. The 9th edition takes place at Cine Lumiere and is supported by Istituto Luce Cinecitta and the Italian Cultural Institute.

LORO ****

Director: Paolo Sorrentino Cast: Toni Servillo, Elena Sofia Ricci, Riccardo Scamarcio, Kasia Smutniak, Euridice Axen, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Roberto De Francesco, Dario Cantarelli, Anna Bonaiuto | 150′

Paolo Sorrentino’s savage political satire is a powerful portrait of controversial Italian public figure Silvio Berlusconi and his inner circle. | UK release date: 19 April 2019

EUFORIA ***

Director: Valeria Golino | Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Valerio Mastandrea, Isabella Ferrari, Valentina Cervi, Jasmine Trinca, Francesco Borgese, Francesco Pellegrino, Andrea Germani, Marzia Ubaldi | 120′

Valeria Golino’s second film as a director explores brotherly love through two very different siblings. It stars her on/off partner Riccardo Scamarcio as one of two brothers brought together through adversity when one falls dangerously ill. Matteo is a man of means in central Rome, Ettore is a primary teacher in their provincial hometown. Beautifully photographed in the eternal city, Euforia ultimate predictability is rescued by the strength of its dynamic performances.

RICORDI? ***

Director: Valerio Mieli | Cast: Luca Marinelli, Linda Caridi, Giovanni Anzaldo, Camilla Diana, Anna Manuelli, Eliana Bosi, David Brandon, Benedetta Cimatti, Andrea Pennacchi, 106′

After success with her debut Ten Winters this touching love story explores the ups and downs of this emotional journey for two young lovers Luca Marinelli and Linda Caridi.

LUCIA’S GRACE (Troppa Grazia) ***

Director: Gianni Zanasi | Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Elio Germano, Hadas Yaron, Giuseppe Battiston, Carlotta Natoli, Thomas Trabacchi, Daniele De Angelis, Rosa Vannucci, Elisa Di Eusanio, Davide Strava | 110′ 

Alba Rohrwacher blazes through this upbeat ecumenical drama that sees single working mother Lucia juggling her life between motherhood, an emotionally exhausting romance, and her work as a land surveyor. When she discovers that an ambitious new building project will have devastating effects on the locale, she debates whether to challenge the project when up pops a mysterious woman, claiming to be the Madonna and offering to support Lucia in flagging up her concerns, and suggesting the construction of a church as an alternative. This whimsical affair offers cheap laughs as an alternative to trusting its strong psychological elements, but Vladan Radovic’s lively camerawork and a strong cast carry it through in the end.   

THE GUEST (L’Ospite) ****

Director: Duccio Chiarini | Cast: Daniele Parisi, Silvia D’Amico, Anna Bellato, Federica Victoria Caiozzo aka Thony, Milvia Marigliano, Daniele Natali, Guglielmo Favilli : 96′

Sofa-surfing is the theme of this coming of age drama about the ups and downs of modern day love and commitment phobia. Guido (Daniele Parisi) is a 38-year-old academic who is writing a pot-boiler on Italo Calvino. But his girlfriend girlfriend (Silvia D’Amico) is having none of it, and puts an end to their flagging relationship forcing him to out of his cosy existence to face some uncomfortable truths through the experiences of lodging with his friends and family. Insightful and enjoyable  .

THE MAN WHO BOUGHT THE MOON ( L’Uomo che compró la Luna) ***

Director: Paolo Zucca |Cast: Jacopo Cullin, Stefano Fresi, Francesco Pannofino, Benito Urgu, Lazar Ristovski, Angela Molina |  103′

This off the wall spy-themed buddy movie from Sardinia stars Jacopo Cullin as a secret agent tasked with investigating a claim that one of his compatriots has bought the Moon as a gift for his girlfriend. Teaming up with his fellow Sardinian Badore (Benito Ugo) the pair set off to infiltrate the Sardinian community and investigate the ludicrous idea in a surefire but engagingly silly caper.

WHEREVER YOU ARE (Ovunque Proteggemi) ***

Director: Bonifacio Angius |Cast: Alessandro Gazale, Francesca Niedda, Antonio Angius, Anna Ferruzzo, Gavino Ruda, Mario Olivieri | 94′

Bonifacio Angius won the Junior Jury Award at Locarno for Perfidia (2014) and returns with this impressively perceptive drama about a middle-aged ‘mammalone’ with a drinking problem. Burning a hole in his mother’s pocket with his failed singing career, he has a mental breakdown and is taken to hospital, where he meets Francesca (Francesca Niedda), a young mother with drug issues. The two fall madly in love and set off on an eventful odyssey to redeem each other by reclaiming Francesca’s daughter who has been taken in to care. 

NOTTI MAGICHE ****

Director: Paolo Virzì |Cast: Mauro Lamantia, Giovanni Toscano, Irene Vetere, Giancarlo Giannini, Eugenio Marinelli, Marina Rocco, Paolo Sassanelli, Roberto Herlitzka, Regina Orioli, Andrea Roncato, Giulio Scarpati, Simona Marchini, Annalisa Arena, Ornella Muti, Jalil Lespert, Paolo Bonacelli | 125 ‘minutes

Ornella Muti makes a welcome return in Paolo Virzi’s playfully affectionate black comedy that explores the mysterious drowning of a film producer in the River Tiber. The main suspects are three young aspiring scriptwriters, and their outlandishly spirited alibis form the basis of an entertaining exploration that takes us back to the golden years of Italian cinema and a moving and magical trip through the backstreet of Rome

THE CONFORMIST (Il Conformista) *****

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci | Cast: Jean-Louis Tritignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Enzo Tarascio, Fosco Giachetti, José Quaglio, Yvonne Sanson | 118′

A wonderful chance to see this classic cult thriller adapted from a novel by Alberto Moravia. Set in 1938, it tells the story of an aristocratic would-be fascist who is sent to Paris to murder his former, anti-fascist philosophy tutor. Jean-Louis Tritignant is supremely sinister in the role of Marcello Clerici, whose demeanour is an eternal reminder of the banality of evil. It was an instant hit when it was released in 1970, and some say it is one of the most poetic and influential films ever made, beloved by film-makers the world over.

WE’LL BE YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL (Saremo Giovani e Bellissimi) ***

Director: Letizia Lamartire | 92 minutes)

In the early 1990s, 18-year-old Isabella (Barbora Bobulova) was a pop star. Two decades later she’s still on the road singing the same old songs with her son Bruno (Piavani) on guitar. But nothing can last for ever and soon the ties that bind will also unravel in this bittersweet and often poignantly moving musical love story.

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | LONDON 2019 | 26 FEBRUARY – 3 MARCH

 

Picnic (1955) **** Home Ent release

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Old Boys (2018) ****

Dir: Toby MacDonald. Wri: Luke Morris and Luke Ponte | UK, Sweden. 2017. 96mins | Alex Lawther, Denis Ménochet, Jonah Hauer-King, Pauline Etienne | 96′

Alex Lawther plays a game of emotional subterfuge in this gentle comic riff on Cyrano de Bergerac set in the rolling West Susssex downs where he is a gifted public school boy at Caldermount (actually Lancing College).

The feature debut from director Toby MacDonald sees sweet but scrawny scholarship pupil Amberson (Lawther) caught in a low-key love triangle between Agnes (Etienne) and the brawny but brainless Winch(Jonah Hauer-King); Both puplis have the hots for the only girl in this ‘boys own’ setting, where pubescent hormones are running wild, but looks – not personality – hold the key to success. Amberson is totally humiliated by his lowly position on the school’s pecking order. Creatively driven his schtick is doodling in pencil and his heroes are Kubrick and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (“love is not looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction”).

There’s a whiff of familiarity with the subject matter that suggests from the early scenes of boarding school ‘absurdism’ that the filmmakers have been here before. And this ribbing humour and taut script will appeal to young and older audiences alike. Lawther holds court throughout with his particular ‘old head on young shoulders’ vulnerability. The twenty something star of Ten Things I Hate About You feels mature beyond his years, with his subtle knowing glances and emotional depth.

The boys endure endless bouts of brutal banter and physical privation in the spartan school surroundings. Sports are de rigueur: cricket, rugby and a game called ‘streamers’ which takes place in the nearby river. Brimming testosterone levels go into overdrive when Agnes arrives on the scene with her frustrated father Babinot, the new French master (Denis Ménochet in fine form). And Amberson, the butt of the ‘streamers’ contests, meets her head-on wearing a pair of sodden pyjamas.

Although the two form a tentative friendship, Agnes only has eyes for Winch, who can’t string two words together, let alone satisfy his pubescent urge to ask the girl out. So it falls to Amberson and his gift of the gab to broker a deal between the love-struck teens. He crafts a series of contemporary billets doux on cardboard placards, filming Winchester reciting these on a video recorder (it’s still the ’80s). This effort on his friend’s behalf gains Amberson instant brownie points with the most popular boy in the school, and his social capital instantly goes into the ascendent. Secretly ruing his vicarious romantic overtures, Amberson then takes a poignant back seat in the proceedings, while Winch woos the wilful French girl, with hilarious results.

There’s a lot to enjoy in this occasionally amusing and rather old-fashioned film with its echoes of Gregory’s Girl. The direction and editing could be tighter but it’s an impressive debut feature and carried peerlessly by Alex Lawther. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 22 FEBRUARY 2019

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Capernaum (2018)***

Dir: Nadine Labaki | Drama | 105’

Nadine Labaki sprung to fame with her delightfully upbeat debut Caramel, set around a women’s hair salon in Beirut Set. Here she casts non-professional actors in a politically themed fable that sees a child resorting to the strong arms of the law.

This multi-awarded Oscar hopeful has the same warm, stylish look as her previous two features but is a much more accomplished film that puts a watchable spin on dour social realism although it does not quite reach the heights of perfection as the script resorts to disingenuous pandering in the slack final section. Subject-wise we are back to Daniel Blake territory although this is a much better crafted film than the one that bagged Ken Loach the top  Cannes award several years ago and CAPERNAUM does not bludgeon the life out of your with its agitprop hammer. There are similarities too with Slumdog Millionaire in its upbeat fervour powered by cute and captivating performances from its newcomer children.

Labaki structures her film round a trial, although this is not a courtroom procedural and most of the action is set in the chaotic streets or in cramped interiors where 12 year old Zain (Zain Al Rafeea), who looks more like 8, is already serving a prison sentence for stabbing, is now suing his parents for bringing him into the world. One of several siblings, his parents never registered his birth. Despite cocky indignation and a bristling sense of entitlement to his rights, he is a likeable kid who lives with his parents Souad (Kawthar Al Haddad) and Selim (Fadi Kamel Youssef). Rather than school, he goes out to sell fruit juice in the market, where he also collects tramadol which the family grind into clothes-washing water which is then passed to Zain’s prison-serving elder brother. Although these circumstances are all quite startling to Western viewers, they are sadly run of the mill for millions all over the world. But medication here in the Lebanon seems to be free at the point of collection, a fact which is difficult to believe.

After his younger sister Sahar is sold in marriage by his parents. Zain runs away and comes across Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), an Ethiopian cleaner who is in Lebanon illegally. He offers to look after her toddler while she is at  work but she later disappears leaving the two to fend for themselves in what turns out to be quite an adventure.

This is a watchable drama with some endearing turns from the ensemble kiddy cast who conjure up an intoxicating chemistry considering their lack of experience. But the star of the piece is Rafeea as the cheekily adamant Zain, a tribute to kids everywhere who feel life has dealt them an unfair start, and who set out to put matters right. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE from 22 February | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | Jury Prize Winner 2018

 

Ring (1998) *** Home Ent Release

Dir: Hideo Nakata | Mystery Horror | Japan, 96′

Ring was only his second feature, yet director Hideo Nakata became an over-night sensation with this supernatural B-movie, written by Hiroshi Takahashi, based on the novel by Koji Suzuki. And despite budget-related poor production values, Ring spawned many worldwide copy-cat features and although it now feels dated, the original impact is still tangible.

It all starts with teenage girls, Tomoko (Takeuchi) and Massami (Sato) discussing a strange video with three other friends in a motel room in Izu. At the end of the video, comes an even stranger phone call telling them they will die in a week’s time. And sure enough, death comes to them all on the day in question in the form of a cardiac arrest, their faces bearing expressions of the horror they encountered. 

Journalist Reiko (Matsushima), Tomoko’s aunt, starts to investigate the mysterious deaths, and watches the video tape in question. She too gets a strange phone call after watching, but this time she enlists the help of her ex-husband Ryuji (Sanada), to avoid the fate of the earlier victims. The couple has a son, Yoichi (Otaka), who, like his father is gifted with sixth sense. Both father and son watch the video, before the parents discover some clues, buried in the past: The psychic Shizuko who predicted the eruption of the volcano in Mount Mihara, later leaped into the volcano, after a scandal involving her mentor Dr. Ikuma and her uncle Takashi. But the real mystery surrounds her daughter Sukado, who was murdered and thrown in a well. Reiko and Ryuji are working against time – but Ring has a rather ghastly surprise in store.

Performances are on a par with the rather crass images. The overall effect verges on the theatrical, Kenji Kawai’s doom-laden score always warning of some imminent threat. There is blatant misogyny, with Ryuji slapping his ex-wife brutally, when she shows signs of fears. He also accuses her of not looking after their son, whilst he is a totally-absent father. The murder victims (in both the flashback and the main story) are, with one exception, all female. There is also the question of Japan’s very violent past (which has never been addressed), like the invasion of China and the consequent taking of sex slaves in the occupied country – perhaps the flash-backs are a form of recognition of these crimes. Finally, TV and video are seen like a virus, infiltrating Japanese society – a warning in a country, which, whilst very modern in its approach to technology, is still moored in an ancient past, which, though denied, comes back to haunt the present. A successful sequel was directed in 1999 by Nakata with Ring 2, in which most of the main cast re-appeared. AS

RING, will release in cinemas 1st March 2019 | It will then release on Digital, DVD, Blu-ray, Limited Edition Steelbook, and Limited Edition Collection featuring Ring, Ring 2, Ring 0and Spiral 18th March 2019.

Two for Joy (2018) ****

Dir: Tom Beard | Samantha Morton, Billie Piper, Daniel Mays, Badger Skelton | UK Drama | 89′

A family’s problems come to a head in Tom Beard’s chilly slice of seaside social realism that sees three kids confronting their inner demons on a caravan site. It’s a grim scenario: Samantha Morton’s Aisha is a mother dealing with the aftermath of her husband’s death and the prospect of having her children taken into care. Vi (Emilia Jones) the elder, suggests a few days holiday in their caravan where the younger, Troy (Badger Skelton), befriends another girl whose mother Lillah (Billie Piper) is also feeling pretty low. Luckily, Uncle Lias injects a cheerful note to the proceedings, but the clouds soon gather on the horizon.

Made on a shoestring budget but none the worse for it, this contemplative arthouse is a study of unalloyed misery and disorientation of the silent type – and this is what Morton does best. May and Piper provide compassionate support and the kids bring a maturity to their roles that does them proud. The English countryside in summer is bleak and dreary but delicately so: pastel seascapes, misty fields, clouds drift by in picture postcard Dorset. A small and compassionate gem MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 25 February 2019

 

World on a Wire (1973) Welt am Draht

Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder | Sci-fi | Ger, 1973 | 204′ 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s noirish sci-fi curio was way ahead of its time with themes that are still relevant today, and would later be explored in the likes of The Matrix, Bladerunner, and TV series Westworld.

Originally created for TV by the prolific but short-lived radical filmmaker, this futuristic film explores the nature of reality. It does so through Simulacron 1, a type of projected reality considered to have some revolutionary potential, such as predicting the price of commodities, and consumer habits in the future – both would later become mainstream realities.

When the Simulacron project leader Henry Vollmer dies, Dr Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch (Cross of Iron) become his successor. As the new doctor realises probes and realises he’s on to something ground-breaking, the company’s head of security (Ivan Desny) also disappears during a louche party, and the line between the real and virtual worlds increasingly blurs. Stiller is compelled to dig even deeper for answers to this unfathomable mystery.

With a theme-tune from Pink Floyd’s drifty surreal album ‘Albatross’ to ramp up the atmosphere, the look and feel is stylishly evocative of the ’70s: all opulent white leather and steel. Blueish computer monitors flashing away in the background, DoP Michael Balhaus creates a hostile and alienating aura, and would go on to shoot other dark thrillers such as Goodfellas and The Departed .

Even the characters here are hard-nosed and unlikeable: men posture around in fedoras and wide-lapelled suites; vampish women are invariably tight-lipped and ash blond. There are roles for Fassbinder’s longterm collaborators Ulli Lommel and Kurt Raab, and Mascha Rabben (Salome) and Barbara Valentin (Our Man in Jamaica) also star. This is a compelling and watchable film, richly thematic and aesthetically avantgarde for its time. MT

NOW ON BLURAY COURTESY OF SECONDSIGHT FILMS. This latest restoration comes supervised by The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, 

 

 

 

Les Quatres Soeurs | The Four Sisters (2018) *****

Dir.: Claude Lanzmann; Documentary with Ruth Elias, Ada Lichtman, Paula Biren, Hanna Marton; France 2018, 273 min.

Just seven months before his death in July 2018, Claude Lanzmann’s last “satellite” feature Shoah was shown on French TV. Even though the four interviewed Holocaust survivors are not genetic siblings, they share the real burden of survival (each the last of their families), yet their stories are very different. In reality their stories of survival are stranger than fiction. Two of them, Paula Biren and Hanna Marton, are still suffering from survivor’s guilt, because, however unwillingly, they were the one who escaped the Nazi extermination machine.

THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH (Le serment d’Hippocrate)

Ruth Elias (1922-2008) sings Czechoslovakian songs from her childhood, accompanying herself on the accordion. These tunes helped her and her fellow sufferers to survive in Auschwitz. Now at home in Israel, her upbeat optimism somehow jars with her macabre story as she cuddles a German Shepherd, the archetypal emblem of Nazi Germany. When the Germans occupied her native city of Moravska Ostrava (Czechoslovakia) in 1939, the family lost not only their – non-kosher – sausage factory, but had to go into hiding with false papers. In April 1942 the rest of the family was deported to Auschwitz, whilst Ruth married her boyfriend and stayed behind in hiding. In Auschwitz, the genders were separated, but Ruth’s mother did not want to leave her husband, and was shot dead in front of him. Ruth’ sister Edith was also killed. And Ruth too was caught eventually, and via Terezin reached Auschwitz, where she found out she was pregnant. She miraculously survived the selection process, other inmates hiding her from Mengele. When he found out, he was furious, especially as Ruth’s friend Berta, also near term, also got away. But Mengele was vengeful: after the birth of her baby-girl, he had Ruth’ breasts bound, so that she could not suckle her offspring. Mengele wanted to find out how long a baby could survive without being fed. After nine days, an imprisoned Jewish doctor, Maza Steinberg, told Ruth that she had sworn the Hippocratic oath to save human lives – and since the baby was dying, it was her duty to save Ruth. She got hold of some morphine, and Ruth injected her baby with a lethal dose. The next day Mengele appeared and was somehow disappointed: “You are really lucky, I had planned to deport you and the child with the next transport”. Via Hamburg and Ravensbruck, she ended up back in the CSSR, totally broken, even after ‘liberation’ She was put into a sanatorium, where she finally found the will to go on living. Later in Israel, she met Dr. Steinberg with her two sons, the women stayed in contact for the rest of their lives.

THE MERRY FLEE (LA PUE JOYEUSE)

Born in Galicia, Ada Lichtman then moved with her family to a village near Krakow. When the Germans invaded in 1939, they gathered the Jewish men, and shot all 134 in a nearby wood. Polish people made life hell for Ida and the other survivors, they looted their flats while the Germans looked on . Ida was captured and housed in an aerodrome where hunger and disease whittled down their numbers. Her fiancée had been shot along with the other weaker Jews, who were hit over the head with rocks. Deported to Sobibor, she soon met Gustav Franz Wagner, SS Oberscharfuhrer. Discovering Ada was a kindergarten teacher’, he said “Then you might be able to keep house for me”. The SS in Sobibor thought it amusing to christian one of the houses “The Merry Flee”, making it sound like an operetta title. In reality the whole camp was filthy. The SS enjoyed stripping all the newly-arrived prisoners, and made the oldest men dance with the youngest girls. Later, when they were drunk (ie. often), they raped the women. Ada never wanted to believe that Sobibor was a death camp but she survived, along with her husband. The Nazis made Ada mend the murdered children’s dolls so they could give them to their own kids to play with. When a convoy with Dutch prisoners arrived, they had to fill out postcards, telling their relatives that everything was fine. They would be gassed, before their postcards arrived home. Wagner, who was called ‘Wolf’, relished performing the executions. After the successful uprising in October 1943, the prisoners scattered around the area. But Sobibor was never re-opened.

BALUTY

This is the titular name for the Lodz Ghetto, where Paula Biren would end up as a member of the Jewish Police. She was seventeen when the Germans invaded, and had helped to dig ditches to stop German tanks. Paula listened to Hitler’s radio reports so she was aware of what would happen to the Jews After the invasion, Polish people would beat up Jews. In October 1939 the Germans started to build the Jewish Ghetto, in the poorest quarter of the city. 200 000 Jews would end up there overseen by Germans and the (Jewish) Judenrat, led by Mordechai Rumkowski, who turned the ghetto into a slave labour camp on behalf of the Germans: 45 000 Jews died of starvation and disease. He and his closest colleges were all deported to Auschwitz. After they lost their flat, Paula’s family moved into the ghetto, it “felt like going to prison”. The Judenrat had once been a Jewish welfare organisation, but now it was a parody of the Jewish state. In 1942 the first transports went to the death camps in Auschwitz and Chelmno. Paula and her family started a vegetable garden, and hopes were high. But she was soon commandeered to join the Jewish Police, initially working in the office, but later on her night patrols. Beggars and ‘loiterers’ were given a warning, and they would be deported to the death camps. Paula managed to hide but her family was deported to Auschwitz and killed. When the ghetto was finally liquidated in August  1944, Rumkowski made a list of people who would go to a special camp.  Nobody believed him any more. “I was finally put on a train to Terezin, which was not a death camp – if I’d stayed put, I would have been killed like my family”. After liberation, the Polish people in Lodz told her to leave –pogroms started up again. Living in the USA, Paula refuses to answer Lanzmann when he asks if she thought Rumkowski was guilty. “I leave this to others”.

NOAH’S ARK (L’ARCHE DE NOE)

Paula Morton had just has lost her husband, also a survivor of Hungarian death camps, when Lanzmann interviewed her in her home in Tel-Aviv. She grew up in Cluj ( also know as Klausenburg) a Romanian/Hungarian city of over 15000 Jews lived. Hungary had send 60 000 Jews to the front in WWII, to fight alongside Germans and Italians in Russia. The Jews had no rifles or other weapons, they were used as slave labour. Only 5000 survived; Paula’s brother was one of the victims. Until 1944 Jews were left alone, then the deportations started. Paula is rather scathing about her fellow Jews: “I kew if Hungarian Jews are asked to come at 12.00 for their execution, they would all appear on time”. Paula and her husband, a lawyer, had been in the Zionist Youth organisation in Hungary, and later got to know Zionist leaders like Dr. Fischer, Dr. Kastner and Hillel Danzig. These three had ties to the SS, and particularly to Eichmann. They agreed that 1684 Jews would be exchanged for huge sums of money (the SS always put the price up, and even when the Jews arrived in Switzerland, huge sums changed hands.). An estimated 500000 RM was being shelled out by the Zionist organisation. Paula and her husband were deported to the Kistarcsa transit camp near Budapest. Between the 10th and 30th June 1944 all Jews from the camp were deported to Auschwitz, just the 1684, mostly Zionist and/or wealthy remained. The group was supposed to travel to Auspitz (!), but the Hungarian authorities wanted them to go to Auschwitz. Kastner intervened along Eichmann, and the transport left Hungary. But before the convoy reached the Swiss border, two families had to leave, and because they were not Hungarian, they were deported to a death camp. Paula is obviously guilty about her survival, but she claims to Lanzmann that her husband was a fatalist and felt no guilt at all. She told him, “it was beyond a personal choice. What people forget is that the Nazi terror produced the situation. They alone decided in the end, who lived and who died. Some will say, if you can save one thousand and let 10 000 die, do it. Others will say, all should die”. Dr. Kastner was later killed in 1957 Israel after being found guilty of collaborating with the Nazis. A later court cleared him posthumously.AS

NOW AVAILABLE COURTESY OF EUREKA CINEMA 

Amazon (Blu-ray) https://amzn.to/2BIK7bi (DVD) https://amzn.to/2Pa3IET

Zavvi (Blu-ray) http://po.st/Oq6u9H (DVD) http://po.st/0vLvRP

 

Die Kinder Der Toten | Children of the Dead (2018) **** Berlinale 2019 | Forum

Dir: Kelly Copper/Pavel Liska | Horror | Greta Kostka, Andrea Maier, Klaus Unterreider | Austria 2019, 90′

Based on the mammoth ghost novel by Austrian author and Nobel-prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, Kelly Cooper and Pavol Liska direct, write and shoot this Super 8mm moral tale of Zombies, transposed to a contemporary Austria still haunted by its Nazi past and neo-Nazi present.

The filmmakers cleverly conflate a migration satire with a ‘herimatfilm (or homeland film) a style popular in Germany, Switzerland and Austria from the 1940s until 1970s, radically rejecting classical cinema to create instead a moody meditation on contemporary Austria, co-produced by the National Theatre and The Steirischer Herbst ensemble, The disonnant sound of the brass band is as disturbing as the mannered acting, reminiscent of silent cinema, and logically complimented by Inter-titles, whilst the macabre actors mouth their words.

At the ‘Alpenrose’ guesthouse in the Austrian region of Styria, Karin Frenzel (Meier) and her mother (Kostka) are eating dinner. The two are bitter enemies, and make no secret of it, their animosity overheard by the other guests. Suddenly a group of Syrian refugees appear asking if this is a Syrian restaurant, but are turned away by the fiercely nationalistic landlord and his wife.  Soon afterwards, Karin and her mother die in a road accident. But this is not the only tragedy to occur. A distraught forester (Unterrieder) has lost his two sons, and is scouring the woods in search of them, to no avail. This home-movie horror immerses us in the universe of the text – and somewhere else at the same time. The parade of zombies in the supermarket recalls the genre films Jelinek herself mentioned as an inspiration, only giving greater credence to the sense that this blend of text, performance, and film, was a terrific idea. Meanwhile the Syrian refugees are seen transformed into zombies, along with Karin, who is chasing her double. Whilst Karin and her double fight, the innkeeper’s wife falls prey to the Syrian Zombies, who speak in lyrical verse. Back at the Alpenrose Inn, now transformed into a gastronomic Michelin star restaurant by the Syrians, Karin and her mother have it out for the last time.

An understanding of Austrian history is somehow necessary to appreciate the finer details of why the Zombies wear yellow Jewish Stars, and other emblems of the Third Reich. The inter-titles are crafted in old fashioned German script which contrasts with   banal mise en scene. Somehow, Jelinek’s anger is channelled into a bluntly outrageous film language by the debut filmmakers in their startling unsettling fantasy horror, which leaves no room for compromise. The duo are from the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and it’s no accident that their producer is Ulrich Seidl.

Children of the Dead won the Fipresci Prize for the Forum section of the 2019 Berlinale.

 

 

 

   

 

Grâce à Dieu (2019) **** Berlinale 2019 | Silver Bear Grand Jury prize

Dir/Wri: Francois Ozon | Cast: Melvil Poupaud, Denis Menochet, Swann Arlaud, Eric Caravaca, François Marthouret, Aurelie Petit, Amelie Daure, Bernard Verley | Drama, France 137′

François Ozon is known for his satirical wit and his relaxed views on sexuality. His Grand Jury Silver Bear winner By the Grace of God takes on the theme of abuse in the Catholic church and its affects on three men. But no matter how hard-hitting their experiences may be there is always a flinty glint of Ozon’s brand of dry humour peeping though to light the dark clouds of its heroes’ despair.

Grâce à Dieu is based on the real case of Father Bernard Preynat who in 2016 was charged with sexually assaulting around 70 boys in Lyon, François Ozon portrays the victims as mature men but reveals the lifelong wounds they have sustained. At the same time, the film criticises the church’s silence on paedophilia and asks about its complicity. As of January 2019, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin is standing trial for ‘non-denunciation of sexual aggression’.

Ozon casts three actors at the top of their game to play the trio: Melvil Poupaud is Alexandre a wealthy Lyonnais banker who has found success with his wife Marie (Petit) and five kids. He appears to be the one least damaged by the Preyan but when it emerges the priest is still working with kids, Alexandre decides to risk jeopardising his own settled existence and blow the whistle. His parents never gave credence to his feeling back in the day, and are still making light of them, but he goes ahead with a difficult confession to the Catholic authorities. It then turns out that happily married François is the next victim, and Dénis Menochet is less cautious about his confessions, bringing his explosive emotional potential to the part. Perhaps the worst affected is Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud) who claims his whole life has been traumatised by what happened, making it difficult for him to deal parent’s divorce and destroying his ability to connect emotionally with women, and this is played out in some incendiary scenes with his partner (Daure). Gradually others join the cause and we learn how each is struggling with their private demons while creating the self-help organisation ‘La Parole Libérée’ (The Liberated Word) is just the first step.

Some of the confessions are explicit and we’re never quite sure how far Ozon tipping the balance between salaciousness and pure honesty. This is also noticeable with reference to Lyon’s gourmet traditions and fine wine and there are frequent allusions to food which is considered as important as upsetting matter in hand when the men meet up, often leading to amusing non-sequiturs: (“anymore quiche anyone”?).

The magnificent Basilica Notre Dame de Fourvière dominates the impressive opening scene as the Cardinal Barbarin hoists a golden cross over the city, almost as a blessing for what is to come in this meaty, affecting and enjoyable saga that richly chronicles a true story whose implications and repercussions are still unfolding in the present. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019 | COMPETITION.

 

 

 

Human Desire (1954) **** Dual Format release

Dir: Fritz Lang | Noir Thriller | US, 1954, 90′

Fritz Lang brings a seething expressionism to this steely hard-boiled Noir. And although Jean Renoir’s 1938 version is better known, Lang’s American remake re-works themes of fear, jealousy and hatred into an equally provocative and suspenseful thriller that translocates the action to a working class New Jersey railroad setting. Loosely based on Emile Zola’s La Bête Humaine, Alfred Hayes script pictures Glenn Ford’s tortured train engineer cum Korean War veteran (Warren) fall for Gloria Grahame’s married femme fatale (Vicki Buckley). Set amidst the bleak monochrome marshalling yards, their doomed love affair is the only spark. Vicki’s abusive alcoholic husband Carl (Broderick Crawford) is fired from his job and blackmails her to stay with him using as his weapon a letter that links her to a jealousy-fuelled murder he committed on a train. He begs Vicki (Gloria Grahame) to speak to John Owens (Grandon Rhodes), an influential businessman. But when her love affair is revealed, it all ends in tears. Oscar-winning cinematographer Burnett Guffey creates a remarkable opening sequence where a train hurtles through the urban landscape. Set to Daniele Amfitheatrof’s rousing score, which primps the highs and lows of the narrative, this is one of the highlights of the mean and moody affair. Meanwhile costumier Jean Louis works his mastery on some seriously well-tailored rigouts. MT

NOW OUT ON DUAL FORMAT RELEASE COURTESY OF EUREKA

 

 

 

The Lady Eve (1941) *****

Dir: Preston Sturges | Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Eric Blore, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest | US Drama 94′

In one of Preston Sturges’ most enjoyable romantic dramas Barbara Stanwyck (1907—90) dusts down her comedy talents to play an opportunistic con woman with a chink of humanity still glinting in her steel-plated armour. As one of a trio of classy card sharks Jean embarks on a tantalising tease to snare the awkward heir to a brewery fortune, but falls for him along the way.

Henry Fonda is the dapper but rather dopey heir to millions, Charles Pike, whose life has been devoted to snakes until he gets ensnared by Stanwyck’s feminine charms on a cruise liner making its way back from South America. Disarmed by Charles’ gallant but rather clumsy charisma, Jean mends her ways in a performance that sees her as a crook, but also a seductress with a vulnerable streak into the bargain. Travelling with her father (Charles Harrington and his valet), Jean is suddenly aware that playing her cards right is more important now that ever, and her father advises her accordingly: “Don’t be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked, but never common.” But Henry Fonda plays the most redeeming characters in this delicious drama. He remains vulnerable and sincere throughout because, like all young men who are madly in love, he remains focused on the void in his heart that only Jean can fill.

Stanwyck is terrific in this screwball comedy romance where she is funny but also graceful and sardonic. After seducing Charles she then toys with his heart as the narrative unspools in  unexpected ways that add to the dramatic tension despite the modest running time. After boy meets girl and then loses her, boy then falls for another girl who is really the same one – when Jean poses as “Lady Eve Sidwich.” Here the film moves on from its seaborne setting to Charles’ family pile in the country where another crook in the shape of her “uncle” Sir Alfred McGlennan Keith (Eric Blore), agrees to accommodate Jean, allowing her to complete her seduction and her swindle. Meanwhile, Charles’ trusty bodyguard Muggsy (William Demarest) has already rumbled Jean’s game: ”It’s the same dame!”. But Charlie can’t – or won’t – believe him, and follows Jean in her trap, amid a series of pratfalls, like a faithful love-struck puppy..

Barbara Stanwyck (1907-90) was one of the most hard-working actresses of her era  (Golden Boy, Stella Dallas, Baby Face) but always wanted a comedy role and Preston Sturges (1898-1959) eventually gave it to her and she excels herself throughout. Fonda manages to be comical while exuding a strong masculine presence. And his looks and stature are elegantly showcased by Edith Head’s impeccable designs. The script, based on a story by Monkton Hoffe, is wittily adapted for the screen by Sturges and there are hilarious scenes especially during the country visit. As Peter Bogdanovich said himself “You can’t get a better romantic comedy than The Lady Eve”. MT

COMING TO THE BFI AND ARTHOUSE CINEMAS 15 FEBRUARY 2019

So Dark the Night (1946) *** Bluray release

Dir: Joseph H Lewis | Cast: Henri Cassin, Micheline Cheirel, Eugene Borden | US Noir, 70′

Joseph H Lewis dabbled in various genres but is particularly well-known for his 1940s film noir outings . So Dark the Night has the advantage being shot by the Oscar-winning Burnett Guffey (Bonnie and Clyde) whose chiaroscuro mastery elevates this rather implausible French-set whodunit making it stylish and worthwhile, along with its fine score by Hugo Friedhofer (who would win the music Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives in the following year). Based on a novel by London-born Aubrey Wisberg, it stars Steven Geray as exhausted Parisian detective Henri Cassin who decides to take a break in the country. There he falls for the hotelier’s daughter Nanette (Hollywood star Micheline Cheirel) who is already engaged to a local farmer, but who (as usual) yearns for the bright lights of gay Paree. On the night of their engagement both Nanette and the farmer disappear leaving the hapless detective with another mystery – and more work – on his hands. Plus ça change!. MT

OUT ON BLURAY FROM 18 FEBRUARY 2019 COURTESY OF ARROW

Delphine et Carole (2019) Mubi

Dir.: Callisto McNulty; Documentary with Delphine Seyrig, Carole Roussopoulos; France 2019, 70 min.

Director/co-writer Callisto McNulty throws new light on the remarkable career of French actress Delphine Seyrig (1932-1990), who together with filmmaker Carole Roussopoulos (1945-2009) was one of the most noteworthy feminists in France from the late Sixties onwards. With Iona Wieder they founded the video collective Les Insoumuses (neologism, in translation Disobedient Muses) in 1975.

Seyrig’s directional debut was Ines (1974), a short documentary calling for the release of Ines Romeu, a Brazilian activist, who was incarcerated in the infamous “House of Death” of the Military Junta. she survived after years of torture and rape. And went on to meet Seyrig in the mid 1970s, when they bought one of the first Sony Portapak video cameras in France – the first was purchased by Jean-Luc Godard.

The duo staged and filmed a protest at the grave of the Unknown Soldier, pointing to the repressed fate of the even more unknown soldier’s wife and celebrating her with a massive arrangement of flowers. Seyrig also signed the ‘343 Manifesto’, admitting to have had an abortion, which was illegal until 1975 in France. Her apartment was the setting for a short film about the technique of abortion. But her first film project with Roussopoulos was Maso et Miso go Boating (1975), an ironic innuendo for Rivette’s Celine et Julie go Boating, in which different generations of women talk about their sex lives.

One woman in her sixties actually accused the younger generation of being lazy: “When it was over, I jumped up and down, I never needed an abortion”. Seyrig was also a member of the MLF (Movement de Liberation de Femmes).  

There are some illuminating TV clips from the mid-Seventies with the then Minister for Women, Françoise Giraud, former editor of Vogue and later co-founder of L’Express. Giraud supports a male journalist who states, “misogynists make the best lovers.” Later, Giraud sent a delegation to the filmmakers, urging them not to use her comments in the documentary. “Sois Belle et tais toi” (Be Pretty and shut up, 1981) followed, the two interviewing famous actresses like Jane Fonda who had been victims of “the male gaze”. Fonda reports“I did not recognise myself after my first make-up session in Hollywood – I was one from a long production line. They even asked me to have my jaw broken, so that I would have hollow cheeks. Oh yes, and a nose job too, because ‘my nose was too long, to be taken seriously in a tragedy”.

Maria Schneider makes reference to the friendships between male directors and actors on the set; whilst women often had nobody to engage with. Francois Truffaut confesses that “women end up scaring men”. There is also an amusing clip with a well-known chef seen declaring that there are no woman chefs or food critics, because women “are unsuitable” for these professions. In a short video, Seyrig and Roussopoulos filmed the protestations of sex workers who had to hide in a church to avoid being imprisoned by the police. The filmmakers were also part of the many groups who filmed the famous LIP strike, where women openly challenged the male Union for the first time.

In 1976 the two filmmakers produced “Scum’, the radical manifesto of early feminist Valerie Solanas from 1967. But the greatest achievement of Wieder, Seyrig and Roussopoulos was the foundation of The Centre Audiovsiuel de Simone de Beauvoir in 1982, an institution which has grown since to be one of the leading centres of Feminism worldwide.

Clips from many of Seyrig’s most famous features enliven this informative film that celebrates the founders of French Feminism. An excerpt from Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” is particularly relevant AS

NOW ON MUBI

       

Farewell to the Night (2019) *** Berlinale 2019

Dir: André Techiné | Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Kacey Mottet Klein, Oulaya Amamra, Stephane Bak, Kamel Labroudi, Mohamed Djouhri, Amer Alwan, Jacques Nolot | Drama, French 91’ 

Catherine Deneuve always gives star quality to her films but she feels rather miscast here as a horse trainer and almond farmer who finds out her grandson has been radicalised. 

Farewell to the Night is rather a bland film that makes nothing of the incendiary dramatic potential of the jihadist plot line. Instead it plays down the affaire to focus on the beauty of the story’s rural surroundings in Techiné’s French Pyrénees birthplace where the almond blossoms are in full flower and a magical solar eclipse takes place in the opening scene. All this contrasts with the outrage of the homegrown jihadist movement and its protagonists Alex (Mottet Klein) and his childhood sweetheart Lila (Oulaya Amamra) who are also discovering first love. Clearly this is a film for all the family, and Techiné directs with a paternalistic eye. 

Alex’s radicalisation has already taken place when the film begins, so we feel little engagement with his character and the reasons for his becoming a jihadi, and this could have enriched the storyline, particularly if young people are the film’s intended audience. It’s worth noting that Both Alex and Lila have dysfunctional backgrounds. His mother died in an accident and he blames his father, who has moved to Guadaloupe with his new family. The trauma has affected his schooling in Toulouse but he comes across as a cocky and committed young man with a clear determination to make a future with Lila, and has converted to Islam to please her. Deneuve plays Muriel with a haughty stiffness and lack of conviction. She runs the farm and equestrian school with her North African business partner Youssef (Mohamed Djouhri), but feels more at ease in the company of a young Syrian ex-fighter (Kamel Labroudi as Fouad) who comes looking for work and, despite his criminal background, actually turns up trumps. Techiné and Lea Mysius co-script this father facile affair that once again highlights the director’s keenness for stories about French-Arab culture. And he adopts a non-judgemental and rather procedural approach to Alex and Lila’s plan to join forces with ISIS recruiter Bilal (Stephane Bak), to raise finance for their jihadist cause. This involves raising a substantial amount of cash for weapons and equipment, and Alex steals part of the money from Muriel. He claims that this is kosher as she is technically an infidel. But their plan will go awry in the rather tame finale. 

There’s a clunkiness to the film’s flow particularly noticeable in the lunch scene which abruptly cuts into a clandestine jihad meeting, where Alex sports white robes and takes orders from an Islamic preacher (Amer Alwan, who collaborated with Techine on the storyline), while Lila dons a hijab for the first time. Techine softens her character by giving her a job as a gentle carer in a nursing home – one of the most caring you’ll probably ever have occasion to meet. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | SPECIAL GALA 2019

Synonyms (2019) **** Berlinale 2019 | Golden Bear | FIPRESCI prize winner

Dir: Nadav Lapid | Cast: Tom Mercier, Quentin Dolmaire, Louise Chevillotte | 120′ Israel

Israeli auteur Nadav Lapid’s third feature is an incendiary portrait of psychological trauma. The trauma of a man on the run from himself. It also works as a migrant’s story, and follows an exiled Israeli soldier who fetches up in Paris determined to forget the past and forge a new future. There’s nothing new about the expat-in-Paris plot line but Lapid brings a refreshing physical energy to his drama making it absurdist and at times exasperating, but ultimately entertaining and watchable, though slim on plot lines and a bit too long. 

Tom Mercier is the unpredictable hero in this chaotic affair and exudes a high octane energy that propels the film forward though its highs and lows. Some scenes are engaging, others ridiculous and banal. Mercier’s physical presence alone is a force to be reckoned with, well-muscled and lean he conveys violent unrest and also vulnerability, best in the scenes when he takes his clothes off, as he often does. In one burst of action, he jumps up on a table and does a striptease to Technotronic’s club anthem “Pump it Up”. In another he endures a humiliating nude photo shoot for an off-the-wall artist, who pays him cash. 

 We first meet Yoav making his way into in an empty apartment in the fashionable Rue Solferino. where he strips down and has a bath before realising his stuff has mysteriously disappeared in the night. Passing out in the cold, he is revived by wealthy bon-chic bon-genre neighbour Emile (Quentin Dolmaire) and his musician girlfriend, Caroline (Louise Chevillotte). They provide him with clothes and money, and become entranced with his exploits taking him under their wing. Yoav immerses himself in the French language, desperately seeking work and surviving on a spartan daily diet of pasta and tomatoes. The characters of Emile and Caroline are never really explored in great depth and are just there serve the narrative representing the ennui of the classic French upper class. Their bourgeois inertia contrasts with the young Israeli’s emotional turmoil. He’s a character straight out of the holocaust: a scalded cat who’s jumped out of a fire. And we feel for him, despite his unease. The film’s entire focus is on Yoav and his maniacal attempts to make something of himself, and obliterate the past. You can take the boy out of Israel, but you can never take Israel out of the boy, and his homeland remains very much a part of his subconscious, especially when he secures a job in security at the Israeli consulate, where the memories of past trauma are re-lived. It seems that Yoav can never escape from himself, and that’s the crux of the film. Wherever we go to find happiness and freedom, we will always come full circle to meet ourselves again. Yoav seems hellbent on raging a war against his own demons. But by finale sees him finding a modus vivendi in the French capital, so the film does have a happy ending of sorts. DoP Shai Goldman, heightens the frenetic energy in long medium close-ups and handheld camera sequences that push things to the limit making this a challenging watch. Lively music choices, high fashion and Paris itself all contribute to this daringly vibrant displacement drama. You may feel bewildered, but you will not feel bored. MT

BERLINALE FILM FEESTIVAL 2019 | GOLDEN BEAR & FIPRESCI PRIZE WINNER 2019

Systeme K (2019) **** Berlinale 2019

Dir/Wri/DoP: Renaud Barret | Doc | French, 94 min

The ‘Satan of Light’ is up to his tricks in the dusty streets of Kinshasa. Kids run away at the sight of horned head and ghastly grimace. 

Award-winning documentarian Renaud Barret (Victoire Terminus) records his encounters with Kinshasa’s street artists who entertain, shock and delight passers by with their quirky brand of street art using anything they can lay their hands on. This quirky and compelling film explores the very nature of creativity and ponders: Where does art begin? And where does it end?”

Known as Freddy, Béni, Kongo Astronaute, Strombo, Majesktik, Kokoko! and Geraldine among others, these people are creating sculptures, paintings, performances and installations in public spaces. Their work is not dissimilar to that found in the Tate or Saatchi galleries of London or MOMA, New York. They have yet to capture the attention of the international art world, but its only a matter of time. Their resourcefulness and passion to create is staggering to behold and reflects an extraordinary will to survive and a restless exuberance that is visually arresting and commendable, one of them explains: “living in Kinshasa is a performance in itself”

Materials include disused bullet cases, plastic waste, electronic scrap, smoke, monkey skulls, wax, blood, machetes and even their own bodies. This is not art for art’s sake but ground-breaking, urgent and politically satirical. Their themes are relevant, important and contemporary: exploitation, the privatisation of water, personal and national trauma and also, as a constant, the fascinating history of the Congo. 

Mastering his hand-held camera to brilliant effect in a stylish tour de force Barret shows us Kinshasa, a poverty-stricken metropolis where art is an unaffordable luxury and the location of a passionate and vibrant subculture claiming the city as its stage.

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 

Piercing (2018) Mubi

Dir.: Nicolas Pesce; Cast: Christopher Abbott, Mia Wasikowska, Laia Costa; USA 2019, 81 min.

Writer director Nicoals Pesce (Eyes of my Mother) has adapted Ryu Murakami’s novel for the screen – with the same success that Takashi Miike had with Audition (1999), another Murakami work. The Eyes of My Mother was shot in black-and-white, as an homage to the film-noirs of the 40s, PIERCING – while not as good – has its aesthetic roots in the ‘Giallo’, Italian crime/horror films of the 70s, and there are echoes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento, and some early Brian de Palma.

The beginning could hardly be more disturbing: new father Reed (Abbott) stares down at his newborn, holding an ice pick. Stressed out by the baby’s constant squealing, he feels like using it. It comes as a relief  then to mother Mona (Costa) that Reed takes a break and moves out: his destination is a hotel, where he rents a room with a plan in mind to murder a prostitute. Every step is prepared and written down in a red notebook. Just to make sure everything goes he rehearses the process, acting out all the gruesome manoeuvres, including de-capitation.

But a phone call changes everything: his first choice of call-girl is running late, and Reed cannot wait: he orders an immediate replacement. When Jackie (Wasikowska) enters the hotel room, Reed is hyped up for the kill – but then he finds Jackie in the bathroom, stabbing herself multiple times in the thigh. But that’s just the start of a wild night.

Piercing is deliberately artificial: everything is composed for impression, its appeal is purely visceral; even the tall apartment blocks – the camera searching out illuminated windows – are not real. Jackie’s room is a composition in red and brown, a mausoleum of shadows dappled with light. She retains her sense of enigma: “I want you to wear my skin”, which also is ironic, because Jackie’s yen for sadomasochism is an obsession for both these characters.

There are flashbacks, filling us in on the childhood traumata they have suffered. Luckily, graphic violence is minimal, Piercing is much more L’Age d’Or than Slasher feature. Mona, in contrast to Jackie, is all mother and house wife – in the novel she bakes cookies – but Reed keeps her in the picture from the phone box. DoP Zack Galler creates a galaxy of effects which alone makes the film worth watching.

Music by Morricone and Simonetti (the latter’s score from Argento’s Tenebre) drives the atmospheric eeriness even more over the top; Wasikowska literally out-performing Abbott in the endgame of this dazzlingly dramatic psycho thriller: and the running time is just right for a spectacular B-picture with a morbid imagination. AS

ON MUBI

 

 

 

Breve Historia del Planeta Verde (2019) *** Berlinale | Panorama 2019

Dir: Santiago Loza | Drama: Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Germany | 90′
Santiago Loza was born in Cordoba, Argentina in 1971 where his edgy, award-winning dramas such as La Paz, Lips and Strange go down well with the arthouse crowd. There’s a Lynchian quality to his latest, a stunningly surreal story that revolves around Trans woman Tania who discovers her favourite grandmother has died peacefully after spending her final years with an alien. With two friends in tow Tania sets off across rural Argentina to bring the creature back to its origin. But when they arrive at Granny’s home in the depths of a petrified forest, the reality is even more bizarre than expected. Powerful childhood memories come flooding back to Tania. And the alien being is not the only surprise they encounter.
There are echoes of Amat Escalante’s 2016 feature The Untamed and even cult classic ET to this thrilling road movie that also works as a lyrical horror mystery. We never know what to expect. And Loza achieves this sense of discombobulation and dislocation with a mixture of magic realism, slo-mo camerawork, photo montage and an eerie electronic and ambient score that wafts us into the unknown depths of the dark continent, blending the commonplace with the utterly absurd, strange and uplifting: literally and metaphorically. Loza’s unique cinematic language and delightfully delicate visual style make this an ethereal experience. MT
BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | PANORAMA SECTION | 7 -17 FEBRUARY 2019

Flesh Out (2019) *** Berlinale 2019

Dir.: Michela Occhipinti; Cast: Verida Deiche, Amal Oumar, Aichetou Najim, Sidi Chiglay; Italy/France 2018; 94 min

Governments in the Western world are desperately urging people to lose weight. Not so in Africa. In her second feature Italian filmmaker Michela Occhipinti (Letters from the Desert) travels to  Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott where it turns out that Islam is at the root of the situation. And once – as in FGM – the matriarchs are in control. Occhipinti uses a non-professional cast to explores the conflict between Verida and a repressive tradition with lyric poeticism.

Young beautician Verida (Deiche) is expected to gain a great deal of weight so she will meet the requirements of her arranged marriage to Amal. Verida’s husband-to-be Amal (Oumar), is well off and drives a Mercedes, the usual car in North Africa. Her best friend, Aichetou (Najim) dreams of going to Cairo, and is proud of her rudimentary English, which includes phrases such as ‘good-bye’ and ‘fuck-off’. Both young women are clearly enjoying their life in the 21st century, and Verida is readying .Bonjour Tristesse’. But three months before the wedding, Verida’s mother Sidi (Chiglay) makes her gain weight, as is customary in the region. The intention is to gain a more imposing stature, and lend gravitas to their new family. Verida is totally against the idea and starts taking pills to counteract the gain – but to no avail. She finally challenges her mother, kicking over a bowl of food. Her mother reacts by taking her off into the desert, where she is force fed a mixture of milk and cereal, the same method for producing foie gras. When Verida spews out the brew, the women force her to eat her own vomit, and Verida’s mother condones their actions. After arguing with Amal, she decides to take charge of her life.

Flesh Out has a languid pace, Occhipinti takes her time introducing the main protagonists. Verida and Aichetou are very close, they daydream and have pillow fights, and although work is the centre of their life, but the family elders think differently, the men’s wishes enforced by the senior women in their community. A worthwhile and well-crafted experience, enlivened by DoP Daria d’Antonio fabulous desert scenes. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019

Out Stealing Horses (2019) *** Berlinale 2019

Dir/Wri: Hans Petter Moland | Cast: Stellan Skarsgard, Bjorn Floberg, Tobias Santelmann, Jon Ranes, Danica Curcic | Norway, Drama, 122′

Stellan Skarsgard has retired to the Norwegian woods after the death of his wife, when the past comes back to visit him in Hans Petter Moland’s overwrought but enjoyable coming of age drama that revolves around a circle of guilt.

Nature and breathtaking-taking landscapes dominate a tale that opens in the small cosy cabin where Trond spends his days reflecting on the past and the fragility of memory and loss. Leavened with gentle humour this complex and evocative story sashays back and forth from the 1940s until 1999, adapted from a novel by renowned Norwegian writer Per Pettersen.

Trond’s rural idyll soon ends when he comes across his neighbour Lars (Bjorn Floberg), and he  recognises him from his youth. In flashback the teenage Trond (Jon Ranes) is spending the summer with his timber merchant father (Tobias Santelmann) in another remote part of the woods. Trond also strikes up a friendship with a troubled boy called Jon (Sjur Vatne Brean) who feels responsible for the death of his young brother, killed in a freak accident the previous day. His adolescent curiosity provides the subtext for a sexual awakening that permeates this visually stunning film. And this comes to a head when he meets Jon’s mother (Danica Curcic) at the family funeral, and later at a local event. But his fantasies are interrupted when he discovers, to his chagrin, that his father is having a full blown affair with Jon’s mother, and has been since the two were in the resistance movement together. Another tragedy then takes place during a logging session on the river. Moving the freshly cut timber downstream to be sold in Sweden, Jon’s father is badly injured. From thereon the two men’s animosity towards each other seethes in a drama more interested in atmosphere and surroundings than in creating a dramatic and suspenseful storyline.

Trond is the only character whose arc feels developed and convincing. And Skarsgard and Ranes really flesh out his character in a meaningful way, both bringing a brooding  intensity to this thoughtful but troubled man. The scenes they inhabit are meaningful, the rest if just pretty pictures for over two hours. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | SILVER BEAR FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT 2019

 

 

Ghost Town Anthology (2019) **** Berlinale 2019 | Interview

Dir/Wri: Denis Côté | Fantasy Drama | Canada, 97′

Auteur Denis Côté explores the aftermath of tragedy in remotest Quebec where the supernatural coalesces with the everyday lives of a blighted rural community.

Well known for his off-piste forays into Canadian backwaters Ghost Town most reassembles his Locarno Golden Leopard winner Curling (2010). There are also tonal echoes of his debut Drifting States, and even Xavier Dolan’s Tom a la Ferme, which was visited by a similar existential angst. Cote bases his story on the novel by Laurence Olivier, who also co-wrote the script. Silence reigns throughout the film apart from an occasional droning sound which adds to the doleful sense of gloom.

Ghost Town Anthology is an unremittingly bleak affair scratching at the edges of horror but settling instead for a mournful mood throughout; its dysfunctional characters stuck in the icy grip of inertia. When Simon Dubé drives his car at full throttle into a wall of cement, the entire population clings together, while a vortex of wind and snow rages through their flatlands home of Irénee-les-Neiges, a place of 200 odd people.

And odd is the operative word. After the crash a handful of kids play around the wreckage, wearing masks reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s Scream. They are the recurring human motif throughout the film, their identity revealed in the finale. At the funeral chirpy mayor Diane Smallwood (Diane Lavallée) fronts up vehemently despite the mood of despair, determined to raise the morale of her townsfolk with a firm belief in allegiance. “my door is always open”. But in vain. Angered by an offer of bereavement support from the local council, she reacts with thinly veiled hostility when the Muslim therapist arrives in the shape of Yasmina (Sharon Ibgui).

Simon leaves behind a family of three: his mother Gisele (Josee Deschenes) and father Romuald (Jean-Michel Anctil) are numbed by the grief and gradually go their own separate ways, suffering in silence. Simon’s look-a-like brother Jimmy (Robert Naylor) is left in state of shock. A coy George and Mildred style couple – Louise (Jocelyne Zucco) and Richard (Normand Carriere) – offer tea and sympathy to timid live-alone single Adele (Shelley Duvall lookalike Larissa Corriveau) who Richard describes as “a few lightbulbs short of a chandelier”. But her fears seem valid enough: she heard thuds and whispering voices in their house, and ends up suspended by own disbelief. Pierre (Hubert Proulx) owns the village bar and wants to keep his partner happy by offering to do up a dilapidated house at the end of the street, until they discover it was the scene of a brutal murder years earlier. And soon the regular appearances of random figures in the gloaming seem to point to the existence of ghosts from the past. A handheld camera conveys the unstable nature of the experience, but also the ephemeral quality of life.

Jimmy actually sees Simon at close quarters by the ice hockey pitch. Yet he has visited his embalmed body in its temporary morgue, awaiting burial, come the thaw. Romuald picks up a hitchhiker who bears a striking resemblance to his son. Adele also sees one of the masked children surrounded by static figures in the distance. There’s nothing baleful or malevolent about these people, lending them further credibility in the scheme of things. And their low key presence seems to lend credence to the Christian belief that the dead are always amongst us. Despite the bleakness that’s a comforting takeaway. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | IN COMPETITION

 

 

 

 

God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya (2019) ** Berlinale 2019

Writ/Dir: Teona Strugar Mitevska | Drama, Macedonia 100

Teona Strugar Mitevska’s fifth feature sets off with an intriguing concept and title but gradually peters out unable to maintain its initial momentum. All the themes are worthy and in place: Petrunya is overweight, unmarried and still living at home with her parents in her late thirties. Her masters degree in history is no help to finding a proper job.

Petrunya is not short of gutsy self-belief , largely due to her indulgent father who always supports her. But her traditional mother wants her to marry, and even serves her breakfast in bed. The possibilities for romance seem thin on the ground in this rural backwater and her meeting with a young police office also fails to ignite. 

Virginie Saint-Martin captures the grim realities of modern life in the drab riverside location of Štip, to the south east of capital Skopje, where Orthodoxy dominates – along with the men of the village. When Petrunya secures an interview at a local factory the owner first makes a pass and then insults her when rejected. On her way home she dives into the river to retrieve a wooden cross that conveys luck when caught as part of the religious men-only ceremony. Petrunya then makes off with the cross and the ensuing ruckus plays out in a skimpy narrative that turns on the question of whether religion or law is more important in Macedonia.  But this debate quickly loses steam – and our patience – due to an underdeveloped script, making promising lead Zorica Nusheva’s role all the more difficult. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019

37 Seconds (2019) *** Berlinale 2019 | Panorama

Dir.: Hikari; Cast: Mei Kayama, Misuzu Kanno, Shunsuke Daito, Makiko Watanabe, Minori Hagiwara; Japan 2019, 115 min.

Award-winning short-filmmaker Hikari has directed, written and co-produced her first feature 37 Seconds, a passionate but sometimes cloying portrait of cerebral palsy sufferer Yuma. Confined most of the time to a wheelchair, she is at the mercy of an over-protective mother who is afraid of being left behind, should her daughter gain independence.

Yuma (Kayama) is a gifted Manga artist whose work is exploited by her cousin Sayaka (Hagiwara), passing Yuka’s drawings off as her own and paying her a pittance in return. Yuma’s mother Kyoko (Kanno) is only interested in keeping her daughter under her own control, giving her no room to develop. Yuka’s father is absent, we learn later, when Yuka is visiting her twin sister Yuka in Thailand, that Kyoko has burned his letters and drawings to Yuma. She rebels and sends her portfolio to another publishing house where she is advised by the female editor, to have a sexual experience first if she wants to draw her Manga adventures. Yuma sets off to the Red Light district of Tokyo, hiring a male prostitute to have sex with – an experiment which goes wrong. She then meets sex workers Mai (Watanabe) and Toshiko (Kumashino) who take care of her, the latter travelling with her to Thailand to meet Yuka. Although Kyoko has tried to cut Yuma off from everyone but Sayaka, she has gradually come to terms with her daughter being a successful, independent human being, despite her disability.

The acting is impressive, particularly Kayama (who in real life is a social worker for cerebral palsy sufferers), and Kanno, who excels in her portrait of an overbearing mother, interdependent with her daughter. DoPs Stephen Blahut and Tomoo Ezaki enlivens the film with some impressive panorama shots of Tokyo and the Thai countryside, and always finds new angles to show Yuma’s fight for independence. But Hikari’s script is often too simplistic and far-fetched in her portraits of the altruistic sex workers. 37 Seconds (the time Yuma failed to breathe after being born) suffers also from a self-indulgent running time, but the rosy-coloured happy ending would have made Hollywood proud. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | PANORAMA

   

   

Hellhole (2019) **** Berlinale 2019

Dir.: Bas Devos; Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Willy Thomas, Hamza Belarbi, Lubna Azabal, Mieke de Grotte; Belgium/Netherlands 2019, 87 min.

Bas Devos is back with another hybrid feature, a vision of urban anxiety and alienation. The feature works as an installation where actors represent Brussels’ lost souls, very much like his 2014 Berlinale winner Violet. 

Inspired by the Brussels’ subway bombings of March 2016 Devos shows us a world out of synch. Often the images break down totally: we get a black screen. Other intervals include long shots of the skies. We watch young immigrants from the Middle East, at school and playing football. “Brussels is called the Jihadi capital of Europe. It would be better to bombard us”. One of the youngsters is Mehdi (Belarbi). He lives with his parents and two younger siblings on a council estate. His older black sheep of the family Ahmed Ahmed puts him in a no-win situation: stealing their grandmother’s jewellery, so he can pay his debts. Mehdi resists. Another bewildered soul Samira (Azabal) makes the only spoken statement of the entire feature the rest are elliptical images: “Violence for me used to be pixels on TV, now I can feel that I can touch it”.  

Meanwhile, Wannes is in a permanent state of angst, unable to get hold of his son Boris, a fighter pilot stationed in the Middle East. He tries to reach him via Skype, but the connection always breaks down. In the Mall, the brutalist architecture and cement walls close in on the shoppers creating a claustrophobic hell. Wannes has a sister, Els (de Grotte), whose husband is dying. The doctor alleviates his last hours of life. The siblings share an unspoken closeness. But closer still is his German Shepherd, who sleeps on his bed. 

Alba (Rohrwacher) is convincing as a vulnerable woman with an eating disorder. Working as a translator with the EU, she is having a break from her fiancée who lives in Rome. Alba picks up a one-night stand on a strobe-lighted dance floor, and sends him away after sex. She knows her fiancée will do the same. When she has faints at work, the fear of something sinister leads her to ask Wannes for advice, but is not convinced she has brain tumour. “The internet says so”. 

It turns out that Mehdi couldn’t find the jewellery – or at least that’s what he tells Ahmed in the Mall. He sits down depressed as two armed soldiers tell him to “keep his backpack close to his body”. At the end Wannes gets a long message from Boris explaining his job: “All images are stored and filed away. There is nothing more to it”. The camera circles a fight plane, like a commercial.

Hellhole unfurls in the city’s drab interiors. Often we get still photos – humans, seem secondary, mostly talking behind glass, in disjointed conversations. Breath-taking and original, Hellhole is like the portrait of a space station, run by aliens, as humans become more and more impersonal. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019

 

A Private War (2018) ****

Dir.: Matthew Heinemann; Cast: Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Tom Hollander, Stanley Tucci; UK/US 2018, 110 min.

As bio-pics go, Matthew Heinemann City of Ghosts) makes a decent stab at showing the ambivalence of his courageous real life heroine, this case American-born war correspondent Marie Colvin (1956-2012). Strangely enough, it’s not the war scenes that look artificial, but the scenes of Colvin’s private life that sometimes look downright clumsy. But Rosamund Pike’s brilliance as Colvin overshadows everything.

Bookended by scenes from Homs (Syria), where Colvin was targeted and killed by Syrian forces in 2012, just after giving a passionate report about the Assad’s Syrian genocide, Heinemann goes about the last twelve years in Colvin’s life with a parallel montage of her private and professional life. Having lost an eye covering the war between the Tamil Tigers and the Government in Sri Lanka in 2001, she returned to London to receive the Foreign Reporter of Year award for her work at The Sunday Times, whose editor Sean Ryan (Hollander) is featured thoughout the narrative as an personal friend. (The real Colvin was married twice to Patrick Bishop, and to war correspondent Juan Carlos Gummuccio, who killed himself). After discovering the mass graves of POWs from Kuwait in Iraq, meeting freelance photographer Paul Conroy (Dornan) and reporting from Marjah in Afghanistan, Colvin had a mental breakdown, and sought help for PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). A wealthy new lover (Tucci) offered her a way out, but she returns to work  with Paul and does one of the last interviews with Mohamed Gaddafi, whom she had met as a very young journalist, before her last assignment in Homs.

Based on the Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner and written by Arash Amel, Private War shows Colvin as having an addictive personality: to alcohol (since the age of fifteen), nicotine and war, but not necessarily in that order. The recurring images of the horror she witnessed – one aspect of PTSD is that these images are not ‘stored’ in the part of the brain where normal memories reside, but have ‘intruded’ in the here and now – making everything worse. Colvin was afraid of growing old – perhaps even more than of dying young. She had an image of herself that she needed to defend and save at all cost. And wanted to filter out the horrors of war, for her readers. But she was also aware of the nature of these readers: a pampered Western audience, ready to cry and give donations, but then equally prepared to forget and return to the safety of their lives. Colvin suffered from these contradictions as much as she suffered from her own: she wanted to make a difference, but at times she could only function with the help of drugs and casual sex – “I always end up with the psychopaths”. But she was a noble warrior, and deserves to be remembered. Heinemann got it just right: A private War is not a monument, but a tribute. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 16 February 2019

 

My Name is Julia Ross (1945) ****

Dir: Joseph H. Lewis; Wri: Muriel Roy Bolton, Music Mischa Bakaleinikoff, Art Director Jerome Pycha Jr | Cast: Nina Foch May Whitty George Macready Roland Varno Anita Bolster Doris Lloyd | Noir thriller US, 64’

Joseph H Lewis’ tautly tense psychological melodrama runs for just over an hour, yet every minute is packed with seconds with Muriel Roy Bolton’s clever script adapted from Anthony Gilbert’s novel The Woman in Red about a decent girl down on her luck who falls into the clutches of a Machiavellian mother and her disturbed son. 

My Name Is Julia Ross immediately secured Joseph Lewis a place in the noir firmament, and was soon to be followed by A Lady Without Passport and Gun Crazy in 1950; Cry of the Hunted (1953); and The Big Combo in 1955.

The premise is slightly outlandish, but suspend your disbelief and you’ll enjoy this Noirish thriller with its eclectic international cast. Dutch actor Nina Foch plays a secretary who secures a live-in position working for a wealthy English dowager (Dame May Whitty) with a dark secret. It soon transpires that Julia (Foch) has been employed under false pretences, as a shoe-in for the dowager’s dead daughter-in-law. She then wakes the following morning to discover she has been heavily drugged and transported to a Cornish seaside mansion where she is now Mrs Marion Hughes, and married to the dowager’s son Ralph. But that’s not the end of a waking nightmare that sees her trapped by circumstances beyond her control. 

Foch makes for a vulnerable yet stylishly foxy heroine decked out in Jean Louis’s elegant designs. Meanwhile, Burnett Guffey’s subtle lighting and chiaroscuro shadow-play spices up the sinister nature of this sinuous English-set psychodrama. Whitty gives a chillingly commanding turn as the mother, and Macready is suitably convincing as her abusive son. In this first class B movie, Joseph H. Lewis shows that great results can be achieved with a modest budget. MT 

OUT ON Bluray 18 FEBRUARY COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS 

Baracoa (2019) *** Berlinale | Generation 2019

Dirs: Pablo Briones, Sean Clark, Jace Freeman | Writer: Pablo Briones | Docudrama: 89′

This freewheeling cinema vérité portrait of Cuban boyhood soft pedals around the stamping ground of two fresh-faced youngsters in the sultry side-streets and playgrounds of Pueblo Textil. Exotic birds croon and dogs bark but the boys chatter has no urgency as they hand out together and idly shoot the breeze.

Free from mobile phones, computers and even football play is important for heathy brain development. And Baracoa serves as a refreshing look at how kids use their creativity while experimenting and developing their imagination, physical and emotional dexterity. Language develops as they learn to engage and interact with each other in the world around them, letting their minds run free. Sometimes their banter is full of insults: “you actually look like a lizard” says Antuán. “You actually shaved your legs, like faggots do” retorts Leonel. Clearly they have a rich inner life and are not as innocent as they look. And these amusing interludes and Jace Freeman’s fluid camerawork and limpid visuals make this an enjoyable watch for any audience.

Antuán and Leonel are roughly the same age, 13. Lithe and tanned by sunny days in the Cuban outdoors, to our sophisticated eyes they seem much younger. Antuán is the dreamer and Leonel his loyal sidekick. They discover a dead blackbird, and experiment with fire, quite literally – in the abandoned ruins of a disused swimming pool, dreaming of a day on the beach, but not quite sure how to get there. Theirs is a simple, impoverished life – but rich in adventures and wonder. And infinitely preferable to some rain-soaked gaming arcade in the Northern hemisphere. At the end of the summer Antuán will move to Havana, so these holidays may be the last they spend together. MT

BERLINALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | GENERATION 2019 | 7-17 FEBRUARY  2019

 

 

Monsters (2019) *** Berlinale | Forum 2019

Dir: Marius Olteanu | Drama, Romania

In a digitalised age of social media reality and perception drift further and further apart. In his feature debut Romanian writer-director Marius Olteanu challenges our perceptions by questioning the gap between who we really our and the persona we project onto others. It’s a fascinating and timely premise and one that Olteanu treats cinematically and quite inventively in this often claustrophobic drama that follows a married couple during 24 hours in the capital Bucharest. It also explores the clash between traditional social values in this predominantly Catholic country and individual needs, particularly sexual desires. And the increasing intolerance of minorities.

Dana and Arthur are a popular couple who have been together for almost 10 years. Yet individually they struggle with their inner demons and have few close friends. It’s almost as if they can only function by keeping up a strict facade of togetherness when what they really want is something quite different. And accepting this with tolerance and understanding might actually be a greater form of love than that defined by sexual expression.

Using the academy ratio and filming in intimate close-up, often from the confines of tight spaces, such as the taxi where Dana spends the night while Arthur wanders around the city and pursues various encounters, this is a drama that focuses closely on its lead characters and doesn’t let them get away from their own, often uncomfortable feelings of angst, frustration, ennui and even coiled paranoia. Structured in three parts: one focuses on Dana, one on Arthur and the third examines their joint dynamic. The first two parts play out on the same night, when the couple, avoid going home, preferring to spend the night in the company of strangers. Dana goes to the length of paying a taxi driver to stay with her in the car for the night, while Arthur wanders around the city and decides to meet a man through a dating app. However, the following day, as much as they have tried to avoid it, they must now face reality. There is a voyeurish quality to this arresting first feature that allows us space for our minds to wonder what is means to love and to be free to explore and find satisfaction, while quietly contemplating a couple in a crisis of their own in  contemporary Romania. MT

BERLINALE 2019 | Forum Section | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019

Mektoub my Love: Canto Uno (2017) ***

Dir; Abdellatif Kechiche (France, Italy, 180’, o.v. French s/t English/Italian) starring Shaïn Boumedine, Ophélie Bau, Salim Kechiouche, Lou Luttiau, Alexia Chardard, Hafsia Herzi

Scripted by regular collaborator Ghalya Lacroix, Abdellatif Kecihiche’s follow-up to Blue is the Warmest Colour is a big-screen version of François Begaudeau’s novel. It doesn’t warrant its three hour running time, and few filmmakers would have got away with such a sparse narrative: but somehow Kechiche succeeds, always re-inventing the plot, keeping the audience on board with hypnotic images – helped by the moody mellow camerawork of DoP Marco Graziaplena.

Kechiche returns to  Sête, where he filmed The Secret of the Grain, for this sensuous celebration of sex and food. Amin (Boumedine), a young scriptwriter from Paris, arrives in the Languedoc fishing town to join his large family who run a restaurant. He visits his friend Ophélie (Bau), whose husband is serving the French navy which does not prevent her from indulging in a passionate affair with Toni (Kechiouche), one of Amin’s family. Amin himself is very reserved, preferring the company of girls like Charlotte (Charchard), who are committed to a relationship. Amine’s mother, played by the director’s sister, always reminds him to go out to the beach. Amin follows her advice, falls in love with Jasmine (Luttiau), but is too shy to make headways, whilst Toni takes what he gets – which is lot, to the chagrin of Ophélie. Whilst his friends – Tony again in the forefront – are celebrating lust and alcohol in a nightclub, Amin photographs the birth of two lambs.

The critics at Venice have all remarked how Kechiche (again) sees women from a man’s perspective, which is fine; but they forget that in many scenes women prefer their own gender when dancing and flirting, and are geting on perfectly well without men. Mektoub, meaning destiny – or thereabouts, is certainly not on the same level as Blue, but it celebrates youth, summer, food and sex; and has in Amin, a very convincing counterpart to Toni’s always-ready stud. Mektoub is like a self-indulgent extended holiday: it could be edited down to a long luxurious weekend break, without losing out on the positive benefits. A perfect Valentine film – or maybe not. AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS from 16 FEBRUARY 2019

The Golden Glove (2019)

Dir: Fatih Akin | Drama | Germany, 2019 | 102’

There are brief echoes of Reiner Werner Fassbinder’s Fear Eats the Soul in the opening scene of The Golden Glove. This schlocky sortie into the squalid life of a serial killer also brings to mind Ulli Lommel’s cult thriller The Tenderness of Wolves. But that’s where the comparison ends. These films offered another string to their bow. Akin’s thriller just revels in its own ghastliness, descending into a desolate world of bars and pick-up joints where in 1970s West Germany, Fritz Honka was a voracious sexual predator, butchering his victims at will.

Chilling it is not, nor remotely terrifying. The true story plays out as a pointlessly gory procedural recording each death with sensationalist fervour. Blood, gore, body parts and disgusting lavatories – you’ll laugh and shake your head at the mindless depravity of it all. 

Rather than explore the psychological profile of this demon, Akin just pictures the gruesome daily grind of Fritz Honka, a Hamburg psychopath who kept dismembered body parts of prostitutes in his attic flat in the red light district of St Pauli. When visitors complained about the smell, Honka blamed his Greek Gästarbeiter family that lived downstairs “and didn’t work”. There’s no attempt to humanise the murderer or to probe his inner life or backstory. Honka remains a cypher from beginning to end.

This is a film that doesn’t serve anyone – least of all its victims. It takes a swipe at racism and ageism but forgets to condemn misogyny. But as the credits roll, the films suddenly turns sentimental offering up poignant portraits of the real women who died – as if suddenly coming to its senses in a bid to do the right thing. We go home without understanding or clarification. A tawdry tribute to those who died.@MeredithTaylor

NOW ON MUBI

 

The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea (2019) *** Berlinale 2019

Dir: Syllas Tzoumerkas | Cast: Angeliki Papoulia, Youda Boudali, Hristos Passalis, Argyris Xafis | Drama | Greec | 120′

There is a sisterhood in Greece, according to Tzoumerkas. This hysterically overwrought melodrama takes place in a swampy eel-farming backwater in the west of Greece, where two woman live out their own personal trauma. Elisabeth is an alcoholic single-parent police chief, Rita (co-writer Boudali) is the subdued soul sister of a local ‘rock star’. They are brought together after the tragic death of a lounge singer. Worn out and world-weary Elisabeth is neverless as sharp as a nail. Drinking heavily she smokes like a chimney throughout this lagubrious eel-themed affair.

Rita’s bullying brother Manolis (Hristos Passalis) is a slippery eel of another kind. He runs a nightclub where he uses her as a hostess to deal drugs through his establishment. Close to his mother he is also a pampered narcissist with dreams of international stardom. But his mistake is also to mock Mesalonghi in a song he sings at the club one night.

And it all ends in tears on the beach in the small hours. But not before bizarre bacchanalian orgies involving drugs, drinks and multiple orgasms enjoyed by Manolis and his friends. Rita is sadly drawn into this dysfunctional debacle and somehow Elisabeth tunes into her pain and decides to help her in the intense finale. Heavy stuff. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019

Acid (Kislota) (2019) **** Berlinale 2019 | Panorama

Dir: Aleksandr Gorchilin | Drama: Russia 97′

Russian actor turned director Aleksandr Gorchilin (The Student) steps behind the camera for this boldly cinematic and uncompromising look at contemporary Russia through the eyes of a group of friends in the capital, Moscow.

Don’t be misled by the title being a reference to the drug-infused times of the last century. The Acid of the title refers the corrosive liquid used by one of the group in his art sculpting studio. By way of experimentation, one of them idly decides to take a gulp of the substance  and ends up in hospital with a nasty burn. The acid in question also provides a nifty metaphor for the moral bankruptcy amongst these sybaritic young things, who are literally being eaten away from inside by their decadent lifestyle that indulges in a freewheeling, non-committal lifestyle – and of course, they blame their parents. As one of them quite rightly points out: “Our problem is that we have no problems”. Their days consist of a bit of yoga, computer work and aimless sex or dancing in the city’s ubiquitous nightclubs.

Gorchilin’s debut feature is more impressionist that narrative-driven, but there is a loose and engaging plot line at work: Sasha and Petya are your average young Muscovites drifting through their twenties dabbling in drugs, music and casual relationships. Sasha in particular feels disempowered by his lack of potential in any direction, and his recent break-up with Vika has left him diminished. He comes under more pressure when his mother comes to stay in the high-rise flat he shares with his grandmother. Naturally she knows better – and is also vegetarian – and she tries to instil confidence in her son while maintaining the moral high ground. But the suicide of one their friends provides the wake up call for them to wake up and smell the coffee, and make some definite plans for the future.

Pleasantly scoreless and elegantly framed and shot around Moscow, making great use of the city’s urban panoramas and stylish domestic interiors. Performances are strong, and Filipp Avdeev (Leto) makes a convincing Sasha bristling with indignation one minute and bewilderment the next. ACID provides another worthwhile snapshot of modern Moscow, not as bleak as the one we experienced in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless but quite desperate nevertheless, but a far cry from the gritty realism of Alekesy Balabanov. MT

BERLINALE 2019 | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019  | Winner of the debut concourse at the 2018 Kinotavr festival.

Earth | Erde (2019) **** Berlinale | Forum 2019


DIR: Nikolaus Geyrhalter | Austria | Doc, 115′

Austrian documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter explores man’s monstrous impact on our planet by examining seven places particularly under siege.

Geyrhalter is a deep thinker who takes a world view and paints on a grand canvas to convey his weighty themes. And although his topics are not always palatable or easy to digest. His concerns are basic yet far-reaching: migration (The Border Fence), Nature vs. Man (Homo Sapiens); health (Danube Hospital); food prodcution (Our Daily Bread) and the 24 hour society (Abendland). Standing back from his subject matter and quietly recording the facts, his ambivalence allows us time and space to consider and form our own ideas.

EARTH is his eighth feature length film in ten years. Divided into 7 chapters, it is another ambitious, immaculately crafted, high end experience, yet the people who inhabit the film are practical, sharing mundane thoughts and experiences as he films them in long takes in the centre of the frame. Then the screen opens up to vast panoramas and then aerial views of mines and construction sites in California’s San Fernando Valley, Fort McKay, Alberta); the Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy; Gyongos, Hungary; Carrara, Italy where the white marble comes from; Rio Tinto copper mines in Spain; and Wolfenbuttel, Germany. Gigantic machines crawl like behemoths on the face of the earth, digging and puncturing – not to mention the occasional explosion. It’s a hostile and even frightening sights as man plunders and probes.

Artistically and logistically bold, and ecologically troubling, the film is a mammoth endeavour. And non of the workers and experts who enliven this ecological study  with their comments admit to being largely ignorant of what they will find next as they scour and delve deeper and deeper into the earth’s core. An Italian worker in Carrara expresses his sorrow for taking giant blocks of marble away from its mountain home commenting:. Soon there won’t be anything left and our ancestors will have to move on the Moon.

The doc, divided into seven chapters of roughly fifteen minutes each, examines man’s devastating impact on the fabric of the plant Earth, endlessly chipping away and scar the landscape, Earth sees man taking over the natural environment, in contrast to Homo Sapiens that sees man’s claiming back its territory. But as the film wears on the ethical issues raised become more and more critical: “Are we a good species”? asks one expert. And one feels that the answer if possibly a clear “no”. We have fetched up on the planet and largely abused it for our owns ends. In the ‘Anthropocene’ era, our incessant intrusion on the natural environment seen through deforestation, mining and construction, together with the use of deleterious man-made materials such as plastic have no doubt led to climate change and pollution of the seas and nature.

There’s a surreal, rhythmic feel to this non-ruminative film. Geyrhalter acknowledges it all with a distant non-judgemental eye, more concerned with the labouring workers whose feint grasp of the apocalyptic enormity of their imprint often beggars belief in the scheme of things. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | FORUM 2019 

Öndög (2019) **** Berlinale 2019

Dir: Wang Quan’an | Cast: Dulamjav Enkhtaivan, Aorigeletu, Norovsambuu Batmunkh, Gangtemuer Arild | Mongolia 2019, 100′

Wang Quan’an has been developing his astonishing cinematic style since his Golden Bear success with Tuya’s Marriage in 2007. This slow-burning detective eco-thriller also plays out as a love story for the wide open spaces of Mongolia; for the animals that roam there and the people caught between their traditional rural existence and the birth of the digital age and growing industrialisation.

Öndög is a visual masterpiece that glows and mesmerises. Each frame a jewel box of resplendent colours and wild scenery in a tale touched with the same cheeky humour as his previous films, and enriched with inventive compositions: a dromedary appears like a burning alien set against a campfire in the obsidian darkness, a peasant woman on horseback shares her landscape with the far distant funnels of a factory, puffing smoke into the gloaming. The narrative, too, is compelling but the characters never take themselves, or their existence, too seriously, as we learn through their spare but insightful views on live in this distant outpost.

A naked woman is found dead in the middle of nowhere, in the Mongolian steppe. Overnight, a young and inexperienced policeman has to secure the crime scene. Since he is not familiar with the dangers on site, a local herder is sent to guard him and the body. This determined woman is known locally as a ‘dinosaur’ for her single status approaching her mid thirties. But she’s no fool and can handle a rifle – and scare away wolves from harming her herd: “Hunting is instinctive” we are told in the opening scene where the police car creeps slowly through a curtain of corn, the only traffic a herd of wild horses. The woman herder lights a fire and offers alcohol to the young policeman to keep him warm, and they grow closer. This is a vast, exotic and remote place but the habits and motivations are no different from our Western ones. Especially for the women. Öndög is a unique tale full of comic and awesome scenes  and surprising twists and turns; it also handles existential themes in an offhand but ravishing way. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019 | COMPETITION

Querência (2019) **** Berlinale 2019 | Forum

Wri/Dir: Helvecio Marins Jnr | Drama, Brazil, 90′

Helvecio Marins’ ravishing debut plays out in the style of a cinema vérité Western imbued with the unique customs and flavours of its picturesque locale in Minas Gerais between Brazilia and Rio de Janeiro on the Rua Urucuia.

Working with a cast of locals, Marins takes great pleasure in creating an atmosphere of bucolic bonhomie in a tale that unfolds langorously in the burnished landscapes of the pampa where God-fearing farm-manager Marcelo Di Souza has grown up raising his Nelore cattle – and he knows them all by name. Their characteristic boney hump and ability to resist blood-sucking insects is particularly suited to the arid planes of Brazil. Marcelo’s other love is the Temme Terra rodeo, where he often announces the competing riders with the ditty: “White, Black, Indian, we are all Brazilian”. This rural community prides itself in solidarity, and there’s little trust for the country’s political leadership. Marcelo is proud of his upbringing but sadly other members of his family have been tempted away by more lucrative work in Rio and Brasilia. And slowly it emerges through casual conversation with his friend Kaic Lima that not everything is as perfect in this rural idyll as Marcelo would have us believe. While he was at the rodeo one night, robbers broke into his  farm and around 100 of his precious cattle were stolen.

In Querência, director Helvécio Marins shows a melancholy hero whose life is in disarray, but who still remains true to himself. Directed with mature confidence and style Marins’ refrains from being overly dramatic and focuses on the textural richness of his subject matter who enjoy an attractive traditional lifestyle in the countryside, and one that’s fast disappearing. It’s a portrait that connects with the narrative of small communities threatened by survival all over the world. And like a fine garment Marins’ film is embellished and decorated with loving textural references and anecdotes that make the journey more involving and pleasurable that the rather enigmatic open final. Long takes and fluid camerawork captures elegant vignettes silhouetted against the darkness or a glowing campfire. And moments of loneliness often contrast with the hurly burly of the rodeo, scored by O Grivo’s award-winning music and bathed in the lush richness of the warm South.  MT

BERLINALE 2019 | FORUM | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019

*Nelore were originally brought to Brazil from India, where they got their name from the Nellore district in Andhra Pradesh.

América (2018) ***

Dir: Eric Stoll, Chase Whiteside | US, Mexico Doc, 78′

A parent in their final years requires patience and understanding – especially if they are controlling and curmudgeonly. Looking after elderly relatives is often a thankless and gruelling task with their challenging character traits all the more concentrated and their physical state diminished. Phrases such as “the squeezed middle” spring to mind and refer to those who are still sharing their homes with their adult kids while trying to care for their ageing parents. Filmmakers are exploring their experiences timely, all over the world – in a darkly comic way by Tom Browne’s (Radiator (2014) a quintessential English portrait of ageing, and tenderly in Chinese documentary Mrs Fang that won the Golden Leopard at Locarno 2017.

Fortunately Eric Stoll and Chase Whiteside have a comparatively easy time with their angelic grandmother América and this makes their debut as directors of this indie doc of her twilight days an enjoyable experience. There is only one tantrum, and that’s between the brothers themselves. Their mother is easy-going, equable and physically undemanding – they can even lift her fragile body from her bed each morning making ablutions a piece of cake – well maybe not such a choice metaphor!. The only setback is that her own son Luis has been put in prison for perceived neglect of his mother. Earning a living and looking after her on his won proved an impossible task for this rather independent man, and América fell out of bed and was injured.

In many European countries too, there are strict rules around the care of elderly people. And it’s very easy to find that your relative is suddenly taken under the wing of the authorities – and that includes their property and personal affects. But the directors deal with this unpleasant bureaucratic bungle in a very calm scene where they are witnessed coming to a mutual understanding with the authorities by crossing their palms with silver – in a very Mexican way. And Luis gets his freedom. But it always comes down to money – even in the closest of families, money is thicker even than blood, and can causes ructions and major fallouts. Stoll and Whiteside manage to heal their differences as seen in the touching finale.

The two directors are dancers and entertainers and they have brought a gentle rhythm and lightness of touch to their big screen debut – filmed over three years – along with the magical light and luminance of their native Mexico, where this film is shot in the tropical high-spot of Puerto Vallarta, home once to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor – but that’s another story. An affecting and deeply personal film – you almost envy their task, thanks to América. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8 FEBRUARY 2019

Boy Erased (2018) **

Dir.: Joel Edgerton; Cast: Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Joel Edgerton, Xavier Dolan, Britton Sear; USA 2018, 114.min.

After his promising first feature Gift, Joel Edgerton overreaches himself with this disjointed drama lacking the emotional heft that the weighty subject matter deserves. And while some scenes have impact, for the most part Boy Erased feels rather clunky and underwhelming.

Edgerton bases his narrative on the memoirs of Garrad Conley, one of 700 000 gay minors who have become the victims of the Christian Conversion Therapy, still practiced in 36 US states. Lucas Hedges plays teenage Jared Eamons coming to terms with being gay in his highly conventional Baptist family. His father Marshall (Crowe), is a bigoted Baptist preacher and his hairdresser mother Nancy (Kidman), too weak to stand up to him in an effective way. Just before he goes starts college, Jared breaks up with his girl friend on account of his sexual motivations and finds himself paying for his sins at a fundamental Christian Conversion Institution, run by the vicious fanatic Victor Sykes (Edgerton). And Jared is not alone is feeling the wrath of God in this insufferable hell hole, joined by one dimensional characters like John (Dolan) and Cameron (Sear), who does his best to be a pal, before committing suicide.

Both Crowe and Kidman ham it parlously, and Kidman is particularly unconvincing as Nancy. Hedges is the standout, doing his best to flesh out Jared’s character despite his crass lines. DoP Eduard Grau’s attempts to break down the stultifying atmosphere with some fine camerawork, but to no avail. Edgerton seems very much at home with the schlock-horror environment of his debut, but he shouldn’t be let loose – for a long time – with material which deserves a serious approach. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from Friday 8 February 2019

  

Freak Show (2017) ** Bluray/DVD release

Dir: Trudie Styler | Musical Drama | US | 97′

Actor, producer and now filmmaker, Trudie Styler works her contact list to great effect in cobbling together this middling teen-outsider musical powered by an impressive central turn from Alex Lawther. He plays Billy Bloom, a spirited and thoughtful young man who finds his gay identity at odds with his new surroundings when the family move from New York to a Red Neck southern state.

Thanks to DoP Dante Spinotti, Freak Show opens stylishly with a glamorous Bette Middler (as Muv) dancing with her little son (Eddie Schweighardt as the young Billy). The two are as thick as thieves but when Muv falls off the waggon, leaving Billy with Daddy ‘Downer’ (Larry Pine actually looks like Lawther), the movie soon loses its pacy allure, and dissolves into a series of musical vignettes that piece together Billy’s gradual empowerment from victim to victor. This schematic sprawl lurches from one scene to the next, hanging entirely on Lawther’s capable coat tails – and there are some striking rigouts thanks to Colleen Atwood and Sarah Laux – and Billy gets the best lines: “I just moved here from Darien Connecticut, the hometown of Chloe Sevigny”.

Intended for a teen audience Freak Show brings to mind Amy Heckerling’s 1995 comedy Clueless, and is adapted from James St James novel by Patrick J. Clifton and Beth Rigazio, who also wrote Raising Helen. Rather than finding her own distinct voice, Styler cherry picks liberally from reliable stalwarts such as Oscar Wilde and Plastic Bertrand whose quotes and music may not be known to young audiences.

After the conservative kids get used to Billy’s outlandish attire at his new school, he soon becomes friends with tousled haired dreamboat Flip Nelson (Ian Kelly), who he secretly fancies, meanwhile Flip is a bland but underwritten teen idol who remains unconvincing as a real person. Billy suffers a brutal homophobic attack that lands him in a coma and hospitalised, but this deepens his thing with Flip and he’s persuaded to run for homecoming Queen. There are some witty exchanges between Middler’s Muv and Dad’s housekeeper Florence (Celia Weston) who flags up the potential woes of Billy’s adolescent crush with Flip, and the gauche handling of this particular conflict resolution is one of the film’s many flaws. But these will likely slip off the radar of the film’s intended audience – it premiered at Berlinale’s 14K generation plus sidebar. See this for Alex Lawther and his star performance as Billy. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON BLURAY DVD

 

Burning (2018) Mubi

Lee Chang dong, Oh Jung mi | 143’ | South Korea | Drama 

Burning sees a rich guy and an honest worker compete for the affections of an enigmatic young woman in a mysterious slow burner that sizzles with a seductive spell and intoxicates for over two hours with its captivating storytelling and strikingly atmospheric score by Mowg.

‘A literary adaptation’ can sound warning bells but this standout psychological thriller breathes life into a short story from Haruki Murakami, adapted by Lee and his co-writer Oh Jung-mi who keep things deceptively simple yet alluring with a thematically rich ride set to Hong Kyung-pyo’s sumptuous cinematography, and enfused with themes of privilege, class, stifled creativity and revenge.

Lonely budding writer Jongsu comes from a poor and dysfunctional family background and works as a deliveryman near the North Korean border where he is unexpectedly invited into the bed of his former school friend Haemi who asks him to look after her cat during her upcoming trip to Africa. But she comes back with an unassuming new guy in the shape of Korean hotshot Ben (Yeun Steven), who seems rather too smooth to be true. But then the story becomes more complex. Jongsu (Yoo Ah-in) realises he’s really fallen for the charming but insecure Haemi (Jun Jong-seo), who remembers his harsh comments on her appearance back in the day, and has since had plastic surgery.

A loose friendship soon develops between the threesome, and for a while the story hums along gently mulling over its cultural references and glorying in its low key placid perfection. But all is not well in paradise and the tone takes a sinister turn after Ben confesses to being somewhat of a pyrotechnic with a penchant for greenhouse burning, and we witness this in a startling bonfire that blazes away in silence providing at unsettling visual counterpoint to the love story inflaming romantic desires when Haemi suddenly goes missing, and the two men become locked head to head in the violent clomax. With dynamite performances from the trio this is an elegantly crafted mystery thriller from a Korean master at the top of his game. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Young Picasso (2019) ****

Dir: Phil Grabsky | Doc | 90′

 

In the autumn of 1907 a young Spanish artist showed his Parisian friends a new painting. So horrified were they that he rolled it up and didn’t show it again until 1937. The artist was Pablo Picasso.

 

Picasso’s formative years are the focus of Phil Grabsky’s latest artist profile for Exhibition on Screen. Enlived by paintings and interviews with museum curators and experts, The Young Picasso has the benefit of the painter’s grandson Olivier Widmaier Picasso as a talking head, giving his impressions of the legend. The straightforward linear approach chronicles Picasso’s formative years from childhood to adulthood in a well-paced, absorbing and informative biopic that shows how the painter’s focus was the future, and his raison d’être was to be highly original.

 

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born into a close family in the Andalucian city of Malaga in 1881, but he would live in Barcelona, La Coruna and Paris during his lifetime, and those places very much informed his work. Somehow he never forgot the intense light of Southern Spain. In the final part of the 19th century Malaga was a city divided between the upper bourgeoisie and the working classes, a place where industry was falling behind its counterparts in the rest of Spain. But it was also an intensely artistic place and Picasso absorbed all those local influences along with the city’s rich and unique combination of Christian, Arabic and Jewish culture. His father Don Jose taught painting and was his son’s guiding light.  Picasso sketched from an early age and produced his first work ‘Twilight in the Port of Malaga”, aged 7.  Just before his tenth birthday, the family moved to La Coruna on the Atlantic Coast and this is where he began painting with oils. Although the family were to live in the Northern city for only 3 years, the stay was a major influence on his career, and here he would give up his main studies to focus on art, and particularly portraiture. His father soon abandoned his own interest in painting and gave Pablo all his brushes, and the boy began to sell his work from a small shop in the city centre, Calle Mayor.

 

But the heart of the art scene was really Barcelona. And so in his teenage years Picasso gravitated towards the Catalan capital where his talents broadened with contemplative works like “An Evening At Home” and a self portrait created in 1896. Although his canvasses “Science and Charity” (1897) and ‘The First Communion’ (1896) showed Picasso’s ability to paint in a formal traditional style, he soon started to develop a more eclectic and inventive bias once in Barcelona. This was a reflection not only of his own nature but also of the more exotic and even seamy side of life that the Catalan capital represented. He continued to perfect his technique for painting limbs and physical characteristics, and despite his small stature he was able to paint some quite large canvasses. Soon his family sent him to San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid where he discovered the Prado with classic artists such as Valasquez and Goya. But he soon found his way back to Barcelona. There politics soon entered the arena as he mixed with a lively community of young artists, and in February 1900 he made a breakthrough sharing an exhibition with the painters Ramon Casas and Rusinol. And it was his association with these artists that took him to Paris. His essentially realist style was in flux with works such as “Lola, the artist’s Sister” in the studio in 1900 when he was only 18. In the Autumn of that year one of his paintings was accepted for a Paris exhibition and he fetched up there at an artistically transformative time, with Montmartre already a Spanish artist colony in the capital. This was the first time Picasso really struggled in life, but he was ready to show his metal and finally to give his creativity and curiosity full rein. He dropped his father’s name Ruiz, and took his mother’s. Yo Picasso was born. A natty dresser he always wore matching underwear and socks and often a top hat. This was an exciting time to be in the city and the local galleries were full of Toulouse Lautrec and other new artists, and local society was richly dressed and passionate. “La Moulin de la Galette” (1900) and “The Dwarf”  (1901) both echoed the dream-like works of Klimt and Lautrec with dazzling tones of turquoise, red and green. Work became less focused on Spanish subjects and more on the local bourgeoisie at play. Impressionism entered the fray in the Vollard Gallery where many of his works were painted on cardboard. Money was tight as a 19 year old, and he lived an intense experience to make his way forward, sharing a small studio with his colleague Carles Casagemas (Germaine, at Night c1901). But they fell out over a woman called Germaine. Casagemas tried to shoot her dead in a bar but he ended up just killing himself, a tragedy which fuelled Picasso’s blue period hghlighted by works such as “Two Women in a Bar” (1902) and “Mother and Child” (1902), The symbolic work “The Tragedy/La Vie” serves as an allegory for both life and love. It was painted in Barcelona but very much looks back to his time in Paris with Casagemas . This was one of his first artistic periods that saw him search for an identity, symbolically dealing with themes such as death and poverty. He re-interprets his sources in a very personal way. During the blue period, Picasso dealt with serious themes but also small works that contained erotic subjects in local bars.

 

Picasso was an arch misogynist and has his first serious relationship was with Fernande Olivier when he moved in Spring 1904 to his new studio in Bateau Lavoir. He was – according to her – sweet, intelligent but also extremely jealous. He also had an ambivalence that made him charismatic. He would work late into the evening and night but resented his reliance on other people for money. His pink period (not much ‘pink’ but more referencing his love of the Circus) lasted roughly from 1904-06 and was epitomised in “Acrobat and the Harlequin” (1905) but he soon started to feel more positive about making money with works such as “Boy Leading a Horse”. He portrayed himself as the Harlequin and began a friendship with the French poet Apollinaire. In Spring 1906 he went to Spain to the remote Catalan village of Gosol with Fernande where he painted “The Harem” in 1906. This kicked off his geometric style and “Nude with a Pitcher” followed . At this point his work moves away from a representational approach and focuses on the subject itself. It was also during this time that he started work on the “Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907). Picasso claims “painting is not an aesthetic process, it’s a form of magic that interposes itself between us and the universe”. His present was a result of the past. This period he called called Primitivism. He wanted to create a new type of art. Fernande Olivier comments:”Picasso presented us with a way of the world which did not conform to what we had grown to expect of it” His faces became masks – aggressively stylised and ambitious – like nothing ever seen before. His next painting was a brothel scene involving 5 women and 2 men. The spectator becomes the voyeur but also involved in the scene. The figures are actually starring back and engaging with the viewer in an alarming and unprecedented way. Paradoxically, they are neither Misses but nor in Avignon. The title refers to a street in Barcelona where Picasso visited a brothel. The name is likely to have been given by a dealer later on in a bid to put a positive spin on the picture. “Les Demoiselles” was revolutionary, incorporating primitive non-Western elements in a traditional form of classic Venus. It represents a turning point in modern art and ushers in Cubism. But his friends hated it. In 1916 – a decade later – the painting was considered a success. Picasso had finally arrived at his objective. He was 35. MT

 

THE YOUNG PICASSO IS RELEASED through EXHIBITION ON SCREEN ON 5 FEBRUARY 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transnistra (2019) | **** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir: Anna Eborn | Doc, 93′

There’s a breezy insouciance to this slice of realism set in the tiny unrecognised state of Transnistra, which split from Moldova after the civil war in 1992. Atmospherically shot on gritty 16mm, it follows a group of close friends and their emotional ups and downs from the sultry days of summer to the bitterly cold winter. Technically the country doesn’t exist at all and that mood uncertainty is conveyed by Anna Eborn’s freewheeling approach to her narrative and a seductive occasional score of woozy jazz tunes and ambient sounds that convey a feeling of surreal dispossession. Far from the buzz of modern life and social media, they shoot the breeze and hang out amid crumbling Soviet buildings. You get the impression the Transnistrans don’t really care what happens now or in the future, beyond their secluded bubble, as long as they can enjoy life in this peaceful softly wooded wedge of land on the Black Sea south of Ukraine and North East of Romania.

There’s a still strong Soviet vibe to the infrastructure and Transnistra has its own police force, currency and army. And they make proud soldiers as we see them graduating from military school to the sounds of a full band and stage appearance, and there are congratulations all round. Russian is their language and the red and green flag sports a sickle but that’s as far as it goes. Eborn’s watchable, un-judgemental fourth feature portrays a happy little ‘country’ content to jog along proudly for as long as it can. And after all, love is still love wherever you are in the world. MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | 23 Jan – 3 Feb 2019 | VPRO BIG SCREEN WINNER

 

The Boys in the Band (1970) **** Bluray release


WDir: William Friedkin | Writer: Mart Crowley | Drama  | 118’

Fifty years ago, this milestone in Queer cinema The Boys in the Band was considered highly controversial, although in retrospect it’s seems rather quaint with Mart Crowley’s priceless dialogue making it all worthwhile (apart from the groundbreaking use of the C-word), particularly Leonard Frey’s Harold gets some caustic remarks.

William Friedkin would go on to make The French Connection a year later, and The Exorcist just after that (in 1973) but this is a beast of another colour and sees a group of gay men grow increasingly antagonistic after enjoying an alcohol fuelled party in a spacious Upper East Side apartment, especially after Harold arrives.

Based on Crowley’s play, and featuring the original cast, it stars a sterling selection of gay actors Kenneth Nelson, Peter White, Cliff Gorman and, of course, Leonard Frey. The play premiered off-Broadway in 1968, just as the gay rights movement was gaining momentum and aimed to portray a candid view gay life, although it sparked mixed reactions amongst the gay community for its negative stereotyping of limp-wristed and bitchy victims of their sexuality. William Friedkin’s faithful 1970 screen version, has become a cult classic. But when all is said and done, LGBTQ equality has pathed the way to a better acceptance of what went before, and the piece can now be appreciated for it depiction of an oppressed group of any kind, and is by turns brutally amusing, compelling and dark.

The film plays out as a chamber piece echoing its original scale. Led by the single Michael (Nelson), a Catholic alcoholic from Mississippi and set in his ostentatious bachelor pad. Michael is throwing a birthday party for his difficult friend Harold (Frey), who eventually turns up high, with a brilliantly bombastic monologue: “What I am, Michael, is a 32-year-old, ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy — and if it takes me a while to pull myself together and if I smoke a little grass before I can get up the nerve to show this face to the world, it’s nobody’s goddamn business but my own.”

Other guests include Donald (Combs), Michael’s ex who comes back to NY to visit his shrink.  Hank (Luckinbill) is a bisexual teacher  (Tuc Watkins), who’s now with photographer Larry (Prentice) although the relationship is strained by Larry’s promiscuity. Bernard (Reuben Greene) is the token black guy and seems the most brooding of the group. Into the party drops Michael’s straight college friend Alan (Peter White), who is on the verge of tears over his own failing marriage. His reluctance to leave nods to an ambivalence in his own sexuality, and hints that he might be hiding an uncomfortable truth from himself.

According to Friedkin, this was “one of the few films I’ve made that I can still watch”. Released 50 years after its Broadway debut – a year before the infamous Stonewall Riots – The Boys in the Band still has the power to shock. MT

NOW ON BLURAY FROM 11 FEBRUARY 2019 with interviews with Mark Gatiss, and commentary from William Friedkin himself | COURTESY OF SECOND SIGHT 

 

An Impossible Love (2018) ****

Dir.: Catherine Corsini; Cast: Virginie Efira, Niels Schneider, Jehnny Beth, Estelle Lescure; Belgium/France 2018, 135 min.

Best known for her Lesbian drama La Belle Saison director/writer Catherine Corsini’s screen adaptation of Christine Angot’s novel plays out like an historical thesis on feminism. Starting in the late 1950s in the small French town of Chateauroux, Corsini tells the story of a brief but passionate love affair that turns into a long-term war between Rachel and Niels. Their daughter Chantal will suffer tragically from her father’s contempt for her mother.

When Rachel (Efira), a clerk, meets the upper-middle class Niels (Schneider) they are attracted to each other. But it soon becomes clear he’s just interested in sex, while Rachel is an incurable romantic and falls for the “man of the world”. Niels leaves her, making it clear he’s not interested in marriage. But when Rachel gives birth to a daughter, Chantal (who is played by four actors during the film), Niels refuses paternity, so Rachel has to settle for “father unknown”, which hurts her much more than being left behind with Chantal. The two adults barely talk, but Niels tells Rachel en-passant, that he has married a wealthy German woman “who will look after him”. By the time Chantal (Lescure) reaches adolescence, the picture has changed with alarming consequences for all concerned.

An Impossible Love is sometimes heartbreaking. Rachel has such low self-esteem from the beginning, she does not ask anything for herself: she does not expect Niels to ever recognise her as an equal. But she hopes that her daughter will have a better life, if she can persuade Niels to give her his name. She is well aware how disturbed Chantal is after her frequent visits to her father a teenager, but she is adamant not to rock the boat.  

DoP Jeanne Lapoirie, who worked with Corsini on La Belle Saison, has gracefully recreated the atmosphere of the 1950s and early 1960s, when women were (the supposed) passive victims of men. The images show Rachel seemingly living in a “pink world with fluffy clouds”, in which she surrenders he whole identity to Niels. The latter is cold and manipulative, always yearning for his ‘freedom’, committed only to his own progress. If one compares Rachel with the adult Chantal, one sees the difference. Progress, so Corsini, has been made, but at what cost:  since Chantal had to carry the burden of her mother’s lack of self-esteem. Even though sometimes over-didactic, Corsini achieves her goal of showing the long, ongoing struggle for emancipation.  AS 

NOW SHOWING at http://Curzoncinemas.com and selected arthouse venues | Previewed at BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018

https://youtu.be/B-2QL8tjP2I

   

End of Season (2018) **** IFFR Rotterdam FIPRESCI award winner

Dir.: Elmar Imanov; Cast: Rasim Javarov, Zulfiyya Gurbanova, Mirmousum Mirzazade; Germany/Azerbaijan/Georgia 2019, 92 min.

Elmar Imanov’s first feature is a homage to Antonioni. Set in Baku on the Black Sea, Imanov not only re-creates the atmosphere of many features of the Italian master, he also revitalises Antonioni’s main theme – the marginalisation of women – in a very up-to-date fashion. His intimate slow-burner is a carefully constructed and memorable low budget gem.

Samir (Javarov) and his wife Fidan (Gurbanova) are living in a Baku high-rise, after their son Mahmud (Mirzazade), a web-designer, has fled the nest. Things are really over for this couple, relationships-wise: Côté Samir loafs around,all day. His wife, a doctor, contemplates a move to Berlin, where she has been offered a job. Samir tries to sabotage her move, it’s still unclear if  Mahmud is actually his son. The three of them go on a trip to the Black Sea, Sami and Fidan attacking each other in their usual passive-aggressive way: Whilst the men doze off, Fidan suddenly disappears. Later a male body is found in the sea – and she suddenly vanishes too, Fidan then re-appears in the Baku flat the next day. But Samir is still grumpy, not believing her story that she nearly drowned. “Are you not happy that I am alive?” asks Fidan. But Samir still cannot trust her, not able to let go of his victim-role. Son Mahmud is no help either: he is critical of his father, and treats his girl friend with the same disdain: he is unable to commit, and is somehow relieved when she signals the end of the relationship. Leaving us with an open-ended finale, Imanov lets the camera search for some meaning.

DoPs Berta Valin Escofet and Driss Azhari conjure up a languid atmosphere where the bleached colours softly melt into the horizon. The resonance with Antonioni is clearly felt: landscape dominates and reduces the protagonists to minor roles. Fidan is the only person of substance, the simply men chasing the chimera of freedom. END OF SEASON is an intimate play of emotions, small gestures – often more meaningful than words. There are also shades of Sartre’s Huis Clos, the trio living in a perpetual state of alienation in their stultifying dynamic. Imanov conjures up quiet desperation which we watch with a certain fascination. We leave  with the feeling that Imanov is a rising talent. AS

OTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 2019 | FIPRESCI AWARD 2019

Crucible of the Vampire (2018) **

Dir: Iain Ross-McNamee | Cast: Neil Morrissey, Charles O’Neil, Katie Goldfinch, Angela Carter | 96′ | UK Horror, Vampire.

Crucible of the Vampire is a rather pale attempt to re-create the traditional fare made by Hammer in the 1960s and early 1970s. The plot is familiar (but required three writers, Ross-McNee, Darren Lake and John Wolskel, who penned Blonde, Busty & Keane) – a naive, young blond (Goldfinch) goes to a 17th century Manor House in rural Shropshire. This time the blond’s clever too, some kind of minor archeologist sent there by her boss to examine the remains of a broken 17th century pot whose owner, a putative sorcerer we witness being accused of all sorts of Devilry, and strung up, in the opening scene. Isabelle (Katie Goldfinch) is apparently oblivious to the goings on in the house where she is made to drink a potion on her first night with the resident couple and their coquettish daughter, who appears to be lesbian, and later has no trouble seducing Isabelle, who has so far resisted the advances of her boyfriend, wanting to remain ‘pure’ until marriage. Clearly, it was just his technique that was lacking, rather than her resolve. More dark revelations unfold with Neil Morrissey’s friendly local farmer offering his manly protection to our heroine, who is seemingly unaware of the dangers surrounding her, until it’s too late. A nice try, and quite watchable. Iain Ross-McNamee certainly succeeds to a degree. But where’s the tinkly organ music, and some of the acting is predictably as twee as the premise. But that’s the whole point, I guess. MT

OUT ON  1 FEBRUARY 2019

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The Gold-Laden Sheep & the Sacred Mountain (2018)

Dir: Ridham Janve | India, drama | 97′

A mysterious “Sacred Mountain” in the Himalayas is the focus of Ridham Janve’s seductive first feature that won the Silver Gateway award at last year’s Mumbai Film Festival and was selected for Rotterdam’s Bright Future Sidebar.

Spiked with subtle humour and an atmospheric ambient score The Gold-Laden Sheep shows him to be a skilful storyteller in a film that works as a realist moral fable, a sinuous thriller and a stylish monochrome nature mystery with a slow-burning narrative that unfolds in the stunning landscape of the remote Dhauladhar mountain region .

While tending his flock, an old shepherd hears news about a local plane crash and is determined to cash in on the booty, remembering stories of other accidents that have yielded their treasures to the hills. Blinded by greed, he leaves his skiving side-kick to tend the sheep and lambs while he goes in search of the wreckage and – with any luck – the crock of gold. Naturally, things don’t end well for any of them, least of all the lambs.

The cast of newcomers from the Ghaddi community add a convincing feel to this carefully crafted debut that tells through its long takes and fluid camerawork a touching tale about their respect for nature and the holiness of the mountain, which, if disturbed, will change life forever. MT

NOW ON MUBI | ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019 

 

Hail Satan! (2019) *** Rotterdam Film Festival 2019

Dir: Penny Lane | US, Doc 95′

Satanism is gaining ground, but don’t panic. Penny Lane’s drôle but disappointing documentary will explain why. According to her findings, the old Devil we can come to know and love has actually been foisted by his own petard. His cult has been hijacked by a motley crew of rather ordinary people who just want to get together and counter the mainstream forces they see dominating America. No harm done. Counterbalancing  is certainly a reasonable idea, but not a compelling premise for a a full length feature documentary. 

Satanists have chosen the rather apt name of The Satanic Temple (TST for short) to represent their cause – and simply because no one else had chosen this title, they checked on the internet, and it was available. And their main man and co-founder really looks the part too with his glazed right eye and shifty expression: Lucien Greaves – not his real name – works jolly hard for the organisation as its spokesperson, ensconced in the black-painted wooden clad house (straight out of the film Halloween) in Salem Massachusetts. Some of the other supporters look rather weird too in their Gothic garb and horned headgear, but that’s about as scary as it gets. And they don’t have much to say for themselves  either, beyond criticising the people they vehemently oppose.

But doesn’t a religion have to have conviction, spirituality, beliefs and customs that transcend mere civic duty?. Amongst their seven tenets the Satanists list: compassion, a struggle for justice, and ‘the inviolability of the body’. But this doctrine could easily apply to the Girl Guides.

And Lane’s documentary certainly doesn’t make us quake in our boots over these so-called Satanists. Mild fascination turns gradually to boredom as Hail Satan! plays out, running round in ever decreasing circles in its effort to get to the crux of the organisation. What TST purports to represent seems ill-defined, but its certainly anti-establishment. The thrust of their activity is clearly to oppose government efforts to establish religious totems such as a granite structure listing the The Ten Commandments in front of a state house, and to erect their own idol which is a metallic figure called Behemoth.

But once we discover that name Satan is just a facade for TST’s rather pointless activities – such as attending ‘unbaptisms’ – and it adherents are just a bunch of average punters with nothing salacious or particularly macabre about them (except their black garb) the whole documentary starts to feel quite tedious. And the fact that they feature regularly on Fox News spinning endless ‘Satanic’ narratives won’t have a novelty value forever. On their website they maintain: We acknowledge blasphemy is a legitimate expression of personal independence from counter-productive traditional norms”. Isn’t this just the same as supporting free speech?. And there’s nothing evil about that.

There’s nothing even o suggest that Satanism is a religion. Ok, it doesn’t espouse violence or evil. Infact it doesn’t really espouse anything cogent at all, apart from being a force for decency and liberalism, and a mealy-mouthed opposition to the mainstream. But behind their black hoods and wicked headgear, there is little talk of faith, spirituality or even morality. Infact there’s no talk of anything other than their smug feeling of hiding behind something that actually doesn’t represent them at all. So their whole existence is misleading. But it’s gathering ground. Their numbers swell day by day, and you might even find yourself joining them one day. But make no mistake. If you’re drawn to this film in the hope of experiencing of something dark and dastardly, you will leave feeling disappointed. At the end of the day, these Satanists are just a bunch of small-town do-gooders.  MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2019

God of the Piano (2019) Digital release

Dir: Itay Til: Cast: Naama Pries, Ron Bitterman, Shimon Mimran, Andy Levi | Drama | Israel 80′

Anat is a young woman who will let nothing get in her way, least of all accidents of nature, in this tightly-scripted and quietly chilling first feature from Israeli director Itay Tal. Prepare to be shaken and stirred.

This study of obsession brings to mind the so-called ‘tiger’ mothers who are so focused on achieving their goals, the well-being of their family is secondary, as long as everything goes according to plan. Sadly these women often come from high-performing backgrounds themselves, and such is the case with pregnant concert pianist Anat (a superbly slick Naama Pries from Laila in Haifa), whose waters break while she’s on stage.

Anat ignores this call of nature until the end of her piece, the liquid slowly pooling round her feet. But when she discovers her chortling baby has hearing difficulties, she takes the sinister step of swapping him over with another child in the hospital birthing room.

Control freaks have been vividly portrayed in arthouse cinema of late, recent examples are Calin Peter Netzer’s Golden Bear winner Child’s Pose (2013) where a mother does her utmost to change the course of law for her son. Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2016) also reworks this thorny theme with a similar cold visual aesthetic and unlikeable central character. In fact, Tal’s film is full of unpleasant types, cyphers whose means to an end makes them frighteningly real in these success-focused times.

Anat’s family are all accomplished musicians including her new son Idam, who plays like a professional pianist from the early scenes – despite his lack of genetic connection with the rest of the family. Her son’s music career gradually becomes the focus of Anat’s days, coaching him as he learns to compose and perform. Even sex with her husband goes out of the window (she is seen half-heartedly pleasuring him with her hands) as she transfers her amorous efforts to composer Shimon Mimran – the only character here with charisma – who gamely offers to help the boy with his composing.

Sex with Mimran seems to satisfy Anat more than anything else in her life: it’s as if she’s finally been fed after starving for years. But rather than trusting her intuition and taking things further with this interesting man, Anat suppresses her own needs and rushes off to promote her son to the next stage of his career.

Alarm bells ring when the local hearing-impaired centre tries to get in touch, Anat eradicating any further communication from them, even visiting the clinic to make sure they strike Idam’s records from their books. Anat’s father is a fiercely competitive man and his reaction to Idam’s talent is quite chilling: rather than encouraging the boy he seethes with anger at Idam’s perfect performance of a piece he wrote at the same age. Although we cannot like Anat’s character, we start to understand her motivations, and the strain she’s under to compete in this unforgiving family environment. A slick and enjoyable thriller and a brilliant debut from Itay Tal. MT

NOW ON iTUNES AMAZON VUDU FANDANGO ON DEMAND DVD | ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE | Big Screen Competition 2019 

 

Chèche Lavi (2019) *** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Sam Ellison, 2019, Mexico/Haiti/USA, world premiere

A poetic and peaceful paean to Haitians seeking a better life, Sam Ellison gloriously colourful images tell a story we already know but in a zingingly positive and honest way. Low on dialogue but long on musical interludes Chèche Lavi offers its characters a chance to tell their tale while we listen and enjoy the scenery and creatively composed shots of the laborious odyssey via Brazil and Peru, in order finally to ride into Mexico in the cargo hold of a truck. Hoping for a new life in the USA, but then there’s the wall.

Director Sam Ellison cut his teeth as a cinematographer of narrative fiction, and his film’s meticulously constructed visual language – formal compositions, long takes, and long silences – draws from that experience. This appealing style draws us into the emotional world of Robens and James as they embark on their borderland adventure, deepening our understanding of their trails. Gradually they cease to feel inaccessibly foreign.

Haiti and Haitian immigrants, specifically, are often singled out as undesirable in crude and racist attacks. And Ellison has tried to push back against this ideological climate with his calm and placid approach that avoids “headline” sensationalism as the protagonists go about their journey.

French and Portuguese speaking Haitian refugees Robens and James naively dreamed of utopia. They come up against unpleasant surprises, but Sam Ellison quails away from the horror of displacement. His portrait sees two likeable young men adopt a philosophical approach to their journey, always looking on the bright side despite their sense of disappointment and resignation. Getting what you want was never going to be easy. And we feel for them. Ellison’s humane but detached approach honours this timeless yet topical theme. Chèche Lavi is a documentary that works like a narrative art-house feature, and looks like one too.

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | BRIGHT FUTURES | 23 JANUARY – 3 FEBRUARY 2019

 

Une Jeunesse Dorée (2019) *** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir: Eva Ionesco | Drama,

Writer-director Eva Ionesco made her debut in Roman Polanski’s horrifying drama The Tenant in 1976. Since then she has made her way into directing. Her second feature is an enjoyable if hollow semi-autobiographical hark back to her disco days at one of Paris’ most legendary nightspots in the late 1970s.

The Palace nightclub was synonymous with stylish couture from Karl Lagerfeld, St Laurent and Missoni. It was also the time of Human League, Grace Jones and Brian Ferry, And this where our young impoverished heroine Rose (Galatea Bellugi) comes to dance with her artist boyfriend Michel (Lukas Ionesco). Both are looking to make their name in the world, and finance the rest of their lives. And this is where they run into decadent ‘beau-monde’ duo Lucile (Isabelle Huppert) and Hubert (Melvil Poupaud), in their fifties and eager for new experiences. Fired up by a cocktail of youth, cash and charisma, the couples feed off each other in an orgy – both literal and metaphorical – of coke and champagne-fuelled sexual encounters – decked out in the latest couture – and Isabelle Huppert is as sexy as her much younger counterpart Bellugi. After rocking the dance floor they all repair back in a Jaguar to Lucile’s soigné chateau in a the country where the young ones are eager for money and contacts, while the older pair paw them with unwanted sexual advances, to spice up their flagging libidos. 

This retro drama is very much a family affair, and it makes for an entertaining drama, if rather glib in its louche emptiness and threadbare script. Ionesco deftly captures the Seventies zeitgeist, but narrative-wise the drama plays out with no surprises. And while Huppert holds court with her sterling support, Poupard also holds sway with his graceful nonchalance, the young two providing alluring eye candy as the doomed and clingy lovers, caught between a desire to succeed and a need to be loved. 

Une Jeunesse Dorée feels slightly overlong at just under two hours, but despite the flagging plot line, expert camerawork comes courtesy of Claire Denis regular Agnès Godard, and there are cossies to die for including ubiquitous sequins and floor length furs from the designers Jurgen Doering and Marie Beltrami. The girls lie back lustfully in Agent Provocateur lingerie and Huppert even flashes her tits and utters outré lines such as: “Hubert has a very beautiful penis, and he knows how to use it”. Now that’s a showstopper, if ever there was one. MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 23 JAN – 3 FEB 2019

X&Y (2019) **** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir.: Anna Odell; Cast: Anna Odell, Mikhael Persbrandt, Shanti Roney, Thure Lindhardt, Trine Dyrholm, Sofie Grabol, Jens Albinus, Vera Vitali, Per Ragnar, Ville Virtanen; Sweden/Denmark 2018, 112 min.

Artist and filmmaker Anna Odell (The Reunion), the enfant terrible of the Nordic film scene, is back with a new feature. X & Y is a star studded ensemble peace, which explores hidden female/male identities. Odell came to prominence in 2009 with her student project Unknown Woman, 2009-349701:  in a life performance in Stockholm, she acted out her psychotic breakdown and suicide. She was later fined for this, but insisted it was not about her own experience in the Swedish Mental Health system, but an attack on the power structures within the institutions. 

X & Y is tamer in comparison, even though structure and topic are extremely (thought) provoking. Odell plays a female director who fancies macho film star Mikhael Persbrandt, who has just published a memoir in which he tackles his image. Odell has chosen three actors for herself and Persbrandt, to play the alternative personalities of the lead couple: Grabol (brilliant as always), Albinus and Vitali act out Odell’s alternate personalities, whilst Roney, Lindhardt and Dyrholm (matching Grabol’s performance) are the alter egos of Persbrandt. Two psychologists, Ragnar and Virtanen try to help the octet come to terms with Odell’s cryptic and basic script.

Odell, to give her credit, holds her own in a star studded cast. After the opening chapter, in where Odell and Persbrandt get close up and personal, the Alter-Egos take over, and start attacking or lusting after their counterparts. Best are the scenes when the leading couple is represented by a different gender actor, showing that the ambivalence of feelings like jealousy, dominance and sexual obsession are not as gender specific as one might think. In the play, Odell is always behind with the script, infuriating her cast. The actors sleep in two groups, and Odell, who has manufactured a frisky animal costume for herself, becomes sexually aggressive with the trio in her bed. Finally, at a re-union month later, it turns out she is pregnant with an “art-child”, obviously drawing on her recent experience of giving birth. Odell, always the provocateur, stated in an interview that, “she is looking forward to introducing her own child to Lars van Trier, who is also the product of an artistic relationship”. 

 X & Y is provocative, but stays inside a concept: every person has three identities: the self, the one we would like to be, and the way we are seen by others. These identities often differ often, and Odell works it out without shrinking from exposing herself. A great ensemble helps, as well as DoP Daniel Takacs, whose images range from distant froideur to aggressive close-ups. Odell’s temper tantrums still are still hard to take, but she is more much reflective now, without having lost the talent to excite.

SCREENING AT ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 23 Jan – 3 Feb   

The Seven Last Words (2019) *** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir.: Kaveh Nabatian, Ariane Lorrain, Sophie Goyette, Juan Andres Arango Garcia, Sophie Deraspe, Karl Lemieux, Caroline Monnert; Canada/Columbia/Haiti/Iran/USA 2018, 73 min.

Canadian filmmaker Kaveh Nabatian has always believed that music and film are inextricably linked: they form a unit, and he illustrates the point with this essay film. The seven chapters are underpinned by the music of The Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross (1787) by Joseph Haydn, played by the Callino Quartet. 

Forgiveness; Salvation; Family; Abandonment; Distress; Triumph and Life after Death all relate to Jesus’ words in his last hours. The chapters are aesthetically very different, reaching from Fiction; Documentary; Experimenta; Magic Realism to a matter of fact conventional narrative. Perhaps most impressive is Distress, a mixture of on on-screen writing and theatrical pantomime. The walls are blood red, naked people pose in front of the dripping blood, and furniture is positioned in front of the walls as in an exhibition. Water is an element common to some essays: in the prologue a woman climbs into a plane which then soars into the sky over the ocean. She later opens the cabin door and jumps out, flying over the water like a bird, her white clothes making her look like a dove. In Triumph we see the same configuration: a boy at the sea front, a woman under water with doves flying above them. Haydn’s music carries The Seven Last Words, its dominance is the connection between the very diverse chapters which leave the interpretation to the audience. The remarkable images shock, inspire and amaze. A cinematic and meditative piece of filmmaking.

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | BRIGHT FUTURE PROGRAMME | 23 JANUARY – 3 FEBRUARY 2019

The Man Who Surprised Everyone (2018) **** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir: Natasha Merkulova, Aleksey Chupov | Cast: Evgeniy Tsiganov, Natalya Kudryashowa, Yuriy Kuznetsov, Vasiliy Popov, Pavel Maykov, Aleksey Filimonov, Elena Voronchikhina, Maksim Vitorgan | Drama | Russia Estonia France | 105’

Russian directing duo Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov tackle a thorny subject with deftness in this classically styled and  surprisingly moving arthouse drama that had its premiere in the Orizzonti sidebar at Venice Film Festival 2018

LGBT issues are still viewed with hostility back home in Russia but the leads are completely convincing in their subtlely nuanced and solemn portrayal of a modern couple coping with extremely challenging conditions in a remote rural outpost.

Egor is a respectable family man who we first meet navigating his boat along the Siberian Taiga where he works as a forest ranger looking out for poachers. He and his wife Natalia are expecting their second child when Egor discovers he has terminal cancer but keeps his wife in the dark about his imminent death. But this is not the only secret the thoughtful middle-aged man harbours, and the filmmakers gradually draw us in establishing the couple’s joint and several feelings of joy for her, and mounting grief and unease for him: Egor must bear alone the double burden of his cancer trauma and his nascent sexual yearnings that will certainly require his wife’s forbearance. When he tells Natasha she persuades Egor to seek further help in looking for a cure. But no traditional medicine or shamanic magic can save him. Finally, left with no other option, he makes a desperate attempt to escape the reality of his death by channelling his feelings into self-identifying as a woman with initial alarm to his close community, followed by anger, disbelief and acceptance by Natasha, and we feel for both of them. His family and the local society now have to accept his new self.

Moody rain-soaked settings and subdued interiors add to the feeling of angst and quiet desperation as the couple struggle on trapped by poverty and Natasha’s ageing and ailing father in a scenario that will be feel familiar to many.

This is a grim and provocatively complex tale that needs clever handling and one that could have gone severely awry with disastrous consequences without the skill of a competent directing team. But instead clever scripting, skilful handling of the complex issues at stake and sensitive performances make for an absorbing feature and one with considerable dramatic heft as we wait for the startling denouement that requires a certain leap of faith but one that feels plausible and satisfying in the circumstances.MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Bangla (2019) *** Rotterdam Film Festival 2019

Dir: Phaim Bhuiyan | Drama | Italy | 90′

Phaim Bhuiyan’s endearing romcom Bangla has already been likened to last year’s standout hit The Big Sick, and it’s easy to see why. Strangely I actually preferred Bangla for its unassumingand disarming central character. And although the film lacks the star power of The Big Sick, this tale of young Bengali Muslim Phaim – who also directs from a script based on his experiences as a second-generation Italian, about falling for a feisty young Italian girl – is watchable and even quite funny, despite the rather clunky awkwardness of the twenty-something himself.

Directing-wise Phaim clearly has a lot to learn but he makes for a decent lovelorn ingenue alongside  the spunky Asia (a convincing turn from Carlotta Antonelli) who is instantly charmed by his cool reticence – which actually masks his desperate desire to get closer and more personal. He describes himself at one point as: “something in between, like a cappuccino – 50% Bengali, 50% Italian and 100% a Torpignattara guy”, referring to a melting pot of different nationalities in that corner of the Italian capital, and he clearly loves his home town and doesn’t want to move to London when his parents need to up stakes and join a new family business.  .

But his observations and nouse is spot-on for a cool Roman dude. And we certainly feel for him when he struggles to explain his feelings of lust and love for this totally unsuitable and forbidden playmate in the shape of Asia. Clearly, Phaim is caught between his own instincts and his those of his   traditional parents. The scenes showing his love hate relationship with his sister work particularly well and there’s a vulnerability and truth to their sibling rivalry that certainly rings true. There are also some nods to rampant racial prejudice that are sadly all too familiar. By no means perfect but a promising first effort, Bhuiyan takes his own story and develops it with this decent debut that has an honesty to it and some really funny lines. Let’s hope his next project builds on his promising start with with Bangla. MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019

The Mule (2018) ***

Dir: Clint Eastwood | Writ: Sam Dolnick | Cast: Bradley Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Manny Montana, Taissa Farmiga | US Thriller | 118′

Clint Eastwood digs up the story of American horticulturalist Leo Sharp and shovels it out as a plodding but endearing drama about a geriatric, green-fingered drug mule.

Most people won’t have heard of Leo Sharp. He was a popular plantsman who tended his award-winning day-lilies until his business went belly up in the digital age. Directing from Nick Schenck’s laboured script, Clint Eastwood plays him as savvy entrepreneur Earl Stone, who seizes the opportunity to finance his dwindling days by becoming a driver for the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel.

The life and soul of any gathering, stone is an old school charmer for whom work is always a pleasure but family a chore –  and we feel his pain as he potters around in a state of perpetual regret for disappointing his nagging wife (Dianne West) and daughter. Infact, all the women in The Mule are seen in a negative light either nagging or as gaiety girls flashing their assets –  his grand-daughter is the exception (Taissa Farmiga gets the best female role).  Maybe there’s more of Clint in Stone than he’d like to admit.

And that’s not all. The DEA (in the shape of Bradley Cooper and Michael Peña) are on his tail, at a snail’s pace. Cooper does his stuff with consummate ease and follows Stone across the scenic landscape and the two compare notes on family faux pas. And clearly Clint relishes his role as he sallies forth on the open road, singing out loud at the wheel of his truck, a rather sly old curmudgeon one minute, and twinkly-eyed Roué the next. And what man wouldn’t when offered a threesome with Mexican babes.

The Mule is a slow roadie with a wonderful central performance from a Hollywood great. Still rocking into his nineties and in command of his faculties. There are few politically incorrect moments – and for a man who grew up in the 1940s you’ve got to appreciate how times – and attitudes – have changed. And when he delivered his acceptance speech at the Day-lily awards, Clint should have quoted Dorothy Parker’s famous line: “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think”. That said, The Mule is a respectable movie. And Clint is still a legend. How many of us can say that? MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 29 January 2019

Edgar Pêra – A genuine original | Retrospective IFFR 2019

There is no filmmaker like Edgar Pêra (b.1960). His work may be an acquired taste but it is always inventive and Avant-garde referencing his heroes in creative ways and keeping the past alive. The Portuguese auteur often pays tribute to Dziga Vertov, Branquinho da Fonseca and Fernando Pessoa – but always in an ingenious way – transforming their ideas into bizarre and refreshing features, some will screen in a retrospective at the Rotterdam International Film festival 2019

Edgar Henrique Clemente Pêra first studied psychology, but soon realised his vocation in Film at the Portuguese National Conservatory, currently Lisbon Theatre and Film School.  But it was the work of Russian director Dziga Vertov that made him pick up a camera in 1985, and his strange visual style and quirky dark humour found an outlet in twisted arthouse fare that is completely unique. He has made over 100 films for cinema, TV, theatre dance, cine-concerts, galleries, internet and other media, and his latest mystery drama Caminhos Magnetiykos screens at Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2019.

His love of music influenced his work in the mid 1980s, and he filmed Portuguese rock bands in a Neo-realist, ‘neuro-punk’ style. In 1988, Pêra shot a film in the Ruins of Chiado, a neighbourhood in the heart of Lisbon, decimated by a large fire that year. In 1990 Reproduta Interdita was shown at the Portuguese Horror Film Festival, Fantasporto. In 1991, his documentary short raised the profile of Portuguese modernist architect Cassiano Branco – The City of Cassiano, (Grand Prix Festival Films D’Architecture Bordeaux). But from thereon his penchant for the weird and radically different took over.

In 1994, Pêra’s first fiction feature Manual de Evasão LX 94/Manual of Evasion (for Lisbon 1994 Capital of Culture), channelled the aesthetic legacy of soviet constructivist silent films, with what the filmmaker called “a neuro-punk way of creating and capturing instantaneous reality”. The film has divided the critics in Portugal and abroad. It will be also screened at the retrospective Rotterdam Film Festival 2019.

In 1996 Edgar Pêra started an ambitious project which would take four years to edit. The surreal comedy feature entitled, A Janela (Maryalva Mix)/The Window (Don Juan Mix), premiered at the Locarno Festival in 2001. From then on Pêra’s work, veered towards a more emotional style, but still kept the emphasis on non-realist aesthetics and eccentric humour. Pêra’s 2006 retrospective at Indie Lisboa won the festival prizes for Best Feature, Best cinematography and Audience Award: Running at just over an hour,: Movimentos Perpétuos/Perpetual Movements is a cine-tribute to legendary Portuguese guitar composer and player Carlos Paredes. Critic and programmer Olaf Möller wrote that “Pêra is too different from everything which we regard as ‘correct’, ‘valid’ within the culture of film, ‘realistic’ in a cinematic, socio-political way. Put more precisely: Edgar Pêra is different from everything that we know about Portugal”.

O Barão  is an adaptation of Branquinho da Fonseca’s short story, premiering in 2011 at the International Film Festival Rotterdam it won the Gold Donkey Award. In 2011 he also started experimenting with the 3D format. His most controversial film yet, Cinesapiens is a short drama, a segment of 3x3D , described by our critic Michael Pattison as “an assaultive triptych that caused walkouts when it premiered at Cannes in 2013”. It forms part of a trio with two other films by Jean-Luc Godard and Peter Greenaway at La Semaine de la Critique in Cannes.

In 2014 Pêra directed two 3D films, Stillness and Lisbon Revisited. Stillness was considered by many as  “astonishingly offensive”. Lisbon Revisited, with words by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, premiered at the Locarno Festival. Pera’s first commercial success came in 2014 with pop comedy feature Virados do Avesso/Turned Inside Out. This was followed by Espectador Espantado/The Amazed Spectator, a “kino-investigation about spectatorship” which premiered at Rotterdam Film Festival, 2016 and was also the title of his PhD thesis. In 2016 his Delirium in Las Vedras, about the Portuguese Carnival in Torres Vedras, premiered in Rotterdam and São Paulo 2017.  And in 2018, O Homem-Pykante Diálogos Kom Pimenta, about the poet Alberto Pimenta, was shown for the first time at IndieLisboa. Caminhos Magnéticos/Magnethick Pathways, starring Dominique Pinon, will also be shown during his retrospective this year at Rotterdam International Film Festival.

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 23 JANUARY – 3 FEBRUARY 2019

Vice (2018) ****

Dir.: Adam McKay; Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Sam Rockwell, Steve Carrell, Alisa Pill, Lilly Rabe; USA 2018, 132 min.

Writer/director Adam McKay (Talladega Nights, The Big Short) amply demonstrates the banality of evil in this glowing satire, worthy of a Jonathan Swift or Molière. Vice is a bio-pic about Dick Cheney, former US Secretary of Defence in the Cabinet of George H. Bush and Vice President under his son George W. Bush. Above all else, it’s a portrait of a man who made the most of his limited qualities, using his “Everyman” persona to grossly misuse power by deceit, helping to lay the ideological foundation for the current USA administration.

We meet Dick Cheney – an extraordinary Christian Bale, who put on 45 kgs to morph into Cheney – in 1963’s Wyoming, where he is arrested, for the second time, for DUI; an offence he shared with the younger Bush. Cheney, a Yale dropout, was also a drunken layabout who had to be reminded by his wife Lynne (Adams) that he resembled her drunken and abusive father, not the responsible husband she thought she had married.

At least Cheney managed to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War (like Bush the younger), accumulating five deferrals, based on sub-par academic achievements, and getting married and having children at the right time. When Dick joined the Nixon administration in 1969 as an Intern, he fell under the spell of Donald Rumsfield (a commanding Carrell), who taught him the President’s dirty tricks. Cheney himself was a Congressman for Wyoming from 1979-1989, a seat his daughter Lynne jr. (Rabe), holds today. He became one of the leaders of the Republican Party in the House, and got the attention of George H. Bush, for whom he served as Secretary of Defence (1989-1993). After Bush’ defeat to Clinton, Cheney left politics for a while, to become CEO of Halliburton, a company specialising in services to the Oil industry. When the Republicans looked for a running mate for George W. Bush (Rockwell), Cheney was asked to select a candidate. He chose himself and the rest, as they say, is history.

It is not a small co-incidence, that Cheney would outdo Rumsfield, when the latter was Secretary of Defence for George W.: Rumsfield asking Dick “do you want to get me sacked, or is it the Bush kid?” Needless to say, that Rumsfield had to go as a scapegoat, because Dick had much more than the ear of George W. By then, after the deception of the Iraq War, Dick Cheney had subverted the cabinet: Condoleezza Rice (National Security Adviser) and General Colin Powell (Secretary of State) were bulldozed by him of towing the line when it came to the invasion. And after the lack of evidence for the “Weapons of mass destruction”, Rumsfield, his former ‘teacher’, was scarified. 

There are some highlights, for example the faux-ending after a third of the running time: Mary (Pill), Cheney’s younger daughter, was a self confessed, married lesbian, and whilst Lynne was aghast, Dick was supportive. McKay ‘closing’ his film with end-credits, claiming “that Dick chose his daughter above a political career, and the Cheney family vanished from public life”. Alas, Dick manufactured the Iraq War, which became very profitable for Halliburton, their shares rising by a mere 500%. American soldiers, who were not so apt to be deferred as Cheney, died in their thousands – so did 800 000 Iraqi civilians. McKay shows the couple in bed, declaimed Shakespeare: Macbeth and his Lady.  

It is difficult to contemplate a serious, straight portrait of Cheney: whilst his criminal wrong-doings were as countless as they were unpunished, there is nothing extra-ordinary about the man: he did all this, because he could. Neither his ideological orientation nor greed were more than average.

Only McKay’s approach of a permanent subversity makes this bio-pic watchable. This is an anti-hero with very little attributes, but Vice shows him exactly as the little man he is – but like a ‘Contrapunkt’ in music, there is always a funny side to the proceedings – even if the laughter is anything but liberating. DoP Greig Fraser (Foxcatcher) supports the director’s approach with homely images of the couple, and the bloody contrast of newsreels and TV images. He also never denounces Dick and Lynne, they are not shown as buffoons, but  ordinary people wanting to better themselves: their house is a shrine to mediocrity, they really care for each other and are rather subdued in their personal affairs: they often shown from behind, always ready to leave the frame, unobtrusive to the last. Vice is the great exception: a major feature made in Hollywood. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 29 JANUARY 2019    

https://youtu.be/eTk2N03-m8U

 

  

        

     

Destroyer (2018 **

Dir: Karyn Kusama | US Thriller | 121’

You will gawp at Nicole Kidman’s transformation in this rather bleak and messy crime thriller cum character study of a lovelorn woman whose desperate past derails her future. It comes as a shock from an actor who is used to playing vulnerable and smart but always beautiful women.

Karyn Kusama has finally given Kidman the chance to play a broken, badass bitch in Destroyer. And it’s a dynamite performance that may look unappealing but certainly strikes home. As Erin Bell, her baleful, sinister stare haunts nearly every frame and coiled anger springs out unexpectedly – this antiheroine is not out to please anyone. After a messy opening act where Kusama establishes the storyline, a fractured narrative seesaws backwards and forwards from the late 1980/90s to present day LA, Destroyer pictures Kidman as hapless antiheroine Detective Erin Bell, whose youth was spent going undercover with her partner/lover Chris (Sebastian Stan) to infiltrate a band of robbers, headed up by glib psycho Silas (Toby Kebbell). But when Silas reappears on the scene, she’s determined to put an end to his antics, which have been carrying on since back in the day. But something else happened – Erin fell in love, madly. And that love, or loss of it on a fateful day that unspools in the satisfying final act, has made her into the woman she is in the current day.

And while her character is utterly believable in both the past and the present, it’s in the unravelling of the story – particularly in fin de siècle LA, that things sometimes feel unconvincing and rather anodyne, given the nature of crime-ridden LA. But Kidman’s detective is hard-hitting, intelligent and unafraid to be unpopular – easier when you’ve got nothing to lose, or live for. And that’s the essence of her character. And although occasionally she overstates her violent vehemence in the context of what’s going on around her, teetering on the edge of caricature, it’s a corruscating performance and one to be proud of.

Sadly this is a step back for Kusama whose brilliant thriller The Invitation (2015), was a shocker with a humane face. Here the band of brigands are almost laughably louche and lightweight, in complete contrast to Kidman’s detective character. And although they try to inject menace into proceedings, all we feel from them is disdain. The only refreshing contrast is a vignette from arch villain who sparks out interest, but not for long.

Kidman is so hard-bitten and bitter you start to feel uncomfortable watching her. Especially in scenes with her daughter’s nasty boyfriend, or jerking off a terminally ill low-life when she’s desperate for a lead. At the end of the day, Destroyer is an unpleasant, empty kind of film. It goes through the motions, but leaves you cold – and glad it’s all over.  MT

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 25 JANUARY 2019

Nina (2018) **

Dir.: Olga Chajdas; Cast: Julia Kijowska, Eliza Rycembel, Andrzej Konopka; Poland 2018, 122 min.

This hit and miss debut drama from Polish filmmaker Olga Chajdas struggles with an illogical narrative, despite some positive elements. 

French teacher Nina (Kijowska) desperately wants a child despite her failing marriage to Wotjek (Konopka), a car mechanic. In order to find the ideal surrogate mother the couple embark on a bizarre strategy: reversing their car into a prospective surrogate’s car, they then offer the victim a cost free repair at Wotjek’s garage and make a connection. And it’s during one of these ill-conceived escapades that Nina meets Magda (Rycembel), an airport security guard with an active lesbian sex life. Nina falls head over heels for the androgynous young woman but Wotjek, feeling left out, reacts with a violent assault on Magda. Nina then gets cold feet, after a confrontation with one of Madga’s ex-lovers with the whole debacle culminating in a positive conclusion. 

Strangely enough some of strongest scenes in NINA take place away from the central lesbian love affair. But while the lovers somehow lack a certain chemistry, Rycembel’s performance as the hot to trot initiator of the sensitive sexual encounter scenes has a lot going for it. And this is what makes Nina unique in spite of its hapless narrative. DoP Tomasz Naumiuk does a great job of recording the wild goings on with his mobile handheld images. There are also some extremely beautiful snowy landscapes.

At Rotterdam Film Festival 2018, where NINA won the VPRO Big Screen Award, Chajdas talked about the repressive new government and the lack of a gay club scene in Poland – so so she makes this a more colourful feature of her drama than reality permits.  AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS from 29 JANUARY 2019

Jan Palach (2018) ****

Dir.: Robert Sedlacek; Cast: Victor Zavadi, Denisa Baresova, Zuzana Bydzovska, Kristina Kanatova; Czech Republic 2018, 124 min.

Robert Sedlacek (Rule of Lies) transforms Eva Kanturkova’s concise script into a complex psychological study of the Czech hero and political activist Jan Palach who killed himself in January 1969 in protest of the Soviet invasion of his country in August of the previous year. Palach’s death was a particularly horrific one but director and writer steer away from hagiography, sensationalism or dry political drama to tell the human story exploring the complex personality and motives of the 20-year old student of history and philosophy.

1968 saw students all over the world on the barricades: in Paris, Berlin, Berkeley and Mexico City, where hundreds were shot just before the start of the Olympic Games. In Prague, students were the backbone of the resistance movement against the Soviet tanks, which rolled into Prague ending the Prague Spring of Prime Minister Dubcek, and dragging the country back into soulless, authoritarian Stalinism. The Prague students shared with their counterparts abroad, a love of spontaneous action and a lack of long-term strategy. They also fatally underestimated the powers they opposed. But theirs was not only an uprising against the state, but also against the values of their parent generation. In the case of Jan Palach, the target was his mother Libuse (Bydzovska), who lived in the small town of Vsetaty. She was hardly a staunch supporter of the communist regime, but having seen her husband, an entrepreneur, being punished by the authorities, she towed the line in order to make her son’s life easier. Since Jan’s father was classified as a bourgeois, only his mother’s ‘class-conscious’ behaviour made it possible for him to study at the Charles University of Prague. Whilst Jan was extremely obedient for his age – when he visited with his girl friend Helenka (Baresova), he slept in a separate bed, before Helenka asked him to join her – but deep down he blamed Libuse for her appeasement of the regime; and even the early death of his father, who lost his business and his drive. This did not prevent him from downing a puppy born to his beloved childhood dog Lassie. They could only find homes for the rest of the litter, so he obeyed his mother’s orders. 

Palach, like many of his believers, was more interested in the concept of equality than in a personal relationship with others. Whilst he supported a Russian comrade in a ‘Youth Camp’ in Kazakhstan, who rebelled against the sub-standard food, he felt much safer in groups, uncomfortable with one-to-one relationships. When he went to France to work for a few weeks picking grapes, he cut himself off from his co-workers. Jan always kept a slight distance from Helenka, who suffered from polio; he was more her helper than her lover. And when tempted, he fell easily for the advances of her attractive room mate Eva (Kanatova). Palach neither drunk nor smoked, his attitude was always to adopt the passive-aggressiveness of a martyr. Sedlacek plays this out in a scene where Palach has just been beaten up severely by a security officer in civilian clothes, and is examined by a medical student: Jan seems to revel in his injuries. In his farewell letter he suggests that there are many like him, willing to die by self-immolation, a boast which is untrue. It is much more reasonable to assume that Palach was inspired by Thich Quang Due, the first Buddhist monk who self-immolated in Saigon, and the Polish activist Ryszard Siwiee, who did the same as a protest against the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in September 1968. Jan Palach left behind his mother, girl-friends and his studies. He also left a stain on his relatives, friends and fellow students: they felt guilty for not having prevented his suicide, but decided to “wait” for a change, something Jan was not able to countenance. Finally, every suicide is half a murder – in this case a very violent one: proof of the enormous latent anger the young man was concealing behind his unexceptional facade. He was not only the victim of an authoritarian regime, but also of his own, unsolved contradictions. We feel his humanity poignantly, but never is this over-stated in Sedlacek’s treatment.

Victor Zavadi is convincing in the title role, and so is Bydzovska as his mother Libuse. They are likeable characters and decent people. Baresova’s Helenka is very much aware that Jan’s feels pity for her, rather than love or even lust. DoP Jan Suster evokes a bland but classically-styled Prague, the university halls seem uninhabited by the ghost from the past. Vsetaty looks like a bucolic pre-war village, the food supply behind the overriding concern of the day. Overall, this traditionally-styled feature has very much the feel of a Chekhov drama: an intransigent hero, full of great words, but finding no real human contact, until there is only one way out. AS

SCREENED AT THE CZECH EMBASSY | LONDON W11 | January 17th 2019.    

                                         

Mary Queen of Scots (2018) ****

Dir: Josie Rourke | Wri: Beau Willimon | Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden, Joe Alwyn, Angela Bain, Thon Petty, Adrian Lester, Adrian Derrick-Palmer, Ian Hart, Simon Russell Beale, David Tennant, Brendan Coyle | Drama | US/UK/ 134′

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS is the second film this year that deals with the complicated lives of women in power. In Yorgos Lanthimos’s sassy black comedy Queen Anne falls under the spell of her two female courtiers but manages to prevail despite her reduced mental and physical circumstances. Josie Rourke’s toys convincingly with the truth in her spectacular but sensitive drama that explores the thorny relationship between two 16th century Queens at opposite ends of the British Islands – Mary in Scotland and Elizabeth in Southern England. In some ways these show how women at the top can be lionised and then swiftly victimised: all three female monarchs are highly intelligent and intuitive but they are also totally alone, and crucially vulnerable because of their gender. And the salient fact that emerges in both these films is that regal women – or any female leaders for that matter – are betrayed by their own kind – and not just their menfolk – in their fight to prevail (‘wise men wasted on the whims of women’).

As director of the Donmar Warehouse Lisa Rourke’s approach is theatrical and exquisitely visual in her screen debut. This is a lavishly mounted and magnificent saga that straddles the majestic Scottish landscape and also the lush intimacy of the interior scenes. The 16th century is seen from a uniquely feminine focus. And Rourke appreciates the sensibilities in question that only a woman could appreciate: the great sadness at the heart of Elizabeth I is her inability to procreate and this makes her a vulnerable character with a fatal flaw, despite her abiding strength of character and acute intelligence. Power for women in that era lay in their fertility and also their fecundity. And Mary is fully aware of this and uses her biology to get the better of Elizabeth, at least for a while. And when they finally meet, in a dreamlike scene where gossamer curtains continually conceal Elizabeth from her rival, the meeting is not confrontational but essentially full of regret and commiseration – although neither backs down from their position of residual power. Beau Willimon (Netflix) brings his unique brand of TV theatricals to the party with behind the scenes skulduggery.

The film opens as the 18-year-old widowed and still virgin Mary (Ronan) returns to Scottish shores after a sexless marriage to François – who was apparently too scared to perform his manly duties. Her half- brother (James McArdle) is temporarily on the throne, and not ecstatic to see her, for obvious reasons, and Protestant cleric John Knox (Tennant) is highly vocal in his dislike of her. Her Catholicism is the divisive factor, as is her unwillingness to stroke male egos (“one moment does not make a man”). Her cousin and rival Elizabeth (a regal Margot Robbie) is also unhappy to have her back in Britain, as she is a rightful heir to the throne and Elizabeth is childless, but concedes that Mary will come next. But those around them are not happy about the possible outcomes, and their scheming sets in motion a series of events that are now ‘history’.

Rourke and Willimon’s subtly salacious backdrop to the intrigue makes this neatly condensed historical thriller compelling but also highly plausible. And Rourke keeps the tension mounting and the pace tight throughout in her masterful first feature. There are no long monologues or endless pontifications – and she deftly dovetails the various plot-lines together while stitching sensually intimate scenes into the narrative and also staging short-lived but spectacular battle scenes. Costumes and hairstyles feel both ancient and edgily Avantgarde. And a sexual frisson seems to sizzle throughout the entire cast.

Obviously there will be bleats from historical purists, but this is an imagined drama not an historical recreation. As Mary, Ronan feels perfectly cast and polished, her porcelain prettiness suffused with ethereal delicacy, and yet she is resolute and pragmatic to the last. After being seduced by Darnley’s charm – hardly surprising given that her smouldering libido has been unquenched by a sexless short marriage – she quickly susses him out to be a bisexual airhead with feet of clay and an eye to the main chance – but realises she must also bear a child by him – as soon as possible. She also fathoms out the way to do this is through domination, and he responds.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth gets a dose of small pox – transforming Robbie from a regal stunner to a dried-up crone – but still radiates an inner strength and an outer vulnerability which brings out the Queen’s thoughtful introspection and her deep regret at having to be “a man”. And the final scene sees her holding her own, despite Mary’s persistence as a Stuart. This is a finely-tuned but mesmerising arthouse drama that manages its modern viewpoint without losing site of its elegant antiquity. MT

From 18 JANUARY 2019

Rotterdam Film Festival | 23 January – 3 February 2019

Rotterdam is one of the largest shipping ports in Europe and forms part of the prosperous oil-trading triangle known as ARA, along with Amsterdam and Antwerp. Rotterdam is the cradle of Modernism from the 1930s onwards and although it was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War (apart from the iconic Sonneveld House Museum which still remains, built in the Nieuwe Bouwen style). The vibrant Dutch city takes pride in its Avant garde and Art Nouveau architecture and buildings such as the Cube House (left), Kunsthal Museum and the Erasmusbrug Bridge (below) making it a magnet for design lovers – and cineastes alike.

This year’s Rotterdam Film Festival takes place from 23 January until the 3rd February with the latest World premieres running alongside 4 sections entitled Bright Future, Voices, Deep Focus and Perspectives – and a cutting-edge arts programme to add a cultural dimension to the 10 days, and this year includes SLEEPCINEMAHOTEL a one off project by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and never before seen outtakes from Sergei Parajanov’s masterpiece The Colour of Pomegranates (196

The 2019 jury comprises Chilean filmmaker and artist Alfredo Jaar; Daniela Michel, festival director of Morelia Film Festival; Katriel Schory, former director of the Israel Film Fund; Pimpaka Towira, Thai filmmaker/producer and programme director of Singapore Film Festival; and Italian filmmaker Susanna Nicchiarelli. The festival’s Big Screen Competition awards a prize of €30,000 to its winning director whose film will be guaranteed a theatrical release in the Netherlands, as be broadcast on the Dutch public TV network NPO.

Sacha Polak’s Dirty God will open the festival.

T  I G E R   C O M P E T I T I O N

Sons Of Denmark, Ulaa Salim, 2019, Denmark, world premiere

No coração do mundo, Gabriel Martins Alves/Maurílio Martins, 2019, Brazil, world premiere

Take Me Somewhere Nice, Ena Sendijarević, 2019, Netherlands/Bosnia and Herzegovina, world premiere (left)

Present.Perfect., Shengze Zhu, 2019, USA/Hong Kong, world premiere

Sheena667, Grigory Dobrygin, 2019, Russia, world premiere

Nona. If They Soak Me, I’ll Burn Them, Camila José Donoso, 2019, Chile/Brazil/France/South Korea, world premiere

Koko-di Koko-da, Johannes Nyholm, 2018, Sweden/Denmark, international premiere

Els dies que vindran, Carlos Marqués-Marcet, 2019, Spain, world premiere

B I G   S C R E E N   C O M P E T I T I O N

Bangla, Phaim Bhuiyan, 2019, Italy, world premiere

The Best of Dorien B., Anke Blondé, 2019, Belgium, world premiere

God of the Piano, Itay Tal, 2019, Israel, world premiere

Hail Satan?, Penny Lane, 2018, USA, international premiere

Joel, Carlos Sorín, 2018, Argentina, European premiere

Queen of Hearts, May el-Toukhy, 2019, Denmark, European premiere

Transnistra, Anna Eborn, 2018, Sweden, world premiere

X&Y, Anna Odell, 2018, Sweden/Denmark, international premiere

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | 23 JANUARY – 3 FEBRUARY 2019 

Rogue Male (1976) Prime

Dir: Clive Donner | Writer: Frederick Raphael | Cast: Peter O’Toole, John Standing, Alistair Sim, Harold Pinter, Robert Lang, Cyd Hayman, Philip Jackson, Maureen Lipman | UK Drama | 103′

Peter O’Toole is perfectly cast as a seedy, tweedy, down at heel aristocrat embarking on a ‘sporting stalk’ of his deadliest enemy Adolf Hitler from frost-bitten Bavaria via London to the wind swept English countryside in 1939. Based on Geoffrey Household’s cult thriller, Rogue Male is a tense and chilly thriller whose source themes are deftly condensed into a compact and witty affair directed by Clive Donner (The Caretaker) and written by Frederick Raphael, who adds a touch of caustic humour to the dialogue.

Alastair Sim (of ‘Something Nasty in the Woodshed’ fame) is in it too (as The Earl), along with Harold Pinter (Saul). They create that sardonic sense of ennui and superciliousness of the upper classes – O’Toole particularly so as Sir Robert Hunter, recently captured by the Gestapo and left for dead after attempting to shoot Hitler at close quarters. His chase from Germany to England sees his hunting prowess and resourcefulness coming into full force in order to survive the wintry rigours of the hostile landscape.

Clive Donner and his scripter Frederick Raphael originally put the piece together on a shoe-string budget for the BBC small screen in 1976, as part of a series of films offering a historiography of British pluck. Rogue Male melds suspense with social commentary and Peter O’Toole comes across as raddled yet gritty, rigged out in his hunting gear and sporting raffishly scruffy sideboards. The film version sees him as more upmarket (a ‘minor baronet’ ) than he is on the page where he enjoys a lunch of beer and ‘a cold bird’ rather than Raphael’s classy lunch of ‘Moet and Chandon 1928 and gull’s eggs’. O’Toole’s lines are priceless. Even when facing death on the edge of a ravine, he retains his pride. When the German officer tells him about his Charterhouse education, Sir Robert calls the school: “a mousy little middle-class establishment”. “Well we can’t all go to Eton”, the Officer responds. “Thank God! is O’Toole’s retort. But who could fail to root for the foxy hero with a valiant vendetta against Europe’s most wanted man. Later on he declines to politely shake hands, claiming “my hand isn’t really up to it”. Contemporary writers and directors would probably downgrade him to a more working class hero, in tune with the zeitgeist, and maybe Mark Strong would fit the role.

The tightly plotted narrative whips along smartly as Sir Robert pursues his enemy Quive Smith (Standing). Fritz Lang had already tackled Household’s thriller in his 1941 outing Man Hunt but according to film critic Paul Fairclough, Donner describes this version (led by Walter Pidgeon) as “a travesty”.

Away from the glumness of the country setting there are contrasting scenes that take place in the dank confines of a steamy Turkish bath. And its here that Alastair Sim, swathed in white towels and bathrobe (as Sir Robert’s uncle), leisurely declines to assert his influence, declaring that despite being a man of influence, as part of Chamberlain’s post-Munich-agreement government, that ‘Bobberty’ should go into hiding to save his own skin, and his uncle’s reputation. When asked for advice by his nephew, The Earl responds presciently: “I’m a member of the Government, how should I know what people should do?” Clearly, he is not going to rock his own boat even to save his relative.

Pinter plays Sir Robert’s lawyer and friend Saul with reassuring cameraderie, offering to find funds for his time “underground”. There is a terrific chase through the London Underground and even a slim interlude where Sir Robert’s romantic psychology is fleshed out through rather awkward scenes with Cyd Hyman as Rebecca. This excellent made for TV film could easily fill the big screen along with other HBO and Netflix outings, if it had been made nowadays. It makes great use of its tight budget, feeling intimate but ambitious in scope. As Benedict Cumberbatch will pay Sir Robert in the latest big screen version of Rogue Male, with Household and Michael Lesslie (Macbeth (2015) on board as screenwriters. But no-one can replace the compact elegance of Peter O’Toole. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO 

 

Beautiful Boy (2018) ****

Dir: Felix van Groeningen | Drama | 110’ | US 2018

Based on a best-selling memoir by journalist David Sheff, BEAUTIFUL BOY explores a teenage boy’s descent into crystal meth addiction. It’s a film that pulls no punches, but which avoids excessively wallowing in the physical misery of drug use. Instead, the focus is on the wider circumstances of the boy’s addiction and, specifically, the impact that it has on his father. It’s a personal, refreshing approach which makes the boy’s decline all the more moving.

An intelligent teenager with a bright future, Nic Sheff (Timothée Chalamet) is nevertheless anxious and alienated, and he starts using drugs to help him fill the void that he feels inside. Sensing a problem, his father (Steve Carell, playing David Sheff) checks Nic into a rehab facility, but the success of the treatment is short lived – ‘relapse is part of recovery’, we’re repeatedly told, and Nic’s sense of emptiness makes him a repeat user. His choice of drug doesn’t help – as an expert explains to David, the recovery rate for crystal meth addicts, as a percentage, is in the single figures.

Playing Nic, Chalamet brings a sympathetic charm to a role which borders a little on cliché – that of the tortured, gifted artist-turned-junky – but the film belongs to Steve Carrell, who excels as the caring father who feels increasingly helpless in the face of his son’s steady decline. Following his turn as a grieving father in Richard Linklater’s recent masterpiece Last Flag Flying, Carrell seems to be moving away from the comedic roles which made his name and carving out a specific dramatic niche all for himself.

Given that it’s the relationship between father and son, rather than son and drugs, that forms the core of Beautiful Boy, the film’s scope widens out, becoming a study of family dynamicsand the way that David’s preoccupation with Nic consumes him, dominating his life and impacting his relationship with his younger children (Nic’s step-siblings): scenes such as the one showing a distracted David failing to watch his younger son swimming reach beyond the drug-addition narrative. But as David struggles with his guilt and his inability to pull Nic from the gutter, the major question that arises is: can you ever really help other people, or can they only help themselves?

Quiet and understated, the film deserves praise for its non-sensationalist approach. Though at times he brings in a touch too much sentiment (including the use of the John Lennonsong which gives the film its title), director Felix Van Groeningen handles the non-linear, elliptical narrative with a commanding efficiency. If the film’s factual closing titles make its ultimate message all too clear, one can’t help but feel it’s an effective film which serves as a pertinent reminder of the devasting and wide-reaching effects of drug use – not only on the users themselves, but also on those who love them. ALEX BARRETT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

The Raft (2018) ***

Dir/scr. Marcus Lindeen. Sweden/Denmark/US/Germany. 2018. 97 mins.

THE RAFT is Marcus Lindeen’s follow up to The Regretters. As another studio-based experimental film it won the top prize at this year’s CPH: DOX festival, one of Europe’s most important documentary festivals. A fascinating study in sociology and psychology, it unites a group of 7 survivors from an 11-man (and woman) raft (the Alcali), who discuss the sea-bound project they took part in during the 1970s – and their experiences then provide remarkable contrast to the people they have now become – although the archive footage is more interesting than the contemporary chats, their maturity now enables them to gain insight into their younger selves.

Marcus Lindeen was essentially playing a game with these people. They had all been selected along strict guidelines (good-looking, sexually attractive parents who may miss their children and look for support from each other) and confirm (or deny) long-standing theories on violence, provocation, sexual desire and group dynamics etc. The raft in question set sail in the Atlantic in 1973 and was put together by the radical Mexican social anthropologist Santiago Genovés, who had been involved in a plane hi-jacking. It was initially Genovés who came up with the idea to put the group in a isolating situation  and thence to study the violence and conflict that potentially ensued. Very much along the same lines as the various Uk TV realit programmes – only more dangerous – there were clearly perils involved in the seaborne voyage of the Acali from the Canary Islands to Mexico, that took over three months and was crewed by volunteers of different nationalities, race, religion and social backgrounds with the sole aim of  “creating tension”. Crucially the only person who felt conflicted was Genoves himself, and he confesses to breaking down in tears one night on deck.

Strangely enough, the only one concerned about the voyage was Maria, the Swedish captain, who stayed calm throughout a near hit from a massive tanker, and everyone grew to respect her. But soon they lose faith in Genoves who withdraws, feigning illness, and later has some sort of minor breakdown. As they set sail, Lindeen had likened this to experiments with rats, but one of the women confirms that the group eventually became inseparable regardless of their radical differences.

Distilled from over eight hours of 16mm footage, this is an extraordinary endeavour. But it could never be done today with the Health and Safety limitations, let alone the lack of Suntan cream! Far from violence and conflict, what actually comes out of this fantastic voyage is the comment “we started out ‘them and us’ and we became ‘us’”. A positive conclusion to a potentially lethal experiment. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

London Unplugged (2018) ***

Dirs: ‘Dog Days’(George Taylor), ‘Felines’ (George Taylor), ‘Unchosen’ (Nicholas Cohen, Ben Jacobsen), ‘Club Drunk’ (Mitchell Crawford), ‘Mudan Blossom’ (Qi Zhang, Natalia Casali and Kaki Wong), ‘Pictures’ (Rosanna Lowe), ‘Little Sarah’s Big Adventure’ (Andrew Cryan), ‘Shopping’ (Layke Anderson), ‘The Door To’ (Andres Heger-Bratterud), ‘Kew Gardens’ (Nicholas Cohen) Interlink segments (Nicholas Cohen) | UK Drama | 78′

London Unplugged is a portmanteau exploration of female centric stories, some more convincing than others, but all of them focusing on London’s diverse communities. Tied together by Nicholas Cohen’s cinematic interlinking segments, the various vignettes are a refreshing take on the usual themes of opportunity, compromise and loneliness that make up modern living in one of Europe’s most eclectic capitals.

George Taylor’s mysterious opening story ‘Dog Days’, sees two strangers connect in a waterside frolic. Likewise light-hearted is Mitchell Crawford’s remarkable animation entitled ‘Club Drunk’ describing the goings on in a playground after dark. Layke Anderson’s ‘Shopping’ is an enjoyably insightful one-hander that takes place in a sex shop, and offers a feel-good message.

There are the usual economic, racial and migration stories, amongst them Nick Cohen and Ben Jacobson’s ‘Unchosen’ which sees a hapless Iranian refugee fighting for asylum in the chosen city of his dreams. The plight of the homeless is explored with humour in Qi Zhang, Natalia Casali and Kaki Wong’s ‘Mudan Blossom’. Whilst “Pictures’ is a musically-themed piece that follows a struggling singer living on the breadline, based on a 1917 short story by Katherine Mansfield.

By contrast, George Taylor’s ‘Felines’ feels forced and rather amateurish, despite Juliet Stevenson’s efforts to portray a cat-loving carer. The film finishes with Nick Cohen’s  ‘Kew Gardens’, another literary adaptation this time from Virginia Woolf. Cohen’s discursive, episodic story of a real-life female athlete brings the whole thing together neatly although rather soullessly, providing an undercurrent of positive and negative, as she runs from east to west expressing the upbeat and the downbeat vibes of the metropolis. MT

VARIOUS ARTHOUSE VENUES FROM FRIDAY, 18 JANUARY 2019

Buffalo Boys (2017) *

Dir.: Mike Wiluan; Cast: Yoshi Sudarso, Ario Bayu, Tio Pakusadewo, Reinout Bussemaker, Happy Salma; Indonesia, Singapore 2018, 102 min.

Mike Wiluan tries hard to make his homeland’s Oscar entry a touchstone for every Western every made. The end result is a stylish but soulless mishmash that reaches new heights of voyeurism, sadism, and violence – with almost continuous sword and gun fights, martial arts, and fisticuffs a plenty.

Even the narrative is over-wrought: Indonesian princes Suwo (Sudarso) and Jamar (Bayu) have been raised in California by their uncle Arana (Pakusadewo), who fled to the USA after his brother Hamza, a Sultan, was killed in Indonesia by Dutch colonial forces, led by the villainous Van Trach (Bussemaker). We are introduced to the brothers learning how to be good cowboys and gun fighters, before travelling with their uncle to Indonesia, to avenge their father in the early 1860s. Siding with suppressed villagers, they soon come to the attention of Van Trach; a pervert who spends his time whipping and raping his servant Seruni (Salma), who turns out to be Arana’s wife. Needless to say, all is resolved in a showdown, when the good ones punish the villains. The less said about this valiant attempt, the better: Performances across the board are one-dimensional and DoP John Radel’s widescreen images are as second-hand as the rest of the ensemble – apart from the sadistic misogyny, which is truly remarkable – even for the Wild West AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 18 JANUARY

Climax (2018) *** Home Ent release

Dir: Gaspar Noé | Drama | 97′

The Argentinian provocateur is now in his fifties but still loves to see the worse in people, as his latest ‘thriller’ shows. This nihilistic metaphor for modern youth starts with a group of young Parisian dancers sharing the joy of their art through a series of video vignettes in the wake of their US tour. This all plays out on TV screen sunk into a bookshelf of bizarre titles ranging from suicide manuals to DVDs of Possession, Harakiri and Schizophrenia. With its ghastly blood red and green tinged camera work, Climax is a well-executed but unedifying affair that’s best left for the horror crowd or those who enjoy a touch of dirty dancing – and I mean dirty.

Shot in fifteen days and opening with the final credits – the camera erupts onto a dance floor basking in gory neon where skanky-looking types writhe and wriggle to the sounds of ‘Supernature’ – all spinning out in one hypnotic take. Scantily clad and in various states of undress the disco divas then move to the sidelines to share inane banter along the lines of: “you’re so fucking fake”. The dancing grows more frenetic after they unwittingly imbibe LSD spiked Sangria. And this is where the film finally descends into a nadir of full-blooded decadent debauchery.

Neither seductive nor particularly interesting, this devilish chamber piece may be a delight to Noe’s fanbase, but others will find it sad to see society’s bases impulses played out as a soi-disant arthouse piece.  Shirking a coherent narrative, the film’s throbbing electronic beats appeal to the darker more reptilian impulses of the human brain. As the camera plummets and soars, the desire to vomit grows stronger. Couples copulate and urinate in the name of art. Noé’s schtick is growing tiresome. Can we play at something else? MT

DVD and BLURAY | 21 January 2019 courtesy of Arrow Films 

https://we.tl/t-Rnh1zai4tW

 

 

La Villa (2017) | The House by the Sea

Dir: Robert Guediguian | Cast: Ariane Ascaride, Jean Pierre Darroussin, Anais Demoustier Robinson Stevenin, Yann Tregouet | Drama | France | 107′

Robert Guediguian offers a paean to Provence in the 1970s when three siblings: famous actress Angèle (Ascaride), Armand (Meylan) and Joseph (Daroussin) all hark back to a jeunesse dorée at their father’s seaside villa, he has since suffered a debilitating stroke.

Armand is possibly the most stable of the trio. He has been running the local restaurant for the past two decades. Joseph pines for the good old days of the PCF, which makes him morose and depressed. The film plays out very much in line with a Checkov play where the past must be resolved before life can go on. Joseph too must face the music; his dance with a much younger fiancée Bérangère (Demoustier) must come to an end. Angèle is still mourning the drowning of her only child, and has fallen for a younger fisherman Benjamin (Stevenin), a fan of her stage appearances since he was a teenager. Neighbour Yvan is the only one in a ‘good place’ emotionally – the young doctor is in town to visit his elderly parents. Late catalysts to the party are Yvan’s parents and the appearance of three child refugees.

Director and co-writer Guediguian marks his 19th collaboration with his wife Ariane Ascaride, staying on familiar ground: he gently sketches out the older characters’ longing for the past, and the contemporary fast lane that young ones like Bérangère and Yvan cling to: for them decisions about the future are easy because they have one. Benjamin is somewhere in the middle – he is a romantic dreamer, who yearns for a life shaped on the past. Property speculators circle the coast line like vultures, Joseph cannot even put his memoirs in order. The three siblings are keen to keep the place and the restaurant open, they have to admit that nearly all their old neighbours has cashed in on the property boom. The refugee children at least provide Angèle with a sort of closure.

The ensemble acting is reliable, and DoP Pierre Milon (The Class) is kept busy, panning and tracking the hilly countryside, nature being the only stable element among the coming and going of humans who, with few exceptions, don’t appreciate the beauty of the stunning landscape. AS

Robert Guédiguian was born in Marseille. Many of his early films, including À la via, à la mort (95) and La Ville est tranquille(00), screened in the Director’s Spotlight programme at the 2002 Festival, and he returned to TIFF with his subsequent features Mon père est ingénieur (04), Le Voyage en Arménie(06), and Neiges du Kilimandjaro (11). Other credits include Le promeneur du champ de Mars (05), L’armée du crime (09), and Une histoire de fou (15). La Villa (17) is his latest film. AS

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 11 January | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 première.

The Upside (2017) ***

122’Dir: Neil Berger | Cast: Brian Cranston, Nicole Kidman | Kevin Hart | US Drama | 

Neil Berger’s slick big budget remake rides roughshod over some serious themes and its own narrative flaws, but thanks to Brian Cranston at the wheel central role. But after a clunky first act, The Upside does improve, and culminates in an enjoyable drama.  

Cranston plays philosophical, philanthropic, paraplegic Philip who has amassed a small fortune the hard way, but is now confined to his glossy Manhattan penthouse due to a hang-gliding accident. But not only is Cranston’s Philip richer and more sassy, he’s also streets ahead in the acting stakes compared to his co-stars Nicole Kidman who plays an obsequious business manager, and Kevin Hart his full-time carer. The Upside is always going to come up and finish second to the original which was the most successful French language film of all time in Spain, Germany, Denmark, Brazil and Mexico to name a few countries. This was all largely due to the intensively moving way it presented its subject matter.

Phil is mainly depressed because he’s recently lost the love his life and the film opens with the tawdry search for someone to look after him now she’s gone. But when the crass and bungling Dell appears on the scene his bullishness somehow strikes a chord with Phil, even though the ex-con appears entirely unsuitable for the job. It soon emerges that Phil’s made the right choice. Dell’s down to earth attitude (think Eddie Murphy’s Trading Places) and refusal to be politically correct chimes with Philip’s own maverick qualities: the two have great chemistry as fearless, free-thinking individuals, and that’s why they hit it off together in this inspirational drama about friendship, forgiveness and the indomitable human spirit.

The Upside hits some high notes with its breath-taking setting: New York has never looked so majestic in widescreen skyscapes and the glitzy interiors of Phil’s lavish home. The Bronx too looks commanding and this is where predictably we meet Dell’s chuntering girlfriend and his sparky son . And there are some well-choreographed car chases with Dell at the wheel of Phil’s fleet of Ferraris and Porches. There’s humour to be had in the situational nuances: Phil’s po-faced neighbours are lampooned and so are his bathroom facilities (a shower that speaks German). Nicole Kidman is glacially prim and proper as the house manager, and certainly doesn’t convince as Phil’s potential love interest. But we soon realise he’s a true romantic who loves women and being in their company. And he’s started an old-fashioned ‘pen-pal’ courtship into the bargain.

Even though The Upside (and the original French film) is loosely based on a real story, the formulaic narrative leaves nothing to the imagination and very much toes the party line that Dell is a ‘jackass’ who’s taken the easy life of crime, and now suddenly starts admiring classical opera and developing painting skills akin to Jean Michel Basquiat. Director Neil Burger (The Illusionist, Limitless) and screenwriter Jon Hartmere have some insightful comments to make and there are a few laughs, but that doesn’t negate the film’s racial undertones, and or the slightly glib treatment of Phil’s infirmities. The Upside slightly manipulates with its charming glibness but Cranston gives things a much needed shot of nuanced dynamism, and this is what ultimately makes The Upside fly. MT

OUT on 12  JANUARY 2019

Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) **** Bluray release

Dir.: Robert Aldrich; Cast: Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotton, Agnes Morehead, Victor Buono, Mary Astor, Bruce Dern; USA 1964, 133 min.

This Grand Guignol of the Southern kind by underrated director Robert Aldrich stars Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. Scripted by Henry Farrel and Lucas Heller it re-unites the cast and crew of Whatever happened to Baby Jane? (1962) – minus Joan Crawford, who started the feature, but was driven out by rival Bette Davis, who asked for De Havilland as Crawford’s replacement.

In the unusually long pre-credit introduction, set in 1927, young Charlotte Hollis (Davis) is hoping  to elope with married lover John Mayhew (Dern) on the eve of a ball, but her overbearing father Sam (Buono) has other ideas after being informed of her intentions by goody-two-shoes cousin Miriam (de Havilland). Even though John obliges Hollis sen., he is decapitated by a meat cleaver, Charlotte being suspect number one in his murder. Jump forward to 1964 when Charlotte, who has being living alone in the big mansion in Hollisport, Louisiana, is still haunted by the murder – for which she blames her father. Losing her mind, she is plagued by an apparition of John’s severed head. Charlotte is forced against her will to leave the mansion, due to the building of a highway. Cousin Miriam returns to help her see sense, together with doctor Bayliss (Cotton). But with the support of her housekeeper Velma (Morehead), Charlotte goes on fighting the past and the present. An eerie meeting between John’s widow Jewel (Astor) and Miriam, throws everything even more into confusion.

It should be said that Davis insistence of getting rid of Crawford has done the feature a great favour, since Crawford would have never had the ability to play such an understated villain as de Havilland. Cotton’s doctor is a snake like performance. Meanwhile, Morehead’s Velma tries to outscore Davis’ hysterics; the latter swings between keeping her status as a wealthy Southern Belle and outright paranoia. All said and done, Hush Hush belongs to DoP Joseph Biroc, who shot eleven of Aldrich’s features. His black-and-white images are truly haunting, he plays with shadows and light and his interior shots of the mansion have an overbearing emotive, tormenting quality. 

Aldrich (1918-1983) made so many memorable features – Kiss Me Deadly, The Killing of Sister George, Vera Cruz, The Dirty Dozen, The Flight of the Phoenix – he should be considered one of the giants’ of his era. But all his genre-films contain a subversive sub-text, unsettling the audience. And this also applies to Hush Hush: which cannily compares the state of society with regards to race, nothing seems to have changed in those intervening forty years. Black and White are strictly segregated, the former only appear professionally in a serving capacity to the white masters. And the (all white) crowd in front of the mansion, watching Charlotte being carted off, gossip about their repressed sexual desires, Aldrich borrowing from Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Baby Doll. And watch out for a direct quote/steal from Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques! AS

BLURAY RELEASE 21 JANUARY 2019 | EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA

Camorra (2018) ***

Dir; Francesco Patierno | Doc | Italy 70’

Francesco Patierno offers a pragmatic but mournful insight into the criminal identity of his birthplace Naples in this historical and socio-anthropological portrait of the capital of Campania in Southern Italy.

The phrase “see Naples and die” takes on a different meaning here from the one coined during the city’s Golden Age when it was the Bourbon capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Patierno seeks to show how the city’s criminal underbelly dealt with pernicious result of unemployment and poverty through powerful self-regulation that confined crime to the working classes.

Camorra is the result of months of research among the treasures of Rai Teche and the Riccardo Carbone archive. What emerges is a surprising trove of unseen news footage and period films from the 1960s to the 1990s, enlivened by a visceral score from local musician Meg.

The Camorra ‘phenomenon’ was born from a culture of subordination. Many post-war orphaned children found in it a structure to protect them from complete poverty and homelessness. They became street workers who learnt to sell cigarettes arriving as contraband from Morocco and further afield, smuggled in by the criminal underworld. Things changed with the advent of warlord Rafaele Cutolo, who unified the activity into a single large military and economic organization providing its members with an identity of social and territorial redemption. 

The culmination of Cutolo’s power coincides with one of the darkest events in the history of the Republic, when the Christian Democrat Ciro Cirillo was kidnapped by the Red Brigades and returned after a massive family ransom was paid. Cutolo negotiated with the terrorists for the release of the politician and the State remained in his debt.

Patierno adopts a different approach to the usual one involving the violence and blood-letting for which the organisation is known. His narrative searches for a meaning and an explanation for the Camorra’s existence, tracing its history and exploring the background of its protagonists, to offer a short but engaging watch. By understanding the roots of the organisation and its methods, positive change can hopefully be brought about.MT

NOW SHOWING AT BERTHADOCHOUSE and selected arthouse venues | VENICE FESTIVAL 2018

New Year, New Films | 2019 in focus

2019 gets off to an impressive start with two extraordinary arthouse dramas both releasing in January. Timothée Chalamet plays a young man struggling with addition in Felix Van Groeningen’s  A Beautiful Boy and Saoirse Ronan gives a dynamite performance as the tragic Mary Queen of Scots in a mesmerising historical epic from theatre turned screen director Lisa Rourke. There’s plenty more to look forward as the New Year gets under way, here are a selection of arthouse features and documentaries releasing in 2019.

Bergman: A Year in the Life 

The focus of Jane Magnusson’s European Award winning documentary is 1957, arguable the zenith of  Ingmar Bergman’s career when he released two on his most acclaimed dramas The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, a TV film and four plays. It’s an impressive film that reflects Bergman’s mammoth contribution to the world of film and theatre. 25 January 

Burning 

Some critics went wild for this psychological thriller from South Korean director Lee Chang-dong. Certainly alluring, the enigmatic arthouse piece is based on a story from Haruki Murakami about a barn-burning weirdo and his struggle to win the girl of his dreams. 1 February 1st

Birds of Passage

In his follow-up to Embrace of the Serpent Ciro Guerra is joined by his wife Cristina Gallego for this arthouse chronicle of the emergence of the drugs trade in his native Colombia. Spring 2019

Can You Ever Forgive Me? 

Melissa McCarthy takes plagiarism to extraordinary ends as Lee Israel, a New York writer struggling to make ends meet – eventually by criminal means. Marielle Heller and Nicole Holofcener offer up an absorbing dark comedy drama that also stars Richard E Grant. Opens February 1st

Sometimes Always Never 

One of my favourite British films this years was this amusingly cheeky indie drama – it will make you laugh and contemplate your own life too. Love, ageing, loneliness and emotional fulfilment all deftly intermingle in a ‘detective’ drama about a father (a thoughtful Bill Nighy) and his two sons, one of whom has disappeared. Set in the rain-soaked Ribble Valley, there’s a soft melancholy to the muted visuals and the quintessentially English storyline, crafted by Frank Cottrell Boyce (The Railway Man). A subtle film film but an enjoyable one.

Border

Writer John Ajvide Lindvist’s arthouse oddity has the same fresh originality as his vampire thriller Let the Right One In, ten years on. The Swedish social satire is a romantic parable that blends fantasy, mystery and horror and won the top prize at this year’s Cannes ‘Un Certain Regard’. March 8th

High Life

Claire Denis is the latest auteur to try her hand with a Sci-fi drama. And she succeeds. This one stars Robert Pattison and Juliette Binoche and premiered at Toronto to wrapt applause. Early spring 

On the Basis of Sex

In the second film about noted US jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG is already on release)– Felicity Jones stars as the fearsome feminine judge and activist who has broken down barriers since the 1950s, and continues to do so with her subtle charm and incisive intellect. February 8th   

Float Life a Butterfly

Carmel Winters’s won the FIPRESCI Discovery Prize in a drama that follows the ambitions of a young and feisty boxing enthusiast (Hazel Doupe) in 1960s Ireland. Spring 2019

Green Book

Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen star in this enjoyable road movie that delighted critics both at Marrakech and Toronto. It follows a suave African-American pianist (Ali) and a New York bruiser (Mortensen) to America’s Deep South on a voyage of discovery – of themselves and the racial tensions of the 1960s. 1 February 2019 

The Young Picasso 

Exhibition on Screen chronicles the early years of the Spanish painter, from his birth in Malaga to  his international recognition in Paris in his mid thirties. Informative and a must for art lovers. 5 February 2019

Greta

Isabelle Huppert had a low profile in 2018, but she’s back with a vengeance in Neil Jordan’s critically divisive drama that explores the relationship between a young girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Huppert’s lonely widow. 19 April 2019

The Irishman

When Martin Scorsese offered a lifetime Tribute to his great friend Robert De Niro at Marrakech Film Festival , The Irishman was the talk of the town. Scorsese’s latest film will be releasing on Netflix, 

The Mule

Another Hollywood luminary – now in his 90s – Clint Eastwood will hit cinemas at the end of January 2019 with his 143rd film – in which he also stars. The Mule is a high-octane thriller set in the US drug trade  January 25th

The Sisters Brothers

Jacques Audiard casts Joaquin Phoenix and John C Reilly in this sensitively-scripted buddy movie that sees the titular brothers embark on a Wild West odyssey, based on Patrick deWitt’s western novel. Skilfully avoiding a macho approach, this is insightful and great fun. April 5th

Woman At War

Benedikt Erlingsson follows his unusual equine-themed drama Of Horses and Men with another innovative tale from his native Iceland that sees an ambitious eco warrior in the shape of a middle-aged woman strike out for the environment. 3 May 2019

Too Late to Die Young

Dominga Sotomayor’s languorous Chilean family drama was a big hit at Locarno 2018, and takes place during the summer of 1990 while the country was making a dangerous bid for democracy.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino latest, another highly-anticipated controversial caper tackles the thorny theme of Hollywood during the Charles Manson era. Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio star. July 26

The Woman in the Window

Based on A J Finn’s bestseller, Joe Wright and Tracey Letts create an intriguing crime thriller that explores urban angst, loneliness and voyeurism in contempo New York. Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman and Amy Adams star.

The Lady Eve

We can always rely on the classics, especially when Preston Sturges, Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck are concerned. Re-released by Park Circus this screwball comedy with a social message  is possibly one of the most enjoyable films you’ll see in February, and makes for perfect Valentine viewing. 15 February.

BEST INDIE AND ARTHOUSE FILMS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2019

 

 

Under the Tree | Undir Trenu (2018) **** | Dual format release

Dir.: Hafstein Gunnar Sigurdsson; Cast.: Steinthor Steinporsson, Edda Bjorgvinsdottir, Sigurdur Sigurjonsson, Lara Johanna Jonsdottir, Pornsteinn Bachmann, Selma Bjornsdottir; Iceland//Denmark/Poland/Germany 2017, 89 min.

In this urban satire, Hafstein Gunnar Sigurdsson (Rams) pulls off a comedy feat: he makes us laugh at our own petty mindedness that can at any moment send us hurtling into a cataclysmic abyss. A great ensemble showcases this a tour-de-force of middle-class nimby-ism with the same dark humour as Rams.

It all starts with a male embarrassment: husband Atli (Steinporsson) is surprised by his wife Agnes (Jonsdottir) in the early morning, masturbating to pornographic images on his laptop featuring him and and – or so he claims. Agnes throws him out, not knowing that his next place of residence back with his parents – will soon be a war zone. After the loss of Atli’s brother, who is heading for suicide, his mother Inga (Bjorgvinsdottir) has been suffering from depression, and has chosen the next-door neighbours Konrad (Bachman) and Eybjorg (Bjornsdottir), as an object for her deflected self-hatred. Konrad and Eyborg, not unreasonably, want the huge tree on his parents’ property trimmed, at it blocks the sun from their front porch. Whilst Inga’s husband Baldvin (Sigurjonsson) is ready to compromise, Inga herself does not want to sacrifice a leaf – she craves war, to release her pent-up emotions. After Atli moves in, living in a tent in the garden, his parent Persian cat disappears without a trace and Inga is convinced the neighbours have abducted her. Since said neighbours own a proud German shepherd, Inga takes matters in her own hand: impersonating Eybjorg at the vets, she has the animal put to sleep and, after taxidermy, puts it at the front door of the hatred neighbours. When husband Baldvin criticises her action as over the top she tells him “at least they know where he is, unlike me” – referring to the missing body of her son. When Konrad, in the middle of the night, takes his saw to the titular tree, he sets in motion a bloody Shakespearean tragedy.

Violence simmers under the suface: Atli cannot stand the thought of Agnes getting custody of their four-year old daughter Asa: who he abducts from Kindergarten and later smashes his wife’s mobile after harassing her at her workplace. But unlike his mother, Atli is too phlegmatic to escalate the conflict, listening to his father’s compromise solutions – but one can see a family resemblance. Though the director never forgets to show us the funny side: at a tenants’ meeting in Agnes’ flat, she complains about Atli being there, blurting out at the meeting “Atli masturbates to the images of his girlfriend. That’s not alright, isn’t it?”, to which the male half of a couple, whose nightly, noisy lovemaking keeps the neighbours awake, responds with a curt “why not, it’s okay”.

Under the Tree is full of dialogue chock-full of witty one-liners as startling as they are absurd: but underneath there lurks a nimbyism and an intolerance of anyone who is not perceived as showing their own values. By the end, Sigurdsson, fed up with  humans, leaves the last ‘meow’ to the cat. AS

DUAL FORMAT RELEASE | 14 JANUARY 2019 | COURTESY OF EUREKA  

King of Thieves (2018) *** Home Ent release

Dir: James Marsh | Cast: Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Paul Whitehouse, Michael Gambon, Ray Winstone, Charlie Cox | UK Thriller |

James Marsh casts the diamond geezers of British acting as perps who bring their woes and their wiles to the table in planning their final felony – that actually took place over the Easter weekend in 2017. Joe Penhall’s script pieces together newspaper footage to provide a convincing account of a caper that’s more plodding than racy, often over-emphasising its veteran credentials in a narrative that focuses on settling scores rather than offering thrills. Michaels Caine and Gambon are certainly entertaining to watch, with Paul Whitehouse pulling off a comedy performance to remember. But Jim Broadbent is the real revelation as a sardonic softy whose sheep’s clothing disguises him as the real wolf of the pack. MT

OUT ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD ON 14 January 2019 | BLURAY/DVD 21 January 2019

 

 

 

RBG (2018)

Dirs: Julie Cohen/Betsy West | US Doc | 98′

WOMEN BELONG IN ALL PLACES WHERE DECISIONS ARE BEING MADE” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg*

To say that ruth Bader Ginsburg is a force a to be reckoned with is an understatement. But never has a woman used her feminine charm to greater effect as this outstanding Supreme Court Justice. Variously called “a witch”, “a monster” and “a zombie”, among other things, Ginsburg is slender and rather attractive. Clearly despite her professional successes, she is not without her detractors, to put it mildly. And Trump goes so far as to call her an “absolute disgrace to the Supreme Court.” That said, Julie Cohen and Betsy West focus on her many achievements in their positive biopic. Far from being hagiographic, it doesn’t quail away from her outspoken nature that continues to make her, at 85, a fearsome and unswerving advocate of women’s rights. She has also been a loving wife and a mother of two. But it’s the calm and indomitable way that she achieves her professional goals that is the thrust of this intelligent documentary. 

Born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, 1933, Ginsburg lost her both sister and her mother before she graduated from hight school. But her husband Marty Ginsburg was to prove a guiding light in her struggle to make a name for herself, and she married him and had two kids family before starting Law school at Harvard, where she was one of nine women in a class of over 500 men. Despite her obvious talent she couldn’t fine a job in New York, a fact she put down to being a woman. 

As in all the professions, the devil is in the detail. But Ginsburg possesses a fine intellect and an infinite capacity for absorbing facts and legal complexities. This capacity to handle mind-numbing minutiae has served her well when tackling various legal ground-breaking legal precedents that have quite literally changed the working world for American women. Cohen and West move swiftly to chronicle Ginsburg’s achievement such as toppling the Virginia Military Institute’s male-only admissions policy. Ginsburg came to office during the Clinton administration and still reigns in office despite her overt criticism of Trump which she acknowledges was probably not her best move. Yet her resilience and unfailing competence has helped her to move mountains in the fight for female rights and empowerment in the workplace. MT

https://youtu.be/NryGsAVlD_4

ON RELEASE FROM 4 JANUARY 2019 AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE and NATIONWIDE.

 

The ABC Murders (2018) | BBC TV

Dir: Alex Gabassi | Wri: Sarah Phelps | Cast: John Malkovich, Shirely Henderson, Rupert Grint, Tara Fitzgerald, Eamon Farren, Andrew Buchan, Bronwyn James, Eve Austin | Thriller | UK

1933 is the setting for this fraught and febrile thriller that opens in a dingy London boarding house.  Shirley Henderson (as Mrs Marbury) welcomes a travelling salesman in the shape of Eamon Farron’s sinuously reptilian Alexandre Bonaparte Cusp who carries a suitcase suspiciously containing women’s tights and a typewriter whose percussive keys forms the pounding score that drives the narrative forward. Meanwhile, John Malkovich fails to convince as a sinister and rather constipated Hercule Poirot investigating the series of gruesome alphabet murders – so called for the capital letters A.B. and C left beside the corpses.

In an attempt to keep give this adaptation a contemporary feel, the usual zenophobic Brexit references are all there – but they just interfere with the solid storyline established by Agatha Christie and classily adapted for the screen by Sarah Phelps. Poirot’s credentials are brought into question by his new boss Inspector Crome (Rupert Grint), as the authorities fail to recognise the Belgian immigré in London. He’s certainly a shadowy character who could well serve for the killer himself. And his hard to pin down accent proves an annoying distraction from the murder investigation of a nasty blond waitress Betty Bernard (Eve Austin) who has denigrated her own sister (Bronwyn James), and Cusp into the bargain.

This TV thriller has more style that substance but it’s enjoyably auteurist all the same. Director Alex Gabassi moves deftly within the first episode to finger the main suspects and there’s a glossy allure to Joel Devlin’s images that conjure up the sickly claustrophobic atmosphere of a dangerously divided interwar Britain shot to pieces and still shaking from the horrors of social deprivation and shell shock, but still trying to put on its best bib and tucker. Apart from the typewriter motif, there’s a rather good score by Isobel Waller-Bridge, (sister of Phoebe). Great stuff for the Christmas holidays in three well-paced episodes from 26 until 28 December 2018. MT

ALSO AVAILABLE ON BBC iPLAYER. 

3 Films in praise of Julien Duvivier

Julien Duvivier (1896-1967) was a prominent French film director largely active between 1930-1960 and best known for his early silent films and thrillers such as Pépé Le MokoLa Bandera, Life dances on, and Marianne de ma Jeunesse. He began life as an actor but after a disaster on stage, he moved on to write and direct, later relating the incident in his 1939 film La fin du Jour, with Michel Simon playing his character.

After working for Andre Antoine at Gaumont, Duvivier directed his first film in 1919. His early work was often religious in nature: La Tragédie de Lourdes, and La Vie Miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin which explored the Carmelite saint Thérèse de Liseux. Gaining experience with seminal French directors Marcel l’Herbier and Louis Feuillade, his first successful drama David Golder (1931) was a rags to riches story of an ambitious Polish Jew who falls foul of his wife. In 1934 Duvivier began a collaboration with Jean Gabin that would see them working together in The Imposter (1944), Pépé Le Moko, and La Belle Equipe (They Were Five). Like his countryman Jacques Tourneur, Duvivier moved to Hollywood and enjoyed the experience working with Charles Boyer, Edward G Robinson, Henry Fonda and Tyrone Power. But like Tourneur he eventually went back to France where he often cast Fernandel, Alain Delon, George Sanders and Michel Simon in his dramas.

Revered by legends such as Ingmar Bergman and Jean Renoir, Duvivier is still one of the greatest figures in the history of French cinema and possibly the most neglected, due to the uneven yet thematically varied nature of his work. Critic Michael Atkinson sees the poetic realist pioneer as “a victim of auteurism, ignored for generations by critics who saw…his output as the work of an able journeyman without signature or invention,” Duvivier, Atkinson argues compellingly, “rarely let a dull or unevocative shot pass through his camera,” and his films “fairly leap and swoon with visual cogency, surprising compositional drama, and a quintessentially French embrace of narrative life, equal parts funeral and fete.” Despite all this, his best films are stellar and treasured by cinefiles all over the world. He died in a car crash in 1967.

Julien Duvivier taps into post-war France’s paranoia in PANIQUE (1944), a long unavailable thriller, adapted from a Georges Simenon novel. Proud, eccentric and anti-social, Monsieur Hire (Michel Simon) has always kept to himself. But after the body of a woman turns up in the Paris suburb where he lives, he feels drawn to a pretty young newcomer to town (Viviane Romance), discovers his neighbours are only too ready to be suspicious of him, and is framed for the murder. Duvivier’s first outing after his return to France from Hollywood, sees the acclaimed poetic realist applying his consummate craft to darker, moodier ends. Led by two deeply nuanced performances, the tensely noirish Panique exposes the dangers of the knives-out mob mentality, delivering a pointed allegory of the behaviour of Duvivier’s countrymen during the war.

ON BLURAY AT AMAZON

But Julien Duvivier’s 1956 thriller DEADLIER THAN THE MALE  (Voici les temps des Assassins) somehow manages to outdo them all when it comes to violent women in film Noir: Catherine (Delorme) is the daughter of the drug depending Gabrielle (Bogaert), and tries to escape from the milieu by marrying the restaurant owner Andre Chatelin (Gabin), who has divorced her mother. Telling him that Gabrielle is dead, the scheming Catherine succeeds in marrying the much older man, who soon learns that his wife is lying about her mother. He more or less imprisons her with her mother Antoinette (Bert), also a restaurant owner, who kills her chicken with a whip – which she also uses on Catherine. The frightened woman asks Andre’s friend, the student Gerard (Blain), to kill her husband, but when he refuses, she kills him. Her end – by the fangs of a particular vicious animal – is particularly gruesome. Again, the images of Armand Thirad are undeserving of this blatant ideology.

ON BLURAY AT AMAZON 

The notorious Pépé LE MOKO (Jean Gabin, in a truly iconic performance) plunges into the gangster underworld as a wanted man: women long for him, rivals hope to destroy him, and the law is breathing down his neck at every turn. On the lam in the labyrinthine Casbah of Algiers, Pépé is safe from the clutches of the police–until a Parisian playgirl compels him to risk his life and leave its confines once and for all. One of the most influential films of the 20th century and a landmark of French poetic realism, Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le moko is presented here in its full-length version. AVAILABLE FROM CRITERION COLLECTION | Amazon Prime

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Born Yesterday (1950) Bluray release

Dir.: George Cukor; Cast: Judy Holliday, Broderick Crawford, William Holden, Howard St. John; USA 1950, 103 min.

Based on the Broadway play of the same name by Garson Kanin, and scripted by Albert Mannheimer, Born Yesterday is not one of George Cukor’s most dynamic features. The film’s plus side is Judy Holliday, who, reprising her Broadway role, won Best Actress at the Oscars. But Cukor’s direction is a little impersonal, and the feature never quite breaks free from its theatrical origins.

Harry Brock (Crawford) is a crook and a mini-tycoon, arriving in Washington with his mistress Billie Dawn (Holliday), to bribe a politician. Helped by lawyer Jim Devery (St, John), he sets in motion a great scheme, but suddenly decides that Billie isn’t good enough just as she is (an ex-revue girl), and should be  be educated to a higher standard to make worthy marriage material: wants her as a wife – not for love, but for insurance purposes: he has made over some properties to her, and a wife cannot testify against her husband. Journalist Paul Verral (Holden), does a fine job of her re-education – before an emancipated Billie upsets the applecart.

There are several reasons why Born Yesterday doesn’t really catch fire: first of all, the 1950 drama has not aged well; and lines like “Yes, you are right, I am stupid and I like it” (Billie) and “Maybe I slapped you a couple of times” (Harry) are not funny today, even though they may have raised a titter back in the day. Secondly, there is an awful lot of preaching going on, and DoP Joseph Walker (who extensively worked for Capra and Hawks) cannot do much to liven up the proceedings. Even Holliday’s sparkling, Oscar worthy performance is questionable: she is hardly a match for Bette Davis (All about Eve) or Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard). Far too verbose and sanctimonious, Cukor’s direction falls between a screwball comedy and a muted pre-feminist manifesto, leaving a rather stuffy and stultified box of tricks. AS

AVAILABLE ON BLURAY from 21 JANUARY 2019      

Nae Pasaran (2018) ****

Dir.: Felipe Bustos Sierra; Documentary with John Keenan, Bob Fulton, Robert Sommerville, Stuart Barrie; UK 2018, 93 min.

After Pinochet’s Army and Air Force bombed the Presidential Palace of La Moneda in Santiago de Chile overthrowing the Allende’s government on 11.9.1973, the General started a regime of terror, torture and mass murder. But the planes employed to bomb the seat of Government were infact British-made Hawke Hunters, maintained in a factory in East Kilbride, near Glasgow. When engineers discovered, in March 1974, that four jet engines were due to repaired and sent back to Chile, they took action.

Apart from some CGI docu-drama, Sierra and DoP Peter Keith stay on a very human level with those that took part; and there’s dry humour in the animation sequences. Engineers John Keenan, Bob Fulton, Robert Sommerville and Stuart Barrie wrote ‘Blacked’ on the engines and started a protest. But they were aware of the full impact of their actions until Felipe Bustos Sierra, a Belgian born son of Chilean emigrants, took a closer look. After a short film of the subject in 2014, his debut feature documentary tells a harrowing, but moving story. In London, like in many European cities, big demonstrations against the military Junta were being held, and Allende’s widow Hortensia Bussi spoke to a big crowd in Trafalgar Square. British Doctor Sheila looked after Allende supporters in hiding. She was captured by the army and tortured in the notorious Villa Grimaldi near Santiago.

After her release in 1975, the human rights infringements in Chile came to light, and made the four Scotts even more adamant about keeping the engines in the East Kilbride factory. What they did not know then, was that their actions had real repercussions on two levels. Firstly through the broadcast radio media that reached the prisoners in the Chilean camps camps. One of them, Dr. Arturo Jiron Vargas (1928-2014) was on the staff in La Moneda during the day of the overthrow. And he tells how they stayed with Allende until the end. Then the soldiers made them lay down on the ground in front of the palace, and given to believe that military tanks would roll over them. Vargas ended up in one of these camps where women were raped by dogs and mock executions were a daily event. The action (or better the non-action) of the Glasgow Four was a sign for Vargas and the prisoners, that they had not been abandoned.

Sierra also interviewed General Fernando Rojas Vender, a retired General and commander in-Chief of the Chilean Air Force under Pinochet. He is still proud of the precision bombing of the Palace by the Hunter Hawks but disappointed that he could not actively participate, since he was in control of ground forces. Before he became a General, Vender was a squadron leader of the Hawker Hunter planes, and he knows every detail. After September 1973, Vender was in charge of the operation to re-patriate the planes to Europe, a big problem, since they were not made to fly long distances. Soon Chile was involved in a border conflict with Argentina, and Vender had only three planes available. He admits that the four men in Glasgow were greatly responsible for the lack of numbers. When he was told by Sierra that the protest in East Kilbride was started by a Christian, Vender hit the roof: “somebody put this idea in his head, like with the Islamists today, they all behave like animals”.

In 2015, Keenan, Fulton and Summerville received the Order of Commander of the Republic of Chile, the highest decoration of the country, from the Chilean ambassador in London. Their four-year long boycott not only gave hope to the prisoners of the Pinochet regime, but hampered the efficiency of the Chilean Air Force. One of the engines involved, rotting away in Chile, was sent back to East Kilbride via ship, and greeted by the four. It will now continue its fight with the Scottish weather. AS

NATIONWIDE and at the ICA

 

Laura (1944) **** Bluray edition

Dir: Otto Preminger | Cast: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson | Film Noir, Mystery | US | 88′

Otto Preminger, the bombastic Austro-Hungarian protegé of Max Reinhardt, trained as a lawyer in his homeland before emigrating to make his name in Hollywood with this glorious Noir love story. A divisive director, he often tackled themes that were taboo during the Hollywood era, such as drug addition (The Man with the Golden Arm 1955) and rape (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959). The project started life with director Rouben Mamoulian in 1944, but Preminger soon took over the reins and Laura gained iconic status due to its sparkling script, adapted from Vera Caspary’s novel, and velvety black and white visuals that won Joseph LaShelle an Oscar at the 1945 Academy Awards. But David Raksin’s soaring score is one of the most memorable things about Laura – and you find yourself humming it long after seeing the film.

Gene Tierney stars as the beautiful New York advertising executive, Laura Hunt, who is mysteriously murdered, raising an investigation by Dana Andrews’ Detective Mark McPherson, who falls in love her, Hitchcock-style. There are also roles for Laird Cregar (The Lodger) who is brilliant as the film’s villain, and Vincent Price who plays Laura’s lascivious boyfriend Shelby Carpenter. Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder was undoubtedly a better crime thriller, as the genre goes, but Laura somehow captures the imagination and lives on in our memories as a lasting classic. MT

BLURAY RELEASE COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA | JANUARY 2019

The 12th Man (2017) ***

Dir.: Harald Zwart; Cast: Thomas Gullestad, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Marie Blockhus, Mads Sjograd Pettersen; Norway 2017, 135 min.

Dutch director Harald Zwart, best known for Agent Cody Banks and The Karate Kid, surprises  us with a gritty WWII feature that lionises intrepid Norwegian resistance fighter Jan Baalsrud, who escaped the Nazis in his home country after an ordeal lasting months. Already filmed in 1957 as Nine Lives, Zwart shows how the solidarity of the Norwegian people was key in helping their courageous countryman to survive, against the odds.

Baalsrud (Gullestad) is part of a twelve man commando sent from Great Britain to Norway, to sabotage the airfields of the Nazi occupants. But the Norwegians are caught before having time to use their explosives, and all but Baalsrud are captured, tortured and shot. Even though Baalsrud has been shot in the foot, he escapes into the treacherous mountain landscape where  two brothers in the small town of Manndalen (Troms County) come to his aide, SS Officer Kurt Stage (Meyers) is in hot pursuit. Meyers prides himself in having caught every resistance fighter in his region, but he becomes so obsessed with Baalsrud that his Ego cannot countenance a defeat. After hiding under rocks and in a hut in the mountains, starving and fighting gangrene, Baalsrud finally makes his intrepid way to Sweden.

Very much in the vain of Fred Zinnemann’s The Seventh Cross (1944), based on a novel by Anna Seghers recounting the fate of seven KZ inmates who flee the camp, The 12th Man is all about making the right choices: The men and women of Manndalen risked their lives to help Baalsrud so that he could become a symbol for their resistance against the Nazis. In real life, Stage was executed in 1947, whilst Baalsrud, who died in 1988, is buried next to Aslak Fossvool in Manndalen, played in the film by T.P. Munch, who fed him in his rocky hide-out but died of diphtheria four weeks after Baalsrud’s escape.

Zwart pulls out all the stops in an action drama that really maxes out the Germans’ brutality against their courageous counterparts. DoP Geir Hartly Andreassen triumphs both in close-up and in the spectacular panoramas of the towering mountains, the final escape is a well-choreographed masterpiece. Whilst relying on action and adventure elements, The 12th Man always keeps us questioning which side we would have chosen. AS

The 12th Man in select Cinemas & Digital HD 4th January and on DVD 7th January

Tribute to Richard Lormand (1962-2018)

It is with great sadness that we pay tribute to one of our greatest supporters, film consultants and readers Richard Lormand who has died aged 56.

During a long and distinguished career Richard was a leading light in international communication, film publicity and marketing, specialising in launches at the Berlin, Cannes, Locarno and Venice festivals, and just recently, Marrakech 2018 where he was preparing the 17th edition, when he died.

LOCARNO credit

Richard was a true professional and always a pleasure to work with. He handled world premieres for numerous award-winning films, including Maren Ade’s TONI ERDMANN, Ildiko Enyedi’s ON BODY AND SOUL, Fatih Akin’s IN THE FADE and SOUL KITCHEN, Alice Rohrwacher’s THE WONDERS and HAPPY AS LAZZARO, Christian Petzold’s BARBARA and PHOENIX, Samuel Maoz’s LEBANON and FOXTROT, Lav Diaz’s THE WOMAN WHO LEFT, Ritesh Batra’s THE LUNCHBOX, Takashi Miike’s 13 ASSASSINS and BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL, the Taviani Brothers’ CAESAR MUST DIE, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s UNCLE BOONMEE, Jerzy Skolimowski’s ESSENTIAL KILLING, Amos Gitai’s RABIN, Lucrecia Martel’s ZAMA and LA CIENAGA, Alexander Sokurov’s RUSSIAN ARK and FAUST, Jafar Panahi’s THREE FACES and THE CIRCLE, and Takeshi Kitano’s ZATOICHI and HANA-BI.

Richard was part of the press consultancy team of Locarno Festival and the producing teams of Mitchell Lichtenstein’s cult favourite TEETH, HAPPY TEARS (starring Demi Moore, Parker Posey, Ellen Barkin and Rip Torn) and ANGELICA (starring Jena Malone and Janet McTeer). He was also a producer on Amos Gitai’s DISENGAGEMENT, starring Academy Award-winning actress Juliette Binoche.

Born and raised outside Lafayette, Louisiana, Richard was the son of a Japanese mother and a native French-speaking Cajun American father. He began his career as a reporter/journalist for Reuters in New York City, then went on to work for the Cannes Film Festival (France), Taormina Film Festival (Italy), Torino Film Festival (Italy) and the Viennale/Vienna Film Festival (Austria). Richard also wrote and directed the 1994 award-winning short TI-BOY’S WIFE/LA FEMME DE TI-BOY (Clermont-Ferrand, Locarno, Torino).

His charisma, warmth and professionalism are rare in these days of increasingly faceless public relations, focussing on ‘hits’ and ‘likes’ on social media. Passionately driven by genuine talent and strong stories, Richard often took chances with small independent films and invested his time and talent to make sure they were noticed. His was a personal approach, genuine and always with heart. We shall miss him so much. MT

RICHARD LORMAND

Life Itself (2018) *** Amazon Studios

Dir.: Dan Fogelman; Cast: Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Antonio Banderas, Laila Costa, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Annette Benning, Samuel L. Jackson, Olivia Cooke, Alex Monner, Mandy Patinkin; USA 2018, 118 min.

Universally panned after its TIFF premiere in September, director/writer Dan Fogelman’s Life Itself is a study in loss, told in five chapters under the headline “Unreliable Narrator”. Often grandstanding and a little too verbose, Fogelman has nevertheless tried something different – and does not deserve the contempt from the newspapers that reward every Super-Hero feature with five stars.

Samuel L. Jackson is the unreliable narrator number one. He tells us that Will (Isaac) is seeing his shrink (Bening) due to his wife Abby (Wilde) leaving him. After Bening is killed off by a bus, Jackson bids us good-bye leaving us in the hands of a more reliable, female narrator whose identity will be disclosed in chapter five. We now learn the truth. It was really pregnant Abby who was run over by that bus, but not before giving birth to daughter Dylan. Anyhow, Instead of looking after his daughter Will commits suicide, leaving Dylan in the care of her grandfather (Patimkin) – grandmother and pet dog making an equally swift exit. No wonder why Abby behaves rather aggressively in Chapter 2. For the next instalment we switch to Spain where farmhand Javier (Peris-Mencheta) marries the beautiful Isabella (Costa). The couple have a son, Rodrigo, whom the family takes to New York for a holiday which ends in tragedy. Trauma follows, and Javier’s boss Saccione (Banderas), who has always lusted after Isabella, pays for Rodrigo’s psychiatric treatment and Javier leaves. We should mention that fatal illness rears its head in this ch apter, whilst Rodrigo goes to study in New York and meets – you’ve  guessed it. The final instalment reveals the identity of the narrator, putting all lose ends together.

The whole idea is far better than the execution, and the literary comparisons don’t always work. Still, there are moments of emotional bravado, and the ensemble acting is brilliant. DoP Brett Pawlak tries to undercut the rollercoaster of sentiments with muted colours, few close ups and panning panorama shots. All in all, Fogelman has bitten off more than he can chew, his skills are obviously too limited to do his concept justice, but the overall effect makes it – just – a better than average proposition. AS

Life Itself is released in cinemas and Sky Cinema on 4 January 2019

The Favourite (2018) *****

Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos. UK/Ireland/USA. 2018. 119 mins.

The Favourite is going to be a firm favourite with mainstream audiences and cineastes alike. This latest arthouse drama is the Greek auteur’s first to be written by Deborah Davis and Aussie Tony McNamara who bring their ‘English’ sensibilities to this quixotic Baroque satire that distills the essence of Kubrick, Greenaway and Molière in an irreverent and ravishingly witty metaphor for female treachery.

Set around 1710 during the final moments of Queen Anne’s reign it presents an artful female-centric view of courtly life seen from the unique perspective of three remarkable women, while on the battlefields England is at war with the French. Besides its period setting, The Favourite coins a world with exactly the same credentials as our own Brexit and Trump era.

Sparklingly witty and endlessly amusing this is a film that could play on forever yet still feels fresh and invigorating even after two hours. There is a charming subtlety and lightness of touch that is saucy and arch but never gross or uncouth with its references to Restoration Comedies of the era: Marivaux, Pope and Swift – while feeling completely contemporary and dernier cri.

Twenty years in the making with Lanthimos attached to the project since 2009, The Favourite is based on an original screenplay by Davis developed by Australian writer McNamara and is guilded by luminous performances from Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone amd Olivia Colman (as the Queen). Stone is a distant cousin of Weisz’s Lady Marlborough and comes to the court rather down on her luck and looking for protection. Slowly she weedles her way into the crippled and ailing Queen’s affections in a triumphant trajectory of treachery.

Colman plays Queen Anne (who reigned until 1714) with vulnerability and charisma as a whiny, insecure monarch. The Duke Of Marlborough has just won a crucial battle gainst the French during the War of Spanish Succession. The Whigs are gaining ground against the landowning Tories under Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult is superb).

The whole affair centres around the battle for power between these three women who are pivotal in the success of life at court and subsequently the country. The sumptuous interiors are shot in candlelight adding intrique and a Gothic frisson to Robbie Ryan’s stunning camerawork, his fish-eye lenses evoking a sense of menace and claustrophobia. Sandy Powell creates some seriously sexy costumes and the glory is topped off with an occasionally discordance original score from Purcell, Handel Vivaldi and British composer Anna Meredith, MT.

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | BEST ACTRESS: Olive Colman | Grand Prix Venice 2018

Roma (2018) ***

Dir.: Alfonso Cuaron; Cast: YalitzaAparacio, Marinade Tavira, Nancy Garcia, Fernando Grediaga, Veronica Garcia, Jorge Antonio Guerrero; USA/Mexico 2018, 135 min

Alfonso Cuaron’s sumptuous semi-autobiographical love letter to the woman who influenced his early life unfurls during a year in Mexico City. It’s 1970 and middle-class medics Sofia and Antonio have four children, three spirited boys and a girl. Meanwhile Cleo and Sofia live high up in the attic, trying to keep the emotionally unstable household together.

Cuaron cleverly establishes the key credentials of the bourgeois set up where people drive enormous cars they can’t even park, and Sofia (de Tavira) is no different. Stressed from Antonio’s frequent absences for work – today he’s off to Montevideo – she earns a decent salary as a biochemist, but has no passion for it.  As it turns out, Antonio (Grediaga) will only be gone for a week, but has secretly returned with his mistress. Meanwhile the rest of the family – along with caring grandmother Teresa (V. Garcia) – are off to spend Christmas on a nearby country estate, where Cleo (Aparacio) and Adela (N. Garcia) will celebrate in the staff quarters. Sofia makes the children write letters to their father, begging him to return, Cleo discovers she’s pregnant by boyfriend Fermin (Guerrero) who is part of a right-wing militia. In a terrifying scene during the Corpus Christmas massacre meeting, Fermin appears briefly in a nearby department store where the women are buying a cradle. He denies fathering Cleo’s child, and is dragged away by his friends to beat up students in the street. Everyday life goes on in this leisurely story of middle-class Latin America – it’s an evergreen saga that plays out like a tele-novela but with a transcendence that somehow lifts out of the ordinary. Cuaron pulls out all the stops, and the glorious 65mm black-and-white images reflect tension on all levels. Sofia and her mother Teresa are the caring matriarchs. Husband Antonio is seen as cruel, petty and vindictive. Cleo and Adela are the willing victims of class and conditioning, the outside world is shown is a hostile backdrop. Cuaron never breaks with any clichés, but he is unable to be understated and analytical due to his personal links to the narrative. In contrast, Mexican director Lila Aviles’, The Chambermaid is a moving yet detached portrait of a hotel worker, echoing similar themes. Roma is graced with some scintillating performances, particularly from newcomers Yalitza Aparacio as Cleo, and Nancy Garcia as Teresa. Overall the bottom line here is that Cuaron’s a brilliant DoP, a good director but a lousy script-writer. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | GOLDEN LION WINNER VENICE 2018

https://youtu.be/vhWut6jTA8o

Cold War (2018) ***** Winner Best Film | European Film Awards 2018

Dir: Pawel Pawlikowski | Cast| Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Syzc, Agata Kulesza, Cedric Khan, Jeanne Balibar | Drama | Poland

This beguilingly sexy and sad paean to disillusioned romantics everywhere portrays the euphoria we yearn for but cannot always sustain. Cold War spans a decade from the 1940s to the1960s where two lovers are caught inextricably in a web of passion and pain in a peripatetic relationship that saunters back and forth between Paris, Warsaw and Yugoslavia between pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and singer-dancer Zula (Joanna Kulig). Pawlikowski deftly handles love’s heartaches, high and lows with supreme grace and elegance.

Apart from the dazzling artistry – each frame is a sultry masterpiece – one of the most atmospheric elements and one that becomes a character in itself is the music, from Polish and Slavic folksongs to Chopin, Gerswin and Chuck Berry bringing back memories of Polish fare of the 1950s and 1960s scored by Andrzej Trzaskowski and Krzysztof Komeda, but also unites drama with his documentary fare such as Serbian Epics (1992)

Shot in Academy-ratio, Lukasz Zal’s velvety black and white cinematography evokes the 16mm of the era, and its Iron Curtain sensibilities link it to Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning gem Ida, although this is a more upbeat affair. Love and longing are themes that flourish throughout the director’s films from his time in England, where he shot Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004), and the ephemeral nature of The Woman in the Fifth (2011). Pawlikowski’s work also has affinities with the films of Czech New Wave director Hugo Haas. The only subtle flaws is the abrupt departure of Wiktor’s lover Irena (Agata Kulesza)who either leaves through her disgust of Stalin or on seeing her partner caught in the fire of his new flame. But this by no means detracts from its sublime beauty as a concise yet richly-textured piece of work, and every gorgeous handmade tapestry has its endearing flaws. Flowing yet episodic, Cold War is melancholy but endlessly captivating.

Wiktor and Zula are united by music while he and Irena are curating an ethnomusicological project for dancers which morphs into an the Mazurek Ensemble, an agitprop of the Soviet regime promoting the Aryan heritage of the Poles. Lust envelops them but Kaczmarek’s career keeps him trapped in Communist Poland and when the ensemble travels to East Berlin to perform, Wiktor decides to defect to the West pleading Zula to come with him to Paris. The two profess undying love but flighty Zula bails at the last minute and stays behind in the East. Although she a mercurial woman she lacks the social confidence that Wiktor has inherited from his more grounded bourgeois background.

There is a deliciously spicy vignette where Jeanne Balibar plays Wiktor’s Parisian lover while Zula arrives at the party claiming to have married a Sicilian glass blower from Palermo. But it is clear that Wiktor and Zula are soul mates whose love transcends time and place. They are eventually drawn back together at the end of the 50s but their love cannot exist in this Cold War world with its privations, poverty and political regime. MT.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE AT CURZON AND SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL |BEST DIRECTOR AWARD 2018

Orphée (1949)*****

Dir: Jean Cocteau | Drama | France | Jean Marais, Maria Casarès, François Périer, Marie Déa | 95′

Jean Cocteau’s modern version of the Orpheus myth still retains its poetic magnetism and astonishing freshness despite a primitive post-war budget that features Cocteau’s delicately drawn astrally inspired opening credits. But this adds to the film’s allure just as it did four years earlier with La Belle et La Bête, also made on a shoestring budget.

There is a dreamlike logic to Cocteau’s narrative that combines with Nicolas Hayer’s inventive camera angles and Jean d’Eaubonne’s set design to give the film a fantasy feel where Orphée (Jean Marais) is transformed into a Left Bank singer obsessed with an enigmatic raven-haired demon princess (Maria Casarès) who captures his imagination inspiring him to follow her into the underworld.

Cocteau brings his talents as a novelist, playwright and artist together to impress his longtime mentor Diaghilev in a gleaming mythological drama whose contemporary resonance is clearly felt throughout the sumptuous production featuring a glittering cast of French talent and his own partner Marais. Particularly enjoyable is the scene where we take a backseat in a chauffeur-driven a Rolls Royce Fantom Cloud for a mystery journey through the French countryside

Orpheus and Eurydice (Déa) are lovers. We first meet the tousle-haired Orphée in the opening scene at the ‘Café des Poétes’ where the postwar Left Bank credentials are effortlessly established with writers and creative types shooting the breeze over Gauloises and Pastis. Death soon arrives in the shape of the Princess (Casarès) making her presence known gracefully in her black Rolls-Royce. Over the car’s radio the BBC’s coded instructions to the Resistance ring out. Meanwhile in Hell lurks the shadow of the German Gestapo. In Cocteau’s version of the story Orpheus and Eurydice are saved by Death’s self-sacrifice along with her soigné assistant Heurtebise.

Orphée has a mildly melodramatic tone, a lightness of touch and an appealing wit that complement the gorgeousness of its mise en scène making Cocteau of most admired and revered filmmakers of his own generation and the New Wave. So much so that Truffaut produced his  sixth and final film, Le Testament d’Orphée, which reunited most of the cast of Orphée and is dedicated to the Nouvelle Vague.

“Quite apart from its symbolism Orphée is tells a mystical adventure, sustaining a balance between the real and the magical and maintaining its hypnotic rhythm beyond the first scene in the poets’ café, at the end of which Orpheus goes off with the Princess in her car, and slowly building up a poetic and beguiling atmosphere – creating a fascinating dramatic arc as the mirror opens, the Princess appearing and disappearing again in the streets of Paris while Orpheus desperately pursues her, the motor cyclists shoot past along the dusty road, as the radio echoes its impenetrable messages in the car. The original tagline called it  – “The immortal thriller”.  

Cocteau replaces the arbitrary force which death represents in Greek mythology by human figures with human desires and feelings.  The Princess loves Orpheus: Heurtebise loves Eurydice: both sacrifice their love, knowing it cannot successfully be pursued. Poets have always been obsessed with death: here, death also falls in love with poets. The symbols, the mysteries and the powers of death must by their vibrant nature be “living”. The princess is a tragic creation despite her haunting beauty and Gothic allure. Auric’s recurring flute score is eerily evocative along with the striking drum rhythms of the Bacchantes, making this fantasy drama both ravishingly elegant and chilling’.

The magic of cinema is sensationally realised in Jean Cocteau’s darkly enigmatic Orphée, one of the great masterpieces of the French avant-garde. Newly restored by SNC (Groupe M6), Orphée returns to the big screen on 19 October 2018, released by the BFI in selected cinemas UK-wide and screening at BFI Southbank from 22 October as part of The Deep Focus season on the French Fantastique. 

Simultaneous bluray and iTunes release on 21 January 2019 

 

Werner Herzog: Retrospective at Visions du Réel 2019

WERNER HERZOG’S WORK WILL BE CELEBRATED FOR THE 50TH EDITION OF VISIONS DU RÉEL

Visions du Réel, International Film Festival Nyon, will pay tribute to one of the world’s major filmmakers during its 50th edition. It is Werner Herzog who will be awarded the Sesterce d’or Prix Raiffeisen Maître du Réel during the 2019 edition of the Festival (5–13 April 2019). In partnership with the Cinémathèque suisse and the ECAL. The audience will meet the legendary film director at a Masterclass on 9 April and screenings of a selection of films, as well as his latest feature-length film, Meeting Gorbatchev (co-directed with André Singer), will have a Swiss premiere.

Werner Herzog was born in 1942 in Munich, Germany and has been living between the Bavarian capital and Los Angeles since 1984. A leading figure of the post-war New German Cinema, he has directed about 70 films.

Moving freely between different forms and processes, fiction and documentary, as a filmmaker whose approach is as philosophical as it is physical, Herzog constantly aspires to “walk to the ends of the earth” (The Dark Glow of the Mountains). At times omnipresent, at times leaving room for others, between heroism and testing limits (Herakles, his first short film in 1962, or The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner), megalomania (Aguirre, the Wrath of God or Cobra Verde, two of the five films made with the actor Klaus Kinski), and a certain taste for madness and the absurd, the filmmaker explores and surveys beings and places, not without humour or (self)derision (Encounters at the End of the World). Author of more than a dozen prose works, he has worked with Isabelle Adjani, Nicolas Cage, Christian Bale and Nicole Kidman among others and won the award for Best Director at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival for his masterpiece Fitzcarraldowww.visionsdureel.ch/festival/maitre-du-reel-2019

50th edition of Visions du Réel: 5—13 April 2019 | Werner Herzog in Nyon will be communicated in March 2019.

Lila Alviles Interview (2018) Jury Prize Winner | Marrakech Film Festival 2018

Marrakech Film Festival Jury Prize Winer THE CHAMBERMAID plays the same thematic tune as two other festival winners this Summer: Golden Lion winner Roma and In A Distant Land which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno. They highlight the isolated and lonely lives of ordinary working people, often migrants – in this case, a Mexican national whose job in the capital detaches her from her loved ones. There is a distinct chilly humour to this acutely observed feature debut from Mexican actress, filmmaker and opera director Lila Alviles. We talked to her about her drama that won the JURY PRIZE at the 17th Marrakech International Film Festival 2018. MT

https://vimeo.com/305923453

JOY (2018) **** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018 | Winner Etoile d’Or

Dir.: Sudabeh Mortezai; Cast: Joy Anwulika Alphonsus, Precious Mariam Sanusi, Angela Ekeleme Pius, Jane Okoh; Austria 2018, 100 min.

German born writer/director Sudabeh Mortezai (Macondo) spent her youth in Vienna and Teheran before studying film at UCLA. Her second feature is centred around Nigerian women sold by their families as sex-workers to Europe. In the prologue, we see the local shaman performing the ‘Juju’ ritual on one of these young women: the victims have to leave an intimate part of themselves behind so they don’t run away, and send money home regularly.

We meet Joy (Alphonsus) on a dark night in Vienna where she is soliciting. Next to her stands young Precious (Sanusi), who has just arrived from Nigeria and does not want to sell her body, in order to pay back Madame (Pius), whom she owes 60,000 Euros. Back in the flat where the girls live in cramped  conditions, Madame holds Joy responsible for Precious’ attitude and tells her that her debt will increase if she doesn’t encourage the young girl to work harder. For good measure, Precious is than raped by two men, her cries of help going unanswered. The brutal treatment makes Precious fall into line and she becomes the highest earner of the group. Madame expresses her thanks by selling her for a profit to Italian pimps. 

Meanwhile Joy and Precious are continually pestered by their families to send more money home. Joy’s family ‘invents’ a fake illnesses so her clients will take pity and pay her extra.  And Precious’ mother asks her to sleep with more more men: “Can you imagine, the woman who gave birth to me wants me to do do that!” Joy, who has a daughter Chioma (Okoh), for whose upkeep she pays a nanny, is sent with Precious to the Italian border, keeping her passport. Precious asks her many times to relinquish the passport, so that she can escape. But Joy is well aware that Madame’s vengeance would be be grim, and she reminds Precious: “This is a game of survival of the fittest. I would kill you if I needed to. Do not trust me!”. Her calculation proves right when Madame ‘releases’ her, which is not so generous as it looks since new and younger girls have arrived from Nigeria.

The director takes a detached approach throughout. The gruesome details of the women’s suffering – Joy is bleeding heavily after being raped by three men, but Madame does not allow her to seek medical help. The whole circle of violence, starting in Nigeria is repeated over and over again, because the authorities in Austria want Joy to testify against Madame, but won’t grant her immediate asylum.

JOY explores a real and continuous nightmare that is happening all the time, in nearly every European city. Shot starkly by DoP Clemens Hufnagl, mostly at night, the few interior scenes reveal the misery and fear that haunts women daily. A depressing but worthwhile film that won the Etoile d’Or at this year’s MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL. MT

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | WINNER GOLDEN STAR MARRAKECH | WINNER LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2108

 

An Elephant Sitting Still | Da Xiang Xi Di Er Zuo (2018)

Dir.: Hu Bo; Cast: Zhang Yu, Peng Yuang, Wang Yuwen, Liu Congxi, Ling Zhenghui, Zhnag Xialong; China 2018, 230 min.

Written, directed and edited by the Chinese director Hu Bo, his award-winning debut is an immersive masterpiece and also his  last film: he committed suicide at the age of just 29, just before the end of shooting.

The action takes place during a single suspenseful day, from dawn to dusk, where the train to the Northern Chinese city of Manzhouli is about to depart. The only noticeable feature in this miserable backwater is an elephant, who, according to rumour, simply sits and watches the world go by.

The symbolic creature draws all sort of people from the surrounding villages: There is young Wei (Yuang), abused by his venal father who father lost his job for taking bribes. Wei’s friend Li (Zhenghui) is accused by Yu (Xiaolong) of stealing his mobile ‘phone. But Li protests his innocence, and Wei defends him. At school, Yu corners the two boys on a staircase and Wei is seriously injured after a scuffle.

This is a community on its knees and at each other’s throats, forced into crime and misdemeanour by harsh economic circumstances. The sins of the parents are meted out on their kids. Wei is in love with Huang (Yuwen) but her troubled mother has projected her own fears onto the young woman causing problems for them both, and Huang to cheat on Wei with the vice-dean of the school whose luxury apartment seems to exist in a parallel universe to the rest of city.

Their secret relationship has been outed by Li, whose phone images of Huang and the teacher, have now gone viral on the internet. The teacher throws Huang out of his flat, blaming her for jeopardising his career. At home Huang is hassled by the teacher’s wife who accuses her of ruining her marriage. And so it goes on, a series of interconnected stories of misery, mistrust and pain all gracefully crafted. A poetic epilogue sees Wang, his granddaughter, Huang and Wei at the station: their train to Manzhouli has been cancelled, forcing them to take several replacement buses to their destination.

Unfolding like one of Balzac’s novels from La Condition Humaine, Hu Bo keeps the narrative going, always finding new angles, plot lines and twists. Everything is elegantly elliptical as the main protagonists meet again and again under new circumstances, completely out of their control. They are always in motion, the city providing a beguiling backdrop to their rat-like existence. In their alienated indolence the young become victims of their elders, who prove poor role models.

Chao Fan’s camera pans relentlessness over the sordidness of it all, tracking the protagonists through the minefield of misdemeanours, like a prowling beast. Even Bela Tarr, always on the lookout for a backdrop of utter desolation, would be impressed by the machinations of Elephant; and there are shades of the Hungarian director’s Werckmeister Harmonies in the the lack of substantial interplay between these characters who glide through the swamp of the city without finding an identity: nothing sticks to them, as they drowning in the quagmire. Fan’s delicately rendered camerawork leaves a great deal to the imagination: the background often distorted in a filmic milkyway. And most impressive of all, we never notice the substantial running time: Hu Bo invites us to live with these characters, and we become part of their world.

A monumental undertaking, to be remembered as a part of film history and with utter regret for being Hu Bo’s sole feature output. A team of China’s FIRST Film Festival, who co-funded Elephant, finished the saga of despair and alienation the way Hu Bo had envisaged it. Elephant won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin Film Festival (Forum section) along with a string of awards at Festivals all over the world including The Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, Asia’s equivalent to the Oscars. The copyright of An Elephant Sitting Still is now with his parents. AS

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO 

The Chambermaid | La camarista (2018) **** Marrakech Film Festival 2018 Jury Prize | Interview

Dir: Lila Alviles | Cartol | Drama | Mexico | 90′

The Chambermaid plays the same thematic tune as two other festival winners this Summer: Golden Lion winner Roma and In A Distant Land which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno. They highlight the isolated and lonely lives of ordinary working people, often migrants – in this case, a Mexican national whose job in the capital detaches her from her loved ones. There is a distinct chilly humour to this acutely observed feature debut from Mexican actress, filmmaker and opera director Lila Alviles. It follows the daily grind of a hotel worker in one of the Mexico City’s 5 star hotels. Cartol (La Tirisia) plays Eve with infinite grace and good humour – in one astonishing scene she stands for seemingly ages outside a lift during one of those awkward silences – catching a hotel guest’s eye several times with an expression that speaks volumes.

Pristinely executed in the zen-like interiors of this palace of interior design, the film pictures an upmarket public as they often are behind the closed door of their luxury suites: ill-mannered, demanding and crude. Bereft of their clothes they also take leave of their humanity – never mind their courtesy. This is social politics laid bare. The Chambermaid also examines the crafty interactions between the low-level workers themselves: the cunning soft sales techniques of her colleague in the laundry who is trying to supplement her low-paid job by selling hand cream and Tupperware. Or just trying to con her into sharing the latest fad – in this case, a gadget that delivers a shock to stimulate a feel-good rush of endorphin. Like a some ghastly face to face equivalent of FarmVille.

The Chambermaid is set in Mexico City’s Presidente Intercontinental. Eve is hard-working and diligent, but if she tries harder she’ll be allocated the stratospheric, newly refurbished 42nd floor with views to die for and even infinity pools. Pinning her hopes on the promotion, she improves her efficiency but to no avail. The only bonus here is in the lost property cupboard. In one of her rooms Eve has found a red dress and hopes to take it home, if the owner doesn’t claim it. But her gruelling schedule leaves no time to be with her child, let alone meet a partner. Outwardly timid, Eve shows her true colours in one scene involving a window cleaner who has taken a shine to her – along with his windows. Eve acknowledges him at a distance. Her reaction is plausible – a little light relief in a sea of sameness. But Alviles restrains herself and keeps this convincing.

Stunningly captured by Carlos Rossini’s creative camerawork, this sealed and sanitised world has a strange beauty. Loosely based on the book Hotel, by Sophie Calle, The Chambermaid is a contemplative but well-paced cinema verité piece that resonates with a powerful message from both sides of the equation. Eve’s humdrum existence is piqued by moments of insight that show her in a different light as she endure the indignities of her role with calm forbearance and subdued silence. The magnificent skyscapes are hers to see but never to enjoy in her closeted existence, locked in an eternal bubble with no respite, until the final scene where the ambient sounds of exotic birdsong replace the refrigerated buzz of musak and air-conditioning.  MT

MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | JURY PRIZE WINNER 

7 QUESTIONS FOR Lila Alviles – director, THE CHAMBERMAID

1: Some of the most interesting films are coming out of South America – your story is simple but has universal appeal

Alviles: When I’m asked to explain my film I realise its so simple and yet profound. The idea started 8 years ago when I saw book about a photographer who took photos of the things people had left behind in hotels. I’m originally from a theatre background so originally it was going to be a play, but then I decided to make a film – to show to the chambermaids working there what I had in mind – and in the end it turned into a feature film as I followed them through their daily lives for 6 years so I could understand their world.  

2: The hotel feels like a microcosm of Mexico or even Mexico City with its different social make-up – the rich the poor, men and women behaving badly – behaving well.

Alviles: Yes, you’re absolutely right – I had so many stories to tell and yet I had no formal training, or diplomas in film – so in some ways I was an outsider. But I was determined to make the film and that’s how it all happened, and then we premiered in Toronto. Now, I’m taking on the festival circuit. 

3. How did you finance the feature?

Alviles: The money came from my own savings but I was so passionate about my idea and so I went with it through intuition. Then my producer joined me and helped me finish the film and other producers joined us to promote it. And we filmed in 17 days and have no done 18 festivals.

4: The good thing about your film is that its minimal dialogue and meditative pacing make it an absorbing watch for all nationalities – viewers can sit back and just enjoy the visual story. And that’s its strength, apart from the intriguing narrative. Are you part of the filmmaking community in Mexico today – along with Alfonso Cuaron or Michel Franco?

Alviles: Yes but not for me! There’s a lot of great cinema in Mexico, I go twice a week to the cinema. Well it’s difficult because I’m the one who came out of nowhere with my film as I didn’t attend film school. But now my film has been shown in Morelia – Mexico’s leading film festival  – and gradually it’s gaining an international platform. For the first time in my life my work speaks for what I am – whether I’m a woman or not.

5: The central actress Gabriela Cartol is very strong – how did you cast her?

Alviles: We had instant chemistry but I knew she was right for the part instantly. I often chose newcomers for my roles. But with Gabriela we have a trust that makes everything happen.

6: Yes she holds that scene outside the life with humour and with dignity – it’s my favourite scene is it yours?

Alviles: Yes it is – it’s almost like a documentary. I wanted so much to be a filmmaker and now I realise that this is my thing!

7: Do you have a project in the pipeline?

Alviles: Well I originally come from theatre and opera – and I love music. My next story actually comes from a personal experience and I started writing it before The Chambermaid. It’s a documentary.

Lila Alviles | THE CHAMBERMAID | MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 

 

 

aKasha (2018) **** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

Dir: Hajooj Kuka | Cast: Abdallah Ahur, Ganja Chakado, Ekram Marcus, Kamal Ramadan | Drama | 78’

Akasha is the feature debut of South Sudanese documentarian Hajooj Kuka, Set in the Nuba Mountains in 2011, the energetic unorthodox comedy love story plays our over 24 hours in a war-torn rebel-held area of Sudan where the soldiers are keen to recruit young men to fight for their cause. Cockily charismatic Adnan (Ramadan) is not having any of it: a revolutionary both in his attitude to life and his guise as a soldier revelling in having shot down a MiG fighter plane with his favourite AK47 called ‘Nancy’. In order to avoid being corralled into the round-up (or “kasha”), he and his mate Absi (Chakado) decide to dress as women, much to the chagrin of Adnan’s long-suffering girlfriend Lina. But that’s not all Adnan, also experiments with the local weed to surreal effect in a flip and fun-loving and colourful caper that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is refreshingly anti-war. MT

IN COMPETITION | MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018  | LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

Capernaum (2018) *** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

Dir: Nadine Labaki | Drama | 105’

Nadine Labaki gained international acclaim with her delightfully upbeat debut Caramel, set around a women’s hair salon in Beirut. Here she casts non-professional actors in a politically themed fable that sees a child resorting to the strong arm of the law. Just before the film screened at this year’s Marrakech Film Festival the news broke that the film would represent the Lebanon at the Academy Awards 2019.

This Cannes Jury Prize winner, and Golden Globe 2019 hopeful has the same stylish look as her previous two features but is a much more accomplished film that puts a watchable spin on dour social realism, although it does not quite reach the heights of perfection as the script resorts to disingenuous pandering in the slack final section. Subject-wise we are back to Daniel Blake territory although this is a much better crafted film than the one that bagged Ken Loach the Palme d’Or award several years ago. It also has to be said that CAPERNAUM does not bludgeon the life out of you with an agitprop hammer, despite a rather manipulative feel to proceedings. There are similarities too with Slumdog Millionaire in its upbeat fervour powered by cute and captivating performances from its newcomer children, and particularly from its lead Zain Al Rafeea.

Labaki structures her film round a trial, although this is not a courtroom procedural and most of the action is set in the chaotic streets or in cramped interiors where 12 year old Zain (Al Rafeea), who looks more like 8, is already serving a prison sentence for stabbing, is now suing his irresponsible parents for bringing him into the world. As one of several siblings, his parents never registered his birth. And all they seem to do is have children who they are unable to support and nourish, or even love. Despite cocky indignation and a bristling sense of entitlement to his rights, Zain is a likeable kid who lives with his parents Souad (Kawthar Al Haddad) and Selim (Fadi Kamel Youssef). Rather than school, he goes out to sell fruit juice in the market, where he also collects tramadol which the family grind into clothes-washing water which is then passed to Zain’s prison-serving elder brother. Later this tramadol water comes in as a usual way of earning money when Zain strikes out on his own. Although these circumstances are all startling to Western viewers, it has to be said that they are sadly run of the mill for millions of kids all over the world. But medication here in the Lebanon seems to be free at the point of collection, a fact which is difficult to believe given the current opiod crisis in the US and Europe.

After his younger sister Sahar is sold in marriage by his parents. Zain runs away and comes across Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), an Ethiopian cleaner who is in Lebanon illegally. This strand introduces a migrant theme to the narrative which also feels timely. Zain offers to look after Rahil’s toddler while she is at  work but she later disappears leaving the two to fend for themselves in what turns out to be quite an adventure.

This is a watchable drama with some endearing turns from the ensemble kiddy cast who conjure up an intoxicating chemistry considering their lack of experience. But the star of the piece is Rafeea as the cheekily adamant Zain, a tribute to kids everywhere who feel life has dealt them an unfair start, and who set out to put matters right. MT

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | IN COMPETITION 2018

A Taste of Honey (1961) **** Bluray release

Dir: Tony Richardson | Writers: Shelagh Delaney, Tony Richardson | Cast: Rita Tushingham, Murray Melvin, Dora Bryan, John Danquah, Robert Stephens | UK | Drama | 101′

“Kitchen sink drama” is a lazy journalistic term glibly applied to long-ago films like A Taste of Honey. Posh critics in film magazines once spoke of the British New Wave as being inferior to the “Nouvelle Vague.” French cinema was praised for its liberation and spontaneity whilst the Brits where dammed for having too much depressing grit. It’s easy to be disparaging about working class dramas of the early 60’s (the bleakest example is probably A Kind of Loving but no one today mentions the rival optimism displayed in Clive Donner’s Some People). 

After the influential “Free Cinema” shorts of the fifties gravitas arrived in the form of A Taste of Honey, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and This Sporting Life: they are the overseas cinematic children of the Italian neo-realists. The background of these films is not wartime, nor a country suffering from immediate post-war difficulties, but the beginnings of a still repressive, and materially poor decade, prior to huge social changes in British culture. They are immensely moving and involving films: trenchant, angry and authentic expressions of the lives of ordinary people, bearing comparison with the visceral social concern of either a De Sica or Rossellini.

Jo (Rita Tushingham) is a 17 year old Salford schoolgirl, who lives with her mother, Helen (Dora Bryan). Poverty and Helen’s drinking means they’re constantly in debt and moving homes. Jo meets a Black sailor named Jimmy (Paul Danquah) and loses her virginity. 40 year old Helen is dating a younger man, Peter (Robert Stephens). Tension arises between Peter and Jo. When Mother moves out to live with Peter, Jo leaves school, finds a job in a shoe shop, rents a room and discovers that she’s pregnant. A young gay man Geoffrey (Murray Melvin) befriends Jo and moves in to her rooms. The relationships / friendships of Mother and daughter don’t really work out. The future seems uncertain for everyone.

It’s now crazy to think that Audrey Hepburn was the first choice to play the teenage Jo. Could Hepburn (with her Eliza Doolittle cockney role still to come) coached in a Salford accent have made the role as convincing as Tushingham? But should it matter? Under Tony Richardson’s direction Tushingham’s body language, line delivery and facial expressions are perfect. Jo’s face constantly conveys an unfulfilled desire for security and affection (close-ups can be over-used in cinema but in A Taste of Honey they’re exactly judged and telling – the camera falling rightly, though unsentimentally, in love with Tushingham).

A Taste of Honey has further brilliance of casting with Dora Bryan giving a comic-tour de force as a selfish mother who resolutely avoids caricature. Murray Melvin brings deep sensitivity to his role as the mothering friend. Paul Danquah expertly sketches in his brief role as the black sailor who never returns. And Robert Stephens is shrewdly spot-on as the car salesman. 

Such characters were not being portrayed in the other British films of 1961. Back then they appeared as outsiders marginalised from the accepted norms of family life; all anxious to have a voice, and articulate their presence. The poignancy of A Taste of Honey is that no one is able to communicate fully their needs. Everyone aspires to a better life; to make sense of their muddled life and move on. Yet sufficient knowledge, education, money, sexual fulfilment and power, within their class, gender and sexuality, are just out of reach.

Richardson’s direction is thoughtful, compassionate and poetic (it’s undoubtedly his finest hour). Walter Lassally provides stunning cinematography. John Addison’s musical arrangements of The Big Ship Sails on The Ally-Ally-Oh are modulated to create a folk ballad. Whilst each carefully shaped performance never makes anyone become a victim – behind potential despair is always a space – cinematically and emotionally – of great resilience. However uncertain the future appears at the bonfire scene climax of A Taste of Honey we have journeyed with hugely sympathetic characters just like you and me. The camera rests on Jo’s face, and her burning sparkler, to create a fleeting moment of peace within the film’s large question mark. In an earlier moment, by a canal, Jo, still so young and unsure about being a mother, yells out: “My usual self is a very unusual self. We’re bloody marvellous!”

And A Taste of Honey is also a bloody marvellous film powerfully decrying earlier moribund theatre and formulaic cinema for being so patronising towards ‘common’ people. In 1961 audiences were shocked, surprised and gradually delighted by its power. Fifty seven years on it still delivers an affecting realism of great concern and sensitivity. Alan Price©2018    

NOW OUT ON BLURAY COURTESY OF BFI | 10 December 2010 | along with THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES

Rojo (2018) **** Marrakech Film Festival 2018

Dir: Benjamin Naishtat | Cast: Alfredo Castro, Dario Grandinetti, Andrea Frigerio, Diego Cremonesi | Drama | Argentina | 109′

Benjamin Naishtat captures the existential angst of Argentina’s Dirty Wars era in a sinuous thriller that chews over some weighty social themes and distils them into this subtle smalltown crime drama.

ROJO follows his previous moody titles History of Fear (2014) and The Movement (2015). His fascination is exploring the psychological effects of instability: what happens to ordinary people and their relationships during political turmoil? The pre-title scene sees a series of people gradually emerging from a house bearing armfuls of valuables and pieces of furniture. Meanwhile, it’s Saturday night in Rio Seco, a town about 500 miles North of Buenos Aires. Local lawyer Claudio (a quietly- assured Dario Grandinetti) is waiting for his wife (Andrea Frigerio) in a busy local restaurant when an impatient single diner (Diego Cremonesi) demands he vacate the table. The situation soon escalates into a frosty contretemps but Claudio refuses to rise to the bait, calmly returning to the bar where he delivers an articulate verbal put down. But it doesn’t end there. After they leave the restaurant the man pursues them with bizarre consequences, and the story flips to three months later. This tight-knit middle class community is gradually exposed as one of astonishing volatility, a moral morass of intrigue and sculduggery: a brilliant metaphor for the state of the country in general during the country’s Dirty Wars of the mid 1970s. Chunks of land are being bought somewhat illegally, law-abiding locals are becoming minor crooks, and people are disappearing without reason – with no questions asked – as a pervasive paranoia creeps like wildfire through the unsettled community. ROJO lurks in a murky Seventies aesthetic, Naishtat creating a climate of menacing fear with a screeching score of strings (from Vincent van Warmerdam) and some cleverly crafted slo-mo sequences that suggest  docudrama. Uncertainty and danger loom at every corner in a clammy climate of fear and mistrust. 

In the final hour, Alfredo Castro’s seedy detective Sinclair insinuates himself into the scenario investigating the murder of the man in the restaurant “el hippie” who, it emerges, is also related to one of Claudio’s close friends Mabel. Channelling Colombo with his stealthy exits and sudden reappearances for “one more thing”, Sinclair sets the lawyer’s nerves on edge in an uncanny set-to that is alarming and totally unexpected. It’s a superbly sinister performance from Castro who sets the cat amongst the pigeons – without any justification, Claudio feels culpable yet has nowhere to go. As the various subplots intertwine the story hints at wider implications for the nation as a whole and Naishtat keeps the tension tightly wound in this unnerving and intriguing thriller. MT. 

IN COMPETITON AT MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | BEST DIRECTOR WINNER San Sebastian 2018 

 

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018) **

Dir.: Andy Serkis; Cast: Rohan Chand, Matthew Rice, Freida Pinto and the voices of Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Serkis; USA/UK 2018, 104 min.

Do we really need a new version of Rudyard Kipling’s story collection The Jungle Book (1894) so soon after the success of John Favreau’s 2016 version? The answer is no, and not this sinister one by Andy Serkis and written by Callie Kloves which takes the much loved children’s classic to a darker more violent place where there’s no singing or dancing  – and no appeal for its fanbase or anybody under the age of twelve, for that matter. A hybrid in every way, the five-year labour of love is an uneasy mix of super-hero yarn and identity conflicts.

After the hungry tiger Shere Khan (Cumberbatch) has devoured Mowgli’s parents, the young boy (Chand) is nurtured by wolves. Bagheera (Bale), the panther and Baloo (Serkis), a not particularly cuddly bear, keeping him safe from Shere Khan, along with python Ka (Blanchett). But Mowgli will never become a proper pack wolf after he is abducted by apes, and reared in a village where hunter Lockwood (Rice) and his gentle wife (Pinto) try to ‘humanise’ the wild child. But after seeing Lockwood’s trophy cabinet, Mowgli has second thoughts.

This latest MOWGLI lacks the humanity of Kipling’s vision: it’s more a Flight-Club in the jungle than anything else. Yes, the effects are stunning, DoP Michael Seresin pulls out all the stops, and other production values are equally convincing – but it always feels like a hijack, not an adaption. Perhaps Serkis wanted to distance himself completely from anything Disney-like – but by doing so, he has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Mowgli sits uneasily  between semi-horror and a stale lecture about identity politics. At the same time it’s downright conventional picturing the partnership between Lockwood and his wife in the redundant cliché of hunter and carer. Most of all though, it lacks emotion: a muddled concept of true solidarity (the opposite of Kipling), this Mowgli is reduced to a soulless race for the line. See what you think. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 7 DECEMBER 2018 | NETFLIX

All Good (Alles is gut) ***

Dir: Eva Trobisch | Cast: Aenne Schwarz, Andreas Dohler, Tilo Nest, Lina Wendel | Germany |

Eva Trobisch’s All Good, is about the dark night of the soul in the aftermath to unimaginable tragedy. Something happens, we think we can deal with it, and it goes away – at least for a while – only to return with a vengeance, as grief, anger and finally depression overwhelm and repress the human spirit.

After an ordinary night out at a school reunion Janne (Aenne Schwarz) is raped by a seemingly innocuous old school friend. Martin (Hans Löw) is now a professional, corporate type who duly accompanies her back home after the party. Both are a little tipsy but the evening did not hint at romance or even mild flirtatiousness. So it’s odd that Martin, almost as an afterthought – decided to makes a move.  After a sustained attempt at seducing her, Janne finally acquiesces to Martin’s advances – the scene is well played and captures all the nuanced undertones of an unwanted encounter. In the full light of day, Janne reflects with distaste and then mild anger at Martin’s presumptuousness. But feels awkward about discussing it with her boyfriend Piet (Andreas Döhler) who’s absorbed in his own dramas.

In her feature debut, which won Best Newcomer at Locarno 2018, Trobisch uses these subtle shifts in human response to create a thoughtful and absorbing drama that kicks over the ashes of suppressed anguish with worthwhile insight and impressive command. All Good is just that, Janne fronts up well to her trauma but what lies beneath is quite a different scenario. And Janne’s  increasing and unacknowledged exasperation turns slowly to simmering rage.

At work, Janne’s new boss (Tilo Nest) is also preoccupied with his own issues, and so she goes about her work with resignation and determination not to let the episode overwhelm her as a young, intelligent and independent woman in the 21st century. But life but goes on and Janne will not give up. A surprisingly mature debut with some strong performances, especially from Aenne Schwartz in the lead. MT

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | IN COMPETITION 2018

 

 

The Dead and Others (2018) **** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

Docudrama | 114’ | Brazil/Portugal

Directed by Palme d’Or winner João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora, THE DEAD AND THE OTHERS is an extraordinary docudrama based on their experiences of living for nearly a year in Pedra Branca, a village inhabited by the indigenous community of the Kraho people in Northern Brazil. The Kraho very much want to continue their way of life and traditions in their rural community, striving to be self-sufficient. Their plight very much connects with a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

Fifteen year old Ihjãc has been suffering from nightmares since he lost his father and in the opening scene he walks through the rain forest in the light of the moon. A distant sound of chanting comes through the palm trees. His father’s voice calls him to the waterfall. It is now time to organise the funeral feast so his father’s spirit can depart to the village of the Dead and mourning can cease. Although his baby son Tepto was born in the local hospital, Ihjãc still spends most of his life with his family in the remote forest and although the village elders are urging him to fulfil his duty to undergo the crucial process of becoming a shaman, Ihjãc escapes back to the local town to avoid the transition. There, far from his people and culture, he faces the reality of being an indigenous native in contemporary Brazil.

With its themes of loss, displacement and cultural identity, this is an masterful if rather overlong piece of filmmaking that feels woozily impressionistic but also strangely urgent in its message, glowingly conveyed in vibrant high contrast cinematography MT

SCREENING DURING MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL | VIEWS FROM MOROCCO AND THE Ottoman Empire | THE 11th CONTINENT

Marrakech Film Festival 2018 | Conversations with….

To celebrate the 17th edition – 30 November to 8 December – MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL has introduced an interactive new talk series.

CONVERSATION WITH is an initiative that offers a space for expression, exchange and reflection with screen legends and film luminaries:

Martin Scorsese (b.1942, US)

Director, writer, actor and producer is one of the most influential directors working today and also one of the most generous in his support of talented emerging filmmakers. In a multi-award winning career spanning nearly 60 years his work has been inspired by his early life growing up with Italian parents in New York City in crime dramas such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976) and Goodfellas (1990), and his own religious faith as in Silence (2016) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He has captured the spirit of legends such as boxing supremo JakeLaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004) and the Dalai Lama in Kundun (1997). His animated feature Hugo (2011) was dedicated to his daughter Francesca. His thriller Cape Fear (1991) has one of the most frightening performances in film history courtesy of his long time collaborator Robert De Niro (Max Cady) and Shutter Island (2010) that was his stylistic tribute to both Out of the Past (1947) and Vertigo (1958). His other regular collaborators have been Leo DiCaprio and Bernhard Herrmann who created iconic scores for Taxi Driver and Cape Fear. His latest crime drama The Irishman based on the death of Jimmy Hoffa, is shortly to be released on Netflix.

Guillermo Del Toro (b. 1964, Mexico)

Del Toro started making programmes for Mexican TV before he directed and produced his first feature film Dona Herlinda and Her Son (1986) at the age of 21. Learning his make-up techniques from The Exorcist’s Dick Smith he got his first break in 1993 with Cronos which went on to win the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes. Since then he has won two Oscars in 2018 for The Shape of Water, a remake of Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). He is currently working on a documentary about the filmmaker Michael Mann.

Cristian Mungiu (b. 1968, Romania)

Screenwriter, director and producer Cristian Mungiu rose to international fame in 2007 with his bleak drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days that shocked audiences with its raw depiction of backstreet abortion in communist Romania. He was the first Romanian director to win the Palme d’Or. Since then he has made a series of films exposing moral degradation in Romanian society. Beyond the Hills (2012) won his Best Screenplay at Cannes in year of its release, and his thorny depiction of family life Graduation followed four years later winning his Best Director at Cannes 2016 (ex aequo with Olivier Assayas for Personal Shopper). 

Yousry Nasrallah (b.1952, Egypt)

Born into a Coptic Christian family in Cairo, Nasrallah started his career as a film critic in Beirut in the late 1970s, soon becoming assistant  to Youssef Chahine whose company Mirs would go on to produce his films that focus on Socialism, Islamic fundamentalism and expatriation. His award-winning debut Summer Thefts (1985) was described as “the only non-ideological film on Nasserism in Egypt”. El Medina (1999) describes the struggle for creative realisation of a young Egyptian actor and After the Battle competed for the Palme d’Or in 2012.

Agnes Varda (b.1928 Belgium) 

Director, writer and photographer Agnes Varda has made over 50 films in her celebrated career. She was born in Belgium but moved to France as a baby before settling in Paris where she eventually married Jacques Demy and became one of the protagonists of the French New Wave with her feature debut La Point Courte (1951). She went on to make a series of award-winning dramas focusing on life and love: Cleo de 5 a 7 (1962), Le Bonheur (1965); L’une chante, l’autre pas (1977) and Jacquot de Nantes (1991) a biopic drama dedicated to her husband. Her latest documentary Faces Places (2017) is a rural ride through France.

Robert De Niro. (b. 1943, US)

One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro grew up in Manhattan where he launched his acting career in Brian De Palma’s The Wedding Party at the age of 26. By 1974 he had won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor in Bang the Drum Slowly, the National Society of Film Critic for Mean Streets, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather, Part II. In 1980 he won his second Oscar, as Best Actor, for Raging Bull.

De Niro’s next project will be Netflix’s The Irishman in which he stars and is producing with Martin Scorsese, for their ninth collaboration. In 2009, De Niro received the Kennedy Center Honor for his distinguished acting and the Stanley Kubrick Award from the BAFTA Britannia Awards. De Niro was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. He served as the jury president of the 64th Cannes Film Festival.

De Niro is also known for his Tribeca Production company and the Tribeca Film Festival, which he founded with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. Through Tribeca Productions, De Niro has developed projects on which he has served as producer, director and actor. Tribeca’s A Bronx Tale in 1993 marked De Niro’s directorial debut. De Niro also directed The Good Shepherd in 2006.

During the interview De Niro confessed to not liking smoking on set. And has never had trouble keeping his personal life, personal. “Don’t bring your drama to the set, put it into your performance”.

https://vimeo.com/303947159/d498bda114

Cannes Film Festival Creative Director Thierry Fremaux.

Thierry Fremaux has come a long way since joining the Lumiere Institute in Lyon. The Fast-talking artistic force behind Cannes also directs, along with (president) Bertrand Tavernier, the Lyon-based Lumiere Festival that each year celebrates the vitality of classic film (restored films, retrospectives and tributes). Fremaux has even made a film about the brothers (LUMIERE 2016). who were the first filmmakers with their ground-breaking invention, the cinematograph. The legendary brothers not only invented the technique of making film, but also the art and the way of bringing people together in a theatre. Thierry explains how the aim of the Lumiere Festival was to connect the past with the present – as digital internet platforms, and mobile phones now compete with the classic way of crafting films. To be ‘healthy’ with contemporary cinema we have to look to the past, and that is why Lumiere came about – back in 2009

As artistic director at Cannes his work is much more difficult than it was 30 years ago, not simply because of the volume of films presented to the festival (the team selects the line-up down from over 1800 films) but also the sheer variety. And if Cannes misses a potential new auteur then this becomes a big deal – not just a small faux pas. As he explains: “Cannes is an international festival set in France and we try to embrace the ever-widening variety of film from across every continent. In the 1990s film noir was being re-invented in Hong Kong by Phil Joanou (State of Grace), inspired by Pierre Melville. Each time a young filmmaker makes a breakout hit – the spotlight will be on him, and we can’t afford to miss that”. “Pan’s Labyrinth came as a big shock to many festival goers, as it was the kind of style that had never really been invited before, and it really surprised people about the way forward we were taking – also with animation and with documentary”. Most films “choose” Thierry rather than the other way round, as passionate filmmaking eventually shows through, as much as talent. But certain films will never be right for the competition. “You have to ask the question – is it good or not for the film to be in Cannes. Also is it suitable for the audience – or for the press – we have in Cannes”. 

At the moment Thierry works with a group of 8, sometimes 10 people to make the final Cannes selection (equally split by gender). “The culture of making films is not that same for a man as for a woman so gender equality is absolutely vital as we move to 2020. This year’s Cannes selection was criticised but we have a duty to put new names on the map. And we have to adapt Cannes for the future and to make it comfortable for the audience and the press”. Clearly there will more changes, but Thierry assures us that they will be for the better. MT

MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL | 30 NOVEMBER – 8 DECEMBER 2018 | INTERVIEW AT THE MAMOUNIA HOTEL POOLSIDE, MARRAKECH 2018

 

 

Khartoum (1966)*** Dual Format release

Dir: Basil Dearden | Wri: Robert Andrey | UK, 1966 | 134′ | Historical Action Drama

KHARTOUM is the kind of spectacular, rousing historical adventure that doesn’t get made anymore, certainly not along the same lines as Basil Dearden’s star-studded epic that exposes English colonialism, religious fanaticism, heroism and sacrifice in a magnificent visual masterpiece. Back in the day, it all seemed perfectly harmless to our innocent childhood eyes as we sat round the telly oblivious to the political incorrectness. And that wasn’t the worst thing: it later emerged that over a hundred horses were severely injured or killed immediately during the battle scenes, due to unethical stunt methods of the time.

Sir Laurence Olivier actually plays the Arab fanatic Muhammad Ahmad, whose troops massacre thousands on British-led Egyptian forces in 1880s Sudan. He truly believes he is the Mahdi, choses by the profit Mohammed’s to topple the Anglo-Egyptian rule. Meanwhile, Legendary Major General Charles George Gordon (Charlton Heston was nearly a foot taller than the General himself) is sent by Prime Minister William Gladstone (Ralph Richardson) to save the city of Khartoum from the Mahdi, but is given only one aide in the shape of Richard Johnson), and limited support from the British government that sent him there. Intrepid til the last he faces a fearless opponent determined to create a new empire. Gordon sees that further bloodshed is imminent.

With impressive battle sequences given greater weight by philosophical and moral debates about the righteousness of military action, Khartoum is a widescreen extravaganza and was the final film to be shot using Ultra Panavision 70 (and screened theatrically in Cinerama) until Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight in 2015. And it’s an extraordinary endeavour with its masterful performance from a heavyweight cast of actors at the top of their game. Perfect entertainment for a drizzly afternoon or a long winter’s night – if you’re not an animal lover!

FROM 3 DECEMBER | COURTESY OF EUKEKA MASTERS OF CINEMA

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Red, White and Zero *** Bluray compilation release

This 1967 portmanteau film from Woodfall both disappoints and surprises in equal measure. Three short films make up an offbeat production that MGM backed only to then shelve on completion. They understandably realised that its box office potential was insignificant and they probably hadn’t a clue as to what it was all about. The White Bus and Red and Blue films are the more radical, whilst The Ride of the Valkyrie is the most traditional. Anderson’s The White Bus was the only film to be shown in cinemas and is the best of the three: yet all of them are failures.

In terms of failing, the worst offender is Peter Brook’s The Ride of the Valkyrie starring Zero Mostel as an opera singer trying to make it on time for his small-part entrance in Wagner’s Die Walkyrie at London’s Royal Opera House. Filmed like a slapstick silent comedy Brooks proves he’s never ever going to effectively pastiche Keaton, Chaplin or even Norman Wisdom! Unfunny sound effects, clunky acting, badly timed gags and a desperate feel of British low-brow farce bring it all crashing down. Zero Mostel (usually a very funny comedian) is here clumsy and self-conscious. His only amusing moment is when, dressed in full costume and yielding a spear, he mistakenly rushes onto a production of a West End drama. And I suppose taking his spear through customs at Heathrow makes you smile because today it would be forbidden and he’d be arrested. But everything else is tedious and quickly forgettable.

The premise of Tony Richardson’s Red and Blue comes across well: a singer’s disappointment with her relationships as she sings of her unhappiness in the present and the past.

Yet despite a convincing and stoical performance from Vanessa Redgrave (who can’t really sing but makes a decent go of it) the film never manages to effectively marry its melancholy with an involving story or convincing atmosphere. It’s partly because the acting of Michael York, William Sylvester and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, (looking very uncomfortable in the part of Redgrave’s elderly lover) is well below par. There’s some effective use of colour filters and a few Jacques Demyish vocal touches which playfully shake the realism of a film that’s never quite a love letter nor a musical offering. Sadly Richardson’s direction lacks real engagement leaving too much up to Vanessa Redgrave. Red and Blue is deeply flawed with some crude New Wavish gangster scenes but still marginally interesting.

Lindsay Anderson’s The White Bus is the most substantial production. However be warned – if you are not an Anderson enthusiast (as I am) it will make less of an impact, as The White Bus is often a series of sketches and notes for If… and O Lucky Man. The script by Shelagh Delaney is adapted from her own short story. Patricia Healy (A look-alike for Delaney) is a writer / office secretary who travels up by train from London to the North. On the platform she encounters a bowler hatted guy eager to date her. On board the train she’s accompanied by a group of football supporters. On reaching Salford, Manchester she joins some foreign tourists, the Lord Mayor (Arthur Lowe) and his dignitaries on a White Bus tour of the city. Throughout all this she remains remarkable impassive– early on in the office scenes Anderson cuts to a not-full body shot of her having hung herself.

So is The White Bus a post-suicide journey to the writer’s background and roots? Or is she travelling home to the moment when she might take her life? – either way the woman’s cool detachment from events has her rubbing shoulders with the semi-depressed landscape of Manchester and the script’s odd, unfunny satirical tone (maybe the geography and manners of Northern England then was too glum to raise a laugh and therefore that’s the point.) The film’s beautiful and soulful greyness of image, intercut with colour footage, is supplied by the great Czech photographer Miroslav Ondricek who worked with Anderson on If… and O Lucky Man.

I was prepared to regard The White Bus as an intelligent but very unsure film until the writer leaves the bus tour to walk round the streets of her neighbourhood. She stares in the windows of houses and sees an old man being shaved and a young girl (herself?) playing the piano. In an alleyway she disturbs a man insisting that his girl-friend have sex with him. Then in a fish and chip shop she eats a meal: its last customer of the day as chairs are stacked up and a voiceover, of its owners, has them talking about the monotony of work. Recalling the film’s earlier suicidal image then a logical development has been made to make us understand the young woman’s alienated state.

Lindsay Anderson revered the poetic direction of John Ford and Jean Vigo. Although often difficult to precisely pin down, a cinematic poetry is apparent in Anderson’s finest work. As a whole piece The White Bus is not him at his best but a preparation for his more mature work.  Yet the autobiographical Delaney scenes have a surreal and haunting power intimating a great deal about environment, class, work, upbringing and its potential to condition and depress.

For these moments alone I’d give The White Bus a three star recommendation, advise you to buy Red, White and Zero and tolerate the other segments. Alan Price©2018

AVAILABLE AT THE BFI FROM EARLY DECEMBER 2018

https://youtu.be/KnQpxCN_SgQ

Mug – Twarz (2018) Bfi player

Dir: Malgorzata Szumovska | Michal Englert | Cast: Mateuz Kosciukiewiczz, Agnieszka Podsiadlik | Drama | Poland

In this salacious social critique of her homeland, filmmaker Malgorzata Szumovska captures the zeitgeist of rural Poland with a strangely moving story involving a scruffy metalhead builder who is forced to reevaluate his life after a tragic accident at work.

Twarz means mug/face in Polish. It refers to the central character Jacek (Mateusz Kosciukiewicz), who still lives in the lakeside town of Western Polish town of Świebodzin with his petty, provincial family. Despite best intentions to move to London with his floozy fiancée Dagmara (Gorol), Jacek is put off by his brother in law’s zenophobic stance on things and Brexit doubts. Only his sister seems to be on his side.

Jacek is building something he believes in – a statue of Christ the King, and the tallest representation of the saviour so far. But a dreadful fall derails his future and his face is so badly injured that he needs life-changing surgery: the local priest (Roman Gancarczyk), his fiancée Dagmara, and the rest of the family will have to chip in to the expensive medical bills. And the result may be quite different from the Jacek they knew and loved. And the after effects are quite different, although by no means as bad as the family feared. That said, even his mother (Anna Tomaszewska) refuses to accept his new look (cleverly photographed by Michal Englert who also co-wrote the script). But when Dagmara shuns him, her rejection strikes to core of his being as a lover and man. Only his sister (a superb Agnieszka Podsiadlik) is there to help with his rehabilitation.

Szumovska cleverly navigates tonal nuances from realism to comic fantasy in a film that is competently performed, utterly compelling and thematically rich with its reflection on consumerism, identity and prejudice. The film also tackles religious belief and the nature of human suffering symbolised by Jacek’s dignified forbearance under the gaze of an all-seeing Jesus Christ. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER from 15 OCTOBER 2021 | SILVER BEAR GRAND JURY PRIZE BERLINALE 2018
PRESS CONFERENCE 

Pajaros de Verano (2018) **** Marrakech Film Festival 2018

Dir: Ciro Guerra |Dir/Prod: Cristina Gallego | Drama | Colombia | Cast: | Carmina  Martínez, Jhon Narváez, José Acosta, José Vicente Cotes, Juan Martínez, Natalia Reyes | 110’

Embrace of the Serpent (2015) was the first Colombian feature to be nominated for an Oscar© and won Ciro Guerra the Art Cinema award at Directors’ Fortnight. The Bogota born director returns with his fourth and most ambitious film today PAJAROS DE VERANO (Birds of Passage) that explores the origins of the Colombian drug trade through this epic yet spiritual  multi-layered story about an indigenous Wayuu family of farmers turned drug-traffickers become involved in the booming business of selling marijuana to the American youth in the 1970s. But from a tiny seed of discontent passion and honour collide, and a fratricidal war breaks out that will put their lives, culture and ancestral traditions at stake.

Working this time in colour with his DoP David Gallego, Guerra creates a fabulous sense of place in the arid windswept plains of Colombia’s Guajira desert, where a deep unsettling feeling continually pervades the heady atmosphere with Leonardo Heiblum’s ground-breaking ominous soundscape.

Embrace of the Serpent writer Jacques Vidal and co-scripter Maria Camila Arias structure the story around five songs: Wild Grass 1968, The Tombs 1971, Prosperity 1979, The War 1980 and Limbo following the age-old traditional rags to riches and then tragedy formula. That said, this is an inventive and refreshingly original film whose poetic nature is continually punctuated by episodes of brutal violence and down to earth characters echoing recent South American fare such as Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, and Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja, and anchoring Birds firmly in historical reality despite its lyrical and often dreamlike folkloric overtones.

In this strongly matriarchal set-up, themes of capitalism vie with those of spirituality showing how both can breed antagonism if left unchecked, and this is eventually what transpires when male machismo and greed topples this delicate human society with tragedy and loss the inevitable outcome. Occasionally marred by uneven pacing BIRDS OF PASSAGE is nevertheless a startling achievement marking out Ciro Guerra and his co-director Cristina Gallego as growing talents on the South American scene. MT

 

MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

Yomeddine (2018) *** Marrakech Film Festival 2018

Writer|Dir: A B Shawky | Egypt | Drama | 97’

YOMEDDINE (Judgement Day) is a coming of age road drama where two outcasts discover the harshness of the real world outside the lepper colony where they have spent most of their tragic lives. Funded by kickstarter, A B Shawky based his film on real people he met at the Abu Zaabal Leper Colony while filming his awarded documentary The Colony: childless leper Beshay and his schizophrenic wife; Hamed, the legless former truck driver, and Nubian boy Obama. After the death of his wife, we re-join Beshay and his apprentice Obama (Ahmed Abdelhafiz) on a journey south in a donkey cart, to trace the rest of Beshay’s family and find out why his father abandoned him there as a child.

A gentle sardonic humour saves YOMEDDINE from descending into sentimentality, even though the two’s sad plight may often have you close to tears. Newcomer Gamal plays Beshay (who is no longer contagious) with vulnerability and amusing self-deprecation, and the down to earth Obama tags along on the mission.

Poverty and religion are the themes that run through this slim but poignant story. Having been judged all their lives for their looks, when will they be judged for their personalities? Obama is more confident than Beshay but the two share an appealing rapport. During their trip they encounter all sorts of nefarious characters along the way, and although there’s no strong narrative, this watchable film ambles gently on as we enjoy the rapport of the characters and the simple storyline enriched by the passing Egyptian landscapes – that veers off the beaten track, offering sites that are unfamiliar to most. YOMEDDINE is a restrained piece of work that may not travel far, but there is a powerful charm to its journey. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-19 MAY 2018 | IN COMPETITION

Tulip Fever (2017)

Dir.: Justin Chadwick; Cast: Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, Dane de Haan, Judi Dench, Holliday Granger, Tom Hollander; USA/UK 2015, 110 min.

Based on the novel of the same name by Deborah Moggach and written by Tom Stoppard, Tulip Fever is a story of a loveless marriage and a disillusioned romantic set against the tulip mania that raged in the first half of the 17th century. Moggach was inspired by the Dutch paintings of the Golden Age, and the film evokes their opulent yet lugubrious surroundings.

The background to this intimate drama is the speculative madness of “tulip fever”: rare bulbs are bought and sold in frenzied bidding, their value often exceeding gold.

A fascinating film could be made this Seventeenth Century Amsterdam’s equivalent of the South Sea Bubble and the Wall Street Crash, but this isn’t it.

The troubled production was charted in the press like that of Cleopatra’ over half a century earlier and, rather like that, the end result is good-looking (the tulips standing out from the general murk as little splashes of colour like the fish in ‘Rumble Fish’) but garrulous and uninvolving; but mercifully a lot shorter.

Being a twenty-first century historical film it contains plenty of unsexy sex and vertiginous steadicam photography; and as in ‘Cleopatra’s day a big historical epic wasn’t complete without a cameo by Finlay Currie, so the cast today inevitably includes Judi Dench.

The camera hovers moodily over the dark interiors, the narrow alleyways and canals seem to be all like traps, it is never really light, the weather seems to be foul all the time – creating a mood of morbidity, in spite of the wealth displayed. Vikander is brilliant in her mood changes, her intimate scenes contrast vividly with manic plotting; in the end, when cornered, she runs wild like a woman possessed.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

The Old Man and the Gun (2018) ****

Dir: David Lowery | Cast: Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek | US Drama | 93mins

This mellow arthouse movie is a tongue in cheek tribute to gentlemen villains everywhere. The perfect antidote to crime thrillers, THE OLD MAN & THE GUN shoots the breeze with Robert Redford’s real life career criminal Forrest Tucker, reflecting over his glorious life of bank robbery. With its themes of ageing gracefully, living life to the full and being true to ourselves The Old Man and The Gun is a wistful experience enriched by polished performances from its well-oiled leads Spacek and Redford.

Redford’s Forrest Tucker is already into his 60s when we meet him in 1981 during a genteel crime spree in the Midwest. Approaching his banking targets he simply produces a gun and asks for the money. With a dozy detective on his trail in the shape of Casey Affleck (as John Hunt) Tucker is meanwhile casually turning his thoughts to romance and dating a rather sceptical woman called Jewel (Spacek), who’s not quite sure what to make of the charming old roué.

The Old Man is Lowery’s follow-up to his rather dour haunting fantasy A Ghost Story. But although both share that undercurrent of navel-gazing introspection that has mulling over the meaning of life, this is a much more upbeat affair that nevertheless packs a powerful undercurrent of tension in its final scenes. The real life Tucker was well into his 80s when he died in 2004. And there’s something faintly laudable about his method of making a living. No-one ever gets hurt, and there’s no deception, although Tucker possesses a steely resolve in his recidivism — Lowery plays on that most disarming of human qualities: the element of surprise. Tucker maintains a genial charm throughout, always cutting to the chase but with charisma in spades. And he slowly builds a convincing relationship with Jewel, who’s attracted to his magnetism despite her better judgement, always aware that at some point she be short-changed.

Old Man has a criminal pulse but it’s a steady one. Craftily, Lowery has us believe that Old Man will be a cat-and-mouse game between Hunt and Tucker. But then he film turns into a much more subtle affair, building rich characterisations of the smiling but steely villain and his half-hearted oppressor, Old Man plays out as a slow-burning study of criminal motivation and mutual respect. Affleck’s Hunt is bemused and mildly fascinated by what makes Tucker tick. And there’s one scene where the two meet in the bathroom that really showcases this charm offensive between the two men. But Hunt’s more interested in staying home with his wife, and mentoring his kids on police methods rather than rushing around frenetically chasing wrongdoers.

The Old Man owes its immense charm to Redford who is really brilliant as the twinkly- eyed thief. There’s deep sadness and longing behind the warmth of his wry smile, rather than any desire to hurt or deceive. His atavistic urge to escape and re-offend is clearly rooted in his childhood – it’s at his very core and keeps him alive.

Joe Anderson’s grainy Super 16mm visually gives the film that retro feel. Daniel Hart’s loose-limbed tuneful score puts a rosy spins on proceedings — Spacek barely conceals her clear affection for the loveable cad, but also the fear that she may lose him to pastures new.   Tucker is a leopard who has no intention of changing his spots. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 7 DECEMBER 2018

Teatro de Guerra (2018) * * *

Dir/Writer: Lola Arias | Doc | Argentina, Spain 2018

The Falklands War (1982-84)  took the lives of 655 Argentinian and 255 British soldiers. It ended in Argentina’s military defeat and in territorial claims on both sides that remain contentious to this day.
Experimental in nature, this frank and often moving film essay from Argentinian artist and filmmaker Lola Arias tries to discover if past trauma can ever be resolved by collectively revisiting the memories by giving soldiers from both sides a chance to explore their feelings and even re-enact their experiences 34 years after hostilities officially ended. This is an illuminating piece of filmmaking that puts us at the cutting edge of the combat through face to face interviews; news footage and staged episodes of the conflict enacted by those who actually took part.

Now in their early 50s, the 12 veterans from both sides, bear their souls in a piece that swings between moments of anguish and absurd comedy. At one point the men even break into song and perform together in a rock band, emoting and finding a cathartic outlet for their anxiety from the past. This makes for an interactive cinema – the soldiers finding a space to release their trauma and viewers experiencing the full throttle of their pain – and even elation. An engaging piece of cinema that grapples with the coal face of conflict in new and inventive ways. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS | BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018 | BERLINALE FORUM PRIZE | ECUMENICAL JURY | CICAE ART CINEMA AWARD

 

Ça C’est l’Amour (2018) *** Marrakech Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Claire Burger; Cast: Bouli Lanners, Sarah Henochsberg, Justine Lacroix, Cecile Remy-Boutang, Celia Mayer; France/Belgium 2018, 98 min.

Claire Burger joint project Party Girl won the Camera d’Or in 2014. Her debut as solo director is another passionate family story, but this one suffers from thematic over-loading and a certain lack of structure, despite a fine central performance from Bouli Lanners. Just as the French title implies – “That is what love is” – Burger shows true love in all its forms: from the obsessive and  possessive to the pre-sexual, always reminding us, that none of these is ideal.   

Set in Forbach, northern France, where the Belgian filmmaker spend her formative years, this starts off as the usual dysfunctional family affair. Working in local government Lanners is a bumptious father to daughters Nikki (Henochsberg) and Frida (Laxroix). His regular spates with his long-suffering wife Armelle (Remy-Boutang) who works in the theatre, finally prove too much  and she walks out suddenly, leaving Mario in the lurch. Nikki is seventeen, and ready to fly the nest – despite Mario’s severe reservations. Nikki keeps boyfriend Nazim at a distance – after a kiss she tells him “not to get any ideas”. Tomboy Frida, the younger, wants to be ‘Daddy’s girl’ but also leave home for good. She has a more complicated relationship: girl friend Alex (Mayer), might be more experienced in love, but she can be a pain in the neck for Frida, who wants total acceptance. Mario is unable to come to terms with living without Armelle, following her to the theatre and making it clear that he expects her go come back. Meanwhile, his relationship with his daughters deteriorates. Clearly something will have to give, not only in the lives of these Belgians – but also in the film’s running time. There is really too much going on in her over-stuffed narrative where marginal characters are introduced – and incidents at Mario’s workspace spiral out of control. Real Love simply runs out of space. The inter-familiar conflicts, as presented in first act are just about enough. Burger somehow fails to find a structure to do justice to her main characters. That said, there’s plenty of humour to save this from veering into a dire lecture about role models. Lanners excels in the comedy moments – the same goes for Henochsberg and Lacroix, the latter leaving the strongest impression on the feature. Burger’s error’s are mostly due to her lack of experience: we can certainly look forward to more from her in future.

SCREENING DURING MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018

     

Vmayakovsky (2018) ****Russian Film Week 2018

Dir: Alexander Shein | 115’      

“For you, cinema is just a spectacle, for me – almost a world view.” declared the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1993 – 1930) who as well as being a socialist ‘rock-star’ performer was also an actor of the silent cinema era (The 1918 The Ladyand the Hooligan, his only surviving film, can be watched on YouTube.) Mayakovsky was part of the Russian Futurist movement believing that art and society would reject the past and strive for a new consciousness. His multi-faceted and contradictory personality was clearly the result of a troubled beginning, and his life went on to be accordingly unorthodox. Yet director Alexander Shein has managed brilliantly to employ a non-linear and iconoclastic style for VMayakovsy that captures (though often it can barely contain) this incendiary poetic talent now mythologized, alongside of Pushkin, in modern Russia.

VMayakovsky opens with a group of actors in a studio rehearsing a film script about Mayakovsky. Gradually they assume the appropriate characterisation of the poet and the people who knew him: body language, manners and revolutionary language start to emerge. This is intercut with fictionalised documentary footage of Lilya Brik (The poet’s muse and lover played by Chillopan Khamatova) as an elderly invalid reflecting on her past. One amusing moment has a gift arriving from perhaps Mayakovsky’s daughter. Lilya’s carer says it’s a package form someone called Saint Saens but it’s not the French composer, but Yves Saint Laurent. Real documentary footage of protesters in modern Moscow; recitals of Mayakovsky’s verse, social gatherings, meetings and a recreation of a Mayakovsky play keep bursting into the film. This becomes a dazzling, energetic collage of impressions and incidents that doesn’t sidestep things into an obvious drama-doc. There’s no excessive use of 1930s documentary footage or any Shostakovich ‘theme related’ music. Shein maintains a restless pace for VMayakovsky – for it’s an experimental film intent on destroying the bio-pic.

VMayakovsky is two hours long: after an hour of arresting cinematic effects its biographical data is realised as a kind of ‘theatrical tableaux’ with occasional filmed exteriors. This shift of tone deepens the film and the superb performance of Yuri Kolokolnikow (As Mayakovsy) reveals him to be a tragic character. Mayakovsky was admired by Lenin yet viewed with suspicion by Stalin and The Russian Association of Proletarian Writers: eventually falling completely out of favour with his audience and the authorities who began to detest experimentation in the arts.

There’s a marvellously satirical scene where the workers are collecting the autumn crop of apples performed against a backcloth of Stalinist Palace of Culture architecture. A close friend informs Mayakovsky that he’s been awarded a state apartment to live in. But cautions him that his writings need to conform to the new social order. This army companion (Who is also being pressured) has a fellow writer colleague of Mayakovsky released from jail and then agonises over Mayakovsky’s unwillingness to change his art. Stalin’s totalitarian world is soon conveyed as a theatre audience of complaining hats, without heads, wittily grouped in a surreal space.

VMayakovsky isn’t an easy film to watch and not everything works. Why is real footage of Communist North Korea shown? What are the crowd, in present day Moscow, actually protesting about?  And why leave out Mayakovsky’s film acting? Yet in spite of some excluded and not properly thought-through ideas, VMayakovsky provokes, stimulates and entertains: rather than an audience beginning to fully understand Mayakovsky, they experience a poetic force called Vladimir Mayakovsky who was a very vulnerable man.

VMayakovsky is a terrific achievement that reminded me of some of the film experimentation that we took for granted from the early sixties to the mideighties (Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Jacques Rivette and the better side of Ken Russell are an obvious influence on Shein.) Sadly Shein’s feature isn’t on any form of limited release. It’s had a few University screenings in London and you can now only catch it if you take a train to Glasgow, Cambridge or Oxford this winter.

I saw VMayakovsky at a cinema inside a large London bank. The director introduced the screening, telling us that it was a joke that his film was being screened in a bank as he himself had just become bankrupt. Buying a ticket may not help to keep Alexander Shein financially afloat: yet your support could just spur him on to produce more work like the remarkably assured VMayakovsky. Alan Price © 2018       

SCREENING DURING RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | 2018

 

The Forest | Les (2018) **** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir.: Roman Zhigalov; Cast: Oleg Shibayew, Natalia Rychkova, Oleg Feokzistov, Maria Avramjova, Vladimir Malyugin; Russia 2018, 97 min.

Roman Zhigalov’s feature debut is a glum, violent and dramatic passion play. In a village surrounded by dense forest, murder, rape and arson seem to dominate the troubled community, in a microcosm of Putin’s Russia. This an important portrait of Russian society, despite its over-accentuated sombre realism. 

Sixteen-year old Danila (Shibayew) lives with oppressive mother Galina (Avramkova) and brutal father Pasha (Feokzistov). Cut off from society he has a problem adjusting to school life and is bullied for his sullen manners and total lack of interest in girls. 

Meanwhile, Pasha lusts after Katya (Rychkova), even promising her to leave his family if she gives in. Katya’s husband Kolka (Malyugin) is an alcoholic with physical and emotional impairments. Little does Pasha know that Danila shares his taste for women and is much more successful than his father in finding favour with Katya. While Pasha are his mates in a battle to prevent the local Mafia buying his sawmill for a knock-down price, one of Danila’s female classmates is gang raped by boys from the district capital, and after Galina surprises her son and Katya in flagrante, she asks her husband to take action. Events eventually spiral out of control in scenes of unrelenting and sometimes graphic, but never gratuitous violence. 

Somehow here, society has taken a step backwards, with greed and lust coming to the fore at every opportunity. The local Mafia seems to represent the regime’s semi-criminal mode of government, and their power is much greater than that of the local administration. Pasha is warned – in vain – by the local mayor to sell his sawmill to the mafia: “You remember what happened in 1989 with the land of the kolkhozes”. Violence against women seems to be the norm, men of all ages still see them predominantly as sex objects, to be conquered and discarded at will.

DoP Yury Sergeyev captures the rural violence with intense close-ups and panoramic shots of the landscape. The human presence seem to offend nature, spoiling its beauty in every possible way. Rychkova is the only positive figure, and her humble humanity is constantly abused by the rest of the protagonists. Zhigalov might have sometimes overdone his orgy of violence, but in the end he succeeds in his message, showing a Russia falling back into the senseless savagery of the eighteenth century.AS

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK 2018 

 

Srbenka (2018) **** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Nebojsa Slijepcevic; Documentary with Oliver Frljic; Croatia 2018, 70 min.

Director/writer/DoP Nebojsa Slijepcevic (Gangster of Love) explores peer violence towards children  of different nationalities in Croatia, and examines how the generation born after the war copes with the dark shadows of history. 

The documentary is set in a Zagreb theatre, during the rehearsals of a play called Aleksandra Zec where the star turn is a Serbian girl who was murdered together with her whole family in 1991, just before the outbreak of war between Serbia and Croatia after the implosion of Yugoslavia. The murder of Aleksandra Zec and her family was an act of social cleansing, and Frljic wanted to show how the wounds of the war are still influencing daily life, not only in Croatia. One actor asks: “Do I become a Serb, because I am in a play about a murdered Serbian girl?” During the rehearsal and on the eve of the premiere, right-wing protesters threatened the director and his girl friend with violence. They were holding up placards saying “Why not a play about the 86 kids of Vukovar”, who were killed during a bombing raid in the civil war. Frljic wanted to detach actors from the play itself, so he let all of them talk about their feelings about the play and the Civil War. Four 12-year old girls – the same age as Aleksandra when she was killed – were also taking part in the play. They too were asked about their feelings, and some of them comment about their fear of Roma – “because when they break their arm, it heals quicker than ours, or “they are like lizards, when they lose a tail, it grows back quickly.”

Their role in the play is to ask the dead girl about her feelings towards her assailants. One of the girls has nightmares after rehearsals, she dreams about killing her sister and taking her organs out. They all admit to bullying Roma children at school. One of girl reports, that a class mate of her did not go to Catholic RE, and was called a Jew. One of the quartet, Nina Batanic, is actually Serbian, she has hidden this from her classmates, particularly from the boy who sits next to her and told her “I like to kill all Serbians, cutting their throat with my teeth”. But Nina is so brave she admits at the evening of the premiere that she is Serbian. After the play is over the camera follows her lingering on the way home.

Even after 25 years, the war is still the central issue. The fear of “the other” is kept alive by right-wing Nationalists, who see anybody who is not Croatian as an enemy. The trauma lets the violence simmer permanent under the surface. Frljic and Slijepcevic see their project as therapeutic, hoping, that when questions about nationality and minorities are brought to the surface, the resentment of ‘others’ might be reduced. But the four girls are living proof, how long the way to anything like a reconciliation still is. Srbenka is brave, but leaves little hope for the future –  and that goes for the whole of Europe. AS

SCREENING AT MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | WINNER OF SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | | SCREENING DURING DOC LEIPZIG.

Tides (2017) **

Dir.: Tupaq Felber | Cast: Jon Foster, Robin Isaac, Simon Meacock, James Zubari, Amanda Rawnsley |  UK 2017, 100′

Tupaq Felber’s monochrome musings of four friends touring the canals of southern England is impressively shot but too banal to really make the same meaningful impact as, say, Andrew Kötting’s stylish Swandown, another recent British ‘roadie’

This blokish (+ a token girl) bonding trip certainly shoots the breeze and takes a long time to get going – the boat-owner’s instructions to the crew tell you everything you never wanted to know about canal boats. TIDES nearly comes to a standstill when they all get drunk and incoherent. Amanda (Rawnsley) is the only woman on board, for a fleeting visit. There are some nasty comments about Amanda’s parsimonious behaviour which soon surface when she justifiably tries to get out of paying nearly £200 for food and boat rental for just one night. The male crew then meander around in the water and it soon becomes clear that Jon (Foster) is dealing with a personal tragedy – but neither he or his mates shed any light on the circumstances. The only concrete fact that emerges about actor Simon (Meacock), married with a young child, is that his part as a ‘suspects’ in a long-running soap-opera, will soon be ‘killed off’ leaving him presumably without any means of financial support. A confident debut, TIDES would make a great twenty-minute short, but the narrative never comes near to justifying the lavish running time.

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE 7 DECEMBER 2018 | Tupaq will also attend a special preview and Q&A with the cast on 4 December at the special barge cinema

Witnesses (2017) Svideteli **** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir.: Konstantin Fam; Cast: Oksana Fandera, Filipp Yankousky, Mariya King, Lenn Kudrjawski, Uliana Elina, Vyacheslav Chepurchenko; Russia/Belarus/Czech Republic/France/Poland/Israel 2017, 100 min.

Konstantin Fam’s drama debut is a trilogy of short films, shot between 2012 and 2017, its intertwined structure featuring human protagonists and mute witnesses of the Holocaust. This is probably the first major Russian feature concerning itself with Russian Jewish victims of the Shoah, since the topic was one of the taboos during Stalinism. Impassioned and powerful, it manages to avoid dramatics, concentrating on the details of the tragic events. 

Shoes (Tufelki) is set in a small Russian town, featuring its characters from the knees downwards. The titular female shoes, optimistically coloured red, belong to a woman who will end up in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Her shoes are now in the Museum of the former Camp, picked from a mountain of abandoned footwear. The camera traces her life through the other shoes she encounters: the happy shop owner who gives her the shoes for free; the little shoes of her daughter; and then the military boots of the German invaders, forcing her into an overloaded cattle truck. And then the military shoes of the German guard, who, we are left to surmise, closes the gas chamber hermetically. Devoid of dialogue, just background noise, and symphonic music, creating an eerie ballet. 

Brut (Brutus) features the young shop owner of the first episode, Rozanna (Fandera), who is given a German Shepherd dog by her husband. The cute puppy develops into a loveable pet, but after the German army arrives, Jews are not allowed to have pets any more. Horst (Yankousky) an outwardly harmless looking SS man, with a model family, takes Brutus away, and Rozanna is forced to surrender “her only friend”. Horst trains the friendly Brutus to be a ‘killer dog’, but when the soldier is transferred to a Concentration Camp, he meets Rozanna, again but strangely fails to recognise her. In a bid to escape, Rozanna is then shot by Horst, but Brutus recognises Rozanna. This is in many ways the most cruel of the episodes, because Horst tries to transfer his murderous instincts to a defenceless animal, whose true nature survives, in spite of everything.  

Violin (Skrypka) chronicles the instrument’s history. First given to a Jewish boy by his father in early 1930s Nuremberg, the violin ends up in contemporary New York. We discover why a Swastika is stamped inside the instrument, in a concentration camp where an officer is asked by his superior “to gather the best musicians for the Camp Orchestra”. Finally through a bizarre series of events, the violin is played at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, perhaps a rather conciliatory ending, but an inventive Holocaust story that plays a thoughtful and plangent tune.

Kam’s (unplanned) structure works very well throughout, showing the various ways in which silent witnesses can bring a message from the past for all of us. Fam avoids any didactic lectures, and concentrates on the small details, which can make such a difference. The DoPs (too many to name), create a convincing  atmosphere; Shoes in particular is highly innovative and hauntingly captures our imagination. Witnesses never tries to be sentimental – but makes an extraordinary emotional impact: demonstrating the wilful distraction of the world of ordinary people.

 SCREENING DURING RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | UNTIL 2 DECEMBER 2018    

Atoll K (1951) *** Bluray/DVD release

Dir: Leo Joannon | Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy | Comedy Drama | 98′

ATOLL K marked the big screen comedy return of Laurel and Hardy in 1951. It was also their swan song. The much loved duo were lured back during a European stage tour to take a trip of another kind – this time involving a ramshackle voyage to the Pacific to save Stan’s island inheritance. The odyssey was actually filmed off the coast of the French Riviera and was an ambitious attempt to add a satirical twist to their well-known slapstick scenarios. It  certainly showcases their versatility and inventive comedy talents. Atoll K (the French title) also comes as a welcome ‘Laurel and Hardy’ refresher in the wake of a new feature film: Stan & Ollie, that arrives in the New Year and stars Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly.

After 1945 Laurel and Hardy had found new popularity with audiences deprived of their films who during the war years. The comedy duo had signed up with 20th Century Fox and MGM for a series of movies, but by the end of the 1940s their career had ground to a halt after a long association with producer Hal Roach. Atoll K (also known as Utopia and Robinson Crusoeland) was the result of a big budget French-Italian initiative, with the production to take place in France. But the project did not run smoothly, and filming took over a year – from Spring 1950 to the following April – instead of the projected 12 weeks. To make matters worse, there were artistic and communication issues between Laurel and the director, who could only speak French. Lancashire born Laurel was diabetic and suffered severe complications during shooting, further hampering the production. And with seven writers contributing to the script, it’s hardly surprising the storyline drifts rather, despite some great comedy moments revolving around the usual setbacks and mishaps during a voyage that’s stormy – both on and off the boat. Despite its flaws this buried treasure from archives provides solid gold entertainment. MT 

ON RELEASE FROM 3 DECEMBER 2018

The Image Book | Le Livre d’Images (2018) ****

Dir.: Jean-Luc Godard in collaboration with Fabrice Aragno, Jean-Paul Battagia, Nicole Brenez; France/Switzerland 2018, 85 min.

Returning to Cannes this May, and eventually winning a Special Palme d’Or with The Image Book, Jean-Luc Godard was as brazen as usual: a portrait of the artist as an iconoclast, but not in the historical sense. JLG, true to form, throws thousands of images at us, just as he’s always done. In very mutated forms – enigmatically connected, their meaning further ambiguously enhanced by free associative texts. It was announced that some of the images would travel the big cities of the globe as an installation. ~Having done away with actors, Godard decided to rely on images – his own as well as others. This event will now happen in cinemas, before an army of academics and JLG acolytes take over the diatribe.

The good news first: The Image Book is much more accessible than say Film Socialisme, it gives the audience a chance to put at least some strains together – depending on how many years one has spent in the cinema and the library, appraising his work. Before the onslaught of images, most of the film clips get away in the original form, the rest is colour distorted, saturated, over- or under exposed, played at the ‘wrong’ speed or an impaired rhythm. Godard reminds us that we think with two hands. The sounds are in discordance, distorted and often violently cut off, or altogether removed – all this to the music of Bach, Schnittke, Scott Walker, Prokofiev (Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible) among others. The clips of films, TV, mobile, newsreel and artwork are released in stunning tempo, underlined by Godard’s rasping voice plus a heavy cough attack. In the chapter ‘Remake’, he uses his own material as well others for a new message: a mix of fictional and real live killings. This is followed by a sequence of train features (always interrupted by Holocaust images) as a form of cinematic representations, starting with ‘The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat’ by the Lumiere Brothers. Then we jump to Europe just after the end of WWII, with Munk’s Eroica and Jerzy Kawalerowicz’ Night Train, and a long clip from Jacques Tourneur’s Berlin Express where the new order in Europe is established by the nominative travellers of the Four Powers.

Trying to be particularly clever, JLG quotes Dostojewski “The Warsaw train was approaching St. Petersburg”. Before we return to Europe, a short-list of features quoted: Johnny Guitar, Kiss me Deadly, The Beauty and the Beast, Vertigo and Gus van Sant’s Elephant. In Europe, JLG opines “the actions of the government cannot be separated from the actions of the citizens”. What he means is that Europeans have reduced the power of emotion by becoming a consumer society, and by killing the real meaning of language, with advertising. And there is the ever-recurring Faust question: JLG accusing Europeans of all wanting to be Kings, rather than Faust. Also spotted is a book of poems by Godard’s partner Anne-Marie Miéville, and excerpts of Hollis Frampton’s Means of Survival. The majority of clips and texts passed me by, so I long for a second, or even third viewing – just to ‘get with the programme’.

ISIS executions are scattered around The Image Book. Also in the last chapter about the Arab world, entitled ‘Joyful Arabia’ from an Alexandre Dumas novel, and with quotes by Albert Cossey: Ambition in the Desert, Godard shows the false dawn of the Arab Spring and other violent episodes – besides just the ISIS cruelties. In the end JLG quotes Max Ophuls’s Le Plaisir: a man dancing around wildly, until he collapses. Wonder what this is a symbol for, if anything?.

Well then: JLG as an audio-visual poet? A channel surfer of history? A lecturer in free association mode? Perhaps most likely just a painter of images. In a (cinema) world with little or no substance (never mind innovation), the idiosyncratic JLG stands out – for whatever reason. Yes, the huge majority switched off after Weekend – a few newcomers occasionally join the party mainly attended by his acolytes – but it’s a requires stamina to follow the leaders. AS

ON RELEASE on November 30 2018 NATIONWIDE

The Song of the Tree (2018) Talinn Black Nights 2018

Dir: Aibek Daiyrbekov | Musical Drama | 93′ | Kyrgyzstan

THE SONG OF THE TREE is a sumptuously vivid story about a woman’s ardent love for a man and our deep connection with home. Based on real and mythical stories passed down from one generation to another, it is also Kyrgyzstan’s first musical film, set and filmed in this magnificent scenic country.

It follows the story of a feisty young man (Esen,Omurbek Izrailov)) who falls foul of his mountain community over time old issue of honour, after stealing some meat, which leads to the felling of a secret tree. Humiliated, he decides to leave with his love Begimai (Saltanat Bakaeva) but after they are  intercepted, the lovesick loner becomes hellbent on revenge. 

The musical elements embellish the nomadic narrative rather than driving it forward, the songs are gracefully performed and, despite subtitles, the story more or less tells itself pictorially to those who hate reading the bottom line. And there’s plenty here to enjoy. Filmmaker Aibek Daiyrbekov tells his tale against the stunning widescreen backdrop of the Tien Shan range of mountains. But there is an intimacy to the story that retains our interest throughout and this often involves a singing vignette in the foreground.

Set during the 1800s the film really conveys the stridence and casual violence of these exotic people who think nothing of whipping their adversaries savagely and pulling out daggers, without a ‘by your leave’. There are some spectacular chase scenes on horseback – one in particular sees a horse roll over and over down a sandy valley. Daiyrbekov keeps our attention on the lovers story (despite the odd subplot) and this eventually culminates in a face-off between between Esen and Oguz (Jurduzbek Kaseivov), the man who cut down the tree and murdered his brother.

There’s nothing particularly unique about the plot line but Daiyrbekov’s directing and mise en scene and Akzhol Bekbolotov’s camerawork is absolutely glorious and visually exquisite. Meanwhile Zholdoshbek Apasov’s compositions and use of local instruments give the film a lyrical quality that adds to its enjoyment. With a modest running time of 93 minutes, this is a worthwhile addition to Kyrgyzstan contemporary cinema. MT

SCREENING DURING TALINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL 2018

https://vimeo.com/300254926

 

 

Disobedience (2017) ***½

Dir: Sebastian Lelio | Cast: Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, Alessandro Nivola | Drama | Argentina | 110min

Sebastian Lelio’s latest is a dour and stifling drama worth watching only for Rachel Weisz as a refreshingly liberated soul who has broken free from her repressive upbringing in a Jewish orthodox community in Golders Green and the Suburb.

Once again Lelio explores female sexuality in its various guises – his lively Berlinale Golden Bear winner Gloria saw a vivacious middle aged divorcee discover her newfound freedom in modern day Montevideo; his second Berlinale winner A Fantastic Woman followed the fallout for a trans woman after her lover dies suddenly in Buenos Aires. Based on the novel by Naomi Alderman, and cleverly adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida) and Lelio himself, Disobedience is a subdued and antiseptic affair stuck in a passionless winter of discontent in a grim suburban setting -Lelio’s visual energy washed away by the drab aesthetic of the film’s locale and it’s rather mawdlin story line. .

Rachel McAdams plays against type as the orthodox Esti, who harbours a sexual secret signalled by the tonal gloom of the films’ opening scenes in the family home: even though her rabbi husband Dov’s adoptive father Rav – a pillar of the community – has just died, there is clearly a skeleton in the cupboard making this couple subdued. To pay her respects to her father, successful photographer Ronit Krushka (Weisz) turns up energetically from New York to the surprise of everyone assembled – she left under a cloud years ago – and her reappearance sets passive aggressive tongues wagging and kippahs askew.

This intriguing set of affairs initially builds up a stealthy level or tension that soon gives way to tedium in the overplayed twists and turns of the rather unconvincing reveal. As Ronit, Rachel Weisz brings a welcome breath of fresh air to this buttoned-up milieu with some witty one-liners and knowing glances. Alessandro Nivola’s Dov is rather likeable and really resonates as the conflicted and cuckholded religious heir to his highly-regarded adoptive father ‘the Rav’ Krushka (Anton Lesser). But McAdams is the least convincing of the lead trio in a difficult one-dimensional role as a rather mousy and mumsy character whose repressed passion never really catches fires – and her three children are strangely completely absent from this family-centric environment. That said, the Orthodox Jewish set-up is brilliantly captured and authentic to last detail. Disobedience is mildly intriguing in its portrayal of religious orthodoxy and its contradictions in contemporary London. But as a love story it leaves you as cold as last week’s chopped liver. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 NOVEMBER 2018

Die Hard (1988) ****

Dir: John McTiernan | Roderick Thorp | US Action thriller | Cast: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia | 132′

This ’80s hostage thriller with a soft-boiled soul ushered in the contemporary crime blockbuster, as we now know it. A tribute to Alan Rickman’s sharp-suited charismatic criminal with a voice of liquid gold. On Christmas Eve, Bruce Willis’ New York detective John McClane arrives in Los Angeles with the aim of reconciling with his estranged wife, Holly (a voluptuous Bonnie Bedelia). When the party is stormed by a group of hell-raising hostage-takers, led by the Rickman’s Hans Gruber. McClane goes out on a limb on a one man crusade. What follows is a slow-burning, skin of the teeth showcase showdown where Willis wages a one-man war against the criminals  attempt to rob his wife’s Japanese employer, whilst they occupy the LAPD and the FBI.  McClane battles on to the last in an auction thriller characterised by its astonishing performances  and dramatic action sequences rooted in reality rather than fake-ness, fantasy and CGI. MT

ON RE-RELEASE NATIONWIDE COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS AT THE FOLLOWING VENUES

Yanks (1979)**** Dual format release

John Schlesinger’s YANKS, a moving and romantic WWII tale of love starring Richard Gere and Vanessa Redgrave is based on Lancashire born Colin Welland’s original story, he also wrote the script.

Colin Welland was one of England’s finest film and TV writers best known for The Dry White Season (1989), Chariots of Fire (1981) and numerous popular TV series including Play for Today and Armchair Theatre. He also appeared in Kes (1969); Straw Dogs (1971) and Villain (1971).

Capturing all the subtle emotional complexity that marked Schlesinger out as a one of our finest directors, this captivating social drama is imbued with English sensibilities of the local characters that contrast so eloquently with the looser and more playful US soldiers, YANKS is full of sweepingly romantic moments and amusing interludes that show how easily petty resentments or racial differences could easily catch fire in the heat of the moment inflaming hearts and minds fraught with the stresses of wartime occupancy.

Ambitious yet intimate YANKS is a World War II epic that won BAFTAs for Best Costume Design (Shirley Russell) and Best Supporting Actress (Rachel Roberts). John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Far from the Madding Crowd) went on to get the Evening Standard British Film Award in 1981. Crucially, his drama focuses on the human angle, avoiding battle scenes to explore the romantic and social entanglements between the locals and the U.S. soldiers stationed in a small town in Greater Manchester just before the Normandy landings of 1945. The American G.I.s set female hearts aflutter across the social divide: in one amusing scene in a train station Mollie (Wendy Morgan) cries”Excuse me, I’m pregnant!”. A woman quickly responds: “So is half the bloody town, love!”.

Gere is particularly charismatic as Sgt. Matt Dyson, falling for Lisa Eichhorn’s delicate heroine Jean Moreton who misses her fiancée Stan overseas. Redgrave is wealthy socialite Helen, engaged in an affair with a gallant captain (William Devane), while desperate to remain faithful to her husband serving in the British Navy. Sergeant Ruffelo’s romantic interlude with Mollie (Wendy Morgan) shows how romance can be heightened by wartime adversity when love and lust helped to counteract the stress and uncertainty of conflict.

Schlesinger had a rare gift for capturing romantic desire and yearning in a typically understated English way, and Yanks was a personal passion project for director whose success with Marathon Man (1976) here allowed him free creative rein. Although the film never really caught fire upon initial release, here is emerges as a soaring classic wartime romance that really deserves to be revisited – hankies at the ready. MT

YANKS NOW AVAILABLE COURTESY OF EUREKA MODERN CLASSICS on 3rd December 2018.

Amazon https://amzn.to/2B4L3GS
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Cause of Death (2018) *** IDFA 2018

Dir.: Ramy A. Katz; Documentary; Israel 2018, 79 min.

On the night of March 5th 2002, a gunman opened fire in a restaurant near Tel Aviv’s Maariv Bridge. Police officer Salim Barakat, who was nearby, brought the gunman down only to be found dead next to the killer. Director/producer Ramy A. Katz (Freeflow) researches the death of the Druze policeman, following his brother Jamal on his search for the truth.

The verdict was that Salim died from a knife wound to the throat. But after visiting a memorial ceremony for Salim, held every year in the police precinct for the tenth time, Jamal begins to question the official version. He discovers that the emergency ambulance’s doctor called in that night, reporting that his brother was “murdered by gun shots” and contradicting the official diagnosis of throat slashing. We watch a video where the main witness, middle-aged Willys Hazan, claims to have shot the attacker, after slashing Jamal’s throat. He is on a drip in a hospital bed, praising Salim, but admitting that the police officer was actually the terrorist. Then Jamal, a trained investigator, meets the head of the National Centre for Forensics, and tells him about the contradictions. The director is concerned l, and questions why no autopsy was performed; asking Jamal to have his brother undergo an exhumation  –  but Jamal’s religion does not permit such an option. Jamal also confronts the chief of Police who asks him to “let his hero brother rest in peace” – the same answer Jamal gets from Hazan, whom me meets twice. Breaking down, Hazan finally concedes, that “this would not have happened had Salim been an Israeli”. Finally, tracing down the staff of the restaurant, who were on duty on the fateful night, Jamal gets the answers he was originally searching for.

This is not just a document of Jamal’s investigation, but a testament to his coming to terms with grief – and his shattered belief in the righteousness of the law. The more he learns, the more his world crumbles. In the end he has not only lost his brother, but what he called his ‘extended family’,the police officers at the station where Salim served. There are some poetic moments, particularly when Jamal talks about his belief in reincarnation that persuades him that Salim has been reborn, and that his soul now rests in the body of a young boy in primary school. Moving, passionate and gripping, Katz takes a candid approach to his narrative, letting the audience make up their mind about the social implications of this cover-up. AS

SCREENING AT IDFA 2018 |

 

 

Genesis 2 (2018) *** Russian Film Week 2018

Dirs: Christian Frei, Maxim Arbugaev | Switzerland | 2018 | 113 mins

GENESIS 2 follows the yearly search for mammoth tusks in the frozen wastes of the New Siberian Islands, discovered in 1723. The task of extracting frozen genetic material from the permafrost is a tough but a worthy one intended to enable some pioneering scientists to reconstruct the long-extinct mammoth that once roamed the icy region.

Oscar-nominated documentarian Christian Frei (War Photographer) has quite literally taken on a mammoth task in exploring this hostile Arctic hinterland. Genesis 2 scratches at the edges of both horror and science, in an endeavour that occasionally feels like he has taken off more that he can chew.

As in Book of the Sea, also screening during Russian Film Week, Friel adds elements of myth to his icebound study. The film opens with narrated verses from a Yakutian epic tale, accompanied by Max Richter’s morose music, and the characters who embark on this intrepid research are all courageous – even foolhardy – enough to risk their lives for what may amount to very little: the resonance with Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, The Wild Blue Yonder, Grizzly Man and even Aguirre Wrath of God, are clearly felt. At times Frei even sounds like the great master himself.

Many of these eco-warriors are dicing with death and several will actually meet their maker in the vain hope of returning home with a slither of genetic material that they can trade for upwards of $45,00. And while this may feed their families for some time, they must endure the downside: perishing cold and even death.

Back in the comparative comfort of a smug Boston scientific seminar we hear how “synthetic biology” is going to change everything by “taking control of evolution” by creating hybrid creatures out of horses, sheep and zebras. But that seems rather glib to the anxious tusk hunters struggling to dig up the ground in the bleak terrain of the Northern hemisphere. Peter Grigoriev (Frie terms him an intellectual because ‘he likes reading a lot”) and his brother Semyon Grigoriev, the Head of the Mammoth Museum, in Yakutsk, Siberia are the main characters in this rather sombre eco-doc, are seen wading through mud in the dripping interior of a cave where “cavemen lived for hundreds of years”. It emerges that anyone who tries to dissenter a mammoth will visited by a curse but they are also deemed “lucky” to come across three polar bears. When Semyon eventually comes across the ancient flesh of tusk specimen, he can’t help tasting it, but seems rather unimpressed. Back in the lab, the aim is to create a new animal, a chimera – just the like the woolly mammoth was back in the day. `

There is a sense of wonder and awe, but also a sense of foreboding in the sober search for animal remains. The spectacular visuals create an amazing sense of the remote emptiness of the locations and the quiet desperation of Siberians who travel here in the hope of improving their lives. The bright Boston buildings and the massive shiny headquarters of China’s National Gene bank make this ‘new life’ seem rather devoid of reality when compared to the gruelling coal face search. MT

SCREENING DURING RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | 25 NOVEMBER – 2 DECEMBER 2018

Los Reyes (2018) **** IDFA 2018 | Special Jury Award 2018

Dir: Ivan Osnovikoff, Bettina Perut | 88′ | Doc Chile 2018

Santiago streetlife plays out poignantly through a pair of canny canine caretakers in this wry and filmic foray to the capital’s largest skatepark.

LOS REYES have got it sussed. A black Labrador (Chola) and a Collie Cross (Football) are literally kings of all they survey. With shady trees and water sprinklers to cool the midday heat, they can play away from traffic in this public playground they consider their own. There’s always an odd ball or two to keep them amused, But don’t welcome motorbikes or the rubbish cart, and howl at the fire engine.

Limpidly shot on the widescreen and in intimate often minute close-up, there’s lightness of touch to this graceful and upbeat slice of city life: every twitch of a tail, every tweak of the cheek signals the dogs’ reaction to the human activities nearby. Meanwhile random male conversation is overheard from passers by. Some of it quite startling. But the kids can rest assured that their macho confessions are safe with these trusty tenants of the capital’s microcosm. On wet days they have a contingency plan – a kennel retreat by the rubbish bins. But it’s not all easygoing between the two of them. When Chola tries to hump a discarded old duvet, Football goes mad.

The film derives its subtle humour from the banal disdain of the dogs’ expressions as they tolerate the trivial and sometimes bawdy adolescent banter, shrugging off the intrusion of wildlife and a couple of donkeys who dare to cross their territory. But when uncertainty looms for the future of this canine couple, some welcome female chitchat lightens the mood. Just like humans, dogs don’t need to talk to communicate with their loved ones, but even in Santiago de Chile’s paradise park, every dog has its day. MT

WINNER | IDFA Special Jury Award for Feature-Length Documentary | 2018

 

 

Pina (2011) Bluray and Home Ent release

Dir: Wim Wenders | Germany, 2011 | Doc | 113′    

PINA is an amazing and lavishly attractive musical that combines 3D to heighten our enjoyment of a series of dance sequences filmed by Wim Wenders and featuring the celebrated dancer Pina Bausch in her Tanztheater in Wuppertal in the southern Ruhr valley, Germany.

The German choreographer died in June 2009 at the age of 68 just as she was starting her collaboration with Wim Wenders but he so believed in the project that he continued with Pina’s versions of Vollmond, a dance that centres on water splashing in a rock pool, Stravinsky’s exotic expressionist piece The Rite of Spring; Kontakthof, where rhythmic movements are inspired by a heightened naturalism; and the dynamic routine Café Müller, where six dancers move around in a restaurant as they rearrange the tables and chairs. West End Blues sees the troupe in full evening dress with lounge suits and long flowing gowns as they move to the jazz syncopations of Louis Armstrong and his band. The dances often break out into the nearby streets where they swirl around using the backdrop of the monorail and green spaces as inspiration for their graceful compositions. Ever inventive this is one of Wenders’ most memorable and enjoyable films along with Wings of Desire and the cult classic Paris, Texas. MT

PINA RELEASES ON BLURAY FROM 12 NOVEMBER 2018 and on DVD on CURZON ON DEMAND

Assassination Nation (2018) **

Dir.: Sam Levinson; Cast: Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef, Abra, Bill Skarsgaard, Joel McHale, Cullen Moss, Colman Domingo; USA 2018, 110 min.

Director/writer Sam Levinson (Another Happy Day) pictures small town America at its most obnoxious; sex, violence and social media run riot – his heady mixture of Heathers, The Purge and Twin Peaks suffers first and foremost from dishonesty, swerving wildly from his critique of  Trump-led anti-feminism.

Set in modern Salem, Massachusetts, the witches in question are actually four 18 year-old High School girls: Lily (Young), a cheap Lolita caricature (her socks are imprinted with Fatal Attraction), and her best friends Sarah (Waterhouse),Bex (Nef) and Em (Abra). We meet Lily first in the office of principal Turrell (Domingo), defending her nude drawing of a young woman, hailed as ”pornographic” by the principal. Lily defends herself well, arguing that pure nudity can never be pornographic. So far so good. Lily and her three friends participate in the usual social media frenzy, enjoying it like everyone does. Her boyfriend (Sarsgaard) is a bullying jackass – then suddenly the narrative veers off into Lynchian territory with the introduction of Nick (McHale), a father whose daughter Lily babysits. The two exchange lurid messages, with ‘Daddy’ proposing all sorts of nasty implications. Then the conservative town mayor Bartlett (Moss) is outed as being in love with men, while wearing female stockings. Next on the list is principal Turrell, who is accused of being a paedophile because he posts photos of his little daughter on the net. The whole atmosphere suddenly morphs into wild violence, Lily and her friends being accused of being responsible for the revelations. Meanwhile, the townsmen don masks featuring the American flag, and hunt down the four girls who look just like Little Riding Hoods masquerading as a feminist death squad.

Having leered voyeuristically at the teenage girls for half the feature, Levinson then suddenly suddenly criticises the male gaze as anti-feminist. But it now seems that the female teenagers love violence as much as their male counterparts. The worst aspect of this thrill-seeker is that Levinson answers the Trumpian message of resurrected male superiority with even more violence, this time perpetrated by females. His cheap blood bath (literally) is merely an excuse to direct mayhem – and he’s brilliant at it. But it degrades any serious confrontation with anti-feminism in a male free-for-all revenge bonanza. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 23 NOVEMBER 2018

   

Orione (2017) ***

Writer/Dir: Toia Bonino | Doc | Argentina | 65′

Orione is a haunting expressionist portrait of grief in the aftermath to a shooting in Don Orione, Buenos Aires. The man who died was Alejandro “Ale” Robles, a gang member and petty criminal who was eventually betrayed by a friend and killed by a police bullet. In the days following the tragedy, Ale’s mother Ana finds soothing solace and therapy in baking – and so do we – as we watch her methodically stirring the cake mixture and kneading the topping for a football-themed cake in tribute to his life. Her feelings of shock and profound pain seep through the voice-over of this exposé of life in the barrio. Playing out in a collage of memories, footage of recent events and home movies of Ale’s childhood: A boy recalls his father being taken away, police questioning takes a sinister twist as events turn sour. As we try to fathom out what happened, an arrested suspect is led to a dimly-lit cell. Grim scenes in a mortuary follow: a greying torso still dented by clothing marks, provides the focus for the surgeons’ discussions. A lifeless hand flops over the gurney, as blood swirls away in a nearby sink. Toia Bonino’s cinema vérité mood piece slips between the macabre horror of the morgue and the tender memories of a family home, kiddies gurgling in a cosy bed. A life of crime comes out of a story of love: that of a mother for her son, and a woman who would bear him a child – post mortem. Ale chose a life of crime for the wages of death. Tonino shows how women create and men destroy in this ethnographic study of urban South America. MT

ORIONE is an ICA CINEMA distribution project | SCREENING AT THE ICA

 

Shoplifters (2018) ****

Writer/Dir: Hirokazu Koreeda | Cast: Kirin Kiki, Lily Franky, Sosuke Ikematsu | Drama | South Korea |121′

Hirokazu Koreeda’s portrait of parenting, After the Storm, has much in common with this perceptive and often ambiguous satire about a family of small-time crooks and the misguided theft they commit for compassionate reasons, but with devastating consequences. SHOPLIFTERS is a worthwhile addition to the auteur’s preoccupations with family life, father and motherhood – both real and imagined, and is possibly his best work so far.

In Tokyo, part-time workers Osamu (Lily Franky) and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) complement their meagre income with a sideline in shoplifting. Aided and abetted by son Shota (Kairi Jyo), they often swipe groceries from the local store near the flat they share with fellow grifter Noboyu (Sakura Andô), teenager Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) and grandma Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), who turns the most lucrative tricks of the lot.

One day they take pity on an abused and timid teenager called Juri (Miyu Sasaki), offering her board and lodging in their already cramped home. This simple act of kindness is the catalyst for change in the family dynamic unleashing previously hidden motivations that range from short-sightedness to self-aggrandisement, and even narcissistic pride.

A tonal shift from upbeat bonhomie to gloomy sadness takes place in the film’s third segment when the family anticipate their emotional loss and start to fear the backlash of their rash altruism, and its damning formal retribution. Kore-eda and his cast bring out  tremendous pathos in this well-meaning family, and while we feel for them as do-gooders, – in the true sense of the word – they are crucially also law-breakers. And this is the J B Priestleyan crux of this upbeat and cleverly-crafted caper reflecting the subtle nuances of Japanese society. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 21 November 2018 | CANNES WINNER | PALME D’OR 2018

Book of the Sea (2018) **** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir: Aleksei Vakhrushev | Doc | Russia, 2018 | 88′

Seasoned filmmaker Aleksei Vakhrushev has made some of the best-known Russian documentaries of the past few years. His previous film The Tundra Book (2011) explores the traditions of deer-hunting in Russia’s Northern Chukotka region. His latest – THE BOOK OF THE SEA – is an intense visual experience that follows the daily struggle for survival of the traditional sea hunters of the Bering Strait whose Inuit faith in ancient myths and legends guides their hunting ethos in their ancient Arctic culture.

Although this sounds quite surreal and otherworldly, it’s actually a very sensible way to live sustainably. Respect for nature and the animal kingdom allows them to avoid unnecessary  slaughter while hunting to feed their families – rather than for pleasure.

Their regular hunting expeditions will see them catching sperm whales, seals and walruses and these sections of the film are roughly divided into chapters entitled: The Whale, The Old man and the Sea, and The Walruses. They also rely on auks eggs and reindeer. Along with his skilled cameramen, Vakhrushev follows the hunters and close-quarters as they track their prey. But as soon as a catch is about to happen, the filmmaker cuts away from the slaughter to Edvard Belyaev’s effective animated sequences that illustrate Inuit hunting legends. In this way, the film transcends the blood and gore of the killing experience, enriching the narrative while also adding a historical parable to the stark reality of the eco-documentary.

Hunting with their trusty husky dogs, Inuit and Chukchi hunters still rely for protein and nourishment on large sea mammals that have sustained their people since time immemorial. But today, these hunters are elegantly kitted out in high-performance padded jackets made of down or seal-skin and their precision equipment is specialised and decidedly high-tech.

The contemporary story of elders Alexander and Alexei blends seamlessly with that of “the woman who gave birth to a whale” and other ancient myths, told here in vivid animation, in this ongoing struggle for survival and preservation of a traditional lifestyle in one of the most remote places on earth. A magnificent and visually striking story about the vitality of these Arctic people whose struggle very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the World. Judging by the richness of the Bering Strait – which runs from the through to the Arctic ocean’s Chukchi Sea – and the Inuit people’s respect for nature, it looks like they will survive for a good many years to come. MT

SCREENING DURING RUSSIAN FILM WEEK 2018 .

The director is an Inuk, who was born on the Chukchi Peninsula in the Far East of the Russian in 1969. Upon graduating from the Director’s Department of the Russian State Film School (VGIK) in 1996, he launched his career with a documentary entitled The Time When Dreams Are Melting. The film tells the true story of his native Yupik Inuit people of northeastern Russia. His unique insider’s perspective group offered a fresh new look at the lives, challenges, and aspirations of the indigenous peoples living on the Russian side of the Bering Strait. It was the first time their story was ever captured on film.

Asino (2017) ****Russian Film Week 2018

Dir: Anatoly Vasilyev | Doc | Russia | 167′

“I am alone like a tree that grows inside another tree”. 

Celebrated theatre director Anatoly Vasilyev’s sensitive but unsettling documentary really sums up the silent plight of man’s most vital but often unappreciated beast of burden. Dogs are loved as our working companions and pets, and even cuddled by the fireside. Yet at the end of their day of duty the humble donkey is tied up and left alone. This gentle often stubborn creature is surely the unsung hero of man’s rural existence, toiling tirelessly from the time of Greek mythology and Jesus Christ to the modern day, tolerating the grimmest conditions and finally even lending its name to a derogatory adjective: asinine.

Shot in Italy and featuring fifteen named donkeys, ASINO is a melancholy but unsentimental celebration of this subjugated helper’s gruelling existence. Told in 8 chapters, entitled novellas, – each 20 minutes long, it melds documentary form with lowkey allegory and is scored by Giovanni Sollima’s evocative occasional music that often signals sadness or doom.

The first novella is a quiet monochrome observation of the animals at rest in their individual stables in an Italian farm. The second takes on a Bacchus-like twist moving to the glorious summer vineyards of Italy, as a young boy crowned in flowers adds a poetic feel to proceedings, with inter titles from literary sources. In a stunning black and white third novella, a donkey shows his stubbornness and reticence about going to work in a chalk mine. The fourth regales us with the donkey ‘Palio’ a race that’s far more eventful than its Florentine equivalent, due to the donkeys’ mischievousness at competing often refusing to reach the finishing line, unlike their obedient cousin the horse. The fifth focuses on a garlanded donkey seemingly left to its own devices to wander freely grazing in a deserted part of the town. The penultimate chapter sees a reluctant donkey acknowledging its fate with dignity after initially putting up a fight. The camera focuses on the deep well of pitiful acceptance in the beast’s defeated eye as it looks out dejectedly from its concrete pen. This is a simply drawn sequence that speaks volumes and will  move you to tears if you care about animal welfare. Worthwhile but painfully slow-burning at times, this thoughtful exploration of the donkey’s role in Western culture is a meditative and meaningful addition to the animal film archive. MT

SCREENING DURING RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | 25 November – 2 December 2018

Forgotten Soldier (2018) UK Jewish Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Lucile Smith; Documentary, narrated by Zoe Wannamaker; UK 2018, 69 min.

This debut feature documentary by Lucile Smith tries to uncover the life of Salomon Jacob ‘Sally’ Noach, who saved at least 600 Jews and other prisoners of the Nazis in occupied France, masquerading as a Dutch Consul. His children, Lady Irene Hatter and Jacques Noach travel to Europe and the USA, to speak with survivors and their children about the role their father played in their liberation.

‘Sally’ Noach was born in the Dutch town of Zutphen in 1909. Early on in his life, he showed great initiative, leaving school at twelve, to work in the hotel business. At the age of 28 he had his own car, working in tandem with his father as a travelling salesman. When war broke out, he was in Brussels, whilst his family stayed in the Netherlands. After the German occupation of France in 1940, he took the train to Paris, starting a chaotic journey which left him and his refugee travellers, mainly Jewish, stranded after four days in the Pyrenean village of St. Julien. Even though Noach helped to organise this ‘refugee camp’, it was clear that the little village could never sustain such an influx of refugees. So he went to Toulouse to the Dutch consulate, making friends and connections, before moving to Lyon, which was ‘the capital of Refugees’. Working as an interpreter for the Dutch consulate official Paul Marx, with the German Military Tribunal. He had also met German Camp commanders, and after forging identity papers, he went to the camps demanding the release of all Dutch prisoners – even freeing numbers of other nationalities. But his greatest coup was the ‘liberation’ of prisoners from the ‘Iris’ stadium at the outskirts of Lyon in 1942. When Klaus Barbie arrived in Lyon in the same year, to start the deportation from the Drancy camp to Auschwitz, Noach left and arrived in London in 1943. He was received by members of the Dutch Government in Exile, and the Queen, but his name had been blackened: he was suspected of being a profiteer in Lyon’s Black Market – since that was the only place refugees could trade, being excluded from all other avenues. Noach married, had three children and moved back to the Netherlands, where he was active in the carpet trade, never talking to his family about his experiences in WWII. Posthumously he was awarded the highest Dutch honour in 1981, only a year after his death at the age of 70.

This is a succinct and well-made documentary, but Lady Irene’s travels to meet survivors and learn about her father’s endeavours suffers from a bit of grandstanding by Irene, who rather overplays herself into the foreground. Some clumsy scenes and transitions could have been avoided by a more seasoned director. Surely, ‘Sally’ Noach himself, an adventurous man of no-nonsense, would have agreed.AS

SCREENING DURING UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 

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UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Anna’s War | Voyna Anny ****. | Russian Film Week 2018

Dir.: Aleksey Fedorchenko; Cast: Marta Kozlava; Russia 2018, 74 min.

Marta Kozlava makes a stunning debut as a six-year old Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis in Silent Souls director Aleksey Fedorchenko’s minimalist feature that follows a six-year old Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis.  Despite a limited script, ANNA’S WAR is full of harrowing images and the austere story-telling avoids the emblematic overload of many Holocaust features.

Anna (Kozlava) has to drag herself from under the body of her mother in a mass grave in the Soviet Union in 1941. The German soldiers have installed themselves in village school and this is where Anna eventually fetches but her ordeal is not over. To avoid recapture she has to disappear up the chimney of a disused fireplace in the building. And this is where the story unfolds as the little girl fights for survival amongst the debris, using the Nazi’s recently installed two-way mirror to keep an eye on them even though she is too young to understand their activities. She drinks water from a glass of paint brushes, makes a coat for herself from the fur of a stuffed wolf, and eats the rats she catches in a trap, sharing her food with a friendly cat and watching as the Nazis put pins to identify their newly captured territories on a map.

Anna wanders the whole house at night, stumbling into a Christmas party where the soldiers are celebrating at a table full of food. A German soldier is too drunk to question her appearance, and gives Anna a gingerbread Swastika she takes to her hiding place, but eventually spurns. This is the only tokenistic faux-pas in Fedoschneko’s otherwise realistic treatment. But Anna also finds a revolver, which comes in handy later, when one of Russian clerks is coming up the ladder over the fireplace, to destroy a pigeon nest. Anna points the revolver at him, and he does not give her away. Much later, the murky darkness lightens and Anna takes out the pins on the military map, whilst we listen to the first sounds of music.

ANNA’s WAR will bring to mind The Diary of Anne Frank and Tarkovsky’s war child Ivan. Apart from Kozlava’s remarkable performance, credit should go to DoP Alisher Khamidkhodjaev who creates a hauntingly macabre setting full of frightening images and worthy of German impressionist cinema. Anna is a heroine with a small ‘h’ but her ingenuity and survival instinct in overcoming her tragic predicament is an inspiration to children everywhere. MT

SCREENING DURING RUSSIAN FILM WEEK 2018

Jumpman (2018) Podbrosy **** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir.: Ivan I. Tverdovsky; Cast: Denis Vlasenko, Anne Slyu, Daniil Steklov; Russia/ROI/France/ Lithuania 2018, 87 min.

Ivan I. Tverdovsky follows up his zany Zoology with a darker feature, another harsh critique of Putin’s Russia. Very much in the mould of Loveless, Jumpman is a portrait of callous exploitation, the young victim literally sold by his mother to perform life-threatening stunts, just to fill her pockets and those of her cronies.

Sixteen years ago Oksana posted her newborn Denis through the baby-hatch of an orphanage where he has lived ever since, handicapped by a rare disease, congenital analgesia, which affects his ability to feel physical pain, and needs to be medically controlled. Now, forbidden from taking care of her son, Oksana (Slyu) tricks the orphanage staff, literally kidnapping little Denis (Vlasenko) and taking him home. It soon emerges that Oksana’s motive is anything but motherly. Denis does not fee pain when injured (his mates in the orphanage played some cruel games with him), and is trained to jump on cars so his mother’s friends can extort cash from the driver. First in line is Denis’ ‘instructor’ policeman Kusnetzov (Steklov), who drives a police vehicle alongside the one earmarked for the ‘accident’, and is first on the scene when Denis lays motionless on the ground. Kusnetzovs’s mother is a doctor at the hospital where Denis is taken by an ambulance crew (also on the make). But the most profitable jobs go to Judge Olga and the bribed defence lawyer. The driver is forced to pay up a huge sum of money – and Denis gets hardly a penny, after everyone else has taken their share. At home his mother treats him more like a lover, running around half naked in a drunken state, even trying to seduce him. That all changes after Denis puts his foot down –  and this leaves only one solution.

Jumpman is a portrait of a society corrupt on every level, a society where the most vulnerable victims are treated like commodities – whether they are rich, poor or just disenfranchised.. When Denis finally quits, Kusnetzov spits in his face: “We’ll find another one, the city is full of trash like you.” AS

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | LONDON 25 November -2 December 2018 | BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018 | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL | 29 JUNE – 7 JULY 2018

 

Core of the World (2018) **** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir: Natalia Meshchaninova | Drama | Russia, Lithuania | 123′

Best known for her debut The Hope Factory, Natalia Meshchaninova’s award-winning sophomore feature is an acutely observed and thoughtfully performed story of emotional disorder that unfolds in a remote dog-breeding facility in Russia.

Writing again with Boris Khlebnikov (they co-scripted Arrhythmia) and her real life partner Stepan Devonin, who also plays Egor, this latest drama combines tenderness, regret and yearning in a troubled vet who finds his animals easier to live with than his co-workers. Egor breeds special hunting dogs (Alabais, also known as Central Asian Shepherd dogs) using domesticated foxes in their training. He is empathetic rather than sentimental towards the animals in his care.

Devonin’s training as a vet informs his role as Egor and he brings a tenderness but clear focus as Egor. When he learns that his mother has died of heart problems related to alcohol abuse, it becomes abundantly clear that there are issues with his childhood relationship. And when his aunt arrives uninvited with a bunch of his mother’s photography, Egor brazenly tells her to “fuck off” a stance that flies in the face of his previously rather quiet and thoughtful behaviour. His troubled personality issues will soon surface in abundance, although rather late in the story. Clearly Egor has escaped into his work in this peaceful forest location, where he tends a dog who has just been brutally mauled with extreme dedication. He is also keen to ingratiate himself with his tough and overbearing boss Nikolai (Dmitriy Podnozov) who has been running the family training facility for several generations.
The dog-training involves the dogs chasing down small wooden tunnels – representing real burrows – where the dogs come into contact with the foxes and a tussle takes place, confirming the canine’s suitability for hunting. Although neither animal appears to come off any the worse for their order, the practice has attracted negative attention from the animal rights brigade who arrive at the gates to protest. Nikolai tells them: “go away children”.
Meanwhile, Egor starts to have feelings for Nikolai’s daughter Dasha (Yana Sekste) who shares the family house with  her son Ivan (a strong debut from Vitya Ovodkov), There are humorous exchanges and they all seem to rub along very well, and Egor continues to tend his injured dog Belka, patiently teaching her how to swim in the nearby far-flowing river. Alhtough he’s clearly able to communicate affectionately with his dogs, Egor has real problems handling his relationship with Dasha but his feelings are palpable and he is clearly drawn to her physically. And although Nikolai seems to rule the roost, Egor’s latent anger eventually rears up again when he’s  pushed to the limits. And it’s the animal activist who finally set the cat amongst the pigeons in a very well-thought out and imaginative plotline that has tragic consequences. MT
CORE OF THE WORLD won the Grand Prix and Best actor awards at the Kinotavr festival in Sochi, and is now screening during RUSSIAN FILM WEEK 2018
https://youtu.be/6dCINvqGnuk

 

The Bottomless Bag (2017) Yakhonty Ubystvo **** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir: Rustam Khamdamov | Fantasy Drama | Russia, 2017 | 104′

Akira Kurosawa was not the only auteur to be entranced by the Japanese classic story on which he based Rashomon. Filmmaker turned artist Rustam Khamdamov reimagines ‘In a Grove’ 1922) in a different light, as a truly weird and wonderful folklore fantasy, transported the 19th century Russia of Zsar Nicholas II, and enhanced by its evocative monochrome aesthetic.

This film within a film, stars Svetlana Nemolyaeva as a female courtier who regales the monarch and his empress with stories, the deadlier the better. One day the a fairytale about his son’s mysterious murder, and we experience three different versions of the event, told from , played by iconic Russian film star ​Svetlana Nemolyaeva, tells the czar a fairy tale about his son’s murder, and we see three different versions of this event.

With echoes of the silent era and references to Russian and European folklore, Khamdamov creates a poetically spellbinding atmosphere of wonder, set in this regal castle deep in the woods near St. Petersburg. But mysterious events are also unfolding in the castle itself. The courtier is looking for a bag of precious jewels (which we see in the hand of a soldier, as the film opens), the palace ghost has concealed the gems in the Christmas tree but is trying to thwart her efforts to relinquish the bag. The courtier is also accused of conspiring with the royal’s assassin. In order to solve the mystery she lies down on a polar bearskin rug and tries to commune with the house spirit, who is hiding in a chandelier. Meanwhile in the forest, a witch (Demidova), drinks her grandson’s urine from a golden bowl, and walks off into the darkness to solve the case. In the end, the courtier discovers the jewels, and leaves the wintry palace on skis, after the servants have stuffed her bag full of everything they can lay their hands on.

The Bottomless Bag actually takes its title from A Thousand and One Nights, Baba Yaga – a witch from Russian legends – is played by Alla Demidova. Sumptious and vaguely ironic, this treasure trove of dreamlike set pieces in a filmic foray into the uncovered depths of Russian culture. The only chagrin is that after his Cannes success with Anna Karamazov (1991) Khamdamov has decided to work exclusively as a visual artist: imagine what Russian cinema is missing without his remarkable talents. AS/MT

SCREENING DURING RUSSIAN FILM WEEK 2018

Suleiman Mountain (2017) *** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir: Elizaveta Stishova | Cast:Daniel Daiybekov, Turgunai Erkinbekova, Perizat Ermanbaeva | Drama | Kyrgyzstan | 101′

Enlivened by offbeat humour and vibrant widescreen images reflecting the rugged beauty of this wild Central Asian nation, SULEIMAN MOUNTAIN is the debut feature of Russian filmmaker Elizaveta Stishova. Largely funded by European finance this appealing arthouse drama explores an unconventional journey of discovery – both literal and metaphorical – for its passionate central characters: a woman, her long-lost son and husband, and his other younger wife. In a drama fraught with tense uncertainty and often brutal rituals involving folklore and shamanism – a scene involving an unconscious woman is particularly alarming – Kyrgyzstan emerges as a region caught between the modern world and one of ancient traditions where women (predictably) get a rough deal as they compete vehemently for the attention of self-seeking macho men. Their hope is that somehow, by smothering them with love and attention, they can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Sadly, twas ever thus.

Kazakhstani actor Asset Imangaliev plays the maverick male at the centre of the story, who cleverly plays his two wives off against one another. Karabas is an opportunistic adventurer who cons his way through life veering from violent outbursts to twinkling smiles as he tries to charm the pants off everyone he meets. Recently reunited with the couple’s thoughtfully endearing son Uluk, his older wife is a healing soul, desperately trying to hold the family together, while her coltish younger rival is also pregnant with Karabas’ child.

Although Kyrgyzstan initially feels exotic and remote, the human story at its core is as old and evergreen as the hills. Stishova has certainly made a watchable and lively debut. MT

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK London  2018 | WINNER OF BEST FILM | PRESENTED BY THE ROSSELLINI JURY | PINGYAO YEAR ZERO 2017

The Wild Pear Tree | Ahlat Agaci (2018)****


Dir/Writer: Nuri Bilge Ceylan/Ebru Ceylan | Cast: Serkan Keskin, Hazar Erguclu, Ahmet Rifat Sungar | Drama | Turkey/France/Germany/Bulgaria/Macedonia/Bosnia and Herzegovina/Sweden 2018 | 188′

For some the countryside is a retreat where hopes and dreams merge with solitude and recovery. For a father and a son in THE WILD PEAR TREE the sweeping landscapes of Western Turkey’s Marmara region are a place of shattered hopes and despair.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan imbues his melancholy mood piece with the usual visual richness in a slow-burning saga that revolves around aspiring writer Sinan (Aydin Dogu Demirkol) who returns from army service to his native village to raise the money to publish his first book. But his father’s debts catch up with him and put a stop to his personal aspirations. Running at a little over three hours, this long-awaited follow to Winter Sleep and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia takes the customary languorous and discursive pace. The wide screen splendour also makes time for quietly intimate moments but there is no melodrama or ‘major developments’ in a film that plays out contemplatively as the story naturally unfolds.

Sinan is not particularly glad to be back home in the small rural village of Çan, where he holds the community in disdain. But his father Idris’ gambling has spiralled out of control causing his mother and sister to do without, so Sinan starts to do the rounds of friends and family in search of finance for his literary endeavour.

Contrary to the title, a wild pear tree never features in the film, and there is no love lost between Sinan and his father Idris, their relationship slowly deteriorating for obvious reasons. There is a sense of longing for urban civilisation, and while the film takes much delight in the convincingly creditable characterisations and conversation pieces, which are quietly enjoyable, often philosophical (even a little bit over talky at times), it’s clear that Sinan is no more enamoured with this rural idyll than when he reluctantly arrived.

Ceylan returns to the evergreen signature themes that have been present in his work since the beginning and have gained him a reputation and a strong following, along with his elegantly crafted widescreen style and well-rounded character studies. And there is always a touch of dry wit to lighten proceedings while grounding them in community, local politics, moral and ethical issues and family concerns.

In some ways, his latest is an expansion of his FIPRESCI and Golden Tulip winner Clouds of May (1999) and has the same ripe quality of visual sumptuousness throughout. Dermirkol plays Sinan as a vaguely unsympathetic character whose ennui with his family and rural life simply demonstrates an ardent need to get on with his aspirations rather than indicating a deeply flawed personality. But maybe they are one in the same. Ceylan eyes his antihero in a detached and observational way that makes him really convincing as a representative of his generation. In contrast to the self-sacrificing heroes of the early 1900s, Sinan is a full-fledged 21st century man. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 30 NOVEMBER 2018 | Cannes Film Festival Premiere

Promise at Dawn (2017) *** UK Jewish Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Eric Barbier; Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Pierre Niney, Pavel Puchalski, Nino Schiffman, Catherine McCormack, Jean-Pierre Daroussin; France/Belgium 2017, 131 min.

Eric Barbier’s screen adaptation of PROMISE AT DAWN has been embellished to a length that does no favours to the original story or the audience, for that matter. Charlotte Gainsbourg comes to the rescue as the enterprising actress turned hotelier in a tour de force of Jewish motherhood.  

Romain Gary penned the wildly romantic novel in 1960 based on his mother’s life of self-sacrifice raising him in Vilnius (then part of Russia) in the early years of the 20th century. During the course of the film, Gary is variously played by Pavel Puchalski (as a child), Nemo Schiffman (as a teenager) and finally Pierre Niney, as a young man.

We first meet Roman Kacew during one of his mother’s many crisis. Nina is an actress turned struggling dressmaker who turns to her actor friend Alex Gubernatis for support, despite his alcoholism. Posing as Parisian couturiers, the two boost their potential amongst High Society Vilnius and business blossoms overnight, leaving Nina to spend more time with her son. The boy shows a talent for drawing, but Nina wants him to be rich and famous. The wayward young Roman (Niney) soon falls in love with Valentine but her brothers beat him up and call him a “dirty Yid”,  causing Nina’s to business falter, and she succumbs to diabetes. By now it’s 1934 and the family moves to Nice for the climate, taking  over the running of a hotel. But Roman’s eye for the girls soon sees him back in Paris, where Law studies are hampered by his Jewish credentials and philandering ways. Finally he joins the French Air Force, becoming a victim of Anti-Semitism and the only one of 300 cadets not promoted to officer status. Needless to say, Nina battles on undeterred, ever hopeful of making a success of her son in the diplomatic service.

Bookended by scenes featuring Gary’s first wife, the English author Leslie Blanch (McCormack), Barbier’s version loves grand sequences, and Glynn Speeckaert’s aerial battle scenes are particularly impressive. Gainsbourg plays Niney off the screen: his Roman is the weakest of the three characterisations. Promise at Dawn, is certainly high octane in stark contrast with Jules Dassin’s more thoughtfully moving 1970 version of the original.  MT

THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 |

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to Berlin (2018) ****

Dir.: Catherine Lurie; Documentary; UK/Bulgaria/Czech Republic/Germany/Greece/ Hungary/ Israel/ Poland/ Romania/Slovakia 2018, 75 min.

Catherine Lurie produced, directed and scripted this lively re-imagining of the first Maccabiah biker rally in the early 1930s. It saw Jewish motorcyclists from Palestine (then a British Mandate), taking to the road to counter growing Anti-Semitism in Europe, urging Jews to compete in the Maccabiah of 1938, a Jewish Olympiad, which never went ahead.

This 2015 version involved eleven male and female rides who completed the 4500 km in 22 days. Their odyssey started in Israel and went via Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, eventually fetching up in Berlin where the 2015 Maccabiah would be held in the grounds of the infamous 1936 Olympic Games.

Nine Israelis and two Jews from the Diaspora made up the marathon. Israeli architect Gal Marom (49) took part in honour of his grandfather Solomon Adir, who was one of the original riders in 1935, visiting Canada and the USA. “This journey allowed me to close my personal circle in memory of my grandfather”. Most moving is the interaction between Yoram Maron (78), a holocaust survivor, and his son Dan (48). Dan has never heard his father talk about the gruesome memories of the camps – this is common amongst many who saw active service, rarely relating the grim events to their children. Some don’t even mention their escape from the Holocaust. Dan understands his father: ”He wanted to afford me the innocence he never experienced, and I will do the same with my own children.” Dan’s mother Irena and her husband were taken from Zloczow Ghetto in 1943, and put into overcrowded cattle trains to Belzec extermination camp. When one of the prisoners, a railway worker, managed to open the door, Irena throw Dan out of the train and jumped after him. They hid in a bunker, fed by a German soldier who was later named as a ‘Righteous’ in Yad Vashem.

At the border between Hungary and Serbia, the bikers encounter the victims of current Hungarian racism. Later, in Budapest, they are joined by Alexander Rosenkranz (60) from Germany. He and his daughter are sitting on the banks of the Danube, at the “Shoes of the Danube Memorial”. In 1944, over 40,000 Hungarian Jews were drowned in the the river by Hungarian Fascists, the “Arrow Cross”. Rosenkranz tells his daughter, for the first time, how his mother was saved. She was deported by Arrow Cross men to be killed. But when one of the passing German soldiers took a fancy to her, she had a lucky escape. The Fascists in Romania and Hungary were more cruel than the Germans themselves, and reports of their atrocities culminating in a letter from the SS to Himmler, complain about “the needless cruelties of the “Arrow Cross”. In Poland, the bikers visit the Ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw amongst others. We also see Joe Gottdenker (73) unite with a member of the Polish family which hid him for four years in Sandomierz while his mother was fighting in the Polish Underground.

Back to Berlin is worthwhile but emotionally exhausting. But the film is much more than a timely reminder of the recent upsurge in Neo-Fascism in countries like Hungary, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Austria and Italy.  The outlook is grim but this time the reference is more on the spread of Islam. The only critique of Back to Berlin is that eleven riders are never mentioned by narrators Jason Isaacs and Larry King: three or four of them seem to have gone missing without explanation. AS                    

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 23 NOVEMBER 2018

Becoming Animal (2018) ***

Dir.: Peter Mettler, Emma Davie; Documentary with David Abram; Switzerland/UK 2018, 78 min.

Peter Mettler (The End of Time) and Emma Davie (I am Breathing) direct, edit and film philosopher David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous) as he explores our real sense of alienation from the animal kingdom in a walk around Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. The aim is to make us more aware of our status ‘as animals’ so we can improve our understanding of the animal kingdom and redress the balance between the ecological and the technological.

The Grand Teton National Park has a dizzying diversity of wildlife. A snail’s body becomes an immense landscape as the soundscape immerses us in shivering leaves, rushing rivers and the weird spacey pitch of elk bugling at night. Becoming Animal uses the sensory tools of cinema to trace how the written word and technology has affected how we see ourselves as instinctual creatures rather than just intellectual humans.

Driven by wonder, curiosity and a desire for balance between ecological and technological imperatives, Becoming Animal is an invitation to explore our relationship with this “more than human world” and recognise it for what it is: an exquisitely intricate system in which everything is alive and expressive. In our delicate ecosystem humans, animals and landscapes are inextricably interdependent, we do not stand alone and dominate.

Wandering through the part at night Abram feels a sudden sense of visceral communion with the birds, elks and bison. After watching a snail leaving its house, he touches a tree and comments “I feel the tree touching me.. I can feel how they see me from their perspective. Trees respond to shadow and light all the time. Touching them, I feel touched by them.” These observations are followed by a more long sequences, before we return to civilisation, and a monologue about how “the alphabet ended the unity between image and message. The alphabet has ended this status, because now, when people see letters, they become special property of humans”. Abstract messages like ‘Welcome’ and “We are erupting with savings” proves the point. Cut to a bison, who keeps some cars waiting on the road. The cars “are our shells for immortality.” And: “Technology always reflects back to ourselves, and we are beginning to interact with the technology.” We see a sign “Please check surroundings for safety” and Abrams concludes “these tools help us, to engage with nature”. Whilst fast-forward images of trees rush by, Abrams explains that “technology tries to undo the ancient relationship between men and nature” “Do we still have the awareness of the wind..Because by-products of our civilisation are dumped everywhere, and change the movement of the wind”.

This provocative and vibrantly evocative film is sometimes hampered by is puzzling messages that almost add to the existing confusion. In the end we get the point – but it could have been simpler without the psychobabble. AS

BECOMING ANIMAL on RELEASE FROM 22 NOVEMBER 2018 

Hamada (2018) *** IDFA 2018

Dir.: Eloy Dominguez Seren; Documentary; Sweden/Germany/Norway 2018, 88min.

Director-writer Eloy Dominguez Seren (No Cow on the Ice) raises the profile of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in this vibrantly passionate documentary shot mainly in the Tindouf refugee Camp in Algeria.

In 1975, when Franco was on his last legs, Spain gave up some North African colonies, and Morocco (300 000 citizens entered the old colony) and Mauritania claimed the territory. However, they did not concede self-government to the Sahrawis, as they were mandated by the UN. The resulting conflict between Morocco and the refugees in their own country lasted for over forty years, with Morocco bombing the Sahrawis with Napalm in 1976, causing a humanitarian crisis as the homeless and afflicted fled to Algeria.

HAMADA follows teenagers Sidahmed and Zaara in their fruitless search for work in the self-governed camp. Sidemeh is rather a restless young. He makes some money repairing cars and radios but finds the work unsatisfying. He also lacks patience, and efforts to teach Zaara to drive soon run out of steam. He’d really like to emigrate to Spain, like everyone in the camp. But this seems like a pipe-dream and none of the others have managed to get a Visa, and Spain does not recognise the SADR or his passport. Zaara can’t get a stable job either and has no qualifications, although she is certainly better educated than Sidameh, who only knows one European country (Spain). Zaara seems more intelligent.

So Sidameh starts to plan an illegal passage to Spain, with his friend Tasalam. Meanwhile the more down to earth Zaara focuses on a potential marriage partner chatting things through with her friends. Both girls are emancipated, and expect their future husbands to leave them in peace, to live their own lives. Zaara still wants to be taught to drive, seeing this as a vital asset in the job market. Sidameh finally sells his car to finance his passage to Spain. When he eventually sets off, the convoy of cars he is travelling in, gets stuck in the desert. And the grass is far from green when he reaches his destination. Homeless and without any proper qualifications, contacts or viable work skills he seems surprises that he is treated with disdain.  Instead of focuses on his own failings, he blames his racial identity: “people make you feel inferior, just because you are an Arab”. Clearly the grass wasn’t greener. Zaara has a better and more philosophical frame of mind and soon finds this leads her to improve her chances of success. And with the help of her kind friend Tasalam, she even learns to drive.

Seren’s observational study certainly succeeds in bringing this forgotten conflict to our attention, letting the teenagers speak for themselves. The local climate and primitive conditions make life tough and extremely challenging. Sidameh is seen rebuilding a house for a family of eight, whose home has collapsed during the rainy season. Spain becomes a much longed for dream destination and their all obsess about finding this ‘Holy Grail’.  But these down-trodden people also reflect on their past: when one of them finds a fishing rod in an abandoned house, it soon emerges that the Sahrawis once made a living from fishing, before being forced into the central plains of the arid desert. MT

WORLD PREMIERE | IDFA 2018 | 15 NOVEMBER 2018

The Last Waltz (1978) **** Home Ent release

THE LAST WALTZ is deeply personal yet timeless in its universal appeal. Martin Scorsese’s love song to rock music is a resounding one, and arguably the best concert film of all time. Dated in its Seventies look, but endearingly so, the doc has been remastered onto bluray, and the result is stunning. The film showcases the legendary rock group The Band’s final farewell concert appearance. Joined on stage by more than a dozen special guests, Van Morrison,  Eric Clapton, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell perform their iconic numbers to dazzling effect. The Last Waltz started as a concert, but it became a celebration. In between numbers, Scorsese chats to members of The Band, filmed by master DoPs Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond. Scorsese’s message to the audience, “this film should be played loud” MT

ON RELEASE FROM 12 NOVEMBER 2018 | COURTESY OF EUREKA FILM LABEL 

THE BAND | BOB DYLAN | ERIC CLAPTON | NEIL YOUNG | JONI MITCHELL | VAN MORRISON | NEIL DIAMOND | EMMYLOU HARRIS| MUDDY WATERS | THE STAPLES | RINGO STARR | RON WOOD | DR. JOHN | PAUL BUTTERFIELD | RONNIE HAWKINS

 

Manu (2018) *** IDFA 2018

Dir: Emmanuelle Bonmariage | Doc | Belgium | 92′

Alzheimer’s is a one of the great human tragedies of modern times. Obliterating personalities, relationships, families, it strikes without warning, often inflicting the most talented and leaving a trail of misery and sadness in its wake. No one escapes its fatal curse.

Belgian filmmaker Manu Bonmariage was 76 when he succumbed. During his career he  made over eighty documentary films, contributing a vast body of work to the landscape of Belgian cinema and television (including the French-Belgian TV show “Strip-Tease”) and establishing himself as a memorable feature of the country’s wider cultural fabric. Sensitive and highly creative (“the camera is my mistress, I like to feel her in my hands”), he co-films here with his director daughter to record their fraught, deteriorating relationship in this painful love letter to his creative past. Manu also serves a socio-political history of Belgium during his lifetime, even recording the time he got stuck down a mineshaft!. This haunting collage of memories, reminiscences, upbeat archive footage (a New York sequence set in the 1960s is one of the most vibrant), medical meetings, musical interludes and cathartic exchanges cannot fail to sadden and amuse. Manu is an endearing and unsettling tribute that will resonate with those involved with the affliction and keen cineastes who remember Manu’s work. MT.

SCREENING DURING IDFA 2018 | INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE | COMPETITION FOR BEST FIRST APPEARANCE | Sunday 18 Nov)

3 Days in Quiberon * * * (2018)

Dir/Wri: Emily Atef | Cast: Marie Baumer, Birgit Minichmayr, Charly Hübner | Germany | Drama | 115′

Award-winning German director Emily Atef’s breezy black and white playful portrait self-indulgently explores the brief sejour in the Britanny seaside resort of Quiberon of one of Europe’s most famous but now fading stars as she attempts to detoxify. At only 42, Romy Schneider’s career was on the wane and she was to die not long afterwards (in 1982). It soon becomes clear that the garrulous diva – a luminous Marie Baumer – is battling demons of all kinds and desperately missing her two children, a baby girl and a teenager who refuses to live with her.

The focus here is the two-day interview with Stern magazine German journalist Jürgs whose crafty attempts to get her to open up about the death of her first husband, who had committed suicide two years earlier, and her tortured relationship with her mother, who allegedly colluded with the press, finally pay off after plying the diva with copious amounts of white Chablis.her best friend arrives to offer support but the two soon fall out.

This playful drama takes inspiration from the glorious maritime setting of a modernist beachside hotel, and is anchored by four thoughtful performances, particularly from Bäumer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Schneider. Thomas Kiennast’s luminous photographs help to recreate a distinct Seventies feel. An enjoyable but rather superficial riff on the nature of celebrity, love and friendship. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDEFROM 16 NOVEMBER 2018

The Price of Everything (2018) ****

Dir.: Nathaniel Kahn; Documentary with Amy Cappellazzo, Stefan Edlis; Jeff Koons, Larry Poons, Gerhard Richter, Jerry Saltz; USA 2018, 98′

Does the global art market benefit the many, or just the very few? It’s an valid question and one that Nathaniel Kahn explores in his entertaining examination of those who have the funds to buy any artistic creation they fancy. Only to lock it away in their private collections while it makes more and more money. The work is question is of no benefit to the general public, because the inflationary prices have made it almost impossible even for the most elite museums to buy and display these works.

The story started on 18th October 1973, when the private collector and NY taxi-fleet owner Robert Scull sold about 50 of his paintings at Sotheby Park-Bernet Gallery. Among them was Jasper John’s ‘Target’, which went for a (then) amazing 135 000 US Dollars. It is now worth a cool hundred million Dollars, after being bought by the private collector Stefan Edlis for ten million in 1997. The Scull auction captured the imagination of the banks. who had never previously considered modern Art as an investment. Prices were driven up – artificially or not – and today’s inflationary sums are paid, ten times higher than they were at the beginning of the millennium. Obviously, the people who profit defend the system. Especially auctioneers such as Sotheby’s: “Great art, almost by nature, needs to be greatly valued” (ie. expensive), “because that’s the culture’s way of protecting it.”

 But what about the painters? There are certain superstars like Jeff Koons who are ‘untouchable’ – even though one of Hirst’s private collectors has recently seen his artwork go down in price. In today’s market it’s not worth the five million Dollars he paid for it originally. Koons, looking like a playboy gone to seed, is seen working in his atelier, around hundred painters taking orders from the master (no, it does not look like Warhol’s Factory at all), whilst the Koons explains that he could only finish one painting a month without his ‘little helpers’. One should mention that Jeff Koons was once a Wall Street trader, which chimes in with Kahn’s reference to The Wolf of Wall Street.

The director then turns his attention to artist Larry Poons who is at the other end of the scale. Now in his eighties, but still very feisty, Poons “fell off the grid” after his success in the 1960s, with his minimalist dot paintings. After he changed his style, moving on to large scale expressionism, his emotional paintings rapidly feel from grace and he became a ‘non-entity’. But, as fate would have it, his work is now popular again – “I wouldn’t be alive, if I had gotten rich”. Seeing him on his vintage motor bike, enjoying himself, you can believe every word. The Cologne based artist Gerhard Richter is now the best-selling artist in Europe. Whilst lecturing about the importance of museums, we see him at a major auction he professes to hate so much. And Amy Cappellazzo, Chairman of Global Fine Arts at Sotheby’s, calls her marketing strategy “hunting” – returning us to the Wolf of Wall Street theme. 

Kahn never really comes down on one side or the other in his fascinating debate. But goes on to show how the future holds even more opportunities for the chosen few: An artwork “created” be AI just fetched $ 432000 – so superstars like Koons and Richter better be careful: AI will need much less maintenance – until they take over the whole human bamboozle. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE 16 NOVEMBER 2018 | ALSO SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

 

The Border Fence (2018) **** IDFA 2018

Dir: Nikolaus Geyrhalter | Austria | Doc | 112′

Brenner Pass, Alpine border, spring 2016: the Austrian government announces the construction of a border fence expecting a shift of the refugee routes to Italy after the Balkan route is closed. The Austrian residents seem to fear the fence as much as the influx of refugees to their homeland. Two years later, the fence is still rolled up in a container. History took another route.

This gave Austrian documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter reason enough to go to the region with his camera and explore the mood there. Surveillance and border fences have long been themes in his work (Abendland, 2011), along with the delicate balance between humans and their environment (Homo sapiens, 2016). What was originally seen as a welcome from Austria soon switched to a crisis that has swept through Europe like a forest wildfire. Everyone feels challenged to protect their homeland (or heimat, as the Austrians put it). “As the first refugees, we were impressed by the welcome culture of Austria. But at some point in the reporting a switch was put”. This subtle change meant that suddenly these people became unwanted. Europe’s solidarity during the world wars was finally put to the challenge.

A short conversation in the toll booth is one of the many absurd scenes in the film: border functionaries air their negative feelings about the ‘refugees’ and migration, while going about their duties solemnly dispensing a 9 euro toll ticket every 30 seconds. In the nearby hillside, two male hunters talk about their experience with refugees on the so-called ‘Green Brenner’ borderline during the winter months, and admit to feeling sorry for the scantily clad travellers who are totally unprepared for the climate and thick snow. These human encounters are often forgotten or buried in the abstract political discourse. Meanwhile the local police try to carry on with their commitments. It’s a thankless task and one that clearly compromises them, trapped between the humanistic angle and their duty to their country. There are no winners here. Everyone tries to put forward their opinions delicately without appearing racist. But the protesters are not silent. 

Elegantly framed and filmed in long takes, Geyrhalter remains the calm observer, distancing himself from the madding crowd, muting their anxiety and anger with placcid detachment, yet still retaining a humanistic feel. THE BORDER FENCE makes for a contemplative experience, allowing the audience space and time to process this European crisis. Geyrhalter’s documentary is a study in atavistic fear and human behaviour at its most base. And while many are vehemently opposed to the crackdown on migration, others feel threatened: “Be my guest – but don’t take over my home”.  MT

IDFA COMPETITION FOR BEST FEATURE-LENGTH DOCUMENTARY | International premiere Tuesday, 20 Nov)

Suspiria (2018) ***

Dir.: Luca Guadagnino, Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Cloe Grace Moretz, Lutz Ebersdorf; USA/Italy 2018, 152 min.

Luca Guadagnino follows his much praised Call Me By Your Name with a rather confused and overloaded vision of Dario Argento’s horror classic, using the original script by Argento and Daria Nicoldi, re-written by David Kajganich (A Bigger Splash). 

Unfortunately the Kajganich has added new material, setting the narrative in Berlin at the height of the Baader Meinhof crisis. A running time of 152 minutes also tests the audience severely.

In the dank Autumn of 1977, Susie Bannian (Johnson) arrives from Ohio at the famous Dance School TANZ, near the Wall in West Berlin. There is an unsettling atmosphere at the academy, the two leading teachers Blanc (a luminously sinuous Swinton) and Markos are fighting for supremacy, the conflict a battle of life and death. Susie soon becomes the lead dancer, relegating Patricia (Moretz) and Sara (Goth) to the lower echelons of the troupe.

When dancers start to disappear, the sinister infighting turns more and more bloody. Enter Dr. Joseph Klemperer (Swinton in a miraculous double act spoof), a relict from WWII, who is still searching for his Jewish wife sent to the Concentration Camp Teresienstadt, where she was killed. The psychiatrist feels deep guilt over her death. As the nastiness at the Academy unfurls, a Witches’ Coven is uncovered and Klemperer’s role becomes more and more murky – in tune with this muddled affair. 

DoP Sayonbhu Mukdeeprom creates magnificently macabre images, but in the long run this is not enough to save Suspiria from emerging an awkward mixture of two films, both competing for our attention. The acting is also mixed, with Swinton being head and shoulders above the rest (quite literally) in achieving visionary eminence. In the end the German history lesson loses out to the horror strand, but the brake comes too late. A needless remake where less would have been so much more. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 16 NOVEMBER | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Dead in a Week (Or Your Money Back) (2018) **

Writer/Dir.Tom Edmunds. UK. 2018. 90 mins

A watchable British cast explore the meaning of life in Noirish comedy that never quite catches fire despite some powerful elements. Dead in a Week is the feature debut of writer/director Tom Edmunds whose his message certainly has evergreen appeal: ‘love makes the world go round in life’s comedy of errors, and we leave stage when we’re least expecting it.’

Aneurin Barnard stars as William, an aspiring writer and lifeguard who has tried nine times to kill himself. The latest attempt – from a London Bridge – is swiftly averted by Tom Wilkinson’s passing hitman Leslie who describes himself as a one-man euthanasia clinic – a clever idea and one that could easily take off in today’s grim world. For the princely sum of £2,000 he offers to kill the soulful writer within a week, paid upfront, “for obvious reasons”. Leslie’s offer has a ring of sincerity to it, and once the two have come to an arrangement, William’s creative juices go into overdrive, galvanised into penning a paper back-style crime thriller chronicling the whole affair.

Leslie’s Raymond Chandleresque pretensions are the only thing saving him from his dreaded retirement in suburbia with a wife whose only raison d’être is needlepoint (She: “I’ve come out of my comfort zone to do a cushion cover, He: “isn’t that more comforting?”). The problem is, Leslie face the sack unless he keeps up his quota of kills for The British Guild Of Assassins. In a zeitgeisty subplot the Eastern Europeans are encroaching on his market, with Ivan (Velibor Topic) recently winning, ‘Hit Man Of The Year’. Leslie is a worried man.

Meanwhile, love comes to William in the shape of his pulchritudinous publisher Ellie (a persuasive Freya Mavor) and suddenly ‘living’ seems a better option than dying. But can he get out of his contract contract with Leslie, who is hell bent on killing him, for his own reasons.

Despite his thoughtful and often hilarious premise, Edmunds never quite manages the film’s changes of tone and mix of styles. A sweary interlude with Leslie’s bolshy boss at the Guild (Christopher Eccleston) feels completely out of place with Leslie and Penelope’s twee domestic idyll that’s more Seventies TV soap opera than this modern day angry outburst. And William’s Byronesque existentialism is convincing but rather too profound for the comedy treatment it’s given. Tom Wilkinson’s deadpan performance of exasperation and tetchiness is a convincing portrait of middle- aged angst and one of the drama’s strongest assets.

On the downside Dead In A Week makes flippant side-swipes at dementia, ageing and even motor neurone disease (a tasteless Michael J Fox joke) and the pace starts to slacken when the story becomes more convoluted. These flaws are largely down to inexperience. Edmunds has some good ideas, he should trust his instincts and avoid over-complicating his plot lines. Dead In A Week’s flippant tone is often too derogatory for themes expressed by its thoughtful characters in a drama that rather toys with very real trauma. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FORM 16 NOVEMBER 2018

The Workshop (2017) ****

Dir: Laurent Cantet | Writer: Robin Campillo | France | Cast: Marina Fois, Matthieu Lucci | 114min | Drama

Laurent Cantet follows his middle-aged rumination Return to Ithaca (2014) with an equally unsettling but darker teenage drama that takes place in a multi-cultural summer school in Provence. Youth is a subject he’s covered before in his Palme d’Or winner The Class (2008) but here the region’s working class past come back to haunt the instability of the present providing an intoxicating mix of emotions in a tense, intelligent and socially relevant drama.

The film follows Antoine who is taking part in summer school in rather downtrodden town of La Ciotat, where he hopes to write a crime thriller novel with the help of a well-known author Olivia Dejazet (Marina Fois).  Joined by seven other local teenagers from the town which has seen better days as a centre for shipbuilding – today the docks just service luxury yachts.

Whilst most of the students are critical of Dejazet’s Parisian “snootiness”, they still co-operate  – apart from Antoine (Lucci). He is provocative to both teacher and co-students, shocking them with a piece of gruesome writing, describing a mass-killer, and told in the first person singular. Downtime is spend hanging around the area, in one instance with an unlicensed firearm.  Antoine has already been playing the popular video game “The Witch3: Wild Hunt”,  where he choses the role of a Viking killer-for hire. Malik (Rammach), a young Muslim woman, is Antoine’s fiercest critic, as he continues to undermine the project, upsetting everyone with his unruly attitude. Dejazet feels hopeless – not used to open racism and Antoine’s perverse love of violence – then she tries to help him. But her efforts end in a traumatic encounter, and Antoine gives himself away: he describes the main motive of the Bataclan perpetrators as boredom, a very astute projection, considering his activities with other far-right friends.

Antoine might not have the intellectual prowess of Drieu La Rochelle, the nihilist hero of Louis Malle’ s Le Feu Follet, but there are certain parallels: both men prefer male company, the home-erotic undertones are very clear. Like many fascists, they are obsessed with death and suicide (La Rochelle killed himself in 1945 after being a collaborator), and their relationship with women tends to be antagonistic: their masculine pride does not allow them to come emotionally close to women. Antoine is a gun for hire, his phantasies of obliteration are as much directed at himself as others.

Regular collaborate Robin Campillo, who also worked on Entre les Murs with Cantet, constructs an ambivalent relationship between Dejazet and Antoine: both are aware of their social differences, but in spite this they are somehow attracted to one another. Their relationship develops into a separate story, whilst the other six students try to write their own crime novel. DoP Pierre Milon uses impressive panoramic shots, showing the empty docks, then returning to the intimate scenes of collaborate writing, without breaking the fluent movement. Cantet’s direction is  sensitive, he never denounces Antoine, seeing him as a victim of change: once he would have found a spiritual home with the dock workers, but now he is alienated and bitter. L’Atelier is a story of disenfranchisement, and storytelling – with the author as teacher, but one who’s not always in control.

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 16 NOVEMBER 2018

 

 

Russian Film Week 2018

Russian Film Week is back for the third year running. From 25 November to 2 December the event will take place in London at BFI Southbank, Regent Street Cinema, Curzon Mayfair and Empire Leicester Square before heading to Edinburgh, Cambridge and Oxford.

The eight-day festival celebrates a selection of award-winning new dramas, documentaries and shorts, bridging the gap between Russian cinematography and the West with the aim of building bridges rather than enforcing tensions. The festival will culminate in the Golden Unicorn Awards. This year’s selection has certainly upped its game and comes thoroughly recommended. Particularly worth seeing is Rashomon re-make THE BOTTOMLESS BAG, a magical mystery drama, in black and white.

Russian Film Week opens with Avdotya Smirnova’s prize-winning historical drama THE STORY OF AN APPOINTMENT (prize for Best Script at Russia’s main national film festival Kinotavr). Based on real life events, it follows an episode from Leo Tolstoy’s life. The opening night will be held at the largest screen in the UK – Empire IMAX Leicester Square.

Other seasonal highlights include Kirill Serebrennikovэ’s Cannes awarded biographical film LETO (Summer) and SOBIBOR, Russia’s foreign-language film Oscar submission 2018. The film is the debut feature for actor-turned-director Konstantin Khabensky, and focuses on events in the titular Nazi extermination camp during 1943. The film also stars Christopher Lambert and Karl Frenzel. Danila Kozlovsky, known for his role in BBC series McMafia (2018) and numerous Russian blockbusters, will present his debut project, sports drama TRENER (‘Coach’).

The festival c Golden Unicorn Awards ceremony, including the Best Foreign Film About Russia. British actor Brian Cox will head up the jury. The awards ceremony is in aid of Natalia Vodianova’s Naked Heart Foundation.

Russian Film Week and the Golden Unicorn was founded in 2016 by Filip Perkon with a group of volunteers on a non-profit basis. From 2017 the festival supported by the Russian Ministry of Culture, Synergy University, and the BFI.

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK 2018 | 25 NOVEMBER – 2 DECEMBER 2018

Death of a Poetess (2017) **** UK Jewish Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Efrat Mishori, Dana Goldberg; Cast: Smira Saraya, Evgenia Dodina, Y. Goldberg; Israel 2018, 77 min.

Poet Efrat Mishori and filmmaker Dana Goldberg’s DEATH OF A POETESS is a hauntingly realistic but depressing portrait of their vision of Israel today. On Tel Aviv’s fabulous beachside two women meet. One has planned her own suicide,  the other one will soon be the victim of a prejudiced police force, who take a dim view of the local Arab population. The bottom line is that this could be any European capital.

Lenny Sadeh (Dodina) is in her fifties and may have lost a daughter. She is adamant about ending her life. She has written some poetry, for the first time in her life, and gives the titular manuscript to a publisher. She then orders a white bathrobe, and makes sure it is in the shop on the chosen day: “There’s no tomorrow” she tells the assistant, who urges her to reflect on her decision. She then takes a taxi to the beach, where she meets Yasmin (Saraya), a young Arab nurse, who happens to be a lesbian, taking a night off from her elderly husband and young daughter. The women talk. Sensing that something is wrong, the nurse follows her into the bathroom, where Lenny has left her ring and other valuables. Yasmin than walks outside, and sees Sadeh heading for the water.

The title is the film’s intended spoiler. The interactions of Lenny’s last day are intercut with a diabolic police interrogation of Yasmin, by an Israeli investigator (Y. Goldberg), who, like the taxi driver, plays himself. We only hear the policeman’s voice, which makes the atmosphere even more frightening. He insists that Yasmin murdered Lenny for the diamond ring, and does not believe a word Yasmin says in her defence. Finally, Yasmin succumbs, telling him that she murdered for greed; she even makes up the details of the murder; even though, in the next scene, her forced confession is refuted.

DoP Asi Oren has conjured up melancholic black-and-white images of Tel Aviv, his close-ups in the interrogation room are masterful, and the doom-laden atmosphere remains til the final scene. Dodina and Saraya are brilliant, they have much more in common the culture that divides them. The directors show a vision of Israeli society not unlike that of Germany during Fascism: greedy and deceitful. The policemen play on these prejudices. A sad lament on daily life in the State of Israel, a tiny Jewish country surrounding by a mass of Muslim nations. And they are fiercely protective of the only place they can call their home. AS

UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 8-22 NOVEMBER 2018

    

My Neighbour Totoro (1988)


Dir: Hayao Miyazaki | Japan | Anime | 86′

This delicately drawn brightly animated fantasy is possibly the best loved of all Hayao Miyazaki’s Ghibli offerings. The magical ‘ghost’ story is so cute it couldn’t say boo to a goose yet remains unsentimental and rooted in reality. With a featherlight frisson of fear, Miyazaki captures the wonder, amazement and uncertainty of growing up, and our childhood need to retreat to a secret fantasy world. Brimming with hope and excitement, two tiny girls move with their father to a countryside retreat where their mother is recovering in hospital. The nearby woods are full of fantasy and intrigue. A cuddly creature called Totoro provides a source of spiritual nourishment and soulful awakening for the sisters as they face the reality of their mother’s illness constantly lurking at the back of their minds. This sumptuously beautiful Japanese anime offers versatile entertainment. There’s something for everyone to take away, if you can manage to leave. MT

MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO is now on Prime Video

Budapest Noir (2017) *** UK Jewish Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Eva Gardos; Cast: Krisztian Kolovratnik, Reka Tenki, Janos Kulka, Adel Kovats, Franziska Töröcsik; Hungary 2017, 94 min.

Veteran director Eva Gardos (An American Rhapsody) serves up a slick but conventional noir spoof that offers decent entertainment despite its cliche-ridden script. There are too many holes in the narrative, the brothel scenes are voyeuristic, and without any knowledge of the complex Hungarian history of the era, audiences will find it hard to understand what’s going on. But BUDAPEST NOIR looks simply stunning and serves as a perceptive study of Hungarian fascism and Anti-Semitism.

In October 1936, Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös, had died of cancer in Munich. His body was received in Budapest with full military honours (Gömbös had boasted about his fascist credentials). Crime reporter Zsigmond Gordon (Kolovratnik) meets an enigmatic young woman in a restaurant, who tells the waiter that the journalist will pick up her bill. When he finds her note to him, promising to pay back the money, the womanising journalist’s interest is aroused – only to discover her murdered a few days later. But when her body then disappears from the morgue, Gordon makes his own inquiries against the advice of the authorities. He finds out that the girl in question, Fanny (Töröcsik), is the daughter of Andras Szöllosy, a wealthy Jewish coffee importer with links to the government. He converted to Catholicism, and started a lucrative business with Nazi Germany. Helped by his on/off girl friend Krisztina (Tenki), a photographer who had just had an assignment in a German camp (sic), Gordon finds out that Fanny’s father had driven his daughter into prostitution, forbidding her to see her Jewish boyfriend, because of his fears for her future. But after Fanny had become pregnant in a high-class brothel, her situation deteriorated. And when Gordon finally catches up with Fanny’s parents, he mother Irma (Kovats) reacts dramatically.

Sad to say, Hungarian Fascists were as brutal as their Germans counterparts. The ruling Regent, Admiral Horthy, felt superior to Hitler, who had spent a decade in a dosshouse. Gömbös, Horthy’s Prime Minister, wanted two nations to be more closely allied, whilst Horthy only supported Hitler without reservations after the outbreak of WWII, when Hungarian troops fought on the side of the Axis.

It is ironic that Horthy was deposed by Hitler when it came to the deportation of the 400 000 Hungarian Jews in 1944 – it turned out that the Hungarian fascists (Pfeilkreuzler) and the population as a whole, did not share Horthy’s reservation, they enthusiatiscally assisted the Germans to send the Jews to the death camps.

There are scenes of open Anti-Semitism in Budapest Noir: in one scene, a bar singer croons a song composed by a Jew, and some Anti-Semites in the audience attack him. Gordon stops them, but the real fighter is his Krisztina, who leaves him for London, to show her death camp images in an exhibition “because over there are people who really care”. The Szöllosy’s family history is typical for Jews of the region: many had converted to Catholicism, trying to deny their Jewish heritage, and, like Fanny’s father, would marry their offspring to anybody but a Jew. Gordon represents the cynical by-stander, who is only after a good story, he does not mind taking a beating, but is totally non-committed on a personal and political level. Strangely enough, Budapest Noir is – in spite of its obvious faults – a mirror of a society where the points for the future genocide are being put in place. AS

SCREENING DURING UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 |

The Accountant of Auschwitz (2018) Netflix

Dir.: Matthew Shoychet; Documentary; Canada 2018, 80 min.

Oskar Gröning, known as the accountant of Auschwitz, lived out a peaceful existence in his hometown of Lüneburg in Lower Saxony for 70 years  – unperturbed by guilt or singled out for his actions as an active member of the SS of Auschwitz. He would eventually get his comeuppance in 2015.

In his debut documentary Canadian director/writer Matthew Shoychet chronicles the 2015 trial against Gröning, featuring testimonies from the defendant himself and the surviving victims and the last living judge from the Nuremberg trial and Holocaust deniers.

Born in 1921 into a nationalist family, Oskar Gröning was unremarkable but seized the opportunity of a lifetime when he joined the SS during the Second World War. Employed at Auschwitz, he was responsible for overseeing all the artefacts stolen from Jewish internees as soon as they arrived at the Polish camp. The goods trains would turn up laden with their human cargo and Gröning would be present and correct on the infamous “Rampe”, where Dr. Joseph Mengele, the Angel of Death prepared to make the macabre decision as to who would be gassed immediately, or who could be of some use as a worker for a limited period. Gröning witnessed some gruesome events: when a mother turned up with her suitcase hiding a her baby, the child’s crying gave them both away to the guards and both were immediately executed. “The crying stopped” was all Gröning had to say.

But the survivors’ reactions could not have been more different: Bill Glied (who died in 2018) even considered that a certain form of justice had been done. But Eva Morez, who survived the deadly twin experiments of Joseph Mengele (together with her sister Miriam), expressed extreme gratitude to Gröning, offering him a hug.

Benjamin Ferenc, Judge at the Nuremberg Trials, explains why the outcome of this trial is so important and why there should never be a statute of limitations for genocide. He explains how the German justice systems had absolutely no vested interest in prosecuting SS men and other guards who kept the concentration camps going. Sure, they were little cogs in the death machine, but without them, it would have ground to a halt.

The SS had around 800, 000 men in 1945. And although it was declared a “Criminal Association” only around 200,000 the members were vetted,  a mere of these 6000 prosecuted, with just 124 life sentence given out. The judges had a vested interest in making sure the whole affair was kept low-key, lest they themselves be implicated. In the end Oskar Gröning was found guilty and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment as an accessory to murder in thousands of cases. He lost all his appeals but died before he started his sentence in 2018.

The Accountant makes for sobering viewing: once again it shows how the huge majority of German civilians of the time actively supported the concentration camps by keeping ‘schtum’ and shielding those involved in the atrocities. Even today films like Luke HOlland’s Final Account (2020) show how Germans turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, some actively condoning it. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside Mossad: Imperfect Spies *** (2018)

Dir: Duki Dror | Doc Israel | 90′ 2018

Mossad (the National Intelligence Service of Israel) has long been regarded as Gold Standard among spy networks in a world that continues to be fascinated by international espionage. Since the First World World spies have been glamourised and vilified. Their tales have spawned a rich vein of cinema from Noir dramas to documentaries and TV series, the most recent and spine-chilling KILLING EVE has enthralled BBC audiences nationwide.

Here, award-winning documentarian Duki Dror steps behind the secret curtain to unveil insider stories from former Mossad agents – some of them as recent as last year. But it’s important to remember that nowadays these functionaries lead quite normal lives aside from their intelligence activities. And although often viewed as exciting a great deal of their work is routine and procedural – like most people they respond with relish to share their stories of adventure and derring-do.

What emerges here is both intriguing and unsettling. Back in 1960 Mossad rose to the public’s attention when an agency team led by former intelligence officer and politician Rafi Eitan, now 91, captured Nazi arch villain Adolf Eichmann and put him on trial in Israel to answer for his Holocaust crimes in a court of Law. Naturally, no-one objected to the move. But since those glory day, Mossad has simply dispatched a number of high profile terrorists considered a threat to the national interest, without a fair trial. This spirit taking the Law into their own hands has been echoed in the recent events in Salisbury, where a former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were famously poisoned on British soil, purportedly by the Russian themselves. Meanwhile, Eitan reveals an incident where an one of his compatriots was discovered to have been selling secrets to an enemy Arab country. He was kidnapped, assassinated, and his body was dropped over from a place somewhere in the Mediterranean. Another Mossad leader, Zvi Zamir also confesses with relish his time spent in service. He also refers to The Gatekeepers (2012) another documentary highlighting the activities of Israel’s other intelligence agency Shin Bet,, who famously failed to protect the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated by right-winger Yigal Amir.

Scripted by Yossi Melman and Chen Shelach (both from Zero Days) Inside the Mossad is an engrossing and succinctly made human interest story. MT

SCREENING DURING UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 8 – 27 NOVEMBER 2018

Hitler’s Hollywood: German Cinema in the Age of Propaganda **** (2017)

Dir.: Rüdiger Suchsland, Documentary, Germany 2017, 105 min. 

Rüdiger Suchsland follows his brilliant From Caligari to Hitler with a chronicle of  cinema during the Nazi regime, 1933-1945. The Nazis may not have achieved their thousand year reign, but they produced roughly this number of feature films. Hitler’s Hollywood is narrated by the softly sinister voice Udo Kier, with quotes from from Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag, Suchsland searches the souls and minds of ordinary German citizens who went the cinema in record numbers, the like of which would never be seen again.

Of these features, roughly 500 were comedies, over three hundred belonged to the popular genre of “Revue” films, the rest was made up by detective and adventure films. There were no Horror movies (enough in real life), and just one SF movie: GOLD by Karl Hartl, a shameless Metropolis rip-off, with its star Brigitte Helm now able to talk. The huge majority of features were produced by the UFA, founded in 1917; its owner, Von Hugenberg, had helped Hitler to achieve power. In 1937 the company was nationalised, and in 1942 monopolised every film production. There were no auteurs in Nazi cinema (they had mostly emigrated like Fritz Lang), the stars had much more power, given to them by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Reach’s Propaganda Minister, who was THE auteur: controlling everything from script, auditioning to censorship. 

Not that Goebbels had to change that much: On the last day of January 1933, after being installed as Chancellor, Hitler visited the Berlin premiere of Gustav Ucicky’s MORGENROT. This U-boat feature showed what was in store for Germany: the love of death. The commander declares “that Germans might not be good at living, but are pretty well prepared to die in style”. More about this later. MORGENROT was one of about 40 hard-core propaganda films. But the Nazi ideology was very much present in all productions. Jews were the most popular target of these agitation films (DER EWIGE JUDE, JUD SUSS, DIE ROTHSCHILDS). The British did featured in OHM KRUGER, but the majority of these outings were either glorifications of dead Nazi heroes, or of their fictional characters. There was HANS WESTMAR, HITLER JUNGE QUEX, SA MANN BRANDT as well as war features. These largely fell into two categories: the ‘victory’ celebrations depicted in SIEG IM WESTEN, STUKAS, U-BOOTE WESTWARTS or the ‘Durchhaltefilme’ (perseverance films) which came towards the end of the Second World War. One of the most prominent of these was Veit Harlan’s 1945 action drama KOLBERG. This was one of the most expensive German productions to date, a mammoth undertaking that saw 100, 000 soldiers taking part in the bellicose spectacle. There was even a Pro-Euthanasia feature ICH KLAGE AN, directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner. It came as no accident that Goebbels chose Harlan to helm this extravaganza. “Fascist ideology was part part of his whole work” – and he was by far the most talented filmmaker of the Nazi period – and the most prolific – with twenty films in just ten years. Harlan cast his wife Kristina Söderbaum to star in nearly all his films: she usually committed suicide by drowning, as in THE GOLDEN CITY DIE GOLDENE STADT (1942), and THE GREAT SACRIFICE (1944)). And it goes without saying that both continued their careers well past 1945 in West Germany. Ferdinand Marian, the most gifted actor of the period, who played the wicked Jew in Jud Süss, was killed while drunk driving in August 1946 – some days before a tribunal would decide his professional fate. 

Kristina Söderbaum was Swedish along with several of her compatriots such as Zarah Leander (LA HABANERA) and Ingrid Bergman who appeared in Carl Froelich’s 1938 romantic drama DIE VIER GESELLEN.  Then there was the Czech actor Lida Baarova  – Goebbels nearly left his wife for her – and star of DIE FLEDERMAUS (1937); the Dutch stars Johannes Heesters in FRAU IM BESTEN MANNESALTER (1959) and Ilse Werner in WIR MACHEN MUSIK (1942) . They were required to visit a police station every week to renew visas. But the brightest star in this firmament was the Hungarian actor Marika Rökk (KORA TERRY, IT WAS A GAY BALL NIGHT 1940), who sang and pirouetted her way through 19 features of the Nazi period, and nearly as many in post-war West Germany.

A special mention should go to the Gustaf Gründgens as the leading turn in Hans Steinhoff’s TANZ AUF DEM VULKAN 1938, and Helmut Käutner romantic drama AUF WIEDERSEHEN, FRANZISKA! (1941).  Gründgens esteemed by Göring, but hated by Goebbels. With his androgynous looks (and muddled sexual orientation), he sang “the night is not only there for sleeping” in the 1938 drama. It was an open invitation to revolt, and Goebbels reacted by letting the film pass, but the recording of the film’s score was never released. There is some irony in this feature where city dwellers throw resistance flyers from their balconies – and in real life, the Scholl siblings were beheaded a few years later for doing exactly that in their High School. Suchsland lets Käutner get away lightly, calling him “a man with an anti-fascist soul”. After the war, Käutner directed less ironic mainstream features, now too timid to upset anybody.

Hitler and Goebbels both were film fans even before coming to power. The Leader preferred Micky Mouse cartoons and Frank Capra films, Goebbels was an admirer of early Eisenstein features. Both had it in mind to create a German Hollywood, dominated by dramatic gestures and crowd scenes. An early example of this was Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 chronicle of the Nazi Party’s Nuremberg meeting: THE TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (TRIUMPH DES WILLENS). It is like a religious service, an ornament of masses, constantly synchronised movements. In contrast to these epics, her Olympia films were a search for the perfect body. But what is lacking in most films of this era is irony, even the screw-ball comedies, modelled on Hollywood, lacked this essential ingredience. 

Later reality and feature films moved even closer: DER GROSSE KÖNIG (Veit Harlan 1942) was premiered in parallel with USSR invasion. Male leader figures like Frederick the Great and Frederick I often featured, such as the hero portraits of Schiller, Schlüter and PARACELSUS (GW Pabst, 1943). During the war years, the newsreels lasted on average forty minutes. 

The other side of these strict political agitprops were the comedies with their regressive characters; and Suchsland starts with a clip from THE MAN WHO WAS SHERLOCK HOLMES (Karl Hartl 1937). It shows the two best known male stars, Hans Albers and Rühmann (the latter a German Everyman, who was extremely popular during the 3rd Reich and in West Germany) playing around like little boys, enjoying their bath and using the foam to have fun in their separate bath rooms. Whilst Albers was usually the hero (THE BLUE ANGEL, PEER GYNT, GOLD) Rühmann (MODEL HUSBAND, HEINZ IM MOND) was the scatter-brained dreamer, who just got along, but usually came out on top. 

And while the Nazis seemed to love their nighttime marches armed with torchlights in the dark, creating a sinister atmosphere of necrophilia, they loved death even more. There is a great montage in Suchsland’s documentary that shows the mountain of deaths that accumulated during these twelve years: nearly everyone seems happy to die, including the victims of Euthanasia.

Last, but not least, we should mention WUNSCHKONZERT (Eduard von Borsody, 1940) an impressive amalgamation of feature and newsreel. Kicking off with the Olympics of 1936 and ending with the Fascist victory in the Spanish war, this relationship drama starring Ilse Werner and Carl Raddatz is best described by the couple listening to the chorus, who sing: “I know there will be a miracle, and a thousand dreams will come true”.  Meanwhile, the cinema audience was increasingly inured to endless sacrifice (turning a blind eye to murder), they were asked not to trust what they saw, but to “believe in their intuition that all will turn out well”. Germans, so Suchsland, did not want to leave the cinema, because the reality was too cruel.

We can look forward to Suchsland’s next project, an analysis of post-war West German cinema, which will showcase the era of the Weimar Republic and the 3rd Reich. AS       

AVAILABLE ON DUAL FORMAT FROM EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA | 5 NOVEMBER 2018

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) 2018 *****


Dir: Peter Jackson | Doc | UK | 99′

The Lord of the Rings director, Peter Jackson shows what it was like to be a solider fighting in the trenches in the First World War where 1 million men lost their lives between 1914-18). Jackson’s New Zealand-based Weta special-effects house uses 3D film and combines cutting edge special effects with archive footage that actually comes to life offering a first hand experience of the trenches, the gunfire, the mud and the death. (courtesy of ).It’s a colossal achievement and fascinating in its down to earth detail.

Sifting through 600 hours of archive footage collated from Imperial War Museums, and overlaying a voiceover of actual testimonies of veterans, also from Imperial War Museums, recorded in the 1960s and 1970s, Jackson puts us in the thick of it with an in-depth start to finish experience of what actually happened when war was declared on Germany in 1914. He describes not only the excitement and sense of duty, but also the banality of fighting for youngsters who returned to Britain on the train to Victoria Station, when the ‘guns suddenly ceased”. And not as heroes, but as unemployed, unemployable often broken men. The Great War has been much romanticised in novels and poetry. Here, Jackson takes the romantic image out of the equation, and gives us a gruelling but also shocking images of mass latrines, open wounds, eviscerated bodies. The stench, but also the pity of war, and the camaraderie too. One soldier reminisces: “it was like a camping holiday with the boys, only with a spice of danger”; another: “the Germans were decent family men, and their loved their kids”.

Jackson shows us how the soldiers made tea from the hot water that cooled their machine guns, and how they got tired of endless plum and apple jam. There are clips of British soldiers enlisting in 1914, of soldiers training, and then boarding decommissioned “pleasure boats” to France where they were offered bottles of wine and raided the fields for carrots. And it’s inclusive – we see Indian soldiers marching in turbans, along with the British platoons.

Jackson’s 3D film feels smooth and non-jerky as it yields up its superbly restored coloured treasures. The voiceover is achieved through lip-read recreated dialogue as the soldiers literally come alive to tell their own story, their faces demonstrating at first hand the smiles, the fear and even the mistrust.

There are naturally elements missing such as footage of the actual battles due to the difficulty of transporting the heavy photographic equipment to the scene. The guns were moved by horses, who sadly often sank into the “viscous” mud. But Jackson takes us there amongst the soldiers in the fray – and we feel for them. It’s a heart-breaking endeavour but infinitely worthwhile. If you only watch one film this year, watch this one. MT

Peter Jackson’s THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD will be released in cinemas nationwide, from 9th November with a special pre-recorded Q&A with Peter Jackson (3D and 2D). It will then premiere on Armistice Day (Sunday 11th Nov) on BBC Two at 9.30pm and will be released on home entertainment platforms later this year. 

 

Wildlife (2018) ****

Writer|Dir: Paul Dano | Cast: Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ed Oxenbould | Drama | US | 105’

A teenage boy experiences the breakdown of his parents’ marriage in  Paul Dano’s crisp coming of age family drama, set in 1960s Montana, and based on Richard Ford’s novel.

Although once or twice veering into melodrama, actor Dano maintains impressive control over his sleek and very lucid first film which is anchored by three masterful performances, and sees a young family disintegrate after the husband loses his job.

WILDLIFE has a great deal in common with Retribution Road (2008), its similar theme of aspirational hope for a couple starting out on their life in a new town, in this case Great Falls, Montana. But here the perspective is very different – in Wildlife, the entire experience is seen from the unique perspective of a pubescent boy, Joe, played thoughtfully by young Australian actor Ed Oxenbould (The Visit).

There’s an old-fashioned quality to the film that very much works to its advantage. The date is 1960 and in the mountains behind the family house a forest fire is raging, with warnings that it could well spread to the town centre if not controlled by rangers, who Jerry Brinson (Gyllenhaal) decides to join at a wage of only a dollar an hour, after much moping around the house when he loses his job on the local golf course. This comes as a big surprise to his wife Jeannette (Mulligan), an earnest homemaker who believes in her husband’s desire to make more of himself, and she sees this as a step backwards, career-wise. Meanwhile, Joe signs on as an apprentice to a local portrait photographer, a part-time job he takes to while doing very well in his school work.

Dano and his co-writer Zoe Kazan, stick to a clean, straighforward narrative but there’s a subtle brooding tension at play, and while Joe seems emotionally grounded and resilient (a tribute to his parents), Jerry and Jeannette are less so: although Jerry’s character is the most underwritten of the three, there’s a haunted quality to him as a straightforwaed dad who suddenly implodes after the shock of his firing. Jeannette also starts to lose her own sense of equilibrium:. “What kind of man leaves his wife and child in such a lonely place?,” Jeanette casts around for emotional ballast in an much older wealthy man, Warren Miller (Bill Camp), who she meets while giving swimming classes.

In some ways this fragmented behaviour is character-forming for Joe, his parents have clearly given him a rock solid babyhood, and so he can weather the shocking fliration scenes that take place between Millar and his mother, and his loss at his father’s temporary abandonment, although he finds it all difficult to fathom. This is not a film about adult infidelity and abandonment, but about how a teenage perceives and deals with it, and as such it is beautifully restrained and supremely elegant – the audience is required to suspend disbelief and take a trip back to teenagehood and the bewildering experience it offers. Dano makes the denouement an enigmatic affair, leaving the door open to hope, while acknowledging the inevitable. MT

NATIONWIDE FROM 9 NOVEMBER 2018

The Other Side of Everything (2017) ****

Dir/Writer: Mila Turajlic. Serbia. 2017. 100 mins.

Like most people who have been driven to their knees and learned how to survive their troubled history, the Serbians are tough cookies. And none more so than the indomitable a professor (who is also her mother) in Mila Turajlic’s engrossing documentary. THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING illuminates turbulent times in pre-World War II Serbia when Tito’s communists countermanded her family’s spacious central Belgrade apartment, and forced them to share their home with two other families.

Srbijanka was a tiny girl when Tito came to power in 1943. But the experiences of her childhood have made her a strong-willed and independent thinker who cuts to the chase with salient truisms such as: ” You don’t believe how it all can begin….until it begins.”. Her views and experiences are enriched by fascinating archive footage and news reels of the Tito years in a film that won Turajlic the main prize at Amsterdam’s International Documentary Film Festival in 2017.

When the communists took over, the internal doors of her apartment were locked back and have remained so for more than 70 years. Serbia is a country that has never really recovered from this shocking era. It’s the sort of place where the Census-taker asks ordinary citizens searching questions like: “Have you had links to terrorism? What about genocide?”.

But it’s the personal story of its stoical matriarch that actually makes this potted history of Yugoslavia and Serbia over the past hundred years, so engaging. And it soon emerges that the casually dressed and amiably ‘bolshie’ raconteur actually took an active part in the eventual downfall of creatures like Slobodan Milosovic.

The rather opulent apartment bears witness to Srbijanka’s upmarket background of enlightened intellectuals and professionals. Her grandfather had involvement with the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes that later became known as Yugoslavia. Sadly, because Srbijanka was not a Communist, she was unable to study Law, but she later became a Mathematics professor at the capital’s University and worked hard to promote pro-Serbian interests. Like so many parents who have experienced terrible political regimes, she warns her daughter to be watchful and sceptical (Mila remains off camera). Yet Mila has her doubts, and this gently probing film marks their expression throughout. The Other Side serves as a worthwhile tribute to the valiant woman at its core, and to everyone who has risked their lives to make their world a better place. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 9 NOVEMBER 2018  | IDFA 2017 REVIEW | Best Feature-length Documentary Winner 2017 | SCREENINGS IN YOUR AREA

 

Outlaw King (2018)

Dir.: David Mackenzie; Cast: Chris Pine. Florence Pugh, Billy Howle, Stephan Dillane, Aaron Taylor-Jones; US/UK, 132 min. 

Director David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) and his four scriptwriters have made this history book of medieval wars between Scots and English into a legend of machismo – but in the end the rivals all emerge as anti-heros, and all is drowned in blood and mud.

In 1304, after the end of William Wallace Revolution,. Robert the Bruce (Pine) attempts to unify the Scotts  tribes to fight Edward I (Dillane), who has seized the Scottish throne for himself – instead of appointing a promised Scottish successor. As a sign of the new alliance, Edward I allowed Robert the Bruce to marry Elizabeth de Burgh (Pugh), daughter of the powerful Earl of Ulster. But after the death of Edward I, his son, the Prince of Wales (later Edward II of England), captured and imprisoned Elizabeth, who was not willing to divorce Robert.

Robert’s fury is fed by the treachery of a Prince of Wales, who was once his close friend. After many years of imprisonment, Elizabeth was re-united with Robert, and they had three children. The many ambushes culminate in the Battle of Loudoun Hill (1307), the show-piece of the feature, and turning point of the campaign for an independent Scotland – even though the war would last another twenty years.

Together with his second in command, James Douglas (Taylor-Jones), Robert is shown as ruthless and risk-loving. The action scenes are repetitive and cruel: at one point during the Battle of Loudoun, spikes are used by the Scots to pierce the bodies of the English horses.

Outlaw King is redeemed by a handful of scenes that are worth watching – between Elizabeth and Robert (who is rather gentle with his young wife) – and these provide a counterpoint to the endless monotone warring, although Mackenzie ruins it with an embarrassing sex sequence. At least Elizabeth is shown as being as stubborn and bloody-minded as her husband, and Pugh excels in another strong female role.  

Cut down from the 146 minutes of the version shown at TIFF, Outlaw King is still far too long. DoP Barry Aykroyd captures the fighting scenes with great power, but in the end, the over-kill is tiring. AS

ON Netflix


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For Vagina’s Sake (2017) London Korean Film Festival 2018 ***

Dir: Kim Bo-ram | S. Korean Doc | 73′

FOR VAGINA’S SAKE takes a coyly humorous approach to a bodily function that happens to half the world’s population. A woman will lose over 10 litres of blood during her reproductive years. And while in North East Asia menstruation is still often seen as an embarrassing occurrence, Dutch women treat periods much more pragmatically according to this worthwhile but rather scatty South Korean documentary debut from Kim Bo-ram.

Boram has certainly done her research and uncovered a wealth of information about this vital bodily function, uncovering startling facts from the Dark Ages and followed it through with up to date political developments. It’s a shame then that her film is hamstrung by its choppy editing, flipping backwards and forward and flitting around like a butterfly on heat, it eventually becomes exasperating in the final scenes. It’s also focused almost entirely on women in their twenties and early thirties in Holland and South Korea.

A dinner discussion in Holland reveals that young Dutch woman go for basic applicator-free protection, while in South Korea some are still scared to insert a tampon (afraid that it may get lost) in a country where periods are still taboo and anatomical ignorance is frankly shocking. We then meet an 80 year old Korean woman whose first period came after she marred at 18, and who then went on to produce five or six daughters. In those days sanitary towels consisted of natural cotton balls wrapped in cotton material. Tied with strings round the woman’s waste they often fell down, causing horrific embarrassment. And this humiliation and fear connected with staining a public seat or losing a pad in the street is still a woman’s worst nightmare today.

There follows a potted historical and religious background which verges on the macabre (if not downright misogynistic). We learn than ancient Japan women were thrown into communal pits of menstrual blood and allowed to drown, whereas in China those who gave birth would apparently go to Hell (?). Menstrual blood was considered a puny female attempt at producing sperm.

The second part of the documentary focuses on politics developments and taxes that apply to feminine hygiene products, with a discussion on the contemporary developments in sustainable protection (material pads, sea-foam, and an overlong diatribe about the menstrual cup and its advantages.

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For Vagina’s Sake uses a mixture of interviews and delicately-drawn animations to put its information across and is both subjective and observational. Graphic images dovetail with lighter more frivolous hand-draughted visuals. Fast-paced and fluffy and rather than serious and analytical – the film becomes more inspirational and empowering for its contributors as it presses on. Certainly a worthwhile film to show to teenagers and students from all nationalities who may be suffering in silence, rather than learning about a shared and very natural female experience. MT

SCREENING DURING THE London Korean FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Microhabitat (2017) **** London Korean Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Jeon Go-woon; Cast: Esom, Ahn jae-hong, Choi Deok-moon, Kang Jin-ah, Kim kuk-hee, Kim Jae-hwa, Lee Sung wook; South Korea 2017, 104 min.

Jeon Go-woon’s spirited road movie sees a city girl determined to keep her independence while her friends cow-tow to tradition in contemporary Seoul. The original title ‘Little Princess’ better describes this thoughtful story of materialism versus spiritualism.

Miso (a brilliant Lee Som) may be getting on a bit, but can’t afford to heat her tiny studio flat, on her salary as a housemaid. When the rent goes up together with the price of cigarettes, she makes a dramatic decision: to move out and indulge in her favourite brand of whisky, and to keep on smoking. But what price freedom? Her boyfriend Hans-sol (jae-hong) lives in a male-only dormitory, so she can’t go there – they even have to give up having sex. Schlepping around with her belongings, like a bag lady, Miso asks her former band members for help. First off is ambitious office worker Moon-yeong (Jin-ah). She is curt and unapologetic: “I am too irritable to lie with someone”. Next is former vocalist Roki-i (Deok-moon), who now lives with his old-fashioned parents. His mother is keen on the idea. Clearly Miso is the just the right match for her son: “she can clean, and that’s all a woman needs to do”. Roki-i’s certainly keen on Miso. But she can’t deal with being hemmed in with his family, so once again it’s time to move on. The next port of call is her girlfriend Hyeon-jeong (Kuk-hee) whose husband tells his wife “to shut up and cook”. And so it goes on.

Go-woon’s refreshing debut is very much a riff on the traditional versus the modern way of South Korean life. It contemplates the difficulties and isolation of the spiritual way of life, in contrast to the more easier and socially acceptable option of materialism. Freedom may be more nourishing for the soul, but is tough on the body: It’s all very well following your heart in your twenties, but the process becomes tougher as the years go by, and when old age looms around the corner. Esom’s former band-members had their flings with music in their twenties, but they have given up on an inner life, swapping it for opportunism – with different degrees of success.

DoP Tae-soo Kim’s images of Seoul are just breathtaking: the city glitters at night, but during daytime it looks rather drab –  just like Miso’s former friends. Shot in fifteen days, with a rather loose script – Go-woon wanted to convey the humour and absurdity during of the shoot. Microhabitat is a little gem: fast moving yet imbued with gentle insight. This intimate picture of a woman’s determination to follow her dreams at all costs is full of humour and irony. AS

MICROHABITAT OPENED THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018

    

  

The Return (2018) | **** London Korean Film Festival

Dir: Malene Choi | Writer: Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen | With Thomas Hwan, Karoline Sofie Lee | Doc | Denmark | 85′

Two Danish-Korean adoptees return for the first time to the country of their birth in search of their origins, in this refreshingly thoughtful and quietly devastating arthouse documentary debut from Malene Choi. Based on her own experiences THE RETURN is a stunningly photographed and touchingly resonant meditation on destiny and identity, nature and nurture. Muted visuals and Philip Nicolai Flindt’s subtle sound design lend a dreamlike quality of mystery and alienation to this contemplative study of two young people uprooted from Denmark, the country that has become their home and where they have grown up, and returned to their original their birth lands. Despite this yearned for homecoming, they somehow feel disorientated and thrown into confusion in the search for their biological parents. Both internalise their feelings into discrete expressions of loss, anxiety and sadness. So locked away is their private grief, that they often admit to feeling nothing, but the trauma clearly lives within them, hidden deep in their souls.

Thomas’s story is particularly harrowing as it emerges during the emotionally-charged first meeting with his birth mother that he was actually conceived after a one night stand. Clearly he is devastated, but remains dignified in front of his mother, suppressing the trauma that slowly seeps out in dramatic physical expressions during a trip around Seoul  – together with Karoline, where they both let off steam by going boating together and enjoy cocktails. For her part Karoline is less emotionally buttoned up but equally traumatised, especially during a meeting with a hospital adviser who tries to help but simply lacks the necessary resources to further the Korean girl’s inquiries. Clearly she is angry, but also disappointed.

Without resorting to sentimentality or even attempting to create a falsely romantic narrative arc, Choi paints a realistic and utterly convincing portrait of two people who cannot go forward until they have gone back – with satisfaction and closure. MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | Now SCREENING DURING London Korean FILM FESTIVAL 2018

French Film Festival UK (2018)

A nationwide festival of recent and classic French film that takes place from 7 November until mid December 2018.

From cult classics such as Alain Delon starrer The Unvanquished (1964), to Jean Luc Godard’s Cannes awarded Image Book (2018) there are 50 films to choose from at various venues all over the UK from London to Edinburgh and Belfast to the provincial cities of Bristol and Dundee.

FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL UK 7 NOVEMBER UNTIL 16 DECEMBER 2018

The House That Jack Built (2018) ****

Writer/Dir: Lars von Trier | Cast: Uma Thurman, Matt Dillon, Riley Keough | Thriller |  Bruno Ganz | 155′

Controversy has always surrounded auteur Lars von Trier and his critically acclaimed work lives up to his reputation as a maverick talent, fuelling fierce debate and attracting attention from his devoted fans. And he is up to his tricks again refusing to be cowed by the controversy that got him ‘persona non grata status’ seven years ago.

This time he offers up the provocative portrait of a serial killer wreaking hell in the 70s world of America’s Pacific North West. THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT confirms the director has no intention of mending his ways, although it’s never quite clear whether he intends to be a mischievous as he appears. That said, he has clearly managed to wind some viewers up with walks out at the Cannes world premiere of the film. And with various allusions to Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao and Idi Amin a mild mannered approach was never going to be the balm needing to heal the wounds of previous damage he caused. 

Anti-Americanism and misogyny are the themes firmly in the forefront of this new and naughty endeavour that has Matt Dillon in the lead role as Jack, a sociopathic criminal who subjects women and kids to a sadistic fate that would put even the Moors murders in the shade, while simultaneously moaning: “why is it always the men’s fault”. The narrative clearly runs contrary to the current polemic over sexual misconduct. Lars was never going to be acquiescent in this regard but his gorefest feels like he’s upping the ante big time! And while there are plenty of sympathisers, there are also the detractors. So the choice is yours.

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT is certainly a film to see, despite its indulgent running time. And it is worth remembering that over the years, the Danish maverick has created some memorable roles for women, assuring Emily Watson a legendary turn in Breaking The Waves, Bjork for Dancer in the Dark, and Charlotte Gainsbourg for Melancholia. In this new outing the victim to feel sorry for is Riley Keough — but von Trier cuts the victim characterisations down to a bare minimum, so as a result we know and feel little for them. They are merely there to serve the narrative’s ploy of putting a spanner in the works of the gender war that is currently raging. 

The film is seen from the perspective of Jack and the hidden voice of his mentor/shrink Verge (Bruno Ganz), who remains in the dark until he finally emerges into the limelight as Dante after some 60 killings have been reported, escorting Jack through the circles of Hell, Divina Comedia style. 

The killing spree is conducted dispassionately by Jack. It kicks off with an deliberately unlikeable motorist (Uma Thurman) who meets her maker in a surprisingly bloodless way, after showing a gross sense of entitlement to Jack, after her car breaks down. Von Trier judiciously leaving the gore to our imagination, we actually feel more empathy with Jack than the woman. The next victims are a recently bereaved widow, then Sofie Grabol and her sons, forced to enjoy a picnic before being unceremoniously ‘taken out’. The director is also clearly taking a swipe at elements of our indifferent and uncaring society that allow victims to go unaided when in peril. The ‘dumb blond’ girlfriend is the next to go, in a killing that mirrors that of Sharon Tate. But each time Lars desire to inflame the recent feminist lash-back is almost overdone and certainly too glaringly obvious to be taken seriously. 

Dillon plays Jack with suave insouciance, boredom even. Nitpicking over details such as bloodstains on the carpet – he has a cleanliness fetish – and as his trail of carnage grows, he experiments with the slowly growing mound of bodies in his cool room.

The mid section of the film is devoted to a treatise on art and its value in society – which is all a bit too arcane to be edifying in the context of a murder movie – and the constant musical motif of Bowie’s ‘Fame’ becomes a tad tiresome after a while. This detour gives nods to Glenn Gould, William Blake, gothic cathedral architecture, the work of Hitler’s favourite architect Albert Speer. A vignette about dessert wine production feels like an echo of the Silence of the Lambs fava beans episode. Ganz’s Verge is a soothing Peter Cook style psychiatrist who assures Jack that his feelings are all consistent with his personality profile as a psycho. JACK’s editor Molly Malene Stensgaard interposes archive material at various salient intervals to add ballast to the ongoing diatribe between Jack and Verge, but there is nothing particularly exciting about cinematographer Manuel Albert Claro’s grainy handheld camera work or choice of visual aesthetic, although he captures the final descent into Hell inventively.

A great deal of the film actually feels quite tedious. JACK is neither a crime procedural or a gripping character study, and when the film’s title is finally fleshed out – quite literally – we are all ready to go home. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 2 NOVEMBER 2018

London Korean Film Festival 2018

Launching its 13th edition, the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF2018) is back with a full programme of films and special events at various arthouse cinemas in the London area. 
Korea is regularly in the world news cycle of late due to some tense international political machinations. This year’s festival moves from this global outlook to an intimate view of the day-to-day lives and struggles of ordinary people. The Regent Street cinema will play host to this year’s Gala Premiere 1 November with Microhabitat Jeon Go-woon’s award-winning drama that follows the trials and tribulations of a female city worker in Seoul. There will also be a chance to see The Return that premiered at Rotterdam Film Festival 2018, and Hong Sang-soo’s Locarno 2018 Best Actor winner Hotel By the River. 
Celebrating its 13th Anniversary LKFF runs from 1- 14 November in London before taking highlights around the country with its annual UK Tour, the festival will feature an in-depth Special Focus entitled A Slice of Everyday Life, along with an exciting mix of UK and International premieres, guests and events across a diverse set of strands; Cinema Now, Women’s Voices, Indie Firepower, Contemporary Classics, Artists Video, Animation and Shorts.

KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | PROGRAMME 

The Devil’s Hand (1943) La Main du Diable | Halloween Classic

Dir: Maurice Tourneur | Writer: Jean-Paul Le Chanois | Cast: Pierre Frenay, Josseline Gaël | Fantasy Horror | France 78′

Jean Cocteau was not the only French director making wartime fantasy films on a limited budget. Jacques Tourneur’s father Maurice (Ship of Lost Men) directs this tightly effective Faustian horror fantasy laced with political undercurrents. Made during the time of the Vichy government, when France was still under German occupation, the film was a subtle attempt to finger those Frenchmen who sold their souls to the Nazis in return for favours, although the narrative is based on Gérard de Nerval’s short story written in 1832.

In a remote mountain hostellerie on the Franco-Italian border, a harried stranger (Pierre Frenay) blows in from the rainy night. All dressed in black, he is the Parisian artist Roland Brissot. He carries a small package and a hunted look. As the evening takes a sinister turn, enhanced by a power cut, the packed dining room is plunged into semi-darkness, and the one-handed painter tells a macabre tragedy. The previous year he had bought a supernatural talisman for the princely sum of a penny. The man who sold it to him was the owner of the famous Melisse restaurant (Noël Roquevert). And the mysterious object looked like a human hand. Overnight he developed extraordinary artistic skill and became a success, both romantically (he marries the demanding beauty Josseline Gaël), and professionally – under the pseudonym of “Maximus Léo,” But there’s a price to pay, not least, because the object comes with a sinister stalker in the shape of a bowler-hatted midget (the devil, played by Pierre Palau with a blood-curdling laugh). And that’s not the end of it all.

Elegantly crafted by Armand Thirard (Les Diaboliques) in alluring black and white, La Main du Diable is endowed with the signature Tourneur shadow play, and this is particularly haunting during the final puppet scene. Andrej Andrejew’s distinctive innovative set design gives the drama a lyrical beauty that sweeps it into the realms of fantasy, despite its realistic setting. Pierre Dumas’ evocative soundtrack drives the intrigue forward as Pierre Frenay plays the classic Tourneur hero, a desperate man struggling against the tide and brought down by his emotional frailty and desire. MT

ON RELEASE AT THE BFI | 3 NOVEMBER 2018

 

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018) Netflix

Dir: Morgan Neville | US Doc | 98′ | With Peter Bogdanovich, Steve Ecclesine, Oja Kodar, Frank Marshall, Joseph McBride, Beatrice Welles, Orson Welles.

Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) is back with a new doc that serves as a useful companion piece to Welles’ rather haphazard metaphor for the madness of the industry that tormented him: The Other Side of the Wind (2018).

Working with footage from the film itself, which started life in 1970, and complementing it with informative interviews and other Wellesian treasures, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead has a spirited and haphazard style that aims to capture the creative butterfly that was the larger than life, Orson Welles (1918-1985).

Those who wonder whether the world needs another Orson Welles documentary will do well to bear in mind that this Netflix affair will reach an audience that may not even have heard of the man and his genius, so the doc will hopefully find a completely new following along with its committed fanbase, amongst its viewership.

The title apparently refers to the pronouncement that Welles once made in reference to those film financiers and ‘powers that be’ who deserted him when he needed their help. And it’s reassuring to know that the film has finally been completed by those who have ultimately leant their support.

Neville has certainly set himself a tricky task but he pulls it off with the usual aplomb. His previous documentaries have been very well received: 20 Feet From Stardom (2013); Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal (2015) and Won’t You Be My Neighbour (2018). And he’s also brought his own creativity to this outing with its inventive camera angles and black & white to ease cohesion with the archive footage. The film’s interviewees were all close friends of Welles: associates Peter Bogdanovich and Henry Jaglom. This documentary’s executive producer Frank Marshall also worked on the Wind shoot and produced the reconstructed film. And there is historian Joseph McBride, who appeared in Wind. Neville’s doc also serves as a tribute to the late Gary Graver, who shot Wind and served as his personal DoP for over a decade, putting his own career and family on the back-burner, in the same way that Leon Vitali dedicated his life to Stanley Kubrick.

The story of the experimental project that was Welles’ main focus for the final 15 years of his life unfolds before us in the velvety black and white sequences. Welles once said that Wind was inspired by his belief in “divine accidents” – and this is one thing that seems to unite the genius with his fellow filmmakers: Every director from Martin Scorsese to William Friedkin reports on these serendipitous moments, and Welles was no different. Wind was repeatedly re-worked and rewritten in a narrative that followed the last day in the life of a veteran film director called Jake Hannaford  (purportedly Welles himself, although he denied it) who was played by John Huston.

Ironically, Peter Bogdanovich started off hero-worshiping Welles, until his own success as a director saw him supporting Welles’ and even offering him accommodation in his own house, with Welles almost outstaying his welcome. But his romantic companion, co-writer and collaborator Oja Kodar, who worked with her paramour on another unfinished project The Deep (1970), remains an enigmatic presence here.

Sadly, Welles’ initial effort to raise finance for Wind remains the most poignant aspect of his endeavour, and the footage of his speech to the AFI in this veiled attempt to garner support, makes for disheartening viewing. The final scenes of the documentary see Welles speculating on the nature of Wind: “maybe it’s just people talking about a movie.”

Neville certainly gives us a great deal of background about Wind in his documentary, but there is very little on the subject of how the film eventually made it to our screens in 2018. And it’s because of this slight flaw in Neville’s film, you might even be excused of thinking that Wind remained a flight of fantasy, rather than a complete feature. Orson Welles and his legacy lives on. MT

ON NETFLIX  | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Edgar Degas: Passion for Perfection (2018) ***

Dir/DoP: David Bickerstaff | 91′ | Art Doc in

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was one of the greatest draftsman of the 19th century.Phil Grabsky’s semi-dramatised documentary reveals the artist’s obsessive experimentation with new techniques. It explores how Degas perfected his craft until blindness overtook him at the end of the First World War. He died aged 83.

Guiding us through the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge which holds the largest Degas collection in Britain, curators and conoscenti show how Degas started his career at the age of 21. After rigorous academic training, he modelled his drawings on the work of another great master Ingrès, who he met through his father’s socials gatherings. A reclusive by nature Degas is pictured (in a filmed cameo by an actor) closeted away in his studio producing a prolific output of paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings, most of which only came to light after his death when art dealer and facilitator of the Impressionist movement Paul Durand-Ruel was tasked with selling the collection. As Degas commented himself: You will realise how much I’ve produced at my death”.

At the beginning of his career Degas worked as a copyist which eventually brought him into contact with Manet in 1864. The art specialists go in to fascinating details about Degas’ masterpieces including The Bellelli Family—an imposing canvas he intended for exhibition in the Salon although it remained unfinished until 1867; Alexander and Bucephalus and The Daughter of Jephthah in 1859–60.  In 1861 we hear how Degas visited an old friend in Normandy where he made many studies of horses. In 1865 he has his first exhibition at the Salon when the jury accepted his painting Scene of War in the Middle Ages, although it gained no critical appeal at the time leading him to submit his horse painting Steeplechase—The Fallen Jockey which signalled his commitment to more contemporary subject matter.

After returning from the Franco Prussian war in 1870, Degas enlisted in the National Guard, where his eyesight was proved to be failing and this was a constant worry to him. He travelled to New Orleans where his brother René lived, he produced The Cotton Office in New Orleans which garnered favorable attention back in France, and was his only work purchased by a museum during his lifetime.

On his return to Paris he was faced with the death of his father and Rene’s accumulating debts forcing him to sell some canvases and paintings he had inherited, and for the first time in his life he was dependent on his own work for income, which proved the making of him and his work with the Impressionists really took off from 1874 onwards, bringing his traditional methods as a history painter to bear on this contemporary subject matter and becoming a classical painter of modern life who is often identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. But it was the physicality of the dancers that interested him, and he spend long hours working with pastels to achieve freshness but at the same depth to these well known works of art. Sharp-tongued in company, he relished the cut and thrust of the debates with his fellow Impressionists and although he is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism he rejected the term, preferring to be called a independent working in a realist style. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation as seen in the famous “In a Cafe” painting. He thought little of the spontaneous “plein-air “paintings of Monet and often came into conflict with him. His conservative social attitudes sat uneasily with the scandal created by the exhibitions, as well as the publicity his colleagues sought. Sculpture became a fascination for Degas as his sight failed him and in 1880 he created the famous Little Dancer of Fourteen Years in wax with complete tutu and ribbons, with permission for the piece to be refashioned in bronze where is appears in the Fitzwilliam amongst other international galleries.

A great collector himself, he was able to buy more painting through sales of his own work, indulging his passion for El Greco, Gauguin and Van Gogh. He idolised the work of Ingrès and his competitor Delacroix. He also developed a passion for photography and often used that to inform his own artwork, and many painters adopt this same technique in portrait painting today.

But after the Louis Dreyfus affair, he withdrew from company being in the “against” camp for the soldier’s release. His misogyny was well documented, he never married and most of the women in his life were paid so he could maintain control over his models and his housekeeper. He eventually stopping working in 1912 after his longtime residence was demolished and he spent his final years trampsing around the Boulevard de Clichy, rejecting help from his family and dying in September 1917. But his memory lives on in own words: “It’s not a matter of what you see, but what you make others see”. MT

EXHIBITION ON SCREEN returns for a sixth season on 6 November 2018

 

 

Made in Prague | Czech Cinema 100th Anniversary

This October marks the 100th year anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia. The celebrations begin with an opening night gala screening of Jan S. Kolár’s silent epic St Wenceslas from 1929; accompanied by a musical ensemble specialising in medieval polyphony.

The 22nd MADE IN PRAGUE Festival showcases the best of contemporary Czech cinema cherry picked from international film festivals’ circuit. It features Barefoot by the Oscar-winning director Jan “Kolya” Sverak; Insects, the legendary filmmaker Jan Svankmajer’s swansong; the UK premiere of Martin Sulik’s drama The Interpreter starring the Oscar-winning director of Closely Observed Trains Jiri Menzel and German star of Toni Erdmann Peter Simonischek, fresh from the 2018 Berlinale. Also screening will be Olmo Omerzu’s Winter Flies, winner of the 2018 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Director’s Prize. Complemented by Vit Klusak’s The White World According to Daliborek, a hilarious stylised documentary portrait of a Czech neo-nazi, and Cervena, Olga Sommerova’s portrait of a vivacious 92-year-old world famous opera singer, the mixture of fiction and documentaries with accompanying debates and Q&A showcases the best of Czech cinema mapping the country’s past and current achievements.

MADE IN PRAGUE | Czech Centre London and other venues across the city, including the Barbican, Design Museum, Regent Street Cinema, Tate Modern, UCL, plus others.

 

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018) **

Dir: Gus Van Sant | Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black, Udo Kier | Biopic | US 113′

Joaquin Phoenix plays a recovering alcoholic artist in Gus Van Sant’s latest drama. And it’s a gruelling journey padded with scenes of fuzzy humour, based on the autobiography of prolific cartoonist John Callahan whose drawings lighten the load. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot chronicles the aftermath of an accident which leaves him quadriplegic, his doodles providing a creative outlet for his bitter frustration and struggle to come off the wagon, in a reduced physical state. On and off screen lover-cum-nurse Annu (Rooney Mara) gives him affectionate support along with John (Joaquin Phoenix) his patron, gay philanthropist Donnie (Jonah Hill). Feelgood but toothless, Don’t Worry is also quite tedious to watch as the frequent flashbacks shows the before and after, Phoenix often wallowing in self-pity and milking his melancholy for all he can get. But there are amusing scenes where he rides his wheelchair in traffic and up skateboard ramps. When it comes to paraplegic comedy dramas, Kills on Wheels (2016) did it better, along with the outstanding Untouchable (2011).

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot tries to be touching and soulful in its portrait of loss and redemption. But despite its strong cast, it just adds insult to injury. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Donkeyote (2018) ***

Dir: Cico Pereira | Spain | Doc | 87′

If you love animal documentaries and nature stories, DONKEYOTE is for you. There’s something endearingly charming about this soothing tale of an elderly shepherd from Andalucia who decides to embark on an pilgrimage with his donkey Gorrion, and a couple of dogs. Filmed in the wild landscapes of Southern Spain by Cico Pereira and his cameraman Julian Schwanitz, it’s a simple story, but an enjoyable one.

Manolo has a traditional life in Southern Spain. He is both ambitious and naive. Against the advice of his doctor, he decides to plan one final journey. From his home in the hillsides near Cadiz, he decides to walk the 2200 mile Trail of Tears in America’s West. Foolhardy he may be, but his positive mental attitude is inspiring. To overcome the obstacle of shipping a donkey with a fear of water, and himself with chronic arthritis and a history of heart problems, is no mean feat.

DONKEYOTE  follows their adventure, and shows that sometimes the journey is more important than the destination, and particularly in this case. Touching, amusing and quietly wonderful, Manolo may be a modern day Don Quixote, but you have to admire his style. MT

SCREENING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE LONDON FROM 23 OCTOBER 2018

DONKEYHOTE 

Nancy (2018) *** DVD release

Dir/Writer: Christina Choe | US Drama | 74′

In this understated study in narcissism downbeat Upstate New York is brought to life by a captivating Andre Riseborough. She plays a woman who thinks she may be have been kidnapped at birth.

Nancy is a compulsive manipulator of the truth, and a game-changer. In a misjudged bid to garner sympathy, she messes with people’s minds. Leaving meetings early, pretending to be ill or even pregnant – all these kind of moves show her to be at best a fantasist, and worst, completely untrustworthy. A slim story but a worthwhile one draws us into its fascinating web as Nancy quietly drops little thoughts into a conversation which ripple out and affect those around her, changing their dynamic in the process while she retreats into the darkness of her own personality.

A frustrated writer, Nancy prefers her cat Paul to her mother Betty (Ann Dowd), who has Parkinson’s Disease. Their relationship had clearly long since broken-down, but when she dies suddenly Nancy decides to contact a couple she sees on TV (J Smith-Cameron and Steve Buscemi) who talk movingly about their daughter disappearing 30 years previously. Nancy takes things further. 

Naturally, the couple want to believe Nancy is their long lost daughter, there’s an undeniable similarity between the photofit of the missing child and how Nancy looks in the present day. They also enjoy her company as she plays to their sympathy exposing her (pseudo) vulnerability and bringing out the woman’s maternal instinct, while Buscemi gives a strong performance as the inquiring father. The doom-laden tone is enforced by Peter Raeburn’s discordant score. This Sundance and Biennale College-supported indie debut is glum but certainly intriguing. MT

ON DVD AND DIGITAL DOWNLOAD 5 NOVEMBER 2018

 

 Utøya – July 22 (2018) ***

Dir: Erik Poppe | Cast: Andrea Berntzen, Aleksander Holmen, Brede Fristad | Thriller | 90′ | Norway

 Utøya 22 seems rather a dismissive title for a film about the tragedy that killed 77 people. Many of them teenagers, on the on the Norwegian island of Utøya, on that fateful date in 2011. But if any director could tell the story with a sensitive way it is certainly Norwegian director Erik Poppe’s whose Oscar hopeful The King’s Choice made the shortlist to represent the country in the 89th Academy Awards. This docudrama vividly recreates the horror and the anguish without sensationalising the horrific events that turned a summer’s day into a living nightmare that went on for 72 minutes, and still continues to haunt the lives of an entire generation of Norwegian youth and those affected. Poppe’s approach is to focus on the victims who were in the midst of enjoying their holidays, but judiciously gives only a passing distant glance to the perpetrator, right-wing extremist Anders Briekvik.

Piecing together direct experiences and interviews with those present, his drama involves characters who are entirely fictitious, so as to spare the families further heartache. What results is  bodyblow of a film. Apart from showing a few bruises and bloody faces, the film focuses on the psychological effects of the onslaught that opens with the bombs exploding on the government buildings in Oslo and then relocates to the island, as the kids desperately flee for cover, huddling in groups in the thickly wooded shorelines. The camera follows teenager Kaya (Andrea Berntzen) who is sharing a tent with her younger sister Emilie (Elli Rhiannon Müller Osbourne). After being separated when gunfire opens, she then rushes through the island trying to find her sibling while giving comfort and support to her friends and along the way until the final desperate moments. Not an easy or particularly enjoyable film to watch in its one-note tone of unremiting tension, but a story well-crafted and atmospherically told – and one you won’t forget easily. MT

BERLINALE FILM PREMIER | ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 OCTOBER 2018

Possum (2018) ****

Dir: Matthew Holness | Cast: Sean Harris, Alun Armstrong | 82′ | UK |

Writer-director Matthew Holness’ impressive feature debut is given considerable resonance by outstanding performances from Sean Harris as a traumatised puppeteer locked in toxic turmoil with his abusive uncle (Alun Armstrong).

Very much genre festival fare and unlikely to appeal to mainstream audiences this low-budget psychological thriller scratches at the edges of horror telling a tale of childhood trauma and abuse revisited on an adult puppeteer Philip (Harris) who desperate to escape the emotional clutches of his noncey uncle Maurice (Armstrong) who still holds him in thrall after decades of abuse following the death of his parents in a fire. In this lugubrious labour of toxic trauma, Philip tries to eradicate his childhood – represented by a spindly, spider-like puppet (the head is an replica of the actor’s) – while perpetually playing out a macabre dance of desperate dysfunction with his uncle. Philip detests Maurice yet can’t live without him: a momentary failure to locate the demon despot in their grimy shared coffin of a crib sends him spinning into full blown psychosis. 

Set in dank and desolate part of the Norfolk marshes this atmospheric tribute to the British nasty fare of the Seventies often feels quite stagey in its interior settings which take place in a decrepit, boarded-up 1930s hovel, but the surrounding locations really bring home what it meant to grow up in an England of second rate secondary modern schools where family members and figures of authority still inspired dread in those whose lives they controlled.

Returning to his childhood home as a 50-year old the outwardly morose and troubled Philip still recalls each painful flinch of his abusive upbringing as fleeting expressions of trauma haunt his pinched face, like passing clouds on a stormy night. His wiry body is contorted and tortured by the terror of his young days; shoulders and hands writhing and gurning in memory of the misery. And we feel for him despite his ghastly appearance and unappealing persona.

Slim of narrative but rich in atmosphere this slow-burning shocker gradually throws up clues to the past in an enigmatic storyline that occasionally feels repetitive in the first two acts despite a meagre running time of 82 minutes. But the final denouement pays off with its gratifying themes of retribution and redemption. 

This splendidly stylised horror outing is shot on 35mm by DoP Kit Fraser, complete with a scary score from the Radiophonic Workshop (which formerly provided the sounded effects for Dr Who – Holness is best know for his TV work). But Possum really belongs to Sea Harris giving him full rein to his flex his considerable talents as one of the best British actors on the contemporary scene. MT 

OUT ON 26 OCTOBER 2018

 

A Woman Captured (2017) ***

Dir.: Bernadett Tuza-Ritter; Documentary; Hungary 2017, 90 min.

Bernadett Tuza-Ritter (Cinetrain: Russian Winter) has certainly achieved something remarkable: her documentary about a Hungarian woman enslaved by an ordinary family is not only moving, but Tuza-Ritter can claim that her film really changed the life of the central character.

We meet Marish, a dishevelled woman of 53 (who looks thirty years older) being woken up early in the morning so she can feed her employer’s menagerie of animals in a backyard of the family home. And this is Europe. Marish has been held in captivity by her boss Eta for over eleven years. Her youngest daughter Vivi escaped the draconian demands of Eta, and lives nearby in the comparative safety of a state orphanage. Without holidays or any time off, Marish is permanently on call to her boss who lives a life of leisure. Tasked with housekeeping and the care of three unruly children, Garish also has to work a daily shift in the factory, giving her boss the monthly wage of 550 Forint to cover her “lodging and food”. Eta makes money out of Marish whenever there is a chance, and insults her into the bargain.. The filmmaker was forced to pay the mercenary Eta 300 Forint a month to gain access to film film Marish – and only under Eta’s strict auspices: Tuza-Ritter was not allowed to film the regular beatings Marish is subjected to in this miserable household. Tuza-Ritter phones the police, but is told that they are unable to take action. In Hungary domestic abuse can only be prosecuted where the victim is related to the aggressor.

To add insult to injury, Marish gets the blame when Eta’s kids break her favourite wine glasses; even the dog Lola is treated with more respect and care than this dejected female servant. Finally, Tuza-Ritter helps Marish to escape to a safe house in a city 200 km away from her tormentor. Although the filmmaker maintains a detached but decent attitude during their nighttime escape from the eta’s premises, Marish is still convinced that she will be betrayed. But when the woman confesses that her real name is Edith, and that Marish was her slave name, we realise that a psychological barrier has been broken. Soon Edith is re-united with her daughter Vivi, who is expecting a baby.

That slavery is alive and well in the EU came as a shock to the director, and will also horrify the audience. Both the police and the social services seem completely unfazed by this parlous situation. What is missing here is an enquiry as to why Marish became a slave in the first place? Marish doesn’t wear chains, so what exactly quantifies her “being held a slave”?  Clearly from the way she talks and behaves, there are indications that Edith has always suffered from low self-esteem and it soon emerges that she has a history of colluding with powerful figures in her life, allowing them to dominate her. She does not appear to have been locked up or in Eta’s house, or indeed, prevented from escaping, so she has clearly ‘acquiesced’ on some level to her imprisonment and cannot therefore technically be classified as a slave. But without knowing anything about her early childhood or upbringing these are only assumptions. It would appear she is just a victim of circumstance who has allowed another human being to take advantage of her for too long.

Tuza-Ritter’s camera is the witness of Edith’s ordeal, and the intimate images are often frightening: Edith is not even allowed to sleep in her own bedroom, but on a couch in the hallway. She is isolated, with no friends or contacts nearby. She is, literally, kept in the dark. A Woman Captured is a brave document, a unique achievement, because the filmmaker took action, when nobody else cared. But whether it’s a testament to modern slavery is questionable. Tuza-Ritter achieves an intensity akin to a Grimm’s fairy-tale, with Eta as the evil witch. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 OCTOBER 2018 | IDFA REVIEW 2017

The Hate You Give (2018) ****

Dir.: George Tillman jr.; Cast: Amanda Steinberg, Lisa Carter, Russell Hornsby, Algen Smith, KJ Apa, Sabrina Carpenter, Common, Anthony Mackie; USA 2018, 133 min.

Director George Tillman jr. (Faster) and his screen writer Audrey Wells have made a brulliant job of adapting the novel The Hate U Give, avoiding clichés and easy answers in this case of another shooting of a black youngster by a white police officer. Instead of solutions, Tillman explores the issues through a teenager representing both communities: she – and other young people – are the victim of a fight they did not chose.

Starr Carter (a brilliant Amanda Steinberg) lives with her family in the black neighbourhood of Garden Heights. Every morning she puts on the uniform of her prestigious prep school and becomes somebody else. Her boyfriend Chris (Apa) and ‘bestie’ Kayleigh (Carpenter) are both white, as are the majority of the students. Starr’s mother Lisa (Hall) has insisted on her choice of school. She wants security for her daughter. Her father Maverick‘Mave’ (Hornsby) is deeply politicised, Black Panther leaflets are all over the house. Starr’s half brother is also very much into his black identity. As a small child, Starr has been the key witness of her classmate’s shooting by the black drug lord (Mackie), who rules Garden Heights with an iron fist. History will soon repeat itself, when Starr is in the car with childhood friend Khalil (Smith) who is shot dead by a white police officer, who mistook a hairbrush for a piece. But, as black officer Carlos (Common) explains to Starr and her father, this is not a simple case because the officer suspected that Khalil was a drug dealer (which he actually was), and reacted in self defence.

When Mave asks Carlos if he would have shot Khalil, the officer nods. “But, if the person in question would have been a white man in a Mercedes, would you have shot too?”, asks Mave. Carlos replies that he would have asked the white man to raise his hands. This double standard is not a question of race, but of tribal law: police officers of all colours are used to dealing with drug lords like the one running the black neighbourhood. It does not matter to them, in the moment of confrontation, that the huge majority of the black population is equally afraid of the drug dealers. Nevertheless, a heated street battle is being fought, and Mave is not only fighting the police, but the black drug dealers, who suspect him of collaborating with the police. In the final analysis, Amanda surmises that hate and violence is not only a question of race.

Stylishly shot on the widescreen and revealing personal close-ups, Steinberg carries the feature with extreme maturity: she is a girl of divided loyalties. And must find a world where she can live in peace with both sides.

Without lecturing, Tillman tries to ask questions. And the audience has to to answer. And there’s no easy answer here, only an acknowledgement that the fault lines run much deeper than the agitators on both sides want to admit. At the same time, The Hate U give is a full-blooded thriller, and in spite of the length, it sustains its suspense. And the real triumph is the marriage of genre aesthetics and articulate political content. AS

NATIONWIDE FROM 22 OCTOBER 2018 | SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The School in the Cloud (2018) **** Warsaw Film Festival 2018

Dir: Jerry Rothwell | Doc | 85′

“Do not limit children to your own learning for they were born in anther time” Rabindranath Tagore

What is the future of education in a networked world? With the words of Tagore ringing in his ears, TED Prize-winning scientist Sugata Mitra installs an unmanned Internet kiosk in a remote Bengali village to pioneer “The School in the Cloud”. As children encounter the Internet for the first time, will they be able to use it to transform their futures? Award-winning documentarian Jerry Rothwell decided to find out in his latest film The School in the Cloud  which examines the ups and downs of Sugata Mitra’s pioneering cloud-based educational model, as the leap from theory to practice proves to be its own fascinating learning curve, both in the developing and the developed world.

Three years in the making – in India and the North East of England – director Jerry Rothwell  (How to Change the World/Sour Grapes) explores the challenges of bringing the Professor Mitra’s vision of giving the next generation the opportunity to create a better and more informed existence for itself. If he’s successful, education will never be the same again. In his tweed suit, shirt and tie, Professor Mitra comes across as a kind and approachable presence. He began his self-organised learning experiments in 1999, when he knocked a hole in the wall of his office in Delhi, India, into a nearby slum and placed an Internet-ready computer there (that went on to become the Hole in the Wall experiment). Some of the children have never had access to the internet. His research had taught him that if children’s minds are allowed to wander in a chaotic fashion, they will crystallise around big ideas. And the experiment was a big success, initially. Children flocked to the computer and taught themselves how to use it. But Sugata wasn’t satisfied with that – he wanted them to be able to pass the same tests as children in private education. By introducing an adult into the mix who offered support and encouragement in much the same way a grandmother does, he found his answer. Both in India and in England, where children are already digital natives, this access to self-learning turns out to be able to change everything. The Indian system of learning tends to focus on stricter right/wrong answers, whereas British children are allowed to be more creative and playful at school. Rothwell’s film is a portrait of an idealist at work, and of an idea that can potentially create positive change for millions of children. But Mitra also has his (British) detractors who make negative comments about the difference in theory and practice of his idea. They talk of “educational colonialism” and “parachuting shiny objects into developing countries, and then hoping for the best”. But Rothwell the first recipient of the Sundance Institute/TED Prize Filmmaker Award in 2013  counters these naysayers: “Mitra is often accused of naivety about the way children learn, but I think the power of his ideas – even if they are utopian – is in challenging education systems that have failed to acknowledge how the internet has changed the world,” says Jerry, “During the film we see both the difficulties of implementing his ideas of self-organised learning environments in remote locations, and their potential for children itching to explore the world.” The children design their own ideal classroom.

Rothwell’s film is enriched by its widescreen footage of the Sunderbans scenery in the local villages of Korakati and Gurjala and and by the children themselves, both in the UK and India, who share their excitement, ideas and lively observations which bring fresh insight into the learning process. The School in the Cloud is a portrait of a positive idealist at work, and of an idea that can potentially create positive change for millions of children. MT

WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 12-21 OCTOBER 2018 | Then at BERTHA DOCHOUSE | FROM 19 OCTOBER 2018 | Q&A with the director on the opening night | International screenings 

Lajko in Space (2018) *** Warsaw Film Festival 2018

LAJKO – GYPSY IN SPACE (LAJKO – CIGANY AZ URBEN)

Dir.: Balazs Lengyel; Cast: Tamas Keresztes, JozsefGyabronka, Tibor Pallfy, Anna Boger, Bohdan Benink; Hungary 2018, 90 min.

Director/co-writer Balazs Lengyel shows no fear: his satire about the first man is Space – of course, a Hungarian, not Gagarin, as claimed by the Soviets – is a relentless attack on Stalinism, but the re-write of history is always funny, even if not always done in the best taste.

Young Lajko, a gypsy growing up in the Hungarian country site, has always been interested in Space travel. Unfortunately, one of his first attempts sends his Mum into space, together with the outdoor toilet. As a young man Lajko (Keresztes) has designed a moored balloon to take him into the stratosphere – but he ignores the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and is shot down by the Red Army. He is the victim of waterboarding, but his torturer has shot through too much money over the previous year, and is put in prison. Lajko can count on the help of his father Florian (Pallfy) and uncle Jeno (Gyabronka), the latter a party functionary. The three are sent to Baku, where the Soviet Space programme is being developed. Lajko has to compete with a Mongolian monk, a Baltic counter-revolutionary and Helga Mengele (Boger) to be the first one in Space. Helga is very upset, that “the good name of her father is by now forgotten”, even though he created ten different prototypes of an Aryan super-woman – of which she is the only survivor. When Brezhnev (Benink) arrives at the Space station, Florian steals his ring, and Jeno falls in love with the Soviet leader, admitting that he is gay for the first time. Lajko finally wins the race to be the first man in Space; meeting his mother there in the process. Needless to say, the beastly Russians put Lajko, Florian and Helga in a work camp (so that Gagarin can claim to be the winner), and poor uncle Jeno is shot dead, having just come to terms with being gay.

This is a romp, sometimes crude, but always enjoyable. DoPGyorgy Reder is very inventive, using different formats for the historical scenes, sometimes speeding up the tempo, like in silent movies. It is obvious that everyone had fun shooting this feature, and Lengyel always manages to keep the careering plot on the road. AS

SCREENING DURING WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL | 12-21 OCTOBER 2018

 

Edie (2018) *** Home Ent release

Dir.: Simon Hunter; Cast: Sheila Hancock, Kevin Guthrie, Amy Mason, Wendy Morgan; UK 2017, 102 min.

Oscillating between embarrassing and clumsy, Simon Hunter plays a tune with another inter-generational dalliance, this one sees a 83-year woman climbing a mountain in the Scottish Highlands, but wastes the great talent of lead Sheila Hancock.

After the death of her tyrannical husband, confined to a wheelchair for thirty odd years of their marriage, his widow Edie (Hancock) is on the verge of being packed off to a care home by her daughter Nancy (Morgan). Their relationship has always been strained so instead Edie decides to fulfil a burning ambition to scale the mountain in the Scottish Highlands, a trip originally planned with her father before he died. Her controlling husband had since managed to scupper the plans.

Leaving a slightly diffident message for her daughter, Edie heads North where she meets young Jonny (Guthrie), who sells her his services as a guide and paraphernalia from his sport shops. But his overbearing girlfriend Fiona (Mason) becomes jealous when Jonny takes a shine to Edie, impressed by her enterprising ambition to conquer one of Scotland’s most challenging peaks (Suilven), to make up for years of marital bitterness and resentment.

In this tale of life-affirming tale of redemption Simon Hunter certainly captures the magical beauty of the Highlands as well as the slightly comic camaraderie between Guthrie and Hancock, who is magnificent as Edie. But there are also some slightly misjudged moments such as when Edie attends a raucous party with Jonny’s loutish friends, made up like a caricature of a much younger woman. The film also verges into the realms of luxury travelogue, when Edie stumbles during a storm into a glamorous ‘hut’ with a blazing fire, and is fed porridge by the silent owner, things start to feel rather over-egged – or maybe over-salted? Which ever way, this is way over the top, even for a mountain drama. AS

Home entertainment | on blu-ray and DVD from 29th October 2018

Dogman (2018) ****

Dir: Matteo Garrone | Ugo Chiti | Adamo Dionisi, Francesco Acquaroli, Edoardo Pesce, Laura Pizzirani | Drama | 120′ | Italy

Matteo Garrone’s terrific revenge thriller returns to his own stamping ground of Caserta with a richly thematic and compulsive exploration of male rivalry in a downtrodden dog eat dog football-playing community barely scratching a living.

Life has always been tough in this neck of the woods, infested by gangland influences: it is a terrain that Garrone knows and describes well in his 2008 feature Gomorrah. A brutal brotherhood controls this bleak beachside wilderness where everyone relies on each other to survive.

At the heart of Dogman is a tour de force turn from actor turned director Marcello Fonte who plays an endearing and diminutive dog grooming supremo who, although popular and kind, has formed a toxic twosome with local hoodlum and sociopath Simone, a thorn in his side who is always dragging him into trouble. Marcello’s wife has cleared off and left him to care for his young daughter Sofia (Alida Baldari Calabria) –  and dog-grooming hardly makes ends meet, so to keep Simone sweet he supplies him with cocaine and courtesies, though secretly he wishes him dead.

Marcello possesses the same innate goodness as Lazzaro in Rohrwacher’s drama that played earlier in the competition line -up. And he’s gifted and patient with the dogs brought into his shop, and in one scene he actually goes out of his way to rescue a chihuahua who has been nearly frozen to death in a botched robbery.

Garrone uses similar ‘good and evil’ themes as Scorsese in his New York street thrillers where one good person is perpetually trying to redeem the others, against the odds, and often at his own expense. Marcello is keen on his friends and is popular and wants to keep it that way, but Simone is a liability and one day will lead him to tragedy.

This is a gritty and violent film and often unbearably so, but there are moments of heart-rending tenderness between his Marcello and his dependants, where tears will certainly well up. Fonte won Best Award at Cannes for his skilful portrayal that switches subtly from sad loner to desperado.

Garrone sets the desolate scene resonantly with his brilliant lighting and inventive camerawork, this time working with DoP Nicolai Bruel, who paints this part of Italy with an almost gothic desperation highlighted by Michele Braga’s mournful musical score. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER | BEST ACTOR AWARD MARCELLO FONTE | CANNES 2018

https://youtu.be/LI2JE_xjAaY

Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018) ****

Dir.: Michael Moore; Documentary, USA 2018, 128′.

Michael Moore has reversed the figures of his earlier documentary feature that focused on the Twin Tower attack Fahrenheit 9/11. 11/9 refers to the date in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected as President of the Unites States of America. This latest is an in-depth analysis of Trump’s past and present but also a future devoid of democracy due to the over-whelming power of the corporations.

And the Democrats don’t get an easy ride in this incendiary examination of US politics: Moore also  rubs Hilary Clinton’s nose into the debacle: on the day before the elections, super-confident, she thanks Beyoncé/Jay Z for their appearance at her rally, and also applauds rappers, whose names she has never heard off. Next comes a reminder that Trump has always played out his corruption and scandals in plain view of the public, but always seems to get away with it. Ditto also appears to have had an inappropriate relationship with his daughter daughter Ivanka – during all stages of child and adulthood. But then again, everyone was made aware of it. Then Moore starts criticising himself: clips from his TV appearance on the Roseanne Barr Show with Trump, the latter praising “Roger & Me”. And Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner even threw a premiere party for Moore’s “Sicko”, because he too liked it so much.

Moore then veers off to his home town of Flint, Michigan (the state Trump won by a whisker). In April 2014, Governor Rick Snyder (R), had called a “State of emergency Management”, dismissing all elected state representatives, and replacing them with his cronies, mostly from the corporate sector – without ever giving any reason for the so-called emergency. Flint got his fresh water from Lake Huron, but Snyder had ordered a new (superfluous) pipeline to be built, and during the time of the construction, water for Flint was pumped from the polluted river which gives the town its name. Thousands of, mainly black, children suffered lead-poisoning, 12 died of Legionnaires disease, but Governor Snyder insisted that the water was safe. Later President Obama visited the stricken town, tasting the water publicly, but only putting his lips to the rim of the glass. Townspeople, who had welcomed his arrival, later damaged a mural in his honour: trust in political institutions in the poorest community of the USA was gone.

Moore concludes with a call to arms, to uphold basic democracy. He also questions whether democracy really exists in the USA, or indeed whether it has ever existed in the across the country. The Snyder example in Flint shows how even the most basic of democratic rights can be circumvented: during a recent TV appearance Trump has already asked the public whether he should  do away with the 2020 election, if a majority of them is in agreement. It seems that this is already a foregone conclusion in Russia and communist China, so why not the USA? For those who don’t support Trump the outlook is grim: Just like Orwell’s Big Brother, Trump urges the people of his country not to always believe what they see and read. Slightly unwieldy, and certainly too long, Fahrenheit 11/9 is still valuable. AS

SCREENING NATIONWIDE FROM OCTOBER 19 2018

Yuva (2018) *** Warsaw Film Festival 2018

Dir/scr: Emre Yeksan | Drama | Turkey. 2018. 119′

From the depths of Southern Anatolia comes this exploration of subsistence in the wild. And although it very much connects with the narrative of the survival for remote communities; in this case, it sees a man trying to disconnect from his human companions in order to pursue life on his own in nature.

YUVA is writer/director Emre Yeksan’s follow-up to Körfez. Set in the heart of a wooded wilderness, Yuva relies on minimal dialogue and an evocative ambient soundtrack to guide us through a sensory rather than plot driven story of Veysel (Kutay Sandikci) who has left his urban past behind, along with his family, to seek solace in nature and the animal kingdom, Veysel is attempting to rewind his own process of evolution as a human, and so make a purer connection with his natural surroundings.

The verdant lushness of the scenery and the extraordinary otherworldly peace and quiet are the most pleasurable elements that Yeksan conveys together with his commendable sound designer and composer Mustafa Avci. Veysal appears out of the undergrowth carrying an injured animal to the base of a tree that will provide an enigmatic touchstone to this experimental drama (along with a red cross painted on the trunk), as the story unfolds. Veysel is clearly at one with his surroundings, hardly uttering a word until he is roused from his relaxed state of mind by his brother Hasan (Eray Cezayirlioglu) who arrives with some groceries and supplies. Clearly these two are close and very fond of one another and this is shown through kind gestures, one to the other. But the suggestive supernatural elements (poetic realist dreamscapes) are never properly developed. The pace soon quickens into something more febrile in the second act when this rural idyll is disturbed by the arrival of builders – the curse of modern day life – and their guns make it clear that Veysel is not welcome. Anyone who lives in an urban setting knows how miserable life becomes once the developers arrive with their schemes to make money, and more importantly noise and disruption, and this is will resonate with a worldwide audience. The coming of these sinister interlopers sees Veysel drawn back into the human sphere from which he has tried to detach himself. Perhaps Yeksan is hinting at a metaphor for a negative political climate, or even just the simple encroachment of family concerns that threaten to cloud our lives when we aim to escape for some respite.

YUVA eschews a traditional narrative and is experimental in nature, working best as a meditation in its woodland habitat, entrancing us with the ethereal sense of place captured by Jakub Giza’s mesmerising camerawork and breathtaking visuals that lull us into a sense of calm. When the ever loudening sound of chainsaws starts to rupture the placid serenity of it all, Veysel’s motivations seem entirely justified in his desire to escape. Yeksan creates a timely and innovative drama that echoes our atavistic human need to connect with nature, and to seek the peace that will contributes to our collective mental health. MT

SCREENING DURING WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL | 12-21 OCTOBER 2018

The Little Drummer Girl (2018) Episodes One & Two ****

Dir: Chan-wook Park | Writer: Michael Lesslie | Michael Shannon, Florence Pugh, Alexander Skarsgard | Episode 1&2 | Thriller | UK

There’s a distinct whiff of James Bond to Park Chan-wook’s glamorous globetrotting spy thriller series coming to the BBC. THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL follows the pursuits of Michael Shannon’s Israeli spymaster Kurtz whose quarry is a cell of Palestinian terrorists targeting the Jewish European diaspora and blowing up a diplomat and his family in the opening scenes. Based on the John Le Carré novel of the title, the first two episodes flip between Munich, London and Greece where gutsy young actor Charlie (a charismatic Florence Pugh) is whisked off her feet by Michel (Alexander Skarsgard) a dangerous stranger she meets on a beach, and who will lead her into Kurtz’ clutches as she learns the arcane art of espionage. Park’s signature style and wicked humour meets John Le Carré’s sophistication and intrigue in this alluringly swish 1970s thriller where each frame is a visual delight. MT

EPISODES ONE & TWO SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018

The Plan that came from the Bottom Up (2018) **** LFF 2018

Dir.: Steve Sprung; Documentary with shop stewards of Lucas Aerospace; Portugal/UK 2018, 212 min.

This film essay, the feature documentary debut of director/writer Steve Sprung, is a British history lesson about about politics, the working class and ecology. Five shop stewards of Lucas Aerospace, who helped to draw up the Lucas Aerospace (L.A.) Shop Steward Committee’s Alternative Corporate Plan in 1976, discuss their motivation, struggle and eventual defeat. The Alternative Corporate Plan was written up after a meeting of 34 Shop Stewards with the then Industry Minister Tony Benn in November 1974, and was called by the Financial Times “the most radical alternative plans ever been drawn up by workers for their company” and nominated for the 1979 Nobel Peace Price.

Lucas Aerospace was a company relaying very much on their armament production, even though it accounted only for just over 50% of the general turnover. In 1974 the company decided to make redundancies, “due to increased international competition”. The Alternative Corporate Plan was an answer, “because it irked the workers that while they could produce Concorde, they were unable to build affordable paraffin heaters for many suffering from the cold in winter”. Staff and manual workers came up with a list of our 150 products, which could replace the military hardware – over 180 organisations had put their proposals forward to the Combine. The argument was that the production of socially more useful goods would also mean that the state would not to have to pay unemployment benefit. The L.A. management rejected the proposals immediately, even though they had admitted that the market for armament products was shrinking. The list of alternative goods was long: it included medical equipment, transport vehicles, improved braking systems, energy conservation, oceanic equipment, and telechiric machines. A cry specific proposal included an expansion of 40% in the production of kidney dialysis machines, which were being manufactured on one of the L.A. sites. The Combine was successful in attracting funding from charitable bodies, which enabled them to set up the Centre for Alternative Industrial Systems (CAITS) at North East London Polytechnic and the Unit for the Development of Alternative Products (UDAP) at Coventry Polytechnic. But after Prime Minister Wilson replaced Benn, and took charge himself of the industry portfolio, he sided with the management of of L.A., and the Combine plan was not even discussed.

Newsreels and documentaries play a big part in recreating the 1970s in the UK which seems a very long time ago. But A Plan is visually dominated by the repeated documentation of the bloody wars L.A. products played such a major part in. The ethical dilemma is so clear that one wonders how successive governments tolerated and even supported a company like L.A.: Between 1971 and 1976, L.A. made a profit of 25 Million £, at the same time, it received grants from Labour/Tory governments worth 10.6. Million £, effectively paying real tax of 470 000 £. But then, today the government supports fossil fuels four times as much as sustainable energy.

The Plan is a reminder that although the black-and-white images seem outdated to us now, the underlying moral bankruptcy of successive government decisions has not changed. Lucas Aerospace doesn’t exist any more, parts of the company were sold off, others went bankrupt. AS

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018   

Cladagh (2018)**** LFF 2018

Dir: Margaret Salmon | Doc | UK | 40′

Starfish, cup coral, langoustine, dolphins, Herring gulls and Gaelic verse: these are a few of Ullapool’s favourite things, along with the limpid seas and emerald hillsides that make this Scottish Highland settlement, warmed by the North Atlantic Drift, such an important port and tourist destination.

CLADAGH is a lyrical portrait of indigenous habitats and species, as well as human interactions with the sea, in and around the remote coastal town in northwest Scotland. But the film is more than just a documentary – it’s a sensory experience that lulls us into the gentle rhythms and the ebb and flow of its maritime way of life that imbues in its inhabitants a natural softness that has sadly disappeared from the urban sprawl. Wandering through the cobbled streets in the June sunshine, children dance on the key-side while older residents take in the glorious sea views. A local school gathers for a ceilidh accompanied by solo musicians, and then back to the shore for an underwater dip in the cool Atlantic where a variety of local sea animals enjoy their unpolluted habitat.

Director Margaret Salmon, who made the hyper realist fantasy drama Eglantine (2016) develops her worthwhile and enchanting filmic forays into the natural world that started with P.S. in 2002, and continued with Everything That Rises Must Converge (2010); Enemies of the Rose (2011); Gibraltar (2013); Pyramid (2014) and Bird (2016), amongst other titles. Very much festival fare, but valuable in their thoughtful exploration of the British Isles, and often further afield. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018

Evelyn (2018)

Dir: Orlando von Einsiedel | UK Doc | 95′

A quietly moving exploration of grief is set in the Highlands of Scotland and the glorious summer seascapes of Cumbria where a family attempt to recover from their loss.

Orlando von Einsiedel’s the documentary debut follows a Oscar nomination for his short film Virunga, and he builds on that experience with something much more intimate and personal and also experimental: with so much grief to process he frequently questions his ability to complete the project given the feelings that surge up during film-making. As such, Evelyn is very much a cathartic experience for Orlando, as well as a testament to tragic bereavement and coming to terms with all.

When his brother, newly diagnosed with schizophrenia and suffering intense depression, took his own life at the age of 18. The eldest of the four, Orlando and his other two siblings have buried the trauma. His parents divorced after completing the family, long before the tragedy happened. Over a decade after the suicide, the family set out on a hiking tour, joined at one point by their rather pompous German father and Evelyn’s two best friends, to reflect on his death and life.

Sometimes when people die we imbue them with qualities they did not possess and this is certainly the case for Evelyn’s father who subtly casts aspersions for what happened on his family – particularly on daughter Gwendolyn, that almost suggests that his son would have survived had he gone to Germany. But on a more positive note, it is Evelyn’s close friends who bring the most warmth and clarity to this family buttoned down by their unreleased grief. Evelyn is a worthwhile and beautifully captured exploration of collective emotional grief.MT

NETFLIX

 

Namdev Bhau in Search of Silence (2018) **** LFF 2018

Dir/Writer: Dar Gai | Cast: Namdev Gurav, Aarya Dave, Zoya Hussain | India | Drama | 84min | Subtitles

Filmed on the widescreen and in intimate close-up by Aditya Varma (Manto), this visually stunning arthouse drama is a simple tale but a transcendent one that will chime with audiences sick and tired of the endless noise and commotion of the modern world. Elderly chauffeur Namdev is at the end of his career and his tether as he slowly goes mental forced to endure the cacophony of Mumbai, one of the noisiest cities in the world. In this stylishly framed low-budget indie Ukrainian-born Dai Gai quickly establishes the cacophony of the city as ambient sounds drift through the house Namdev shares with his extended family. Exhausted by his wife’s endless banter and his brother’s religious chanting, he escapes from the kitchen to the privacy of his taxi, but his regular customers are soon fighting over a fare.

Desperate for calm Namdev packs his wheelie and heads north to the fabled mountain retreat of Silent Valley, where he hopes to find peace at last. However, on arriving in the Himalayas, Namdev discovers ‘silent’ has nothing to do with this busy religious centre where the locals and pilgrims are just as rowdy as back home in Mumbai. The film then takes an intriguing turn into buddy movie territory when Namdev meets a young boy called Aaliq (Dave) who is on the run from his parents. Darkly comic and contemplative, Dar Gai’s well-paced and compelling second outing seems to find gentle humour in every frame as Namdev travels through spectacular landscapes in search of that most prized treasure: Peace. With Andrea Guerra’s beguiling occasional score giving proceedings a Mediterranean twist and sensitive performances from Namdev Gurav and Aarya Dave, the irritating boy who hides a tragic secret, this is a refreshingly beautiful portrait of a man who’s tired of the city but not yet of life. Watching it, you can actually feel the wind blowing through your hair. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 10-21 OCTOBER 2018

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) ***

Writer/Dir: Drew Goddard | Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jeff Bridges, Lewis Pullman | Jan Hamm, Cynthia Erivo, Chris Hemsworth | US Drama | 141′

Drew Goddard moves from a Cabin in the Woods to a hotel straddling Nevada and California in his over-stuffed Neo-noir saved by a dynamite cast. Set in Lake Tahoe hotel during the Nixon era, a bold attempt to tribute Tarantino is laudable but over-ambitious, and although El Royale juggles a fistful of plots in its fractured narrative the result is unwieldy and far too long. The central figure is Jeff Bridges’ Reverend Flynn, a gangster posing as a man of the cloth who has returned to El Royale for his ill-gotten gains, in the shape of a briefcase of dollars, years later. His fellow guests at this jaded establishment with two-way mirrors include an ebullient salesman (Jon Hamm); a mysterious gun-toting femme fatale (Dakota Johnson) and Cynthia Erivo’s brilliant lounge singer who keeps giving forth with those strong-voiced solos which will soon come in handy, plotwise. There’s a seething paranoia abroad reflecting the febrile political era and each character seems locked in their own private hell, not least the timid bell boy (Lewis Pullman’s Miles Miller) as who is the real dark horse of the El Royale. And when the story’s almost done, along comes a cocky Chris Hemsworth channelling Charles Manson in an ill-advised final chunk to the proceedings – he’s determined to get his hands on the loot. It all looks stylish and slick and the acting is superb, yet for all this mystery and money (clearly the budget was huge) there’s no satisfaction to be had in the protracted ending. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 12 October 2018 NATIONWIDE

22 July (2018) ***

Dir.: Paul Greengrass ; Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Jonas Strand Gravli, Jon Oigarden, Hilde Olausson; Norway/Iceland/USA 133 min.

British director/co-writer Paul Greengrass (United 93) imagines what actually happened during the Norwegian tragedy of 22. July 2011, when right-wing nationalist Anders Behring Breivik killed 69 children on the island of Utoya. Earlier in the day, he had already killed eight passers-by with a bomb in the diplomatic quarter of Oslo. The main focus here is aftermath on the island, and Greengrass ends with a moving court scene.

Anders Breivik (Lie) is a narcissistic killer who prepares for his atrocities meticulously – as if the world were already watching him. After the bombs go off near government offices, he sets out for the island of Utoya, where the Youth Section of the Norwegian Labour Party is meeting. After the killing spree Breivik is contained, treating the policemen who arrest him, with cold distain, as if to say “you should be helping me, not putting me in jail”. In prison, Breivik asks for a well-known liberal lawyer, Geir Lippesad (Oigarden), who takes on his defence, even though he is emotionally repelled by his new client. Lippesad was forced to move his children out of their local schools, as fellow parents could not understand him defending a monster like Breivik. The latter had never actually met a single member of the local Norwegian fascist scene. One of its leaders, who had communicated with Breivik via the internet whilst playing video-games (!) describes him in court as a loner, not worthy of being one of the movement’s leaders – whilst also condoning his actions. Breivik’s mother (Olausson) tries to apologise for what has happened, but blames it all on uncontrolled immigration.

After the attack, Greengrass then switches his focus to Viljar (Gravli), who has been close to death after being shot by Breivik, on the island. Learning to walk again, and living in fear of the shrapnel pieces near his spine moving and killing him, he confronts his attacker in a cathartic court scene. Breivik’s isolation and loneliness contrasts sharply with the solidarity of his family and fellow-survivors.

Apart from an over-schematic script, 22. July is laudable largely because Greengrass avoids sensationalism, and concentrates on the personalities of those involved. Lie gives a brilliant performance of the isolated, arrogant and self-controlled killer, who is unable to feel empathy for anybody – apart from himself. DoP Pal Ulrik Rokseth’s images treat the events like a documentary, keeping the audience involved without becoming over-emotional. This portrait of a self-obsessed, human killing machine traces all the ambiguity of his complex personality, without reaching a conclusion. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Austrian Films at the BFI London Film Festival 2018

 

 

AUSTRIAN FILMS BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

Austrian cinema is always a worthwhile presence at the BFI London Film Festival, and this year is no exception with Sudabeh Mortezai’s streetwise drama JOY featuring in the main competition.

JOY (2018) Tuesday 16 & Wednesday 17 October

Sudabeh Mortezai (Macondo, LFF 2014) presents a vital and hugely affecting drama that tackles the vicious cycle of sex trafficking in modern Europe.

ANGELO (2018) Wednesday 17 & Thursday 18 October

The powerful story of Angelo Soliman, a forced Europeanised African who makes his way through Viennese society in the early 18th century without ever belonging.

STYX (2018) Thursday 11 & Saturday 13 October

A professional woman’s solo sailing journey turns into a deadly serious ethical dilemma in this unusual and taut political allegory. (*Germany-Austria co-production)

TWENTY-TWO HOURS  (2018) Tuesday 16 October

Bouchra Khalili’s meditation on revolutionary histories considers the poet Jean Genet’s secret 1970 visit to the United States at the invitation of the Black Panther Party. *Germany-USA-Norway-Austria co-production Screened in conjunction with PROMISED LANDS, directed by Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa. Austria-Germany-Uganda 2018. 19min

YOMEDDINE (2018) Thursday 18, Saturday 20 & Sunday 21 October

Egyptian filmmaker A.B. Shawky makes his feature debut with this utterly unique road movie which charts the friendship between a leper and a young orphan. *Egypt-Austria co-production

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018 

Bisbee 17 (2018) **** LFF 2018

Dir: Robert Greene | Doc | US | 122′

Robert Greene’s documentary sees him working alongside the residents of the former copper-mining town of Bisbee, just 7 miles north of Mexico, as they prepare to put on the “largest group therapy session” in response to an infamous local event that changed this town forever, a hundred years ago. Since then the “town that refused to die” makes a tourist attraction of its disused mines. Bisbee is now home to an assortment of creatives and left-leaning non-conformists, a far cry from its origins during the copper boom.

Accompanied from the opening scene by an ominous score of strings, the film recalls the major event in question which took place on July 12, 1917 when miners on strike against their bosses, the copper companies, were aroused from their beds and taken to the central post office, thence expelled in cattle cars via the desert to New Mexico. Those responsible were fellow citizens who had taken it upon themselves to end the menace they felt the striking workers had become to the town. Bisbee 17 commemorates this tragic historical event now known as the ‘Bisbee Deportation’.

Greene’s outing clearly has a contemporary resonance, although it actually raises more questions than it answers. And while not attempting to provide a definitive history of the episode in question, it never really examines what then happened to the deportees, or how their plight was dealt with by the county’s legal framework. It is more concerned with  personal recollections of how the conflict divided families, friends – the entire local community – as Bisbeans take it in turns to reminisce over who was a loyalist/capitalist and who a protester or socialist.

Interestingly enough, the majority of those striking for higher pay and improved conditions were originally from Mexico and Eastern Europe (all but one of the loyalists was Anglo-Saxon) so it turns out – surprisingly – that there was a quasi-ethnic cleansing element to the conflict. And whether this was a latent cause for the uprising is never examined in depth, as this is by no means an ethnographical study. Fernando Serrano, a young Mexican-American man who had never heard of the deportation before Greene rocked up with his crew, suddenly becomes a central protagonist in the proceedings, playing a Mexican miner. Comparisons soon emerge between his family’s past and the 1917 events, and this gives the documentary emotional texture and offers much food for thought. As the professional film crew collaborates with the locals the endeavour starts to take on a life of its own. The results are both haunting and moving. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10-21 OCTOBER

 

 

Mandy (2018) **

Dir.: Panos Cosmatos; Cast: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache; USA/Belgium 2017, 121 min.

MANDY is a corruscating cosmic ‘boy’s own’ blow-out fuelled by Nicolas Cage’s well-known powers as the hell-raiser in the cultish extravaganza. But that’s about all. Panos Cosmatos dresses up a mundane script with some alarming visual effects driven forward by two dynamite performances. Cage is Red, a lumberjack who shares his woodland cabin with his shop-assistant girlfriend, the etherial Mandy (Riseborough). At night they watch cheesy TV-fiction. On her way back from work one night, Mandy is spotted by Satanic cult leader Jeremiah Sands (Roche), who immediately decides “he has to have her”. Living nearby with his mother and disciples in a ramshackle hut, Jeremiah then abducts Mandy, but when she laughs at his advances (in spite of being drugged), he has her burnt alive, forcing chained-up Red to look on, livid. Whilst Jeremiah can actually summon demons, there’s no matching righteous Red’s fury, who not only turns his skill to making lethal weapons, but is also handy with the chainsaw.

Using coloured filters, DoP Benjamin Loeb tries to pretend that this time-honoured story of a woman being abducted, drugged, tortured and killed has something to do with Art. Cage does his best to give an impersonation of an unleashed male, helping to make this reactionary charade a colossal success at the box-office. Watch it for the thundering score from the late, great Jóhann Jóhannsson. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018  

1945 (2017) ***

Dir: Ferenc Török | Cast: Péter Rudolf, Bence Tasnádi, Tamás Szabó Kimmel, Dóra Sztarenki, Ági Szirtes, József Szarvas | Drama | Hungary 2017 | 91 min

Best known for his 2001 comedy drama Moscow Square, Ferenc Török has continued to hone his skills in TV work in his native Hungary. His latest film is an unsettling war-themed drama that takes place on the Hungarian puszta during the blistering heat of August 1945 where the local chemist is getting ready for his son’s wedding. In the sleepy afternoon torpor, two strange men arrive on the scene – and no one is glad to see them. As news of the Sámuels’ arrival seeps through the streets like a bad odour, these orthodox Jewish men dressed in black walk solemnly behind a horse drawn carriage, where their two wooden boxes – like children’s coffins – conceal a mysterious cargo. Clearly something has happened here that has left a sinister whiff of fear for all concerned, not least because of the local’s poor treatment of their Jewish neighbours during the war years. And as they past re-visits the present, the villagers know exactly why they should be scared.

Meanwhile, preparations for the evening wedding are underway. But the bride Kisrózsi (Dóra Sztarenki) is no virgin – she left her good-looking boyfriend Jancsi (Tamás Szabó Kimmel) to pursue a better offer from Arpad, who owns the profitable chemist store. But Arpad’s mother Anna (Eszter Nagy-Kálózy) has rumbled her and is well aware that Kisrózsi and Jancsi are still lovers. This appears to be a community seething in hatred, mistrust and envy, that comes from the outside and from within as they tolerate the constant strain of Soviet occupation.

The tone is very much like that of a darkly comic Midsommer Murders, as the Samuels’ tale intriguingly unfolds amidst a climate of fear and doom. Török and co-writer Gábor T. Szántó base their narrative on Homecoming, a short story where a guilty village serves as a metaphor for national shame, with each character determined to keep their secret in the face of the enemy they have wronged. DoP Elemér Ragályi’s beguiling black and white visuals recreate the 1940s in a mystery that relies on its ominous atmosphere and the strength of its performances, rather than dialogue, to tell a tale of vengeance and dishonour in post war Hungary.MT

NOW SCREENING NATIONWIDE from 12 October 2018

 

 

Two Plains and a Fancy (2018) LFF 2018

Writers/Dirs: Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn | Cast: Benjamin Crotty, Laetitia Dosch, Marianna McClellan, Maria Cid Avila, Alex Decarli, André Frechette III, Libby Gery, Michael Murphy, Travis Nutting, Kim-Anh Schreiber, Logan Boyles | US Drama | 88′

Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn’s “spa western” is a certainly a whimsical curio. A mannered yet inspired period piece it’s set in the Colorado desert in the late 1890s but has characters that are straight out of modern day Brooklyn and smoke dope and utter lines such as “Do you take American Express?”. Along with Laetitia Dosch, it also has the latest buzzworthy star of the indie circuit Benjamin Crotty – whose short film The Glorious Acceptance of Nicolas Chauvin won the Mantarraya prize at this year’s Locarno.

Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn rose to the public gaze with their debut title L for Leisure which is set 100 years later than Two Plains but seems to feature similar fey characters to this quirky drama which takes place over three days in September 1893, after the start of the so-called ‘Denver Depression’. The film also has the same look as Blazing Saddles, without the laughs or the raciness.

To it’s credit, Two Plains doesn’t take itself seriously. There are some rather odd production inconsistencies which are clearly intentional: the signage along the desert route is all freshly painted and the cast are squeaky clean from their rough ride in the dusty landscape and occasionally speak French, eat saucisson and brie for their lunch and have ridiculous names such as Ozanne Le Perrier (Laetitia Dosch with broad French accent), Alta Maria Sophronia (Marianna McClellan) and Milton Tingling (Benjamin Crotty). After a dip in the first spa waters they encounter, their lunchtime conversation focuses on the supernatural and John Atkinson and Talya Cooper’s Sci-Fi style score suggests an ominous, surreal presence in the locale.

But this never develops into a tangible strand in the oddball narrative and the group carry on in a their dilatory fashion in search of the next spa retreat, their bizarre prandial conversations starting to become more and more irritating: amongst other banal subjects they discuss first world concerns such as back-pain, and whether to conduct a séance – which they eventually do – clearly the writers are taking the Micky out of contemporary creative types. Sophronia leads the candlelit seance with a script that sounds more like a post-yoga meditation exercise than the real McCoy. But that’s all part of the ‘humour’. Two Plains & a Fancy is a jokey experiment of a comedy that will either have you dashing for the exit early or rolling in the aisles. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018

 

Columbus (2017) ****

Dir.: Kogonada; Cast: John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Parker Posey, Michelle Forbes, Rory Culkin; USA 2017, 104 min.

Seoul born director Kogonada is a visual artist known for his documentaries. Columbus is his visually alluring and quietly affecting debut feature exploring the human soul in crisis with great sensitivity and a transcendent feeling of stillness and calm. Set in Columbus, Indiana and underpinned by three fine performances, it is also a love letter to modernist architects Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei and Richard Meier, whose modernist buildings lend an air of cool contemporary splendour to the bland Mid-West.

Jin (John Cho) arrives from Seoul to look after his estranged father who has suffered a stroke the night before delivering a lecture on modernist architecture. Harassed by his editor and irritated by his Korean family commitments, Jin is drawn back in to the complex world of his father’s assistant Eleanor (Posey), a crush from his younger days. To gain some perspective he wanders around the campus where he comes across Casey (Richardson) as young graduate caring for her sick mother. Casey’s friend Gabriel (Culkin), is another young man lost in a void, hiding behind great words but clinging to the past.

Kagonada makes great use of the impressive buildings and the way they elicit a subtle or profound emotional response from their human counterparts in this  unique study in psychogeography, a subject that has been tackled before in documentary form but rarely as a feature. Each shot is a complex study in how the built environment  impacts on the human element as the protagonists react sensitively to the vibes of the mainly glass-fronted structures and the spaces that surround them. 

The two main protagonists seem trapped in their minds, but Casey feels liberated and inspired by some of these remarkable buildings that move her to dance, cry and sing: in this way architecture provides a means of escape from her days worrying about her mother. Jin feels unmoved by the buildings: he is a more pragmatic character but both are trapped in the security of inertia and familiar routine. 

Casey uses her mother as a reason to postpone decisions about her future, and Jin blames his father’s omnipotent presence for his own underachieving, loneliness and his dysfunctional relationship with Eleanor as the narrative’s dramatic arc slowly points to a solution.

DoP Elisha Christian (In Your Eyes) creates an otherworldly reality inviting us in from the outside as the protagonists glide around aimlessly, like fish in a bowl. Sometimes the atmosphere feels eerie as the buildings take over, dominating everything with their commanding presence, dwarfing and deafening the human element. Columbus is unique in its near transcendental approach, and asks for some patience, but rewards the audience with an extraordinary experience.

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE AT ARTHOUSE VENUES. 

Il Postino (1994) **** Dual format release

Dir: Michael Radford | Cast: Philippe Noiret, Mario Troisi, Maria Grazia Cucinotta | Drama

Michael Radford’s masterpiece, Il Postino (The Postman) is a tender tribute to the enduring power of love and friendship garnered critical acclaim and multiple accolades on its release in 1994.

Scripted by Furio Scarpelli together with Anna Pavignano, Massimo Troisi and Michael Radford, the story follows Pablo Neruda’s exile to a tiny island off Italy where, being a high profile figure, he receives such huge quantities of mail – even for 1952 standards – that the post office has to take on extra staff – Ecco Il Postino,

This touching drama is underpinned by a imagined story the sees the exiled Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda (Noiret) retreating to house on an island off the Neapolitan coast. And the shy and poorly educated postman becomes secretly charmed by Neruda (Philippe Noiret/Life and Nothing But) as the two soon form a film friendship, Neruda helping him to win the affections of the enchanting local siren Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta/The World is Not Enough).

Radford’s brilliant casting and the breathtaking seascapes of Southern Italy make this a worthy winner of an Oscar – even though it was for Best Music and Original Dramatic Score. The only tragedy was Troisi’s death soon after filming. He embodies the romantic soul of Italy in a drama that never seems too sentimental, or too beautiful. MT

AVAILABLE ON Blu-ray and DVD from 15 October 2018 courtesy of CultFilms. 

Major Arcana (2018) *** Raindance Film Festival 2018

Dir: Josh Melrod | US | Drama | 82’

A simple back to nature tale but none the worse for that, what MAJOR ARCANA really needs is a shot in the arm – ironic considering one of its central themes is addiction. Josh Melrod’s low budget indie sees a jobbing carpenter Dink (Ujon Tokarski) seek solace back in his home town in Vermont where building a wooden cabin serves as a kind of therapy for his long-term drug and money problems. Serendipity has him meeting up with an ex-girfriend Sierra (Tara Summers) who seems to share his troubled past – and is clearly glad to see him again despite their rather frosty surprise re-encounter which will provide the only spark in this gently smouldering tale. Dink’s father has left him a sizeable chunk of property including 52 acres of land that provides the film’s bosky location and cinematographer Ramsey Fendall’s freshly limpid visuals make best use of the lushly verdant landscape with a river running through it. The only thorn in Dink’s side is an alcoholic mother desperate for cash in this everyday story of countryfolk where life goes on but nothing really happens. MT

RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

https://vimeo.com/273335814

Won’t you be my Neighbor? (2018) **** LFF2018

Dir: Morgan Neville | US | Doc | 94′ | With Bill Clinton, Hilary Clinton, Al Gore, Robert F Kennedy. 

In his latest documentary Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (Twenty Feet from Stardom) looks back on the legacy of US TV presenter Fred Rogers (1926-2003) , whose programmes during the 1950s were popular with young kids, introducing them to a broad educational agenda as well as providing light entertainment. While the nation changed around him, Fred Rogers stood firm in his beliefs about the importance of protecting childhood. And Neville pays tribute to this legacy with the latest in his series of highly engaging, moving documentary portraits of essential American artists.

Looking like a cross between Val Doonican (he donned a different cardy in each episode) and William Rees-Mogg, Fred had a calm and kindly manner in explaining, in an accessible way, contemporary political issues as well as more complex concepts such as love and divorce. He was married with his own children and advocated the government funding of children’s television before a US Senate committee.

Rogers started out as an academic with a background in child development and after ordaining as a Presbyterian minister he headed for a church career, but felt an overriding need to reach out to kids through the medium of television. A pioneer of popular culture, he cared deeply about protecting the emotional needs of the nation’s children. His pre-school programme Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood ran from 1968 – 2001.

His onscreen manner had nothing to do with preachy didacticism. He talked touchingly about loving one’s neighbour and respecting the community. And while it’s easy to sneer about his caring approach and these fluffy ideals, the man comes across as a really genuine character, and buy no means a pseud – unlike Jimmy Saville. Whereas nowadays kid’s attention spans are short, and TV time is precious and expensive – with a need for frequent commercial breaks, Rogers’ programmes had a leisurely pace to them, and a spontaneity that allowed time and space for contemplation, and he always made sure to repeat that his young viewers were ‘loved, and lovable’ just as they were. He created characters such as Captain Friday (who hated change) and his own alter ego Stripey Tiger.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor also engages with the idea that Rogers’ fostered narcissism and a sense of entitlement by doting on his child fans, but this was hardly the case – he was simply at pains to ease their fears and anxieties so they could develop their own sense of self-esteem. In fact, it emerges that Rogers had his own share of heartache, and actually worried about whether his programmes would make a difference to children’s lives in America’s increasingly violent culture. Neville draws on a wealth of archive footage as well as contemporary interviews to create this warm and informative portrait of a remarkable man and his legacy, whether or not you know of this humane and public figure. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018

   

My 20th Century (1989) Bfi Player

Writer/Dir: Ildiko Enyedi | Cast: Dorota Segda, Oleg Yankoskiy, Paulus Manker, Gabor Mate, Peter Andorai | Drama | Hungary/West Germany | 104′ 

Enyedi’s intoxicating sensual concoction trips lightly but engagingly over one of the most fascinating and transformative periods in world history – the dawn of the 20th century, seen from the intriguing feminist perspective of two Eastern Europeans, identical twins Dora and Lili, who are born in a simple country household on the evening Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb in 1880. With technology rapidly advancing, could women’s rights ever hope to keep pace?

The orphaned identical twins will take completely different paths in life to discover a world dominated by men where they both nevertheless manage to thrive through their guile and intelligence. One becomes the enticing courtesan/mistress of Oleg Yankoskiy’s Capitalist Z, the other plays take the road less travelled as a radical revolutionary militant. Dorota Segda plays both women in a delicate tour de force that embraces the different possibilities now open to womenkind in a brave new world where their increased agency offers a sense of hope at the turn of the century. She shows how women can succeed if they really put their mind to it.

Still only 34 at the time, Enyedi’s complex but languid fractured narrative seems to amplify the film’s dramatic potential while DoP Tibor Máthé’s sumptuous visual wizardry pays filmic tribute to cinema itself, with the support from the Hamburg Film Board.

Russian star Oleg Yankovsky (Nostalghia) provides romantic support to both women in the lead male role – his slightly exotic looks adding allure to the convincing love scenes. He plays the enigmatic Z. The magical elan of this fairytale-style is further enhanced by twinkling stars and a tinkly original score from Laszlo Vidovszky.

The thematically rich storyline features a variety of animals: a dog in a laboratory sees a vision of the future; a zoo-bound chimpanzee describes how it came to be captured. There is a definite sense of wonder, euphoria and discovery that reflects the true avant-garde nature of the early 1900s – never has art or culture been so radically ground-breaking in the intervening years.

Imaginative and endlessly fascinating to watch this extraordinary debut won Enyedi the Camera D’Or at Cannes in 1989. She continues to experiment on a more realistic but visionary level with On Body and Soul that won the Golden Bear at Berlinale 2017 and just recently at with the overlong but admirable Story of My Wife (2021). MT

4K restoration of MY 20TH CENTURY made possible by BFI awarding funds from National Lottery.

 

 

 

Tehran Taboo (2017) ****

Dir.: Ali Soozandeh; Animation; Elmira Rafizadeh, Bilal Yasar, Zahra Amir Ebrahimi, Negar Mona Alizadeh, Arash Marandi; Austria/Germany, 2017, 96 min.

First time director Ali Soozandeh shows us the seedy tightly-belted underbelly of life in Tehran, where drugs, illegal sex and all sorts of corruption are still part of a daily routine. Using rotoscoped characters and a mixture of 3D and drawn backgrounds, he creates a vibrant picture of a place full of psychotic men and women punished for their hypocrisy.

The central character is Pari (Rafizadeh), a prostitute who takes her mute son Elias (Yasar) with her to work. The first sequence is symbolic of all what follows: Pari is giving a man a blowjob in the front of the car, whilst Elias is sitting in the back, experimenting with an condom. Suddenly, Pari’s customer spots his daughter on the pavement, she is walking hand-in-hand with a boyfriend. The customer, enraged, shouts at the young man calling him a pervert. He pushes Pari aside, and crashes his car.

Pari is trying in vain to get Elias enrolled at a special needs school. But her attempts are unsuccessful, because her husband is serving a long jail sentence for drug-dealing (“I gave them 20 million to avoid the death penalty, now they want ten million for my freedom”), he refuses to sign the application form and will not allow Pari a divorce. When she asks the clerical Judge Adel to help her, he denies her rights – but finds a nice flat for her where he can visit at his leisure, loving the rough sex she provides. In the apartment block Pari where poses as a nurse, we meet Sara (Ebrahimi), who’d rather work as a teacher than have children with her repressive husband Mohsen. Sara looks after Elias, while Pari uses Judge Abdel to get her son into a school. A third narrative strand involves Donya (Alizadeh), who has a one-night stand with musician/DJ Babak (Marandi) and needs an operation to have her hymen replaced for her marriage the following week. When Pari tries to help both Sara and Donya, she discovers that both women have secrets that will lead to their undoing.

Soozandeh makes great use of mirrors and other reflective backgrounds to show the reality, hiding behind the action in front. A typical example of male society is Sara’s father-in-law, a diabetic, who uses Elias to fetch the hidden chocolate from the shelves. He watches pornographic films in Elias’ presence – but is alert enough to quickly switch the TV channels to the state-controlled news as soon as Sara comes into the room. Although the narrative is sometimes too heavy-handed, Soozandeh succeeds in painting a picture of male debauchery and violence behind the curtain of religious purity. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 OCTOBER 2018

Le Cahier Noir | The Black Book of Father Dinis (2018) *** San Sebastian 2018

Dir: Valeria Sarmiento | Chile | Drama | 113′

Valeria Sarmiento follows her Locarno curio La Telenovela Errante (2017) with a classically-styled lavishly-mounted 18th century drama that follows the petripatetic exploits of an (unknowingly) aristocratic Italian nursemaid Laura (Lou de Laâge) after her employer dies in mysterious circumstances leaving her in sole charge of an infant son Sebastian.

Based on a literary work by Chilean novelist Camile Castelo Branco, and adapted for the screen by Carlos Saboga, this sedate and ambitious affair establishes an air of intrigue and uncertainty with an sinister orchestral score as Laura is hotly pursued by the saturnine  Marquis Lusault (Niels Schneider), who quickly ravages her before rakishly marrying someone of better birth – or so it initially appears – until Laura’s real heritage is revealed by  Stanislas Merhar’s priest with an ill-fitting wig. The drama then takes off across Europe visiting a series of sumptuously decorated stately palaces with little to distinguish whether they’re in France, Italy and England. No expense is spared in the costume department although everyone shares the same sepia-tinted lipstick (including the men).

Gracefully performed by its accomplished ensemble cast, The Black Book is an elegantly rendered potboiler that pays homage to Sarmiento’s late husband Raúl Ruiz, sharing the same sombre pacing as his masterpiece Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) while also referencing Sarmiento’s 2012 Lines of Wellington (prepared by Ruiz) although not its breadth of subject matter. A solid and engaging drama. MT

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 21 – 29 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

School’s Out | l’Heure de la Sortie (2018) **** LFF 2018

 

 

Dir.: Sebastian Marnier; Cast: Laurent Lafitte, Emmanuelle Bercot, Luana Bajrami, Victor Bonnel; France 2018, 103 min.

Sebastian Marnier follows his debut Irreproachable with an impressive adaption of Christophe Dufosse’s novel of the same name. Set in a posh secondary school, it has very much in common with John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos, filmed twice as Village of the Dammed in 1960 and 1996.

Supply teacher Pierre Hoffman (Lafitte) is called to St. Joseph’s College, after his predecessor, Capadis, jumped out of the window during a lesson. Hoffman is soon confronted by a group of six very gifted students who have formed a secret society led by Apoline (Bajrami) and Dimitri (Bonnel). This lot don’t seem concerned about what happened to Capadis; they regularly meet in a disused quarry. to perform daring acts and beat each other up – they seem to be immune to pain. Apoline accuses Hoffman, who is gay, of fancying Dmitri. But this is really to get rid of Hoffman on the grounds of his collection of video tapes recording the group’s activities. One of Hoffman’s fellow teachers, a music instructor and choir mistress called Catherine (Bercot), seems to be the only teacher that understands the group. It emerges that her family were killed in a car accident, while she was driving. Dimitri and his group invade Hoffman’s privacy in revenge for him snooping on them. After the finals, the six hijack a bus in a bid to crash it into the quarry. Hoffman escapes by the skin of his teeth, but the stunning finale gives answers to the many questions which have piled up.

Shot by DoP Romain Carcanada, the visuals have a glacial quality, as if everything was set in a frozen climate, despite the stifling summer heat. But this seems to mimic the icy coolness of the group of six. Hoffman is shown as a tortured soul, detached and lacking in any real identity. Bajrami and Bonnel lead with a maturity well beyond their age in this tense and gripping thriller. AS

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018

 

Crystal Swan | Khrustal (2018) ****

Dir.: Darya Zhuk; Cast: Alina Nasibullina, Yuriy Borisov, Swetlana Anikey, Ivan Mulin, Ilya Kapanets; Belarus/USA/Germany/Russia 2018, 93 min.

Darya Zhuk 1996-set feature debut shows how little Belarus has changed in the intervening years. Alina Nasibullina is the star turn as a disc jockey in Minsk who dreams of emigrating to Chicago, birth place of House Music. Although her performance takes on a farcical form, the comedy here is really gallows humour – vitriolic and bitter.

Velya lives with her museum curator mother (Swetlana Anikey) who like many in the older generation, yearns for the “good old” days on the Soviet block. The freedom they fought for has brought only insecurity. When Law graduate Velya gets sick and tired of the system and her childish and attention seeking boyfriend Alik (Borisov) she forges Visa documents from the US-Embassy in Minsk, somehow managing mess up her (non existent) employment details. The telephone number actually belongs to a family in a traditional factory town in the countryside, so she sets off to put things right. There she comes up against matriarch Alya who is deaf from blowing crystal in the local factory. Her oldest son Stepan (Mulin) takes a shine to Velya who plays along; having paid the phone bill, she is eagerly awaiting a call from the embassy with a glowing character reference. After Stepan rapes her, Velya goes back to Minsk with another lost soul, his younger brother Kostya.(Kapanets). Alik has moved in with her mother. But all is not lost.

Zhuk directs with great verve and energy, mastering the quickly changing narrative with considerable aplomb. Nasibullina is very much a central European version of Cindy Looper, a misfit in a country with a nostalgia for a brutal past. Velya is by no means a heroine, but a vulnerable victim of her rash spontaneity. DoP Carolina Costa avoids dour realism, crafting this flight for freedom with vibrant colours and inventive angles. 

The only black mark is the LFF’s decision to place Crystal Swan in the festival’s “Laugh” strand: a woman’s rape is anything but funny. Perhaps the selection committee, led by a woman, should take note of IMdb, where the film is rightly classified as “Drama”. AS

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10 -21 OCTOBER 2018 | Karlovy Vary 2018

 

 

The Wife (2018) ***

Dir: Bjorn Runge | Cast: Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater | Drama

Bjorn Runge (Happy End) and Jane Anderson’s screen adaptation certainly lacks the teeth of Meg Worlitzer’s acrimonious original – their schematic and conventional approach avoids the novel’s acrimony to bring us just another relationship melodrama despite the screen dynamism of Glen Close and Jonathan Pryce. 

We first meet Joan (Close) and Joe Castleman (Pryce) in 1992 – having just had sex – celebrating his winning the Nobel Prize for literature, they are rolling around in bed like teenagers. It all seems too good to be true – and so it turns out. Their daughter Susannah (Regan) will soon give birth to a son David (Irons) who will fail to outshine his father, in his own writing career. On the flight to Stockholm for the award ceremony, a nagging little voice belonging to journalist/writer Nathaniel Bone (Slater) whispers in his ear, suggesting the great man may have not written the novels by himself. Flashbacks into the life of young Joan (Starke) and Joe (Lloyd) confirm the truth: it was Joan who wrote the whole oeuvre, but in the 1960’s ‘it was easier’ to launch a career as a white, male Jewish genius.

In Stockholm Joe again puts on his charm, trying to seduce young photographer Linnea (Korlof), who could be his grand-daughter. Joan, has seen it all and doesn’t bat an eyelid, reminding him to take his blood pressure tablet, whilst she’s having a long talk with Bone, who’s own research threatens to spill the beans. Joe pays homage to her in a very conventional way in his acceptance speech, ignoring the script the two had agreed between themselves. So naturally, his wife is not amused and leaves  him, setting in motion a dramatic finale where the crux of the matter is once again swept under the carpet.

The topic of female spouses “helping” their husbands to turn out classics is nothing new, Count Tolstoy being a case in point. And closer to home, T.S. Elliot and his wife Vivienne is another example: Elliot later ‘disposed of’ her into a mental hospital, where she died unrecognised. But Runge is eager to show how complicit Joan was in the act of fraud – totally forgetting that this compliance was/is often the only way for women to survive and thrive in society. The female counterpart has always had to carry a huge part of the guilt, be it rape or literary fraud. Whilst the settings of the ‘60s flashbacks are spot on, the endgame in the posh hotel world is false because it deflects from the real conflict. DoP Ulf Brantas tries to outdo Italian cameramen of the 60s, but only succeeds in rehashing the classics. Glenn Close struggles all the time to find a voice, but is submerged by a script which gives her no chance to make her point. A wasted opportunity but an enjoyable romp. MT

ON GENERAL RELASE FROM 28 SEPTEMBER 2018

Dusty and Me (2016) ***

Dir: Betsan Morris Evans | Writer: Rob Isted | Cast: Iain Glen, Luke Newberry, Genevieve Gaunt, Ben Batt, Alan Bentley | UK Comedy Drama |94′

This innocuous enough caper and its spot-on 1970s styling will certainly resonate with the 50 plus crowd, but not sure who it’s aimed at – certainly not adults, but maybe adults with pre- teens?. In the opening scenes Ben Batt channels Reece Shearsmith (League of Gentleman) but Dusty and Me is not *that* sort of comedy – more a comedy of errors – the error being its distinct lack of teeth for a shaggy dog story, The dog in question is actually a Greyhound.

Derek ‘Dusty’ Springfield (Newberry) is a bright working class scholar who’s just broken up from his final term at boarding school in Leeds. Meeting him on the school’s gravel drive is his Sheepskin-jacketed older brother Little Eddie (Batt) in the family Jag. Hopefully his Oxbridge results will jettison him into pastures more promising than the schematic one that lies ahead back home: Chuntering old dad down the pub, mum is a modern day, toned down version of George & Mildred’s Yootha Joyce (you know where I’m coming from, if this was your era).

Footloose and fancy free awaiting the dreaded exam results, the disenfranchised Dusty befriends a Greyhound who runs like the wind, comically naming it Slapper, the two become close buddies. But then Dusty falls for the fragrant Chrissie (Genevieve Gaunt) who’s way out of his league – or so he thinks. The rest you can pretty much guess.

Dusty and Me is a heartwarming tale with a winning score of tunes from back in the day (there could have been a bit more TSOP), and a brash retro aesthetic that lovingly recreates a time when the blue Ford Capri was to die for along with loons, cheesecloth shirts, and scalloped collars. Any everyone spent their Friday night at ‘the pictures’. It’s a cheerful little family film – needing a bit more Vodka in its tonic. MT

NOW OUT ON RELEASE FROM 28 SEPTEMBER 2018

The Gospel According to André (2017) Mubi

Dir: Kate Novacek | US Biopic | 95′

Kate Novacek cuts André Leon Talley rather too much slack in this glowing portrait of the first black fashion editor of Vogue who rose from a modest upbringing in North Carolina to become the driving force of changing the face of fashion in Paris and New York, during the Jim Crowe era. The Gospel According André is very much that, with Talley projecting his own self image and Novacek rarely getting behind it.

Born in 1948, Talley’s grandmother was the abiding influence in his upbringing. Early interest in fashion came during Sunday’s church meetings, “the only time when Afro-American identity was re-affirmed. It was like a fashion show”, says Talley, who was particularly impressed by the hats worn by the female congregation members. An MA at Brown on a scholarship, led Talley to New York in 1974, where he was taken under the wing of Diana Vreeland, then editor of Vogue. He became a regular at Andy Warhol’s Studio 54 “the only person not interested in sex or drugs”. But Talley’s love life is a blank: he is quoted “the work left him little time for a partner”, and he chuckles when recalling how Vreeland was suspicious “that he’d slept with a white woman”. “If only she’d known”. This comment regarding his sexual orientation is a leading one. 

Nearly two metres tall, Talley stands out in any crowd, and his love of capes and kaftans gives him an air of an African prince. His was a meteoric rise through the ranks from Women’s Wear Daily and W between 1975 and 1980, he then became Fashion’s News director at ‘Vogue’ between 1983 and 1987 and its creative Director until 1995 when he moved to Paris for Vogue and W meeting Carl Lagerfeld and Yves St. Laurent. In 1998 he became Vogue’s Editor-at-large until 2013.

‘Operatic best’ describes his taste. He loved Visconti and one of his film-subjects, Sissi but also experimented with Gone With the Wind creating the first black Scarlet O’Hara. He wrote at length about Sandy Crawford’s appearance in a black veil, reminiscent of Jackie Kennedy. We hear a lot from other celebrities like Woopi Goldberg, Diane von Furstenberg and Anna Wintour, but somehow Talley is absent from this portrait – apart from what he wants to give away. Only once does Novack find an emotional moment, when Talley talks about being called “Queen Kong” in Paris; that seems to imply he could only make so many connections in the fashion world by sleeping around. Somehow a true trail-blazer like him deserves a more demanding approach, even if it means re-questioning him. And that would be another film. AS

Now on MUBI

 

Olivier Assayas | Early Films | On Bluray

DISORDER (DÉSORDRE) (1986) ***

Dir.: Olivier Assayas; Cast: Wadeck Stanczak, Ann-Gisel Glass, Lucas Belvaux, Remy Martin, Corinne Dada, Etienne Dacla, Etienne Daho, Philippe Demarle, Juliette Maihe, Simon de Bosse; France 1986, 88 min.

After editing Cahiers du Cinema and writing scripts, among them two for Andre Techiné, Assayas’ debut feature is a playground for lost souls in limbo. Three members of a band, Yvan (Stanczak), Anne (Glass) and Henri (Belvaux, a future director himself) rob a music shop but Yvan loses his nerve and kills the owner. The tone is chaotic and it’s clear that the trio will never be the same again, haunted by their own neurosis, self-doubt and self-obsession. There all react in different ways: Anne is traumatised by the murder; Ivan and Henry go on as if nothing has happened. But Anne soon distances herself from the other two, appalled by their blatant denial. Henri and Yvan get on with the daily running their band. Drummer Xavier (Martin) loses his girl friend band member Gabirel (de Bosse), whilst Ivan falls in love with Cora (Dacla), the manager’s girl friend. Henri is finally overcome by the darkness that has literally defeated him, leaving the rest behind with their doubts, affairs and long phone calls.

What starts as a Bonnie & Clyde drama soon morphs into a classic riff on the soul-searching that would continue to appear in his work: instead of the police (who never appear) we get the inner selves of the protagonists, desperately clinging on to the idyllic days they have left behind in the music shop. Shot in London, Paris and New York, by Assayas’ regular Denis Lenoir (Winter’s Child, Demonlover), whose images are the reflections of the tormented trio, everything rushing by frenetically. Perhaps most memorable are the long sessions in the phone box. Disorder is a modern Dostoyevsky.

WINTER’S CHILD (L’ENFANT DE L’HIVER) (1989) ****

Dir.: Olivier Assayas; Cast: Michel Feller, Clothilde de Bayser, Marie Matheron, Jean-Philippe Escoffey, Anouk Grinberg, Gerard Blain; France 1989, 85 min.

Winter’s Child, the director’s second feature, is a logical follow-up to Disorder. Set in a familiar milieu (the theatre), Assayas once again visits spiritual and emotional stagnation . Stephane (Feller) and Natalie (Matheron) are running out of steam as a couple. Casting around for away to revitalise their relationship they make the mistake of having a child – and this actually makes things worse. Stéhane leaves Natalie during the pregnancy and has a short affair with Sabine (de Bayser), a young set designer. Sabine likes Stéphane, but has just left a passionate relationship with actor Bruno (Escoffey). Sabine shuttles between her two lovers until Bruno rejects her once again, even asking her to leave the theatre so they can be rid of one another, once and for all. This endless chopping and changing goes on until Sabine threatens then with a gun one New Year’s Eve.

Assayas shows how adults are so often prone to emotional immaturity where affairs of the heart are concerned: narcissism predominates, a lack of commitment parades as spontaneity. Natalie’s motherhood at least allows her to progress to adulthood. These characters are brutal and self-pitying at the same time, changing their outlook on life and relationships change as often as their underwear. Winter’s Child would have benefited from the title of the Fassbinder’s first feature: Love is Colder than Death. Assayas certainly makes great progress in the three years between Disorder and Winter’s Child, the latter being an analytical portrait of self-centred emotions, mistaken for love in this brilliant La Ronde of self-deceit. AS

ON BLURAY FROM 8 OCTOBER COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS 

    

Kings of the Road (1976) Bluray release

Dir: Wim Wenders | Cast: Rüdiger Vogler, Hanns Zischler | Drama |

The final part of WIM WENDERS’ loose trilogy of road movies (following on from Alice in the Cities and Wrong Move), KINGS OF THE ROAD has been hailed as one of the best films of the 1970s and remains Wenders’ most remarkable portrait of his own country.

After driving his car at high speed off a road and into a river, losing all his worldly possessions, Robert Lander (Hanns Zischler) hitches a ride with Bruno Winter (Rüdiger Vogler), who travels across Germany’s hinterland repairing projectors in run-down cinemas. Along the way, the two men meet people whose lives are as at odds with the modern world as their own. In attempting to reconcile their past, the two men find themselves increasingly at odds with each other.

KINGS OF THE ROAD is a meditation on the passing of the age of great cinema, an acute study of life in post-war Germany and to this day remains one of Wim Wenders’ most accomplished films.

WINNER – FIPRESCI PRIZE 1976 | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 1976 | RESTORED/REMASTERED IN STUNNING 4K | Commissioned by the Wim Wenders Foundation and supervised by director Wim Wenders

Anchor and Hope (2017) *** London Spanish Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Carlos-Marques Marcet; Cast: Oona Chaplin, Natalia Tena, David Verdaguer, Geraldine Chaplin; UK/Spain 2017, 111 min.

Re-uniting his leads Natalia Tena and David Verdaguer from 10000 KM, director/co-writer Carlos-Marques Marcet offers a modern love story with a twist, set around a houseboat in North London’s canals. Screening during this year’s London Spanish Film Festival this far from  soppy romcom is a barbed tale that proves all is fair in love, for its Eva (O. Chaplin), a 38 year old Salsa teacher who lives with Kat (Tena) on the cramped houseboat, and Roger (Verdaguer), Kat’s boisterous friend and dreadful womaniser, who soon joins the party. Eva uses the death of their cat to fulfil her longing for a child, and with the help of artificial insemination with Roger’s sperm her dream soon comes true. Then Eva’s mum Germaine (G. Chaplin) comes on board and lectures them about the responsibilities of parenthood, since neither of them has a permanent job. But the main problem is that Kat, and to a lesser degree David, want to stay free and unfettered teenagers for life. When Eva loses her baby, she accuses Kat of never wanting to be mother and leaves to stay with Germaine in Barcelona. But her  mother is not very welcoming, and soon we see Eva circling Kat and David on the houseboat like a hungry tiger in this intricate psychology drama. Eva and Kat are the sexual partners; but Kat and David are the spiritual couple, wanting to freewheel forever. While Kat is even more determined to keep the status quo, David, a much softer character behind his macho mask, comes to terms with some aspects of fatherhood. And it is exactly this realisation which drives Eva to despair: sexual orientation is secondary, when it comes to personal commitment and parenthood. Some cuts could benefit this overlong saga but overall Anchor and Hope is a well balanced story that questions how many, often colliding, relationships needs can be fulfilled. The three leads are brilliant, and DoP Dagmar Weaver-Madsen, another team member from 10000 KM, makes great use of the London settings. AS

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON SPANISH FILM WEEKEND 26 – 30 SEPTEMBER 2018

The Little Stranger (2018) ***

Dir.: Lenny Abrahamson; Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Charlotte Rampling, Will Poulter, Liv Hill; UK/Ireland/France 2018, 111 min.

Lenny Abrahamson’s big screen adaption of the Sarah Waters’ Gothic novel, set in rural Warwickshire in 1948, is less a horror yarn more a portrait of Britain just after WWII – though Ole Birkland’s imaginative images of the romantic settings will please genre addicts.

Middle-aged country doctor Faraday (Gleeson) first visited Hundreds Hall, the seat of the aristocratic Ayres family, when he was eight, just after his mother had left her position as maid. Years later he fetches up at the dilapidated country estate to care for Roderick Ayres who has returned from WWII with terrible injuries. With deteriorating mental health, Faraday has him admitted to a psychiatric ward of the newly founded NHS. But there’s lots to be done: teenage maid Betty (Hill) feels unwell – the symptoms may be psycho-somatic, and Roderick’s sister Caroline (Wilson) seems to be spooked by uncanny events, culminating in the friendly family dog pouncing on a little girl who had come to visit. Rampling is now a widowed matriarch and equally obsessed by the secret of her youngest daughter Suky, who died of diphtheria when she was eight. Might she be the Poltergeist behind all the weird goings-on? Faraday is all stuff-upper-lip and scientific, but deep down he cares far more for the fate of the Ayres family – and their property business – than the Ayres himself, who seem not to cling as much to their country seat as Faraday, who falls in love with Caroline – who at first wants nothing more to be taken to London where Faraday has been offered work. But the good doctor wants to posses the stately home with all its trappings – however crumbling – more than the woman.

Lucinda Coxon’s script puts so much focus on Faraday’s losing battle to win over the trappings of Hundreds Hall, like he must have dreamt as a little boy, the tragic events and final denouement rather take us by surprise. And whilst Abrahamson succeeds in the character portrait, this dramatic thrust takes too much away from the horror elements which seem artificial at times. A strange, captivating drama which can’t make up its mind what genre it serves. AS

NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 21 SEPTEMBER 2018
                                 

The Third Wife (2018) ****

Dir.: Ash Mayfair; Cast: Ngyuyen Phuong Tra My, Tran Nu Yen Khe, Thu Huong Maya, Le Vu Long, Nguyen Tranh Tam; Vietnam 2018, 83 min.

Ash Mayfair (aka Nguyen Phuongh Anh) left Vietnam at the age of thirteen to study film at RADA in London and New York. Her debut is a surprisingly mature and meticulous drama that focuses on the many-layered exploitation of the women in a feudal household in late 19th century Vietnam.

May (12 year-old Ngyuen Phuong, no relation to the the filmmaker), is married at the age of fourteen to feudal lord Hung (Long), and has to share their home with his first two wives Ha (Yen Khe) and Xuan (Huong Maya). May soon becomes pregnant and competes with Ha and Xuan to bear a son to the master. Sadly she fails and gives birth to a daughter, Ha saving her life with an impromptu caesarean carried out with a kitchen knife. Gradually May is drawn to Xuan while Hung’s son (Tanh Tam) rebels against his father and his dominating regime: he refuses to touch his child bride Tuyet during their wedding night – dishonouring her in the eyes of her family. The young girl hangs herself on a tree, overlooking the river. Gradually, May becomes accustomed to the male dominated household and closes ranks with Ha and Xuan. In spite of her youth, she is already resigned to a life with no real choices. Lien, one of Ha daughter’s, cuts off her long hair in protest – but her gesture is only symbolic.

DoP Chananun Chotrumgroj’s camerawork is sublime, impressionism dominates, particularly Monet’s paintings spring to mind in a soft haze of pink, yellow and blue; every frame a jewel box, a new adventure. The mournful piano music scored by Ton That An heightens the melancholic narrative; the souls of the women are slowly drowning in beauty. But even though The Third Wife won prizes all over the globe (Toronto, San Sebastian, Minsk, Chicago and Cairo), there is something missing. Compared with most other newcomers, Mayfair seems already to be the finished article: the main message of her feature is resignation and suffering, there is no rebellion. Somehow one does expect a little wildness from a first film – but The Third Wife, has very little spirit in its perfection. It is comfortably executed, like a minor etude, playing out without sharp edges let alone barbed wire. AS

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018

   

Matangi/Maya/M.I.A (2018) ****

Dir.: Stephen Loveridge; Documentary starring M.I.A.; USA/UK 2018, 96 min.

Director Stephen Loveridge’s debut feature documentary is a tour-de-force of struggles, contradictions and art: rarely has a person had to fight so much for personal, political and artistic identity than M.I.A. – born in Hounslow, growing up in war-torn Sri Lanka and coming back to the UK to start a glittering artistic career, only to be de-railed by music industry and mainstream media, who could not handle her outspokenness.

Matanghi ‘Maya’ Arulprasan was born in London to the engineer and soon-to-be Tamil resistance leader Arul and his wife Kala in 1975. The family moved six months later to Sri Lanka, where M.I.A. grew up in a war torn country: The Civil War lasted from 1980 to 2009. Bombs where smuggled covered by toys, and Government soldiers shot at the school M.I.A. was attending. In 1986 Kala moved with her three children to India; and in the same year to London.

M.I.A. attended the Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, and gained a degree in 2000. Being first interested in visual arts and cinema, she later turned to music, creating hits like “Kala” (2007) and “Maya” (2010). But after her visit to Sri Lanka in 2001, she became politicized. The main stream media in the West reported the Civil War as a fight between Tamils (terrorists) against the legal Government – it was in reality a near-genocide of the minority. Not that her family had any pity on her: “You never had the war zone experience” – she was estranged from her own country, and back in London she was taunted as a “Paki”. In 2009 at the Grammy Awards, M..I.A was nine months pregnant, and commented that her interview in a newspaper was  “too much about me”. To which the journalist replied: “You are the first to say this. People mostly want it to be about them”. A year later, further controversy occurred after the publication of a high-budget music video “Born Free”, which showed the rounding up of white boys with red hair, who would later be shot in the head. NY Times Magazine Lynn Hirschberg raved about the video originally, but later was very critical, misquoting M.I.A.  And at the Half-Time at Super Bowl 2012, Maya was appearing with Madonna, giving the nation the middle-finger, after being angered by Madonna’s treatment as sexist: before she went on stage. She had to change her outfit after complaints by male managers of the event. The NFL (National Football League) sued M.I.A. for 16 million, the law suit was settled later in private. Her marriage to Benjamin Bronfman (a member of the Lehman family) lasted six years until 2012, the couple had a child. M.I.A. commented after the split “who Ben is, on paper, sounds more powerful than who I am, because of where he comes from”.

The documentary is book-ended by the music video “Borders” featuring refugees and migrants. It’s not a hagiography – Loveridge does not paint M.I.A. as a victim, but as a political artist, the overlapping borders between art and politics causing friction. And M.I.A.’s approach is not always the most sensible – but how could anyone be balanced and adjusted growing up in a civil war, one side led by your father? Loveridge directs with empathy, trying to do his subject justice, without losing all detachment. Overall Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. is not only substantial, but very entertaining. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 21 SEPTEMBER 2018

The Comfort of Strangers (1990) **** Dual Format release

Dir: Paul Schrader | Writer: Harold Pinter | Cast: Christopher Walken, Natasha Richardson, Helen Mirren, Rupert Everett | US Thriller | 104′

Perhaps better named ‘Never Trust a Stranger’ this unsettling cult thriller sees Colin (Everett) and Mary (Richardson) head to Venice to spice up their jaded sex life. But the trip will also lead to tragedy putting an end to the sensual piquancy they hoped for.

Harold Pinter wrote a winning script that explores the more exotic avenues of sexuality through the couple’s chance meeting with a generous but often brutally playful aristocratic Robert (Walken) and his submissive wife Carol (Mirren). The sultry Venetian ambiance lulls them into a devil may care sense of adventure as they endure a bizarre evening with this strange couple in their magnificent palazzo after which Colin and Mary discover a new zest for each other that melds with obliging uneasiness to comply with Robert’s wishes. Not put off by this second encounter, they surrender to a third get together with devastating consequences. There is seemingly no limit to their naivity which can only be put down to a distinct lack of judgement, and a foolhardiness resulting from their innate English politeness. Schrader’s gracefully paced slow-burner exerts a beguiling yet sinister torque on the viewer, while impressive performances make for an engrossing if unsettling watch, amplified, in hindsight, by Richardson’s untimely death less than a decade later. This is a stifling erotic thriller enriched by Dante Spinotti’s camerawork surrounding us in the richly torpid environment that is Venice in Summer, Gianni Quaranta’s sensuous sets showcasing scenes of stultifying horror. MT

OUT ON DUAL FORMAT FROM 24 SEPTEMBER 2018 | BFI releases are available from all good home entertainment retailers or by mail order from the BFI Shop Tel: 020 7815 1350 or online at www.bfi.org.uk/shop

l’Année dernière a Marienbad (1961) Bluray DVD and digital download

Dir.: Alain Resnais; Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff; France/Italy 1961, 94 min

Alain Resnais co-founded the Nouveau Roman movement in the early 1950s going on to win the Palme d’Or with this stylishly somnambulist drama scripted by Alain Robbe-Grillet.

In a splendid Bohemian villa, gorgeously attired guests are enjoying an  languorous cocktail party. A young woman (Delphine Seyrig) is approached by a man (Albertazzi), who wants to elope with her. Apparently they met at the same place the previous year, had an affair, and she let him to believe they would run away together. But this woman is already spoken for by another lover (Pitoeff) who tries to intervene, without success.

The setting is luxurious, treasures and works of art dominating every shot, but the sinister organ music by Francis Seyrig references the doom that lies ahead. Our elegant couple sashay around languidly as if intoxicated by the allure of their sublimely dreamlike surroundings, the enigma of their relationship echoing all around as they ignore the world outside. This soigné world of treasures and culture would soon go up in flames, like the victims of the holocaust.

Resnais filmed at Schleissheim and Nymphenburg castles, built by Ludwig II the King of Bavaria not far from the former Concentration Camp Dachau. The actor Françoise Spira (who would commit suicide at the age of 36), used her 8mm camera to capture “the shooting of Last Year in Marienbad“. Among the material (lost for many decades), where shots of the actors and crew visiting the remains of the concentration camp. Whilst Spira did not shoot inside the camp, her images show the complete indolence of the German population living nearby, who were completely unfazed by the mass murder happening in their midst. When the 8 mm material was re-discovered, German director Volker Schloendorff (who had been a mere second-assistant director during the shooting of Last Year), re-edited the material and added a commentary. The historic implications are clear. Resnais and DoP Sacha Vierny tried to re-create the shots of their famous documentary Nuit et Brouillard. And whilst Resnais’ contemporary comment (“Could I direct this feature whilst the Algerian War was going on?”) reflects his way of of thinking, the highly-stylised pre-WWII atmosphere in Europe not only dominates throughout the drama but reflects on Resnais’ own role as a pure connoisseur of culture when he arrived in Paris in 1940. He was a by-stander during the German occupation, until visits to Austria and Germany “left me no chance, and it became clear why the faces of the French police during the deportations where eradicated  in films and photos”.

Far from being an artificial work of art for the sake of it, Last Year is very much in line with Resnais’ output of the time, set between Hiroshima mon Amour (1959) and La Guerre est Finie (1966). WWII and The Spanish Civil War are shown from a personal angle, and Last Year is really a study of denial and ignorance, which would lead to the outbreak of both the conflicts. The gorgeous aesthetic – however hypnotising –  it is a metaphor for the apathy of a world which is about to be obliterated. AS

NOW AVAILABLE ON BLURAY, DVD AND DIGITAL DOWNLOAD COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL

Extras

New: ‘RESNAIS and ROBBE-GRILLET – The wanderers of imagination’

Interview with Film Historian Ginette Vincendeau

2 short films by Alain Resnais: ‘THE STYRENE’S SONG’ and ‘ALL THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD’

‘In the Labyrinth of Marienbad’

Restored Trailer

BD only: Documentary on Alain Robbe-Grillet

ON BLURAY COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL FROM 17 SEPTEMBER 2018 

 

Eye of the Needle (1981) *** Bluray release

Dir: Richard Marquand | Cast: Donald Sutherland, Kate Nelligan, Christopher Cazenove, | Action Drama | UK |

EYE OF THE NEEDLE is an ambitious wartime spy thriller set on the Isle of Mull and based on Ken Follett’s novel adapted for the screen by Stanley Mann. It was one of several big screen outings made by the British TV director Richard Marquand along with Jagged Edge and Return of the Jedi.

Evergreen themes of passion vs marital allegiance are bought sharply into focus when a stranger arrives on the remote Scottish Island en route to Germany with secrets that will stop the D-Day Invasion. Donald Sutherland’s ruthless spy is the outsider who inveigles himself into the household of Lucy (Kate Nelligan) and her ex-RAF husband David (Christopher Cazenove) who is wheelchair bound after a car accident pictured in the early scenes in an idyllic English countryside. But can illicit passion survive the harsh realities of war? This is a gripping and energetic affair, with appealing performances from Cazenove and Nelligan as the conflicted couple, but somehow Donald Sutherland never feels attractive enough to appeal to this lonely woman, and despite his best efforts to bring charisma to the role, he just remains a weirdly unlikeable psychopath.

After a brief prelude in the summer of 1940, Sutherland’s unsavoury German spy called Faber -”Needle” is his codename – finds out that the Allied invasion of Europe will take place in Normandy. But while he’s about to relay this information to his superiors he is shipwrecked on Storm Island (Mull) and rescued by Lucy and David, who is threatened by his steely presence in their family home.  Meanwhile, Faber goes straight for the jugular when he realises that the couple’s marriage is in trouble largely due to David’s feelings of inadequacy, and it’s not longer before he has cast a spell over Lucy with a combination of his powerful persona and bedroom skills. Their passionate affair then becomes the central focus, the spy story taking a back seat with its rather inevitable and unsurprising showdown as Lucy comes to her senses – and there’s nothing like a drab morning in Scotland for staging a wake-up call.

But it’s Kate Nelligan who you’ll remember, nearly three decades after the film’s initial release. It’s a shame her feature film career never really went further than TV work because she brings a remarkable tenderness to her role as Lucy. As war romance thrillers go, Richard Marquand certainly made an impressionable one. MT

OUT ON DUAL FORMAT FROMT 24 SEPTEMBER 2018 | BFI releases are available from all good home entertainment retailers or by mail order from the BFI Shop Tel: 020 7815 1350 or online at www.bfi.org.uk/shop

https://youtu.be/tZTWyNrWkqk

Faces, Places (2017) ***

IMG_3618Dir: Agnes Varda, JR | Doc | French/Belgian | 91min

The diminutive Agnès Varda comes across as a warm social animal at the ripe age of 89.  Collaborating for the first time ever with another photographer, the Ali G lookalike and French creative force JR – possibly for his able assistance and van driving skills – the pair embark on a tour of France, not just to take pretty pictures, but as a tribute to the people they meet along the way. Travelling south from the Northern mining towns to the Midi and Savoie, their aim is to record the memory of ordinary citizens by pasting their oversized photographs for posterity, on old houses and monuments.

JR’s van is painted to look like an enormous camera, and contains a photo-booth that churns out the large photographic prints. It’s a clever idea and one that generates enormous pleasure all round. By the end of their journey, Varda will even have her toes and eyes emblazed on road tanks waggons, to carry her adventure forward. Through this interchange of photographs and conversations with locals, they visit the small towns of Bonnieux, Pirou, St Aubin and Sainte Marguerite where in conversation with farmers, postmen, waitresses and dockworkers Varda builds a special portrait of contemporary France that’s also frank and sometimes even controversial along the lines of: ‘why don’t more women drive heavy goods vehicles’, or, ‘should a goat always keep its horns?’.

Varda still has a keen eye, even though she now suffers macular degeneration and has to undergo painful regular hospital injections. Claiming that ‘chance’ has always been her best assistant she clearly has a positive view of life and reminisces over her industry friends: there is Henri Cartier Bresson and his wife Marine Franke, whose graves we visit, and Guy Bourdin whose photo ends up on a beach monument. And despite happy memories of her friendship with Jean Luc Godard, when turning up at his house for an invitation to tea, the veteran director churlishly fails to appear. MT

NATIONWIDE FROM 21 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

The Captain (2018) Der Hauptmann ****

Writer/Dir: Robert Schwentke | Cast: Max Hubacher, Milan Peschel, Frederick Lau, Waldemar Kobus | Wartime Thriller | 118′

Best known for Divergent and The Time Traveler’s Wife, Robert Schwentke’s first German-language feature for 15 years is a shocking depiction of the dark recesses of the human mind when left to its own devices after emotional trauma has robbed it of all decency.

This gruellingly uncomfortable watch is told through the real-life story of a young German soldier who deserts his unit during the last knockings of the Second World War when he assume the rights but not the responsibilities of of a high-ranking official whose guise he assumes after a chance discovery.

We meet Willi Herold (Hubacker) trudging laboriously through a widescreen rolling landscape in search of something to eat. Mud-splattered and worn down after hiding in the roots of a tree after his chase through the forrest that is straight out of Jan Nemec’s Diamonds of the Night. Herold is now desperately looking for something to eat. What he finds is a suitcase containing the pristine uniform of a Nazi captain. Confidently assuming this new guise complete with monocle, Herold goes on to command a motley crew of survivors on an odyssey into the nadir of destruction and debauchery.

Far from Noirish this startlingly lit arthouse shocker takes time in establishing its horrific storyline as Private Herold transforms into an emotionally detached psychopathic killer. A hauntingly spare score, jagged angles and claustrophobic interiors echo German Expressionism at its finest as the camera leers down on Gothic townscapes and cowers up at the frightening faces of these demonic deserters at the crumbling of the Third Reich.

A dynamic cast of Germany actors are led by the diminutive Max Hubacher channelling Bob Hoskins in Long Good Friday with touches of Daniel Craig. After subjugation, he discovers domination. And he likes it. Barking orders at his subordinates and giving his hostages the full two barrels, the tension gradually mounts as he convinces everyone he’s taking order from the Führer himself. Milan Peschel plays his adjutant, calmly obeying him but secretly despising him. There’s a madcap quality at play here, although realism dominates in the dialogue and acting.

The Captain must surely be the definitive anti-war film with its over-arching themes of futility and gratuitous violence and the final scenes shows British complicity in the act of war, but not a drop of blood is ever shed. Chillingly devoid of genuine camaraderie save that of the togetherness of joint slaughter this is an exquisitely stylish, gratuitously violent, quintessentially German absurdist parody with its homage to The Night Porter in the deranged denouement. MT

In UK cinemas from 21 September 2018

11 Films to See at the BFI London Film Festival 2018

 

The lineup for the 2018 BFI London Film Festival has been announced, and the public box office is open. The 12-day festival will show over 225 feature-length films from all over the globe – so here are some of the best we’ve seen from this year’s international festival circuit.

WILD LIFE (2018)

A teenage boy experiences the breakdown of his parents’ marriage in Paul Dano’s crisp coming of age family drama, set in 1960s Montana, and based on Richard Ford’s novel. Although once or twice veering into melodrama, actor turned filmmaker Dano maintains impressive control over his sleek and very lucid first film which is anchored by three masterful performances, and sees a young family disintegrate after the husband loses his job. WILDLIFE has a great deal in common with Retribution Road (2008), with its similar counterpoint of aspirational hope for a couple starting out on their life in a new town – in this case Great Falls, Montana. But here the perspective is very different – in Wildlife, the entire experience is seen from the unique perspective of a pubescent boy, Joe, played thoughtfully by young Australian actor Ed Oxenbould (The Visit).

WOMAN AT WAR (2018) – SACD Winner, Cannes Film Festival 2018

Benedict Erlingsson’s follow-up to Of Horses and Men is a lively, often funny eco-warrior drama that follows a single woman taking on the state of Iceland with surprising results. Lead actress Haldora Geirhardsdottir has an athletic schedule, running and hiding in the countryside, with helicopters and drones circling overhead. With a magnificent twist at the end, Woman at War doesn’t pull its punches: There are shades of Aki Kaurismaki, the dead pan humour taking away some of the tension of the countryside hunt for Halla. And Erlingsson makes a refreshing break from tradition in the super hero genre by casting a middle-aged woman, who is also super-fit, in the central role.

THE FAVOURITE (2018) Best Actress, Olivia Colman, Venice 2018.

The Favourite is going to be a firm favourite with mainstream audiences and cineastes alike. This latest arthouse drama is his first to be written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara who bring their English sensibilities to this quixotic Baroque satire that distills the essence of Kubrick, Greenaway and Molière in an irreverent and ravishingly witty metaphor for women’s treachery. Set around 1710 during the final moments of Queen Annes’s reign it presents an artful female centric view of courtly life seen from the unique perspective of three remarkable women while on the battlefields England is at war with the French. Despite its period setting The Favourite coins a world with exactly the same credentials as that of Brexit and Trump.

SUNSET – FIPRESCI Prize Venice 2018 

Laszlo Nemes follows his Oscar-winning triumph Son Of Saul with another fraught and achingly romantic fragment of the past again captured through his voyeuristic camera that traces the febrile events leading up to the shooting of Emperor Franz Ferdinand that changed the world forever Set in Budapest between 1913 and the outbreak of the First World War, Sunset reveals a labyrinth of enigma, intrigue, hostility, greed and lust as the central character played by Juli Jakab (Son of Saul) guides us through scenes of ravishing elegance and cataclysmic violence. What seems utter chaos gradually becomes more clear as the spiderweb is infiltrated. Nemes pays homage to the late Gabor Body whose Narcissus and Psyche, are the obvious touchstones to Sunset. On an historical level, Mathias Erdely’s images conjure up the fin-de-siècle fragility in the same way as Gabor’s masterpieces. 

BORDER – Winner, Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2018 

BORDER is one of those bracingly original films. Melding fantasy and folklore while teetering on the edge of Gothic horror, it manages to be cleverly convincing and unbelievably weird at the same time. Fraught with undercurrents of sexual identity and self-realisation this gruesome rites of passage fable is another fabulous story with enduring appeal for the arthouse crowd and diehard fans of low key horror. Based on a short story by Let the Right One In creator John Ajvide Lindqvist it is Ali Abbasi’s follow up to Shelley and his first film with writing partner Isabella Ekloff. Abbasi masterfully manages the subtle strands of his storyline while keeping the tension taut and a mischievous humour bubbling under the surface.

DOGMAN Best Actor, Marcello Forte, Cannes 2018 | Palm Dog Winner 2018 

Matteo Garrone’s terrific revenge thriller returns to the filmmaker’s own stamping ground of Caserta with a richly thematic and compulsive exploration of male rivalry and belonging in a downtrodden, criminal-infested, football-playing community scratching a living in a seaside backwater. Life has always been tough in this neck of the woods, infested by gangland influences: it is a terrain that Garrone knows and describes well in his 2008 feature Gomorrah. A brutal brotherhood controls this bleak coastal wilderness where everyone relies on each other to survive. Dogman a gritty and violent film and often unbearably so, but there are moments of heart-rending tenderness – between his Marcello and his doggy dependants – where tears will certainly well up. Fonte won Best Award at Cannes for his skilful portrayal that switches subtly from sad loner to daring desperado.

MADELINE’S MADELINE  

Josephine Decker’s inventive, impressionistic dramas – Butter on the Latch (2013) /Though Wast Mild and Lovely (2014) are an acquired taste but one that marks her out as a distinctive female voice on the American indie circuit. And here she is at Sundance again with a multi-layered mother and daughter tale that is probably her best feature so far. With a stunning central performance from newcomer Helena Howard and a dash of cinematic chutzpah that sends this soaring, Madeline’s Madeline is a thing of beauty – intoxicating to watch, compellingly chaotic with a potently emotional storyline.

MUSEUM – Best Script Berlinale 2018

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ follow-up to his punchy debut Guëros, sees two wayward young Mexicans from Satellite City robbing the local archeological museum of its Mayan  treasures – simply out of boredom. MUSEUM is an offbeat but strangely captivating drama that gradually gets more entertaining, although it never quite feels completely satisfying, despite some stunningly inventive sequences and three convincing performances from Gael Garcia Bernal, Simon Russell Beale and Alfredo Castro (The Club). It’s largely down to local Mexican incompetence that these two amateurish dudes (Bernal/Ortizgris) get away with their heist in the first place. But what starts as a so-so domestic drama with the same aesthetic as No!, slowly starts to sizzle with suspense as the director deftly manages the film’s tonal shifts to surprise and even delight us – this is a film that deserves a watch for its sheer wakiness and inventive chutzpah. 

IN FABRIC 

Impeccable red talons slide a flick knife across a box to reveal its contours, a beautiful silky dress that can kill. Peter Strickland’s latest, highly-anticipated oddball feature again stars Sidse Babett Knudsen (The Duke of Burgundy) in a haunting ghost story that follows the fate of this bedevilled garment as it passes from owner to owner, with tragic consequences against the backdrop of the winter sales in a busy department store. This is a gem of a giallo with Strickland’s signature soundscape dominating, just as it did in Berberian Sound Studio. 

THE WILD PEAR TREE – Palme d’Or, Cannes 2018 

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s long-awaited follow-up to Winter Sleep melds his classic themes of family, fate and self-realisation into a leisurely and immersive 3-hour narrative that won him the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes. This is a sumptuous, visual treat to savour but you’ll never actually see a pear tree. 

THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD (2018)

There should be a sub-genre dedicated to films about the multi-talented force that was Orson Welles. Here Morgan Neville (Best of Enemies) has his turn with a focus on the final fifteen years of the director Welles as he pins his Hollywood comeback on a film called The Other Side of the Wind, a film within a film sees an ageing director trying to complete his final oeuvre. Welles’ film starring John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich was a hotchpotch of brilliance and tedium, in equal parts. Neville’s doc offers new insight into the creative legend with clarity and charismatic flourishes that would make Welles turn in his grave…with approval. MT

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

AQUARELA: Victor Kossakovsky, Eicca Toppinen; BEEN SO LONG: Tinge Krishnan, Michaela Coel, George Mackay, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, Amanda Jenks; FAHRENHEIT 11/9: Michael Moore; THE HATE U GIVE: George Tillman Jr, Amandla Stenberg, Angie Thomas; MAKE ME UP: Rachel Maclean; OUT OF BLUE: Carol Morley, Patricia Clarkson; PETERLOO: Mike Leigh; RAFIKI: Wanuri Kahiu; THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD: Peter Jackson 

OFFICIAL COMPETITION

BIRDS OF PASSAGE: Ciro Guerra, David Gallego; DESTROYER: Karyn Kusama; HAPPY AS LAZZARO: Alice Rohrwacher; HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD.: Ben Wheatley; IN FABRIC: Peter Strickland; JOY: Sudabeh Mortezai; THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN: David Lowery; SHADOW: Zhao Xiaoding; SUNSET: László Nemes; TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG: Dominga Sotomayor

FIRST FEATURE COMPETITION

THE CHAMBERMAID: Lila Avilés; THE DAY I LOST MY SHADOW: Soudade Kaadan; HOLIDAY: Isabella Eklöf; JOURNEY TO A MOTHER’S ROOM: Celia Rico Clavellino; ONLY YOU: Harry Wootliff; RAY & LIZ: Richard Billingham; SONI: Ivan Ayr; WILDLIFE: Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

DREAM AWAY: Marouan Omara, Johanna Domke; EVELYN: Orlando von Einsiedel; JOHN MCENROE – IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION: Julien Faraut; THE PLAN THAT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM UP: Steve Sprung; PUTIN’S WITNESSES: Vitaly Mansky; THE RAFT: Marcus Lindeen; THEATRE OF WAR: Lola Arias, David Jackson, Sukrim Rai; WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD’S ON FIRE?: Roberto Minervini; YOUNG AND ALIVE: Matthieu Bareyre.

THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 10-21 October 2018

 

 

 

 

The Good Girls | Las Ninas Bien (2018)** Toronto Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Alejandra Marquez Abella; Cast: Ilse Salas, Flavio Medina, Paulina Gaitan; Mexico 2018, 93 min.

Alejandra Marquez Abella structurally flawed sophomore feature is an anthropologist’s dream: based on characters by Guadelupe Loaeza, a group of bitchy, upper-middle class Mexican wives who fight over the best caterer at the crowning of their entire existence: having Julio Iglesias for dinner. Led on by lead Sofia, the rest are mere cyphers and the episodic structure doesn’t help in keeping viewers engaged for the ninety minutes.

Sofia (Salas), loathes her South-American heritage: and sending her three children off to summer camp, she warns them “don’t hang out with Mexicans”. A European background is really all she and her competitors crave for. Sofia’s parties are real productions, and she seems to have married her husband Fernando (Medina) largely  because of his family’s Spanish heritage. Everything is a competition for Sofia, the smallest detail could lead to a loss of face amid her rivals. But we are in the early Eighties and the Mexican Peso suddenly bottoms out. As Sofia and her circle rely on imported goods, this is a major catastrophe. So when credit cards get refused politely and the servants don’t get paid, doom is imminent. To make matters worse, Sofia’s only real competitor, noveau-riche Ana Paula (Gaitan), is still quids in. Her default-position is resigned acceptance, but with the Peso tumbling further, even this seems to be too much.

Salas is always brilliant, cool and contained, she carries the film as much as she is able to. DoP Daniela Ludlow succeeds in conjuring up this lush environment of petty mini-me’s in meltdown, always keeps everything close and personal, despite the widescreen format. As a chickflick study of vanity and self-deceit this would be brilliant – as a feature it lacks emotional depth and an absorbing dramatic arc. AS

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL | 6 – 16 SEPTEMBER 2018
 

The King (2018) **** DVD release

Dir: Eugene Jarecki | US | Musical Biopic with Alex Baldwin, Ethan Hawke, Ashton Kutcher, Lana Del Rey, Emmylou Harris | 109′

Using Elvis Presley’s life as a metaphor to explore America’s modern malaise from so-called dream to disaster, Eugene Jarecki’s Sundance Grand Jury Winner heads across the States for a musical mystery tour in the legendary star’s vintage Rolls Royce, four decades after his life as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century ended in a heart attack, aged 42.

Although Jarecki adopts a novel approach to the life of the legendary singer and entertainer, the results are sprawling, spirited and great fun in a biopic that gazes deep into the soul of a nation in flux and features an eclectic cast of stars and well known places from Presley’s birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Graceland, Memphis, Las Vegas and New York.

Enlivened by archive footage, musical interludes and enlightening observations from Ethan Hawke and Alec Baldwin, ex-band members and those associated with Presley’s life, Jarecki cleverly draws a comparison between the star and President Trump  showing how these two  transformative figures made a terrific impact on the US culture. In Presley’s case his musical style created a bridge to ease racial tension which sadly ended in disappointment, particularly in the southern states, due to the pursuit of financial above humanitarian goals (Presley always chased the money in his career choices, and when once purportedly asked by President Reagan whether he would choose a new swimming pool or to help kids with AIDS, he went for the swimming pool). On the face of Jarecki’s seems like an inspired and persuasive viewpoint: whether it stands up beyond this cursory glance, remains to be seen and sometimes his approach feels as it Elvis has been slotted in to meet the needs of his argument. 

Needless to say, the musical soundtrack is astonishing (shame the excerpts are so short) and Jarecki’s wide angle images of the glittering skylines and sweeping landscapes of Route 66 make this an enjoyable romp as well as an informative biopic of the “King of Rock and Roll” MT

ON DVD FROM 1 October 2018

ARTISTS FEATURED IN THE KING

EmiSunshine and The Rain; Leo “Bud” Welch; STAX Music Academy All-Stars John Hiatt; Loveful Heights; Immortal Technique; The Handsome Family; Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers; M. Ward ; Justin Merrick and the STAX Academy All-Stars; Lindy Vision; Robert Bradley

FILMS FEATURED IN THE KING

LOVING YOU (1957); SPEEDWAY (1968); JAILHOUSE ROCK (1957); KID GALAHAD (1962); GI BLUES (1960); FOLLOW THAT DREAM (1962); GIRL HAPPY (1965); CLAMBAKE (1967); IT HAPPENED AT THE WORLDS FAIR (1963); TICKLE ME (1965); EASY COME EASY GO (1967); FUN IN ACAPULCO (1963); BLUE HAWAII (1961); LIVE A LITTLE LOVE A LITTLE (1968); HARUM SCARUM (1965); PARADISE HAWAIIAN STYLE (1966); FRANKIE AND JOHNNY (1966); VIVA LAS VEGAS (1964)

Reversing Roe (2018) *** Telluride Film Festival 2018

Dir: Ricki Stern/Annie Sundberg | Doc | US | 90′

Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg explore the history of the abortion debate in this well-researched and workmanlike documentary that avoids filmic flourishes and brings nothing new to the story. It is nonetheless a worthwhile summation of what has gone before in various film and TV outings and might help cristalise viewers own thoughts or further inform those with little knowledge of the polemic. 

While same sex couples are busy bringing up their children in most parts of Europe, the pro-life lobby in the United States still rages vehemently for a ban on abortion 45 years after the Supreme Court declared the practice legal with the Roe v. Wade case. While legal challenges and restrictions continue to thwart women wishing to end their pregnancies, the fact remains that doing so is still a highly personal decision. And while the film begins on an emotional note with a mother breaking down in court, what follows is a pragmatic detached study that seeks to illuminate the issues from a variety of difference standpoints with archive footage, newsreels and interviews showing both sides of the equation. 

Gloria Steinem maintains that it is a woman’s right to control her own body. Meanwhile Texan Right to Life campaigner John Seago, believes abortion is murder. On the middle ground, the appealing and well-informed Rev. Tom Davis was instrumental in advising women how to gain access to a sympathetic doctor before abortion was made legal, and he points out that illegal abortions were rarely prosecuted at that time. The wealthy have always been able to access a termination, but it was the poor and particularly Black women who often took extreme measures, with tragic results. But after the law changed, restrictions ironically came into effect in at least 4 US States. 

In St Louis, a calm and committed gynaecologist Dr Coleen McNicholas believes in choice and travels from her clinic in Missouri to help those women affected by the state restrictions. In contrast, Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, resorts to the Bible to justify his pro-life beliefs, and is proud about his success in shutting down several abortion clinics. McNicholas emerges the most convincing of the two from both a scientific and personal point of view. 

This rather didactic study then chronicles the various political standpoints of the debate charting the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump, and showing how as individuals they were more liberally- minded until it came to the election campaigns.  

What’s missing here is the grey area of pro-life and pro-choice: an analysis on the various parties’ view on the stages of pregnancy and how this ethical analysis relates to the legal and the political aspects of abortion, hinging on the crucial moment when life is considered to begin: on conception, when a heartbeat is discernible, when the foetus is fully formed just prior to birth or at birth? Some may agree that abortion should not be available after three months. others longer etc. None of this is really dealt with. The filmmakers could also have developed the strand about language and phraseology surrounding the debate. Rights Lawyer Kathryn Kolbert and Dr McNicholas both argued that the phrase “partial birth abortion” is not an accepted medical term, and is not used by abortion practitioners or the medical community at large. The phrase is used by pro-lifers as a politically-weighted term to describe the dilation of the cervix to extract a foetus before term. All in all, this is a thorough examination that triumphs in maintaining a detached view and in relating the facts as they stand today, with abortion rights hanging in the balance of the Supreme Court. MT

 

TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL | 31 AUGUST – 3 SEPTEMBER 2018 ON NETFLIX from 13 September 2018

The Nun (1966/67) ****

Dir: Jacques Rivette | Cast: Anna Karina, Liselotte Pulver, Francisco Rabal, Micheline Presle | Drama | France | 140′

Jacques Rivette is famous for his playful features such as Céline and Juliette go Boating, and his one and only excursion into mainstream fare, La Religieuse (1966), based on a Diderot novel, is also full of anarchic fun and was almost banned due to its salaciousness, but went on to be nominated for the Palme D’Or in the year of its making. Suzanne Simonin (Anna Karina), is incarcerated in a cloister against her will and soon falls foul of not one, but three Mother-Superiors who respectively treat her sadistically, tenderly, or as an object for plain lesbian lust – but Suzanne stays pure. This anti-clerical romp was very popular at the box office and served as a liberating force for Karina giving her the emotional impetus to finally divorce JL Godard after having completed their last collaboration, Made in USA, in the same year. AS

IN ARTHOUSE VENUES NATIONWIDE FROM 27 JULY 2018 with a HOME ENT release planned for September 2018 | COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL

 

Angel (2018) *** Toronto Film Festival 2018

Dir: Koen Mortier | Cast: Vincent Roitiers, Fatou N’Diaye | Belgium | Thriller | 103′

A fateful encounter between a Senegalese sex worker and a world-famous Belgian racing cyclist subverts our expectations in director Koen Mortier’s (Ex Drummer) slim but atmospheric thriller.

Angel is a lushly cinematic love story pays homage to Claire Denis but lacks the sociopolitical underpinnings of her superior work. It speaks the universal language of love across the social divide where for one dreamlike night two souls meet but do not find nirvana the following morning.

Where once tribal forces held sway Senegal is now dominated by Islam and sex workers are considered low in the social pecking order, prostitute Fae (Fatou N’Diaye) meets Thierry (Vincent Rottiers) a world-renowned Belgian racing cyclist whose career has attracted scandal because of his substance abuse. Taking a break with his brother in Dakar, Thierry meets Fae in a night club, and tries to reconcile his feelings of lust with those of love at first sight. He has never paid for sex nor is he attracted by the prospect. Fae’s beauty and elegant allure captures his imagination and the two share en extraordinary encounter. But it soon becomes clear that Thierry is a damaged despite his outwardly superior professional credentials.

With its woozy surreal sensuality and hypnotic fractured narrative Angel envelopes us into an intoxicating world where nothing is a it seems as reality and fantasy collides. Its emotional arc is familiar yet exotic, touching yet troubling provocative exploration of how words can be as powerful as the realm of this senses when we fall in love. MT

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

Blindspot (2018) **** Toronto Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Tuva Novotny; Cast: Pia Tjelta, Oddgeir Thune, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Nora Mathea Æien, Ellen Heyersdahl, Per Frisch; Norway 2018, 102 min.

Tuva Novotny’s impressive and unflinching debut documents every parent’s worst nightmare. Shot in two long takes, we witness the suicide attempt of the teenage schoolgirl Thea, and the reactions of her family, as they try to cope with something they cannot understand. The most used phrase returning again and again, is “that Tea was happy”.But when an unexpected catastrophe happens, everything about their life is called into question.

Maria (Pia Tjelta), Anders (Anders Baasmo Christiansen), and their two children — Tea (Nora Mathea Øien) and son Bjorn enjoy a settling and happy life in Oslo. We during an average day playing handball at school, and walking home with her friend Anna (Heyersdale) and greeting her (step)mother Maria (Tjelta) and her little brother Bjorn in their third floor apartment, where she makes herself a sandwich, before writing a short note in her diary. She then jumps out of window. 

The second part features Maria – the camera focuses on her grief after finding her unconscious daughter in front of the apartment block. Her father Hasse (Frisch) comes to help her, calling an ambulance which takes her to hospital and the trauma team. The arrival of her biological father Anders (Christiansen) makes everything even more fraught as he is aggressive, insisting on seeing his daughter. We learn from him that Thea’s birth mother Line killed herself and was found by her daughter and father. Martin brings bad news, 

The experience of bereavement by parental suicide of children and young teenagers is not well understood, as evidenced by the lack of empirically supported interventions for this underserved sector of the population. All we know is that “there are extra layers of bereavement” for this group. The process of healing is not much helped by the fact that children have an “omnipotent” perspective and feel responsible for the death of the parent. Children under eighteen who suffer parental bereavement are three times more likely to commit suicide as children with living parents. And, for reasons not understood, girls are three times more likely to have traumatic reactions to parental suicide than boys.

DoP Jonas Alarik treats the narrative like a documentary, there is nothing superfluous in his images, particularly the close-ups are impressive, as well as Maria’s ride in the ambulance, when she is trying to understand how his could have happen to her “happy” daughter. Anders might have given a little clue, reporting at the hospital that Thea told him when she was younger “Daddy, when I die. I turn into a lovely flower you can pick and put on to the window sill”. A heart braking study of grief, flawlessly executed by Nowotny.

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 7 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

 

Flight of a Bullet (2017) Open City Doc Festival 2018

DIR: Beata Bubenec | Doc | 80′

In Flight of a Bullet Russian documentarian Beata Bubenec offers unprecedented insight into life on a volunteer military base during the Donbass 2014 conflict in Ukraine.

This remarkable cinema vérité film is remarkable for being recorded during one single 80 minute take of her handhold camera and brings us face to face with the conflict offering a palpable sense of unease verging on terror. Bubenec gains unprecedented access to a bomb blasted bridge over a river where we witness the arrest and questioning of a Ukrainian man accused of being a separatist by hooded aggressors. We then accompany the men during a car ride to the military base where Bubenec is clearly as recognised part of the team.

Gritty and real, this is guerrilla filmmaking at its more urgent and cutting edge – nothing prepares us for what will happen next. MT

OPEN CITY DOC FESTIVAL | LONDON 4.-9 SEPTEMBER 2018 | Grand Prix Winner

Escobar (2017) ***

Dir/Writer: Fernando Leon de Aranoa | Cast: Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard | Spanish | Drama | 123′

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem step into the limelight as the convincing kickass couple at the heart of this florid foray into the life of Colombian cocaine king Pablo Escobar, from Madridleno director Fernando Leon de Aranoa (Mondays in the Sun).

Playing out like a clunky crime caper from the 1980s Escobar is true to its era in depicting the career of the rags to mega riches drug baron who eventually burnt himself out on a hot tin roof – or so we’re led to believe in the final melodramatic moments.

Bardem’s Colombian accent is spot on and he rocks another mat-like wig (from his already extensive repertoire) and a prosthetic pot-belly that takes on a life of its own. Cruz is all glamorous in YSL couture, almost drowning under the weight of her glossy mop and gurgling on a fruity English accent. The film opens in 1993 as she’s evading Colombia on a plane: “I’ve had to leave a house to escape a man, but never a country” – or words to that effect.

As journalist Judith Restrepo, she is the voiceover filling us in on the Escobar investigations handled by American DEA agent Shepherd (a laconic Peter Sarsgaard): subsequent events show that for years she’s been playing a somewhat flirty cat-and-mouse game with Shepherd, who’s been probing her for information on her louche lover. The story then tracks back to 1981 where she meets the seedily illustrious married Escobar on his tropical estate and headquarters of the notorious Medellin Cartel. Desperate to be taken seriously as a politician -but gradually failing miserably in the endeavour – he is now lying low. Initially confident in her career, she enjoys a whirlwind courtship, but rapidly sees her reputation failing as her lover loses interest and becomes increasingly menacing: his gifts turn from diamonds to a diamante revolver – for her own protection – against him and his rivals.

Bardem creates another scary psychopath: loving to his family but threatening to his enemies, and his richly-roasted accent is brilliant in contrast to Cruz’s screechy meltdowns. Chainsaws abound and there is abundant animal cruelty in what is ultimately a mildly entertaining and well-paced chronicle of the cocaine king’s career. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 16 SEPTEMBER 2018

The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) **** Bluray release

Dir.: Jean Renoir; Cast: Rene Lefevre, Florelle, Jules Berry, Nadia Sibirskaia; France 1936, 80 min.

Jean Renoir’s The Crime of Monsieur Lange is often seen as a political film, supporting the Front Populaire  – Renoir working with the Left Bank agit-prop theatre Premiere Groupe Octobre, but it goes much further: criticising misogyny and the unjust laws regarding abortion. One of his most successful dramas it is humane and entertaining, scripted by Jacques Prevert (Les enfants du Paradise), the film was also notable for its innovative techniques in depth of field photography.

Amadée Lange (Lefèvre) is a day-dreamer, unlike his scheming boss Paul Batala (Berry) who runs a publishing house exploiting its women workers. Strangely, or not so, Lange’s Western comic-strip hero Arizona Jim is the total opposite of his creator: always trying to defend the poor against the rich. Batala even uses Lange’s stories to prop up the small ads. But when the womanising Batala starts to run up debts with his creditors, he asks Estelle (Sibirskaia) to sleep with one of them to keep him at bay. All in vain: Batala has to make a run for it, escaping on a train, which later crashes. He goes into hiding disguised in the clergyman robes of one of his fellow travellers. Meanwhile Lange and his lover Valentine (Florelle, star of Moulin Rogue) witness a reversal of fortune: Arizona Jim and his creator have become a success, and all the employees of the company share the profits. But, alas Batala soon re-appears, wanting to re-instate himself.

The Crime is told in flashback: Lange and Florelle are on the run at the Belgian boarder when she asks the “court” in a local relais to decide if her lover was really guilty when he shot the returning Batala in the courtyard where the action unfolds. This roving scene is a masterpiece shot by DoP Jean Bachelet in the style of the handheld cameras that would follow in the future “eyeing the life layered all around it with persuasive urban density”. 

The drama also showcases Renoir’s controlled spontaneity, a breezing sublimity where a character can jump suddenly into the frame, thus changing the narrative. Berry makes for a terrific pantomime villain, showing real flashes of evil. Florelle lures the hesitant Lefevre with her in a superb turn. Even though La Regle du Jeu and La vie est à nous, were much more admired, Le Crime is the most spirited of the trio. AS

NOW OUT ON BLURAY COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL

   

 

A Tramway in Jerusalem (2018) *** Venice Film Festival 2018

 Israel is a complex nation of multiculturalism – and none better to convey this than author/ filmmaker Amos Gitai in his fraught and frustrating drama A Tramway in Jerusalem.

His characters seem trapped on a freewheeling journey to nowhere, going round and round on what seems like an endless trip on London’s Circle Line – the fact is they’re all in the same boat: gentiles, Hasidic Jews, Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Israeli Arabs, Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Jews. Gitai’s embraces the chaotic nature of these Semitic people – they argue, cajole, console, sing and debate – but they are rarely silent.

The film opens with a smiling woman singing an operatic song, a man plays the oud. Mathieu Almaric slouches back on a seat with his son, visiting the city for the first time he is delighted to be there finally. A group of Hassidic men chant a religious chorus. This series of sketches trundles along offering a taster for those who have never been to the country but have heard a lot about it – and it’s very different on the inside. One Palestinian woman has a Dutch passport through marriage, another has lived abroad but they share common ground. Anyone without an Israeli passport usually gets a hard time, and Gitai shows this happening to the Palestinian woman. There is even a Catholic Priest (Pippo Delbono) who rambles on incoherently. And black humour features too – the Jews have survived by sending themselves up. In the funniest sketch, a mother is lamenting her son’s lack of a wife, he listens – rapt, while all around their fellow passengers banter and debate the issue off screen. This is Israel in microcosm. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Phoenix (2018) ** Toronto Film Festival

Dir.: Camilla Strom Henriksen; Cast: Yiva Bjorkaas Thedin, Caspar Falck-Lovas, Maria Bonnevie, Sverrir Gudnason, Ellen Sandal, Renate Reinsve; Norway 2018, 86 min.

First feature of writer/director Camilla Strom Henriksen’s debut feature is a variation on The Cement Garden, in this case siblings Jill and Bo are forced to grow up too quickly by parents who fail them at every turn. Despite some terrific performances, the script loses intensity in the final third.

Teenager Jill (Thedin) is used to looking after her divorced mother Astrid (Bonnevie) and much younger brother Bo (Falck-Lovas). Astrid is desperate to succeed as a painted and insists that the whole flat is permanently cast in semi-darkness, the many-layered curtains letting in little light. She spends most of her time in bed, dependent on alcohol and prescription drugs. Her friend Ellen (Sandal) talks the local museum’s director into giving Astrid a chance: she is the only applicant for a job. Jill tries to make her mother’s first public appearance in a long time a success, buying her a white blouse. But Astrid is scathing about her daughter’s efforts: “You make me look like a director’s wife, why don’t don’t you wear it yourself, you are so proper”.

Then father Nils (Gudnason), a musician, promises to visit on Jill’s birthday. Jill is ecstatic, ready to be pampered for once. But she soon finds out, that her mother skipped the interview and later finds her dead in the basement. Not wishing to ruin her birthday Jill locks the cellar door and pretends that her mother is missing. Unfortunately for both Jill and the audience, the night out with her father and his new girl friend Kristin (Reinsve), turns out to be a disaster culminating in the admission that he is not going to tour Brazil for six months, but starting a prison sentence for drunk driving. After this bombshell, Phoenix starts to lose its narrative thrust.

Thedin is brilliant in her role as parenting teenager who morphs into a much older act to ‘seduce’ her father in taking her with him to Brazil. DoP Ragna Jorming creates some surreal images in the darkened flat where Jill sees – literally – monsters creeping around. The scenes in the ultra modern hotel where Nils takes his children are overcooked but chime with the plot’s loss of direction. As long as the action stays indoors, Strom Henriksen can not do wrong – afterwards, alas it all crumbles. AS

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2018

https://youtu.be/jk0bA3sf8-Q

Capri-Revolution (2018) ** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Mario Martone; Cast: Marianna Fontana, Reinout Scholten van Aschat, Antonio Folletto, Maximilian Dirr; Italy/France 2018, 121 min.

Mario Martione does his homeland a disservice with a turgid and distinctly un-revolutionary Golden Lion hopeful. Set on the island of Capri in the run up to the First World War this is a didactic drama which even manages to make a nudist colony look bland and boring. But worse is the misogyny with which he treats his main-protagonist.

In 1914 twenty year-old Lucia (Fontana) enjoys a bucolic island existence looking after the family’s herds of goats, but when her father dies, her grumpy older brother decides to marry her off to a rich widower, thinking first and foremost about the financial benefits for the family. Soon both brothers are off to war, and Lucia joins a nudist colony, despite warnings from the locals that they are  “devils”. There she falls under the spell of painter and commune leader Seybu (van Aschat), a composite of the German painter Karl Diefenbach who led a commune on Capri between 1900 and 1913 and his compatriot, the artist Joseph Beuys, who had not even been born in 1914.

Seybu teaches Lucia to read and soon she is multi-lingual. But the local doctor Carlo (Folletto) hopes to win Lucia’s affections, the two men fiercely stating their points in the duel between science and art. This becomes very boring with sentences like ”There is only matter and spirit, there is no duality”. Furthermore, Herbert (Dirr), a psychotherapist, tries to interfere with the all the women in order to make them more compliant towards the male egos. Lucia soon has enough and wants “to go back to dancing in the woods”.

DoP Michele D’Attanasio tries his best to conjure up a sapphic image of beauty and nature, but this is a drama much too verbose to allow our imagination to wander – dialogue getting in the way.  Martone insists that everything is debated in a principled discussion, creating the climate of a business seminar. There is no lust – in spite of the naked bodies – and art is just another subject to be discussed to the death. Fontana tries her very best, but the males around her dominate. This is a sprawlingly endless mosh-mash, Martone even managing to botch the ending. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

 

      

Shadow 2018) **** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir: Zhang Yimou | Action Drama | China | 110’

Two-time winner of the Golden Lion at Venice for The Story Of Qiu Ju, and Not One Less, Chinese supremo Zhang Yimou relinquishes his charisteristic colour spectrum for a magnificent monochrome palette in his latest martial arts extravaganza that melds solemn Singing in the Rain set pieces with eye-popping wuxia credentials in a glorious return to form akin to Hero and House of Flying Daggers.

Grey has never looked so stunning in Yimou’s action scenes inspired by China’s tradition of ink-wash painting and creatively choreographed with the director’s signature style and inventiveness. In place of shields, lethal steel umbrellas cut and thrust in an epic tale set during China’s Three Kingdoms era during the Third century where the land of Pei is ruled by an unhinged maverick king (Zheng Kai). The king’s military commander (Deng Chao) has shown his skill on the battlefield, but running the kingdom is another matter needing political nous and diplomacy to survive. So he has trained a “shadow” (also played by Deng), who can fool the king, as well as Pei’s enemies, when required. Fighting to gain control of the walled city of Jing, the king and the commander join forces to plan a secret strategy. While the real king, a dissipated old warrior, has retreated to his lair to lick his world weary wounds, his wife Madam (Sun Li) has fallen for the younger and stronger double. 

During the extraordinary battle scenes the only contrast from the stunning steel grey, charcoal and white aesthetic is that of human flesh and blood evoking a palpable feeling of pain and suffering and bringing to mind the epics of Akira Kurosawa. This occasionally drawn out but intoxicating game of intrigue and duplicity slowly builds to a coruscating climax as Yimou manages the spectacular combat set pieces with extraordinary ingenuity both on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, the umbrellas bristling with blades as they cascade like gushing rivers of steel raining down on the floating Trojan horse centrepiece.

Aside from the visual mastery of it all Yimou offers dramatic character studies: Deng as a double-crossing demon, the gracefully feisty women Sun Li and Guan Xiaotong giving impressive performances. But it’s Cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding and production designer Ma Kwong Kwai who really set the whole production alight. Another worthwhile and thoroughly enjoyable edition to Yimou’s wuxia wonderland. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

A Letter to a Friend in Gaza (2018) **** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Amos Gitai; Cast: Makram Khoury, Clara Khoury, Hilla Vidor, Amos Gitai, Amira Hass; Israel 2018, 34 min.

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others (do not forget the pigeon’s food).
As you conduct you cars, think of others (do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others (those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others (do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others (those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others (those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself (Say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).
Mahmoud Darwish, Think of others

Israeli director/co-writer Amos Gitai (Rabin, the last Day) uses poetry to confront Israel’s on-going decimation of their Palestinian neighbours. Inspired by Albert Camus’ “Letters to a German Friend” (1943-1944), Gitai and co-writer Makram Khouri both express their hope for a future when “Israeli children will ask their parents what they have done”; with Gitai stating “I love my country too much, that I will not become a nationalist”.

The images on the huge walls separating the two nations make the Berlin Wall look decisively less threatening in contrast: DoP Oded Kirma’s camera nearly touches the monstrosity. Other scenes show Palestinian youths with slingshots fighting a professional Israeli army with machine guns; and the last image of the documentary is an antique painting of David attacking the well armoured giant Goliath with his catapult.

But it is words that take centre stage: Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Think of others’ seems in parts like a direct reference to the destruction of water tanks in Palestine by the Israeli Defence Forces. But the poem ends lyrically.

The centrepiece is Amira Hass’ monologue about a hopeful future. Courageously, Gitai then sets the cat amongst the pigeons of today’s Israeli society: the parents’ response to their kids is that “they obeyed orders”. This was their excuse,  but it was also the excuse of the Holocaust’s perpetrators. Gitai once and for all sets a line in the sand, breaking a taboo: there is no longer any justification for the continuous war against the Palestinians, and there hasn’t been since the foundation of the State of Israel.

Allying himself with Camus on the question of the just war against the Nazis, Gitai comes very close to a “guilty verdict” for the State he fought for – and nearly died – as a soldier. He might have become the proverbial ‘candle in the dark’, but the likeliehood that the children of today’s Settler generation will leave their parents’ homes is very remote -metaphorically and practically. AS

SCREENING DURING VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

     

The Summer House (2018) Les Estivants | *** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. France/Italy. 2018. 127mins |

Actor-director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s reworks familiar territory in her latest comedy drama where she plays a vulnerable woman obsessed with a feckless younger man. This time she adds farce to the histrionics sending herself up as the delightfully dizzy delusional central character. You have to admire her cheekiness in this well-observed but flimsy piece of fun.

At the beginning Anna (Tedeschi) is tottering over a Parisian bridge with her sulky lover Luca (Riccardo Scamarcio), on the way to a cafe. Joining them is a serious be-suited man and a divorce proceedings  immediately spring to mind: they are actually attending a film financing meeting where filmmaker Anna freely admits to rehashing her plot when questioned by the team. Considering arch re-hasher Frederick Wiseman is on the panel this comes as a feminist jibe and we actually warm to her, and if you’re a fan of her formula (A Castle in Italy etc) then The Summer House is for you.

The Summer House has the advantage of some seriously sumptuous settings: this time we visit the Cote d’Azur and a gorgeous belle époque Villa surrounded by lavender-scented gardens where her real mother Marisa Borini (resembling her other daughter Carla Bruni) plays her onscreen ma, and the daughter she adopted with Louis Garrel, Oumy Bruni Garrel, is Anna’s daughter – exuding all the saucy sense of entitlement you would expect. Co-scripted by Tedeschi, Agnès de Sacy and Noémie Lvovsky, this upstairs/downstairs affair features the problems of the staff along with those of the guests – although the characterisations are shallow and rather trite – and often descends into implausible farce failing dismally as an attempt to engage us in an exploration of the human condition in all its splendour and desperation.

Bruni Tedeschi’s younger partner Luca does not join them, after hinting at a new romance, so the start of the holiday is blighted by emotional telephone outbursts and the usual melodramatic meltdowns. Anna’s alcoholic sister Elena (Valeria Golino) tries her best in an awful role where she whines and whimpers between drunken episodes as the wife of the villa’s much owner, ageing businessman Jean (Pierre Arditi). Meanwhile, Lvovsky also stars as Anna’s divorced writing partner Nathalie who appears to be recovering from some failed romance in a role that never materialises into anything meaningful.

Ever brimming with hope that her romance with Luca can be reanimated, there is much humour to be had in the way Anna swings from kittenish charisma to snarling witchery, her frustration seething under a well-disguised gamine fluffiness. Tedeschi’s attempt to introduce a sexual molestation strand to the narrative falls on deaf ears – whether this is another jibe on the #metoo theme is left to our individual interpretation. Gorgeous to look at, if mostly exasperating, The Summer House is more of the same fresh air from a familiar face. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The River (Ozen) *** Venice Film Festival 2018 | Orizzonti

Dir/scr: Emir Baigazin. Kaz-Pol-Nor. 2018. 108mins

This spare and rhythmic final film in Kazakh auteur Emir Baigazin’s Asian trilogy serves as a simple but mesmerising metaphor for the dangers of the digial world exploring themes of repression, release and discovery in a remote corner of Kazakhstan.

Following on from Harmony Lessons (Uroki Garmonii,2013) and The Wounded Angel (Ranenyy Angel, 2016), The River (Ozen) captivates with its austere and gracefully composed sequences in a parable that seethes with expectation throughout its spare dramatic arc establishing its appeal to arthouse audiences from the opening scenes when we first meet the brothers in their dusty, windswept village where earthy sepia and bleached khaki prevails in Baigazin’s stark aesthetic.  

Five brothers cower under the obdurate cosh of their draconian father (Kuandyk Kystykbayev) who imposes a spartan regime of hard work and strict discipline. Like many austere fathers his intentions are protectionist rather than cruel, and the reason for this will soon become clear when a newcomer arrives in the village to disrupt the peaceful existence.

The oldest son Aslan (Zhalgas Klanov) is expected to act as second in command to his father and teach his brothers how to read and write. Unlike his father he offers some light relief to his siblings allowing them to swim in the fast-flowing river nearby, the benefits of nature are clear and the dangers self-apparent, Meanwhile in the outside world beyond their home the benefits of progress are more ambiguous,

This questionable garden of Eden is soon destabilised when Kanat (Eric Tazabekov) breezes into the village one day. Dressed in flashy yellow socks and a silver anorak, this bright young stranger also rocks a pair of headphones and carries a bleeping tablet. The boys are amazed by his swanky attire and intrigued by his computer with its News channel and games. 

The River is fraught will religious motifs from the Bible amongst them a wooden cross in the shaped scarecrow, and this all presages doom for the boys’ rural sanctuary. This is a the film whose spare credentials and minimalism belie its rich thematic content that make it an incisive and satisfying look at progress and loss of innocence. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | Best DIRECTOR | ORIZZONTI 2018

Emma Peeters (2018) Venice Film Festival 2018 | Giornate degli Autori


Dir.: Nicole Palo; Cast: Monia Chokri, Fabrice Adde, Stephanie Crayencour, Andrea Ferrol, Anne Sylvain, Jean Henri Compere, Abdre Ferreol; Belgium 2018, 90 min.

Nicole Palo’s second feature is a charming but fluffy comedy about a Belgian would-be actress plagued by her embarrassing parents and fashion faux pas. Shot idyllically, mostly in Belleville Monia Chokri’s portrayal of the titular heroine is an impressive performance. 

Emma (Chokri) is in her mid-thirties and has made the decision to throw in the towel on her acting career in Paris and radically also to end her life. After visiting a funeral parlour – wearing her usual faux-sheep coat and looking very sheepish indeed – she attracts the attention of the owner Alex (Adde), whose struggle with reality is just as troubled. A good-bye visit to her annoyingly banal parents (Sylvain/Compere) in Belgium is followed by several unsuccessful attempts to get rid of her cat Jim, who clings on (clearly loving her jacket). And her friends are no great help either: Stephanie (Crayencour) is a blond, vacuous version of Emma (but a success with men of all sexual orientations) and is only interested in her friend when she wants to borrow her tiny flat to sleep with married men. Her ‘best friends’ Bob and Serge, gay hairdressers, think that a new haircut may lift her spirits. After Mum and Dad turn up for an uninvited visit, we begin to understand Emma’s pain. And when Alex finally gives Emma the promised suicide pill, we know that a happy-end awaits all concerned: Stephanie is pregnant by Bob and/or Serge, and Emma will be the god-mother.

There are shades of the late Solveig Ansbach here (Queen of Montreuil), but without her love of detail and anarchic complications. Palo just goes for the most obvious laughs, using Belleville as a background and creating a succharine atmosphere. On top there are half-baked characters like Bernadette (Ferreol), a lonely old woman who not well-disposed towards Emma. At best this quirky comedy drama could be described as endearing. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI 4 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

Sunset | Napszallta (2018) ***** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Laszlo Nemes, Cast: Juli Jacob, Vlad Ivanov, Hungary/France 2018; 142 min

Laszlo Nemes follows his Oscar-winning triumph Son Of Saul with another fraught and achingly romantic fragment of the past again captured through his voyeuristic lens tracing the febrile events leading up to the shooting of Emperor Franz Ferdinand that changed the world forever

Set in Budapest between 1913 and the outbreak of the First World War, Sunset reveals a labyrinth of enigma, intrigue, hostility, greed and lust as by Juli Jakab(Son of Saul) guides us through scenes of ravishing elegance and cataclysmic violence. What seems utter chaos gradually becomes more clear as the spiderweb is infiltrated.

Cultured beauty Irisz Leiter (Jacob) arrives in Budapest from Trieste, where she retreated after her parents’ death in a mysterious fire at their famous hat atelier. Irisz hopes to secure a position there but the enigmatic manager Oszcar Brill (Ivanov), asks her to leave immediately. Somehow she inveigles her way into the company, desperately looking out for her long lost brother Kalman, who is in hiding, having murdered Count Redey. It soon emerges he has joined the Hungarian Nationalists in their bid to overthrow the House of Habsburg, whose ruling base in Vienna in on the verge of toppling with the murder in Sarajevo of the Austrian Crown at the hand of a Serbian nationalist. Irisz’ search for her brother is continually thwarted by Brill, who is literally selling his female employees as courtesans to the Court in Vienna. Her desperate quest culminates in the trenches and the demise of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Nemes pays homage to the late Gabor Body whose Narcissus and Psyche, echo in Sunset. On an historical level Mathias Erdely’s images conjure up the fin-de-siecle fragility in the same way as Gabor’s masterpiece. In contrast, Nemes sets his epic in Budapest (and not in the countryside) conveying the crumbling decadence in the urban settings. There is surreal horror in the street scenes – characters spring out of the shadows like animals – or even vampires. After dark utter chaos rules. As daylight dawns the Habsburg police try to enforce order. Irisz emerges as ‘Alice’, but her wonderland is uncertain and menacing. Courage and a strong sense of her innate dignity will see her through but her place in the world will be destroyed forever in a narrative that very much chimes with today’s sense of cultural identity. Sunset is an everlasting testament to the past, the present and our uncertain future. A masterpiece that will need more than one viewing. As/MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | FIPRESCI WINNER 2018

Joy (2018) Venice Film Festival | VENICE DAYS 2018

Dir.: Sudabeh Mortezai; Cast: Joy Anwulika Alphonsus, Prcious Mariam Sanusi, Angela Ekeleme Pius, Jane Okoh; Austria 2018, 100 min.

German born writer/director Sudabeh Mortezai (Macondo) spent her youth in Vienna and Teheran before studying film at UCLA. Her second feature is centred around Nigerian women sold by their families as sex-workers to Europe. In the prologue, we see the local shaman performing the ‘Juju’ ritual on one of these young women: the victims have to leave an intimate part of themselves behind so they don’t run away, and send money home regularly.

We meet Joy (Alphonsus) on a dark night Vienna where she is soliciting. Next to her stands young Precious (Sanusi), who has just arrived from Nigeria and does not want to sell her body, to pay back Madame (Pius), whom she owes 60,000 Euros. Back in the flat, where the girls live in cramped  conditions, Madame holds Joy responsible for Precious’ attitude and tells her that her debt will increase if she doesn’t encourage the young girl to work harder. For good measure, Precious is than raped by two men, her cries of help going unanswered. The brutal treatment makes Precious fall into line and she becomes the highest earner of the group. Madame expresses her thanks by selling her for a profit to Italian pimps. 

Meanwhile Joy and Precious are continually pestered by their families to send more money home. Joy’s family ‘invents’ a fake illnesses so her clients will take pity and pay her extra.  And Precious’ mother asks her to sleep with more more men: “Can you imagine, the woman who gave birth to me wants me to do do that!” Joy, who has a daughter Chioma (Okoh), for whose upkeep she pays a nanny, is sent with Precious to the Italian border, keeping her passport. Precious asks her many times to relinquish the passport, so that she can escape. But Joy is well aware that Madame’s vengeance would be be grim, and she reminds Precious: “This is a game of survival of the fittest. I would kill you if I needed to. Do not trust me!”. Her calculation proves right when Madame ‘releases’ her, which is not so generous as it looks since new and younger girls have arrived from Nigeria.

The director takes a detached approach throughout. The gruesome details of the women’s suffering – Joy is bleeding heavily after being raped by three men, but Madame does not allow her to seek medical help. The whole circle of violence, starting in Nigeria is repeated over and over again, because the authorities in Austria want Joy to testify against Madame, but won’t grant her immediate asylum.

JOY explores a real and continuous nightmare that is happening all the time, in nearly every European city. Shot starkly by DoP Clemens Hufnagl, mostly at night, the few interior scenes reveal the misery and fear that haunts women daily. A depressing but worthwhile film. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 29 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2018 | VENICE DAYS AWARD WINNER 2018

 

 

Suspiria (2018) ** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Luca Guadagnino, Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Cloe Grace Moretz, Lutz Ebersdorf; USA/Italy 2018, 152 min.

Luca Guadagnino follows his much praised Call Me By Your Name with a rather confused and overloaded vision of Dario Argento’s horror classic, using the original script by Argento and Daria Nicoldi, re-written by David Kajganich (A Bigger Splash). 

Unfortunately the Kajganich has added new material, setting the narrative in Berlin at the height of the Baader Meinhof crisis. A running time of 152 minutes also tests the audience severely.

In the dank Autumn of 1977, Susie Bannian (Johnson) arrives from Ohio at the famous Dance School TANZ, near the Wall in West Berlin. There is an unsettling atmosphere at the academy, the two leading teachers Blanc (a luminously sinuous Swinton) and Markos are fighting for supremacy, the conflict a battle of life and death. Susie soon becomes the lead dancer, relegating Patricia (Moretz) and Sara (Goth) to the lower echelons of the troupe.

When dancers start to disappear, the sinister infighting turns more and more bloody. Enter Dr. Joseph Klemperer (Ebersdorf), a relict from WWII, who is still searching for his Jewish wife sent to the Concentration Camp Teresienstadt, where she was killed. The psychiatrist feels deep guilt over her death. As the nastiness at the Academy unfurls, a Witches’ Coven is uncovered and Klemperer’s role becomes more and more murky – in tune with this muddled affair. 

DoP Sayonbhu Mukdeeprom creates magnificently macabre images, but in the long run this is not enough to save Susperia from emerging an awkward mixture of two films, both competing for our attention. The acting is also mixed, with Swinton being head and shoulders above the rest (quite literally) in achieving visionary eminence. In the end the German history lesson loses out to the horror strand, but the brake comes too late. A needless remake where less would have been so much more. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Peterloo (2018) ***

Dir/Writer: Mike Leigh | Cast: Maxine Peake, Rory Kinnear | Historical Drama | UK | 154′

Mike Leigh’s PETERLOO is a lavishly mounted period drama that delivers in robustly verbose detail the story of the massacre that took place in Manchester on 16th August 1816 when cavalry charged into a crowd of some 80,000 members of the public demanding parliamentary workplace reform.

While Leigh’s epic slowly builds to its climactic carnage scenes, which are brutally realistic without resorting to gratuitous gore, it expansively explores both sides of the conflict between the British aristocracy and the rebellious working classes in a plodding way that destroys dramatic tension as it trundles through its bloated running time of two and a half hours. With incendiary performances from its sterling cast – Rory Kinnear and Maxine Peake are splendidly vehement – this is certainly one of Leigh’s most heartfelt dramas, and clearly a personal moral crusade that charts a gritty and violent episode from the socio political history of England. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 2 NOVEMBER 2018 | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW 2018

Why are we Creative? (2018) ** Giornate degli Autori Venice 2018

WHY ARE WE CREATIVE: THE CENTIPEDE’S DILEMMA

Dir.: Hermann Vaske; Documentary; Germany 2018, 84 min.

German born writer/director Hermann Vaske (Arteholic) asks more than fifty of the World’s most successful artists why they have chosen to express their creativity in their professional lives. Obviously, their answers are going to be superficial, since there is hardly time for a reflective answer in a film of just over an house. But there’s also no structure here, Vaske lists the answers he gets in a haphazard and roughly chronological order. It’s a trite film akin to flicking through a glossy copy of Hello! Hola or Point de Vue magazine.

Thirty years in the making, his project is the brainchild of the liberation he felt having just emigrated to London. And one his first candidates was David Bowie, who is also one of the few who turns up twice to talk about their creative impulses. Architect Franz Gehry uses drawings to explain his motives, the same goes for Damien Hirst, David Lynch and Ai Weiwei among others. Travelling to Davos for the economic summit, Vaske interviews Bill Gates and Yasser Arafat, who claims his artistic bent rises out of a desire “to carry on for the sake of the future”. In Tokyo, the director gets drunk with the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, who tells us “I get an erection when shooting my photographs”.

Architects top the list of professions, authors are as rare as musicians, who are easily beaten by actors. But sadly women make up a tiny minority of his doc: Yoko Ono, Jeanne Moreau, Bjork, Isabella Rossellini, Zara Hadid, Vivienne Westwood, Angelina Jolie and Diane Kruger. Vaske likes his interviewees to be positive and in a good mood – if they are difficult, their answers are cut short.

Towards the end, director Michael Haneke gives the most original answer: “One should not ask a centipede why he walks, because he might stumble”. Haneke goes on, telling the famous story of the composer Gustav Mahler, who stopped seeing the father of analyses, Sigmund Freud, because the latter told the composer, that analyses might reduce his creativity.

The structure (or the lack of it) invites us to be creative in our own ways, as our attention wanders off, reflecting about what to have for supper, or where we parked the car. But what is more disturbing is the huge number of participants, who are not with us any more – so many of them victims of suicide. Surely they  deserve a less flippant approach – underlined by the amusing cartoons of Valerie Pirson and Floppy Lazare – and a more serious treatment, using the parameters of a proper documentary. AS

SCREENING AS PART OF VENICE DIRECTORS’ WEEK 2018

Adam & Evelyn (2018) *** Venice Film Festival 2018 | Critics’ Week

Dir.: Andreas Goldstein; Cast: Florian Teichtmeister, Anne Karis, Christin Alexandrow, Lena Lauzemis, Milian Zerzawy; FRG 2018, 100 min.

Based on the novel by Ingo Schulze, ADAM & EVELYN sees a couple’s crumbling relationship set against the final days of the German Democratic Republic in this thoughtful collaboration from Andreas Goldstein and Jakobine Motz.

In his tailor’s shop in the small town of Torgau, Evelyn surprises Adam one day ‘in flagrante’ with a much older client and, not taking his excuses for an answer, she sets out with girlfriend Simone (Alexandrow) for a summer break in Budapest. But this is no happy holiday. They arrive to discover that the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany has been forced to close its doors due to a massive influx of German citizens who are camping inside, waiting to be allowed into the FRG.

For two-thirds of the film we will witness – over the radio – the gradual downfall of the GDR regime, until they throw in the towel and open the Berlin wall and their borders in November. But Adam is totally unfazed, as if it’s nothing to do with him – an accusation Evelyn had made at the beginning. He picks up a hitchhiker, Katja (Lauzemis) and smuggles her nonchalantly over the boarder into Hungary. Near Lake Balaton, the two meet up with Simone and Michael (Zerzawy) – a West German biologist, until Evelyn lures Michael into her bed. Simone leaves but then Evelyn grows close to Adam again, sleeping with both men – a rivalry which Adam seems not to notice. The three of them end up in Austria where Evelyn discovers she’s pregnant – but unsure of the father. Adam falls under suspicion as being a spy and this is so incongruous that Evelyn starts laughing. But the point is made: when it comes to paranoia, both German states have more in common than the FRG might like to admit. Finally, Adam and Evelyn get a new flat in Hamburg where Evelyn is full of utopian dreams for her child, whereas Adam misses the restrictive, but safe GDR.

Book and film make a valid point: the uprising which brought down the regime was more or less restricted to East-Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden – in the countryside there was a sort of inertia which really did not lend itself to revolt. Evelyn is right when she remarks that “Adam did not really have to work: all the girls came to him, and he made them pretty clothes”. But there was no competition, because the state products were absolute awful.

The images in Torgau and the surrounding countryside reflect a country which time seems to have left behind: the cars are 30 years old, the houses are falling apart and sexual infidelity is the only game in town. As one commentator said, after the fall of the Wall “the GDR men had to give their women a decent sex life to make up for the material poverty of all concerned.” Adam will be a stranger forever in the re-unified country – looking backwards to an idyll, which didn’t really exist. AS      

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 28 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2018 | CRITICS’ WEEK

Friedkin Uncut (2018) Tribute to William Friedkin

Dir: Francesco Zippel | US-ITALY | 107 MINS | DOCUMENTARY | with William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, Willem Dafoe, Wes Anderson, Matthew McConaughey, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Shannon, Juno Temple

Wlliam Friedkin swaggers into the room and grabs a mug of dark coffee: “What interests me is how Hitler took a load of intelligent people down, whereas Jesus lifted them up”: He concludes “it’s a struggle for every human being to overcome their dark side”. 

William Friedkin, who is sadly no longer with us, must be one of the most quotable directors. Perfectly formed truisms just flood out of him in this amiable portrait from Francesco Zippel. Looking like an amiable astute tortoise with his smooth features and perfectly coiffed hair, he can be vociferous. When filming The French Connection he apparently shouted at his cinematographer: “What you’ve shown me so far sucks”. The two went on to make an all time classic that flopped at the box office. As Michael Shannon puts it: “Billy forces you to the dark place- he’s aware when something is phoney – he wants 200% because he’s giving 200%. Unlike Kubrick, he’s not looking for perfection, he’s looking for spontaneity.

Born in 1935 of Ukrainian Jewish parents who immigrated to the US, Friedkin did not realise the family was poor because everyone around them in their Chicago tenement was in the same boat. His father was a semi-professional soft ball player, his mother a warm and giving woman who he adored Young Friedkin started in the mail room of a TV station and worked his way up – in common with many other directors of the 1960s, but seeing Citizen Kane was the turning point that inspired him with the power of film and then he went on to Hollywood and was completely devolved of that notion. The rest is history.

Built around Friedkin’s pragmatic and pithy commentary Francesco Zippel’s doc well-structured documentary focuses on each of his films, intercut with commentary from the relevant talking heads and collaborators who discuss the way they worked with him. Friedkin is articulately frank and open about his motivations, which are interesting in themselves. A tinkly occasional score accompanies some extraordinary revelations: his film The people vs Paul Crump actually saved the man’s life. On the whole his films have a cinema vérité quality to them that is rooted in his documentary style, especially The French Connection that transports you ‘there in that era’ but the film still feels incredibly fresh and – in the view of Edgar Wright – more so than thrillers that are being made today. Infact FC is almost 95% based on truth, along with Bug and Killer Joe.  Friedkin liked facts and percentages rather than ephemera. 

Yet while filming he gets lost in the moment: Gina Gershon calls him a method director as he literally becomes part of the atmosphere during a shoot, making a suggestion and seeing what the actor does with it.

Wes Anderson likes his horror fare because the narrative pulls you in keeping you close to the characters are engaging because in Friedkin movies they’re built in reality. Casting his films to perfection avoids too many takes. Infact he’s very much a one take guy, a cording to Juno Temple who applauds the complexity of his female characters, who are sometimes even more complicated that his male characters. And he casts his films to perfection Max von Sydow was perfect in the Exorcist Ellen Burstyn  knew the territory as a lapsed Catholic herself. “He taught me how to be real in the fiction” she says.

We are treated to archive footage of an interview with Fritz Lang where the German emigre complains that his films made in Germany are worthless but al least he got to meet Goebels. Lang only appreciated the films he made in Hollywood. As a director you need ambition, luck and the Grace of God, and particularly the latter. But in the end “success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan”

In his lavishly hilltop home we are shown his drawings by Sergei Eisenstein before he discusses his film Cruising which was made inside the gay bars of New York but wasn’t a hit with the gay community on account of exposing their haunts in their raw reality. “I loved it as an exotic background for a murder mystery. But i don’t approach cinema from a political standpoint. Infact I don’t trust politics or politicians”.

He wanted to cast unknown actors in To Live and Die in LA (1985) and so low key stage actor Willem Defoe became electric casting opposite with William Petersen. In accordance with his documentary research credentials the film also involved some real counterfeiters, whom Friedkin got to know.

Friedkin never attended film school and doesn’t consider himself an artist but admires Antonioni and a Fellini and claims Kathryn Bigelow to be the best woman filmmaker working today. 

“Acting and filmmaking are professions. It’s a job. Out of this work there can come art – but it’s rare. when you start to believe in yourself as a artist – instead of telling a story with the utmost professionalism – that’s the end of a career. Antonioni and Fellini’s films are full of mood and texture”. Friedkin’s only regret was not having been able to transcend reality in his films. Sadly time is no longer on his side. MT

TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM FRIEDKIN 1935-2023| VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | CLASSICS | 31 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

 

Tumbbad (2018) *** Venice Film Festival 2018 | Critics’ Week

Dirs: Rahi Anil Barve, Adesh Prasad, Anand Ghandi | Horror Fantasy | 104′

This 19th Century set fantasy thriller is the first Indian feature (out of competition) to open Critics’ Week at Venice Film Festival, the arthouse sidebar that this year features nine films by first time directors from across the world.

TUMBBAD is a mythical story that has its roots back in Hindu folklore where the ‘Puranas’ (told primarily in Sanskrit, but also in regional languages) were often linked to deities such as Vishnu, Shiva and Devi.  Six years in the making and directed by Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad the stunning Pune-set parable story revolves around three generations of a Brahmin family exploring the roots of human greed. 

Blue-eyed mega star Sohum Shah is impressive as the stubbornly conniving bastard son of the village lord in the dank backwater of Tumbbad where he lives with his long-suffering wife and family. Obsessed with a mythical ancestral treasure, he suspects the secret of its whereabouts lies with his great-grandmother, a cursed witch who has been comotose for centuries in a damp underground sewer. Confronting her in this foul sunken pit puts him face to face with the guardian of the treasure, an evil fallen god. What starts with his lust for a few gold coins, quickly spirals into a reckless, perpetual yearning, spanning decades. Vinayak’s greed escalates until he unearths the biggest secret of all, something more valuable than the treasure itself.

This fast-paced parable contrasts elegant 1920s settings with ghastly, spine-chilling scenes that unravel in the remote monsoon-drenched location imbuing in its characters a sense of quiet desperation and tortured misery as they fight for survival spurred on by their quest. Jesper Kyd’s ominous orchestral score adds depth to this magical horror mystery. Kyd composed the music for Assassin’s Creed and Darksiders series.

TUMBBAD is one of a new generation of arthouse titles coming out of India. With its spookily crafted set pieces, convincing performances and imaginatively scripted folklore-based narrative it easily competes with the best titles currently on the fantasy drama stage. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | CRITICS WEEK 2018

L’EnKas (2018) *** Venice Film Festival 2018 | Orizzonti

Dir: Sarah Marx | Cast: Sandrine Bonnaire | Sandor Funtek | Drama | 85′

L’EnKas is a lucidly imagined slice of contemporary social realism described by its director Sarah Marx as “socially aware”. Her intention was to make a film about “ordinary people who weren’t born bad but who have had to follow illegal paths”. In other words, these are not natural born criminals but those who commit crime when the going gets tough. And although she takes no moral stand with her well-paced observational feature debut, its premise departs from a cock-eyed moral standpoint although its subject matter is as old as the hills. And her main character Ulysse (an impressively convincing Funtek) certainly gets off on the wrong footing, when he arrives home fresh out of prison for a minor offence. His main concern is to make as much money as possible but he is confronted by a stack of unpaid bills and a mother (Sandrine Bonnaire as you’ve never seen her before) who suffers from depression and needs treatment. So he comes up with a plan with his best friend, David. Selling a mixture of water and Ketamine, obtained from a contact who works in a Veterinary surgery, the two travel from rave to rave selling the drug mixture from their food truck.

And it’s a short-sighted idea that naturally sees the pair in trouble as their dreams crash and burn and their world comes toppling down. Meanwhile troubled mother Gabrielle is having private psychiatric care. Fresh and full of naturalistic performances L’EnKas is a strong debut that gets inside the simplistic minds of naive people, who fall, get hurt, get back up again, contradict themselves and have their own reasons for doing so. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 29 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2018 | ORIZZONTI

Stripped (2018) **** Venice Film Festival | Orizzonti

Dir: Yaron Shani | Israel | Docudrama | 118′ | EROM

Yaron Shani rose to international acclaim with his feature debut Ajami. He brings to this year’s Venice film festival the first part of The Love Trilogy entitled STRIPPED (EROM). It’s an intriguing and highly intelligent cinema vérité piece that seeks to blur the lines between fiction and documentary through its refreshingly low key approach to an extremely intimate and at times startling film where the lives of seemingly  unconnected eventually intertwine in its unexpected and quite shocking denouement. Performances are pitch perfect and naturalistic from its cast of mainly newcomers.

34 year-old Alice is an award-winning writer and filmmaker who lives with her menagerie of dogs in a Tel Aviv apartment. She is woken up one morning from a deep sleep by her boyfriend, under rather bewildering circumstances: the dogs have been shut in the bathroom where someone has scrawled a message on the mirror. Going about her day she increasingly starts to feel weird: panic attacks follow and a sense of desperate displacement and unease.  On the news, reports of a rapist are circulating. Her mother decides to come and stay so the two can look after each other for a while but none of this takes place in a melodramatic ways as Shani coaxes completely natural performances from his cast of mostly newcomers,

In the same apartment block a talented young classical guitarist (Ziv, 17) lives with his parents. His high hopes for a professional career in a local orchestra are dashed when the audition results confirm that he hasn’t got in. Soul-searching ensues with his helpful family. He heads off for his army service where the demands of adulthood will rob him of his tenderness and innocence. One of his friends is in hospital suffering from cancer. His university friends gather round his bedside as an impromptu round of jazz singing kicks off. Later they will take part in a highly charged visit from a ‘strippo-gramme’ service – some will lose their virginity in scenes of explicit nudity – it’s all light-hearted fun but it gives the boys a taste of reality. The narrative then comes full circle in the final scenes when the main protagonists lives intertwine in a shocking finale subverting our expectations.

STRIPPED feels bracingly original and refreshingly different. In order to achieve this quasi documentary feel, the cast took part in an extreme method acting experiment where they have each inhabited the lives of their fictional characters for the unusual long shooting period of over a year. The skeleton script was then fleshed out by the actors’ own personal experiences and the result is refreshingly bold in its naturalism, and despite still being fiction – clearly their input makes proceedings highly personal. It’s as if the directer invented a new form – semi-fiction or documentary fiction. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | ORIZZONTI | 28 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER

 

The Seagull (2018)

Dir: Michael Mayer | Cast: Annette Bening, Saoirse Ronan, Corey Stoll, Elizabeth Moss, Billy Howle, Brian Dennehy, Michael Zegen; USA 2018, 98 min.

Director Michael Mayer (A Town at the Edge of the World) is more at home on Broadway than behind the camera, where he has clipped this vision of Chekhov’s play down to 98 minutes – the average stage outing is well over two and a half hours. There’s something missing here, but a brilliant ensemble at least makes everything enjoyable.

On their country estate near Moscow, fading actor Irina (Bening) gets together with her older brother Sorin (Dennehy), a retired civil-servant who is also on his last legs. They are joined by her lover, the mediocre but popular writer Boris Trigorin (Stoll) who is obsesse with the cult of his own personality. With them is Irina’s son Konstantin (Howle) a so-so symbolist writer who yearns to get away from the torpor or the countryside. He is in love with Nina (Ronan), a young woman from a neighbouring estate, who dreams of a career on the stage. Schoolteacher Mikhail (Zegen) is soft on Masha (Moss), who puts him down in public and is secretly in love with Konstantin. 

Irina’s post-oedipal relationship with her son erupts on the evening of the amateur performance of his absurdist play, which his mother mocks. Konstanti lowers the curtain prematurely while, Nina, acting her heart out, attracts Trigorin’s attraction. Irina and Konstantin spend the next day sulking like teenagers and Nina confesses her dreams to an infatuated Trigorin. But Irina has no truck with Trigorin, blackmailing him emotionally before literally fleeing the estate, dragging Trigorin with her, leaving all love conundrums unsolved.

Two years later it emerges that Nina ran away from home to have a child with Tregorin, which later died leaving him to slink back sheepishly to Irina. Her acting career is reduced to a third rate repertoire company, travelling around Russia third class (“with all the peasants”). Konstantin fares slightly better, still remaining deeply unhappy, whereupon Nina opts to return to the stage. Meanwhile, Masha has married Mikhail, but not even their baby has softened Irina’s heart, she longs for Konstantin. But after all these ups and downs between the sheets from town to country, a resolution eventually seems inevitable.

The play’s premiere in 1896 was a complete disaster, and Chekhov wanted to give up writing for the stage altogether, but Stanislavski’s production two years later was a great success – luckily, Chekhov had changed his mind.

Whilst Mayer (and script writer Stephan Karam) manage to convey the main characters’ desire for drama, they are unable to point to a wider existential trauma. Nobody is exactly a spring chicken – apart from Nina and Konstantin, they all behave like moody, self-obsessed teenagers. They all behave like actors using their craft to gain the smallest of advantages. Trigorin is the main example, he discards Nina like an object. Mayer fails to show the inner emptiness of his main protagonists – any idealism expressed by Nina or Konstantin is rebuffed and exploited by the elders. There’s also a lack of melancholy, the subtext is missing.

DoP Matthew J. Loyd’s cinematography evokes the lush countryside and lake. The costumes and interiors show a meticulous attention to the era. Saoirse Ronan is a brilliant Nina, only surpassed by the splendidly scheming Irina, Bening changing moods like a chameleon. Unfortunately, Mayer never manages to grasp the essense of Chekhov’s multi-layered play. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 6 SEPTEMBER NATIONWIDE                               

The Man from Mo’ Wax (2017) ****

Dir: Matthew Jones | Music Biopic | doc |

The Man from Mo’Wax chronicles the life and times of the influential producer, DJ, and musician James Lavelle.

For his laudable debut feature Matthew Jones draws on extensive archive footage and previously unseen videos of Lavelle together with stills and original interviews that capture the essence of his idiosyncratic label Mo’Wax, gaining insight into his relationship with DJ Shadow and duo’s chart-topping UNKLE project, featuring amongst other musicians Thom Yorke, Richard Ashcroft, Josh Homme and Kool G Rap. No stone is left unturned in exploring the ups and downs of the iconic cool guy’s personal life and loves in this enjoyable and lively documentary that will appeal to fans and music-lovers alike. MT

There will be a special event at BFI Southbank on 30st August 2018, featuring a screening of the film and a Q&A with James Lavelle and director Matthew Jones. The film will be released in selected cinemas nationwide on the 31st August – celebrating the 20th anniversary of ‘Psyence Fiction’’s release. Following that the DVD/Blu Ray will be released September 10th with TV streaming TBA. For more information about all confirmed nationwide screenings of The Man From Mo’Wax

NOW AVAILABLE COURTESY OF THE BFI ON BLURAY

 

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Under the Wire (2017) ***

Dir.: Chris Martin; Documentary with Paul Conroy, Marie Colvin, Edith Bouvier, Wa’el, Dr. Abu Mohamed; UK 2018, 93 min.

Chris Martin’s first solo documentary feature is a moving tribute to New York born war correspondent Marie Colvin (1956-2012), who was killed in Homs, Syria together with French photographer Remi Ochlik. 

Based on the book of the same title by photographer Paul Conroy, who worked in tandem with Colvin, this is a chronicle of a journey that began on February 13th 2012, when ex soldier Paul Conray, (“the army and me did on get on well”) turned photographer and accompanied Colvin to Homs. His testimony is central to the narrative. On route, they decided that once they had reached Homs, and were forced to leave the rebel stronghold, they would return ‘illegally’ to the city of slaughter, where President Assad’s forces shelled apartment blocks, and particularly the Press Centre in the district of Baba Amir.

Marie Colvin, who interviewed Muhammar Gaddafi in 1986 and 2011, was a decorated journalist, who had lost an eye whilst reporting in Sri Lanka on the Tamil underground war in 2001. She had worked for the Sunday Times since 1985, reporting extensively on the Arab Spring. Not always known for her tact, she often had difficulties working with male photographers, but her relationship with Conroy was a meeting of kindred spirits.

What angered Colvin and Conroy the most was the incessant shelling of the Syrian Army, which gave Homs’ population no chance: combined with snipers on rooftops, the bloodbath was endless. Helped by their journalist/translator Wa’el, the two interviewed Dr. Abu Mohamed, who was running a makeshift hospital in a cellar, performing surgery, often without anaesthetic, on kitchen tables. 

Colvin reported live to the broadcasters of CNN, Channel 4 and the BBC. Immediately afterwards the targeted shelling of the Press Centre began. After Colvin and Ochlik had been killed on the 22th of February, Syrian State Radio announced that they were victims of the Rebels who had thrown a nail bomb into the building. But Conway is quite adamant about the shelling of the Press building a day after Colvin went on air to the international community. Soon Conway and Edith Bouvier found themselves on Dr Mohamed’s operating table in the cellar, being tended for leg injuries inflicted in the same attack which killed Colvin and Ochlik.

The final part of this documentary is the most harrowing. Both Bouvier and Conway needed to be looked after in a proper hospital, otherwise their situation would have become life limiting.  When they heard that a Syrian controlled ambulance was on its way to transport them out of Homs, they had to make a decision. Warned that the collaboration was anything but friendly, both declined, as did another injured French journalist. Finally, Conway got smuggled out of Homs, through a tunnel, the only way the rebels got get food and medicines into Homs. Two days later Bouvier and her French college escaped through the same route.

Conway’s narrative is complemented by tributes from Lindsey Hilsum from C4 and Sean Ryan from The Sunday Times: yet never has the gulf between journalist and editors been wider. However, that is nothing compared with the fact, that six years later President Assad has won his dirty war against his own people.

UNDER THE WIRE is not for the faint-hearted: some of the images will remain seared to the memory: this is a modern version of Dante’s Inferno.  AS ****

Open City Docs Festival | London 4 – 9 September 2018

Open City Documentary Festival is back for the eighth edition of the annual festival celebrating creative documentary and non-fiction filmmakers with a dynamic new programme for 2018. With 30 features and 48 shorts, 2 world premieres, 3 European premieres and 26 UK premieres across shorts and features from more than 30 countries, the festival will take place from the 4th – 9th September in a host of great venues across central London.

Marking the festivals’ Opening Night will be the UK Premiere of Baronesa (2017, Brazil, directed by Juliana Antunes. Her astonishing debut follows friends Andreia and Leid as they navigate the perilous reality of daily life in the favelas of Belo Horizonte. At first glance, their days seem calm and untroubled, but the threat of violence is never far away and Andreia dreams of moving to the safer neighbourhood of nearby Baronesa. Antunes spent five years in Belo Horizonte, working with a non-professional cast, to create a work of rare intimacy and authenticity which despite its simple structure emerges as a complex, multilayered and moving portrait of contemporary life in the favelas. Baronesa announces an exciting new voice in Brazilian cinema.

The Closing Night will be the UK Premiere of The Swing (2018) directed by Cyril Aris. A touching and emotionally rich film about keeping family truths hidden so as not to upset the patriarch. After sixty years of marriage, Antoine and Vivi have lost their most beloved daughter; but no one has dared to tell the bedridden nonagenarian Antoine, lest his heart crack. A simple solution, though everyone else in this densely interconnected family has then to live the same lie, giving no expression to their grief. A deeply affecting, beautifully shot cinematic novella; like all the best stories The Swing is a simple tale, but one that never short-changes its viewers.

For the Emerging International Filmmaker Award the following documentaries have been nominated: Angkar, dir. Neary Adeline Hay (France); Those Who Come, Will Hear, dir. Simon Plouffe (Canada); Home of the Resistance, dir. Ivan Ramljak (Croatia) and The Best Thing You Can Do With Your Life, dir. Zita Erffa (Germany, Mexico). 

The festival will hold selected retrospectives of two unique voices in non-fiction filmmaking: The innovative found footage documentarian Penny Lane and Japanese pioneer of an action documentary’, Kazuo Hara. Both filmmakers will be at the festival to present their work.

For the full programme and tickets

 

Venice Film Festival 2018 | La Biennale

Alberto Barbera has announced a stunning line-up of highly anticipated new features and documentaries in celebration of this year’s 71st edition of Venice Film Festival which takes place on the Lido from 28 August until 8 September 2018. 30% of this year’s films are made by women which sounds more positive. Obviously the festival can only programme films offered for screening.

The festival kicks off on the 28th with a remastered 1920 version of THE GOLEM – HOW HE CAME TO BE (ab0ve) complete with musical accompaniment. This year’s festival opening film is Damien Chazelle’s biopic of Neil Armstrong FIRST MAN. There are 21 features and documentaries in the main competition which boasts the latest films from Olivier Assayas (a publishing drama DOUBLE LIVES stars Juliette Binoche), Jacques Audiard (THE SISTERS BROTHERS), Joel and Ethan Coen’s 6-part Western THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS, Brady Corbet’smusical drama VOX LUX; Alfonso Cuaron with ROMA; Luca Guadagnino’s SUSPIRIA sees Tilda Swinton playing 3 parts; Mike Leigh (PETERLOO), Yorgos Lanthimos with an 18th drama entitled THE FAVOURITE; Carlos Reygadas joins from his usual Cannes slot; and Julian Schnabel will present AT ETERNITY’S GATE a drama attempting to get inside the head of Vincent Van Gogh. Not to mention Laszlo Nemes’ Budapest WW1 drama NAPSZÁLLTA, a much awaited second feature and follow up to his Oscar winning Son of Saul.

The out of competition selection is equally exciting and thematically rich. There is Bradley Cooper’s directing debut A STAR IS BORN (left), Charles Manson-themed CHARLIE SAYS from Mary Herron; Amos Gitai’s A TRAMWAY IN JERUSALEM, and Zhang Yimou’s YING (SHADOW). And those whose enjoyed S Craig Zahler’s dynamite Brawl in Cell Block 99 will be pleased to hear that his DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE adds Mel Gibson to the previous cast of Jennifer Carpenter and Vince Vaughn. There will be an historic epic set in the time of the French Revolution: UN PEUPLE ET SON ROI features Gaspart Ulliel and Denis Lavant (who also stars in Rick Alverson’s Golden Lion hopeful THE MOUNTAIN) , and Amir Naderi’s MAGIC LANTERN which has the wonderful English talents of Jacqueline Bisset. And talking of England, Mike Leigh’s much gloated over historical epic PETERLOO finally makes it to the competition line-up

Documentary-wise there’s plenty to enjoy: Amos Gitai’s brief but timely A LETTER TO A FRIEND IN GAZA; Francesco Patierno’s CAMORRA which explores the infamous Italian organisation; Frederick Wiseman this time plunders Monrovia, Indiana for his source material; multi-award winning Russian documentarian Viktor Kossalkovsky will present his latest water-themed work AQUARELA; Ukrainian Sergei Loznitsa’s film for this year’s festival is PROCESS (he’s the Ukrainian answer to Michael Winterbottom in terms of his prodigious output) this time focusing on the myriad lies surrounding Stalinism.

Out of Competition there are also blasts from the past including a hitherto unseen drama directed and co-written by Orson Welles and his pal Oja Kodar, starring Peter Bogdanovich and John Huston; and Bosnian director Emir Kusturica is back after his rocky time On The Milky Road with EL PEPE, UNA VIDA SUPREMA. 

And Malaysian auteur Tsai Ming-liang also makes a welcome return to Venice with his drama YOUR FACE. A multi-award winning talent on the Lido, his 2013 Stray Dogs won the Special Grand Jury Prize and Vive l’Amour roared away with the Golden Lion in 1994 (jointly with Milcho Manchevski’s Pred dozhdot).

Venice has a been a pioneer of 3D and VR since the screening of GRAVITY which opened the festival in 2013 amid much mal-functioning of 3D glasses at the press screening, and this year’s VR features include an excerpt from David Whelan’s 1943: BERLIN BLITZ which will be released ithis Autumn. This VR showcase experience is an accurate retelling of the events which happened inside a Lancaster bomber during one of the most well documented missions of World War II using original cockpit audio recorded 75 years ago. The endeavour is expected to be released on the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Oculus Go, Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR and Windows Mixed Reality platforms. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 28 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2018 

 

 

 

The Children Act (2017) ****

Dir: Richard Eyre | Writers: Richard Eyre, Ian McEwan | Cast: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Fion Whitehead | UK Drama | 105′

THE CHILDREN ACT is the kind of chewy intelligent drama you’d expect to made by a French director with its adult themes all sprinkled lightly with thoughtful insight and some of the wittiest lines this Summer, if not this year.

This is mainly due to Emma Thompson who plays Fiona Maye, a judge who must decide whether to force a blood transfusion on a patient  – just short of his 18 birthday – who has refused treatment due to being a Jehovah’s Witness.

But in her personal life things are more cut and dried. When her husband (a thoughtful Stanley Tucci) broaches the subject of having an affair she simple tells him to pack a bag. And so he does. The narrative beats as it sweeps until it comes to the more subtle differences between ethical and moral dilemmas. And that’s where Justice Maye has her work cut in navigating the subtle complexities of what The Law states and what her heart dictates. Justice May is a fabulous role that could also have been played by Kristen Scott Thomas – but Emma Thompson carries it off with that knowing insouciance tempered with deep empathy that shines out in each scene and carries the film through some awkward moments when it could have come of the rails ending up in sentimental sidings. The essence here is entertainment. Richard Eyre and his co-writer McEwan (on whose book the film is based) have managed to touch on some thorny issues without going for an out and out crusade and keeping the narrative firmly focused on Maye and her fully-rounded but conflicted life as a High Court Judge dealing with a difficult time in her marriage and some buried emotional baggage. Stanley Tucci has a less rewarding role as her husband who can’t work how to seduce her anymore, away for the absorbing and demanding nature of her work. As such he comes across as an acolyte who could appear lightweight and rather superfluous but clearly has the maturity to realise that his love and warmth is what carries her through. It’s a tricky role, but Tucci pulls it off. Fionn Whitehead is terrific as the troubled boy and there’s a leanness to the narrative and dialogue that keeps you on your toes without ever pressing the point. In the early scenes Eyre quickly establishes the couple’s professional credentials: in the high octane world of Law, she is an articulate decision-maker; he a talented lecturing professor. But their life is in crisis due to time management of their demanding careers. Hers is more demanding than his.

The film also offers an intriguing and convincing look inside the contemporary legal system, tripping lightly over the day to day issues that confront a judge from taking off her MaxMara coat at chambers to getting home and gracefully kicking off her Roger Vivier shoes for a strong glass of red. And naturally our Emma pulls this off with aplomb and is a delight to look at times resembling her mother Phyllida Law. Both still ravishing.

Eyre underlines two important things in THE CHILDRENS ACT: that what kids really need is wise inspiration rather than limitless personal freedom. And that sometimes it is cruel to be kind – despite our best intentions. And despite the film’s minor flaws – and they rest largely with you’re own judgement – this is enjoyable. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 24 AUGUST 2018

 

 

The Poetic Trilogy (1996-2012)

Mohsen Makhmalbaf is one of its shining lights of Iranian cinema lauded by critics and cineastes alike on the international film circuit and at home. His Poetic Trilogy is a collection of three of the writer-director’s most lyrical, imaginative works:

GABBEH

Dir.: Mohsen Makhmalbaf; Cast: Shaghayeh Djodat, Abbas Sayah, Hossein Moharami, Rogleih Moharami, Parvanah Ghalandari; Iran/France 1996, 75 min.

THE SILENCE (SOKOUT)

Dir.: Mohsen Makhmalbaf; Cast: Tahmineh Normatova, Nadareh Abdelahyeva, Goibibi Ziadolaheva, Araz M. Shirmohamadi; Iran/Tajikistan/France 1998, 76 min.

THE GARDENER

Dir.: Mohsen Makhmalbaf; Cast: Ririva Eona Mabi, Paula Asadi, Bal Kumar Gurung, Maysam Makhmalbaf, Mohsen Makhmalbaf; South Korea/Israel/Iran/UK 2012; 87 min,  

Director/writer Mohsen Makhmalbaf (*1957) went to prison at the age of seventeen, protesting against the regime of the Shah of Persia by knifing a policeman. After serving five years of his life sentence, he was freed in the aftermath of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, and his first four films are one-dimensional propaganda features. But his growing criticism of the Islamic authorities led finally to his exile in 2005. He has since lived in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, India and Paris, before settling finally in London. His three children Samira, Hana and Meysam are all filmmakers in their own right.

This ‘Poetic Trilogy’ consisting of three features shot between 1996 and 2012, could be called lyrical journeys, very much in the manner of Sergei Paradjanow’s The Colour of Pomegranates. The emphasis is on the visual, and GABBEH starts with an exploration of the colourful titular carpet, floating downstream. The carpet depicts a couple riding a horse, and whilst the owner of the carpet, elderly couple (Hossein and Rogleih Moharami) fight over their past, recounting their romantic miss-adventures, the girl in the picture, also called Gabbeh (Djodat), springs to live, to tell her story. Living with Nomads, Gabbeh is looking forward to marry her beloved for a long time. But her repressive father always invents new reasons to postpone the marriage: her uncle (Ghalandari) is used as a reason for the father to stall. First Gabbeh has to wait for the uncle’s return from a trip, than he has to find a wife for himself – somebody who will sing near a river “like a canary”. But Gabbeh tires of seeing her future husband only as a shadow on the horizon, and she will have to make a decision.

Filmed in a small town in Tajikistan, SILENCE tells the story of ten-year old Khorshid (Normatova), who is blind, but earns a living as a tuner of musical instruments, to support his mother. His master always threatens him with dismissal, since the young boy gets obsessed with the four opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, which keeps him distracted. A young woman (Abdelahyeva) acts as his eyes, selling bread and fruit near the river. She wears cherries instead of earrings and flower petals instead of nail varnish. In one scene, she becomes very nervous, when a soldier looks like he wants to arrest a woman, who is not adequately covered. SILENCE is a symphony of images (DoP Ebrahim Ghafori) and sounds, a magic and sensual journey into the world of a special childhood.

In THE GARDENER, not quite a documentary, but more a travelogue about the role of religion, Mohsen senior and his son Meysam visit the magnificent Gardens of the Baha’i faith headquarters in Haifa. The Baha’I religion has about six million followers world wide, but in Iran, its members are persecuted and often imprisoned. Makhmalbaf sen. interviews one of the volunteers tending the garden, Ririva Eona Mabi from Papua New Guinea, to learn more about the Baha’I faith. Afterwards son and father split up: Whilst Mohsen will play the role of the defender of religion and faith, Meysam will prove the destructive force of every organised religion. He travels to Jerusalem, where he films Israeli citizens praying at certain parts of the West Wall where the equally important Al-Asqua Mosque is literally a stone’s throw away. Meysam concludes quite rationally that religion has been exposed and damaged beyond repair by groups such as the Taliban. Meanwhile his father finds enough bystanders only too happy to discuss the positive aspects of religious faith. In the end Mohsen and Eona Mabi “mirror their hearts”, carrying big mirrors which reflect the red of the flowers surrounding them, before listening to the waves crashing down on a stormy beach nearby.  

The trilogy is a feast of colours and ideas directed by a filmmaker who has paid the price for expressing his vision of tolerance, framed in images of splendour and beauty. AS

The newly restored Blu-ray release of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The Poetic Trilogy? Out 27th August from Arrow Academy. 

   

San Sebastian Film Festival 2018

The San Sebastian Film Festival is Spain’s only A-list event running from 21 September until 29th in the North West Spanish town, often known by its Basque name of Donostia. This year celebrating its 66th edition, a selection of Spanish titles and international fare competes for the Golden Shell Award in venues such as the Kursaal and the Victoria Eugenia theatre. 

Joining the main competition will be the latest from Alfonso Cuaron, Jacques Audiard and Jia Zhangke also join the lineup of features already announced: Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born, in which he portrays a musical who falls for a struggling artist (Lady Gaga), Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Damien Chazelle’s First Man starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to walk on the moon, and Claire Foy. The film premieres at Venice where it open the festival running from 28 August 2018 on the Lido

This is the first time that Spike Lee will compete for an award in San Sebastian. His film BlacKkKlansman, the story of an African-American policeman who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, won the jury grand prix honor at Cannes and the audience award at the Locarno Film Festival. Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, also premieres at Venice, it is the story of a maid working in a middle-class district of Mexico City in the early 1970s.

THIS YEAR’S COMPETITION LINE-UP

EL AMOR MENOS PENSADO

JUAN VERA | ARGENTINA 

After 25 years of marriage, Marcos and Ana question themselves deeply on the subject of love, the nature of desire and faithfulness, making a decision that will change their lives forever.

 

ANGELO

MARKUS SCHLEINZER | AUSTRIA – LUXEMBOURG 

The story of Angelo, an African born in the 18th century, who is brought to Europe at the age of 10. Now a servant in the court of enlightened nobility, he skilfully employs his otherness to become an appreciated guest and attraction for the members of high society. Being close to the emperor, he decides to marry Magdalena, a young maidservant with whom he falls in love.

DER UNSCHULDIGE / THE INNOCENT

SIMON JAQUEMET | SWITZERLAND – GERMANY 

Ruth works in a neuroscience research lab, despite coming from an extremely traditionalist and conservative Christian family. She suddenly finds herself facing her past when her former lover reemerges after twenty years in jail, prompting her to question her feelings, her life and eventually even her faith.

EL REINO

RODRIGO SOROGOYEN | SPAIN – FRANCE 

Manuel, an influential deputy secretary of a regional government who has everything going his way for making the leap into national politics, sees how his perfect life falls to pieces after news leaks of his involvement in a corruption ring with Paco, one of his best friends. While the media starts reporting the extent of the scandal, the party closes ranks and only Paco comes …

ENTRE DOS AGUAS | ISAKI LACUESTA | SPAIN 

Isra and Cheíto are two Roma brothers: Isra was sent to prison for drug dealing and Cheíto signed up for the Marines. When Isra is released from prison and Cheíto returns from a long mission, they return to San Fernando. The reunion between the siblings brings memories of their father’s violent death when they were only boys. Twelve years have passed since La Leyenda del tiempo…

HIGH LIFE.

CLAIRE DENIS

FRANCE – GERMANY – UK – POLAND – USA 

Deep space. Beyond our solar system. Monte and his daughter Willow live together on board a spacecraft, in complete isolation. A solitary man, who uses his strict self-discipline as protection against desire (his own and that of others), Monte fathered the girl against his will. His sperm was used to inseminate Boyse, the young woman who gave birth to the girl.

ILLANG: THE WOLF BRIGADE

KIM JEE-WOON

SOUTH KOREA 

In 2029, after the governments of North and South Korea announce a 5-year plan to reunify the country, strong sanctions by the world’s most powerful nations cripple the economy and lead to a hellish period of chaos. With the appearance of an armed anti-government terrorist group called The Sect which opposes reunification, the President creates a new police division called …

LE CAHIER NOIR / THE BLACK BOOK

VALERIA SARMIENTO

FRANCE – PORTUGAL 

This is the story of the late eighteenth-century adventures of a singular couple formed by a little orphan with mysterious origins and his young Italian nurse of similarly uncertain birth. They lead us in their wake, from Rome to Paris, from Lisbon to London, from Parma to Venice. Always followed in the shadows, for reasons we don’t know, by a suspicious-looking Calabrian

QUIÉN TE CANTARÁ

CARLOS VERMUT

SPAIN – FRANCE 

Lila Cassen was the most successful Spanish singer of the nineties until she mysteriously vanished from one day to the next. Ten years later Lila is preparing her triumphant stage comeback; however, shortly before the long-awaited date she is involved in an accident and loses her memory. Violeta’s life is dominated by her conflictive daughter Marta. Every night she finds escape..

ROJO

BENJAMÍN NAISHTAT

ARGENTINA – BRAZIL – FRANCE – NETHERLANDS – GERMANY 

In the mid-70s, a stranger arrives in a quiet provincial town. In a restaurant, for no apparent reason, he sets about attacking Claudio, a well-known lawyer. The community supports the lawyer and humiliates the stranger, who is thrown out. Later, on the way home, the man intercepts Claudio and his wife Susana once again, determined to wreak his terrible revenge on Claudio.

VISION

NAOMI KAWASE

JAPAN – FRANCE 

Jeanne leaves for Japan in search of a rare medicinal plant. During the trip, she meets Tomo, a forest ranger, who accompanies her on her quest and guides her through the traces of her past. 20 years ago, in the forests of Yoshino, Jeanne lived her first love.

YULI

ICÍAR BOLLAÍN

SPAIN – CUBA – UK – GERMANY 

Yuli is the nickname given to Carlos Acosta by his father, Pedro, who considers him the son of Ogun, an African god and a fighter. As a child Yuli avoids discipline and education, learning from the streets of an impoverished and abandoned Havana. His father, however, has other ideas, and knowing that his son has a natural talent for dance, sends him to the National Ballet Schoo…

GIGANTES

ENRIQUE URBIZU, JORGE DORADO

SPAIN 

OUT OF competition

For decades the Guerrero brothers have controlled the flow of drugs from the peninsula to the rest of Europe. Now they’re faced with one of the most crucial moments in their history. The eldest brother, Daniel, is released from jail after fifteen years, eager to recover his place in the family. The world Daniel left behind no longer exists. His father Abraham is sick, ..

DANTZA

TELMO ESNAL

SPAIN 

Special Screenings

The storm breaks after a hard day’s work in the fields. When the rain eases off life springs up from the previously barren land. Fruit grows and ripens, survives disease and becomes the apples which give life to cider. Then comes the time to harvest, offer toasts and celebrate love. A story about the cycle of life and death, the fight for survival. Where the passage of time…

TIEMPO DESPUÉS

JOSÉ LUIS CUERDA

SPAIN – PORTUGAL 

Special Screenings

In 9177, give or take a thousand years (there’s no point in being finicky about these details) the whole world, and, according to some authors, the universe too, has been reduced to a single Representative Building and squalid suburbs inhabited by all of the out-of-work and hungry in the cosmos. One of the down and outs, José María, decides that by facing up to the difficul…

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL

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SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL | 21 – 29 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) **** Bluray release

Dir: Billy Wilder | Writers: Billy Wilder, Harry Kurnitz, Lawrence B Marcus | Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, John Williams, Torin Thatcher, Norma Varden, Una O’Connor | US Crime Drama | 116′

A veteran British barrister takes on a slippery client in Billy Wilder’s twisty courtroom triumph based on Agatha Christie’s international stage success.

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION is an enjoyable classic masterpiece that blends humour, intrigue and stunning performances from an outstanding cast lead by Charles Laughton as the bombastic diehard Sir Wilfred Roberts (Laughton), who is determined not to be outwitted by his charmingly glib client the putative murderer Leonard Vole (Power) whose steely wife Christine (Dietrich) plays a vixen with a heart of gold. Wilder and his co-writer Harry Kurnitz lace this deliciously intoxicating cocktail with their signature witty one-liners that pretty up this elegantly pleasing theatrical courtroom drama with its robust legal underpinnings and insight into England in the late 1950s, the distant echoes of WWII and Colonialism adding gusto to the storyline.

The film was nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director and was reportedly praised by Agatha Christie as the best adaptation of her work she had seen. MT

AVAILABLE ON BLURAY COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA FROM 10 SEPTEMBER 2018

BlacKKKlansman (2018) ****

Dir: Spike Lee | Cast: Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold, Corey Hawkins | Biopic Crime Comedy | US |

Spike Lee’s latest film follows Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer from Colorado, who successfully managed to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan.

BlacKkKlansman champions the Black Lives Matter brigade and is Spike Lee’s most engaging film in years, playing out as a straightforward 1970s style tale that sees a Black rookie detective get close up close and personal with the KKK, by posing as a potential punter over the ‘phone then sending his white colleague along to do the honours. Adam Driver plays game in fine form.

There shades of Shaft here and other blaxploitation films of the era, but the accent is on comedy and irony rather than outright thriller, although Lee has done his research seriously offering plenty of historical detail and some archive footage from the Charlottesville riots from August last year, and the camera swivels firmly in focus of President Trump, and DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

The white supremacists are a nasty bunch, as you can imagine, and no one escapes their vitriol which is aimed at Jews and anyone not of Aryan blood. Topher Grace plays David Duke, the head honcho of the local branch, the film also features Black characters who are racist such as Patrice..

After joining the surprisingly racist Colorado Springs Police department, his first mission is to attend a Black Power meeting addressed by Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture. Here he meets and falls for Angela Davies Patrice (Laura Harrier). The film then charts his progress to infiltrate and bring down the KKK organisation in scenes where the tone is taut but always firmly upbeat. With lowkey natural performances from leads Adam Driver and John David Washington, and a stellar score of ‘70s hits, this is an enjoyable, informative and undivisive drama and certainly worthy of winning the Palme d’Or. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | GRAND PRIX WINNER 2018

Bad Samaritan (2017) ****

Dir.: Dean Devlin; Cast: David Tennant, Robert Sheehan, Jacqueline Byers, Carlito Olivero, Kerry Condon, Tracey Higgins; USA 2018, 110 min.

Unjustly panned by major US outlets, this tight little B-movie directed by Dean Devlin (Geostorm) might not re-invent the neo-noir genre, but it has, thanks to writer Brandon Boyce’ (Apt Pupil), enough clever plot elements to keep the audience entertained. And  David Tennant’s well educated Ivy-League villain is truly frightening.

Sean (Sheehan) and his mate Derek (Olivero) work as car valets for a restaurant – but they have a nifty robbery sideline that keeps them flush: One of them motors via GPS to the house of the victim, and collects the loot, before returning the car before the pay check is exchanged. Enter Cale Erdenreich (Tennant), snotty and arrogant, who leaves his Maserati in the care of Sean (Sheehan), who has just come across Erdenreichs’s new credit card, which he gleefully activates. But his elation turns to horror when he finds a young woman (Condon) bloodied and held captive in a house they intended to rob. Sean miraculously morphs from small-time crook to upright citizen, promising to save the distraught victim. Which is easier said than done: first, the police don’t believe his story, only FBI agent Fuller (Higgins) takes him seriously. But the main obstacle is Erdenreich: cute and well-versed in alluding the police (via a flashback we see him kill a horse and its trainer as a teenage boy), and Sean is no match for him – at first. But after Erdenreich has beaten up Sean’s girl friend Riley (Byers) so badly that she has to be treated in Intensive Care, the hunter becomes the hunted.

Tennant makes the most of his psychotic serial-killer: he tells himself and his victims he is actually “correcting” them, breaking them in like the horse in the flashback. Like a true psychotic he believes he’s doing society a favour by murdering people who are “beyond correction”. Sometimes there’s a crack in the facade – when Erdenreich suddenly veers off script, hurling obscenities at his victims. But mostly, he is very much in control: in one scene, we see him, gun in hand, watching Sean under the shower. But instead of shooting, Erdenreich puts the safety on, mouths “poof” and leaves smiling.

DoP David Connell’s widescreen images pay homage to Portland/Oregon; his use of the electronic gear in the cat-and-mouse game between Cale and Sean is truly impressive. Devlin, producer of Godzilla and Independence Day, occasionally goes over but with a character like Erdenreich, this seems only logical. Finally, in classic noir tradition, there is a neat final twist: the filmmakers take on board a psychopath’s need to rid the planet of undesirables – wherever they find them. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 24 AUGUST 2018

 

The Guardians (2017) ****

Dir.: Xavier Beauvois |  Cast: Nathalie Baye, Iris Bry, Laura Smet, Cyril Descours, Gilbert Bonneau, Olivier Rabourdin, Nicolas Girand, Mathilde Viseux; France 2017 | 134′

Xavier Beauvois imagines the heroic sacrifices made by the women left at home during the Great War (1914-18) and shows shows that he has come a long way since his kitchen-sink debut feature Nord (1991). Based on the 1924 novel by Gouncourt winning author Ernest Perochon, and stunningly shot by Caroline Champetier, THE GUARDIANS is a celebration of female emancipation, played by a brilliant ensemble cast led by Nathalie Baye as a compelling matriarch.

Widow Hortense (Baye) is left in charge of the Paridier farm after her sons Constant (Girond) and Georges (Descours) are sent to the Front; they are soon joined by her daughter Solange’s (Smet) husband Clovis (Rabourdin). Helped by her father Henri (Bonneau), Hortense not only manages the farm-hands, but works the land herself in a bid to ensure that their livelihood continues while the men make occasional visits from the Front. In spite of her best efforts, she has to hire a newcomer, the orphan Francine (the outstanding debutant Bry) who is not only a good worker, but initiates the acquisition of a tractor and a harvesting machine. When Georges comes back from the front for a week, he falls in love with Francine to the chagrin of local girl Marguerite (Viseux) who was favoured by Hortense to marry her son.

Without making an idyll of nature, Champetier frames every shot with great care making fabulous use of the transcendent light, so that the soft hues of the terroir form a glowing backdrop to the toiling humans  The predominantly female workers are gracefully framed as they toil away in the fields and even though their work is gruelling, there is always a certain rhythmic elegance at play. This is a complete contrast to Riefenstahl’s Olympia films where female athletes were shown in short, hectic clips, focusing on an immediate target, like robots robbed of their human qualities. Beauvois lets the camera linger, allowing the scenes to play out naturally. Admittedly, there is some self-indulgence, which manifests itself in the running time, but like Thomas Hardy, some novels need to be transferred to the big screen in their full length – and this is one. Lusciously photographed, but poignant in its dramatic conflicts, THE GUARDIANS is almost a masterpiece. AS

Now SCREENING nationwide in arthouse cinemas courtesy of Curzon

One Note at a Time (2017) ****

Dir:  Renée Edwards | Featuring: Clarke Peters (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Dr John, Kermit Ruffins, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Irma Thomas, Hot 8 Brass Band | US Doc | 95 mins.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans traditional jazz musicians gather together to play and talk about the soul of their city which celebrates its 300th Anniversary in 2018. 

Renée Edwards’ paean to these Louisiana musicians is a labour of love that’s been nine years in the making. Four of these were spent following a small number from different genres, as they came to terms with their changed city, musical landscape and life. Intertwined are their musical and health stories, as they frequent the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, a lifeline and comfort, that simultaneously had its own struggles, whilst aspiring to fulfil a mission to ‘keep the music ALIVE’. Without these guys the city would lose its soul, not to mention the thousands of tourists who come to join in the fun.

Best known for her editing work for some of television’s highest profile news and current affairs series and documentary dramas, including award-winning Panorama Specials, A Fight to the Death and The Mind Reader, this is the British-born filmmaker’s feature debut. And it’s a semi auto-biographical piece recording her own happy memories of childhood holidays spend in the area, but shot through with a melancholy that records a dark time for New Orleans when the music stopped in 2005 in the aftermath to one of the most deadly and destructive hurricanes in American history. The flood defences failed, flooding the Crescent City for weeks. Lives were lost and lives were shattered. Many displaced musicians felt compelled to return to the chaos and bleak confusion to play again. This is the story of some who made it back, told in their own words. MT
ONE NOTE AT A TIME has won numerous international and domestic festival awards including BEST FEATURE DOCUMENTARY at Studio City International Film Festival, GOLD WINNER at Los Angeles Film Review Industry Awards, BEST DOCUMENTARY at Nottingham International Film Festival and three awards at the Oxford International Film Festival including FILM OF THE FESTIVAL.

ONE NOTE AT A TIME 2018 marks the 300th anniversary of the founding of New Orleans.

The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018)

Dir: Mark Cousins | Doc | UK |

Devotees of the great Orson Welles will be delighted by another in-depth look into the world of the charismatic legend Orson Welles by British director Mark Cousins who shares photos, drawings and paintings that add another dimension to our existing knowledge of the Hollywood maverick’s talents to amuse. 

THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES plays out like a person to person love letter to narrated by its director director Mark Cousins, in his lilting Belfast burr, bringing him up to date on how the world has changed since his departure on 10 October 1985 at the age of only 70.

Orson Welles was not just an actor, director and writer known for his wide-ranging films, plays and creative endeavours, but a pioneering maverick who wasn’t afraid to stand apart from the crowd and champion his  ideals. He was a towering figure both physically and intellectually, so much so that  J Edgar Hoover added him to the US security list.

This is not the first time Cousins has adopted this style for his documentaries: What Is This Film Called Love? and I Am Belfast are similarly crafted and mark him out to be an engaging writer who 2017 book The Story Of Looking, The Eyes Of Orson Welles is a also epistolary in style. Initially commanding there are times when his didactic, stentorian tone feels a little too heavy-going and you long for a lighter touch to the way he engages enthusiastically with his subject.

But this must undoubtedly be one of the most encyclopaedic films – possibly the defiinitive biopic of the master as Cousins embarks with the blessing of Beatrice (Welles third daughter by Dolores del Rio) on a peripatetic odyssey enriched with photos, paintings – even Christmas cards – and archival footage charting Welles’ birthplace in Wisconsin in 1915 and on to Ireland, Paris, Morocco and Spain to mention a few countries visited in his lifetime

Orson may have been outspoken but he was also generous and public-spirited and took great interest in charity work and espoused old-fashioned ideas of chivalry – in common with the  character of Don Quixote (his unfinished film commenced shooting in 1957 but never came to fruition); he was a natural in his performances as Winston Churchill, Louis XVII, Michelangelo, Benjamin Franklin, Emperor Justinian and other great minds and leaders .

This is a mammoth undertaking which Cousins pulls off with his customary aplomb as he delves deeper and deeper into the life, loves and singular visual style of this intriguing genius. But in a sense there is a feeling that he only scratches the surface in just short of two hours.

Daughter Beatrice Welles makes her presence known but never outstays her welcome which seems to add a dimension that could have been more thoroughly explored. MT

NOW SCREENING AT DOCHOUSE COURTESY OF DOGWOOF AND OTHER VENUES NATIONWIDE FROM 17 AUGUST 2018

Gangbyun Hotel (Hotel by the River) *** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dir/Scr Hong Sang-soo. South Korea. 2018. 96mins

The meaning of life seeps through the quietest moments of Hong Sang-Soo’s GANGBYUN HOTEL (HOTEL BY THE RIVER), a poetic cocktail of family dysfunction and random rendezvous laced with the Korean auteur’s idiosyncratic brand of humour and charismatic charm.

This slow-burning winsome affair sees a famous poet Younghwan (Ki Joobong) in retreat by the Han River where he is overwhelmed by a melancholy introspective state of mind as he contemplates the wintry landscape. Convinced he is going to die, he calls his two sons to reminisce and reflect with him in his Ingvar Bergmanesque final hours as snow softly falls outside. It seems that Younghwan wants to bring a conciliatory conclusion to their lives together but Kyungsoo (Kwon Haehyo) and film director Byungsoo (Yu Junsang) are keen to put their side of the story, as the trio josh a mild tiff breaks out that leads to some revelations and soul-searching. Younghwan quietly slips off to the bathroom as the others temporarily lose contact with their father, fearing the worst, while the old man was merely relieving himself.

In a quiet bedroom, somewhere else in the waterside hotel, two other troubled souls are drawn together: Sanghee (Kim Minhee) is tearfully getting over a relationship as her friend Yeonju (Song Seonmi) consoles and comforts her. But when they meet Younghwan strolling through the snow his rather embarrassing compliments about their appearance lift the mood from sadness to shared hilarity and suppressed giggles.

Enriched by the usual combination of cryptic dialogue and whimsical non-sequiturs, Gangbyun Hotel is a peaceful, reflective drama, endearingly warmed by the placid equanimity of these human resolutions. DoP Kim Hyung-ku’s bleached out and beautifully framed compositions of the snowy landscape resemble minimalist Japanese Hugusai paintings. MT

BEST ACTOR WINNER – KI JOOBONG | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

Leaning into the Wind: Andy Goldsworthy (2017) ****

Dir: Thomas Riedelsheimer; Documentary with Andy Goldsworthy, Holly Goldsworthy; UK/Germany 2017, 97 min.

Sixteen years after their last impressive collaboration Rivers and Tides, Thomas Riedelsheimer teams up again with the self-proclaimed land artist and sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, joining him around the world to film his ground-breaking experimental artistry with stones, branches, fallen trees leaves, clay, rocks, vines and even icicles.

We start in the Brazilian reservation of Ibitipoca where Goldsworthy admires the floor of a hut: thehomemaker, an elderly woman stating simply “that all you need is clay and cow dung’, but it is hard work”. Via the Presidio Park in San Francisco, the two explore the English countryside, Provence, Gabon, a museum’s courtyard in St. Louis before returning to the artist’s home in Dumfriesshire, where we witness one of the most astonishing moments: Goldsworthy looks like he is swimming through trees, floating, a total inversion of the usual images of men being swallowed by machinery. Goldsworthy sometimes collaborates with animals in what he calls “random art” where he initiates sheep painting with their hooves.

The overriding impression is ephemeral, or, quoting the late Roger Ebert, who wrote about Rivers and Tides “Watching this movie, is like day dreaming”. Goldsworthy himself is less sure about what he does: “I am contradicting himself in my creations, because nature is everywhere. It is not so clear any more. I am just trying to make sense of this world.” If Paganism was a religion, Goldsworthy would be its first apostle. But there are all also very worldly moments, particularly when he involves his daughter Holly; as does Riedersheimer with his son Felix.

Goldsworthy never hides his admiration for nature: he even eats a handful of leaves, before spitting them out. And the urban environment often creates opportunities for his spontaneous art: lying on a pavement, in what cold be a coffin-like hole, the rain fills up the basin to produce an art form of a different kind, verging on the surreal. The music of composer Fred Frith underscores this lonely, pure and transcendental meandering around the globe, a sort of spiritual trance. AS

 

Ciao! Manhattan (1972) | Bluray release

Written and directed by Factory regulars John Palmer and David Weisman this cult film is a semi-biographical take on Sedgwick’s life and captures a seminal time in history, namely the groundbreaking 1960s New York art scene. 

If you’re keen on watching a mash-up of a black and white Sixties-set musical thriller and the final early Seventies knockings of the wasted Sedgwick, sporting a surgically enhanced chest and cavorting around half naked and half cut, then CIAO, MANHATTAN will appeal.

Edith Minturn Sedgwick was born in California in 1943, studied at Harvard, rose to fame in 1965 as an actress in Andy Warhol’s films, was briefly married to Michael Post and died from a barbiturate overdose in her parents’ home at just 28.

On the plus side, the film perfectly recreates the star’s own chaotic life and also features other contemporary ‘heroes’ such as Holzer and Viva. Rather than a liberated woman of her generation, she emerges disillusioned and delusional. With its soundtrack featuring the music of Ritchie Havens and Kim Milford, this is a redolent portrait of a shooting star who crashed and burned, yet her fame remains. MT

OUT ON BLURAY 20 AUGUST 2018 COURTESY OF SECOND SIGHT FILM

A Land Imagined (2018) *** Golden Leopard winner | Locarno 2018

Dir: Yeo Siew Hua | Drama | 95′ 

A Land Imagined could have been rather a good noirish thriller, judging from the early scenes which see a slightly sleazy Singapore detective hot on the heels of a missing migrant worker in Singapore’s crowded commercial district. What follows is a moody and sensuously cinematic arthouse drama with a subtle moral message that initially would have us believe that those who fetch up in this rich island seeking to improve their lot are somehow hard done by – or even meet a sticky end. Actor writer and director Yeo Siew Hua instead subverts expectations opting instead for a more unstructured approach that mirrors the film’s title but results in a downbeat outcome that will disappoint those hoping for twists and turns and a satisfying denouement.

Lonely reclamation construction worker Wang Bi Cheng (Liu Xiaoyi) has disappeared after forming a virtual friendship with a mysterious gamer. Detective Lok (Peter Yu) is the world weary cypher who gives nothing away in his search for the missing man, as gradually his trail loses focus as he aimlessly scours the streets and kicks a beer bottle along the sand-dunes at night. Wang is in no hurry to get away as he wanders in a febrile trance through sad cyber-cafes. His Bangladeshi co-worker and friend Ajit (Ishtiaque Zico) is one of the only decent, likeable characters here, the other human link is Mindy (Luna Kwok), a whip-smart cafe worker who offers him feisty company but is certainly no fool. Wang feels his chances rapidly melting away in the quicksand of this existential corner of Hell. The tone is ominous as the story drifts dreamily in a neon-lit goldfish bowl.

DoP Hideho Urata paints the working districts of the affluent hub of South Asia as an unsettling mirage where all is not what it seems. Lights twinkle softly in the distant nightscapes seen from the pearl white beaches of the reclamation land; but the sand has been imported from Malaysia. Mounds of aggregate and cement loom up like pyramids in the dusky night air. The breezy jazz score somehow allays our fears that this will not end well for our migrant worker, while groups of Bangladeshi workers dance themselves into a frenzy with mournful tunes from back home.

Lok’s attempts to get under the skin of his quarry in an effort to bring his search to a conclusion but in the end the drama drifts without any questions being answered, leaving us to ponder the existence of another artificial world created by a disenfranchised workforce uprooted from their homes and families and sucked into a meaningless existence of that serves no purpose other than to simply stay alive. MT

SCREENING IN COMPETITION | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Birds of Passage (2018) ****

Dir: Ciro Guerra |Dir/Prod: Cristina Gallego | Drama | Colombia | Cast: | Carmina  Martínez, Jhon Narváez, José Acosta, José Vicente Cotes, Juan Martínez, Natalia Reyes | 110’

Embrace of the Serpent (2015) was the first Colombian feature to be nominated for an Oscar© and won Ciro Guerra the Art Cinema award at Directors’ Fortnight. The Bogota born director returns with his fourth and most ambitious film today PAJAROS DE VERANO that explores the origins of the Colombian drug trade through this epic yet spiritual  multi-layered story about an indigenous Wayuu family of farmers turned drug-traffickers become involved in the booming business of selling marijuana to the American youth in the 1970s. But from a tiny seed of discontent passion and honour collide, and a fratricidal war breaks out that will put their lives, culture and ancestral traditions at stake.

Working this time in colour with his DoP David Gallego, Guerra creates a fabulous sense of place in the arid windswept plains of Colombia’s Guajira desert, where a deep unsettling feeling continually pervades the heady atmosphere with Leonardo Heiblum’s ground-breaking ominous soundscape.

Embrace of the Serpent writer Jacques Vidal and co-scripter Maria Camila Arias structure the story around five songs: Wild Grass 1968, The Tombs 1971, Prosperity 1979, The War 1980 and Limbo following the age-old traditional rags to riches and then tragedy formula. That said, this is an inventive and refreshingly original film whose poetic nature is continually punctuated by episodes of brutal violence and down to earth characters echoing recent South American fare such as Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, and Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja, and anchoring Birds firmly in historical reality despite its lyrical and often dreamlike folkloric overtones.

In this strongly matriarchal set-up, themes of capitalism vie with those of spirituality showing how both can breed antagonism if left unchecked, and this is eventually what transpires when male machismo and greed topples this delicate human society with tragedy and loss the inevitable outcome. Occasionally marred by uneven pacing BIRDS OF PASSAGE is nevertheless a startling achievement marking out Ciro Guerra and his co-director Cristina Gallego as growing talents on the South American scene. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-19 MAY | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

 

Those Who Work (2018) **** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dir/Writer: Antoine Russbach, Emmanuel Marre | Switzerland,Belgium | Cast: Olivier Gourmet | August 2018 | 100′

Premiering here at Locarno Film Festival, this hugely enjoyable and absorbing drama from Swiss director Antoine Russbach is uplifted by a compelling performance from Olivier Gourmet as Frank, a dedicated father of five who devotes his life to work in cargo shipping.

A strong narrative is the key to this modest parable and what starts as a potential hijack thriller in the style of Tobias Lindholm’s recent outing, soon develops into a richly thematic character study about a man’s tough decision during a crisis that loses him his job and potentially everything else he holds dear and eventually leads to some deep soul-searching. Deeply shaken, betrayed by a system to which he has given everything, Frank (Gourmet) finds his back against the wall but his tough upbringing and committed work ethic keeps him grounded in reality with a feelgood outcome that feels satisfying and rewarding in this world of political correctness.

In Frank’s world there are only two types of people: those who work to achieve a level of success so they can look after and provide for those who enjoy the benefits of the standard of living that he is able to provide. A risk-taker and a pragmatist who takes pride in the ability to deliver his company’s goods on time and with a healthy profit margin, Frank is a both a hero and an anti-hero, depending on which side of the fence you stand on this thorny issue. But to his credit, he is a self-made and self-reliant worker who has risen from an extremely modest rural background. He’s is also a calm and diligent father who always gives his kids time and consideration, particularly his youngest Mathilde (Adele Bochatay in a thoughtful debut). His wife is an understanding and devoted homemaker who cares for their comfortable house in the outskirts of Antwerp and the couple enjoy a happy marriage. Inadvertently, his kids have developed a sense of entitlement and have grown to expect the things their father can provide: the latest mobile phone and a luxurious swimming pool – but this is par for the course of today’s affluent society. And men are most fulfilled when they can are successful in their chosen careers and can provide for their family.

When the crew of his one of his container vessels inadvertently fails to spot a migrant on board, Frank is forced to make a decision in order to save his clients and his company considerable losses, and the delay of the cargo. In short, the shops will not get their goods in the time and the consumer will suffer with higher prices. The unwelcome interloper on board thought he was heading for Europe – not further afield – and has started to freak out on board, frightening to cause a mutiny amongst the sailors and disrupt the smooth running of the vessel with his suspected outbreak of Ebola virus. It’s a terrible dilemma and Frank deals with the crisis calmly and in a pragmatic way that nevertheless contravenes human rights and company guidelines. Although commercially he has saved the day, in the aftermath he becomes a scapegoat, falling from grace with his employers and his family. There follows a dark night of the soul, but Frank makes it through to the morning thanks to his steely resolve and a strong need to protect and look after his family. Antoine Russbach has made a supremely intelligent and powerful moral parable that deserves to be seen by all the family. MT

FILMMAKERS OF THE PRESENT | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 1-11 August 2018

 

Tegnap | Hier (2018) **** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Writer/Dir: Balint Kenyeres | Cast: Vlad Ivanov | Thriller | 119′

Hungarian filmmaker Balint Kenyeres is best known for his Cannes awarded short film Before Dawn and The History Of Aviation which opened the Directors’ Fortnight in 2009.

In this paradoxical psychological thriller Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov (Toni Erdmann/Sunset) plays Victor Ganz, an architect/builder who fetches up in North Africa on a business trip that will lead him into a place of unreliable memories and exotic characters. Slowly he plunges into a labyrinthine world where present and past collide, as the future gradually closes in on him – or so it would initially seem.

In HIER Hungarian auteur Balint Kenyeres creates a scenario where a seemingly decent businessman travels to an exotic country where nothing is what it appears to be. On his arrival at the bustling port Victor cuts a reassuringly suave figure at the wheel of his Swiss registered black Range Rover on route to a 5-star hotel through the shabby streets of the souk. He gives short shrift to the locals, throwing his weight around with the local cultural attaché and barks orders to his staff back home on a mobile ‘phone. On the face of it, he is the sophisticated European on a mission connected to some property he bought many years ago on a previous visit. After the affairs of the day, he retreats into the shady backstreet where the local bar The offers lives music of a chance to ‘kick back’ with an old acquaintance. But this is where the mood changes and grows more sinister as echoes of the past flood back to a long-lost lover who has mysteriously disappeared. At this point, we assume that Victor is going through some kind of mid-life crisis, as he will never be the same again. Or is the the real man emerging from behind the soigné persona. After making probing inquiries, a scuffle breaks out and Victor wakes the next morning in a building site being robbed by two young boys who make off with his wallet. Injured and empty handed, he makes his way to the villa of another old friend who sets him up with fresh clothes and the briefcase left behind on his last visit. But on the way to the airport his cranky old bus breaks down and leaves him stranded in the middle of nowhere. Perpetually making telephone calls home, Victor promises to be on the next plane home but there is no urgency in his desire to leave, the search for his old lover propelling the narrative further and further into remote corners of the desert as he desperately questions each random contact for information that may lead to the mysterious woman.

HIER is a strange and beguiling thriller with a tense undertow that makes it watchable and compelling. Shooting in Super 16, Kenveres achieves just the right grainy 90s feel without it being a retro affair. The essence of the story lies with the character of Victor, and gradually we start to question his motives. Apart from being unlikeable and difficult to connect with, he lacks conviction as a businessman or an architect, for that matter, once he moves away from the respectable surroundings of his comfortable hotel. Initially we believe in Victor: he seems plausible enoug and businesslike, going about his days with a sense of purpose. But gradually Victor becomes an unreliable witness to proceedings, an antihero unable to stick to his timetable or even stand by his word, let alone his memory. He brushes people up the wrong way, continually oversleeps and is deceitful to his partner waiting for him at home: He is the proverbial ‘man with feet of clay’; and whilst we identify with his situation, we certainly don’t identify with the way he handles it, driven by a near psychotic desire to uncover the past and obsessed with this enigmatic woman who he names ‘Sonia”. Kenyeres’ script continually subverts our expectations in his paradoxical film. The characters Victor meets in his alien surroundings prove to be increasingly more solid and reliable than he is: an old doctor who kindly stitches up his wounds; a professor researching into hyaenas and a friendly shopkeeper who finally puts him on the right trail. But Victor rewards the kindness of these strangers with truculence – even stealing the professor’s jeep – as his behaviour deteriorates into a state of lust-crazed psychosis. The enigmatic denouement is left to the imagination, making it even more powerful as the antihero is finally trounced by the very people he previously held in disdain. It’s an inventive idea for a story and Kenyeres pulls off. He raises vital questions about social stereotypes and the human condition – can we really reliably connect, identify and compare our own experiences with those of another person? And this is the crux of this unusual and compelling existential thriller. MT

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | FILMMAKERS OF TODAY STRAND 

The Guest (2018) ***

Dir.: Duccio Chiarini; Cast: Daniele Parisi, Sylvia d’Amico, Mivia Marigliano, Sergio Peirattini, Daniele Natali, Thony, Anna Bellato; Italy 2018, 93 min.

Duccio Chiarini’s portrait of Italian middle-class malaise is familiar all over Western Europe. Thirtysomethings show a depressing lack of commitment – particularly the men. What starts as a romcom rapidly dives into melancholy meditation on modern life.

We meet wannabe write and occasional substitute teacher Guido (Parisi), naked between the legs of his girl friend Chiara (d’Amico). Clearly copulation has taken place, and Guido is looking for the burst condom. After finding it, Guido votes they should go for a baby, rather than the ‘morning after’ pill – knowing full well that Chiara is opposed to the idea: ”I have to have done something with my life before having a child”. And it’s true, neither of them has a good job, despite Chiara’s two MAs, her stint as a tour guide, and Guido’s book on Calvino, which is still waiting for publication. Nothing seems to work in their relationship either: the car is broken down, but there’s no money to repair it. And Guido’s mother (Marigliano) is still buying his underwear, as Chiara points out, although he’s pushing forty. Chiara is considering a decent offer in Canada but is unsure how to broach the topic.  And this is the beginning of the end of their relationship, because Guido suspects that Chiara is seeing another man.

The focus then changes to Guido, who becomes the hero: sofa-surfing with his parents and various friends, and stalking Chiara in the meantime. His mates aren’t faring any better. Dario (Natali) has fallen in love with another woman and is about to leave girl friend Roberta (Thony), a cardiologist. “We met via Tinder”, is Dario’s lame excuse, telling Guido to have a look at Chiara’s emails. Pietro and the pregnant Lucia (Bellato), are more negative than happy about their baby, and Lucia is competing with Guido for a literary grant. This is modern life, according to Guido’s mother: “You throw away, we mend”.

Guido and his generation see relationships and careers as transient. Self-obsessed, the men in particular, fail to grow up or even learn from their mistakes. Chiarini is an insightful observer, and DoP Baris Ozbicer’s camera finds always new angles for the emotional distress of the protagonists. Overall, the feature is more entertaining than philosophical, the director too well-meaning to produce anything with sharp edges. AS

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

 

M (2018) *** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

 

Dir: Yolande Zauberman | Doc | Israel/France | 103′

Entering the secret sexual world of Israel’s Hasidic Jewish community feels like a privilege and a revelation in this incendiary, no holds barred documentary premiering here at Locarno Film Festival.

According the findings of French filmmaker Yolande Zauberman a startling number of male kids in this orthodox religious community have undergone rape at the hands of their elders. Gaining  unprecedented access to the titular M, aka Menachem, a young Israeli man who we first meet on Tel Aviv beach at night, Zauberman unearths a history of abuse and family dysfunction leading to marriage breakdown that exposes the disturbing reality behind the silent facade of this tight-knit religious enclave. And it’s not just happening in Tel Aviv, Israel. This is a startling story that seems to connect with the narrative of sexual abuse across the ultra religious spectrum from Orthodox Judaism to Catholicism, and possibly beyond.

Speaking in a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish, Menachem tells us how he grew up in Bnei Brak, just outside Tel Aviv. His mother was kind but never particularly affectionate, so when he started to attend Yeshiva (a religious school) and bathe in the mikvah (a cleansing pool) the elders’ attention seemed almost comforting to the young boy, until he realised what was going on. This led to problems with his marriage, and divorce. He now finds the company of Tel Aviv’s transsexuals easier to deal with as there is no emotional involvement. In a car journey with an Arab trans friend, the two compare the Hassidic stricture with being trapped inside the wrong body: both men needed to break away.

A talented cantor and a likeable but clearly troubled soul, Menachem opens up freely to the camera, finding the filming process a cathartic experience, empowering him to seek out his abusive elder, Akiva Katz, so he can obtain some kind of closure. The search for Akiva propels the narrative forward as more and more shockingly naive religious men join the conversation, glad to unburden themselves with their experiences, although many do not want to be filmed..

M is a tough and claustrophobic watch. This is in part due to Zauberman’s decision to film at night and at close quarters. Under the cover of darkness she finds people more relaxed and willing to share their feelings. “Does a woman have genitalia?” asks one young married man. Meanwhile in the background to these spontaneous (unscripted) discussions, orthodox families freely go about their business into the small hours, little kids in tow. This is a self-regulating society that seems locked in the Dark Ages, closeted away from the internet, social media and the modern world.

IN COMPETITION | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Gangbyun Hotel (Hotel by the River) *** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dir/Scr Hong Sang-soo. South Korea. 2018. 96mins

The meaning of life seeps through the quietest moments of Hong Sang-Soo’s GANGBYUN HOTEL (HOTEL BY THE RIVER), a poetic cocktail of family dysfunction and random rendezvous laced with the Korean auteur’s idiosyncratic brand of humour and charismatic charm.

This slow-burning winsome affair sees a famous poet Younghwan (Ki Joobong) in retreat by the Han River where he is overwhelmed by a melancholy introspective state of mind as he contemplates the wintry landscape. Convinced he is going to die, he calls his two sons to reminisce and reflect with him in his Ingvar Bergmanesque final hours as snow softly falls outside. It seems that Younghwan wants to bring a conciliatory conclusion to their lives together but Kyungsoo (Kwon Haehyo) and film director Byungsoo (Yu Junsang) are keen to put their side of the story. As the three of them banter, a mild tiff breaks out that leads to some revelations and soul-searching. When Younghwan quietly slips off to the bathroom for rather a long time, the others immediately fear the worst. Meanwhile the old man was merely relieving himself.

In a quiet bedroom, somewhere else in the waterside hotel, two other troubled souls are drawn together: Sanghee (Kim Minhee) is tearfully getting over a relationship as her friend Yeonju (Song Seonmi) consoles and comforts her. But when they meet Younghwan strolling through the snow his rather embarrassing compliments about their appearance lift the mood from sadness to shared hilarity and suppressed giggles.

Enriched by the usual combination of cryptic dialogue and whimsical non-sequiturs, Gangbyun Hotel is a peaceful, reflective drama, warmed by the humour and bonhomie of these endearing interactions. DoP Kim Hyung-ku’s bleached out and beautifully framed compositions of the snowy landscape resemble minimalist Japanese Hugusai paintings. MT

BEST ACTOR WINNER – KI JOOBONG | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

Menocchio 2018 *** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dir: Alberto Fasulo | Drama | Italy | 103′

Alberto Fasulo’s lavishly mounted imagined drama, having its premiere here at Locarno Film Festival, examines the ethical and moral issues surrounding the purported heresy of Domenico Scandella (1532–1599), also known as Menocchio, a miller from Montereale, Italy, who in the 16th century was tried by the Inquisition for his unorthodox religious views, and burnt at the stake.

Fasulo won the top prize at Rome 2013 with Tir. This, his fourth film is a costumed period piece that plays out from the POV of the inquisition’s interrogator as he encourages Scandella’s friends and associates to denounce the honest miller. Fasulo invites us into a God-fearing world where the close-knit community are dominated by the Catholic Church and potently in thrall to their religious convictions.

This exquisitely-crafted arthouse has the look and gravitas of the films of Italian masters such as Olmi or even the Taviani brothers. Each frame is elegantly composed telling the simple chronological storyline. Much of action takes place in the cloistered candlelit confinement of the ancient prison where Menocchio, his draw expression captured in the flickering candlelight, is interrogated about his views and beliefs that question the virgin birth. And Menocchio repeatedly sticks to his principles refusing to ask for forgiveness or change his mind, knowing full well that fatal punishment awaits him. These scenes contrast with the fresh and summery outdoors of the Friuli region were his associates are put to the test, some of the speaking in the region’s dialect.

Performed by a cast of mostly non-professional actors Menocchio is a quality drama that while shedding light on a little-known episode in history really needed the charismatic charge of a well-known actor to raise its worthwhile subject matter. MT.

IN COMPETITION | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

#Female Pleasure (2018) **** Locarno Film Festival 2018

Dir: Rebecca Miller | Documentary with Deborah Feldman, Vithika Yadav, Rokudenashiko, Leyla Hussein, Doris Wagner; Germany/Switzerland/UK/USA/Japan 2018, 95 min.

Writer/director Barbara Miller (Forbidden Voices), has travelled the world to connect with five different women with one thing in common: the struggle against religious/state sponsored male superiority. Some are even joined by sympathetic menfolk slowly turning the wheel of history. Miller’s straightforward, non-judgemental approach allows the women full reign to share their opinions.

Deborah Feldman, a Hasidic Jew from New York, courageously left her arranged marriage with her little son, splitting from an extended family who are now lost forever. She wants to raise her son to respect women.“The Torah”, she says, “is the word of men”. In Orthodox circles there is a feeling that women are necessary but, at the same time, are the enemy. On a walkabout Jerusalem she passes huge street signs that say:“Please do not pass through this neighbourhood in in-modest clothes: closed blouse with long sleeves, no skirts, no trousers, no tight fitting clothes”. She is emphatic “that orthodox women in arranged marriages do not have the same constitutional protection as other women”. Finding a life outside her old community with a new partner, she goes on fighting the cause.

Meanwhile in India, Vithika Yadav runs a self-help website that supports girls in overcoming the prejudices of Hindu teaching, which has veered very much from Ghandi’s approach to an aggressive male ideology, often held responsible for the many rape cases in this country. Vithika is the first woman in her family to reject an arranged marriage. According to her, Hindu teaching claims “women are the root of all sins”, Indian society is geared toward male desire and satisfaction.Yadav’s website is a great start, but she takes things even further by organising street theatre and demonstrations, trying to rope men into the fight. On the subject of rape, she is very clear: “You all see it, but you don’t do anything”. ‘LOVE matters’, is one of their slogans, and slowly more and more young men are joining Yadav’s movement.

Japanese manga artist and “Vagina defender” Rokudenashiko from Tokyo has a spirited approach to the issue, but the pretty drawing of the female sex organ on her website has already leading to her arrest by ten(!) police officers on the grounds of obscenity. Before her trial she calls a press conference telling the audience “the female body is seen as a sex toy for men. Hard core porn films are legally produced and sold, yet my art is seen as obscene”. She claims Japanese men are very brutal in bed yet pretend to be unaware of the pain they inflict. Even comics portraying images of young girls being raped are allowed to be published in Japan. There is a yearly parade of ‘Penis Worship’ and the artist and her friends make fun of this, sucking sugary phallus-sized sweets. During filming, Rokudenashiko is convicted for spreading obscene art and even sailing a canoe in the shape of a vagina on a nearby lake. She and her lawyers are determined to have the verdict overturned. “As women, we are defined by jealousy”. Buddhist teaching says, ‘that due to the sinfulness of our bodies, women have to suffer eternal torment and the Blood Bowl Hell’”. Her protests have actually found her a sympathetic boyfriend in the shape of Mike, a rock singer who does not smoke or drink and has even composed a song to support her cause. Her parting shot is typical “Long live the vagina!”

Leyla Hussein is a highly articulate and likeable Somali woman living in London where her cause is the global issue of FGM – 200 million women and girls are the victims. “Men have authority over women according to the Quran which says ‘those wives from whom you fear disobedience, beat them’. Often very young woman are forced into arranged marriages when they are still teenagers. “Let’s call arranged marriage by its proper name: Legalized paedophilia.” In London she runs a centre and a website to fight FMG where she describes exactly what FMG does to the female body – some of the younger men can hardly watch. But she is happiest back in Kenya, where Masaai support her cause: “Masaai women have no fun with sex, and that’s frustrating for men too. We have to spread the word!”

In Germany, Doris Wagner joined a Catholic order at a young age. She was systematically raped by her superior but when she reported him to the Mother Superior, the woman shouted at her; then forgave her. She feels that the Catholic Church frames women as  seductresses: “I ask myself: was the Church really founded to do good, or was it all along just intended to support the structure run by men?’ Doris now lives with her partner and son. She is writing her PHD theses “feeling like born again”.

In this substantial and engaging documentary Miller allows her contributors to voice their concerns freely in a way that is both informative and empowering for those affected by the issues. Often amusing, it occasionally takes sides but, crucially, it also raises awareness of women’s plight with a lightness of touch, showing the way forward for men to join the movement for a more liberal and pleasurable society, that can only benefit them in the long run. She feels that women should not feel imprisoned by their gender, and the sooner men learn this, the better it is for us all. Change is possible, but, as Miller point out, it is a long way off in some societies.

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 1-11 AUGUST 2018 | IN COMPETITION.

 

 

 

 

 

Acid Forest (2018) *** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dir: Rugile Barzdziukaite | Doc | Lithuania | 63′

Rugile Barzdziukaite describes her eco-film as a creative documentary. It is set in her native Lithuania where a strange phenomenon has occurred in the forested region of the Curonian Spit, a scenic peninsular edged by the Baltic from one side and the lagoon from the other. ACID FOREST makes its premiere at Locarno Film Festival 2018.

Taking her cue from the likes of documentarians Sergei Loznitsa and Jem Cohen, Barzdziukaite’s debut feature often sees the funny side of this blot on the landscape. This humour comes out of the spontaneous comments made by unsuspecting visitors to the otherwise appealing UNESCO world heritage site, known for its natural resources and high-end beach resorts.

Training his camera on a look-out platform in the midst of the acid forest, her DoP Dovydas Korba gets a bird’s eye view not only of the tourists, but also the black cormorants who migrated back to the area nearly twenty years ago in 1989, after becoming extinct, and have since laid waste to the native pine trees with their acid-rich droppings that fall from the nesting places. where these destructive birds roost and bring up their young. But it’s not all bad. Deciduous trees have now started thrive in the area, feeding on the cormorants fishy manure. And so gradually the forest is mutating from one of pines to one of oaks and ashes. And this narrative very much chimes with the cycles of human migration that have happened all the world since time immemorial. Acid Forest is a an unusual but fitting metaphor for the surreal world that we live in. MT

OUT OF COMPETITION | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 

Alice T. (2018) **** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dir: Radu Muntean |  Drama | Romania | 105′

Romanian New Wave director Radu Muntean follows his existential thriller One Floor Below (2015) with a similarly slow-burning contemporary portrait of narcissism and disenchanted Bucharest youth premiering at Locarno Film Festival 2018.

Drawing comparison with Uli Edel’s Christiane F, teenage Alice T is pretty, petulant and out of control. Adopted as a baby from a Rumanian orphanage she is constantly finding ways to market herself for personal empowerment and spends her directionless days hanging out with mindless friends, taking selfies, a cigarette casually in her hand. Their focus is on boys and soon Alice is pregnant, sparking a furious row with her adoptive mother (Mihaela Sirbu from Aferim!) who suffered to have her own kids but now accepts her daughter’s right to have the baby. Spurred on by this petty victory against her mother, Alice at first feels more in control; she has a weapon against her mother, a new identity and a mission to accomplish – that of motherhood. Her mother warms to the pregnancy and gradually the family are on board supporting her too. Alice finally feels she’s got somewhere with her life, but soon becomes bored with the idea of having a baby which may take the focus off number one.

Andra Guti is really impressive in her debut as Alice and Muntean, writing with two regular male collaborators (who are all fathers), keeps his distance from his anti-heroine as the observational story gradually unspools. What starts as a sad reflection on modern womanhood and the loss of feminine could have transformed into something warmer and more mature on Alice’s part. But that’s not the point. And soon her abusive narcissism resurfaces as she casts around for more attention, another power fix. This transformation is so subtle it takes a while to fully take on board the true depth of Alice’s self-centredness as the prime focus of her mother’s doting and undivided attention, calling to mind that same dedication seen by the mother in fellow Romanian Calin Peter Netzer’s 2013 drama Child’s Pose.

This female centric storyline highlights the focus on domestic trivia where low level issues form the centre of everyday conversations. The camera hangs over these scenes to the point of tedium, emphasising the sheer vacuousness of Alice’s existence. There are no hopes or dreams for anything outside this narrow domain. And Alice is not encouraged to aspire but shielded from any kind of challenge, so she is unable to learn by her mistakes on a road to nowhere. Her bad reports at school are openly questioned by her mother in the face of authority, pointing to a system where children can do no wrong, but will never really amount to anything. After the pregnancy is confirmed, her mother decides that her daughter will take some time out for the pregnancy, but this only leaves more of a vacuum in the teenager’s feckless existence and she needs to be the centre of attention.

Tudor Lucaciu’s camera pictures the scene around Bucharest and the coast in master shots and long takes showing how Alice can be anything to anybody as she casts her spell over strangers and acquaintances alike. The male characters remain unexplored and are mostly seen as bemused outsiders just trying to get on with their lives. And the finale comes as a fait accompli leaving Alice just as bewildered and lost as she must have felt back in that orphanage, and even less sure of herself than she was at the start. This is a drama that will make your blood boil. MT

IN COMPETITION | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 1-11 AUGUST 2018 | Due to release next year in the UK

Separate Tables (1958) **** bluray release

Dir: Delbert Mann | Writer: Terence Rattigan, John Gay | Cast: Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth, David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Gladys Cooper, Cathleen Nesbitt, Felix Aylmer, May Hallett, Rod Taylor Audrey Dalton | UK | Drama | 100′

Based  on the one act plays “Table by the Window” and “Table Number Seven” by Terence Rattigan. This intimate and exquisitely-crafted character drama from Marty director Delbert Mann shows darker noirish shadows lurking behind its chic and gracefully turned out long-term residents staying at the Beauregard Hotel in the English seaside resort of Bournemouth, in the late fifties. 

The hotel manager is the prim and dignified Miss Pat Cooper (Wendy Hiller) who seems to be involved with Burt Lancaster’s recovering alcoholic. But it soon emerges that the troubled writer is actually still in love with his beautiful but insecurely narcissistic former wife (a glowing Rita Hayworth) who – on a dynamic-changing rebound – makes a smouldering entrance amongst the assembled guests, an unhappy assortment of troubled misfits, loners and fakes who welcome the chance to have the company of fellow souls as they dine at separate tables, all elegantly attired by costumier Edith Head. David Niven plays the part of a Walter Mitty major, a delusional phoney who tries to impress the emotionally fragile and histrionic Deborah Kerr, styling himself as a war hero. Deborah is accompanied by her brittle and overbearing mother (Gladys Cooper). 

Considered controversial at the time it all feels rather quaint but its underlying themes of emotional dysfunction, family breakdown, lost love and broken dreams are enduring and just as meaningful now as they ever were, and John Gay’s thoughtful script (complimented by David Raksin’s atmospheric score and Charles Lang’s pristine cinematography) never resorts to melodrama or sensationalism in expressing them as the narrative gradually reaches a satisfying conclusion with the ensemble cast giving some really fabulous performances. This is English classic cinema at its best. MT

AVAILABLE ON BLURAY | DVD FROM 20 AUGUST 2018

The Deer Hunter (1978 *** Bluray release

Dir: Michael Cimino | US War Thriller | 183′

Another great film of the Seventies and one of the most salient on the futility of war, this was undoubtedly Michael Cimino’s masterpiece.  The lives of three Pennsylvanian steelworkers are changed forever when they sign up as volunteers for Vietnam. Patriotic and poignant, THE DEER HUNTER is underpinned by a terrific cast and two towering performances from Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken – one a victorious hero, the other a tragic victim of the hostilities and of life in general. This rich character epic portrays how men can be tested by the worst of circumstances and can survive or fail. Magnificent both as a moral tale and a soaring testament to community and comradeship, the Nietzschean saga is not for the feint of heart, nor those lacking in viewing stamina – it runs for over three emotionally gruelling hours. MT

THE DEER HUNTER | BRAND NEW 4K RESTORATION TO COMMEMORATE 40th ANNIVERSARY | IN CINEMAS 4TH JULY 2018ON BLU-RAY, COLLECTOR’S EDITION (INCLUDING FIRST EVER 4K ULTRA HD VERSION) AND EST 20TH AUGUST 2018

 

Elvis ‘68 Comeback Special (2018) ***

Dir.: Steve Binder; Documentary with Elvis Presley; USA 1968/2018, 105 min.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of this legendary Elvis Presley Comeback Show, originally filmed in the NBC studios in June 1968, director Steve Binder and Priscilla Presley shed light on the details of the recordings; followed bya 90-minute special cut of the original 440- minute DVD. The Special Edition will be shown in cinemas on August the 16th, the 41th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death.

Presley’s manager Colonel Tom Parker, who had pushed the singer into a mediocre Hollywood career after his return from Military Service, originally wanted the first public appearance of Presley for seven years as a Christmas Special, but when ‘Hullabaloo’ producer/director Steve Binder came on board everything changed, though Parker church a hope that at least the final song would be a festive one for the screening in December of that year. But Binder sent Presley away to slim down, and for the start of the recordings on June 17th in the NBC studios, he re-united Presley with his original musicians Fontana and Scotty Moore, later adding Mike Deasey and Hal Blaine to support the star. Presley was a little shy at first, but soon started goofing around on and off the little stage, which looked “like an open boxing ring”. And he certainly looks terrific in a swanky black leather outfit and his signature slicked back hairdo. More sexually alluring but with the same dry sense of humour as The Beatles, who had made their own tour of the US two years earlier.

For the planned Gospel medley recordings on June 27th, Parker had given out tickets mainly to NBC security guards, and Binder personally went to ‘Bob’s Big Boy’ to get a much different age group to attend. Whilst classics like “Guitar Man”, “That’s alright” and “Heartbreak Hotel” make us remember how great Presley was creatively and physically (only nine years before his death), Binder cut the infamous ‘Bordello’ sequence. A week after shooting ended, Presley started the Western Charro. As Blaine said “Everybody was on Cloud Nine” – but Presley would never be the same, even in his third, ‘Las Vegas’ re-incarnation. This release is bound to be a hit with fans of the star and may even garner some new interest from the current millennial generation. AS

AVAILABLE IN UK CINEMAS FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY ON 16 AUGUST 2018 ACROSS 250 CINEMAS NATIONWIDE 

Diane (2018)*** Locarno International Film Festival

Dir/Writer: Kent Jones | Cast: Mary Kay Place, Jake Lacy, Estelle Parson, Andre Martin, Deirdre O’Connell, Phyllis Summerville, Ray Iannicelli US | 90′

Kent Jones has made some dynamite documentaries: Hitchcock Truffaut, A Letter to Elia; Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows. His feature debut is an earnest and perceptive drama about an ordinary woman forced to find inner strength when her family crumbles around her. Diane could also be a US version of our long-running BBC4 series The Archers with its cheesy and occasionally awkward moments of ‘raw’ sincerity very on the maudlin. It pictures Diane padding around in a pink fluffy housecoat making chicken casserole to take to a sick friend, or having one margarita too many while unwinding in the local bar. This is not Hollywood or New York but somewhere like Denver Colorado where the characters sit around in thick cardies, pouring tasteless coffee into giant mugs and reminiscing over the dead and dying in their local community. What saves it and actually makes it rather watchable is the impressive cast that Jones has assembled: Mary Kay Place gives a subtle but stunning performance as the titular heroine a divorced do-gooder whose son (Jake Lacy) has lost his way. Deirdre O’Connell is wonderfully convincing as her cousin Donna dying from cancer, and Andrea Martin simpers as her trusted friend. The whole thing plays out like ‘an every day story of countryfolk’ (The Archers’ tagline), as they support one another, do good in the community and occasionally argue but gradually work through their issues. Diane is never hard-edged, but honest and straightforward, despite occasionally striking a bum note – the scenes exploring Diane’s spiritual quest feel rather bogus as does the character of her aunt  Mame (Estelle Parsons does her best). All in all, this is a well-played and acutely observed domestic drama that reflects, in part, the world we now live in. MT

SCREENING AT LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 1-11 AUGUST 2018

The Last Movie Star (2017) *

Dir.: Adam Rifkin; Cast: Burt Reynolds, Ariel Winter, Clark Duke, Ellar Coltrane, Chevy Chase; USA 2017, 94 min.

Adam Rifkin has had a mix career in movies and TV, coming up with features like Dawn of Sex (original title Homo Erectus), and here shows an ageing Burt Reynolds in the worst possible light.

Keeping the best part for starters, we first meet elderly actor Vic Edwards (Reynolds) in the waiting room of a vet’s practice where he will later be told that his dog must be put down. Driving back to his sprawling mansion, we do feel for him. But Rifkin makes sure that our sympathy won’t last. Talking to his buddy Sonny (Chase) in an outdoor restaurant – where no woman escapes their lascivious glances – Edwards tells him about his invitation to Nashville to receive a lifetime award. He’s not keen to go but Sonny eventually talks him into making the all-expenses-paid trip and he is soon met at the airport by Lil (Winter), a millennial Goth pestered by an abusive and two-timing boyfriend. 

In Nashville, Edwards is aghast at the shabby hotel but even more by the venue of his prize giving: a backroom of a bar where Lil’s brother Doug (Duke) and Shane McAvoy (Coltrane) lead the proceedings. After a pathetic ‘ride’ on a rocking horse meant for children, even Edwards has had enough, and wants to be taken back to the airport. But seeing a motorway exit leading to his hometown of Knocksville, he changes his mind, and revisits old haunts: his family home and the football stadium, before meeting his first wife in a care home. “Having made peace” with his past, he can return to Sonny and ogling young women.

This choice cinematic experience with its themes of nostaligia and last chances is made considerably less bearable by interludes from two Reynolds films (Smokey and the Bandit/ Deliverance) spliced into the narrative. This allows the older Reynolds to talk to his young alter-egos. The Last Movie star is beyond saving: Cheesy, sentimental, cliché-ridden and utterly sexist, it’s certainly a contender for “Turkey of the Year”.

COMING TO DIGITAL ON 20 AUGUST 2018

The Escape (2017) ***

Dir.: Dominic Savage; Cast: Gemma Arterton, Dominic Cooper, Francis Barber, Jalil Lespert, Marthe Keller; UK 2017, 101 Min

Known mostly for his TV work Dominic Savage’ second feature suffers mainly from a rather characterisation of Tara, a brilliant Gemma Arterton who lives a rather banal existence hemmed in by her emotionally vacant husband and two in a two lively children in an outer London suburb.

The opening scene sees her nearly in tears making love to her husband Mark (Cooper). The fact is, she can hardly stand him she can hardly stand him athough he appears entirely satisfied with his life- a house, two children, a well paid job and an attractive wife. But he is desperately insecure and relies on her judgement about what to wear for an important meeting. 

It seems that both are social climbers – Tara’s mother Allison (Barber), tells her daughter in a working class accent ‘not to rock the boat’ – in her eyes Tara is a success – having brought her up as a single mum. But Allison provides the only insight into Tara’s past and present: there are no references to what went on in her life before, or why she is so feels so totally isolated – after all, both children spend their days in a perfect environment for Mums to socialise and share the child minding. But Savage focuses his storyline on the repetitive here and now of this nuclear family, offering scant food for thought. 

On an excursion to London’s Southbank, Tara life is suddenly transformed when she buys a book about the tapestries of ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’ and decides to join an art class, much to the bewilderment of Mark, who somehow would like to make her happy, but has neither the knowhow or the imagination. After a fractious outburst at the children, blaming them for her predicament, Tara finally snaps and sets off for Paris on the Eurostar and this is where the narrative starts to derail. A meeting with a hunky photographer Philippe (Lespert) leads to several night of lust whereupon she discovers his secret and rapidly down-spirals into depression mode, and the arms of Anna (Keller), who tells Tara to give family life another chance in a different environment. 

An enigmatic second ending complicates matters even more. Somehow you get the feeling that The Escape should have been set in the early sixties when housework and childcare were suffocating women and there was little scope for escape. But because men have not much evolved much since then, women face the same issues surrounding personal satisfaction even today, but they have learned to cope better with inequality.

Arterton does her best with this rather limiting role. DoP Laurie Rose conjures up imaginative scenario of life in suburbia – but overall The Escape feels like a worthy Play-for-Today – without the cutting edge

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 2 AUGUST 2018

El Mar La Mar (2017)

Dirs: Joshua Bonnetta, J.P. Sniadecki | USA 2017 | English, Spanish |Doc | 94 min · Colour

Renowned documentarian J P Sniedecki teams up with Joshua Bonetti for this episodic reverie that scratches at the edges of fantasy horror as its gradually emerging narrative explores strange occurrences in the Sonoran Desert between Mexico and the United States (rather than the seascapes suggested in its obstruse title).

The opening scene, entitled Rio (River), is a dizzying affair bordering on nausea as the camera flickers alongside a waterside seen peeping through vegetation. The second is called Costas (coasts) but it is difficult to make out its obscure subject matter, as the mood gradually grows more unsettling.

Disparate reports of strange sightings occur daily in this sparsely populated and inhospitatble region and nameless locals narrate their experiences against blacked out footage: visits from travellers and immigrants making their way from Mexico seem totally unprepared for the horrors that await them: snakes, insects, fierce climatic changes and spiky vegetation are some of the perils of this dangerous route, not to mention the human element in the shape of border guards, both official and self-appointed, who are are known to open gunfire both day and night.

The directors’ approach has a highly bewildering feel, and as the mood grows increasingly sinister, faceless voices talk of traces of human remains and even dead bodies sadly left to decompose without trace, save for their faded clothing. Abandoned rucksacks, shoes and toys are testament to this trail of tragedy, gradually becoming part of the gruesome landscape.

EL MAR LA MAR‘s polyphonic soundtrack, disembodied voices and 16-mm visuals are a stark and strangely beguiling tribute to human endeavour, recording for posterity those who never made it in their quest to seek a more financially rewarding life. Sometimes the grass is not greener. MT

AWARDED A SPECIAL MENTION AT BERLINALE 2017 | FORUM SECTION

Hearts Beat Loud (2017) **

Dir.: Brett Haley; Cast: Nick Offermann, Kiersey Clemons, Toni Colette, Ted Danson, Sasha Lane, Blythe Danner; USA 2018, 97 min.

Best known for his comedy drama The Hero (2017, Brett Haley’s latest HEARTS BEAT LOUD adds music to the formula, but a minimalist storyline and cardboard characters make it hard going at over 90 minutes.

Frank Fisher (Offermann) is one of those life-long middle-aged loafers unable to let go of his dream of a music career. Meanwhile his relationship with his daughter Sam (Sasha Lane) is fraught by efforts to talk the budding medical student into postponing her studies to join him in his musical endeavours. But Sam is a smart cookie and the death of her mother in a cycling accident, leaving Frank in charge of her education, has taught the teenager a lesson – to ignore her father.

Since the death of his wife, Frank has had a series of unsatisfactory relationships probably due to his role model in mother Marianne (Danner), who has recently been arrested for shoplifting. Things with his landlady cum girlfriend Leslie (Colette) are even more strained, and his record shop has gone bankrupt. Only his old friend Dave (Danson), who has run a bar for over thirty years, seems to understand Frank, since he too lives in the (Woodstock) past. Somehow Haley must have felt that his old-fashioned musical numbers needed some contemporary characters to re-invent them but the ones he has created don’t really move the narrative forward, since they’re all entrenched in their cliché-ridden existence. DoP Erin Lin tries for a sort of melancholic nostalgia with brown and light blue dominating the picture, but this can’t save an undercooked script which might have worked better as a thirty-minute vignette AS

NATIONWIDE FROM 3 AUGUST 2018

Sicilian Ghost Story (2017) ****

Dirs/scr Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza| Italy/France/Switzerland, 2017. 122′

Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza made their names with Mafia thriller Salvo at Cannes several years ago, and returned in 2017 with another Sicilian-set slow-burner that adds teenage romance and Gothic fantasy to their signature Mafiosi mix to create this modern day Romeo & Juliet styled fantasy drama.

This is a stunningly crafted, magical fairytale enriched and heightened by the visual wizardry of Luca Bigazzi (The Great Beauty) but despite its touching storyline and convincing performances SICILIAN GHOST STORY is slightly overlong in telling the truth-based tale of teenager Giuseppe Di Matteo (Gaetano Fernandez) who was kidnapped in 1993 in order prevent his Mafia supergrass father, Santino, from spilling the beans. His ordeal is seen through the eyes of little Luna (Julia Jedlikowska), who holds a constant candle for her schoolfriend so bright, that the two form a psychic connection throughout his captivity, as he clings to her letter as his guiding light to salvation.

With its echoes of Grimm’s Fairytales (the enchanted wood) and Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (through the girl’s red duffel coat) the directors pay homage to best examples of fantasy meets reality. The film also recognises the fact that children escape into a world of fantasy when reality becomes too traumatic for them to cope.

Bigazzi intensifies the drama with his masterful techniques enhancing the vibrancy of Sicily’s landscapes and interiors with heady and luscious hues. At atmospheric soundtrack harnesses the ambient sounds of the forest to amazing effect. And newcomers Julia Jedlikowska and Gaetano Fernandez bring extraordinary intensity to their roles as Luna and Giuseppe in this thematically well-managed and haunting slice of Sicilian recent history. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 3 AUGUST 2018

The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971) **** Die Angst des Tormanns for den Elfmeter

Dir.: Wim Wenders; Cast: Arthur Brauss, Kai Fischer, Erika Pluhar, Libgart Schwarz, Marie Bardischewski, Rudiger Vogler; FRG/Austria 1971, 101 min. 

Based on the novella by German playwright Peter Handke, who would be his collaborator on Falsche Bewegung, Wenders’ debut The Goalie’s Anxiety is a portrait of alienation, where meaningful communication has ground to a halt. 

The story kicks off when anti-hero and professional footballer Joseph Bloch (Brauss) is given the red card for protesting against a goal scored (in his opinion) from an off-side position. In the aftermath, he wanders around Vienna losing the will to live until his first casual sexual encounter with Marie (Bardischeewski). Next on the list is Gloria (Pluhar), a cinema cashier who sells him a ticket for Howard Hawks’ Red Line 7000. After spending the night in her flat near the airport, Bloch strangles her without any apparent motive and sets off for Bierbaum, a small border village near Hungary. There he falls out with his old friend and innkeeper Hertha (Fischer), after trying to flirt with her and barmaid Anna (Schwarz), without really showing any real commitment to either. He then bores a salesman rigid with his stories about penalties, as the two watch the game.

Wenders’ regular DoP Robby Muller keeps his camerawork mostly static, reflecting the intransigent mood of the main protagonist. Bloch is unconcerned about being pursued by the Poice, even when he sees a composite drawing of his mug in the newspaper he stays put. His nonchalant reaction to the murder suggests sociopathy, he’s possibly a serial-killer, so bored with himself and everyone else that the act of killing leaves him unimpressed and catatonic.

After a recent visit to the States, Bloch (like Wenders) is obsessed with America, and gadgetry of all kinds (a latter-day substitute for his mobile ‘phone?). The Wurlitzer juke box in the bar gets all his attention. His talk is flat and casual – a dead fish at the best of times. Vogler plays a village idiot and would go on to play the many ‘broken’ male heroes in Wenders’ films. Strangely, he seems to be the only one who cares for others. 

As spare and striking as a noir-feature in colour, The Goalie’s Anxiety is a brilliant study of chronic introspection seen through the eyes of an individual who can only express himself through violence. Desolate and disenchanted, he is caught in a trap of his own making, an island off an archipelago of sorrow. A triste portrait of psychotic gloom. AS

Having remained commercially unavailable for over three decades due to music licensing, Wim Wenders’ 1972 classic THE GOALIE’S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK returns to UK cinemas in Summer 2018, restored and remastered in stunning 4K. Also available on Blu-ray and DVD

The Changeling (1980) **** Bluray release

Dir: Peter Medak | Cast: George C Scott, Trish Van Devere, Joh Colicos, Melvyn Douglas | Horror | 107′

Born into a Jewish family of textile merchants in 1937 director Peter Medak fled his native Hungary during the late 1950s uprising to embark on a film career in the UK which would see him directing for both TV and the big screen. In 1963 he signed with Paramount Pictures where his feature debut was Negatives (1968). This was followed by such successes as The Ruling Class (1972); The Krays (1990) and Let Him Have It 1991). Medak’s TV work includes episodes for The Wire; Hannibal; Homicide: Life on the Streets and Breaking Bad. Slated to world premiere at Venice this September, his latest film is a documentary entitled The Ghost of Peter Sellers based on the unreleased film Ghost in the Midday Sun, filmed in Cyprus in 1973.

The Changeling is a gripping supernatural thriller anchored by a terrific turn from George C Scott as a talented composer who seeks solace in a remote West Coast mansion after the tragic death of his wife and daughter. In this stylish horror outing, Medak quails away from cheap thrills and sensationalism in favour of a more elegant and intriguing approach gradually inveigling us into the life of John Russell (Scott) and the mysterious history of his haunted home and its connections to a powerful local senator (Spencer Carmichael). All the usual tropes are deftly employed to disturbing effect: murderous wheelchairs, mysterious banging doors and séances, as the sceptical Scott and his friend Claire Norman (real wife Trish Van Devere) gradually identify both victim and usurper in a shocking and satisfying denouement.  MT 

NOW OUT ON BLURAY COURTESY OF SECOND SIGHT FILMS | 13 August 2018

https://youtu.be/ro4aYYPgctI

The Producers (1968) | Bluray

Dir: Mel Brooks | Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Estelle Winwood | US Comedy | 90′

Mel Brooks’ debut feature is a flagrant  New York Jewish comedy so gross it is actually hilarious and hammy in the extreme – in the best tradition of American Burlesque. Set in Broadway is stars Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock a failing theatre producer forced to flatter a series of rich widows in order to finance his plays. When timid accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) is brought in to do his books, he inadvertently reveals to Bialystock that under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than a hit. So Bialystock cajoles Bloom into helping him achieve this end and together they come up with what they consider to be a sure-fire disaster waiting to happen – a musical version of Adolf and Eva’s love story entitled ‘Springtime For Hitler’. 

Directed by legendary filmmaker Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles), and starring Zero Mostel (The Front), Gene Wilder (Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory) and Estelle Winwood (Murder By Death), The Producers was adapted for Broadway in 2001, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and went on to win a record 12 Tony Awards.

THE PRODUCERS new 4k restoration from the original negative screens nationwide on August 5 2018 in celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary. The Oscar-winning feature will also include a very special Mel Brooks introduction from Turner Classic Movies. MT

The Producers will be released in UK cinemas for one day only on August 5th, and then on DVD/Blu-ray/EST on September 10th 

The Apparition (2018) ***

Dir.: Xavier Giannoli; Cast: Vincent Lindon, Galatea Bellugi, Patrick d’Assumcao, Anatole Taubman; France 2018, 144 min.

In his follow-up to Marguerite, Xavier Giannoli again bites off rather more than he can chew: The Apparition is a mixture of Dan Brown and the eternal question of God’s existence, played out against a backdrop of European cities and war-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Pretentiously divided into chapters, it stars Vincent Lindon as traumatised war reporter Jacques who develops hearing difficulties and loses his best friend, a photographer, during an assignment somewhere in the Middle East.

On his return to Paris, Jacques is asked to investigate an apparition in the Carbarat region of France where 18-year old Anna (Bellugi) claims to have seen the Virgin Mary. The sighting has given rise to a cult and Jacques decides to form a committee to question Anna, who has lived most of her life in foster families. Father Borrodine (d’ Assumacao) seems to profit most from the cult, which is commercially exploited by Anton (Taubman), a Christian version of an advertising guru. 

Suddenly the narrative changes course radically, Jacques morphing into a sleuth to find out more about Anna’s past and unearthing a murder and letters to her from a refugee camp in Africa. The icon discovered by his dead friend makes a reappearance. Although the mystery surrounding the apparition seems to have been cleared up, Anna is nevertheless in danger, having discovered too much. Sadly, the audience is still in the dark with too many questions unanswered, and even the overgenerous running time does not allow for the plot-lines to gel.

DoP Eric Gautier’s widescreen shots would do any travel advert proud, but like the script, everything feels rather formulaic. Arvi Part (one of four composers) gives this hybrid travelogue just the right blend of quasi-religious background music for the decent but sprawling religious crime drama. AS

IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 3 AUGUST 2018

In Harmony | En Equilibre **** (2016)

Dir: Denis Dercourt | Cast: Cecile de France, Albert Dupontel | France | Drama | 82’

Two magnetic performances (not to mention a great supporting act from stallion Othello) make this elegantly crafted uplifting drama really watchable. Based on the true story of paralympian Bernard Sachsé, a stunt horse trainer who suffers life-changing injuries, it stars Albert Dupontel) as Marc, paralysed from the waist down after an accident on a film set. It turns out that his insurance loss adjuster Florence (Cecile de France) has a sideline as a former professional pianist playing just the kind of tunes that the good-looking rider enjoys as the two gradually fall in love while fighting over the claim resolution.

Set in the glorious countryside of Brittany in springtime, this cleverly written and well-paced story shows how two people can come together through their artistic appreciation of one another. Florence is attracted by Marc’s courage and self-belief in pursuing his dreams, and also his appreciation of the skills that she herself has neglected in order to pursue a safer, more traditional life as a working mother. But it’s not all straightforward, and seasoned director Denis Dercourt adds a twist to his tale that creates a soupçon of dramatic tension as the film trots satisfyingly towards its final denouement. An inspiratonal, feelgood film with some moving moments. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD FROM ICARUS FILMS 

 

The Heiresses (2018) ****

Dir: Marcelo Martinessi | Cast: Margarita Irun, Ana Ivanova, Ana Brun

Paraguayan actress Ana Brun won a Silver Bear for her dignified portrait of loss and loneliness in Marcelo Martinessi’s finely-tuned first feature.

The Heiresses shares similar thematic concerns with a number of recent South American features recalling a gilded past such as  Jorge Thielen Armand’s Caracas-set La Soledad (2017) and Argentinian drama Tigre (2017) that played at last year’s East End Film Festival.

Living in reduced circumstances in a well-appointed but shabby apartment in the capital Asuncion, Chela (Brun) has been forced slowly to sell off her prized heirlooms in legal negotiations handled by a trusted friend, Carmela (Alicia Guerra), to save her debt-ridden but considerably more jovial partner of 30 years Chiquita (Irun) who is threatened with a spell ‘inside’. Martinessi’s elegant script enigmatically weaves tentative romantic undertones and female solidarity into his texturally rich and atmospherically evocative storyline often transporting the introspective Chela into a dreamlike reverie consistent with her daily dabbling as a painter.

But an unexpected request from her more flush and considerably less guarded next door neighbour Pituca ( Maria Martins) ushers in a gradual change of circumstances allowing Chela to step out of the sidelines and into the limelight as she slowly regains confidence and a new sense of direction availing herself of a long disused Mercedes to ferry local ladies who lunch to and from each others homes for games of bridge and social tittle tattle. And it is during these leisurely afternoons that the drama gains a gently humorous twist and an opportunity for Chela to broaden her social and romantic inclinations, and to come into contact with the languorously seductive Angy (a feline Ana Ivanova).

Delicately drawn in subdued tones and sombre interior settings The Heiresses is an intimate female-centric affair that draws seething suspense from its hauntingly enigmatic minor-key and acutely observed characterisations of the former elite going about their elderly lives in leafy and affluent Asuncion. But danger is never far away in the over-crowded streets and backwaters of the city.

Men are absent but frequently alluded to in invariably dismissive or even derogatory tones: for what they haven’t done or have done badly, not only on a personal but on a national level. By definition women have learnt to be resilient, forbearing and generally self-reliant and there is considerable warmth and solidarity amongst them, and even though the usual bouts of bitchiness occasionally creep in they are tripped over lightly and soon forgotten. The gay pair have ceased to be close in the intervening years of financial hardship (“have you used my toothbrush again” Chela chides Chiquita) but still cling fastidiously to their routines and rituals: the hair coiffed and perfumed; the jewellery proudly displayed; the morning coffee meticulously prepared and served by the willing housekeeper (Nilda Gonzalez), each cup and accoutrement in its correct place or there’s hell to pay. And it’s these rigorous daily moments that hold their lives together, while everything seems to be gradually falling apart.

Chiquita’s eventual spell in the local women’s prison provides seamy contrast to their sedate life behind domestic doors where the splendour of yesteryear is reduced to ghostly shadows and peeling paper on the wall where once hung masterpieces and family treasures. And when Chela mobilises the ancient Mercedes there’s still a certain diffidence until she gets herself back into gear. But soon her distant memories of the glory days seep back as the casual nonchalance of Angy’s feral joie de vivre proves intoxicating. And it’s here that The Heiresses draws comparison with Sebastian Lelio’s Gloria, as Chela’s slow but sure emergence from emotional confinement finally starts to emerge again quietly but defiantly in this nuanced, slow-burning but compelling drama. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 10 AUGUST 2018

 

 

It Happened Here (1965) | dual format re-master

Dir: Kevin Brownlow/Andrew Mollo | Cast: Pauline Murray, Sebastian Shaw, Bart Allison, Reginald Marsh, Derek Milburn | Drama | UK | 93′

Made on a shoestring budget – and none the worse for it – Brownlow/Mollo’s Neorealist re-imagining of a Nazi invasion of Britain is plausible and chilling: even though the event never happened. Financed by Tony Richardson and his Woodfall Film Production Company, it was shot in 16mm and 35mm, with a mainly amateur cast and incredible attention to detail.

Eight years in the making – Brownlow was only 18, Mollo 16 when they started – IT HAPPENED HERE pictures the whole scenario in the wake of the British retreat from Dunkirk in 1940 where the German army are strongly resisted at first, but finally crushed, lacking outside support. Then in 1944, it reappeared and the result sees history being re-written with Germany winning the Second World War with England under occupation.  MT

SCREENING AT BFI SOUTHBANK ON 23 JULY AT 18.00 FOLLOWED BY A DISCUSSION WITH KEVIN BROWNLOW AND ANDREW MOLLO TO MARK BROWNLOW’S 80TH BIRTHDAY | DUAL FORMAT RELEASE NOW AVAILABLE.

 

 

Iceman (2017) ***

Dir/scr: Felix Randau. Germany/Italy/Austria. 2017. 97 mins

Felix Randau opts for a rather unimaginative approach in this imagined drama about the final days of Alpine warrior Otzi, whose perfectly preserved body was found in 1991, over 5,000 years after he perished in an Italian glacier. With its captivating Alpine scenery and visceral depiction of life back then ICEMAN is nevertheless convincing and we do feel for Otzi and the savage world he inhabits.

This is Randau’s third feature and easily his most ambitious both in scope and budget and it provides solid entertainment for those keen on natural history and truth-based stories from way back when, recalling films like Pathfinder (1987) or even The Revenant (2016) and might inspire other filmmakers to try a more dynamic approach with a film about the 3,000 year old Ur-David, a red-haired Eurasian discovered in China, or our own Lindow Man whose remains emerged from around 2,000 years ago in a peat bog in Cheshire,

The characters here speak an untranslated version of the Rhaetic language but this actually works to the film’s advantage capturing our imagination about this ancient community of nomads, and providing a more peaceful, almost meditative experience.

We first meet Kelab (Jurgen Vogel) who lives in a cave with his pigs, goats and fur-clothed family, foraging for nourishment in the local forests. There appears to be a spiritual element to their existence, and one day while out hunting, his wife and son are brutally slaughtered leaving only their baby who Kelab takes with him on his journey into the snowy South Tyrol wilderness to find the holy shrine of Tineka.

Venturing into the breathtaking beauty of windswept mountain peaks and rugged snowscapes Kelab struggles on in the wilderness as the film turns into a gripping fight for survival when a dramatic fall into a deep crevasse saves him from the spears of two vicious warriors. An eerie atmospheric score ramps up the tension as Kelab fights on, Jurgen Vogel giving a nuanced performance that considerably adds to what might have been a rather unreachable character. It’s a scenic and cinematic experience and a brilliant depiction of the sheer basic savagery of life in that grim Neolithic world. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 27 JULY 2018

Tracking Edith ****

Dir/Writer: Peter Stephan Jungk | Doc | Austria 2016 | 91 min.

Based on his non-fiction book Die Dunkelkammern der Edith Tudor-Hart (The Dark Rooms of Edith Tudor-Hart), Peter Stephan Jungk explores the exciting secret life of his great aunt Edith Tudor-Hart (1908-1973).

This enigmatic woman was best known in the art world as an iconic photographer (her photos can be admired in the Scottish National Gallery), but the clue to her secret life lies in the double meaning ‘dark rooms’: she was also a spy instrumental in the recruiting of Kim Philby and the other members of the ‘Cambridge Five’. 

Born into a progressive Jewish family in Vienna 1908 – her father renounced Judaism then founded a bookshop and a publishing company. Edith Suschitzky was only sixteen when she went to London in 1925 to study with Maria Montessori, the famous Kindergarten pioneer. On her return she worked in Vienna’s branch of the Montessori School – but her life changed when she met the academic Arnold Deutsch in 1926, who also worked as a recruiter for the KGB. Their relationship was significant for two reasons: he not only recruited her for the organisation but also gave her a Rolleiflex camera, and she set out to picture the poorer districts in Vienna before studying Photography at the Bauhaus in Dessau under Kandinsky and Klee among others. 

Edith also developed radical tendencies – visiting London she was expelled after filming a demonstration and talking to a Soviet delegate. But by then she had already met Dr. Alex Tudor-Hart who would later divorce his wife and move to Vienna, where they were married. Her photos were published by TASS and after the Austrian Nazi Party became more and more powerful in the mid 1930s the couple fled to the England where they renewed their acquaintance with the recently married Litzi Friedmann and Kim Philby, who had also had to leave Vienna for the UK after the Nazi Party had killed the Austrian chancellor Dollfuss. In 1934 Edith introduced Philby to Arnold Deutsch in Regents Park – the rest is history.              

Jungk enlivens his debut documentary with interviews with family, amongst them Edith’s brother Wolf, and other witnesses of her turbulent life. What becomes clear is that Edith was an idealist who never saw the Soviet system but was faced, like all central Europeans, with the alternative of Hitler and Stalin. Above all she was a humanist who never received any money for her clandestine activities – but unlike Philby, MacLean, Burgess and Blunt – she always lived modestly. Her first loves were the impoverished children of Vienna and Brixton, whose lives she hope to transform through her creative endeavours. AS

AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 27 July 2018 | Arthouse Crouch End, Bertha DocHouse, Barbican Cinema and JW3 | Main photo credit: Family Suschitzky

La Belle et la Bete (1946) Bluray and Prime Video


Dir, Writer: Jean Cocteau | Cast: Jean Marais, Josette Day, Mila Parély, Nane Germon, Michel Auclair, Marcel André | 96min | Fantasy Drama | French with English subtitles

LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE is one of the most amazing fantasy films ever made, drawing you into its Gothic spell and enchanting beauty.

Jean Cocteau was a visionary intellectual and one of the creative geniuses of the 20th century.  A poet, writer, painter and filmmaker, the dreamlike nature of his work is perhaps best showcased on the silver screen.  Given the climate of austerity, shortages and widespread power-cuts when the film was being shot during the end of the Second World War, it seems even extraordinary – and nothing less than a work of art.  And although some of its effects may appear unremarkable to contemporary audiences, its mesmerising style and ambience was unlike any other film that had gone before.

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Based on a fairytale by Madame Leprince de Beaumont, there is something delightfully innocent yet sophisticated about this fable with its dark Freudian implications. Light of touch and ethereal in atmosphere – evoked by Henri Alekan’s sensual cinematography (assisted by Rene Clement) – there is nevertheless a sinister undertone to proceedings enhanced by Georges Auric’s haunting music, placed in a Gothic setting in the French countryside where La Belle lives with her family not far from the bewitched chateau of La Bête, inspired by Gustave Doré.  In LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE, Cocteau (who was 60 at the time) asks us to suspend our disbelief as adults and return to childhood with all its magic and mystery.

La Belle’s father is a refined merchant who has fallen on difficult times. Lamenting their reduced circumstances, La Belle’s two nasty sisters Felicié and Adélaide (played with coquettish petulance by Mila Parély and Nane Germo) and sneering brother Ludovic (Michel Auclair) constantly diminish her. Suitor Avelante (Jean Marais) who also plays La Bete, prancing around in his regal splendour in one scene, before descending into brutish behaviour in the next – fangs bared and eyes glistening: very much the epitome of the modern alpha male. His make-up alone is a masterpiece. The costumes were designed by Lanvin and Pierre Cardin.

There’s an experimental feel to the film with its trance-like episodes as La Belle glides through the corridors of La Bête’s bewitched Château, with its draperies wafting eerily and mysterious statues coming to life in the glint of lighted candelabras and goblets of wine:  There are even ‘electric’ gates and an enchanted white horse: Le Magnifique, whose rider’s wish is its command. This is the stuff of dreams; there a magic mirrors, and gauntlets that transport the wearer from one place to another. La Bête is a sad figure, almost like that of Count Dracula; forced to live a life without love entombed in a nocturnal doom, and forced to beg each night at seven for La Belle’s hand in marriage.  The answer will surprise you. Avant-garde fantasy coalesces with the peerless disciplines of traditional methods and drama, even teaching the American cinema of the day some tricks that it never thought possible. MT

LA BELLE ET LA BETE IS ON BLURAY and PRIME VIDEO

 

 

Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) Prime Video

Dir.: John Frankenheimer; Cast: Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Thelma Ritter, Edmund O’Brien, Betty Field, Telly Savalas; US 1962, 147 min.

Director John Frankenheimer (1930-2002) came from a TV background and retains his documentary approach once at Hollywood which was nominated for several Oscars and went on to sweep the board at Venice in 1962.

There were various setbacks – Charles Crichton actually started at the helm but the British director fell out with the film’s star and de-facto producer, Burt Lancaster, and left alongside his DoP John Alton.

There were script issues too: Frankenheimer was told that Guy Trosper’s screenplay would run for four and half hours, so clearly scenes had to be re-shot later to fall in line with a new narrative, Birdman still running for well over two hours.

Lancaster plays Robert Stroud (Lancaster) spent 53 years of his life in prison and mostly in solitary confinement until his death in 1963. His life-long tormentor was Prison Warden Harvey Shoemaker (Malden), the two clashing on numerous occasions.  Stroud’s original sentence was for the murder of a bartender who did not want to pay for one of Stroud’s prostitutes. In prison he killed a guard for not letting his mother Elizabeth (Ritter) visit him. Originally sentenced to death, his mother’s campaign eventually saved Stroud’s life. 

Ironically, Birdman is shot mostly in Leavenworth Prison, where inmates were allowed to keep pets. After his transfer to Alcatraz, Stroud could not look after birds anymore. In Leavenworth, Stroud had became a self-taught ornithologist, developing  medicines for his bird patients. He was so successful that he and his wife Stella Johnson (Field) founded a company for the supply of the pharmaceuticals. In spite of his running battle with Shoemaker, Stroud helped to put down a prison revolt in 1946. He would also meet his future biographer Thomas E. Gaddis (O’Brien), on whose work the film is based. Telly Savalas also makes a moving impression as one of Stroud’s fellow prisoners and bird keepers.

Frankenheimer shot his masterpiece The Manchurian Candidate in the same year, proving his versatility as a director. He would go on and direct a trio of features (All Fall Down, Seven Days in May, The Iceman Cometh), which like Manchurian Candidate, would feature Trump-like politicians, ready to overthrow the constitution of the USA by manipulation and force. 

Birdman is hyper-realistic, but Stroud’s exclamation “You ain’t got much, but you keep subtractin”, is proven wrong in the end. DoP Burnett Guffey’s (Bonny & Clyde) black-and-white images are cast in deep shadows and as stone cold as the prison walls. in spite of his brush-up with Crichton, Lancaster is brilliant, winning the Volpi Price for Best Actor in Venice 1962.AS

OUT ON BLURAY COURTESY OF EUREKA

Blossom Valley (2018) **** Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Laszlo Csuja; Cast: Reti Laszlo, Berenyi Bianca, Kozma Karoly; Hungary 2018, 83 min.

The original Hungarian title of Laszlo Csuja’s debut drama is symbolic: Viragvölgy is the last stop on a children’s railway that runs through Buda Heights and the woods near Budapest.

BLOSSOM VALLEY’s impressive cast of non-professionals, Laszlo Reti (a former Special Olympics skating champion) and Bianka Berenyi) performer and lead singer of Cannibal EU are largely the reason why this eerie, melancholic and angst-ridden road fairytale won the Grand Jury Price of the ‘East – West Section” of this year’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

Just for the hell of it, feisty Bianka (Bianka Berényi) has decided to kidnap a baby but she soon meets young Laci (László Réti), who provides a calming influence despite having been declared mentally unfit to make his own decisions. The couple and their new baby settle into a family unit of sorts and – after stealing a caravan – the police are soon in hot pursuit of the trio.

Bianca is a borderline sociopath who loves nothing more than attention and mischief. Like Laci, she has issues with regressive development, but unlike him – naïve and wanting to please – she has a certain malice, which is hidden behind a childlike demeanour. Her attention span is limited, she must be entertained and worshiped permanently. Contrary to her ex-boyfriends, who see her at a nuisance, Laci adores her non-stop, accepting most of her changing moods.

Mentored by Enyedi Ildico (On Body and Soul, last year’s Berlinale winner), Csuja, very much like Enyedi, goes all out to achieve a frightening atmosphere managing the film’s tonal shifts with surprising dexterity and adding a punk rock twist to the mix. The baby – played by two sets of twins, one actually named Laura – is in constant danger, but the ‘parents’ are too focused on themselves, even though there are some moments of closeness and intimacy. The impulsive Bianca and the love smitten Laci are always a step away from disaster.

Gergely Vass’s images are full of saturated colours, the scenes in the countryside are full of magic and the car journey’s a nightmare, but there are moments of grim social realism too. All said and done though, this zany drama belongs to the leading actors. MT

GRAND JURY PRIZE WINNER | EAST OF WEST | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The Receptionist (2017) ***

Dir.: Jenny Lu; Cast: Shiang-chyi Chen, Fan Shixuan, Shuang Teng, Teresa Daley, Sophie Gopsill, Joshua Whitehouse, Stephen Pucci; UK/Taiwan 2016, 102 min.

Needs must when the Devil drives comes to mind in describing Jenny Lu’s grim but timely exploration of migrant’s shattered dreams dedicated to Anna, a woman from mainland China, whose life ended in tragedy after seeking a better life. 

Set mainly in a dingy ‘massage parlour’ near Heathrow and told from the perspective of Tina, the titular onlooker, The Receptionist pictures the lives of several young migrant workers in contemporary London.

Tina (Daley) and her boyfriend Frank (Whitehouse) are  graduates struggling to pay back their student grants and coping with the high rent of their miniscule flat. Tina’s job-seeking experiences are futile – who wants another literature graduate? When Frank is sacked, Tina takes the job she had rejected in the first place: receptionist to ‘Madame’ Lily (Gospsill), whose tawdry house near Heathrow Airport is the setting for this exploitation drama. When Tina arrives, Lily already has two sex-workers toiling for her: the mature, having-seen-it-all Sasa (Chen), and the the pixie-like Mei (Shixuan), who pretends that it’s all a game. At first, Tina is aloof – treating Sasa and Mei with contempt and grudgingly obeying Lily, who always finds new jobs for Tina – such as duct-taping the windows “ so that the neighbours cannot smell the sex”. But Tina prefers writing up her diary – an activity totally out of place given the setting. 

Relationships are complicated by Sam (Pucci) Madame Lily’s much younger ‘toy lover’, who not so secretly yearns for some “freebies”. When Anna (Teng), a woman in her mid-thirties arrives, Tina turns her allegiance to the sex workers, joins “their side” against her employer. Anna is a naive country girl and has no idea what she letting herself into. Her family has paid a huge sum of money so that she can work in the UK – and everybody back home relies on this financial support. She soon finds out from Sasa and Mei that abortions are not safe at all, even an anaesthetic is seen as a luxury. Unable to cope, Anna looses the will to live. The ending itself is poetic but never sentimental and cannot hide what has gone on before.

The director’s debut drama shows a passionate concern for her story and never lets up on realism, without resorting to explicit sex or nudity. DoP Gareth Munden captures the prison atmosphere with great flair and the ensemble acting is brilliant. Whilst there are some structural difficulties, The Receptionist is more than well-meaning, showing the fate of invisible women from another world being pushed to the margins and beyond. AS

NATIONWIDE FROM 20 JULY 2018

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017)

Dir: Frederick Wiseman | Doc | US | 197′

Legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman (In Jackson Heights, National Gallery) takes his cameras within the walls of the New York Public Library for his forty-third film in fifty years which again throws light on a great institution – and is again well over three hours. It would be rash to say that Wiseman is losing it – but his tone is more and more lecturing, and we find ourselves in the position of students, well aware that the professor is talking down to us. Or perhaps, Wiseman has perfected his style to the point that he really needs no audience any more: who can argue with an encyclopaedia? There is no recourse, no questions, no room for doubt: Wiseman’s documentaries are the bible on his chosen subject.

The NY Public Library system with 92 branches, was founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911, the headquarters, a beautiful Art-Deco building on 5th Avenue/42nd Street, is impressive, and rather British with its dominating lions. But Wiseman visits many branches, and the libraries could not be more different. The same goes for the activities: a librarian is recording all of Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark, there are talks by Patti Smith and Ta-Nehsi Coates, poetry reading with P. Hodges and endless quotes: from Karl Marx, Primo Levi and Malcolm, to name a few. Wiseman even includes a job-fair in the Bronx in his meanderings in the city. “Libraries are about people” is the motto of Ex-Libris: true, but people are irrational and very contradictory, because they are alive. But in spite of the motto, Wiseman seems more interested in discovering structures, showing off how clever he is. AS

NOW SHOWING from 13 JULY 2018 | VENICE REVIEW 2017

Pin Cushion (2017)***

Dir: Deborah Haywood | Cast: Lily Newmark, Joana Scanlan | UK | Drama |

The age-old subject of bullying is tackled here with tender aplomb by first time writer director Deborah Haywood in her poignant mother daughter buddy movie currently doing the festival rounds and now at Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Iona (Lily Newmark) and her mother Lyn (Joana Scanlan) are trying for a fresh start in a new town, but their close relationship soon comes under pressure largely due to Lyn’s physical challenges, causing Iona to retreat into her own fantasy world in a bid to escape the constant teasing and ridicule from schoolfriends. The deftly entitled PIN CUSHION is very much a contemporary tale highlighting the often claustrophobic nature of today’s nuclear family where mothers often see their world entirely through their daughter’s experiences rather than reaching out for emotional and intellectual fulfilment in their own peer group, partner or even the workplace. While we have every sympathy for Lyn (Scanlan), her life totally revolves around Iona – they share the same hobbies, and even a bed! Not only does this cramp Iona’s style by preventing her developing at school with kids her own age, but it also discourages her mother from reaching out to contacts in her local community which could in turn benefit both mother and daughter, lending her more respect all round. Scanlan’s brilliant performance as a kindly and caring parent is what really makes PIN CUSHION so enjoyable as an insightful look inside the brutally miserable world of the bullied and abused. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Vertigo (1957) Remastered *****

Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock; Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara del Geddes, Tom Helmore; USA 1957, 128 min.

VERTIGO is based on The Living and the Dead by the French duo Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac set in France in the 1940s. Henry-Georges Clouzot had adapted their previous novel for Les Diaboliques, but Hitchcock was unhappy with Alec Coppel’s original script and asked the San Francisco based Samuel Taylor for a re-write.

Filming took place between September and Christmas 1957, the 1958 summer release of Vertigo was either a critical or box-office success – and Francois Truffaut gave it just six pages (out of 300) in his ‘Definitive Study’ Of Hitchcock.

James Stewart plays police officer John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson who is plagued by agoraphobia after an accident that kills a fellow officer. Even his artist girlfriend Midge Wood (del Geddes), cannot seem to get through to him after the tragedy, then an old school, ship owner Gavin Elster (Helmore) asks him to keep an eye on his wife Madeleine (Novak), who is suicidal, and believes she is a re-incarnation of Charlotta Valdes, who committed suicide in 1857 aged 26. Elster reveals to Scottie that, unbeknown to his wife, Madeleine is Charlotta’s great-grand daughter. Scottie starts following Madeleine, and saves her from drowning near the Golden Gate Bridge. The two fall in love, and afterwards drive together to Muir Woods, Cypresse Point and finally the missionary of San Juan Bautista, where Madeleine confesses  love for Scottie, before climbing the steeple whence she falls to her death, Scottie unable to save her due to his phobia. 

Scottie becomes clinically depressed and Midge visits him during his confinement but spoils everything painting a garish portrait of herself as Charlotta Valdes; the real painting hanging in the Legion of Honour Museum, which Scottie visits regularly. Despairing, he meets the shop assistant Judy Barton from Salina, Kansas, who is a brunette, but resembles Madeleine, who was a blonde, eerily. Scottie is trying to remake Judy into Madeleine, but stumbles on a deadly secret: Elster has used him, and it was the real Madeleine Elster, who got killed at the missionary. Scottie drags Judy to San Juan Bautista to make her confess, but ends up losing her a second time.

Hitchcock regulars DoP Robert Burks, editor George Tomasini and particularly composer Bernhard Herrmann make Vertigo a standout success and his most mature masterpiece. The director had cast Vera Miles in the leading role, but to his annoyance, she got pregnant. Whilst Kim Novak brilliantly fills her shoes, Hitchcock told her on the first day of shooting that he would not tolerate her “pre-conceived ideas”. 

San Francisco provides an eerie backcloth to this alienating drama, deeply Anti-Proustian in its conception, maintaining that memory is free and floods back in every detail. Here Hitchcock sees memory as just a distortion: however hard Scottie tries to re-invent Madeleine, she remains Judy under the glaring green light of an advertising sign. Vertigo is a double murder, both crimes committed by the most tragic of Hitchcock’s heroes. AS

Park Circus is delighted to announce the Presenting Alfred Hitchcock season with an opportunity to explore Alfred Hitchcock’s signature style in the year that Vertigo celebrates its 60th anniversary. 

Vertigo will screen in a new 4K restoration at the BFI, Southbank and at cinemas across the UK from 13 July. The film will also be released in international territories.

The Piano (1993) | Re-Release

Dir.: Jane Campion; Cast: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin; New Zealand, Australia, France 1993; 121 min.

As a landmark in film history, few features can measure up with Jane Campion’s epic The Piano: in only her third outing (after many successful short films) as full-length motion picture writer/director, she tackled all: feminism, racism and above all, sexual relationships. She won an Oscar for Best Director, The Piano got the nod for Best Picture and most wondrous at all, she was the first  – and, 25 years later – still the only woman recipient of the Palme d’Or, albeit sharing it with Chen Kaige’s Farewell my Concubine. 

Scottish widow Ada (Hunter) has been traumatised by the death of husband, who was killed, standing next to her, by lightning. As a result, she has lost her voice. Her father marries her off to Stewart (Neill), a farmer, living in the jungle: he picked her from a mail order catalogue. Ada, a former opera-singer like her late husband, arrives at the unwelcoming beaches of mid-nineteen century New Zealand with daughter Anna (Paquin) and her price possession: the titular piano. Stewart does not care about the instrument, and leaves its transportation to his second in command, Baines (Keitel), a native of the country. Ada, withdrawn from reality, falls in love with Baines, after the latter makes it clear to him, that she is more than a sex object for him. Stewart, jealous and out of control, extracts bloody violence; promising more, if Ada is seeing Baines again. One of the main features is the role of Ada’s daughter Anna, who, whilst loving her mother, sides with Stewart: she yearns for a stable home. Like young Helene in Chabrol’s Les Noces Rouges, she inadvertently gives away the game, whilst intending to help her mother.

Sumptuously photographed by British cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh (who collaborated with Campion on An Angel at my Table and The Portrait of a Lady), and  an eerie score by his compatriot Michael Nyman, The Piano seems head and shoulders about contemporary cinema. Alas, Jane Champion would never again be so brave and daring: apart from the Henry James adaption The Portrait of A Lady (1996) and the Keat’s bio-pic Bright Star (2009), both more sturdy than innovative, little can be said of her more recent output. It seems, like she was frightened by her own boldness – like a comet who bloomed to early and imploded. AS

ON RE-RELEASE IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS  in CELEBRATION of its 25th Anniversary | | 16th July 2018

  

First Reformed (2017)***** | Sundance London

Dir: Paul Schrader | Cast: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried | US | Thriller | 108′

Paul Schrader’s FIRST REFORMED is a sleek and elegant beast; economical, eco-themed and uncompromising yet firing on all cylinders, powered by Ethan Hawke as an anguished Christian minister fraught with spiritual and existential thoughtfulness.

The film’s richly textured themes of religious tradition, radicalisation and global warming underpin a graceful story of faith, hope, despair and finally love, redeeming all. And we wrestle and ruminate with Hawke on his personal journey from a sombre starting point to a place of peace in a rich character study that sees Schrader back on form after his ill-advised experiments with The Canyons and Dog Eat Dog.

Hawke is Toller, a sorrowing military chaplain whose marriage has failed due to the death of his son. In a white wooden-clad church in upstate New York, he has a new start in life leading a congregation that includes Mary (Seyfried), a pregnant woman who seeks his moral support over her activist husband Michael (Philip Ettinger). It soon emerges that Michael wants to get rid of their child due to his disenchantment with the corporate world he holds responsible for climate change and pollution.

There are comparisons here with Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver and Light Sleeper which also explore despair and disenchantment, although Toller is a much more down to earth decent character than John LeTour (Defoe) and Travis Bickle (De Niro) from the outset, and only seems to lose his sense of direction when his health deteriorates, and cancer becomes a possibility, leading him into a dark place of soul-searching made blacker by a tragedy involving Mary and Michael.

Toller also becomes convinced that a local businessman, sponsoring the church renovations, is actually responsible for environmental pollution on a large scale, and this presents a moral dilemma that further challenges the minster’s troubled state of mind. As the film slides between reality and somewhere more sinister. he desperately tries to lead his followers maintaining respect, compassion and dignity. Seyfried plays Mary as an open and honest woman whose motivations at first seem enigmatic but soon become clear as the two share a mutual sense of desperation and denial. There are strong performances also from Cedric the Entertainer, as a Toller’s ecclesiastical mentor and Esther, a fellow pastor who falls foul of Toller, despite her best intentions, inspiring one of the film’s most killer lines: ” I despise you: you bring out the worst in me”. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | PREVIEW SCREENING DURING SUNDANCE LONDON

Path of Blood (2017) ****

Dir.: Jonathan Hacker; documentary narrated by Samuel West and with the voice of Tom Hollander; USA 2018, 91 min.

Best known for his groundbreaking TV work Jonathan Hacker’s big screen debut is a chronicle enlivened by Al-Qaeda home movies and propaganda statements, and videos of the Saudi Secret Service and police forces bearing testament to their side in action against the Jihadists in the out-and-out war between Al-Qaeda and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that has been raging since 2003. 

Hacker never takes sides. Even the most infuriating statement by the young, un-informed and death-loving Al-Qaeda fighters is simply shown as testimony. The first is Ali, a young man who does not wear a mask and has been chosen to drive a car with a bomb – for which 72 virgins will wait for him in paradise. Asked by his instructor “Ali, what do you say, if you hear, that our acts are a sin against Islam?” Ali does not know the answer and begs “for a more easy question”. Keep it simple, is his repeated refrain. In the same video men are laughing, messing about – your normal gang of teenagers with arrested development. They will play football and talk about their love of death and killing: the fight against the “crusaders”, the police and security forces of Saudi Arabia, is a holy and noble one. “Expel them! Rip them apart! Destroy them until they either die or convert to the true religion”. Western citizens are obviously targets and do not even deserve the option of converting. Victims like the US engineer Paul Marshall Johnson jr., who worked for a company who run Apache helicopters, are simply be-headed – for once, Hacker does spare us the gruesome details, and leaves us with the black images with ‘snow’, which always ends when the videos of the ‘other side’ are about to begin. Older generations will recognise this from the small black and white TV sets, appearing when the programmes of the day were over- quiet a symbolic reference indeed.

In 2004 Al-Qaeda switched targets after they were heavily criticised for killing high numbers of Muslims in their attacks. From now they would attack compounds like Al Hamra, killing foreigners in great numbers. The attack on the oil refinery of Abqaiq could have seriously damaged the Saudi economy if it had succeeded as planned. And in 2009 the Saudi security minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, escaped an assassination attempt, after his forces eliminated more and more cells, like the whole Saudi-Arabian leadership of the Jihad fighters, who had hid in a village villa. Their leaders were killed by the police at roadblocks or petrol stations. But sometimes Al Qaeda got away with murder on a grand scale: a member telling proudly the story how they escaped “after having shot western citizens in a shopping mall, we had a good breakfast, and then Allah made sure, that the forces of the evil-doers did not find us when we fled”.      

All told this offers bloody evidence in the videos from both sides of the hostilities: Nothing is spared in a repetitive cold blooded murder fest. The older zealots send their youth on the gratuitous killing sprees – just for the hell of it. Whilst utterly brilliant, Path of Blood is not for the faint-hearted. Unlike the realistic fiction in films such as The Hurt Locker, this is disturbingly chilling and real. AS

PATH OF BLOOD will be released in cinemas 13th July www.pathofbloodfilm.com#pathofbloodfilm

Picturehouse Central – London Premiere – 10th July

Curzon DocDays – 17th & 19th July

Racer and the Jailbird (2017)

Dir: Michael R Roskam | Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Adele Exarcholpoulos | Belgium | Crime Drama | 130′

Best known for his glowering Flemish thriller Bullhead, Michael Roskam is back again for the forth time with Belgian heavyweight Matthias Shoenhaerts who plays smalltime gangster Gigi in this classy high octane ‘amour noir’ thriller set on the race track.

The opening scenes introduce us to Gigi Vanoirbeek early days of danger where his father used to a fierce Alsatian to discipline him. Things have moved upmarket for Gino, who now operates in the luxury car market where he falls for young racing driver Bibi Delhany (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Their sexual chemistry is incendiary and love is spurred on by their risk-taking personalities, despite their wildly different backgrounds.

This is a stylishly fluid piece of kit and wonderful to watch as Roskam and his stars hold our attention and the action-packed hour that sparks on all cylinders fired up by the fizzing fervour of the pair’s glamorous lifestyle. But then Roskam makes an abrupt left turn, just as he did in Bullhead, and the adrenaline runs out as plot lines blur and the vehicle gradually trundles off the tracks.  This is no fault of Schoenhaerts whose mesmerising physical presence is matched by Exarchopoulos cutsy charm both in and out of bed they are a perfect couple but the script can’t sustain 130 minutes of their lust as the romance peters out with his sociopathic lies about ‘business travel’ to cover his back, and her life-challenging down-spiral after smelling a rat. Clearly Gigi has a built-in factory default that limits his reliable shelf life but Bibi can’t let go until she starts to lose her own mind and friends come to the rescue.

As a story of doomed love this feels terrifically convincing but Roskam doesn’t know how to call it a day and add fuel to his fire. That said, this is definitely one to watch with its firebrand finale courtesy of ace DoP Nicolas Karakatsanis. MT

Michaël R. Roskam was born in Flanders. He studied at the St. Lucas Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and the Maurits Binger Film Institute in Amsterdam. His directorial credits include Bullhead (11), which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and The Drop (14), which played the Festival. Racer and the Jailbird (17) is his latest film.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 |

 

I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018)*** Winner | Karlovy Vary 2018

Writer/Dir: Radu Jude | Cast: Ioanna Iacob, Alex Bogdan, Alexandru Dabija, Lon Razia| Drama | Romania | 140′

After his contemplative paean to Romania’s lost Jews (Dead Nation), and Berlinale winner Aferim!, a drama exploring life in 19th century Jewish settlements, Radu Jude is back with another playfully bolshy and bruising indictment of ethnic cleansing, this time concerning the events leading up to the Holocaust.

Romania was as a Nazi ally – along with several other European countries – and it’s a subject that is close to his heart, and one that has divided his homeland. The film’s title refers to the words spoken by the Council of Ministers in the Summer of 1941 that announced another episode of genocide, this time on the Eastern Front. History always repeats itself and Radu Jude choses to depict this tragic era with a dark and spiky farcical doc-drama that recreates the tragic events on the Eastern Front preceding the Holocaust 

Set in contemporary Romania this experimental film within a film takes the form of a theatre production incorporating archive footage, lengthy critical diatribes Godard style, all driven forward by the feisty character of Mariana Marin (Ioana Iacob in her debut). This is a comprehensive and ambitious piece of meta-filmmaking but its sprawling verbosity and indulgent running time makes it sometimes heavy going.  

We first meet Mariana in the grounds of Bucharest’s National Military Museum as she is preparing to stage her outdoor theatrical extravaganza based on the tragic events of Autumn1941 when Romanian troops joined Nazi forces to wipe out some 30,000 Jews in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. The military dictator Ion Antonescu had sanctioned the routing before going over to the German side in 1944. In the event roughly 400,000 Jews, Roma gypsies and other ethnic minorities were massacred. 

As in many other European countries, antisemitism is still rife even today and this sentiment is echoed during Mariana’s rehearsals when some of the non-professional extras voice their concerns about acting alongside Roma gypsies and even challenge her version of events as proceedings almost turn into a bun fight. Meanwhile, Mariana’s complex love life with her married airline pilot Stefan (Serban Pavlu) is threatening to cause 

Also taking part in the production is Romanian theatre veteran Alexandru Dabija (Afterim!) who plays Movie and tries throughout to pacify the public by appealing to Mariana to adopt a less controversial take on the Odessa massacre, namely one that doesn’t offend Romania’s wartime heroes. Sparks fly as the two engage in a dialogue that pays homage to Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel, Steven Spielberg,  Leni Riefenstahl et al in lively scenes captured by handheld cameras accompanied by an ambient score. Not an easy film to engage with but a worthwhile effort to bring these controversial events to the public domain. However, with its 140 minute running time this is a docudrama that may prove commercially unviable for most arthouse cinemas and will likely find its viewers on home entertainment front MT

CRYSTAL GLOBE | EAST OF THE WEST | KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 2018

The Butterfly Tree (2018) **

Dir:Priscilla Cameron; Cast: Melissa George, Ed Oxenbould, Ewen Leslie; Sophie Lowe; Australia 2017, 97 min.

Priscilla Cameron’s debut feature looks terrific, but the Australian filmmaker cannot restrain her self-indulgence in a drama that flails madly between cheap melodrama to symbolic overdrive – and to make matters worse, shares t the worst aspects of the male view when it comes to the description of the female body.

In Queensland, college lecturer Alan (Leslie) has recently lost his artist wife and is drowning his sorrows in  bed with his creative writing student (Lowe), while his jealous son Fin (Oxenbould), looks on, somehow blaming his father for his mother’s death. Fin is a loner who collects butterflies, and it’s through this hobby that father Alan comes into contact with the enchanting but ditzy ex-chanteuse Evelyn (George) who enjoys roller-skating in flowery dresses, designed by Chrissy Flannery.

But the father/son relationship between Fin and Alan rapidly deteriorates, Oedipus meeting teenage lust, when the boy discovers a roll of film showing Evelyn in all her naked glory. Evelyn’s backstory is never alluded to, apart from a brief appearance of an ex-husband. And needless to say, Cameron script never reaches a satisfactory conclusion, the ending is tame and so very Hollywood – for which Butterfly Tree is meant to be a calling card.

Apart from Flannery who gives it his best, Cameron has to thank DoP Jason Hargreaves and PD Charlie Shelley to ensure that her debut is not a total write-off. Hargreaves conjures up ravishing dreamlike images, mostly with overhead shots. Meanwhile Shelley constructs an ethereal reverie for Evelyn and Fin to inhabit, that relies a little too heavily on influences from Baz Luhrman. And she is unable to convincingly realise the traumatic death of Fin’s mother, it being just another number in the cabinet of obscurities. Butterfly Tree is partly based on her short Beetle Feeders; but it might be worth using a script-writer for her next outing: her obsession with obscure desires is not enough to tackle really traumatic experiences with a restraint they deserve. AS

The Butterfly Tree will be released in selected cinemas nationwide (UK & Ireland) from 13 July 2018.

Dream Away (2018) *** Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Marouan Omara, Johanna Domke | Documentary | Germany/Egypt 2018  | 86 min.

Egyptian filmmaker Marouan Omara and Johanna Domke a visual artist from Germany create a near-absurdist portrait of Sun Rise, a deserted luxury hotel in Sharm El-Sheik in southern Egypt. The whole place is geared-up for Western tourists – but there are hardly any there nowadays, and the staff are left wondering about the future: will their pay-cuts end in redundancy? How can they reconcile their traditional upbringing with the western lifestyle forced upon them in their own homeland. The Arab Sprig and the confusion of the post revolutionary era has robbed the entire place of its livelihood, where once it offered warm seas, fabulous coral gardens as one of the best places for Winter sunshine and diving. And nobody is a winner now.

Horreya Hassan is a member of the housekeeping team, a euphemist title for a cleaner. She is looked down upon by members of the entertainment/animation team such as Shaima Reda (“To share a room with a member of Housekeeping, outraging”). Horreya is finally accepted by the women from Animation, who dance in front of a empty space where the audience used to be. Horreya tries to make up for her lowly status by reading self-help books which tell her “How to connect the mind gaps”. Meanwhile, D J Taki (Khaled Ahmend) has to support an ill mother, and has a foreign girl friend, although in the old days he used to see things from his parents’ point of view. Now, a female member of the animation team is divorced and enjoys running around in bunny costume at night in the eerie desert. Driver Hossam (Abo Salama) is married to a much older but very wealthy woman who has bought him an expensive Dodge. He defends himself with his friends: “It’s okay to marry an older woman, really”. Masseur Alaa (Abo El Kassem), dreams about foreign women wanting a “private massage”. But when he talks one of his friends into giving up a staff room, we watch him treating a mannequin, whose arm comes lose during the process.  All fear they’ll be sacked eventually, but at the same time know “that staying here you will get stuck”.

DoP Jacob Beurle evocative images create a atmospheric  sense of place, particularly in the desert scenes, which have a strong other-wordly character. A more structured approach  make have worked better; but then, life in the void somehow invites the fluent and elliptical style of the filmmakers. Dream Away is a melancholic portrait of a young generation left to fight for a new identity: trying hard to copy the Western heroes of all the films they watch, they are still stuck in a country which is on the brink of a return to traditional authoritarianism.AS

SCREENING DURING KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Whitney (2018)

Dir: Kevin Macdonald | Musical biopic | UK | 120’

Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald looks at the real woman behind the legend that was Whitney Houston in this blistering biopic that gains exclusive access to the enigmatic star’s family and music.

The 1987 global hit  “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” was probably the most telling in the tragic star’s repertoire reflecting a romantic balladeer for whom true love and peace remained elusive. Whitney was a female vocalist who emerged into the limelight with a series of soulful ballads that captured the imagination of women everywhere, at a time where popular music was defined by bands. 

 “How Will I know,” and “Saving All My Love for You” felt personal and yet universal with their sentimental confessions that remain dance-floor delights across the generations. But who was the real woman behind these tender tunes? 

In two compelling hours WHITNEY explores the meteoric rise and sudden death at 48 in a Beverley Hills hotel, after years of addiction and a troubled marriage to rapper Bobby Brown who comes across here as defensive. Macdonald has the key advantage over Nick Bromfield’s Whitney: Can I Be Me, with his intimate access to family, friends and industry collaborators who all seem united in getting to the truth behind the public persona and cliche.

Piecing together contemporary talking heads, Macdonald and editor Sam Rice-Edwards delve into the singer’s psychological past revealing a “tough tomboy” whose parents were unfaithful, and purported sexual from family member, Dee Dee Warwick, who died in 2008. Allusions are made to Whitney’s ‘fluid’ sexuality that indicate marriage to Brown was just to conform to the celebrity image back in the day. Longtime assistant Mary Jones indicates that Whitney’s close friend Robyn Crawford was also her ‘secret lover’, and although Crawford is notably absent to confirm this, the two shared an apartment. Whitney was also dogged by the perception amongst the African-American community that her music, “wasn’t black enough.”.

Rice-Edwards’ clever editing captures the political and social climate interweaving images of Houston’s musical contemporaries and concurrent world events. The Bodyguard co-star Kevin Costner talks of her groundbreaking role as a ‘black leading lady.”  And there are suggestions that her father abused her financially, causing the estrangement that led to her emotional down-spiralling and weight loss, seen in tawdry stage appearances echoing those of tragic Amy Winehouse. And although the film does not quite match the cogent quality of Asif Kapadia’s Oscar-winning Amy, it offers compelling and deeply affecting revelations for her fans and mainstream audiences alike. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 6 July 2018

The Swing (2018) | Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018

Dir: Cyril Aris | Doc | 74′

The business of dying is never going to be fun. But with the lightest of touch and always with humour the director films his parents’ final months in a documentary that will resonate with anyone familiar with the issues.

Viviane and Antoine have lived together for 65 years, and while Vivi still has her strength, he is largely bedridden with poor hearing and heart problems. At least they have the dignity and comfort of being cared for in their spacious apartment thanks to the services of a cheerful ‘Bonne’.

It soon emerges that the apple of Antoine’s eye – their adored daughter Marie-Therese – has died suddenly, and the family make the decision not to tell Antoine for fear of weakening him further. He is man of great serenity and religious faith, certainly the most positive of the two who tells his wife of his love for her everyday day – often signing the words in Italian. One can only imagine the final knockings of life as we wait quietly for matters to take their course – and, especially in the case of a couple – wondering who will go first. Vivienne suffers her daughter’s death in silence, but often dissolving into tears. Not only because Marie-Therese had promised her mother that they would sit together on their favourite swing, come Summer, but also because she cannot share her loss with her husband, who comes across as one of the most romantic and docile old people ever. Gracious, uplifting and deeply sensitive, Aris should be applauded for this light-hearted and lyrical love letter to the memory of his parents. MT

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Swimming with Men (2018) **

Dir: Oliver Parker | Writer: Aschlin Ditta | Cast: Charlotte Riley, Rupert Graves, Rob Brydon, Nathaniel Parker,  Adheel Akhtar, Thomas Turgoose, Daniel Mays, Jim Carter | UK Comedy | 96′

Oliver Parker is clearly feeling for middle-aged men. His latest film is a  comedy that means well in tackling marriage breakdown and mid-life crisis from a male perspective. It sees Rob Brydon’s bored accountant Eric driven neurotic by his partner’s new success in politics (Jane Horrocks in fine form), while he sits on the sidelines, a disillusioned accountant – so what’s new?. The only thing that makes Eric happy is a dip in the local swimming baths where he bumps into a motley crew of jaded men also down on their luck, but not all past it. Agreeing to keep their personal lives strictly off-poolside, they gradually begin to find the life aquatic gives them a reason for living again. And limbering up with the encouragement of coach Susan (Charlotte Riley) they discover that swimming in sync is the answer to their woes, but not their flabby waistlines. So off they go to Milan.

Sound great, doesn’t it? And you could see where Parker was coming from. The problem is that the direction and writing are the only things out of sync in a comedy of woes that needed to be much tighter and funnier. There are some heartfelt performance from a brilliant British cast (Christian Rubeck is luminous as the token German),  and you can’t help feeling for these guys, particularly Luke (Rupert Graves) and (Thomas Turgoose). But there are hardly any laughs to be had from Ditta’s script, which mostly just feels embarrassingly over the top, or miserably maudlin, and too many lingering close-ups are nobody’s idea of fun.

SWIMMING WITH MEN | nationwide From July 6.

53 Wars (2018) Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2018 ****

Dir: Ewa Bukowska | Drama | Poland | 79′

Ewa Bukowska’s stunning feature debut is a visceral impressionist portrait of anxiety, longing and psychotic meltdown seen through the eyes of a woman whose husband is a war correspondent in Chechnya. Based on a best selling book by Grazyna Jagielska, Bukowska builds up a collage of snatched memories, archive footage, thoughts and scenes from the couple’s life together and apart to palpably convey how it really feels to yearn passionately and to fear desperately for a loved one until it hurts, quite literally.

Anchored by a quivering, neurotic tour de force by Magdalena Poplawska (she also appears in this year’s festival’s Panic Attack) this tightly scripted and searingly affective psychological thriller mesmerises during its compact running time. Bukowska makes use an evocative score of romantic tunes, requiems, electronic buzzings and moments of deafening silence as she deftly manages the subtle tonal shifts between the heart-pounding good times when the couple are united, during love-making and with their little son, and those of sheer, dry-mouthed palpitating terror when Anka imagines Witek (Michal Zurawski) dead or on a gurney in some foreign hospital.

Eventually dark dread and purple passion meld into one chasm of terror as Anka downloads her angst-ridden neurosis to everyone in her sphere  – summed up in an extraordinary scene where her head-splitting palpitations are chanelled into a builder’s jammering drill in the street outside. She begs him to stop – but the angst is inside her own head. Later she threatens an innocent woman passer-by in a hijab to ‘stay away from her husband”. Stylishly captured in intimate close-up and on the widescreen by DoP Tomasz Naumiuk this is an inventive and unique way to show how anxiety can eventually take over and become completely destructive. Clearly fear eats the soul. MT

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 29 JUNE – 7 JULY 2018 | EAST OF THE WEST

Bridges of Time | Laika Tilti (2018) **** | Karlovy Vary 2018

Dirs: Kristīne Briede and Audrius Stonys | Doc | 90′

This meditative essay from Latvian writer Kristine Bride and Lithuanian director Audrius Stonys captures the essence of the Baltic New Wave through a series of velvet vignettes and short films from the lesser-known filmmakers of the 1960s. Taking each director in turn, this doc compendium shows how – in contrast to the French, English and Italian pioneers of stark social realism and cinéma vérité – these cinematic auteurs were developing a more sensory, romantic and often whimsical approach even though their stylistically diverse work was still primarily concerned with stories of everyday life: raising children, studying nature and providing food for their families and local communities.

Book-ended with a deeply affecting and poetic portrait of childbirth, we experience Baltic bird life and animal welfare, school children reciting their own poetry, folklore in Estonia, bringing home the catch of Baltic herring in Latvia, a Lithuanian marriage ceremony and even a visit to Israel. What makes this so enjoyable is its overwhelmingly tender and often amusing approach to life. Absolutely enchanting and expertly crafted. MT

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018 

Putin’s Witnesses (2018) *** Karlovy Vary 2018 | Best Documentary Winner

Dir: Vitaly Mansky | Doc | Latvia/Switz/Czechia | 102’

On New Year’s Eve 1999 the former head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, became president of Russia. In his latest offering the exiled documentarian Vitaly Mansky (Truba) threatens to blow the lid on his own entente cordiale in a film that gives intimate and unprecedented acces to Putin himself and other protagonists on the Russian Political scene including Mikhail Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin, who chose the ambitious 47-year-old politician as his successor.

Ukrainian-born Vitaly Mansky bases his film on witness accounts of the events that happened in the years following that fateful day in December, perhaps the most important moment in 21st century Russian history. Making his presence known both behind and infront of the camera as he relaxes with his wife (who openly admits her hatred of Putin) and kids durimg the New Year holidays, the filmmaker offers his own telling perspective on the current man behind the iron mask who is seen delivering red roses and a hug to his former teacher and giving his own personal take on the responsibilities of being a president, while being driven to his private gym: “you have to create a world which you are happy to live in..and not hang you head in shame..when your term of office is over”. Throughout  all this bonhomie and bumfluffery, Putin smiles but remains cold-eyed.

During their voluble encounters, Mansky probes the president on his decision to restore the Soviet anthem and his reasoning behind doing appears candid and unguarded in a film that allows this entertaining expose to speak for itself. This is not about the here and now but how it all came about and throughout a sinister soundtrack signals doom and bleak resignation. At one point a sick and bloated Yeltsin puts a call through to Putin to congratulate him on his victory only to be told that Putin will ring him back. He never does. Although Mansky seems keen to humanise the whole affair, Putin’s glare never really melts, although he cracks the odd fake smile. He is man who plays his cards close to his chest, and we can see all see through the charm offensive. Mansky’s final words offer a chilly takeaway:  “Tacit consent turns witnesses into accomplices” MT

BEST DOCUMENTARY WINNER | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflections in the Dust (2018) ***

Dir.: Luke Sullivan; Cast: Sarah Houbolt, Robin Royce Queere, Aldo Fedalo, Ali Aitken; Australia 2018, 75 min.

Young Australian director/writer Luke Sullivan (You’re Not Thinking Straight) really pushes the boundaries out in this ominous post-aplocalyptic tale that combines elements of documentary and fiction by doing away with a conventional narrative, and casting a severely sight-impaired actress Sarah Houbolt, who is suffering from Hallermann/Steiff syndrome, in the lead role. And he succeeds. REFLECTIONS IN THE DUST breathes through claustrophobic, vivid imagery accompanied by an unsettling soundtrack.

In this tragic portrait of loneliness, we first meet Freckles (Houbolt) muttering ‘I don’t believe in love because I’ve never seen it’ to a faceless interviewer in the opening moments of the film. She ekes out an existence with her father who is an ageing paranoid schizophrenic clown (Queere) near a lakeside swamp, where the  act out a father daughter relationship, scavenging for food from washed up detritus. The clown oscillates between tenderness and aggression towards Freckles, who often blackens her face with shoe polish, and plays with an action man toy who she talks to like a child. One day she meets a moustachioed stranger in a beret, who reveals that her ‘Mom’ died in a circus accident, but the clown becomes aggressive towards the man and tells him to: “Go back! You are mad”. And later when a gypsy woman (Aitken) brushes Freckles’ hair lovingly, the clown sinks into a catatonic stupor, as he loses his adopted identity, acting out in bizarre ways: swinging a hammer, biting a tree and licking its bark. As fear, paranoia and anger consume these lost souls, the film sporadically switches between this fictional world and increasingly traumatic real-life interviews, until it reaches a shocking conclusion.

 It would be too easy to compare Reflections to a Beckett play or a drama by Tarkovsky, but Sullivan’s docu-drama is unique. This is total dystopia where everything is reduced to its lowest common denominator. The central characters play out base identities in re-enacting family life – symbolically, the few pieces of simple furniture slowly sink into the swamp.

DoP Ryan Barry-Cotter uses very little light for his grainy black-and-white images, and it comes as a shock when garish colour images occasionally flood the screen for a few seconds. But what really stands out is Houbolt’s tour de force that conveys the anguish of person lost in a world of voices and vague images. The ex-paralympian swimmer is simply stunning in her expressionist angst, in a performance that will resonate for a for a very long time.

Director Luke Sullivan is at the forefront of the next generation of Australian filmmakers. At a remarkably young age, he is now in the company of renowned Australian directors including Phillip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence), Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah) and David Michôd (The Rover) who have previously screened at Karlovy Vary. MT

World premiere at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2018 | IMAGINA 

History of Love (2018) *** | Special Mention | Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018

Writer/Dir: Sonja Prosenc | Cast: Dorothea Nadah, Kristoffer Jonah, Zita Fusco, Matja Vasti | Drama l Slovenia Norway | 106’

History of Love is a visually alluring mood peace with an enigmatic storyline that intrigues but never gets under the skin of its central character, despite a committed performance from Dorothea Nadah.

While exploring the various stages of family bereavement, an underlying enigmatic cat and mouse game plays out between the central character Iva and her mother’s ‘lover’ which ultimately fails to convince but provides food for thought in her denial phase when she is seeking someone to blame for the traumatic loss.
Seventeen-year-old Iva (an impressive Dorothea Nadrah) is in the process of coming to terms with the death of her mother. Influenced by this deep personal sadness and by the discovery that she didn’t know everything about her parent, she slowly immerses herself into a strange, almost dreamlike world where water is a recurring motif symbolising the ebb and flow or emotions.
Sonja Prosenc’s second feature is dominated by a sombre and reflective tone and a distinctive poetic style that uses visual impressionism to tell its loose-limbed, structureless story. She also makes good use of sound with an occasional elegiac classical score and soft ambient sounds conveying the shock, grief, denial and finally anger of post bereavement trauma.
The film captures the bosky riverside surrounds of its lush Slovenian locations creating a great sense of rus in urbis as Iva wanders around trying to come to terms with her grief. Discovering her mother’s things: a favourite scarf or a letter, delayed in the post, sends her spiralling into unspoken melancholy but the film is light on dialogue and never resorts to open displays of sadness or histrionics preferring to emote through Mitja Licen’s stunning visuals, a strong score and deftly managed tonal subtleties. MT
 
SPECIAL MENTION | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018
https://youtu.be/kjcg-6rSip4
 
 

Adrift (2017)

Dir.: Baltasar Kormakur; Cast: Shailine Woodley, Sam Chaflin; USA 2018, 96 min.

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur (Everest) creates another human struggle with nature: this   time a couple of drifters come up against a hurricane – and, low and behold – it’s the woman who rescues the man and keeps the boat afloat.

Based on a true story and Tami Ashcroft’s book, Woodley plays the heroine with great gusto and endless stamina. Her mate Richard Sharp (Chaflin) is most of the time inactive, suffering serious internal injuries and a shattered leg after the hurricane struck. Writers Aaron and Jordan Kendell and David Branson Smith have overcome a structural problem by intercutting the drifting period (not much happens) with scenes from the past five years, after these two free spirits met in San Diego. Both are running away from traumatic childhoods: Tami’s mother was just fifteen when she gave birth to her, and Sharp’s mother committed suicide when her son was seven. Tami is particularly keen on keeping her independent status when a wealthy elderly couple, friends of Richard, ask them to sail their luxury boat from Tahiti to California, she is at first reluctant. But Richard talks her into it, and so the fateful journey begins.

DoP Robert Richardson, an Oliver Stone (JFK) and Tarantino (Kill Bill) regular, skilfully pictures the horror of waves crushing into the small space of the boat: often it looks like a phone box tossed into the ocean – not the luxury sailing boat of before. Tami is at the centre of action, riffling through the rubbish to find food, after having rescued Richard from clinging to a plank. Afterwards she keeps the boat afloat, using duct-tape to repair the holes. After Richard falls into a delirium, she nurses him while he whinges “ I wish you had never met me, you would not be in trouble”. Full of stoism Tami accepts her role of saviour and martyr, convincing herself that she will survive.

Both actors have been part of dystopian teenage features like The Hunger Games, but this much more intimate enterprise suits them better. Their chemistry helps to carry the feature, which, to be honest, doesn’t really bring anything new to the shipwreck survival sub-genre. But to have a female lead (in the true sense of the word) does make a difference in perception. Together with Richardson’s stunning under-water images, they succeed in making Adrift a cut above the rest. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

 

Edinburgh Film Festival 2018 | Award Winners

THE MICHAEL POWELL AWARD FOR BEST BRITISH FEATURE FILM

The winner of the prestigious Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film, which honours imagination and creativity in British filmmaking, went to British filmmaker Matt Palmer’s debut feature, CALIBRE, which received its World Premiere at the Festival.

The winner was chosen a Jury comprised of Ana Ularu, Jason Connery and Iain de Caestecker

THE AWARD FOR BEST PERFORMANCE IN A BRITISH FEATURE FILM

The award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film went jointly to actresses Liv Hill and Sinead Matthews for their roles in JELLYFISH and was also selected by the Michael Powell jurors.

 

THE AWARD FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

The award for Best International Feature Film went to Cyril Shäublin’s THOSE WHO ARE FINE, which received its UK Premiere at this year’s Festival. The winner was chosen by the International Jury comprised of Gráinne Humphreys, Simin Motamed-Arya and Yung Kha.

THE AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

The award for Best Documentary Feature Film went to Kevin Macdonald’s much-anticipated WHITNEY. This year’s jury was comprised of Gaston J-M Kaboré, Nada Cirjanic and Kate Muir.

EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 20 June – 1 July 2018

Leave No Trace (2018) ****

Dir: Debra Granik | Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Ben Foster | US Drama | 109′

A wayfarer father (Foster) and his teenage daughter (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) are the focus of  Debra Granik’s cogent coming of age docudrama that explores – without judgement or melodrama – the close but often problematic bond between parent and teenager as they go about their day-to-day existence ‘eco-warrior-style’ in the lushly wooded US Pacific coastal area.

LEAVE NO TRACE avoids dramatic conflict in its pragmatic approach to telling a contemporary story that harks back to an atavistic era of hunter gatherers portraying with complete naturalness and finesse the pair’s daily existence as they forage for food, seek out warmth and shelter, relying completely on local flora and fauna for all their creature comforts. And for a while it seems an enviable and harmonious way of life until Tom (Thomasin) grows tired of roaming around and hungers for something more – both physically and emotionally – as she discovers that nesting and belonging suits her better than avoiding society and being constantly on the move. Whether this is a male or female state of mind is a subject for consideration in this – on the surface – simple but thematically rich piece of filmmaking. Tom’s coming of age evolves as naturally as the landscape surrounding her. Clearly her father is a loner, whereas Tom is much more garrulous – clearly a product of her nature rather than her parental nurturing.

What also emerges here is a picture of rural America at its most original state: a collection of people who came together and forged a close community looking after each other in what could ideally be described as basic socialism. But when the state intervenes in the form of social care our hackles begin to rise at this seemingly unnatural intrusion into their state of grace.

With this quietly unassuming indie gem Granik questions and explores complex human dynamics: our desire for privacy and autonomy within our families, communities and even within ourselves is constantly evolving and being challenging by officialdom. LEAVE NO TRACE is a small gem that is larger than life. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 29 JUNE 2018

 

Claire’s Camera (2017) *** | London Korean Film Festival

Dir: Hong Sang-so | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Shahira Fahmy, Kim Min-hee, Jun-yeong Jeong | Drama | Sth Korea | 69min

There are similarities between Hong Sang-soo’s latest seaside drama Claire’s Camera and his Korean set comedy In Another Country. But not only does this latest lack the mordant humour of his 2012 outing it also drifts along aimlessly, the tangible chemistry between its central characters played by gracefully Isabelle Huppert and Kim Min-Hee almost making up for its unengaging narrative, posing as improvisation, yet often stretching our impatience to the maximum.

Set in an around Cannes, this whimsical whisp of a story almost brushes off the blatant marital infidelity that is quite blatantly its central premise. Sales agent Manhee (Kim Min-hee) is fired by her female boss for sleeping with the director So (Jung Jinyoung) she is representing at the festival. Her boss refuses to give her a chance to explain and it soon emerges that she is in a relationship with So, and is clearly jealous of the young Manhee.

Meanwhile, Huppert is delicately caught in the crossfire as a dilettante in the Riviera there to enjoy the festival ambiance. The results are a mildly amusing play on jealousy, social awkwardness and the more subtle aspects of the female ego in matters of love. MT

REGENT STREET CINEMA | 23 JULY 2018 | AS PART OF THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL TEASER SCREENINGS

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (2017) ****

Dir.: Mari Okada (Co-director Toshya Shinohara); Anime with the voices of Manaka Iwami, Miyh Irino, Ai Kayano; Japan 2018, 115 min.

This debut anime by writer/director Mari Okada (who scripted Anthem of the Heart) is a stunning and moving portrait of an immortal teenager to coming to terms with inevitable loss of her close friends and family. Maquia (Iwami) belongs a to the clan of the Iolphs, elf-like creatures, who live forever, locked in their teenage years. A fiercely proud and loyal people, their heritage is preserved and passed on in their craft of weaving, called Hibbiol. But the Iolphs’ secret of immortality is coveted by a neighbouring kingdom, and Maquia’s friend Leilla is captured and forced to marry the Crown Prince of the Royals after they ambush the Iolphs. Leilla soon bears him a child who she is not allowed to see. 

Meanwhile Maquia wonders around lost in the world of the humans, depressed and disorientated. Finding a baby boy, whose mother was killed by the King’s forces, Maquia adopts him and calls him Erial (Irino). The remainder of the story involves Maquia’s development from child to adult, stuck in her teenage body and overcoming existential angst. There are delightfully rendered scenes of the countryside, where mother and son spend an enchanting time together. But when they move to the capital, their relationship becomes complicated with Maquia staying a teenager and her son growing up. Gradually the two come to terms with each other in the moving finale that is considerably enhanced by Kenji Kawai’s original score. 

Okada avoids romanticising her story, concentrating on the fate of her heroine and her struggle to find an identity in the human world in a wonderfully emotional feature dominated by memory and loss. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE ROM 27 JUNE 2018

 

Our New President (2017) ICA LONDON

Dir. Maxim Pozdorovkin, Russia/USA, 2018, 77 mins, English and Russian with English subtitles
Ever since a fateful visit to a mummy’s glass-encased tomb in 1997, Hillary Clinton has been plagued by fainting spells, drug use, and even allegations of sexual abuse and murder. Don’t believe it? Just ask the reporters at Vesti and NTV, two of the most-watched state-run news shows in Russia, where outlandish stories like these reach millions of viewers every night.

As more details of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election emerge, acclaimed filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin assembles a fever dream of Russian propaganda aimed at both Clinton and Trump from YouTube, RT, and other media platforms. Within this alternate universe of misinformation, we witness the seeds of the 2016 fake news cycle take root and successfully infiltrate the collective conscience of a Russian populace trained to distrust truth and objectivity.

The divisive stories peddled by these journalists, handpicked by Putin, range from sinister to absurd, but they all point to a coordinated effort to alter public opinion at home and abroad. COURTESY OF THE ICA.

OUR NEW PRESIDENT – THIS WEEK AT THE ICA

The Long Good Friday (1980) | New restoration on Bluray

Dir: John Mackenzie  Writer: Barry O’Keefe  Composer: Francis Monkman (Curved Air) | Cast: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Dave King, Bryan Marshall, Derek Thompson, Eddie Constantine, Paul Freeman, Pierce Brosnan.

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY is firmly built on a dynamite performance from Bob Hoskins who smoulders throughout as hard-edged East End crime sion masterminding a deal that heralds the dawn of London’s Big Boom transforming the Docklands wasteland into a property powerhouse and ushering in a new dawn of prosperity for the capital.

As underworld boss Harold Shand, he is poised to pull off a multi-million-pound property deal to be built on the backing of American money. It all turns out to be a dodgy as Shand himself when it emerges that the Mafia is involved. But just as he’s hoping to trouser a tidy profit, Shand comes under siege from one of his own trusted clan; and rapidly his house of cards collapses as bomb blasts blow away his Rolls-Royce, East End pub and his dreams, in scenes of epic destruction. Helen Mirren is queenly and kittenish as his savvy moll, who knows just when to bare her claws and when to purr in the background.

The meat-heads are called in for a moratorium –  a hilarious “heads-down” that takes place in a local abattoir as they are notoriously up-ended  from meathooks – but it ends in tears. A furious Bob Hoskins steams with anger, surprise and indignation throughout, fetching up in a fiendish finale of facial gesticulation – as Francis Monkman’s classic score blares out to mask Mackenzie’s off-scene encouragement to his lead. The last scene also marks the debut of a sly-eyed, fresh-faced newcomer in the shape of Pierce Brosnan. But this is Bob’s film and will go down as his most legendary performance. MT

A BRAND NEW RESTORATION SOURCED FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVES AND APPROVED BY CINEMATOGRAPHER PHIL MEHEUX IS OUT ON BLU-RAY WITH INTERVIEWS AND EXTRAS COURTESY OF ARROW FILM FROM 16 JULY 2018

 

 

Secret Beyond the Door (1947) | Bluray release

Dir: Fritz Lang | Noir | US 1947

This domestic noir from Fritz Lang. SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR  stars a luminous Joan Bennett as Celia, a elegant woman who marries a troubled and mercurial architect Mark (Michael Redgrave) with a secret past. Lang himself had started studying the profession in Vienna (his father was an architect). Film Writer Walter Benjamin wrote: “that watching films is a simultaneous and collective effort, therefore architecture is closest to the cinema of all the classical art forms. They are related and they are viewed the same way, but cinema is able to show the masses in their way of life. Film shows us an enlarged, unbelievable new world”.

So Death and architecture are again the themes here, as they were in Metropolis (1927): more than twenty years after Der Müde Tod Lang (1921) Lang again picks one of his favourite combinations. The feature has a layered Russian-Doll like structure, there are continuous flashbacks – optical, verbal and architectonic – including daydreams, hallucinations and phantasies that come to life. All the time, the objects become symbols, which often in a pathological way, transform memories and phantasms into a much more potent layer of consciousness than the real world.

0263_SECRET_BEYOND_THE_DOOR_01The architect Mark Lamphere (Redgrave) has closeted himself in a gothic mansion where he has designed three rooms, filled with furniture from a secret room where a murder had occurred. This room is dedicated to the memory a wife stabbed to death by a husband who thought she was being unfaithful. In the second chamber, a young man tied his mother to a chair, and drowned her. The third room is the copy of the bedroom of Mark’s first wife Caroline (Revere), for whose death Mark feels responsible. He has certainly a very disturbed view of women, and when he shows his second wife Celia (Bennett) the third room, she is stunned to recognize her own bedroom. Since his childhood, Mark had repressed murderous instincts, for which he feels guilty. Celia knows that if her “therapy” is not successful, she will pay with her life.

Lang himself was no fan of this feature –  during the shooting there were many setbacks. “The ending is really ridiculous. Nobody is healed so quickly from traumatic obsessions”. But there is much to be said in favour of Secret Beyond the Door: Silvia Richards’ screenplay, based on the novella by Rufus King, is very tight but also innovative. veteran DoP Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Andersons, Night of the Hunter) excelled with his stylish dissolves and long panning shots and the music of Miklos Roza is haunting, but never competes with the visuals. Lang might not have like the end product, but Secret is a small masterpiece.

NOW AVAILABLE COURTESY OF ARROW ACADEMY FROM 25 JUNE 2018 

 

New Directors for the Berlinale

The Berlinale turns over a new leaf as Carlo Chatrian takes over as artistic director and Mariette Rissenbeek as executive director of the International Film Festival starting in 2020.

Carlo Chatrian, born in Turin in 1971, is a film journalist and has directed the Locarno Film Festival since 2013, where he has proved that he can successfully curate and lead an art house audience festival. He stands for an artistically ambitious mix of programming and for a focus on discovering new talents. He and the new executive director, Mariette Rissenbeek, will head the Berlinale starting in 2020. Mariette Rissenbeek (born in Posterholt, The Netherlands in 1956) has long headed German Films, the information and advising centre for the international distribution of German films, as managing director. Her successful career in the film industry makes her the ideal choice for this position: She has many years of experience in working with all the important film festivals around the world and has an extensive network of national and international contacts in the film industry.

BERLINALE 2019 | 7 – 17 FEBRUARY 2019

 

Allure (2017) ** bluray release

Dir.: Carlos and Jason Sanchez; Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, Julia Sarah Stone, Denis O’Hare, Maxim Roy; Canada 2017, 105 min.

Carlos and Jason Sanchez’ feature debut is an overblown melodrama lacking any serious theoretical background deserving of this sensitive topic of sexual abuse. Well acted by the two leads, this sensationist psychodrama relies on Sara Mishara’s eclectic images to convey atmosphere. 

Laura (Wood), a woman in her late twenties, works as a cleaner in her father William’s business. She is introduced to us having rough, anonymous sex with a stranger. On one of her cleaning jobs, she meets sixteen year old Eva (Stone), whose controlling mother Nancy (Roy), wants to move her out of her childhood home so they can join her new boyfriend in his place. Somehow Eva falls for Laura, and instead, moves in with her. Laura obviously suffers from severe Bi-Polar symptoms and is hardly the ideal partner, but Eva stays with her as a toxic relationship develops. Slowly a role reversal takes place as Eva starts to mother Laura who seems more and more imbalanced, eventually becoming the sexual victim of two men. It appears that Laura has been sexually abused by her father (O’Hara) who at one point tries to apologises for his behaviour. But since we are never quiet sure of the past, the enigmatic narrative just veers into a series of meaningless, melodramatic encounters.

It is well known that abuse victims create a circle of violence in their own lives, trying helplessly to re-create the situation of the original dysfunction. But Allure is so one-dimensional that Laura’s relationship with Eva is simply shown as a homophobic nightmare. This simplistic approach often spoils the positive production values, and Mishara’s moody images using filters to highlight the nightly atmosphere of threat, are a case in point. Wood and Stone put on a bravura performance, but ALLURE still fails to convince, deserving a more mature and less sensationalist approach. AS .

NOW OUT ON BLURAY COURTESY OF EUREKA FILMS AND VIDEO

Shooting Stars (1928) | Bluray release *****

Dir: Anthony Asquith | UK | Drama | 101′

British Instructional Films is a production credit that makes Shooting Stars sound as if it’s going to be a dull affair, suggesting a utilitarian entertainment for the masses. In fact it’s quite the opposite: Shooting Stars has a strong popular appeal but is never complacent. Throughout a running time of 101 minutes this stunning film has much of the flavour and emotional sophistication of the European Cinema with the craft and enthusiasm of Hollywood of the 1920s: a confident young man’s film (Anthony Asquith’s first) assimilating, without ever imitating, the influence of Lang and Murnau (the staging and lighting of sets) an expressive Chaplin/Lubitsch style acting and a precise attention to detail equalling Hitchcock, who was Asquith’s contemporary.  

Asquith really did his homework: visiting European studios and Hollywood where he met and spoke to prominent producers, directors and actors. On returning to England he wrote a clever, nuanced story so tightly constructed that the credited A.V. Bramble only went thorough the motions as a director – a very much in-charge Asquith completely oversaw the production.  

Mae Feather (Annette Benson) and Julian Gordon (Brian Aherne) are a married couple and movie stars. The marriage is strained. Mae is attracted to actor/comedian Andy Wilkes (Donald Calthrop). Julian finds out and threatens Mae with a scandal that will ruin her career. The distraught wife plans an act of violence against her husband. 

The title Shooting Stars operates on three levels: the film making process itself; the transient nature of a film star’s fame; and that star being the possible victim of a shotgun loaded with real bullets, fired on the set. Between these conceits the film oscillates, creating constant tension, comedy and tragic rejection.

Asquith’s later A Cottage on Dartmoor displayed an acute editing comparable to Hitchcock and indebted to Eisenstein. In Shooting Stars it’s not so much the cutting but a representation of objects that’s remarkable. Much playful suspense is created between the similar shape of a lipstick and a bullet. They become symbols of both sexual betrayal and Mae’s plot to kill, as they’re jostled back and forth in the couple’s home, and then in abstract imagery against a skyline. One is mistaken for the other as the camera compounds a perception of dangerous ambiguity. Such inter-changeability proves fascinating. 

And round these ‘tease’ object moments, Asquith directs a sad marital drama and sharp satire on the film industry. The leading actors are being directed in a Western drama called “Prairie Love.” This is set in a British film studio, in Cricklewood, North London with some location work on the Devon coast. In the opening scenes the camera prowls around this frontier romance, but also over another film being shot in the same studio space. All done with a superbly staged crane shot looking down on the comedies and dramas being filmed, as extras get out of the way of electric cables and musicians rehearsing: a fluid long take achieving a semi-documentary elegance that is breathtaking.

Arguably, Asquith never bettered his great late 1920s achievements: Shooting Stars, A Cottage on Dartmoor and Underground are his best pictures. After that his career was pretty uneven. Check out The Way to the Stars, Pygmalion, The Browning Version, Orders to Kill and A Woman in Question as terrific highlights. Avoid The V.I.P.’s and The Yellow Rolls-Royce. His work in the sound era produced much brilliant craft, involvement and style but is unevenly spread. To watch Shooting Stars is to experience the visual poetry of a young filmmaker fully, and comfortably, in first love with his newly chosen medium. Alan Price©2018

NOW AVAILABLE ON BLURAY COURTESY OF THE BFI       

In the Fade (2017) ***

Dir: Fatih Akin | Cast: Diane Kruger| Drama | German | 104min

IN THE FADE is a hard film to watch after the events of Manchester, Westminster amongst many others. In it Diane Kruger plays a plain-talking hard-edged mother trying to cope with the death of her Kurdish husband and small son, murdered by a bomb in their German home town.

Since his gritty debut Head-On Turkish-German director Fatih Akin has remained faithful to his indie style and his ethnic-rooted dramas in a another film that is incessently grim, as the events would suggest. But none its characters are at all likeable accept, strangely. the German father of one of duo of bombers, who are purportedly neo-Nazi sympathisers.

Kruger’s Katya has married Nuri, a convicted drugs dealer, in prison. Clearly in love, the devastation she feels in the aftermath is palpable. And it’s a strong performamce, Kruger’s first in her native German. A really spiteful courtroom procedural records a unjust verdict and Katya repairs to the seaside to heal. Or so it would appear. It actual fact, in keeping with her tough persona, she’s pursuing the bombers to a small Greek resort. The film is a subtle as a mallet, and about as enjoyable as being hit by one. Diane Kruger won Best Actress at Cannes for her histrionic performance. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 22 JUNE 2018

 

 

Pressing On: The Letterpress Film (2016)

Dir: Erin Beckloff, Andrew P Quinn | US | Doc | 99′

A 4K feature length documentary exploring the remarkable community keeping letterpress alive

Just as vinyl is the true home of the music aficionado, the old-fashioned letterpress – with the symbols carved out of wood or moulded out of lead –  is the shrine of the printing fanatic. This world of the letterpress ended in the 60s with the advent of off-set printing and the copy machine – over 50% of the printing shops closed. In this immersive feature debut, filmmakers Erin Beckloff and Andrew P. Quinn follow old and young addicts of these huge machines all over the United States.

I thought letter print would die with me” says Gregory Walters from Ohio. Meanwhile, Richard Hopkins from West Virginia, who has collected 40 machines from the scrap-yards, now wants to give these treasure “my last ten good years”. Both are in love with the big classic print machines named Heidelberg, Line-O-Scribe, Kelsey and Sigwalt. Another hobby printer “wants to carry the torch, the best thing I can hope for”. But their fears of being the last in a long line of those still using Johannes Gutenberg’s invention from the mid 15th century, are absolutely unfounded. The best example is Dave Churchman, a hobby printer from Indianamwho died during the filming of this documentary, and whose son Andrew took over immediately from his father. And “Masterprinter” Jim Moran from Wisconsin can talk nostalgically about the onset of on-set printing – the NYT was the last paper to switch in 1978 – but he knows full well that the trade is safe – mostly in the hands of young women. Which is surprising, giving the dangerous nature of the traditional way of printing:  Jim Daggs from Iowa is not the only one to shows his ‘war wounds’: some fingers are rather incomplete, and one arm is disfigured by a lead burn. Needless to say, Daggs does not think much of modern printers, which “are getting away from the skill of the trade.”

Jim Sherraden runs the Hatch Show Print in Nashville,Tennessee, specialising in posters for Country music. The manager of Hatch, Celene Aubrey (a woman in her thirties) is proud of a tradition which started with Jimmy Cash, followed by Dolly Parton and now features Bon Jovi. “We are a living connection from the past into the future. An honourable mention should go to the Plateau Press Museum in Illinois, where over 600 machines are curated by Paul Eden. There is another museum of the trade in Hamilton, for Wood Type and Printing in Wisconsin. But it is not only printing letters and posters: Jennifer Farrell, who quit her job to work for her Starshape Press in Illisnois, prints ornaments, which are very much admired by the veterans of the trade. And Tammy and Dam Winn, both in their forties and from Illinois, run their Red Door print shop profitably, just like in the good old days.

To liven up the “Talking Heads” the directors have used old AFL-CIO vocational films and other documentary clips about the art of printing, as well as historical re-enactment. A quiet but rewarding feature, which slowly grows on anyone patient enough to enjoy its pearls of wisdom.

AVAILABLE from June 19 VOD/DVD/BluRay

Wadjda (2012) Mubi

Dir/Wri: Haifaa Al Mansour | Cast: Reem Abdullah, Ahd, Waad Mohammed | 98′ | Arabic with subtitles

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 Saudi woman. Despite the vast wealth of that country, it was impossible to raise finance for such a venture.  So the funds came from Europe and the feature was backed by the Sundance Institute.

In the modern world of Saudi, there’s nothing religiously radical or precious about Wadjda. She is 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 religious 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

NOW ON MUBI | Haifaa Al Mansour was Head of the Dino De Laurentis Jury at VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2013

Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) ***** | Bluray Limited Edition

Dir.: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Cast: Günter Lamprecht, Gottfired John, Barbara Sukowa, Hanna Schygulla; West Germany/Italy 1980, 940 min.

This captivating 15 hour odyssey is Fassbinder’s adaption of Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel of the same name. It is the story of two men who can not admit their love for each other, and go on to destroy themselves and the women they become involved with. At the same time, it is a symbol of advancing Fascism in the Germany of the Weimar Republic – of which Döblin (1878-1957), a practising psychiatrist and novelist, became a victim himself, and was punished with emigration for being Jewish.

Berlin Alexanderplatz is often compared to James Joyce’s Ulysses and Don Passos’ Manhattan Transfer, two contemporary novels where the protagonists play a major part. Fassbinder has translated the associative structure of the text into an impressionistic portrait of the German capital, where half-sentences and poster texts mix with a permanent flowing traffic: a city which never sleeps, everything dazzles and glimmers. But the chaos of words, sounds and thoughts covers the growing infection with the Fascist bacillus, a regime which promised a new order of certainties.

Franz Biberkopf (Lamprecht) has just been released from prison, after serving four years for strangling his girl friend Ida. He is forbidden by the Police to live in certain areas of Berlin because the milieu might make a recidivist of him. Franz is working as a hawker, selling necktie holders, but he has not the gift for the gab, and finds it impossible to make ends meet, so he is talked into selling the Nazi newspaper Der Volkische Beobachter, even though some of his Jewish contacts warn him of the consequences. Unfortunately, Franz does not want to take on board their efforts to protect him and he sinks further and further into the negative influence of this misguided political movement, where robberies are supposed to benefit the NSDAP, but more often than not serve only the perpetrators. Franz gets to know his nemesis Reinhold (John), a sort of underground leader. Reinhold get quickly bored of his girlfriends, and Franz “inherits” them. One of them is Eva (Schygulla), who once worked for Franz on the streets of Berlin. But his true love is Mieze (Sukowa), who is only too glad to lose Reinhold as her pimp. But Reinhold is jealous of Franz’ chance of a happiness, and he murders Mieze, before throwing Franz from the back of a truck, after a robbery. Franz survives, but loses his right arm – ironically, he cannot perform the ‘Heil Hitler’ greeting anymore. An epilogue sees Franz recovering from his psychosis in a closed psychiatric ward where he suffers from nightmares: dreaming of the atomic bomb and other Armageddon-like events. In the end, he is prepared for work in a Fascist society, but becomes very much a prisoner of the system.

This impressive endeavour, described as the longest film in history at 900-plus minutes, is photographed brilliantly by Xaver Schwarzenbeger (Querelle, Lilli Marlen). With a cast and crew of over a hundred, most of them Fassbinder regulars – such as composer Peer Raaben and editor Juliane Lorenz – Berlin Alexanderplatz is the director’s greatest opus: the homoerotic element of German Fascism symbolised by the bi-polar love-hate relationship between Franz and Reinhold, causing (self) destruction first on a private, then on a worldwide level. AS

AVAILABLE from Second Sight as a LIMITED EDITION BLURAY BOXSET ON 23 JULY 2018 | Complete with a luxury 60 page perfect bound book. 

SPECIAL FEATURES FOR LIMITED EDITIONLimited edition deluxe box set (2000 copies only)

  • ‘Fassbinder: Love Without Demands’ – The acclaimed 2015 feature length documentary by ChristianBraad Thomsen
  • Berlin Alexanderplatz – A Visual Essay by Daniel Bird
  • ‘A Mega Movie and its Story’ documentary by Juliane Lorenz
  • ‘The Making of Berlin Alexanderplatz’
  • ‘The Restoration’ documentary including ‘before and after’
  • The Original Recaps
  • Berlinale 2007 trailer
  • 60-page perfect bound book featuring new essay by Cahiers Du Cinema’s Stephane du Mesnildot andarchive material by Wim Wenders, Thomas Elsasser and Christian Braad Thomsen

 

Stanley, A Man of Variety (2016))

Dir.: Stephen Cookson; Cast: Timothy Spall; UK 2016, 83 min.

As much as we all love the veteran actor Timothy Spall, his one-hander Stanley, a Man of Variety, co-written by Stephen Cookson (My Angel), is simply a vanity project and the total opposite of the title: a portrait of a mental patient, wasting away in a derelict psychiatric ward.

Stanley also suffers from its unstructured script – hardly a narrative, but a series of numbers, held together by the slightest of content: Stanley fantasises about his past, his never totally explained transgression, only wanting to leave the ward to visit his daughter’s grave. Apart from his parents, Spall also acts out the personas of popular British actors: Max Wall, Alistair Sim, Margaret Rutherford and Noel Coward to name a few. They mostly berate poor Stanley, who is lost in his world of cleaning the ward and watching old VCR cassettes – if he can find the tokens for the meter.

Stanley veers helplessly between parody and self-satire; everything between Tarkovsky and Carry-On is plundered, but all seems oddly second-hand, like Spall’s imitations. One suspects that Cookson/Spall had Rober Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets in mind, but Alec Guinness was helped by a great ensemble of the very best – and a proper script based on a brilliant novel. DoP Ismael Issa tries very hard to jazz the whole thing up, but it’s difficult to find coherence when the script is merely a collection of notes. Stanley resembles a work in progress – but very much like the first draft. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 15 JUNE 2018

Picturehouse Entertainment presents Stanley, A Man of Variety exclusively at Picturehouse Central from 15th Juneand at Picturehouse Cinemas nationwide on 26th June for Discover Tuesdays

Current Screenings + Q&As with Timothy Spall

15th-22nd June – Picturehouse Central, London (with Q&A on 24th June)
27th June – Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley (with Q&A)
30th June – Cambridge Arts Picturehouse (with Q&A)

 

Hereditary (2018) ***

Dir: Ari Aster | Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Bryne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, 125′ US | Horror

Hereditary is in the upper echelons of atmospheric character-driven horror fare, but the film doesn’t end well for its characters – or the audience, for that matter. Superb in execution, characterisation and tropes, Ari Aster’s feature debut comes unstuck in a meandering narrative that simply doesn’t know where to go in the final act. And that’s the tragedy. Like an over-excited child at its first birthday party, Hereditary knows its been good and shared its new toys, and desperately wants the show to go on, but it’s also strung out and eventually driven to tears by exhaustion.

Favouring buttoned-up tension and tone-setting over blood and gore, this claustrophobic arthouse piece feels clammy rather than chilling, along the lines of The Babadook and It Comes At Night. Aster is clearly a consummate storyteller with tricks up his sleeve, but his desire to underpin a spiritual ghost story with traditional folklore goes awry in the final denouement.

And what a grim lot his Graham family are. Living in their morbid house in the dank Pacific Northwest, they make a morose and dysfunctional foursome, headed by Gabriel Bryne’s simpering Dad, Steve, who seems lost behind a pair of opaque ‘specsavers’. Meanwhile Toni Collette is miserable and malign-looking as Annie, the Mom who didn’t get on with her own Mom, and is regretting it as she reads her fumbling funeral elegy which follows a newspaper death announcement  in the opening scene. The couple have two teenage kids, petulant Peter (Alex Wolff) and zombie-like Charlie (Milly Shapiro) who is prone to tongue-clucking – a aural motif that will haunt you for the foreseeable future, bringing back memories of that well worn phrase from Cold Comfort Farm: “something nasty in the woodshed”.

When another woeful tragedy befalls this hapless household, the family dynamic turns stultifying, both to watch and experience. And this tonal claustrophobia takes a hold of the solar plexus for the rest of the story as Aster masterfully guides us through an increasingly grim and gruesome series of events that bring the sword of Damocles firmly down over all and sundry. To compensate for her feelings of loss and confusion, Annie decides to seek refuge in bereavement counselling and this course of action leads to her dabbling in the occult. But from this moment forward the film veers from suspense to disappointment and boredom, as increasingly matters just don’t stack up and Aster resorts to an outlandish scenario to compensate.

Collette, Byrne (who is used to coping with this kind of melodramatic meltdown) and Wolff are impressive in their subtle portrayal of family members steadily losing the plot, in more ways than one. Ann Dowd joins the fun as bereaved mother Joan who is purportedly there to help Annie in her Spiritual awakening, but actually makes matters worse in unleashing a sinister side to the matriarch’s hitherto grounded personality. And here Collette is extraordinary in a sustained performance as Aster’s multi-faceted anti-heroine whose grief and desperation know no bounds as she gradually – and literally – dissembles. But our sympathies ultimately lie with Bryne’s Steve, who plays the most decent character of the lot, and we feel for him as he holds out to the bitter end, trying to see the light but knowing full well, in his bemused bewilderment, that he taken on another film that will eventually end in a shambles. MT

SCREENING DURING SUNDANCE LONDON 2018 |NOW ON RELEASE

A Ciambra (2017)

Dir.: Jonas Carpignano; Cast: Pio Amato, Koudous Seihon, Iolanda Amato, Damiano Amato, Rocco Amato; Italy/USA/France/Sweden 2017, 118 min.

Jonas Carpignano’s casts non professionals in this companion piece and follow-up to his debut Mediterranea, a lively all singing all dancing immigration drama that revolves around a family of Romas who live in an enclave of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, .

Voluble teenager Pio (Pio Amato) is the youngest in the family of jailbirds, idolising his brother Cosimo (Damiano Amato) who has already served time, as has his father Rocco (Rocco Amato), he mixes easily in the multi-cultural milieu of fellow Romas, local Italians and African refugees, and the rest of their clan are under house arrest. Mother Iolanda (Iolanda Amato) keeps the family together, and Pio is a afraid of her – but not enough to stop his various criminal activities. Pio’s only confidant is Ayiva from Burkino Faso, who lives in the African section of the town and is played by the only professional actor, Kudos Seihon. Pio’s loyalities are put to the test when he discovers his clan is planning a robbery at Ayiva’s “warehouse”; but he’s proud to be a Roma and keeps his mouth shut, respecting his brother’s words: “when you are in prison, you are respected, even by the Italians, but nobody respects the Africans”.  Carpignano keeps his distance from his characters, never judging them and allowing their macho, misogyny full rein. That said, the clan live in abject poverty, crime clearly doesn’t pay for these canny immigrants. This approach works up to a point. Realism is fine, but it has to encompass more than one dimension. There are shades of The Dardenne Brothers in Tim Curtin’s handheld camerawork which follows each scenes through to the end, although the brothers take their narrative rigour from showing society as a whole, not indulging in the cul-de-sac actions of one section of the community.  Overall, A Ciambra pulls out all the stops aesthetically, allowing the audience to enjoy the ride rather indulgently, and with a dangerous lack of reflection. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 18 JUNE 2018

 

Iron Monkey (19930 | **** Bluray release

Dir: Yuen Woo-ping | Action drama | China | 90′

Yuen Woo-ping’s kung-fu classic is a breathtaking action adventure from perhaps the greatest action choreographer of all time, Yuen Woo-ping’s Iron Monkey combines innovative special effects and remarkable fight choreography with a classic story of courage, honour and sacrifice, all doused in deliciously dark humour.

Wong Kei-ying (Donnie Yen; Ip Man, Rogue One), a physician and martial artist, is mistaken for a masked vigilante known as the Iron Monkey (Yu Rong-kwong); a Robin Hood style hero who has been robbing the wealthy local officials in order to provide medical treatment for the poor. The two men must team up to defeat a corrupt political regime, and protect the lives of the people whose cause they champion.

NOW OUT ON BLURAY FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA FROM 18 JUNE 2018

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) **

Dir.: J.A. Bayona; Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith, Rafe Spall, Toby Jones, Isabella Sermon, James Cromwell, Geraldine Chaplin, James Cromwell; USA/Spain 2018, 128′.

Director J.A. Bayona (A Monster Calls) and his regular, fellow Catalan DoP Oscar Faura have delivered the fifth instalment of the Dino franchise, with Fallen Kingdom being the middle piece of a trilogy. Despite some visually stunning set pieces (and a budget to match), the script by Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly is as weak as their work for Fallen Kingdom’s predecessor Jurassic Park (2015).

This new outing sees the dinosaurs on the Isla Nublar threatened by an erupting volcano. Dino lovers Owen Grady (Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Howard), still lack a convincing chemistry and are called back into a rescue mission with their sidekicks Dr. Zia (Pineda) and Franklin (Smith). Unbeknown to the quartet, back in Lockwood Mansion Sir Benjamin (Cromwell) is dying and his wicked CEO Eli Mills (Spall) has teamed up with Super-Baddie Gunnar Eversol (Jones), to trade the surviving dinosaurs to the highest bidders so they can be genetically altered and used as fighting machines. After Lockwood’s  death, his granddaughter Maise (Sermon) takes over the good fight having lost her last ally, a Mrs. Danvers-like housekeeper (Chaplin). While the auction of the rescued animals is in full swing, Maise is finally joined by the foursome in her fight to thwart the greedy usurpers.  

Shot in CinemaScope (240:1 ratio) with an Arri Alexa 65, digital debutant Faura deftly masters the mix of animatronix and CGI, using older lenses in place of the latest ones – as digital’s lack of depth tends to look hyper real. Having said this, the folio on the island does appear to be a little bit too rubbery….  

There’s nothing really new here: once again we get a reprise of the fight between the good flying dinosaur (Blue, Grady’s lead Dino) and the baddie reptile; and when they eventually fall through yet another glass roof, there’s a maddening sense of déja vu. Fallen Kingdom never makes its mind up if it wants to be a disaster movie or a Bond flic with a great finale. The 128 minutes running time outstays its welcome without any justification for doing, and the ending, prepping us for a planned third outing of the rebooted franchise, is only secured by a mind blowing act of unbelievable wilfulness. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018

Lek and the Dogs (2017) **** | Director’s Cut

Dir.: Andrew Kötting; Cast: Xavier Tchili, Catherine Tchili, Clay Barnard (voice); UK 2017, 92′

Based on the play Ivan and the Dogs by Hattie Naylor, Andrew Kötting’s experimental feature uses archive and narrative film and the Tchili/ Kötting family’s private footage to create a deeply disturbing portrait of an end-of-time dystopian world, set in 1990s Moscow and shot in the eerie desert of Antofogasta in Northern Chile. LEK completes Kötting’s EARTH trilogy, comprising This Filthy Earth and Ivul.

Timely themes of survival, social deprivation and family breakdown are depicted through the real life experience of Ivan Mishukov, who left his dysfunctional home at the age of four to seek the creature comforts of a pack of stray dogs eking out an existence on the hyper-violent streets of recession-hit Moscow. Kötting brings his fine arts training to bear on Lek’s vulnerable view of the world; hunger, pain and bewilderment are drawn with acute sensitivity in the stark desert landscape, where he sometimes walks on all fours.

Voiced by Clay Barnard, audiotapes reveal his mother’s murder at the hands of his stepfather, and expose the cruelty of a social system where all dogs where expelled from the city centre so that they would starve. A child psychologist explains the post traumatic experiences of  neglected children like Lek who came to identify with the instinctual purity of animals who gravitate towards “warm pipes” for security and survival. A visceral relationship develops between Lek and the neighbour’s daughter Mina (C.Tchili), who becomes the love of his life (“She said to me, you are so full of dog”) and they go on to have a child, but the story ends in tragedy.

Societal breakdown takes the form of bulldozers destroying dilapidated houses, or breaking up roads in a hostile terrain; sometimes, whole areas appear to be depopulated in the aftermath to a supposed nuclear attack. As the planet becomes ever devoid of human civilization, so nature claims back its territory. There are many enigmatic clues to Lek’s childhood: like a certain Irina, who gave him the audio recorder; visits to Punch and Judy shows and repeated visuals showing canine life underground – dogs, always dogs. 

Told in fourteen chapters, with headings such as “The Hope Thereunder”; “The Nature of Eternity” and “A Natural History of Destruction”, this is a film fraught with motifs of alienation and destruction, and ending with a long overhead shot of Lek walking in an absurdist cemetery where symbols have replaced graves, as the tapes finally runs out, on his 49th birthday.

It would facile to liken Lek with Tarkovsky’s Stalker, or to compare the use of symbolism with that of Sukorov – there may well be parallels, but Lek does not need comparisons, or classification: it can stand on its own as a unique achievement. Let’s also not be tempted to fall into the trap of over-thinking the analyses and commentary of the endless psychologists droning on in the background. Lek’s images, however cryptic or elliptical, tell their own story, and that is the beauty of it all. AS  

OUT IN CINEMAS ON 8 JUNE 2018

 

 

 

 

 

Darkest Hour (2018) **** Bluray release

Dir: Joe Wright | Cast: Gary Oldman, Kristen Scott Thomas | Lily James | Ben Mendelsohn, Ronald Pick-up | Biopic Drama | UK

Darkest Hour is to be believed, Britain’s destiny was actually decided during a tube journey from St James’ Park to Westminster on the 28th May, 1940 when the war cabinet met to make a pivotal but in the end winning agreement to continue resisting Hitler’s inexorable plans to invade the British Isles.

English director Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour follows on from Jonathan Teplitzky’s Churchill which concentrates on the hours leading up to the invasion of Normandy. They are both worthwhile and weighty films deriving considerable dramatic heft from these crucial and compelling moments during the Second World War.

The film opens as Parliament is returning a no-confidence vote against Neville Chamberlain’s shaky leadership (he was suffering from cancer), in favour of fellow Conservative Winston Churchill who is played with considerable conviction and aplomb by Gary Oldman in a performance that won him an academy award at the year’s Oscars. Ironically the US film came away empty handed but won a BFDG award for production design.

Although Churchill was seen as a bumptious drinking man – and he wasn’t a well man himself, he nevertheless got up and finished first in the charisma stakes and the rest is history. While all around him – including the weakened King George VI were clammering for Britain to strike a deal with Germany and retire graceful from the fray, Churchill confidently led the country to victory through a precarious series of potholes from Hitler’s imminent invasion through to winning the war. Strangely Clement Attlee doesn’t feature at all, but that’s for another film.

This is a beast of a role and Oldman takes it on masterfully – deftly playing up the vulnerable ego-driven empathiser, he makes for a sleeker and more dapperly upbeat Churchill than Brian Cox’s blustering bull of a man, although they both have their moments in creating an indomitable English hero who is still much treasured in the Nation’s collective memory. And it falls to Joe Wright and his writer Anthony McCarten to turn the action around from the fateful tube journey and a time of desperation to the successful end game with their rather clunky plot device.

The distinguishing factor about Darkest Hour is the atmospheric way Wright catapults us back into 1940 with the extraordinary look of the film. From the scenes in Buckingham Palace, in Parliament and even in Churchill’s intimate domestic rooms we are surrounded by the gloominess of the era, daylight shafting in through windows onto characters dwarfed by the enormity of what was at stake. Lit by Bruno Delbonnel’s terrific cinematography the walls and wood-panelling soars up around us, making us feel small in the scheme of things.

Impressive also are the performances: Ben Mendelsohn makes a stutteringly good George complaining of being “harshly tweeted” (he probably would have been had twitter been invented at the time). And Kristin Scott Thomas is gracefully deferential of her husband, much less forceful but, strangely, just as convincing as Miranda Richardson’s Clemmie. Lily James gets a small but perfectly formed and even amusing cameo as Churchill’s secretary Elizabeth Layton.

But at the end of the day it is Oldman’s Churchill that powers this forward. His alluring way with words and his charismatic showmanship energises this biopic sending it soaring into the annuls of Second World War film archive. MT

NOW ON BLURAY

All the Wild Horses (2017) Mongol Derby


Dir: Ivo Marloh | Doc | UK | 90′

The wild Mongolian horse was Genghis Khan’s weapon of choice when he conquered the hostile wolf-infested steppes of the World’s largest land-locked country. And the Mongol Derby is the world’s longest and most gruelling horse race at 1000 kilometres. Inspired by Ghenghis Khan’s Urtuu postal system it courses through the northern territory of this vast Asian country where the self-navigating riders – and their resilient mounts – occasionally stop to rest and re-feul at these 27 posting stations, and there is one every 40 kilometres.

An endurance test for those who relish things that go wrong – and here they invariably do – and Hollywood fare such as Bite the Bullet (1975) and Hidalgo (2004) both dramatised this epic struggle, and Otto Bell’s recent documentary The Eagle Huntress (2016) takes place on similar terrain. But Ivo Marloh has captured the real thing on the hoof in his brilliant widescreen adventure that gets down and dirty and up close and personal with the horses themselves (who are not to be petted) and their intrepid riders who have travelled from far and wide (South Africa, Ireland, Texas and Canada) to win the race, and win it whatever the cost (should they fall off mid station, it’s a long onward hike, or maybe even death).

The going gets tough and unpredictable – often unbearably so, but the riders must persevere against the odds: injury, buzzing insects, heat exhaustion and the elements soon take their toll. And Marloh is there in the thick of it, delivering an exhilarating watch from close quarters while also exploring the human story of a remote community struggling to survive in their ancient pastoral tradition. “This is the Wild frickin’ West” says one rider. And we feel his pain. But this is rip-roaring entertainment – and not for the feint-hearted. MT

THE MONGOL DERBY IS AN ANNUAL EVENT THAT TAKES PLACE IN AUGUST

Pandora’s Box | Die Büchse der Pandora (1928)


Dir.: G.W. Pabst; Cast: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, Carl Götz, Alice Roberts, Daisy d’Ora, Alice Roberts; Germany 1928, 135′.

Based on two plays by the German playwright Frank Wedekind (Earth Spirit/Pandora’s Box), there had been already a stage, screen and even musical version of the story, and Pabst, after having failed to find his ‘Lulu’ was about to cast Marlene Dietrich in the title role.

Luckily for him (and for the millions who have watched the feature), 22 year-old Louise Brooks (a trained dancer), his first choice, phoned from Hollywood just in time, to accept. Pabst had seen her in the role of a circus artist in Howard Hawks’ A Girl in every Port, and Paramount did not even answer his request to borrow her.

Only after she quit Paramount ((“just for the hell of it”), did Bud Schulberg tell her that Pabst had offered her the part. She cabled Pabst her agreement immediately – Marlene Dietrich waiting in the director’s office.

Lulu (Brooks) is a mixture of modern femme fatale and a naïve child. Her allure and seductiveness is apparent from the get go when her lover, Dr. Peter Schön (Kortner) arrives. Meanwhile her first pimp Schigolch (Götz) is hiding on the balcony of her flat. Schön is the editor of a big newspaper and engaged to the aristocratic beauty Charlotte (O’Ora). After spotting Schigolch, the disgusted publisher is delighted Lulu wants to star in a variety show, helped by Schigolch and the strongman Rodrigo Quast. But on the evening of the first night Lulu has a tantrum: she is not going to perform in front of her lover’s fiancée.

When Lulu seduces Schön, Charlotte and Schön’s adult son Alwa (Lederer), who is secretely in love with Lulu, enter through the backroom of he theatre. The editor has no choice now – he has to marry Lulu. On the night of their wedding there is a drunken scene in their boudoir involving Quast and Schigolch.  Lulu’s newly-wed husband, asks her to shoot herself, to save him from becoming a murderer – but in the struggle for the gun he is killed. Lulu is found guilty of manslaughter, but escapes with Alwa, Schilgoch and Quast. The trio soon runs out of money, ending up penniless in London, where Lulu meets her end at the hands of Jack the Ripper.

Not only did Pabst introduce Louise Brooks as the modern sex siren, he also casts, perhaps for the time in film history, a lesbian protagonist: Countess Anna Geschwitz (Roberts) is equally smitten by Lulu. But she is no wallflower – and even ends up murdering Quast, who wants to give Lulu away to the police for money.

Pandora’s Box was not successful at the box office, even German critic of the time Kracauer has nothing good to say: he considered Wedekind’s plays to be “really essays”, lifeless and lacking visual strength. In the USA, the film’s ending was changed: instead of being murdered, Lulu joins the Salvation Army.

Brooks would stay in Europe starring next in Pabst’s Diary of a lost Girl, before returning to the USA, where she ended her screen career in 1938, becoming a writer. Pabst himself would never again reach the same heights, retuning to Nazi Germany in 1939, and ruining his reputation. But Pandora’s Box, a serendipitous meeting of chance and the unique historic constellation of culture, the Weimarer Republic, will live on forever. AS

A BFI RELEASE OF THE NEW 2K DCP OF THE MUNICH FILM MUSEUM’S DEFINITIVE 1997 RESTORATION, WITH SCORE BY PETER RABEN

That Summer (2017) ***

Dir.: Göran Hugo Olsson; Documentary with Edith Ewing Bouvier, Edith Bouvier Beale, Lee Radziwill, Peter Beard; Sweden/Denmark/USA 2017, 80min.

THAT SUMMER is a kind of prequel to Albert and David Maysles’ cult documentary Grey Gardens (1975) and is all about the nostalgia for nostalgia. Shot in the summer of 1972, using material by Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Peter Beard and Albert Maysles, bookended (and commentated) by Peter Beard, creates his diary in collage form, this documentary is by far more direct than Grey Gardens, when it comes to its main protagonists Edith Ewing Bouvier and her daughter Edith Bouver Beale, being called lovingly Big and little Edie, who lived alone in splendid isolation in a decaying mansion since the 1930ies.

Using original film material, re-discovered after decades, director Göran Hugo Olsson (Concerning Violence) sets out to describe a magical summer in 1972, when Lee Radziwill, the younger sister of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and her friend the artist and photographer Peter Beard, spent a summer in East Hampton, Long Island. Beard, setting the tone for the feature, calls contemporary East Hampton “Cash” Hampton, a place for the rich and vulgar. But in the early 1970ies, artists like Andy Warhol (who usually preferred urban settings), Truman Capote, Mick and Bianca Jagger mingled with Jackie Onassis and her husband, who paid for the restoration of Grey Gardens, the house Big and Little Edie has lived in. Lee Radziwill directed the work, which included cleaning up cat droppings, which had accumulated during decades. The felines themselves are a main feature always posing attractively. Beard, who now lives in Montauk, not far away from Grey Gardens (which is worth around 18 million Dollar these days) talks about those months in lyrical and poetic terms: Every minute was new, insanely funny, poignant, wild unpredictable and unmatchable… Daily soap operas amongst themselves, the most original scripts, the most paranoid gossip, remarkable historical tales. And the most unforgettable, amazing thing was getting in there – naturally the whole outside world had been padlocked out. Gaining entrance to this world of conscientious objectors: that was the mystery ticket”.

What That Summer underlines is the “castle relationship” between the two Edies: With all the work in the house going on, Radziwill and Beard trying to perform their task of modernisation, whilst mother and daughter continue their role-play like relationship, utterly dependent on each other, yet constantly at odds as they argue the smallest point. They are very much like precocious children, waiting to be asked by the ‘adults’ to perform. Which, in the end they do, singing about autumn and the dwindling, precious days.

Olsson tries very hard to get all different elements to gel but this task is nearly impossible, and what results is a slightly in-cohesive documentary that still manages to keep the audience spellbound. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 1 JUNE 2018 IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS.

King of Hearts (1966) ***

 Dir.: Philippe de Broca; Cast: Alan Bates, Genevieve Bujold, Pierre Brasseur, Micheline Presle, Jean-Claude Brialy, Adolfo Celi; France/Italy 1966, 102′

Director Philippe de Broca (1933-2004) was assistant director to Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut, before setting out to direct thirty features; which, like King of Hearts were mainly light-hearted entertainment, but this is notable for its legendary English star Alan Bates. The director’s most popular outing, The Man from Rio (1964), was a sparkling adventure escapade starring Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Set in the French town of Marville in the last days of WWI, Scottish Private Plumpick (Bates) is sent by by his buffoonish commander Colonel MacBiberbrook (Celi) to defuse a bomb in the city, evacuated by the Germans who have intercepted Plumpick’s carrier pigeons, and are waiting for him in the deserted town. Running for his life, Plumpick takes refuge in the local asylum, where the patients greet him with adoration after learning, from the Germans soldiers, that he was the King of Hearts. Soon the patients from the asylum change into fancy dress, imitating the French court and a real brothel. The courtiers, among them General Geranium (Brasseur) and The Duke De Trefle (Brialy), want to crown Plumpick in the derelict church. But he falls for the virgin whore Coquelicot (Bujold), having been introduced to her by Madame Eva (Presle). After defusing the bomb, Plumpick watches the patients celebrate his great ‘firework’. But the explosion brings the two fighting armies back, and the patients run back to the asylum, where they are joined by Plumpick, who, having survived the.

With bears, lions and cycling monkeys running wild in the town after being liberated from their cages by the patients, this is a riotous romp, even though it was a disaster at the box office in France. It also bombed in the USA, but during the Vietnam war it went down a storm on the campuses. It now feels dated but the great ensemble acting and the production values are first class. DoP Pierre Lhomme (Camille Claudel) and composer George Delerue (The Last Metro, Day for Night) also go to make this anarchic cult classic solid entertainment. AS

KING OF HEARTS in cinemas NATIONWIDE (UK & Ireland) on 8 June 2018

My Friend Dahmer (2017) ****

Dir.: Marc Meyers; Cast: Ross Lynch, Anne Heche, Dallas Roberts, Alex Wolff, Tommy Nelson, Harrison Holzer, Vincent Kartheiser; USA 2017, 107 min.

Marc Meyers (Harvest) scores a winner with this brilliant screen adaptation of ‘Derf’ Backderff’s comic book tracing the final year of the legendary serial killer Jeff Dahmer.

Meyers’ work is best known in the US but this fascinating biopic thriller resonates far and wide due to the universal appeal of its gruesome subject matter. Born in Wisconsin, Jeffrey Dahmer grew up in the small town of Bath, Ohio, where Meyers captures the final year at college before his fragmented psyche exploded, leading to the murders of seventeen young men. Disney star Ross Lynch is cast against type turning in an excruciatingly realistic performance that brings with it an understanding of what drove Dahmer to murder, cannibalism and necrophilia. And the idea that society does not produce serial killers, but is in some way responsible for their existence – soon begins to percolate through the subconscious.

Dahmer’s senior year at Revere High School ran from 1977-78. And we learn how his role as an outsider was pre-determined by his dysfunctional family life where the atmosphere was fraught with discord: Father Lionel (Roberts), a chemist, and his wife Joyce (Heche) argue non-stop: Joyce is undergoing psychiatric treatment for her belligerent attitude to almost everything, but mainly her family. Only Jeffrey’s younger brother Dave (who name was changed due to legal anonymity), seems to find parental approval, largely due to the masculine attributes he shares with father: Both revel in the seclusion of the laboratory, avoiding social interaction, despite Lionel asking his son to develop a more outgoing attitude.

At school, Jeffrey’s obsession with dead animals is well known, he collects carcasses and dissolves them in acid, playing with the bones. His three ‘friends’ Derf (Wolff as the future comic book author), Neil (Nelson) and Mike (Holzer) make full use of Jeffrey’s willingness to be the class clown: they even pay him to perform his antics, which run to mock epileptic seizures and cerebral palsy routines in the local Mall. But Jeffrey is no fool: he is perfectly aware that he doesn’t belong and takes to drinking spirits and developing an early gay crash on a jogger (Kartheiser), who nearly becomes his first victim. Aware of his sexual orientation, Dahmer is condemned to silence, since there is no opportunity to discuss or explore his sexuality in this macho mid-western state  – and little has changed, even today. And so, Jeffrey ‘sleep-walks’ into his first murder, picking up a hitchhiker three weeks after his graduation (another milestone unacknowledged by his family).

From today’s perspective, it seems incredible that the early warning signs of Jeffrey’s fragmentation were not picked up at school, and that a court should find him “mentally sane” to stand trial in 1991. His murder by a fellow inmate serves as a sad but logical epitaph to a life in which the troubled 34 year-old actually kept the remains of some his victims for company. Meyers’ detached case study shows Jeffrey Dahmer as a spectator, looking in on his own life. He is unable to identify with anything alive, his sexuality making him even more of an outcast. His cerebral intelligence was no help: his pent up emotions were so over-powering that he could only find an outlet in physical cruelty, in revenge for being locked out of everyone’s life. DoP Daniel Katz’s wide-screen images underline the joyless grey world he experienced, an arctic emotional landscape. Lynch’s peerless performance underlines the fact that Dahmer was actually handsome, but lacked the wherewithal to connect physically or emotionally with anyone alive. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 1 June 2018

 

The Knack..and how to get it (1965) | Bluray release

Dir: Richard Lester | Cast: Rita Tushingham, Ray Brooks, Michael Crawford, Donal Donnelly | Comedy | UK

It’s indicative of our more conservative century that in 2001 the Wallflower Critical Guide appreciated the creative cinematography and editing of The Knack, but then said it disrupted the storytelling. That’s ridiculous. The bare storyline of The Knack makes for a comedy pitched exactly in tune with its technique: a style conveying zany behaviour, sexual freedom and cheeky irreverence. Never a case of disruption but a familiar eruption of the visual approach associated with director Richard Lester. 

Sandwiched between the two Beatles films, A Hard Day’s Night and Help, The Knack is very much a Sixties production. Amazingly, it won the 1965 Cannes Palme D’Or and has become one of the ‘swinging’ 60s films that people either love or hate. I like it, but with a few reservations. Blow-Up is the other 60s film now lazily described as ‘swinging’. Antonioni’s film doesn’t swing but provokes and mystifies: a film of its time yet also magisterially timeless; whereas The Knack has begun to look dated: caught in its own charming time capsule.

Colin (Michael Crawford) is a schoolmaster with little sexual experience of women. His friend Tolen (Ray Books) is a smug and conceited womaniser. He has the knack of seduction. Colin wants it too. Only with the disruptive arrival of Nancy (Rita Tushingham) on the scene does it seem possible that Colin’s inhibitions will be swept away by a potential girlfriend.

The Knack was adapted by Charles Wood from a play by Ann Jellicoe. I’m not sure how much of the dialogue is Jellicoe’s and how much is Wood’s. What is apparent is a strange and strained tone of both awkward misogyny and exhilarating energy. You disapprovingly groan at Tolen’s remark that women are ‘just skirt’ and that “skirt is meat”, and his assertion that “girls don’t get raped unless they want it.” These attitudes are powerfully counterpoised by Nancy’s assertive dialogue. As Tolen approaches, intent on rape, Nancy blasts out, “Mr. Smarty, Smarty, tight trousers – just you don’t come near me!” whilst her constant asking to be directed to the YWCA becomes a repeated knack leitmotif. Will the YWCA ever preserve Nancy’s virginity?  

The Knack is a semi-absurdist mishmash of Wood/Jellicoe lines that manage to attract and repel. And Lester directs his actors to speak in a frenetic, questioning manner as if they were tearing through the text of Beckett’s Godot – not anxiously waiting for redemption but running up and down stairs intent on sexual gratification.

If The Knack hadn’t been so perfectly cast then I don’t think I would be giving it very much critical attention. Michael Crawford, Ray Brooks, Donal Donnelly and Rita Tushingham deliver wonderfully winning performances. The film might be an uneven, if brilliantly photographed, fantasia on sexual drives, but I strongly identified with the frustrations and ambitions of its very likeable and very human characters. 

The comedy sometimes fall flat – both the child-like lion taming scene and the wheeling of a bed, through the London streets, are over-long – but when The Knack’s comedy works, it becomes an appealing bundle of anarchic energy. And British films are always in need of a good dose of that. Alan Price.

NOW ON BLURAY TO CELEBRATE BFI’s WOODFALL: A REVOLUTION IN BRITISH CINEMA 

Special features

Product details

RRP: £19.99/ Cat. no. BFIB1292 / Cert 15

UK / 1965 / black and white / 85 mins / English language with optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / original aspect ratio 1.66:1 / BD50: 1080p, 24fps, PCM dual mono audio (48kHz/24-bit) / DVD9: PAL 25fps, PCM mono audio (48kHz/16-bit)

 

The Apartment (1960)***** 4K restoration

Billy Wilder’s comedy The Apartment takes us back to the ordered world of Mad Men when men still ruled the world and the workplace: but it didn’t always work in their favour. There’s so much to enjoy about the sly camaraderie and refreshing lack of political correctness that still make this a winner, and a reminder of the (sometimes) good old days.

And back in the day it won five Oscars at the 33rd Academy Awards, including for best picture, dynamite writing duo Diamond and Wilder (Jewish emigrés from Romania and Germany), The Apartment is a romantic comedy verging on melodrama that trips lightly over a scorching satire of the old school network that still exists today, in a much more covert way than even back then. The movie is positively bristling with social commentary but all of it dressed in a chipper sense of upbeat bonhomie. Sometimes its characters are vulnerable, lonely and frustrated but the humour skips on relentlessly always presenting its best face to a world that knew firmly where and how its bread was buttered, and accepted it with dignity and good grace.

And none more so than Jack Lemmon’s character C C Baxter, a hard-working, hard-done-by corporate servant, who thinks the best of everyone and everything, and is gifted with an enviable optimism and a indomitable will to survive. Lemmon brings an acute sense of comic timing and slapstick skill to his memorable performance. Wilder puts a positive spin on this immoral world knowing that his stock in trade was to entertain not to depress of deflate. Baxter is grafting his way slowly to the top, knowing that his ace card is his Manhattan home, a small but snug pied à terre that provides a priceless bolt hole for his bosses to conduct their extra-marital dalliances. But this cosy corner is somewhat of a poisoned chalice, as even Baxter will admit.

Meanwhile, Shirley MacLaine is the lift lady in the office building where Lemmon works, and is secretly dating one of his married bosses (Fred MacMurray) who makes use of the apartment from time to time. Miss MacLaine (Fran Kubelik) and Lemmon are both likeable losers, disillusioned romantics who finally fall for each other after bonding over Baxter’s meatballs after she tries to kill herself on Christmas Eve, spurned by MacMurray’s Mr Sheldrake (who finally gets his comeuppance at the hands of his secretary Miss Olsen (Edie Adams), one of the five philanders who make use of the apartment. The other are flippantly played by Ray Walston, David Lewis, Willard Waterman and David White. His next door neighbour Dr Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) provides a vibrant vignette featuring the comforting Jewish doctor and his wife Mildred (Naomi Stevens), who save the day with their nous and matzah ball soup.

The script is full of perceptive moments and witty dialogue that plays on a verbal motif using the suffix ‘wise’; when Fran Kubelik asks Baxter if he wants candlelight over dinner, he replies: “it’s a must, gracious living-wise” and this goes on to hilarious effect, as Wilder and Diamond clearly enjoy themselves writing the multi-awarded script.

Joseph LaShelle’s black-and-white Panavision photography glows to great effect in the restoration, picking out the period details and the impeccable fashions of the day (Miss Olsen’s faux leopard hat and handbag combo and her cat’s eyes sunglasses are still on trend today) and this is all set to Adolph Deutsch’s imaginative score, with its jazzy tunes: an Ella Fitzgerald album cover on Baxter’s sideboard provides a perfect cultural counterpoint to an era where to be successful in the workplace was to be male and white; but that was ok. MT

4K RESTORATION by PARK CIRCUS and MGM from an original 35mm print in cinemas later this year. With thanks to Nick Varley and John Letham for Park Circus. 

 

l’Amant Double (2017) ***

Dir: François Ozon | Cast: Jeremie Renier, Marine Vacth | Drama | France | 104min

François Ozon is back with a meandering 90s-style erotic thriller that starts as an upbeat, intriguing psychodrama hinting at hidden depths, but then loses its sting in the final stages. Poking fun at its female-centric themes, the film opens with an eye-watering gynaecological close-up – if only the script was as tight as its heroine’s tooshie.

The female anatomy belongs to pouting pixie-like minx Chloe (Marine Vacth) who is bored in her new job at a trashy art museum. Just as well, because her love life is complex and full of energetic sexual encounters that kick off when she falls for her dishy psychoanalyst Paul (Jeremie Renier). But when they move in together Chloe is alarmed to discover Paul is not who he seems. Firking around in his things she finds his passport with a different name and realises her lover has an analyst twin brother, which at first he denies. Pretending to need therapy, she tracks down the identical sibling (Renier flips deftly between the two), and soon they too are having rampant sex.

Ozon’s twin theme recalls the obsessive psycho thrillers of Brian De Palma and Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers and even The Brood, where emotional confusion casts doubt on the central character’s state of mind. This is Marine Vacth’s second collaboration with Ozon since she sprung to fame in his 2013 drama Young and Beautiful, and here she plays a similar type who is slightly disdainful and dissatisfied with her life. Despite Paul’s amorous and easy-going nature, Chloe is curiously drawn to the more difficult character of his brother – Jeremie Renier excels in both roles. Ozon, as playful as ever, then resorts to his box of kinky tricks as Chloe turns dominatrix, in a twist obviously worked into the narrative to delight French audiences – who love this kind of thing. From then on L’AMANT DOUBLE broadens into an exploration of Chloe’s gynaecological and psychosexual issues, scuppering the suspense and  the impact of the ultimate reveal.

Thank God for Jacqueline Bissett whose vignette spices up the dragged out denouement, and Myriam Boyer who brings some light relief as the nosy neighbour with a penchant for cats. If only Ozon would return to his more satisfying early thrillers, such as Under the Sand (2000)Swimming Pool (2003) or the serious dramas such as Frantz (2016).

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 JUNE 2018

 

Ismael’s Ghosts (2017) **

Dir: Arnaud Desplechin | Cast: Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Louis Garrel, Mathieu Amalric | Hippolyte Girardot, Alba Rohrwacher | Drama | 110min | France

Cannes 70th Anniversary got off to a wildly pretentious start with Arnaud Desplechin’s sprawling fantasy melodrama made watchable by sparkling performances from two of France’s leading female stars: Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

The histrionic storyline follows Matthieu Amalric, in his usual tortured turn as a neurotic chain-smoking writer whose wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard) was declared missing 20 years previously. Emotionally unstable, he falls for Charlotte Gainsbourg’s charming and calming single astrophysicist, whose cross to bear is raising her disabled brother – who never actually appears.

Into this budding romantic mêlée plops the delicately distraite adventurist Carlotta who has been wandering the globe, much to the chagrin of her dying father and her husband.  She now turns up out of the blue to reclaim her husband and have his baby. Is she a ghost or a real person, do we really care? She puts a spanner in the works for all concerned – and only to illuminate Ismael’s ambivalence about what he really wants from a partner, and out of life in general. At this point Desplechin’s adds a exotic twist to proceedings involving Louis Garrel, who plays a diplomat hired by the French government, to a mythical North African country with his new bride, a playful Alba Rohwacher. And this is where the film loses its way (and our interest) as it slips backwards and forwards, careening between sparks of quirky humour, wild reverie and erotic moments where Cotillard reveals all but, judiciously, Gainsbourg remains gracefully un-décolletée – and strangely more interesting and appealing – as Ismael’s true love).

Funny how Déplechin’s female characters are eminently more interesting but only ever exist to serve his one-dimentional men. That said, there is much to admire in this hotchpotch: a sweepingly romantic score that punctuates the occasional moments of intrigue, Irina Lubtchansky’s intricate camerawork that conveys claustrophobia in tight corridors, and soaring delirium in widescreen shots; but nothing ultimately hangs together. ISMAEL’S GHOSTS is best remembered as a vehicle for Garrel, Gainsbourg, and Cotillard, and some flashes of momentary brilliance in a rather disturbed nightmare . MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 JUNE 2018

The Dam Busters (1955) | 75th Year’s Celebration | Home Ent Release

Dir: Michael Anderson | Writer: R C Sheriff | Cast: Richard Todd, Michael Redgrave, Ursula Jeans, Basil Sydney, Ernest Clark | Aventure Drama | UK | 124′

British classic, The Dam Busters was directed by the late Michael Anderson (Logan’s Run) from a script by R C Sheriff (Goodbye, Mr Chips) exploring the legendary true story of Commander Guy Gibson and his elite squadron, The Dam Busters (1955). The film captures all the thrilling action and suspense of the magnificent exploits of a group of young pilots and their crews, charged with taking out the supposedly impenetrable Ruhr river dams of Germany with an ingeniously designed bouncing bomb. Starring Richard Todd as Gibson and Michael Redgrave as scientist and engineer Dr Barnes Wallis, the film also immortalised composer’s Eric Coates’s masterpiece: The Dam Busters March.

The impact of The Dam Busters on modern filmmakers spans the decades: director George Lucas hired the film’s special effects photographer Gilbert Taylor to work his magic on the original Star Wars; and The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has long been attached to a remake, based around a screenplay by actor/writer Stephen Fry.

THE DAM BUSTERS DVD / Blu-ray / EST and Collector’s Edition | Courtesy of STUDIOCANAL’S Vintage Classics label from June 4th, with a host of extras including an exclusive‘Making of The Dam Busters’ documentary. The Collector’s Edition will include the feature in 1.37 and 1.75 aspect ratios, a 64-page booklet, a rare aerial photographic print of the Möhne Dam following the raid (signed by the surviving members of the original 617 Squadron), an RAF Chastise Lancaster Bombers poster and a set of 5 art cards. Pre-order here: https://amzn.to/2I4z400

Fred (2018)*** | DVD release

Dir: Paul Van Carter | Doc | UK |

Paul Van Carter (The Guv’nor) spills the beans in this solemn non-judgemental exposé of Kray Twins associate Freddie Foreman – or Brown Bread Fred, as he’s known in the trade. As biopics go this is a stealthy but straightforward affair heavily controlled by Foreman’s brooding and rather swarthy presence as he sits facing Carter, only sharing what he wants to – and that’s not a great deal, in the scheme of things. Most of the detail surrounding this ruthless villain’s bloody past is in the pubic domain, including his part in the grizzly demise of Jack the Hat McVitie – for which he served ten years behind bars, and Freddie openly admits to this. But by the same token, he describes himself as a family man who never really wanted to harm anyone unless they got out of hand. Foreman has been accused of over forty murders, yet he’s not troubled by his gangland past: heartache comes only in the shape of memories of the Blitz and his Wartime childhood. And he certainly has a way with words, and a calm economy of movement when alluding to his misdemeanours, in phrasing that could be described as euphemistic. As a figure he very much calls to mind Bob Hoskins’ character in The Long Good Friday but Foreman has a brutal hard-edged quality that not even Bob could muster in his superlative performance. Foreman blames his criminal past on his impoverished upbringing as one of five boys in London’s Battersea, long before it became posh. And despite his shrewd entrepreneurialism – he went straight for two years in the US and Spain – he still reverted to his recidivist ways: clearly crime runs in his blood, even when the money flowed too. In his 80s and with strained family relations, Foreman now lives in a care home, where no doubt he is getting a taste of his own medicine. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD 28 MAY AND ON 4 JUNE DVD

Tony Richardson and his New Wave Wonder

Woodfall Film Productions was founded in 1958 by English director Tony Richardson (1928-1991), the American producer Harry Saltzman (later of James Bond fame) and the English author and playwright John Osborne, whose play Look back in Anger was filmed by Richardson in 1959 as the opus number of the company that championed the British New Wave. So it’s only fitting that Richardson should finish the circle in 1984 with Hotel New Hampshire, creating a sub-genre of dram-com, which was later developed by Wes Anderson.

The Entertainer featured Laurence Olivier in the title role, reprising his stage role from the Royal Court, co-written by John Osborne from his own play. There is nothing heroic about Olivier’s Archie Rice: he is a bankrupt womaniser, exploiting his long suffering wife Phoebe (de Banzie) and using Tina Lapford (Field) – who came second in the Miss Britain contest – and her wealthy family to prolong his stage career. Not even the death of his son in the Suez conflict can deter him from his vain pursuit of a long dead career. Using his father – who dies on stage – for his own advantage, Archie sinks deeper and deeper. There is a poignant scene with his film daughter Jean (Plowright), whom he asks: “What would think, if I married a woman your age?” and Jean answers exasperated “Oh. Daddy”. At the end of productions, Olivier would marry Plowright, after his divorce from Vivien Leigh. Shot partly at Margate, this is a bleak portrait of show business, shot in brilliant black and white by the great Oswald Morris (Moby Dick, A Farewell to Arms).  

Set in a desolate Manchester, A Taste of Honey would make a star of the lead actor Rita Tushingham. She plays 17-year old school girl Jo, who is totally neglected by her sex-mad mother Helen (Bryan), who only has time for her fiancée Robert (Stephens). Jo gets pregnant by the black sailor Jimmy (Danquah), who soon leaves with his ship. Jo befriends the textile student Geoffrey, a brilliant Murray Melvin, who is not sure about his sexual orientation. He looks lovingly after her, before Helen returns, after having been rejected by Robert. She shucks Geoffrey out, and pretends to look after her daughter and the baby, whilst having one eye on the next, potential suitor. A Taste of Honey is relentlessly gloomy and discouraging. Photographed innovatively  by Walter Lassally, who would become a Richardson regular.  

Written by John Osborne, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner again created a new star: Tom Courtenay in the titular role as Colin, a young, working-class petty criminal. After being caught by the police, he lands in up in Borstal, which is run by the posh Ruxton Towers (Michael Redgrave). The vain headmaster loves nothing more than to prove his theory that hard labour and physical exercises will reform his juvenile clients. Colin has a talent for running, and Towers trains him to beat the best of the Public School runners, in the annual competition.  Teased by his mates as ‘teacher’s pet’, Colin strives hard to fulfil his potential – but, in one of the great endings in film history, he has the last laugh, making a complete fool of Towers. Again shot in grainy black-and-white by Lassally, The Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner is a classic of the new genre of kitchen-sink dramas.  

Nothing could be more different than Richardson’s next project, the historical romp Tom Jones, based on the novel by Henry Fielding. Albert Finney is the bumptious titular hero, who is nearly hanged due to the schemes by his adversary Bliflil (the debut for David Warner). With a great love story involving Sophie Western (York) and her father (Griffith), there are some great performances by Edith Evans, Joan Greenwood and Diane Cilento. Like his auteur Richardson, Lassally changes style effortlessly in this colourful wide-screen bonanza. It would garner an Oscar for Richardson, and was a huge success at the box office: the slender budget of £467000 pounds would result in a cool 70 million takings. AS

NOW AVAILABLE FROM THE BFI THIS CLASSIC BOX SET SERIES IS PACKED WITH QUALITY EXTRAS

Blu-ray RRP: £79.99 / Cat. No. BFIB1296 / Cert 15

UK / 1959-1965 / black and white & colour / English language with optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / 921 mins (+ extras)/ original aspect ratios / 24fps, 1080p / 7 x BD50 & 2 x BD25 / Blu-ray: PCM mono audio (48kHz/24-bit)

DVD RRP: £69.99 / Cat. No. BFIV2113 / Cert 15

UK / 1959-1965 / black and white & colour / English language with optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / 885 mins (+ extras)/ original aspect ratios / 24fps, PAL / 9 x DVD9

 

 

This is Congo (2017) ***

Dir: Daniel McCabe | Doc | 91′ | Congo

Magnificent landscapes give way to mass murder and mayhem in This Is Congo, Daniel McCabe’s cinematic documentary that follows several of his compatriots surviving twenty years of conflict in this war-torn nation. Congo’s leaders have chosen war in place of an intelligent way of harnessing the country’s abundant mineral wealth, and ensuring peace and prosperity for its people.

Most of us have never been to this lush mid-African country three times the size of Texas. Fertile soil encourages agriculture and provides a rich cocoa-dusting for the country’s ample mineral reserves of tourmaline, manganese, copper, bauxite and gold.

McCabe knows from experience that filming will be dangerous here and certainly gives a flavour of the perils in the opening scene where booming mortar fire sends tremors through our seats while onscreen the fleeing Congolese protect their kids and livestock  on the run.

Bordered by Rwanda and Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo sounds like a country of the free and enabled. It is quite the opposite: a place divided by macho rebel forces, such as the M23, who compete with rival militia groups while the government-led forces continually strive to keep control and calm the masses under the auspices of Colonel Mamadou Ndala who eventually loses his battle – in the surprising final scenes – not to the enemy but to his jealous officers threatened by his energy and charisma.

Voiced by the melodic tones of Isaach de Bankole), the real heroes of the Congo are not the generals and fighters but the enterprising civilians: voluptuous business woman Mama Romance who trades precious gems in the main port of Goma and tailor Hakiza Nyantaba who traipses from village to village with his trusty Singer sewing machine. With great sensitivity and dispassion, McCabe shows us a nation surviving against the odds, its people forced into a peripatetic mode of existence, cheerful and philosophical despite their trial and tribulations. MT

THIS IS CONGO | IN CINEMAS | ON DEMAND FROM 25 MAY 2018 | DOGWOOF

 

 

La Signora senza Camelie (1953) **** Dual Format release

Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni | Drama | Italy

From the opening credits of La Signora Senza Camelie we’re in very recognisable Antonioni territory. First, a close overhead shot of a young woman pacing up and down the street at night: she’s hesitant, anxious and uncomfortably placed against an architecture that appears to disturb her. On the soundtrack we hear a melancholic title theme composed by Giovanni Fusco (Who later worked with Antonioni on L’avventura, L’eclisse and Il Deserto Rosso). Then the woman enters a cinema to catch the final moments of her latest film. As she watches herself, singing in a nightclub, Signora’s filmic intersection of life and art undemonstratively signals what will be the cause of the woman’s continuing stress – the capricious and uncaring Italian film industry of the 1950s.

Clara Manni (Lucia Bose) is a beautiful-looking shop assistant now transformed into a film starlet. After Clara’s first successful film, the movie executives propose a project entitled “Woman Without a Destiny.” Attempts are made to make the film more erotic and provoke the censor. Producer Gianni Franchi (Andrea Checchi) persuades Clara to marry him and commence with the new production. The film does well but Gianni objects to the sexual exploitation of his wife. Upset by the studio’s control of her talent and image, Clara walks out of the marriage and requests a part in a more artistic film. A version of the Joan of Arc story is completed, but is badly received. Clara is shaken by the ordeal and continues to strive for serious roles.

Hollywood would have treated this storyline with either black satire (Sunset Boulevard) or sophisticated critique (The Bad and the Beautiful). But not Antonioni. In interviews he’s said that it was not the workings of film production that interested him but the personality, or soul, of an actress, praised then denigrated by forces that prevent her self-realisation.

Lucia Bose was also the leading actress in Antonioni’s first film, Cronica di un Amore. This masterly debut feature contained outstanding acting from Bosse and the supporting cast. La Signora Senza Camelie is a cooler and less intense affair. Yet both films are companion pieces in so far as they eloquently convey the despairing looks of Bose –prefiguring the haunting look of later Antonioni women such as Jeanne Moreau and of course the incomparable Monica Vitti. It’s a look not of victimisation but of outward betrayal; a vulnerable face revealed to the world: but subtly concealing both a determination and strength to be respected for your inner worth. Men also struggle in Antonioni’s films but it is the women who appear more resilient in situations and relationships that threaten moral vacuity and loneliness. 

Bose’s performance is superb at capturing such intense disappointment. But is she not too middle class and sophisticated to project the fate of a humble shop-girl? Both Gina Lolibrigita and Sophia Loren where choices for the parts: sadly Antonioni couldn’t get either actress. Yet ‘miscast’ or not, Bose brings much nuanced depth of feeling to her character. 

Without Bose, Antonioni’s camerawork and the photography of Enzo Serafin the story of La Signora Senza Camelie might have collapsed into melodrama or worse, soap opera. Antonioni may not have wanted Lucia Bose, but he ably guides her to deliver a radiant performance, making the final ten minutes of the film touching and transcendent.  

In one scene Clara is shown reading Pirandello. And it’s from Pirandello that Antonioni begins to comment on the complex realities of identity. Antonioni’s seamlessly ‘light’ and graceful direction integrates the disenchantment of the business of living with the industry of film production and its commercial imperative to manufacture dreams and illusions.  

Already within a conventional narrative Antonioni is an auteur bringing both rigour and spontaneity to an overworked plot. A short story by Cesare Pavese is better realised in his next brilliant feature Le Amiche and once we reach L’avventura Antonioni’s  technical control is completely assured, here plot evaporates and abstraction triumphs. 

Admirers of Antonioni have to see La Signora Senza Camelie. For it remains a fascinating springboard for the ideas of Antonioni’s great films of the 1960’s, which have a modernity that hasn’t dated, remaining just as urgent and pressing as we make difficult ethical decisions in our new century. Those Italian writers, artists, socialites, intellectuals, businessmen and poor Anna (Still gone missing on the island in L’avventura) really matter. There’s never definitive closure in Antonioni’s world but continual exploration. Alan Price ©2018   

NOW AVAILABLE ON DUAL FORMAT COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA

Zama (2017) Bfi Player

Dir: Lucrecia Martel | Argentina, Brazil / 115’ | cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lola Dueñas, Matheus Nachtergaele, Juan Minujín

Argentinian auteuse Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman) makes a welcome return with a subtle and sumptuously beguiling fantasy peepshow where one man’s mind unravels in mysterious 18th century South America.

Tired of waiting for the King to transfer him to his wife in Buenos Aires, a Creole officer of the Spanish Crown embarks on a perilous bid to return to his family while around him his fellow officers scheme and disemble. Based on an adaptation of Antonio Di Benedetto’s 1956 Latin American classic, this cinematic soupçon offers creative insight into Spanish colonial history through its central character Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) who slowly loses his grip on reality and descends into paranoia in a remote and savage outpost somewhere in Paraguay.

Sensually deprived and desperate for home, Zama falls prey to the South American sirens including Lola Duenas’s lacivious noblewoman, and a local Indian with whom he fathers a crippled child. Martel seduces with her gorgeously costumed cavalcade as we strain to make out the enigmatic storyline through a closeted and voyeuristic lens amid exotic birdsong and strange beasts including a volatile pet llama. Beyond the invidious perils of the settlement lies a land of savagery populated by dangerous masked tribes and a wild Portuguese warrior named Vicuna, whom Zuma is tasked with capturing in a perilous final attempt at a glorious transfer back to civilisation in Spain.

Drawing comparisons with other recent films from South America such as Jauja (Lisandro Alonso) and Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra). ZAMA is an extraordinary historical adaptation. Gleaming like Pandora’s Box and striking like a cobra, Martel offers a dizzyling distallation of the dying days of Don Diego de Zama. MT

ON BFI PLAYER

eXistenZ (1999) | Bluray release

Dir: David Cronenberg | Jennifer Jason-Leigh, Jude Law, Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe 
Visionary director David Cronenberg (Videodrome) challenges the boundaries of reality in sci-fi thriller eXistenZ. During a closed-door demonstration of her new virtual reality video game, brilliant game designer Allegra Geller survives an attempt on her life by a crazed assassin. On the run with Ted Pikul, a young marketing trainee who falls into the role of bodyguard, Allegra convinces Ted to join her in her game, eXistenZ. As the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur, the real-life dangers they sought to escape start to merge with their virtual world.
Special Features
Brand New Extras
• The Leader: An interview with Christopher Eccleston
• Commentary with Kim Newman and Ryan Lambie
• Commentary with Mondo Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson
• Limited edition booklet includes: ‘Enemy of Reality: David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ’ by Alex Morris, and ‘Of Fabrics and Flesh: An interview with Denise Cronenberg’ by Phillip Escott.
 
Additional Extras
• Audio commentary by David Cronenberg
• Making-of documentary
• Promo Featurette
• Special Effects Featurette
• Backstage interviews with Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Willem Dafoe, Jim Isaac (visual effects) and David Cronenberg
• Trailer
 
101 Films launch their new Black Label with The Grifters and eXistenZ both on dual format on 21 May 2018
 
Pre-order both for £25 direct from 101 Films: http://bit.ly/101BlackLabel  

 

The Grifters (1999) **** Bluray release

Dir: Stephen Frears | Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening | Thriller |

Directed by British auteur Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons) and producer Martin Scorsese, The Grifters, is a taut thriller that explores themes of seduction and betrayal. When small-time cheat Roy Dillon (Cusack) winds up in hospital following an unsuccessful scam, it sets up a confrontation between his estranged mother Lilly (Huston) and alluring girlfriend Myra (Benning). Both Lilly and Myra are con artists playing the game in a league far above Roy, and are always looking for their next victim. As Roy finds himself caught in a complicated web of passion and mistrust, the question is who’s conning whom? Frears elicits memorable performances from this talented cast in one of the 20th century’s most edgy and memorable cult classics. 
 
Special Features
Brand New Extras
• Seduction. Betrayal. Murder: The Making of The Grifters: A brand new feature length documentary on the film’s production, including new interviews with director Stephen Frears, cinematographer Oliver Stapleton, editor Mick Audsley, executive producer Barbara De Fina and co-producer Peggy Rajski.
• Limited edition booklet includes: ‘Jim Thompson, Noir, and the Popular Front’, an essay by David Cochran, and ‘Elmer Bernstein: Grit not Grift’, a review of the legendary composer’s career by Charlie Brigden
101 Films launch their new Black Label with The Grifters and eXistenZ both on dual format on 21 May 2018
 
Pre-order both for £25 direct from 101 Films: http://bit.ly/101BlackLabel  

1987: When the Day Comes (2017) Korean Film Festival

Dir: Jung Joon-hwan | Political Thriller | South Korea |

With an impressive ensemble cast and polemic real-life story, director Jang Joon-hwan’s powerful portrayal of the events that led to Korea’s historic June Democratic Uprising was as much a hit with audiences as it was with critics when it stormed the box-office at the start of this year.

In 1980s South Korea, the military regime of President Chun Doo-hwan pushes the masses to breaking point with its widespread corruption and oppression. In 1987, a series of events will be set in motion through which the heroic actions of ordinary people from all walks of life result in nationwide protests, altering the course of the nation’s history forever.

When a student protester dies under police interrogation, the order is given to quickly cremate the body, effectively burying the evidence. Unfortunately for Director Park (Kim Yoon-seok, The Fortress), the head of the Anti-Communism Investigations Bureau in Seoul desperately trying to cover up the crime, Prosecutor Choi (Ha Jung-woo, Assassination) is not playing ball. Suspecting foul play, Choi refuses the request and insists on an autopsy. When it’s discovered torture was the likely cause, the race is on to bring the crime to light. Prison guard Han (Yoo Hai-jin, Confidential Assignment) his niece Yeon-hee (Kim Tae-ri, The Handmaiden) and idealistic student Han-yeol (Gang Dong-won, A Violent Prosecutor) are just some of the ordinary people who put their lives on the line to uncover the truth.

Highly regarded director Jang Joon-hwan (Save the Green Planet, 2003) has made his most ambitious film to-date with this fast-paced, tightly plotted political thriller based on the shocking true events of 1987 Korea. Like last year’s A Taxi Driver, 1987: When the Day Comes gives the blockbuster treatment to a turbulent period, resulting in an exciting thrill-ride of a film that never loses sight of the human drama at its core. Korean Film Festival Review

HEADLINING UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | Teaser Screenings | Monday 18 June  | Picturehouse Central

Murder me, Monster (2018) *** | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir Alejandro Fadel. Argentina. 2018. 106′

MURDER ME MONSTER’S widescreen solemnity might bring to mind the murder investigation in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia – and there are vague echoes of Amat Escalante’s The Untamed, but that’s where the similarity ends. This brooding Andes-set crime mystery is the gruesome work of Los Selvajes director Alejandro Fadel, and it is certainly not for the feint hearted with its bestial themes and deformed zombie-like characters. Infact everyone in this stomach-turning horror fantasy is on edge and whispering morosely, for one reason or another. And a series of macabre murders, where heads are torn from bodies, seem to be the reason why.

The opening scene sees the dying moments of a woman whose throat has been severed and as a herd of sheep, and some other livestock are slowly make their supper of her remains, a blind man mumbles on about the murder, as slowly Fadel builds suspense out of a series of weird incidents that seem to indicate that a feral beast is on the prowl and out of control in this remote corner of Argentina where it invariably appears to be night.

Rural police officer Cruz (Victor Lopez) is tasked with investigating the murders and the finger seems to point to local thick-lipped weirdo David (Esteban Bigliardi) who claims that a savage creature is using certain phrases to commune with him, as if through telepathy, with a ‘silly’ voice that repeats ‘Murder Me, Monster’.

Cinematographers Manuel Rebella and Julian Apezteguia evoke nightmarish visuals often using the same technique as the painter El Greco – where the characters’ faces are often starkly backlit against a murky darkness. And there’s a garish otherworldly quality to the outdoor mountain scenes that turn increasingly Lynchian as the plot thickens. Pus-yellow, murky mustard and puke green make up the colour palette of costume and set designers Florencia and Laura Caligiuri. An atmospheric ambient score keeps the tension brewing.

This is intriguing stuff, if rather too enigmatic for its own good as a satisfying narrative that eventually leaves us stranded in its own mysterious backwater, and we feel rather nauseous and bewildered by the end. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | UN CERTAIN REGARD 2018

https://vimeo.com/268725708

 

Ayka | My Little One (2018) **** | Cannes Film Festival | In Competition

Dir: Sergei Dvortsevoy | Wri: Gennadiy Ostrovskiy | Cast: Samal Yeslyamova | Drama | Kazakhstan | Dop Jolanta Dylews

After giving birth in a squalid Moscow hospital minutes before, a young woman trudges back through blinding snow to pluck chickens in a factory outlet. Sound like your kind of film? This harrowing hunk of social realism is the delicately drawn follow-up from the man who rose to international stage with his tender Kazakh Un Certain Regard winner Tulpan back in 2008. 

Writer-director Sergey Dvortsevoy returns to the Croisette with this competition hopeful AYKA, a much more morose affair anchored by a carefully considered performance from Samal Yeslyamova, that won her Best Actress at Cannes, and who also played the main character’s sister in Tulpan.  Chased along the icy streets and tawdry interiors by awarded DoP Jolanta Dyweska’s handheld camera AYKA has the same chaotic feel as the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta (1999). Here our back-footed heroine has had to abandon her baby to battle against a callous country populated by criminal landlords, corrupt employers, poverty and disdain. And we feel for her. 

Dvortsevoy and his co-writer Gennadi Ostrowski, trip backwards and forwards offering inklings into the Kyrgyzstani woman’s background in a drama whose themes of social injustice and transmigration are not hammered into place but lightly alluded to in a tale that makes us focus more on Ayka’s blood-stained postpartum hardships (which are not for the feint-hearted) and her fearsome fight for survival in a place where she is neither wanted nor welcome. Some of the scenes make for gruesome viewing but this is a brave and ballsy film that begs for an audience and certainly deserves one. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | BEST ACTRESS WINNER 2018

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The Gentle Indifference of the World (2018)**** | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir: Adilkhan Yerzhanov | Writer: Roelof Jan Minneboo | Cast: Sultan Abzalov, Tulemis Alishev, Dinara Baktybaeva, Kulzhamilya Belzhanova | Drama | Fr/Kazakhstan |

Roelof Jan Minneboo is a Dutch writer and script doctor who works with budding independent filmmakers to give their distinctive stories a voice. He has done this so far with the late Somalian director Abdi Jama for Queleh, with Georgian director George Ovashvilli’s Corn Island which went on to win the main prize at Karlovy Vary in 2014 and with Armenian Ilgar Najaf whose Pomegranate Orchard (2017) picked up a several awards last year for his story of a prodigal son. This is his second collaboration with Kazakh filmmaker Adilkhan Yerzhanov, after the director won the Free Spirit Award at Warsaw for his debut  The Owners (2014).

The title’s logline: Love will always be above life, fear, death and money, is an encouraging start and The Gentle Indifference of the World never disappoints with its captivating style and unusual narrative inspired by Kazakh Steppe legends. Each frame of this stunningly filmed piece of cinema is an absolute gem, once again embracing the free-spirited and unique cinematic voice that is Yerzhanov, directing with inventive conviction in a strangely poetic and offbeat thriller. Unexpected humour, gentleness and violence emerge from the bizarre yet simple tale about feisty Kazakh folk who are not afraid of taking the law into their own hands in the big sky countryside of the lle Alatau Steppe and in the corrupt city of Almaty.

After her father’s sudden death, the central character Sultanat (a gracefully charismatic Dinara Baktybaeva) is forced to move from her idyllic rural home to Almaty to raise money to pay off family debts so her mother can avoid a prison sentence. With only her faithful friend Kuandyk (Dyussembaev) for emotional support, city life proves tough for this ravishing beautiful young woman and even when her uncle comes up with a suitable husband to do the honours financially, Sultanat soon finds him wanting. She has been close friends with the faithful but penniless Kuandyk since they were little, but can their bond survive in the tough urban setting where cold reality lurks at every turn, and love must triumph over money and power which continually trump its survival? An extraordinary and evergreen story, beautifully told. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8 – 19 MAY | UN CERTAIN REGARD

 

 

 

Burning (2018)

Lee Chang dong, Oh Jung mi | 143’ | South Korea | Drama 

Lee Chang-dong’s sees a rich guy and an honest worker compete for the affections of an enigmatic young woman in his mysterious slow burner that sizzles with a seductive spell and intoxicates for over two hours with its captivating storytelling and strikingly atmospheric score by Mowg.

‘A literary adaptation’ can sound warning bells but this standout psychological thriller breathes life into a short story from Haruki Murakami, adapted by Lee and his co-writer Oh Jung-mi who keep things deceptively simple yet alluring with a thematically rich ride set to Hong Kyung-pyo’s sumptuous cinematography, and enfused with themes of privilege, class, stifled creativity and revenge.

Lonely budding writer Jongsu comes from a poor and dysfunctional family background and works as a deliveryman near the North Korean border where he is unexpectedly invited into the bed of his former school friend who later returns from a trip to Africa with suave but unassuming new boyfriend in the shape of Korean hotshot Ben (Yeun Steven), who seems rather to smooth to be true. But then the story becomes more complex. Jongsu (Yoo Ah-in) has really fallen for the charming but insecure Haemi (Jun Jong-seo), who remembers his harsh comments on her appearance back in the day, and has since had plastic surgery.

A loose friendship soon develops between the threesome and for a while the story hums along gently mulling over its cultural references and glorying in its low key placid perfection. But all is not well in paradise and the tone takes a sinister turn after Ben confesses to being somewhat of a pyrotechnic with a penchant for greenhouse burning, and we witness this in a startling bonfire that seethes in silence. This heats up the whole affair with Haemi going missing and the two men coming head to head in a violent climax. With dynamite performances from the trio this is an elegantly crafted thriller from a Korean master at the top of his game. MT

NOW ON BBC | IPLAYER | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL FIPRESCI PRIZE 2018

Sir (2018) | Critics’ Week 2018

Dir: Rohena Gera | Drama | India | 97′

Documentarian Rohena Gera’s fiction debut is a refreshing and delicately drawn character drama, a love story that takes place in modern day Mumbai between two likeable people from opposite ends of the social spectrum, one is rich the other poor.    

Ratka is a young widow whose dicey new single status has for forced her to find work in the city. So she moves from her rural village to work as housekeeper for a wealthy young man whose wedding has recently been called off. “Sir” is clearly feeling emotional and Ratka suggests to his mother that the wedding presents be kept in her room to spare him further heartache. There they fester as a constant reminder of his and her marital failure.

The lovelorn Ashwin is gradually soothed by Ratka’s kind and thoughtful personality, so different from the spoilt prima donnas from his own milieu. Impressed by her drive and ambition to become a tailor, he offers her time out to train. His own work as a writer seems like a vanity project in contrast and most of his time is spent lolling around feeling sorry for himself and secretly ashamed at his lack of ambition.

Gera makes great use of Mumbai’s pulsing metropolis as a backdrop for the pair’s palpable chemistry as sexual tension slowly catches fire between them. But Ratka’s personality is the stronger of the two and Gera takes time to flesh out her emotional qualities and sparky intelligence leaving Ashwin as a rather one-dimensional cypher with only the machismo consistent with his status to define him. Clearly something’s gotta give, and in order to bring these two together between the sheets in an elegant manner Gera has to employ a narrative device that ends up being unconvincing. That said, SIR is a watchable film and was justly awarded a prize at the Cannes Critics’ Week sidebar. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE

Manto (2018)**** | Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Nandita Das; Cast: Navazuddin Siddiqui, Rasika Dugal, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Rajshiri Deshpande; India/France 2018, 112 min.

Nandita Das’ follows her stunning debut Firaaq, with a passionate bio-pic of Indo-Pakistani writer and author Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955), whose life was a constant struggle against censorship under British colonial rule and in the newly created Pakistan, whence he fled  from Bombay. Rather daringly, Das has integrated five of his short stories into the narrative, that are proof of Manto’s radicalism.                       

The first is Dus Rupay where a young girl from the slums is sold to two wealthy men for the afternoon: they play with her on the beach, before abusing her. Das covers the time between 1946 and 1950, with Manto (Siddiqui) working as a scriptwriter for Bollywood in Bombay, where feels very much at home before the partition. He and his wife Safia (Dugal) mourn their dead son, but are comforted by their two young daughters. Manto shows his morbid nature on his gravestone: “Here lays Saadat Hasan Manto, wondering if he is the better storyteller or God is!” Manto invariably sides with women in his writings, and it is no accident that he was a good friend of the feminist writer Ismat Chugtai (Despande), who also found herself in the British courts. When asked why he is writing about sex-workers, and not the British repression, Manto answers: “Aren’t they part of society too?”

After the partition, Manto’s friendship with the film star Shyam Chadda (Bhasin) comes to an end when an angry Muslim mob in Pakistan attacks the actor’s Hindu family in Pakistan, making them flee to Bombay, “I could kill you”, says Chadda to Manto – and even though he takes it back, the writer knows his time is up, and he moves to Lahore. But there is little to stimulate him in the Pakistani city, and he is soon in court defending himself for another shot story (Cold Meat), considered obscene. Even though he wins the court case, Manto does not feel at home in Lahore, and his drinking lands him in rehab. Symbolically, he is like the man in one of his stories who remained in no-mans land between the two states, having written “Two or three years after Partition, it occurred to the governments of India and Pakistan to exchange their lunatics, like they had exchanged their criminals. The Muslim lunatics in India were sent to Pakistan, and the Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistani asylums were to be handed over to India.”

MANTO’s stylish aesthetic is photographed by Kartik Vijay in semi-sepia, and Siddiqui gives a subtle splendour to his turn as the caustic, low-level depressive writer who cannot adjust to his new homeland due to his humanist nature. Melancholic, sombre and despondent, he drinks himself to death at only 42. Writing was his life, he even gave up the typewriter to use only pens because he felt they were more pure. AS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL – UN CERTAIN REGARD 2018

Lazzaro Felice | As Happy as Lazzaro 2018 | Best Script Cannes 2018

Writer/Dir: Alice Rohrwacher | Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, Luca Chikovani, Sergi Lopez | Italy | Drama 125′

Al Rohrwacher brings tenderness and curiosity to her delicately compelling fables set amongst rural communities in her homeland of Italy. Her latest Lazzaro Felice won Best Script at Cannes this year, her previous a languid pastoral The Wonders (2014) followed a family of beekeepers in 1970s Tuscany. In her debut Corpo Celeste (2011)  a young girl challenges religious morality in the southern town of Reggio Calabria.

Happy as Lazzaro is time-bending tale that uses poetic realism to enliven the rather depressing theme of corruption and crime in contemporary Italy. Again Rohrwacher uses Super 16mm to establish a retro aesthetic of sepia and muted senape and to re-create a nostalgic feeling for the past and times gone by in the dilapidated village of Inviolata where a traditional family of sharecroppers still serve the Marchesa Alfonsina de Luna. Although sharecropping has been illegal since the 1980s, their loyalty to their corrupt mistress is born out of habit, and because it suits them to maintain the status quo: It’s what they’ve always done. This recalls a past (and possibly a present in some areas) where a feudal system of sorts still exists, and Italy’s now decadent royal family (Vittoria Emanuele) are still acknowledged, paid homage to and addressed by their titles. So the villagers go about their leisurely business lacking the imagination or motivation to move on, and respecting the powers that be in this remote, sun-baked backwater that seems stuck in the past. And Lazzaro is the man with a heart of gold who is simply too good for this world, let along for this job. As saintly soul, Lazzaro is left the duties no one else wants to do, such as picking giant guarding the chicken coop from wolves. The Marchesa’s fecklessly lazy young son Tancredi, decides to play a trick on mother, for not giving him his inheritance early, and he sees that Lazzaro’s gentle nature and naive nature will make him perfect for a plan to defraud her. Lazzaro is naturally in thrall to the boy, out of deference, to his status. Tancredi then fakes his own kidnapping, hiding out in the undergrowth around the village expecting his mother to cough up the million lire ransom he has demanded. Naturally things don’t go according to plan and Lazzaro falls through a time-warp – in a tonal shift that Rohrwacher pulls of with aplomb – ending up in another world, set against a corrupt urban sprawl where he wanders dreamlike (and there is a certainly a surreal quality to these sequences) amongst unscrupulous characters as a nightmarish future unfolds around him. Lazzaro at this point takes on the semblance of a Christ-like figure – and it’s a performance of great subtlety and placidness that has to be seen to be believed. This transformation to saint, or even ghost seems to represent the soul of the Italian nation overcome by decadence and the perils of modernity. It also raises the everlasting conundrum: how long can a person continue to be good when continually challenged by evil. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 9 – 21 MAY 2018

BlacKkKlansman (2018) | Cannes Film Festival | Grand Prix winner

Dir: Spike Lee | Cast: Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold, Corey Hawkins | Biopic Crime Comedy | US |

Spike Lee’s latest film follows Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer from Colorado, who successfully managed to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan.

BlacKkKlansman, champions the Black Lives Matter brigade and is Spike Lee’s most engaging film in years, playing out as a straightforward 1970s style tale that sees a Black rookie detective get close up close and personal with the KKK, by posing as a potential punter over the ‘phone then sending his white colleague along to do the honours. Adam Driver plays game in fine form. 

There shades of Shaft here and other blaxploitation films of the era, but the accent is on comedy and irony rather than outright thriller, although Lee has done his research seriously offering plenty of historical detail and some archive footage from the Charlottesville riots from August last year, and the camera swivels firmly in focus of President Trump, and DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

The white supremacists are a nasty bunch, as you can imagine, and no one escapes their vitriol which is aimed at Jews and anyone not of Aryan blood. Topher Grace plays David Duke, the head honcho of the local branch, the film also features Black characters who are racist such as Patrice..

After joining the surprisingly racist Colorado Springs Police department, his first mission is to attend a Black Power meeting addressed by Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture. Here he meets and falls for Angela Davies Patrice (Laura Harrier). The film then charts his progress to infiltrate and bring down the KKK organisation in scenes where the tone is taut but always firmly upbeat. With lowkey natural performances from leads Adam Driver and John David Washington, and a stellar score of ‘70s hits, this is an enjoyable, informative and undivisive drama and certainly worthy of winning the Palme d’Or. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | GRAND PRIX WINNER 2018

The House That Jack Built (2018) | Cannes Film Festival

Writer/Dir: Lars von Trier | Cast: Uma Thurman, Matt Dillon, Riley Keough | Thriller |  Bruno Ganz |

Controversy has always surrounded auteur Lars von Trier and his critically acclaimed work lives up to his reputation as a maverick talent, fuelling fierce debate and attracting attention from his devoted fans. And he is up to his tricks again refusing to be cowed by the controversy that got him ‘persona non grata status’ seven years ago.

This time he offers up the provocative portrait of a serial killer wreaking hell in the 70s world of America’s Pacific North West. THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT  confirms that the director has no intention of mending his ways  although it is never quite clear whether he intends to be a mischievous as he appears. That said, he has clearly managed to wind some viewers up with walks out at the Cannes world premiere of the film. And with various allusions to Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao and Idi Amin a mild mannered approach was never going to be the balm needing to heal the wounds of previous damage he caused. 

Anti-Americanism and misogyny are the themes firmly in the forefront of this new and naughty endeavour that has Matt Dillon in the lead role as Jack, a sociopathic criminal who subjects women and young kids to a sadistic fate that would put even the Moors murders in the shade, while simultaneously moaning: “why is always the men’s fault”. The narrative clearly runs contrary to the current polemic over sexual misconduct, and Lars was never going to be acquiescent in this regard.  

That said, THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT is certainly a film to see, despite its indulgent running time. And it is worth remembering that over the years, the Danish maverick has created some memorable roles for women, assuring Emily Watson a legendary turn in Breaking The Waves, Bjork for Dancer in the Dark, and Charlotte Gainsbourg for Melancholia. In this new outing the victim to feel sorry for is Riley Keough — but von Trier cuts the victim characterisations down to a bare minimum, so as a result we know and feel little for them, they are merely there to serve the narrative’s purpose of putting a spanner in the works of the gender war that is currently raging.. 

The film is seen from the perspective of Jack and the hidden voice of his mentor/shrink Verge (Bruno Ganz), who remains in the dark until he finally emerges into the limelight as Dante after some 60 killings have been reported, escorting Jack through the circles of Hell, Divina Comedia style. 

The killing spree is conducted dispassionately by Jack, and kicks off with an deliberately unlikeable motorist (Uma Thurman) who meets her maker in a surprisingly bloodless way, after showing a gross sense of entitlement to Jack, after her car breaks down. Von Trier judiciously leaving the gore to our imagination, we actually feel more empathy with Jack than the woman. The next victims are a recently bereaved widow, then Sofie Grabol and her sons, forced to enjoy a picnic before being unceremoniously ‘taken out’. The director is also clearly taking a swipe at elements of our indifferent and uncaring society that allow victims to go unaided when in peril. The ‘dumb blond’ girlfriend is the next to go, in a killing that mirrors that of Sharon Tate. But each time Lars desire to inflame the recent feminist lash-back is almost overdone and certainly too glaringly obvious to be taken seriously. 

Dillon plays Jack with suave insouciance, boredom even. Nitpicking over details such as bloodstains on the carpet – he has a cleanliness fetish – and as his trail of carnage grows, he experiments with the slowly growing mound of bodies in his cool room.

The mid section of the film is devoted to a treatise on art and its value in society – which is all a bit too arcane to be edifying in the context of a murder movie – and the constant musical motif  of Bowie’s ‘Fame’ becomes a tad tiresome after a while. This detours involves nods to Glenn Gould, William Blake, gothic cathedral architecture, the work of Hitler’s favourite architect Albert Speer. A viignette about dessert wine production feels like an echo of the Silence of the Lambs fava beans episode. Ganz’s Verge is a soothing Peter Cook style psychiatrist who assures Jack that his feelings are all consistent with his personality profile as a psycho. JACK’s editor Molly Malene Stensgaard interposes archive material at various salient intervals to add ballast to the ongoing diatribe between Jack and Verge, and there is nothing particularly  exciting about cinematographer Manuel Albert Claro’s grainy handheld camera work or choice of visual aesthetic, although he captures the final descent into Hell inventively.

A great deal of the film actually feels quite tedious. JACK is neither a crime procedural or a gripping character study, and when the film’s title is finally fleshed out – quite literally – we are all ready to go home. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | Out of  COMPETITION 2018

Fugue | Fuga (2018) **** | Cannes Film Festival 2018 | Un Certain Regard

Dir: Agnieska  Smoczynska | Cast: Gabriela Muskała, Łukasz Simlat, Małgorzata Buczkowska, Zbigniew Waleryś, Halina Rasiakówna, Piotr Skiba, Iwo Rajski | Poland/Czech Republic/Sweden 2018, 100 min.

Director Agnieszka Smoczynska re-unites with DoP Jacub Kijowski and actor Malgorzata Buczkowska who together made The Lure an international success. For Fugue, they are joined by writer Gabriela Muskala, who also plays the lead, Kinga/Alicja, a woman suffering from severe post-traumatic amnesia.

We first meet Kinga staggering onto the platform of a station where she promptly collapses, having urinated infront in full view of the other passengers. Clearly she has lost her mind, and spends the next two years in a psychiatric ward in a Warsaw hospital, where she makes a brief appearance on TV, in the hope that someone might identify her. And they do. She is soon re-united with her husband Krystzof (Simlat) and four-year old son Daniel. Her name is Alicja, but strangely, no one appears happy to have her back, least of all her Daniel. The only thing she is sure of is her credit card PIN number she and immediately makes an application for a new Identity Card. Her mysterious family friend Ewa (Buczkowska) is clearly so much more that than this, but Smoczynska keeps her cards close to her chest, revealing little in this enigmatic but captivating mystery drama. Eventually Alicja starts to re-adjust to home life with her husband, but a sudden accident in their car seems to trigger   Alicja’s memory and gradually a whole picture slowly develops of their life before the train incident. It emerges that her husband had successfully divorced her and wanted sole custody of Daniel.

In her follow up to The Lure, Smoczynska offers us another circuitous and enigmatic drama: there are moments of supernatural evidence, where Alicja’s home environment appears completely alien to her. Particularly the green bathroom looks eerily like a fish tank (drawing comparisons with The Shining’s Room 237). The country house has a weird and haunted feel to it, and Alicja seems to be a prisoner within its walls, he family and even her son treating her with hostile suspicion. Fugue is an allegorical story of a woman who is unsure of her position in the world, retreating from motherhood, and drifting between various states of being. Gabriela Muskala gives a brilliant tour de force in the leading role of this unique and beguiling Polish arthouse drama. AS.

UN CERTAIN REGARD | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 8-19 MAY 2018

Foam at the Mouth | Ar Puma uz Lupam (2017) *** | Cannes Market 2018

Dir.: Janis Nords; Cast: Vilis Daudzins, Ieva Puke, Raimonds Celms, Indra Brike; Latvia/Poland/Lithuania 2017, 80 min.

After tackling the thorny subject of child crime in his Berlinale Grand Prix winner Mother I love You, Janis Nords comes to Cannes Market with an atmospheric thriller that scratches at the edges of horror set in a remote Latvian community where women are the only civilising influence in a community where man and beast converge.

The women here are a tough bunch and none more so than physiotherapist Jana (Puke), whose ex-cop husband Didzis (Daudzius) has lost part of his left leg is and only employable as a dog handler. To makes matters worse, the challenge to his masculinity has reduced Didzis to an hostile neurotic who feeds off his three Alsatians’ aggression, showing them affection in return, particularly his favourite Gina. The neglected Jana is surprised by her own sexual frustration that surfaces while treating seventeen year old Roberts (Celms) at the gym where she practices, and this incident provides a inventive vein of dark humour and tension to the intriguing narrative. Driving home one night, Jana and Didsis collide with a rabid boar which leaves its infected blood dripping from their truck bumper, and the dogs sniff this out. What follows is a harrowing hunt for the rapid beasts, which attack some students of the school. Meanwhile, Didzis tracks down an enemy of his own, in the shape of Roberts, whose mother soon emerges as a repressive zealot, as the grim storyline reveals that everyone’s life in danger from either from the animal kingdom or the human one.

Matthew A. Gossett’s script is taut and mischievous complimented by DoP Tobias Datum suggestive images, mainly shot at night and in the gloaming when the difference between dogs and humans is distinguishable only by their form. This is a thriller where testosterone driven males and infected dogs seem to be at war at all costs. Foam is more than just symbolic: under the superficial veneer of civilised society, men are deteriorating into atavistic creatures, just like local wild dogs. Made a shoestring, and none the worst for it, FOAM is really frightening at times, as Nords plays on the darkest fears of the human psyche in this tense little B-picture, which would make Sam Fuller proud.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | MARKET SECTION | Winner of the Moscow Critics’ Award

Inherit the Wind (1960) | Dual Format release

xDir.: Stanley Kramer; Cast: Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, Gene Kelly, Dick York, Harry Morgan, Claude Akins, Donna Anderson; USA 1960, 128 min.

Director Stanley Kramer (1913-2001) often used his films for progressive arguments: Judgement at Nuremberg, On the Beach, Ship of Fools and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner are a few examples. INHERIT THE WIND is a rerun of the famous “Monkey Trial” of 1925, when a young school teacher was on trial in 1925 because he was teaching Darwinism and denied the biblical account of creation.

Needless to say, this argument is hardly an historic one: ten years ago, 38% of American teenagers believed that God created the universe within the last 10 000 years, and 54% of adults do not believe that humans evolved from other species. In 2006 Darwinism was on trial again, this time in Dover, Pennsylvania.  

In the original Monkey trial in Tennessee, schoolteacher John T. Scopes was accused of violating the recently passed law, stating that nobody was allowed to deny the biblical story of creation. Scopes was defended by star attorney Clarence Darrow, whilst the prosecution was led by three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. To emphasise that that nothing much has changed, Darrow’s hefty fee was paid by the Baltimore Sun papers, represented by the famous journalist H.L. Mencken, who covered the trial extensively.

In Kramer’s feature Darrow becomes Drummond (Tracy), Bryan is HarrisonBrady (March), Scopes is called Cates (York) and Mencken morphs into EK Hornbeck (Kelly). The courtroom battle is centrepiece of Inherit: Tracy and March slog it out in the best Hollywood tradition; their speeches are long and passionate. After judge Mel Coffey (Morgan) has sided with the prosecution and disallowed Drummond’s request to hear six scientific witnesses, the lawyer calls Brady to the stand – as a witness for the defence. Brady, bombastic and grandiloquent, cannot resist the bait: when quizzed on biblical details, Brady goes so far, as to nail down the hour of creation exactly: Nine a.m. on October 23rd 4004BC.

The scenes outside the courtroom are mixed: A preacher and his followers stage a fair in the town of the trial, presenting a smoking monkey, whilst a barker agitates the masses, telling them, that this monkey is proof, that humans were not preceded by monkeys. A sub-plot, involving the engagement of Cates with the preacher’s daughter Rachel (Anderson) does not add anything; the preacher, frothing at the mouth, calling his daughter “a creature of the devil” is simply wildly over the top.

In spite of its length and overly verbose content, INHERIT is still a fine example of challenging fundamentalism. Acted brilliantly by the two male leads, recreating the atmosphere of ignorance and aggression in the American South  the feature is carried by the images of veteran DoP Ernest Laszlo, who started his career in the 1920, and was active into the late 70ies (Logan’s Run). His roving camera makes the courtroom look more like a battlefield than a house of law. AS

ON DUAL FORMAT RELEASE COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA ON 21 May 2018

   

Shoplifters (2018)**** | Cannes Film Festival | Winner Palme d’Or (2018)

Writer/Dir: Hirokazu Koreeda | Cast: Kirin Kiki, Lily Franky, Sosuke Ikematsu | Drama |121′

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s portrait of parenting, After the Storm, has much in common with this perceptive and often ambiguous satire about a family of small-time crooks and the misguided theft they commit for compassionate reasons, with devastating consequences. SHOPLIFTERS is a worthwhile addition to the auteur’s preoccupations with family life and father and motherhood – both real and imagined, and is possibly his best work so far.

In Tokyo, part-time workers Osamu (Lily Franky) and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) complement their meagre income with a sideline in shoplifting. Aided and abetted by son Shota (Kairi Jyo), they often swipe groceries from the local store near the flat they share with fellow grifter Noboyu (Sakura Andô), teenager Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) and grandma Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), who turns the most lucrative tricks of the lot.

One day they take pity on an abused and timid teenager called Juri (Miyu Sasaki), offering her board and lodging in their already cramped home. This simple act of kindness is the catalyst for change in the family dynamic unleashing previously hidden motivations that range from short-sightedness to self-aggrandisement, and even narcissistic pride.

A tonal shift from upbeat bonhomie to gloomy sadness takes place in the film’s third segment when the family anticipate their emotional loss and start to fear the backlash of their rash altruism, and its damning formal retribution. Koreeda and his cast bring out  tremendous pathos in this well-meaning family, and while we feel for them as do-gooders, – in the true sense of the word – they are crucially also law-breakers. And this is the J B Priestleyan crux of this clever and beautifully crafted caper reflecting the subtle nuances of Japanese society. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | WINNER | PALME D’OR 2018

https://youtu.be/3zJ3_JZnH_Q

Jeune Femme (2017)

Dir.: Leonor Serraille; Cast: Laetitia Dosch, Gregoire Monsaingeon, Soleymane Seye Ndiaye, Natalie Richard, Erka Sainte, Lila-Rose Gilberti; France 2017, 97 min.

La Femis graduate Leonor Serraille, won the Camera d’ Or at Cannes 2017, is a for this wild debut: its main protagonist Julia  – an excellent Laetitia Dosch – is nothing like the fragile, delicate damsel in distress of countless French features, but a steamroller of a personality: ready to bury anything in her way – including herself.  

Serraille introduces her heroine head on, literally: splitting her forehead, ramming it against the door of her ex-lover Joachim Deloche (Monsaigeon), a photographer, who had made a career modelling her, but has now discarded the young woman on their return to Paris. After a decade in Mexico, Julia has returned to France broke, homeless and looking after Joachim’s cat, a fluffy Persian. She is picked up and rescued, by mistake, by a young woman who believes she is a former school friend, who had heterochromic eyes, just like Julia, whose irises are green and hazel. 

After Julia’s rescuer discovers her mistake, she and the cat are homeless again Thus begins an emotional rollercoaster ride, in which Julia has to adapt like a chameleon to ever changing situations. Her mother (Richard), blames her: “you are just like your father, you leave me alone”. Finding a place to sleep on the sofa of an elderly man, is no solution either; after being told, that he does not like to sleep alone, Julia tells him “to buy himself a teddy bear” and moves out. Answering an ad, Julia then gets a job as a baby sitter, and is allowed to sleep in the maid’s chamber in the attic. This is eventful film full of gleeful energy but Seraille avoids romanticising the predicaments Julia finds herself in. The gender relations are always at the centre, ranging from rough sexual harassment to absurdity (Ousmane falling asleep whilst Julia is undressing him). Serraille, who was pregnant during shooting, never idealises her main protagonist: Julia is not a victim, but her stubborn fight for absolute autonomy results in her having sometimes a part in her own downfall. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19 MAY 2018

A Cambodian Spring (2017)

Dir.: Chris Kelly; Documentary; UK/Canada/ROI 2017; 120 min.

Chris Kelly six year long journey into contemporary Cambodian life is a trip into the Heart of Darkness, to paraphrase Joseph Conrad.

To fully comprehend the horrors unfolding it is necessary to bear in mind that Cambodia is ruled today by the Cambodian People’s Party, led by Prime Minister for life, Hun Sen since 1985 – and this is the same Party of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, changed only in name to the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party, having renounced Communism and genocide and claiming the lives of over two million citizens, is never far from the surface.

Kelly started out in 2007 with what seemed then a local conflict: Once a retreat in the capital Phnom Penh, Boeung Kak Lake has become a wasteland having been filled steadily with sand. The World Bank sponsored project was carried out by the Shukaku Company with strong ties to the government. In the process of draining the lake, the houses of the surrounding area were flooded. Those dwellings still standing would soon be demolished. But the inhabitants of the waterlogged houses have little choice but to stay put, since the compensation offered by the government is so meagre they cannot afford to buy any replacement homes.

Working class mothers Tep Vanny and Toul Srey Pov (who would later fall out for personal reasons) take up the unequal fight with Shukaku and the government, fighting for a fair compensation. Both will be imprisoned on trumped up charges, but they are joined by a surprising ally, The Venerable Luon Sovath, a Buddhist monk from the province of Siam Reap. Mediagenic and charismatic, he is under duress from the Church leadership, since the Supreme Patriarch of the Cambodia is appointed by the government – clear parallels with China, undermining the struggle for religious freedom in Tibet.

The documentary takes its title from the return from exile in July 2013 of the opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who would found the Cambodian National Rescue Party. In 2010 Rainsy was sentenced to ten years in prison and had to leave the country. The opposition CNRP gained 55 sets in Parliament in the 2013 election. But both Rainsy and his successor as Party leader, Kem Sokha accused the ruling party of vote fraud. Rainsy again had to leave the country in 2016, after he accused a high official of the CPP of being a torturer in the prisons of the Khmer Rogue. His political future is uncertain, since he was banned by the CPP from political activities for life.

There is no overriding narrative here, more a gathering of moments, subjectively collected, very much like a “Fly on the Wall”. In a certain way Kelly’s style recalls Tarkovsky’s “visual fugues”; abstract visual sequences that are thematic strains. Water, grass and flames contrast with the clashes of the demonstrators with the heavily armed forces of the government. State corruption, supported by the Church, is not easily broken because, as Toul Srey Pov puts it: “It’s easy to wake a sleeping person, but you can’t wake them up when they are only pretending to sleep.” AS

ON RELEASE FROM 25 MARCH 2018

On Chesil Beach (2017)

Dir.: Dominic Cooke | Cast: Saoirise Ronan, Billy Howle, Emily Watson, Samuel West, Anne-Marie Duffy, Adrian Scarborough | UK 2017 | 110′

According to debut film director Dominic Cooke, and Ewan McEwan who wrote the script for this melancholy love story, based on his novella, England is still a country of emotional repression and class prejudice, and nothing has changed since Brief Encounter.

ON CHESIL BEACH explores this romantic disillusion through a poignant love affair between Florence Ponting, (an outstanding Saoirise Ronan), and historian Edward Mayhew (Howle) who meet and fall for each other. Ponting’s father Geoffrey (West) is a wealthy industrialist married to Violet (Watson) an Oxford lecturer. Mayhew’s mother Marjorie (Duff) is brain-damaged after an accident at a railway station: she has lost all inhibitions, making her a brilliant painter, but she often runs around the house naked and Edward’s primary school teacher father (Scarborough) is out of his depth which reflects in Edward’s emotional distance. Florence copes well with Marjorie, and is ‘in love’ with being in love with Edward but can’t cope with a physical relationship. Their wedding night is a hotel in Dorset, is fraught with sexual difficulty, and the pair end up arguing, Edward, accusing her of frigidity. She offers him unconditional love, even agreeing that he could have lovers, he goes off in a strop and leaves her for good, forfeiting a life’s happiness that unravel in epilogues set in 1975 and 2007.

On Chesil Beach could be sub-titled love in a cold climate. Women in the Sixties were still “le deuxieme sexe”, expected to be their husband’s appendages. Sex was rarely discussed in polite homes: do-it-yourself handbooks – as read by Florence and her sister – were common. There sex is described “as the woman being the doorway for the man”. Edward, who is also a virgin, is unable to put his feelings into words,expecting her to be his little dormouse – even though, as the leader of an aspiring string-quartet, she has obvious qualities he lacks. But Edward is painted as a man of principle; when walking with a Jewish friend, who is abused by a passer-by, Edward corners the aggressor. Florence too, mentions anti-Semitism in her family, wishing that her father would stop his tirades against Jews. DoP Sean Bobbitt (Queen of Katwe) conjures up an England of delicate beauty in soft colours, very much in contrast with the emotional turmoil unfolding. Cooke directs with great sensibility and the supporting cast, particularly Duffy as Marjorie and Watson as the classist ice-maiden, are very convincing. But Saoirise Ronan claims this utterly forlorn and heartbroken story of diminution for herself. AS

SCREENING IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 19 MAY 2018

Breakheart Pass (1975) *** | Dual format release

Dir Tom Gries | Writer: Alistair Maclean | Cast Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Richard Crenna | US | 95’

With shades of Narrow Margin to its locomotive setting BREAKHEART PASS is a Western murder mystery that takes place on a stream train at the height of the frontier era, starring Charles Bronson and based on Alistair Maclean’s bestselling novel, who also wrote the script.

Bronson plays an undercover agent who is hotly pursuing a murderous gang during an perilous journey to a remote Army post across hostile wintery terrain featuring marauding Native Indians and some brutal action sequences. None of these men can be trusted to post a letter and moll Jill Ireland realises this, but she can’t be trusted either – at least, not on the romantic front, and ends up switching partners during the action. With a rousing score by Jerry Goldsmith and some magnificent set pieces – including one where a entire train careers full length into a ravine – this is a roadie Western with plenty of thrilling twists up its snow-covered sleeve. MT

OUT ON DUAL FORMAT BLURAY DVD FROM 14 MAY COURTESY OF EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT

The Load (2018) | Directors’ Fortnight | Cannes Film Festival 2018

 Writer/Dir. Ognjen Glavonić |  Drama | 98’

Ognjen Glavonić won various awards for Depth Two, a documentary about the grim discovery of war graves in his native Serbia. THE LOAD is his debut drama that fought its way out of the country inspired by the region’s 1999 NATO onslaught to tell another story from this harrowing period of Balkan history, a quietly devastating one that haunts with its slow burning revelation looming tragically out of the dreary landscape of longterm war.

This is a place full of dour-faced officials going through the motions in a country were hope has been washed away with the winter rain and bombs still cascade in the distance like incendiary stars. A few roadside blossoms tell us spring has arrived and tired-looking truck driver Vlada (Leon Lucev) is making his daily grind towards Belgrade from Kosovo with a load locked in his beaten-up lorry, the contents unknown. His instructions are clear : no stopping or diversions, he must keep a low profile until he reaches his destination.

On his way the journey starts uneventfully but at a crossing a smouldering car crash has blocked the the route to the capital. And a rather blasé teenager hitchhiker Pava (Pavle Čemerikić) offers to show him the way to his destination, tempting Vlada to bend the rules. As it happens Pava is clueless about map-reading, but doesn’t really mind that he has let Vlada down. Clearly, he represents the younger generation, shielded from the coldface of war from protective parents like Vlada, who, inured to disappointment and setbacks, motors on resigned, his face etched with the gruelling inevitability of his lot and eventually the pair start to bond.

The tone is brooding, morose and vagually doom-laden as the men push on framed in close-up and on the widescreen by Tatjana Krstevski whose superb washed out visual also featured in Depth Two).  The two men drive on until Paja blithely announces his departure to hitchike to German and look for better things. But nature of his Vlada’s business requires him to be responsible and slowly the gruesome truth dawns making the inevitable realisation all the more haunting. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT 2018

 

Bergman: A Year in the Life (2018) | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir: Jane Magnusson | Doc | Sweden | 116’

Documentarian Jane Magnusson takes a swipe at Ingmar Bergman’s memory in her sprawling in-depth documentary that marks this year’s centenary of the birth of the Swedish legend. It is an informative expose that lays bare the lesser known side of Bergman and follows on from her 2013 outing Trespassing Bergman where Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen appraised the filmmaker’s staggering oeuvre.

In this current climate of moral rectitude, your judgement of the film will be guided by whether or not you think an artist’s work should stand apart from their personal life. Predicably it emerges that Ingmar was his father’s favourite and  his brother Dag Bergman reveals other intimate details about their childhood together, including his brother’s neurosis that led to stomach pains and sleepless nights.

Opting for a thematic rather than chronological narrative allows Magnusson to zoom in on Bergman’s personality, family and the women in his life in a revealing expose of a man who seemed entirely focused on his own needs. Yet he also emerges as a director who worked closely and intensively with his actors creating female roles that were appealing as well as emotionally and intellectually challenging.

So many documentaries about Bergman have been hagiographic tributes to the national hero, and when a filmmaker reaches these heady heights it becomes difficult to be critical. Since the dawn of time creators have been philanderers and poor parents, driven by their obsession with emotionally consuming work. Does this mean that they should be metaphorically ‘taken out and shot’ or have their work shunned and demonised?

Magnusson’s film is observational in style, cleverly focusing in on 1957, Bergman’s most prolific year as a filmmaker on television and the big screen, with the release of Wild Strawberries and the Seventh Seal, his most autonomous work. It was also the year of his involvement in four theatre productions – including the massive almost unstageable endeavour that was Peer Gynt. 1957 heralded the arrival of his sixth child, with wife Gun Grut, and romances leading to marriage with Käbi Laretei and Ingrid von Rosen, including an affair with actor Bibi Andersson, who starred in the year’s two films. 

Enriched by a wealth of personal photos and footage, there are informative talking heads from the world of film, theatre and literature making this a definitive and ambitious piece of work that reveals a complicated but endearing genius, despite its provocative stance. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-19 MAY 2018

 

Cold War | Zimna Wojna (2018) | Cannes Film Festival | IN Competition


Dir: Pawel Pawlikowski | Cast| Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Syzc, Agata Kulesza, Cedric Khan, Jeanne Balibar | Drama | Poland

This beguilingly sexy and sad paean to disillusioned romantics everywhere portrays the euphoria we yearn for but cannot always sustain. Cold War spans a decade from the 1940s to the1960s where two lovers are caught inextricably in a web of passion and pain in a peripatetic relationship that saunters back and forth between Paris, Warsaw and Yugoslavia between pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and singer-dancer Zula (Joanna Kulig). Pawlikowski deftly handles love’s heartaches, high and lows with supreme grace and elegance.

Apart from the dazzling artistry – each frame is a sultry masterpiece – one of the most atmospheric elements and one that becomes a character in itself is the music, from Polish and Slavic folksongs to Chopin, Gerswin and Chuck Berry bringing back memories of Polish fare of the 1950s and 1960s scored by Andrzej Trzaskowski and Krzysztof Komeda, but also unites drama with his documentary fare such as Serbian Epics (1992)

Shot in Academy-ratio, Lukasz Zal’s velvety black and white cinematography evokes the 16mm of the era, and its Iron Curtain sensibilities link it to Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning gem Ida, although this is a more upbeat affair. Love and longing are themes that flourish throughout the director’s films from his time in England, where he shot Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004), and the ephemeral nature of The Woman in the Fifth (2011). Pawlikowski’s work also has affinities with the films of Czech New Wave director Hugo Haas. The only subtle flaws is the abrupt departure of Wiktor’s lover Irena (Agata Kulesza)who either leaves through her disgust of Stalin or on seeing her partner caught in the fire of his new flame. But this by no means detracts from its sublime beauty as a concise yet richly-textured piece of work, and every gorgeous handmade tapestry has its endearing flaws. Flowing yet episodic, Cold War is melancholy but endlessly captivating.  

Wiktor and Zula are united by music while he and Irena are curating an ethnomusicological project for dancers which morphs into an the Mazurek Ensemble, an agitprop of the Soviet regime promoting the Aryan heritage of the Poles. Lust envelops them but Kaczmarek’s career keeps him trapped in Communist Poland and when the ensemble travels to East Berlin to perform, Wiktor decides to defect to the West pleading Zula to come with him to Paris. The two profess undying love but flighty Zula bails at the last minute and stays behind in the East. Although she a mercurial woman she lacks the social confidence that Wiktor has inherited from his more grounded bourgeois background. 

There is a deliciously spicy vignette where Jeanne Balibar plays Wiktor’s Parisian lover while Zula arrives at the party claiming to have married a Sicilian glass blower from Palermo. But it is clear that Wiktor and Zula are soul mates whose love transcends time and place. They are eventually drawn back together at the end of the 50s but their love cannot exist in this Cold War world with its privations, poverty and political regime. MT.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-19 MAY |BEST DIRECTOR AWARD

Ash is Purest White (2018) Mubi

Dir: Zhangke Jia | Cast: Tao Zhao, Fan Liao, Xiaogang Feng | Drama | China | 140’

ASH IS PUREST WHITE portrays the eventful relationship between a Chinese petty criminal and the woman whose loyalty to him never dies. This rolling contemplative saga occasionally veers off the beaten track with its indulgent running time of 141 minutes but will still appeal to the director’s ardent followers, featuring the same rough-edged characters who we first meet in 2001 and follow until the bittersweet denouement on New year’s Eve 2018.

Star of Shanxi’s creative community, Jia Zhang-ke trained as an architect near his native mining town of Fenyang, just South of Beijing, and brings his aesthetic flair and some magnificent landscapes to this lasting love story set in a dying era. The director’s forte is his graceful way of portraying China’s traditional way of life with its penchant for ceremonial drumming and white-gloved officials, with the chaotic new era vibrantly captured in Eric Gautier’s resplendent camerawork.

Opening in 2001in his Shanxi homeland, his wife and regular collaborator Zhao Tao plays the confident delicate local beauty Qiao, who frequents the nightclub of her boyfriend Guo Bin (Liao Fan/Black Coal, Thin Ice). And she is no arm candy, establishing herself as a keen advocate of the traditional jianghu codes of loyalty while embracing the modern world, spryly dancing to Village People’s YMCA. 

Respectful of her ageing father she is more playfully assertive with Bin, and when he is assaulted by thugs on motorbikes, she manages to save him by firing shots into the air in a brutal scene that really takes your breath away, but also secures her a spell in prison where she is unwilling to grass on her boyfriend about the ownership of the firearm.

The second act is an upbeat affair that follows Qiao’s release in 2006, and treats us to a sumptuous journey down the Yangtze River in another nod to the sinking glory of the old China versus the brash new world. Qin has proved a feckless boyfriend and is no longer on the scene, but Qiao is keen not to let him slip away so easily, after her sustained loyalty. And when she is robbed of her cash and passport, she bounces back cleverly in some amusing scenes where she gate-crashes a wedding to enjoy the banquet, desperate for food. Qiao finally confronts Bin in a soulful and moving episode that is visually captivating for its exquisitely calm contemplation of the end of their romance. 

As we leave Qiao she is running a gambling hall, and Bin is back in her life, attracted to her strength of character and tenacity. The two actors are mesmerising to watch in their commandingly restrained yet natural performances, exuding a fascinating chemistry that will remain in the memory for a long time after the credits have rolled. MT

NOW ON MUBI

 

Foam at the Mouth | Ar Puma uz Lupam (2017) *** | Cannes Market 2018

Dir.: Janis Nords; Cast: Vilis Daudzins, Ieva Puke, Raimonds Celms, Indra Brike; Latvia/Poland/Lithuania 2017, 80 min.

After tackling the thorny subject of child crime in his Berlinale Grand Prix winner Mother I love You, Janis Nords comes to Cannes Market with an atmospheric thriller that scratches at the edges of horror set in a remote Latvian community where women are the only civilising influence in a community where man and beast converge.

The women here are a tough bunch and none more so than physiotherapist Jana (Puke), whose ex-cop husband Didzis (Daudzius) has lost part of his left leg is and only employable as a dog handler. To makes matters worse, the challenge to his masculinity has reduced Didzis to an hostile neurotic who feeds off his three Alsatians’ aggression, showing them affection in return, particularly his favourite Gina. The neglected Jana is surprised by her own sexual frustration that surfaces while treating seventeen year old Roberts (Celms) at the gym where she practices, and this incident provides a inventive vein of dark humour and tension to the intriguing narrative. Driving home one night,  Jana and Didsis collide with a rabid boar which leaves its infected blood dripping from their truck bumper, and the dogs sniff this out. What follows is a harrowing hunt for the rapid beasts, which attack some students of the school. Meanwhile, Didzis tracks down an enemy of his own, in the shape of Roberts, whose mother soon emerges as a repressive zealot, as the grim storyline reveals that everyone’s life in danger from either from the animal kingdom or the human one.

Matthew A. Gossett’s script is taut and mischievous complimented by DoP Tobias Datum suggestive images, mainly shot at night and in the gloaming when the difference between dogs and humans is distinguishable only by their form. This is a thriller where testosterone driven males and infected dogs seem to be at war at all costs. Foam is more than just symbolic: under the superficial veneer of civilised society, men are deteriorating into atavistic creatures, just like local wild dogs. Made a shoestring, and none the worst for it, FOAM is really frightening at times, as Nords plays on the darkest fears of the human psyche in this tense little B-picture, which would make Sam Fuller proud.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | MARKET SECTION

Border | Grans (2018) | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir : Ali Abbasi | Fantasy Drama | Sweden | 104’

BORDER is one of those bracingly original films. Melding fantasy and folklore while teetering on the edge of Gothic horror it manages to be cleverly convincing and unbelievably weird at the same time. Fraught with undercurrents of sexual identity and self-realisation this gruesome rites of passage fable is another fabulous story with enduring appeal for the arthouse crowd and diehard fans of low key horror. Based on a short story by Let the Right One In creator John Ajvide Lindqvist it is Ali Abbasi’s follow up to Shelley and his first with writing partner Isabella Ekloff.

Tina (Melander) has always been an outsider because she suffers from a neanderthal physical appearance of flaring nostrils and a facial gurning movement that mark her out to have the heightened sensory perception of an animal. She feels a particular affinity to the wildlife near her comfortable cabin in the heavily forested woods between Finland and Sweden, and can sense when deer or moose are about to cross the country road. As a customs officer, she has a keen awareness for criminality but she feels diminished by her otherness and lonely: her live-boyfriend Roland (Jorgen Thorssen) is more interested in his pack of dobermans.  

One day she spots an unusual traveller going through custom who looks like her male double and Tina feels a palpable attraction to Vore (Eero Milonoff) who seems to be an entomologist, from the contents of his luggage,  though on further examination this is not all he appears to be. Has Tina found love for the first time, or just somebody from her own tribe? There’s a tone of optimism on the romantic front, and also workwise as Tina’s talents see her become the key investigator in the hunt for a local paedophile.

Abbasi masterfully manages the subtle strands of his storyline while keeping the tension taut and a dark humour bubbling under the surface. Melander’s Tina is gentle and almost submissive character who keeps her tale between her legs, and we feel for her even when her confidence make her more assertive after meeting Vore,  particularly towards her elderly father who has clearly duped her since childhood, and her useless boyfriend. But the denouement of is quite unexpected in this rare curio that keeps you guessing all the way to the end. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | UN CERTAIN REGARD 2018

Wildlife (2018) | Critics’ Week | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Writer|Dir: Paul Dano | Cast: Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ed Oxenbould | Drama | US | 105’

A teenage boy experiences the breakdown of his parents’ marriage in  Paul Dano’s crisp coming of age family drama, set in 1960s Montana, and based on Richard Ford’s novel.

Although once or twice veering into melodrama, actor Dano maintains impressive control over his sleek and very lucid first film which is anchored by three masterful performances, and sees a young family disintegrate after the husband loses his job.

WILDLIFE has a great deal in common with Retribution Road (2008), its similar theme of aspirational hope for a couple starting out on their life in a new town, in this case Great Falls, Montana. But here the perspective is very different – in Wildlife, the entire experience is seen from the unique perspective of a pubescent boy, Joe, played thoughtfully by young Australian actor Ed Oxenbould (The Visit).

There’s an old-fashioned quality to the film that very much works to its advantage. The date is 1960 and in the mountains behind the family house a forest fire is raging, with warnings that it could well spread to the town centre if not controlled by rangers, who Jerry Brinson (Gyllenhaal) decides to join at a wage of only a dollar an hour, after much moping around the house when he loses his job on the local golf course. This comes as a big surprise to his wife Jeannette (Mulligan), an earnest homemaker who believes in her husband’s desire to make more of himself, and she sees this as a step backwards, career-wise. Meanwhile, Joe signs on as an apprentice to a local portrait photographer, a part-time job he takes to while doing very well in his school work.

Dano and his co-writer Zoe Kazan, stick to a clean, straighforward narrative but there’s a subtle brooding tension at play, and while Joe seems emotionally grounded and resilient (a tribute to his parents), Jerry and Jeannette are less so: although Jerry’s character is the most underwritten of the three, there’s a haunted quality to him as a straightforwaed dad who suddenly implodes after the shock of his firing. Jeannette also starts to lose her own sense of equilibrium:. “What kind of man leaves his wife and child in such a lonely place?,” Jeanette casts around for emotional ballast in an much older wealthy man, Warren Miller (Bill Camp), who she meets while giving swimming classes.

In some ways this fragmented behaviour is character-forming for Joe, his parents have clearly given him a rock solid babyhood, and so he can weather the shocking fliration scenes that take place between Millar and his mother, and his loss at his father’s temporary abandonment, although he finds it all difficult to fathom. This is not a film about adult infidelity and abandonment, but about how a teenage perceives and deals with it, and as such it is beautifully restrained and supremely elegant – the audience is required to suspend disbelief and take a trip back to teenagehood and the bewildering experience it offers. Dano makes the denouement an enigmatic affair, leaving the door open to hope, while acknowledging the inevitable. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-19 MAY 2018 | CRITICS’ WEEK |

 

Yomeddine (2018) | Cannes Film Festival | In Competiton

Writer|Dir: A B Shawky | Egypt | Drama | 97’

YOMEDDINE (Judgement Day) is a coming of age road drama where two outcasts discover the harshness of the real world outside the lepper colony where they have spent most of their tragic lives. Funded by kickstarter, A B Shawky based his film on real people he met at the Abu Zaabal Leper Colony while filming his awarded documentary The Colony: childless leper Beshay and his schizophrenic wife; Hamed, the legless former truck driver, and Nubian boy Obama. After the death of his wife, we re-join Beshay and his apprentice Obama (Ahmed Abdelhafiz) on a journey south in a donkey cart, to trace the rest of Beshay’s family and find out why his father abandoned him there as a child.

A gentle sardonic humour saves YOMEDDINE from descending into sentimentality, even though the two’s sad plight may often have you close to tears. Newcomer Gamal plays Beshay (who is no longer contagious) with vulnerability and amusing self-deprecation, and the down to earth Obama tags along on the mission.

Poverty and religion are the themes that run through this slim but poignant story. Having been judged all their lives for their looks, when will they be judged for their personalities? Obama is more confident than Beshay but the two share an appealing rapport. During their trip they encounter all sorts of nefarious characters along the way, and although there’s no strong narrative, this watchable film ambles gently on as we enjoy the rapport of the characters and the simple storyline enriched by the passing Egyptian landscapes – that veers off the beaten track, offering sites that are unfamiliar to most. YOMEDDINE is a restrained piece of work that may not travel far, but there is a powerful charm to its journey. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-19 MAY 2018 | IN COMPETITION

Filmworker (2017)

Dir: Tony Zierra | With Leon Vitali, Ryan O’Neal, Danny Lloyd, Matthew Modine, Stellan Skarsgard, Pernilla August | Doc | US  | 94′

Director Tony Zierra (My Big Break) shows how easy it was for one actor to become obsessed by the legend that was Stanley Kubrick, becoming his right-hand collaborator and dedicating his life to Kubrick’s films, and even now, 18 years after the director’s death, working to transfers the master’s oeuvre onto 4K material.

In 1975, actor Leon Vitali (287), a young man with a great future ahead of him on both screen and stage – he had offers from the National Theatre – landed one of the main parts as Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick’s epic Barry Lyndon. Vitali admired Kubrick so much that he soon abandoned his acting career to learn about filmmaking, finally talking Kubrick into getting him a job on The Shining (1980). And Vitali was so quick to earn Kubrick’s trust that he was tasked with casting the child parts for the Cult horror feature, discovering little Danny Lloyd. For Full Metal Jacket (1987), Vitali’s main contribution was enabling the actors to live up to the harsh and exacting demands of the director. Whilst returning to his acting career in Kubrick’s final feature Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Vitali also helped with various technical tasks. 

Well that’s the nuts and bolts of this well-made and engaging documentary, enriched by archive footage and photographs including informative talking heads who enlighten further on one of the World’s most outstanding 20th century filmmaker. Kubrick was a perfectionist and control freak, and working with him often meant putting in 16 hours a day; Vitali became  the trusted adjutant and their two often working round the clock often even worked around the clock. Kubrick’s three children, who are interviewed, make it quite clear that they came second in the pecking order for Dad’s attention. Other interviewees, like Ryan O’Neal and Matthew Modine, talk about Vitali’s obsessive relationship with Kubrick, who was often bad-tempered when Vitali did not follow his orders. And clearly this obsessive relationship has taken its toll on Vitali, physically as well as psychologically. He looks much older than his actual age, haggard, and still driven by fulfilling the tasks he sets himself as Kubrick’s personal assistant for life.

Filmworker is a haunting portrait of a man who has submerged his own identity to serve another in a near religious case of submission. But when it comes to posterity, he couldn’t have chosen a more rigorous genius to learn from. AS

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 18 May 2018

 

Youth (2017) | Bluray release

Dir: Feng Xiaogang | China | Historical Drama | 148′

Feng Xiaogang (I Am Madame Bovary) is widely considered as China’s answer to Stephen Spielberg, and he certainly proves himself in this crowd-pleasing if over-ambitious drama that straddles an entire generation of young Chinese, caught in the vortex of political and social change.

Setting off in the 1970s this magnificently-mounted saga tries – and initially – succeeds in being all things to all people: a musical laced with political commentary; a tragedy of war and of first love all narrated by Xiao Suizi (Chuxi Zhong) a dancer in a military troupe where another young woman He Xiaoping (Miao Miao) has just arrived determined to escape her troubled background by making a name for herself. The professional dancing standards are exacting even by Chinese considerations but He does her best for the national cause despite bullying from the other girls. Feng (Xuan Huang) takes her under the wing and the two grow close.

While the dizzy backdrop of political events unfolds – Chairman Mao’s death is a highlight – the troupe (the the drama) powers on at a relentless pace amid rivalries, and romantic crushes all masterfully recorded by Pan Luo whose energetic camerawork darts around taking it all in.

With Chairman Mao gone, a new sense of confidence invigorates the troupe and, slowly, materialism rears up in the face of the previous hardships as the film segues into a bloody depiction of the Vietnam War and its salient Chinese protagonists. Meanwhile, our own heroes don’t get away lightly during the decades – and we feel for them, especially Liu Feng whose dedication and sacrifice shines through, while He seems also to be misunderstood. As time marches relentlessly on, the film loses momentum as the focus becomes more scattered, its previous authenticity turning soapy in contrast to the convincing earlier scenes.

Overall this is an entertaining romp through the Chinese history books, its schmaltzy score milking the memorable moments with a rousing gusto that Chinese audiences will relish and take to their hearts. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON BLURAY/DVD | Reviewed at PINGYAO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | YEAR ZERO | 28 OCT – 4 NOV 2017

The Poetess (2017) ****

Dir: Stefanie Brockhaus, Andres Wolff | Cast: HIssa Hilal | Drama | 89′ | Saudi/Germany

Hissa Hilal, Saudi poet and political activist in her forties, has made some ground-breaking literary efforts to push out the boundaries for women in Saudi Arabia. Veiled in her burqa she is a vehement critic of fundamental fanatics and Islamist terrorism. To be an outspoken woman and a poet in the Muslim world is an act of courage on its own, but to attack the predominantly male audience in the studio on live TV, goes a step further.

Ms Hilal is the focus of this enlightening documentary from Stefanie Brockhaus (On the other Side of Life) and Andy Wolff. We learn how she became the only woman competitor in the “Million’s Poet Show” 2015, televised to an audience of 70 million from Abu Dhabi (United Emirates). Remia (her mother does not let her use this name on TV), is married to another journalist and poet, who stands by her during the crisis following her appearance in the reality show, filmed in a TV studio with the most garish and gilded decor known to the modern world. It is a miracle in itself that she even reaches the grand final, where she will compete against five men. Covered in an abaya hijab and a burqa, Hissa attacks the unfaithfulness of men, and even more daring, she condemns the muftis, the issuers the Fatwa, all through her clever poetry. Needless to say, a Fatwa has been issued against her, a death threat, for which she is prepared: “If they kill me, I will be a martyr for humanity”.

For Hilal, “religion is a private matter, but is manipulated today for political ends”. Clips from documentaries from the early 20th century support her thesis clearly stating that a hundred years ago, Bedouin women could move around freely, have their own business and did not wear the burqa, which was only introduced later, “because beautiful women caused conflicts in the desert”. She remembers her youth, when Saudi Arabia was a much more liberal country. She watched television in the 1970s “when the parents forbid them to watch Egyptian movies. But we stayed up, until the parents were asleep and then enjoyed the forbidden features”. The change in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world came in late 1979, with the Juhayman incident in Mecca when 270 people were killed and over 500 were injured. The revolt was lead by Juhayman al-Oteibi and Mohammed Abudl al-Qahtan, the latter claiming to be the Mahdi. The Saudi monarchy, feeling threatened by the clerics who accused them of selling out to Western culture, placated the religious leaders by giving them control over the whole of society: media, culture, education, everything. The interaction of genders was the first victim: even in the TV studio, genders are separated.

One of the most interesting elements of the film is seeing the contrast between the cities of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and more liberal Oman, which is photographed both from an aerial perspective and with the camera moving freely through the streets and malls, evoking a authentic feel for Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman.

Tension builds in the grand finale “Million’s Poet Show”. The audience are clearly rooting in Hilal’s favour, but there’s bound to be some manipulation behind the scenes to ensure a male wins. She does not expect to be victorious and sadly her fears are realised. “They like to see me defeated, it’s really hate”. Her income from writing enables her to buy herself a house in Abu Dhabi; in the capital Riyadh this would not have been possible, and certainly not in the UK. She might have avoided the consequences of the Fatwa, but is not sure, when she will see her family again. This real eye-opener should be screened globally for all to see. MT

THE POETESS | NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW |

Mansfield 66/67 (2017) * *

Dir: P Ebersole and Todd Hughes | US Documentary with Kenneth Anger, Richmond Arquette, Ann Magnusson, John Waters, Mary Woronov | 84′

The real Sixties sex symbol Jayne Mansfield is never really revealed in this frivolously flirty film that floats around aimlessly in exploring her ill-fated final years.

Mansfield 66/67 is all bells and whistles as it careens chaotically through the blonde bombshell’s short-lived career – she died aged only 34 in 1967. Taking as its informative talking heads John Waters, Mary Woronov, and Kenneth Anger (et al) this is a light-headed piece of entertainment from the pair who brought us Hit So Hard that explored musician Patty Schemel’s descent into drug abuse.

It turns out that Mansfield was not just a pretty face or a stunning figure, for that matter: She was a polished publicity machine. Beyond that we learn nothing about her formative years or her movie career, although her death in Louisiana in a freak car accident in 1967 is much discussed and debated, along with her “Faustian” association with the Satanist Anton LaVey. It comes as no surprise to find out she very much enjoyed sex: “it should be animalistic, it should be sadistic, it should at times be masochistic…There are few rules and moral conventions”.  She also loved being a mother to her five kids, starting at age 17. According to her (convincing) funeral embalmer she was not de-captitated, contrary to popular belief, but she did dabble in witchcraft (the louche LaVey was variously blamed for her death); and live in a pink palace; and drive a pink Cadillac, during a decade long Hollywood career that hit its peak in the late 1950s.

But this film is so busy flitting through its different styles of presentation – that include dance routines by a bizarre bewigged foursome and Pink Panther style animations – that the thrice-married curvaceous kitten Jayne Mansfield almost takes a back seat in her own vehicle, and ranks secondary to the stylistic flourishes of this quasi vanity project. Ironic, considering that Mansfield’s career was defined exclusively by her desire for publicity “at any cost”. Public property during her lifetime, post mortem Mansfield still maintains her mystery. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 13 APRIL 2018

 

 

Anon (2017) **

Dir.: Andrew Niccol; Cast: Clive Owen, Amanda Seyfried, Colm Feore, Sonya Walger; Germany 2018, 100 min.

New Zealand born director/writer Andrew Niccol (The Host) has managed to create the ultimate misogynist feature where baddies rule the world, and women are just sex objects. On the same lines as his previous features, Gattaca and In Time, Anon is set in an imagined future, where crimes are unheard of due to a surveillance system that records everyone, and digital footprints are freely available to the law enforcers whose brains have been computerised. 

In this dystopia we meet Sal Frieland (Owen) is a detective working for the squad who tracks murderers by accessing the cloud-based visual memories of killers and their victims. He encounters a woman, known as Anon (Seyfried), who has no digital identity so threatening their security. Unleashing a sting operation he pretends to be a potential client but in so doing exposes his own troubled past. But The Girl soon finds out his profession and intention, and makes life hell for him. As the situation escalates, Anon leaves the audience with more questions than answers.

Apart from the gratuitous sex scenes and the nearly all-male police squad, Niccol manages to ruin the images with a bombardment of graphics and texts, keeping the audience reading instead of watching. DoP Amir Mokri (Transformers) finds inventive angles to show this absurdist functional world, which looks like laboratory for animal research. But Anon is, at the same time, frightfully old-fashioned when it coms to vices: Sal and his pals smoke, drink and snuff Coke, somehow the male dominated future world is as unbearable for the buddies, as the present. Hint: there are other emotions apart from guild and paranoia. AS 

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 4 MAY 2018

Tully (2018) ***

Dir.: Jason Reitman; Cast: Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Mark Duplass, Ron Livingston, Elaine Tan; USA 2018, 96 min.

Tully, the third cooperation for director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody – after Juno and Young Adult – is a realistic, bitter-sweet study of suburban family life near New York, and a flirt with the supernatural, which will not be disclosed (no spoilers). Apart from the lame ending, the two strands form an exciting unity, held together by the female leads Charlize Theron (Young Adult) and Mackenzie Davis (Always Shine).

We meet Marlo (Theron) heavily pregnant in her third trimester – and not loving it at all. Theron was either over-committed to her role, or her fat-suit is superior to anything seen so far. But Marlo has to carry the whole weight of the new arrival, the third, and not a happy accident. “I feel like an abandoned trashbag” and My body looks a relief map for a war-torn country” are some of her choice comments. The reason for the overload is mainly husband Drew (Livingston), who is more absent than present, and has substituted their sex-life for nocturnal marathons on the Play Station. Her brother Craig (Duplass) is higher up the bourgeois ladder, and offers to pay for a night time nanny; whilst his perfectly trim wife Elyse (Tan) puts her foot in with comments “I had to crawl to the gym in my last month of pregnancy”. Needless to say, Craig and Elyse have a couple of perfect children, who love their greens, whilst Marlo’s daughter Sarah and son Jonah would prefer something more filling like pizza. Sarah’s reaction to the new arrival is a loss of self-esteem, and to compound matters, Jonah is about to be kicked out of kindergarten because his parents pretend that he is just “quirky”, rather than on the autism spectrum.

After the birth of Mia, and some sleepless nights amidst the rising domestic chaos, Marlo decides to accept her brother’s offer of help: Enter Tully (Davis), an optimistic, practical angel of competence, who not only liberates Marlo from the nightly child duties, but brings order into the household.. But there is a slight android quality about Tully, enhanced by her androgynous looks. We suspect the worst, when Tully helps Marlo to spice up her sex-life, wearing a waitress uniform, one of Drew’s beloved fetishes. But nothing comes out of this encounter, and soon Marlo and Tully become a unit. After a night-out in Brooklyn, Marlo’s old haunt, Tully announces suddenly, that she has to leave.

Certainly, Cody’s script is the soul of this feature, her dialogue is witty; and well-informed by her own experience of motherhood. One of her next projects, titled Barbie, is a live action film about a doll from Barbie Land, who is expelled from this universe and has adventures in the real world. With Tully Cody asks whether motherhood has to be the end of an independent life – is the old Marlo of Brooklyn dead or, can she be re-animated?

DoP Eric Steelberg’s images work best during the chaotic time in Marlo’s household and the confrontations between Marlo and the kindergarten teachers. But sometimes, like the whole project in the end, he finds too many comprises, choosing soothing colour schemes, avoiding more innovative angles. Tully could have been a great feature, but taking back so much of the critique at the end, spoils the whole enterprise. 

OUT ON RELEASE THIS FRIDAY, 4 MAY 2018

The Young Karl Marx (2017) ***

Dir: Raoul Peck |France / Germany / Belgium | Drama | 112 min · Colour

Interesting to discover that, according to Raoul Peck (I am Not Your Negro), the young and unemployed Karl Marx lived on the money of a capitalist he despised, while writing his community treaty Das Capital, and fathering two children. This is one of many revealing facts uncovered in this worthy period drama – which is rather pleased with itself despite being about as enjoyable as a wet weekend with Diane Abbott and one of her migraines.

Played convincingly by August Diehl (Salt), the 26 year old lived with his heiress wife Jenny in exile in Paris, where he is pictured as a rather arrogant flaneur habitually in debt and plagued by existential anxieties. Initially dismissing German factory heir Friedrich Engels (Stefan Konarske) as a dandy, the pair go on to develop a veritable bromance when Marx discovers Engels has just published a study on the miserable impoverishment of the English proletariat, and has distanced himself from his father – despite remaining on the payroll, hence financing Marx.

From then on this becomes a political procedural as the pair, assisted by Jenny and Engel’s factory shop steward wife Mary Burns (Hannah Steele), continue to work tirelessly and admirably to provide a theoretical foundation for revolution and to improve workers’ rights and abolish child labour. Soon their aim is not merely to interpret the world, but to change it with a work entitled Critic of the Critical Critique and subsequently, the Communist Manifesto.

Pascal Bonitzer’s brisk workmanlike script follows a linear narrative; Alexei Aigui (I am Not Your Negro) and animates it with an earnestly dramatic score, with unimaginative visuals conveying the drabness of Victorian England to great effect in a rather lacklustre but informative period drama. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 4 MAY 2018

 

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (2018) **** | Meari to Majo No Hana

Dir.: Hiromasa Yonebayashi; Anime with the voices of Hana Sugisaki, Ryonosuke Kamiki, Yuki Amani, Fumiyo Kohinata; Japan 2017, 102 min.

In 2014 the worldwide fanbase of the much-loved Studio Ghibli was saddened to hear of its demise. Three years later, we’re delighted (and relieved) to confirm that its successor Studio Ponoc has produced a knockout first outing: nearly all the crew of Mary and the Witch’s Flower are Ghibli veterans, starting with director/co-writer Hiromasa Ynebayashi (The SecreteWorld of Arietty, When Marnie was There).

Like many other Ghibli productions, Mary and the Witches Flower is based on a children’s novel by British/American women writers – this time Mary Stewart’s The little Broomstick (1971). It follows Howl’s Moving Castle (Dianna Wynne Jones), Ursula K. Le Gun’s A Wizard of Earth Sea (filmed as Tales from Earthsea), Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (filmed as The Secret World of Arrietty) and Joan Robinson’s Marnie was There. 

In this contemporary soci0-political allegory, Mary Smith (Sugisaki) is living with her great aunt Charlotte (a former witch) in the placid backwater of Redmanor, where all the local kids are on vacation and Mary’s parents are working on a project far away. Mary encounters Peter (Kamiki), who is a few years older than her and has more freedom to roam around town. She also meets cats Tib and Gib who lead to her finding the broomstick and the equally potent magic flower, setting her on the way to a kingdom in the clouds, ruled by the malicious Madam Mumblechook (Amani) and her evil sidekick Doctor Dee (Kohinata). They are running a school of magic – Mary is initially mistaken for a new student – but their real goal in their Frankenstein-like laboratories, is to put the whole universe in danger by changing animals and humans alike into ugly zombie-like creatures who will obediently following their command (anyone read The Bell Curve?). Although Mary has rather low self-esteem, she soon discovers her fighting spirit, rescuing Gib and Peter from being transformed into zombies, finally taking on the deadly duo in a splendid takedown finale.

The character designs and certain action scenes are familiar from former Ghibli productions but, contents-wise, there is a stark difference: the antagonistic forces of many Ghibli productions where never as evil as Mumblechook and Doctor Dee, who are truly Bond villains, ready to put the whole World in danger; their schemes of biological mutations reminding us of the worse medical ‘experiments’ in the Nazi camps of WWII and some of today’s political regimes.

But this rather harder edge does not deflect from the overall impression of wonder and magic and when the heroine starts believing in herself, she soon becomes a building light and inspiration for others. After thirty years of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli,  his former collaborators now carry the flame to a new beginning in the form of Pomoc studio. AS

Altitude Film Distribution and Studio Ponoc are proud to present, Mary and The Witch’s Flower is releasing in UK and Irish cinemas nationwide, in both dubbed and subtitled forms, from 4th May, with a One Night Only preview of the subtitled version on 10th April 2018.

Cannes Film Festival 2018 | On the Croisette – off the cuff update

Festival bigwig Thierry Frémaux warned us to expect shocks and surprises from this year’s festival line-up, distilled down from over 1900 features to an intriguing list of 18 – and there will be a few more additions before May 8th. The main question is “where are the stars?” or better still “Where is Isabelle Huppert” doyenne of the Croisette – up to now. The answer seems to be that they are on the jury – presided by Cate Blanchett, who is joined by Lea Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Denis Villeneuve, Robert Guédiguian, Ava Duvernay, Khadja Nin, Chang Chen and Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Last year’s 70th Anniversary bumper issue seems to have swept in a more eclectic and sleek selection of features in the competition line-up vying for the coveted Palme D’Or. There are new films from veterans Jean-Luc Godard (The Image Book), Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman) and Oscar winner Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War), and some very long films – 9 exceed two hours. Three female filmmakers make the main competition in the shape of Caramel director Nadine Labaki with Capernaum, Alice Rohrwacher with Lazzaro Felice and Eve Husson presenting Girls of the Sun. Kazakh filmmaker Sergei Dvortsevoy rose to indie fame at Cannes Un Certain Regard 2008 with his touching title Tulpan, and he is back now in the main competition line-up with a hot contender in the shape of AYKA or My Little One. 

Scanning through the selection for British fare – the Ron Howard “directed” (Thierry’s words not mine) Solo, A Star Wars Story stars Thandie Newton, Paul Bethany and Emilia Clarke but no sign of Mike Leigh’s Peterloo. And although Matteo Garrone’s Dogman is there and is a hot contender for this year’s Palme, the much-awaited Jacques Audiard latest The Sisters Brothers, and Joanna Hogg’s hopeful The Souvenir Parts I and II are nowhere to be seen- but Lars von Trier is still very much ‘de trop’ on the Riviera, or so it would seem. Thierry is still thinking about this one. And on reflection he has now added The House That Jack Built – out of competition.

Apart from Godard, there are two other French titles: Stéphane Brizé will present At War, and Christophe Honoré’s Sorry Angel – in competition, and these features will open shortly afterwards in the local cinemas – to keep the Cannois happy. The Un Certain Regard sidebar has 6 feature debuts in a line-up of 15. And the special screening section offers Wang Bing’s Dead Souls with its 8 hour running time  allowing for a quick petit-dej on the Croisette before the following days’ viewing starts!

It Follows director David Robert Mitchell will be in Cannes with his eagerly anticipated follow-up Under the Silver Lake. And Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke  brings another Palme d’Or hopeful in the shape of Ash is Purest White, starring his wife and long-term collaborator Tao Zhao.  First time director A B Shawky presents the only debut feature in the competition strand Yomeddine – a leper road movie from Egypt – and it’s a comedy!. Iranians Jafar Panahi (Three Faces) and Asghar Farhadi (Everybody Knows) also make the list – with Farhadi’s film starring Penelope Cruz and husband Javier Bardem and opening the festival this year.

So out with the old guard – Naomi Kawase included – and in with the new – is Thierry’s message this year. Let’s hope it’s a good one. And stay tuned for more additions and coverage from the sidebars Un Certain Regard, ACID, Semaine de la Critique and Directors’ Fornight. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8 -22 MAY 2018

COMPETITION LINE-Up

EVERY BODY KNOWS – Asghar Farhadi

AT WAR - Stéphane Brizé 

DOGMAN – Matteo Garrone

LE LIVRE D’IMAGE – Jean-Luc Godard

NETEMO SAMETEMO (ASAKO I & II) (ASAKO I & II) – Ryusuke Hamaguchi

SORRY ANGEL – Christophe Honore

GIRLS OF THE SUN – Eva Husson

ASH IS PUREST WHITE – Zia Zhangke

SHOPLIFTERS – Kor-eda Hirokazu

CAPERNAUM – Nadine Labaki

BUH-NING (BURNING) – Lee Chang-Dong

BLACKKKLANSMAN – Spike Lee

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE – David Robert Mitchell

THREE FACES – Jafar Panahi

ZIMNA WOJNA/Cold War – Pawel Pawlikowski

LAZZARO FELICE – Alice Rohrwacher

LETO – Kirill Serebrennikov

YOMEDDINE – A B Shawky

KNIFE + HEART – Yann Gonzalez

AYKA –  Sergey Dvortsevoy, director of Tulpan, winner of the Prize Un Certain Regard in 2008.

These two films by Yann Gonzalez and Sergey Dvortsevoy are both directors’ second feature. It will be their first time in Competition.

AHLAT AGACI (THE WILD PEAR TREE) – Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of the Palme d’or 2014 for Winter Sleep.

The Competition 2018 will be composed of 21 films.

SHADOW – Zhang Yimou (out of competition)

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT – Lars von Trier (out of competition)

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 71st CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-20 MAY 2018

 

 

Lean on Pete (2017)***

Dir: Andrew Haigh | Great Britain / 121’ | Cast: Charlie Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny

Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) directs Steve Buscemi and Chloë Sevigny in a rather uneven rites of passage Pacific western about a boy who bonds with an old racehorse, and based on the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin.

This is a film to be seen for its captivating performances rather than its meandering narrative that abandons the central soulmates (fifteen year old Charlie and his horse Lean on Pete) midday through to explore how the teen resorts to petty crime in order to survive as an orphan. We first meet him living alone with his sweary Dad Ray (Fimmel) in Portland,Oregon; Ray loves his sensitive son, but is too selfish to care for him since his mother left town due to Ray’s philandering. So when a vengeful husband kills Ray, Charlie is left alone and desperate to find his aunt Margy, who fell out with Ray, for obvious reasons. Teaming up with the disreputable horse trainer Del (Buscemi in fine fettle), the two are soon joined by jockey Bonnie (Sevigny), leaving Charlie in the cold again, when Bonnie takes over Del’s attention. So Charlie sets off on a mission to save the ageing racehorse, Lean on Pete, who is bound for Mexico – an euphemistic term for the slaughter house. Their soulful journey across the luminous desert landscape is painful for both, and ends in tragedy, leaving Charlie on an elusive quest for aunt Margy in Laramie, Wyoming.

LEAN ON PETE is a lightly-plotted family film, apart from the animal tragedy. Magnus Nordenhof Jonck’s stunning images make up for an unsatisfying storyline that starts full of promise then Peters out, limping aimlessly for two full hours. Haigh tries to see the good in everyone, often stepping over the line to out-and-out sentimentality, but his central character does not deliver. Professionally produced and well-acted, particularly by Plummer, who won the De Laurentis Prize in Venice for Best Newcomer Actor, LEAN ON PETE is not only lean of plot; but all the social realist rough edges are polished too: Charlie keeps a stiff upper lip and takes it on the chin, but somehow his soul takes a short cut into rocky terrain rather than finding redemption in pastures new. Some critics called it “a modern Huckleberry Finn” – but that would be insulting to Mark Twain.

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 27 APRIL 2018

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir: Ron Howard | Writers: Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan | Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Paul Bettany | US | Action adventure | 135′ 

In 2002, it was Star Wars – Episode II – Attack of the Clones and in 2005, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. In 2018, what is one of the greatest legends in the history of cinema has returned to the red carpet here at Cannes, presented Out of Competition.

The saga’s second spin-off is the latest film of the Star Wars galaxy by Ron Howard bringing together Han Solo, his faithful Chewbacca, the crooked Lando Calrissian, the Millenium Falcon and of course the droids. This adventure takes us back to the youth of the famous smuggler, ace pilot and charming scoundrel, Han Solo. Written by Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, and directed by Ron Howard, who starred in George Lucas’ classic American Graffiti and directed numerous popular and critical hits such as Apollo 13 (1995) or A Beautiful Mind (2002, Oscars for best film and director).

Alongside Alden Ehrenreich (Blue Jasmine, 2013) who plays Han Solo, it has local Hampstead resident Thandie Newton (Jefferson in Paris); Woody Harrelson (No Country For Old Men), Emilia Clarke (Terminator Genisys), Donald Glover (The Martian), , Phoebe Waller-Bridge (The Iron Lady), Joonas Suotamo (Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi) and Paul Bettany (Dogville).

The Wound | Inxeba (2017)


Dir: John Trengrove | Writers: John Trengove, Thando Mgqolozana, Malusi Bengu | Cast: Nakhane Touré, Bongile Mantsai, Niza Jay Ncoyini (Kwanda) | DoP Paul Özgür | Music
João Orecchia |South Africa | 88 min · Colour

Best known for his TV series Hopeville and his short film iBhokhwe (The Goat) that tackled the subject of male circumcision, this is John Trengrove’s feature film debut and explores the experiences of a typical young factory worker in an extraordinary contemporary story that feels as if it could have taken place a hundred years ago. THE WOUND proves that an all-male environment can generate a dramatic range of tender and aggressive emotional expressions, where the taboo of homosexuality and masculinity are concerned.

Xolani (played by singer Nakhane Touré) is from the Xhosa, a South African tribe inhabiting the areas round Cape Town and the Eastern Cape. Every year he travels to a remote region in the mountains to take part and act as a care-giver in an annual circumcision ceremony. Women are not permitted to join the activities where the men paint their bodies in alarming designs using white ochre, as they immerse themselves in a coming of age rites of passage. One of the men Xolani meets is Kwanda, a middle class boy from Joburg undergoing his initiation, sensitive and perceptive, the young man quickly picks up on Xolani’s own homosexual identity.

This a gripping and immersive film that slowly generates tension from the mens’ needs to comply with their traditional environment while also satisfying their own emotional and sexual impulses. It gradually emerges that the melancholy Xolani is also there to cement his rather one-sided relationship with fellow married care-giver Vijami. But contrary to our expectations, Kwanda actually supports Xolani’s secret and idolatrous bond with Vijami rather than exposing him, adding another twist to this textured storyline. The magnifcent scenery, compelling narrative and subtle characterisations make this a watchable drama and a strong directorial debut for Trengrove. THE WOUND would make in interesting companion piece to Ousmane Sembene’s female circumcision story MOULAADE. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 27 APRIL 2018 | NAKANE IS PROMOTING HIS NEW ALBUM ‘YOU WILL NOT DIE’

 

 

 

 

Modern Life is Rubbish (2017) **

Dir: Daniel Jerome Gill | Cast: Josh Whitehouse, Jessie Cave, Ian Hart, Steven Mackintosh, Freya Mavor, Tom Riley | Musical Drama | UK | 114′

Daniel Jerome Gill is clearly a fan of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. Modern Life  is Rubbish makes a brave attempt to re-create Stephen Frears’ 2000 cult classic drama, that sees a young couple come together through their shared love of music, only to part ten years later, falling out of love.

Gill’s endearing but lightweight film lacks the charisma and zinging chemistry brought to the original by John Cusack and Iben Hjelje – not to mention the sensational script – to make it another breakout hit. Modern Life works best as a stinging reminder of the economic climate of its time as the world entered the late 1990s recession, Its sparkling string of musical hits by Blur, The Smiths, Oasis, and Radiohead considerably enhance the film’s entertainment and nostalgia value.

As Liam and Natalie, Josh Whitehouse and Freya Mavor are gently appealing: he, an old-school struggling musician who believes in his worth and his art; and she, an uptown aspiring art designer (of album covers) who lacks conviction, despite a megawatt smile. We first meet them in the rather morose opening scene whence the drama sashays backwards and forwards – to the time they first clapped eyes on each other, in a record shop, gradually showing them falling in love, as opposites attract. Liam’s inability to embrace the modern corporate world make him an appealing embodiment of anti-corporate culture, his disdain for social media is palpable: He refuses to own a smartphone or an iPod and is proud of his tangible record collection on vinyl. Natalie is more pragmatic, casting aside her artistic hopes for the advantages of pecuniary gain, to work in advertising. But her heart is clearly not in it – at the opening night of her first gig in an art gallery, the two realise they are not quite cut out for each other when Natalie explains: “We’re doing a viral campaign for the gallery” and Liam chips in: “a load of wank, if you ask me”. That said, the soundtrack that first defined their relationship keeps pulling them back together.

Taking its title from Blur’s 1993 album, the film is a pure satirical trip to its era, working best as a testament to the late 1990s, rather than as a believable story of frontman Liam and his weak attempts to make it with his band Headcleaner, his lack of finances being the major cause of the pair’s eventual rift. The scenes involving Steven Mackintosh, Will Merrick and Ian Hart feel laboured and generic (although Hart gives a stonking turn as the band’s agent), but when Whitehouse (a real guitarist) takes to the stage in a live performance, the film gets a shot in the arm, in lucid sequences filmed by cinematographer Tim Sidell.

Strangely, it’s the viral success of the band that finally makes Liam a name, and this leads to the inevitable, and a rather bittersweet, finale for the lovers in this ultimately enjoyable trip down memory lane. MT

OUT ON RELEASE from 4 May 2018

 

 

 

The Deminer (2017) ****

Dir.: Hogir Hirori (Co-director Shinwar Kamal); Documentary with Fakhir Berwari; Sweden/Iraq 2017, 83′

This is one of the few films has the audience in an emotional grip that lasts long after the credits have rolled and having watched Hogir Hogir’s  documentary about Colonel Fakhir Berwari, who defused thousands of explosive devices in a wartorn Iraq, one is left with admiration – but also with a feeling of huge inadequacy, however misplaced.

Fakhir Berwari, a Kurdish father of eight, was a man with a mission, or better, an obsession: he wanted to save as many lives as possible, and when he was demobbed by the Iraqi army after he losing a leg in an explosion, he became morose. Only after DAESH started its terror regime in and around his hometown of Dohok, did he find his equalibrium. And he joined the Kurdish Peshmerg army in 2014. Attaching a simple prosthesis to his stump allowed him to do what he was best at: defusing the deadly legacy of DAESH, using his bare hands to rip the mines apart, and de-activating the boob-trapped bombs in the houses with a pair of pliers and a wire cutter.

The filmmakers got access to video material from Berari’s son Abdulla, who found a cache of tapes in his father’s briefcase. These documents are from the time when Fakhir was a major, serving in the regular Iraqi army, learning his craft, being christened “Crazy Fakhir” by the American allies, whilst he disposed of bombs and mines left by supporters of the by now executed Saddam Hussain. To quote Abdulla “These tapes are action movies, but for real”. They are filmed by either Berwari himself, or his closest assistants – and capture the assault that occurred when the car carrying Berwari and his team is thrown into the air, like a toy. There are other near misses, and the tension becomes more and more unbearable, convincing that there will be no happy-end.

The DAESH troops who plant the deadly weapons, wear black, and one is immediately reminded of the Nazi black-shirts in their SS uniforms. To mine the houses of civilians is an act of pure evil, blowing them up with a signal from a mobile. But ordinary life goes on for the Berwari family: in between these rescue missions, Fakhir is phoned by a creditor, who demands payment. Then he defuses a mine, which would have blown up the whole street. It is difficult to sum up The Deminer – which won the Special Jury Price at the Amsterdam IDFA in November 2017 – so overwhelming are the images, comment is redundant. Perhaps, the joyful expression on Fakhir Berwari’s face, after re-joining the army in 2014 and returning to his mission, is the best way to remember him. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE from Friday 27 April 2018

Beast (2017) ***

Dir: Michael Pearce | Cast: Jessie Buckley, Johnny Flynn, Trystan Gravelle | UK | 107′ | Thriller

Two troubled souls are drawn together in this twisted and intriguingly intelligent psychological thriller debut from British TV director Michael Pearce.

On a Jersey beach during her birthday celebrations, Moll (Jessie Buckley) breaks away from the fraught family gathering drawn to a tousled-haired wayfarer Pascal ((Flynn) who is implicated in a series of murders rocking the island. Tour guide Moll is far from squeaky clean but her vulnerable, wide-eyed appeal provides a suspenseful counterpoint to Pascal’s sensitive knowingness; such a breath of fresh air compared to her boring police officer boyfriend Cliff (Trystan Gravelle). Moll still lives at home with her dementia-ridden father and dominating martyr of a mother Hilary, a feisty Geraldine James, who is holding everything together – including the church choir – while clearly favouriting supercilious brother Harrison (Oliver Maltman). To add insult to injury, sister Polly (Shannon Tarbet) has just announced her twin pregnancy on Moll’s special day. Clearly there is more to Moll than meets the eye, but Pearce keeps us guessing about her dark secret which is cleverly reflected through her family’s harsh and controlling attitude towards her. There is also something gently sinister about the prickly Pascal who prowls around with a hunting rifle while the two grow closer complicit in their shared orbit of shadowy darkness; Moll’s unhappiness piqued by the sense of danger and romantic thrill that gradually comes to a head in the final beachside denouement. BEAST is a subtle thriller that skates around the edges of melodrama and horror primped by Benjamin Kracun’s luminous images and superbly nuanced performances from Geraldine James, Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn as the tense lead trio. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 27 April 2018

 

 

 

Marty (1955) | Dual format release

 Dir.: Delbert Mann; Cast: Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Esther Minicotti, Joe Mantell; USA 1955, 90 min.

Based on the TV play by Paddy Chayevsky, who would later script Network (1976), Delbert Mann won both the 1955 Oscar and the Palme d’Or in Cannes for his debut feature (he had directed the original TV Playhouse production with Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand).

Ernest Borgnine won an Oscar for his thoughtful performance in this  independent production (Hecht/Lancaster) which had a mini-budget of USD 300 000 but grossed over five million US Dollars at the box office. It was a follow-up to his impressive turn as the sadistic sergeant in From Here to Eternity,

Director Delbert Mann was an intellectual with a TV background, restricting his Hollywood output to a few, but memorable, features such as The Outsider (1961). His career would lead him back to TV, a medium which gave him more freedom than the Hollywood studio system. Shot in brilliant blackand-white by the veteran Joseph LaShelle (Laura, The Apartment), Marty is a chamber piece, which g set in the Bronx, during two days between Christmas and New Year’s Day: Marty (Borgnine) is an affable but rather thick-set butcher, who is mistreated both by his mother (Minicotti) and his “best friend” Angie (Mantell), a superficial misogynist. They both criticise 34year old Marty for not being married, but would rather keep him under their control, to suit their own needs. Up to a certain point, Marty plays ball, talking in the Mickey Spillane style  – but deep down he is aware of his lack if appeal to the opposite sex, his social clumsiness: he is the anti-hero, and he knows it. When he meets Isabel (Blair), a schoolteacher who has just been stood up on a blind date, the two outsiders slowly find happiness together – in spite of their shyness and awkwardness.

In an era dominated by big, colourful blockbusters from Hollywood, fighting the advent of TV with more and more sensational technical innovations and lame, simplistic plots, often featuring invincible male heroes, Marty was the antithesis to all these adventures: escapism, which never engaged the audience brains, so they would not forget where they had parked the car. Marty and Isabel were anything but the heroic winners, which sailed through the feature, but ordinary working people, whose problems were rooted in a society, where interaction between the genders where stereotype, and “a good line” was more important than a reliable character. Angie is the classical example of male insecurity, who is only too happy, to transfer his helplessness onto Marty. Having said this, Marty relies very much on the witty dialogues by Chayevsky, who identifies the conflict with the lines between the two friends: Angie trying to keep Mart at his side, as a fellow man, who never wants to grow up, and lives in the phantasy land of hard-boiled detective novels.

After winning an Oscar for her part in Marty, the Spanish director Juan Antonio Bardem would cast Blair in his subversive anti-Franco feature Calle Mayor, where she plays another unfortunate female in a story about three bored young men, one of whom pretends to be in love with her, while his friends support this illusion. Sixty years later, Marty’s humane message is still strong, and the acting is outstanding, avoiding sentimentality at all times as its simple appeal shines through. 

NOW OUT ON DUAL FORMAT COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA

 

 

 

Obey (2018)| *** Tribeca Film Festival 2018 | 21-28 April 2018

Dir.: Jamie Jones; Cast: Marcus Rutherford, Sophie Kennedy Clark, T’Nia Miller, James Atwell, Sam Gittins; UK 2018, 93 min.

Jamie Jones’ feature debut takes place during the London riots in August 2014, after the police killing of Mark Duggan in North London. Black teenager Leon has a hard time, seeking refuge in a small gang, while his mother sinks deeper and deeper into alcohol dependency. But when Jones introduces Twiggy, a young white middle-class woman, who supports the urban youth, the narrative takes a radical change from the usual “hard-luck” story of young black males.

Until he meets Twiggy, the only thing Leon (Rutherford) enjoys is boxing in a dilapidated local gym. His mother Chelsea (Miller) has shacked up with a violent boyfriend called Chris (Atwell), who beats up both mother and son. Meanwhile, Twiggy (Kennedy Clarke) meanwhile, runs around with a camera, taking photos of the gang and police violence. Living in a squat with boyfriend Anton (Gittins), she makes a wild entrance, kissing another woman at a party – but this does not deter Leon from falling for her. Being mocked by his gang members for fancying “Blondie”, Leon goes on a houseboat trip with Twiggy and Anton, interrupting the near-permanent street violence for a romantic outing. After a fight with Chris, Leon enters Twiggy’s flat, and she looks after his wounds, whilst Anton has a deep post-coital sleep. When the police storm the squat in the morning, Anton is arrested, but Leon and Twiggy escape, indulging in alcohol and weed in Leon’s flat where they consummate their relationship. But when Leon wakes up, Twiggy is gone and he later discovers the truth about his lover as the story down-spirals into a violent finale.

DoP Albert Salas handheld camera captures the chaotic violence and Leon’s emotional turmoil. The moment he leaves the security of his gang, he loses his personal perspective and self esteem. Seeing Twiggy as a sort of life-boat, which might take him out of the permanent misery, he fails to grasp that this woman is not only white (which makes him a traitor in the eyes of his peers), but a middle class one at that – one of the do-gooders, who protest against their own privileged status by making a guest appearance in the ghetto-like slums, before returning with her boyfriend to the safety of suburbia when the going gets too rough. Obey is by no means perfect, but superior to many features of the same sub-genre. AS

WORLD PREMIERE IN COMPETITION AT TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL | NEW YORK 2018

The World is Yours (2018) ***


Dir: Romain Gavras | Writers: Noe Debre, Romain Gavras, Karim Boukercha | Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Vincent Cassel, Francois Damiens, Karim Leklou, Norbert Ferrer | Comedy Crime | France | 100′

Romain Gavras’ rambunctiously glossy gangster comedy is stashed with French household names and beats as it sweeps towards a preposterous finale. Best known for his music videos for the likes of Jaz-Z, this energetically stylish comedy is full of French verve and punchy argot making it less accessible for non-French speakers with its raucous, over-the top absurdity. Isabelle Adjani and Vincent Cassel boost a brash and ballsy plotline that sees a North African crime syndicate dream of better things from their humble Paris council flats. A Prophet‘s Karim Leklou (Fares) is the surprising standout as a feisty grifter who is desperate to make some cash so he can retire to the sun. Meanwhile his unmanageable matriarch Danny (Adjani) has her own hair-brained schemes, so it’s up to mid-mannered Fares and his motley crew to make it all happen. Bonkers but delightful if you like this kind of French caper. MT

NOW SHOWING AT CINE LUMIERE FROM 25 APRIL 2019 | QUINZAINE 2018

Cure (1997) **** | Dual Format release

Dir/Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa | Japan | Mystery Thriller | 111′ 

Twenty minutes into Cure (Kairos) I was reminded of David Fincher’s Seven, and the first Japanese Ring film, both causing me to think that they had influenced Kiyoshi Kurosawa. In fact Seven (1995) was 2 years before Cure: with Fincher’s urban decay corresponding with Cure’s grimy and rundown suburbs of Tokyo. However Cure was made 1 year before Ring and shares some of its long dark-hair menace (from both ‘villian’ characters) pulsating as strongly as their similar eerie soundtracks. A further link is the menacing way that spilt water is filmed, prefiguring Dark Water (2002) and reminding you of the malevolent power of water in old Japanese ghost stories.  

Putting influences to one side, Cure is more of a hybrid than the other productions. Part psychological thriller, cop movie and supernatural horror film – blending all these generic elements with impressive skill. This is a film absent of sensationalist gore and full of creepy menace. There is no cure for anyone in this ironically titled drama. Quite the opposite. Characters are infected by a sinister hypnotism event, from 100 years back, causing people to be mentally manipulated to kill those they work or live with.

Kenichi Takabe (Koji Yakusho) is a Tokyo detective investigating a serious of gruesome murders – a large X is cut across the victim’s neck. The killers are caught and cannot explain what made them kill. Takabe accompanied by psychologist Sakuma (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) trace a connection with a young man called Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara). When brought in for questioning Mamiya appears to be an amnesiac – he’s very dazed and confused about who he is, where he is and what he’s doing. After searching his apartment the police discover that he used to be a psychology student who studied the ideas of the 19th century hypnotist Anton Mesmer. They conclude that Mamiya is capable of planting hypnotic suggestions in people that turns them into murderers.

The ex-student mesmerist, the stressed detective and his mentally unstable wife are pitted against a force which initially appears emphatic. Mamiya wants to know his victim’s emotional state. “Let’s talk about yourself” is a re-occurring request through Cure. Mamiya wishes to make “the inner become the outer” and have them act on their darkest impulses. The very matter of fact depiction of the killings in Cure is what makes for an unsettling experience. The scene where a policeman takes out his gun and kills his colleague, just outside the police station, is chilling for its casual horror. He carries on working then drags the body inside. Filmed at a distance, acutely well framed and morally detached: nothing unusual is seen to disturb the policeman’s banal routine. 

There is little obvious thriller action in Cure. Many clashes of will and personality occur in a hospital or police headquarters: the best of these almost equalling the interrogations in Silence of the Lambs. Aided by excellent performances from Koji Yakusho and Masato Hagiwara, setting up their suspenseful games, Kurosawa powerfully creates a highly personal and atmospheric world of damaged individuals.

If you carefully examine the plot then you will find holes. Why would Anton Mesmer be such an influence – where’s the real proof? Why did the hospital nurse appear to tear off the face of the bloodied corpse in the waiting room? It’s never explained. How was the ‘curse’ of hypnotic suggestion actually passed on to new perpetrators over time? But this is the logic of a mysterious and highly intelligent horror film where emotion suppresses cold rationality. By not explaining too much Cure allows its creepiness to infiltrate the viewer. And like all good horror stories plants its dread of the unknown in a plausibly real and indifferent world.  

Cure is so strong and gripping that it makes me eager to seek out Kurosawa’s other works, both horror movies and art house cinema. He is subtle, understated, visceral, very in control of his medium and ought to be better known. A remarkable filmmaker. ALAN PRICE ©2018    

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s CURE [Kyua] (Masters of Cinema) now out on Dual Format |  Available from Amazon 

 

 

Never Steady, Never Still (2017) ****

Dir/Writer: Kathleen Hepburn | Cast: Shirley Henderson, Nicholas Campbell, Theodore Pellerin | Canada. 2017. 110′.

At the heart of this haunting portrait of family dissonance is Shirley Henderson’s dramatic performance as a dignified independent woman brought to her wits’ end by Parkinson’s disease. And if ever there was a location the echoed the mournful storyline it is the alienating lakeside landscapes of snowbound British Columbia, Canada, where this intimate exploration of strained but resilient kindred spirits unfolds in Kathleen Hepburn’s resonant debut, brought to life by DoP Norm Li’s impressive 35mm camerawork.

As films go this is a gruelling and devastating watch despite its worthwhile intentions. Judy (Henderson) is only in her fifties but has been struck down with the debilitating neural affliction and inured to the constant suffering since early in her marriage to  to Ed (Nicholas Campbell). And the pair live in mutual affectionate acceptance of one another despite the restrictions Judy’s illness has posed on their relationship. Not so their 19-year-old son Jamie (Theodore Pellerin) who is a sexually frustrated angry young man, at odds with himself and everyone round him in his male-orientated work in Alberta’s oil business. And in some ways this makes a man of him, although he is clearly troubled and drifting aimlessly through life, occasionally seeing his only friend Danny (Jonathan Whitesell). When he does meet a girl his opening gambit is along the lines of “do you like to fool around?”.

When his parents come under pressure at home, it’s clear that Jamie must knuckle down and offer support. In some ways Jamie’s mental state (never steady, never still) seems to channel his mother’s physical disability but clearly he’s been affected by the restrictions of his upbringing in feeling affection for his mother, but repelled by physical contact with her. So his attempts to engage with women his age are fraught with ambivalent awkwardness. He has brief encounters with a prostitute and local school girl local girl Kaly (Mary Galloway). Hepburn avoids sentimentality or melodrama using instead the quietly moving emotional heft of Judy’s devastating illness and compassion for her son as the dramatic counterpoint to his deeply troubled mental state in this stunning first feature. MT

PREVIEWING AT EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 15 APRIL 2018 and On general release from FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018

https://youtu.be/3a6ca9bm6NA

One or the Other (2017) | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Adam Kossoff; Documentary; Israel/UK, 60 min.

Adam Kossoff’s (The Anarchist Rabbi) illuminating essay film about the titular question of homeland versus nation state, researches this topic with references to the building and existence of the State of Israel, using different forms of images to explain the difference between official and personal history. To illustrate his point aesthetically, Kossoff often uses 8- or 16 mm home movies inserted in the middle of the main images.

Whilst watching images of fleeing Palestinians during the Israeli/Arab War of 1948, Kossoff also shows example of Hollywood style movies, showing Israelis as heroes. He references the many Jewish organisations in the diaspora who asked their own governments for financial support for a country they did not want to live in. The saying “Next year in Jerusalem” clouded many a European Jewish childhood in the 1950s and 60s, leaving the younger generation in limbo between their native country, and the mythical Jewish nation of Israel, their parents never intended to join.

Kossoff is very strong on emblematic issues; whilst Israel has declared the olive tree the symbol of the State, it has never the less destroyed over 800 000 Palestinians olive trees since 1967, together with many Palestinian homes in Haifa and Tel Aviv, the owners fleeing to save their lives. The same home are now being sold to Israelis because their former owners do not currently possess the finance required by the Jewish Trust administering the properties. So, when these buildings are sold, it is a final act. Kossoff comments “the nation state is not interested in justice, but self preservation”.

In the “Battle of Jenin” in April 2002, when IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) flattened the refuge camp which existed since this 1948 War, about 50 people were killed, most of them in their own houses. The actually casualty figures is still in dispute, but one of the bulldozer drivers showed no regret, blaming Palestinian “terrorists” for the fighting, and telling gruesome stories about him drinking whiskey to last the three day battle. Official films of the D9, praising this vehicle of destruction for its invulnerability, are gut-wrenching in their bellicose language. In another newsreel excerpt, the commentator points to Arabs reading their own newspapers, commenting “they have newspapers in their own language, even though they are a minority, when they had once been a majority”.

Finally, a reminder that Israel replaced Yiddish, spoken by many of the first wave settlers with a modern version of ancient Hebrew. Criticism came from many writers and Rabbis warning “those who had forced this biblical language on to the people, do not believe in the biblical meaning of it. It might lead to their destruction. This language has been reconstructed to define itself against others”.

Ending on a long shot of an old postcard “Visit Palestine”, over which the credits roll, this essay with texts by Walter Benjamin, Mahmood Darwish, Tanya Reinhart and Susan Sontag ends on a melancholic note. It certainly points to the evils of the Nation State, its only fault is in failing to mention that Israel is not alone in annexing territories and burying the history its citizens. AS

22 April 2018 |THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The Marriage (2017) East End Film Festival 2018


Dir.: Blerta Zeqiri; Cast: Alban Ukaj, Adriana Matoshi, Genc Salihu, Vjosa Abazi; Albania/Kosovo 2017, 97 min.

Blerta Zeqiri’s debut feature is set in Kosovo’s capital Pristina and features – surprisingly – a gay/straight ménage-a-trois. Shot in warm colours by the handheld camera of DoP Sevdije Kastrati, The Marriage always comes up with new twists, keeping us engaged throughout

We first meet Bekim (Ukaj) and his finance Anita (Matoshi) at the border between Kosovo and Serbia, where this Kosovar couple is waiting to identify the bodies Anita’s parents, who were killed in Kosovo War of 1999. This gruesome scene in a makeshift tent is a pitiful sight especially as Anita cannot identify her parents. On the way home in their car to Pristina, were Bekim runs a bar and Anita works in fashion shop, they discuss of Nol (Genc), a musician, who had a successful career in Paris and has now come back to their village. Anita is well aware of the friendship between the two men, but does not know that they have been lovers for a long time. In Bekim’s bar, both men lie to Anita, claiming hat they are depressed because Nol had to give up the love of his life – the implications are clear, that this person is a woman. Later Bekim goes a step further, and tells Anita that Nol is the lover his married sister Zana (Abazi).

What emerges is a story of lies and obfuscation based partly on shame – Islam takes a hard line decrying homosexuality – but this is compounded by a man’s inability to be straight and honest with his wife. Nol too is clearly is confused and is unable, despite his feelings, to be frank with Bekim, refusing to leave the village with and start again in France.

The gay sex is very graphic, on the whole Blerta never shrinks from showing a realistic picture of the male relationship. The atmosphere in the bar scene is testosterone-laden, and when Bekim is approached by a  man who wants to use his bar for an LGBT celebration, Bekim refuses and leaves the table angrily. Neither Bekim’s nor Anita’s extended family has an idea about Bekim’s sexual orientation, gaydom is unacceptable for them. Zeqiri never shrinks from showing the duplicity, Bekim’s fear and betrayal are always played out in the crassest possible way. This is a very brave debut, with brilliant ensemble acting and realistic ending. AS

SCREENING DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

Dir: Mike Newell | Writer: Kevin Hood, Thomas Bezucha, Don Roos, Annie Barrows (novel) | Cast: Lily James, Matthew Goode, Jessica Brown Findlay, Michiel Huisman, Tom Courtney, Katherine Parkinson, Glen Powell, Penelope Wilton | 124′ | UK

Mike Newell’s screen adaptation of a chicklit novel is as over-stuffed in the early scenes as its title suggests, but stick with it and you’ll be won over by this moving story of book club camaraderie made memorable by its dazzling performances and appealing characters. What’s more, you’ll be rushing to visit the picturesque island in the English Channel, and you might even join a book club.

It all starts in 1946, when an plummy young novelist Juliet Ashton (James) is struggling for inspiration and about to set off on a book tour with her agent Sidney (Matthew Goode in superb form). A surprise fan letter or sorts from a Guernsey resident Dawsey (Michiel Hiusman) captures her imagination, so leaving Sidney and her American boyfriend in the lurch, she sets off instead to the former Nazi-occupied Channel Island, intrigued by this interesting man and his book club with a rather strange name. It soon turns out that Dawsey is rather a dish himself, and his potato pie society was formed out of necessity during an encounter with German soldiers on a post-curfew night out.

Newell and his team have captured the verdant lushness of summer and the settings and period details are ravishingly recreated, and its inhabitants turn out to be delightful as well. Plot-wise there is sufficient intrigue and dramatic heft to keep our interest stimulated, the dialogue delicately pokes fun in all the right places, and the support cast are really charming and genuine: Katherine Parkinson is convincingly amusing at an loopy earth-mother and Tom Courteney as the amiable postmaster. Penelope Wilton overdoes it slightly as the mother who’s lost her daughter, in a lukewarm subplot that whilst adding a scintilla of wartime intrigue and realism, feels somewhat submerged by the upbeat nature of the main storyline. This is about the positiveness of collaboration and community, rather than the negativeness of division and conflict.

And although Juliet’s enthusiasm and free-spiritedness drives the narrative forward at first, the romance that develops at its heart untimately feels unconvincing as lovers have no palpable chemistry whatsoever. Luckily the strength of the other performances generates enough enjoyment to carry this through, despite this rather fluffy and schematic ending. MT

The Leisure Seeker (2017) ***


Dir: PAOLO VIRZÌ | Drama Italy / 112’ |cast: Helen Mirren, Donald Sutherland

Paolo Virzi’s drama is based on the novel by Michael Zadoorian and stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland in a timely tale about an elderly couple looking for one last hurrah on a bittersweet final road trip that gives full throttle to Dylan Thomas’ redolent words: “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Those on their last legs will heartily appreciate the sentiment  embodied and expressed here with feeling by Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren, who share a palpable onscreen chemistry as the amiable pair embarking on their odyssey with the full knowledge that this is likely to be their last together, and is fraught with ups and downs, and memories both good and bad.

The English-language debut of Italian director Paolo Virzì (Like Crazy), The Leisure Seeker sees Ella (Mirren) dying of cancer and John (Sutherland) stumbling on the foothills of Alzheimer’s disease. Neither is remotely interested in quietly fading away in a nursing home or hospice, at least not until they are forced to. So they hit the road in their vintage car on a trip from Boston to Florida with John behind the wheel. This is a tribute to a life lived to the fullest by people who have are cognisant of their plight; it is never maudling or downbeat but admits the inevitable with grace and good humour. The film also offers up an eventful travelogue of this part of America, brimming with insight into how the world has changed as they pass through the cities that have shaped and punctuated their time together. Keats put it rather well when he said: “Live life to the lees” – it’s a quote that acknowledges a life lived pleasurably and with gusto, and this is the feeling that permeates this entertaining tribute, offering a little taster of what’s come for all of us, and a timely reminder to make the most of it while we can. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE |

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | IN COMPETITION

 

Let the Sun Shine In | Un Beau Soleil Intérieur (2017) Mubi

Writer|Dir: Claire Denis, Christine Angot | Cast: Juliette Binoche, Gérard Depardieu, Valéria Bruni Tedeschi | 94min | Comedy drama

Claire Denis’ talents extend across the genres – her terrific comedy debut Un Beau Soleil Intérieur starring Juliette Binoche, Gérard Depardieu and Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi sees a trio of Parisians keen to find love the second, third (or possibly even) twentieth time around. Previously known as Des Lunettes Noires, a more edgy and intriguing title that conveys the romantic pleasures of the time discretely known as ‘un certain age’, this drôle and triumphantly upbeat satire will make you chuckle knowingly, rather than laugh out loud.

Binoche plays Isabelle, a recently divorced mother in her early fifties keen to rediscover the buzz of sex and lasting love again and all the other things that make ‘la vie du couple’ worth living, after the pressures of raising a family or struggling to build a life. Surrounded by a series of smucks – to put it politely – she feels that romance is already a thing of the past. Isabelle is ‘special’ in that mercurial way that becomes amusingly familiar as Denis’ insightfully intelligent narrative unfolds. She has reached a time when wisdom and experience enriches everyday life, but when it comes to love we are still often teenagers.

Isabelle welcomes the familiar routines of daily life, but so do the men she encounters, particularly one pompous banker (Xavier Beauvois) who is the ultimate control freak and useless in bed. But she falls in love all the same, due to her newfound ability to tolerate even the worst of what’s left men-wise. The banker is clearly unable to leave his wife, so Isabelle moves on to Sylvain (Paul Blain), a louche and sensual man she meets in a bar where they dance to they strains of “At Last’  – and of course you know this is just another dream. Then there is alcoholic actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle) who satisfies her sexually but is too fond of himself to far for anybody else. Isabelle is looking for chemistry but also someone from her ‘milieu’, but at this stage in the game most  available men are single for a reason: they are either geeks or deeply unattractive, but totally unaware of it. And ex-husband François (Laurent Grevill) still serves as a ‘friend with benefits’, occasionally popping back on the scene, although her daughter is only glimpsed briefly.

Apart from the acutely observed witty script, the emotional nuances of Binoche’s performances are what makes this so enjoyable. Un Beau Soleil never takes itself too seriously, and is a complete departure from her dramas such as Beau Travail and White Material, and is probably most like her 2002 outing Friday Night. And the final scene where she visits Gerard Depardieu’s psychic is such a perceptive interplay between clever dialogue and intuitive performances it’s a joy to behold. MT

NOW ON MUBI

 

 

 

The Ballad of Shirley Collins (2017) | Home Ent


Dir: Rob Curry | Tim Plester | Musical biopic Doc | UK | 94′

Rob Curry and Tm Plester (Way of the Morris) retain a 1970s aesthetic for this lyrical paean to Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (born Sussex 5 July 1935) the English folk singer who, along with her sister Dolly, is widely regarded as the mainstay of the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. After leaving school at 17, she often performed on the banjo and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose piano accompaniment created unique settings for Shirley’s plain and often plangeant singing style. She first met Communist activist and eminent ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax at a party Ewan MacColl held in the early 1954, fell in love and followed him back to Kentucky in 1959 where he had been under surveillance during the McCarthy witch-hunt. The two made recordings under Atlantic Records under the title Sounds of the South (some were re-enacted in the Coen Brothers’ Oh Brother Where Art Thou). But the focus here is largely on Shirley and her life experiences up to the present day, and there’s a distinct feeling of loss and redemption that runs through it.

Shirley Collins comes across as vulnerable but warmly down to earth telling how she briefly lost her singing voice after a relationship ebded, but she has certainly recovered it now – she looks and sounds stunning at 82 – as she performs informally. Shirley is also a lively raconteur adding a touch of wry humour when recalling letters to her family back home, written from her time in Mississippi with Alan, which she describes as ‘quite domestic’: “I must finish now as I have to go and syringe Alan’s ears”.

Narrated by Hannah Arterton (The Five) and enlivened by original black & white footage, audio archives, and colourful filmed excerpts from Arundel and the countryside around East Sussex where she grew up, this enjoyable and informative biopic raises the profile of this little known era of English folk singing with a distinct pagan feel to it. THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS is fascinating and gorgeously framed and captured in Richard Mitchell’s limpid visuals. MT

DVD ON RELEASE FROM AMAZON.CO.UK

Truth or Dare (2017) **

Dir.: Jeff Wadlow; Cast: Lucy Hale, Tyler Posey, Violette Bene, Hayden Szeto; USA 2018, 100′.

Director/co-writer Jeff Wadlow is behind the popular Purge franchise with together  Blumhouse Productions, and has tried the same thing with Truth or Dare with an that ending hints at a sequel, but is its audience gullible enough. On present form, the answer is probably yes.

On their final Spring Break, a group of college students take a vacation in Mexico, where they are lured into a Truth or Dare game by a mysterious stranger in a spooky church cellar. Retuning home, they soon discover that the game has followed them. If any of the participants refuses a challenge; lies or fails a dare task, she/he is dead. The first victim, Ronnie sets the tone: he is dared to show all, standing up on the pool table, but chickens out. The demon punishes Ronnie with sudden death: he falls of the table and crashes his head in. Perhaps not the most sensational start to a killing spree; but even though blood is not spared, it soon turns out that Truth or Dare is more interested in the hidden secrets of its participants. Does goody-two-shoes Olivia (Hale), who rather would have rather spent a week doing humanitarian work than go to Mexico, really fancy Lucas (Posey), the philandering boyfriend of Olivia’s best friend Markie (Beane)?. And has Olivia also a hand in the suicide of Markie’s father? And then there is Brad (Szeto), who can’t confess to his homophobic cop-father that he is gay, and is duly killed by his Dad’s fellow-cop. Finally. Olivia gets on a trip to Mexico to interview a mute ex-nun, the sole survivor of a massacre in the church where the ordeal first started.

Symbolic for the whole enterprise is a scene where one of the afflicted has to drink a bottle of spirits whilst walking on the roof of the house, spikes looming, and her helpers running along the house with a mattress. Truth or Dare is anything but frightening – very much Scooby Doo meets Gossip Girl. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 APRIL 2018

Big Fish and Begonia (2017) *****

Directors: Xuan Liang, Chung Zhang | Chinese Anime | Mandarin | 106′

A delicately drawn and ravishingly beautiful Chinese anime enveloped in the same social concerns and passion for folklore as Studio Ghibli and drawing comparison with Spirited Away. The shape-shifting fantasy tells a tender rites of passage tale of love and yearning between the spiritual and animal kingdom. With good triumphing over evil, Big Fish & Begonia is a fable with weighty themes that will enchant and absorb adults, but with a cute and lovable story for younger audiences with its subtle blend of 2D and CG animation, superbly rendered in a rainbow palette of hand-drawn images.

Epic in its thematic richness, Xuan Liang and Chung Zhang’s indie project is very much a labour of love that gradually came together over a period of 12 years due to financing constrictions . This version is in Mandarin with English subtitles gives a more atmospheric feel to the piece and follows the aged narrator as she looks back wistfully at her teenage years, and the time when she as Chun (Guanlin Ji) was forced to leave her spiritual home and return for a week long ‘rite of passage’ back to the real world where she takes the form of a dolphin. Shortly arriving beaming up to this surprisingly beautiful human kingdom she gets trapped in fishermen’s nets and is rescued by a soulful human man called Kun (Xu Weizhou) who tragically perishes during the ordeal leaving Chun moved to repay him for his sacrifice and bravery by seeking the help of the spirit world, and leaving a MacGuffin in the shape of a small mouth organ.

What follows is both touching and mesmerising: Chun is given the chance to forfeit part of her own life and she diligently searches for her saviour in a magical repository for human spirits, guarded by a one-eyed mahjong-playing old hag, who rules the territory and bristles with wickedness. Chun’s spiritual connection with Kun (who takes the form of an adorable baby dolphin) drives the narrative forward – the two’s souls are intertwined in a love match that very much captures the words of Noel Coward and could serve as an alternative retro title: “Time and Tide can never sever Those whom love has bound together”. And this is the bond that keeps the pair united throughout all their endless trials and tribulations. Themes of fate and destiny come into play again and again, and the mesmerising storyline delivers a powerful message: that mortals must make sacrifices on a spiritual level if they want to change the course of destiny.

Meanwhile, Chun has an admirer in the real world (Shangqing Su), a young man who travels with her for her week’s trial, and stays by her side, hoping for his love to be reciprocated by his acts of derring-do and sacrifice: he wrestles a two-headed snake and dives into a disgusting cesspit – but Chun regards him as a brother figure, her heart is already taken by Kun, and she is totally absorbed in her selfless efforts to get him back into her human world.

Xuan Liang and Chung Zhang have together created a fabulous fantasy fable based on Chinese Daoist culture and folklore, complete with traditional temples and furniture inspired by the Southern Chinese traditional design and architecture (although it’s filmed in Beijing and much of the settings also echo this region). Chun even wears earrings made of jade. Water is once again the symbol of emotion, re-birth and creation and forms a nurturing and flexible conduit between the real and spiritual world we inhabit. This is an awe-inspiring and adorable anime, the final scene leaves us with a message of hope: in a tribute to both the strength and the everlasting tenderness at the heart of true love. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18 APRIL 2018

 

 

Hou Hsiao-Hsien | Three Early films | MUBI

Hou Hsiao-hsien is one of contemporary cinema’s most dynamic and esteemed auteurs, and a leading light of Taiwanese cinema and its New Wave movement.

It’s surprising that his pre New Wave debut CUTE GIRL/Lovable You (Jiushi liuliu de ta (1980) is a raucously upbeat romantic musical comedy of the ‘golden age’ of Mandarin cinema in Taiwan. This first film is light years away from the director’s complex and poetic portrayals of Taiwanese social history that would first emerge with The Boys from Fengkuei (1983).

Although Hou Hsiao-hsien tries to play down his early films – CUTE GIRL (1980) *** is evidence of his talent for clever comic timing and situational comedy, as well as the more serious fare that would follow later. The romcom was a commercial vehicle for two leading stars of the 1980s: Feng Fei-fei (who has since died) and Kenny Bee, who was the main character in this first part of the trilogy that continued with Cheerful Wind/Feng er ti ta cai (1981) and The Green, Green Grass of Home/Zai in hepan quincao qing (1983).

So boy (Bee) meets girl (Fei-fei) with profuse musical accompaniment and a nod to Taiwan’s economic boom – although technology is still confusing and mobiles have only just really arrived. Themes of modern life in Taipei contrast with the traditional rural idyll and come into play when a young surveyor is practically forced by his parents to marry the daughter of a rich industrialist in the schematic but amusing plot line. The social context is familiar, but the serenity and sumptuous widescreen cinematography is absent, along with the slightly melancholy tone of his later work.

THE GREEN, GREEN GRASS OF HOME (1981) *** is the third part of the Kenny Bee trilogy and continues in a formulaic romantic/musical comedy vein, with a considerably more auteurist feel already emerging along with some impressive extended takes and naturalistic, improvisational performances from impressive child newcomers.

Bee arrives in the country village as a substitute teacher and soon becomes part of a community where adults are often more childish than their pupils. Ironically, Bee succeeds in offering some lessons in conservation to these ‘back to nature’ types, as they make their emotional way into adulthood. Sadly, the young female schoolgirl characters hardly get a look in, but this is an interesting prelude to his masterpieces that would follow.

THE BOYS FROM FENGKUEI (1983)**** His first work as an auteur (rather than a commercial director ) is a coming of age story set in an idyllic fishing village in the Penghu Islands where a group of boys are waiting to be called up for the army. The harsh realities of city life soon bite in a cautionary tale that sees three of the youngsters leaving for the large port of Kaohsiung, where their fate awaits and reality finally comes home. Slightly darker in tone but with some gentle humour, Hsiao hsien stresses the importance of a good education and a proper start in life in this poetic and at times sentimental rites of passage drama. MT

CUTE GIRL IS NOW ON MUBI | HOU HSIAO-HSIEN: THREE FILMS 1980-83 MASTERS OF CINEMA  

 

 

 

 

Canada Now Festival | 3-6 May 2018

CANADA NOW festival brings the best of new Canadian cinema to the Curzon Soho London, before a ten-film national tour of the UK .

The festival opens with the London premiere of RUMBLE: THE INDIANS WHO ROCKED THE WORLD, a searingly entertaining feature documentary exploring the Indigenous influence on blues, folk, jazz, rock, rap and metal. The Festival will close with LET THERE BE LIGHT, a documentary based on the true story of how scientists from 37 countries have come together in the south of France in an attempt to build the most complex machine ever attempted: An artificial sun.

Alongside seven premieres, CANADA NOW also includes a repertory screening of Patricia Rozema’s 1987 masterpiece I’VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING. 

This second edition tackles a broad range of stories, from issues of race in BLACK COP, to matters of the heart in MEDITATION PARK and from addiction drama in MARY GOES ROUND to matters of divine intervention in ALL YOU CAN EAT BUDDHA.

CANADA NOW | MAY 2018 | NATIONWIDE 

A Gentle Creature (2017)

Dir: Sergei Loznitsa | Cast: Vasilina Makovtseva |143min | Drama

A Gentle Creature is a short story by Dostoevsky, narrated by a middle-aged pawnbroker whose wife kills herself. The tale was first adapted by Robert Bresson in 1969 as his first colour film. Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s sombre screen adaptation is a disquieting psychodrama that imagines the bitter frustration of a descent into Hell for its central character, an earnest young woman trying to track down her husband in the intractable Russian prison system.

This parable about contemporary bureaucracy and human rights it is also a cynical takedown of ‘everyman’. The woman, played thoughtfully by Vasilina Makovtseva, has decent intentions that lead her into a nightmarish journey that never ends. The film works on two levels: as a Kafkaesque psychological thriller and a brazen indictment of Russian society. A bit long at over two hours but deadly potent none the less.

From her ramshakle cottage in the middle of nowhere, the woman sets off to personally re-deliver a parcel of homemade food and clothing, returned to her by the prison authorities. The claustrophobic bus journey is fraught with vile and unhelpful characters who bicker and bait each other, spouting vile opinions that provide rich insight into Russian society and its current concerns. The most memorable scene is a mesmerising dream sequence that glistens with shades of Kubrick s Eyes Wide Shut offering the characters she meets along the way an opportunity to expound on the greatness of Mother Russia, but this culminates with a brutal rape scene as the woman is driven away in a van, full of misguided hope of visiting her husband. Loznita’s  modern day ‘Dante’s Inferno’ has no happy end. It is a mournful but moving reflection on the misery of mankind and the unkindness of strangers populating our broken society. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 16 APRIL 2018

 

 

 

 

Custody (2017) ****

Dir|Writer: Xavier Legrand | Denis Menochet, Lea Drucker, Thomas Gioria, Mathilde Auneveu | 93’

A broken marriage leads to a bitter custody battle in this intense family drama than won the coveted Best Director award at Venice for Xavier Legrand.

There have been some superb movies made about custody battles. This riveting drama from French actor-director Xavier Legrand is certainly among the best, braced by the filmmaker’s unerring authority and sense of what to do next, scene after scene, as the family at its centre splinters into chaos.

As Custody opens, Miriam and Antoine Besson have just divorced. Their young son, Julien, sits in family court reading out a letter denouncing his father. His sister, Josephine, having recently reached the age of majority, is not part of the dispute. Antoine is described as a violent monster, yet in court appears to be a model of calm reserve. Despite Miriam’s appeals for sole custody — also Julien’s preference — the judge gives the parents shared custody. And Antoine is not a two-dimensional beast. He tries to re-establish a relationship with a son who feels paralyzed by the competing emotional demands of his father and his mother, who will stop at nothing to remove both Julien and herself from her ex-husband’s life.

Custody is harrowing and complex, a domestic nightmare that unfolds to reveal an inventory of abuses both overt and subtle. Denis Ménochet and Léa Drucker are finely attuned to these demands as Antoine and Miriam, while Thomas Gioria inhabits the haunted Julien with heartwrenching naturalism. Legrand dissects the Bessons’ family dynamic coolly, with impressive restraint and intuition, yet still evokes profound sympathy for his protagonists. The result is mesmerizing.

Xavier Legrand is a French actor, writer, and director who received his training at the National Conservatory of Paris. His short film Just Before Losing Everything (13) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. Custody (17) is his debut feature film.

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 APRIL 2018

 

House Without Roof (2017) **** | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Soleen Yusef; Cast: Mina Sadic, Sasun Sayan, Murat Seven, Wedad Sabri, Ahmet Zirek; Iraq/Germany/Qatar 2016, 117 min.

Writer/director Soleen Yusef was born to Kurdish parents, and emigrated to Germany with her family when she was nine. The intricate script is one of the highlights of this self-assured and densely plotted debut, a convincingly fraught road movie, which is actually her graduation film from the Baden-Würtemberg Film School.

After the fall of Sadam Hussein, Kurdish siblings Liya (Sadic), Jan (Sayan) and Alan (Seven) are not getting on well in their new life in Germany. Their mother Gule (Sabri) wants to go back with them  to their Kurdish homeland, but the rather wayward Alan will have nothing of it. Gule dies suddenly and her Will reveals the request to be buried next to her husband – a hero from the war against Iraq in 1990 – on Kurdish soil. The three siblings cannot agree about anything so make their separate ways back to Duhok, where Liya meets a taxi driver, who will play a significant role in the forthcoming odyssey. They all finally come together in the house of uncle Ferad (Zirek), and it becomes clear that well-balanced Jan (whose wife is expecting a child back in Germany) has a secret. When Ferad categorically denies the siblings the right to bury their mother next to their father, the real facts starts to emerge about this so-called father who was anything but a hero: he was a traitor who took his own life. Their final journey back to the village is fraught with ups and down as the truth is finally revealed.

Yusef deftly masters her material, keeping the plot together, despite near-surrealistic incident made more bizarre by the awkward trio conversing in German. Liya, whose name means ‘Patience’ in translation, is just the opposite. DoP Stephan Burchardt’s lively handheld camera creates the right look for this topsy-turvy family drama, mixing close-ups mixed with long panning shots over the glorious landscape. Sadic leads the brilliant cast, never wavering from her efforts to put her foot down in a male dominated society – even if she has to copy some bad habits of the opposite sex. AS

SCREENING DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The Legend of the Ugly King (2018) | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Hüseyin Tabak; Documentary with Yilmaz Güney, Fatos Güney, Elif Güney-Putün, Nebahat Cehre, Donat Keusch, Serif Goren, Costa Gavras, Patrick Boussier, Canan Gerede; Germany/Austria 2017, 122 min.

German born director Hüseyin Tabak (Deine Schönheit ist nichts wert) treads a careful line in this frank portrait of the Kurdish film director and political activist Yilmaz Güney (1937-1984) – a man with personal flaws but undeniable talent.

Yilmaz Güney was born in Andana, Anatolia in Southern Turkey to Kurdish parents – and heritage he was proud of for he rest of his life. After studying economics at Istanbul University, he became a screen actor in as many as 111 features and later gained the sobriquet ‘The ugly King’, after playing a gangster in the 1967 film of the same name. In 1960 and 1962 he was imprisoned for political reasons, and directed his first feature in 1965. After establishing his own production company with early 1970s social realist fare such as Umut (Hope), Agit (Elegy), Aci (Pain) and Hopeless – far removed from the entertainment films he had starred in beforehand. In 1972 he was arrested again for harbouring radical students, and was later imprisoned during pre-production of Zavallilar (The Miserable) in 1975. The timing of his arrest was crucial, since he was completing his 1974 film Endise (Worry), which was finished by his assistant Serif Gören, who would become a regular stand in during his prision stays, particularly during Güney’s long internment between 1974 and 1981. The filmaker was released under an amnesty in 1974, but re-arrested in the same year for shooting dead a district attorney near his birthplace of Adana. In the trial, it became clear, that the incident was part of a drunken brawl, and Güney had absolute no intention of killing his victim. But he state judiciary changed trial judges three times, and finally Güney was convicted for murder and sentenced to 19 years in prison. In his cell, he wrote his masterpieces directed by Zeki Okten: Suru (The Herd), 1978 and Dusman (The Enemy) 1979. A year later, the new military Junta declared all of Güney’s films banned, and a year later the director escaped from prison, helped by the American director Canan Gerede, and his Austrian producer Donat Keusch, who bribed prison wards and border soldiers with “whores and money”. Güney was being granted asylum in France by President Mitterand, after Germany and other West European countries had refused to grant him this status. In the following year, at the Cannes Film Festival, Güney’s Yol (directed again by Goren) won the Golden Palme, sharing it with Costa-Gavras’ Missing, the latter having fled from the Greek Junta to France. A year before his death of cancer in 1984, Güney directed his last feature, Duvar (The Wall) in France.

Güney’s first marriage was to the Turkish actress Nebahat Cehre, who had co-starred in many of his films. The marriage only lasted from 1966 to 1968, after which Cehre asked for a divorce, after her husband had tried to run her over with his car after an argument, breaking her collarbone in the process. Interviewed, she stated, that her ex told her in hospital “that I could be sure, that he did not wanted to hit me with the car”. Güney had a daughter from a former relationship, Elif Güney Putun, whom he hardly ever saw. But Tabak quotes from one of Güney’s film’s, were a child is called Elif, and her (film) fate bears resemblance to the one of his neglected daughter. When shooting The Wall in 1983, French filmmaker Patrick Blossier was allowed to shoot a documentary of the making of the feature, and was surprised, how much freedom Güney gave him. The excerpts we see are rather frightening: he making a big scene with the translator, after the latter misheard Güney’s directives. Worse, the latter shouts and raves at an actor, a young boy, who tried in vain to cry. After the day’s shooting, Güney tried to make up for his brutal behavior, telling the boy, how much he loved him.

Tabak, who discussed the structure of the film with fellow director Michael Haneke, tries his best to give the professional the personal Egos of Güney enough space, sometimes one feels his embarrassment at this ‘hero’s’ vicious machismo. But Tabak delivers a very satisfying statement on filmmaking, history and the male psyche. AS

ON RELEASE DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 15 April 2018

Even When I Fall (2017)

Dir.: Sky Neal/Kate McLarnon; Documentary with Saraswoti, Sheetal; UK 2017, 95 min.

Sky Neal and Kate McLarnon’s incredible documentary explores how victims of child trafficking manage to build new lives out of their tragic past in Nepal’s first circus.

That said, the facts are pretty grim: human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal activity on the planet: 20.9 million people are used for slave labour of different kinds, 10 000 women and children are trafficked from Nepal to India a year.

One of these kids was Saraswoti, abandoned by her family at the age of eight, she ended up working in an Indian circus along with many other trafficked children from Nepal. She married the owner’s son when she was 14, and had three children at the age of 17. The death of her father-in-law and husband finally set her free, after the circus went bankrupt. Sheetal does not know her exact age, but she worked eight years in a circus in India and cannot remember any members her family after being re-united – she is sensitive enough to pretend otherwise. Situations like this lead to the stigmatisation of the children, since the parents easily transfer their guilt (often claiming naivety, when they deny their guilt), to the returning survivors.

Furthermore, the circus milieu has a very negative, sinful connotation in Nepal, which made it even more brave for Saraswoti and Sheetal to found the first Nepalese circus in Khatmandu with eleven other young survivors of trafficking. But their circus work is only part of their fight-back to create a new identity; they combine their performances with outreach work, leafleting extensively in the visiting towns where they meet with parents to warn them about the false promises of modern slavery’s gang-leaders.

After a long fight with the authorities, Circus Kathmandu finally secured visas to perform in Dubai and Glastonbury. But the triumph was short lived, because the devastating earthquake in Nepal in 2015 worsening the situation at home again, escalating poverty and given the traffickers carte blanche to recruit.

Six years in the making, this is an illuminating testament to the circus-workers suffering. Robbed of their childhood and education, they have fought back: the graceful images of Sarwoti performing, and Sheetal’s poise when freefalling from the titular silk robes, will stay longest in the memory.

Most documentary filmmakers leave their subjects behind for good after finishing their feature. But this film team has raised funding at the end of 2017 from Comic Relief: the Circus Kathmandu can thus continue their outreach work, travelling to areas known for trafficking: performances and education will go on hand-in-hand. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 APRIL 2018

 

London Spanish Film Festival | 13-15 April 2018

The Eighth London Spanish Film festival takes place in London from 13-15 April offering a chance to see recent festival outings that may only get a limited release in the UK

MAY GOD SAVE US | Que Dios nos perdone ****
Dir. Rodrigo Sorogoyen, with Antonio de la Torre, Roberto Álamo, Javier Pereira | Spain | 2016 | 127 min. | cert. 15 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Two detectives work out their own troubled relationship when investigating a series of brutal crimes against elderly women. The rather aggressive Alfaro and the stuttering, insecure Velarde are played convincingly by Álamo and de la Torre respectively. Set during the Pope’s visit to Spain in the hot summer of 2011, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s crime drama is a rich character study, examining social tensions, the role of the police and Spanish Catholicism.

Friday’s screening will be followed by a Q&A with Antonio de la Torre

Fri 13 April | 6.10pm | £12, conc. 11 | Regent Street Cinema Sun 15 April | 5.45pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

THE BOOKSHOP ***

Dir. Isabel Coixet, with Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson, James Lance | Spain/UK/Germany | 2017 | 113 min. | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | Special preview courtesy of Vertigo

Isabel Coixet’s rather turgid drama is enlivened by three superb performances from Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy and Patricia Clarkson in this screen adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1978 feminist novel that sees a young widow (Mortimer) struggling with the ruthless opposition from a local grand dame (Clarkson) when she opens a literary emporium in a small English town, tempting an elegant batchelor out of reclusive retirement and into her arms. Enriched by a voiceover from Julie Christie and Alfonso de Vilallonga’s score, the film garnered several Goyas for Best Film as well as Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay awards for Coixet.

Fri 13 April | 8.50pm | £12, conc. £11 | Regent Street Cinema

CAN’T SAY GOODBYE | No sé decir adiós ***
Dir. Lino Escalera, with Juan Diego, Nathalie Poza, Lola Dueñas | Spain | 2017 | 96 min. | cert. 15 | In Spanish with English subtitles | London premiere

Anchored by a standout performance from Nathalie Poza, Lino Escalera’s award-winning feature debut is an intense and emotional road movie that explores contemporary and traditional Spanish values through the story of a young woman and her estranged and ailing father.

Sat 14 April |6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

ABRACADABRA

Dir. Pablo Berger, with Maribel Verdú, Antonio de la Torre, José Mota, Josep Maria Pou, Priscilla Delgado, Quim Gutiérrez, Julián Villagrán | Spain/France/Belgium | 2017 | 96 min. | In Spanish with English subtitles

Maribel Verdu stars as a long-suffering football widow in Pablo Berger’s zany domestic melodrama with touches of magic realism and horror thrown into the mix. An intense and inventive follow-up to his 2012 hit Blancanieves.

Followed by a Q&A with actor Antonio de la Torre
Sat 14 April | 8.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Regent Street Cinema

SUNDAY’S ILLNESS | La enfermedad de los domingos

Dir. Ramón Salazar, with Susi Sánchez, Bárbara Lennie, Greta Fernández, Miguel Ángel Solá, Richard Bohringer, Manuel Castillo | Spain | 2018 | 113 min. | cert. 15 | In Spanish and French with English subtitles | UK premiere

A mother and daughter reunion is at the core of Ramon Salazar’s thematically rich character drama that explores the complex tensions and the mixed love-hate emotions between a daughter and her stoic mother. Barbara Lennie and Susi Sanchez acts their hearts out supported by Ricardo de Gracia’s photography, Sylvia Steinbrecht’s art direction and Clara Bilbao’s costumes.

Sun 15 April | 4.30pm | £12, conc. 11 | Regent Street Cinema

LOTS OF KIDS, A MONKEY AND A CASTLE | Muchos hijos, un mono y un castillo

Dir. Gustavo Salmerón, with Julieta Salmerón, Gustavo Salmerón | Spain | 2017 | 90 min. | doc | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | Special preview courtesy of Dogwoof

Lots of kids, a monkey and a castle were Julieta Salmerón’s dreams as a little girl. And she got them all. Gustavo Salmerón, better known in Spain for his work as an actor, this is a documentary tribute to his mother who emerges a delightfully pragmatic woman, optimistic and somewhat extraordinary as well as eccentric; she keeps some of her grandfather’s backbones and her parents’ ashes and teeth at home.The film garnered several awards including Best Documentary at the Goyas and Karlovy Vary, a became a box office hit in Spain.

Sun 15 April | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL | 13-15 APRIL 2018 

Ash is Purest White (2018) ****

Dir: Zhangke Jia | Cast: Tao Zhao, Fan Liao, Xiaogang Feng | Drama | China | 140’

ASH IS PUREST WHITE portrays the eventful relationship between a Chinese petty criminal and the woman whose loyalty to him never dies. This rolling contemplative saga occasionally veers off the beaten track with its indulgent running time of 141 minutes but will still appeal to the director’s ardent followers, featuring the same rough-edged characters who we first meet in 2001 and follow until the bittersweet denouement on New year’s Eve 2018.

Star of Shanxi’s creative community Jia Zhang-ke trained as an architect near his native mining town of Fenyang, just South of Beijing, and brings his aesthetic flair and some magnificent landscapes to this lasting love story set in a dying era. The director’s forte is his graceful way of portraying China’s traditional way of life with its penchant for ceremonial drumming and white-gloved officials, with the chaotic new era vibrantly captured in Eric Gautier’s resplendent camerawork.

Opening in 2001 in his Shanxi homeland, his wife and regular collaborator Zhao Tao plays the confident delicate local beauty Qiao, who frequents the nightclub of her boyfriend Guo Bin (Liao Fan/Black Coal, Thin Ice). And she is no arm candy, establishing herself as a keen advocate of the traditional jianghu codes of loyalty while embracing the modern world, spryly dancing to Village People’s YMCA.

Respectful of her ageing father she is more playfully assertive with Bin, and when he is assaulted by thugs on motorbikes, she manages to save him by firing shots into the air in a brutal scene that really takes our breath away, but also secures her a spell in prison where she is unwilling to grass on her boyfriend about the ownership of the firearm.

The second act is an upbeat affair that follows Qiao’s release in 2006, and treats us to a sumptuous journey down the Yangtze River in another nod to the sinking glory of the old China versus the brash new world. Qin has proved a feckless boyfriend and is no longer on the scene, but Qiao is keen not to let him slip away so easily, after her sustained loyalty. And when she is robbed of her cash and passport, she bounces back cleverly in some amusing scenes where she gate-crashes a wedding to enjoy the banquet, desperate for food. Qiao finally confronts Bin in a soulful and moving episode that is visually captivating for its exquisitely calm contemplation of the end of their romance.

As we leave Qiao she is running a gambling hall, and Bin is back in her life, attracted to her strength of character and tenacity. The two actors are mesmerising to watch in their commandingly restrained yet natural performances, exuding a fascinating chemistry that will remain in the memory for a long time after the credits have rolled. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 26th APRIL 2019

 

Wonderstruck (2017) ***

Dir: Todd Haynes | Cast: Julianne Moore, Toby Jones, Michelle Williams | Amy Hargreaves | US | Drama | 120min

Scripted by Brian Selznick based on his 2011 novel, Todd Haynes follows his gorgeously sumptuous Carol with twee and self-indulgent schmaltz. It follows similarly nostalgic lines, the childhood wonder and magic connected to happy memories of the past. But the retrospective often magical reveries finally emerging in a narrative voiceover require us to marvel at the serendipity of fate. Often we remember what we chose to and clothe it in swathes of golden glory. Wonderstruck is by no means a bad film but it often feels disingenuous and sentimentally saccharine – it is a film that congratulates itself it a glow of smugness composed of an intertwining narrative that sashays back and forth about two aurally-impaired children who grow up at different moments in time, who are lonely and head for the bright lights of the city away from the unhappiness of their rural homes.

Ben (Oakes Fegley) is a troubled kid from Gunflint, Minnesota whose single mother (Michelle Williams) was killed in a car crash before he got to know the identity of his father. When he hits the big time arriving in 1970s New York (a lovely imaginative scenes and one of the best in the film) he finds a book with a message to his mother from a person called Danny and decides to follow up on the address written there. The narrative then flips back to 1927 where Rose (Millicent Simmonds) is entranced by a Hollywood silent movie star Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore). Rose also makes her way to the big City to see her idol perform on the stage. And the two stories collide through their characters’ mutual fascination with the Museum of Natural History. Rose’s strand is the weaker and least convincing of the two. To say that her love of silent movies is connected to her deafness is rather glib and completely overlooks the vital component of orchestral accompaniment that brings this form alive. Although Ben’s strand is more engaging it lacks the ability to deal with major plotholes and inconsistencies that culminate in its absurd denouement. Wonderstuck is certainly well-meaning but ends up being worthy and caught up with its own importance in some of the longueurs in the museum. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 APRIL 2018

 

 

Thoroughbreds (2017) ***

Dir.: Corey Finley; Cast: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Paul Sparks, Francis Swift; US 2016, 91′

THOROUGHBREDS is an impressive debut by director Corey Finley, who adapted the stylish neo-noir thriller from his own play. It’s a razor sharp portrayal of the set it sends up, but just a little bit to sleek to be totally convincing.

In wealthy, rural Connecticut, school friends Amanda (Cooke) and Lily (Taylor-Joy) are re-united by Amanda’s mother (Swift), who has sensed that Lily is an outcast after killing a sick horse in a very gruesome way. Amanda is fully aware of this, and she tries to lure Lily into a plot to murder her obnoxious stepfather Mark (Sparks) who wants her to go to a college for mal-adjusted students instead of one of her choice. Lily comes up with a great idea involving local lowlife Tim (Yelchin, superb in his last role). The pair try to trick Tim into doing the deadly deed, but he gets cold feet at the last minute. After accusing Amanda of being “not high on empathy” – fair statement – Lily is asked not to drink a knock-out cocktail by Amanda, who mixed it. But Lily is hell-bent on proving that she can outdo her friend.

The teenagers are a merciless duo, not really evil but full of malicious intent stemming from the privileges of their upbringing. There is also a good amount of believing all sort of half-baked theories, and finally, in Lily’s case, a sense of morbidity – drawing comparison with Heavenly Creatures. Yelchin is brilliant in the role of the sex-offender who seems to fall into the trap set for him, but just in time gets his neck out of a noose so carefully designed for him by the girls. Amanda’s step-dad is very menacing, the sounds of a rowing machine he seems to be addicted to, mix eerily with Erik Friedlander’s atonal score. Lyle Vincent’s handheld camera shows the teens’ disturbing dialogues against the opulent backdrop: the night time is their favoured setting, during the day they fade, like vampires, into a washed-out blue. Finley directs with great panache, his characters all more or less damaged, are trapped from the get-go. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 6 APRIL 2018 NATIONWIDE

Sleeping Dogs (1977) | Bluray release

Dir: Roger Donaldson | Sam Neill, Warren Oates | 107′ | NZ Thriller

Tightly scripted and tense, SLEEPING DOGS is the gritty political action thriller that revolutionised New Zealand filmmaking, kicking off its New Wave movement at a time when the country was not well known for its cinema, at the end of the 1970s. Resonating with audiences at home and abroad with its themes of politics and personal struggle, it also launched the Hollywood careers of Sam Neill (Possession) and director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out). Neill, in his first lead role, plays a mercurial young man escaping his failed marriage and two kids by taking temporary refuge in an island off the Coromandel Peninsula Meanwhile at home, political turmoil and an oil embargo leading to civil war is drawing him slowly but surely back into its claws. Warren Oates is also brought into the conflict as the commander of a US army unit. Together, they fight against the country’s dictatorship, in a narrative based on C K Stead’s novel Smith’s Dream. Amazingly, Donaldson enlists the cooperation of the NZ Air Force in this entertainingly subversive and occasionally surreal action thriller. MT.

ON BLURAY COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS FROM 16 APRIL 2018

120 BPM (2017) ***

Dir: Robin Campillo Writer: Robin Campillo | Cast: Nahuel Perez Biscayart, Arnaud Valois, Adele Haenel, Yves Heck, Coralie Russier | 135min | Drama | French

Robin Campillo’s follow up to Eastern Boys is a cinéma vérité style drama that reflects  his own years as an AIDS activist during Mitterand’s 1990s government. It makes a brave and honest attempt to communicate the frustration felt by many sufferers of the disease through an organisation that calls itself Act Up.

120 BEATS feels quite conventional in style, and clearly Campillo feels so strongly about the film’s themes that he has decided not to be too ambitious artistically – the result is rather bland and overlong at 142 minutes, but certainly valuable as a lasting testament to the era, and a fight that continues. Most impressive are the naturalistic performances, particularly from Hanaele as the strong-minded Sophie, and the evocative score with tunes from Bronski Beat.

The film opens with during a rowdy meeting of Act Up in a brightly lit venue where clicking of fingers replaces clapping as a signal of approval. The group’s members, not all sufferes, are encouraged to be vocal and expressive. There follows a raucous demonstration in the offices of a drug company refusing to release its test results. There are romantic interludes with rather overplayed graphic sex that takes place between the feisty young Chilean French Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), who has fully blown Aids,  as he falls for HIV-negative Nathan (Arnaud Valois). Their relationship is only really examined in the light of Sean’s illness and none of characters is fleshed out enough for us to engage with their plight, which is a shame.

Artistically there are one or two inventive flourishes such as when the sparkles from the disco lights are transformed into the virus, but it’s clear that Campillo does not want to cloud his central message with aesthetic mastery. Also, the aggressive energy generated by some of the more unappealing characters make it difficult for us to feel for them in their plight, despite Campillo’s witty script. Beats per Minutes has garnered much critical acclaim for its important subject matter, but a worthy theme alone does not make film brilliant and this is a decent but unremarkable third feature from Campillo. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 6 APRIL THROUGH CURZON | PREVIEWING AT BFI FLARE

Heimat – A German Chronicle (1984) | Bluray release

Dir.: Edgar Reitz; Cast: Marita Breuer, Dieter Schaad, Michael Lesch, Rudiger Weingang, Eva Maria Bayerswaltes, Karin Rasenack, Michael Kausch, Peter Harting, Jorg Richter, Jorg Hube, Gudrun Landgrebe, Gertrud Bredel; West Germany 1984, 924 min.

Edgar Reitz was originally intending to publish Heimat as a semi-autobiographical novel but a meeting with producer Joachim von Mengershausen inspired him to film this as a chronicle of Germany’s wartime social history set in the imaginary village of Schabbach, from 1919 to 1982. He was especially keen to avoid the phoney undertones of the US soap opera ‘Holocaust’ (which ironically went down very well with German TV audiences). HEIMAT (1984) is an epic achievement that captures the turbulent years of postwar economic hardship, the rise and fall of Nazism, The Second World War and the decades that followed through the prism of traditional family life rather than through the eyes of Germany’s leaders, politicians, or creatives. Marita Breuer gives a wonderful performance as the woman at the centre of it all, holding the family together as a daughter, wife and matriarch from childhood to old age.

The story begins after Germany’s routing in the Second World War that sees Paul Simon (Lesch) returning to his family in Schabbach, where he escapes the confines of the small community by building a radio and escaping into world events. He falls in love with Apollonia, but later marries Maria (Breuer). His brother Eduard (Weigang), panning for gold in a nearby river, catches pneumonia and never really recovers and is sent to Berlin for treatment. Paul suddenly ups and leaves and Maria is left with the children.

Eduard falls in love with social climber Lucie (Rasenack), who runs a brothel and talks him into joining the SA. Back in the village, another member of the Simon clan is imprisoned in a KZ, for his Communist Party leanings. Maria has now fallen in love with the engineer Otto Wohlleben, but a letter from Paul, who is living in the USA, destroys any future for them. When Paul finally remerges, arriving in Hamburg, he cannot enter the country due to to his name being misconstrued as being ‘Jewish’ – and he has no proof of his Aryan ancestry. Meanwhile Otto is defusing bombs at the front when he learns that Maria has borne him a son called Hermann who he will meet for the first time at the end of the war, when American troops arrive in the village, after the Allies’ victory in 1945, bringing with them a sense of normality – and food. Paul finally returns from the USA, his big limousine is the talk of the village. But his return is not celebrated by everyone and he soon goes back, missing the funeral of his grandmother Katherinna (Bredel). Maria lives her life through her son Hermann who is interested in music and poetry. He eventually falls for Klärchen, who is eleven years older than him. Paul has since sold his company to the Americans for a huge profit, and channels his success into helping Herman with his musical career.

The shoot ran from 1981, and took 18 months, before 13 months of editing resulted in a 15-hour potted version, down from 18 hours of rough-cut. Over ten million West Germans watched the eleven episodes. Thanks to DoP Gernot Roll, a later cinema version was internationally successful, the seemingly arbitrary changes from colour to black-and-white and back giving the chronicle of the years between 1919 and 1982 an added feature. The main premise of HEIMAT was to show how ordinary people – in this case the Germans – can easily embrace a murderous regime such as Nazism, and even in a small village like Schabbach, could tolerate the existence of the concentration camps, almost turning a blind eye. These same people went on to embrace consumerism, this time following in the footsteps of the Americans. Reitz would follow Heimat with The Second Heimat (1992), Heimat – Fragments – The Story of the Women in Heimat (2006) and Home from Home (2013) – all together another 30 hours viewing, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, which became Reitz’ second home.

HEIMAT | 30 APRIL 2018 | Newly restored version for the first time on Blu-ray as Heimat Limited Edition Box Set courtesy of Second Sight. Restored from the original negative by The Edgar Reitz Film Foundation, the set comes complete with a limited-edition luxury 50-page soft cover book and features a vast array of brand new bonus features including Edgar Reitz’s two-hour documentary ‘prologue’ to Heimat and interviews including Edgar Reitz and Marita Breuer  Weigang.

 

 

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion and Disco (2017)

Dir.: James Crump; Documentary with Antonio Lopez, Juan Ramos, Corey Tippin, Karl Lagerfeld, Jessica Lange; USA 2017, 90 min.

James Crump (Black White + Gray) pays homage to one of the most original fashion illustrators of the last century: Antonio Lopez (1943-1987) and his creative partner Juan Ramos (1942-1995) revolutionised not only the way fashion designers and illustrators worked together, but how they discovered models like Jerry Hall and Grace Jones, who might otherwise have never become world famous.

Meeting at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in the 60s, and pair set up shop in a studio above Carnegie Hall. Antonio was the extrovert artist, Juan the “art director” who stood behind his creative partner to provide structure and ideas. Although both men came from Puerto Rico, the were products of their unique New York milieu: Antonio grew up in Brooklyn and Juan in Harlem. Max’s Kansas Hotel and Hotel Chelsea feature heavily here. As does Andy Warhol who was a rival for a long time, before he exchanged portraits with Juan.

Their social ‘sets’ were strictly separated, with the exception of Donna Jordan. One could not think of more different characters: Warhol, the observer who waited until a situation developed, and Lopez, who worked for hours feverishly, needing only his muses like Jessica Lange, Patti D’Arbanville and Grace Jones (to name a few) for inspiration – and Juan for “editing”.

Lopez brought fashion to a new level: streetwise, sexy and extravagant. At a time when counter-culture exploded onto the scene these were heady times: the LGBT movement was making its mark and the Vietnam War brought millions of protesters onto the streets. The bi-sexual Antonio was a “sex machine”, changing partners on a regular basis, but often staying friends with his past paramours. His relationship with Jerry Hall – the two even got “married”, was one of the most enduring.

In 1969 Antonio and Juan moved with their entourage to Paris, where they worked with Carl Lagerfeld, an intimate enemy of Yves-Saint Laurent. The duo helped Lagerfeld to establish a pret-a-porter culture, signalling the end of the classical fashion industry – particularly the mannequins, who had hardly moved on the catwalk, now walked at a funereal pace. Antonio’s fashion models danced like disco queens. Racial taboos were broken too: Pat Cleveland was perhaps the first ever black super model.

Given access to Lopez drawings, photographs, 8-mm and 16-mm films by the designer’s heir, Paul Caranicas, Crump has realised the fantasy of his teenage years in rural Indiana, “when Lopez magical life and milieu aroused me to no end and made me fantasize about the early 1970 in New York and Paris”.

With music by Donna Summer, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes, this feature is a hell of a ride: the dawn of a new style of living, the innocence of this first generation, who challenged gender as well as art, their innocence and unawareness of the future would bring Aids, and both Antonio and Juan would become victims. AS

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

The Dinner (2017) *** DVD release

Dir.: Oren Moverman; Cast: Richard Gere, Laura Linley, Rebecca Hall, Steve Coogan, Charlie Plummer, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Miles J. Harvey, Cloe Sevigney; USA 2017, 120 min.

Oren Moverman (Time out of Mind) is the third director to brings Herman Koch’s 2009 novel to the screen. By introducing more characters and a reflection of the battle of Gettysburg, he delivers less punch than his predecessors Menno Meyjes and Ivano de Matteo who stayed very close to the original where two sets of parents try to cover up their offsprings’ serious crime History teacher Paul (Coogan) is not keen to join his wife Claire (Linley) at a posh restaurant, for dinner with his brother Stan – who is running for governor – and his second wife Kate (Hall). The rivalry of the brothers is well documented in flashbacks, along with a meeting at the scene of the deciding battle of the American Civil War, where both men reflect on the dominance of violence in American history. Little does Paul know that the dinner guests are well aware of the ghastly murder committed by his son Nick (Plummer) and Stan’s offspring Rick (Davey-Fitzpatrick), burning a homeless to death. The dinner courses are used as chapter headings, and the hilarious serving ceremony by an army of waiters brings light relief to the brutal contents. Stan’s PA, who is in the lobby, also interrupts the discussions, since a vote in House and the forthcoming elections have to be organised. Surprisingly, Stan is alone in wanting the teenagers punished. The others invent excuses, and in the end, Paul goes so far as to try to kill his brother’s adopted son Bean, who is awre of the crimes. The evening ends in pandemonium, the protagonists stripped of their bourgeois masks, defending their tribe with violence, like a pack of wild animals.

The problem here is that Moverman dilutes the plot, with references to Paul’s mental illness, and Stan mentioning the history of these health issues in the family. Furthermore, the introduction of Stan’s first wife Barbara (Sevigney) in the flashbacks, makes this meal feel overstuffed and verbose: more theatre than film, as Coogan, particularly, milking his role for what its worth. DoP Bobby Bukowski (Arlington Road) uses film-noir elements in the restaurant scenes, creating an unreal atmosphere. Moverman’s mealy-mouthed treatment results in a bloated  affair that drifts around desperate for the concentrated flavour of the novel. AS

DVD release on Monday 2nd April.

Between Land and Sea (2017) ***

Dir: Ross Whittaker | Doc| Ireland |87′

Between Land and Sea shows how a little village can change from one season to the next and from a generation to the one that follows as its population struggles not only to survive but to make the most of a sustainable existence. There are only so many crashing waves, glorious sunsets and smiling locals one can admire for 96 minutes, and whether Whittaker’s film can sustain interest in the absence of an engrossing narrative arc is the only criticism here.

Once famous for its golfing activity, Lahinch, Co. Clare now buzzes during the summer months when surfers flock to its wild Atlantic seascapes featuring the cliffs of Moher to capture the mammoth waves. At the end of the season the place recedes back into the emerald landscape taken over by its regular population, nature and the elements.

The film opens as the New Year descends on Lahinch, shops boarded up but behind closed doors villagers who have decided to make their lives to this ravishing part of Ireland are eeking out a meagre existence preparing for the coming season when the Easter weekend will see the return of tourists to fill their coffers once again. We then get a close-up view of the villagers’ lives in and out of the water: Tom Doige-Harrison (and his Spanish wife Raquel Ruido Rodriguez), Ollie O’Flaherty, Fergal Smith, John McCarthy and Dexter McCullough, along with Pat Conway and get to learn how they are make ends meet in this glorious back to nature idyll. Champion surfer Shane Dorian also makes an appearance.

If nothing else, Between Land and Sea serves as an imressive travelogue for those interested in the popular destinations of Riley’s Wave and Aileen’s Wave on this stunning Atlantic coastline captured in Kevin Smith’s impressive aerial and in-water camerawork which provides some breathtaking shots. MT

ON RELEASE AT CURZON BLOOMSBURY + SELECTED SCREENS

 

Mellow Mud | Es Esmu Seit (2016) | European Hidden Gems Collection

Dir.: Renars Vimba; Cast: Elina Vaska, Andžejs Jānis Lilientāls, Edgars Samitis, Ruta Bitgere, Zane Jancevska; Latvia 2016, 106 min.

Renars Vimba makes his filmmaking debut with an intense coming-of-age story, brilliantly acted by Elina Vaska who brings emotional depth to the subtle changes between tomboyishness and womanhood. Vimba too directs with a spare economy that never overstates the pent-up emotions of his heroine.

Seventeen-year old Raja (Elina Vaska) and her much younger brother Robis (Andžejs Jānis Lilientāls) are left to fend for themselves after tragedy touches their modest life in rural Latvia, leaving them bereft of their parents and at the mercy of their difficult grandmother (Bitgere), who soon after succumbs to a heart attack. Raja decides to bury the old woman, telling nobody of her demise, not even their social worker (Jancevska). But sudden responsibility for her brother and the family’s orchard, which she takes over at the expense of her education, is a sobering experience. With a bit of resourcefulness and strong English skills Raja decides to enter a nationwide English competition which she wins, to surprise of everyone, apart from herself. The prize is a trip to London and a short-lived affair with her teacher (Edgars Samitis), which is doomed, largely due to their age difference. Baffled and hurt, Raja sets off to London to find her mother, who left her address on an envelope. Meanwhile, Robis is taken into an orphanage after the social worker finds out they are both orphans.

Drawing comparisons with the work of Ian McEwan (Cement Garden), the Dardennes Brothers, and the black-and-white images of 1960s British Realism, DoP Arnar Thor Thorisson uses bleached, muted colours, and shades of grey to underpin this lean affair that tackles thorny issues of childhood abandonment and prescient resignation. The London scenes are extremely powerful, Raja shrinking literally in the harsh and hectic life of the metropolis. This is a melancholic journey about loss, disillusionment and the total absence of adult responsibility.

SCREENING DURING THE EUROPEAN HIDDEN GEMS FILM COLLECTION

 

 

 

 

Hell Drivers (1957) **** | Bluray release

Dir: Cy Endfield | Writer: John Kruse | Cast: Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins, Patrick McGoohan, William Hartnell. Sidney James | 108′ | Crime Drama

“They fight to the death – and their weapons are ten-ton trucks.” So screams the poster publicity for Hell Drivers. This tough and tautly directed thriller unconsciously echoes the lorry driver tribulations of Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear and anticipates the internal combustion engine, as monster, in Spielberg’s Duel. The Wikipedia entry for Hell Drivers actually supplies a credit for the vehicles “The Doge 100 Kew” parrot-nosed truck, with a tipper body.” The trucks are as much a star of this film as are the macho guys who manically drive them, loaded with gravel, on 20 mile round trips.

Tom Yeates (Stanley Baker), just released from prison, gets a job as truck driver after seeing Carley, (William Hartnell) the manager for a local building contractor. He soon meets Red (Patrick McGoohan), the head Irish driver and violent bully. Lucy (Peggy Cummins), the manager’s secretary, is dating driver Gino Rossi (Herbert Lom), but is really more interested in Tom. Red and Tom compete fiercely and dangerously to be the top driver so they can claim a gold cigarette case (their prize and flashy symbol of strength). Meanwhile, Hell Drivers’ sub-plots of managerial corruption, loyal male friendships and the attraction of the hardly conflicted Lucy, all simmer in the pot for this powerful duel.

Hell Drivers is fascinating for its Americanisation of the parochial British thriller of the 1950s. Director Cy Endfield (a victim of the McCarthy purges) is an émigré who directs as if whipping up a posse pursuit in a Western, with a nod to that Warner Brothers melodrama about truck driving: They Drive by Night: all the action being sharply spiked by an angry script about worker exploitation. Yet Hell Drivers seems to address conflicting forms of masculinity rather than small business swindles in today’s climate.

Stanley Baker is outstanding as Tom. It’s a perfect role for his idiosyncratic fiery Welsh temperament. Baker consistently expresses a potent mix of surface menace and suppressed tenderness. He cares, yet doesn’t really care. Baker’s wayward “devil may care” persona was always impatient to get things done and achieve a kind of class justice in a treacherous world. His acting had a fantastic edge. He was at his very best when directed by Cy Endfield and Joseph Losey: exhibiting a Celtic Brando-like power (minus any method acting) that gripped you by the throat and worth a quote from critic David Thomson here.

“Until the early 1960s, Baker was the only male lead in the British cinema who managed to suggest contemptuousness, aggression, and the working class. He is the first hint of proletarian male vigour against the grain….”

Patrick McGoohan was compelling in the role of Red. But unlike Baker he is a bit too self-consciously acting for effect. He was a highly individual and intense performer who was most famous for his TV work on Danger Man and, of course, the iconic The Prisoner. In The Prisoner he was always searching to find ‘No 1’. Whilst in Hell Drivers he is the foreman driver of the ‘No 1’ truck. After several viewings of Hell Drivers I’m beginning to think that Red is just a bit too much of a stereotyped baddie. McGoohan snarls his way through the film as if aping Lee Marvin on a bad day. Or prefiguring an imitation of Eli Wallach in a spaghetti western. Yet in spite of the hugely enjoyable over-acting, Red’s character doesn’t flaw the realism of Hell Drivers: it works to provoke the Tom character to discover some moral virtue behind his gritty attitude.

The third element of masculine force is Gino – finely played by Herbert Lom. Any caricature of an Italian abroad in a rough community, is avoided. True, he does have a Catholic side, in the form of a prayer-room point in the lodging house. But religious sentimentality, mama mias and a love of pasta are absent. Lom touchingly stresses the sensitivity and kindness of Gino. He acts as a feminine catalyst between the opposing forces of Tom and Red: pairing himself up with the tough Lucy (a strong performance from Peggy Cummins).

All the characters in Hell Drivers – including the minor supporting actors, such as a very young Sean Connery – keep testing one another. And not simply on a testosterone tough guy level. They’re challenged by the company’s demand for profit and hence their need for insanely reckless driving. Through an exposure of the cheating management, Red does eventually receive his come-uppance and Tom, a form of salvation, or more specifically he comes to his senses and might be a changed man.

The crisp photography of Geoffrey Unsworth; tight editing; expertly-used locations and a strong pace to the story make for an exciting film. Although the benefits of American materialism hadn’t yet fully hit British society, our cinema was invigorated by the intervention of outsider Cy Endfield (and soon after by Joseph Losey with Blind Date and The Criminal both starring an even more intimidating Stanley Baker). And what with Hammer’s Dracula and the British New Wave waiting in the wings, sedate manners trembled. ALAN PRICE©2018

NOW AVAILABLE ON BLURAY | NETWORK

Crowhurst (2017) ****

Dir: Simon Rumley | Cast: Justin Salinger, Amy Loughton, Haydn May, Marcus May, Austin May, Agatha Cameron Kettle | UK | Drama | 104′

Following on from Colin Firth’s portrayal of Donald Crowhurst in The Mercy, comes Simon Rumley’s biopic drama casting Justin Salinger in the role of the lone British yachtsman who disappeared while sailing round the world in 1968.

This is the strange but true story of a wannabe hero who bottled out without leaving a message when his attempt to circumnavigate the globe hit troubled waters. His poorly prepared vessel and delayed late autumn start didn’t help matters. Marooned in the middle of nowhere he threw in the towel when the elements conspired against him. James Marsh’s The Mercy was a decent stab at the story and enjoyable enough largely due to Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz in the lead roles. But Rumley’s low budget psychological drama is by far a better film. Leaner, meaner and infinitely more moving, it cuts straight to the chase with some salient, snappily edited opening scenes that see the entire endeavour from Crowhurst’s unique point of view. Spare on dialogue, it’s a plucky prequel to the descent into doom. Salinger’s Crowhurst is a pullover-ed Walter Mitty character whose ambition far outreaches his talent. With an ailing business on his hands, his first concern is winning the money, and his ego explodes buoyed up by the prospect of being a hero – from the safety of his chintzy armchair in Teignmouth. While Firth’s Crowhurst was more internalised about the drawbacks, trying to contain his anxiety and hide it from his family; Salinger bluffs things over with a misplaced bravado that often gets the better of him in the wee small hours when he sobs into his wife’s comforting bosom.

After the stress of the preparation, the bleached out sailing sequences are the dreamlike impressionistic focus of this trip to the nightmarish depths of claustrophobic despair. Told through the intricate details of his domestic hell inside the boat: sleepless nights, tinned food, broken equipment and flooding – all this is set to a minimal ambient score of electronic beeps and echoes as the haunting loneliness of his dread and anxiety eventually leads to the epiphany moment where he morphs into maniacal Mitty mode before madness and misadventure eventually blow his mind and puncture his spirit after a solitary slap up lunch on Christmas Day. While, on dry land, his bloated agent, wife and back-up team give rousing renditions of “Jerusalem”, ” Silent Night” and “I Vow to the My Country”, Mr Mitty is having a ghostly last tango in Argentina. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 23 MARCH 2018

 

 

The Batchelors (2017) **

Dir.: Kurt Voelker; Cast: Josh Wiggins, J.K. Simmons, Julie Delpy, Odeya Rush; USA 2017, 97 min.

Kurt Voelker follows Park with the ultimate phoney Hollywood tearjerker that spouts endless American optimism totally ignoring any basic psychological principles on its way to its sugar coated happy-end, which is revealed shortly before the story has got underway.

After the premature death of his wife, Bill Ponder (Simmons) decides to take up a teaching job at a friend’s school in California, along with his teenage son Wes (Wiggins). No sooner have they arrived before Wes takes a shine for beauty-queen Lacy (Rush), when Julie Delpy’s French mistress (Carine) puts the two of them in a homework team. After a punch up in the cafeteria. Lacy leaves her macho boyfriend for Wes and Bill eventually falls for Carine after an unbelievably ignorant psychotherapist prescribes one drug too many drugs – and electro-shock treatment also fails – Bill is ready for a foursome in the sun – but not before Wes has won the cross-country run against the odds and has Lacy to promise him to stop self-harming. Yes, the production values are passable, but any film featuring a classroom nervous with the victim (Bill) foaming at the mouth, cannot be taken seriously. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 29 MARCH 2018

The Third Murder (2017)

Dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda | Thriller | Japan | 120′
Festival favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking, Nobody Knows) offers an engrossing murder mystery about a defence lawyer who believes that his client — a self-confessed killer — is the fall guy for a conspiracy. A lengthy crime procedural provides the backbone to this luminously filmed but alienating arthouse affair that asks the question: who is judging the judges?

The central character is the suave and convincing lawyer Shigemori (Fukuyama Masaharu/Like Father, Like Son) who is called to investigate the case of a man who has spent three decades in prison for a double murder and has subsequently confessed to killing his factory-owning boss and burning his body. We witness the murder in the opening scene, so clearly Misumi (Yakusho Koji) must be guilty; strangely, it is Shigemori’s father who handed him a life sentence, instead of the death penalty, but times have changed.

The problem is that Misumi keeps changing his story, making things difficult for
Shigemori, the son of a retired judge, who is forced to keep writing and re-writing his script in order to get the most plausible defence for the murderer. To make matters worse, his own personal life is fraught with problems: estranged from his daughter, who is caught for shop-lifting, he is also separated from his wife. As he gets to know Misumi over their constant meetings, it soon emerges that their behaviour is very similar, they appear to be one in the same person, on different sides of the law.

This is a subtle but thematically rich crime thriller, brilliant in concept but less so in execution, despite Takimoto Makiya’s stunning camerawork, and Ludovico Einaudi’s moody score. The fault, at least for non-Japanese speakimg audiences, is its dialogue-led narrative which keeps us glued to the subtitles while scanning up and down the screen in case we miss vital clues, making it heavy-going, despite its universal themes rippling out to provide endless food for thought. MT

Hirokazu Kore-eda was born in Tokyo, where he studied literature at Waseda University. He is a master dramatist whose features include Maborosi (95), After Life (98), Distance (01), Nobody Knows (04), Hana (06), Still Walking (08), Air Doll (09), I Wish (11), Like Father, Like Son (13), Our Little Sister (15), and After the Storm (16), all of which have played the Festival. The Third Murder (17) is his latest film.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Happy End (2017) ***** | Home Ent release

Dir: Michael Haneke | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jean-louis Trintignant, Toby Jones, Mathieu Kassovitz, Franz Rogowski, Fantine Harduin Drama | 110min

HAPPY END is Michael Haneke’s satirical exploration of a rich family of industrialists whose dysfunctional daily lives become linked to the turbulent ongoing immigration nightmare that is Calais, thanks to the son and putative heir of the Laurent family’s building firm.

The ironically entitled HAPPY END joins Haneke’s film oeuvre with impeccable production values, sophisticated interiors and elegant performances from a starry ensemble cast, including veteran Louis Trintignant and, of course, Isabelle Huppert. This is a typical Haneke film: all his classic themes coalesce in a slow-burning treat, with an exquisitely judged script. Themes here include voyeurism, family guilt, shame, and revenge with social media and onscreen messaging topically enlightening the narrative and adding to a gritty subtext behind the beautifully manicured domestic scenes. In one involving and impromptu moment musicale for the scion’s 85th birthday (Trintignant as Georges Laurent), the female musician, a chelloist, is conducting a covert porn exchange with Thomas Laurent – revealed only to the audience as it scrolls down on his onscreen messenger.

Isabelle Huppert plays Anne Laurent, the chatelaine of the family’s Belle Epoque residence (complete with Moroccan staff) who has recently taken over the construction business from her ageing father Georges, who is stumbling on the foothills of decrepitude, and desperate to die, while actually being healthy, despite his advanced years. Recently engaged to Toby Jones’ English lawyer, and tasked with handling a UK deal involving the business, her son, Pierre (Franz Rogowski), is a non-starter prone to drunken outbursts, and her brother Thomas (Kassovitz) has a new wife, a baby and a savvy little daughter, (Harduin) from a previous marriage, who has broken into his computer and sussed his game.  So far, so dysfunctional. Meanwhile, we are treated to glimpses of the migrant crisis on the streets of the coastal city and an industrial accident on one of the Laurent’s main construction sites.

This is a malevolent movie that wears its unsettling credentials discretely hidden under its haute couture outerwear, and as in all Haneke’s fare, we know the ending will be far from happy, but provide first class entertainment from start to finish. MT

NOW ON BLURAY/DVD | 26 MARCH 2018

Oddsockeaters (2017) **** DVD release

Wri/Dir: Galina Miklinova | Animation | Czech Rep | 83′

This Czech animation cleverly makes a strangely endearing storyline out of the sock that routinely go missing in the wash, while the other sits forlornly at the back of the airing cupboard waiting to be reunited with its other half.

Clearly this is an annoying scenario, and one that has worried Galina Miklinova enough for her to make a feature length musical Noir set in a dystopian corner of modern Prague, where its invisible sock inhabitants have been successful dubbed into English – with Brooklyn accents – and its central character little Hugo (Christian Vandepass) is a cute and curious stripy blue sock who has stolen not one, but an entire pair of socks to give to his grandpa Lamor on his deathbed: “baby socks give you the best nutrition” says Hugo as his grandpa’s life slips away, telling him to seek out his uncle, a gang leader, Big Boss (Gregg Weiner), the only family he has left.

The street recreations are absolutely terrific as the film deftly mixes 3D computer animated adventure with themes of alienation and homesickness, not unlike a sort urban-based and more nefarious version of The Clangers. What follows is a fascinating survival story where Hugo and his twin cousins, Ramses and Tulamor have to compete with their arch rival Professor René Kaderábek, who also shares their attic abode by the river in Prague, while drawing courage from the rules his grandpa has told him. It turns out however, that their biggest enemy is a gangster named Sid who head another gang of Oddsockeaters. The two rival gangs sock in out an this inventive and enjoyable urban adventure that never outstays its welcome during its modest running time. MT
OUT ON DVD FROM 27 MARCH 2018

Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (2018) ****

Dir: Lorna Tucker | With Vivienne Westwood | Biopic | 83′

British anti-establishment icon Vivienne Westwood is known for her avant-garde and inspirational designs. But ironically what comes across in Lorna Tucker’s enjoyably brisk debut documentary is Westwood’s utter straightforwardness and lack of guile: qualities so refreshing in the self-regarding world of fashion, making her popularity no surprise. While her minions prance and pose, Vivienne Westwood calls a spade, a spade – in her syrupy Derbyshire accent:”Let me just talk and get it over with, I will get into it, but it’s all so boring” she complains at the start of this linear look into how she became the ‘wild child’ of the British fashion world, ‘inventing’ Punk and taking 20 years to gain official recognition for her creative talents, before turning her pioneering gaze towards saving the planet and climate change. Defiant she may be, and she certainly takes no prisoners, describing Johnny Rotten’s ageing anarchy as distinctly démodé. Westwood’s ideas are progressive; she has no desire to rest on her laurels or even accumulate wealth: what excites her is making choice garments for her clients, rather than further expanding the self-made empire over which she has still complete financial and artistic control. Dialling down to quality rather than up to quantity is the watchword, Westwood-wise. But she realises that her expanding workforce entirely depends on her and that’s a concern she now wrestles with.

In her lifetime Westwood has so far had two epiphany moments that have given rise to her defiance. The first was discovering that the sweet baby Jesus sold to her by her parents later died tragically on the Cross, forcing her to question every figure of authority going forward. The second was discovering that climate change was actually here to stay, causing her to become an environmental activist.

This desire to both protect and protest seems to be at the core of Westwood’s being. But despite her individuality she has always worked closely with her partners: first with music impresario Malcolm McClaren who was the catalyst for the establishment of her Kings Road shop ‘Sex’ as the two struggled to create the global brand that Westwood now admits is becoming unwieldy. She currently enjoys a productive partnership with her third husband, and former student, Austrian designer Andreas Kronthaler, who confesses his near obsessive love for every part of her. It’s clear the two share the same values despite their 25 year-age gap. And Westwood is honest and genuine as she talks candidly about her fears for her business, and disenchantment with some of her workers’ lack of focus. Talking heads are minimal but include her younger son Joseph Corre, founder of Agent Provocateur, and the Westwood CEO Carlo D’Amario, a former carpet impresario with sterling contacts in the international fashion world.

But Westwood is the shining light here: her honesty and inspirational charisma make us genuinely warm to her especially as the pathway to success has been beset by those who would do her down: as evidenced in a clip from TV. Lorna Tucker has certainly done a great job in uncovering the real Vivienne Westwood for those who found her image difficult to engage with. Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist covers all the bases in just over an hour, and will go down well with fans and those with a penchant for British eccentricity in modern design. MT

AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS NATIONWIDE 23 MARCH 2018 | COURTESY OF DOGWOOF

 

I Got Life | Aurore (2017)

Dir.: Blandine Lenoir; Cast: Agnes Jaoui, Sarah Suco, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Pascale Arbillot, Thibault Montalembert; France 2017, 89 min.

French cinema continues to cock a snoot at the popular myth that cinematic love affairs end in middle age with this typical Gallic story centred around 50 year old Aurore, whose daughters leave the nest, only to return, and whose best friend is a raving feminist. Aurore’s answer to all this is to go for broke and re-connect with the love of her life, after her husband leaves her in the lurch. I GOT LIFE  is a deft mixture of comedy, farce and feminism. The characters are stronger than the uneven plot, with an episodical structure not helping this rather lightweight affair, despite some great comedy turns. Agnes Jaoui is particularly good as the menopausal mid-lifer whose attempts at getting back on the career ladder have been scuppered by her husband clearing off – and taking with him her unpaid job as his administrator. A job in a bar turns out to be a disaster: the owner insisting on calling her Samantha, “because it’s more sexy”. A string of disasters happen, one after the other. First of all her oldest daughter Marina (Suco) tells her that she is pregnant (“you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did” Aurore mumbles – making herself about as popular as Marina’s expanding girth). Then her youngest daughter Lucie (Roy-Lecollinet) decides to decamp to Barcelona with her boyfriend, abandoning her studies. And being with best girlfriend Mano (Arbillot) is not always fun either: Aurore has has agreed to help Mano sell flats by pretending to be an interested client in a bid to attract some real applicants. But when events spiral out of control Aurore settles for the charms of her first love Totuche (Montalembert), her first love,  who turns up like a bad penny – as Marina’s gynaecologist doctor. And although Totuche is reluctant to play romantic ball second time around, it all pans out well in this watchable romcom, photographed by Robert Guediguian regular Pierre Milon (The House by the Sea). Sadly, the jokes are very much hit and miss. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 23 MARCH 2018

Gholam (2017) ***

Dir.: Mitra Tabrizian; Cast: Shahab Hosseini, Nasser Memarzia, Corinne Skinner-Carter, Tracie Bennett; Iran/UK 2017, 89′

Exile and alienation are at the heart of Mitra Tabrizian’s impressively stylish debut. This existential London drama is shot with mostly natural light, at night and dusk very much  along the lines of Melville’s The Samurai. 

Gholam (Hosseini) is an Iranian ex soldier who makes a meagre living as a cab driver who occasionally helping his mechanic friend out (Memarzia) in his spare time. He keeps very much to himself but often eats at his uncle’s restaurant, where he meets two different sets of Iranian exiles who are keen to muscle into his life. At a price, they would guarantee him a return to Iran to be re-united with his family. But Gholam rejects all offers, and prefers the company of strangers, like an elderly black woman (Skinner-Carter), who he often gives a lift in his cab. Waiting in front of her house, he meets Mrs. Green (Bennett), who looks after a broken-hearted old lady who has recently lost her grandchild. The two rival exile groups become more and more assertive in their pursuit of Gholam, even contemplate his assassination. But Gholam choses his own fight: and after he loses his job over a petty customer complaint,  he goes after them.

DoP Dewald Aukema paints a saturnine portrait of London’s twilight zone where the gloomy streets are often deserted as cars and creatures of the night hurry by – Gholam is one of them; either driving his cab, or drifting aimlessly, his zest for life gradually seeping into the pavement cracks as nightmare and reality fuse into a dreary existence. Only the music of the childhood can comfort him, but his search for self-annihilation is a noble one: his life has been lived, and he does not want another chapter of this ghostly existence.
Rather like her compatriot Abbas Kiarostami, Tabrizian is a famous photographer who regularly exhibits in Tehran. This stunning debut marks her out as the most remarkable newcomer in a long time, directing with great sensitivity and aesthetic aplomb. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 23 March 2018

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