Archive for the ‘Listings’ 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

Kinoteka (2024) London Polish Film Festival 2024

The Kinoteka Polish Film Festival is back for a 22th edition running from 6 March until 28 March and celebrating the latest in Polish arthouse film and cult classics.

World-famous filmmakers: Agnieszka Holland, Małgorzata Szumowska & Michał Englert, and DK & Hugh Welchman, will join the festivities as well as renowned directors such Walerian Borowczyk and Krzysztof Kieślowski.

OPENING GALA

Kinoteka 2024 begins on 6 March at BFI Southbank with an Opening Gala screening of the critically acclaimed Green Border (Zielona granica, 2023) from director Agnieszka Holland (In Darkness, The Secret Garden) raising the profile on immigration in the form of a moving journey across Europe. After moving to the north east of Poland, psychologist Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) becomes an active part of a tragedy that takes place on the Polish-Belarusian border. This story interweaves similar events involving those trying to make their way to Europe to escape an uncertain future in their own countries.

CLOSING GALA

Heading to the BFI IMAX on 28 March, the festival’s Closing Gala for 2024 will be an exciting celebration of film and music, where the audience will be treated to Polish box office smash-hit The Peasants (Chłopi, 2023) that makes stunning use of an oil painting animation technique, The Peasants is a visually thrilling rendering of Władysław Reymont’s Nobel Prize-winning tale.

NEW POLISH CINEMA

Expect to discover the very latest in Polish films hot off the international festival circuit. Małgorzata Szumowska (Never Gonna Snow Again, Mug, Body) and Michał Englert (Never Gonna Snow Again, Infinite Storm). Woman Of (Kobieta z, 2023) is set against the landscape of the Polish transformation from communism to capitalism, spanning 45 years of the life of Aniela Wesoły (Małgorzata Hajewska) and her journey to find personal liberty as a trans woman.

Communist Poland also provides the backdrop for Saint (Święty, 2023), which is set during the final, turbulent days of the Polish People’s Republic and shows a nation grappling with its identity, torn between allegiance to Church and State. Mateusz Kościukiewicz (Mug, Bracia) stars as a rookie policeman investigating the theft of a priceless silver sculpture from Gniezno Cathedral in this thrilling mystery.

The multi-award winning Doppelganger (Doppelgänger. Sobowtór, 2023) from Jan Holoubek (Netflix’s The Mire, 25 Years of Innocence) is a stylish psychological thriller rooted in actual events of Cold War Poland starring Jakub Gierszał (Najlepszy), as a tale of espionage unfolds simultaneously on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Elsewhere in the programme, Klaudiusz Chrostowski’s Ultima Thule (2023) features another compelling lead performance from Jakub Gierszał as Bartek, a man struggling to make sense of his life, who leaves his family to travel to a remote Scottish island. This striking, minimalist feature debut won the Best Micro Budget Film Award at Gdynia Festival 2023.

Adapted from a novel by Jakub Małecki, Feast of Fire (Święto ognia, 2023) is a heartwarming film about happiness, ambition and secrets as two devoted sisters struggle with very different constraints imposed by their bodies.

Adrian Apanel’s Horror Story (2023) is a smart take on the often absurd rites of passage between adolescence and adulthood that expertly combines black comedy and horror tropes. Jakub Zając (Dawid i Elfy) plays a man who arrives in Warsaw ready to start his adult life in the world of finance but soon finds himself reeling from the brink of one disaster to another.

The Secret of Little Rose (Rózyczka 2, 2023) is the much anticipated sequel to Jan Kidawa-Blonski’s multi-award winning Rose (2010). Once again starring Polish acting greats Magdalena Boczarska (Ostatnia rodzina) and Robert Więckiewicz (In Darkness, Wałęsa: Man of Hope), the film tells the story of a career politician whose life is turned upside down following a terrorist attack which kills her husband.

Lastly, Paweł Maślona’s Scarborn (Kos, 2023) is an action-packed historical tale that won multiple prizes at Gdynia Film Festival 2023 including the Golden Lion, Press Award and Youth Jury Award. Based on real events, it follows the story of General Tadeusz “Kos” Kościuszko (Jacek Braciak) who returns to Poland in 1794 and plans to start an uprising against the Russian occupying forces but on his tail is a Russian cavalry captain (Robert Więckiewicz) who is determined to foil his plans.

DOCUMENTARY

The festival’s documentary strand this year consists of two eye-opening films that take viewers to war zones across the world and, through very different lenses, show how the conflicts affect those caught in the cross-fire. In the Rearview (Skąd dokąd, 2023) tells the stories of the ordinary Ukrainian people that director Maciek Hamela helped evacuate from the country following the Russian invasion.

Developed over seven years, Danger Zone (2023) is an unsettling documentary examining a dark side of tourism, where people choose to visit war zones on organised tours at great expense. Taking an observational approach, the film juxtaposes the experiences of these so-called ‘war zone tourists’ and a tour operator with the everyday lives of those who live and fight in countries such as Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria.

CINEMA CLASSICS

Three Polish auteurs are represented in the Cinema Classics strand, in a programme that spans 1940s and 1970s Polish film. Krzysztof Kieślowski’s breakthrough masterpiece Camera Buff (Amator, 1979), was written for then rising actor Jerzy Stuhr who plays a factory worker whose passion to capture the world on 8mm film, gradually takes over his life, with implications on his freedom.

The Story of Sin (Dzieje grzechu, 1975) is an intense, taboo-breaking work from cult director Walerian Borowczyk, that is based on a famous novel by Stefan Żeromski, who co-wrote the screenplay. Presented as a sumptuous melodrama, the film follows the fate of a young woman Ewa (Grażyna Długołęcka) who, after falling for the young impoverished lodger in her family home, ends up in a spiral of seduction and obsession.

And lastly from prolific filmmaker Michał Waszyński, Kinoteka is proud to screen The Great Way (Wielka droga, 1946), the first post-WW2 Polish feature film. Produced by the 2nd Polish Army Corps and shot largely at Cinecittà, it tells the story of a young soldier who is taken to a military hospital where a nurse pretends to be his fiancée, to support his recovery. Secretly reading his journal to understand his story, she learns of his experiences on the battlefield. While a fictionalised narrative, The Great Way uses documentary footage to show the real story of the Polish army led by General Anders, known for their mascot Wojtek the bear.

KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | LONDON 6-28 March 2024

Venues: BFI Southbank, BFI IMAX, Southbank Centre, Cine Lumiere, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Phoenix Cinema, Prince Charles Cinema, Rich Mix, Watermans

Comme Le Feu (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: Philippe Lesage | Canada/France 2024 | 161′

The Generation sidebar of the Berlinale seems perfect for filmmaker Philippe Lesage, it is a section that facilitates exchanges between audiences and filmmakers especially focusing on dialogue with younger audience members. Lesage is most well known for the two loosely linked films The Demons (2015) and Genesis (2018) which both launched the international career of Théodore Pellerin. The director has focused on the travails of Quebecois teenagers and their distant parents and with Comme Le Feu he is back on familiar ground that unfortunately is returning an ever more diminishing recrudescence.

Teenage Jeff is invited by his friend Max to travel deep into the woods and stay at the isolated estate of acclaimed director Blake Cadieux. He has high expectations for the trip: Cadieux is an artist he greatly admires – plus Aliocha, Max’s older sister, with whom he is secretly in love, is also coming.

The film opens with a muscle memory of visual references: long following shots with a gliding camera as a car travels through the bucolic countryside accompanied by a deep drone-inflected score that indicates a pensive trip is to come. By the time the journey ends we will be at a lake where we meet a man standing by a sea plane. This is acclaimed director Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter), who is meeting an old colleague: Albert (Paul Ahmarani), his son, daughter and Jeff. By the interactions from the ‘adults’ we become aware of some of the oncoming battles for Alphaness between two men who have left a lot unsaid, that will slowly unravel during a very long 161m.

The scenario is of course familiar to the classic French Country House genre, but not the farce of Feydeau or the state of the nation treatise à la Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu but something else entirely, something very Quebecois. Lesage makes claims that border on cliché, that of the hostile forest and the interior of the cabin becoming the liminal space where there is a youthful search for ideals and freedom while confronting the wounded egos of the jaded adults. There are the motifs of the country house updated, hunting (with both rifles and bow & arrows), dinner, alcohol and unspoken grievances bubble up and destroy the supposed relaxed atmosphere.

This is centred on the two best scenes in the film that are formally the same, a fixed camera at the head of the table as the two adult male protagonist poke and prod each other until they start orally fighting for control and supremacy, while this is on-going the teens sit in stony silence. These two scenes are beautiful in their emotional violence with Paul Ahmarani a clear stand out, what with his pathetic neediness and long-held grudge with his former collaborator Blake.

Other than these two scenes everything else is signposted by a broad schematic screenplay that tries to cover far too many bases. From spurned teenage love, to emerging female sexuality, to creativity in crisis and the inability to settle. By the last act the film has completely come undone with characters acting to the edicts of the screenplay rather than in an emotionally honest manner. This comes with death, dream sequences and a hurt dog.

After the potential promise we started with, we are left with a squalid melodrama that seems snatched from an even more mediocre genre film. @d_w_mault

GENERATION 14 PLUS | BERLINALE 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 eight years ago with Being 17. 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

 

 

Paramount on Parade (1930)

Dir: Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding || Cast: Jean Arthur, Clara Bow, Gary Cooper, Fredric March, Maurice Chevalier | US Musical 102’

Paramount on Parade displays little of the imagination of Universal’s The King of Jazz and certainly lacks the star quality of Metro’s The Show of Shows and is amateurishly staged as if on a proscenium and played to the camera throughout; but the masters of ceremonies Jack Oakie and Skeets Gallagher sauntering through the proceedings cheerfully breeching the fourth wall seem to be having as much fun as the audience.

The sets are pretty basic with the idiosyncratic exception of the tinted spoof murder mystery and the various Technicolor sequences which ironically lack a soundtrack (although perhaps that’s a blessing in the case of Harry Green as a Jewish matador). Jean Arthur and Gary Cooper are rather wasted – particularly as the points when they get to sing are both now silent – and you have to look hard to spot Frederic March.

With the fleeting exception of Kay Francis in Technicolor as Carmen Maurice Chevalier is easily seen to the best effect (in sequences evidently the work of Ernst Lubitsch), especially performing an Apache Dance with Evelyn Brent; but Mitzi Green, Nancy Carroll and Clara Bow also get to make their mark.

Apart from the scenes with Chevalier it’s hard to know who actually directed what, but the presence of Ludwig Berger – addressed as ‘Dr. Berger’ – in the Technicolor episode The Gallows Song identifies him as the man responsible for the colour composition that so impressed Alexander Korda that he later invited him to work for him at Denham on The Thief of Baghdad. @RichardChatten

Rei (2024) IFFR 2024

Dir/scr: Toshihiko Tanaka. Japan, drama 189′

Rei is a kanji character that can represent a variety of meanings. The genderless name is therefore a really good title for this complex but rather overlong (at over three hours) feature debut from Toshihiko Tanaka which won the Tiger prize at this year’s 53rd Rotterdam Film Festival.

Rei is about Matsushita Hikari, a self-contained thirty-something woman whose comparatively uncomplicated life in the corporate world contrasts with the trials and tribulations of her friends in a series of interconnecting dramas that highlight – albeit reductively – Japanese attitudes towards disability and, in particular, those with special needs and heightened sensibility. On a deeper level Tanaka also explores human connectedness along the lines of that well-worn phrase: “No man is an island”: It’s only through knowing each other that we really come to understand ourselves.

We first meet Hikari (Takara Suzuki) and her deaf landscape photographer friend Masato (played by Tanaka himself) in the wintery countryside surrounding Tokyo. Hikari’s life lacks a certain excitement and she seeks this out in creative scenarios. Hikari is also drawn to an actor called Mitsuru (Keita Katsumata) who she meets through her love of theatre and through a flyer where she has discovered Masato’s work. Finding his artistry compelling she asks him to take her portrait in the snowy setting. Another friend of hers Asami (Maeko Oyama) has a three-year-old daughter with special needs. Asami is dealing with the additional pressures of a husband who is having an affair with a nurse (who also cared for Masato’s mother).

Hikari is fascinated by Masato and the two share exchanges on SMS and email to get over the communication barrier. Asami is so impressed by Masato’s portraits of Hikari she commissions him to photograph her own family and these extraordinary pictures capture something that words can never do about the state of her relationship with her husband. But despite his unique and arcane talents Masato is sadly seen as a flawed character due to his hearing issues in this dense narrative in a drama that marks Toshihiko Tanaka out as a rising star in the film firmament. @MeredithTaylor

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | TIGER PRIZE 2024

 

Get Your Man (1927)

Dir: Dorothy Arzner | US Drama 63’

Interesting to compare this rather demure affair with the one pictured nearly a hundred years later in HOW TO HAVE SEX (2023).

Far from being a manual advising young ladies how to succeed with the opposite sex as the title suggests, this early directorial outing for Dorothy Arzner – the only woman director during Hollywood’s Golden Age – whose assignment to the project led Clara Bow to take umbrage as her presence on the set meant one less man around – subscribed to the then prevalent twenties convention of a racy title but a plot of ultimately high propriety, ending (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) as it does with the two young leads retiring to separate rooms rather than spending the night together.

Typically for a film by Ms Arzner the men are all gormless and pliable, while the observation that “My uncle’s eighty, and he’s still a public menace to private secretaries” shows that she had their measure a full ninety years before the Harvey Weinstein scandal lifted the lid on workplace sexual harassment. @RichardChatten

Now on YouTube

Bolero (2024) IFFR 2024

Dir: Anne Fontaine | France, Biopic drama, 122′

Anne Fontaine’s ravishing musical biopic of Joseph Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) opens with various modern musical versions of the legendary French composer’s 1928 masterpiece – the Bolero – from China, India, Africa and Mexico that have kept his spirit alive for modern audiences and whose composition is at the heart of the drama.

Ralph Personnaz plays the leading role of Ravel, an accomplished pianist in his own right, who is pictured being turned down for a place at the Paris conservatory after a dizzying display of his keyboard talents at audition.

Feted as one of France’s most loved composers, Fontaine chronicles Ravel’s life and loves in the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s with this sumptuous romantic drama that gathers together a talented cast: Jeanne Balibar, Vincent Perez, and Emmanuelle Devos, and benefits from the lavish musical interludes as Ravel takes to the piano during his touring concerts: Like Rachmaninov, amongst others, he earned his living from playing as well as composing.

The first of these transports us to Boston and New York where he convenes with the turn of the century ‘beau monde’ and indulges his penchant for gloves (asking a local prostitute simply to put them on gracefully, rather than indulge his sexual fantasies in a more palpable way). The past fuses with his present in a dreamy reverie of flashbacks that flesh out his talents and skills and cement his reputation as one of the greatest French composers of the 20th century along with his contemporary Debussy, all set against a highly creative period in French history that aligned him with the Impressionists and famous writers and poets such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Cocteau amongst others.

Here in the US he also cements his friendship with the unhappily married Misia Sert (Doria Tillier) one of three female influences in the film: the other being the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein (Jeanne Balibar), who inspired the Bolero, and his fellow pianist and friend Marguerite Long (Emmanuelle Devos). An elegant and informative biopic from Fontaine who delighted us with Coco before Chanel in 2009. @MeredithTaylor

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | 25 JANUARY – 3 FEBRUARY 2024

 

 

Rotterdam International Film Festival 2024

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) takes place this year from 25 January until 3rd February and the Tiger and Big Screen competitions for the 53rd edition are already raring to go.

Head South by Jonathan Oglivie opens the festival on Thursday 25 January. The celebration will close with La Luna. a comedy debut from Raihan Halim, about a conservative Malaysian village shaken by the arrival of a lingerie premiere of

This year’s Talks line-up features: Marco Bellocchio, Anne Fontaine, Alexander Kluge and Rachel Maclean.

 

IFFR’s Tiger Competition is the main festival platform for emerging film talent and features a selection of 14 titles in 2024. The Tiger Competition Jury for 2024 is Marco Müller, Ena Sendijarević, Nadia Turincev, Herman Yau and Billy Woodberry.

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, 2024, United States, world premiere

Flathead, Jaydon Martin, 2024, Australia, world premiere

Grey Bees, Dmytro Moiseiev, 2024, Ukraine, world premiere

Kiss Wagon, Midhun Murali, 2024, India, world premiere

Me, Maryam, the Children and 26 Others, Farshad Hashemi, 2024, Iran, Germany, Czech Republic, world premiere

Moses, Jenni Luhta, Lauri Luhta, 2024, Finland, world premiere

La Parra, Alberto Gracia, 2024, Spain, world premiere

Praia Formosa, Julia De Simone, 2024, Brazil, Portugal, world premiere

Rei, Tanaka Toshihiko, 2024, Japan, world premiere

Reise der Schatten, Yves Netzhammer, 2024, Switzerland, world premiere

She Fell to Earth, Susie Au, 2024, Hong Kong, world premiere
sr, Lea Hartlaub, 2024, Germany, world premiere

Swimming Home, Justin Anderson, 2024, United Kingdom, world premiere

Under a Blue Sun, Daniel Mann, 2024, France, Israel, world premiere

Clockwise, stills from the films: La Parra, Praia Formosa, She Fell to Earth, Swimming Home

 

Big Screen Competition

The Big Screen Competition offers a wide-ranging selection, bridging the gap between popular, classic and arthouse cinema features. 12 titles have been selected for IFFR 2024. IFFR invites an audience jury to grant the VPRO Big Screen Award.

Aire: Just Breathe, Leticia Tonos Paniagua, 2024, Dominican Republic, Spain world premiere

Children of War and Peace, Ville Suhonen, 2024, Finland, world premiere

Confidenza, Daniele Luchetti, 2024, Italy, world premiere

Eternal, Ulaa Salim, 2024, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, world premiere

Milk Teeth, Sophia Bösch, 2024, Germany, Switzerland, world premiere

The Old Bachelor, Oktay Baraheni, 2024, Iran, world premiere

Portrait of a Certain Orient, Marcelo Gomes, 2024, Brazil, Italy, Lebanon, world premiere

Seven Seas Seven Hills, Ram, 2024, India, world premiere

Steppenwolf, Adilkhan Yerzhanov, 2024, Kazakhstan, world premiere

Tenement, Inrasothythep Neth, Sokyou Chea, 2024, Cambodia, world premiere

The Worst Man in London, Rodrigo Areias, 2024, Portugal, world premiere

Yohanna, Robby Ertanto, 2024, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Italy, world premiere

Clockwise, stills from the films: Eternal, Milk Teeth, Steppenwolf, Seven Seas Seven Hills

Talks

Each edition, IFFR presents a Talks programme that aims to inspire – providing fresh perspectives and profound insights into the world of filmmaking.

This year’s lineup features luminaries such as Marco Bellocchio (Rapito, Limelight); Rachel Maclean, one of this edition’s artists in Focus; Alexander Kluge (Cosmic Miniatures, Harbour); and Anne Fontaine (Boléro, Limelight), who each will discuss their remarkable careers.

The full Talks lineup will be announced in the second week of January.

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 25 January – 3 February 2024

 

Society of the Snow (2023)

Dir: J A Bayona | With: Enzo Vogrincic, Agustin Pardella, Matias Recalt, Esteban Bigliardi | Spain, Thriller 144′

The crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in the Andes mountains in the South American springtime of October 13 has been told many times before and certainly makes for compulsive viewing in J A Bayona’s horrifying version of the tragedy. Society of the Snow is Spain’s Oscar hopeful but perhaps Piers Paul Read’s 1974 book ‘Alive’ is still the most emotionally impactful retelling, leaving the visual impact of the events to our imagination. Bayona bases his version on a more personal account from Uruguayan written Pablo Vierci who grew up with some of the victims. 

From the warm comfort of our own viewing experience, how can we possibly imagine what it really felt like when the Uruguayan Old Christians Club rugby union team were forced to cope in sub zero temperatures after the plane carrying them to a match in Chile was sliced in half by the mountains. Sixteen passengers survived the initial crash and the event hit international headlines. Wearing scanty clothing and with no equipment whatsoever the victims made it through the initial days. But after the search was called off they were forced into an unconscionably grim 72-day fight for survival forcing them into cannibalism. Of the forty five original passengers, only sixteen would make it back home. 

This is not an involving, character driven film but one that launches from a brief introduction to the team into collective trauma, reflecting their common goal to survive. Bayona opts for sensationalism staying true to his roots in horror, working with mostly newcomers. There are no leads just an amorphous central casting. The film ostensibly deals with isolation, suffering and survival, but on a much deeper level the victims were forced to acknowledge the true impact of their plight. Their Catholic faith was test to the limit, not by praying in a Church, but on a bare mountainside through unselfish acts of human sacrifice. Desperately hungry, most ate their dead companions consoling themselves in the belief that this was the true meaning of Holy Communion. In this enforced team-building situation, the men are put to the test and forced to face the ultimate truth:  who are, and how do we relate to one another when everything is stripped away in a snowbound wilderness

Narrated by Numa Turcatti (Enzo Vogrincic), who joined the trip at the last minute, the film is a lasting testament to all those who died, naming them individually in inter-titles as they die. Proving once again that truth is often more incredible than fiction, the nightmarish events the survivors are forced to endure really beggar belief: endless blizzards, an avalanche that traps them with their friends’ dead bodies for several days. Technically Society is faultless in Pedro Luque’s spectacular cinematography but there are longueurs and issues with pacing in a screenplay that involves four writer.s  Society of the Snow feels overlong at over two and a half hours. So in conclusion more of a last tribute to those that died than a moving engaging experience. My advice is stick to the book. @MeredithTaylor 

NOW ON NETFLIX

Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got (1985)

Dir/Wri: Brigitte Berman | Canada | 1985 | 115m | English

An Oscar-winning music documentary about the mercurial clarinetist Artie Shaw returns to the screen after many years in a pristine new restoration.

Shaw (1920-2004) was no ordinary musician: his restless intellectual curiosity and uncompromising nature took him from postwar poverty to stardom in Hollywood where he would tirelessly reinvent himself as a pioneering saxophonist and bandleader, flouting the colour barrier of the time by hiring African Americans like Billie Holiday, Hot Lips Page and Roy Eldridge to play alongside him. Shunning celebrity in the 1940s Shaw would go on to write four bestsellers. His charisma and matinee idol good looks saw him marrying eight times, his wives included Lana Turner, Ava Garner and Evelyn Keyes. He even dated Rita Hayworth.

In Brigitte Berman’s Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got (1985) we join Artie in the privacy of his own home as he talks us through his five-decade career, enlivened by interviews and a treasure trove of photos and archival film footage. Berman refuses to try anything tricksy or complicated with her storyline,  adopting a straightforward chronological structure – and this is one of the plus points of this engrossing Oscar-winning documentary.

She sets the scene with a brief prologue. Artie Shaw (1910-2004) was born Arthur Arshawsky on the Lower East Side, to immigrant parents. An only child, he was teased for being Jewish when his family later moved to Connecticut. Retreating into books and music he taught himself the clarinet, practising eight hours a day, to escape his loneliness: “I just wanted to get up there on the stage in the bright lights with those pretty girls…and get out of where I was living”.

After ‘expelling himself’ from school to focus on music he soon found work as a jobbing clarinetist and saxophonist and headed to New York which was the capital of jazz in 1929. There the best work was to be found on the radio stations and Shaw was well paid. By the end the of the 1930s he would be earning USD 60k a week. From time to time during his career he became disenchanted by the music scene, taking time out to reflect on his second love, writing. In one of these ‘sabatacle’ breaks he bought a farm in Bucks County and hoping to spend the rest of his life there coming to the conclusion eventually that his recalcitrant personality and inability to compromise was better suited to writing than show business which required constant collaboration.

All that said, Shaw would go on to become one of the most popular stars of the 1930s and 40s Swing era – and a friendly rival to “King of Swing” Benny Goodman with his own compositions like “Nightmare”. His big break came in 1938 with a recording of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine”. After that he never looked back as a leading light on the big-band circuit.

But it wasn’t always plain sailing – heading for the West Coast in 1939 to support soldiers during the war effort he fell ill with leukaemia, but was soon back on his feet after a ground-breaking treatment. Here his fame often got in the way of his solidarity with the others in his desire to entertain troops, and be assisted in his efforts to do so. When asked on one occasion: “Who do think you are?” He answered: I know who I am: but who do YOU think I am?”

Tiring of fame during the ‘jitterbug’ era when he literally walked offstage after being hit by a dancer’s heel during a stint as the house bandleader at New York’s Pennsylvania Hotel. The public was offended when Shaw angrily branded the jitterbugger as ‘morons’, for not taking music more seriously. Undeterred, he refused to come back, but of course he would return.

Although he never professed to be an actor, Shaw appeared alongside Fred Astaire and Paulette Goddard in H C Potter’s 1940 outing Second Chorus that sees Artie taking on two competitive college students (Burgess Meredith and Fred Astaire) after hiring their band manager Ellen Miller (Godard). The pair then compete to win Ellen’s heart. 

Berman is an award-winning Canadian film director best known for her 1981 documentary debut BIX: Ain’t none of them play like him yet, which focused on another jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke. Berman shows how Shaw’s restlessness and intellectual curiosity drove him forward to explore his creativity and collaborate with a number of well known stars of the time including vocalist Mel Tormé, drummer Buddy Rich – who give interviews – and actress/ex-wife Evelyn Keyes (Gone With The Wind), whose other ex-husbands included director John Huston. @MeredithTaylor

A tribute to my father Gordon Taylor who was inspired to learn the clarinet by Artie Shaw | Screening at Film Forum from Friday, January 5 to Thursday, January 11 – the New York premiere of a new 4K restoration, supervised by the director.

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

A Taste of Anatolia | Turkish Film Festival 2023

Turkish cinema comes to England this November courtesy of TASTE OF ANATOLIA – the only film festival in the UK dedicated to cinema of Turkey.

Celebrating its 5th edition, the full programme is available online on the film platform Balik Arts Tv and at live ‘in person’ screenings at the Rio Cinema, London, Old Divinity School, St John’s College, Cambridge University, North London Community House in London, Refugee Workers Cultural Association in London, University of East Anglia in Norwich and Aylesbury Youth Action in Buckinghamshire, the festival stretching to four towns for the first time.

Expect to see the latest releases from the festival circuit including Black Night (2022) and Snow and the Bear (2022) that premiered at the prestigious Golden Orange Festival in Antalya on Turkey’s Mediterranean riviera.

A TASTE OF ANATOLIA

The Idea (1932)

Wri/Dir: Berthold Bartosch, Frans Masereel Music: Arthur Honegger. Silent, 25’

I’ve long been aware and intrigued by this film and have finally just availed myself of the opportunity to see it on YouTube.

An adaptation of the 1920 graphic novel by Franz Masereel, it remains one of the tiny handful of attempts at a serious animated film which although technically a fantasy paints a vivid picture of the social unrest of the period and strongly evokes an urban environment; the hazy visuals possibly intended to suggest smog and capturing the same haunting atmosphere as – no, don’t laugh – Noggin the Nog (who’s avant garde score it resembles).

As for the Idea herself she resembles a corporeal version of Botticelli’s Venus whose fluctuations in size throughout are presumably intentional. @RichardChatten

AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE

Abschied (1930) Powell + Pressburger Season at the Bfi

Dir: Robert Siodmak | Cast: Brigitte Horney, Aribert Mog, Emilie Unda | Drama

Made in Neubabelsberg Studios in Berlin in just ten days on a budget of DM80,000, Abschied (Farewell) gained Emeric Pressburger his first screen credit during his brief sojourn in Weimar Germany before settling in Britain in 1936.

The action never leaves the shabby boarding house presided over by Emilia Unda, who some viewers might recall as the headmistress in Madchen in Uniform. Unlike Robert Siodmak’s previous outing of outdoor Neue Sachlicheit (Menschen am Sontag (1929) this anticipates the later garrulous romantic realism of Pressburger’s own Miracle in Soho minus the baroque touches one came to associate with those of his longtime collaborator Michael Powell. @RichardChatten

POWELL + PRESSBURGER SEASON AT THE BFI AUTUMN 2023

Three Sad Tigers (1968) Raul Ruiz Retrospective Viennale 2023

Raúl Ruiz | Drama, Chile 100′

Ruiz’s lively debut is perhaps the purest form of cinema verite and social realism, giving a fascinating snapshot of ordinary people in Chile in the late 1960s. If there was an example of the Chilean New Wave – this is it; and the film went on to win the Golden Leopard at Locarno the year after it was shot.

Inspired by a play from Alejandro Sieveking. Ruiz’ essentially plotless narrative centres on three men trying to make a decent living for themselves in pre-Allende Santiago, the rolling camera capturing the most intimate moments of their everyday activities in brief and tantalising vignettes often scored by atmospheric music or outbursts of song. Raw and charismatic Three Sad Tigers leaves a haunting impression. Ruiz incomparable technique is astounding.

The most obvious touchstone is John Cassavetes’ 1970 outing Husbands but this is a much more impressionistic look at what men get up to when left to fend for themselves during times of crisis. It also offers a sober impression of life back then. What starts as a reasonably playful affair soon turns sinister eventually descending into violence as one of the characters feels short-changed by another other. Three Sad Tigers was the first of a trio of films Ruiz made in Chile before the 1973 military coup set in motion his move to France. MT

RAUL RUIZ RETROSPECTIVE | VIENNALE 2023

 

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

Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger

Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger is a major UK-wide celebration of one of the greatest and most enduring filmmaking partnerships: Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-1988).

Bold, subversive and iconoclastic, their passionate collaborative artistic vision – spanning 24 films, including A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes,  Miracle in Soho and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp – is a vital part of the fabric of British cinema history, which continues to inspire audiences and artists alike.

Contraband (1940) Courtesy of BFI

The Spy in Black (1939) Courtesy of BFI

Black Narcissus (1947) Courtesy of BFI

From 16 October to 31 December at venues across the UK, on BFI Player and with the free, major exhibition The Red Shoes: Behind the Mirror (from 10 November, BFI Southbank).

Prison in the Andes (2023) BFI London Film Festival 2023

Dir/Wri: Felipe Carmona | Chile, Brazil | 2023 | Spanish | 95′

On 11 September 1973 the Chilean Air Force bombed the Presidential Palace of La Moneda in Santiago de Chile overthrowing the Allende government and ushering in Augusto Pinochet’s brutal regime of torture and mass murder.

With innovative angles on the tragedy a slew of new films – 1976 and El Conde. commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pinochet’s reign of terror that continues to capture the imagination of filmmakers all over the world – from Costa Gavras’ Missing (1982), Marcela Said’s 2001 documentary I Love Pinochet to Pablo Larain’s The Club.

Felipe Carmona reflects on the surviving perpetrators of the regime in his first feature Penal Cordillera (Prison in the Andres). Premiering at this year’s BFI London Film Festival, the film explores the aftermath of evil, based on real events: what happens when instigators are on the receiving end of the cosh they themselves once wielded?

Not surprisingly, the perps are a remorseless bunch of baddies who utterly refuse to accept responsibility for their crimes on humanity in the post-Pinochet era. Prison in the Andes, a slow-burn often gruelling thriller despite its lush locations, centres on five military officers serving out their sentence in a luxury prison in the Andes mountains. Taking his inspiration from Pablo Larrain’s recent vampire reverie El Conde, that won Best Script at Venice Film Festival, Carmona plays fast and loose with his timeline, imagining this period of incarceration will go on for many of years, rather than months’, or even decades. And we certainly feel the weight of time.

The luxurious mountainside setting (in Chile and Brazil) enables Carmona to offer up a rather smouldering scenario, with his DoP Mauro Veloso certainly giving us a cinematic eye-full despite the glowering subject matter: the right-hand henchmen have their own pool and gardens and seem to hold sway over their captors in this false paradise. But a surprise change in circumstances, resulting from a prison interrogation, demonstrates their total lack of remorse. And the ensuing mayhem provides for some florid scenes of violence.

Once again themes of Nazism and the inherent nature of evil creep into Carmona’s rather flawed script although his film certainly makes for a muscular debate: are oppressors intrinsically immoral; or are they just otherwise decent people corrupted by blindly obeying orders? The Chilean filmmaker weighs in with a promising debut that reworks solid, evergreen themes, but his script lets him down in this potent study of evil. MT

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | FIRST FEATURE COMPETITION 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

Sultana’s Dream (2023) San Sebastián Film Festival 2023

Wri/Dir: Isabel Herguera | With the voices of Mary Beard, Miren Arrieta, Paul B Preciado, Roberto Bessi, Nausheen Javeed | Anime 80′

Fears of being a woman alone surface in this opening scenes of this ravishing animation that packs a potent punch in fluidly depicting life in a society ruled by men.

Isabel Herguera’s tale of female empowerment is a first feature for the San Sebastián-born filmmaker. Inspired by the exotic colours and sultry moods of the Indian subcontinent she bases her narrative on an avant-garde 1905 fable by a pioneering Bengali feminist writer Rokeya Hussein who imagines a utopian kingdom of Ladyland. Here, women call the shots in creating a harmonious society where they are educated and gain considerable agency while the men are locked away in purdah.

Set her timeline in the modern day Herguera’s glowing anime centres on Ines (Miren Arrieta), a young filmmaker who returns from India to Spain to seek career advice from her wheelchair-bound oceanographer mother who is a font of wisdom.

With its topical themes of politics, religious freedom, feminism and the environment Herguera’s well-paced and witty satire pokes subtle fun at the male-dominated society that still exists in India as Ines embarks on a peripatetic odyssey to realise her hopes and dreams in this visually captivating gem. MT

GOLDEN SEASHELL COMPETITION | SAN SEBASTIAN 2023

A Journey in Spring (2023) San Sebastián Film Festival 2023

Dirs: Ping-Wen Wang, Tzu-Hui Peng | Taiwan, Drama, 90′ 

Lovers of slow-burning Asian Arthouse cinema in the masters Jia Zhangke, Tsai Ming-liang or Kim Ki-Duk will warm to this drole and dystopian look at a marriage in decline and its aftermath.

A languorous opening sequence by a waterfall gives way to a bustling street scene that shows, without the need for words, that Khim-Hok and his wife Tua are no longer happy together. And who can I blame a bickering middle-aged couple forced into close proximity enduring the dregs of winter in a rain-soaked rural backwater, dreary despite its magnificent temples and lively food market.

Small domestic altercations in the couple’s cramped living conditions collide with serene moments in the lush Taiwanese countryside when Khim-Hok remembers their promising past and his estranged son’s happy wedding, seen in flashback, as he waits endlessly for a bus. Back at home matters come to a head after an incident with a jar of plums, and the following day when Tua quietly passes away he decides to relegate her body to the chest freezer.

But their son and his partner suddenly appear on the scene, unannounced, after years of absence. Khim-hok clearly has some explaining to do and this clarity focuses his mind and brings the past flooding back into the present leading him on a cathartic and often poignant journey of reflection and self-discovery.

Seasoned filmmakers Ping-Wen Wang and Tzu-Hui Peng direct this assured and resplendent Taiwanese tale that unfolds in evocative tableaux giving minor moments of everyday life a resonance without resorting to fanfare or fussy dialogue. Journey into Spring is a watchable joy – particularly for an international audience outside Taiwan – with its minimal dialogue. The sleek script speaks volumes leaving nothing spare in a muted and memorable 21st century parable. MT

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | GOLDEN SHELL 2023

Golden Orange Film Festival 2023 | National Competition 2023 | Cancelled

The Golden Orange Film Festival was due to open on the 7th October 2023 celebrating its 60th anniversary on the Southern Turkish Riviera has been cancelled due to censoring issues centring on one of the films: a documentary entitled The Decree. A glittering selection of world premieres and award-winning titles will take part in the International Feature and documentary Film Competition, with the National Feature and Documentary Competition showcasing the latest in Turkish cinema.

NATIONAL FEATURE COMPETITION | GOLDEN ORANGE FILM FESTIVAL | Antalya 2023

A HERO OF OUR TIME (2023)

Dir/Wri: Miraç Atabey | CastEmrah Gülşen,Mustafa Kandemir, Elvan Çanakoğlu, Evrim Çervatoğlu,A Hero Of Our Time

Inspired by Lermontov’s infamous anti-hero Pechorin, A Hero of Our Time depicts a negative generational portrait that embodies many of the vices and flaws of our time through the story of an immature man who deals with his father’s funeral preparations in the hills of northeastern Turkey where tradition clashes with the modern world.

THE REEDS (2023)

Dir: Cemil Ağacıkoğlu | Wri Cemil Ağacıkoğlu, Arzu Ağacıkoğlu | Cast: Hilmi Ahıska, Sevgi Temel, Gökhan Yıkılkan,

In an Anatolian village, Ali, an impoverished cane-harvester, is still deeply in love with his wife, Aysel, and dreams of winning back her affection. The region is ruled by gangs and outlaws and Ali kills one of them in a tragic accident. And when he loses his entire crop Ali must struggle to survive against the odds in this fable about resistance and the enduring power of love.

SACRIFICE (2023)

Dir/Wr;: İsmail Güneş | Cast: Mürşit Ağa Bağ, Fuat Onan, Nermin Yılmaz

Born in Samsun in 1961 Ismail Güneş made his directorial debut with the film Before the Sun Rises in 1986. His latest feature premiering at this year’s GOLDEN ORANGE FILM FESTIVAL is a complex moral tale that sees an elderly man fighting with his conscience when his son is conscripted into the army.

LIFE (2023) – main image 

Dir/Wri: Zeki Demirkubuz | Cast: Miray Daner, Burak Dakak, Cem Davran, Umut Kurt, Melis Birkan, Osman Alkaş

Zeki Demirkubuz embarked on his cinema career in 1986 as an assistant to Zeki Ökten. Since 1994, his films have been premiering on the international festival circuit. His latest feature, LIFE, screens at Antalya’s GOLDEN ORANGE FILM FESTIVAL. Once again the past and present collide when Hicran runs away from home after her father forces her into an unwanted engagement with Rıza who, desperate to track his potential bride down, begins an eventful search for her in Istanbul.

NOT WHAT YOU THINK (2023)

Dir/Wri: Vuslat Saraçoğlu | Cast: Serdar Orçin, Alican Yücesoy, Hazal Türesan, Ozan Çelik, Ünal Yeter, Elif Neva Özhan

Vuslat Saraçoğlu’s first feature film, Debt was screened at international festivals and received various awards, including the Golden Tulip for the Best Film at the 37th Istanbul Film Festival.

Not What You Think follows three siblings who are all different in character, mentality and lifestyle: Tahsin (44), Yasin (38) and Remziye (34) are drawn together in their hometown after the mysterious death of their father. During their time in Tokat, their relationship oscillates between closeness of warm moments and serious tension where their personal realities are challenged in this film that explores the tangled dimensions of sibling-hood and false and unreliable memories.

BELONGING (2023)

Dir: Mete Gümürhan | Wri: Chris Westendorp | Cast: Alihan Şahin, Sinan Eroğlu, Hayat van Eck, Mina Demirtaş, Lorin Merhart

A feature exploring the poignant sense of dislocation and disenfranchisement felt by a teenager born in Rotterdam of Turkish parents. Belonging also carries with it a positive message of hope for all those with preconceived notions about the past.

Directing from a script by Chris Westendorp, Belonging marks Gümürhan’s first venture into fiction feature filmmaking, after gaining a Special Mention from the Generation Kplus International Jury at the 66th Berlin Film Festival for his 2016 title Young Wrestlers where it premiered.

SUDDENLY (2023)

Dir: Melisa Önel | Wri: Feride Çiçekoğlu | Cast: Defne Kayalar, Öner Erkan, Şerif Erol, Ayşenil Şamlıoğlu

Another immigrant tale sees Reyhan returning to İstanbul from her longterm base in Hamburg where she opts for a radical reinvention of her former life in an daring experiment with freedom.

Directors Melisa Önel, born in İzmir in 1980, has a photography and video installation background. She has been writing and directing shorts, fiction films, and documentaries since 2007, including ‘Me and Nuri Bala’ (Best First Documentary at Antalya Film Festival 2009), Seaburners (Berlinale Forum 2014), and Coastliners (Istanbul Film Festival 2016).

8X8 (2023)

Dir/Wri: Kıvanç Sezer | Cast: Alican Yücesoy, Ece Yüksel, Halil Babür

Three people are caught in an endless struggle to survive in this complex character-driven drama.

Born in Ankara, director and writer Kıvanç Sezer has received multiple awards on the international festival circuit for his debut and sophomore features, My Father’s Wings (2015) and La Belle Indifference (2019)

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION | 2023

MY LIFE IS A MOVIE (2023)

Dir: Serdal Doğan | Turkey,

A group of elderly people in their twilight years have agreed to participate in this experimental film where they script and act out their own trials and tribulations in the context of a supportive cinema education framework.

MY NAME IS HAPPY (2023)

Dir: Nick Read & Ayşe Toprak

Aspiring popstar Mutlu Kaya (Mutlu means ‘happy’ in Turkish) narrowly escapes an attempted femicide with her life. Despite life-changing injuries, Mutlu goes in search of justice and to reclaim her voice as a singer in this film about female empowerment.

ECLIPSE (2023)

Dirs: İpek Kent, Efe Öztezdoğan

One of the greatest tragedies of the modern era happened in 2020. As a result of the global measures taken against the Covid-19 pandemic, the Olympic Games, which was to be held in Tokyo, was delayed for the first time in its history. In one hundred years, only three gymnasts had been able to represent Turkey in gymnastics, however, this is about to change; Eclipse explores their motivations, victories, losses and injuries in a bid to get one step closer to the highest success attainable by an athlete.

THE AEGEAN SUN (2023)

Dir/Wri: Ömer Gümüşer

Writer and director Ömer Gümüşer studied Film Design at Yaşar University brings his unique visual perspective to this new documentary about the popular İzmir Kültür Park that was shut down in 2019, only to be given a lucky reprieve in the wake of the pandemic.

PHILOSOPHY (2023)

Dir/Wri: Münir Alper Doğan

Conversations with five philosophy scholars from Turkey about philosophy, art, literature, life and death. Prof. Dr. Örsan K. Öymen, Prof. Dr. Halil Turan, Prof. Dr. Türker Armaner, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Barış Parkaner and retired philosophy scholar Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cemil Güzey expand on the ideas of famous philosophers who left their mark our recent history, such as Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Marx, Wittgenstein, Heraclitus, Sokrates, Plato, Aristoteles and many others in this worthwhile and enlightening journey through the history of philosophy.

THE DECREE (2023)

Dir/Wri: Nejla Demirci

The Decree looks at Turkey’s mechanism known as ‘Decree Law’. Yasemin and Engin have been driven out of society and pushed into isolation but want to return to their duties and fight back through a forest of red tape. How long can they persevere?

Director and writer Demirci was born in Ağrı and studied Sociology in Anadolu University. While fighting for the Ergene River, which is abandoned to industrial pollution, she decided to make a documentary film about the situation. The journey of the Sunflower (2012) which received Special Award of the Jury at Ankara Film Festival. Her documentary Confrontation (2017) received the Best Documentary Award in International TRT Documentary Days.

BLUE ID (2023)

Dir: Burcu Melekoğlu, Vuslat Karan | Wris: Burcu Melekoğlu, Vuslat Karan, Efe Durmaz

An intimate report of the struggles and self-realisation of Rüzgâr Erkoçlar, Blue ID tells the story of the many obstacles the actor has had to overcome in order to live ‘an authentic life’.

Burcu Melekoğlu is a director and editor based in Istanbul. Believing in the power of independent documentary film to change hearts and minds, she founded MOXIE, an independent production company that produces documentaries and released the feature length documentary film Blue ID that won the IDFA NPO Audience Award in 2022.

WHO ARE YOU? (2023)

Dir/Wri: Cenk Kaptan

Music was one of the sectors hit by the pandemc. OLTA Solidarity, founded by independent musicians, made a name for itself with the support it gave to musicians during the crisis. OLTA Solidarity managed to release 130 songs with a total of 10 albums. All the income was transferred to musicians, music and stage workers who lost their livelihoods. In a playful style “Who Are You?”  underlines just how indispensable music and musicians are for societies today.

THE GOLDEN ORANGE FILM FESTIVAL | ANTALYA, TURKEY | due to run from 7 October until 14 October 2023 has been cancelled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carlos (2023)

Dir: Rudy Valdez | US biopic with Carlos Santana | 87′

This is a comprehensive and personal chronicle recounted by the Mexican born guitarist Carlos Santana, now 76, who rose to fame in the late 1960s where he pioneered a fusion of rock&roll and American jazz with his eponymous band.

Directed by Rudy Valdez and featuring Carlos himself – interweaved with archive footage, family photos and films of the band performing – we hear how he grew up in 1950s Tijuana Mexico, where his parents were his main influence – and not always in a positive light – along with Tito Puentes, Little Richard and B B King. His father Jose was a violin player in a classic Mariachi band, a national instrumental style that involved the players dressed in matching outfits, led by a conductor. Close to his mother, Carlos states, in a rather cheesy note, how buying her a home with a refrigerator meant much more to him than personal fame.

Carlos’ first recorded performance was in 1966 when the family had moved to San Francisco where he would cross paths with producer Bill Graham who began booking the band as a support act to the likes of The Who.

For diehard fans of Santana’s iconic style, the film misses a trick in its focus on family details as recorded in his 2014 memoir, “The Universal Tone,” more than his fabulous career as lead of the world famous band. The thrust here is on his early struggles which involved sexual abuse, addition and racism, and his fight for success and recognition through spirituality.

The band toured internationally, and I was lucky enough to see them at a gig at university on their rise to fame with the 1999 ‘Supernatural’ Album, and they made for a spectacular live act and are equally powerful in the recording studio.

But Carlos ultimately attributed his success to Columbia’s Clive Davis, who is now a senior at Sony Music Entertainment, the production company behind this documentary. There is a distinct lack of commentary from friends and collaborators making this seem rather a one-sided and even self-congratulatory affair despite some enjoyable musical interludes that stand testament to the band’s iconic status and worthy of its international fan base. MT

CARLOS: THE SANTANA JOURNEY GLOBAL PREMIERE | IN SELECT UK Cinemas ON SEPTEMBER 23 & 27. 

The Bedford Incident (1965)

Dir: James B Harris | Cast: Richard Widmark, Sydney Poitier, Martin Balsam, James MacArthur | US Action drama 106’

Producer James B. Harris made his own singular contribution to the war film after he and Stanley Kubrick went their separate ways and with the help of Kubrick’s cameraman Gilbert Taylor came up with this astringent naval drama which manages to feature both Eric Portman and Donald Sutherland in the same film (but not at the same scene alas).

A product of the period when black & white was the cinemas’ default setting and filmmakers treated their audiences like grownups, the characters were sufficiently nuanced to encompass Cold War Ahab Richard Widmark’s indulgence towards Wally Cox (who himself seems completely oblivious) and the dog that didn’t bark, since after fifteen years this was the first ever film in which Sydney Poitier’s colour was never relevant or remarked upon.@RichardChatten

ON MUBI

Coup! (2023) Venice Film Festival | Venice Days 2023

Dir: Austin Stark, Joseph Schuman | Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon | US Action Drama 98′

This darkly comic upstairs-downstairs satire harks back to another pandemic this time the tragic Spanish ‘Flu outbreak in 1918.

Coup! also features an invasive force of another kind in the style of Teorema or The Servant when a gun-slinging grifter from the Deep South arrives at the Hamptons island retreat of a wealthy family to cook for them during their glorious isolation.

The opening sees Floyd Monk (Peter Sarsgaard stealing the show) looking down on the body of man with a gunshot wound to his head. Meanwhile out in the streets bodies are mounting up due to the arrival of a fatal flu from Spain.

First time filmmakers Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman set the scene with with black and white news footage of the tragedy that swept through North America causing more casualties than the World War itself.

But the outbreak has so far avoided the island where Jay Horton and his wife Jules are secretly holed up in their palatial mansion. And this where Floyd fetches up as the new cook. The laidback, card player has a seditious streak immediately starts a low-key rebellion downstairs inciting the other members of staff, a chauffeur (Faran Tahir) and a housemaid (Skye P Marshall) to join in. But the wary longterm housekeeper Mrs McMurray Kristine Nielsen), will have none of it, and immediately orders him to make an eggplant casserole supper for his new boss.

Insurrection is now in the air, as well as the virus, as Floyd stages a coup. Meanwhile Horton, a progressive vegetarian journalist – who also purports to be a humanitarian boss – encourages his staff to be aspirational while he himself fosters political ambitions, although some hail him to be a  ‘muck-raker’. Pretending to still be on the thick of it back in the big City, he also emerges as rather deceitful, writes a ill-judged piece for a local rag accusing the president of mishandling the pandemic.

Back in the ‘Big Smoke’ mass protests are being staged against the president and his mishandling of the pandemic, and McCarthy is injured in a mêlée at the market, while buying food. Floyd the opportunity of her absence to encourage the staff uprising requesting horton to double their wages, and staff quarters (for their protection) which he agrees to do. But a strict lockdown soon sees all cut off from the mainland and encouraged to kill the local fauna to stay alive, a practice that Jay Horton opposes on humanitarian grounds, but is soon forced to change his mind when his wife and family demand to be fed. And Although Floyd is clearly a better shot and a far superior survivor than his cowardly boss: (“At times like these nature has a way of bringing out the beast in some, and the beauty in others”) the hobo, in a clever move, makes sure he passes the glory onto Jay. And when they all tuck into venison the mood is decidedly upbeat.

Determined not to be outdone, Jay thinks he can rumble Floyd but the hobo is cleverer than he gives him credit for. And it appears there’s been a case of mistaken identity in this louche little thriller carried by Sarsgaard with a glint in his eye and Sarah Gadon who turns how to be rather a dark horse. The denouement is both satisfying and unexpected. MT

CLOSING NIGHT GALA | GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI 2023

The Vanishing Soldier (2023) Locarno Film Festival 2023

Dir: Dani Rosenberg | Cast; Ido Tako, Tikva Dayan, Shmulik Cohen, Efrat Ben Tzur | Israel 97′

When an Israeli soldier disappears during a terrorist raid on his barracks all hell breaks loose in this tragic comic love story from Dani Rosenberg who looks at what freedom really means in a country permanently on its guard.

Anyone who has spent any time in Israel knows that most people live an ordinary existence despite the constant violence reported on the News. But young soldiers are ever-present in the streets and pavement cafes of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem serving as a constant reminder of how this tiny nation the size of Wales protects itself from from the vast surrounding block of countries that seek to undermine its existence.

What starts as a tense survival thriller with a young IDF soldier Schlomi fleeing from Gaza after an attack from Hamas militants soon develops into a freewheeling exploration of this soldier’s life as an ordinary young man forced to defend his country in an ongoing ‘battle,’ when all he really wants is to be at home with his girlfriend and family.

Since Israel’s foundation in 1948 military conscription has been mandatory for both sexes. From the age of 17 they are required to serve for at least two years in this major rite of passage.

In his third feature director Dani Rosenberg, also known for his TV fare, takes an almost documentary approach to show the stresses and strains of army service and how that pressure impacts on parents, friends and family members. Not just a question of routine administrative duties, army life involves the ever present possibility of severe injury and even loss of life.

After 18 year old Schlomi (Ido Take) escapes his army base in the film’s fraught opening scenes, agile camerawork and a needling score highlight the teenager’s tense state of mind as he chases round trying to reconnect with his girlfriend Shiri (Efrat Ben Sur) and eventually spending a few hours with his grandmother. Desperate to find his parents Schlomi finally tracks them down at the main hospital in Tel Aviv where his father Shmulik is recovering from a heart attack brought on by a bomb blast. He reflects laconically on what the police are calling’a terrorist incident’.

But Schlomi’s bullshit story about being home ‘for a few days leave’ doesn’t wash with his mother (Tikva Dayan) who sees a newsflash on the television telling a different story: The IDF have launched a search for Schlomi’s whereabouts believing him dead or even kidnapped. The young soldier has clearly committed a serious breach of army service leaving his angry mother to face the music with the commander while she hatches a plan for her son to save face and get back to his platoon. Despite a rather underwhelming finale, The Vanishing Soldier is a brave and intelligent drama picturing real life in Israel today. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | GOLDEN LEOPARD 2023

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 |

 

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

Fantastic Machine (2023) Sundance London

Dir.: Axel Donielson, Maximilien von Aertryck; Documentary Sweden/Denmark 2023, 88 min.

‘An image tells a thousand words’ 

A potted history of the camera – from the early nineteenth century to the present day – provides compulsive viewing in this new documentary from Axel Donielson and Maximilien von Aertryck.

Apparently King Edward VII, when watching his own coronation re-staged by film pioneer Georges Melies in a Paris studio, exclaimed “What a fantastic machine” in his wonderment of a gadget which would transform public and private life forever.

The first time feature directors have plundered the archives and uncovered a wealth of material from the clips and sources – as a bonus, they are also preparing a book version which will serve as a companion piece to the documentary – promising additional, previously unseen material into the bargain.

The opening shows people in a shopping centre looking in astonishment at the ‘Camera Obscura’ images, forgetting they have far more sophisticated equipment in their own pockets. The stream of images, from Muybridge to Logan Paul; Melies sensational early shorts to “Breaking Bad” Fantastic Machine is a film about film and our obsession with recording what we see. It also tells the story of how technology changed the planet.

Back in the day, Melies’ footage of trains shocked audiences so much they fled the cinema in horror. There are oddities on show too, and breathtaking examples throughout that beggar belief: A very cheerful Leni Riefenstahl, looking back with nostalgia at a flatbed editing machine, ignores her past and her work and pretends there is no representation in any of her films.

Fantastic Machine shows us the first intercontinental broadcast and the response it got from  an audience in Wisconsin. There are examples of how photography eventually came alive with the moving image, and the first examples of the ‘peep show’ that would lead, in time, to ‘blue movies’. Yes, now that’s all on the internet for free.

The advent of TV was a major step forward, and with it the commercials that now seem to rule the world. But early TV was also a means of gaining insight and education in the “Open University” at least for the middle-classes, who were upwardly mobile during the 1960s. TV Commercials or ‘adverts’ soon found their way from the big box in the living room to the mobiles in our pockets, leading us persuasively by the nose to the goods we think we need with algorithms to find a target audience.

You Tube has now created a new audience, and a set of new age entrepreneurs: The phenomenon has spawned a legion of teen millionaires all under the age of eighteen. On a darker note, we have to thank the cameramen who risk their lives in war zones, and those who took images of liberated concentration camp victims, “so that nobody can say that it did not happen”. The directors strike a note of caution when it comes to fake news, urging us to think before we act. Seeing is not always believing, and can be deceptive.

Fantastic Machine is certainly worth a second viewing. Apart from being a treasure trove of information, it never takes itself too seriously with a welcome dash of humour, and a non-judgemental approach at all times. AS

SCREENING  at SUNDANCE LONDON 2023 | 6-9 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

Afire (2023)

Dir.: Christian Petzold; Cast: Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel, Enno Trebs, Paula Beer. Matthias Brandt; Germany 2023, 103 min.

German writer/director Christian Petzold (*1960) won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival 2023 in for Afire, his tenth feature film. This award is well earned: Petzold can be called the chronicler of recent German history, illuminating past and not so present transgressions. Hot on the heels of Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog he is the only German director regularly featuring at international festivals. His minimalist style always cuts to the chase with a lean but substantial body of film.

Petzold’s first feature Innere Sicherheite/The State I’m In (2000) set the standard for what would follow: Petzold tells the story of a teenager whose desperate need for freedom jeopardises the security of her terrorist parents who have so far successfully avoided capture. In the 2001 he began what was to be an enduring collaboration with Nina Hoss and continued with FIPRESCI prize winner Wolfsburg (2003) and this continued with Yella (2007) and Jerichow (2008). In Barbara (2012) Petzold investigates Germany’s immediate 1945 past, and Transit (2018), an adaption of the Anna Seeghers’ novel of the same name, featuring the life of German immigrants during the first years of the Nazi regime, saw him replacing Hoss with Paul Baer who won the Best Actor prize in Berlin for Undine (2020).

Afire is the second part of a trilogy about the artist in society in Germany. Set in an imagined time span after the fall of the wall in the advent of the computer age, this is a feature nonetheless dominated by human emotions with a dose of dark humour .

On the way to a summer getaway on the Baltic Coast friends Leon (Schubert) and Felix (Uibel) are waylaid when their car breaks down. Then Felix’s mother, the owner, has also promised Nadja (Beer), a post graduate student, one of the rooms. Nadja has a boyfriend, coastguard Devid (Trebs), and Felix and Leon have to listen to the couple’s lovemaking. This is quickly reversed, with Nadja and Leon having to listen to Devid and Felix getting it on.

Leon, meanwhile has just finished writing a second-rate novel and is behaving like a stroppy teenager, secretly in love with Nadja. Leon’s editor Helmut (Brandt) turns up and tempers flare, with catastrophic results.

All this fits into Petzold’s general overview of German men who still seem better at living than dying. Helmut discusses the director’s pet theme with Heinrich Heine’s poem “The Asra”.

DoP Hans Fromm puts a documentary spin on his images, catching the protagonists like fish in a deadly net. Schubert simmers quietly but effectively as the spoilt child would be author, and Beer does her best with a tricky role. But true to Heine himself, Petzold stays the course, and no one’s prepared for what’s in store.

Afire might not be Petzold’s greatest achievement, but he once again proves to be head and shoulders above his German peers. This is another sad tract on Germany’s guilt complex – played out by a new generation of males. AS

IN CINEMAS and ON CURZON HOME CINEMA from 25 AUGUST 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 Brothers (1947)

Dir: David MacDonald | Uk Drama

Where do you start with this one? It certainly doesn’t look as if it was meant to promote tourism north of the border.

Patricia Roc (looking even less convincing as a sweet young thing in pigtails than Joan Fontaine in ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’) arrives on the Isle of Skye where the ratio of men to women seems five to one and the attracts the attention of all the young bruiser. Foolishly she soon goes skinny dipping with predicable effects on the local lads who promptly start fighting over her.

You start wondering if you’re seeing double when John Laurie appears in two roles, and are we seriously expected to believe Finlay Currie produced two sons who look like Duncan Macrae and Maxwell Reed; maybe they were adopted? @RichardChatten

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

 

 

The Damned (1961)

Dir: Joseph Losey | Cast: Macdonald Carey, Shirley Anne Field, Oliver Reed, James Villiers | Thriller, 82′

The film that concluded the journeyman phase of Joseph Losey’s career. Based on H. L. Lawrence’s novel ‘The Children of Light’, and called ‘The Damned’ because ‘Village of the Damned’ had recently scored a big hit. I would have loved to have been present when this film was first screened for the top brass at Hammer Films, who must have seen the film out in stunned silence.

Unable to know what to do with it, they pushed it out as a second feature, when it rescued by an admiring review from Philip French just months before Losey made his critical breakthrough with ‘The Servant’. Writer Evan Jones said they could have made half a dozen different films from what they’d shot and that one cast member so exceeded expectations they built his part up; he didn’t name names but I suspect he meant Kenneth Colpe.

Despite Losey’s admission that he’d never read the novel, it’s actually a very faithful adaptation of the original. The opening chapters depicting the hero fleeing the accidental killing of his wife have been discarded, the children in the book are hot to the touch rather than cold, the villain in both is called Bernard and and one point he instructs his minions to send a helicopter (so much for Losey’s claim that that was an original idea!) While Oliver Reed and his marauding gang obviously inspired the Droogs in ‘A Clockwork Orange’. @RichardChatten

WatchAUT Festival 2023 | A celebration of Austrian cinema

March brings a chance to binge on Austrian cinema – not only the classics but the latest crop of films from edgy new directors.

 

This year WatchAUT celebrates its second edition running from 23-26 March at London’s Cine Lumiere courtesy of The Austrian Cultural Forum London in cooperation with the Austrian Film Institute and Austrian Films.

The festival offers a special archive screening of Fritz Lang’s silent masterpiece FRAU IM MOND. Often considered as the first ‘serious’ science fiction film, the female led fantasy is a fascinating historical counterpoint to today’s spectacular sci-fi epics – including Leni Lauritsch’s space station thriller RUBIKON, one of the new Austrian films set to screen at this year’s festival alongside others including opening gala THE FOX, award-winning LGBTQ+ drama EISMAYER, and Nikoas Geyrhalter’s environmental documentary MATTER OUT OF PLACE.

THE FOX (dir: Adrian Goiginger, Germany/Austria, 2022). UK Premiere.

The true story of Franz Streitberger, the director’s great-grandfather, a motorcycle courier for the Austrian Army. At the beginning of the Second World War, this introverted young soldier comes across a wounded fox cub that he looks after and takes to occupied France with him – and through this unique friendship, his own past as an outcast farmers son slowly catches up with him.

Q&A with director Adrian Goiginger and lead actor Simon Morzé. 23 March.

FRAU IM MOND (dir: Fritz Lang, Germany, 1929).

An early film by visionary Austrian director Fritz Lang, Woman in the Moon follows a band of space pioneers as they attempt mankind’s first lunar voyage. This silent sci-fi epic is often considered as the first ‘serious’ science fiction film due to its realistic depiction of space travel. When the film premiered 94 years ago, it introduced cinema audiences to many elements that we now readily associate with space travel, including the idea of a countdown before the launch of a rocket. Presented in its rarely seen full-length version with live piano accompaniment, transporting the audience back to the era of silent film.

26 March

EISMAYER (dir: David Wagner, Austria, 2022). London Premiere.

Vice Lieutenant Eismayer is the most feared trainer and model macho in the Austrian Army, despite being a gay man in secret. When he falls in love with a young openly gay soldier, his world gets turned upside down. Based on real events, this LGBTQ+ feature championed at numerous film festivals, including Venice where it won the Grand Prize at Venice International Critics Week and was nominated for the Queer Lion.

Including Q&A with director David Wagner. 24 March.

I AM THE TIGRESS (dir: Philipp Fussenegger, Dino Osmanoviç, Austria/United States/Germany, 2021).

A favourite at BFI Flare, this intimate documentary portrays Tischa Thomas aka The Tigress – a 47-year-old mother and competitive bodybuilder whose physical strength and prowess contrasts with her beneath-the-surface vulnerability.

Including Q&A with directors and Tischa Thomas. 25 March.

MATTER OUT OF PLACE (dir: Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria, 2022). Winner of the WWF Green Leopard at Locarno International Film Festival, this environmental documentary captures the dispersion of garbage – observing the sisyphos-like work of garbage collectors and waste managers around the world. 25 March.

RUBIKON (dir: Leni Lauritsch, Austria, 2022). British actor George Blagden (Versailles, Vikings) stars alongside Austrian actress Julia Franz Richter and Ukrainian-born actor Mark Ivanir (The Good Shepherd) in this sci-fi drama. When Earth suddenly disappears in a toxic brown fog and all contacts are broken, the crew of a space station must decide whether to stay safe in space or risk their lives to get home and search for survivors. 26 March.

VERA (dir: Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel, Austria, 2022). Winner of the Venice Horizons Award for Best Director, as well as Best Actress for Vera Gemma, this Italian language drama co-stars Asia Argento and tells the story of Vera: a woman who lives in the shadow of her famous father and is tired of her superficial life amidst Rome’s high society, until tragedy offers perspective.

23-26 March 2023, Ciné Lumière, London SW7 2DW https://www.acflondon.org/events/watchaut-2023/

Cinema Made in Italy | Spring 2023

Cinema Made in Italy showcases the best of Italian cinema with eleven new releases coming to London’s Cine Lumiere from 9 until 13 March 2023

 

Fantozzi 

An insignificant cog in the wheels of a large company, Fantozzi starts his days battling against time (he must clock in) and overcrowded buses; he continues half hidden behind piles of work dumped on him by his crafty colleagues. Things are no better at home. Or in his free time. The film follows the hilarious and sometimes desperate trials and tribulations of our anti-hero, as he tries to get on in life.

Il Colibrì (The Hummingbird) (2022) Dir: Francesca Archibugi

Nanni Moretti, and Berenice Bejo star alongside Pierfrancesco Favino who plays Marco Carrera, aka il Colibrì or “the hummingbird”: a life of fateful coincidences, loss, and stories of absolute love. Il Colibrì is the story of the ancestral force of life, of the arduous struggle we all make to withstand what at times appears intolerable – also by wielding the powerful weapons of illusion, happiness, and good cheer.

Il Signore Delle Formiche (Lord of The Ants) (2022) Dir: Gianni Amelio

At the end of the sixties, a trial was held in Rome that caused a sensation. Playwright and poet Aldo Braibanti (Luigi Lo Cascio) was sentenced to nine years in prison, found guilty of plagio. That is, of having submitted another person, physically and psychologically, to his own will. In this case, a student and friend who was barely of age. The youth’s family had him committed to a psychiatric hospital and subjected to a string of devastating electroshock treatments to “cure” him of that “diabolical” influence. Drawing inspiration from true events, the film tells a story through a chorus of voices.

In Viaggio Dir: Gianfranco Rosi (2022)

This documentary by award-winning filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi centres of the first nine years of Pope Francis’s pontificate during which he made 37 trips visiting 53 countries, focusing on his most important issues: poverty, migration, the environment, solidarity and war. Intrigued by the fact that two of Francis’s trips – the first to the refugees landing in Lampedusa; the second in 2021 to the Middle East – so closely mirrored the itineraries of his films Fuocoammare and Notturno, Rosi follows the Pope’s Stations of the Cross. He sees what he sees, hears what he says and creates a dialogue between archival footage of Francis’ travels, images taken by Rosi himself, recent history and the state of the world today.

Interdit Aux Chiens et Aux Italiens (No Dogs or Italians Allowed) (2022)

In Alain Ughetto’s stop motion animation Luigi and his brothers set out from their native village in the Piedmont,  to discover “La Merica”, the fabulous land where dollars grow on trees. Finally, instead of crossing the Atlantic, Luigi puts his backpack down in southern France, with hands that could no longer work.

Le Otto Montagne (The Eight Mountains) (2022)

The Eight Mountains is a story about friendship, fatherhood, and the choices we make in life. In the background, the mountains we climb every day, both physically and mentally. Told through the story of two close friends, this Cannes award-winning feature reflects on the complex nature of human relationships in the modern world.

L’immensità (2022) Dir: Emanuele Crialese

Spanish actor Penelope Cruz gives a tour de force performance at the centre of this 1970s set drama that unfolds in Rome at time of great social and cultural change, full of grit and glamour. The young Borghetti family has just moved into one of the many freshly-built apartment blocks in the city. The move is bittersweet. Despite the beautiful, sweeping views of Rome from their top floor apartment, the family is not as close as they once were.

Clara (Cruz) and Felice (Vincenzo Amato) are no longer in love, but are unable to leave each other. Clara finds refuge from her loneliness in the shelter of her special relationships with her three children. The oldest, Adriana (11), an unknown child in this new neighbourhood, deliberately presents as a boy to the local children, pushing the family’s bond towards a breaking point.

Margini (Margins) (2022) Dir: Niccolo Falsetti

Summer 2008. Three friends have the chance of a lifetime: opening for their favourite punk hardcore band. At the very last moment, the concert falls through but Edo, Iac and Miche don’t give up. To them punk is more than music, it’s a lifestyle. In a blink, they decide to bring the gig to Grosseto, the silent and conservative city where they live. All the difficulties and problems they face on their way risk to blow up their lives and their friendship.

The March on Rome (2022) Dir: Mark Cousins

Through little-seen archive and his characteristically cinematic analysis, Mark Cousins narrates the ascent of fascism in Italy and its fall-out across 1930s Europe. Both essay film and historical document, Cousins contextualises history through the now, holding a mirror to a political landscape of a creeping far right and manipulated media.

 

Notte Fantasma (Ghost Night) (2022) Dir: Fulvio Risuleo

This award-winning two-handed psychological thriller sees a plain-clothes policeman apprehend a seventeen year old boy, after watching him buying dope. The detective will drive aimlessly around all night with the teenager in the back of his car.

Siccità (Drought) (2022) Dir: Paolo Virzi

Drought has plagued the Italian capital of Rome for three years now, and the lack of water has changed everybody’s life. While strict rules add to people’s misery, odd characters roam the streets of the capital. Outcasts, achievers, victims, and wrongdoers are all part of the same tragic picture, and they are all after the same thing: redemption.

Spaccaossa (The Bone Breakers) (2022) Dir: Vincenzo Pirrotta

Inside a warehouse in Palermo, a group of people smashes a man’s arm to pieces with a wheelie bag packed with weights. This is the method used by an amateur criminal organization that fractures the limbs of its willing victims before staging fake accidents and raking in the insurance payouts. Vincenzo recruits the individuals from among the down-and-outs that haunt the city streets, where Luisa is a habitué, since she gets her crack there. Vincenzo’s problems suddenly get worse, though, after a series of mistakes shut him out of the gang, and Luisa is now his only chance: he convinces her to have her bones broken.

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY : MARCH 9 – 13 2023 |  CINE LUMIERE LONDON

 

 

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

Women Talking (2022)

Dir.: Sarah Polley; Cast: Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, August Winter; USA 2022, 104 min.

With all the dystopian dramas around at the moment Sarah Polley offers a rewarding human story full of hope that unfolds within a religious cult in a remote corner of contemporary Bolivia.

In the aftermath to ongoing abuse from their menfolk, a group of women – carried by a stellar cast of Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand – try to come to terms with their experience and focus on finding a positive solution to determine their future and that of their children.

For years, men have used cattle anaesthetics to subdue the women, raping everyone of them between four and sixty. On top of it, they have accused the women of making it all up, claiming that demons were at work. But the seven men are now in custody in the nearby town, the rest are collecting money to free the perpetrators from jail. The women have two days to come up with a practical answer: there are three alternatives: Submit to the men by forgiving them -to keep the status quo; stay and fight – or leave. Scarface Janz (McDormand, (the film’s producer) choses the first option, but she is in the minority and soon leaves the meeting. Ona (Mara) changes her mind and votes to leave, Salome (Foy) wants to stay and fight, even if that means transgressing the religious laws of the colony. Mariche (Buckley) even speaks out the unspeakable: committing murder as an act of revenge.

The only man present is schoolteacher August Epp (Whishaw), who is taking the minutes of the meeting. None of the women can read or write, having been deprived of the basic education. Epp is in love with Ona who is pregnant after having been raped. Another question is how to deal with the children: if they vote for ‘leave’, what will happen to the children. Maternal instincts will clash with the overall decision.

Women Talking is a calm and edifying experience. Salome comments “freedom is an endless meeting”, something straight out of 1960s. And: “Looking back, we saw that violence was happening everywhere”; the women try to explore their own guilt examine whether they have somehow colluded with their menfolk by letting them get away with abuse, just to keep the peace – and the religious order “set up by men”.

DoP Luc Montpellier reflects the vapid existence of these women with a bleached out colour palette of pale hues. In the end, with The Monkees “DaydreamBeliever” blasting over the end titles, nothing will be the same any more.

IN CINEMAS FROM 17 FEBRUARY 2023

 

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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Phaedra (1962)

Dir: Jules Dessin | Cast: Melina Mercouri, Anthony Perkins, Elizabeth Ercy, Raf Vallone | US Drama 115’

After Anthony Perkins checked out of the Bates Motel he spent the next five years on the continent where he fell into the predatory embrace of lynx-eyed cougar Melina Mercouri.

Phaedra‘ is probably the nearest thing Jules Dassin ever made to a Hollywood soap opera, as he follows Mrs Dassin in the title role cheating on her husband (a shipping magnate who owns his own helicopter) while she swans about on boats, gets off planes in dark glasses in a succession of killer outfits, and generally behaves like a glamorous cougar.

Instead of pianos on the soundtrack we get guitars by Mikos Theodorakis. It’s all hilariously pretentious, but great fun. @RichardChatten

https://youtu.be/JQVbuCbpZ_c

100 Seasons (2023) Rotterdam Film Festival 2023

Dir.: Giovanni Bucchieri; Cast: Louise Peterhoff Giovanni Bucchieri, Michel Riddez, Karin Bertling, Vera Olme Peterhoff; Sweden 2023, 101 miin.

Giovanni Bucchieri reflects on his 1990s relationship with co-writer Louise Peterhoff  in this impressive but disturbingly morbid hybrid feature.

Giovanni lives in a small room entirely dedicated to his past. In his late forties, he has fallen on hard times professionally as a singer and actor, and is undergoing treatment for bi-polar with a psychologist (Riddez) who also prescribes him medication which Giovanni flushes down the loo. Intensely obsessed with his own death, even to the extent of making it into an art form involving his own coffin, Giovanni also performs in the street, one time ending up naked. Louise was the love of his life, and he spends his days watching videos of his life with Louise, a ballet dancer and now a choreographer who is bringing a modern dance version of “Romeo and Juliet” to the stage.

The home videos tell a sad story of how Louise – who is divorced, and living with teenage daughter Sasha (V.O. Peterhoff), became unable to cope with Giovanni’s tendency to over-dramatise every situation in their relationship. The films show them in 18th aristocratic dress which is somehow redolent of the rollercoaster relationship. Both have been deeply affected by their time together and Giovanni is now coming to the end of his life. Meanwhile, Louise is in a relationship with Noah whom she tries in vain to keep away from her daughter.

Louise’s ballet project is often interrupted by the cast who are not happy with her style of direction that pictures the romantic story as anything but. In her defence Louise claims that “Romeo and Julia” is Shakespeare’s weakest play, but that she chose to choreograph it as “a challenge”.

100 Seasons is a macabre piece of filmmaking. Rarely have we seen a director filming their own fictional death for a feature. Bucchieri is certainly in love with decay and morbidity, and the film becomes a vehicle for this weird obsession which verges on outright narcissism. DoP Axel Pettersson goes all out for effects, showcasing Bucchieri’s the over-the-top performance to extraordinary effect. 100 Seasons is not always well served by its rather chaotic structure, which leaves too many questions unanswered in an otherwise entertaining and engrossing debut. AS

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | TIGER COMPETITION 2023

Five Fingers (1952)

Dir: Joseph L Mankiewicz | Cast: James Mason, Danielle Darrieux, Michael Rennie, Walter Hampden | US Thriller

James Mason actually quotes the famous observation that “no man is a hero to his valet”. At the time Mason was treading water in Hollywood and probably looked down with the same urbane contempt as Cicero himself obviously felt for the men her was currently working (witness the ease with which he opens his original contact’s safe when he’s briefly out of the room and the smug way he explains how he did it).

Based on a true story, and a novel ‘Operation Cicero’, Five Fingers is a wartime spy thriller that sees the valet to the British Ambassador in Ankara trying to make a fortune by selling secrets to the Germans while trying to romance a refugee Polish countess.

Mason was patrician enough to pass for “an Oxford-bred aristocrat if ever I saw one” (he actually admits to being Albanian) and was just the man to do justice to Joseph Mankiewicz’s witty dialogue, and the film boasts a score by Bernard Herrmann.

Daniele Darrieux brings a little Continental sophistication to the part of a Polish countess, John Wengraf is a reasonable facsimile of Von Papen (although Alfred Zeisler doesn’t look a bit as his co-defendant at Nuremberg Ernst Kaltenbrunner). @RichardChatten

Una Vita Difficile (1961)

Dir: Dino Risi | Alberto Sordi, Lea Massari, Franco Fabrizi, Lina Volonghi | Italy, Drama 118′

Lake Como, Northern Italy, 1944. Partisan Sordi on the run from the Germans, is sheltered, nursed and romanced in an abandoned mill by local innkeeper’s daughter Massari, whisking her to Rome after the war to share his shabby flat.

The story of an on-again, off-again, then on-again relationship, told against 17 years of Italian history, from the last year of World War II to the economic boom of the early 1960s – the liberation of Rome, the country’s switch from monarchy to republic, the first post-Fascist general election, etc. – as Sordi’s commitment to the Cause gets in the way of his earning a decent living for Massari and their newborn son.

In Italy, Una Vita Difficile is cherished as one of the great works of commedia all’italiana – a Golden Age of cinema from the 50s and 60s that includes Monicelli’s Big Deal on Madonna Street, Germi’s Divorce Italian Style, Lattuada’s Mafioso, De Sica’s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, and Risi’s own Il Sorpasso. While these and others were major arthouse hits, Una Vita Difficile was never released in the US.

One of Italy’s most beloved stars, Alberto Sordi began his film career as the Italian dubbing voice of Hollywood actors, including Cary Grant, and became famous as the Italian voice of Oliver Hardy.  After appearing as the Valentinoesque title character of Federico Fellini’s The White Sheik, Sordi had his breakthrough role in Fellini’s I Vitelloni, as one of the aimless young men of the title

Though never an international star like contemporaries Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Gassman, Sordi was one of Italy’s biggest box office attractions, starring in over 150 movies (19 directed by himself).  Along with Anna Magnani, Sordi was the quintessential Roman, affectionately known by his public as “Albertone.” At his funeral in 2013, an estimated crowd of close to a million gathered outside the church to pay their last respects.

Una Vita Difficile’s many comic highlights include a Banquet from Hell at the table of an ancient principessa and a riotous sequence at Cinecittà, with guest appearances by superstars Vittorio Gassman (who’d star in Risi’s Il Sorpasso a year later) and Silvana Mangano (best known as star of the neo-realist classic Bitter Rice and wife of producer Dino De Laurentiis), along with director Alessandro Blasetti, known as “the father of Italian cinema.”

Often called “Italy’s Billy Wilder,” Dino Risi’s film career began as an assistant to Mario Soldati and Alberto Lattuada. His films are populated by a rogue’s gallery of shamelessly lovable commedia all’Italiana types in the inimitable guises of some of the era’s greatest actors: Alberto Sordi, Vittorio Gassman, Nino Manfredi, Ugo Tognazzi, and Sophia Loren.” Risi was awarded an Honorary Golden Lion at the 2002 Venice Film Festival for his life’s work.

Una Vita Difficile was scanned in 4K from the original negative by Istituto Luce, Rome.  The restoration was carried out at VDM by Studiocanal and headline.@Andrea Torres

AT FILMFORUM New York from FEBRUARY 3

The Grand Bolero (2021)

Dir.: Gabriele Fabbro; Cast: Lidia Vitale, Ludovica Mancini, Marcello Mariani, Filippo Prandi; Italy 2021, 90 min.

Gabriele Fabbro draws on an award-winning background in music promos and commercials with this surprise mixture of horror and musical drama with a lesbian twist. Borrowing for the best of Dario Argento and Luis Bunuel The Grand Bolero will particularly appeal to classical music lovers.

In a dilapidated 17th century church in the Italian countryside during the recent pandemic, a banner proclaims “Everything will be fine” – but everyone knows this is wishful thinking. Father Paolo (Mariani) spends his days ringing the bells to mark another steep rise in the number of victims struck down during the first lockdown . The church houses two organs: one from the 15th century, the other from the 19th – that really came into its own during the era of silent films.

Middle-aged control freak Roxanne (Vitale) is in charge of the organ’s restoration programme, and is furious when Paolo presents her with a mute assistant called Lucia (Mancini) who has been taking artefacts from the church and passing them on to a man called Luca (Prandi) – who could be her brother or even a lover.

Roxanne becomes so obsessed with Lucia she does everything in her power to humiliate the young woman, but has to pipe down when it turns out Lucia is also a gifted organ player. For Lucia’s character Fabbro and his co-writer Ydalie Turk clearly had Jeanne Moreau in mind from Bunuel’s The Diary of a Chambermaid – the original tempestuous subordinate turned mistress. The enigma of Lucia remains mysteriously, and suitably, unresolved. The peaceful wood near the church becomes a hunting ground of violent emotions transforming the fairy story into a Grand Guignol finale.

The Grand Bolero culminates in an orgy of music, featuring everything from the Ravel to Holst and other European organ masters. The narrative is driven forward by Roxanne’s lust for Lucia that seems to devour everything as it builds towards the climactic reveal. Gabriele Fabbro leaves us breathless but satisfied: having pulled out every stop, in more ways that one, for this imaginative debut underpinned by considerable filmmaking experience. AS

NOW ON AMAZON PRIME

The Stranger (2022) Netflix

Dir: Thomas M Wright | Australia, Thriller

Two strangers meet on a bus ride in the outback in this tense Australian thriller written and directed with visual flair and ingenuity by Thomas M Wright.

At first The Stranger feels like one of those heist movies, one last trick before retiring for a bearded and biddable loner Henry (Sean Harris) hired by Paul (Mouzakis), an amiable undercover cop. Henry is down on his luck and looking for a gig ‘but nothing violent’. Paul then introduces his new pal to his criminal circle and an uncertain Henry goes along for the ride soon bonding with Mark (Joel Edgerton), who will show him the ropes.

Paul and Mark soon turn out to be police detectives working on a cold case, an unsolved crime involving the disappearance of a boy eight years earlier in 2002. The police have been working tirelessly to find a body and a murderer, but so far have been unable to pin down Henry, the only suspect, who was seen in the area at the time the boy vanished. But when they discover Henry has another identity things start to fall into place.

Based on Kate Kyriacou’s book The Sting: The Undercover Operation that Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer, The Stranger is a gripping and sinuous piece of filmmaking with a twisty, tantalising narrative and convincing performances from Harris and Edgerton, who also produces.

Mark works hard to win Henry’s trust and their close relationship runs parallel to the nationwide police investigation that will gradually get to bottom of Henry’s murky past. Until the police get firm tangible evidence to place murderer and victim at the scene of the crime their killer could still slip away, after eight years on the run. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

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

Medieval (2022)

Dir: Peter Jakl | Cast: Michael Caine, Ben Foster, Sophie Lowe, Til Schweiger | US Action drama, 126′

A bloodthirsty bohemian epic from the days when men took their anger out on the battlefield rather than the football pitch and warlords said deep and meaningless things like “Death brings Life”. Medieval, touted as the most expensive Czech film ever made, tells the story of the Czech warlord Jan Žižka (1360–1424ish) who is considered a major figure in Czech history and led the military wing of the followers of the religious thinker and reformer of the Catholic Church Jan Hus, the so-called Hussites.

Žižka is played by American actor Ben Foster who’s more interested in grimly defeating armies of the Teutonic Order of Holy Roman Empire than exuding charisma. Once again, Michael Caine stars – and is no guarantee for the quality of a film – but he brings a certain sense of naturalness to the party as the wise old Lord Boresh. See it on the big screen where Jesper Toffner’s swashbuckling set-pieces really come into their own. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

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

 

 

 

 

 

Marrakech Film Festival | Programme Highlights 2022

Marrakech Film Festival is back after two years under a new artistic director Remi Bonhomie. With its fabulous climate, medieval walled Medina dating back to the Berber empire, exotic palaces and lush gardens – Yves Saint Laurent’s famous Majorelle is the standout – Marrakech is the ideal location for a winter festival celebrating international cinema with an emphasis on Moroccan and MENA film in general. The 19th edition includes an international competition, gala screenings, the Moroccan Panorama, and the 11th continent celebrating innovative film that challenge cinematic boundaries and

Here is the festival line-up:

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

ALMA VIVA
by Cristèle Alves Meira / Portugal
Principal Cast: Lua Michel, Ana Padrão, Jacqueline Corado, Duarte Pina, Catherine Salée

ASHKAL
by Youssef Chebbi / Tunisia
Principal Cast: Fatma Oussaifi, Mohamed Houcine Grayaa, Rami Harrabi, Hichem Riahi, Nabil Trabelsi, Bahri Rahali

ASTRAKAN
by David Depesseville / France
Principal Cast: Mirko Giannini Samuel, Jehnny Beth, Bastien Bouillon

AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Makbul Mubarak / Indonesia
Principal Cast: Kevin Ardilova, Arswendy Bening Swara, Haru Sandra, Rukman Rosadi, Yusuf Mahardika

THE BLUE CAFTAN (Le Bleu du Caftan/Azraq al-qaftan)
by Maryam Touzani / Morocco
Principal Cast: Lubna Azabal, Saleh Bakri, Ayoub Missioui

FARAWAY SONG (Cañçao ao Longe)
by Clarissa Campolina / Brazil
Principal Cast: Mônica Maria, Carlos Francisco, Jhon Narvaez, Margô Assis, Matilde Biagi, Ricardo Campos

PETROL
by Alena Lodkina / Australia
Principal Cast: Nathalie Morris, Hannah Lynch

RED SHOES (Zapatos rojos)
by Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser / Mexico Principal Cast: Eustacio Ascacio, Natalia Solian, Phanie Molina, Irine Herrera

RICEBOY SLEEPS
by Anthony Shim / Canada
Principal Cast: Choi Seung-yoon, Ethan Hwang, Dohyun Noel Hwang, Anthony Shim, Hunter Dillon

SAVAGE (Amina)
by Ahmed Abdullahi / Sweden
Principal Cast: Nimco Ahmed Ali, Jamilah Mohamed Kirih, Ariane Castellanos

SNOW AND THE BEAR (Kar ve Ayı)
by Selcen Ergun / Turkey
Principal Cast: Merve Dizdar, Saygın Soysal, Asiye Dinçsoy, Erkan Bektaş, Derya Pınar Ak

A TALE OF SHEMROON (Chevalier noir)
by Emad Aleebrahim Dehkordi / Iran
Principal Cast: Iman Sayad Borhani, Payar Allahyari, Masoumeh Beygi, Behzad Dorani

THE TASTE OF APPLES IS RED (Ta’am al-tufah, ahmar)
by Ehab Tarabieh / Syria
Principal Cast: Mariam J. Khoury, Tarik Kopty, Rula Blal, Hussien Rumiah, Maisa Abd Elhadi, Suheil Haddad

THUNDER (Foudre)
by Carmen Jaquier / Switzerland
Principal Cast: Lilith Grasmug, Mermoz Melchior, Benjamin Python, Noah Watzlawick, Sabine Timoteo

GALA SCREENINGS

Opening Film
GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO
by Guillermo del Toro / Mexico et Mark Gustafson / USA
Principal Cast: Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton
­
ARMAGEDDON TIME
by James Gray / USA
Principal Cast: Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta, Anthony Hopkins

BOY FROM HEAVEN (Walad min al-janna)
by Tarik Saleh / Sweden
Principal Cast: Tawfeek Barhom, Fares Fares, Mohammad Bakri, Makram J. Khoury, Mehdi Dehbi

MARLOWE
by Neil Jordan / Ireland
Principal Cast: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Danny Huston

MASTER GARDENER
by Paul Schrader / USA
Principal Cast: Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Quintessa Swindell
­
MEDITERRANEAN FEVER
by Maha Haj / Palestine
Principal Cast: Amer Hlehel, Ashraf Farah, Anat Hadid, Samir Elias, Cynthia Saleem, Shaden Kanboura

THE SITTING DUCK (La Syndicaliste)
by Jean-Paul Salomé / France

Principal Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Grégory Gadebois, François-Xavier Demaison, Pierre Deladonchamps, Alexandra Maria Lara, Gilles Cohen with the participation of de Marina Foïs, Yvan Attal

THE SWIMMERS
by Sally El Hosaini / Egypt/United Kingdom
Principal Cast: Mana Issa, Nathalie Issa, Matthias Schweighöfer, Ahmed Malek, James Krishna Floyd, Ali Suleiman
­
SPECIAL SCREENINGS


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BURNING DAYS (Kurak Günler)
by Emin Alper / Turkey
Principal Cast: Selahattin Paşali, Ekin Koç, Erol Babaoğlu, Erdem Şenocak, Selin Yeninci

CORSAGE
by Marie Kreutzer / Austria
Principal Cast: Vicky Krieps, Florian Teichtmeister, Aaron Friesz, Katharina Lorenz, Jeanne Werner, Alma Hasun

THE DAMNED DON’T CRY
by Fyzal Boulifa / Morocco
Principal Cast: Abdellah El Hajjouji, Aïcha Tebbae, Antoine Reinartz

DECLARATION (Ariyippu)
by Mahesh Narayanan / India
Principal Cast: Kunchacko Boban, Divya Prabha, Lovleen Misra, Danish Husain, Kannan Arunasalam

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER
by Joanna Hogg / United Kingdom
Principal Cast: Tilda Swinton, August Joshi,
Carly-Sophie Davies, Joseph Mydell, Crispin Buxton

GODLAND
(Vanskabte Land | Volga∂a Land)
by Hlynur Pálmason / Iceland
Principal Cast: Elliott Crosset Hove, Ingvar Sigur∂sson, Vic Carmen Sonne, Jacob Hauberg Lohmann, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir

LES HARKIS
by Philippe Faucon / France
Principal Cast: Théo Cholbi, Mohamed Mouffok, Pierre Lottin, Yannick Choirat, Omar Boulakirba

MONICA
by Andrea Pallaoro / Italy
Principal Cast: Trace Lysette, Patricia Clarkson, Emily Browning, Joshua Close, Adriana Barraza
­
NAYOLA
by José Miguel Ribeiro / Portugal
Voices: Elisângela Rita, Vitória Soares, Feliciana Délcia Guia, Marinela Furtado, José Adelino Barcelo Carvalho

NO BEARS (Khers nist)
by Jafar Panahi / Iran
Principal Cast: Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaseri, Bakhtiar Panjei, Mina Kavani

QUEENS (Reines)
by Yasmine Benkiran / Morocco
Principal Cast: Nisrin Erradi, Nisrine Benchara, Rayhan Guaran, Jalila Talemsi, Mohamed Nider Hamid

RETURN TO SEOUL (Retour à Seoul)
by Davy Chou / Cambodia
Principal Cast: Park Ji-min, Oh Kwang-rok, Guka Han, Kim Sun-young, Yoann Zimmer, Louis-Do Lencquesaing

RHINEGOLD (Rheingold)
by Fatih Akin / Germany
Principal Cast: Emilio Sakraya, Kardo Razzazi, Mona Pirzad, Arman Kashani, Hüseyin Top, Sogol Faghani

SAINT OMER (Saint-Omer)
by Alice Diop / France
Principal Cast: Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit, Robert Cantarella

UNDER THE FIG TREES (Sous les figues)
by Erige Sehiri / Tunisia
Principal Cast: Fide Fdhili, Feten Fdhili, Ameni Fdhili, Samar Sifi, Leila Ouhebi
­
THE 11TH CONTINENT
­
BEIRUT AL-LIKA (Beirut, the Encounter)
by Borhane Alaouié / Lebanon
Principal Cast: Haitham El Amine, Nadine Acoury, Renée Deek, Refaat Haidar, Hussam Sabbah, Najwa Haidar, Rafic Najem (1981)

DRY GROUND BURNING (Mato seco em chamas)
by Joana Pimenta / Portugal
and Adirley Queiros / Brazil
Principal Cast: Joana Darc Furtado, Léa Alves Da Silva, Andreia Vieira, Débora Alencar, Gleide Firmino, Mara Alves

EAMI
by Paz Encina / Paraguay
Principal Cast: Anel Picanerai, Curia Chiquejno Etacoro, Ducubaide Chiquenoi, Basui Picanerai Etacore, Lucas Etacori

FATHER’S DAY
by Kivu Ruhorahoza / Rwanda
Principal Cast: Mediatrice Kayitesi, Aline Amike, Yves Kijyana, Cedric Gisubizo

FRAGMENTS FROM HEAVEN
by Adnane Baraka / Morocco
Documentary
With: Mohamed Oubakha, Abderrahman Ibhi, Lahcen Oubakha, Youssef Oubakha

IN FIELDS OF WORDS: CONVERSATIONS WITH SAMAR YAZBEK (As-sahel al-mumtani)
by Rania Stephan / Lebanon
Documentary
With: Samar Yazbek
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MARINER OF THE MOUNTAINS (Marinheiro das Montanhas)
by Karim Aïnouz / Brazil

MUNA MOTO (The Child of Another)
by Jean-Pierre Dikongué-Pipa / Cameroon Principal Cast: David Endéné, Arlette Din Bell, Philippe Abia, Gisèle Dikongué-Pipa, Jeanne Mvondo (1975)

PACIFICTION
by Albert Serra / Spain
Principal Cast: Benoît Magimel, Pahoa Mahagafanau, Marc Susini, Matahi Pambrun, Alexandre Melo

POLARIS
by Ainara Vera / France
Documentary

REEL NO. 21 AKA RESTORING SOLIDARITY
by Mohanad Yaqubi / Palestine, Morocco
Documentary

REWIND & PLAY
by Alain Gomis / Senegal
Documentary

MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL | 11 -20 NOVEMBER 2022

Made in Prague Festival 2022

The popular, multi-genre festival Made in Prague returns to London for its 26th year. Representing one of the oldest national celebrations of European culture in the UK,
the festival presents an exciting programme covering film, music, science, visual art and literature across London and beyond between 1 November and 4 December 2022.

This year’s highlights feature:

Olmo Omerzu’s wry black comedy Bird Atlas, often quoted ‘Czech Republic’s answer to the smash hit series Succession‘.

Kunstkamera, Czech surrealist and filmmaker Jan Švankmajer’s lastest film introducing the artist’s unique private collection of artefacts to the world.

Powerful documentary 107 Mothers, an exquisite docudrama telling the stories of mothers and pregnant woment in a Ukrainian prison.

Gustav Machatý’s 1929 silent gem Erotikon + live accompaniment by UK pianist Stephen Horne at the BFI Southbank.

Hommage to the great Czech film composer Zdeněk Liška available on BFI Player.

a number of critically acclaimed contemporary Czech films, many of which will be introduced by their directors.

MADE IN PRAGUE FESTIVAL 2022

Occupation | Okupace (2021) Made in Prague Festival 2022

Dir.: Michal Nohejl; Cast: Antonie Formanova, Aleksey Gorbunov, Martin Pechlat, Otokar Brousek, Tomas Jelabek, Cyril Dobry Vlastimil Venclik; Czech Republic 2021, 98 min.

This bizarre absurdist chamber from Czech director/co-writer Michal Nohejl (Fobie) sees the crew and cast of a Prague theatre imagine the emotional aftermath to the invasion of their country by Russian and Warsaw Pact troops in 1968.

Okupace never really escapes its stagey stetting – the bar of the theatre – Nohejl borrowing freely from Milos Forman’s Fireman’s Ball – but adding a critical nuance in terms of the historical traumata of the old Czechoslovakia.

For many Czechs the Munich tragedy of 1938 comes back to haunt them in 1968. In both cases, there were no heroes to save the day and the drunken arguments of the cast and the play’s director (Brousek) are very much a reaction to this lack of muscular leadership. Pavel Neskudia (Pechlat) plays the artistic boss of the theatre. The play – about the Czech communist martyr Julius Fucik – is hailed as ‘mediocre’ by all present. Neskudia is interviewed by the enigmatic beauty Milada (Formanova), who heaps praise on him for having returned from Western exile after the invasion. Unfortunately Neskudia, like everyone one else in the room, is slightly paranoid, and accuses the woman of being part of the secret service STB, sent out to spy on him.

One of the actors has remained in his SS costume and this freaks out a drunken Russian officer (Ukranian actor Aleksey Gorbunov), who arrives desperate to get even more drunk. He accosts Milada and a scuffle breaks out. Somebody decides it would be good idea to pretend that the Russian has fallen into the hands of the Nazis, represented by the “SS man”. Violence escalates, and the artists leave the Russian for dead. A Russian patrol then turns up inquiring where their officer is, and the Czechs’ total denial of his whereabouts leaves the group in a precarious position: they know very well what will happen to them if the truth comes out. Fuelled by more alcohol, the  troupe decide to aspire to the heroes the country never had.

Inspired lighting effects from DoP Jan Baset Stritezsky make the bar look like something out of Visconti’s The Damned. He then conjures up pure evil with his shadow-play as the violence escalates. Performances are decent with the protagonists falling out with each other over the violence they have brought upon themselves. Despite all this the production fails to soar above the confines of its one-location setting. Occupation remains very much a filmed theatre play which does require a basic knowledge of Czechoslovakia’s history. The war in Ukraine also plays a role, underlining how just much Czech people feel let down by their own country. Occupation is a brave and avant-garde endeavour which doesn’t quite live up to its intentions. AS

SCREENING DURING MADE IN PRAGUE FESTIVAL | LONDON 2022

Nocebo (2022)

Dir: Lorcan Finnegan | Wri: Garret Shanley | Cast: Eva Green, Mark Strong, Chai Fonacier, Billie Gadsdon | Ireland, thriller 90′

A blood-sucking insect is a metaphor for the exploitative fashion industry in this ingenious horror outing starring Mark Strong and Eva Green. She plays a fashion designer suffering from a mysterious illness that frustrates her husband (Strong), the pragmatic voice of reason, and leaves their little daughter Bobs -a stunning Billie Gadsdon – totally distraught. Help arrives in the form of a Diana, a Filipino carer (Fonacier) who uses traditional healing to reveal a terrible truth in this latest riff on the nanny sub-genre.

Best known for his distinctive sophomore feature Vivarium Irish director Lorcan Finnegan plunders Filipino folklore and may have had his fellow countryman Sheridan Le Fanu’s The Evil Guest in mind for this incendiary thriller set in the contemporary and contentious world of children’s fashion. Once again, as in Vivarium, the focus is a married couple in crisis, this time a well-off professional couple: Chrissi (Green) and Felix (Strong) who live in a vast Victorian mansion in smart part of Dublin, but Bobs comes second to their high-flying careers.

The marriage is not without its flaws and the opening scene that sees the couple  arguing about who should pick Bobs up from school – as they climb into their top of the range cars in their gravelled driveway – will strike a familiar cord for parents who both work. Eva Green’s delicate – almost feral – beauty is just right for the role of Chrissi a highly-strung children’s designer whose health takes a turn for the worse after a difficult phone-call provokes a series of ghastly hallucinations featuring a dog festooned in tics.

Feeling generally under the weather Chrissi completely forgets hiring Diana (Fonacier), a spooky Filipino helper who arrives on the doorstep making herself immediately at home. Felix resents her intrusive way about the house calling her “a backward snake oil merchant”. Diana is indeed a mixed blessing – she cooks sumptuous meals and provides Chrissi with symptom relief – but always with the sinister caveat “for the time being”. A sinuous use of slow-mo and an exotic score ramps up our fears for the family, and flashbacks reveal Diana’s troubled past toiling in a Filipino sweatshop. Garret Shanley’s well-thought out script touches on all the right notes with convincing characters, a backstory that feels real and a satisfying plot resolution, and although the finale is a touch overwrought Nocebo is a slick and gripping watch. MT

ON RELEASE in early DECEMBER 2022

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 |

Fragments of Paradise (2022)

Dir.: K D Davison; Documentary with Amy Taubinis, Allen Ginsberg, Hollis Melton, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Kent and Flo Jacobs, John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, Peter Sempel, Oona Mekas, Sebastian Mekas, Marina Abramovic; USA 2022, 98 min.

US director/producer KD Davison has chosen the avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) as the subject for her first feature documentary scooping the Best Documentary prize at Venice Film Festival in the process.

Jonas Mekas – the “Godfather of Avant-garde Film” – was a prolific filmmaker as the architect of the movement. Told in four chapters this is a chronicle of a life-long odyssey, and Davidson clearly worships at his alter, an approach that is the film’s only flaw.

Born in Lithuania, Jonas and his brother Adolfas eventually arrived in the USA settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn after leaving Lithuania for Vienna in 1944 via the German Labour Camp of Elmshorn near Hamburg. Jonas had become a published poet in his homeland and became obsessed with cinema after visiting Amos Vogel’s ground breaking “Cinema 16”.

In 1954 Mekas founded the alternative “Film Culture Journal”, four years later he became the first film critic of “The Village Voice”. He was co-founder of the “Filmmakers Cooperative” (1962) and – perhaps his greatest contribution to film history – he started the “Anthology Film Archives” in 1964. That same year, with Lionel Rogosin, Mekas began to organise filmmakers in the “New American Cinema Movement.” 1964 was a proactive year for Mekas but the downside was his arrest for screening Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures and Jean Genet’s Un chant d’Amour.

Kenneth Anger and Allen Ginsburg were often guests in Mekas’ chaotic house, as was Jim Jarmusch, who filmed his short Coffee and Cigarettes in the dilapidated “Anthology” building, before it became the functioning centre for the production and distribution of about 600 avant-garde features. A miracle then that Jonas still found time to shoot his own films, Guns of Trees (1961) and Walden (1969) were the most successful of the early period.

Ironically Mekas’ The Brig (1964) had found admirers in the Soviet Union who lauded him for his critique of the USA. Mekas was invited to show his feature in Moscow in exchange for a visit to his family in Lithuania. There are moving images in Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) showing a reunion with his mother who had waited 25 years to see her son again.

In 1974 Mekas married Hollis Melton and his two children Oona and Sebastian serve as executive producers of this documentary. Oona’s birth was filmed on camera and she is moved to tears when shown images of her childhood, very much aware that her father never stopped being a poet, his obsession with spending at least ten minutes a day with his camera was his way of creating a daily poem. Later we see him filming his granddaughter.

The filmmaker Pete Sempel shot a trio of Mekas features: Jonas in the Desert, Jonas at the Ocean and Jonas in the Jungle. There are extremely sad songs, and Mekas is seen still traumatised by his youth. Scorsese called him “the prophet, he showed us the way”. Mekkas also became firm friends with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, but he never stopped filming his family: Out-takes from the Life of a happy Man, As I was moving ahead occasionally and Paradise not yet Lost (aka Oona’s third Year). Cats also grab the limelight occasionally challenging humans with their beauty and grace.

In 1999 Hollis Melton was adamant about having her own independence and started to move out – a process which took until 2004. The scenes of her gradually taking her belongings are heart-breaking, throwing Jonas into a life he did not want: “What is my life all about, 30 years – now this empty space. Do I still have time to do something with my life. Nobody but the camera, she is my only friend?”.

On film, a ladybird crawls around the rim of a glass and Mekas comments: “this is the human condition”. But his camera rolls on, for at least ten minutes a day. And suddenly there is worldwide recognition, exhibitions all over the place. He had turned the trauma into energy. In old age, he had found a new form of relationship with his son, they had become best friends. Oona is seen rummaging around Jonas’ flat, looking for Christmas decorations. “We always find little fragments. Intimate things from his heart and soul. Poetry is his films, he managed to catch some of the beauty.”

DoP Bill Kirstein creates rather conventional images that reflect the structure of the narrative. But it would have been too much to ask for a ‘Mekas’ style’ film. In this way the documentary is accessible for newcomers to Mekas’ work. A filmmaker who was also clearly in love with his family and his cats. AS

JONAS MEKAS | SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | BEST DOCUMENTARY PRIZE | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 2022

 

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

 

 

18th Spanish Film Festival | London 2022

The London Spanish Film Festival kicks off at the Ciné Lumière and Riverside Studios for its 18th edition from September 22-29 . An opportunity to catch the latest Spanish films that may not get a general release in UK cinemas.

DONDE ACABA LA MEMORIA – Where Memory Ends (2021)
dir. Pablo Romero Fresco, with Ian Gibson, Carlos Saura, Mike Dibb, Román Gubern | Spain | doc | 63 min | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiered

In 1933 the young filmmaker Luis Buñuel traveled to Las Hurdes, an isolated and extremely poor region in central Spain, to film his surrealistic documentary Land without Bread. 85 years later hispanist and biographer Ian Gibson does the same trip as part of his work of recovering the most recent historical memory of Spain through the biographies of the country’s famous artists Buñuel, Dalí and Lorca. Gibson’s trip will end in Granada, where the search of Lorca’s remainings seems to be coming to an end.

Followed by an on-stage conversation with filmmaker Pablo Romero Fresco and documentary-maker Mike Dibb.

Sat 24 Sep | 4.15pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

ALEGRIA dir. Violeta Salama, with Cecilia Suárez, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Sarah Perles, Laia Manzanares, Joe Manjón | Spain/USA | 2021 | col | 105 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish and Berber languages with English subtitles

Alegría lives in the Southern city of Melilla has been trying to distancing herself for her Jewish background when the arrival of her niece brings the past flooding back. Will this be the time to reconcile with her own daughter, who she hasn’t seen for years and is now living in Israel – and a mother herself? Inspired by the director’s own experience, Alegría is a film by and about women, their friendship and understanding beyond religion and culture as well as the conflicts and contradictions within.

Tue 27 Sep | 8.50pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

ESPIRITU SAGRADO | The Sacred Spirit – 2021 by Chema García Ibarra, with Nacho Fernández, Llum Arques, | Spain/France/Turkey | 2021 |  97 min | In Spanish with English subtitles

When Julio, the leader of an UFOlogists association in Elche dies unexpectedly, it falls to José Manuel take over his work. Meanwhile, everyone in Elche is looking for a girl who has gone missing. Exquisitely framed, García Ibarra’s debut feature film is uncomfortably amusing and defies expectations in a terrific way.

Preceded by the short SUELTA | Loose
by Javier Pereira, with Olivia Baglivi, Javier Ballesteros, Maria Jáimez | Spain | 2022 | col | 19 min | In Spanish with English subtitles

With a solid and long acting career, Javier Pereira moves to the other side of the camera and surprises us with Suelta, his first short, a dark story about trust and preconceptions that won’t leave you indiferent.

Wed 28 Sep | 8.30pm | £13, conc. £11, under 25 – £6.50 | Riverside Studios

LA CASA ENTRE LOS CACTUS – The House among the Cactuses – 2022 dir. Carlota González-Adrio, with Daniel Grao, Ariadna Gil, Ricardo Gómez | Spain | 88 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

Emilio and Rosa have created a dream family living with their five daughters in an isolated valley in the Canary Islands. But the past comes back to haunt them in this tense debut feature based on Paul Penn’s novel Desert Flowers

Followed by a Q&A with lead actor Daniel Grao
Wed 28 Sep | 8.30pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

SOLO UNA VEZ – Just Once (2021) dir. Guillermo Rios Bordón, with Ariadna Gil, Alex García, Silvia Alonso | Spain | 2021 | col | 80 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

Laura is a psychologist working with victims of gender violence, and harassed by the husband of one of her patients in this subtle and stylish psychological thriller.

Thu 29 Sep | 6.20pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

CERDITA – Piggy (2022) dir. Carlota Pereda, with Claudia Salas, Carmen Machi, Pilar Castro | Spain | 2022 | col | 90 min | cert. 18 | In Spanish with English subtitles | Special preview courtesy of Vertigo Films

Pereda’s formidable debut rifs on adolescence insecurities and delivers a grisly and ferocious psychological horror film which premiered at Sundance Film Festival this year. It sees Sara, an overweight teenager, become the victim of constant bullying by the other girls until the arrival of a mysterious stranger in the village.

Thu 29 Sep | 8.40pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

14TH CATALAN WINDOW

SIS DIES CORRENTS – Seis dias corrientes | The Odd-Job Men
dir. Neus Ballús, with Mohamed Mellali, Valero Escolar, Pep Sarrà | Spain | 2021 | col | 85 min | cert. PG | In Catalan, Spanish and Berber languages with English subtitles

Neus Ballús third feature film is an original and deadpan docudrama that follows the  working days of three handymen from different cultural backgrounds in the Catalan capital. Entertaining and times hilarious in its depiction of ordinary life.

Thu 22 Sep | 6.30pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière Sun 25 Sep | 8.40pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

PAN DE LIMON CON SEMILLAS DE AMAPOLA – Lemon and Poppy Seeds Cake
dir. Benito Zambrano, with Elia Galera, Eva Martín, Mariona Pagès, Tommy Schlesser, Pere Arquillué | Spain/Luxembourg | 2021 | col | 118 min | cert. PG | UK premiere | English and Spanish with English subtitles

This moving reflection on loyalty and the ties that bind is set in small-town Mallorca where two estranged sisters, Anna and Marina will uncover all sorts of skeletons in the cupboard when they are forced to sell a local bakery. Anna has barely left the island and is unhappy in her marriage, Marina works as a doctor for an NGO in Africa.

Fri 23 Sep | 6.15pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

MEDITERRANEO – Mediterraneo: The Law of the Sea
dir. Marcel Barrena, with Eduard Fernández, Anna Castillo, Dani Rovira, Sergi López | Spain/Luxembourg | 2021 | col | 112 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In English and Spanish with English subtitles

Autumn 2015. Two Catalan lifeguards, Oscar and Gerard, travel to the Greek island of Lesbos after seeing the heart-wrenching photograph of a little boy drowned in the Mediterranean. When they arrive the shocking reality is much worse: thousands of people are risking their lives everyday trying to cross the sea in the most precarious of vessels, fleeing from armed conflicts and other miseries in their home countries. And nobody is doing any rescue work. Based on real facts and real people, Barrena’s multi-awarded film invites us to think about what can be done when a crisis hits from political, social and human standpoints.

Sat 24 Sep | 6.30pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

13TH BASQUE WINDOW

MAIXABEL
dir. Icíar Bollaín, with Blanca Portillo, Luis Tosar, Bruno Sevilla | Spain | 2021 | col | 115 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish and Basque witn English subtitles

In 2000, Maixabel Lasa’s husband, Juan María Jáuregui, was killed by the terrorist organisation ETA. Eleven years later she receives a message from one of the men who killed Juan: he wants to meet with her in the Nanclares de la Oca prison in Álava, where he is serving his sentence after breaking ties with the terrorist group. Based on the inspiring true story of a brave woman whom, after losing her husband at ETA’s hands, decided to take a step towards a peaceful coexistence by agreeing to meet the imprisoned terrorist responsible for her husband’s death.

Followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Icíar Bollaín
Wed 28 Sep | 6.00pm | £13, conc. £11, under 25 – £6.50 | Riverside Studios

ERASE UNA VEZ EN EUSKADI – Once Upon a Time in Euskadi
dir. Manu Gómez, with Asier Flores, Aitor Calderón, Miguel Rivera, Luis Callejo, Arón Piper, Yon González | Spain | 2021 | col | 101 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

Euskadi 1985, and 12-year-old Marcos and his friends, José Antonio, Paquito and Toni are forced to face turbulent times of political violence and terrorism even though the  summer holidays are in full swing.

Preceded by the short HELTZEAR | Features
dir. Miguel Gurrea, with Haizea Oses, Mikel Arruti, Oier de Santiago | Spain | 2021 | col | 17 min | cert. PG | UK premiere | In Basque with English subtitles

San Sebastian, 2000. The Basque conflict is active. Sara, a fifteen-year-old girl, writes a letter to her absent brother as she trains for the most difficult clib of her life.

Sun 25 Sep | 6.40pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

1st ANDALUSIAN WINDOW

LA HIJA – The Daughter
dir. Manuel Martín Cuenca, with Javier Gutiérrez, Patricia López Arnaiz, Irene Virgüez | Spain | 2021 | 122 min | col | cert. 18 | In Spanish with English subtitles

Manuel Martín Cuenca explores the dark and sinister side of human nature in this atmospheric drama that centres around a pregnant teenager who has run away from a juvenile detention centre near Jaen.

Followed by a Q&A with producer and co-writer Alejandro Hernández Thu 22 Sep | 8.35pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

ESTIU 1993
Verano 1993 | Summer 1993
dir. Carla Simón, with Laia Artigas, Paula Robles, Bruna Cusí | Spain | 2017 | 97 min | col | cert. PG | In Catalan with English subtitles

Carla Simón’s spectacular debut feature is a beautifully crafted, sensitive drama about a six-year-old girl who goes to live with her Catalan family after her mother’s death.

LA MANIOBRA DE LA TORTUGA -Unfinished Affairs
dir. Juan Miguel del Castillo, with Natalia de Molina, Fred Tatien, Mona Martínez, Ignacio Mateos | Spain/Argentina | 2022 | 101 min | col | cert. 18 | In Spanish with English subtitles

When the body of a young girl is found inspector Manuel Bianquetti sets, despite the opposition of his superiors and coleagues, on a solitary crusade to find those responsible for the crime, which reminds him of his own troubled past. The only person who seems to be on his side is his neighbour, a fragile and distrustful nurse. Adapted from the bestselling novel by Benito Olmo and set in the city of Cádiz, Unfinished Affairs is a true noir full of misleading clues, revenge, corruption and bold decisions as well as a portrait of the harsh reality of gender-based aggression.

Followed by a Q&A (tbc)
Mon 26 Sep | 6.20pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

TRANCE
dir. Emilio Belmonte, with Jorge Pardo, Chick Corea, Mark Guiliana, Niño Josele | France | 2021 | 98 min | doc | UK premiere | In English and Spanish with English subtitles

Trance follows Jorge Pardo, renowned flutist and saxophonist of Paco de Lucía’s sextet, on a journey to the heart of flamenco music. Pardo’s flamenco-jazz work is essential to understand the evolution of contemporary flamenco. Belmonte’s road movie contains some exceptional musical moments and captures Pardo’s conception of art as a way of life and life as art.

Tue 27 Sep | 6.20pm | £15, conc. £13 | Ciné Lumière

A TREASURE FROM THE ARCHIVES HOMAGE TO BERLANGA

PATRIMONIO NACIONAL
National Heritage
dir. Luis García Berlanga, with Luis Ciges, Luis Escobar, José Luis de Vilallonga, Amparo Soler Leal, Agustín González | Spain | 1981 | 112 min | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles

After the death of Franco, the Marquis of Leguineche returns to Madrid from thirty years of voluntary exile in the countryside. From his palace he intends to approach the King to resume court life. Berlanga, with his usual sharp wit, explores how Spanish high society tries to invent itself after Franco’s era has ended.

18th Spanish Film Festival | London 2022 | 23 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

 

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

Last Dance (2022)

Dir/Wri: Delphine Lehericey | Cast: Francois Berleand, Kacey Mottet Klein, Deborah Lukumuena, Dominique Reymond, Astrid Whettnall, Sabine Timoteo, Jean-Benoit Uguez | Comedy, 90′

A delightfully bittersweet Swiss Belgian comedy drama starring Francois Berleand as a po-faced widower coping with the loss of his wife and the unwanted intrusion of his well-meaning loved ones.

Last Dance mulls over familiar territory when it comes to bereavement: and for 75-year-old Germain the grief is sudden and heartfelt. But he hardly has time to recover when the constant intrusive ‘phone calls to check on his well-being begin. And these are mostly to relieve the callers’ anxiety rather than for any sense of neighbourly care. Then there’s the stream of well-intentioned but unsolicited cakes, pies and casseroles (which Germain duly feeds to the cat.) Family visits never seem to stop – or end – and he wonders why his kids are unable to stick to their individual weekly visiting rota that he could really do without (Carole is Tuesday, Matthieu, Friday – or was it the other way round).

Lise (Reymond), his much loved wife of 50 years, was heavily into volunteering and experimental dance in a troupe led by the domineering choreographer ‘La Ribot’ (Lukumuena) and Samar (Mottet Klein).  In a bid to show willing, Germain feels obliged to take Lise’s place enacting a series of avant-garde movements that feel entirely awkward, causing him to break his bedside lamp rehearsing in the privacy of his bedroom. But he puts his foot down to the idea of taking on a mentorship for a young student, until his daughter insists it will be good for his ‘mental health’. So student and mentor eventually come to a ‘win win’ situation that suits both of them – but will anyone actually benefit from their arrangement?.

Delphine Lehericey directs her witty insightful script with great confidence and dexterity and the performances all round are really spot on. There are some laughs to be had too in this deadpan tongue-in-cheek story about a man who resolutely refuses to mourn, in the conventional sense, after a lifetime of happiness with his lost love. MT

ON RELEASE IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM |  BEST FILM | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Paris, Texas (1984)

Dir.: Wim Wenders; Cast: Harry Dean Stanton, Nasstassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Aurore Clement, Hunter Carson, Bernhard Wicki; West Germany/France 1984, 147 min.

German director Wim Wenders follows his earlier road movies with a real cult classic. Paris, Texas is perhaps most memorable for Harry Dean Stanton, Ry Cooder’s moody score and the burning images of the Wenders regular, Austrian DoP Robby Müller. Written by the Sam Shephard, and adapted for the screen by L.M. Kit Carson, this enigmatic character drama won the “Palme d’Or” in Cannes 1984.

Wim Wenders in Cannes | Debussy Cinema @Meredith Taylor copyright

 

Stanton is Travis Henderson, an aimless drifter who stumbles into a bar in the Texan desert, and promptly passes out. A German doctor (Wicki) revives him and finds a piece of paper with a phone number, in the man’s pocket. It belongs to Travis’ brother Walt (the charismatic Dean Stockwell), who collect him and endures his brother’s stony silence on the long drive back to LA where Walt lives with his gentle wife Anne (Clement) and Travis’ 7 year old son Hunter (H Carson, son of Karen Black and Kit Carson) who they have raised for the past four years.

Hunter and Travis hit it off – against all odds – and Anne tells Travis that Hunter’s birth mother is paying a monthly deposit money into an account for her son. Travis and Hunter track Jane (Kinski) down to San Antonio, Texas where it transpires she is working as a sex worker in a Peep-Show. Pretending to be a client, Travis, who can not be seen by Jane because of one-way glass window, talks to her via an intercom, sharing their love story until she cottons on. Confused by his emotions but wanting the best for Hunter, Travis finally hatches a very unlikely plan.

Guilt is the watchword in Wenders’ movies. Overtaken by the emotion from an early age, he considered taking the priesthood to fulfil his strong feelings about Catholicism. Nearly all his anti-heroes live their lives in the past, and fear the future. Travis’ unfounded jealousy and alcoholism led to the break-up of the torrid relationship with the much younger Jane (a luminous Kinski). He had even bought a plot of land to prepare for their future together. Only a crumpled photo of a ramshackle hut in the desert remains. But Travis clings to it like a totem. Along with the titular hero in The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty (1972), who kills out of boredom, Travis is always running away, not to find anything, just to lose himself.

The German photographer in Alice in the Cities (1974) escapes to another continent to ‘forget’ a relationship, only to be trumped by a mother who leaves her daughter in his care, expecting him to trace the girl’s relatives in Germany. Kings of the Road (1976) sees two lorry drivers dreaming of a future which will never be realised because they can only talk about women, and how much they miss them. Finally, in The American Friend (1977) Zimmermann, a painter and frame-maker, is unable to communicate his physical and emotional turmoil to his wife; instead he goes on murdering spree, for money.

Paris, Texas raises the timely theme of belonging: As nurturing fill-in parents to Hunter for most of his life, Walt and Anne are the losers of the piece. But Wenders hardly touches on their emotional arc – or their pain – in the aftermath to Hunter’s departure. His focus is the birth mother and son who must be united at all costs. And their final scene together brings to mind the emblematic coupling of Christ with the Virgin Mary.

Leading men are generally loners in Wenders’ features, their isolating fear of women gradually diminishes their persona as the narrative unfolds. Violence is never far away, and Travis suppresses his anger into a brooding silence. Harry Dean Stanton channels a palpable intensity of feelings into a performance that is subtle and exquisitely felt, but barely shown. His brother Walt is likeable and articulate along with his delicate wife Anne, a touching turn from Aurore Clement. There’s an almost whimsical quality to the early domestic scenes with the four of them together. Where there could have been emotional trauma and harsh words, Wenders instead brings a tender, almost comedic lightness of touch.

Wenders’ love for America and its culture is explainable: violence is simmering under the surface, ready to explode at any time. Paris, Texas is never violent, but the emotional pain is only too visible. A cult classic that needs to be explored again and again.

ON RE-RELEASE AT Picturehouses | Curzon Cinemas | from 29th July 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

 

 

 

 

The Good Boss (2021)

Dir.: Fernando Leon Aranoa; Cast: Javier Bardem, Oscar de la Fuente, Manob Solo, Almadena Amor, Tarik Rmili, Sonia Atmarcha, Fernando Albiza, Celso Bugallo; Spain 2021, 119 min.

Javier Bardem plays another arch villain in this darkly satirical Spanish arthouse flic which is entertaining up to a point, but doesn’t quite do justice to the serious nature of the material with bland jokes and one-dimensional characters often reducing the narrative to a farce, the many plots and subplots are still left dangling despite the generous running time.

Blanco (Bardem) has inherited a factory from his father, and somehow thinks he owns his employees into the bargain, lording it over them and interfering in their lives at will. The regional council is giving out a prize for the most progressive company and Blanco is keen on the prestige the award confers, and the prize money. His first target is José (de la Fuente), who takes his revenge on being sacked by building a minicamp outside the main gates of the factory where he is joined by his children in chaotic protests. Next in line is production manager Miralles (Solo). The two grew up together and Blanco believes he can sort out Miralles’ marriage rift when his wife decides to play the field. But all he gets for his troubles is a slap in face from the wife, in public. When new intern Liliana (Amor) joins the company Blanco’s luck seems to change. But after a night of passion with Liliana he find out from his long suffering wife Adela (Almarcha) that he looked after Liliana as the baby daughter of some close friends. Blanco ends the relationship unceremoniously, but Liliana teams up with Khaled (Rmli), who has taken over from Miralles’ role as productions manager, leveraging a pay rise and a job as marketing boss in return for not spilling the beans to her parents. So Blanco’s dream of winning the coveted award seems a long way off at this point in the game.

Best known for his breakout hit Loving Pablo, one can see what Spanish director Fernando Leon Aranoa had in mind: a modern version of a Frank Capra movie. But he lacks the finesse of the legendary American director, and even though Bardem makes for a charismatic lead there is no Jimmy Stewart to counter him. DoP Paul Esteve Birba and his handheld camera keep up the tempo in the production scenes, but the domestic stuff with Blanco in different bedrooms is rather old hat. Overall Boss falls between two stools, lacking the ballast to be a populist satire or enough humour and nuance for a modern screwball comedy – but it’s certainly worth a watch. AS

OUT ON 15 JULY at CURZON CINEMAS and CURZON HOME VIDEO 2022

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

The Black Phone (2022)

Dir: Scott Derrickson | Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies | US Horror, 104′

The Black Phone is set in the early 1970s around the time of Tobe Hooper’s cult classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre and with that same grungy aesthetic – there the similarities end. Derrickson has made some decent movies but this isn’t one of them; a despicable horror outing that follows two kids and their abusive father during the sinister goings in a down-at-heel rural backwater somewhere near Denver.

Bullied at school and beaten by their dad, their mother having committed suicide, Vinny (Thames) and Gwen (McGraw) do their best to survive by giving each other emotional support until Vinny is bundled into a van by a masked weirdo (Hawke) who goes by the name of “The Grabber”. 

Well that’s the first half hour, the remainder of the film descends into a well of psychological torture (for the audience as well as the kids) as spunky Gwen tries to track down her brother, and tough teenager Vinny is forced to endure the nefarious ministerings of Hawke’s uninspiring psycho and a series of silly anonymous calls from the so-called ‘Black Phone’ on the wall of his subterranean padded prison.

The only mystery here is why producers keep funding this kind of drivel. It’s sad, depressing and, worst of all, not even scary and has been done so many times before, and far better. If you don’t nod off early as the narrative torpor drones on, your attention will soon be drifting off to what’s in the fridge for dinner. And the gratuitous physical violence afflicted on Gwen by her deranged father (Davies) is simply inexcusable in a new feature film, given the current climate of hatred women are enduring all over the world. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN NATIONWIDE

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Dir: Martin Scorsese | US Drama

A stylish, exhilarating film to experience (although hardly – despite the incredible ‘quaaludes’ sequence – three hours worth). Nor is it the first to be called ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’. That distinction belongs to a long-lost early talkie starring George Bancroft that opened a few months before the original Wall Street crash of 1929. And the new ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ amply demonstrates that the United States of America has learned absolutely nothing in the intervening ninety years.

DiCaprio acknowledges at one point that the life that he and his cronies lead is unsustainable in the Real World, “but who wants to live there?” This is of course an option denied the colossal army of poor working stiffs (many of them women) with their feet planted firmly on the ground working long hours for peanuts serving as waiters, domestic staff and nurses; as well as manufacturing the sharp suits and industrial-strength quantities of drugs consumed by the leads “sailing a boat fit for a Bond villain”.

This army remains as invisible throughout most of this film as the consumption by the masters they spend their lives servicing and cleaning up after is conspicuous; which graphically demonstrates the harmfulness of giving the predominantly white male parasites who populate this movie “more money than you know what to do with”.

Billionaire conservatives meanwhile continue to lobby tirelessly for tax cuts and sanctimoniously and disingenuously to demand where the money to create adequate universal health cover in the richest nation on Earth would come from. @Richard Chatten

NOW OUT ON QUALITY DIGITAL PLATFORMS

 

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

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 Eight Mountains (2022)

Dir: Charlotte Vandermeersch, Felix Van Groeningen | Cast: Alessandro Borghi, Luca Marinelli, Filippo Time, Elena Lietti | Belgium, Drama 147′

The Eight Mountains celebrates a lyrical connection with nature through the lifelong bond between two boys who grow up in a tiny mountain village in Italy, one a holidaymaker the other a permanent resident.

Felix Van Groeningen, best known for The Broken Circle Breakdown,and his partner Charlotte Vandermeersch stick faithfully to Paolo Cognetti’s popular 2016 novel in a buddy movie that is gently appealing but fails to soar above its literary origins, with a narrative arc that ultimately lacks enough dramatic peaks and valleys to keep the audience engaged throughout its epic running time.

Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi make for convincing chums who will stay tightly bound together from childhood as they make their way through life from pre-teenagers in 1984 until their early thirties. Pietro (Barbiero/Marinelli from Martin Eden) goes by the name of Berio, and is from a middle-class background – his mother a teacher, his father an engineer possibly at the Fiat factory in Turin. Bruno is a real ‘montanaro’ or mountain dweller – one of the remaining 14 inhabitants of their tiny village, his father has left for pastures new in the building industry leaving him with an uncle on the family smallholding where they make a living from dairy cows.

The mountains are a strong presence but never overwhelm this intimate character drama shot on 4:3 aspect ratio, with the psychogeography of the settings influencing the boys’ choices as they grow up: Glimpses of Pietro’s pokey family flat in rain-soaked Turin are the reason why he suffers early depression and is determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps. But Bruno can never imagine straying from his alpine home and the paths they both follow will ultimately lead to their their respective destinies.

Old friends always pick up where they left off, and Pietro and Bruno’s easy rapport is one of the triumphs of this drama that crawls along at a snail’s pace. A mountain trek provides one of the few moments of tension, when Pietro’s father Giovanni (Timi) attempts to lead the boys across a mountain crevasse. But a plan to finance Bruno’s education in Turin never materialises and the two will not meet again for 15 years until Pietro inherits a ramshackle chalet high in the mountainside. The rebuilding project will once again cement their lowkey but solid relationship before Pietro becomes a published travel author in Nepal and Bruno attempts to run a mountain pasture business.

The Eight Mountains is a sober drama weighed now by a droning occasional score of American folk music that occasionally hints at a much needed plot twist that never actually happens. The boys will both develop romantic attachments, but the joy here is in their brotherly tenderness that makes this watchable along with the magnificent Alpine mountain-scapes seen through the changing seasons. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE 12 MAY 2023  | D

 

 

 

 

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 |

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Dir: John M Stahl | Cast: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jean Crain, Vincent Price | US Noir 110′

I was once asked what the most glamorous film I could think of was; and this sumptuous adaptation of Ben Ames Williams’ best-seller was the title from my video collection I came up with.

Only in the movies could a man find himself being interrogated in court by a district attorney who had previously been the discarded suitor of the woman he married; played, moreover, by Vincent Price with all the vengeful malice he could muster.

Long after his death in 1950 director John Stahl was described by Andrew Sarris as “a neglected pre-Sirkian figure”, and with Natalie Kalmus making sure the images were clean and bright Leon Shamroy’s Oscar-winning Technicolor photography was not then permitted the dramatic high-contrast look Russell Metty created ten years later for Douglas Sirk at Universal (the lens flare at one critical moment probably made it into the final print only because it was in a scene shot on location and Technicolor therefore couldn’t insist upon it being re-shot). But the rich images and Alfred Newman’s magnificent score make it a glorious experience to savour. @RichardChatten

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES | PRIME VIDEO

Dalva (2022)

Dir: Emmanuelle Nicot; Cast: Zelda Samson, Alexis Manenti, Fanta Guirassi, Sandrine Blancke, Jean-Louis Coulloc’h; Belgium/France 2022, 85 min.

Emmanuelle Nicot wrote and directed this audacious first feature about a sensitive twelve-year old girl, the titular Dalva (Sansom), who has been sexually groomed by her incestuous father, the two sharing an intimate and outwardly loving relationship, more like lovers rather than father and daughter.

Nicot’s skills as a casting agent are key to her successful drama: Samson is totally convincing in the role of the outwardly shy and vulnerable young girl who has the assured gracefulness of a Geisha girl, knowing how to play every man she meets. Dressed titillatingly in lacy black dresses, drop earrings and stockings, she has clearly been a target for paedophile clients and the film’s violent opening scenes witness her being forcefully separated from her father (Coulloc’h) who has literally kept her to himself, moving rapidly from place to place, to escape the authorities, and her mother (Blancke).

She arrives, kicking and screaming, at the foyer for vulnerable females demanding to be re-united with her father. When she is told by her new carer Jayden (Manenti) that he abused her sexually, she claims: “But I never said no”. Isolated from the other girls, she tries several times to escape, and these scenes picture her negotiating walls in slinky evening dress. Brought back to the home, she befriends Samia (first timer Guirassi) who has been raised by a negligent sex-worker mother, the two offering each other complementary tips on how to survive the rough and tumble of the institution.

But Dalva has not given up the idea of seeing her father again, and she tries to manipulate Jayden with inappropriate sexual overtures, trying to seduce him into being a second father figure. Finally, the authorities give in, and Dalva is allowed to visit her father in jail, accompanied by Jayden. In a moving vignette, her father admits to being a paedophile abuser, destroying Dalva’s world for good.

Nicot directs with assurance, guiding Samson through the often upsetting confrontations. DoP Caroline Guimbal captures the ‘female gaze’ with her delicate images of Dalva’s interpretation of mature womanhood, keeping to the role her father has groomed her for, to perfection. It’s a performance within a performance. The close-ups of Dalva are particularly evocative, Samson has that rare ability of conveying strong emotion without over-acting, quite an achievement for one so young.

But Nicot is also honest enough to show the reasons for Dalva’s insistence at being a “wife” to her father, who is acting out against her mother, still frantically searching for Dalva. This portrait of evil shows a father poisoning his daughter against his ex-wife in allowing Dalva to believe she has succeeded in replacing her mother – just to make her even more malleable to his illicit intentions. Dalva takes the audience on a strange psychological journey: the long and painful way back to girlhood, after the enforced role of being an ‘adult’ sex object. Passionate, provocative and brilliantly executed.

NOW IN UK CINEMAS

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

Doberman (1997)

Dir.: Jan Kounen; Cast: Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci, Tchéky Karyo, Dominique Bettenfeld, Romain Duris, Stephane Metzger; France 1997, 104 min.

A tour-de-force of misogyny and profanities Doberman champions its anti-intellectual stance with an unrelenting orgy of violence that would make the first time director later fare look comparatively sane and docile. After cutting his teeth with a strong cast of Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci and Romain Duris, the Dutch director would graduate to more sober features in the shape of quasi western Renegade and stylish biopic Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky.

Cassel and Bellucci were already real life lovers setting the tone here as an ’80s Bonnie and Clyde duo, based on the comic strip series by Joël Houssin, who adapted the film version with the director.  It all kicks off with Yann (Cassel) still wet behind the ears at his Christening, after the CGI Dobermann had lifted his leg over a dead cameraman in the opening credits. Just in time for young Yann to end up with a .357 Magnum in his stroller.

Twenty years later he has teamed up with mute Roma beauty Nat (Bellucci) and a crew of violent misfits: narcissistic L’Abbe (Bettenfeld) enjoys his fake priest outfit, while Nat’s brother Manu (Duris) has incestuous longings for his sister. The gang specialises in bank heists, driving psychotic police inspector Christini (Karyo) mad with nightmares of revenge. After successfully managing three parallel robberies, Christini again being foiled, the inspector and his men raid the family home of Sonia (Metzger) who lives a double life of law student and trans sex worker. Threatening Sonia’s baby son, the policeman then finds the gang is celebrating with raids in an S&M techno club.

Hard core sex and strobe lights accompany an orgy of brutality in a prolonged police raid that gradually loses its sting and shock impact: the stylish, glittering surface gliding over the film’s rotten core. DoP Michel Amathien’s cross cutting with extreme wide-angle shots, split screens and frenetic editing by Benedict Brunet and Eric Carlier only makes this feel more remote, less reachable. What remains is an exercise in nihilistic violence. Symbolically, near the end, one of the gangsters uses a copy of Cahiers du cinema’ to wipe his bottom in full view of the police cars. Kounen might have aimed for something like Nikita by Luc Besson, but he ended up with a third rate self-parody. AS

IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 25th ANNIVERSARY DOBERMAN IN CINEMAS AND ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD | 13 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

Under the Sky Shelter (2022) Viennale

Dir: Diego Acosta | Doc, Chile 68′

The past collides with the future in this provocative pastorale shot in refreshing black and white. It follows Chilean shepherd Don Cucho on a sinuous almost sinister odyssey through the craggy wilds of the Andes mountains to the valley with his herd of over a thousand sheep, and dogs. His journey is as atavistic as the hills and as well-worn, but Acosta’s inventive filming techniques and an edgy ambient soundtrack give this a surreal and unsettling twist that makes the down-to-earth suddenly dangerous and otherworldly in the hostile terrain. Now is the time for the seasonal movement of the animals to pastures new. Once they reach the valley, the animals can graze at their leisure for the rest of the season.

Writer director Diego Acosta works as his own DoP on 16mm often viewing the herd from above as it flows like a remote and rhythmic river of moving objects or shape-shifting creatures surging along in outer space. Others scenes are straggly and fraught as the beasts struggle awkwardly through a rushing stream stumbling as they make their way up the hillside under a sultry sky sparkling with stars.

There are languorous times too in the heat of the midday sun where clouds scud mysteriously into a silent sandstorm. Then winds whistle through the makeshift overhead canopy that protects the shepherd from the searing sun. But the night comes soon with its secrets and shadows and the Don lies down for the small hours til dawn. A clump of flowers takes on an exotic guise in the moonlight, and a reverse flowing waterfall looks magical yet quite frightening – a simple idea but supremely affective in this dreamlike feature full of surprises and unusual juxtapositions, time-lapses, shifting lights and shadow-play. A yearly journey becomes meditative, mysterious and magnificent – yet as old as time. MT

SCREENING DURING VIENNALE 2022

 

Cries and Whispers

Dir.: Ingmar Bergman; Cast: Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin, Anders Ek, Erland Josephson, Henning Moritzen, Georg Arlin; Sweden 1972, 92 min.

CRIES AND WHISPERS stands out in the Bergman canon and not only from The Touch (1971) and Face to Face (1976), which came before and after this 1972 outing. Like so many of Bergman’s films, they were straightforward relationship dramas. Cries takes us back to Bergman’s early features dominated by death and the human relationship with God, men and women living separate lives even after marriage. Yet Cries is also a horror feature, not least because the dissolves (replacing conventional cuts) are crimson red. Another point worth mentioning, is that

In rural Sweden Agnes (Andersson) is dying of cancer. Her two sisters arrive more out of duty than real concern. More caught up with their own lives, they don’t see eye to eye. Maria (Ullmann) is unhappily married to Joakim (Moritzen) and desperate to rekindle her affair with the family doctor, David (Josephson). Karin (Thulin) is aloof and lives with the cold-hearted tyrant Fredrik (Arlin). So the caring role falls to the maid Kari (Sylwan), who has already lost her daughter.

After Agnes’ agonising death, the vicar prays with Kari and the sisters, reassuring them  that Agnes’ faith was even stronger than his. Suddenly, Agnes comes back to life for a moment, asking her sisters to stay with her. Both decline, making spurious excuses to get back to their own families, and for a moment they make peace with each other. Kari offers Agnes her support. There is a positive denouement, even though the narrator, Agnes, can not be totally trusted.

The crux of the story is that Maria was the family favourite. Agnes can only remember getting her mother’s full and undivided attention on one occasion. But, crucially, she has left her diaries to Kari, who is touched by the gesture. Perhaps these will provide a clue?

DoP Sven Nykvist shot more than a dozen of Bergman’s features in black & white, and Cries was all about getting used to colour film, somehow also achieves a fairytale atmosphere. Ullman not only plays a sister, but also the role of mother to Agnes and Karin when they were children. Cries is probably not the most momentous of Bergman’s features, but it is certainly one of the most daring. AS

Opening on 1 April 2022 at BFI Southbank, HOME Manchester, Watershed Bristol, Tyneside Cinema, Cine Lumiere, IFI Dublin, Glasgow Film Theatre, Broadway Nottingham and selected cinemas UK-wide

The Divide | La Fracture (2021) Bfi Flare 2022

Dir: Catherine Corsini | Cast: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Marina Foïs, Pio Marmaï, Aissatou Diallo Sagna, Jean-Louis Coulloc’h | France, Drama 98′

Corsini’s Parisian dramady unfolds over 24 hours reflecting the political conflicts dividing France through a disintegrating romantic relationship between two women. Raf (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and Julie (Marina Foïs) have been together for ten years but the arguments are getting worse. After a night of angry texting distraught Raf begs Julie to stay chasing after her into the street and ending up in hospital with a broken elbow. The two are briefly united in a ward fraught with hysterical patients, Raf knocking back the tramadol to quell her physical and emotional pain. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi gives another of her signature melodramatic performances full of vulnerability and mischievous tongue in cheek humour.

Meanwhile outside the famous ‘gilets-jaunes’ are staging yet another rally against president Macron. One of the protestors is truck driver Yann (Pio Marmaï) who takes a bullet from the police and ends up in the same ward as Raf. ‘Casualty’ fills up with a constant stream of sick and injured while the staff do their best – led by real-life caregiver Aïssatou Diallo Sagna – in a microcosm of French society ‘du jour’ raging with anger, fear and disenchantment at the government and the world at large. Joined by her co-writers Agnes Feuvre and Laurette Polmanss Corsini directs a whip smart script laced with satire and acute observations. MT

SCREENING AT BFI FLARE | CANNES 2021 PREMIERE

 

 

 

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

 

Tacheles – The Heart of the Matter (2021) Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2022

Dir.: Jana Matthes, Andrea Schramm; Documentary with Yaar Harell, Elisies Zavadsky, Rina Kardisch- Zavdasky, Jasmin Harell, Marcel Nist, Sarah Heitz, Nina Paslawska; Germany/Israel 2020, 104 min.

Three generations of Holocaust survivors collide in this documentary debut from German writer/directors Jana Matthes and Andrea Schramm. When 21-year old game designer Yaar, born in Jerusalem, but living in Berlin, develops a Holocaust-themed video game, the older members of his family are slightly offended by Yaar’s stance in blaming his family for giving him a victim identity. But Yaar soon comprehends their viewpoint during his journey into the dark family history.

Yaar then invites his father over for a boxing match – minus the punches – airing his grievance and his plan to explore it further. He then sets off to Krakow where the family was settled before the Holocaust, to develop the game with his friends Marcel and Sarah, and put the record straight. Visiting grandma Rina in Jerusalem is the first step, and Yaar is overwhelmed by her memories.

In Krakow the trio starts to put the game together, but Marcel’s protagonist, the “good SS man Edgar” fails to fit into the narrative. Crucially, does a good SS man really exist?. Visiting the scene where Steven Spielberg shot Schindler’s List, and the nearby camp of Plaszow itself – meticulously re-constructed by Spielberg himself – the site is now overgrown – Yaar’s starts to change his viewpoint, particularly when finding the slogan “Fucking Jews out of Poland” sprayed on the wall of the Jewish cemetery.

Yaar’s father arrives in Krakow, and they meet up with Nina Paslawska whose parents tried to hide Rina and her little brother Roman from the Gestapo in 1939. A family secret soon emerges but Yaar’s game gets put on the back burner: it seems the experiences of Yaar and his generation are emotionally too removed from the generation of his parents and grandparents.

TACHELES is certainly formed by the ambiguous way the directors tackle the conflict. They certainly belong to Yaar’s generation unlike the first generation who often grew up with low self esteem, unable to compete their elders who had failed to make it back from the camps and were hailed as everlasting heroes. There is a generalised feeling amongst the heirs of Holocaust victims of being somehow inferior to their forebears, whose memory could never be sullied and who possessions remained enshrined as sacred relics – woe betide the son or daughter who damaged the favourite plate of a beloved, but dead aunt, whilst doing the washing up.

Overall TACHELES also suffers from being over ‘talkie’, it works best when DoPs Lars Barthel and Andrej Johannes Thieme show the images of the Plaszow camp, or the interior of a church, where the whole truth of Rina’s life is revealed. TACHELES is very much a reminder that Yaar’s generation point of view of the Shoah is “that God fell asleep”. They do not want their children to inherit the misery of the past. AS

SCREENING DURING HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL | 17-25 March 2022

 

Midnight (2021)

Wri/Dir: Kwon Oh-Seung | South Korea, Thriller 103′

An impressive first film for South Korea’s Kwon Oh-Seung highlighting his country’s negative attitudes towards women and the less able in a really tense cat and mouse thriller.

Kyung Mi (Jin Ki-joo), a deaf woman, is attacked in a crowded street when she goes to the assistance of another young woman, onlookers siding with the assailant (serial killer) Do Shik (Wi Ha-Joon) and viewing her cries for help as female histrionics – or even a tantrum.

The implication here is that these two women really shouldn’t really be out and about after dark. But putting misogyny aside for the moment, the film inadvertently sheds a grim light on the male characters: a control freak brother and an outright killer.

Kyung Mi and her mother may be aurally challenged but they certainly make up for it with their courage and resourcefulness refusing to be put down despite their impairments, without coming over as self-pitying. The director makes clever uses of a soundscape that imagines the world from the POV of the hard of hearing and that is its selling point, despite the rather trite finale. MT

Midnight is released on 14 March on digital platforms courtesy of EUREKA

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

 

The Third Man (1949)

Dir: Carol Reed | Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard, Ernst Deutsch | UK Thriller

It’s a sign of what happened to the cinema between 1950 and 1980 that if a film had come out thirty years after The Third Man with Joseph Cotton, Trevor Howard and Orson Welles in the cast you’d have known it would be garbage; but in the forties the result was pure gold.

Harry Lime’s speech about the cuckoo clock always seemed to me just sophistry and his remark about people being just dots to him reveals that he’s a sociopath for all of his charm; which necessitated him (SPOILER COMING:) killing the film’s most likeable character to justify his comeuppance (a moment that always comes as a shock to me no matter how many times I see it).

Although it seems starkly realistic, The Third Man is a triumph of artifice, since Welles is only in the film for about ten minutes (he wasn’t actually in Vienna for much longer, which is why you so seldom see his breath in closeups). The sewers in Vienna don’t actually provide the unbroken passage throughout the city the film so vividly suggests and the famous final shot in the cemetery wasn’t shot by Oscar-winning cameraman Robert Krasker, but an uncredited Hans Schneeburger (who did get a credit a few years later for his second unit work on Carol Reed’s The Man Between).

The opening narration by the way (only heard in the British version) is by director Reed himself (who’s fingers are seen coming through the grill at the climax). And two of my favourite moments belong to Bernard Lee: his admiration for the craftsmanship that went into Valli’s forged documents and his reassurance when reading through her love letters, “That’s all right miss, we’re used to it. Like doctors”. @RichardChatten

NOW ON BBC IPLAYER

Psycho (1960)

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles | Thriller 109′

Herschel Gordon Lewis used to boast that his films where the first in which people died with their eyes open; but that’s precisely how the first victim ends up here.

One of only two films Hitchcock made in black & white after 1953 (which probably accounts for it’s relative eclipse by Vertigo in recent years), it demonstrates that a cheap horror movie can reach the heights if made by people with talent; witness Bernard Herrmann’s pulsating all-string score and a script that includes lines like “a son is a poor substitute for a lover” and “if it doesn’t gell, it isn’t aspic”.

Copyright Universal Pictures

 

It was Hitchcock who had the bright idea of changing Norman Bates from a middle-aged recluse to a personable young man (who in retrospect resembles Lee Harvey Oswald). Flashes of The Master’s wit can be discerned in Marion’s smirk as she imagines her client’s outrage, the moment when we’re rooting for Norman when her car briefly stops sinking, Sheriff Chamber’s wife lowering her voice when she says Norman found his mother and her lover’s bodies together “in bed”, and realising a long-held ambition by showing a toilet flushing in close-up; while Hitchcock’s famous fear of policemen finds full flower in the scene with the patrolman.

Copyright Universal Pictures

 

People tend to not to notice that the film takes place at Christmas and forget that the close-up of Norman (lifted from that of Michael Redgrave at the end of his episode in ‘Dead of Night’) is not the final shot in the film, since it actually ends with the car being winched out of the swamp (thus providing one final shudder since you know what they’ll find when they open the boot). @RichardChatten

Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960) Original Theatrical Cut 4k restored and in UK/Eire cinemas from 27 May as well as selected international territories, including: France, Austria, Spain, Denmark and Switzerland | Park Circus is representing PSYCHO on behalf of Universal Pictures.

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

Elephant Walk (1954)

Dir: William Dieterle | Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Dana Andrews, Peter Finch, Abraham Sofaer | Drama

One of several films Elizabeth Taylor made where as much drama went on behind the camera as it did on the screen; a sort of ‘Rebecca’ written by Maugham, complete with a hostile Miss Danvers in the form of Abraham Sofaer. Taylor replaced a stricken Vivian Leigh only after Jean Simmons, Olivia de Havilland and Katherine Hepburn had politely said ‘no’.

It follows a similar plot arc to The Naked Jungle, with the radiant young Liz mistreated by a boorish Peter Finch until all their problems are rendered irrelevant by the double whammy of cholera and marauding heffalumps, and ironically concludes with Sofaer declaring “The time will come when the people will not fear inoculation. They will learn”. @RichardChatten.

Northern Skies Over Empty Space (2022) Berlinale Panorama

Dir.: Alejandra Marquez Abella; Cast: Gerardo Trejoluna, Paloma Petra, Dolores Heredia, Mayra Hermosillo, Francesco Barreiro, Juan Daniel Garcia Trevino, Raul Briones; Mexico 202, 115 min.

After her first feature, The Good Girls, a superficial comedy of manners, Mexican director/co-writer Alejandra Marquez Abella, comes up trumps with a hard hitting neo noir Western, a stylish, epic tale of violence and spurned love. Brilliantly shot by DoP Claudia Becerril Bulos, this is a mixture of Italo-Western and soap-opera, with an ending like Rene Clement’s late feature La course du lièvre à travers les champs.

Don Reynaldo (Trejoluna) is a ranch owner near the city of Monterrey. Ranch and owner are decaying, and family life is more than complicated. Suffering from prostate cancer and failing eyesight, Reynaldo (‘Rey’) can’t even hunt any more – his greatest hobby, as documented by the many trophies in the mansion, which has seen also better times. He is married to long suffering Sofia (Heredia), whose life is dominated by the menopause. Rey’s best (and only friend) is Rosa (Petra), the dominant manager of the state, who even shoots a deer for her master, after he has muffed the shots. Apart from her, everyone in the family wants to inherit the ranch, even though nobody takes any responsibilities, leaving Rey to mis-manage the property, whilst still pretending to be a great hunter. He has an ambivalent relationship with his son Elias (Barreiro), who is going through a divorce, and might lose custody of his children. Elias wants nothing more than be loved by his father, and Sofia reminds her husband to show some affection. Daughter Lily (Hermosillo), once dad’s favourite, is now distancing herself from the once proud patriarch. Then, one the day, Rey is celebrating the founding of the ranch by his father, a stranger, calling himself Guzman (Briones), appears and asks for ‘Protection’ money. Rey sends him away, but we all know, that the man, or even worse characters, will appear again. Rey, obviously having a death wish, sends everyone of his his family away. Only Rose, pregnant after having been gang-raped, will fight Rey to the bitter end – but not before she makes the most astonishing confessions.

There’s enough going on here in to sustain our attention for the two hours running time. Petra carries the film and the conflicting interests of Rey and his family, as well as the few employees left. The atmosphere is maudlin from the beginning, and amid the escalating violence and betrayals, Rey gradually loses control while the family run for cover. Rosa and Rey seem to be the only couple with mutual feelings – until the former’s disclosure seems to pull the rug from underneath what Rey and the audience assumed to be the truth in this impressive spectacle of class conflict, opportunism, greed, shattered illusions and death. AS

BERLINALE | PANORAMA 2022

Terykony (2022) Berlinale Generation 2022

Dir.: Taras Tomenko; Documentary with Anastasia Danilova, Yaroslav Kuzin, Arseniy Malkov, Anton Danilov, Miroslava Malkova, Olhan Danislova, Nina Malkova; Ukraine 2022, 79 min.

After making not one but two films about the famous artists’ residence Slovo House in Kiev, Taras Tomenko explores another part of Ukraine with this timely dystopian look at the eastern city of Toretsk. Here children have to wade to school every morning through mountains of debris and bombed out buildings, just 500 yards from the front line between Ukrainian and Russian troops. Misha Lubarsky’s camera is relentless in its hyper-realistic style – with Tomenko avoiding a ‘talking heads’ approach in a visual tour-de-force.

Anyone reading the papers will know that a ‘hot’ war has been raging in the region since 2015.
Homes have been razed to the ground and the few which are still habitable have been reduced to shell-marked hovels. Nearby, in the countryside, only the shaft towers of disused mines still stand. And this is a ‘playground’ for fourteen-year-old Anastasia (‘Nastia’) Danilova whose father was killed by a bomb that decimated their home. Fending for herself amongst the rubble she teaches a boy to cry without blinking. “Boys usually don’t cry” says Nastia. Arseny, a few years younger, has found a “step father” after his parents split up, a grave digger in a Stars Wars tee-shirt who buys him clothes. Arseny and Nastia scavenge for scrap metal and finally find a dealer who gives them 30 hryvina for their collection of 30 kg. The kids roam around unsupervised; there is always something new to discover, like an old theatre with its stage still standing.

At ‘home’ they watch DVDs on an age-old computer, or play games or their handheld game consoles. “Life is not an SIM game”, one of the few father remarks, but this does not impress the youngsters who have to fight off wild dogs while unearthing scrap metal. We watch Anastasia on her train journey to the big city to visit the archaic passport office – she must apply before the age of 15 – or she will “be in trouble”.

The nearby mall advertises “European Quality” goods, a huge map of Asia hangs on the wall, with the old USSR dominating in red. Later one of the children will find volume one of Lenin’s writings; hoping that it will fetch a good price. Nastia then visits a church where the orthodox priest gives a sermon. The adventure ends with her trying on make-up and eye-liners in a club where she dances on the strobe-lit stage. Terykony leaves the audience with no doubt about the future of the children of the debris mountains, even though they look out for each other the squalid childhood will haunt the rest of their lives. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | Generation Plus 2022

Une Belle Fille Comme Moi (1972)

Dir: François Truffaut | Cast: Bernadette Lafont, Claude Brasseur, Charles Donner, Guy Marchand | France Drama, 98′

Francois Truffaut’s early death in 1984 came as a particularly grievous disappointment since it conclusively brought to an end the lingering hope that he had one more masterpiece still in him.

As early as Shoot the Pianist in 1960 he had perennially found inspiration in American pulp fiction, often centred on a ruthless femme fatale. One of the more obscure items in the the current season on the South Bank is this cheerfully amoral little anecdote reuniting Truffaut with the star of his acclaimed 1957 short Les Mistons, Bernadette Lafont (the first of several seductive hussies she played for the Nouvelle Vague) based on a novel by the author of ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane’.

The paucity of strong female protagonists has always blighted the current run of superhero movies, and if Hollywood had their wits about them instead of going to the trouble and expense of squandering millions on commissioning yet more of the same, remake rights to this or Henry Farrell’s original 1967 novel could be acquired for a song and almost unchanged would make a terrific Catwoman origins story.

All it would need is a new ending in which Our Heroine employs her wiles and her practised skills as a manipulator to persuade the prison psychiatrist examining her to just this once let her put on her old costume again, engineer her escape; and with her back at large a new franchise would be born!

But who would they find today to fill Ms Lafont’s ankle boots? @RichardChatten

SCREENING AS PART OF THE FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT SEASON at BFI Southbank, Edinburgh Filmhouse and Cine Lumiere to include BFI Distribution re-releases, BFI blu-rays, a selection on BFI player  | JAN-FEB 2022 |

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

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

Too Late for Tears (1949)

Byron Haskin | Cast: Lisabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy | US Noir 99’

Don’t expect the tear-jerker the title might lead you to anticipate. To paraphrase Godard, all you need for a film noir is Lizabeth Scott with a gun in her handbag, and that’s what you get here.

Visually the film isn’t actually terribly noirish, since much of the action takes place in the modest but well-lit little apartment occupied by honest working stiff Arthur Kennedy and his wannabe Queen Bee wife Lizabeth Scott. However, since Ms. Scott’s extraordinary face framed by a sleek blonde bob is a prominent visual motif throughout the film, there are enough images of her framed by cameraman William Mellor in a succession of chic high-collared suits to inspire plenty of paintings by Richard Hamilton.

In a narrative that anticipates Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, Kennedy and Scott have predictably differing ideas about what to do with a suitcase containing $60,000 in untraceable notes that unexpectedly lands on their car seat. Not long afterwards Dan Duryea at his scariest wearing an obnoxious little bow-tie comes calling wanting his money back, before learning too late – like Tony Perkins in ‘Pretty Poison’ – that he’s in way out of his depth with a true criminal sociopath like Ms. Scott.

There’s a lot of talk; but as scripted by Roy Huggins (who later created ‘The Fugitive’ and ‘The Rockford Files’) it’s good talk, and the interaction and development of the characters builds to a most satisfyingly conclusion to which little clues have been discreetly sown along the way. The characters of the man introducing himself as Kennedy’s former war buddy, and Kennedy’s sister herself who lives across the landing – played by Don Defore and Kristine Miller – don’t at first seem terribly interesting but grow to confound expectations.

All the acting is good, with the possible exception of Ms. Scott herself, who’s a bit one-note, but isn’t really required to do much except look like Lizabeth Scott, which she does to perfection. Aged only 26, she already looks as if she’s had her face lifted about half a dozen times; but on her it looks good @RichardChatten

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

Cloak and Dagger (1946)

Dir: Fritz Lang | Cast: Gary Cooper, Robert Alda, Lilli Palmer, Vladimir Sokolof, US 106’ Thriller

Made during that brief period just after the war before commies took over from nazis as Hollywood’s enemies of choice; when leftish sentiments penned by scriptwriters Albert Maltz and Ring Lardner (both soon blacklisted) could still be expressed onscreen by Gary Cooper (schooled in Dunstable and soon to be a ‘friendly witness’ before the HUAAC).

Anticipating Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain by twenty years, Coop plays a scientist sent into enemy territory to pick the brains of a top physicist (presumably based on Lise Meitner); aided on the ground by Robert Alda (father of Alan) and Lili Palmer (the latter making her Hollywood debut and receiving “and introducing” billing despite having been busy in British films since 1935).

It lags a bit during the second half but picks up with another sequence anticipating ‘Torn Curtain’ when he and a fascist fight dirty to the death. @RichardChatten

NOW DOING THE ROUNDS ON TALKING PICTURES TV

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

The Tattered Dress (1957)

Dir: Jack Arnold | Cast: Jeff Chandler, Jack Carson, Jeanne Crain, Gail Russell | US Noir, 93′

The Tattered Dress is the second of four programmers released by Universal in 1957 directed by Jack Arnold, who had started the year extremely auspiciously with The Incredible Shrinking Man.

The 1949 outing was the first of two he made set in the deep south: the latter being Man in the Shadow, in which Jeff Chandler played the honest sheriff of a fictitious cow town called Spurline who crosses swords with a ruthless local ranch owner played by Orson Welles. In The Tattered Dress it’s the sheriff (played by Jack Carson) who’s the heavy; and Chandler is a lawyer from New York who has come to defend a wealthy spiv for the murder of a popular local sports hero to whom his trashy wife had lately taken a shine.

After a glorious opening sequence resembling a series of dime novel covers of the period, Chandler arrives in Desert View, Nevada; and the moment he steps off the train the unfriendly looks he gets tell us we’re in Mississippi Burning territory. Like most Hollywood films since time immemorial it takes a remarkably cynical view of lawyers and the law (“I could spend hours telling you of innocent men imprisoned and executed because of clumsy and uninspired defences”), but treats its often lurid subject matter in a rather lacklustre and talky fashion. Jeffrey Chandler isn’t the most convincing of casting as a cynical and ruthless lawyer whose motto is “If you’re guilty get James Gordon Blane” (it would have been perfect for Carson, actually); and most of the excellent supporting cast aren’t really at their best, with the notable exception of Edward Andrews in a very small part and Gail Russell (whose vulnerable appearance is enhanced by the regrettable fact that she was in reality drinking herself to death at the time) as a pawn in a dastardly plot by crooked sheriff Jack Carson to cook Chandler’s goose.

Two nice uses by Arnold of the Cinemascope screen were the way Chandler’s until now estranged wife Jeanne Crain signals that their conjugal relations are about to resume by firmly pulling shut the curtains in his hotel suite; and the slight but perceptible little sigh of relief visible on the part of the court stenographer (played by Robert Haines) when Chandler’s passionate summary to the jury finally ends. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

Absolution (1978)

Dir: Anthony Page | Cast: Richard Burton, Dominic Guard, David Bradley, Billy Connelly | UK Drama 95′

You never knew during his later years whether Richard Burton was going to just walk through his part with a faraway look in his eyes and simply collect his cheque, or pull his finger out and actually give a performance worthy of his reputation; and this is one of those occasions when he’s actually rather good as a flint-hearted Catholic priest who has plainly spent his entire life studying the scriptures without ever absorbing one iota of their meaning.

A sort of cross between Hitchcock’s I Confess and Sidney Lumet’s Child’s Play, in which the unlovely central character is mischievously manipulated as in scriptwriter Anthony Shaffer’s earlier classics Sleuth and The Wicker Man (Burton’s face when he first takes young Benjie Stanfield’s confession is truly a picture!), it’s basically a two-hander between Burton and Dominic Guard for much of its duration, with fine actors like Andrew Keir and John Nettleton given remarkably little to do in brief supporting roles, indicating quite a bit of paring back in the cutting room.

The presence, however, of Dai Bradley and Brian Glover further evokes the harrowing picture of school life painted a decade earlier in Kes @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO | PLEX TV

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

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Wri/Dir: Lana Wachowski | Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Neil Patrick Harris | US action Thriller 138’

At two and a half hours all the hushed talk, bone-crushing violence and showy special effects gets very tiring. But there are occasional flashes of wit and grace; and Jessica Henwick and Neil Patrick Harris are welcome additions to the franchise. Richard Chatten

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

Belfast (2021) BAFTA Outstanding British Film 2022

Dir: Kenneth Branagh | Cast: Judy Dench, Ciaran Hinds, Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe, Drama, UK

Kenneth Branagh’s happy little film glosses over the turbulence of The Troubles to give us a candy-coated memoire of his Protestant childhood in backstreet Belfast of the Sixties.

Most of us remember the endless reports on the telly and radio recounting the horrors of Catholic and Protestant confrontations in the ‘bogside’ area of the capital. And there’s no attempt to brush these under the carpet, but staged in lustrous monochrome set pieces the hostilities seem almost thrilling from his character Buddy’s cheeky 9 year-old perspective (Jude Hill is perfect for the part). Dressed in grey flannel shorts, a shirt and tie he watches it all from the bedroom window of his family’s two-up two down terrace where he grows up with his parents (Dornan and Balfe) and grandparents (Hinds and Dench) and older brother Will (McAskie). It’s a picture of domestic bliss.

The upbeat freewheeling storyline drifts from home to pub to schoolroom with a focus on his father’s constant trips to England to chase lucrative work as a carpenter, before the family eventually moved there. This leaves Buddy time alone to fathom out the religious conflict in his own mind, and dream and scheme about girls with his grandfather Pa, a jovial Ciaran Hinds, Judy Dench bringing them both down to earth with a cutting comment or two. There are trips on the bus and family outings to the ‘pictures’ to see Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC and A Christmas Carol. A redolent score by Van Morrison seems apt for this perfectly pitched family drama telling it just how it was back then. MT

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM | EE BAFTAS 2022 I RED SEA FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

 

 

The 400 Blows | Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959)

Dir.: Francois Truffaut; Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Rémy, Guy Decomble, Patrick Auffay, Georges Flamant; France 1959, 100 min.

Francois Truffaut was banned from attending the Cannes Film Festival in 1959 but that didn’t prevent him from winning Best Director for Les Quatre Cents Coup, paving the way for other “Cahiers du Cinema” critics like Godard, Rivette and Chabrol to follow in his wake – et voilá La Nouvelle Vague was born.

Dedicated to the eminent French critic André Bazin, who had “adopted” Truffaut and died just before shooting began, the over-literary translation ‘Raising Hell’ would have certainly been appropriate given the startling nature of this bitter coming-of-age story fraught with poverty, institutional repression and parental neglect and centring on Jean-Pierre Léaud’s pre-teen Antoine Doinel.

Victimised at school, Antoine’s home life is no better, his mother Gilberte (Maurier) and stepfather Julien  (Rémy) neglect him emotionally in their cramped Parisian apartment where he is forced to sleep in the hallway. Escaping this nightmare environment is the only answer: Antoine will play truant at school with his friend René (Auffay), sneaking into cinemas and a fairground, and hiding in René’s flat where his parents make it nearly impossible for the two to meet. A huge, stuffed horse dominates the bedroom, a metaphor for the absurdity of their marital life.

At school Antoine is the scapegoat of an obnoxious French teacher (Decomble) who regularly picks on him. When a photo of a pin-up girl is passed round under the boys’ desks naturally Antoine is caught in the act, painting a moustache on the woman’s face. Later, Antoine paraphrases a Balzac text for an essay and is accused of plagiarism – the writer is his hero, he even has an altar with a candle for him, almost burning down his parent’s flat.

Worse is to come: Antoine gets caught out lying about his mother’s ‘death’ until both parents turn up at the school, alarmed by the boy’s behaviour. Antoine sleeps rough, steals a typewriter from his step-father’s office, and ends up behind bars with robbers and sex-workers. Later Antoine is transferred to a juvenile detention centre, where he absconds during a football match – eventually ending up on the beach  – his dream of freedom comes true.

The humour is always harsh, even Antoine’s close friendship with Rene is turbulent – but at least he has a decent home. Truffaut explores the emotional affects of Antoine’s homelife through a psychologist at the detention centre, who asks him: “how do you feel, not knowing who your biological father is”. Antoine’s answer is cutting: “I always thought my mother was not my real mother”.

Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Leaud’s collaboration on the film led to a close friendship that would continue until Truffaut’s early death. DoP Henri Decaë sums up the cultural wasteland of the 1950s with this dispiriting picture of a Paris of grey facades. Black-and-white images are for once not poetic nor illuminating, just simply bland – ugly even. There is no compromise possible: family and institutions are the enemy of liberty and creativity in Truffaut’s mind. His debut would be his masterpiece. AS

Opening at BFI Southbank, HOME Manchester, Ciné Lumière, Broadway Nottingham and selected cinemas UK-wide on 7 January 2022

 

The Story of Film: A New Generation (2021)

Dir/Wri: Mark Cousins | Doc, UK 160′

A decade after The Story of Film: An Odyssey, comes Mark Cousins’ latest deep dive inquiry into the state of filmmaking in the 21st century. The Story of Film: A New Generation, sees Cousins focus on the past decade in a fascinating reflection on world cinema from 2010 to 2021. The film opens with Joker and Frozen showing the transformative power of the medium and its ability to bring stories from the desperate and disenfranchised on the world stage. Cemetery of Splendour (2015) features heavily in this exploration of recurring themes and emerging motifs, from the evolution of film language, to technology’s role in moviemaking today, to shifting identities in 21st-century world cinema.

Cousins’ research is encyclopaedic as he confidently talks us through a staggering array of films – not just from the last ten years but reconnecting to examples that demonstrate connections with the past that have influenced filmmakers of the present and future. Rather like fashion and architecture, cinema is an eternal reimagining of what has gone before marking out trends and themes only to reinvent them to appeal to a new generation, weaving in historical touchstones such as Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter as the world responds to its environment.

Plundering the archives for those iconic features there is everything from Jonathan Glazer’s visually and thematically groundbreaking Under the Skin to reworked upstairs/downstairs satires such as Parasite and Us which explores the dark and light sides of the human psyche through the an invasion thriller. In With films like Lover’s Rock and Moonlight Cousins identifies films, filmmakers and communities under-represented in traditional film histories, with a particular emphasis on Asian and Middle Eastern works, as well as boundary-pushing documentaries and films that see gender in new ways.

The streaming age has taken us from ‘cinema on show’ to ‘cinema on demand’. Cousins tracks the latest trends of the digital age with viewers calling the shots, a trend accelerated in the light of the recent pandemic. He looks forward to the future but what remains is a recurring motif that drives cinema forward: our profound desire to escape and travel beyond the ordinary, or see ourselves reflected through the medium of the silver screen as we are transported to a place of wonder and euphoria. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 17 DECEMBER NATIONWIDE

 

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

Hell’s Gate (2021) Red Sea Film Festival 2021

Dir: Amin Dora | Cast: Cynthia Samuel, Adam Bakri, Fadi Abi Samra, Hassan Farhat | TV Series | 8 Episodes

When it comes to the niche genre of Arab Sci-fi this new TV series is one to watch out for with its surprisingly captivating characters and inventive production design, make-up and costumes.

Blending horror and sci-fi with an edgy love story, it takes place in a post apocalyptic Beirut in the year 2052, where an authoritarian regime has taken hold of the population. A struggle for power breaks out between a group of shrewd investors who have assumed control of the Lebanon and a bunch of revolutionary young men and women eager to overthrow them. The story centres on Adam (Adam Bakri) whose path crosses with a mysterious young woman Alia (Samuel)  who claims to “tick all the boxes”, and she certainly seems to with her intelligence, mesmerising beauty and emotional strength.

Emmy Award winning director Amin Dora has us hooked from the opening scenes with his cast of really impressive Middle Eastern actors made more intriguing for Western audiences by their exotic looks and strong characterisations – the women are certainly no wallflowers here, often calling the shots.

Hell’s Gate is on Shahid VIP, Shahid’s subscription-based service, now available worldwide 

Hit the Road (2021)

Dir: Panar Panahi | Iran, Drama 98′

A promising debut for Panar Panahi (son of Jafar) proving that Iranian cinema need not have a political subtext but can just be relaxed and reflective, as Hit the Road certainly is, in spades. Clearly well-trained under his father, Panahi hits the spot with a bittersweet but un-involving story steeped in melancholy, a road movie that successfully blends light-hearted and more sensitive moments encompassing the nuances of human behaviour and the complexities of life.

Very much a critics’ film with its arthouse style and artful framing (it premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight) the pace may be too slow-burning for mainstream audiences with a lack of real dramatic tension, and unexplained plotlines – in the old Iranian style the film meanders along at its own pace bolstered by enigma, but never really reaching a conclusion, other than the predictable, sad event that brings it to a melancholy close.

A car is travelling through the Iranian countryside and 6-year-old Rayan (Sarlak) is playing along to the classical music on the radio tapping imaginary notes on a hand-painted keyboard on his father’s plaster cast – clearly his much older father (Hassan Madjooni from The Pig) has broken his leg. Rayan’s mother (Pantea Panahiha) sits in the front and his older brother (Amin Similar) is in the driving seat, a sullen young man who doesn’t quite gel with the rest of the family unit, and is permanently on the verge of tears although we never really understand why.

Panahi shifts from dark comedy to Greek tragedy, the mother frequently breaking into tearful or cheerful song as they travel along. Rayan has a tiny tantrum when his mother decides to bury his mobile phone with her bare hands by the roadside, a bizarre action that is left open for our own conclusions.

The father is a moody, avuncular man who dotes on his precocious little boy, clearly an afterthought in the couple’s long marriage. Rayan plays to the audience, sometimes disingenuously, you get the impression he is being heavily guided off camera.

As they head into the mountains, the tone grows more sombre and we discover their adorable pet dog Jessy is a stray with not long to live. It then emerges in an elegantly framed father/son tete a tete, set by a backdrop of astounding natural beauty, that all is not well with the elder brother who reflects on his future, or lack of it.

The mother clearly absorbs all the sadness of her family as well as the ebullience of little Rayan, it’s a wonderful performance from Panahiha and balances Madjooni’s laidback nonchalance. There are shades of Kiarostami in the widescreen set pieces, and inventive use of CGI in a mesmerising scene shot from above, but some may find the final act too long and drawn out.

Hit the Road is an expressive four-hander with a strong aesthetic, plenty of new ideas and solid performances. But somehow you leave feeling disappointed – and the ending doesn’t help. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | REVIEWED AT THE RED SEA FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | 6 -15 DECEMBER 2021

 

 

Val (2021)

Dirs: Leo Scott and Ting Poo | US Doc 104′

The thing about Val Kilmer is his silly humour. It shines out in this warm biopic of an actor who struck gold commercially but still wants to make it in the arthouse world. Now in his early 60s, a glittering past is behind him, a cancer survivor clinging on cheerfully despite a robotic voice like Stephen Hawking, he still smiles radiantly. A shadow of his former self but his spirit is strong and full of positive energy for the future. And once you get used to the voice you realise he’s much the same as he ever was: just older and wiser – and more philosophical.

In Val, directors Leo Scott and Ting Poo use a hotchpotch of videos and snapshots mostly taken by Kilmer himself: an actor and writer but most of all a big human whose love for life and his family radiates through the 40 years of archive footage in a documentary that takes us from his childhood years in California to the Batman years for which he is most famous, and beyond. His latest project – a tribute to Mark Twain – is still ongoing and clearly fascinates him. 

The film starts with him playing around in his trailer with Rick Rossovich during the making of Top Gun, his complex character comes out in another scene where he’s filming John Frankenheimer on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Ordered to stop filming Kilmer carries on regardless. The director had threatened to walk out and so Kilmer bargains with him to stay and the camera continues rolling.

A training at New York’s Juilliard school has clearly instilled a strong sense of quality in his work. And this is probably the root cause of his reputation for being ‘difficult’. He was billed for the main role in the 1983 production of “The Slab Boys,” a Broadway hit play, Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon later pulling rank for the main parts. His creativity went on to be stymied by the commercial system that ultimately offered little by way of freedom to express himself, and this theme sets the tone for an entertaining portrait of a real man, rather than just a jobbing player of parts. This is why his story remains one of success rather than failure, despite the decrepit guy in the picture. Loss is a big theme: his marriage and divorce from Joanne Whalley affected him badly, and obviously the cancer diagnosed in 2015. But he soldiers on making us laugh with an infectious humour in this feelgood movie. 

Batman was a personal disaster for him weighed down by a heavy costume and hardly able to breathe, let alone speak. It crushed his performance and he signed out after one go at the Caped Crusader: “every boy wants to be Batman, but not play him”.

The Top Gun episode was a blast with much fooling around off set, sealing his reputation:“For the rest of my life I will be called Iceman by every pilot at every airport I ever go to.” he comments from his Malibu beach hideaway. But he wanted more than fame. Inspiration was really his watchword. In a bid to work with Kubrick and Scorsese he sent them audition tapes but nothing came of it. His force of personality projected him forward for choice roles but he didn’t always get them. Willow was another disaster but the The Doors would be special and he honed his performance again and again, even wearing the leather trousers in an obsession that ultimately cost him his marriage. 

Family intervenes throughout the film: particularly his sadness over his brother Wesley who died in a jacuzzi accident in his teens. And his mother was a big influence and he reminisces over her in some tearful sequences. Although his father was a big business man Val ultimately had to bail him out. His faith Christian Science also figures strongly and clearly gives him the strength to pursue his artistic projects. He may have fallen from the pantheon of stardom but seems to have found peace with his kids and a boundless enthusiasm drives him forward to the future. MT

NOW ON RELEASE

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

Hive (2021)

Dir.: Blerta Basholli; Cast: Yllka Gashi, Cun Lazci, Kaona Sylejmani, Mal Noah Safqui, Kumrije Hoxha, Adriana Matoshi; Kosovo/Switzerland/Albania/Macedonia 2021, 84 min.

Feminist solidarity, male chauvinism and the effects of the Kosovo war (1998-99) and its aftermath coalesce in this impressive first feature for Albanian writer/director Blerta Basholli who triumph against considerable odds with this true crime story. The conflict came to be viewed as a Serbian act of genocide and her film went on to win all three main awards at Sundance, Yllka Gashi is brilliant in the main role.

In the village of Krusha e Madhe in Kosovo 260 men have been killed in the hostilities, with a further 64 still missing. One of them is Agim, husband of Fahrije (Gashi), who lives in a dilapidated house with Haxhi (Lazci), her father-in-law and her two children Zana (Sylejmani) and Edon (Safqui). The family makes ends meet selling the honey Fahrije produces – she has been stung all over her body to prove it. But she also has to look after the invalid Haxhi who is totally dependent on her. Haxhi does not want to undergo a DNA test, which would make it possible to identify the remains of his son; many remains are still being discovered. Fahrije gathers together he women of the village and starts a business  producing a spicy preserve made from red peppers, intending to sell the product in supermarkets in the nearby town, passing her driving licence so she can transport the goods with the help of her most supportive helpers Zamira (Agushi), Lume (Matoshi) and Nazmije (Hoxha).

But the men in the village make a bid to sabotage the women’s collective: calling Fahrije a whore, sexually assaulting her, breaking her car window with a stone, and even trying to turn her son and daughter against her. But Fahrije is determined to prevail against the  odds in this gritty portrait of a war-torn society where male chauvinism still holds sway. AS

CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY RECLAIM THE FRAME presents HIVE plus recorded Q&A with writer and director Blerta Basholli on Tuesday 8 March 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

No Time to Die (2021)

Dir: Cary Joji Fukunaga | Wri: Neil Purvis Cast: Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas, Rami Malex, lea Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ralph Fiennes | Action Drama 163’

It seems rather ironic that the latest James Bond was thrice postponed because of Covid, since one of many plot elements is a weaponised virus. No Time to Die is being declared the best Bond movie ever; although I still feel that accolade belongs to From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger easily the most fun).

A nightmare rather than the usual 007 daydream, Daniel Craig’s James Bond is what ‘The Iron Mask’ was to Douglas Fairbanks’ D’Artagnan, with Craig’s Bond looking much older than before, and continuing to bear the scars from the pre-credits sequence throughout the film that follows.

There are three eye-popping action scenes (and the film is thankfully free of the unrelenting use of steadicam that is such a trial in modern films), but Ana de Armas is grievously underused as the nearest thing it has to a traditional Bond girl. Much more of the massive 163 minute running time is devoted to hushed talk in which little of Phoebe Waller-Bridges’ much-vaunted wit is in evidence; while the villains’ lair owed more to the German silent cinema than the swinging sixties, housing poisonous plants straight out of the final scenes of You Only Live Twice (the book not the film); likewise the chilling confrontation with a returning Christoph Waltz as Blofeld briefly wheeled on like Haghi in Spione. @Richard Chatten

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

The Last Duel (2021)

Dir: Ridley Scott | US Action Drama 153′

This medieval parable based on a true story feels utterly up to date with its modern rape-revenge theme told from three perspectives: a savvy noblewoman, her pompous husband and the silver-tongued ‘Squire’ who rapes her. Ridley’s Scott’s latest is a magnificently mounted and gory epic, crowned by a string of charismatic performances: Jodie Comer is Marquerite de Carrouges, Matt Damon her husband Sir Jean, and Adam Driver. the squire, Jacques Le Gris. Ben Alffleck is dynamite as his close friend and ally Count Pierre d’Alencon, rocking a saucy blond wig; Alex Lawther plays a mincing King Charles VI. Strange accents are the order of the day – Laurence Olivier would turn in his grave.

Back in the 14th century chivalry was a big thing. And men took their gallantry seriously, and were even prepared to stake their lives on it. Women were merely impotent bystanders in this honour-bound society, and that’s – to an extent – the only flaw in the rape-centred story. Co-writer Nicole Holofcener (Gladiator) serves up revenge from a female point of view primped with contemporary credentials, showing that a woman’s mental resolve can be just as strong as the sword when her own honour is called into question.

Freighted by the gravity of its subject matter, The Last Duel bristles with intrigue from start to finish, a gripping crowd-pleaser that wears its ethical and moral emblems proudly on its 14th-century sleeve. Ridley Scott jostles us through the early part of his film establishing the milieu of brutal battlefield set-pieces finally getting down to business with the crux of the narrative: land-ownership and property in 1386. Norman knight Carrouges is locked in a bitter dispute with his nemesis Le Gris over parcels of land and military preferment. But when his wife Marguerite accuses Le Gris of rape, the feud turns murderous, Carrouges asking King Charles VI for the right to challenge his enemy to a duel.

Based on Eric Jager’s bestseller: The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial By Combat in Medieval France, the macho premise morphs into a female-centric tale reflecting on the putative assault from the three different angles, growing more persuasive as they pass from assailant to victim.

Once again Jodie Comer is the star of the show even through she only grabs part of the screen time from the macho male contingent  in a lavish and entertaining Hollywood style arthouse action drama. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS

 

 

Raphael Revealed (2020)

Dir: Phil Grabsky | Doc

Marking the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, director Phil Grabsky was in Rome with his camera to document the greatest exhibition that has ever taken place of the Italian master’s work. Raphael Revealed celebrates the life of Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino on the big screen allowing viewers all over the world access to several hundred masterpieces, including paintings and drawings – over a hundred of which have been brought together for the first time.

Director and cinematographer Phil Grabsky has made a name for himself recording a series of major art exhibitions and adding value with informative commentary from experts – in this case Nicholas Penny, Tom Henry and Dr Angelamaria Aceto, of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford – who bring the artists’ creativity to life for those unable to be there in person.

Raphael 1483-1520) is widely regarded as one of the three great masters of Renaissance Italy, along with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Mixing in eclectic circles from Popes to paupers his work reflects the diversity of 15th century society, not just through paintings but also in his skilful draughtsmanship of building design and architecture. Raphael also wrote poetry in his brief life of just 37 years.

Grabsky takes us on a tour of the exhibition itself interweaving vibrant shots of the paintings with outdoor vistas picturing Raphael’s forays to Florence and Rome as well as his his daily life in Urbino. The exhibition unfolds in reverse chronological order, starting in Rome, where he dies at the age of 37 – with a life-size facsimile of his tomb “built with cutting edge technologies” (which will later rest in his hometown of Urbino) – and then tracing his story back to Florence and Umbria.

Raphael honed his craft by drawing in pencil, a skill that enabled him to understand the intricacies of the human form and learn about spacial perspectives. His father was the official painter and poet of the Duke Montefeltro, and Raphael took over this role when he was still only a teenager on his father’s death.

At the age of 25 Raphael was commissioned to decorate the rooms in the Vatican where he spent the rest of life perfecting his skills not only as a painter but also as architect to the serving Popes, a role that allowed him to develop his artistic expression in sculpture, tapestry design and drawing in ink, charcoal, metal point and chalk.

During his lifetime Raphael also crafted two self-portraits and these bookend the exhibition – one from the Louvre, known as Self-Portrait with his Fencing Master (1518) and the other portraying the maestro as a young man.

Raphael Revealed also includes significant paintings from the Uffizi, Pinacoteca di Bologna and the National Gallery of Washington along with sculptures, tapestries and other works. The highlight for many devotees of the Italian artist are the portraits of the two popes hung together for the first time: Julius II from the National Gallery in London and Leo X with the cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi de’ Rossi from the Uffizi.

Along with Chopin, Mozart and the poet Shelley who also died in their thirties, Raphael’s incredible body of work puts him in the league of the world’s most revered creative geniuses. At his death he was still working on a graphic reconstruction of Ancient Rome  MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 12 OCTOBER 2021

Getting Away with Murder(s) (2021)

Dir.: David Wilkinson; Wri: David Wilkinson, Emlyn Price | Documentary with Philip Rubenstein, Benjamin B. Ferencz, Fritz Bauer, Donald M. Ferencz, Jens Rommel; UK 2021, 175 min.

Yorkshire born director David Wilkinson (Postcards from the 48%) has co-written and produced a unique, sober and frightening report on Holocaust murderers that have somehow avoided prosecution. How did it happen? How did the executioners of six million Jews get away it? Only one percent of the million or so perpetrators were actually brought to justice.

On his mission to uncover the truth Wilkinson has travelled the globe interviewing Nazi-hunters and survivors, horrifying clips from the camps underline an utter contempt for retribution that begs the question: what would the US government have done had the Nazis decimated the entire State of Maryland? And how would the British government have reacted had the entire population of Yorkshire lost their lives in the same way? Surely, the rate of successful prosecutions in both cases would have run into double-figures.

The (West) German government and the Allies played their part by turning a blind eye to the atrocities The victors all fell out, starting a Cold War which saw the USA, Great Britain and France freeing already convicted war criminals who would then see active service against the USSR.

From the late 1949 to the mid 1960s the West German government was led by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who in 1934 had begged the Nazi Interior Minister Frick to have his state pension restored: “I have always treated the NSDAP properly, against ministerial instructions. I allowed the NSDA to meet in the city sports ground, moreover I allowed the Party to hoist up the Swastika”. His plea was successful. As Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), Adenauer surrounded himself with a cabinet that included Hans Globke, author or the Nuremberg laws of 1938 for the Nazis. Theodor Oberländer was Minister for Refugees and had been a member of the SA, having participated in the Hitler putsch of 1923, and had been directly involved in the plans to exploit the occupied countries in Eastern Europe. In 1965, Adenauer was replaced by Ludwig Erhard who had the dubious honour of being a member of the Nazi “Arbeitskreis für Aussenwirtschaftsfragen (AAF)” along with Ludger Westrick, Karl Blessing and Hermann Josef Abs. All played a major role both in Nazi Germany and the FRG,

But the government of the time merely reflected the view of the German population: war criminals lived on at liberty, often without having to change their names. Some even returned from exile in  South America to bury their dead: Dr. Joseph Mengele, the “Angel of Death” was a prime example, having ‘selected’ Jews on the ramps of Auschwitz for his infamous experiments. Reunited with his family in Switzerland in 1956, he returned to his birthplace in Günzburg/Bavaria in 1959, for his father’s funeral. Everyone in the small town knew that he was present – apart from the police. Mengele died of a stroke swimming in Sao Paulo in 1979, aged sixty-seven.

German justice actually made it extremely difficult for Nazi war criminals to be prosecuted, as Benjamin B. Ferenc, Chief prosecutor of the 1948 trial against the members of the Einsatzgruppen explained: German law did not allow retrospective interpretations of any criminal action, which meant that since it was lawful to kill Jews, Communists, gays and Roma in Nazi Germany, one had to prove the accused acted “in a way beyond the legal (!) requirement” – for example showing more than average brutality or indulging in extra-curricular actions. It was a reasonable defence to clam the Jews were the enemies of Germany. In many trials in Germany and Austria, witnesses were asked for the exact time when the atrocities took place – as if any camp inmate had a watch. Defence lawyers hunted down the witnesses, and the population in many towns joined in.

Thus the trials became more a second punishment for the Jews and other victims, than for the perpetrators themselves. Even though, the names of Fritz Bauer and Jens Rommel, both having been in charge of the Central Agency for the Prosecution of Nazi Criminals in Ludwigsburg, should be mentioned – Bauer gave Mossad a tip-off about Eichmann’s whereabouts in Argentina, because Bauer believed his trial in Germany would not serve justice.

The number of major war criminals who got away it is long: Walter Rauff, who designed the specialised carriages where 100 000 victims met their deaths, fled to Chile, where he died in 1984 aged seventy-seven. Karl Jaeger, Nazi Colonel, carried out the murder of Lithuanian Jews, his diary showed that he killed over 100,000 men and women, of which 4273 were children. In the 1965 Sobibor trail in Germany, the main defendant Alfred Ittner was convicted of the murder of 68 000 Jews – his punishment was seven years in prison. Johanna Altvater, a mere secretary, killed Jewish babies by throwing them out of the window. She was never prosecuted and died aged at the ripe old age on 84, in 2003.

Dr Herta Oberweiler was responsible for the deaths of thousands of children who lost their lives as a result of her sepsis “research’. She was sentenced to twenty years prison, later reduced to five. After her release, she actually got her licence back, and it took years for her to struck off the register. Alois Brunner, Eichmann’s deputy, responsible for the murder of over 100,000 Jews, got the death penalty in absentia in France, but fled to Syria, where he advised the government on torture methods, dying in his late 90s. Herberts Cukurs, the “Butcher of Riga”, was not so lucky. He was responsible for killing 30 000 Latvian Jews. In a macabre incident, Cukurs asked an old Jewish man to rape a young Jewish woman, and then shot all Jews who looked away. He fled to Brazil, where he was killed by Mossad agents in 1965, aged sixty-four. But in 2014, a musical was produced in his home town, showing him as a hero.

The British government’s role in all this is rather shameful. Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden was asked by the Bulgarian government in the early 1940s, to allow over ten thousand Jews, threatened by the Germans, to emigrate to the British Protectorate of Palestine. Eden refused, and all Bulgarian Jews were murdered subsequently in Treblinka. Later, the UK Government clamed to be too broke, to contribute to the 1948 trial against members of the murderous Einsatzgruppen. Even though the trial went ahead, few of Einsatzgruppen were prosecuted. After the war, the UK became a safe heaven for Nazi war criminals; and Wilkinson visits places in Oldham and Selby, were many had hidden, a map showing that the perpetrators managed to settle throughout the UK. Philip Rubenstein, former director of the All Party Parliamentary War Crime Group was instrumental in changing the law to allow for Nazi prosecution in the UK. He reports, that since 1943 Civil Servants were actively employed in avoiding Nazi prosecution, claiming that it “smelled of laws made by the victors.” Needless to say, the Holocaust is not on the main curriculum in UK schools.

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER(S) is an epochal work, much more than a feature documentary, it is disturbing testament to widespread genocide and asks grave questions of our judicial system AS

Critically-acclaimed Holocaust documentary Getting Away with Murder(s) to be made available to view for free as a two-parter to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 

27 January 2023 | 9pm CHANNEL4

 

Pleasure (2021)

Dir.: Ninja There; Cast: Sofia Kappel, Revika Anne Reustle, Evelyn Claire, Chris Cock, Eva Melander; Sweden/Netherlands/France 2021, 109 min.

Girls in the world of porn is the subversive subject of this first feature from Swedish director Ninja There. Expanding her 2013 Cannes award-winning short offers a timely opportunity to explore the lucrative male-dominated sector of the economy where women are literally asked to betray their own gender. Whilst the cool, analytical form may not be everyone’s taste, Pleasure is a stunning portrait of an industry just invented to titillate men.

A young Swedish woman lands in LAX and is asked a common question: Business or Pleasure? She opts for the latter, but it turns out to be an illusion. With a new name, Bella Cherry (Kappel) she will join the many hopefuls who try to make a name and fortune in the porn industry. Apart from Kappel, all protagonists are in the business – so to speak – including top talent agent Mark Spiegler. Set in the grim industrial San Fernando valley and the interiors of some garish mansions, Bella joins collegues in a house where she makes friends with Joy (Reustle) who teaches the uninitiated the tricks of the trade.

When Bear (Cock), a senior crew member, asks her about her life story, Bella claims she has been raped by her father, laughing it off in the same breath and Bear warns her about the competition. Bella’s first shoot is fairly lowkey – one of the crew members is a woman. But then she enters the harsh end of the profession: rough sex, or, as it turns out, rape. Three men coerce her into hours of submission, threatening not to pay her all if she refuses to comply to their wishes.

Bella is a bit of a loner back in Sweden, as we learn this from a phone conversation with her Mum (Melander), but is determined to do her best She wants to succeed, at all costs. But friendships soon fall by the wayside. Joy, nicknamed “trailer trash” by one of the so-called stars, pushes him into the pool. Shortly afterwards Bella sides with the producers, when Joy is clearly hurt by a male actor – but Bella keeps schtum. She is in awe of the glittering Ava (Claire), the latest ‘Spiegler Girl’ who acts in girl-on-girl features. Their love/hate relationship is the pivotal point of the feature and its abrupt ending.

There are some parallels here with a recent Swedish feature, Holiday (2018) by Isabella Eklöf. But Thyberg goes into detail, including full erections. DoP Sophie Winquist keeps a firm grasp on her film with a woman’s gaze, always subverting expectations – in total contrast to a straight-up porn film. But the key element is Thyberg’s unflinching attack on the patriarchal power at play. Bold and with a brilliant eye for detail, Pleasure never lets the audience forget who is in charge and why. AS

https://youtu.be/1hl4D0sE5TA

IN CINEMAS & MUBI 17 JUNE 2022 | ZURICH FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

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

 

Nobody Has to Know (2021)

Dir: Bouli Lanners | Cast: Bouli Lanners, Michelle Fairley | Drama, 99′

Memories define us and connected the present with the past. In his latest drama – a first in English – Belgian writer and director Bouli Lanners plays a man whose romantic history is rewritten when he suffers a stroke.

Atmospherically shot on the windswept Isle of Lewis in Scotland, this is a sober and reflective psychological drama made all the more dour by its subject matter and the morose-looking locals, although its hard to imagine that the thoughtful Phil (Lanners) is a Belgian farmhand – he behaves more like a sophisticated film director (!) with his raffish good looks, swept back hair and well-trimmed beard. And when his carer Millie arrives (Fairley), after a stroke leaves him with amnesia, she takes an instant liking to her vulnerable patient persuading him they were lovers before his illness.

Despite his memory loss there is nothing wrong with Phil’s sex drive: he makes romantic overtures which Millie instantly rejects causing Phil to be even more confused. It soon dawn on Millie that she’s crossing professional boundaries and must draw a line, not only for lying to her charge, but also for abusing a mentally ill patient – particularly as Phil is now completely disarmed – but the two end up in bed.

Millie continues to tease him with ‘memories’ of their past relationship and how it came about, and can now be rekindled. She is clearly having a field day after a fallow patch in her love life on the barren island.

Despite its flawed premise Nobody Has to Know looks gorgeous, Lanners and Fairley making for convincing lovers as they wander along vast castor sugar beaches, storm clouds scudding by and melting into the distance. A religious subplot that sees the local vicar vehemently preaching the Christian gospel from a pulpit doesn’t quite work, although clearly it represents the wagging finger of God. A dog called Nigel is the focus of another rather unsubstantial narrative strand in this watchable feature that explores identity, false memory and the nature of romantic desire. MT

NOW ON RELEASE

 

 

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

The Hand of God (2021)

Wri/Dir: Paolo Sorrentino Cast: Filippo Scotti, Toni Servillo, Teresa Saponangelo, Marlon Joubert, Luisa Ranieri, Renato Carpentieri, Massimiliano Gallo, Betti Pedrazzi, Biagio Manna, Ciro Capano, Enzo Decaro, Lino Musella, Sofya Gershevich, Lino Musella, Dora Romano, Alessandro Bressanello, Birte Berg, Roberto Oliveri, Alfonso Perugini | Italy Drama 129’

Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino returns to Naples in the 1980s with this melodramatic coming of age drama fuelled by football, family and Fellini.

The Hand of God has all the hallmarks of Sorrentino’s signature style: the violent men, corrupt officials and voluptuous women who inhabit a larger than life landscape vibrantly brought to life by Daria D’Antonio’s lush camerawork. But this is a tragedy in the Greek style, complete with folkloric undertones and a soulful often strident chorus-line scoring the mosaic of magnificent vignettes that make up a poignant feature tainted by tragedy, and possibly Sorrentino’s most personal yet.

Naples is the star of the show, the majestic Campania coastline and the mauve mountains of Capri shimmering in the Tyrrhenian sea providing an amazing backdrop to the flamboyant storyline. In the traffic strewn Spaccanoli a big-breasted woman (Ranieri) waits wearily for her bus home. A limousine pulls up and a blue-eyed man (Decaro) claiming to be San Genaro, patron saint of Napoli, offers her a welcome life home and hints at the possibility of a much-wanted child to heal her marriage to Franco (Gallo), who the driver appears to know by name. Astonished, the woman climbs on board, but her arrival home is greeted with a brutal beating from her husband, forcing her to call her happily married sister Maria (Saponangelo) and husband Saverio (Servillo) who soon arrive with their teenage son Fabietto (Scotti) from whose perspective the story continues.

At this point it becomes clear that Fabietto is Sorrentino’s younger self: a gentle, thoughtful, football-mad teenager, desperate to lose his virginity: “just get the first time out of the way” urges his conspiratorial father Severio, a warm and loving pater familias with a fine line in tailoring and a solid job.

But Fabietto’s first love is football, hence the film’s Diego Maradona linked title – referring to a divisive goal he scored in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal. Welcome news for the lustful but lowkey Fabietto arrives when the Argentine player is signed for Naples and will turn out to be his saving grace in the final denouement.

But until then the film swelters with Neopolitan summer indulgences: robust encounters, raucous al fresco lunches and volatile viragos busting out of bikinis or stripping naked to bask in the sun. There’s a cheeky scene where Fabietto eventually scores, not in the football sense but with his much older neighbour (Pedrazzi). His creativity is stimulated by the charismatic film director Antonio Capuano (Capano) – whose 1998 feature The Dust of Naples, was co-written by Sorrentino.

Sorrentino recalls all this with nostalgia and a tender affection that steers clear of sentimentality in bearing its heart on an elegantly crafted sleeve. Scotti’s Fabietto makes for an appealing, introspective alter ego capable of extreme emotion and utter devotion in fervently pursuing his future career. MT

ON NETFLIX | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | SILVER LION – GRAND JURY PRIZE 2021 | BEST YOUNG ACTOR – FILIPPO SCOTTI

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

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

 

The Surrogate (2020)

Dir.: Jeremy Hersh; Cast: Jasmine Batchelor, Chris Perfetti, Sullivan Jones, Brook Bloom, Tonya Pinkins; USA 2020, 93 min.

Made on a (crowd funded) mini-budget, The Surrogate is one of those worthy films you really want to like: Take a pregnancy, a Down’s Syndrome baby, a surrogate mother and two gay ‘fathers’ and you have the recipe for a success. But no, Hersh’s script lets him down, and the actors can’t help.

The titular surrogate mother is Jess Harris (Batchelor), who, in spite of an MA, is having difficulties as a web designer for a Non-Profit outfit which does nothing to value to her efforts. Jess throws all her energies into becoming a surrogate mother for best friends Josh (Perfetti) and Aaron  Jones (a lawyer for a prestigious law firm, who has drawn up a contract between Jess and the gay couple).

Since surrogacy is illegal in the State of New York, money cannot change hands. But after the first euphoria, it turns out the baby’s genetic make-up points to Down’s Syndrome. At first, Jess intends to leave the abortion option to the men, but after they voice support for a termination, Jess becomes a saint-like fighter for the unborn baby, taking the couple to a Help Centre for those affected and a visit to family with a Special Needs child. Eventually she literally rail-roads a mother of an afflicted child into answering all her questions about why she, Jess, should not terminate the pregnancy. The bemused mother just can’t give an affirmative answer. From selfless helper, Jess becomes increasingly judgemental when the men decide, once and for all, to opt for a termination.

Hersh’s characters are rather one dimensional, the gay couple only defined by their sexuality. Jess’ family members come and go, so does a sudden love interest. We are left with a hectoring main character who pushes forward ideological points of view, rather that a real person full of contradictions and doubts.

DoP Mia Cioffi Henry tries her best with the mundane environment, but the narrative only really offers her talking-head shots, All the performances suffer from Jess’s central position – the feature being determined by a morality-play insincerity. Many valid questions are raised, but are left hanging in the air. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 9 JULY

Anaïs in Love (2021)

Dir: Charlene Bourgeois-Tacquet | Cast: Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi, Anais Demoustier, Denis Podalydes, Jean-Charles Clichet,

Anaïs in Love is light, fluffy but real in its depiction of a young girl enjoying her Parisian life, flirting and indulging in a varied sex life while trying to pay the rent – and who better to play her than a gorgeously flip and froufrou Anais Demoustier who strikes just the right chord between frivolousness and concern for her mother, recently diagnosed with cancer, as the titular Anaïs, who can shed a tear although a smile is never far from her pouting red lips.

This is French filmmaker Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s feature debut and she writes and directs with confidence and a lightness of touch in a freewheeling narrative that sashays gaily around Paris in the summer. Of course, it always helps to have Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi in this sort of upbeat sweet-hearted drama, and she adds a touch of class in her usual slightly ‘distraite’ style as Emilie, a vaguely blue-stocking woman who lectures on creative writing at a summer school that piques Anais’ attention. The two bond immediately, drawn together  by the stylish allure they both exude, and a strong sexual attraction.

Of course, Anaïs is short of cash and has to blag herself onto the class where upfront payment is de rigueur. Here she meets Yoann whose father has just died of cancer, reminding Anaïs to write to her mother (cue John Ireland’s mournful score of “When I am dead”). But it’s Emilie who holds the strongest interest for the young Anaïs, until it turns out that they also share the same man, in the shape of much older Daniel (Denis Podalydes) who turns up unexpectedly to join the fun in this enjoyable literary-themed romantic drama with its scarlet aesthetic and vibrant lesbian twist. MT

COMING TO CINEMAS ON 19 August 2022

Where is Anne Frank? (2021)

Dir: Ari Folman | With voices of Emily Carey, Ruby Stokes, Neil Barlow, Skye Bennett, Sebastian Croft, Stewart Scudamore | US Animation 109′

On a dark stormy night in Amsterdam a red-haired beauty breaks into the city’s Holocaust Museum and steals a diary from a crystal showcase. The woman is Kitty and the daybook belonged to the famous woman who created it, Annelies Marie Frank (1929-45).

Ari Folman’s latest animation is a playfully evocative take on the tragedy of Anne Frank (Emily Carey) whose final months are reflected through the eyes of her gadabout muse and confidante Kitty, vividly brought to life here by Ruby Stokes. Bristling with ideas that buzz around like fireflies in the vibrantly rendered animations, this clever imagined drama offers a slice of European social and political history pulsing to an upbeat syncopated score, but doom is never far away.

Ink spots on the diary implode to expose episodes of Anne’s daily life before and after her Jewish family’s confinement in the Amsterdam attic, Folman reveals a tense and introspective young daddy’s girl (her father Otto was the sole survivor) escaping into her imagination, pushed away by an unloving mother, an envious elder sister (Margot) and a collection of unsuitable boyfriends in the shape of Herman Kupman and Rob Cohen, growing up in wartime Amsterdam. Finally she settles for the gentle unassuming hypochondriac Peter van Daan, thoughtfully voiced by Sebastian Croft.

In the present day, Kitty comes alive as an inquiring young ‘girl about town’ desperate to find out what happened to her creator, who disappeared nearly eighty years ago. Gradually the past and present collide through a kaleidoscope of comic and tragic touchstones: flashbacks to Anne’s final birthday with a cake and bottle of ‘4711’ cologne; Nazi troops marching into the city as supersized Darth Vader monsters shrouded in black; the ‘Occupy Europe’ era. The current immigration crisis shoehorned in as a pivotal plot twist is inspired, but somehow a step too far.

More convincing is the film’s ‘cancel culture’ theme that sees the wan and prickly teenage Anne confessing to missing the cinema as she huddles with her family in their attic hideout while the Nazis set fire to the city, banning Jews from everywhere in the ensuing mayhem. Her dream that Clark Gable will scoop her up on a white charger and save her from the macabre encroaching enemy feels real and poignant with its nod to the pandemic.

In their hideout the Frank family are joined by the genteel Van Daans. This allows Folman to make some amusing observations about living in close quarters with strangers: how do you cope with flatulence when your diet consists largely of cabbage? Then there’s the well-worn  hypochondria theme seen through Peter’s penchant for staying in bed all day feigning illness.

After Anne’s ‘disappearance’ Kitty files a ‘missing person’s report’ and meets little Ava who has managed to enter Europe by boat courtesy of her sailor father. The police are ever vigilant, one officer has an Israeli accent, but the shadow of the death camps darkens the film’s final segment in haunting widescreen animations picturing trains travelling East to Westerbork transit camp where Anne and her mother are briefly united before she goes with Margot to Bergen Belsen and beyond.

There is a romantic scene towards the end that captures Anne and Peter kissing under a frosty star-strewn sky, set to Chopin’s Piano Etude #3 In E. this is the loveliest memory of a film that occasionally dazzles with its trove of thoughts and memories of a terrible time in history when Europe was divided as it is, once again, today. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 12 AUGUST 2022

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

Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1958) Curzon

Dir.: Bert Stern, Aram Avakian; Documentary with Theolonious Monk, Anita O’Day, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Chico Hamilton, Chuck Berry; USA 1959, 85 min.

This documentary of the Newport Jazz Festival that took place at Freebody Park, Newport, Rhode Island in July 1958 is the only directional credit of fashion photographer Bert Stern; also one of three credited cameramen of Jazz. (His co-director Aram Avakian is best known for helming End of the Road (1970), which got a X-rating for showing an abortion).

Jazz is a lively interactive blast from the past, the crowd are major players in an event that captures the heady atmosphere of a free-wheeling and jubilant world on the cusp of the 1960s: the best was yet to come in this brave and promising new era. Of course, behind the scenes Behind Vietnam was raging and the filmmakers make a conscious decision not to include the mayhem caused by an influx of black citizens into the luxury enclave of Rhode Island. But they are big players as musicians and onlookers enjoying the pleasant July seaside resort.

The music is very mainstream, even by standards of the late 1950s. Looking at the list of omissions by the filmmakers – Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington with his band, and Mary Lou Williams – it becomes clear Jazz was meant to appeal to the widest audience possible. Still, it works, mainly because the lack if commentary, just the voice of emcee Willis Connover. The directors drift around the harbour too where yachts were competed in trials for the ‘America Cup’, adding a salty maritime edge to the sultry Southern singers. Their camera catches the Hamilton Quintet rehearsing in a nearby house, after which cellist Nathan Gershman plays Bach’s Cello Suite number one – just for himself.

Having said all this, there is a towering cast of musicians, dominated by female artists – Louis Armstrong (joyful as ever) and his “All Stars”, Anita O’Day (Sweet Georgia Brown), Dinah Washington (All of Me), R&B star Big Maybelle and Mahalia Jackson. At the beginning we get only a short glance of Theolonious Monk, playing “Blue Monk” with his trio, totally immersed in playing the piano, oblivious to what was going on around him. Chuck Berry enjoyed great applause for his version of “Sweet little sixteen”, even though it was originally a rock hit. But the night belonged to Mahalia Jackson, whose “The Lord’s Prayer” ran into Sunday morning.

The audience is shown intimately, not just a decorative backdrop, but a real participant. Some are serious devotees, others have brought their children and even babies to boogie along. A vicar and fan with his own 8mm camera are also on show. The consensus was to give the impression of a united nation, helped along by a decade of affluence. But the undocumented police interference was a sign of things to come. The near future would bring the murders of John F. Kennedy, his brother Bobby and the slaying of Martin Luther King amongst a growing Civil Rights movement. So looking back Newport 1958 appeared like a beacon of hope, in a world now lost for ever. We are left wondering how many of the earnest young citizens went on to the streets in the 1960s, protesting against the Vietnam War.

The film was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1959 and the restored copy is much more than a Jazz documentary: A snapshot of a nation just before major turmoil would jumble the pieces leaving nothing in its place any more. Only the jazz survived. AS

A 4K RESTORATION ON CURZON | 30 AUGUST 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

 

 

Men Who Sing (2021) Sheffield Doc Festival 2021

Dir/Wri: Daryl Williams | UK Doc 77′

The Welsh are well known for their singing. And this charming story about an elderly Welshman’s choir in the town of Rhyl on the Denbighshire coast, makes it World Premiere at this year’s Sheffield doc festival.

Director Dylan Williams is best known for his award-winning documentary debut Men Who Swim (2010), and this thematic sequel turns out to be another poignant love letter – this time to his father. Not the closest pair, the two are reunited when the widowed 90 year old announces he’s selling the family home “while he’s still able”. Naturally this is a wake up call to ‘only child’ Dylan, who promptly makes his way back from his home in Sweden where he has lived for the past twenty years.

Almost entirely in the Welsh language this is, unsurprisingly, a tuneful and light-heated biopic, making great use of its green and pleasant coastal settings in the former industrial town in North Wales, known for building the airbus, and this is where most of the choir men have been gainfully employed. Now retired they have found cosy camaraderie in this local choir, and inspiration from their feisty choir-mistress Ann)

But most of the men are now mostly in their eighties, and a much needed recruitment drive to find new singers to boost their dwindling numbers makes up the other main strand to the narrative, along with the important need to keep practising, improving and entering competitions, adding an element of drama to the storyline. Men Who Sing is not just a another tribute to a filmmaker’s father, this is a well-structured and watchable portrait of a choir, and a generation of men soon to be lost forever in the industrial heartlands of North Wales. MT

SHEFFIELD DOC FESTIVAL 2021

The Skull (1965) TPTV

Dir; Freddie Francis | Peter Cushing, Patrick Wymark, Jill Bennett, Nigerl Green, Patrick McGee, Christopher Lee | UK Horror

Shrewdly packaged from a 1945 short story by Robert Bloch for his recently formed company Amicus by Milton Subotsky, vividly designed in Technicolor and directed by Freddie Francis when he still cared. The film also follows Hammer precedent by employing a classy British composer, Elizabeth Lutyens, whose music carries the long sections without dialogue.

Although headlining Hammer alumni like Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Michael Gough, the cast includes many others of Britain’s finest, including Patrick Wymark and Nigel Green (both of whom died not long afterwards) and Patrick Magee fresh from Corman’s Masque of the Red Death. The fanciful use of colour, weird visuals and general mood suggest familiarity both with Corman’s Poe pictures and the Italian horrors of directors like Bava & Freda. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV | PRIME VIDEO

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

Blind Ambition (2021)

Dir/Writers Warwick Ross & Rob Coe | Australia, Doc 96′

Driven by relentless optimism and a passion for their craft, four Zimbabwean refugees become South Africa’s unlikely top sommeliers, competing for the coveted title of ‘World Wine Tasting Champions’ as Zimbabwe’s first ever wine-tasting team.

Blind Ambition is a colourful and lively documentary cutting a dash through the stuffy, privileged world of the wine-tasting with its refreshing spin on South Africa’s storied winelands. Upbeat in tempo in its early scenes, the fractured narrative style gradually sobers up as it reflects on the sommeliers’ backstories of poverty and disadvantage back in their beleaguered homeland. Luminaries Jancis Robinson add insight and credibility to the film boosting its potential for a mainstream audience. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 12 AUGUST 2022 | World Premiere TriBeCa Film Festival 2021.

 

The Red Pony (1949) Prime

Dir: Lewis Milestone | Cast: Robert Mitchum, Myrna Loy, Shepperd Strudwick, Louis Calhern | US Drama 89′

Ten years after his classic version of Of Mice and Men for Hal Roach, Lewis Milestone this time went to Republic (the title design is the same as on their John Ford westerns) to again film John Steinbeck (this time adapted by Steinbeck himself), who professed himself satisfied with the results.

In addition to Steinbeck & Milestone this stagy but affecting little fable recalling The Yearling and The Boy with Green Hair marshals various disparate talents including composer Aaron Copland (who had also scored Of Mice and Men) and veteran cameraman Tony Gaudio doing a lovely job behind the camera on his final film; while Bob Mitchum is in his only Technicolor film of the 1940s and Myrna Loy of course looks ravishing in her first since the two-colour days and coming as close as she ever came to her long-cherished desire to play a frontierswoman.

The brash little blond kid with blue eyes is a seven year-old Beau Bridges, Louis Calhern as Loy’s garrulous pappy looks and sounds almost exactly as he did the following year as Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun; while Margaret Hamilton as the local schoolmarm appropriately looks as if she just stepped out of a painting by Grant Wood. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

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

In a Quiet Place: Part II (2021)

Dir: John Krasinski | Cast: Emily Blunt, Noel Jupe, Millicent Simmonds, Cillian Murphy | US thriller 97′

It’s a novel idea: an anthropod alien attracted to earthbound prey merely by sound. In a Quiet Place (2018), essentially a survivalist Sci-Fi thriller, was the brainwave of John Krasinski who wrote and stars alongside his wife Emily Blunt. As Evelyn and Lee Abbott they spend the entire film cowering in silence in the family farm in New York State while the predator  – who arrives from the heavens – rages outside. Part II sees Evelyn and the kids escaping across the Appalachian mountains where other dangers lurk.

Thriller-wise there are some clever beats here: the exquisitely sound-sensitive predator is an animal – not a robot – and can be destroyed by gunfire – keeping the story grounded, relatively speaking. This spider-like critter can also be repelled (for a time) by a loud transistor radio, held up like a cross to a vampire. Meahwile its horrified potential victims tiptoe around – in the serene splendour of the bucolic Buffalo countryside where they hide out in a disused factory. The well-honed family members feel real and relatable, Evelyn and her clever kids Marcus (Jupe) and hearing-impaired Regan (Simmonds) love each other, and it shows. There’s also a newborn in tow.

Krasinski successfully develops the storyline with a sequel that combines likeable heroes with stunning Sci-fi set pieces moving on from the ground-breaking reveal of ‘part one’. Pitting man against monster in a post-apocalyptic world feels entirely ‘now’. Horror lovers will enjoy plenty of jump scares and skeletons popping out of nowwhere to a pounding soundscape that jostles thunderous vibes with suspenseful interludes of silvan silence. Somehow this could be happening to you. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

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 

 

London Spanish Film Festival 2021

London Spanish Film Festival
10th Spring Weekend 28 – 30 May 2021

The 10th Spring Weekend of the London Spanish Film Festival is back full of energy and positive vibes setting the mood for an exciting 17th edition in September.

You’ll find the latest film by veteran Fernando Trueba, three decent debuts from women filmmakers, a hopeful and moving reflexion on what life is and a special screening of the latest treat from Maestro Almodóvar.

LAS NIÑAS  | Schoolgirls

Dir. Pilar Palomero | with Andrea Fandos, Natalia de Molina, Zoe Arnao | Spain | 2020 | 97 min | cert. 15 | London premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

Celia is an 11-year-old girl studying at a nun’s school in 1992. She’s a responsible student and a considerate daughter but the arrival of a new classmate will open a little window Celia is willing to look out from to discover about the outside world. Together with her group of friends she’ll give her first steps into adolescence and first-times even if that means confronting her mother and questioning everything that meant comfort and security. The film has won several awards among which Best Film, Best New Director, Best Cinematography and Best Original Screenplay Goya Awards.

Fri 28 May | 6.30pm | £13, conc. £11

EL OLVIDO QUE SEREMOS Memories of My Father

Dir. Fernando Trueba, with Javier Cámara, Nicolás Reyes Cano, Juan Pablo Urrego | Colombia | 2020 | 136 min | cert. PG | In Spanish, Italian and English with English subtitles | Distributed by Curzon

Trueba’s latest film tells the story of Héctor Abad Gómez, one of Colombia’s most beloved national heroes, through the eyes of his son. He balances a nuanced portrait of Abad Gómez’s family life in Medellín and the harsh reality of the country in the turbulent 1970s and 1980s, in which corruption is common and the government cannot be criticised. Based on the book written by Abad Gómez’s son, Memories of My Father is a memorable work, a love story and the portrait of a man fighting for the basic human rights of his people: food, water and adequate shelter.

Fri 28 May | 8.35pm | £13, conc. £11 Sat 29 May | 5.50pm | £13, conc. £11

LA VOZ HUMANAThe Human Voice

Dir. Pedro Almodóvar, with Tilda Swinton | Spain | 2020 | 30 min | cert. PG | In English and Spanish with English subtitles

Jean Cocteau wrote The Human Voice in 1928 and, since then, many artists have staged or filmed their own vision of this woman’s dramatic moments after her lover of the last few years leaves her to get married with to another woman. Almodóvar’s stunning version brings to The Human Voice his sense of aesthetics, of rhythm and his peculiar, subtle sense of humour, making the pièce his own. Chameleonic Swinton, in what seems a wonderful and perfect tuning with Almodóvar, captures the essence of his style bringing to it some delightful British exquisiteness. A must.

The film will be followed by a 40 min video-Q&A with Pedro Almodóvar and Tilda Swinton with Mark Kermode. It will be preceded by a video-presentation by Prof. Maria Delgado

Sat 29 May | 4.15pm | £13, conc. £11

LA INNOCÈNCIA | La inocencia | The Innocence

Dir. Lucia Alemany | with Carmen Arrufat, Laia Marull, Sergi López, Joel Bosqued | Spain | 2019 | 92 min | cert. 15 | London premiere | In Catalan and Spanish with English subtitles

Lis is a teenager whose dream is to become a circus artist and go traveling. While she knows she’ll have to confront her parents and fight for it, she spends the summer playing around with her friends and with her boyfriend, a few years older than herself and the relationship with whom she tries to keep hidden from the constant gossip of the neighbours. Lucia Alemany’s impressive first feature film is a fresh coming-of-age story that captures perfectly the rural and festive mood without losing any realism nor honesty.

Sat 29 May | 8.45pm | £13, conc. £11

MY MEXICAN BRETZEL 

Dir: Nuria Giménez | Spain | 2019 | 73 min | cert. PG | London premiere | In English

Giménez’s debut film offers, through archive footage of home made movies, a glimpse into the life of a wealthy European couple, Léon and Vivian Barrett, after WW2 and up to the 1960s. The quality of the footage is superb and is accompanied by text from Vivian’s diary offering details of their lives, her thoughts, gossip… Mesmerising and compelling, this is a clever work of direction and of editing by Giménez, and has won her, among others, the Found Footage Award at the Internation Film Festival of Rotterdam last year.

Sun 30 May | 6.10pm | £13, conc. £11

LA VIDA ERA ESO That Was Life

Dir. David Martín de los Santos, with Petra Martínez, Anna Castillo, Florin Piersic Jr., Ramón Barea | Spain/Belgium | 2020 | 109 min | cert. PG | UK premiere | In Spanish and French with English subtitles

When María and Verónica end up meeting and sharing a hospital room in Belgium, the only thing they have in common is that they are Spaniards who came to work to this country with the hope to find more opportunities than back at home. Slowly a bond grows between them and one of them will start a journey to Almería, where the roots of the other are, initially to meet her family, finally to discover principles beyond those on which she had based her whole life. The film is poignant in his humble and intimate approach. The subtly nuanced acting of Petra Martínez in the lead role as a woman pushing herself out of the boundaries of the role in which she felt confined, adds emotion to this wonderful film.

Sun 30 May | 7.55pm | £13, conc. £11

LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL 2021 

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.

 

Fängelse | Prison (1949)

Dir/Wri: Ingmar Bergman | Cast: Doris Svedlund, Birger Malmsten, Eva Henning, Hasse Ekman | Sweden Drama 79′

Fängelse, like För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor fifteen years later, is a fascinating film that throbs with energy and enthusiasm but came a cropper when it opened and was later disowned by Bergman; although it’s by no means a car wreck of the order of the later catastrophe, and was actually acclaimed as “a masterpiece” by Variety’s reviewer on its first appearance. But even on the tiny budget Bergman had to play with it was a commercial flop, and he made far more coherent use of the non-linear narrative techniques flamboyantly used in his attempt to dazzle us with here in his next superficially less ambitious film, Törst.

Fängelse remains an experience to be savoured, superbly shot by Göran Strindberg and punctuated by virtuoso sequences such as the silent movie and the heroine’s dream. The extraordinary face of Doris Svedlund – on display in a whole range of angles and lighting styles – also lingers in the memory. And all packed into less than 80 minutes! @Richard Chatten

 

 

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

 

Escape (1948)

Dir: Joseph L Mankiewicz | Philip Dunne | Cast: Rex Harrison, Peggy Cummins, William Hartnell, Norman Woodland, Jill Esmond | US Drama

In the hands of Joseph Mankiewicz, this version of John Galsworthy’s play originally produced in the West End in 1926 with Leslie Howard, and first filmed in 1930 with Gerald du Maurier is predictably verbose, but, like Joseph Losey’s Figures in a Landscape works equally well as a location-shot thriller and as an existential drama.

The law is depicting going about its usual business of persecuting the law-abiding when a boorish detective ends up hitting his head in one of those accidents so common in the movies; for this, war hero Rex Harrison gets three years in Dartmoor for manslaughter. The film doesn’t make it clear how much of his time he’s served when he makes a break for it in the fog, but his chances don’t seem very good; and the evident irony of the title is compounded by plot contrivances like the way Peggy Cummins’ path keeps crossing that of Harrison. Miss Cummins is obviously in a trap of her own, betrothed to a man she doesn’t love; and she’s given a lot of didactic dialogue which it seems as unlikely that a human being would actually say in conversation as some of the things the script requires detective William Hartnell to say.

Never mind. Although you know this can’t end well, there’s plenty of action, enlivened by Freddie Young’s location photography on Dartmoor; and it builds up to a satisfying – and moderately hopeful – conclusion for which we have been prepared by a tremendous scene with Norman Wooland as the sympathetic parson. He talks a lot of sense (“The church was endowed by God, but is managed by men; and where there are men there are doubts and confusion”); and since he has just said “Our human laws are as fallible as the men who make them”, the quotation from Galsworthy with which the film concludes (“The law is what it is – a majestic edifice sheltering all of us, each stone rests on another”) seems intended either to placate the censors or to be taken with a pinch of salt. @Richard Chatten

 

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

In the Mist | I Dimma Dold | (1953) Netflix

Dir: Lars Eric Kjellgren | Cast: Eva Henning, Sonja Wigert, Hjordis Petterson, Dagmar Ebbesen, Georg Rydeberg, Sven Lindberg | Noir thriller Sweden 82′

A valuable collection of films by the Swedish director Lars Eric Kjellgren have recently appeared on Netflix, including this rather stylish arthouse noir starring Eva Henning as the kittenish femme fatale Lora (a Nordic Lizabeth Scott).

Based on his own novel Vic Suneson’s script begins as Lora is driving away from her comfortable mansion where her husband Walter (a rather ghoulish Georg Rydeberg) is later discovered shot dead. But the murderer remains a mystery as the glacially elegant Lora demurely teases a coterie of locals – including an earnest detective (Sven Lindberg) and a ludicrous pair of old biddies, into solving the crime.

Boasting bold black and white photography by Gunnar Fischer (Wild Strawberries) this is a joy to watch as it gracefully combines vivid realist street scenes of 1950s Stockholm with lush interiors culminating in a ‘Cluedo’ style dinner party denouement primped by Erik Nordgren’s needling score. MT

ON NETFLIX 

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

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

Dir: Richard Boleslawski | Wri: Sidney Buchman/Mary McCarthy | Cast: Irene Dunne, Melvyn Douglas, Thomas Mitchell | US Comedy

Seen today, accustomed as we are to seeing the adorable Irene Dunne in her later comedies slinkily casting those lovely eyes sideways and laughing that distinctive gurgling laugh it’s hard to believe that after several years as a celebrated drama queen Theodora Goes Wild represented for her a leap in the dark into the hitherto unaccustomed territory of farce; at which she immediately proved adept.

Thomas Mitchell as the town’s abrasive newspaper editor figures prominently in the opening and closing scenes, promising a more satirical subject than we actually get. Theodora’s ‘scandalous’ novel ‘The Sinner’ was by now inevitably required by the proprieties of the Production Code to be wholly a work of her imagination and is largely forgotten as the film progresses; post-Code, the Hays Office would never permit the notion that there could possibly have actually been any men in the life of the demure, unmarried Ms Dunne before she put pen to paper. Five years earlier it would have been a very different story indeed and the escapist fantasy of Theodora Goes Wild – even down to its innocently racy title – recalls a silent film of ten years earlier rather than the earthier fare of the early sound era.

Ms Dunne was approaching forty when she made this film, and although the title holds out the promise of her eventually letting her hair down, she never reveals half as much in the film as she does baring her arms and shoulders in the figure-hugging dress she wears on the poster; revealing her inner hussy by instead piling on feathers and sashaying about in expensive bad taste while the plot ties itself into knots attempting to subvert the requirements of The Code while simultaneously observing its constraints and parodying the very rural bluestockings it was introduced to appease.

This was the last film completed by the always interesting Richard Boleslawski before his sudden death the following year at the age of 47. Aided by luminous photography by Frank Capra’s regular cameraman Joseph Walker and superb performances by a first-rate supporting cast, the end result is a handsome piece of fluff wholly devoid of the bite and contemporary relevance it would have had if made five years earlier. Melvyn Douglas does his best to bestow some charm on the obnoxious Michael Grant, but the two lead characters have absolutely nothing in common, and Theodora deserves much better than this mischief-making jerk who doesn’t even let her know that he’s married. ©Richard Chatten

The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020)

Dir: Kaouther Ben Hania | Cast: Yahya Mahayni, Dea Liane, Koen De Bouw, Monica Bellucci, Saad Lostan, Darina Al Joundi, Jan Dahdouh, Christian Vadim | Tunisia, Drama 104′

A Syrian man turns difficulty into success in this stunning exploitation love story set in the international art world.

This Oscar-nominated follow-up to Beauty and the Dogs gives Tunisian writer director Kaouther Ben Hania another opportunity to question social injustice with her signature sensuous cinematic language.

Powered forward by an unabashedly angry performance from newcomer Yahya Mahayni as Syrian refugee Sam Ali – whose chance meeting with a famous artist sees him agreeing to be transformed into an artwork himself:. a Schengen visa is then tattooed on Ali’s back, securing him a coveted air passage to Europe, Belgium to be precise, where he reconnects with girlfriend Abeer (Dea Liane).

To say that Sam has a plucky attitude is an understatement. But his-blind-sided sense of self-belief certainly opens doors and gets him what he wants. First of all the sympathy of the controversial artist himself, Jeffrey Godefroi (De Bouw) who takes him onboard as a ‘canvas’, despite his chippiness. It also ensures the utter dedication of the artist’s assistant (a blond-haired Monica Bellucci, no less) who panders to his every whim, even after being told “F**k you”.

But what Ali really wants is the woman of his dreams who he proposes to in the deliriously romantic opening scenes, but who is now married to somebody else, and living comfortably in Belgium.

There is a dark Shakespearean downside to the story and one that gives the film a potent message: Ali must agree to give his skin back after his death, as it remains (ironically) the copyright of the artist. And there’s more, poor Ali must also acquiesce to being ‘auctioned’ which seems a gross act of human commodification, in a plotlline that makes this relevant all over the world, not just locally.

This stylish production is shot by award-winning Christopher Aoun (Capernaum). And although the rather schematic plot falls into place rather too easily, the sheer verve of the performances and the highly controversial civil liberty and refugee issues at its core makes it a soulful winner. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 23 SEPTEMBER 2021

 

The Quiller Memorandum (1966) TPTV

Dir: Michael Anderson | Cast: George Segal, Alex Guinness, Max Von Sydow, Sent Berger, George Sanders, Robert Flemyng, Philip Madoc | Uk Drama 106′

Adapted from Adam Hall’s novel ‘The Berlin Memorandum’, this was the only spy film written by Harold Pinter; a sad loss, since he and the genre – with their ambiguous motivations and outright deceptions, complicated here by the fact that almost everybody around him is speaking amongst themselves in a foreign language – were made for each other.

The dialogue scenes between spymasters George Sanders and Robert Flemyng in Whitehall are pure Pinter. While back in Berlin the second most Pinteresque scenes are those where our disarmingly offbeat hero is interrogated by knuckle-cracking neo-Nazi Max von Sydow. Alec Guinness puts in a sinister appearance in the mammoth Olympiastadion at Charlottenburg. Truly the stuff of nightmares.

Senta Berger is the heroine. Meester Quiller!! (She is currently shooting her latest film in Bavaria). While the final scene is a wonderfully Hitchcockian denouement, all the more shocking for taking place in glorious morning sunshine to an appropriately wistful accompaniment from John Barry’s score sung by the mellow Matt Munro. ©Richard Chatten.

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV | AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

Human Rights Watch Festival 2021 | Women have their say

Opening this Thursday 18 March, this year’s HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FESTIVAL  kicks off with The 8th about Ireland’s women-led campaign to engineer the impossible – to overturn the 8th Amendment, a constitutional ban on abortion.

In Belly of the Beast two women wage a near impossible battle against the US Department of Corrections to expose modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.

Mujer de Soldado reveals a deeply moving picture of female solidarity among four Peruvian women, who are bringing charges of historical rape against their abusers.

And in the Closing Night film on 26 March Unapologetic new talent Ashley O’Shay spent four years chronicling the lives of two young, black, queer women within the Black Lives movement in Chicago. In Ashley’s words: Unapologetic serves as a blueprint to that moment (last summer)…. I hope you walk away feeling inspired, and hopeful, and righteously rageful at the systems that have failed women.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | Tickets go on sale February 18 and can be purchased via the Human Rights Watch Film Festival or Barbican Cinema On Demand.

The Frightened Man (1952)

Dir: John Gilling | Cast: Dermot Walsh, Barbara Murray, Charles Victor, John Blythe | UK Drama 69′

An ultra-noirish cautionary tale (like most Tempean productions superlatively lit by Monty Berman) sternly warning audiences in postwar austerity Britain against the lure of apparently easy money; such as that stands to be acquired from frequent target Hatton Garden in a diamond heist.

Making the most of a meagre budget, John Gilling writes and directs a tighly-plotted and rather unpredicable little heist thriller that sees the profligate Julius Rosselli (Walsh) paying a visit to his adoring, antique shop-owner father (Charles Victor) after being sent down from Oxford University in disgrace. Julius plunders his father’s savings, flirts with the lodger (Murray) and soon falls in with a criminal element in a bid to make money without working for it, in a heist that runs into complications.

The first of two films by Tempean in which Charles Victor played the lead (the second being the title role in The Embezzler) flanked by the usual choice cast many of whom later featured in TV comedy series (Peter Bayliss in ‘The Fenn Street Gang’, Ballard Berkeley in ‘Fawlty Towers’, John Horsley in ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’, Martin Benson in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ and Thora Hird and Michael Ward in just about everything else). Richard Chatten.

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO | TALKING PICTURES TV

Day of the Triffids (1963)

Dir: Steve Sekely, Freddie Francis | Cast: Howard Keel, Nicole Maurey, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore, Mervyn Johns | Sci-fi 93′

Nobody ever points out that John Wyndham’s classic 1951 novel actually contains two apocalyptic catastrophes for the price of one; either of which would have provided ample material for an entire book in its own right. The whole population suddenly going blind would have been hard enough to deal with even without the survivors also having to fend off giant carnivorous plants going on the rampage! (As the night watchman at Kew Gardens devoured by one of the exhibits, Ian Wilson without his usual glasses ironically has one of his largest roles ever, with plenty of close-ups, but no dialogue).

Described by Raymond Durgnat as “hideously botched, but interesting”, this, the sole big-screen version yet attempted of Wyndham’s book, had a troubled production, plainly lacked the budget for adequate special effects and has a very abrupt tacked-on resolution. (The original itself lacks any sort of tidy conclusion.) Inevitably it pales by comparison with either of the two films derived from The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) or the TV versions since made. But it treats the original with respect and generally captures it’s mood. Were it’s source not so renowned, it would probably be considered more sympathetically on it’s own terms.

The film suffers from the same problem as the original novel that once the wonderful central situation has been set up it bogs down somewhat and runs out of plot: hence the addition of the scenes in the lighthouse. And it has the affliction of most modern creature features that the triffids themselves are deprived of their original elegance by making them just too slaveringly revolting compared to those in the book; although the noise they make is cool.

But the scene where the word ‘blind’ causes sheer feral panic to sweep like wildfire through a plane in flight is alone powerful enough to justify the film’s existence. Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO |

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 

 

Azor (2021) Berlinale | Encounters Berlinale 2021

Dir: Andreas Fontana | Cast: Fabrizio Rongione, Stephanie Cleau, Gilles Privat, Elli Medeiros, Carmen Iriondo, Pablo Torre Nilson, Ignazio Vila, Juan Trench, Juan Pablo Geretto| Argentina, Switzerland, 99′

Another sophisticated Argentine thriller along the lines of Rojo set during the ‘Dirty Wars’ and this time seen through the eyes of a Swiss banker who arrives in Buenos Aires to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his partner only to discovers intrigue and subterfuge amongst the elite.

In 1976 a military junta seized power from Eva Peron’s government resulting in the deaths of over 30,000 people. Swiss born filmmaker Andreas Fontana transports us back to these uncertain times with high society characters who feel real in their glamorous settings, manicured poolsides, lush estancias, exclusive polo parties where Fabrizio Rongione strikes just the right tone of cool circumspection and biddability in his role as the trustworthy banker with a listening ear (a million miles away from the shoddy service we’ve come to expect from our own banks).

Cleau adds allure as Ines, his chain-smoking wife and confidente, oiling the wheels of their social encounters – where smoking is ‘de rigueur’ -with her unthreatening, savvy charm. Other characters who stand out here are Carmen Iriondo, a society hostess, and the Monsignor, who strikes fear into the proceedings with his chilly glare. These are people you may not trust to post a letter but as the gatekeepers of Argentina’s shady upper echelons of power, they must be respected.

In their car from the airport Yvan and Ines witness two men being held up at gunpoint, Yvan suavely fails to bat an eyelid, and once in their comfort of their exclusive hotel, Buenos Aires stretches before them just like any other international capital city, although the tinkling harpsichord score warns of trouble ahead, in the style of those Claude Chabrol thrillers. The couple get a rude awakening from the rather glib thickly-accented lawyer Dekerman (Geretto), who welcomes them to BA on behalf of ‘the client’, before rudely ordering his own whiskey before offering Ines a drink (and failing to light her cigarette), preparing her for the macho set up that will follow.

Business here is not just about talent but also moving in the right circles and keeping quiet at the right time (the code word ‘Azor’ means to ‘keep shtum’, rather like the Sicilian ‘omertà’). As a private banker from a monied background Yvan De Wiel settles graciously into the hushed scenes of high society in this enjoyably taught first feature from Swiss director Fontana who writes and directs with considerable flair, capturing the zeitgeist of these dangerous times with a florid eye for local detail.

A De Wiel sashays discretely and suavely in soigné villas, lush lounges and amongst the polo ponies, he swiftly gains the trust of the movers and shakers repositioning his bank’s interests with the junta when it dawns on him that his partner Rene Keys had possibly pulled the wool over his eyes bringing his firm into question. But he has another string to his bow, that of deal-making (aka laundering blood money) using his utmost caution. it’s a restrained performance and one of subtlety.

From the outset Fontana creates a real sense of danger here, a feeling that anything could go wrong as De Wiel’s investigation leads him deeper and deeper into the exotic hinterland of Argentina’s pampas where the Junta’s sinister types hang out in the film’s seething finale.

There is more that a whiff of colonialism here. Silence and an evocative ambient soundscape prove to be Fontana’s best weapon in ramping up tension in the final stages of his restrained thriller, a slick seventies score of musak playing out during discrete cocktail parties where these smooth operators mingle under swaying palms, waiters plying them with drinks as they plot and plan how to deal with the trappings of colonialism. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | Encounters 2021

 

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

Focus Hong Kong | February 2021

FOCUS HONG KONG celebrates the Chinese New Year with a UK online programme running February 9th to 15th

 

Dedicated to celebrating the cinema and filmmakers of Hong Kong, the festival features early works to the glory days of its reign as the Hollywood of Asia, through to new and exciting films.

In February, there’ a strong line-up of UK online premieres, including the new 2K restoration of Tsui Hark’s immortal fantasy wuxia classic Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain, acclaimed contemporary anthology Memories to Choke On, Drinks to Wash them Down, offbeat murder mystery A Witness out of the Blue, the latest film from Andrew Fung, dark psychodrama Till We Meet Again, and the thrilling martial arts drama The Empty Hands, starring Stephy Tang and Chapman To. The festival also features a free to view selection of short films from the Hong Kong Fresh Wave Competition, renowned as the hothouse for future talent in the Hong Kong industry.

March will see another selection with a full festival event later in the year,

FOCUS Hong Kong 

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 Investigation (2021) BBCiPlayer | DVD

 

Dir: Tobias Linholm | Cast: Soren Malling, Pilou Asbaek, Pernilla August, Rolf Lassgard, Laura Christensen, Dulfi Al-Jabouri, Hans Henrik Clemensen | Denmark, True crime drama, 2021

True crime doesn’t get any more gruesome than the murder of journalist Kim Wall. So the Danes have thrown their best talent behind this HBO miniseries (now also on BBC 2) written and directed by Tobias Lindholm (whose Another Round is Denmark’s Oscar hopeful) and starring Pernilla August, Borgen‘s Soren Malling, Pilou Asbaek (A Hijacking) and Rolf Lassgard.

This was a murder that shocked the world: a Danish inventor Peter Madsen invited Wall to visit his homemade submarine somewhere off the coast of Denmark. She then disappeared without trace and Madsen was rescued after his vessel sunk near to Copenhagen’s Koge bay. Interviewed by police Madsen later claimed Wall had slipped and hit her head, drowning in a watery grave. But then it gets weird. As Wall’s body parts were gradually washed up, the head some time later delaying identification, Madsen was arrested and charged with her murder, changing his story several times in the aftermath.

Sombre and sumptuously photographed by Magnus Nordenhof Jonck this plays out as a slow burning and evocative thriller that manages to be utterly compelling while respecting the delicate subject matter and Wall’s loved ones, as it carefully chronicles the unfolding investigation – day by day – under the guidance of Malling’s thoughtful Jens Moller. The detective really took it upon himself to ensure that no stone was left unturned in exploring the unpalatable facts, consulting oceanographers and tide experts to fathom out what happened during that fateful night of August 10th 2017.

Wall was an accomplished professional investigative journalist with everything to live for, yet her career was cut short by Madsen who not only ended her life, but in such a macabre way – presumably he hoped the evidence would be destroyed by marine life.

Moller works painstakingly in the suitably grim conditions of a rainy Danish autumn – the whole process took four months – to try and piece together enough evidence to nail Madsen. Dogs detectives join specialist divers and pathologists, and the scenes involving Walls’ parents are particularly moving. The six part structure enables Lindholm to fully flesh out the characters’ backstories in this deeply affecting criminal procedural that widens out into a slice of social history.

Although one tries to avoid the expression ‘Nordic Noir’ in this particular case, it’s just what it is. No disrespect to Wall, she just happened to be the victim. All things considered I think she would consider this a fitting tribute to her life. MT

ON BBC2 from 29 January 2021 | DVD on 1March 2021

 

 

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.

 

Slalom (2020) Curzon VOD

Dir: Charlène Favier | Writers: Charlène Favier, Marie Talon | Cast: Noée Abita, Jérémie Renier, Marie Denarnaud, Muriel Combeau, Maïra Schmitt, Axel Auriant | France, Drama

Noée Abita made a name for herself in Lea Mysius’ poignant drama Ava (2017) about a girl gradually losing her sight. In Slalom she stars alongside Jérémie Renier in a love story set in the snowy French Alps.

This coming of age sports drama is an impressive debut for writer-director Charlène Favier who made the Cannes 2020 official selection. Abita plays 15-year-old ski professional-in- training Lyz who falls for her sexually voracious power-tripping coach Max (Renier), already in a relationship with another team member (Marie Denarnaud), in a drama that echoes real life cases in the world of tennis and swimming in France and the US.

Favier and her co-writer Talon show how kids of that age are emotionally vulnerable and subject to hero-worshipping in a world where their collaborative and professional relationship is particularly vital, especially when they have little support from their parents. In this case her mother (Muriel Combeau) makes a new boyfriend a priority, rather than the stability and wellbeing of her daughter who she abandons to rush off on a romantic break over Christmas. Lyz is understanding heartbroken. But not for long.

Deftly interweaving the heart-pumping slalom competitions that will shape her into an Olympic hopeful, and the intense love story at its core, this snowbound affair is as hot as they come – especially when its focus is first love – set in the spectacular mountain scenery of the French Alps where Yann Maritaud creates a real sense of drama on the sparking icebound slopes and frosty moonlit nights-capes not to mention those intimate close-ups.

Lyz experiences a whirlwind of emotions from anxiety surrounding her sporting prowess, to confusion in lust-ridden days of wondering whether Max will be there for her in bed – and on the slopes. Of course, we can all see Max’s own adrenalin- fuelled turmoil as he barks orders, and commands his star pupil’s respect, while being confused by his own feelings.

Abita is terrific as she gradually develops stamina, independence and self-belief – physically, as well as mentally – straining every core of her body to reach peak performance, Her gamine insecurity gathers storm as she develops a fierce sense of pride and integrity. If there was ever a drama perfect for teenage girls – (or adult girls who’ve already been there) this is it!.MT

ON CURZON VOD from 12 February 2021

 

 

 

 

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 

 

Wild Indian (2020) Sundance Film Festival 2021

Dir.: Lyle Mitchell Corbine jr.; Cast: Michael Greueyes, Chaske spencer, Julian Gopal, Scott Haze, Kate Bosworth, Jesse Eisenberg; USA 2021, 90 min.

1980s Wisconsin provides the setting for this atmospheric thriller that sees two Native American teenagers brought together by a murderous secret. In his first feature competing in this year’s Sundance Film Festival Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr writes, co-produces and directs the intriguing stand-alone narratives that somehow fail to come together as a satisfying whole.

Makwa (Haze) and Teddo (Gopal) are outsiders who spend their afternoons kicking around the neighbourhood where their own parents are struggling to give them a proper home. Makwa’s father is so abusive he has to invent excuses for the bruises he is always covered in. One afternoon in the woods Makwa accidentally shoots a fellow student with a gun, that was lying around at home. Teddo is appalled, but helps his friend to bury the body.

Decades later in 2019, Makwa (Greyeyes) – now calling himself Michael – is a successful accountant in LA, married to the attractive Greta (Bosworth) with a son, Francis, Greta soon giving birth to a second baby. Teddo, on the other hand, has spent most of the last twenty-five years in jail. He blames his ‘bad luck’ on the trauma he suffered helping his friend cover up the murder. Michael is still drawn to violence, choking a sex worker, and threatening the victim’s relative to be quiet, attacking her in hospital. His well-paid lawyer gets him off any charges, police are uninterested in solving the case. But when Teddo fetches up at Michael’s house intent on revenge, there is an ugly and tragic incident.

Nothing tangible connects these two scenarios, Mitchell Corbine leaving the plot underwritten and leaving viewers to grapple in the dark: we have no idea how Makwa/Michael became so successful, or Teddo turned to a life of crime – somehow the trauma of the dead student is left unresolved. Micheal has a curious rapport with his right-hand man (Eisenberg is terribly underused): Michael asking his subservient underling about his haircut amongst other issues.

DoP Eli Born shows two worlds in complete contrast, the LA glitter is wildly overdone. Nice idea to bookend the feature with mythological images and poetry from the canon of the native Americans, but there are too many unanswered questions in this oblique but well-meaning debut. AS

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 28 JANUARY – 7 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

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Muranow (2020) **** Jerusalem Film Festival 2020

Dir.: Chen Shelach; Documentary; Israel 2020, 70 min.

This haunting documentary debut from Isreal’s Chen Shelach, explores the traumatic past and present of Warsaw’s Muranow, once home to 200,000 Polish Jews before their lives were destroyed in the ghetto, the largest in the nation state that was ‘Greater Germany’. The vast majority were deported to Treblinka death camp where they were murdered in broad daylight.

But Muranow also tells another tale: of the Jewish uprising that took the ghetto by storm – and of those who live there today, still  traumatised by the ghosts and demons of their past – but who still deny their fellow citizens collaboration with the Germans.

And the ghosts and demons are still very much alive, according to one flat dweller whose refurbished property adjoins the Muranow cemetery. She claims no one will drink her tap water because the ground below the pipes still contains traces of Jews who lost their lives in the tragic years between 1938-1945.

Only two of buildings have survived the war and Muranow’s subsequent urban regeneration: One houses the Warsaw University’s Psychology department which once was the SS HQ. The other is St. Anne’s Church, where the SS hid paintings and other valuables looted from Jewish homes. Researcher Mattan Steffi contrasts old archive films and photos with today’s modern version of Muranow. The current Polish inhabitants of the quarter are well aware of this gruesome and guilt-ridden past. When interviewed they hide behind lame excuses – even though one of them moved out to Gdansk for two years on account of the ‘ghost’ in his flat – whom he Christened Rachella. Another woman bought a Menora, to fight off the ghosts “from a lost civilisation”. The existence of the ghetto is a taboo subject in schools.

The modern worlds collides too: A Lebanese baker tells about his family’s flight from the Middle-East war zone to Warsaw – and is shocked to learn that he’s actually living on the Nazi genocide victims’ bones.

Then there are the young Zionists from Israel, who visit the bunker where the Jewish Uprising’s victims committed suicide. They are proud of their slaughtered ancestors “you died with pride, so we can fight with pride for Israel”. A commentator is rather forgiving of this failed analogy: “Young people always need a story with a Happy-End.” The Polish authorities work hard to create an image, picturing Jews and Poles as victims of the Nazis alongside each other.

There are demonstrations in Muranow, but these only show how the Holocaust has been hijacked for a new Polish Nationalism: “Poland for Poles only” sing these neo-fascist on Muranow’s highway and byways. Meanwhile bookshops stock titles such as “Zombie Jews Living in the Underground”. Muranow’s new residents are often “sad about what happened to the Jews, but not so sad as to move away” – many still benefit from this Jewish legacy, and live in fear of the Jewish returning to reclaim their land and property.

One collective tries to recreate the Muranow old town with the help of 3D films, creating parallel versions of the old and the new. One writer is making a film about this Ghetto between 1940 and 1945 using a German 16 mm camera dating back to 1935. Mattan Steffi ‘feels’ the bodies under the pavement. The director and writer claim the guy ” is crazy in the head” – but are proud of his obsession with the past nonetheless.

With DoP and producer Micha Livne delivering stunning images of the old and the new, this is a perfect passion project. The saddest point is perhaps the Poles collective denial of what happened. It seems they’ve learnt nothing from history. People never learn. The ghosts and demons are possibly their own projections of a guilty conscience. No one can escape their history – no matter how hard they try.  AS

JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL 2020

 

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

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

Red Penguins (2019) ****

Dir.: Gabe Polsky; Documentary with  Steven Warshaw, Tom Ruta, Howard Baldwin, Victor Rikhonov, Valery Gushin, Alimzhan Tokhtakhonov; USA/Germany 2019, 79 min.

Russian émigré Gabe Polsky (Red Army), now working from the USA, offers a cautionary tale about a time when Russian hopes were high after the fall of Stalinism, and US entrepreneurs believed that doing business with their newly liberated partners would be easy and profitable.

Nothing could be more from the truth – as it turned out. Directing, writing and producing this remarkable and hilarious true story Polsky spills the beans about the “Red Penguins”, a Russian ice hockey team taken over by American financiers. If you remember, in his previous outing Red Army, the key to Russian success lay in ‘working as a team’. Read on.

The film kicks off with the two owners of the NHL (National Hockey League) team Pittsburgh Penguins, Tom Ruta and Howard Baldwin, who were in charge between 1991 and 1997. Back in the early 1990s, many world class ice-hockey players of the former USSR were snapped up by NHL teams. Meanwhile, the sport itself, like nearly everything in Russia, was in the doldrums. Finding investment was the easy bit – Michael J. Fox soon signed up and agreed to finance a takeover of the old Soviet Army team by American owners.

What happened next is told mainly by Steven Warshaw, who was the ‘Red Penguin’s’ Marketing Executive Vice President. He was appalled by the parlous state of the famous “Ice Palace” arena which was anything but palatial: the executive boxes were full of homeless people; the Plexiglas round the rink was splintered – and in the basement there was a strip club.

Alexander Lyubimow, a famous TV journalist, introduced Warshaw and his team to old hands like general manager Victor Gushin who wanted to help with the rebuilding of the once famous crew. But marketing whizkid Warshaw and the US investment team saw the operation less as a sporting venue, more as a marketing opportunity to transform the team into the greatest show in Moscow.

The ladies from the basement were confined to cages where they entertained the crowd by ‘stripping off’. New outfits and logos (smiling Penguins) were rolled out on TV, and finally coach Victor Gusev brought together a team which was at least presentable. But the girls weren’t the only ‘come on’. Bears dressed up as waiters serving ice cold beer to the over-excited punters, and one of the players actually lost part of his finger – clearly the bear was not amused by his antics. But young people loved the circus atmosphere, and advertising did the rest.

Meanwhile back in the USA, Disney became interested in the project, Michael Eisner planning a marriage of Mickey Mouse with the Russian ice hockey team (he later denied contact with the “Red Penguin’s” team). But when Russia fell into chaos after President Yeltsin bombed his own parliament, the collaboration naturally fell apart. Steven and his co-workers were called in to see the Minister of Defence, Alexander Baranovsky, former head of the CSKA sport club, and this meeting confirmed who was really in charge.

On 1994, the owners then took the team on a tour in the USA, but the results were very disappointing. Back in Russia, the Mafia was responsible for 40% of the GDP. Camouflaged as taxmen, they also approached Warshaw who claimed “they were ready for them to steal several hundred dollars, but they took a million.” It was all a little bit like the feature film Sudden Death, shot in the Pittsburgh home of the original Penguins, where a whole crowd is taken hostage.

The fate of the endeavour was finally sealed when Disney cut all ties, Five people involved in the operation were brutally murdered: the team photographer, one of the players, the assistant head coach, a Russian Hockey Federation employee and one of the most high profile personalities of the era TV journalist Vladislav Listyev (who was shot dead on March, 1st, 1995). Warshaw got away with a damaged thyroid.

The film plays out as a farce, DoP Alexey Elagin giving the narrative development a jerky intensity with his handheld camerawork. Polsky later laments Putin’s steady rise to power, as a helpless Yeltsin stood on the sidelines. Red Penguins is a masterclass in power-grabbing, highlighting a moment in history when the Kremlin and the KGB took the opportunity to manoeuvre themselves into the seat of power. Capitalism, bribery and murder was all part and parcel of the new order. AS

BBC Storyville | Monday 7 December 10pm | BBC iPlayer

 

 

   

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

 

 

Le Trou (1960) **** Prime video

Dir: Jacques Becker | Michel Constantin, Jean Keraudy, Philippe Leroy, Raymond Meunier, Marc Michel | French Thriller 131′

It was bold indeed of Jacques Becker to make another prison escape film so soon after Robert Bresson had created the genre’s masterpiece, Un condamné à mort s’est échappé (1956); but the gamble paid off handsomely.

Based on a book by Jose Giovanni and adapted by the writer, along with Becker and Romanian-born Jean Aurel, the plot is simple: four long-serving inmates planning an elaborate escape cautiously induct fresh blood into their scheme in the shape of a short-term detainee from another cell-block. Will he have the same commitment in his desire to escape?.

Like Robert Rossen’s Lilith (1964), La Trou seen in isolation looks more like the debut of an exciting new talent than the valediction of a veteran in his fifties about to be taken before his time. Released shortly after Becker had died of a heart attack aged just 53, when confronted with such a fresh and modern-looking piece of filmmaking one is vexed by the question of where Becker would have gone next, which we shall never know.

The film remains unusual for its lack of a music score (composer Philippe Arthuys, significantly, is actually credited at the end with ‘Illustration sonore’), and I can even forgive this film for setting a deplorable precedent by being possibly the first to have no credits at the start; they all come at the end, to the accompaniment of a simple piano arrangement of Rubinstein’s ‘Melody in F’ which may have been intended as discrete mockery on Becker’s part of the grandiose use of Mozart’s ‘Mass in C Minor’ at the conclusion of Bresson’s film. DoP Ghislain Cloquet (who was married to Becker’s script-editor daughter, Sophie) achieves tremendous rhythm with his kinetic black and white camerawork despite the claustrophobic and squalid prison confines. Jean Keraudy, a veteran of the original escape, segues smoothly into the uniformly excellent cast; while among the staff, Jean-Paul Coquelin has a beguiling air of dry good humour in his scenes as the cell block lieutenant. Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

 

 

The Parallel Street (1962) **** Mubi

Dir: Ferdinand Khittl | Wri: Blodo Bluthner | Germany/Czechia, Doc 82′

The limited number of people who have seen Peter Greenaway’s The Falls (1980) – extravagant fiction structured as a documentary – will experience a sense of déjà vu watching Die Parallelstrasse, which may – repeat may – be an ethnographic documentary structured as fantasy.

Not for the feint-hearted, The Parallel Street is one of the most enigmatic experimental films of the New German Cinema, produced by GBF, and dealing with subjectivity and objectivity in the medium.

We are addressed at the outset by the minute-taker (Friedrich Joloff) on the third and final night of some sort of symposium shot in jagged black-&-black that recalls the silent films of Fritz Lang (and the behind the camera footage of Clouzot & Picasso in Le Mystère Picasso), for which those under examination have been enjoined to hand in their watches and to submit to various forms of classroom discipline; a process of which he informs us that the final upcoming 90 minutes will be the last in the lives of those on the panel. We are also informed that this process is an endlessly recurring one in which the minute-taker sadly looks on in apparent resignation as panel after panel meander their way through the material in the limited time available; forever missing the fact (staring them in the face) that the files in front of them actually refer to themselves. The committee resembles a ship heading for the rocks while the crew debate the course to take: an appropriate analogy, as much of the documentary footage depicts ships and the sea.

It seemed to me some sort of allegory of the brevity of human existence, and of peoples’ dithering preventing them from resolving their lives in the tragically limited time available to them. The meat of the film – literally in the case of File 269, which includes extensive footage shot in a slaughterhouse – consists of colour travel footage shot by director Ferdinand Khittl and his cameraman Ronald Martini during two extensive expeditions around the world in 1959 and 1960; framed by what may be some sort of celestial inquisition like the one in Outward Bound (1930).

The documentary sequences (perhaps deliberately) are as difficult for the viewer to assimilate in one sitting – especially if you don’t speak German and are trying to follow the subtitles – as the panellists are evidently finding it, because the exotic imagery and the density of the minute-taker’s commentary are throughout simultaneously competing with each other for your comprehension. Plainly a film that calls for repeated viewings. Unless it isn’t. Richard Chatten.

NOW ON MUBI

 

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

Meet our contributors at FILMUFORIA

ANDRÉ  SIMONOVIESZ

Our ‘Eastern European’ correspondent, André Simonoviescz has over thirty year’s experience as a film critic in a variety of film and entertainment media outlets.  He has covered the Berlinale for Hollywood Reporter and written for Berlin-based entertainment publications: HOBO and TIP. During the nineties he was co-editor of the bi-lingual film magazine FILM UND FERNSEHEN and  from 2000 until recently, he was film critic at the German daily: Märkische Oderzeitung. He has  broadcast as a film critic for RIAS (Broadcasting for the American Sector) in Berlin, and Radio Brandenburg.

ALEX BARRETT

is an independent filmmaker and freelance journalist. His films collectively have been screened at over 60 international festivals and garnered ten awards. His debut feature, LIFE JUST IS, was released in December 2012, after being nominated for the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. His silent documentary entitled LONDON SYMPHONY (2017) was nominated for the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film, and he is currently working on Their Trip to Europe and Sounds Like London.  www.alexbarrett.net.

RICHARD CHATTEN

Richard Chatten has written for The Independent, the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, The Encyclopedia of British Film, The Journal of Popular British Cinema and Cinema: The Whole Story. His favourite film is A Matter of Life and Death (1946).

STEFAN PAPE

Stefan Pape is a film critic and interviewer who spends most of his time in dark rooms, sipping on filter coffee and becoming perilously embroiled in the lives of others. He adores the work of Billy Wilder and Woody Allen, and won’t have a bad word said against Paul Giamatti. His great uncle coined the phrase ‘kitchen sink drama’, but he doesn’t like to go on about it.

MATTHEW TURNER

Matthew Turner (@FilmFan1971) is a freelance film journalist who has written for Empire, Total Film, Hotdog, Metro, The Big Issue and others, as well as spending fourteen years as the weekly film reviewer for ViewLondon. A lifelong film obsessive, he sees around 500 films a year and his favourite film is VERTIGO. He has also not missed an episode of EastEnders since 1998.

MICHAEL PATTISON

Michael Pattison (@m_pattison) is a Gateshead-based film critic whose work has been published by Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Cineaste, Slant Magazine, Senses of Cinema others. He has a regular column at Keyframe Daily and is a programming consultant for a number of international film festivals. In addition to all this, he reports on the more niche European film festivals such as indielisboa; CROSSING EUROPE; Kino Otok; FIDMarseille amongst others. His film debut

ALAN PRICE

Alan Price was born in Liverpool and now lives in Camden, London. He is an ex-librarian, poet, scriptwriter, short story writer, book reviewer for the online Magonia and blogger at alanprice69.wordpress.com  Two stories were broadcast on Radio 3 and published, with others, in his 1999 collection The Other Side of the Mirror (Citron Press). A TV film
A Box of Swan was broadcast on BBC 2 in 1980. He has scripted five short films. The last one Pack of Pain (2010) won four international film festival awards. Alan’s debut collection of poetry Outfoxing Hyenas was published by Indigo Dreams in 2012. His pamphlet of prose poems Angels at the Edge (Tuba Press) appeared in 2016. The chapbook, Mahler’s Hut came out in 2017. His new collection, Wardrobe Blues for a Japanese Lady will be published by The High Window in the Spring of 2018. Alan has been passionate about cinema since the age of 5!

ED FRANKL

Ed Frankl (@Ed_Frankl) is a freelance journalist who has been published in the Evening Standard and the Independent. He fell in love with film journalism at the 2012 Venice Film Festival and has never looked back, even after he had to review Transformers 4 at a matinee screening in Slough. He commits occasional crimes against cinema by reviewing theatre for The Stage, and is a sub-editor at the Guardian. His favourite film is Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy, but that doesn’t entirely mean he understands it. His personal blog is edfrankl.com

LINDA MARRIC

Linda Marric (@Linda_Marric) is a freelance film journalist and interviewer. She has written extensively about film and TV for The London Economic, HeyUGuys, FilmLand Empire, Dmovies.com and her own film blog screenwords.co.uk. After graduating with a degree in Film Studies from King’s College London, she has worked in post-production on a number of film projects and had a short stint working at the BFI London Film Festival. She has a huge passion for intelligent Scifi movies (think Phillip K Dick adaptations). Her favourite movie of all time is still Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL almost 30 years after watching it for the first time.

Contact us at filmuforia@gmail.com 

 

Dead of Night (1945)

Dir: Alberto Cavalcanti, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, Charles Crichton | Cast: Mervyn Johns, Michael Redgrave, Roland Culver, Google Withers, Mary Merrall, Frederick Valk | UK Horror 113′

The biggest mystery connected with Dead of Night is why the studio never made another film like it (Basil Dearden had recently made the literally haunting wartime fantasy The Halfway House; but apart from the multi-story film Train of Events and the spooky anecdote The Night My Number Came Up that was it).

Made by Ealing Studios with individual segments directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer, the drama centres on architect Walter Craig (Johns) who has arrived at a country house party in Kent to offer the owner, Elliot Foley (Culver), renovation advice. Craig soon realises he has seen the guests in a recurring dream despite never having met any of them, and senses impending doom as his half-remembered recurring nightmare turns to reality. The guests encourage him to stay as they take turns telling their own supernatural tales.

My personal favourite episode is Robert Hamer’s The Haunted Mirror (I found myself avoiding mirrors for a while after my mother died in case I saw her in them); while Hitchcock plainly lifted the final close-up of Michael Redgrave that concludes the ventriloquist’s dummy episode for the end of Psycho.

Unlike most commentators I rather like the episode about the golfers; especially as it’s always a pleasure to see Basil Radford and Naughton Wayne whatever they’re in. I agree however with Carlos Clarens, who dismissed the ‘official’ ending as “a final farandole which mixed all the stories together”; but consider the repetition of the opening sequence under the closing credits inspired. Since Walter Craig states earlier on that he’s never told anybody else about his dream, the seldom remarked upon comment by his wife that closes the film (underscored by Craig’s disconcertingly slowed-down reaction shot as he draws on a cigarette) gives the lie to that claim, and more than forty years after I first saw it I still haven’t figured out what it’s implications are…©Richard Chatten

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV and PRIME VIDEO

No Man is an Island (1962) ****

Dir: Richard Goldstone, John Monks Jr. | Jeffrey Hunter, Barbara Perez, Marshall Thompson, Ronald Remy, Amparo Custodio, Paul Edwards Jr. | US Action drama, 116′

No Man is an Island (aka Island Escape) is based on the 1945 memoir ‘Robinson Crusoe, USN’ by George Ray Tweed (1902-1989), who evaded capture by the Japanese for more than two and a half years after the Japanese invasion of Guam in 1941.

Nearly two hours in length, this Universal release handsomely lensed in colour and scope by Carl Kayser and back in Hollywood edited by veteran cutter Basil Wrangell is considerably more ambitious than the other cheap war movies shot in the Philippines during the early Sixties; with Hollywood star Jeffrey Hunter again finding himself alone on an island dodging enemy bullets just nine years after finding himself in the same situation in the Boulting Brothers’ Singlehanded.

The title quoting John Donne – along with a lead actor who had just played Christ – had made me expect something preachier; but apart from a scene with a local priest there’s actually surprisingly little God talk (maybe there was more in Tweed’s original book). The situation was played for laughs in Heaven Know, Mr Allison! (from which footage reappears) and Father Goose; while the ending recalls Brigadoon. But here – despite one character treading barefoot on a scorpion and others bleeding to death, being decapitated and stripped down to a skeleton by crabs – the treatment is more like a soap opera, with a pet chicken cutely named ‘Admiral Halsey’ and a suitably romantic score by Restie Umali.

Although prominently billed second in the opening credits, Girl Friday Barbara Perez in fact gets a fraction of the screen time of ninth-billed Filipina comedienne Chichay (Mrs Nakamura) as a feisty Japanese-American saloon owner, to whose establishment the film keeps returning. Richard Chatten.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE and Amazon DVD

 

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

Ivana the Terrible (2019) Locarno

Dir.: Ivana Mladenovic; Cast: Ivanka Mladenovic, Gordana Mladenovic, Modrae Mladenovic, Kosta Mladenovic, Luca Gramic, Anca Pop, Andrei Dinescu; Serbia/Romania 2019, 86 min.

Director/co-writer Ivana Mkadenovic (Soldiers: Story from Ferentari) describes her latest, a fictional autobiography, or docu-fiction hybrid is very much in the vein of this year’s IDFA winner Radiograph of a Family although far more satirical in nature. The past and the present collide in Kladovo, Serbia, near the border to Romania, where Ivana also ‘stars’ as a histrionic millennial jilted by her Romanian lover and suffering the after-affects of PTSD. Her family, friends and former lovers play the other roles.

We first meet Ivana on a train going back home to Serbia for the summer, where we get to experience just how terrible she really is. Freed from her work commitments, she accepts the mayor’s invitation to become the face of a local music festival, and finds herself the latest citizen to be honoured with an award acknowledging the bond of friendship between Serbia and Romania. It just so happens that the Trajan (Friendship) Bridge over the Danube connecting Serbia and Romania, and where Tito and Ceausescu once famously met, is also in Kladovo, on the Serbian side, adding all sorts of bilateral connotations to the narrative, along with the generational conflicts.

Far from triumphant, Ivana’s return puts the cat amongst the pigeons on all front , escalated by her fragile state of mind. To make matters even worse (or somehow better, as it turns out), Ivana’s relationship with a much younger guy is soon the talk of the town (the general consensus being that she should settle down and start a family), but this gossip soon confers a kind of celebrity status on the petulant woman, her erratic behaviour becoming par for the course. Her behaviour certainly challenges social stereotypes in the traditional community. And the arrival of Ivana’s friend (portrayed by Romanian-Canadian singer-songwriter Anca Pop – to whose memory the film is dedicated) is a another game-changer, further enhancing her bad-girl status in the village, and there is much consternation among the old-fashioned local womenfolk when an offer to have their private parts form the basis of a local sculpture is not well-received, to say the least.

Eventually Ivana gets a lift with Anca and Andrei back to Bucharest, stopping on the way to listen to some poets reading on the Friendship bridge. Another dimension to this (un)happy merry-go-round comes in the shape of a story from the Second World War when over a thousand Jews came to Kladovo where they were to be escorted by boat to the safety of Palestine. But the ship never came, and the Jews lost their lives during the ensuing Nazi occupation of the town. MT

ARTEKINO | PREMIERED AT LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL

The Glass Cage (1964) ***

Dir: Antonio Santean | Wri: John Hoyt | Cast: Arlene Martel, John Hoyt, Elisha Cook Jr, Bob Kelljan, King Moody | Henry Darrow | US Thriller

Off-beat to put it mildly, this location-shot murder mystery and psycho-drama was co-written and co-produced by veteran actor John Hoyt, who saw to it that the tiny budget was well employed while enjoying himself as a seasoned cop working the mean streets of early Sixties L.A. It sees two detectives investigating the murder of a local businessman by a mysterious woman.

If you were working on a budget as low as this bizarre cross of William Castle and early Kubrick you could probably do pretty much what you wanted as long as you didn’t go over schedule, made sure there was film in the camera and didn’t upset the censor. Although not exactly good it’s certainly strange enough to linger in the memory and gives a juicy role to TV actress Arlene Martel (billed as ‘Arlene Sax’), best remembered for the very different role of Spock’s Vulcan bride T’Pring in the classic Star Trek episode ‘Amok Time’. The film’s biggest liability is actually a noisy music score.

Slight spoil alert: It also has the bonus of Elisha Cook as the heroine’s father; although despite being billed fourth he appears so fleetingly it feels as it he was just visiting the set while they were filming and offered a walk on (or – since he walks with a stick – a hobble on). We’re told he’s an evangelist but sadly don’t see him in the pulpit. Richard Chatten.

 

 

 

Athlete A (2020) **** Netflix

Dir.: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk | With Maggie Nichols, Rachael Denhollander, Jessia Howard, Jamie Dantzsher; US Doc 2020, 104 min.

Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk (Audrey&Daisy) get behind the camera for this worthwhile documentary that chronicles the ongoing sexual abuse of members of the USA Gymnastic team. The person responsible was none other that their trusted team physician Dr. Larry Nassar, who got a custodial sentence of 121 years in 2017 for molesting over a hundred young women. The feature is shot from the perspective of the investigating journalists of the Indianapolis Star, whose efforts are the basis for this documentary.

But the inquiry also uncovered complaints against 54 coaches were made during a course of many years. The President and CEO of USA Gymnastics , Steve Penny (who resigned and awaits trial), helped to cover up the abuses – and he was not alone. But if there is one weak point of the documentary, it pins the entire blame on Penny as the evil mastermind – in reality the whole organisation has to take the rap for the systemic abuse.

The account of survivors make heart-breaking listening: there is Maggie Nichols (the titular Athlete A, named so after her complaint which was followed by blackballing her); Rachael Denhollander; Jamie Dantzscher and Jessica Howard, their stories telling not only the actual abuse but the cover-up which went on for over a decade. Dantzscher states she was so proud of being an Olympian, but after Nassar abused her during the games in 2000, she associated the Olympics with this vestige of shame.

But this is also a story of the Cold War: Until the end of Stalinism in 1989, gymnasts from the Warsaw pact countries had dominated the sport. In 1981, Bela and Marta Karolyi, Hungarian-born coaches of the Romanian national gymnastic team (along with their choreographer Geza Poszar) defected to the USA. They had been responsible for the success of Nadia Comaneci among others. The Karolyis installed themselves in a training facility near Huntsville, Texas, which closed in 2018. They have both been sued for being part of the Nassar cover-up. There is a clip in Athlete A, with Marta Karolyi (who retired in 2016) admitting her awareness of  Nassar’s abuse at the “Ranch”. Poszar admitted the method of working with the young athletes “was total control over the girls.” Coaches, not only the Karolyis, abused the gymnasts verbally, emotionally and physically: they were slapped, and told that they were fat.

The norm for female gymnasts was to be 5.4 feet and anorexic. Poszar also claimed these method were acceptable in Romania – and obviously in the USA too. The gymnasts in the Huntsville were isolated, parents were not allowed to visit, the gymnasts were forbidden to phone friends or relatives outside the facilities. Former USA National Team gymnast Jennifer Sey (one of he co-producers of the feature), author of “Chalked Up” talked about merciless coaching, overzealous parents, eating disorders and above all, the dream of Olympic Gold. The line between coaching and abuse gets blurred, Athletes were often forced to compete in spite of serious injuries. We watch Kerri Strug winning a Gold Medal at the 1996 Olympics despite a severe ankle injury. But medals meant good business for the USA Team and their CEO Steve Perry.

Perhaps the most saddening statement comes from one of the victims: “Dr. Nassar was the nicest grown-up in the camp”. This most damning sentence calls for a complete reassessment of the next gymnastic competition in the sporting calendar. Shot with a lively camera by Jon Shenk, Athlete A is  another eye-opener: the perverted drive for Olympic medals, reducing young women to “little girls” to be objectified and abused, is just another example of the male gaze and its horrifying consequences, finally emerging after decades of cover-ups. AS

WINNER OF THE US CRITICS AWARD 2020 | coming to NETLIX

Son of Sofia (2019) **** Artekino Festival

Dir: Elina Psikou | Victor Khomut, Valery Tcheplanowa, Thanasis Papageorgiou | Greece, Drama 113′

A Russian boy escapes into a world of fantasy when forced to relocate thousands of miles away from his familiar culture and homeland.

Writer-Director Elina Psikou’s sophomore feature Son of Sofia brings to mind another film about childhood trauma Valley of Shadows (2017). Both explore the coming-of-age of two young boys who have lost their father figures and are going through the trauma of early adolescence in unfamiliar territory. In this case Misha arrives in Greece after several years away from his mother. He is barely 11. The Olympic Games are in full swing but another, much more momentous event clouds his sense of gleeful anticipation – a strange man on the scene, and suddenly the threat of rejection once again beckons, along with the scorching heat of Summer, as the odd trio try make the best of their new lives together in this doleful menage a trois.

In his debut role, Khomout perfectly captures the vulnerability of a young boy’s bitter disappointment, and it never seems to leave his tear-stained face. For her part, Sofia (Valery Tcheplanowais) is keen to make a fresh start with her ‘new’ family, greeting her son with one of the cuddly toys she makes for a living.  But however much she cares for her new partner, she cannot force Misha to feel the same way. Misha (Viktor Khomut) feels his initial relief at finding his mother again melt away as he retreats into a fantasy world in a powerfully atmospheric environment where the winds of change leave him out on a limb. Desperately clinging to his mother he is unable to move forward with any certainty and feels trapped in his own private hell in coming to terms with this new life, and potentially more heartache. The elderly man, purportedly his mother’s boss, Mr. Nikos (Thanasis Papageorgiou), soon turns out to be a rival for her affections, and a violent one into the bargain. An unusual but thoughtfully crafted story that generates a powerful sense of place and reconnects to the frightened child in all of us. MT

WINNER AT SARAJEVO CICAE | JURY AWARD TRIBECA 2017 | also now available free to watch at ARTE

 

 

 

A Shot in the Dark (1964)

Dir: Blake Edwards | Wri: Blake Edwards, Harry Kurnitz, Marcel Achard | Cast: Peter Sellers, Britt Ekland, George Sanders, Herbert Lom, Tracey Reed | US Comedy, 102′

At work most of my colleagues only vaguely knew who Peter Sellers was; usually responding with the faintest glimmer of recognition when I said he played Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films. That A Shot in the Dark – filmed before The Pink Panther had even been released – was the only one starring Sellers not to have ‘Pink Panther’ in the title – it’s actually based on a 1960 farce by Marcel Achard called ‘L’Idiote’ which was a big hit on Broadway the following year with a young William Shatner in the role that became Inspector Clouseau – gives a clue as to why it’s so much funnier than the series that came much later.

The film’s long and tortuous production – the plug had already been pulled on an initial film version directed in 1962 by Anatole Litvak; while pre-release tinkering is evident from two editors being named in the credits and the brevity of the roles of well-known actors like Ann Lynn and Moira Redmond in the film itself – and the fact that Edwards swore (after it wrapped) that he would never work with Sellers again, would evidently make a fascinating book in it’s own right; and the two only reluctantly worked together again after both were starved into burying the hatchet after a long run of flops during the intervening ten years.

As for the film itself, the virtuoso pre-credits sequence outside the Ballon house demonstrates what a class act Edwards was in those days; while it has a script literate enough for George Sanders to invoke ‘Macbeth’. (The dancer, shown in close-up commenting in Spanish on her partner’s dancing in the flamenco club, is informing him that he is unique). And the scene in the car stuck in Parisian rush-hour traffic is more literally like a nightmare than anything even Hitchcock ever devised. Andrew Sarris approvingly observed that it “lurches from improbability to improbability without losing its comic balance”.

Both George Sanders and Herbert Lom (of course) are hilarious, the latter later becoming the real star of the series; and all the way down the cast list Sellers is surrounded by first-rate talent, all like Sellers himself (and later series regulars like Andre Maranne and Burt Kwouk) looking shockingly youthful. It’s also good to see Graham Stark playing straight man to Sellers for once.

Had Sellers died from the heart attack he suffered the following spring this would have made a wonderful swansong; instead his last completed film was The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu. ©Richard Chatten

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES

The Letter (1940) **** Prime Video

Dir: William Wyler | Wri: Howard Koch | Cast: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescor, Gale Sondergaard, Bruce Lester | US Drama, 95’

Geoffrey Hammond learns the hard way in this mesmerising classic Hollywood melodrama that you end a relationship with Bette Davis at your peril. Although Bette Davis and Herbert Marshall get top billing, the film is really held together by the late James Stephenson in an Oscar-nominated performance, while Gale Sondergaard is unforgettable as the vengeful “Mrs.Hammond” (who with her arched eyebrows and in her skin-tight qipao bears an eerie resemblance to the Martian Girl in Mars Attacks!).

Davis is the wife of a rubber plantation administrator who shoots a man to death claiming it was self-defence. But a letter in her own hand may prove her undoing.

William Wyler not surprisingly had wanted Gregg Toland, but veteran cameraman Tony Gaudio provides a more gothic look (aided by the immaculate production design of Jules Carl Weyl), and creates some vivid moonlit scenes, while Wyler occasionally achieves an interesting effect, akin to Toland’s depth of field, emphasising the intensity of the images by occasionally putting Stephensen in some of his scenes with Davis exaggeratedly out of focus either in the foreground or background.

It all goes a bit over the top towards the end in order to appease the Hays Office, and Max Steiner’s score is a bit – well – Steinerish at times, but his eerie main theme is yet another aspect of the film that will stay with you long afterwards. Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

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

The Tenant | Le Locataire (1976 Blu-ray

Dir: Roman Polanski | Wri: Roman Polanski, Gerard Brach | Cast: Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Shelley Winters, Jo Van Fleet | Prods: Andrew Braunsberg, Alain Sarde | Original Music: Philippe Sarde | 126mins

The Tenant completes the Apartment Trilogy following on from Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby and a faithful adaptation of the 1964 novel Le Locataire Chimerique. Polanski directs, co-writes and appears as a Polish emigré called Trelkovsky in this allegory of the outsider in society, a poignant reminder of the immigrant in these Brexit-ridden days.

Paris is the sombre star of the twisted psychodrama, squalidly romantic and steeped in Jan Nyqvist’s evocative visual gloom that unearths nostalgia for the Paris of the 1970s with its sleazy backstreets and nicotine-stained bars where seedy raincoated types breakfast on Gauloises and Café Crème.

Based on the book by Roland Topor, this portrait of paranoia is punctured by lewd moments of humour and a scabrid script. Trelkovsky is a timid, insignificant sort of functionary. Despite his newly acquired French citizenship he is painfully aware of his foreign status in the eyes of the chauvinist French. Renting an two-room apartment where the previous tenant has attempted suicide, he remains a doleful character soaking up the ancient atmosphere of the squalid apartment block with its ghostly corridors, strange noises, and litany of neighbour complaints, until he gradually takes on the guise of the former occupant of his flat in the rue des Pyrénées: Simone Choule.

Polanski gives an understated but persuasive performance and one that leaves us reflecting on his own tragic past. The horror slowly unravels to Philippe Sarde’s poignantly plangent score (with its suavely syncopated dance sequence). Trelkovsky’s American colleagues gradually fade into the background leaving him a vulnerable figure troubled by his sniping landlord and accusing neighbours, imagining the worst in this moribund backwater of the city’s former industrial heartland.

The director clearly feels for his character, a seedy little outsider who is desperate to do the right thing. He pours the anguish of his own past into this Polish alter ego, from the loss of his mother in a concentration camp, to a childhood of rejection from foster families on account of being Jewish, to the brutal bloody murder of his wife and unborn child. Trelkovksy also becomes obsessed with Simone and her mysterious past, even entertaining a friend and comforting him when he turns up unaware she had subsequently lost her fight for life in the Hospital Bretonneau. Simone’s  funeral is particularly macabre adding a Gothic twist this richly textured saga. Gradually empathising with Simone’s terrifying breakdown he embodies her whole being, dressing in her frocks and a grotesque wig. Haunted by the past the present becomes his reality in flesh and blood, echoing in his horrifying screams that resonate with a wartime siren in the final moments. Pity, shame and humiliation in the Père-Lachaise.

Polanski would go on to win an Oscar for his 2002 thriller The Pianist. The Tenant limped home empty-handed from Cannes, a bruised and broken, intimately private film, feeding into the director’s personal brand of enigmatic psychosis, the outsider’s descent into self-inflicted purgatory that eventually becomes self-realising, or is it just a nightmare?

Strangely Polanski received no acting credit for his quietly appealing role alongside Isabelle Adjani’s nonchalant lover, Shelley Winters’ sulky concierge, Lila Kedrova’s tortured neighbour and her crippled child. Watching the film you can’t help meditating on Paris’ grim revolutionary past. For me, every part of France is a film memory: Claude Chabrol’s Le Boucher is Bergerac; Swimming Pool (2003), Avignon; A Prophet (2009) very much embodies the fighting spirit of Marseilles; La Reine Margot is resolutely Bordeaux: but Paris is The Tenant, one of the most haunting films ever made. MT

NOW ON BLURAY

NOW on BLURAY |

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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The Exception (2020) ****

Dir.: Jesper W. Nielsen; Cast: Danica Curcic, Amanda Collin, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Lene Maria Christensen, Olaf Johannsen, Magnus Krepper, Borut Veselko, Simon Sears; Denmark/Norway/Sweden 2019, 116 min.

Best known for his thrillers Through a Glass, Darkly and The Day Will Come Jesper W. Nielsen is becoming a master of Nordic Noir. His latest thriller is based on Christian Jungersen’s 2004 novel, and adapted by Christian Torpe into a gripping hybrid of crime, horror and a discourse on violence. And although genre purists may disagree, Nielsen directs with skill and confidence. Reality and nightmare twist and turn in a relentless maelstrom of aesthetic brilliance.

The story centres on four women in a Copenhagen NGO (though the film was actually shot in Budapest). Their lives are far from easy: Iben (Curcic) has escaped kidnapping by clever negotiation with one of her Kenyan captors, Malene (Collin) suffers from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis and is struggling with a marriage breakdown. Both vy for Gunnar’s attention, and he “is certainly not the marrying kind”. Lene-Maria (Christensen) seems the most sorted of the four, but her affair with Serbian solder Mirko Zigic (Veselko), was probably a mistake – accused of genocide he’s soon the target of Iben and Malene’s latest research project. Librarian Anne-Lise (Knudsen) is the odd one out. Paul (Johannsen) heads up the team, a bit of a cold fish. Meanwhile, Malene and Iben are on the receiving end of suspicious emails and just when their computer specialist is on the case he suffers a fatal fall, and they go missing.

Seen through the eyes of four unreliable narrators the shifts in perspective are simply staggering, forcing us to re-examine the facts as reality spins out of control. And why are these charitable women fighting for a better world, when they are so immersed in guilt, real or imagined?. The Exception avoids easy answers, the perpetrators going back to their everyday lives – without any repercussions.

DoP Erik Zappon’s noirish aesthetic is all cold steel and white: Sidse Babett Knudsen is phenomenal as the haunted outsider, keen to do everything to be a part of the collective. Nielsen never sticks to a formula confronting us with our own self-doubts. The Exception is challenging, often seeming contradictory, but that is exactly what makes it so unique. AS

The Exception will released across all major UK Digital Platforms on 22nd January including iTunesAppleTV, Sky Store, Google Play, Amazon, Virgin, Curzon Home Cinema & Chili (& BT on rental only from 1st Feb)

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

Rag Doll (1961) ***

Dir: Lance Comfort | Cast: Jess Conrad, Christina Gregg, Hermione Baddeley, Kenneth Griffith, Patrick Magee | UK Drama 67′
If you peruse a copy of ‘Women’s Own’ from the 1960s or 1970s you’ll almost certainly come across the smiling face of Christina Gregg in the fashion adds after she returned to modelling following a brief film career as a juvenile leading lady during the Swinging Sixties.

In the title role of this cautionary tale from Mancunian Films, directed with his usual flair by Lance Comfort (with a infectious skiffle score by Martin Slavin), she learns the hard way what perils lay in wait behind the bright lights of the capital city sixty years ago (vividly shot in winter by veteran cameraman Basil Emmott); starting like Gun Crazy with the innocent young hero (a girl) and ending like The Asphalt Jungle. The feature had a US release under the title of Young Willing and Eager. 

Most of the men are trouble, including Gregg’s abusive stepfather Patrick Magee; predatory night-club owner Kenneth Griffith and bad lad Jess Conrad (who was signed for Decca Records), first seen propping up a bar in a leather jacket; while Hermione Baddeley resembles the Joan Blondell character from Nightmare Alley as a fortune teller predicting that Miss Gregg is “going on a journey”. Richard Chatten

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

Dishonored Lady (1947) ****

Dir: Robert Stevenson | Cast: Hedy Lamarr, Dennis O’Keefe, John Loder, William Lundigan, Morris Carnovsky | US Noir thriller, 85′

The second of two independent productions made by Hedy Lamarr’s own company continuing Hollywood’s forties fascination with psychiatry; with Morris Carnovsky’s benign, pipe-smoking psychiatrist following in the footsteps of Now Voyager’s Dr.Jaquith in curing fur-coated glamour puss Lamarr (“as pretty as a picture and as stubborn as a mule”) of a malaise languidly expressed in chain-smoking and dependence on sleeping pills.

Directed by Robert Stevenson, who later made Mary Poppins, this too concerns the exploits of a career woman in a suit without a woman’s usual fear of mice. She’s not short of suitors (plainly cast with actors intended not to outshine the star; one of them Lamarr’s then-husband John Loder, who courts her to ‘Tristan and Isolde’).

About two-thirds of the way through the plot abruptly changes from Lady in the Dark to Mildred Pierce, with Lamarr a glamorous defendant in the dock in the final third after one of the suitors gets murdered. But I won’t spoil the ending for you..Richard Chatten.

NOW ON YOUTUBE | Prime Video

Marlene Dietrich at Universal 1940-42

These four classics from the Golden Age of Hollywood showcase the timeless charisma of Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992). Seven Sinners, The Flame of New Orleans, The Spoilers and Pittsburgh were all produced by Universal during the war years of the early 1940s, and capture Dietrich’s enduring persona that had justifiably brought her the fame and riches garnered during her six magnificent collaborations with Josef von Sternberg. Dietrich continued to be the epitome of big-screen glamour and sensuousness, and although she never quite attained the dizzy heights of her time with von Sternberg, she continued working until the early 1960s, her last substantial role being in Stanley Kramer’s Judgement at Nuremberg in 1961. MT

Seven Sinners

Seven Sinners is the first of three films starring Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne – Pittsburgh and The Spoilers followed in 1942. This lively musical showcases the versatile talents of a vampish Marlene Dietrich following her spectacular comeback in the standout Western Destry Rides Again (1939), after being branded “box-office poison.” Once again she plays a dubious gaiety girl and entertainer to John Wayne’s honest and gallant lover, Navy Lt Dan Brent (from Stagecoach). After the Wild West, the South Sea Island setting is luminous and exotic (complimented by Rudolph Maté’s sublime shadowplay). Dietrich’s Bijou sings her lovelorn ballads with a great deal of charm, in a similar vein to her 1930s triumphs with von Sternberg yet somehow bereft of the innate style and emotional heft of these outings, Dietrich trying – unsuccessfully – to keep her troupe of motley misfits under control. There is Antro (Homolka), Dr. Marin (Dekker), Little Ned (Crawford and Sasha (Auer). When Dan Brent enters the fray with a big bouquet of orchids, Dietrich has to save him from the knife-throwing Antro – and also from himself, because an affair would have destroyed Brent’s career chances, and one of Brent’s superior’s quips is fittingly: “the Navy has already got enough destroyers”. In the end, Bijou leaves him to his first love: The Navy.

The script by John Meehan and Harry Tugend is a mixture of songs (by Dietrich), brawls and witty repartee. Russel A. Gausman’s production design, and the Maté’s camerawork are both stars turns in their own right, bringing to mind a Joseph von Sternberg feature. Sternberg, who directed Dietrich in Der Blaue Engel and her first Hollywood films, was known as her Guru, and his style and influence on the actress still shape her appeal. The set design was intricate, with elaborate windows and labyrinthine staircases and an overall ornate richness, coming to life in Maté’s fluid camera. Many of Sternberg’s movies (Macao) fall into the “Exotica” category, here symbolised by the huge gargoyle in the club were Bijou performs, recalling Sternberg’s Scarlett Express, where Dietrich was flanked by huge statues. Dietrich is in perpetual motion, an ethereal angel in satins and haute couture, driving the narrative forward a lightness of touch. Again, in a nod to von Sternberg, Dietrich wears the white Officers uniform, mirroring Wayne/Brent.

This is very much Dietrich’s film  (“I am a bad influence”). Wayne is her acolyte – he had only just made the step from support to main player, and it shows. Tyronne Power, who was originally cast, would have certainly been a stronger pendant to Dietrich’s Bijou. Garnett favoured maverick stars for his films, often casting those who’d fallen foul of established society, such as Greer Garson’s Mrs. Parkington (1944) and Valley of Decision, a year later. And whilst Garnett does not always reach the heights of von Sternberg, Seven Sinners is a glittering piece of entertainment. AS

Pittsburgh

With its sequences of social realism picturing the grimness of Pittsburgh mining traditions (as Groucho Marks once commented: “this is like living in Pittsburgh, if you call that living”, Lewis Seiler’s 1942 morality tale is certainly the least glamorous of the trio of films Dietrich made with John Wayne. Greed is the theme here, and Seiler sets the scene from the get-go with a rousing speech from Wayne’s Charles “Pittsburgh” Markham who is hellbent on financial success in the steel industry, whatever the cost. To get there he’ll trample on friends and lovers, but when the sh*t eventually hits the fan, he does get a second chance. The film came out a year after Pearl Harbour, which is also cleverly wound into the plot line. Randolph Scott plays Wayne’s rival and Dietrich the smouldering siren Josie Winters. MT

The Spoilers

This 1942 version of a popular Rex Beach novel has been filmed three times before (twice as a silent) and another would follow. An eventful romantic adventure following a group of crooks adding corruption to its list of themes, the setting is Nome, Alaska, during the Gold Rush days of 1900. Hero John Wayne gets the bit between his teeth, and particularly in the final showdown set-to in the bar with crooked gold commissioner Randolph Scott and good guy John Wayne, all over a woman, and the woman in question is the joint’s owner, Marlene Dietrich.

The swindlers have in their sights the biggest mine in the territory. They also have Scott’s McNamara on their side along with a dodgy Judge (Samuel S. Hinds) and his underling Struve (Halton). They plan to lure the wealthy punters in with the services of an upmarket Helen Chester (Lindsay). John Wayne’s Roy Glennister falls for her. Wayne and Scott take to their action roles with a swagger, and Marlene does her stuff with a succession of elegant and seductive costumes. She’s not just a pretty face but a witty and entertaining hostess enjoying some comedy moments with her maid Marietta Canty. And she’s a mistress of the put-down too, making short shrift of an unwelcome suitor in the shape of Richard Barthelmess, dismissing him with a curt: “Go down below to your table.” MT

Flame of Orleans

After the end of her partnership with Josef von Sternberg, Dietrich echoes her role in Destry Rides Again this time in Rene Clair’s farce Flame of Orleans. Once again she plays woman with a dubious past, this time cutting a dash as a ‘faux’ countess in New Orleans, torn between a stable marriage to a rich banker and her wild sexual attraction for a strapping but penniless captain of a Mississippi steamer. This was the first of the four films that Clair directed in Hollywood during his wartime exile from France. Norman Krasna wrote the entertaining script but Dietrich sets the night on fire with her flirtatious game-playing in a delightful costume drama that was Oscar nominated for Jack Otterson’s stylish art direction, Russell A Gausman’s set design and DoP Rudolph Maté’s peerless visual allure. MT

Limited Edition Blu-ray release on 18 January 2021 | BFI SHOP

Unidentified (2020) ****

Dir.: Bogdan George Apetri; Cast: Bogdan Farcas, Dragos Domitru, Vasile Muraru, Ana Popescu, Kira Hagi, Andrei Aradits; Romania/Latvia/Czech Republic 2020, 123 min.

Very much in the style of the classic French crime thrillers of the 1970s, Unidentified is a modern version of Yves Boisset’s Un Condé, tackling  racism and misogyny in one fell swoop in a tightly plotted murder story. Unidentified is the sophomore feature of Romanian director Bogdan George Apetri who also wrote and edited and co-produced drawing from his experiences of working in New York.

It sees scuzzy minor Detective Florin (Farcas) down on his luck, and in need of a scape goat to his appease his boss, Commissar Sef (Muraru). The sacrificial lamb soon fetches up in the shape of Roma security guard Banel (Domitru) whose been unlucky enough to have two major disasters occur during his checkered career, both seemingly connected to insurance fraud with Banel aiding and abetting the perpetrator, the owner of hotel where he was working.

Not that Florin is is squeaky clean from the personal probity angle either. Behind with his car repayments and mortgage, and he badgers his friend Mircea (Aradits) to give him more time to pay off his debts. But money worries are not the only thing getting the obsessed detective down. In Oleg Mutu’s fluid widescreen camerawork, we watch him on a hillside, overlooking a hotel and parking lot, spying on his fiancée Stela (Popescu) who is cheating on him with a married man. It’s hardly surprising given the way Florin neglects her and always seems to be in a bad mood. But what the hell? He hatches an ingenious plan to get rid of both of them in a double murder – the perfect crime. It will involve getting to know Banel and organising for him to work in the hotel where Stela hangs out. It’s got to be meticulously planned, so it looks like an accident: He invites Banel to his home, and makes him touch a beer bottle, which he will later use as a Molotov cocktail to kill Stela. So off he goes to meet Banel in the parking lot of the hotel at nine pm. But in that classic but always effective dramatic device – things don’t go according to plan for Florin. Not during the crime but afterwards, when his boss Sef picks holes in his story.

Apetri is certainly a master storyteller, overlaying his story of detective obsession with the serene score of none other than Chopin’s delicate piano music. Helicopter shots show Florin driving around manically, chasing his prey on a murderous mission. Even at two hours plus, Unidentified keeps us in its grip in exploring a psychotic law enforcement officer, crumbling before our eyes. And apparently there’s more to look forward too, Apetri’s  feature is the first of a trilogy set in small town Romania. AS

Special Jury Award, International Competition | Warsaw Film Festival 2020 | Rendezvous with French Cinema 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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Pickpocket (1959)

Dir.: Robert Bresson; Cast: Martin LaSalle, Marika Green, Pierre Leymarie, Jean Pelegri, Dolly Scal, Kassagi, Pierre Etaix; France 1959, 75 min.

Pickpocket, shot more or less at the same time as Godard’s A bout de souffle in the late summer of 1959, is by far the closest the French director got to the Nouvelle Vague. Even though the Bresson worked on his feature for ten months, Godard had rushed off his script on the first day of a shoot that would go on for between 15 minutes and 12 hours, depending on his ‘inspiration’.

Both directors opt for style over content, filming mostly on location rejecting the idea of film as photographed theatre. In both the main protagonist is a thief called Michel, although only Godard’s antihero commits a murder. Both directors had strained relationships with their lovers going on the run and aspiring to be above trivial everyday life. But here similarities end: Godard’s Michel is very much a personification of the classical film gangster, the script of Godard’s A bout de souffle is far more conventional than Pickpocket, and the denouement could not have been more different.

Michel (LaSalle) falls into petty thieving out of boredom rather than necessity, enjoying the surprise ease of the casual encounters which he goes on to study and perfect. At the Longchamp race track he steals money from a soignée punter and is enraptured by the euphoria this gives: “like I was walking on air with the world at my feet – a few moments later, I was caught”. The inspector (Pelegri) who arrests him (having to let him go through lack of evidence) will play a big part in the petty crim’s life. Michel joins a group of highly skilled pickpockets, working mostly in crowded places (like the Gare du Lyon) and the crime takes on the choreographed nature of ballet dancers at the Comedie Francaise.

Michel leads a sheltered existence until he meets meets Jeanne (Green) who will later fall for his only friend Jacques (Leymarie), a fellow pickpocket. The inspector entraps Michel via his book on the art of thieving – but finds no concrete proof of his activities despite a thorough search of his lodgings. After his mother (Scal) dies, Michel goes to her funeral with Jeanne only to discover the dying woman had made a complaint to the police about stolen money – later withdrawing the allegations realising it must have been her own son. Michel flees the country for Milan and Rome, travelling on to London and frittering away his ill-gotten gains. Returning to Paris he meets Jeanne who has split with Jacques but now has his child. Michel turns to thieving again to support Jeanne and her child, finding a sense of relief in his love for her.

Leonce-Henry Burel shot four of Bresson’s features, and his immaculate black-and-white images are absolutely mesmerising in sequences crisply edited by Raymond Lamy that bring a stylish grace, rather than a sordidness to Michel and his illicit activities. There’s an elegant beauty in the intimate delving of hands into plush leather wallets and crocodile handbags elevating the activity to an art form in its own right and one that somehow negates the nefariousness intent.  Michel slips into crowds and makes his sinuous escape, ducking and diving like an agile beaver. The locations often dwarve the thieves and they go about their business brilliantly in choreographed dovetailing.

Martin LaSalle is hypnotic as a non-pro, originally from Uruguay, he would disappear off to Latin America and a TV career. Bresson did not cast professional actors, preferring to move his protagonists around the set like mannequins. He specifically did not want professional actors with ‘skills’. So in many ways, Pickpocket feels more radical than Godard’s debut feature which seems superficial in comparison. Bresson focuses on Dostoyevsky’s theme of crime and punishment as a metaphor and thus adds another layer of nuanced meaning  (not for the first or last time). Bresson relies on the power of his images, Pickpocket could almost be re-shot as a silent film, the meaning would still be conveyed. A masterpiece.

BACK IN CINEMAS FROM 3 June 2022

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. 

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

 

Martin Eden (2019)

Dir Pietro Marcello | Italy, Drama 129′

Based on the 1909 novel by Jack London, Pietro Marcello crafts a sweepingly timeless romantic epic that follows the fortunes of a sailor (Luca Marinelli) in his captivating quest to become a writer.

Martin Eden is a hero in the classic Southern Italian style: his passionate raw charisma hides a vulnerable but trusting heart.
Marcello’s film is set in a nameless Italian port city where it blends a variety of temporal cues while remaining timeless, a restless momentum driving the narrative forward, and keeping the audience absorbed for nearly three hours.

As Eden, Luca Marinelli has an energetic physicality that pulsates with his desire to overcome the odds of his skimpy education. We first meet him as a jobbing sailer, his imagination fired into action by a chance encounter with the sophisticated Elena (a fragile Jessica Cressy) and he becomes infatuated, for a while. But Martin’s intense preoccupation with bettering himself work-wise – and socially too –  soon becomes an obsession, alienating those who have helped him, As the saying goes: ‘you can take a boy out of Southern Italy but you can’t take Southern Italy out of a boy” and his humble start in life tugs at his conscience.

Marcello’s decision to shoot on Super 16mm gives the film an atmospheric retro quality that compliments the timeless romance of this aspirational story. The use of archival footage both illuminates and intensifies this haunting flight of human passion. The desire to seek a better life against all odds is both timely and universal. MT

New Wave Films is finally set to release Pietro Marcello’s ‘MARTIN EDEN‘ in UK cinemas on 9th July.

 

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.

     

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

Striding into the Wind (2020) *** Cannes Selection 2020

Dir.: Wei Shujun; Cast: Zheng Yingchen, Zhou You, Lin Kai, Wang Xiaomu; China 2020, 134 min.

Wei Shujun won a Special Award for his short film On the Border at Cannes 2018 and was back in the competition selection again this year with this eye-catching but flawed drama which overstays its welcome at over two hours.

Based on Wei Shujun’s own experiences, Striding Into the Wind is a footloose road movie that offers a snapshot of modern China through the life of two film school layabouts. Essentially a series of episodes that take place in and around  Beijing where restless sound technician Zuo Kun (Zhou) is taking time out from his final year studies behind the wheel of a beaten-up Jeep. Kun can’t seem to commit to anything – let alone a driving test – and we see him flouncing off in a fit of rage when things go wrong. The Jeep eventually becomes a liability: he is stopped for driving under the influence and ends up in prison, where his warden Dad is able to get him an early release.

Kun’s portly comrade in arms, Tong (Kai) is a junk food addict who rolls out of bed just in time for the college start at noon. The women is Kun’s life are more practical: his long suffering girl A Zhi (Yingchen) lends him cash, and his mother, a university lecturer, supplies exam papers which sell for good money on campus. A film shoot provides the opportunity for the pair to break loose and  decamp to Inner Mongolia where they attempt to lock down their film project and Kun makes a play for the Mongolian star actress.

What saves this from being an empty rant in celebration of juvenile delinquency is the imaginative visuals bringing to mind early 1980s features by Hsiao-Hsien Hou. Shujun’s sycophantic treatment of his two main characters adds to the overindulgent feel of a film where so much talent has been wasted on immature postering. AS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2020 | COMPETITION LINEUP | BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2020

    

The Prowler (1951) ****

Dir.: Joseph Losey; Cast: Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes, Emerson Tracey, Wheaton Chambers, John Maxwell; USA 1951, 92 min.

The Prowler was Losey’s favourite among the five Hollywood features he directed before blacklisting forced him to emigrate to Europe. The HU-AC witch hunt also affected the film’s writers Dalton Trumbo, Hugo Butler, PD John Hubley and German émigré writer/director Hans Wilhelm, who co-scripted the project.

The alternative title The Cost of Living, is actually a more appropriate one for this rather nasty little noir thriller that takes its cue from Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. Losey’s feature has nothing of the grandeur of the Wilder film, being simply a story of mundane greed and lust. Fred MacMurray’s insurance salesman Walter Neff has a a shred of charm and a conscience, even though he ‘mislays’ it. His equivalent here, police officer Webb Garwood (Van Heflin), is just in it for the money and the sex.

LA socialite Susan Gilvray (Keyes, married at the time to co-producer John Huston) has been disturbed by a prowler. Inspector Webb Garwood (Heflin) fetches up at her mock Spanish villa with his partner Bud Crocker (Maxwell) – the good cop – who will shadow his buddy to the bitter end.

Webb is smitten by the lady, but much more impressed by her wealth. Susan is married to William (Tracey)M a late-night radio host who is infertile. After rebuffing Webb at first, Susan falls for him, and they have an affair. Webb then sets up a scene where the “prowler” (who is none other than Webb, having the foresight to use the William’s revolver) shoots the husband dead, grazing his skin.

The inquest is quickly over, but Susan discovers she is four months pregnant by Webb – something the couple clearly need to keep a secret. They travel to a quiet backwater in Yermo, California, to wait for the birth of the child. But complications arise, and Webb fetches Dr. James (Chambers) from LA. Susan, who now knows the truth, is afraid Webb will also do away with Dr. James after he is no longer needed. Webb flees when the cops show up in town, but instead of surrendering, he takes the bullets from his former collegues.

The Prowler is bleak and also rather squalid with its petit-bourgeois values. Webb is corrupt, using his position in society for murder. He is the “typical” victim of circumstances: a former basket ball player, whose career had been cut short by injury. Webb wants to take revenge for his misfortune, and has no qualms about his victims. Susan is a superficial woman, only in the end mustering some moral fibre. This was the last feature for veteran DoP Arthur C. Miller (The Song of Bernadette), who was elected as President of the American Society of Cameramen, dying in 1970.

Producer SP Eagle (Sam Spiegel) had a lot in common with the anti-hero of the piece: making Losey and his writer Trumbo sing for their supper, and in the end having to seek recourse to justice for their fees – including the USD35 Trumbo was paid for giving his voice to the radio host. AS

A GOOD PRINT IS AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE

      

A Call to Spy (2019) Netflix

Dir: Lydia Dean Pilcher | Cast: Sarah Megan Thomas, Stana Katic, Radhka Apte, Linus Roache, Rossif Sutherland, Samuel Roukin | US Drama 123′

US director Dean Pilcher lifts the lid on a little known Americanised account of World War II history about a group of women recruited by Churchill’s Special Operations Executive a “club unlike any other”. The proviso was that they should know all about France, be passionately against Hitler, and pretty.  The film is coincides with this year’s 75 anniversary of the D Day Landings.

Slick, affecting and brilliantly acted this impressive feature never takes itself too seriously thanks to Megan Thomas’ zesty script (she also produces and plays one of the spies) and the film has that distinctive look of TV zipping along at a brisk pace in establishing how the women were recruited and the stumbling blocks they will encounter professionally and personally in the field.

Stana Katic is a chic, no-nonsense Vera Atkins, a Romanian Jew whose accent occasionally lets her down, but she is keen for promotion and in charge of the recruitment drive as secretary to the head of the French section of the SOE (Roache). Keen for promotion, she begins the recruitment drive in the lush countryside of occupied France selecting Noor Inayat Khan (Apte) a French Sufi Muslim, and Virginia Hall (Megan Thomas). All are experiencing the discrimination of British society at the time: Virginia has lost part of her leg in a hunting accident; Noor has been held back by racism, along with her religion’s pacifist credo. But she is a talented wireless operator and her winning personality will clearly be an asset.

The multi-stranded plot is often bewildering as it wears on – there are too many unanswered questions – although this flaw could easily be attributed to inexperience, and the inherent confusion that prevailed during wartime. Strong performances carry the feature through, particularly that of Apte as Noor. Set on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, Baumgartner and Goodall’s atmospheric camerawork evokes the claustrophobia of their secret situation and the perilous, frenzied atmosphere of the covert operations.

The stakes are high and the constant sense danger is ever present as the women soldier on coping not only with the fear of detection and capture from the enemy, but also making quick decisions that affect their lives – not just their jobs – and the frequent errors of judgement made by their male counterparts back at base. And not all will survive to tell their tale.

Enjoyable and passionate A Call to Spy is also confusing at times and may have worked better as a TV series allowing the characters to expand into real people with rounded lives not women just caught up in a difficult war. The women were courageous heroes in the true sense of the word, and will be an inspiration to many who think that success is just about celebrity. MT

Signature Entertainment presents WWII espionage thriller A Call to Spy now on Netflix

Ronnie’s (2020)

Dir: Oliver Murray | Doc with:

The sheer exhilaration of live music is one of life’s pleasures. And Oliver Murray conjurs up the vibrant spirit of Jazz in this documentary tribute to a man who was always “gracious, inviting and free to share his ideas with everybody” in the words of American record producer Quincy Jones. This is the story of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. Soho’s storied jazz club in London.

Ronnie Scott (1927-1996) was an English jazz tenor saxophonist who played alongside some of the most famous figures in the world of Jazz in a small basement location in London’s Frith Street in the heart of Soho.

Once described as a “very nice bunch of guys”, Ronnie was all things to all people, everyone describing a different side of his charismatic personality. And Murray saves the darker side for the final chapter of this layered biopic. Scott grew up in a working class Jewish family in the East End of London where he trained on the saxophone just like his father before him, founding his iconic jazz club in 1959 and unintentionally creating a den of cool and a meeting place for luminaries of the jazz world and their aficionados.

Still going after 60 years, Ronnie Scotts is now a household name, inextricably linked to the word Jazz, the current manager (and talking head) Simon Cooke has been keeping the place going for the past 25 years. Owned by theatre impresario Sally Greene and the entrepreneur Michael Watt since 2005

Fascinating archive footage forms the background to a later interview with Ronnie – taking us through the history of his East and West End childhood and early adulthood in the 1940s where he became a dance-band saxophonist (like his father) and then falling in love with Bebop and learning his Jazz style on board oceans liners bound for New York. Here he discovered Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and eventually, sailing back to London, he dreamed up the idea of his own jazz club – he would be the star-power – starting the evening in compare mode with a series of dry jokes – his fellow musician Pete King was the business brain. The idea came together with the aspiration to provide keen musicians with the first ever place to perform in Gerrard Street (just round the corner), although Americans were forbidden by the Musician’s Union to play in English venues. This made the financing complicated because only the Americans bought in the money. This led to a long-standing feud with the UK musician’s union.

Five bob (UK shillings) was the charge for the Saturday ‘all-nighter” and there was generous hospitality shown to regulars and those who worked there. Later the club moved to bigger premises at 47 Frith Street and welcomed the likes of Sonny Rollins, Dizzie Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Roland Kirk, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Oscar Peterson, Buddy Rich, Thelonious Monk, Chet Baker and Sarah Vaughan, and even Van Morrison all of whom perform in the clips that Murray interweaves into this lively biopic.

Scott was the frontman while macho straight-talker King took care of the business. Their close relationship was likened to a marriage, by King’s wife Stella, who describes Ronnie as a complicated man who, unknown to friends and fellow musicians, suffered from low moods that he shook off by playing his music. And bankruptcy was often round the corner, Ronnie recalling the bailiffs being on site one time even pricing up the piano while the show went on. Ronnie often gambled away the takings but he was also the life and soul of a place fondly remembered here by those who enjoyed it over the years amongst them Mel Brooks, music journalist John Fordham, Ronnie’s daughter Rebecca, and his various wives and partners Mary Scott, Francoise Venet, and others who help flesh out the complicated artist he was.

But the unique feel of the place and Ronnie’s soulful charisma dominant this jubilant often deeply poignant biopic about a man with a vision, and a club that still attracts crowds as never before and will hopefully carry on. MT

ON QUALITY PLATFORMS

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Saint Maud (2019) **** Bfi player

Dir/Wri: Rose Glass | Cast: Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle, Lily Frazer, Lily Knight, Marcus Hutton, Turlough Convery, Rosie Sansom, Carl Prekopp, Jonathan Milshaw, Noa Bodner, Rosie Sansom | UK, Fantasy Drama 84′

Rose Glass has been making films since she was 13. Her accomplished first feature is a restrained brew of horror and psychological thriller built round intoxicating performances from Morfydd Clark and Jennifer Ehle as nurse and patient.

The real St Maud lived in 10th century Germany, the daughter of a Saxon nobleman known for her healing hands, but this Maud has a distinctly Welsh sensibilities. Clark is clearly cast for her angelic face, although we see her with fresh blood on her hands in the opening scene which suggests that she is not as pious as she would have us believe when she arrives at the Arts&Crafts villa of a surprisingly vivacious diva who is dying of cancer.

Amanda (Ehle) is clearly not going to “go gentle into that good night” in the words of Dylan Thomas. Fond of Art Deco prints, mid-Sixties furniture and the music of Al Bowlly, Ehle dusts down her purring North Carolina accent and often dons a wig and false eyelashes to create a ravishing portrait of faded glamour which echoes Dorothy Parker or even Cyd Charisse. Bored rigid by her own mortality, and relying on her lover Carol (Frazer) to entertain her, Maud responds by stroking her ego, as a tender nurse whose new found religious fervour reaches orgasmic levels, inspiring both patient and carer to hope for better things in the next life – saved by the power of God. But Maud is jealous of Carol, and her tenure ends in tears. This elegantly crafted first act is bewitched by the squally winter skies of Scarborough, Adam Janota Bzowski’s booming sensaround soundscape and lush lensing from Ben Fordesman.

Once Ehle has left the stage (she does return for a brief blast) the film turns into a rather more disturbing study of untreated mental illness, Glass directing with inventive  flourishes clearly influenced by The Devils and Repulsion. Maud is a disturbed and delusional character suffering from loneliness and a desperate need to control, and clinging to her Christian faith and its emblems for succour. And we really feel for her in this astonishing turn from Clark.

It soon emerges from a chance encounter in the street that she was previously known as Kate, and worked in a hospital where something bad happened. Now offering palliative care through a private agency, Maud has poetically re-styled herself as a contemporary version of Florence Nightingale, and Glass has given clever thought to this imaginative re-branding: Maud is also dogged by dangerous moods and these sequences are accompanied by magic realism and glowing special effects – in one Maud sprouts luminous wings, another sees her incandesce in a really shocking finale.

Maud’s delusional episodes grow increasingly florid as she finds herself alone and unemployable in a dingy basement flat. By the end the reality and fantasy become indistinguishable although this ambiguity never entirely satisfies. But Glass clearly enjoys honing her beast and adding further layers of texture to a characterisation that has haunting implications. Ehle is sadly underused but makes the best of her tortured diva in this really frightening first foray for the British director. MT

IN CINEMAS 9 OCTOBER 2020

Shadow Country | Made in Prague Czech Film Festival 2021

Dir.: Bohdan Slama; Cast: Magdalena Borova, Stanislav Majer, Csongor Kassai, Denisa Bresova, Robert Miklus, Petra Spalkova, Marie Ludvikova, Jiri Cerny; Czech Republic 2020, 135′.

In this stark but illuminating drama Bohdan Slama chronicles the longterm social consequences of “ethnic cleansing” in a Czechoslovakian village near the Austrian border from the 1930s until the late 1950s.

German”Sudetenland’, as it was known at the time, consisted of about three million people who lived under German occupation during 1938/9. German became the official language – although Czech remained the lingua franca. Seventy five percent of the Jewish population (around 590,000) was exterminated by the occupying forces and their Czech collaborators, property was confiscated, along with that of the Czech inhabitants. As one villager puts it, in his lifetime, he lived in 3 different countries without moving house

In 1943, the Allies made plans for several million Germans to leave the country, a process that took nearly three years. But as the War came to an end in 1945, over 60,000 were Germans were forcibly evicted by Czechs, some even killed with the silent consent of the government and political parties across the board. .

The famous Singer Sewing machine becomes the symbol for these tortured events from the late 1930s onwards. Given to a couple at the christening of their new-born child, it will change hands often before being discarded the the rubbish in the end. Ivan Arsenyev’s script follows a married couple: Marie Veberova (Borova) is Czech and her German husband, Veber, is a trader. In order not to attract attention to themselves many Czech citizens ‘forget’ their language. Jews are required to leave, their property is ‘shared’  with the remaining, often well-off, Czechs. Resistance is sparse, only Joseph Pachl (Kassai) and a few others try to arm themselves against their enemies. Pachl is soon arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Life in the village changes completely: an previously innocuous woman discovers her love of Fascism, forcing her school kids to sing the Nazi youth hymn “Unsere Fahne flattert uns voran”. Veber and others look after Joseph’s daughter, Zdena Pachlova, but take her property in payment.

Essentially an account of how ordinary people respond to these changing circumstances with all the contingent ideological and racial implications involved this is a deeply affecting film that avoids melodrama or a sentimental approach, drawing comparisons with recent outings on a similar themes such as The Painted Bird and Charlatan.

Several years in the making, the Slama works with a cast of actors and non-pros drawing on real incidents without creating a drama documentary; the film focuses on a collection of characters showing how divisions are rife. Petty thieving becomes the order of the day, everyone stealing from their neighbours. Symbolically, one old woman steals three cups from her recently departed neighbours. When they return after the end of the war, she shamelessly returns them with the comment “I wanted to have something to remember you by”.

The end of the Nazi occupation has dire consequences for those who have collaborated. The woman who led the singing is raped, and Pachl, who has returned more dead than alive from the camps, is put in charge of the community. Later, soldiers make him responsible for a ‘show trial’ against a group of collaborators, amongst them is Veber. The victims are forced to dig their own graves. Pachl is later appalled by what he has done, and is accused of making the trial into a shambolic farce by the authorities.

With his use of 35 mm real film stock, DoP Divis Marek ensures  unmitigated bleakness throughout. Early scenes are shot on the widescreen in a bid to create a collective feeling of community – capturing thirty or so people in one panoramic take. But this sense of unity soon breaks down into violence and greed. Needless to say, there are no heroes, just victims of various kinds. The male-centric narrative has no room for sympathy, although a few women rise about the parapet in their attempts to shine light on the darkness and depravity of this devastating episode in history.

Slama’s outlook for humankind is as depressing as his film. History tends to repeat itself, and the Czech director shares his thoughts in a recent interview where he talks about the burgeoning sense of Nationalism sweeping through Europe as populations feel increasingly swamped by the social pressures of mass migration. AS

MADE IN PRAGUE FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | 17 NOVEMBER 2021

 

     

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

 

 

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

 

Private Information (1952) *** Talking Pictures

Dir: Fergus McDonell. Sr: Gordon Glennon, John Baines (from the former’s play). Cast: Jill Esmond, Jack Watling, Carol Marsh, Gerard Heinz, Mercy Haystead, Norman Shelley, Lloyd Pearson, Henry Caine, Brenda de Banzie. Drama, 65′.

Another topical little gem hiding in plain sight on Talking Pictures is this British drama cheaply shot at Nettlefold Studios directed by veteran editor Fergus McDonell (the last of three) on behalf of ACT Films.

As relevant today as it was nearly seventy years ago (except that most council houses were long ago sold off). In barely an hour it updates and transposes the plot of ‘An Enemy of the People’ to the fictitious small  English town of Hamington in postwar Britain.

Female characters and their concerns take centre stage, principally those of Lawrence Olivier’s first wife Jill Esmond as a middle-aged council house tenant against whom a venal male establishment automatically close ranks and use their financial clout to attempt to muzzle her when she learns of the health risks posed by defective drains; which sure enough leads to an outbreak of typhus. Richard Chatten

SCREENING ON TALKING PICTURES TV

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

                                               

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

Final Account (2020)

Dir: Luke Holland Doc, UK 90’

British filmmaker Luke Holland goes the other side of the fence in this definitive documentary that plunders the memories of German Second World War veterans involved in Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Final Account is a candid film that pulls no punches in its trenchant expose of German and Austrian wartime veterans – both men and women. And although the director maintain his distance – his grandparents lost their lives in the camps; what emerges is startling and often depressing.

Blue-eyed witnesses now in their 80s and 90s reminisce over their joy and excitement at being part of the Hitler Youth Movement that allowed them to indulge in a variety of sports such as swimming and athletics that had previously been denied them during the early 1930s in Germany.

But others even ended up engaging in sports of a more gruesome nature when they decided to join in Hitler’s ethnic genocide and become direct participants in the horrors of the prison camps. What emerges is not always palatable to watch and several interviewees continue to deny the gravity of their actions in the name of their country, whether through selective amnesia or embarrassment.

Twelve years in the making and enriched by footage and photographs from the personal albums of those involved Final Account is a vital and worthwhile addition to the Holocaust canon. But the casual denial and abdication of responsibility of those who took part in the Wehrmacht, or SS, will be a bitter pill for most viewers to swallow.

Most Germans claim to have been carried along on a wave of nationalistic pride, or were ‘just obeying orders’. Others state allegiance to the Hitler’s view that German Jews were becoming too successful and clicquey. One ex SS office is honest enough to admit that he didn’t particularly care when hundreds of synagogues were burnt down on Kristallnacht in 1938. Another man, pictured in his farm, explains he didn’t hesitate to telephone the police when his Jewish neighbours tried to hide in his barn to avoid capture, bringing to mind the ‘banality of evil’. Another man remembers a childhood song about “Knives sharp enough for Jewish bellies”. He now admits to be shocked at the memory. A group of women in a care home cast their mind back to the smell of burning and black smoke billowing from a nearby furnace, while they gleefully enjoy coffee and biscuits.

These are tragic recollections superbly edited by Stefan Ronowicz in a film that never descends into sentimentality or melodrama – just a stark and sober revelation of human indifference. MT

NOW ON RELEASE

Tenet (2020) ****

Dir/Wri: Christopher Nolan | John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh | Action Adventure Sci-fi | 150′

Missing a dose of international travel this Summer? Bold, bewildering and brilliantly spectacular, Tenet takes you to the most glamorous corners of Europe and beyond in an action-packed peripatetic two and a half hours that will make a dash for the nearest airport tempting, quarantine or not.

Attention spans may flag in the final hour where the complex narrative trips itself over, ambitiously conflating an over-demanding Sci-fi idea with a slick action-packed espionage thriller: The former detracts from the latter, enjoyment-wise. But overall Tenet is up there with the best of the Bond films, and this time ‘James Bond’ is played by John David Washington.

Nolan has always loved the notion of time: Memento, Interstellar and Dunkirk have played about with the concept. Tenet does the same. This is not a film about time-travel, but a complicated idea about replaying the past that is actually the film’s Achilles heel. And although this is constantly explained from one character to another, by the end nobody really gets the bullets that go backwards – back in time that is – and the “technology that can reverse an object’s entropy” – according to Clemence Poesie’s tight-lipped scientist in the films opening scenes. Car chases and combat scenes are played backwards in discombobulating ferociousness. So best to sit back and enjoy the astonishing scenery and set pieces and the charisma of Pattinson, Debicki and Branagh, who is so vicious as her husband – a misogynist Russian gangster – he almost makes you want to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all.

There a some astonishing sequences thanks to DoP Hoyte Van Hoytema (who was Oscar nominated for Dunkirk): after an astonishing siege at the Kiev Opera House, Pattinson and Washington (‘The Protagonist’) scale the front of a vertiginous apartment building in Mumbai; he then joins Debicki and Branagh for an electrifying chase in a high speed catamaran, all driven along by Göransson’s pounding sound design. There are brutal fight sequences  involving meat tenderisers and cheese graters, and an amusing finale where Debicki wreaks revenge on her control freak husband on the deck of his luxury yacht moored off the coast of Vietnam. It’s all very bold but believable.

The cast is superlative: you can’t take your eyes off Robert Pattinson’s tousled-haired, linen-suited Neil who has an edgy glamour suggestive of a foxy foreign correspondent in some Mediterranean backwater. He also does action man well, having honed his body since the Twilight years. Washington is all muscled, melodious-voiced and masterful, never hinting at anything but well-intentioned professionalism. Kenneth Branagh comes late to the party, but is well worth waiting for as the hard-nosed arms trader Andrei. “How would you like to die”: he snarls at Washington “of old age” — comes the casual reply.

Clearly Nolan has spent a great deal of time thinking through his premise, it’s a shame then that nobody seems to understand how it all fits together, least of all the audience (ideas – on a postcard, are welcome). But the espionage element is thoroughly enjoyable, along with the serrated-edge love hate romance that sees Debicki as a vodka slurping virago one minute, and an Hermes-clad mummy the next.

In this first big cinema blockbuster post lockdown, Tenet once again shows Christopher Nolan at the top of his game when it comes to high octane thrills and magnificent mise en scene. Sorry Netflix, you’ve had your moment – the big screen is where cinema is and always will be. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 26 AUGUST 2020 NATIONWIDE

Hope Gap (2019) **

Dir/Wri: William Nicholson | Cast: Annette Bening, Bill Nighy, Josh O’Connor | UK Drama 100′

William Nicholson’S second feature sees a hopelessly miscast Annette Bening struggle as a literary-minded English wife whose marriage is on the rocks. Bill Nighy plays her reserved husband, in his usual diffident style, more concerned for his work than his crumbling relationship.

Clearly Bening is there to sell the film to the US, but she never feels real in this maudlinly stagey affair with its flawed structure and awkward characters. Nicholson is such a brilliant writer, Oscar-nominated for Shadowlands and Gladiator but he needed a more complex and punchy counterpart to play against Nighy, who can suck the air out of any situation, and one who could have breathed life into some deft dialogue, rather than simply just reciting the lines. Nicholson reduced us to tears in Shadowlands but here we don’t care about any of his characters. Hope Bay mostly feels trite and generic, lacking in emotional depth.

Set in East Sussex, it sees Nighy’s Edward leaving his wife (Grace) of nearly thirty years. Their grown-up son Jamie (Josh O’Connor) is caught in the crossfire. Predictably, Edward is leaving because he can’t be the husband he thinks Grace wants – lame excuse – and is tired of trying, and of her complaining. All Grace wants is a little more reassurance that they’re “on a path together”. But clearly they’re not. Edward has been invited to walk away with someone else, someone more pliant and undemanding. Somehow Nicholson fails to mine the rich dramatic potential here in a drama that entirely lacks any dramatic sparkle. The only dynamism is in the widescreen wonder of soaring cliffs and magnificent views across the Seaford bay.

Edward announces he’s leaving Grace before we’ve even invested in their lives together, or got to know and feel for them as a couple divided by their respective points of view. Most of the film sees Grace moping about on the cliffs, or nagging Jamie about his own love life – or lack of it – and joining some bogus telephone helpline. No self-respecting counselling service would take on a person going through emotional trauma so the storyline isn’t even authentic. And rather than empathising with Grace’s perspective on her marriage failure, and appreciating Edward’s cowardice and his own viewpoint, we are simply left with a nagging woman, and a man who has been tempted by a new love. “It’s all contactless nowadays, Dad” says Jamie when Edward tries to buy him an ice cream. “You got it there” Edward retorts – and that telling phrase sums the film up. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 28 AUGUST 2020

 

Coup 53 (2019) joins the Rotten Tomatoes 100 percent club

Dir.: Taghi Amirani, Documentary; UK/USA/Iran 2019, 118 min.

Director/co-writer Taghi Amirani (Red Lines and Deadlines) fled Iran as a teenager and brings his life experience to bear in this detailed examination of the British/American coup of 1953, which brought down the government of the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minster Mohamad Mosaddegh (1882-1967).

With the help of editor Walter Murch (Godfather), who is credited as co-writer, Amirani has plunged the archives to piece together the events of August 1953 which still reverberate not only in the region but all over the world.

The suggestion that Mosaddegh was a communist was not far from the truth. And the British and American propagandists certainly concurred with this line of thinking. Apart from being a staunch nationalist, Mosaddegh was a member of the royal Qajar dynasty, a much older Institution than that of his opponent Shah Mohammed Raza Pahlavi, whose father had forcefully overthrown the Qajar dynasty in 1925. In the eyes of Prime Minister Mosaddegh, Shah Raza, of the house of Pahlavi, was an upstart. Mosaddegh had studied law in Europe and went on to nationalise the oil industry which was run by the Anglo-Iranian Oil company (AIOC) back in 1951.

News reels show the company’s tearful British employees leaving Iran. In reality, Mosaddegh had asked them to stay. But Britain and the USA did not want a functioning oil industry run by Iran: they organised a world-wide boycott of Iranian oil on the world market. When this plan did not work out, British Prime Minister Churchill and US president Eisenhower met in 1953 and decided to get rid of Mosaddegh during a coup. Organised by CIA chief Allen Dulles (brother of US foreign minister John Foster), and executed on the ground by Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of President T. Roosevelt) and Britain’s Norman Darbyshire, chief of the Iranian branch of MI6, the so-called operation Ajax was not always plain sailing. Only after Tehran’s police chief Mahmoud Afshartous, a staunch supporter of the Prime Minister, was abducted, tortured and murdered by General and Prime Minister Fazlollah Zahedi, did the coup look like succeeding.

One reason for the remaining question marks lay with Shah Mohammad Raza Pahlavi himself. He had fled the country and retreated to a luxury hotel in Rome with his wife Soraya, and continued to live his previous life of privilege, albeit in exile. His twin sister, Princess Ashhraf, was much more wily and helped the plotters actively. It was Kermit Roosevelt who made the difference in the end: he organised a “spontaneous” popular uprising against the Prime Minister, paying just 60 thousand US dollars for his rented mob. Mosaddegh was put on trial and ended his life alone under house arrest and in solitary confinement for the last fourteen years of his life.

There is a particular British transcript to the affair: In 1985 a TV production of End of the Empire interviewed some participants of the 1953 Coup, among them Norman Darbyshire, who, according to the transcript of the interview, was very open about his contribution. But he never appears in the finished documentary. The quotes used for the interview were neatly cut out and seemed lost – before an anonymous person sent the missing lines of Darbyshire’s interview to the Observer. Amirani landed his own coup, letting Ralph Fiennes read the incriminating sections.

Coup 53 allows us to imagine what could have happened in the region if democracy in Iran had been allowed to flourish. Today we are still confronted with the clerical-fascist Islamist regime of Iran –  belated vengeance for the Coup for oil. AS

REAL-LIFE THRILLER COUP 53 JOINS THE 100% CLUB ON ROTTEN TOMATOES 

NOW ON DIGITAL RELEASE | LONDON FILM FESTIVAL review 2019

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   

 

Babyteeth (2019) *** 2019

Dir,: Shannon Murphy, Cast: Eliza Scanien, Ben Mendelsohn, Essie Davis, Toby Wallace, Emily Barklay, Australia 2019, 120 min. 

Australian filmmaker Shannon Murphy directs her debut with sentiment and a sort of obnoxious humour, the clash of styles is something only Australian filmmakers can muster.

Adapted for the screen by Rita Kainejais, based on her own play, it sees sixteen year old Milla (Scanien) dying of cancer. Her psychiatrist father Henry (Ben Mendelsohn) and psychotherapist mother Anna (Davis) are finding it hard to cope despite their professional training but they also have their own demons to deal with. Henry neglects his clients, seeking  diversion by helping pregnant neighbour Toby (Emily Barklay) with the household tasks. Enter Moses, a small-time crook in his mid-twenties, who nearly pushes Milla under a train. She falls for him all the same, and her bewildered parents put up with the relationship to make her final months bearable. Moses finally moves in and Henry supplies morphine to his daughter and her boyfriend. Anna is the most interesting character and Davis plays her with subtlety: a talented middle-aged musician whose sexual urges are not always satisfied by her husband, despite their fondness for one another and the impending crisis.  

Babyteeth is a beautifully performed four-hander – but Murphy never really finds the right blend of calmness and flippancy to make the drama work as a convincing piece of cinema. But these faults are the faults of inexperience and Andrew Commis’ images are a striking firework of colours, underlining the chaotic storyline. Scanien is a tour de force, bringing both vulnerability and power to her role. Comparisons with Jane Champion’s early films are wide of the mark – but there is always hope for this promising new filmmaker. AS

IN CINEMAS from 21 August 2020 | premiered at VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 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 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

 

     

 

The Traitor (2019) Bfi player

Dir: Marco Bellocchio | Writers: Marco Bellocchio, Ludovica Rampoldi, Valia Santela, Francesco Piccolo | Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Alessio Pratico, Maria Fernanda Candido, | Italy, Drama 135′

In the early 1980s, an all-out war rages between Sicilian mafia bosses over the heroin trade. Tommaso Buscetta, “boss of the two worlds”, flees to hide out in Brazil. Meanwhile back home, scores are being settled and Buscetta watches from afar as his sons and brother are killed in Palermo, knowing he may be next. Arrested and extradited to Italy by the Brazilian police, Tommaso Buscetta makes a decision that will change everything for the Mafia: He decides to meet with Judge Giovanni Falcone and betray the eternal vow he made to the Cosa Nostra.

With thundering vehemence Marco Bellocchio portrays the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of Sicily’s real-life ‘men of honour’, and although The Traitor certainly packs a punch, it somehow lacks the heart and soul of many Mafia-themed features – and particularly Kim Longinotto’s recent documentary Shooting the Mafia – in telling the story of the Mafioso boss turned informant. In explaining the inner working of the organisation, the director blends dark humour and brutal violence with vibrant set-pieces (in Sicily, Rome, Brazil and the U.S) to provide a visual masterpiece with a palpable sense of the era. The mammoth endeavour runs at two and a half hours, blending archive footage (of Falcone’s tragic death ) and entertaining court scenes that revel in the cut and thrust of the debate and the raucous ribaldry of the gangsters showing just how impossible it was actually to bring them to justice and how dishonourable they actually were – and some are still on the run.

Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi) once again emerges a gentleman and a diligent lawyer who garnered great respect from Bruscetta, and met his terrible end for simply doing his duty. Bruscetta is a macho man with a lust for life and love, and Pierfrancesco Favino is tremendous in the lead as this main mafioso figure who decided to testify before Falcone and appear in the mafia ‘Maxi Trial’ that lasted from 1986 to 1992. His testimony was historically crucial in implicating others and also securing him reduced prison sentences.

The action begins in 1980 when the two main Sicilian families in Palermo had decided to call a truce (Bruscetta from the Porta Nuova family and Toto Riina from Corleone). Tommaso had moved to Rio de Janeiro with his Brazilian wife (Maria Fernandez Candido) but left two of his eight children behind in the care of Pippo Calo’ (Fabrizio Ferracane), a big mistake as we soon discover.

After a resurgence of killing back home, shown in savage bloodshed, Tommaso decides to stay put, his sidekick Totuccio Contorno (Luigi Lo Cascio) surviving the massacre. But Tommaso doesn’t escape being arrested and tortured for drug-trafficking during which his wife is seen dangling from a helicopter over the bay in Rio. Extradited back to Italy he agrees to meet the authorities and  starts a dialogue with Falcone, mutual respect being the watchword.

The courtroom scenes are amongst the most stimulating in this bodyblow of a film, Nicola Piovani’s operatic score ramping up the emotional timbre. Once the trial is over, Buscetta and his family enter witness protection in Florida, but he is still determined to settle old scores, despite suffering from terminal cancer.

Naturally, this is not a film to be overjoyed about, but at least Bellocchio leaves us with a message of hope posited by Judge Falcone: “the mafia is not invincible; it had a beginning and will have an end,” MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

 

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

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  

Maserati: A Hundred Years Against All Odds (2020) **

Dir: Philip Selkirik; Documentary with Carlo Maserati, Stirling Moss, Juan Manuel Fangio; Germany 2020, 89 min.

Unlike the sleek and streamlined vehicle in question this new documentary is a dreary journey through detail weighed down by a monotonous voice-over and too many backseat talking heads.

Maserati originates from Bologna where brothers Alfieri, Ettore and Ernesto had a fight on their hands to keep their legendary company on the road, surviving thanks to take-overs by Orsi, Citroën, Fiat, even sharing the same owners as arch rivals Ferrari. Henry Ford II was keen on producing Maserati models for the mass market in the USA – rather like he was with Ferrari and the late British GP driver Stirling Moss talks about “spare girls and spare cars”, before lauding the Maserati as the best car he has ever driven.

Philip Selkirk does his best occasionally enlivening his film with archive footage of races such as Nuvolari’s triumphs in 1930s. But the focus seems to be company politics: and we learn that Maserati will soon be re-united with old rivals, made possible by the forthcoming merger of PSA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Group) and Peugeot /Citroën/DS/Opel and Vauxhall. Maserati has not driven in F1 for 50 years, unlike Mercedes or Ferrari.

Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason’s comments dovetail into the avalanche of technical data. Selkirk bills the Fascist movement in Germany and Italy as “just a change in politics”, mentioned in passing between the more glorious successes of the Maserati “Trident” car: The symbol of Neptune’s powerful weapon was adapted in 1920 as a company symbol, copying the spear of the Fountain of Neptune statue in the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, before the factory was moved to Modena. Unfortunately for Maserati, the brand’s trident symbol has recently been closely associated with far-right organisations such as ‘For Britain’ and fascist groups such as Trident Antifa.

Maserati is hard work, as one critic put it, “make sure of adequate food and drink supplies”. Intended as a doc for mainstream audiences Maserati somehow misses the Zeitgeist of our times – by a mile and more. It’s more likely to please diehard fans of the brand or petrol-heads. AS

AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD 20TH JULY, DVD & DIGITAL RENTAL FROM 27THJULY

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

 

 

 

Krabi 2562 (2019) *** Bfi Player

Dir: Ben Rivers, Anocha Suwichakornpong | Experimental, Drama | UK 97 minutes

Krabi is not just an exotic beach location in Thailand where you can ‘get a massage”, as a one banal Western couple found out. In this offbeat cinema vérité experiment Ben Rivers joins fellow director Anocha Suwichakornpong to explore the landscape and stories within the wider community of this well-known beauty spot rich in Mangrove forests, limestone cliffs and offshore islands. 

The meditative often mysterious drama works chronologically, ethnologically and socially, the atmospheric use of sound – whether ambient or man-made – captures and distils the often eerie enigmatic essence of the place in a specific moment in time where the pre-historic, the recent past and the contemporary world collide. Tonally, Rivers conjures up that same resonant serenity and offbeat humour often associated with the Far East in a story that feels very much like that of Hong Sang-soo’s humorous In Another Country (2012). 

A Thai filmmaker arrives in the area to research locations. She is escorted by a guide offering insight into local folklore and a chance to discover the area’s more undiscovered corners: remote caves where they come across a wild-haired shaman in a loin-cloth, stoking his glowing campfire. Bizarrely, a film shoot is also taking place nearby jolting us back into reality as the scantily clad actor clocks the shaman, Rivers contrasts this with her trip to the highly commercialised shopping area where every type of cuisine is on offer. Deep in the lush rainforest we meet an octogenarian who has lived his entire life in a wooden house. The farmstead is also home to a humpback pig and cockerels. The news that Krabi has a Biennale of its own plays out against the background of gently flowing water as a group of rowers glides by gigantic cliffs. Another black and white scene features enormous shells and skeletons in a depths of a coastal cave giving the piece at atavistic twist.

It soon turns out that the location scouting filmmaker is researching the town’s cinema that has been shut since 1981; a banner announcing the latest releases “Comming soon!” – is a dusty testament to a cinematic past where screenings ran for 24 hours a day, and were packed full. But her presence seems to be a concern only to the local police, as bats and flocks of birds flit past the ghostlike temples of spiritualism and commerce, and dusk falls in this dreamy backwater. Langourously the strands come together to exert an unsettling pull over us as we muse over this fascinating but rather enigmatic trail of events. Intriguing nonetheless. MT

BFI PLAYER from 20 JULY 2020 | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2019 |  7 -17 AUGUST 2019

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

 

The Girl with the Bracelet (2019) **** Curzon World

Dir/Wri:Cast: Stéphane Demoustier | Cast: Melissa Guers, Roschdy Zem, Anaïs Demoustier, Chiara Mastroianni, Annie Mercier, Pascal-Pierre Garbarini

Wilful nonchalance comes across as evil in this sophisticated social thriller from Stephane Demoustier based on the script of Acusada by G. Tobal and U. Porra Guardiola and set in the Britanny town of Nantes. 

Thee chilling story of modern teenagehood plays out in the stylish family home of Lise Bataille (Guers) – accused of murdering her best friend Flora Dufour – and in courtroom scenes where an intense battle plays out during the murder trial. This is probing stuff and you really have to concentrate hard on the subtitles if you don’t speak fluent French.

16 year old Lisa lives with her parents (Chiara Mastroianni and Roschdy Zem) and has been forced to wear an electronic ankle monitor after the fateful night she spent at Flora’s house. Flora was found savagely stabbed to death around midday the following morning. Lise is the main suspect and the only genetic print on Flora’s body has been traced back her. It also emerges through Lise’s frank confession, that the two purportedly slept together naked in Flora’s single bed, Lise giving her friend oral sex before they fell asleep intoxicated from an evening of drinking during which Lisa had also sucked off a boy called Nathan, an incident filmed on a mobile ‘phone, and produced in court.

This is a psychological thriller that focuses on how the witness comes across, rather than the forensic evidence of the murder. The reaction of Lise’s family, friends and those in the courtroom comes under the spotlight but her parent’s seemingly fraught relationship fails to be fleshed out, leaving us in doubt about their exact feelings for one another, or indeed if they are still together and there is no backstory to inform the aftermath of these crucial details. Meanwhile, Lise appears poker-faced and indifferent throughout, sometimes even given a unsettling stare. It’s a mesmerising performance from newcomer Guers. Both her parents express their surprise at the change in her behaviour, both stating that prior to the tragedy she was an open, pleasant and easygoing daughter. Now they start to questions her motives, as well as her innocence.

The Girl With a Bracelet puts the audience in the role of judge and jury as the rest of the courtroom tends to fade into the background. Anais Demoustier (the director’s sister) is powerful as the prosecuting barrister, and Annie Mercier is also convincing as the experienced defence counsel. But Lise’s supreme confidence and aplomb generates considerable tension for all concerned as we start to question if she’s playing us all along as a killer with no remorse, or really is a complete innocent. When this whodunnit from the court room drama genre, the crucial difference here is attitude rather than evidence. And here we are left pondering how we would anticipate a close family member to react when accused of murder, and whether we’d judge them for their behaviour in court, or give them the justice they deserved. The final scenes reveals all. MT

NOW ON CURZON WORLD | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2020

 

 

The Oak Room (2020)

Dir.: Cody Calahan; Cast: RJ Mitte, Peter Outerbridge, Ari Millen, Martin Roach, Nicolas Campbell; Canada 2020, 95 min.

Breaking Bad’s R J Mitte plays a mysterious drifter who fetches up in this suspense-ridden snowbound psychodrama based on Peter Genoway’s stage play and directed by Cody Calahan.

The Oak Room brings to mind Bill Paxton’s breakout hit Frailty (2013), but goes a step further, blurring the lines between thriller and horror with a slew of sinuous twists and turns that bring violence to small-town Canada in a slow-burn game of mistaken identity, childhood trauma and transference.

It would be a shame to spoil the ending, so let’s stick to the bare bones of the story. Steve (Mitte) turns up at his local during a snowstorm to settle a score with bartender Paul (Outerbridge), a friend of his father Gordon (Campbell), who has recently died. Paul is angry Steve didn’t attend the funeral or contribute to the costs. Paul has Gordon’s ashes, and claims Steve forced his father Gordon into an early grave, selling his business to finance Steve’s further education. Clearly a waste of time, judging by appearances. Steve casts his mind back to the past, revealing childhood trauma surrounding an incident where Steve was forced by his father to kill to a piglet. The past has turned Steve into a troubled and violent man who goes on to wreak havoc on the other characters. These are stormy waters and the red herrings soon pile up, seemingly leading nowhere. But by the end we are so deeply entrenching in the complex web of deceit, transference and projection that mayhem prevails.

The film’s narrative structure is the key to its runaway success. Mitte is mesmerising as the drifter  hellbent on changing his destiny. But are his grievances real or brought on by false memory, Steven emerging an unreliable narrator par excellence, and we are forced into decoding the enigmas as the film plays out. The Oak Room is sort of ‘sleeper’ – lying low, drawing us into its spiral of sinister snowy doom. Motives rather than murders make the most impact in this paranoid tour-de-force. AS

NOW ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD ON ALL MAJOR PLATFORM

CANNES MARKET 2020    

   

 

Gagarine (2020)

Dir.: Fanny Liatard, Jérémy Trouilh; Cast: Alseni Bathily, Lyna Khoudri, Jamil McCraven, Farida Rahouadj, Finnegan Oldfield; France 2020, 97 min.

The world’s first Space traveller Yuri Gagarin gives his name to this impressive debut from Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh. Cité Gagarine, a housing estate in the Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine, had a less illustrious time of things than its namesake, and has now been almost totally demolished along with other buildings of the HLM (habitation à Loyer Modéré), once home to many thousands.

This long version of the directors’ 2015 short starts with a newsreel showing Mr Gagarin (1934-1968), when he visited the site in 1963, enjoying a rapturous welcome from the tenants. Fast forward to 2019, and our new hero teenager Youri (effervescent newcomer Bathily) has not quite come to terms with losing his longterm home. His parents have long left the nest: his mother is now living with a new partner and baby. So his only close tie is with friend of the family Fari (Rahouadj) who will soon leave for pastures new in the South of France. That leaves Youri’s friend and sidekick Houssam (McCraven) and of course Diana (Khoudri), a teenager from a nearby Roma settlement, who shares Youri’s passion for Space travel.

When engineers from the council declare the block of flats unfit for habitation, Youri is determined to save his home, constructing an elaborate space shuttle within its walls. A solar eclipse is the ‘last hurrah’ before the old block is to be detonated. After a valedictory night of passion, Diana goes on her way, Youri agreeing to take care of the dog, renaming it Laika. Everything is now set for the great detonation, and the former residents assemble outside for the final time. Suddenly, a coordinated light show flashes from their former home. Diana and Houssam realise Youri must still be hiding inside in some outlandish act of denial.   

This French film is a revitalising tonic after so much drab British sink estate realism: Yes, bad things happen, but there is always love, and dreams. Even the drug dealer (Oldfield) is not the “bad guy” sent by central casting, but a rather disturbed young man with suicidal tendencies.

Youri’s escapist new ‘home’ is a marvel of imagination and gives DoP Victor Seguin the basis for imaginative ‘space travel’ in Youri’s parallel world. And there’s astringent humour here too: Diana having to help her acrophobic lover up the ladder to the command unit. Ever the optimist, Youri sums it all up with his starry-eyed observation “we are neighbours with the moon”.

Gagarine gives us hope at the end of the rainbow that stretches beyond our day-to-day tunnel of trauma, to infinity and beyond. Youri shows we all have the power to re-create another universe, however parlous our life may be. Far from idealising poverty, Gagarine is proof that escapism offers redemption – we just need to explore our own imagination for salvation in these unworldly times.

NOW IM CINEMAS NATIONWIDE | CANNES COMPETITION SELECTION |  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

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

Fanny Lye Deliver’d (2019) ***

Dir: Thomas Clay | Cast: Maxine Peake, Charles Dance, Freddie Fox | UK Drama 112′

British indie filmmaker Thomas Clay is a fresh and inventive talent who returns after more than a decade with this sinister 17th century home invasion drama cum feminist awakening saga set in a remote Shropshire homestead in 1657, during the final year of Oliver Cromwell’s time as protector.

The morality tale revolves around Fanny (Peake) and her domineering ex-solider husband John (Dance) strict Puritans who live in a remotely situated wattle and daub house with their infant son Arthur. In the opening titles Clay establishes the lawlessness of the English Revolution showing how the countryside was a dangerous place to be, the Cavaliers and Roundheads were still engaged in open warfare using any weapons they could lay their hands on – at one point the local sheriff is seen dangling – his eyes gouged out – in an iron cage at a crossroads. But Clay also imbues his drama with a contemporary urban feel using expressions such as: “I’d lose that attitude if I were you” when a couple of mouthy wayfarers take refuge in their barn while the family are attending church.

The two are Thomas Ashbury (Fox) and his companion Rebecca Henshaw (Reynolds) who claim to have been the victims brigands in a nearby hostelry. Clay telegraphs doom from the opening scene, narrated by Fanny: “I never thought this would be the last time we attended church as a family”. So from then on we are just waiting for something awful to happen.

Against their better judgement, Fanny and John agree to let the couple stay, but soon regret their decision when news comes of a warrant for the arrest of a couple wanted for holding orgies and preaching on the equality of women, or what was termed “leveller” preaching. At this point you have to cast your mind back to the 17th century, a time when ordinary women were owned by their husbands, and actually believed they were second-class citizens. And Fanny is so modest she even looks up to Thomas, even though he is considerably younger.

All this has a a similar feel to Ben Wheatley’s English Revolution piece A Field in England (2013). But Clay plays it more down the line, drifting into salacious territory as Thomas and Rebecca play a subtle game of subversion, gradually asserting their authority through teasing Fanny, as John gradually loses his power, and dignity. Fanny appears to fall for Thomas’s sexual goading, up to a point – and this is a particularly uncomfortable scene to watch. But when Arthur gets involved, Fanny comes to her senses.

The Puritan era was a time of spiritual authoritarianism – but the contrasting rakish lifestyle is clearly what Clay is alluding to in Thomas and Rebecca. Only three years later Charles II would be on the throne again and the theatre, science and sexual promiscuity would flourish again, embodied by John Wilmot, the famous Earl of Rochester, aka The Libertine.

Fanny Lye is a fascinating if rather predictable film with a gripping start and ending, although it loses momentum in the second act. Peake keeps it all together with her intelligent performance as a morally unambiguous woman prepared to fight her corner. The impressive 17th century sets look convincing and Clay’s needling original score keeps us in suspense until the grim finale. MT

DIGITAL STREAMING | DVD FROM 24 AUGUST 2020

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

 

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

Influence (2020) *** Sheffield Doc Fest 2020

Dir/Wri: Richard Poplak, Diana Neille. Doc, With: Tim Bell, Ron Leagas, John Hegarty, Phumzile van Damme, Nigel Oakes, Mark Hollingsworth, David Wynne-Morgan, Marianne Thamm, Sergio Bitar, Ascanio Cavallo, Pablo Zalaquett, José Antonio Kast Rist, Ralph Mathekga, FW de Klerk, Stanley Greenberg, Chester Crocker, Ketso Gordhan, Johann Kriegler, Andile Mngxitama, Alex Goldfarb, Paul Bell, Meirion Jones, Haider Jraidan, Joel Harding, Kirsten Fontenrose, Francis Ingham | Doc, 107′

The late advertising and PR supremo Timothy John Leigh Bell is the subject of this brisk and enjoyable documentary that soon sinks under a weight of detail. South African journalists Richard Poplak and Diana Neille use a clever framing device that sees Bell being interviewed for a radio station as the discussion widen out enlivened by archive footage and ample talking heads – but there’s just too much to take in for those unfamiliar with the territory.

If only Sir Tim Bell could have written the script. He comes across an uncomplicated and amusingly laconic character, glancing amiably over horn-rimmed glasses, cigarette permanently on the go, a man who you’d want on your side. And whose biggest coup in the early days of his career at Saatchi & Saatchi was working on the “Labour Isn’t Working” campaign that helped Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher win the 1979  general election. Bell and his associates soon worked out that winning elections and campaigns of all kinds is not down to ‘luck’ but a scientific skillset that interprets how the audience will respond, therefore creating a workable weapon: “It wasn’t about what you said, it was all about the audience”. And this is one of Bell’s most salient legacies.

He co-founded PR company Bell Pottinger in 1988, and was later famous for frosting up the relationship between the West and Putin through a simple but telling hospital bed ‘photo of the poisoned Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko. This establishes the truth that a picture is worth a thousand words. But that’s far from end of the story.

The exposé jumps around quite a bit eventually spinning off in all directions intoxicated by the complexities of the task it takes on. After dealing with Bell’s work on British politics, the thrust moves on to South Africa to explore Bell Pottinger’s role in unethically firing up racial unrest under President Jacob Zuma, influenced by the Gupta family. Bell Pottinger was hired to dispel and change the mood there and cocked it all up. Ironically a grass roots social media campaign in South Africa reacted against the influence of the British PR film. The resulting fallout led to the company filing for bankruptcy and Bell resigned in 2018.

The self-made spin doctor spins his own image with his direct approach to dealings, possessing the confidence and clarity of vision that many of us envy and even admire. He was paid to put a positive facade on the profiles of nefarious characters – amongst them Saudi arms dealers and autocrats such as General Pinochet – but his success in the end contributed to his own downfall. Barristers represent arch criminals everyday and get off Scott free. But when the press and public rise up against you your days are numbered. Ironically Sir Tim was foisted by his own petard – despite being brilliant at the task he took on.

Bell – filmed here before his death in August 2019 – puts up a good argument and a plausible one, and some of his arguments are plausible. But the directors have taken on more than they can chew. In the end their forensic approach encumbers their attempts to make a digest about the fascinating times we live in. We are left with an unpalatable fact: Perception is increasingly more important than the truth. MT

SCREENING AT SHEFFIELD DOC FESTIVAL 2020 | NOW ONLINE.

 

 

 

 

A Scandal in Paris (1946)

Dir.: Douglas Sirk; Cast: George Sanders, Signe Hasso, Carole Landis, Akim Tamiroff, Alma Kruger, Gene Lockart; USA 1946, 100 min.

Douglas Sirk (1897-1987) started life as Detlef Sierck in Berlin (UFA), before emigrating via France to Los Angeles just before the Second World War. Best known for his florid Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s, Magnificent Obsession and All I DesireSummer Storm (1944) and A Scandal in Paris (1946) are beasts of another feather and throwbacks to his German career. Scandal is based on the autobiography of Francois Eugene Vidocq, erstwhile criminal who became the Police Chief of Paris. Adapted by Ellis St. Joseph, Vidocq tries his best to camouflage his real past: His father was a wealthy man, and probably the first victim of his criminal son.  

In 1775, we meet Vidocq (Sanders) and his sidekick Emile (Tamiroff) on the verge of fleeing prison with the help of a file hidden in a cake. Thanks to a forger, part of Emile’s large criminal family, Vidocq is made a lieutenant in the French army, a perfect foil for stealing jewellery from wealthy women who fall under his spell.

Next on the list is the chanteuse Loretta de Richet (Landis), who is married to Chief of Police Richet (Lockhart). After successfully completing his assignment, Vidocq sets his eyes on the jewels of the de Pierremont family, represented by the Marquise de Pierremont (Kruger) and her daughter Therese (Hasso). But having trousered the gems, Vidocq changes tack after Richet being sacked by the Marquis de Pierremont, his superior. The master thief not only ‘solves’ the case, but also ‘recovers’ the jewels, becoming Richet’s successor, a move that will give him access to the vault of the Paris Bank.

Loretta blackmails Vidoqc, asking him to give up Therese and rekindle their relationship. But this leads to a chain of events culminating in a deadly struggle at a merry-go-round in the woodlands, the exact same place where Therese revealed she knew everything about Vidocq’s shady past.

DoP Eugen Schuftan (1983-1977), a legend who shot Menschen am Sonntag and early Hitchcock features, goes uncredited, with Guy Rose getting the only camerawork mention. Schuftan gives the feature a decisively European look reminiscent of Max Ophuls’ pre-war fare. Hans Eisler’s score echoes this arrestingly stylish look and Hungarian born producer Emeric Pressburger makes up the team whose roots were cultured in the old continent before the rise of fascism.

George Sanders is brilliant as the ambivalent anti-hero, the same goes for Carole Landis who, in one of her scenes as a chanteuse, very much impersonates Marlene Dietrich in Der Blaue Engel. But, alas both actors had a string of unhappy relationships and would go on to commit suicide: Landis in 1948 at the age of twenty-nine and Sanders in 1972, plagued by dementia and depression. Signe Hasso on the other hand never lived up to her billing as Greta Garbo’s successor, living a long and happy life, mainly starring in TV commercials. 

Fellow émigré director Edgar Ulmer mentioned Scandal‘s sublime quality unique to Sirk’s oeuvre, that lends an ethereal touch to this romantic drama with is exquisite costumes by Norma (Koch). AS

NOW ON CURZON ONLINE AS PART OF THE COHEN VINTAGE COLLECTION

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 

 

The Case For Daniel Birt and Dylan Thomas

In his series on underrated British directors, Alan Price looks at two films from English filmmaker Daniel Birt (1907-55) who started his career in the cutting room with Channel Crossing (1933) and went on to make thrillers and TV fare before his early death at 47.

On consulting Brian McFarlane’s “The Encyclopedia of British Film” (2003) I found this entry for Daniel Birt: “It seems unlikely that anyone will try to elevate Oxford-educated Daniel Birt to auteur status but one of his films is striking enough to deserve attention.” 

That film is The Three Weird Sisters (1948), a fascinating semi-Gothic melodrama and quasi critique of capitalism, set in rural Wales. But there’s another Birt film worthy of attention: his remarkable drama No Room at the Inn (also 1948) about child evacuees of the Second World War in Northern England. 

Like McFarlane I would hesitate to call Daniel Birt an auteur, but who knows for sure? Many of his films are hard to see (From 1935 to 1956 he directed just under ten films.) The invaluable TV channel Talking Pictures has recently screened Inn. Perhaps other Birt films will materialise so we can judge him better? He’s certainly a subject for further research.

What’s also distinctive about these two films is that they were co-written by Dylan Thomas. The Welsh poet was employed to re-write dialogue and change scenes; though maybe not paid to criticise, even scorn Welsh identity, local bureaucracy and insert a fairy-tale element into one of the stories. A case for complete authorship on these collaborations begins to throw up an interesting debate between writer and director.

The Three Weird Sisters (A deliberate nod here to the three witches in Macbeth) depicts three old fashioned and elderly women (played by Nancy Price, Mary Clare and Mary Merrall) living in a decrepit mansion near a disused mining village in Wales. The former mine collapses and destroys some property. The concerned sisters wish to rebuild the houses but have no money to do so. They call on Owen (Raymond Lovell) their local businessman brother to help them. On arriving at his sisters’ place Owen refuses financial aid. The sisters then devise a plot to kill him through poisoning his drink. It fails, so they continue on him whilst also attempting to murder Owen’s secretary Claire (Nova Pilbeam) the heir to his fortune.

The plot indicates some obvious shaky melodramatics yet The Three Weird Sisters keeps shifting tone: from a socialist condemnation of the wealthy, a horror comedy, a thriller and a romance between the secretary and the local doctor. On top of this are the machinations of the sisters, controlled by the blind Gertrude, needing to preserve their family name and traditions whatever the cost. Birt and Thomas’s switching from the creepy, the romantic and the political meshes quite well, giving the film an odd originality, while Birt’s visual style often reveals a deft eye for detail and imagery – numerous shots of the sisters on a rickety staircase, as unpredictable as themselves, hold your attention. 

The film’s political rant is a denunciation of the Welsh nation and an attack on the inequality of a political system that exploited the village for coal, and then deserted it. One strange but memorable scene is worth describing; Nova Pilbeam flees the house to inform the local police of the sisters’ intentions. On receiving short shrift from the local constabulary she leaves to find Mabli Hughes (Hugh Griffiths) an out-of-work miner. He’s seated on a little hill near the neglected mine, addressing a group of four dogs, as if to rouse the workers against the system. “Here in Cumblast all social evils are condensed and crystallised. This one village may be regarded as the hub, the nucleus of a microcosm, of all Pluto-democratic, inevitable inequality.” That’s quite a hyperbolic mouthful and not the kind of dialogue you’d normally expect to find in a British film of the late 1940s. Understandably the secretary considers the miner’s speech to be sincere (if half-crazy) and quickly realises he’s reluctant to help her.

Although Dylan Thomas’s script is frequently perversely opinionated, it becomes the glue that holds the film together: best realised in the determined character of the secretary and Nova Pilbeam brings great conviction to her role. It’s the best written and least stereotyped part in The Three Weird Sisters. She’s feisty in her attempt to bring some common sense and order amidst the gothic strains of the film’s plot. Like her performance, when a young girl, in Hitchcock’s first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1932) Pilbeam may appear on the surface to be ‘over-sweet’ and too posh but underneath the surface charm she’s a no-nonsense woman, confident and focused. Nova isn’t going to be put down by incompetent men and dangerous women (nearly all the female characters in The Three Weird Sisters and No Room at the Inn are more strongly realised than the men.)

A sense of the Gothic also infiltrates No Room at the Inn set in the early months of 1940. We witness atmospheric blitzed streets by the railway bridge next to a rundown house that’s definitely on the wrong side of the tracks: all lorded over by Mrs Agatha Voray (Freda Jackson) doing her damn best not to properly look after three young girl evacuees. The children live in squalor and suffer mental and physical abuse under the care of this coarse woman who invites men (local councillors and shopkeepers) for casual sex and bit of cash to bolster her shopping allowance of ration coupons. 

No Room at the Inn was adapted from a play that opened in 1945 at the Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage, London. Like the film it was very successful, causing The Daily Express in 1946 to devote considerable space to the plight of orphaned children in unchecked private homes. You could argue that by the time the film version appeared in 1948 public attention was drawn to a social problem in the manner that television did much later with Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home (1966), exposing a nationwide housing crisis. 

The character of the schoolteacher Judith Drave (Joy Shelton) is remarkable, for we have – like the secretary of The Three Weird Sisters – a force for truth-seeking that refuses to be silenced. A powerfully written and acted moment occurs when Miss Drave, who has complained about Mrs Vrang’s behaviour, is asked to give evidence at a town councillors’ meeting. They dislike Ms Drave’s assertive manner. When Mrs.Voray has her right to reply she adopts the manner of a humble woman struggling to do her best during wartime restrictions. The schoolteacher sees right through her performance. But the council members (half of whom have flirted with Voray) believe her account of things over the teacher’s. I love Dylan Thomas’s writing here. His social concern is angrily targeted at bureaucratic corruption and ineptitude. And it’s much better integrated into the plot than the politics of The Three Weird Sisters.

Like The Three Weird Sisters there are fascinating if disconcerting alterations of tone – such as the beautifully written bedtime story scene in the room of the young girl evacuees. Norma Bates (yes, not Norman, though the film has its moments of Hitchcockian darkness) who is played by Joan Dowling, re-interprets the Cinderella story in a ripe, savagely Cockney manner. She comforts the children who are desperate to escape the mean house and its mean housekeeper. It’s a spellbinding moment of Dylan Thomas poetics: a joyful spin on Cinderella, beautifully shot and executed. And its lyricism is made more poignant by intercutting with Mrs Voray in the pub getting drunk with the sailor father of one of the evacuees. 

No Room at the Inn often seems prescient of much later British films about master and slave relationships between adults and children. It recalls Jack Clayton’s woefully neglected Our Mother’s House (1967) and Andrew Birkin’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel The Cement Garden (1993). They all contain seedy and claustrophobic forces about to explode into violent revenge. Without divulging the ending of No room at the Inn I can reveal that – for the film version – Dylan Thomas was supposed to have radically changed the circumstances surrounding Mrs.Voray’s demise. And the film’s final 15 minutes turn remarkably dark and intense, avoiding histrionics, as the story inevitably descends into pathos, suspense and horror. There’s a scary What Ever Happened to Baby Jane moment when Mrs Voray, cheated by a would-be lover, returns home drunk and furious; ascends the stairs to attack the children, looking a for a moment like a demented Bette Davis.

Neither of these two films is without flaws. The ending of No Room at the Inn is too abrupt – though the story is told in one extended flashback, I felt it should have returned to its opening scenes where a now adult Norma is caught shoplifting: while Hermoine Baddeley, playing Voray’s accomplice, Mrs Waters, gives a truly terrible and grating performance. As for The Three Weird Sisters I found some of the humour, centring on grumpy brother Owen’s health, to be overplayed and though the film admirably attempts to wriggle out of its obvious ‘old dark house territory’ it doesn’t quite succeed.

Yet putting these reservations to one side what still impressed me, on a second viewing, were many of the performances. Freda Jackson brings a full-blooded intensity to the role of the selfish and uncaring Aggie Voray. She was a sensation in the play and that’s why they made a film version which launched her considerable career on stage and in the cinema. Jackson probably became a role model for actors portraying more authentic working class women. I wonder if Pat Phoenix (Elsie Tanner) of Coronation Street was influenced by her? As for all of the child actors in No Room at the Inn well they’re brilliant – especially Joan Dowling who’s street-wise confidence cannot hide her emotional damage. She deserved a prize but unfortunately the BAFTAs didn’t begin until 1954.

This is notable British Cinema of 1948. And these two strange and atypical productions struck me as remarkably individual for their time. Whether it was Daniel Birt or Dylan Thomas who was most responsible for their power I’ll leave you to decide. Neither film is on DVD. You can see No Room at the Inn on ‘Talking Pictures’ (should be up for another screening soon.) As for The Three Weird Sisters, that can only be found as a rough, but still watchable copy, on YouTube. Alan Price.

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES | JUNE 2020

 

   

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

A Rainy Day in New York (2019) **** Streaming

Dir: Woody Allen | Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Liev Schreiber | Comedy 92’

Woody Allen films are like proverbial buses: if you miss one another is sure to come along soon after, but here’s one you won’t want to miss with its bittersweet riff on the mystery of love and attraction.

A Rainy Day In New York is a typical Woody Allen comedy that follows two young lovers on the verge of graduation. Elle Fanning (Ashleigh) and Timothee Chalamet (Gatsby) provide fabulous entertainment as a couple of loved up Ivy Leaguers whose weekend trip to Manhattan goes pear-shaped. If you’re a Woody Allen you won’t be disappointed – this is a reliable, but not outstanding, largely to casting flaws.  But there’s so much energy, and Chalamet and Fanning exude charm in spades: she the excitable ingenue, he the subversive and surprisingly deep-thinking rich boy. The film has proved a global success on the  since its digital release.

Situational comedy wise the storyline keeps on rolling as it gathers momentum, at times feeling rather like Max Ophuls’ La Ronde, and the farce element is strong in satirising American privilege and celebrity culture along with the nouveau riche. Veteran DoP Vittorio Storaro (Wonder Wheel) assures another good-looking watch, whether it’s sunny or raining.

The plot is simple: budding journo’ Ashleigh has been granted a celebrity interview with world weary film director Rolland Pollard (Liev Schreiber). In her excitement to secure an unexpected scoop with the troubled auteur she misses a romantic lunch planned by Gatsby, and then finds herself entrancing both the film’s writer (Law) and the main star Francesco Vega (Diego Luna). Leaving a swanky nightclub on Vega’s arm, she is captured by the celebrity news channels who announce her as his new lover, as Gatsby watches on horrified, and annoyed. This clever indictment of fake news also gives Woody a chance to hit back at unfounded rumours surrounding his own love life, in the light of the #metoo narrative. Meanwhile lovelorn Gatsby runs into the hard-edged sister of a girl he once dated (Selena Gomez as Shannon) who invites him to be her love interest in a short film shoot involving a kiss. But the course to true love never runs smoothly and Gatsby has his overbearing mother (Cherry Jones) to contend with, and mothers are often the most difficult women to satisfy in a man’s life.

Chalamet and Fanning’s star turns aside, there are vignettes from an unrecognisable Jude Law as a screenwriter Ted, and Rebecca Hall as his ex. Cherry Jones is captivating as Gatsby’s mother who sheds a light on his character’s subversiveness. Woody subverts expectations in a romcom where the morally questionable characters are the women rather than the men. There is a cheating wife, the morally questionable young woman, and the savvy adventuress – the only sleazy ball  is Vega’s Latin lover, the other males are rather tortured souls such as Gatsby friend Alvin played by an insignificant Ben Warheit. Selena Gomez is one-dimensional as the ‘New York bitch’, her onscreen chemistry with Gatsby so unconvincing it actually ruins the film’s denouement.

Woody Allen’s is master storyteller who enjoys spinning a romantic yarn and sticking to his own tried and trusted formula. He’ll be remembered for his endearing comedies and for being one of the few New Yorker directors who actually moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan – rather than the other way round. MT

A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK is on release on 5 JUNE 2020


 

Shiraz (1928) ***** We Are One Festival

Dir: Franz Osten | Writer: W Burton based on a play by Niranjan Pal | Cast: Himansu Rai, Enakshi Rama Rau, Charu Roy, Seeta Devi | 97′ | Silent | Drama

SHIRAZ: A ROMANCE OF INDIA is a rare marvel of silent film. This dazzling pre-talkies spectacle was directed by Franz Osten and stars Bengali actor Himansu Rai who also produced the film from an original play by Niranjan Pal. Shot entirely in India with a cast of 50,000 and in natural light, the parable imagines the events leading to the creation of one of India’s most iconic buildings The Taj Mahal, a monument to a Moghul Empire to honour a dead queen.

Shiraz is a fictitious character, the son of a local potter who rescues a baby girl from the wreckage of a caravan laden with treasures, ambushed while transporting her mother, a princess. Shiraz is unaware of Selima’s royal blood and he falls madly in love with her as the two grow up in their simple surroundings, until she is kidnapped and sold to Prince Khurram of Agra (a sultry Charu Roy). Shiraz then risks his life to be near her in Agra as the Prince also falls for her charms.

SHIRAZ forms part of a trilogy of surviving films all made on location in India by Rai and his director Osten. Light of Asia (Prem Sanyas, 1926) and A Throw of Dice (Prapancha Pash, 1929) complete the trio intended to launch an east/west partnership bringing quality films to India, all based on Indian classical legend or history, and featuring an all-Indian cast in magnificent locations. Apart from the gripping storyline, there is the rarity value of a sophisticated silent feature made outside the major producing nations in an era where Indian cinema was not yet the powerhouse it would become. Rai makes for a convincing central character as the modest Shiraz, with a gently shimmering Enakshi Rama Rau as Selima. Seeta Devi stars in all three films, and here plays the beguiling but scheming courtesan Dalia, determined to get her revenge on Selima’s charms.

Apart from being gorgeously sensual (there is a highly avantgarde kissing scene ) and gripping throughout, SHIRAZ is also an important film in that it united the expertise of three countries: Rai’s Great Eastern Indian Corporation; UK’s British Instructional Films (who also produced Anthony Asquith’s Shooting Stars and Underground in 1928) and the German Emelka Film company. Contemporary sources tell of “a serious attempt to bring India to the screen”. Attention to detail was paramount with an historical expert overseeing the sumptuous costumes, furnishings and priceless jewels that sparkle within the Fort of Agra and its palatial surroundings. Glowing in silky black and white SHIRAZ is one of the truly magical films in recent memory. MT

SHIRAZ IS PART OF WE ARE ONE A FESTIVAL CELEBRATING SOLIDARITY FROM THE FILM COMMUNITY | BFI PLAYER

 

 

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 Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) **** BfiPlayer

Dir: Val Guest | Wri: Wolf Mankowitz | Cast: Edward Judd, Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Michael Goodliffe, Bernard Braden | Fantasy Sci-Fi | US 96′

Valmond Maurice Guest (1911-2006) was an English film director and screenwriter who started his career on the British stage and in early sound films. He wrote over 70 scripts many of which he also directed, developing a versatile talent for making quality genre fare on a limited budget (Hell is a City, Casino Royale, The Boys in Blue). But Guest was best known for his Hammer horror pictures The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass II, and Sci-Fis The Day the Earth Caught Fire and 80,000 Suspects which nowadays provide a fascinating snapshot of London and Bath in the early Sixties. Shot luminously in black and white CinemaScope the film incorporates archive footage that feels surprisingly effective with views of Battersea Power Station and London Bridge. A brief radio clip from a soundalike PM Harold MacMillan adds to the fun.

The central theme of this energetic and optimistic fantasy thriller is nuclear paranoia that plays out in flashback in the Fleet Street offices of the Daily Express newspaper reporting on a crisis involving H-bombs tests in Russia and the US, causing the titling of the Earth and leading to cyclones, dangerously rising temperatures, and a lack of water with fears of a typhus epidemic : “and what about all this extra Polar ice that’s melting”  (a prescient reference to global warming).

The opening scenes rapidly sketch out the febrile tension in the air and introduce us to the voluable characters involved through some extremely zippy dialogue between science editor Leo McKern, Bernard Braden, and bibulous reporter Peter Stenning (Edward Judd), who then falls for savvy telephonist Jeannie Craig (Janet Munro) who gives him the firm brush off. The real-life Express editor is played rather woodenly by Arthur Christiansen. There’s even an uncredited vignette featuring Michael Caine as a traffic officer – his voice is unmistakable.

NOW ON Bfi Player

Ran (1985) ***** BfiPlayer | Japan 2020

Dir.: Akira Kurosawa; Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, Mieko Miyazaki, Mansei Nomura, HisashiI Igawa, Peter, Masayuki Yui; France/Japan 1984/85, 162min.

Director/co-writer Akira Kurosawa was seventy-five when he finished his final epic action drama Ran (Chaos), loosely based on Shakespeare’s King Lear, using elements of Japanese theatre it features epic scenes of battle and a rousing score by Toru Takemitsu. The script had been ten years in the writing and he still needed a Japanese producer for the twelve million dollar project. Finally, Frenchman Serge Silberman took the risk, and shooting started in June 1984 involving 1,400 extras (all with complete body armour) and 200 horses. Filming was dominated by the loss of sound designer Fumio Yamoguchi, and Kurosawa’s wife Yoko Yaguchi at the age of sixty-three. But the movie premiered at the first Tokyo Film Festival in May 1985, in the absence of the director.

In medieval Japan Hidetora (Nakadai) is an ageing warlord keen to retire from public life and leave his empire to his three sons Taro, (Terao), Jiro (Nezu) and Saburo (Ryu), the youngest and his father’s favourite. Saburo warns father that the brothers intend to start a war for total domination over him, but Hidetora fails to recognise the elder brothers’ resentments, and Saburo is banished for refusing the pledge of allegiance. As Saburo predicted, his older siblings soon take control leaving the old warlord basically homeless. Jiro and Taro’s wives Kaede (Harada) and Lady Sue (Miyazaki) have not forgotten Hidetora’s abusive reign of power that led to the genocide of Kaede’s family, and the blinding of Lady Sue’s brother, and Kaede is still keen on revenge. After a battle between Saburo and Jiro’s forces, the youngest prince is killed by a sniper. Hidetora dies from grief. Kaede then forces Jiro to kill Lady Sue and marry her instead. But after Lady Sue is killed by one of Jiro’s assassins, Kurogane (Igawa), Jiro’s loyal chief counsel and military chief decapitates Kaede. We are left with Kyomani the Fool (Peter) contemplating the scene of death and destruction. 

Kurosawa combined King Lear with a Japanese medieval epic. The feature, shot by Takao Saito and Asakazu Nakai, is an absolute knockout in visual terms. Kurosawa capitalises on his aesthetic brilliance with Kagemusha, to create something quite magnificent with the use of static cameras that leave the audience in almost in command of the battle scenes, are the warriors fight on. Production designer Emi Wada, who won an Oscar (1986) for his mastery  – Kurosawa lost out to Sidney Pollack’s Out of Africa in an exceptional year the saw Hector Babenco, John Huston, and Peter Weir in the competition line-up.

It is easy to envisage Kurosawa at this point in his career very much identifying with the King Lear figure – he was shunted around in his own country, where his features were seen as old-fashioned – suffering the same fate as Ozu decades earlier. Kurosawa had just shot four films in the last twenty years in 1985 – he was a marginal figure in Japan. Consequently, Ran only just broke even in Japan, but was much more successful in Europe and the USA – today’s total box-office is 337 Million $ and rising. Kurosawa’s influence on Western cinema is enormous: Hidden Fortress would inspire Star Wars, The Seven Samurai were re-made as the The Magnificent Seven and Sanjuro was transformed by Eastwood into the Italo-Western A Fistful of Dollar and For a few Dollar More. But the same goes for Kurosawa’s ‘borrowings’: Apart from Ran there is Throne of Blood (Macbeth), Lower Depth (from Gorki). The Idiot (from Dostoyevsky) and Ed McBains police thriller adapted by Kurosawa as High and Low.  Unlike Lear, Kurosawa leaves behind a treasure trove of achievements: world cinema would not be the same without him. AS

NOW ON BFiPlayer in celebration of JAPAN 2020 

I Walked With a Zombie (1943) **** BBCiPlayer

Cast: James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway, Edith Barrett, James Bell, Christine Gordon, Teresa Harris, Sir Lancelot | USA Fantasy Drama 70′

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jacques Tourneur was another master of shadow-play. It lends a chiaroscuro delicacy to this sultry Caribbean take on Jane Eyre that sees a tormented soul suffer in an atmospheric zombie outing made in the same year as The Leopard Man in the RKO studios in Hollywood .

Well aware of the high-grossing heft of the horror genre, RKO has already coined the movie’s title but producer Van Lewton, who had been hired by the studio to pioneer a line of horror outings, had something much more intriguing in mind than a schlocky shocker. Ironically the producer was a dreamer, whereas the director was very much the pragmatist, and his second collaboration the Jacques Tourneur, and DoP J Roy Hunt, is a lushly surreal and nuanced arthouse treasure that is so much more beguiling than its name initially suggests.

While war was raging in Europe the characters in the tropical plantation of St Sebastian are experiencing unease of a different kind, that that affects the mind as well as the body. Naive Canadian nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) arrives on the island to take up a position with the Holland family, and is immediately drawn to the masterful charms of Paul Holland (Tom Conway), her Mr Rochester-like employer. At nightfall Tourneur’s shadowplay casts an alluring spell over the island, and Betsy’s catatonic charge (Jessica Holland) floats by in a flowing white gown. She makes for a particularly sinister anti-heroine with her extreme height and sublime expression (Christine Gordon never says a word but is sublime all the same).

Betsy also has to contend with Holland’s alcoholic half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison), and his missionary-style mother Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett). This is clearly another dysfunctional family, and it soon transpires that Wesley and Jessica have had an affair, and the moralistic Betsy sees it as her divine duty to bring Holland and Jessica back together, as an act of higher love on her part. But it’s not a straightforward as it all seems: This no Canadian backwater, but the exotic West Indies where witch doctors and voodoo priests hold sway. And Jessica is under their powerful influence, reduced to a Zombie and lured away from the confines of the Holland estate and into the savage jungles beyond. Betsy’s St Sebastian maid, Alma (Teresa Harris), suggests taking Jessica to the local voodoo priest, but this only leads to tragedy ironically releasing Paul from his marital torment. The characterisations are surprisingly complex given the era, Tom Conway’s Paul demonstrating tremendous insight into his male condition avoiding racism or toxic masculinity, and the islanders are seen as more than just colonial cyphers, Teresa Harris makes an appealing Alma and Darby Jones projects a really affecting malevolence as Carrefour.

Ultimately though Tourneur’s direction is the star turn here: he creates exquisite visual magic in the windswept and eerie locations, so much so that Curt Siodmak’s enigmatic outcome feels almost irrelevant. And the pounding score of drums adds just the right touch of exotic danger to make this one of the most poetic and ravishing zombie films ever made. MT

NOW ON BBCiPLAYER

 

 

The Last Full Measure (2018) *** Digital

Dir: Tod Robinson | Action Drama, US 116′

As hero melodramas go The Last Full Measure slips down easily and looks slick and professional with a quality cast of William Hurt, Linus Roche, Samuel L Jackson and Diane Ladd, fitting the bill for midweek evening entertainment. Christopher Plummer also adds touch of class but can’t lift this out of the also ran section despite the movie’s scenic locations in the lush forests of Costa Rica and electrifying combat scenes.

The hero in question is paratrooper William H. Pitsenbarger who in April 1966 flew a helicopter into a fire in order to treat the wounded soldiers, and stay with them throughout their ordeal even during a sustained attack from the Viet Cong when he took a fatal bullet from a sniper, after saving at least 60 men. He was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross, and much later also garnered Medal of Honour and promoted to Staff Sergeant.

Over thirty years later in 1999, puppy-faced Defence Department executive Scott Huffman (Stan) is tasked with finding out why Pitsenbarger did not get the upgrade in the immediate aftermath, and this mission obviously involves talking to other veterans who served at the time and who share Pitsenbarger’s story – Samuel L. Jackson; Ed Harris; Jon Savage and even Peter Fonda (in his Swanson at 79).

But this is underwhelming and cliched ridden stuff given the importance of the subject matter. And even the scenes involved with his parents (Plummer and Ladd) fail to be moving, and are full of well worn chestnuts (“you can’t teach your children values) and generic tributes which just feel banal, (and weird phrases like “he tapped his cleats for luck, before he went up to bed”). These scenes are naturally accompanied by cheesy music. All this combines with flashbacks to the battlefield which show random Vietnamese women soldiers shooting on US troops.

Todd Robinson is best known for White Squall. But sadly this film has nothing really exciting to bring to a party that is already full of ambitious and affecting stories, many of them from Vietnam. Although naturally the fact that the soldier’s action was impressive now, and in retrospect, there’s a remoteness to the treatment that makes it feel bland, despite its starry cast of veterans. MT

RELEASED DIGITALLY FROM on all major platforms | 1st June 2020

 

 

 

Curse of the Cat People (1944) **** BBC iPlayer

Dir.: Robert Wise, Gunther von Fritsch; Cast: Ann Carter, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Simone Simon, Julia Dean, Elizabeth Russell, Eve March); USA 1944, 68 min.

The Curse of the Cat People launched Robert Wise and Austro-Hungarian Gunter von Fritsch as directors. Wise would make a further 38 features in a career which went on until 1989, winning two Oscars for Sound of Music and West Side Story. Von Fritsch, would be less prolific: he managed to complete half the film in the allotted 18 days of the schedule, but would only occupy the director’s chair on three more occasions before a TV career beckoned, and retirement in 1970.

Most people agree that not calling the feature The Curse of the Cat People and selling it as a sequel to the classic Cat People (1942), would have enhanced the fantasy thriller’s reputation. But it was an opportunity for Val Lewton to re-unite writer de Witt Bodeen, cameraman Nicolas Musuraca, as well the actors Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph and Elizabeth Russell from Cat People so the outcome was a done deal:  Hollywood’s way of selling sequels was already long established. The Curse references events from Cat People, but is anything but a horror movie, even though it drifts that way in the end. Overall Curse is much nearer to Lewton’s production of Ghost Ship, and ironically was set in a place called Sleepy Hollow.

Curse begins seven years after the tragic events of Cat People: Oliver Reed (Smith) and his workmate Alice Reed (Randolph) have a six-year old daughter Amy (Carter). The family lives in rural New England, where Amy is at prep school. She has the tendency to daydream, rather like his first wife Irena whose traumatic death still haunts him.  And Irena becomes Amy’s imaginary friend, after Oliver burns her photos to obliterate his past. Amy wanders into the gloomy mansion of ageing actor Julia Farren (Dean) and her daughter Barbara (Russell), and befriends them after being rejected by her school chums. But Julia had trouble in excepting that Barbara is her daughter, showing more empathy with Amy, and causing Barbara to mutter “I will kill the brat, if she appears again”. After the Amy gets her first (off-screen) ‘spanking’ from her father over her fantasy of Irena (Simon) appearing to her in the garden, the little girl runs away into woods and meets Barbara who is only too willing to make her promise come true.

DoP Nicholas Musuraca creates a parallel universe to that of Cat People. Although the panther scenes there intrude into a world of hyper-realism shared by Oliver and Alice share, that leaves Irena as the outsider. Curse shows a family which looks perfectly normal to the outside, but is crippled by Oliver’s inability to come to terms with the past. Then, there is the voice of reason that comes courtesy of Amy’s teacher Mrs. Callaghan (March), Oliver rejecting her rather modern approach. Irena is much more benign fantasy than Cat People‘s Panther. In analytical terms, Irena is a much better mother than the rational Alice, who, like her husband, has not worked through the events leading to her marriage with Oliver: she is deeply suspicious that Oliver is still under Irena’s spell, and therefore punishes Amy, just to show just the opposite. Furthermore, the Irena sequences in Curse are the total inversion of its predecessor: Irena here is about peace and harmony, while her Panther ego was just the opposite. Curse also demonstrates that Oliver has not learned very much from his experience with Irena: he still  not able to show empathy for those who do not share his “pragmatic” approach to life. His inability to realise that emotions are the most important qualities human’s possess, costs Irena her, and now threatens that of his daughter.

When all is said and done, Curse of the Cat People is anything but a sequel to Cat People: it’s a story about loneliness, repression and denial – both the Farrens and the Reeds have much more I common than at first glance. AS

NOW ON BBC iPlayer

 

    

Human Rights Watch Festival 2020 | Now Online


The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is about documentaries and dramas that celebrate courageous people and those affected by Human Rights issues in their countries – which this year include: Armenia, Australia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Guatemala, Germany, Iran, Macedonia, Mexico, Peru, Romania, the United States, and Vietnam. Ten of the 14 films selected for this 24th edition are directed by women.

In this latest online London Edition nine (out of 14) films will be streamed to UK audiences from 22 May until 5 June and each film has a live Q&A webinar discussion scheduled. For anyone wanting to get that festival feeling of watching a film followed immediately by a discussion, the festival has recommended timings to start streaming each film title, details here:

https://ff.hrw.org/london-digital-edition. Otherwise there is also a handy list of the free live Q&A’s here:

https://ff.hrw.org/venueinfo/london-digital-edition

Here are some of this year’s highlights:

Shot entirely on three mobile phones, MIDNIGHT TRAVELER follows the traumatic journey of Afghan filmmaker Hassan Fazili as he and his family escape across Europe from their homeland. It is not their choice to flee, and they are not doing so on economic grounds. Hassan’s life is in danger from the Taliban due to a fatwah.
Indigenous rights come under the spotlight in Claudia Sparrow’s doc MAXIMA which has been a favourite for audiences all over the festival circuit. It tells the story of Máxima Acuña (winner of the 2016 environmental Goldman Prize) a free-spirited and courageous woman who owns a small, remote plot in the Peruvian Highlands near another owned by one the world’s largest gold-mining corporations. The charismatic and indomitable Maxima is determined to preserve the rights of the locals in this stunning natural environment. (not in online selection)
China’s now-defunct ‘one only’ child policy has left millions of single women under immense social pressures to marry quickly, or be rejected by society. This crisis is explored in depth through the lives of three women in Hilla Medalia and Shosh Shlam’s LEFTOVER WOMEN (2019) that won the Best Director and Editing prizes at the Tel Aviv documentary festival DocAviv last year.

When she was 12 years old, the actress and filmmaker Maryam Zaree found out that she was one of many babies born inside Evin, Iran’s notorious political prison; Maryam’s parents were imprisoned shortly after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. BORN IN EVIN cuts to the chase with an appealing and lyrical approach that sees Zaree confronting decades of silence in her family to understand the impact of trauma on the bodies and souls of survivors and their children.

As witnesses of the genocide of over 200,000 indigenous people, the Mayan women of Guatemala act as a bridge between the past and present in César Diaz’ Caméra d’Or-winning debut drama, OUR MOTHERS which follows Ernesto, a young forensic anthropologist who is tasked with identifying missing victims of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war. While documenting the account of an elder Mayan woman searching for the remains of her husband, Ernesto believes he might have found a lead that will guide him to his own father, a guerrillero who disappeared during the war. (Not in selection)

Rubaiyat Hossain’s impressive debut drama, MADE IN BANGLADESH, is the final film on Friday, 20 March. Best known for her 2011 film Meherjaan (2011) the director draws on her own life experience as a women’s rights activist, shining a light on the oppressive conditions in the clothing industry through the story of Shimu and her efforts to create a trade union against all odds. The screening will be followed by an in-depth discussion with Rubaiyat Hossain and special guests.

The films are streaming through CURZON HOME CINEMA and the cost is £7.99 for the majority. The Q&As are free.

 

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

Stop Making Sense (1984) **** Bfi Player

Dir: Jonathan Demme | With David Byrne and Talking Heads |Biopic, 84′
A musical biopic in the best sense of the word. In Hollywood December 1983, 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 tThis 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
NOW ON BFI PLAYER
https://youtu.be/yCXT5Fs-V10

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

The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (1952) **** Blu-ray

Dir: Yasujiro Ozu | Cast: Shin Saburi, Michiyo Kogure, Koji Tsuruta, Chishu Ryu | Japan, Drama 116′

The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice tells the story of a marriage slowly imploding as Japan shifts into the modern world from its pre war traditions.

Like many luminaries of the last century Japanese legend Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) experienced some milestones – from the Manchurian Invasion to the Second World War and the atomic bombs that ruined Japan on an epic scale. But the director absorbed all this tragedy and distilled it into gentle domestic dramas reflecting on the virtues of humanity and the subtleties of relationships in family life as seen in Tokyo Story (1953) and Good Morning (1959).

The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (1952) cleverly skirted round the censors in telling a story of one family unable to overcome the shift from the traditional to the contemporary. Taeko Satake (Michiyo Kogure) comes from a wealthy family but her marriage to working class husband Mokichi (Shin Saburi) is in trouble, her refined ways and preference for wearing kimonos is at odds with his more down to earth attitudes, and the couple have no children to keep them together. During a spa trip with friends she voices her feelings of disenchantment. Meanwhile, her niece Setsuko (Keiko Tsushima) expresses her own desires to make a break from tradition dressing in the latest fashions and resisting her aunt’s attempts at matchmaking, pointing out how her own arranged marriage is clearly not the answer.

All this is handled with the lightness of touch and underlying humour so familiar to Ozu’s films. The tone is upbeat and there is still an affectionate playfulness to the couple’s discord with the usual daily tiffs that speak volumes about their troubled relationship. Taeko prefers cultural pursuits such as the  kabuki theatre while Mokichi is more at home riding his bicycle. But they eventually reach a compromise over a simple meal of green tea over rice they prepare together late at night after their maids have gone off duty. Meanwhile Setsuko finds a new boyfriend in the shape of Noburu, a young friend of Mokichi. The final scene is a cleverly enigmatic depiction of the one of the film’s pivotal themes. We see Setsuko running away from her lover down a Tokyo street: is she rejecting the idea of marriage or simply playing hard to get? Underlying tensions are teased out delicately in this graceful domestic drama from the Japanese master. MT

Blu-ray/DVD release on 18 May 2020 and simultaneously available to stream or buy via iTunes and Amazon Prime. On BFI Player from 5 June 2020 within a collection of 25 Yasujirô Ozu films released on BFI Player’s Subscription service as part of JAPAN 2020, a major new BFI season launching this month (more details below)

Curtiz (2019) *** NETFLIX

Dir.: Tamas Yvan Topolanzky; Cast: Ferenc Lengyel, Evelin Dobos, Andrew Hefler, Scott Alexander Young, Declan Hannigan, Nicolett Barabas, Caroline Boulton, Christopher Krieg; Hungary 2018, 98 min.

The shooting of Casablanca, one of the most iconic Hollywood features, is the centrepiece of this ambitious debut drama from Swiss-Hungarian writer/director Tamas Yvan Topolanzky. The result is not a disaster, but underwhelming: Curtiz will be best remembered for making us want to see the 1942 classic again, and with new eyes. The film also explores the troubled relationship between Curtiz and his daughter, which was never resolved (according to the final credits).

Born in Budapest in 1886 as Mano Kaminer, Michael Curtiz arrived in Hollywood in 1926 and would direct a string of masterpieces: The Adventures of Robin Hood and Mildred Pierce being the most outstanding in a career that would showcase his talents across the genres, with 177 feature films. Casablanca, for which he won his only Oscar, was bedevilled from the very beginning. Studio boss Jack L. Warner (Hefler) and producer Hal B. Wallis (Young) had a fight on their hands to keep Curtiz and Johnson (Hannigan), the censorship head, from tearing each other’s heads off. Curtiz was a mixture of fellow Austro-Hungarian directors Erich von Stroheim and Otto Preminger. But Warner was a bottom line man (“I don’t want it great. I want it Tuesday”), and the spiralling production budget made him concerned that Bogart and Bergman would walk away – they were critical of the  script. Curtiz (“Don’t talk to me when I am interrupting) was a well known womaniser and but his grasp of English led to some hilarious misunderstandings during the making of Casablanca: there is an amusing interlude when the prop master misinterprets Curtiz’ request for ‘puddles’ during the rainy scene at the Gare de Lyon, bringing five poodles on the set, amid much consternation. But the joke was on Curtiz who also had a long running argument with actor Conrad Veidt (Krieg), a German emigrant who often cast as a Nazi; but vehemently insisting that not all Germans were Nazis, a fair point.

The director flagrantly cheated on his third wife Bess Meredyth (Barabas), an accomplished actor and writer, seducing young women, by using his director star power. The arrival of his daughter Kitty (Dobos), from an earlier marriage in Hungary, made things even more complicated. In a very ugly scene, we see see Wallis trying to rape Kitty, unaware she is Curtiz’ daughter. The director (“Magic happens on the casting couch”) was also disinclined to help his sister leave a Hungarian ghetto. She and her family were eventually deported to Auschwitz, she was the only survivor. Finally, we come to the end of shooting, when the small cardboard plane, which will carry Elsa and Laszlo to the USA, is half hidden in fog and surrounded by Lilliputian soldiers, to make it look bigger.

Curtiz is stylishly shot by DoP Zoltan Devenyi, his roving camera often mimicking the style of Christian Matras in La Ronde: the re-imagining of the original black-and-white photography is stunning, although the crane and circular rotation shots are overdone. This is a film where the aesthetics beat out a script clinging to the sensational, and parlously uncritical of any sexism. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX

 

   

Love and Death on Long Island (1997) **** Bfi Player

Dir: Richard Kwietniowski | Cast: John Hurt, Jason Priestley, Sheila Hancock |  drama, Canada, UK 93′

John Hurt is the reason to watch this inventive social satire set in Nova Scotia, Canada. Age almost always trumps beauty if the older party has style and charisma – and Hurt has this in spades when he plays a raddled English writer who falls under the spell of an American teen-movie star in the shape of Jason Priestly in Richard Kwietniowski’s award-wining sophomore drama, which he adapts with wit and verve from the novel by Gilbert Adair.

Crumpled but confident widower Giles De’Ath (Hurt) is long in the tooth, but totally naive to the newfound gadgets of modern life such as the latest TV and video scene. He discovers the good-looking young actor Ronnie Bostock (Priestley) who is setting the night of fire for teenage viewers (a kind of poor man’s version of Timothée Chalamet), and who opens his eyes to all kinds of wonderful possibilities when Giles accidentally buys a cinema ticket to the wrong screening: “This isn’t E.M Forster!” he exclaims, but he is transfixed to his seat by the appearance on screen of Ronnie Bostock in a film called . “Hotpants College 2,”.

Giles is smitten and gradually works his way through the Bostok ‘ouevre’ in his local video stores, including such outing as “TexMex”, emerging as a rather scuzzy upperclass roué. Eventually he sets off across the pond in search of his unlikely crush whom he tracks down near the Hamptons.

Ronnie awakens Giles’ own desires and broadens his horizons as a muse who also stands to benefit from the connection. Like most great relationships – it offers a win win opportunity that beats as it sweeps – Ronnie benefitting from Giles’ superior knowledge with a chance to brush up his own credentials; his girlfriend Audrey (Lowei) completing the trio.

The film widens into a social commentary on America with its modern day gods: trainers and takeaway pizzas; and the detail is so accurate it actually adds to the dramatic heft. But when Ronnie eventually appears in the flesh, he pales in comparison to Giles’ suave elan –  and it’s here that Hurt’s superior acting skills also gain the upper hand – exposing their different worlds with startling clarity, but providing much mirth into the bargain. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON Bfi Player 

 

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  

Eve (Eva) (1962) **** Prime

Dir.: Joseph Losey; Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Stanley Baker, Virna Lisi, Giorgio Albertazzi; France/Italy 1962, 116′.

Jean-Luc Godard was originally slated to film this classic paperback hit from James Hadley Chase, whose novels provided rich dramatic pickings for the big screen (around 50 were filmed). The Franco-Swiss director wanted Richard Burton as his leading man, but it was another Welsh actor, Stanley Baker, who finally stepped up to the plate and his choice of helmer was Joseph Losey. And it was a memorable one.

Stanley Baker had already triumphed as a saturnine but alluring tough guy in Losey’s Blind Date (1959) and The Criminal (1960) the two developing a well-oiled working relationship, so Baker had no problem selling him to the producers, Raymond and Robert Hakim. Jeanne Moreau manages to tease out Baker’s raw romantic credentials in the stylish thriller, but Chase’s pulp fiction style sat uneasily with Losey and his two scriptwriters Hugo Butler and Evan Jones – Losey eventually falling out with his long term friend Jones, who had also been a victim of the HUAC witch hunt. The result was a critical and financial disaster – but has stood the test of time, Eva now being one of the cornerstones of Losey’s oeuvre – and also his personal favourite.

Eva begins with a prologue: Jeanne Moreau sailing by on a water taxi in a wintry Venice. A mournful trumpet prepares us for the gloomy outcome. The credits roll and we see Eva approaching Harry’s bar, where Tyvian Jones (Baker) holds court, telling the story of his brother, a Welsh miner (like himself). He is accosted by Branco (Albertazzi), the producer of the film adaptation of Tyvian’s novel: it is the second anniversary of the suicide of Tyvian’s Italian wife Francesca (Lisi), whom Branco loved.

Cut to Venice Film Festival two years previously, when Tyvian is seen water-skiing, as Eva looks on. Francesca is madly in love with her Welshman fiance, who is too busy to celebrate the success of the film version of his novel. A rainstorm brings Eva into Tyvian’s life: she and her client force entry into into the writer’s rented hideaway on the island of Torcello. Eva makes herself at home in the bedroom – to Billy Hollidays’ Willow, Weep for Me – and later takes a bath. When Tyvian enters she shrugs her shoulders nonchalantly, ignoring him. The writer throws out the client, thus entering a relationship which will destroy him – even though Eva tells him she is only in it for the money. But after Tyvian remarks: “let’s see, what you can do”, she knocks him out with a huge glass ashtray.

Tyvian is already engaged to the charming Francesca (a delicate Virna Lisi) but he becomes mesmerised by Moreau’s Eva who slowly ensnares him – it’s a magical performance from Moreau but Baker is equally enthralling. The Hakim Brothers cut the 155-minute version, and withdrew the feature from Venice Film Festival. A later cut shredded even more of the storyline, leaving just a 100-minute feature at the premiere in 1963.

How much Losey himself was involved is still a question. But there is much to admire: Michel Legrand’s jazzy score, andparticularly DoP Gianni Di Vinanzo’s sparkling black-and-white images of Venice and Rome. There are also intricate interior shots, using the mirrors in Eva’s apartment to show the compelling interplay between the lovers. In The Servant, Losey’s next feature, it was James Fox’s turn to be caught in the mirrors of his supercilious superiority. The only difference between the two films is that Robin Maugham’s book and Harold Pinter’s script for The Servant were far superior to the Chase/Butler-Jones version of Eve. When all is said and done, Losey’s original film far outstrips Benoit Jacquot’s 2018 remake, and not even Isabelle Huppert can save that pale rider. MT

ON PRIME VIDEO

 

 

 

 

 

Testimony (1987) ***** Streaming

Dir.: Tony Palmer; Cast: Ben Kingsley, Sherry Baines, Magdalen Asquith, Mark Asquith, Terence Rigby, Ronald Pickup, John Shrapnel, Robert Stephens; UK 1987/8, 151′.

British director Tony Palmer (Bird on a Wire) has an impressive track record, mostly connected to music, and particularly composers. His portrait of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) is easily his masterpiece. Although Palmer is criticised for basing his biopic on the controversial Solomon Volkov, the aesthetic brilliance of the feature, and an imaginative script by David Rudkin produce a feast for ears and eyes. This tour de force is crowned with Ben Kingsley as a brilliant Shostakovich, DoP Nic Knowland (The Duke of Burgundy) producing grainy black and white images, which are often not discernible from the archive footage of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, or the quotes from early Eisenstein films.

Palmer presents his film as a metaphorical duel between Shostakovich and Stalin (Rigby). Even though, in reality the two never met, and only spoke once to each other on the ‘phone, Stalin is a constant presence in the composer’s life. Married to the independent Nina (Baines), with two children, Gala and Maxim (Magdalen and Mark Asquith), Shostakovich had a rather turbulent family life. But the ordinary quarrels were forgotten at night, when the pair cuddled up in bed, listening to noises on the staircase, generally signalling some confrontation between neighbours and the Secreti Police.

The composer slept with a packed suitcase (warm clothing and toothbrush) under his bed for decades. Shostakovich’s name was on Stalin’s ever growing growing list of enemies (as was Rachmaninoff), the dictator had noted the composer’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in 1936. Stalin and his entourage had left the theatre in anger, and Shostakovich had to withdraw his Forth Symphony, simply to stay alive. He took to composing music for the cinema, and we watch him in the cutting room, discussing the score with the director. It should be said, that both Stalin and Shostakovich have much more of a physical presence than a verbal one. The composer seems often resigned, biting his tongue, whilst Stalin is never happier that when he is going though the list of artists who he can eliminate with a stroke of his pen. Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, actually called an apology of a Soviet composer for earlier mistakes, brought him back into favour. His greatest triumph was the war time composition of the 7. Symphony, the Leningrad, which got him on the cover of Time. But all this was forgotten when he (and other composers such as Prokofiev and Kachaturian) were accused by Polit-Bureau member Zhadanov (Shrapnel) at the Congress of Soviet Composers in 1948, to have written music that indulged in Formalism, avoiding any positive messages for the proletariat. But a year later, Stalin telephoned Shostakovich asking him to attend the International Peace Conference in New York. There the question of Formalism was raised again, and Shostakovich accused himself and other composers – Stravinsky was one – of the error of making music for the sake of the form. Stalin died in 1953, and Palmer added a dream sequence in which the dead Stalin visits the dying composer, who tells him: “Looking back, I see nothing but ruins, but mountains of corpses.”

There are unforgettable images: Stalin’s huge stone head rolling toward the composer, threatening to crush him. And then there is the scene with the composer on a raft, playing the piano, sinking deeper and deeper into the water, with Lenin’s sculpted head on fire. Most of the music is played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Rudolf Barshai – with all the music pieces shot in colour.

Testimony was not really a critical success at its opening but has matured into a classic, Palmer triumphing, but never again reaching the heady heights of perfection with this idiosyncratic, extravagant, essayist reflection on art and politics. AS

NOW STREAMING ONLINE    

  

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.

 

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse

Director | Cinematographer: David Bickerstaff | Producer: Phil Grabsky | 93min | Documentary | UK

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Claude Monet at Giverny

The Royal Academy’s ‘Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse’ exhibition was the first of its kind to display paintings by artists inspired by gardens. Using Claude Monet as a starting point, the exhibition explored the major role of gardens in the development of art and painting from the 1860s through to the threshold of modernism in the 1920s.

This dazzling film takes a magical journey from the gallery to the gardens, to Giverny and Seebüll that inspired some of the world’s favourite artists. It takes an in-depth look into how early twentieth century artists designed and cultivated their own gardens to explore contemporary utopian ideas and motifs of colour and form.

Director David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky are known for their art documentaries on Goya, Van Gogh and Renoir. These ‘exhibitions on film’ add a another dimension to the artists and their paintings, bringing their vibrant creations to the screen and allowing their works to travel and gain context through the valuable insight of art curators, experts, even members of the artists’ families.

Edvard Munch | Apple Tree in the Garden 1932-42

Joaquin Sorolla | Garden of the Sorolla House 1920

Monet | Water Lilies

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873

Painting the Modern Garden shows how Monet was not only a talented painter but also a horticulturalist who took inspiration from nature describing his garden as his “most beautiful masterpiece”. He owed “having become a painter to flowers”, using colour, form and latterly stripping things back to just light and reflection to give an impression of what he really saw and experienced.

Bickerstaff’s agile camerawork flits from sumptuous groupings of vivid, herbaceous perennials to gloriously discordant drifts of annuals and their painted representations in the works of Pierre Bonnard, Paul Klee, Gustave Caillebotte, Wassily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, John Singer Sargent, Camille Pisarro, Emil Nolde, Joaquin Sorolla, Berthe Morisot, Jacques Tissot, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse (to name but a few but only one Englishman!). He finally alights on the talking heads: the Royal Academy co-curator Ann Dumas explains how during the 1860s private gardens became a visual pleasure and a sanctuary for the family, rather than just a source of food. The celebrity garden designer Dan Pearson looks at how Singer Sargent and Monet conveyed their understanding and love of raising the plants to their artistic impressions of them, particularly seen in Monet’s zinging portrayal of flame rust day lilies, and Singer Sargent white asian lilies.

The film also shows how many different species were being discovered in the Orient, bringing a new dynamic vitality to classic plant pairings in garden designs. The cheeky head gardener at Giverney tells how Monet favoured clashing colours (planting purple with orange accentuates the vibrancy) in contrast to England’s ‘old-fashioned’, classic harmonious schemes – he obviously hasn’t visited many English gardens and in particular those at Great Dixter by the pioneering writer and designer Christopher Lloyd (1921-2006) who with his head gardener Fergus Garrett, whose stock in trade was strident yellow with fluorescent carmine, and other striking contrasts is at pains to point out that gardening and horticulture is often denigrated as an applied craft along with knitting or basket weaving, whereas, infact, it is a living and changing interactive art – as much as we plant and plan, nature offers a constant source of surprise, each year and season bringing up unexpected variations and results, in many ways similar to painting and filmmaking even architecture: we design but the infinite alchemy of the elements often throws up a result which is both surprising and rewarding.

The second part of Painting the Modern Garden gets out and about in the gardens themselves, visiting Monet’s garden at Le Pressoir, Giverny; German Impressionist painter Max Liebemann’s lakeside garden on the banks of the Wannsee in Berlin; Emil Nolde’s garden in Seebüll (Northern Germany) – there are cutaways to Nolde’s intense impressionist works showing how he literally daubed the paint on the canvas to illustrate the boldness of his poppies and dahlias; Joaquín Sorolla’s garden in Madrid which influenced his ethereal work with light and shadow; Henri le Sidaner’s garden in Gerberoy, Picardy – we also meet his relative who explains how le Sindaner’s ‘intimist’ painting was based on the atmospheric light in his garden which echoed reflection and informed his work. This gorgeous travelogue showcases the gardens at their most resplendent.

The final section of the documentary hones in on Monet’s later years to illustrate how he designed and planted his borders specifically as a source of inspiration for his impressionism. Rather than portraying the garden and individual studies of it, he focused obsessively on light and reflection (left). He sourced newly discovered exotic cultivars of nympheas (bright pink and yellow) that he acquired (‘all my money goes into my garden’) and grew in his excavated lake from the mid 1890s until his death in 1926. The film offers a panoramic view of the remarkable 42ft Agapanthus triptych; a vision of light, suggestive colour and reflection and the most evocative of all his works (seen together for the first time and borrowed  from three different museums) that perfectly evokes the ‘oceanic’ state – a feeling of limitlessness where we are at one with nature. This is the perfect climax to a study that progresses from Renoir’s figurative portrait of Monet in his garden at Argenteuil in 1873 to the broad brush impressionism that occupied the final decade of his Monet’s life. Painting the Modern Garden initially feels like a glossy an advert for the exhibition, but in analysis it offers far more: a worthwhile cinematic tribute to the world of 19th garden art and the fascinating history and people that informed and shaped it.@MeredithTaylor

PAINTING THE MODERN GARDEN: MONET TO MATISSE is in cinemas around the world from 27 February 2024

 

 

 

Sátántangó (1991/3) Bfi Player

Dir.: Bela Tarr; Cast: Mihaly Vig, Istvan Horvath, Erika Bök, Peter Berling, Miklos B. Szekely, Laszlo Fe Lugossy, Eva Almassi Albert, Alfred Jaray, Erzsebet Gaal, Janos Derzsi, Iren Szajki; Hungary/Germany/Switzerland 1991/93, 450′.

Based on the novel 1985 by co-writer Laszlo Krasnahorkai, Bela Tarr’s collaborator in his final five feature films, Sátántangó is a human tragedy that deals with time, memory and melancholy, delving into the final years of Communism in a Hungarian village, where everyone plays a part in their collective fate.

Filmed in long tracking shots, the opening sequence – an eight minute take of cows ruminating in the grounds of a decaying estate – is symbolic for what is to follow. Told in two parts with six episodes each, Santantango uses tango steps for the retrogressive dance sequences as the story unfolds. The work of Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard clearly springs to mind, but Tarr/Krasmahorkai add an extra dimension of absolute stasis that contrasts with the characters’ overriding desire to escape their fate from the outset.

The story begins in 1990s Hungary where life has come to a standstill for a group of farmers waiting for their collective farm to be shut down. Their plan is to move to a new location. But socially things are looking bleak: Futaki (Szekely) is having an affair with Mrs. Schmidt (Albert); Mr. Schmidt (Lugossy) is trying to steal the money the villagers have put aside for their escape plan. Futaki demands to be part of the scheme. All this goes on under the beady eye of a drunk Doctor (Berling) who  chronicles the unfolding narrative.

However, the master plan is abandoned when the villagers discover that Irimias (Vig) and his manipulative co-conspirator Petrina (Horvath) have returned. The two have struck a deal with the police captain to spy on the villagers. The doctor has run out of brandy, and after replenishing his supplies, he meets the young Estike (Bök), who asks him desperately for help. But the doctor passes out in the wood. The morning before, Estika had been tricked into planting a ‘money tree’ by her brother in the nearby wasteland. Estike tortures and poisons her cat to show she has some form of control over her life, but she soon loses the plot, like many others who are seen dancing in the pub.

But Estike has a shred of humanity, and is overcome by grief after her cruelty to the cat. She asks the doctor to save her pet, but this episode ends in tragedy. Meanwhile Irimias then turns his efforts to convincing the villagers to hand over the escape money. But he also has another dastardly plan up his sleeve. And the story ends with the doctor returning to the abandoned farm, unaware he is alone. On hearing the church bells ringing and a madman shouting: “the Turks are coming”, the doctor nails his windows shut and starts the narration from its beginning.

Gabor Medvigy’s intimate camera encircles the characters with long panning shots and cold-blooded close-ups, leaving nothing to the imagination. Tarr shows us that there are three cinematic worlds to escape into: the one of beauty, the ugly one and the empty one. Beauty belongs to the works of Tarkovsky; Ozu’s films meditate the void, and the early works of Antonioni portray ugliness.

Dedicating a whole day to watch Satantango is to immerse yourself in a world of visual wonder. It’s not that there is so much to tell, but because there is so much to understand. Neo-Realism revolutionised the world of cinema by allowing the audience to participate, and take part in the composition. Neo-Realism is only effective if the audience can watch the film from the inside. If today’s films want to be meaningful they need to focus on the strength of the script, rather than degenerating into attention-grabbing digital trickery.

Satantango offers a chance to immerse ourselves completely in a point in time, and be a part of the story. Watch and submerge yourself in the reality of this remarkable story-telling – and join the world of sense and sensibility. AS

NOW AVAILABLE ON BFI Player | Also on Bluray     

                         

Mr Klein (1976) Blu-ray

Dir: Joseph Losey | Cast: Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau, Francine Berge, Juliet Berto, Michael Lonsdale | Thriller, 123′


What a fabulous and resonant contribution American director Joseph Losey made to the world of European cinema: each film a work of art that seems to live on. reinventing itself with each new generation. Mr Klein is a case in point and seems more relevant now that it did on its original release in 1976 in telling a story from Nazi-occupied Paris of the early 1940s.

Elegant, unsettling and strangely brooding this noirish thriller reflects another world of caution and insecurity reflecting the current state of crisis. Opulently set in and around the quartier of a Parisian apartment belonging to an art dealer – a superb Alain Delon who plays the central role with a suave and amiable dignity alongside his pouting heroines Jeanne Moreau and Juliet Berto exquisitely attired by French costume designers Collette Baudot and Annalisa Nasalli-Rocca. Gerry Fisher’s subtle camerawork and chiaroscuro lighting enhances Alexandre Trauner’s magnificent production designs creating an atmospheric sense of place in the beautiful bourgeois Parisians settings. So much so that you almost forgot the storyline that is stealthily working its way to a compelling conclusion, in the background. Not to mention the salient subject of Jewish persecution and anti-semitism which is at the film’s core. And crucially, it is the police that are carrying out the rounding up of Jews (some 13,000), not the German soldiers.

Elliptical in nature, in the same way as The Servant and Accident, Franco Solinas (Battle of Algiers) wrote the script along with Fernando Morandi and Costa-Gavras, but Losey drew on his experience with Hollywood Blacklisting to create the atmosphere of creeping uncertainty and mistrust that steals through the feature.

Delon’s Robert Klein is running a tight business buying up art works from Jewish Parisians desperate to leave the country. But gradually his facade drops when a Jewish newspaper bearing his name is delivered to his private address, forcing him to check the provenance of the paper, and prove his identity and his raison d’être. And as he digs deeper, the more the mud seems to stick to his hand-tailored tweed suits, eventually landing him in deep shit when things spin out of control, as they eventually do, in the best possible taste. A fascinating film about suspicion, illusion, collective recrimination and the strange way people behave when the ground starts to shift. MT

Joseph Losey’s MR. KLEIN | Fully restored on Blu-Ray, DVD & Digital on September 13

 

 

 

 

 

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

Scandinavian Silence (2019) ****

Dir: Martti Helde | Cast: Rea Lest, Reimo Sagor

The life of three siblings is told by each of them in this stylish Scandinavian thriller from Estonian director Martti Helde 

Martti Helde was feted for In the Crosswind his experimental wartime feature debut back in 2014. This stylishly frosty foray into family territory is more intimate in focus despite its striking widescreen visuals and tells the story of siblings struck dumb by violent circumstances.

Essentially a two-hander that plays out in three parts, Scandinavian Silence muses over themes of false memory and subjective interpretation in an enigmatic film that is ultimately more visually arresting than entirely satisfying in its storytelling, leaving us with more questions than answers. But it certainly captivates and conjures up a Tarkovskian sense of resonance through expert camerawork from Sten-Johan Lill and Erik Pllumaa creating an arresting sense of place.

In a freezing forest landscape Tom (Reimo Sagor) joins his sister Jenna (Rea Lest) in a drive that is a one-sided monologue, Tom expressing his feelings of regret, confusion and self-doubt about a troubling family set-to that left him in prison and his sister Jenna exposed to their father’s abuse. Then back at the same starting point, Jenna gives her sides of the story while Tom keeps his powder dry at a table in a roadside cafe. And what emerges is a different take on the situation, Jenna partially exonerating Tom for his acute feelings of guilt. This diatribe is punctuated by a strange encounter with an older couple adding an unsettling vibe to the proceedings that resonates with their dysfunctional homelife.

The third section of the trilogy is like a silent film of what has gone before, neither Tom nor Jenna speaking, it relies entirely on body language, suggestive expressions and eye contact culminating in a surprising finale that somehow leaves us wanting given the weight of expectancy with what has gone before.

Style over substance this may be but Helde certainly creates an arresting piece of cinema that offers much food for thought in the frozen wastelands of the mind, where less can often mean more. MT

https://vimeo.com/314322683

The Calm after the Storm **** | Visions du Reel 2020

Dir.: Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo; Documentary with Victor Gaviria, Marcela Jaramillo; Columbia 2020, 72min.

Colombian filmmaker Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo confronts her childhood and her famous filmmaker father, Victor, in her documentary debut which she scripted, filmed and co-edited.

Mercedes worked as her father’s assistance during the shooting of his final film La Mujer del Animal (The wife of the Animal). Gaviria senior is the only Columbian director whose films have been shown at Cannes Film Festival.

Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo always wanted to get out of the shadow of her famous father: in spite the pleas of her mother, she studied film at Buenos Aires, and worked there after graduation as sound designer. But the pull of the family proved too strong, when she agreed to assist her father in his latest feature La mujer de Animal (2016). On her return to her home, she finds that her mother Marcela, an anthropologist, has left her room untouched, which comforts Mercedes. The Calm is actually two films in one: there are the sequences of shooting La mujer, and the home videos her father shot of her, her brother Matias and mother Marcela. And then there is the diary of her mother, for her yet unborn daughter. “It sounds, like I was her only confidant”. Victor is known for his realism, and using non-professional actors. The story of La mujer is of Marguerita, who lives in the neighbourhood, but does not want to give an interview to Mercedes: Marguerita, who had been kidnapped and raped by “the animal’ at eightenn, is fearful, that the actor, who portraits her tormentor, might bring back the bad spirit of him, even though he died long ago. Marguerita’s role is taken by Natalia Polo, a nursing assistant, who gives up her job, to concentrate on filming. Tito, a bus driver will feature as the villain. It is obvious, that Mercedes is horrified of the rape scene between the main protagonists, whilst her father is directing with calm, taking about the size of the lenses he will use in the next shot. Natalia is often found crying, and Victor sends her away from the set. Mercedes: “Marguerita’s suffering rekindles in every woman’s body”. It rains during the first six days of shooting, and cast and crew get ill – apart from Victor. Next is another violent scene, a sex orgy, where sex workers are brutally raped and beaten. Victor uses real sex workers from Berrio Park, and the lads are from the tough neighbourhood. Mercedes has to close her eyes, but keeps listening. When Mercedes is alone with her mother, she wants to ask her about the diary. “I want her to take my fear away, talking to her. But she only asks, if the catering at the set is ok. I just answer it – to calm her”. In an old home video, we watch Mercedes, called Mechi, being bullied by her father into writing a story for school. Mechi refused, telling him, that a scorpion has bitten her. From her mother’s diary: “Only twenty days left until your birth. You are going to have a very special dad. Even if we have our problems, as you will find out soon. He is very sensitive, always meeting lots of people when he is not with us, because other people need him too. I hope you are optimistic, I was not. You give me strength  to keep on fighting for our love. I loved your father too much, I am always afraid of losing him, you can’t live like this”.  The principal photography for La mujer is over, and Victor discusses with his daughter, that he was well aware of the fact, that the cast used Clonazepam with alcohol, to get over the trauma of acting. “The mixture is so strong, you don’t remember the next day what you have done at all”. From the home videos we learn, that the Tooth Fairy is called ‘Perez the Mouse’ in Columbia – but young Mercedes is not fooled: “Its not true, its Mom and Dad who give me the presents.”. Merceds tries in vain to talk with her mother about the diary. “What would she say to me? That living with a man is not easy. But life must go on”. Thinking back to the shoot and her father: “He finds it easier to direct violent scenes, than to direct Natalia.” Her brother Matias, Mercedes films an ugly spat between macho father and son, is generally not fond of being filmed: “Life has to be lived, before its being filmed”. And a last thoughts about the rape scene:” The contradiction of filming a rape scene being the privileged gender. And a film set full of men. Yes, talk about gender violence in a country suffering from a war.”

Never didactic, the director tries always to keep distance, but it is not easy to keep the distance with your family. A calm, but moving reflexion on gender and filmmaking. AS

VISIONS DU REEL ONLINE 25 APRIL           

Elgar (1962) **** Streaming and on Blu-ray

Dir: Ken Russell | UK, Doc 55′

Elgar was Ken Russell making a straightforward musical biopic under the strict control of Huw Wheldon’s guidance. And it certainly works to the film’s advantage when compared to the bloated and faintly ludicrous charades notably: Tommy and Lisztomania.

With its velvety black and white visuals and soaring score of orchestral masterpieces and more delicate pieces for the violin and cello, Russell was able to convey another portrait of creative angst while retaining the composer’s lofty romantic vision inspired by his walks in the rolling Malvern Hills. Weldon was the Head of the BBC and had put a dampener on Russell by banning dramatisations of the lives of real people. Russell used the difficulty cleverly getting round this by using actors filmed at a distance and no dialogue allowing the music too do its tour de force. Although Elgar sometimes veers on the didactic with Weldon’s stentorious narration overlaying the graceful set pieces showing a young boy (‘Elgar’ ) riding across the English landscape or through country lanes on a bicycle (with the love of his life Alice), this ethereal melding of sound and vision showed Russell at his best, despite – and perhaps because of – the limitations.

Elgar had a love of the countryside and it served as his muse when composing during his daily forays in the open air. By the time he returned home the compositions were fully formed in his mind, he had only to write them down. Russell traces the composer’s lowly background; his meeting Alice (Caroline Alice (1889-1920) who pioneered the way forward, never giving up on her arrant belief in his talent.

Elgar’s music captured the imagination of the Germans and finally took flight during the First World War, when the British public finally took him to their hearts with his talent for rousing marching music, and Russell’s film is enriched with brilliant archive footage showing all the pomp and circumstance of these celebrations, but also the quiet moments of self-doubt and reflection. But above all this is a true love story of the best kind: Where belief and perseverance drive the romance forward to great heights. Real love is not staring into each other’s eye, but looking in the same direction, as Elgar discovered. Alice was the making of this most English of our composers. And Russell’s Elgar is a small gem.

NOW ON BLURAY | STREAMING ONLINE

 

The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse | Die tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse (1960) ***

Dir.: Fritz Lang; Cast: Peter van Eyck, Dawn Addams, Gert Fröbe, Werner Peters, Wolfgang Preiss, Lupo Prezzo, Reinhard Kolldehoff; Germany/Italy/France 1960, 103 min.

Fritz Lang (1890-1976) goes back to the beginning with his final output: The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse: there is the re-emigrant Lang, making his last of three films in West Germany, finishing his career with completing the Mabuse trilogy that started with Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1932). Joining fellow Hollywood re-emigrant Peter Van Eyck, Lang concentrated on the Nazi spirit of evil, still virulent in West Germany, and his favourite topic: machines versus humans. Based on the novel by Polish author Jan Fethke and using the Mabuse character created by Norbert Jacques, The Thousand Eyes is a melancholic good-bye from one of 20th century’s greatest directors, who had forged his career in the early days of silent film.

Having promised his radio station an impressive scoop, a reporter is murdered in his car. Meanwhile in the Hotel Luxor, where the Nazis used spy on the clientele with hidden microphones, wealthy American Henry Travers (Van Eyck) saves the live of fellow guest Marion Menil (Addams) not once but twice: he saves her from committing suicide, then kills her club-footed husband Roberto (Kolldehoff) with a single shot. A voyeur is in control of the hotel, watching every room via TV: the new Mabuse is after Travers’ nuclear plans to dominate the world. But detective Kras (Fröbe) is puzzled by the identity of the evil genius: is it the ubiquitous salesman Hironymos B. Mistelzweig (Peters); the blind clairvoyant Cornelius (Prezzo), or the enigmatic Professor Jordan (Preiss)?

The Thousand Eyes is a feature of double mirrors: every scene is connected to the previous one. Each take is followed by something “directed” by the evil genius. As in Metropolis, the story is one of triumph and destruction of a machine come alive. This Mabuse is the very much in the spirit of the 1932 feature: Hitler using technology first to conquer Germany, then the world. But this Mabuse is more creative than ever: he makes friends, divulging his secrets to them, only to destroy them when they are no longer of use. He is subversive, hoping to change the power structure from within.

Sadly DoP Karl Löb’s black-and-white images lack elegance and fluidity, short-changing the feature along with the German cast who are anything but enigmatic or unfathomable: they were the same actors who played clichéd characters in the UFA re-makes of the era – at a time when the Nouvelle Vague in neighbouring France was re-inventing cinema. So we often get second-hand emotions, and bemusement instead of real angst. That Lang’s last feature is still by far the most interesting of the era in West Germany’s post WWII film history speaks for itself – the era was  dominated by caricature thrillers based on the work of British author Edgar Wallace, who met deadlines by dictated his books from London phone boxes. No fewer than six Mabuse ‘thrillers’ were produced in the next decade in Germany, Lang was eventually forced to retire after his eye-sight worsened. AS    

ON BLU-RAY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE UK ON 11 MAY 2020

               

Camino Skies (2020) *** Digital release

Dir.: Noel Smyth, Fergus Grady; Documentary with Julie Zarifeh, Sue Morris, Terry, Mark Thompson; New Zealand/Australia 2019, 80 min.

Antipodian first time documentary filmmakers Noel Smyth and Fergus Grady set off with six of their countrymen and women for a 800 km pilgrimage from Saint Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The holy walk started in the Middle Ages, and for the last sixty years, 300 000 yearly tried to come to terms with God, after their lives took a change for the worse, by undertaking this mammoth hike.

Sue Morris is first up, seventy, the oldest of the half dozen. She is suffering from degenerative arthritis. It is short of a miracle that she manages to stay the course, only once taking a bus and a taxi ride. But her stoic appearance hides a deeply traumatised inner life – and the journey seems not to have given her any answers.

It is much more straightforward for Terry and his son-in-law Mark Thompson – the former wearing a vest, claiming the 1.6 million steps are for Maddie, the daughter of Mark, who died from complications of Cystic Fibrosis at the age of seventeen. While not wishing to grade suffering,  Julie Zarifeh (54), seems to be hardest hit: in less than a month she lost her husband and son – basically her life. This certainly a Via Dolorosa for her, and her grief is utterly compelling.

The participants seem not to be overly religious, it is more the self torture which appeals to them, most of them suffering from survivor guilt. One listens to ‘Black Sabbath’, without the directors mentioning it. Dogs, horses, donkeys, beetles, lizards and snails are being cuddled and stared at, much to their alarm. The participants visit hairdressers and bars, the women sometimes dancing together, the men more interested in drinking. Small stones on the paths play a major role: Julie re-arranges them into a heart form: ‘For Paul and Sam’. The arrival in Santiago de Compostela lacks any triumph – a rather sobering ending. For Julie, the journey goes on to Muxia, on the Coast of Death, near the ocean. There she climbs the rocks and empties the content of an urn into the waves.

Even at eighty minutes, Camino Skies overstays its welcome. There is only so much to watch, and the repetitiousness of muddy pathways and ordinary day-to-day activities detract from the real physical and emotional suffering of these modern pilgrims. Yet despite the potential offered by the dramatic locations Smyth’s images are often too bland to be cinematically engaging, the filmmakers’ lack of inexperience diminishing the overall impact of these traumatised souls on their journey to salvation. AS

ON CURZON HOME CINEMA FROM 8 MAY 2020 | other platforms TBC

                       

                                       

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) **** Streaming

Dir: Michael Powell. Wri: Emeric Pressburger | Cast: Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr, Roland Culver, Harry Welchman, Arthur Wontner, Albert Lieven, John Laurie, Ursula Jeans, James McKechnie, Reginald Tate, David Hutcheson, A.E.Matthews | Drama. 163 mins.

Those editing the meticulously kept diaries of Dr Goebbels, now housed in Moscow, usually omit his observations on the cinema (which will hopefully one day make a fascinating book in it’s own right); but he would doubtless have been aware of the determined efforts of Winston Churchill to prevent this film from being made, and recorded his thoughts on the matter.

Films don’t always end up the way their makers originally envisaged at their outset, and the maiden production of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s Archers Films would have turned out completely differently had Laurence Olivier been freed from the Fleet Air Arm to make it; since it is now impossible to imagine without third-billed Roger Livesey and his distinctive voice in the title role (in which at the age of 36 he convincingly ages forty years). The makers’ relative inexperience shows in the fact that they ended up with a initial cut over two and a half hours long; but fortunately J.Arthur Rank liked the film so much he let it hit cinemas as it was. Indeed, it was Pressburger’s favourite of the Rank outings, and would go on to influence the work of future filmmakers such as Scorsese in his The Age of Innocence and Tarantino who copied the device of beginning and ending a film be rerunning the same scene from the point of view of different characters.

Irony was obviously lost on Winnie, and basing the central character upon a cartoon caricature that personified all that was most stupid and reactionary about the British establishment in wartime doubtless seemed to the Prime Minister (and others) tantamount to treason. Blimp’s left-wing creator David Low authorised the production on the one condition that Blimp be revealed as the fool he was (and professed himself thoroughly satisfied with the result). But the very title stresses that Colonel Blimp’s day is hopefully now past (just as the present coronavirus crisis hopefully means the death of ‘austerity Britain’, although I’m not holding my breath).

The British can take enormous pride in having been on the side that made this film written by a Hungarian Jew, with an Austrian leading man, a French cameraman, music by a Polish composer and sets by a German production designer, rather than the side that made ‘Die Ewige Jude’; and one can only marvel at the magnanimity that made it possible to produce a film when this country was engaged in a fight for its very survival, as pro-German as it is anti-Nazi. Richard Chatten.

AVAILABLE ON BBC2 | 26 APRIL 2020 | BBC & BFI PLAYER 

Mimaroğlu: Robinson of Manhattan Island (2020) **** Visions du Reel 2020

Dir.: Serdar Kökceoglu; Documentary with Ilhan Mimaroglu, Güngör Batum, Rüstem Batum; Turkey/USA 20219, 76 min.

Serdar Kökceoglu is a composer and filmmaker whose first feature is a vivid portrait of fellow Turkish composer, filmmaker and artist Ilhan Mimaroğlu (1926-2012), a leading composer of electronic music.

Structured in three chapters and using a dreamlike soundscape and evocative visual style the documentary recounts how Mimaroğlu emigrated from Turkey to the USA in 1959, spending the rest of his life in Manhattan as a composer and all-round artist. Mimaroğlu gradually develops into a diary of contemporary music-making in Manhattan in the late twentieth century. But equally important was his relationship with his wife Güngör Batum, whom he married in 1959 back in Istanbul. Both were idiosyncratic in their life style, but, as she said “We were like one person”.

After finishing law school at Istanbul University in 1949, Mimaroğlu had already made his name as a music critic. Later awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant, he went on to study musicology under Paul Henry Lang at Columbia University. He would also work for the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Centre with Edgard Varese and Vladimir Ussachevsky. For Mimaroğlu,, cinema and music were one and the same, his compositions were “like collages, similar to editing a film”.

One of the highlights were his collaboration with Fellini for Satyricon. Working at Atlantic Records in the 1970ies, with Freddie Hubbard and Charles Mingus among others. Mimaroğlu founded his own label, Finnadar Records. German electronic visionary Karl-Heinz Stockhausen was one of his heroes, as was Jean Dubffet, who published Mimaroğlu’s own jazz compositions like ‘Tract A: A composition of Agitprop Music for Electromagnetic Tape’. Under his own record label, he met pianist concert pianist Idil Biret in 1972, the two of them working together for ten years, producing nine albums. After Finnadar Records folded in the 1980s, the composer stepped away from music and focused on street photography and films.

Mimaroğlu was always aware of status near the margins: “I am a composer, that’s one suicide. On top of it I am contemporary composer. And a composer of electronic music – and I compose political music.” He never wanted to go to a conservatoire in Turkey, “because they might teach me the wrong things”. And even in New York, he was critical of the places of higher learning: “University is a self-serving institution. This whole country, being the graveyard of culture, its universities being its mausoleums.” For him, music was alive, he collected tapes for sleeping from sounds of daily life. He compared himself to a preacher in the Sahara, nobody listening to him. “Even if they do, they fail to figure out what I was talking about”. He made a short film about people walking in slow-motion into a mall, past a poster which he had created, showing the MacDonald’s label with the inscription “Mc Lenin”. Like his friend and music critic David Toop said “his records were almost like Graffiti, that’s why he later became interested in Street Photography – the absolute immediacy.” And music writer Evin Ilyasoglu gave the feature its title” I think, he was mad, that people did not understand him. The Robinson of Manhattan. That’s why he was so pessimistic.” He felt that everyone was out to shoot contemporary composers. “Don’t shoot us, we are just innocent bystanders. When I am confronted with Mozart and Elvis, the question is, whom do I shoot first, its a matter of priority: Business or pleasure. And: “Do you think that I am paranoid in this respect? If so, there is a reason for it: Strauss Elvis, Mozart, all in the same bag”.   

The third chapter concentrates on Güngör Batum, who had to branch out into business during her husband’s middle age, “becoming a left-wing artist and a business woman at the same time”. She was shattered at his death, living in denial of it for the rest of her life. “Shortly after losing him, I thought I could only manage the world with a new perspective. Because we had been really close, supported each other in every way. I had to work out how to live without him. The hardest period of my life”. Her son Rüstem, whom she left behind when she left the USA, talks abut the couple’s relationship:” When my mother had guests, Ilhan would just come into the room for a moment, would not greet anybody and leave the room. He was an anti-social person. I could not bond with him, only our relationship with cinema kept us going. He watched some films ten times. They were the polar opposites. He always lived in an apartment at Columbia university, where he always returned for the night.” After having spent many years on the balcony of her NYC apartment, Güngör Batum re-emigrated to Istanbul, reconstructing her life out of memories. In Istanbul she talked to friends about “Ilhan coming soon to join her in Turkey. “Than we can all meet together”. As Rüstem said, his mother had a way of deny certain occurrences in her life. So, for her it was “like living still with him, but by myself.”  

With wonderful archive material, partly shot by the composer himself, this a real art history lesson. DoP Levent Türkan avoids too many Talking Heads, and concentrates Instead on conjuring up a palpable Cinematic essence of the man. A truly unique documentary about music and relationships, with Mimaroğlu having the last word: Old composers never die. They just turn into index cards”.   AS

Burning Lights International Competition | ON VISIONS DU REEL | NYON SWITZERLAND | APRIL- MAY 2020

Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy (2019) **** Now on iTunes

Dir.: Elizabeth Carroll, Documentary with Diane Kennedy; USA/Mexico 2019, 82 min.

In her informative feature debut Elizabeth Carroll celebrates the British chef and cookbook supremo Diana Kennedy, a 97-year-old widely regarded as the world’s authority on Mexican cuisine. Standing barely five feet tall with a cut-glass English accent, Diana is the author of nine cookbooks and has spent the last 70 years exploring and documenting the many and varied regional cuisines of Mexico. It’s clear from the outset her ferocity is borderline: “if her enthusiasm were not beautiful, it would border on mania.”

Diana is a force of nature, living entirely in harmony with all things natural. She designed and built her ecologically sustainable property outside Zitácuaro, Michoacán in 1974, where she continues to cook, recycle rainwater, use solar power, and grow her own vegetables, coffee, and corn. She was decorated with an Order of the Aztec Eagle from the Mexican government in 1982; received a Member of the Order of the British Empire for strengthening cultural ties between Mexico and the UK in 2002.

An inspirational figure she is always on the lookout for natural ingredients at the wheel of her Nissan pick-u truck she zips through the Mexican countryside or shops in markets near her  home in Zitacuaro, Michoacan, where she grows her food ingredients organically.

The film’s title is the same as one of her nine cookbooks, and is also a very apt description of the gruff nonagenarian who sets the agenda for everyone: “People who want to live here have to realise they have to live with nature”. Her eco drive never stops: she has campaigned against the bleaching of table clothes in restaurants and the gentrification of the market in nearby Oaxaca is certainly not to her taste: “Before it was all more natural and untidy. And tasty.” 

After the war she went to the USA and Canada, before meeting her husband Paul P. Kennedy, the foreign correspondent for the NY Times in Porto Prince, Haiti. In 1957 they went to Vera Cruz, and Diana became inspired by the recipes of Josefina Velazuez de Leon. She wanted to be more than a housewife, and Craig Clayborne, Food editor of the NY Times from 1957-1986, helped to establish her. In 1965, Kennedy became ill, and they moved to New York for his treatment. After his death in 1967 – she never married again – Diana became depressed, and only her Mexican cooking classes, as featured in the NY Times, kept her spirits up, whilst actors and writers were her dinner guests in the restaurant. All this fired her up for the future and eventually he decamped down south to Mexico City in 1976. She now has “boot camps” for aspiring cooks in her house, and shows that she is not a very forgiving teacher. Nowadays she is a harsh critic of contemporary:  “The more we are connected electronically, the less we are united”. And she is as sober about herself as she is with others: “When I am blind, or can’t cook or eat any more, than I am out”.

But Carroll has managed to make Diana and her life’s story into an entertaining and upbeat experience – not only of food. DoPs Paul Mailman and Andrei Zakow have contributed with vibrant and refreshing aesthetic which gives Nothing Fancy a story book background. AS

AVAILABLE ONLINE FROM 2 MAY 2020 | COURTESY OF DOGWOOF | iTUNES 

 

ONLINE AT DOGWOOF
                               

Viaggio in Italia (1954) | Journey to Italy | Bfi Player

Dir: Robert Rossellini | Wri: Roberto Rossellini, Vitaliano Brancati | Cast: Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders, Maria Mauban | Drama, Italy/France, 86

In this groundbreaking film it is almost impossible to take your eyes off Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders as they enact the fading love story of a well-healed fifties middle class couple both undergoing painful heartache of their own, behind the scenes. Roberto Rossellini’s drama is the culminating masterpiece of Italian neo-realism and arguably one of the greatest neo-realist love stories of the era.

Inspiring and ushering in the New Wave, Viaggio channels the ideals of the neo-realist movement in the use of non-professional actors and rural everyday life, in the this case in Naples and Pompeii and although it performed badly at the Box Office, it went down very well with French critics, based loosely, as it was, on Colette’s novel Duo and Francois Truffaut, called it the first ‘modern film’.

The film’s plot is simple: an unhappily married couple drive down to Italy to organise the sale of an inherited villa in one of the most scenic locations in the South, the bay of Naples. They bicker and neither is at peace. Katherine is young and vivacious but disappointed with her hostile husband, Alex, who – she claims – cares only for money and work and dislikes the area: “I’ve never seen noise and boredom go so well together.” As the trip grows more complex with delays in the property sale so Alex takes it out on his wife, who harks back to a previous lover and starts to sense that divorce is inevitable. The two flirt openly with outsiders on every social occasion and spend increasing time away from each other during in activities and venues that seem to enhance their feelings of desperation and sadness. Katherine visits a morbid catacomb, Alex becomes close to a girl he meets through friends. The final moments are unforgettable, unexpected and transcendent in the history of Italian cinema and mark Viaggio in Italia out as a significant film that has stays in the memory long after the titles fade.

The production was not without it difficulties. Ingrid Bergman’s marriage to Rosellini was under severe pressure. George Sanders was at the end of his union with Zsa Zsa Gabor and was fraught from his attempts to contact her long-distance.  He was not only annoyed that he was expected to improvise, but also that the director himself appeared to be making it up as he went along.

According to Tag Gallagher (The Adventures of Robert Rossellini, New York Da Capo Press, 1998) Sanders was waiting in his hotel reception as instructed at 2pm: “I was led like a man in Sing Sing’s Death House to the waiting car which whisked me away to some Neapolitan back street where Rossellini had set up the camera to shoot the momentous scene for which we had all been waiting so patiently.  He had his scarlet racing Ferrari with him (a new one!) and he kept eyeing it and stroking it while the cameraman was fiddling with the lights, getting the scene ready. Finally when all was ready, Rossellini changed his mind about shooting the scene and dismissed the thunderstruck company. While we watched him in stupefied silence, he put on his crash helmet, climbed into the Ferrari, gunned his motor and disappeared with a rorar and screeching tyres round the bend of the street and out of our lives for two whole days…). Meanwhile Ingrid Bergman was equally distraught. She couldn’t improvise, she hated to improvise, which Roberto well knew.  Yet whenever she’d ask what she was supposed to say, he’d snap: “Say what’s on your mind”.

After a long and tortuous process, the film was finally released in July 1954. Despite all the set-backs and unpleasantness and Rossellini’s wasteful and unorthodox methods the film emerged as one of the most enduring examples of ingenious innovation and timeless inspiration.  Rossellini managed finally to get convincing performances from two people authentically portraying the end of love. MT

Recently restored l’Imagine Ritrovata VIAGGIO IN ITALIA | BFI Player 

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

I Am Love (2009) **** BFi Player

Dir: Luca Guadagnino | Italian, Drama, 120′

Tilda Swinton is the graceful and luminous presence who lights up this sexually ambitious  drama about a woman whose sterile existence comes to life when she falls in love.

She plays an ice cool aristocratic-looking Russian who assumes a dignified role as the doyenne in the wealthy moneyed household of her Italian husband Tancredi Recchi. Their austere 1930s mansion is surrounded by formal gardens and staffed by a legion of white-aproned maids and black-coated butlers. But she is about as satisfied as Silvana Magnani in Pasolini’s Theorem, or Lucia Bose in Antonioni’s Cronaca di Un Amore, although a good deal more wealthy.

The rich and powerful Recchi dynasty is well-established, like a tight-lipped Northern Italian version of the Corleone’s without the Mafia connection – or at least there is no allusion to that here. And Emma is tasked with organising a birthday dinner for her father in law (Gabriele Ferzetti) who informs them all during the afternoon that follows the expansive banquet that he has decided to hand over the reigns of the family business to Emma’s husband and her younger son Edo (Flavio Parenti).

There is plenty to enjoy here even if the ensuing love story or business wranglings fail to ignite your imagination. And fortunately Emma’s lover (Antonio Biscaglia) is a more sensible choice than Mangani’s dalliance with The Visitor in the shape of Terence Stamp in Theorem. There have been many Spring/Autumn affairs in the history of film and this one is delicately handled by Swinton who appears to share her sentimental feelings with her son Edo, although the Lesbian liaison of her art student daughter (a perfectly cast Alba Rohrwacher) seems a bit contrived and less convincing. When love blossoms for Emma the dour Milanese winter scenes are abandoned for a sun-filled sojourn on Liguria’s coastline, at least for a while and everything glows in Yorick La Saux’s sumptuous visuals which won him awards for Best Cinematography two years later. Antonella Cannorozzi does her stuff exquisitely in the costume department, although the Oscar went to Colleen Atwood for Alice in Wonderland (2010). The only bum note is the inappropriate score.

But dark clouds gather on this brief-lived idll and ugliness is soon exposed behind the facade of elegance and respectability. Just goes to show what glisters isn’t always gold. MT

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

 

 

Fire Will Come | O Que Arde (2019)

Dir: Oliver Laxe | Wri: Oliver Laxe, Santiago Fillol, Oliver Laxe | DoP Mauro Herce | 90′

One of the strongest films in the Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2019 was this stunning docudrama from Mimosas director Oliver Laxe.

Set in the remote Ancares region in the heart of the Galician mountains Oliver Laxe’s stirring third feature transports us back to a rural way of life where the occupants live in gentle and humble acceptance of nature, eeking out their existence from the land and the animals who live amongst them.

This wild and savagely beautiful part of North East Spain is covered in rain-drenched forests and rolling mountains where the gusty winds can kindle even a small fire and send it raging incandescently through the region decimating flora and fauna. Laxe’s gaze is detached but brooding with sensitivity, inviting us into to this strangely unsettling world.

Amador grew up here with his parents and his respect for the local way of life is palpable. His regular cinematographer Mauro Herce (Dead Slow Ahead) shooting on Super 16, films a row of fir trees cascading to the ground and eventually revealing a massive bulldozer causing widespread mayhem as it moves ominously through the wooded hillside like a behemoth .

Amador (Amador Arias) comes home after serving time for causing a fire that almost wiped out the villagers, not to mention the vegetation and livestock. Set to the sonorous tones of a Vivaldi psalm we can sense this is a bitter homecoming for a middle-aged man with no one but his 83 year old mother Benedicta (Sanchez) to welcome him. She does this with a simple acknowledgement. “Are you hungry?” Both characters are played by non-pros who inhabit their roles with the naturalism professionals

Mother and son continue their day to day life as they left off. Amador is rather harsh on his sweet and obliging mother who runs their smallholding single-handedly, tending their three cows and trudging backwards and forwards with their ageing Alsatian. The other locals in this mournful corner include Inazio (Inazio Abra), who is working on a large-scale refurbishment of his parents’ stone farmhouse. Amador is emotionally buttoned down and taciturn, refusing to rise to the bait when one of the villagers shouts, “Hey Amador, have you got a light?”

There is a solace to this spartan existence drawn by Laxe with moving simplicity. The animals complete their household. Elena (Fernandez) the vet is the only intruder and she arrives to help pull one of their cows out of a ditch. The journey back to her practice is one of poignant beauty and wry humour as Amador once again remains tacitly unfriendly while the cow’s gentle eyes look on trustingly.

This is a minimalist film of rare eloquence. Nothing is forced or spare, the unsettling narrative gradually unfolding with a growing sense of doom as, predictably, the fires come back to the mountains forcing the animals to flee amid devastation, firefighters struggling with the raw power of the mammoth flames. One image that remains seared to the memory is of a horse stumbling bewildered from the wreckage, having been singed by thefla,es. The tiny figure of Benedicta is seen wandering disconsolately across the charred landscape. And we are once again left to ponder Amador’s involvement. Fire Will Come is pure cinema. Set to the atmospheric ambient sounds of nature and full of naturalistic detail and subtle undercurrents, it is joy to behold. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Colonel Redl | Oberst Redl (1985) **** Streaming

Dir.: Istvan Szabo; Cast: Karl-Maria Brandauer, Hans-Christian Blech, Armin Müller-Stahl, Gudrun Landgrebe, Jan Niklas, Dorottya Udvaros, Laszlo Galffy; Hungary/West Germany/Yugoslavia/ Austria 1985, 144 min.

Colonel Redl is the second part of a trilogy of true life fables dealing with the political and psychological milieu in Hungary in the early half of the 20th Century. Flanked by Mephisto (1981) and Hanussen (1988) which unfurl in Germany, Colonel Redl is set in the final years before the outbreak of the First World War in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Adapted from A Patriot For Me by John Osborne, it centres on the rise and fall of an opportunistic real life character, a bisexual Austrian officer who trades in his integrity for personal gain, betraying Austro-Hungarian secrets to the Russians on the cusp of war.

Karl-Maria Brandauer is the driving force of these three films with his sheer physicality and the mesmerising power of his performance impersonating three well known Europeans who find themselves dicing with intricate moral dilemmas. Although Mephisto is by far the most dazzling here Colonel Redl certainly has its moments under masterly direction of Istvan Szabo who cinematographer Lajos Koltai also photographed the other two features.

Alfred Redl (Brandauer) grew up in modest circumstances, but was educated at a prestigious military school. There he met fellow student Krystof Kubinyi (Niklas), who invited him to holiday on the estate of his aristocratic family. There Redl meets his sister Katalin (Landgrebe), who has a crush on him. But Alfred is drawn to Krystof, even though he would go on to enjoys the sexual favours of Katalin. Redl is a social climber and over-ambitious at work, where he rules his men with a draconian command. General Von Roden (Blech) is impressed with him, and promotes him to chief of Military Intelligence. Even though Redl is aware of his sexual ambivalence, he marries a Viennese wife from the upper classes (Udvaros), still lusting over Krystof, even though they have a falling out. Introduced to Archduke Franz-Ferdinand (Müller-Stahl), he tries to find a scapegoat, preferably from the Ukraine, whose trial would go on to send shock-waves through the officer corps. Redl is unaware of being the chosen sacrificial lamb, and after passing on secrets to his lover Velocchio (Galffy), he commits suicide on 19th March 1913 saving himself and the army a trial for treason.

Szabo plays fast and loose with historical facts, and the focus is very much Redl’s dual personality, which manifests itself in his sexual orientation and spying activities. Like many in his position, he feels alienated and pays a heavy price for professional and social success. Brandauer also brings out the sadist in him, taking pleasure in degrading others in public. His love for Krystof is equal to his envy for his position in life, and he would do anything to swop places with him. Redl excels professionally but is always aware of his lowly upbringing, he get rid of his sister by palming her off with money, but forbidding her to visit him again. 

If there is one criticism here it is the over-bloated narrative. There was no need for an epic, the scenes of Redl’s youth at home add unnecessary detail. Brandauer is brillaint most of the time, but sometimes overdoes the ‘tortured soul ‘moments. The rest of the ensemble is excellent, with Landgrebe’s Katalin moving as the woman who tries desperately to change the sexual orientation of a gay man. DoP Laszlo Koltai (Malena) succeeds in re-creating the glamour and decadence of the Vienna court, everything glitters and glows, and the imperial architecture is playing a major part. Colonel Redl might not be Szabo’s most outstanding work, but it is still a stunning story and and won a BAFTA in 1986 and the Jury Prize at Cannes 1985. AS

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Narcissus and Psyché | Nárcisz és Psyché (1980) *****

Dir: Gábor Bódy | Fantasy drama, Hungarian, 261′

Hungarian director Bódy Gábor, (1946-1985, Budapest), was a provocateur and pioneer of the Hungarian ‘New Sensibility’ film movement whose controversial arthouse features garnered critical success at home and abroad where he won an award at Locarno for this dreamlike Avantgarde masterpiece completed in 1980, a few years before his death by suicide in 1985.

Adapted for the screen with writers Vilmos Csaplar and Vera Varga, Narcissus and Psyche is based on Hungarian poet Sándor Weöres’s Psyché (1972), an anthology of letters and poems by a fictional 19th-century female poet Erzsebet Lonyai (aka Psyche played by Patricia Adriani ). The arthouse drama is full of surrealistic elements, philosophical symbolism and visual experimentation with the use of slow-mo; time lapse sequences; hypnotic sex scenes; motion trails; and colour filters, it spans a century (between the Napoleonic wars and the Second World War,) yet is miraculously condensed into a lifetime experience exploring Psyche’s enduring love for Narcissus (a blond haired Udo Kier). Their affair is often ambivalent but never consummated and withstands a lifetime of influences from other relationships, sexual disease and tragedy. 

This mesmerising tour de force is extraordinary to look at and was shot by renowned cinematographer Istvan Hildebrand with a score by My Twentieth Century composer Laszlo Vidovskzky that feels both modern and classical. With a running time of nearly four hours, the epic is told in three parts. There are striking slo-mo love scenes set to harpsichord music that draw us into the action yet remain intimate and erotically poetic. Other love-making sequences feel more remote and salacious, such as the one set by a blazing fire while stoats and wild animals roam around the vast stone-floored bedroom of an enchanted castle, where later a ballroom scene sees dancers swirling around in a 3D style masterstroke. 

One elicit scene features the Pope pulling up his trousers after enjoying a blowjob from a young male courtier. He then gives an audience which is filmed from underneath the glass floor to reveal the sparkling soles of his diamanté slippers. Psyche herself emerges a sultry and tousled haired beauty, always ready for a new liaison she is libidinous and licentious and runs the gauntlet of male attraction much to the chagrin of Narcissus who suffers from syphilis contracted from gypsies earlier on in his life. Psyche is seduced, used and lusted after – in an inspired and lyrical depiction of life for most attractive women, even today. Narcissus remains her soulmate, teacher and friend but she is forced to marry an indifferent nobleman and this plot line is the thread that runs through this jewel-like richly textured tapestry. MT

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Marta Meszaros | Retro | Bergamo Film Meeting 2021

Márta Mészáros occupies a unique position in Hungarian and world film history. The director, Kossuth and Prima Prize laureate, winner of awards at the Berlinale, Chicago, Cannes and many other international film festivals, is in herself a historical legend. Together with her contemporaries Agnès Varda, Larisa Shepitko e Věra Chytilová, she ranks as one of the most significant female authors in the world.

She is the first Hungarian woman to be awarded a diploma in film directing, she has dedicated her movies to depicting the lives of women (their identity, deviance, female rebelliousness, erotic intimacy and Hungarian history of Stalinism), and her directorial debut attracted global attention.

Even as a young child she had struggled with being orphaned, with hunger and the vicissitudes of history. She was born in Budapest in 1931. Her father, the avant-garde sculptor László Mészáros, in fleeing fascism moved the family to Kirgizia, where on the outbreak of World War II he fell victim to Stalin’s purges. Her mother also died. She was placed in a Soviet orphanage and only returned to Hungary after the war.

Between 1954-56 she studied at the film academy in Moscow and until 1968 she made Romanian and Hungarian documentaries. These autobiographical motifs inspired the Diary series that garnered considerable international acclaim.

Diary for my Children (Naplo Gyermekeimnek) Hungary 1983, 106 min.

Hungarian writer/director Marta Meszaros (*1931) chronicles a decade of Hungarian social history (1947-1958) in this autobiographical trilogy of just under six hours, where she is represented by the teenage character Juli. Meszaros actually made a fourth feature, Little Vilma (Kisvilma – az utolso naplo) in 2000, which runs along similar lines but its realisation differs from the original format. Of the three Diary for my Children is by far the most impressive, winning the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in the year of its making. The colour versions of Diary for my Lovers and Diary for my Mother and Father, descends into simplicity, with Meszaros losing her objective documentarian’s viewpoint. All three parts were shot by DoP Nyika Jansco, her husband Miklos Jansco’s son from a previous relationship before their marriage which lasted from 1960 to 1973.    

In 1947, teenage Juli (Czinkoczi) arrives in Budapest from exile in Moscow to stay with her foster mother Magda (Polony), and her grandparents (Pal Zolnay/Mari Szemes). Magda is a member of the Communist Party, courageously opposing Nazism and Stalin, but recently her opinions of the Communist set-up have softened. Most of her friends have mixed views about her political affiliations. Old friend Janos (Nowicki) disagrees with her stance, her flatmate Judith Kardos (Margitai) more or less supports her. Juli’s mother died during the war, and her sculptor father had been imprisoned during one of the purges in the late 1930s. So she takes a dim view of Stalin, suspecting he may have had a hand in her father’s ‘disappearance’. The dynamic of these relationships forms the rich backcloth to this intimate character study.

Juli idolises Janos as a father figure. In her dream sequences, Janos actually becomes her father, working in a huge quarry. Much later, when Janos is married to Ildi (Bansagi), she also is the same person as her mother in Juli’s dreams. Not one for school, Juli does steals Magda’s cinema pass and discovers the classics: She identifies with Greta Garbo in ‘Mata Hari’, and make a fancy dress of her idol. But Juli has a harsh side, treating her boyfriend meanly by refusing to sleep with him. Janos gets arrested for “sabotage” in the factory he is working in, but he buys his freedom, denouncing a co-worker – and also relying on Magda’s help “for the sake of the old days”. Finally, Juli is thrown out of the school and has to work in a factory before she moves out of Magda’s flat, to live with Janos and his son (Toth), who has to spend his days in a wheelchair.

Diary for my Lovers (Napok Szerelmeinnek) Hungary 1987, 141 min.

Diary for my Lovers starts in 1953 and explores her sexual forays in Moscow. Juli has gone back to school and is chosen (with some help by Magda) to study economics but then has a change of heart, talking the Russians into letting her swop places with a young Hungarian whose dream to be an economist gives her the opportunity realise her own wish to become a filmmaker. At film school she meets the glamorous actress Anna Pavlova (Kouberskaya), who has a relationship with an older and senior party functionary. She also discovers how her father met his fate and angered by the revelations she decides to go home when the  1956 revolution breaks out in Hungary, despite becoming emotionally close to Janos and his son. Back in Budapest Magda has joined the security forces is nearly lynched during public unrest.  by the revolting citizens. Ildi asks Juli to flee to Vienna with Janos “and keep him there.” But they end up in Budapest.

Part three, A Diary for my Mother and Father (Naplo Apamnak, Anyamnak) Hungary 1990, 119 min.

This begins with a New Year’s Eve party in Magda’s flat, celebrating the end of a traumatic 1956. Magda and the Party have regained power after the Russian invasion, and Juli, who is working for the newsreel section of he Party, comes to blows with her mother. Janos is now part of an independent worker’s union in the factory, and convinces his co-workers not to give in to the regime, and continue their strike. But this all ends in a gruelling drawn-out tragedy

Meszaros combines the opposing forms of documentary and fiction, the film’s aesthetic and narrative becomes a notion of film as art, entertainment and record. The quasi documentary style and the inclusion of archive footage is a clear reflection of earlier Meszaros films. And this is all conveyed in the subtle acting performances, which remind us of Rossellini’s work in Italian Neo-Realism. We become attached observers, looking in from the outside as flies on the wall catching snippets of conversation at the dinner table, when working conditions in the factories are discussed, before Juli escapes into her dream world. There is a quietly devastating sequence with Juli sitting alone in the room after her grandfather has scolded her for bring up the story of her father’s tragic disappearance. A recurring dream imagine her father in the quarry; and we even get a glimpse of her as a child – her voice echoing as she calls for her father. Lacking a family in the traditional sense, she invents her own: as one where only Janos will discuss the past. Juli’s real world is the cinema.

Zsuzsa Czinkoczi gives an astounding performance considering she was only fifteen-years old when the film was shot. She dream-walks through the six hours, never putting a foot wrong. Subtly evoking tone and pace, and her life and circumstances change. Anna Polony’s Magda is a study in ambivalence. Both she and Juli somehow need each for a time: Juli to get to film school, Magda to repress her guilt regarding the death of Juli’s father. But they start out more or less on an even footing: life choices see them move farther apart. The truth here is that any totalitarian regime – rather like a religion- is extremely demanding of its believers, Magda becoming someone she didn’t set out to be. The only way out is total emotional rejection of the status quo, which Juli achieves in the end – but not before she entertained the idea of a silent truce with the system.

Whilst Meszaros always refused to be called a feminist, she was one of the first women directors who won major awards, and she was the first ever female filmmaker to win the Golden Bear in Berlin 1975, for Adoption. AS

MARTA MESZAROS RETROSPECTIVE | BERGAMO FILM MEETING 2021 | AVAILABLE FREE ONLINE WITH KIND PERMISSION OF THE HUNGARIAN CULTURAL CENTRE LONDON UK |

  

   

 

Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe | Draga Emma, Edes Böbe, vázlatok, aktok

Dir: István Szabó | Drama, Hungarian 90′

The lives of two woman are laid bare in this gentle exploration of the final days of Communism from Hungarian director István Szabó. Having made their way to the capital to teach Russian a few years previously, the struggle to maintain their social position in the new regime is the focus of the narrative.

Johanna ter Steege gives a smouldering performance as Emma, and her recurring dream of rolling naked down a grassy bank opens this affecting film that glows with a limpid freshness in Lajos Koltai’s black and white camerawork. Enikö Börcsök plays her bubbly and flirtatious friend Böbe. The two sleep in tiny beds in their shared room at the teachers hostel near the airport in Budapest.

Sex is uppermost in Emma’s mind, and we see her subtly trying to capture the headmaster’s attention, across the playground where he chats nonchalantly to another girl, casually throwing her a smile that speaks volumes about their lowkey affair, that carries on despite his wife. Meanwhile her pupils burn their Russian literature books with glee on an open bonfire, and she quietly frets about losing her livelihood now her skills are out of favour – Russian no longer being any use with the fall of Communism. Language is a currency that has been devalued overnight. And Communist party members are no longer revered across the board, and this also applies to the classroom.

While the girls’ lives play out in this new regime, Szabó’s film – co-written with Andrea Vészits – examines a whole world changing suddenly, as ordinary citizens catch their breath and open their minds to the new possibilities and obvious changes that are inevitable. Böbe is convinced she can save herself by marrying a foreign guy. Clearly inequality between the sexes continues to rear its head: one scene shows naked women flashing themselves infront of a camera in the hope of securing preferential treatment for the latest jobs on offer.

There is a raw emotional truth to this engaging drama that calls to mind Kieslowski’s plain-speaking realism, and relates tragic events without ever drifting into sentimentality. MT

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Ten Thousand Suns | Tizezer nap (1965)

Dir.: Ferenc Kosa; Cast: Andras Kozar, Tibor Molnar, Janos Görbe, Bürös Gyöngi, Janos Kottai, Laszlo Nyers, Janos Rajz; Hungary 1967, 103 min.

Notable for its arthouse depiction of the fate of Hungarian peasantry in the last century, the central character Istvan Szeles comes to life in a portrait of vulnerability, humiliation, and social deprivation during Stalin’s collectivisation.

Five years in the making director/co-writer Ferenc Kosa started the project while still at film school and the finished result was his graduation film in 1965. It stayed on the back burner for two years while the authorities asked for changes  to be made – and were not keen about it being in the line-up at Cannes Film Festival in 1967, where it won Best Director. Needless to say, a ‘sanitised’ version later found its way onto cinema screens in Hungary.

The fractured narrative flips backwards and forwards, opening during collectivisation when a huge hydroglobus arrives in the village were Istvan (Molnar) lives with his family, just as his son (Kozar) is leaving to join the Navy. Istvan admits to having attempted suicide. He is a lonely man, an idealist at heart, caring more for his family than himself.

The action then returns to the titular ten thousand suns during the 1930s, when Istvan met his wife Juli (Gyöngi) while the two were working for the wealthy landowner Bakogh (Rajz). His close friend Fülöp (Kottai) follows him through the story, often getting them both into trouble, such as the time when they steal hay from the landowner so they can heat their meagre living conditions. Work is gruelling but they decide not to join a strike at the factory, preferring to put food on the table for their families. Their refusal to put down tools with the rest of the workers, along with their colleague Mihaly (Nyers), provokes an angry reaction and they are called ‘scabs’.

We jump forward to the period after the Second World War, after the first wave of collectivisation. Istvan and and Mihaly are angry about the authorities confiscating their grain. Fülöp becomes an ardent supporter of the Communist Party and its policies, Mihaly is then killed by a police officer and Istvan is accused of not having stopped the fight, and for the ‘theft’ of the grain. He is imprisoned in Recski, a copper mine used as a work camp. After his release, he returns to his village where Fülöp is now enjoying the privileges of a leading communist activist.

We then move to the time of the uprising in 1956 – which is called a ‘revolution’, something the censorship would not allow. Fülöp and three of his comrades find themselves in front of a firing squad and Istvan becomes a victim of clinical depression, and tries to hang himself. The censors would have preferred a much happier ending, but this one somehow gets through.

In its stark monochrome aesthetic, Ten Thousand Suns is strikingly beautiful, shot by Sandor Sara, with whom Kosa would go on to develop a long collaboration, as he did with his  writer Sandor Csoori. Despite the harsh subject matter, Kosa and Sara find a symbolic way of developing a poetic realist style which goes much farther than a pure critique of the Stalinist state.

Ten Thousand Suns, Tízezer nap, director: Ferenc Kósa, 1965 – with English subtitles | WITH KIND PERMISSION OF THE HUNGARIAN CULTURAL CENTRE LONDON | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2020

Violent Playground (1958) **** free online

Dir.: Basil Dearden; Cast: Stanley Baker, Anne Heywood, David McCallum, Peter Cushing, Brona Boland, Fergal Booland; UK 1958, 108 min.

In the 1950s British director Basil Dearden (Victim, 1961) made a string of solidly-crafted features that explored racism, homophobia and other social issues that once again came into focus once the War was over. Although not as gritty and powerful as Rossellini’s Rome Open City the crowd scenes in post war Liverpool express the same frothing social unease in this slice of British Neo realist pic that make great use of the war-scarred locations of a city, enlivened by its immigrant influx from China and Ireland, yet down on its knees in the aftermath of the Blitz. Some critics have accused Dearden of being maudlin and preachy but there’s nothing remotely sentimental about Violent Playground , written by James Kennaway, with brilliant exterior photography by Reg Johnson, set mostly in the Gerard Garden estate of the Northern port.

It stars a hard-nosed Stanley Baker as Detective Sergeant Jack Truman leading an investigation into an arson attack perpetrated by the so-called “firefly” when he rubs his superiors up the wrong way and is transferred to Juvenile Liaison, a remit that sits badly with his tough guy image, but soon brings out his ‘caring’ side. His first ‘case’ concerns two under-fives, Mary and Patrick Murphy who are engaged in a pilfering racket in the High Street. Returning the kids to their home on the Estate, he comes up against the leader of the rebellious youth group and older brother of the pint-sized delinquents, Johnny Murphy, and McCullum makes for an impressive criminal in the role.  Johnnie and his gang have been terrorising the local Chinese laundry workers Alexander and Primrose. But when Johnnie sees Truman, whom he immediately identifies as a cop, even though dressed in civvies, he tamps down his activities. Later Truman will fall for the forth member of the Murphy family, the responsible Katherine (Heywood).

Meanwhile Johnnie goes about his business, burning down properties, Truman not cottoning on to his identity, and only making the connection when Johnnie accidentally kills Alexander  while making a getaway from a crime scene.  Armed with a machine gun, Johnnie then holds siege to the Scotland Road school building full of kiddies. A local Catholic priest played by Peter Cushing is also injured when he tries to gain access to the building via a ladder.

The hostage scene is the triumph of the feature, and brilliantly directed. Baker makes for a stern but compassionate hero, playing against type here on the right side of the law. McCallum rocks as the psychotic rock’n’roll antihero, a far cry from his suave Man from UNCLE image that was to follow. The music sets him (and his gang) in a sort of trance, where he even considers taking Truman on, before he finally comes to his senses. Heywood’s Kathy is a too goody-two-shoes to be believable. But Brona and Fergal Boland as Mary and Patrick, often steal the show in naturalistic performances as the two precociously criminal kids, often taking the wind out of Baker’s wings.  Despite his spiritual credentials Peter Cushing feels strangely underwhelming, his Father Laidlaw is ineffective and under-cooked. Dearden directs the mass scenes of the parents in front of the school, clamouring for their children, with great sensibility – a good rehearsal for Khartoum (1966). This gritty story with its important social implications certainly suited Dearden’s style, if only he’d taken on more of the same, l instead of opting for soppy relationship conflicts.

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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

Knives Out (2019) *** On Demand

Dir|Wri: Rian Johnson |Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon, Ana de Armas LaKeith Stanfield | Comedy Drama 130′

Rian Johnson excels in this crass but entertaining old-school whodunnit inspired by crime mistress Agatha Christie and dusted down in a sleek new format for the present day. It sees Daniel Craig’s dapper Deep South detective Benoit Blanc investigating the murder of powerful patriarch and best-selling author Harlan Thrombey (Plummer) who heads up a combative family in a Gothic Mansion, somewhere in wooded Massachussetts.

Never mind the head-spinning plot twists, the cast will keep you on your toes with their stinging repartee and back-biting banter: Toni Collette is particularly good as the hard-edged daughter Joni, and the stellar cast includes a frightening Jamie Leigh Curtis, a twinkly eyed Don Johnson and a pucker Christopher Plummer who gradually expose their hypocrisies over cocktails, very much shaken not stirred while Mr Bond puts his received pronunciation on the back burner for a Southern twang. Suave and sophisticated it may not be, but entertaining it certainly is. MT

NOW AVIALABLE FROM CURZON ON DEMAND |

 

 

 

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

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Who You Think I Am (2019) Curzon

Dir: Safy Nebbou Writer: Safy Nebbou, Julie Peyr | Cast: Juliette Binoche, François Civil, Nicole Garcia, Marie-Ange Casta, Guillaume Gouix, Jules Houplain, Jules Gauzelin, Charles Berling, Claude Perron | French, 101′

A little bit late to the party comes another film about female sexuality after fifty. Bright Days Ahead started the trend, and then Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche did a great job with Let the Sun Shine In (2017). Now Binoche lends her talents as a similar woman in Who You Think I Am, a much darker and more introspective look at the loss of sexual power and identity that can afflict the female of the species, often affecting her wellbeing and confidence.

As Byron once wrote: “Man’s love is of man’s life a part; it is a woman’s whole existence”. And this is very much the case for Claire (Binoche) not satisfied with just being a mother or a literature professor in Paris, she also misses being desired, touched and lusted after. Abandoned by her husband, and keen to understand why her younger lover has also left, she idly delves into Facebook for a solution. A fat chance there, you may be thinking. But soon she’s inventing a fake profile and befriending her Alex, 29, masquerading as 24-year-old Clara, and Alex predictably takes the bait. Conversations with her shrink intensify and the two women become enthralled in the story that Claire is creating, Nicole Garcia is masterful as D Boormans finding it hard to remain a professional on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, as their flirty chat intensifies on social media and phone calls, Alex is soon in thrall to the woman of his dreams, Claire in disquise. But when she does the maths, reality bites. Lacking the confidence to meet Alex in person, she has nevertheless grown accustomed to his online attention, feeding her feelings of lust and longing, day by day. An experienced woman of the world, she knows just how to keep him onboard online. But not for ever, as Alex is gagging to meet her. And her elusiveness is driving him mad, and making him keener. But she deludes Alex, she is also deludes herself and this feeling sends her spiralling back into desperation. If only she looked young again, she could be having real sex with this guy, but isn’t that thought process also self-defeating. If she was confident, maybe he wouldn’t mind her ageing body, as he already loved her mind. And his feelings were real.

Based on the eponymous novel by Camille Laurens, Safy Nebbou convincingly probes Claire’s drift into virtual reality exploring it from different perspectives and exploring her psyche. There are so many angles here to contemplate, and Nebbou does a great job of understanding the female point of view. And as 89 year old Bernie Ecclestone announces the arrival of his latest kid, the subject of sexuality once again rears its ugly head in the gender politics debate. Juliette Binoche delivers an incredible portrait of a woman struggling to cope with the wounds inflicted by loneliness and growing older, from a female perspective. MT

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The Whalebone Box (2019) **** Home Ent release

Dir/Wri: Andrew Kötting | UK, Doc with Anonymous Bosch, Andrew Kötting, Nick Gordon Smith. Philippe Ciompi, Eden Kötting, Iain Sinclair, Philip Hoare, Macgillivray, Kyunwai So, Ceylan Ünal, Helen Paris, Steve Dilworth.

Artist, writer and director Andrew Kötting has built up a string of quintessentially British films. The Whalebone Box is another of his experimental jaunts made with his regular collaborator Iain Sinclair, and the photographer Anonymous Bosch.

Discovered in LondonM the box in question is bound in fishing nets and reputed to convey healing properties in the Scottish town of its origin, which is desperately down on its luck. So the two men start their eventful journey north to return it to the Scottish home of the sculptor Steve Dilworth, a Hull native who has settled on the island of Harris, in the Outer Hebrides.

What is the secret behind this enigmatic container? Is it a relic, a survivor from a mysterious shipwreck, or a magical totem?. The mystery gives rise to an expedition suffused with evocative reveries, drenched in strange fairytales, folklore, dark humour and sonic interludes. The travellers are gradually mesmerised by the power of this enchanted object which gradually becomes “heavier and heavier, turning into a different substance”,

A parallel strand intertwines with the 800 mile pilgrimage, this features Andrew Kötting’s daughter Eden, who has already appeared in several of his earlier films. Eden suffers from Joubert’s disease and her presence lends an eerie vulnerability adding texture to the fascinating narrative. From the depths of her sleep, or adorned with a magnificent crown of flowers and binoculars, she is the film’s muse and guide, attempting to interpret the strange and mystical goings on. But so is a whale with its mournful atavistic cries – embodying nature’s suffering at the hands of humanity.

As usual there are cul-de-sacs and detours, and these feature the dead poets Basil Bunting and Sorley MacLean and the sculptor Steve Dilworth – the film also borrows from Pandora and Moby Dick and takes its 10 chapter headings from Philip Hoare’s novel Leviathan, or the Whale. One thing is sure – the box must never be opened, and therein lies a sense of anticipation and wonder – little did the men know the delirium they would unleash. Eventually they reach the white sands of Harris where they intend to return the box to its original resting place. Shot in Super 8, 16mm this is a strange, haunting and magical film. Just watch out for the post credit sting. MT

NOW ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD |

 

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 Year of the Sex Olympics (1968)

Dir: Michael Elliott | Wri: Nigel Neale | Cast: Leonard Rossiter, Suzanne Neve and Brian Cox

First broadcast by the BBC on 29 July 1968, The Year of the Sex Olympics is one of the most original pieces of television drama ever written, foreshadowing both the likes of Big Brother and Love Island and the sexualisation of digital space.

Unavailable on DVD for many years, on 20 April 2020 it will be re-released by the BFI in a new edition with a host of accompanying extras including a feature-length audio commentary by actor Brian Cox and Nigel Kneale in conversation. Also on the disc is Le Pétomane(1973), a short comedy biopic of Joseph Pujol, starring Leonard Rossiter and written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson (Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son).

Nigel Kneale’s eerily prescient drama is set in a future when society is split into two strata. The low-drives are the passive majority, mentally anaesthetised by an incessant diet of TV consisting largely of pornography. Television, and by extension the populace, is controlled by the high-drives, an educated class engaged in a perpetual quest for better ratings and audience subjugation. But when the low-drives become increasingly uninterested in the programming on offer, production executive Ugo Priest (Leonard Rossiter,  Rising Damp, The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin) and his team happen upon a new concept: reality TV.

The Year of the Sex Olympics was originally broadcast in colour. At some point after that single broadcast, the original colour tapes were erased and all that remains is a black-and-white 16mm telerecording which has been remastered by the BBC for this release.

DVD release on 20 April 2020 

Special features

 

Battle of the Sexes (1960) *** Home Ent release

Dir: Charles Crichton | Cast: Peter Sellers with Robert Morley, Constance Cummings and Donald Pleasence | UK Comedy 84′

Comedy genius Peter Sellers gives one of his best performances in this famously sharp-edged satire on sexual politics in the 1950s workplace.

The sleepy staff of Macpherson’s traditional Scottish tweed firm get a rude awakening when young Macpherson (Robert Morley, Theatre of Blood) hires a feisty American efficiency expert Angela Barrows (Constance Cummings, Blithe Spirit). She advocates new-fangled horrors like automation and – ghastliest of all – ‘synthetic fibre’.  Can nothing stop her? Nothing, perhaps, but meek accountant Mr Martin (Peter Sellers). Beneath that placid surface, still waters run deep; to balance the books, he decides, he must erase the ‘error’.

Made just after I’m All Right, Jack, this misleadingly titled version of James Thurber’s The Catbird Seat transposed to fifties Scotland was both Peter Sellers’ final character part (recalling his elderly projectionist Percy Quill in The Smallest Show on Earth) and his first starring role as a shuffling old accountant driven to thoughts of murder by American efficiency expert Constance Cummings.

It’s more a battle of cultures or of generations in the vein of an Ealing comedy than of the sexes; as befits Michael Balcon’s maiden production for his newly formed company Bryanston. Directed by Ealing veteran Charles Crichton, it is also considerably enhanced by the glacial black & white photography of the rabbit warren in which Sellers works and on the streets of Edinburgh by Oscar-winning cameraman Freddie Francis fresh from Room at the Top. R Chatten

Blu-ray/DVD release on 20 April 2020 with simultaneous release on BFI Player, iTunes and Amazon

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Celle Qui Manque (2020) *** Cinema du Reel 2020

Dir.: Rares Ienasoaie; Documentary with Ioana Ienasoaie; France 2019, 

Romanian born director/DoP/Sound designer Rares Ienasoaie has created a very personal feature documentary: having not met his sister Ioana for twelve years, he tracks her down living   in a camper van, eking out an existence from detritus, a drug addict for most of her life.

 “One day, I felt alone and I thought of my elder sister Ioana”. Ioana has not really disappeared, she travels because she wants to be forgotten. But Rares really misses her and takes his camera along on her nightly odyssey. Twelve years is a long time, even for siblings. It soon emerges her most recent relationship has come to an end – one of many endings. Ioana does read her correspondence but always finds a way to avoid contact. She loves the stories Rares tells – as long as they are kept in a mythical past. The present belongs to drugs and her dog. Ioana’s recalls being jealous at fourteen, and wanting a sporty man like her friend. She is thirty now, and does not even know what sporty means. Something she did not get – like everything else. When Rares asks her about the future the answer comes quickly: “I hope I will be still myself.” Whatever that is, because Ioana has to admit her drug dependency keeps her from having a real identity: they have put her life on hold pause. “I know, drugs are stopping me from being free”. Some of her friends have overcome their dependency on replacing it another drug, that of sexual elation. But love is not for her. “You think you are in love, and the other person is laughing at you. But with drugs, you are always aware of it – you self-destruct, but there is no chance of rejection”. The past always, the past: “The past defines us, if you don’t deal with it. I realise that I have not gotten over it: I still see myself as fat and ugly, even though I am not any more. But I don’t feel good”. 

Most of the shots are taken in the back of the camper, the only light being Ioana’s headlamp. It comes as a shock when we suddenly move to a daytime shot down by the seaside. Another Ioana emerges, and suddenly there is colour. Rares is gradually trying to persuade Ioana to visit her family, their parents in particular. But Ioana is reluctant: “I’ll never feel ready, because I’ll never be able to put things right again. It not neutral territory” When Rares reminds her that Blicourt is not her childhood home, she refuses to accept it. “Only Compiegne, that’s the only place I feel comfortable”. When her brother insists that her parents definitely bought Blicourt for them, Ioana gets angry: “They can’t believe we wanted children. No grandchildren.” Rares plays down a putative meeting: “We won’t say anything, we’ll just say you’ll come and see them. We’ll pretend everything is fine. I can’t pretend I have no sister, I am an only child. I feel like the ungrateful son”.

The Missing One finally comes to a conclusion on the beach with the dog running around, swimming happily. Ioana leans against a rock. Nothing is spared, the darkness of the camper van shrouding everything in a mournful guise, Ioana going more backwards than forwards. Like a Becket play, everything stripped to the essential gloom. AS

42nd CINEMA DU RÉEL 2020 Paris France | 13-22 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

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

 

In Touch (2018) *** Kinoteka

Dir.: Pawel Ziemilski; Documentary; Poland/Iceland 2018, 61 min.

Pawel Ziemilski finds an ingenious way to tackle the timely topic of distance relationships in a challenging new documentary which won the main prize at IDFA in 2108.

Since the 1980s, the Polish town of Stare Juchy (Old Blood) has seen its population dwindling with most of the young moving to Iceland, of all places. Desperate to stay in touch, those left behind resort to electronic methods of communication. And Skype seems to be the most popular. But it’s not as simple as it seems. Gradually a different modus vivendi takes hold as the emigres adapt to their new environment, become influenced by the change of language and social set-up. Most of them will never return.

But In Touch goes beyond a study of citizens chatting to relatives and friends on a screen. Ziemilski records images of the landscape in both locations and then literally projects the footage via electronic means onto a vast canvass, a sort of moving art installation that keeps the communities in touch with each other, and their environment – rather like google Earth on a grandiose scale. Ziemilski can even project absent family members into a life-size Easter meal, or show a distant daughter painting her mother’s nails in another country. A goalkeeper on the Polish pitch tries to save shots not only from the Icelandic strikers, but also from opponents elsewhere. Sounds amazing? But – and it is a big but – the whole concept fails to convince because we never find out exactly who we’re dealing with, or how they feels about the situation. Brief, subjective, person-related information would have been so much more effective than just pictures: Greta putting her Icelandic co-workers down, telling her friend in Stare Juchy that she went for a job interview at the airport, and hoping she’ll get the job “since only Icelandic girls seem to be working there”.  

The sheer variety of these visual devices is extremely impressive, opening up new ways of enabling interaction by reconfiguring the conception of spaces, and exploring the topic in formally imaginative ways. But the concept is undermined by the plethora of sub-approaches, which often reduces the outcome as pure gimmickry.

All very imaginative in theory, but the human interaction feels impersonal and lacks real  intimacy. In Touch would work far better in the formal confines of an art gallery where visitors could drift in and out. As a cinematic experience it is often too limited by its formalism, which strangles the human touch. AS

Showing 24 March @ 8.30pm at the ICA as part of KINOTEKA | The Polish Film Festival in London, Kinoteka.org.uk

  

Desert Fury (1947) ***

Director: Lewis Allen. Scr: Robert Rossen. Cast: John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, Mary Astor, Wendell Corey. USA 1947, 96 min.

This lush but still obscure Technicolor film noir with an atmospheric Miklos Rozsa score is set (like The Misfits) in Nevada; originally based on a story called ‘Bitter Harvest’ serialised in ‘Collier’s’ magazine in 1945 by Ramona Stewart (whose only other novel to be filmed was ‘The Possession of Joel Delaney’ in 1971).

Described by Eddie Muller as “the gayest movie ever produced in Hollywood’s golden era”, the whole thing makes sense as a menage a trois drama with Lizabeth Scott (dressed to kill by Edith Head and driving a fabulous wood-panelled convertible) coming between gangsters John Hodiak and a debuting Wendell Corey in the face of additional opposition from Scott’s mother, Mary Astor, and local sheriff, Burt Lancaster, (in his early days as a tough guy). Definitely one of a kind! R Chatten

‘Desert Fury’ is now on bluray.

The Hunt (2019) ****

Dir.: Craig Zobel; Cast: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Emma Roberts, Sturgill Simpson; USA 2020, 89 min.

Twelve strangers wake up in a field. They don’t know where they are, or how they got there. Their fate is soon revealed in a terrible game called The Hunt. And they are ‘The Deplorables’.

Adapted from Richard Connell’s often-filmed 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game, The Hunt is a classic Blumhouse schlocker. Connell’s short story was first adapted for the screen by Ernest Schloedsack in 1932, starring Fay Wray – both turning up again for the first King Kong version. Twelve years later Orson Wells based his CBS radio play on the material; and more recently, Italian director Elio Petri took the helm on The Tenth Victim in 1965, starring Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroiani. But all these are pure entertainment movies – with perhaps a little nod to social conflict. Only The Hunger Games trilogy, based on Suzanne Collins’ novels, has a direct political undertone. When Universal withdrew The Hunt, scheduled to be premiered last September, two reasons were given: the mass shootings at Dayton and El Paso, and President Trump’s intervention, proclaiming that The Hunt showed “liberal Hollywood” as its worst (again).

Craig Zobel (Compliance) is the latest to have a bash at a film version and makes a good go of it with his writers Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof. ‘The Deplorables’ team is fronted up by Crystal (Gilpin) who has served as a soldier in Afghanistan and runs rings round the hunters’ hired hands. Their leader Athena (Swank) makes a spectacular mistake: She was supposed to include a no-hoper, also called Cristal, in ‘The Deplorables’ team – instead she chose Crystal with a ‘y’; during the final duel, the women scope out which of them best resembles Snowball from Orwell’s Animal Farm (based on Stalin’s opponent Trotsky). Other oddities are the reconstruction of an Arkansas petrol station in Bosnia, and Crystal’s long rendering of the ‘hare and turtle’ nursery rhyme. Crystal is forced to eliminate the other members of her group, who are supposed to be on her side, but are really ‘the enemy’.

The horror element here is more camp than anything, and the absurdities make it easy to classify The Hunt as comedy-horror; names like Yoga Pants (Roberts) and Vanilla Nice (Simpson) setting the tone. Yet, Zobel’s commitment to the task is admirable: his madhouse ensemble is able to fight with irony as their weapon of preference. DoP Darren Tiernan (HBO’s Westworld), conjures up parallel worlds which are as beautiful as treacherous. Gilpin’s Crystal has the leadership talents of Stakhanov and Machiavelli combined, and although The Hunt may not be a masterpiece, it represents solid entertainment for genre fans – with a touch of acid. AS

THE HUNT IS OUT NOW 

Cunningham (2019) *****

Dir: Alla Kovgan | US Doc, 93′

Mercier Philip Cunningham or “Merce” (1919-2009) was an American dancer and choreographer whose groundbreaking style is celebrated here in a stunning 3D documentary. Cunningham is a first feature for documentarian Alla Kovgan. In keeping with Merce’s innovative approach, she combines archive footage and new works never performed in public in this dynamic front row experience of visionary dance style. The dancer refused to describe his work as Avantgarde or even modern: “I don’t describe it, I do it” he opines during the VoiceOver narration. The film refreshingly avoids a talking heads approach, focusing on dance as a purely visual expression of “animal authority and human passion”, rather than an accompaniment to music.

Merce was also passionate about working with artists from other disciplines including composer John Cage, Cunningham’s longterm partner; the painter Robert Rauschenberg; and Andy Warhol whose collaboration is particularly striking in Merce’s 1968 Sci-fi themed dance work Rainforest which featured Warhol’s metallic helium-filled silver balloons (the Silver Clouds) that float around the dancers like something from outer space.

Born in Centralia, Washington in 1919 Merce was always adamant about his craft that was at the forefront of American dance for more that 50 years until his death in 2009, age 90. He performed in 1999 with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the New York State Theater for his 80th birthday. In common with virtually all artists he describes the endless need to practice from dawn ’til dusk, and his battered feet are pictured in close-up going through the motions of a dance routine.

Kovgan explores the first 30 years of a career that would play a part in transforming ballet and dance. Most of the movements are radical – bestial even – neck muscles ripple and pulsate, torsos quiver. The film’s structure is fluidly organic rather than chronological, making striking use of DoP Mko Malkhasyan’s aerial photography and ground-level camerawork that allows sequences to flood off the screen making us feel part of the dance routine. The 3D adds to the dancers’ lithe physicality, and their syncopating movements — the New York skylines stand out in pin-sharp vibrancy, as do the vivid outdoor settings that zing with freshness and acuity. The soundscape adds weight and depth but is never intrusive.

Conversations and correspondence between his contemporaries Cage, Rauschenberg, Warhol and Jasper Johns contextualise Cunningham’s vision; his disciplined, prolific and experimental concepts facilitating a counterculture that transformed the postwar dance-scene – although it wasn’t well-received by everyone. During an international tour in 1964 Parisians threw tomatoes during performances – “if only that had been apples”, claims Rauschenberg, “we were hungry and wanted something to eat”.

Money was tight in the early years when the troupe took off across America in a minibus but gradually this new and expressive form took off during a 1964 world tour when his reputation for being outlandish slowly faded – to his chagrin: his aim was always to cutting edge. Eventually Merce became an old father rather than a instructive companion to his fellow dancers but his inspiration lives on in his disciples Paul Taylor, Karole Armitage and Alice Reyes who have gone on to form their own companies with memorable routines such as Suite for Two; Winterbranch and Second Hand. MT

CUNNINGHAM IS ON RELEASE FROM 13 MARCH 2020 | ANDY WARHOL’S SILVER CLOUDS CAN BE SEEN AT THE TATE MODERN, LONDON, IN A MAJOR EXHIBITION OF HIS WORK | 11 MARCH 2020

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 

     

Charlatan (2020) Digital release

Dir Agnieszka Holland | Wri: Mark Epstein | Cast: Ivan Trojan, Juraj Loj, Josef Trojan | Drama Czech, Irish, 118′

A talented self-taught Czech herbal physician fights discrimination during the totalitarian 1950s in this lushly inspired drama that also tells a convincing gay awakening story.

Agnieszka Holland really finds her groove in this fascinating film about Jan Mikolasek (1889-1973) a mercurial master of alternative medicine who treated a wide range of illustrious patients including Nazi Martin Bormann and leader Antonin Zapotocky, but eventually fell from grace when homosexuality was still a crime. The film opens during the political turmoil of 1957 that sees the 70-year-old Mikolasek suffering under the draconian cosh of the post-Stalinist era when the death of his ally Zapotocky ushers in president Antonin Novotny.

Czech actor Ivan Trojan gives a mesmerising performance as the maverick medic in this elegantly realised period piece that makes appealing use of its picturesque settings in the verdant Czech countryside. Award-winning scripter Mark Epstein admits to playing fast and loose with the sketchy historical facts in giving life to this slightly mysterious man who railed against the febrile Eastern European political system despite his outwardly pucker credentials and dapper demeanour.

Mikolasek grew up with an interest in plants and their medicinal properties, and we meet him as a young man (played by the main actor’s feisty 18-year old son Josef Trojan) who learns to read bottled urine samples by holding them up against the light. The young Mikolasek is prone to violent outbursts at one point threatening his father with an axe and then bashing a bag of newborn kittens against a tree instead of drowning them. In flashback we see him as a young soldier traumatised by his orders to execute a comrade. All this serves the main story well and is seamlessly interwoven into the narrative.

The doctor’s arcane abilities to cure the sick were endorsed by a long line of locals who queued for hours to received a diagnosis of their ills. And soon his successful practice allows him to move into more luxurious surroundings in a countryside manor which also serves as his clinic. He hires an assistant in the shape of Frantisek Palko (Juraj Loj) who lacks training and experience but desperately needs a job to support his growing family and is prepared to offer his undivided time and loyalty.

The men develop a bond that extends beyond the professional and these scenes feel convincingly natural, their sexual tension ramped up by the illicit nature of an affair that culminates in a heart-stopping finale.

Scored by Dvorak and other Czech composers, Holland’s accomplished filmmaking is showcased in this illuminating work that sheds light on a little known episode of the nation’s history. The past and present comes together gracefully, delineated by the entrancing camerawork of DoP Martin Strba that contrasts sun-filled outdoor scenes with stylishly subdued interiors and black-and-white archive footage of the Communist era offering a really enjoyable experience. MT

NOW ON PREMIER DIGITAL PLATFORM AX1 from 7 MAY 2021. Berlinale FILM FESTIVAL premiere 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

                                    

       

First Cow (2020)

Dir: Kelly Reichardt | Writers Jon Raymond, Kelly Reichardt | Cast: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shepherd, Gary Farmer, Lily Gladstone, Alia Shawkat, Rene Auberjonois, Jared Kasowski | Drama US 121′

“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” William Blake

Kelly Reichardt’s eighth film takes us back to the old West in a timeless and fabulously crafted story of two men finding friendship as they wander the sylvan landscapes of the 19th century Oregon Trail trying to survive off the land.

This lyrical and richly textured film lulls us with a hypnotic narrative that slowly catches fire in the final stretch. The mutually compatible souls come together from different corners of the earth. Bonded by their hopes and dreams they develop a miniaturist cottage industry: the Chinamen King Lu (Orion Lee) has the business acumen, the diffident American is Boston baker “Cookie” (aka Otis Figowitz, a sensitive John Magaro) and what emerges is a painterly rendering of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: first there is hunger but gradually sophistication and greed come into play, as the smouldering story unfolds.

It all starts with the arrival of the first cow in the region, an amiable dairy heifer seen drifting gracefully along the river in a boat from San Luis Obispo. Once firmly on dry land she is encouraged by Cookie to provide the vital ingredient for his buttermilk buns. And these provide for the men’s needs in the short term. Lu suggests they sell them at the nearby market, and soon they have regular customers for their fare. Lu points out their “window” will not last for long. But before competitors catch on to their bakery bandwagon, something tragic happens.

And this comes with the arrival of the cow’s owner, Toby Jones’ Chief Factor, a wealthy English sea merchant who lives in a supposedly grand clapperboard house, with his Native American wife (Lily Gladstone). His observations on how to incentivise workers, and his sophisticated social commentary on London fashions spike this gentle story with a vein of subversive humour. We learn the buns have a subtle taste of “South Kensington” and that the ‘Empire Line’ is no longer in vogue, but canary yellow is the now the colour ‘du jour’ for ladies couture. Also that his humble cow is actually descended from the highly prized ‘Froment de Leon’ breed, crossed with Isigny in Brittany, ensuring exceptionally rich grass for grazing, hence the quality of its milk and cream. So when Factor visits the market to sample the famous buttermilk buns and orders a ‘blueberry clafoutis’, the penny starts to drop, but not into the baker’s hands.

Reichardt’s regular cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt creates painterly images that glow like Rembrandt Old Masters, enhanced by the use of the silent era’s 4:3 aspect ratio. The animal connection here is tender rather than sentimental, once again showcasing Reichardt’s relationship with animals: her well known dog Lucy has been cast in her films – notably Wendy and Lucy (2008), and Old Joy (2006) which share Reichardt’s regular writing partner, who also wrote the book on which this arthouse treasure is based: The Half Life. MT

ON RELEASE IN THE UK & IRELAND and on MUBI | 28 MAY 2021 | BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2020 PREMIERE

 

 

 

Uppercase Print (2020) Mubi

Dir.: Radu Jude; Cast: Serban Lazarovic; Ionna Iacob, Bogdan Zamfir; Romania 2020, 128 min.

Director/co-writer Radu Jude won the Silver Bear in 2015 for his 19th century adventure drama (Aferim!) and his 2018 satire I Don’t Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians won the Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary. He is back in Berlin with another episode from Romanian history, a biopic of the famous Botosani teenager Mugur Calinescu (1965-1985) who chalked anti-state slogans all over the town and was hounded down by the feared Securitas, and crushed by president Ceausescu’s secret police.

Uppercase Print is based on Securitas files and the play by Gianina Carbunarius, and adapted for the screen by Jude and the playwright himself. Jude interweaves the narrative with police re-enactment sequences during the time of the case and after the fall of the regime, and domestic scenes featuring Mugur (Lazarovic) and his parents (Iacob and Zamfir). These are enriched by  newsreel and short films from Romanian State Television, giving the docudrama a convincing historical perspective.

In September 1981 Mugur was disenchanted by things in his native town of Botosani, and expressed his concern by chalking relatively harmless messages on the walls of the Cultural Centre: “We can’t take the injustice any longer… I consider we should remove it”.  Often commenting on developments in Poland, where Solidarity and Rural were formed – Mugur wanted this progress for Romania. He continued to raise awareness about long food queues in the shops and called for an end to “the filth and injustice in our country”. The messages were written in the upper-case letters, hence the film’s title. On the kerb Mugur wrote “We want Freedom” At the same time, TV images were mildly misogynist showcasing women’s beauty, all thanks to the regime.

Mugur got caught by the Securitas, and ended up in a file, code name “Pupil”. Policemen bugged the flat where he lived with his mother – his father had left the family. The secret police accused him of asking state enemies for help. And despite his efforts to apologise, the police closed in on him and his friends, his mother was pressurised in her workplace. All during this time young men were being conscripted: the Fatherland was worth any sacrifice. The class enemy in the West was accused of Human Rights violations. Mugur told the authorities be believed Romania to be a backward country, even compared to other the socialist nations.

In November 1981 school and security services got together to rule in the “Pupil” case. Mugur was regarded an enemy of the state and the Securitas cross-examination continued. A thoughtful re-enactment of his funeral ensues, his old case officers in attendance and now living happily in Bucharest, shrugging off any guilt about his fate. The authorities stated: “Ceausescu did not want political cases any more. In 1964 Mugur would have got 15 years in prison”. Mugur left the world with a dim opinion of his fellow countrymen:” My friends betrayed me, that’s the worst. I confessed so Securitas could not act indifferently. Among cowards you can’t do anything”.

Radu Jude’s sensitively crafted biopic drama pays heartfelt homage to a young man who tried to make the world aware of the social injustice in his homeland, illuminating a little known snapshot of history outside the confines of the Totalitarian State. Today Mugur is remembered as a hero by all Romanians, and it’s thanks to Jude that we all now know his story. AS

NOW ON MUBI | BERLINALE 2020 PREMIERE           

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

The Old Dark House (1932)

Dir: James Whale | Wri: Benn Levy/J B Priestley | Cast: Boris Karloff| Charles Laughton | Eva Moore | Gloria Stuart | Melvyn Douglas| Raymond Massey | Horror / Comedy |US  75′

James Whale’s greatest film was arguably The Bride of Frankenstein but The Old Dark House comes a near second with its spine-tingling blend of thrilling suspense piqued with deliciously dark humour, cleverly sending up the horror genre in a subtle and brilliant way, thanks to Benn W. Levy’s script based on J B Priestley novel, Benighted. The storyline is secondary to spirited performances from a superb cast led by Raymond Massey, Mervyn Douglas and Gloria Stuart as a trio forced to take refuge in a macabre household presided over by sinister siblings (Ernest Thesiger and Elspeth Dudgeon). Things go bump in the night and Boris Karloff plays the monstrous hirsute butler off his rocker – hinting at an early version of Frankenstein himself. But it’s the quirky characterisations that make this supremely entertaining, along with an eerily evoked Gothic atmosphere. Another threesome soon emerges – a ménage à trois between Charles Laughton’s bumptious  Yorkshire mill-owner and his gal (Lilian Bond) who is chivalrously courted by Douglas whispering sweet nothings in the gloaming. Good fun all round. MT

New 4K restoration of THE CHILLING LOST CLASSIC from the director of FRANKENSTEIN, THE INVISIBLE MAN & THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN | and on dual format from 21 May 2018 COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS of CINEMA | ALSO SHOWING AT THE CINEMA MUSEUM, LONDON on FEBRUARY 23  

 

 

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

When Lambs become Lions (2018) | ****

Dir: Jon Kasbe | Doc | US

When you fight to survive in the vast arid plains of East Africa life is tough. In his deeply affecting feature debut, award-winning filmmaker Jon Kasbe (Heartbeats Of Fiji) explores whether human life in Northern Kenya is more valuable than that of endangered species. The subject of poaching is certainly an emotive issue that strongly divides the nation’s inhabitants, many of whom are deeply opposed to the illegal practice on moral grounds. But the lucrative trade goes on.

This is the latest in a series of conservation-themed features that started with Blackfish, The Cove and last year’s Trophy. Stunningly captured on the widescreen and in intimate close-up the film contrasts Kenya’s natural beauty with the less palatable aspects of animal slaughter, that takes place not for food but for trophy hunting. And the animals do not die a quick death but a long, drawn out and painful one due to being inexpertly shot or poisoned with venomous arrows. The film’s atmospheric score adds gravitas to the melancholic episodes where Asan silently contemplates his doubtful future. And these sequences contrast with the high-octane nighttime forays into the bush to locate victims and escape the rangers’ onslaught.

Kasbe’s non-judgemental thriller unspools with a growing dramatic tension as it moves stealthily between the lives of two men: an unlikeable ivory trader (X), and his ranger nemesis Asan, who is also his cousin. The glassy-eyed macho X boasts of making a successful black market business selling ivory. As he swaggers around chain-smoking defiantly and invoking ‘Allah’, he claims not to do the killing himself. Hot on his tracks is Asan and his fellow government employed rangers who are heavily armed with rifles and threaten the poachers with their zero tolerance approach. But rangers have little to gain financially from their work, although many feel sadness for the elephants’ plight. Heavily armed with automatic rifles they also have an axe to grind against the government claiming they have not been paid two months’ wages due to an administrative error. Meanwhile, the poachers make a lucrative living. X’s sidekick Lukas posits the powerful adage “if we do not hunt we will be hunted”. The pressure to earn a pittance is also putting a strain on Asan’s marriage and growing family, and he fears he may have to go back to the petty crime of his youth. 

Although poaching is a blot on the landscape, so is the plight of the people who inhabit this impoverished region. President Uhuru Kenyatta confiscates and burns all illegal ivory stashes claiming – on a television programme – that “ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants”. Meanwhile X and Lukas watch silently desperately wishing they could lay their hands on the truckloads of bounty destined to be destroyed by the government’s crackdown. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Possession (1981) ****

Dir: Andrzej Zulawski  | Cast: Sam Neill, Isabelle Adjani, Margit Castensen, Heinz Bennent, Johanna Hofer | 124min  | Horror Drama  | Poland France West Germany

possession_2116In the opening scene of Andrzej Zulawski’s POSSESSION, Isabelle Adjani (Anna) meets Sam Neill (Mark) outside their Berlin apartment block, on his return from a business trip – she appears to be dressed in mourning. It then emerges she wants a divorce, and the two of them descend rapidly into a frazzled state of anxiety – Mark rocking to and fro in a cold sweat and Anna sobbing down the telephone from her new lover’s place. Mark (a self-confessed misogynist) seems less concerned about the divorce, but is eaten up with jealousy that Anna is having sex with another man – and enjoying it. Confronting her lover Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) in his spacious book-filled apartment, Mark is understandably indignant. Heinrich is dressed like a flamenco dancer; black shirt slashed to his ageing midriff. Embracing Mark, he appeals to his sense of fair-play in understanding their mutual state of flux.

Initially banned in the UK; this is the Russian-born Polish film director’s most controversial film. Many claim to be shocked and traumatised by it; others to find it a total enigma, even a laughable mess. Certainly it gives full throttle to the full-blooded emotional fall-out when a relationship goes wrong – but this is not social realism; it is mannered horror. Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress at Cannes for her histrionic, ‘obsessive compulsive’ performance – which involves an electric carving knife – and Neill is also at his most viscerally raw, switching from demonic anger to childlike vulnerability (his eyes are especially weird – an effect achieved by coloured contact lenses), as he pleads with Anna to share her feelings so he can work to make it right. Meanwhile he is also trying to negotiate a deal with his employers and look after his infant son Bob.

Filmed by ace DoP Bruno Nuytten (Jean de Florette) in the frigid blue light of a rained-soaked Berlin winter in Kreuzberg and Mitte’s empty streets, there are unsettling vignettes where Anna is at one point pursued by a government official who asks to check the windows of the apartment where she is now living (having left Mark). In this apartment, she has produced – or apparently given birth to – a strange octopus-like blob of gore, that masquerades as a gigantic living foetus. When the inspector discovers it, she glasses him in the neck with a broken bottle of red wine, having previously offered him a drink. In another she plays Helen, a teacher from Bob’s school, and turns up unannounced to read to Bob and do the washing up for Mark: the two end up in bed. The dialogue is often dead pan and banal compared with the heightened melodrama that accompanies it – after trashing Mark’s living room in a blind rage Anna announces blandly: “I have to give Bob his yogourt”.

Admittedly, the film is a carnival of sensationalism, yet we feel nothing for the characters nor their trauma as their feelings are completely unconvincing – they are merely the psychotic and narcissistic projections of sociopathic cyphers, totally lacking in authenticity or a scintilla of humanity. Although Zulawski attempts to generate horror, as an audience we feel entirely alienated and detached from the narrative, however gory, blood-soaked or deranged it becomes. A fantastic curio and the perfect antidote to romantic Valentine’s Day. MT

LEXI CINEMA | KENSAL RISE OVERGROUND | FRIDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2020

 

City Under the Sea (1965) ***

Dir: Jacques Tourneur | Scr: Charles Bennett/Louis M.Heyward | Cast: Vincent Price, David Tomlinson, Tab Hunter, John Le Mesurier, Henry Oscar, Derek Newark | Sci-fi/Adventure 85 mins

By the early sixties Jacques Tourneur was working mainly in television; but he made two more feature films for AIP, ‘The Comedy of Terrors’ (1963) and this, both inevitably starring Vincent Price, with whom Tourneur had not previously worked. (A projected film of Wells’ ‘When the Sleeper Wakes’ was not made).

Vividly designed, and shot in colour and widescreen during four weeks in Pinewood by veteran cameraman Stephen Dade (who had recently returned from making ‘Zulu’ in the Transvaal), it is framed by a poem by Poe (who is included in the credits) sonorously delivered on the soundtrack by Price, but obviously influenced by the recent fifties adaptations of Jules Verne (such as the ‘hilarious’ inclusion of a chicken named Herbert).

Our heroes discover a lost underwater city where the inhabitants are kept immortal by the strange quality of the air but die when exposed to ultra-violet light and are living next to a volcano now stirring back to life… from which you can probably guess the rest.

In America it was retitled War-Gods of the Deep, presumably after the gill-men occasionally seen, reminiscent of the Aquaphibians in ‘Stingray’. RC

(‘The City Under the Sea’ is repeated on Talking Pictures at 3.10 pm on Wednesday 12th.)

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

The Lighthouse (2019) *****

Dir: Robert Eggers | Thriller, US 109′

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are hard-nosed sea salts caught in a battle of wills in this terrifying two-hander set in 1890s Maine.

The Lighthouse is Robert Eggers much anticipated follow-up to The Witch and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. Fuelled by a pent up rage that seethes right through to the biting end of this often claustrophobic thriller, the lauded American auteur adds another cult classic to the New England Gothic genre.

Arriving from Canada Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson) joins the craggy and flatulent old retainer Thomas Wake (Dafoe) to offer support as the winter sets in and the weather worsens. The stormy dynamic of their emotional voyage is fraught with hallucinatory twists and turns in a gripping yet enigmatic chiller that relies on atmosphere and a mounting dread to tell a stir-crazy tale infused with mystery, myth and legend. The haunting atmospheric soundscape is particularly redolent of solitude and isolation setting a plangent tone for what is to come.

Echoes of Moby Dick are clearly felt but this artful drama is more akin to Robert O’Flaherty’s 1934 document Man of Aran with its dense grainy black and white images and rugged sense of place. The Movie-tone aspect ratio focuses the attention on the keepers’ constantly fleeting expressions, like storm clouds scudding by. Louise Ford’s editing borrows from Soviet Montage outings such as The Diplomatic Pouch (1927) and Old and New (1929). Eggers scripts with his brother Max, and his regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke captures the mournful misery of it all in chiaroscuro brilliance.

Dafoe is brilliantly cast as Wake, William Blake his literary touchstone, a grizzled beard and rugged features bearing witness to an eternity of storms and baking sun. Hobbling about on a gammy leg, his countenance is that of stiff-necked superiority and he pulls rank at every opportunity over his junior Winslow, who bitterly resents every command, turning his gaze on the slowly revolving beam, mesmerised by its chiaroscuro shadow play. Wake insists on being “the keeper of the light,” but we are soon made aware of a curious sexual vide that also inhabits these close quarters. Both have a troubled past and a need for solitude so their enforced nearness is a constant thorn in the side of the other.

Seabirds are very much a motif here along with a recurring sequence where Winslow is sexually tormented by a mermaid. A contretemps with an angry seagull marks a change in the weather, bringing a freezing storm from the North East and ruining their food stocks, sending them straight to the bottle for sustenance, with alarming and ambiguous consequences. Clearly it will all end in tears, albeit very salty ones laced with rum. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

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

 

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 

The Grudge (2020) ***

Dir: Nicolas Pesce, US. 2020. 94mins.

Nicholas Pesce had finally sold his soul to the Devil – the Hollywood franchise brigade – along with the cursed characters in his third feature – another inferior take on the popular 2002 Japanese film Ju-On (which has already spawned two American remakes). Gone is the edgy arthouse styling, the thoughful writing and the intriguing characterisation. The only thing that remains of his impressive sophomore outings are the widescreen panoramas and overhead shots that hover menacingly over cars and other vehicles unsuspectingly making their way to doom in the foggy dankness of their North American landscapes.

The atmosphere of unsettling dread is also still there, giving this bloodless horror outing an unmistakable shot in the arm along with an impressive cast that includes John Cho and Andrea Riseborough who looks wan and forlorn in her role of a recently widowed police detective investigating a weird haunted house that puts a curse on anyone crossing its threshold.

Slithering backwards and forwards in time yet mostly set in 2006, the film pictures Muldoon (Riseborough) newly arrived in town and putting her best foot forward with her self-contained little son (who would have made a much better Danny in the recent Shining-reboot). Work leads her to a forbidding mansion in a leafy boulevard where, in flashbacks to 2004 and 2005, it emerges that an estate agent (Cho) has been trying to sell the house for some mysteriously nebulous inhabitants who have also employed the services of an end of life counsellor (Jacki Weaver) to give compassionate support in an assisted suicide. Muldoon’s colleague (Bichir) has already reached a dead end with the case, but she is soon on the receiving end of macabre visions that haunt her day and night.

Pesce rose to fame with a bewitching black and white fable The Eyes Of My Mother that showcased his talent for creating stylish thrillers dripping with atmosphere and gripping storylines. Piercing followed two years later, a psychodrama with cinematic credentials and clever writing that captivated the arthouse crowd and critics alike, marking him out to be a distinctive auteur in the making. Pesce still writes and directs The Grudge with its morose and sorrowful undercurrent of profound loss – but brings nothing new to the gruesome party and few narrative surprises. The film actually feels cliched and tedious despite a modest running time, and the fractured narrative detracts from the suspense leaving us bewildered and bored when new characters suddenly appear in the shape of the odd couple in their seventies (Lin Shaye and Frankie Fasion) whose suitability as marriage partners fails to convince despite their best efforts .

Andrea Riseborough is delicate and believable as a mournful single mother dedicated to her profession, but the other characters are cyphers going through the motions in trying to add resonance to a series of bland provincial Pennsylvanians who don’t make us care if they live or die or escape their dreadful curse. Mr Pesce, please go back to your roots. MT 

https://youtu.be/Yq5igwyrX9E

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

 

The Distinguished Citizen (2016) ****

Dirs: Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn | 118min | Comedy Drama | Argentina

When an Argentinian Nobel prize winner returns to the village of his birth he discovers a lawless Wild West, or has he just become “over-civilised”.

This pithy premise underpins the latest from Argentinian directors Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn. It stars Oscar Martinez (of Paulina and Wild Tales fame) as the world-weary and emotionally avoidant author Daniel Mantovani, who returns to a remote village about six hours drive from Buenos Aires, to accept a medal. Having left there many years ago, he never felt the impetus to go back having made a successful writing career in Europe where he lives in palatial splendour in the lush hills of Barcelona’s Tibidabo.

Written by Gaston’s brother Andres Duprat, THE DISTINGUISHED CITIZEN is a tightly-scripted, insightful and often hilarious satire with echoes of Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll’s 2004 comedy Whisky with similar themes of parochial pettiness and cultural awareness. The tone is always light but touches upon some dark home truths. The elegant framing and architectural sensibilities makes this a visual pleasure, Maria Eugenia Sueiro’s interiors reflecting a faded seventies aesthetic.

The film opens as Daniel is delivering a trenchant rebuke at the acceptance ceremony mocking the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm. Fast forward five years and he is on the plane to BA where a taste of his future tribulations arrives when his airport taxi driver breaks down in a field, hours from Salas, forcing him to spend the night in the middle of nowhere round a campfire lit with one of the pages from his recent novel. The following morning that same book comes in handy as lavatory paper – and we all realise where things are going.

The narrative unspools in five parts – for no specific reason – as Daniel goes back in time to a homespun and unsophisticated community stuck in the past. This motley crew respond entirely inappropriately treating him like a local soap star rather than an intellectual introvert. He bumps into his old girlfriend Irene (Andrea Frigerio) who is now married to his butch friend Antonio (Dady Brieva), a mean dancer and an even meaner game hunter – a talent that plays out in Daniel’s hasty departure in the final scenes. The film centres on the small-town mentality that really rears its ugly head as the story develops, the inhabitants gradually turning the writer from hailed hero to vilified outsider in their collective mean-spiritedness.

This is an enjoyable and intelligent piece of cinema, dark and deadpan situational comedy arises out of bizarre encounters and bitter ironies (much in the same vein as those of the recent Toni Erdmann). The film leaves us with some memorable maxims to reflect on. “making things simple is an artistic kindness” is a choice takeaway from the role and often poignant indie gem . MT

Argentinian Film Season: El ciudadano ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen) (2016)

WINNER COPA VOLPE | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2016 | BEST ACTOR | OSCAR MARTINEZ

 

Crime Wave (1953) ****

Dir: Andre de Toth | Writer: Crane Wilbur | Cast: Gene Nelson, Sterling Hayden, Phyllis Kirk, Ted de Corsia, Charles Bronson, Niedrick Young, James Bell | US Noir Thriller 73′

The Cinema Museum’s Kennington Noir thread hits the new year running with this bleak crime drama shot on location in the streets and police stations of L.A. in just 13 days by veteran Hollywood cameraman Bert Glennon.

Crime Wave probably influenced the young Stanley Kubrick, with three of the film’s cast going on to feature a couple of years later in his classic heist thriller The Killing (which is the next film in the season on 19 February; director Andre de Toth’s only other noir – Ramrod – will be shown on 15 April).

But there was a dark side to the story in real life as well as in the film noir itself: both writer Bernard Gordon and Nedrick Young (who plays the ill-fated Gat Morgan) were later blacklisted. But Young would be back – he is credited with co-writing the screenplay for Jailhouse Rock in 1957, which starred Elvis Presley, and went on to win the Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay for The Defiant Ones (1958). R Chatten.

KENNINGTON NOIR SEASON | THE CINEMA MUSEUM | LONDON SE11

 

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

A Hidden Life (2019) ***

Dir|Wri: Terrence Malick | Cast: August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Michael Nyqvist, Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruno Ganz, Karl Markovics, Franz Rogowski | US Drama 173′

Terrence Malick brings his tenth feature to Cannes with a reputation in the balance. Although appreciated by a small cadre of Malickians, his post-Tree of Life output even his defenders seem to agree needs defending.

So is A Hidden Life a return to form, or is it another stage in a sad decline. Well, the truth is: a bit of both. It tells the true story of conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) and his wife Fani, played by Valerie Pachner, who lived in St. Radegund, an Austrian farming community. Beautiful mountains form a backdrop, an idyll just as the tropical islands did prior to the hostilities of The Thin Red Line. But war is approaching fast with Hitler, a native of the same region, glowering from newsreel footage and ripping through first France and then into Austria. At this point, Franz decides that he cannot swear an oath of allegiance to a man he views as the antiChrist. How he comes to this conclusion is unclear as Malick’s typically syllopsistic style means we never see him read a newspaper or watch any of the newsreels we see.

Everyone in the village tries to persuade Franz against his decision from the ultra-nationalistic mayor to the well-meaning priest. Again the gaps in the narrative made by the relentless moving fluttering from one beautiful image to another means that we weirdly never hear Jews mentioned, despite the fact that anti-Semitism was rife.  Hitler wasn’t some exceptional monster. His hatred and xenophobia and anti-Semitism were a product of his Austrian upbringing. This was by no means exclusive to Austria or Germany, but there was a particular virulence which made the message of National Socialism resonate. But according to Malick everyone just wanted to cut grass and drink beer.

Franz’s rebellion is religious and almost anti-political. And again Malick’s style favours this approach. There are no dialogues in Terrence Malick’s cinema and it is almost impossible to talk about politics without allowing people to actually talk. We have a series of monologues directed at characters which typically take place in the context of some photogenic meandering. The letters which form the bulk of the voiceover (yes, there’s voiceover) simply reiterate much of what we’re seeing on screen. But again I never felt that above a lot of PDAs there isn’t much of a relationship between Franz and Fani. They say they love each other a lot, but again they don’t argue and frankly I don’t trust a couple that doesn’t argue from time to time. They also have three extremely pretty daughters, Franz’s mother, who frequently looks pitiable against a white washed wall and Fani’s spinster sister living with them.

A film with no scenes is way too long at three hours. Joerg Widmer’s camera peers into faces with a distracting lack of respect for personal space before zooming off to look for something else to be interested in. Again, the absence of the conventional blocking of scenes means that often actors are left to wander like non-player characters in a mid-90s video game. And the decision to make the film bilingual with the Nazis speaking German and the protagonists English is a ludicrous one. How can you aim to be daring as filmmaker on one hand and then submit to such a lazy Hollywood convention? And one with such damaging effect on your political position.

But again, what political position? I respect the true story behind this but Malick seems to want the whole of the second world war and the moral universe to hang in the balance here. Franz is held up as an exemplar – something like Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Joan of Arc – but I couldn’t help but think of him as something of a von Trapp. His refusal to say the oath – he is offered the chance to work in a non-combat capacity – feels petty in the face of the unnamed Holocaust which is going on at exactly the same time.

Ultimately, Malick has made another technically beautiful film, with a gorgeous soundtrack and wonderful photography, that is at the same time unable or unwilling to engage with its subject. In always trying to go for the glory, he seems to miss what it is that makes us essentially human. We talk to each other. John Bleasdale

ON RELEASE FROM 17 JANUARY 2020

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

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

Robert Redford | Conversations with | Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Sometimes I ask myself what’s missing. What’s missing now is the dreams and enjoyment of my childhood, the sense of wonder”

When Robert Redford was growing up in small-town California it was wartime and there was no television back then, only radio. “The first movie I saw was a Walt Disney. The dream was to be able to walk to a neighbourhood theatre to see it on the big screen – I could hardly wait for the weekend. What I miss with all these screening services and advanced technology is the time when you would walk into that cinema, into the darkness with all the energy of all these people around you, and the magic was seeing things on the big screen”.

Talking during the ‘Marrakech Conversations with’ series at this year’s 18th edition, Redford looks frail but contemplative as he casts his mind back to his first cinema memories.  “The idea of being an actor was the sense of freedom, the freedom to act someone else. And if you were paying attention you would notice certain types of people. And you could embody these people and bring that forward as an art form. And acting is very much an art form”.

During his fifty years in the business, Redford has always tried to look forward, only looking back if it helped in the story telling. One of his favourite authors is Scott Fitzgerald and he had the pleasure in 1974 to be a part of that story with his film version of The Great Gatsby where he plays the Jay Gatsby in love with Mia Farrow’s Daisy. There’s a great line where Nick Carraway notices Gatsby’s great love of the past, when he’s discussing with Daisy after the big party. And she says: “Gatsby you can’t repeat the past. And Gatsby answers: “of course you can”.

Redford was a voracious reader as a young man. The writers that influenced him were Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway – ‘when he wasn’t being too macho’ – and J D Salinger. Many of the films he went on to direct look at the past of America. But he says: “When I think about my country, it’s hard not to be critical because during the war when I was about five years old, I remember the energy, when everyone was getting together for the greater good (to fight Fascism in Nazi Germany). We all came together in unison, in an act that would bind us together in something that was going to be good for our country. I didn’t really understand what that was, but it just felt good. That was my memory of the Second World War, that and the memory of going to the movie theatre, particularly if it was something by Walt Disney”. We are now in dark times and I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone reading the news that there’s a dark wind blowing through all the countries. And in America I see so many of our liberties threatened”.

The most important piece of advice he can give to young actors nowadays is to ‘pay attention’. ” You often hear the phrase: ‘God is in the details’, if that’s true then I myself should also be paying more attention. And so when I’m walking in my place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I’m often so busy thinking ahead, that I don’t notice what is actually in front of me. And so I’d think the best advice it to see what you’ve actually got in front of you”.

Redford finds it sad when a lot of good directors don’t get attention. “Some directors work is very one-dimensional, it’s good but it’s always the same group of people, the same themes” One director who he feels was very side-lined was George Ray Hill. “he was all over the map, if you look at his biography, and I’m sad not many people have, he rises up to the top. If you think about Butch Cassidy, and you look at The Sting, he’s never really got much credit. It makes me kinda sad.”

When he was getting ready to make Butch Cassidy Redford had just come out of a comedy on the stage in New York. He was about 28 0r 29 and Paul Newman was the confirmed star of the film, all set to play The Sundance Kid, and Redford Butch Cassidy in account of his previous comedy role. But the part that interested him was actually The Sundance Kid. So he explained this to Ray Hill when they met in a bar in New York’s Third Avenue. He wanted to play the Kid based on his own experience and his sensibility of feeling like an outlaw for most of his life. Ray Hill knew Paul Newman very well, and he knew he was much more like Butch Cassidy – he was an upbeat guy. George Ray Hill appreciated the situation and turned it all around. Newman and Redford became close friends. At the time Paul Newman was highly considered, he was 42 whereas Redford was only 29. The studio didn’t really want Redford in the film and Ray Hill did. So finally Newman decided to support Redford and as a result he was always grateful to him. “Paul was always a cool guy, chewing gum and smoking cigarettes and he suited the part of Butch Cassidy, but what many critics missed was that in our following film The Sting the roles were completely reversed. In Butch Cassidy I played the cool guy, and he played the happy go lucky guy. In The Sting he was the cool guy and I was the happy go lucky guy. No one’s picked that up.”

When asked what he thought about Sydney Pollack’s maxim that “everything is political, even love” Redford raises a laugh. “Well you’ll have to ask Sydney about that, but you can’t because he’s dead”. Redford enjoyed a close friendship with Sydney Pollack. The two developed a mutual trust because they had both been actors, although Pollack worked best when he was in control. The relationship drifted apart when “Pollack realised he could not just be a director, he could be a mogul in control of a studio, and he started to drift out of that zone, and I don’t think he was entirely happy but it had a lot to do with growing up in a Mid Western town and from under-privilege. He was aiming very high and I think he saw his way forward as being in control of everything”.

In Sydney Pollack’s political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975) Redford plays a CIA character who is trying and get to the truth when he finds all his co-workers dead on returning to his office. His character Turner asks: “Who can we trust to get to the truth? There’s a story to telling the truth. But is it a true story?. I’m not so sure”. Nowadays it’s getting more difficult to get the truth everywhere in the world”. You have to trust your faith and your instincts. But you don’t really know. Who can you really trust?. Three Days ends with a question, rather than an answer. And that’s very relevant still today. Originally adapted from James Grady’s book Six Days of the Condor, when asked why the film had been renamed Three Days of the Condor he replies: “it was about budget”. Also cutting down the time frame, tightened the tension.

In The Company You Keep (2012) trust and the search for the truth are also central themes. The bottom line here is again: “Who can you really trust to give you the truth. Someone isn’t telling the truth and you have to find out who and why?

Redford claims to be very focused on being socially conscious. And by this he means being aware of what’s going on on the political front. He very much believes in questioning the truth and firmly relies on good journalism to do so – The New York Times is a trusted source – as a way of providing a counterbalance to politicians and leaders who are often spinning their own story. Being socially aware for him is all about questioning the truth and what’s out there. In The Company he plays a character who firmly questions the truth and is prepared to be flexible in that goal, whereas his co-star Julie Christie plays a radical who actually hides from the truth hoping it will change. Their feisty dynamic provides the dramatic grist a story about investigative journalism set during the 1970s.

So what does freedom mean to Robert Redford? When scoping it out he comes up with the counterintuitive position that freedom often fails to offer a better alternative. “if you take the position that you have to get away from anything you’re given, you might be losing something really valuable”. There’s a great deal of dramatic potential to be mined from seeking the truth. And this premise has driven many of his films as a director.

In Lions for Lambs (2007) Redford explores the aftermath of Afghanistan through three stories involving those affected. One is an angry young student played by Andrew Garfield. “Are young people more self-centred and less engaged politically than the older generation were in their day? Redford ponders: “Many of them are angry. But if you assume – as Andy Garfield’s character did that being sceptical or convinced that everything is corrupt is a very one note position, but it doesn’t actually make it the truth. The truth is actually more complicated than that: Being radical is actually being very narrow-minded. Life is not just one dimension”. And the tension between Garfield’s narrow-minded character and the professor mines that dramatic tension through the movie.”

Although Redford describes himself as being more political during the Vietnam war years, he then became more self-absorbed when he got back to his acting career. But the art form of directing makes a worthy subject of politics and he started to re-engage when he started making films. “Art in a broad sense is a useful way to criticise society and maintain a balance between the power base. Art provides another point of view to correct extremes and pioneer a way forward for the truth”.

When Redford saw a documentary made by D A Pennebaker, known for his cinema verite approach to filmmaking, this inspired him in directing his own films. “They went inside their subject matter with the camera, rather than simply observing it from the outside, bringing some real dramatic tension to the form”. And so this was the approach Redford adopted when he started filming. When asked if he finds it easier to direct or act, Redford claims it all comes down to control. Also working as an artist sketching people he met on his travels in Europe helped tremendously to shape his filmmaking projects. “At that time there was a great deal of anger towards America and so I ceased to engage with people and used my sketchbook as a companion and to storyboard ideas and ‘get in the picture. being on the outside looking in and also on the inside”.

Robert Redford has now started to move back into sketching and drawing and away from filmmaking, but makes an acute observation on his change of direction:. “The trouble with retiring is that you should never announce it, otherwise people start saying – Oh could you just do this, or could you just do that – you should just retire”. However he is still working on a project which was has been in development for a few years. “It’s called 109 East Palace ” and it’s about an address in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was developed, and Oppenheimer was behind it. So I thought it was just such a great story, about the inventor of the atomic bomb. But because he was a Communist and this was the McCarthy era during the 1950s, everything was very extreme and right wing. Although Oppenheimer was a hero,  they (the authorities) went after him. What interests me is how quickly things can change because of the political climate”. He’s still deciding how he wants to approach the endeavour. “I believe in risk, and I believe that not taking a risk is a risk. It’s the only thing that pushes you forward. Because you don’t know where that going to lead you. Otherwise you will become stagnant. But it’s important to study the reasons why you want to pursue the risky strategy”. He also enjoys a challenge playing a character who is not popular and whose point of view is isolated from the mainstream “because it involves really committing to the role, and seeing it forward successfully. If you are going to play a part, you really have to inhabit that character, and it’s a risk because you can get lost.”

Robert Redford has never considered himself a Hollywood actor. “I grew up in Los Angeles, I didn’t grow up in Hollywood and I’ve never had that much regard for Hollywood. I wanted to be a serious actor and that started in New York in the theatre and I wanted to see where that led, and it led me back to Los Angeles as a filmmaker”.

When he decided to set up Sundance his goal was very simple: “Celebrating people who don’t get celebrated. Celebrating people who are either being ignored or undiscovered. Who deserve to be discovered. When I started Sundance back in the 1980s there were hundreds of independent films but they had no traction, there was no real category. It was still just mainstream films. Because I was in the mainstream I was very tuned into the idea of being independent. I was in the studio system but there was a whole world out there and I wanted to give it a chance. I wanted to support independent film with this non-profit institute called Sundance to support the stories and talent out there. ”

Robert Redford CONVERSATIONS WITH | MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2019 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

 

Greta Scacchi | Tribute to Australian Cinema | Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Born in Milan, Italian Australian actor Greta Scacchi studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School before beginning a sustained and successful career on stage and screen. The early 1980s was a particularly prolific time when she made four films in fifteen months. Her most iconic roll is possibly as Olivia in Merchant Ivory’s Heat and Dust in 1983, and she went on to star in Michael Radford’s White Mischief three years later. International film work beckoned with The Coca Cola Kid (1985)), Three Sisters (1988) and Alan J Pakula’s Presumed Innocent (1990) when she starred alongside Harrison Ford. Gillian Armstrong’s Fires Within (1991) allowed her to play alongside her then partner Vincent D’Onofrio. Robert Altman’s The Player followed and English classic The Browning Version based on Terence Rattigan’s play. Most recently Scacchi appears in Rachel Ward’s Palm Beach (2019) and Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s Colonial drama Waiting for the Barbarians (2019) which unites Greta Scacchi with actor Mark Rylance. She also appears in Mikhael Hers’ French family drama Amanda. MT

Marrakech Film Festival | TRIBUTE TO AUSTRALIAN FILM 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

 

Motherless Brooklyn (2019) ****

Dir.: Edward Norton; Cast: Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alex Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Mann Bobby Cannavale, Robert Wisdom, Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts Josh Pais; USA 2019, 144′.

US audiences and critics have been rather harsh with Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn. Many expected more, and now feel short-changed because Motherless is not Chinatown. Sure, Norton has not created a classic – but something special. As for the length, like Scorsese’s Irishman, Motherless has the feel of a TV mini-series.

Norton acquired the rights to Jonathan Letham’s novel of the same name in 1999, when it was published. It took him nearly twenty years to be its writer, director and star. He changed the timeframe – contemporary in the case of the novel – to the 1950s, but kept the main theme, gentrification and the hero, PI Lionel Essrog, who suffers from Tourette syndrome, when nobody had a name for it.

Frank Minna (Willis) runs a detective agency in NY with four younger men he has rescued from the orphanage: Lionel (Norton); Tony (Vermonte); Danny (Roberts) and Gilbert (Suplee). Frank never calls Lionel by his name, he is the titular Motherless Brooklyn. Frank is on a dangerous mission, and Gilbert and Danny listen to the phone, because Frank is taping the conversation. Tony and Lionel are in hot pursuit of Frank, but can only witness when he is shot and  dies later in hospital. For Lionel revenge is a matter of honour, and he finds the first clues when he meets the black anti-gentrification lawyer Laura Rose (Mbatha-Raw). She introduces him to his father Billy (Wisdom), who runs a Jazz-club. Billy mistakes Lionel, who poses as a newspaper journalist, for one of the henchman of developer Moses Randolph (Baldwin), and has him beaten up. When he finds out the truth he agrees to meet Lionel to tell more. But he is murdered, his death staged as a suicide. Lionel saves Laura’s life and meets Randolph’s brother Paul (Dafoe), an architect. Laura tells Lionel that Paul is her real father – but when Lionel discovers Frank had tried to blackmail City Commissioner William Lieberman (Pais), because the latter wanted more money for his services from Moses Randolph, all assumptions he had made prove to be false.

Lionel is not the only motherless person: Laura grieves about the loss of her own parent, and like in all noir films, the oedipal motive is also centre stage: in this case Tony sleeping with Frank’s wife Julia (Mann). Lionel is a throw-back to Elliot Gould’s Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, also sharing an apartment with his cat. Baldwin’s Moses Randolp is very much modelled on the real life NY developer Robert Moses (1888-1981), who tore down many neighbourhoods and eschewed public transport in favour of motorways. He also was the force behind the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to California, robbing the borough of much of its identity. But since he was also the creator of around 245 parks in the city, many people admired him. Perhaps not the population of Harlem, because of the 245 parks, just one was built in their borough. But Baldwin is also Trump: his racist attitudes, phrases like “winning is all what is about” and “America’s greatness”, together with his posture, the childishly folded arms and a pouty posture. 

British DoP Dick Pope (Mr. Turner) and PD Beth Mickie (Drive) take the lion’s share of the success: the brownstone buildings have never looked more real, and the car chase images are not the only highlights: Pope includes all the yesterdays, even a Gothic=looking Penn Station. Norton is part of a brilliant ensemble and he can be proud of his attempt to fuse past and present together with personal stories. No Chinatown – but a bloody relevant and entertaining feature. AS

ON RELEASE from 6 December 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

Sorokin Trip (2019) *** Russian Film Week 2019

Dir: Ilya Belov | Doc with Vladimir Sorokin, Russia, 90’

Director Ilya Belov (Brodsky is Not a Poet) and writer Anton Zhelnov have painted a lively portrait of prolific Russian underground artist Vladimir Sorokin (*1955), who has markedly calmed down since setting fire to Soviet literary tradition and building his own world on its ashes. He now lives in Moscow and Berlin, hugging trees and believing in God.

Sorokin who grew up outside Moscow, had the misfortune to be the only student in his class whose parents had a higher education. He was physically bullied, but refrained from retribution. His emotionally cold father had mental health issues,, his mother trained as an engineer but retired at 35 due to ill health. Sorokin first published in a newspaper: ‘For the Workers in the Petroleum Industry’. But he went on to make his living illustrating books, and was one of the leading figures of Soviet Underground culture. Like many students all over the world, he skipped lectures and enjoyed provoking the authoritarian Soviet establishment, which fell for his stunts, which were nowhere near as radical as the Underground scene of New York. 

Sorokin draws most of his inspiration from Fine Art, and is an accomplished painter. His first publicised book was Ochered (The Que) in 1983; his most famous novel Den Oprichnika (Day of the Oprichnik) in 2006. It describes a dystopian Russia in 2027, when a Tsar rules in the Kremlin. The ruler has a “Great Russian Wall” built, separating the country from its neighbours; with Sorokin positing that he wrote this all before Brexit. His plays include “Dostoevsky Trip” (1997), whilst his libretto for the Opera “The Children of Rosenthal”  caused uproar at the Bolshoi Theatre, watched by the author and his twin daughters.  Sorokin’s novella ‘Blue Bacon Fat’ (2002) drew the ire of not only the authorities, Putin’s men inflamed the affair by in a massive book-ripping event that carried the slogan ‘down with pornography’. The courts got involved, but the matter was dropped due to lack of evidence.

It is a shame that Belov concentrates so much on the confrontational nature of Sorokin’s output, his juvenile posturing is hardly worth the time. After all, Sorokin has written eighteen books, ten plays and four film scripts, among the Rotterdam Winner Four (2004), which was directed by Ilya Khrzhovsky. DoP Mikhail Krichman does a much better job, keeping the audience interested with his free flowing images, somehow capturing the soul of the writer much more than Belov’s overly verbose outpourings. Overall Sorokin Trip does Sorokin a disservice. Thi is an underwhelming biopic, not because of its main subject, but because Belov tries too hard to match the antics of the young author and creative genius. AS

Screening as part of RUSSIAN FILM WEEK Saturday 30 November 3.00pm | Curzon Mayfair

https://youtu.be/mAWn4WK4Gig

Sole (2019) ***

Dir: Carlo Sironi | Italy, Drama 90′

For some a baby is a prized goal in life while others can use their fertility to make some cash on the side. This is the premise in this spare but topical drama from new Italian director Carlo Sironi. It centres on a heavily pregnant Polish girl (Lena/Sandra Drzymalska) who agrees to sell her offspring to a desperate childless Italian couple, splitting the proceeds of the fee with their nephew Ermanno (Claudio Segaluscio) who poses as the biological father of the baby. Surrogacy is still illegal in Italy.

The director steers well clear of melodrama or sentimentality in this rather austere feature that keeps a tight control of its plot-line, playing its cards close to its chest: Ermanno and Lena make for a morose couple who barely rub along in their relationship of convenience, although things improve slightly with the impending birth giving Ermanno a new aim in life, a welcome break from his state of hopelessness.

Ermanno is certainly a contemporary character, a buttoned down anger simmers behind his poker faced demeanour. It’s a thoughtful performance from non-pro Segaluscio, whereas Drzymalska is more accepting of her situation, inured to the pain she has clearly suffered in the past and quietly pleased to be prized rather than put down in her new role. But when the chips are down and Lena realises her baby is just a porn in her struggle to survive, the emotional meltdown is palpable. MT

Marrakech Film Festival 2019 | IN COMPETITION

 

Cherry Lane (2019) **** Chat with Yonfan | Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Dir Yonfan | Cast: Voices by Sylvia Chang, Zhao Wei, Alex Lam, Yao Wei, Tian Zhuangzhuang | Hong Kong 125’

Cheeky and charming but very much intended for an adult audience – and particularly cat lovers – this intoxicating animated drama is an amusingly erotic romp through modern history, deliciously enveloped in an avant-garde love story. Set in Hong Kong of the 1960s, No. 7 Cherry Lane sees an English literature student caught in a love triangle with the woman he is tutoring and her 40 year old mother.

Celebrated filmmaker, photographer, art connoisseur, and collector Yonfan returns after a decade with this languorous debut animation that visits the cauldron of political turmoil and repressed desire that was the Hong Kong of his youth.

Based on three of the director’s own short stories, and divided into three enignatically titled chapters — Dream Charade, Play Shadow and Winter Cometh — the story unfolds within the confines of an upmarket residential block in 1967, when the streets of Hong Kong were fraught with leftist protests erupting in violence between anti-colonial demonstrators and police. Meanwhile Ziming (Alex Lam) is experiencing an eruption of a different kind, involving his own sexual awakening. As a student reading modern literature at the university, he takes on a part-time job teaching English to a family recently exiled from Taiwan. Meiling (Zhao Wei) is the daughter of Mrs. Yu (Sylvia Chang), a single mother and exporter of luxury goods to Taiwan, whose own youth has been fraught with revolutionary unrest but whose present is steeped in woozy nostalgia. Ziming’s arrival stimulates literary debate about Brontë, Proust and Cao Xueqin. They indulge in Simone Signoret matinees at a local picture palace. And while a beguiling Mrs. Robinson-like relationship smoulders in the background, the family’s collection of cats indulge in of all kinds of mischievous behaviour. Ziming is beguiled both by Meiling and Mrs. Yu, as he embarks on an education sentimental no university curriculum could possibly provide.

Blending art and history, politics and eroticism. Cherry Lane showcases a new animation process, turning original 3-D illustrations into 2-D images on rice paper. Yonfan has created a delicate aesthetic that feels modern yet steeped in tradition, offering a unique paean to Hong Kong’s past that is tongue in cheek, kitsch and gently erotic. MT

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Views on the Maghreb: Colonial Past and Early Cinema | Marrakech 2019

Film critic and academic Jay Weisberg presents a compendium piece that headlines Marrakech Film Festival’s 11th Continent strand and aims to offer a taste of North Africa’s heritage from its early Colonial past (1914-1922).

It was a time when Morocco was a protectorate of the French government, under the benevolent guidance of Marshal Lyautey, who represented the interests of France and developed Morocco’s potential while respecting its traditions and culture under the auspices of the Sultan. In this way Morocco became a pro-Western country unlike its neighbour Algeria which was under French occupation. Lyautey’s vision was both paternalistic and ideological: to further education, culture and commerce while the Sultan retained his religious and legal powers in an exclusively Arab Court.

Weisberg shows how early cinema’s notable trans-border distribution means the world’s archives are depositories of unexpected treasures: the cork forests of Morocco exist only at the British Film Institute in London; French-made panoramas of Algeria from 1910 are at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; Italian-produced images of Libya have turned up at the National Library of Oslo. These are precious visual records from cinema’s early decades when European and American companies sent cameramen across the globe. As the medium quickly developed, however, film increasingly became a tool for perpetuating Orientalism and reinforcing colonial agendas. This programme, a follow-up to last year’s Views of the Ottoman Empire, looks to engage the audience in this debate via rare short films of North Africa from the 1910s and 20s, some digitised specifically for this screening.

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 11TH CONTINENT STRAND | Marrakech Film Festival 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

Noura’s Dream (2019) *** Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Dir/scr. Hinde Boujemaa | Cast: Hend Sabri, Lotfi Abdelli, Hakim Boumsaoudi, Imen Cherif, Saif Dhrif, Jamel Sassi Tunisia, Belgium, France, Qatar. |  92 mins.

Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was a time of change for the nation’s working class. Filmmaker Hinde Boujemaa eyed the era with caution in her 2012 documentary It Was Better Tomorrow.

In her richly textured drama debut, Boujemaa brings the epoch to life in a flawed but fascinating story set in the crumbling backstreets of Tunis and led by a towering performance from Tunisian actress Hend Sabri.

Obviously corruption reigns and petty criminals abound in this impoverishing milieu enchanted by its once glamorous colonial buildings and now fraught with world-weary resilience amongst ordinary people just trying to make their way in life.

Hospital laundry worker Noura (Sabri) is in love with Lassad (Boumsaoudi) and the two share amorous embraces and fond glances indicative of the secrecy of their romance as Noura is seeking a divorce from Jamel (Abdelli), her jailed husband. She is a mother to three children, and her female lawyer reminds her that adultery, in Tunisia, carries a five-year prison sentence. Women beware women.

Jamel is intellectually challenged, to say the least. And when he is suddenly released from prison he starts to threaten Noura again. But Lassad offers little in emotional support. Noura is caught between a rock and a hard place: but most women will be familiar with this territory.

Sabri is brilliant as the central character. Her careworn face is a testament to suffering, yet she carries on in desperation, hoping against hope that love will find a way. Her son is just another misogynist in the making and her daughter looks on almost contemptuously as she vows not to make the same mistakes. An affecting debut that says: Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. Mt

IN COMPETITION | Marrakech Film Festival 2019 

 

 

Säsong | Ridge (2019) Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Dir: John Skoog | Sweden, 2019 70′

Swedish director John Skoog won this year’s CPH:DOX Award with the bewildering and visually sensational film. In some way Säsong (2019) or Ridge, is a broadening of his trilogy of shorts examining economic exploitation, starting in 2011 with Sent på Jorden; followed in 2013 by Förår and culminating with Reduit in 2014.

Best described as an ethnographical docu-drama Ridge is a love letter to Sweden’s agrarian past and the country’s deep connection to the land and nature. It prepares for the future with trepidation – Skoog’s camerawork pictures the mammoth farm machinery surging on the horizon at dawn like some great behemoth, as it cruelly savages the virgin swathes of corn, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Cows are silently harnessed to computerised milking machines sending their own gentle rhythms into disarray as stand isolated in vast soulless hangers. A few of them head for the woods, ‘demented’. Or, at least that is what we are led to believe in an opening anecdote in Skoog’s non-judgemental treatment. The burgeoning demands of the contemporary and future population are presented as a mute assault on the landscape and the Earth is crying.

Skoog celebrates Summer, and particularly MidSummer’s Day  – a big event in Sweden due to its dark winters, and a cause for much merriment and over-drinking in the verdant pastures of Skoog’s hometown of Kvidinge, a village in northern Scania County. Skoog abandons a traditional narrative opting for something more enigmatic and refreshing that forces the audience to speculate and scope out his motives and ideas – dialogue is minimal. The most loquacious segment sees a group of Polish workers, who have arrived by ferry for seasonal work, discussing how to approach Swedish women. “Not the romantic, moody Polish approach” one advises a younger member of the team.

Skoog works with family members and non-pro’s to create a portrait of a land that shares a common work ethic and where women and men are more or less equal. But there’s also a mystical remoteness and an unsettling undercurrent here in this distant rural corner. Often madness is more prevalent in the countryside, and there is certainly a human destructiveness at play here. But it is light-hearted and anarchic rather than sinister. The abstract juxtaposition of the scenes; a sunset played with an unsettling soundscape, can easily play havoc with our imagination, and our expectations. So Skoog appears to be having the last laugh here in an inventive and playful but ultimately deeply thoughtful film that resonates with the current zeitgeist on climate change and our deep connection with nature. MT

MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2019

 

Arracht | Monster (2019) Bfi Player

Dir/Wri: Tom Sullivan; Cast: Donall O Healai, Saise Ni Chuinn, Dara Devaney, Elaine O’Dwyer, Elise Brennan, ROI 2019, 86 min. (In Gaelic with English subtitles)

Tom Sullivan sets his melancholic feature debut in 1845 Ireland, just before the outbreak of the potato famine known as the Great Hunger. A fisherman gives sanctuary to a stranger at the behest of a local priest. This former soldier arrives just ahead of ‘the blight,’ a disease that eventually wipes out the country’s potato crop, contributing to the death and displacement of millions.

Narrative-wise this is a nebulous and enigmatic mood piece that recreates this unsettling period of Irish history, helped along by a brilliant cast and the haunting intensity of its remote countryside setting in the costal region of Connemara. Donall O Healai is particularly impressive as the dogged Colman Sharkey who lives with his wife Maggie (O’Dwyer) and young son in a small but cosy coastal cottage. When the local priest introduces him to Patsy (Devaney), who might be a deserter from the British Army from the Napoleonic Wars, Colman takes him in. It soon becomes clear that Patsy has an uncontrollable temper: when Colman is visited by two British soldiers collecting the rent for the British landlord, he explains his reluctance to pay as – like all the other locals – he has been forced to sell his fishing boat and is nearly starving.

So Colman pays a visit to the English Landlord’s lavish abode to request a stay on rent increases that predicted to destroy his community. His request falls on deaf ears and Patsy’s subsequent actions set Colman on a path that will take him to the edge of survival, and sanity. After the mayhem Colman then takes refuge in a sea cave, where near starvation sends him to the edge. It is only upon encountering an abandoned young girl called Kitty (Ni Chuinn) that Colman’s resolve is lifted. Just in time for the darkness of his past to pay another visit.

Sullivan relies on symbolism is this often surreal fable with its striking visual allure, and echoes of poems by Seamus Heaney, and Defoe’s lyricism. AS

NIW ON BFI PLAYER

Babel Film Festival 2019 | Cagliari, Sardinia

 

The Sardinians have come up with a novel idea for a film festival. Babel focuses on ethnic minorities, and in particular linguistic ones.

Film is all about cultural exchange. Babel hopes to enrich and enliven the global debate with some marginal cinematic experiences, connecting the mainstream world with communities struggling to survive, not only physically, but culturally.

The programme offers a diverse array of documentaries, fiction features and shorts, and contributions from the world of theatre and music mining a wealth of minority languages since the dawn of time.

Now celebrating its sixth biennale edition the Babel Film Festival hopes to roll out festivities in an annual event making the Sardinian capital city of Cagliari a place for enlightened discussion and cultural exchange. Cineastes and industry professional can visit and get to know this exotic source of creativity featuring a diversity of minority languages, including dialects, slang and more. Lesser known languages are not just about communication on a basic everyday level, they are complex methods of expression in their own right, allowing speakers the freedom to wax lyrical with a nuanced and poetic vision of the world they live in.

BABEL FILM FESTIVAL | 2 -7 DECEMBER 2019

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

 

 

 

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

Murer: Anatomy of a Trial | Murer: Anatomie Eines Prozesses (2018) UKJFF

Dir.: Christian Frosch; Cast: Karl Fischer, Alexander E. Fennon, Karl Markovics, Roland Jaeger, Ursula Ofner, Luc Veit, Matthias Forberg; Austria/Luxembourg 2018, 138 min.

Austrian director/writer Christian Frosch (Rough Road Ahead) captures the cumulative intensity of the trial of his compatriot SA Oberscharführer Franz Murer (1912-1994), commandant of the Vilnius Ghetto from 1941 to 1943, which was held in Graz in 1963.

Known as the “butcher” of Vilnius, Murer was known for the sadistic killings during his watch on the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto once ‘home’ to over 80,000 Jews, only a few hundred lived to tell the tale. After the war he was spotted by accident by one of the survivors, and stood trial in the USSR, where he was sentenced to 25 years for the killings of the Soviet denizens. In 1955, having only served six years of his sentence, he was repatriated as part of the Austrian Treaty which re-established the country of Austria after ten years of rule by the Four Allies. One of the conditions for his release was that he be re-tried in Austria. Only thanks to Simon Wiesenthal, this finally happened in 1963.

We are introduced to Murer (Fischer) and his wife Elisabeth (Ofner) on the first day of the trial: they kiss passionately in his cell, before his lawyer Böck (Fennon) makes an entrance, insisting Murer wears an old traditional jacket instead of the expensive coat chosen by Elisabeth. Clearly Böck is trying to make Murer look like an Austrian Everyman; the victim of Jewish propaganda. But Murer is anything but: it is rumoured that he stole gold from the ghetto finances, paying for the large agricultural holdings he then acquired. He is also a well-known regional member of the governing Austrian People’s Party.

Prosecutor Schuhmann (Jaeger) is no match for the defence lawyer, who uses every trick in the book to discredit the Jewish witnesses, accusing a father of lying when he witnessed his son’s murder at Murer’s own hands: “This was a case of mistaken identity, Jewish people under orders of Wiesenthal and other Zionists, do not care if they accuse the wrong person, as long as it is a German or an Austrian”. Murer’s defence is helped by a particular witness, Martin Weiss (Veit), De-facto commander of the ghetto, who then takes responsibility for the boy’s killing. Oberscharführer Weiss, member of the ruthless Einsatzgruppe 3 and the SD, was responsible for the massacre of Ponary, where 100,000 Jews and Communists were shot. He was convicted to a life sentence in West Germany in 1950, which was first suspended in 1970, then revoked in 1977. Like Murer, Weiss would live well into his eighties. 

Judge Peyer (Forberg) is clearly seeking ‘a non-guilty’ verdict, his own murky past makes him inclined to “be lenient on people like Murer, who have repented – if we don’t show mercy to people like him, what do we do with the hard-core Nazis?” He is joined by the majority of the Graz citizens, who throw stones through the window of the restaurant where the press, the Jewish witnesses and Simon Wiesenthal (a brilliant Karl Markovics) are being hosted. Frosch establishes Murer as “an ordinary man of evil”, whose supreme arrogance in the face of guilt is backed up by the huge majority of Austrians, not only his own town folk. It is not only the verdict which proves him right: Until June 2019, when an interim government took over from the discredited OVP/FPO coalition, as well as in the post-war past, the right wing “Freedom Party of Austria (FPO)” formed part of the government, their Law makers helping to deny the country’s questionable past.  

DoP Frank Amann’s mobile camera brings the trial to life, avoiding a static pot-boiling drama, which runs for over two hours. That said, this is much more than a historical trial: its showcases a contemporary history in Europe where  countries like Austria, who participated in the Holocaust, but never owned up to their culpability, are now creating an ideal environment for the resurgence of Fascism by forming an alliance of denial at all cost. AS

UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2019   

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 

    

Mater | Mother (2019) *** Tallinn Black Nights Festival 2019

Dir.: Jure Pavlovic ; Cast: Daria Lorenci-Flatz, Neva Rosic; Croatia 2019, 96 min.

Best known for his TV work, Jure Pavlović’s marks his documentary feature debut with this convincing portrait of mother daughter discord mulling over the past both personal and national.

Middle-aged Jasna (Lorenci-Flatz) has arrived home from Germany to look after her dying mother Anka (Rosic) in a small-town Croatia. The opening panning shot sees her returning to the place she grew up. It’s an awkward rather maudlin home-coming fraught with mistrust on both sides, and the two women a while to get used to one another again in the dim and claustrophobic family home.

When does falling over, suddenly become “a fall”. The phrase is laced with dread, and usually doesn’t end well. And in Anka’s case it soon becomes clear she hasn’t got long to live and although she makes it home from hospital, she is now completely bedridden. Gradually things thaw slightly between the mother and daughter and they watch television together. It seems the line of least resistance, the holy cross placed judiciously over the screen. Jasna deals with all her mother’s paperwork and visits a lawyer in order to clear up some property issues. A cloud of deep resentment seems to hover over these meetings and Anca’s friends are always in the background, keeping an eye on her. There are hints of a troubled past, particularly when Jasna visits her father. gravestone. He died at the age forty in 1976. Jasna spends a lot of time skyping with her husband and two children in Germany, switching effortlessly to German when she talks to them. Keeping her own family affairs to herself and often hiding from her mother in the downstairs loo. Finally, on the eve before her family arrives to celebrate her own daughter’s birthday, the two women make peace, the party proceeds in stark contrast to everything which had gone on before.

Without going into finer detail, it’s safe to say that this mother daughter conflict hinges on repressed feelings of the past, but Pavlovic keeps his distance, leaving the ending open. Daria Lorenci-Flatz makes for a convincing fish out of water forced back to her hometown in this quietly intense slice of social realism that sees a loving woman daunted by the authority still radiating from her mother’s immobile body.

Jana Plecas’ camera echoes this detachment, observing the detail like a fly on-the-wall in this prison of souls. Overall, more clarity about the past would have made this chamberpiece a more satisfying watch. But family relationships are often far from satisfying. AS

SCREENING DURING TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL 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

    

Tommy (1975) *** re-release

Dir.: Ken Russell; Cast: Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Elton John, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, Robert Powell, Paul Nicholas; UK 1975, 108 min.

After his subtle and convincing art features for BBC 2, and his iconic dramas Ken Russell’s sortie into rock music suffers from bombastic overkill. The vibrant visuals are still astonishing, but Russell treats his narrative like an assault course. Hovering between a masterpiece and a manic mess, this is one of his worst features, and, not surprisingly he himself admitted that “Tommy is his most commercial film”.

The film is set in a wartime Britain. Captain Walker(Powell) and Nora (Ann-Margret) have recently become parents to the titular child Tommy whose childhood is getting off to an awful start. The young boy witnesses Nora’s lover Frank (Reed) killing his father, and he reacts with a catatonic stupor that makes his deaf, dumb and blind ushering the classic hit That Death Dumb and Blind Child. Moving on to his teenage years, Tommy (Daltrey) is neglected and abused, his wizardry at pinball being his only escape. There are some decent cameos, the best by Elton John, performing Pinball Wizard in his skyscraper boots. Also enjoyable is Tina Turner’s Acid Queen. Ann-Margret excels in her champagne detonation cum baked beans and soap suds explosion scene, whilst Reed and evil cousin Kevin (Nicholas) use Tommy as a scapegoat for all their own frustrations. This being Russell, it is no surprise that Tommy finally becomes the Messiah, climbing the mountain.

Russell is not interested in any form of dramatic structure, his aim is to set the night on fire with a slew of cinematic musical numbers: the relentless visuals, the gaudy design and the over-the-top acting of his stars excites the wild child in him and he is oblivious to the chaos and near incoherence. The music is based on the Rock Opera by Pete Townsend, and while fans will thoroughly enjoy the spectacle, although newcomers to the story might find it all too dated. But the main reason for a re-run must surely be Roger Daltrey’s sheer dynamism as a performer captured spectacularly by Dick Bush and Ronnie is this all singing and dancing seventies showstopper. AS 

Opening at BFI Southbank, in cinemas UK-wide on 22 November 2019 as part of the major season

BFI Musicals! The Greatest Show On Screen, November 2019 – January 2020

 

Judy & Punch (2019) *** LFF 2019

Dir.: Mirrah Foulkes; Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Damon Herriman, Benedict Hardie, Tom Budge, Brenda Palmer, Terry Norris; Australia 2019, 105 min.

Australian actor turned filmmaker Mirrah Foulkes creates a full-on fairytale with a feminist twist that doesn’t pull its punches. A brilliant cast is led by Mia Wasikowska in this tonally off kilter comedy-drama that champions the resilience of women in a man’s world.

For a first feature this is wacky but wonderful stuff that makes use of magic tricks and  slapstick in a 16th-century village called Seaside – the joke is on the not very bright denizens, as the place totally landlocked. Said locals are not only slightly retarded, they are downright vicious, particularly when it comes to their treatment of women. There is a regular ‘Stoning Day’, and if anyone is unlucky enough to have her chickens die on that day, stare at the Moon too long or develop a rash – they are stoned to death.

Puppeteers Punch (Herriman) and Judy (Wasikowska) run a regular show that recently suffered from Punch’s boozing and violent temper. Judy is the most gifted of two and she soon emerges as the stronger. While preparing for the latest show Punch’s cruel nature once again rears its ugly head undermining her efforts to win back the audience. A tragic incident does not lead to  contrition on his part, and he makes matters worse by nearly beating his wife to death, before dumping her in the forest. He then blames their endearing servants Maud (Palmer) and her dementia-ridden husband Scaramouche (Norris), the mild protestations of police officer Derrick (Hardie) brushed aside. Meanwhile, Judy has been found in the woods and recovers to reek her brilliant revenge.

Foulkes certainly has a penchant for camp in the hotchpotch of just about everything. Herriman’s Punch channels Captain Sparrow, his charm masking a violent personality. Joined by a motley crew of villagers who dance around in Renaissance rig-outs rehearsing their tai chi moves in the ancient forest. Whether to laugh or cry or even recoil in horror, is entirely up to you. That said, DoP Stefan Duscio’s wide-screen images are impressive, his imagination running riot. Wasikowska rises to the occasion as an enterprising young woman, taking on her husband and the entire in the feisty finale. But the contradictions somehow spoil the enjoyment: swinging between utter farce and black comedy the audience loses its bearings too often. And in spite of some strong ideas and a wonderful  Wasikowska, Judy & Punch never really catches fire. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 27 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

  

  

The Amber Light (2019) ****

Dir: Adam Park | Wri: David Broom | UK Doc 93′

Following on from Scotch: The Golden Dram (2018) comes this voluble road trip documentary that explores the impact of Scotland’s best known liquor on the lesser known parts of the country’s cultural identity and history. The Amber Light certainly loosens the tongues of a range of personalities from the world of art, music, literature and food. In his feature debut, Adam Park also focuses on the unsung role of women in distilling and blending over the centuries, the influence of alchemists, medicine men and botanists, and the evolution of spirits from medicine to social lubricants.

And when musicians are not on screen, the film’s writer David Broom adopts a voluble conversation style in talking us through the history of the spirit, explaining how whisky suddenly became more than a drink made in a distillery for him, providing a creative impulse for him to explore the culture surrounding it. DoP Dan Dennison has an ingenious way of filming interweaving interviews with live footage of Scotland that suddenly break into delicately rendered amber coloured animations.  The film also looks at the temperance movement, smugglers, Dante’s Inferno, and the use of unexpected ingredients in whisky’s development, such as saffron.

Music is also an important part of Gaelic culture and the rhythms of whisky-making inspired many ballads, such as “Blond Haired Boy” referring to the spirit itself. The film’s score also features a selection of Scottish musicians and singers to feature music from including King Creosote, Alasdair Roberts, James Yorkston, Rachel Newton (plus more to be announced) as well as Avante-Garde noisemakers and poetry collective Neu Reekie.

Dave Broom, who has been writing about spirits for 25 years and he is the main influence behind this informative whisky travelogue that travels the length and breadth of Scotland, talking to key innovators and thinkers in the whisky world – farmers, distillers, bar owners and historians – as well as people less directly involved: musicians, artists and writers, including Scottish novelists and “king of the Tartan Noir” Ian Rankin is almost an ambassador for the golden dram and he certainly who waxes lyrical about how wishy brings out the “darkness in the Scottish soul”, born of the long nights that encourage brooding, bringing out the worst in people: “Not everyone can handle it”. This offers an musical opportunity for a rendering of the sinister ballad: “Jonny My Man”  Musicians Alasdair Roberts, James Yorkston perform live on screen.

Whisky is a particularly socially cohesive dram: it has provided an opportunity to open a conversation with a perfect stranger. Once the amber nectar is poured into a glass, introductions can begin and very soon the dialogue flows, and friendships are forged. Made on a shoestring, and none the worse for it: David Broom raised the lion’s share of the film’s finance from crowd-funding. MT

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 22 November, paired with Director Q&As and whisky tasting opportunities at several sites across London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cambridge, Dublin and more—all through DECEMBER 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

 

Songs from the North (2014) **** London Korean Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Yoo Soon-Mi; Documentary; South Korea/USA/Portugal 2014, 72 min.

Born 1962 in South Korea, Yoo Soon-Mi studied in the USA, where she now lectures at MassArt in Massachusetts. This is only one example of an attempt to understand her divided homeland, and follows her 2005 short film on the subject Dangerous Supplements that uses footage from American fighter planes bombing North Korea. This is an attempt to look for a landscape that seems to drift away. For Yoo, the film “is an incomplete index for the memory, a substitute for a vision that is yet to be born.”

This vision was finally realised in Songs from the North, that describes North Korea as  “the loneliest place one Earth, the country has no friends, no history, only myths, repeated endlessly from morning to night”. But for the filmmaker North Korea was always the elephant in the room, a country she wanted to visit for a long time “a land of evil that is scared as a mother’s womb”. During her three visits to the North, what emerges is a collage of interviews, film and TV archives. The masque of slips but only briefly surround the slipping but only briefly from the world’s most secretive nation.

Dedicated to her father Yoo Young-choon, whose comments to camera provide integrity and ballast to this intriguing essay film, Soon-mi Yoo does her best to maintain distance from her first person account that manages to offer insight into the culture and general ambience of this lonely state with, apparently, few friends. She visits Pyongyang and the surrounding area where white-gloved officials take pride in their marching displays, much as they do in mainland China. On the whole people seem relatively chipper with their lot, clearly they don’t know what they’re missing but is their ignorance bliss or simply a sinister form of brainwashing?.

Her excursions were heavily censured, often we hear her ‘handlers’ shout “no filming” or “stop”. At one point a man literally runs away from Yoo shouting “filming too long”. But Yoo stays true to her opening shot, were high-wire acrobats at the circus, one of them abruptly falling into the safety-net, destroying the illusion of a perfectly functioning display. Yoo is looking for moments when the citizens drop their mask for a moment; when even the awe-inspiring, official version of life comes to a halt: a group of bearded men in a billiard saloon, seen through the beads; a traffic cop on night duty, again indirectly captured through a bus window, restaurant employees cleaning up the place, whilst asking Yoo if it was worth filming at all.

Her father had fought as a young man in the Korean War. Afterwards, most of his friends, convinced that communism was the future, emigrated to the North, where they all perished in brutal purges. Yoo directly asks her father to camera, if he shared the political convictions of his friends. And after a pause, he is affirmative, concluding that only the love for his mother kept him back. He goes back in time, criticising the North Korean regime for its failures from a Marxist point of view: communism is built on economic success, but the regime has never come to terms with it, instead it went for personal politics, which are just the super-structure.

The official State Propaganda pieces are hilarious: huge halls, decorated in Soviet-style of the 1950ies, are filled to the brim. On stage, a North Korean version of a young pioneer exclaims the great leader (which ever Kim was in power) loves him like a father and a mother. Whilst his own mother died of shame on account of his father’ treachery to the nation, the great leader forgave him. And there he is, singing the praises of Kim, and making him forget he is an orphan: his pride in representing the leader in public is the highest honour.

Another TV production talks about Japanese soldiers losing the will to fight when resistance fighters sang the praise of the first Kim, who is credited with getting rid of the Japanese invaders. The death of Kim Il Sung was too much to bear for the country’s citizens. Hysterical collective weeping is showcased as a major attraction. Afterwards soldiers berate their wives for their lack of patriotic engagement. All this against the background of a wintry Pyongyang, dreary as it can be. All TV programmes somehow look as is they are shot from a different planet, even though the regime is credited with sending a communications satellite into space, at no point do we believe that we are in the 20th or 21st century.

Elegantly structured, the film conveys the feeling of utter solitude. The tone is melancholy, modest even, but still a corrective to our first hand knowledge, because Yoo never stops wanting to learn more about this hybrid state: she confronts it with glaring truth, but she never forgets that it is still the sibling of her, and her father’s, homeland. AS

SCREENING DURING London Korean FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | UNTIL 27 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) 

Musicals! | The Greatest Show on Screen | Winter season 2019

BFI MUSICALS! THE GREATEST SHOW ON SCREEN is the UK’s greatest ever season celebrating the joyful, emotional, shared experience of watching film musicals on the big screen. Highlights of the season, The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) in Belfast Cathedral; a festive screening of White Christmas (Michael Curtiz, 1954) in Birmingham Cathedral; and a tour of Russian musicals to London, Bristol and Nottingham

BFI Musicals will also feature a touring programme of 12 musicals  such as Gold Diggers of 1933; First a Girl (Victor Saville, 1935), Guys and Dolls (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1955), A Star is Born (George Cukor, 1954), Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972), Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935), Carousel (Henry King, 1956), Sweet Charity (Bob Fosse, 1969), Pakeezah (Kamal Amrohi, 1972), Cabin in the Sky (Vincente Minnelli, 1943) and Singing Lovebirds (Masahiro Makino, 1939).

Three classics on release this season are – Singin’ in the Rain on 18 October; Tommy on 22 November and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on 6 December. The re-releases will screen at venues across the UK, ensuring that audiences the length and breadth of the country will be able to join in the celebration of all things song and dance.

https://youtu.be/1t6L-HU9Amg

The Seashore Village (1965) **** London Korean Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Kim Soo-yong; Cast: Shin Young-kyun, Ko Eun-ah-I Hwang Jung-soon; South Korea 1965, 91 min.

The Seashore Village was the thirty-forth film of prolific director Kim Soo-yong, who made 109 features between 1958 and 1999. Now in his nineties the director still travels the world to present his films giving Seashore a feisty send off to the delighted audience at a lively Q&A in Regents Park Cinema (and bemoaning the absence of his two main actors) where his film opened the London Korean Film-Festival 2019.

Based on the novel by fellow director Bae Chang-ho and Executive produced by Ho Heyon-chan of Last Autumn fame, Seashore Village is a mournful melodrama about doomed love, but also a celebration of female solidarity amid hostile working conditions which makes today’s gig economy look like a walk in the park. 

On a remote island, beautiful young pearl fisher Hae-soon (Ko Eun-ah-I) has just got married. But her husband is to become one of many victims of the ocean that both gives and takes away the villagers lives. And when he does not return from a fishing trip, Hae-soon joins the fate of many of the island’s women, widowhood. Sadly custom prevents them from marrying again so she must live with her mother-in-law Hwang Jung-soon. 

Many of them have resigned themselves to a lonely life, others have chosen lesbian relationships. But Hae is too beautiful to sink into oblivion and is soon getting unwelcome attention from the local men. One is Sang-soo (Shin Yong-kyun), a rootless coalminer, who lives near the village. Hae is annoyed by Sang-soo, but eventually succumbs to his persistence. But he cannot keep their affair secret, and when he starts boasting about his luck, the couple have to leave the village, with the help of Hwang Jung-soon, Hae’s mother in law. But their relationship is doomed to fail. Everywhere the go, men just cannot keep their hands off the beautiful young woman in the dark and brutal depiction of the male in Korean society

Resplendent in black and white The Seashore Village has a strong documentary character yet retains its poetic sensibilities, the widescreen images of DoP Chun-Jo myong reminding us very much of Visconti’s La Terra Trema and Flaherty’s cult classic Man of Aran. AS

LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 1-24 NOVEMBER 2019 

 

The Shining (1980) *****

Dir: Stanley Kubrick | Cinematography: John Alcott: Script: Stanley Kubrick/Diane Johnson | Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny Lloyd | 144′  | Thriller US

Cold, hypnotic and profoundly disturbing, this tale of a family who come to grief during the isolation of one Colorado winter is burnt into the memory and will remain a standout film of the 20th century.

Based on Stephen King’s bestselling novel, some see Kubrick’s tale of a family man who takes a job as winter caretaker in the Overlook Hotel as a psychological drama, some a ghost story.   The film’s enduring success is partly due to its ability to be whatever to whoever experiences it. The endless fascination with the film and its different interpretations for cinemas goers and critics alike has even spawned a documentary: Room 237: a mishmash of strands examining esoteric codes and arcane theories behind the screen original, with appeal largely to the anorak brigade.

Stanley Kubrick seeded his 14th feature with so many elements that build tension and spark off an unsettling reaction in the viewer before the action has even started.  In other words, we’re actually ‘spooked out’ in anticipation. The desolate forests of snowbound Colorado in the awesome opening helicopter sequence; the weird emptiness of the brightly-lit hotel interiors; Danny’s unnerving psychic gift and his visit with a child psychologist (a new scene); a spine-chilling score; the talk of a previous tragedy in the hotel and the fact that the family are an unknown quantity add to its strange power,

Kubrick’s exacting standards often meant 50 takes to get the scene right and get the cast to give their all. Jack Nicholson was even said to remark: “Just because you’re a perfectionist, it doesn’t mean you’re perfect”. That said, he gives one of the most memorable turns of his career as Jack Torrance, a frustrated wannabe writer with anger-management issues whose metamorphosis from decent guy to demon has its amusing moments as in the scene with bartender Joe Turkel (extended here).  Shelley Duvall, is perfect as a simpering homemaker and mother who was forced to remain ‘hysterical’ for nearly four months to comply with Kubrick’s demands on her.  Danny Lloyd is extraordinary as a sensitive 7 year-old boy with psychic potential who has an imaginary friend Tony who speaks to him of impending tragedy.

Veteran actor Scatman Crothers had never heard of Kubrick until he was cast as Halloran, the kindly hotel chef who shares Danny’s extrasensory perception and calls it “shining”.  Barry Nelson gives a suave and polished turn as Ullman, the hotel manager; and Philip Stone, who plays Grady the former caretaker and is the only character to dominate Jack Torrance (in a status switch in the mens’ room scene), is supremely in control of his chilling performance.  Scored with a dissonant soundtrack using existing recordings by Bela Bartok, Gorgy Ligeti and Polish modernist Krzysztof Penderecki that presage doom from the title sequence until the credits roll, Kubrick creates a malevolent dystopia that will shine out for eternity as a signpost to horror. MT.

THE SHINING is now on re-release in selected arthouse venues

 

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

 

 

UK Jewish Film Festival 2019

UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2019 TAKES PLACE 6 NOVEMBER – 21 NOVEMBER 2019 ACROSS CENTRAL LONDON VENUES AND 20 TOWNS AND CITIES ACROSS ENGLAND

UK Jewish Film is delighted to announce the 23rd UK Jewish Film Festival, which will run from 6th – 21st November at 15 cinemas across London. A UK tour of festival highlights to 20 towns and cities across England, Scotland and Wales will run until 12th December.

This year’s programme, comprising 96 films, plus Q&As and discussions with directors, actors, politicians, journalists and others, is the largest Jewish film festival programme in the world. The film programme includes 8 world premieres, 1 European premiere, 40 UK premieres, and films from 24 countries, including 23 films from the UK.

The diverse range of films in this year’s programme includes Oscar tipped satire from Fox Searchlight Pictures Jojo Rabbit which will be the Closing Night Gala along with the Centrepiece Gala being The Operative which stars Martin Freeman and Diane Kruger which will receive its UK premiere at the festival.

Further highlights include Synonyms which was awarded the Golden Bear at this years Berlin International Film Festival, documentary The Human Factor which is directed by Oscar nominated documentarian Dror Moreh and Israeli filmmaker Itay Tal’s intense portrait of motherly obsession God of the Piano. Meanwhile Norwegian teenager Esther finds herself caught up in the Nazi occupation in Ross Clarke’s award-winning drama The Birdcatcher

A documentary strand includes Amos Gitai’s  A Tramway in Jerusalem and Advocate a look at the life and work of Jewish-Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel who has represented political prisoners for nearly 50 years.

There will also be a chance to revisit a some cult classics such as the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, When Harry Met Sally and even Fiddler on the Roof!

Festival tickets can be purchased via the UK Jewish Film website here:
https://ukjewishfilm.org/festival/uk-jewish-film-festival-2019/

 

Earthquake Bird (2019) ****

Dir.: Wash Westmoreland; Cast: Alicia Vikander, Riley Keough, Naoki Kobayashi, Jack Huston; USA 2019, 107 min.

Wash Westmoreland (Colette) turns Susanna Jones’ 2001 debut novel into a traumatic nightmare, set in 1989 Tokyo. The ménage-à-trois between two ex-pats from the UK and a Japanese photographer ends in murder – or does it?

In Tokyo, Lucy Fly (a brilliant Alicia Vikander) works as a translator and is haunted by the accidental death of her brother, for which she blames herself. She is emotional fragile and hates showing her feelings, very much in keeping with Japanese whosemotions are equally repressed. She plays the cello in a quintet of women musicians, and tries hard to fit in. All that changes, when she meets Teiji (Kobayashi), who works during the day in a noodle restaurant, but is obsessed by taking photographs. He lives in a sort of container, high up in the sky. Lucy falls for him, and for the first time forgets all her inhibitions. Enter Lily Bridge (Keough), a nurse who has just arrived in Tokyo and is equally taken by the mysterious Teiji. During an outing, Lucy falls ill and is left behind by Teiji and Lily. But then, in a bizarre twist, the police arrest Lucy at work for the murder of Lily. Lucy confesses, but the Japanese inspector is not convinced about her guilt, and the results of the DNA tests are inconclusive.                       

This is not so much a who-done-it but a study in guilt and betrayal. It is unfortunate that the first man Lucy trusts could well be a murderer. Vikander plays her like a cornered animal, plagued by psycho-somatic illnesses, due to her on-going low-level depression. She is often unable to find find a way through life, because nightmares are intruding more and more in her perception of reality. DoP Chung-hoon Chung shows Tokyo at night like a horror-movie, and during the day a cold landscape lingers gloomily. Vikander’s Lucy is caught in a flight from her past, only to be delivered to a haunting existence, in which she questions everything and everybody. For once, an atmospheric thriller with a gripping narrative. AS

ON NETFLIX FROM 1 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.

RoboLove (2019) **** DOK Leipzig 2019

Dir.: Maria Arlamovsky; Documentary with Hiroshi Ishiguro, June Korea, Matt McMullen, Ulises Cortes; Austria 2019, 79min.

Robots are the future. And according to a new documentary from Austria we should be very concerned. Humanoid robots, androids, and sex robots have always aroused our curiosity, they also awaken in us a very-human fantasy about power. RoboLove shows how robots reflect more about us than their AI creators would perhaps care to admit.

In her follow-up to Future Baby, Arlamovsky – who also co-wrote Abendland with Nikolaus Geyrhalter embarks on a provocative study of the emerging and often surprising issues concerning morality, humanity, diversity and identity, as society progresses en-masse into unchartered technological territory. With robots increasingly entering our private lives, the film gently probes the issues at the cusp of a new-age of servitude.

The Austrian director has interviewed AI designers all over the world and has made a one crucial discovery: the naivety of those designing your future helpmate – or lover – is astonishing.

RoboLove opens with an candid interview with Dinah, a female android whose most important feature is her smile. Dinah can hold an intellectual conversation, and she is proud to be a robot. Then we watch an ‘upper torso’ called Harmony in verbal debate with to her designer. Harmony can argue, and is in no doubt about her role: “I was crated to please you.”

Meanwhile the AI designers are also clear about their aims. Ulises Cortes considers robots as consumer products, like coke or coffee. He also hopes that in future they will not only be a commodity, but will support lonely old people left alone who have been abandoned by their younger relatives. The intention is for them to become emotional companions. Another AI designer, Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, has dreamed all her life of having a perfect assistant and hopes that AIs will care for her in her old age.

For Matt McMullen, his female androids are not only sex-objects, but actually active in other areas of his life. Arlamovsky posits the theory about cyberspace being a female friendly space in the future. But the feminists have got it wrong: cyberspace is a battlefield of the sexes, mainly because men have greater purchasing power, and so most of robots look like young, slender white females, who never age. This is the only range McMullen and others are intending to develop.

Other AI researchers are talking about the danger of kids getting too attached to their their robots. The idea therefore is to develop special AIs specifically for children, and investing in zoomorphic research to create AI animals. Another designer, who as a child cherished the idea everybody would live forever, and nobody would leave him, is making a range of robots who can talk about their favourite memories, and are clearly products of a childhood trauma, when relatives and friends died.

Designer June Korea makes it clear that in about hundred years, the first humans will live for an eternity, having profited from AI. There are some weird scenes, when Hiroshi Ishiguro watches his AI creation stroking a leaf, or playing his guitar, with his head in the lap of the AI. But basically, most researchers and designers support the general consensus that humans are merging into AIs. “Take the technology away from humans, and we are only apes. By technology, I mean robots, so the differentiation between robots and humans is absolute nonsense. 80% to 90% of our lives is based on technology. But even if our human organs were replaced by technology, we would still be human. The scary thing is that AIs are getting more and more on par with humans. 

But Arlamovsky’s most frightening discovery of all is that the huge majority of AI designers are not aware that humans are not just the sum of their emotional experiences, but the victims of an ongoing internal battle, which is conflict inherent, and heading for the destruction of this planet. How to merge the majority of humans with suicidal tendencies with the products of logic dominated AIs has never been even contemplated. RoboLove, with its stunning images by Sebastian Arlamovsky, is a frightening documentary: do we really want our future in the hands of these technocratic scientists, who at best will replicate the contradictions of human life today?. AS

62nd DOK LEIPZIG FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 28 October – 3 November 2019

                                          

 

After the Wedding (2019) ****

Dir: Bart Freundlich | Wir: Susanne Bier/Anders Thomas Jensen | Cast: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Billy Crudup, Abby Quinn | US Drama 110′

One of two films out this season starring Julianne Moore. Both are remakes, but this orphanage-themed story is the one to go for.

Danish director Susanne Bier made the original ‘dogma styled’ version and was nominated for an Oscar back in 2006. The US version has two powerful female leads, and Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams make for a terrific duo as a successful business woman and a free-thinking philanthropist, respectively.

Earth mother Isobel (Williams) runs an orphanage in Kolkata, but the magnificent opening sequence has the drones sweeping in over the exotic landscape quickly establishing this as a glossy drama all about fraught relationships, love, and forgiveness rather than a grim slice of social realism. True there are some cheesy elements at the start of the film: we don’t particularly warm to Moore at first, as she sashays round her ample New York residence, nodding to domestic staff while she talks on her ‘phone. But her character soon proves to have a hidden agenda behind its rather glacial facade. She’s a wife, a mother of three and an accomplished entrepreneur married to Billy Crudup’s rather puppyish sculptor, Oscar.

Freundlich has clearly crafted Theresa with Moore in mind. She is businesslike, a loving mother to her kids and affectionate with her husband – a woman who seems to have it all – but we will later discover that she doesn’t. Her daughter (Abby Quinn) is about to get married, but she seems rather unsure of intended. But Theresa gives her plenty of cheesy assurances and she is busy organising her ridiculously lavish wedding and shooting orders at everyone in sight. At first we dislike this rather glib family.

And Isobel (Williams) isn’t much better. Although she clearly loves the beautifully polite kids in her orphanage, and particularly eight-year-old Jai (Vir Pachisia), there’s a steely dissatisfaction behind her doting gestures. And we soon discover why when she turns up in New York to take delivery of the “suitcase full of money” offered to her orphanage by a benefactor who demands a face to face meeting.

This donor turns out to be none other that Theresa. There’s a motif running through the drama that points to her sympathy for felled trees and wounded birds. But she’s also a draconian boss, and there’s a wonderful kick-ass scene involving her assistant, that you’d never get away with in Britain.

The New York scenes are typically over the top with lavish hotel suites, brands everywhere and riches beyond the dreams of avarice in Theresa’s waterfront estate. The first reveal in this strangely absorbing drama occurs when Oscar clocks Isobel at the wedding (she’s been press-ganged into attending by Theresa).

Bizarre the next reveal may be, but it certainly packs a punch. And the characters are sent reeling in disbelief and horror. At this point, Theresa decides to widen the remit of her donation, naturally with poisoned chalice conditions. Isabel may practice yoga and have a habit of kicking her shoes off without a by your leave, but she’s certainly no fool and remains skeptical of her Theresa’s motives. And with good reason. Another dramatic twist leads to the rationale behind Theresa’s erratic behaviour.

These two woman are tough as nails behind their faux sympathy. They display the spiky machiavellian capabilities of the deadlier sex. And it’s a joy to watch them in full flow in this engrossing melodrama that almost puts the BBC’s Dr Foster in the shade. Bier’s original had two male protagonists but these women are much more convincing and never fail to surprise us with their sneakiness. Although a beginner, Quinn is the only one who really displays  heartfelt feelings, but the other characters offer plenty to chew on in this meaty melodrama. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 1 NOVEMBER 2019

Helena Třeštíková – Czech Velvet | 17-19 November 2019

November marks the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that saw a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia. Taking place from 17 November to 29 December 1989 it resulted in the end of 41 years of one-party rule and the subsequent transformation of the country to a parliamentary republic.

In celebration of these years London Czech centre is to pay hommage to the first lady of time-lapse documentaries, Czech filmmaker Helena Třeštíková, whose impressive film career spans over 40 years and features more than 50 documentaries including the 2008 European Film Academy the Prix Arte winner, René.

Following people’s stories over the course of several years, even decades, Trestikova builds up with openness and intimacy full character studies of her protagonists whether these are married couples (A Marriage Story), young delinquents (René) or women (Malloy). Finding the universal in her subjects and their life dramas, an unsensational excitement in their everyday adventures, Trestikova bears witness to the human condition as lives evolve before our eyes recalling of Richard Linklater´s film Boyhood.

An hommage will feature the UK premiere of her latest film Forman vs Forman, a fascinating portrayal of the Academy Award-winning director of Amadeus, Milos Forman, which premiered at Cannes Classics 2019, and MalloryTřeštíková’s long-term observation project from her series Trapped In, Trapped Out, and A Marriage Story, representing her signature series.

AT VARIOUS VENUES IN LONDON | 17-19 November 2019

The Dove on the Roof | Die Taube auf dem Dach (1973/2010)

Dir/Wri: Iris Gusner | Cast: Heidemarie Wenzel, Gunter Naumann, Katrin Martin, Heimat Guass | Director of Photography: Roland Gräf | GDR 1973/2010, b/w, DCP, digitally restored version 2010, (35mm), 85 mins. Drama 90’

Iris Gusner’s light and episodic story of a young contruction site manager who has to juggle shortages of building material and her relationships with two very different men was made in a moment of artistic freedom only to be condemned to decades of oblivion when the political climate changed again.

Linda Hinrichs is the manager of a building site in Thuringia in the south of the GDR. New “Plattenbau” (prefabricated) flats are to be erected, and Linda has to move things forward in spite of building material shortages and other problems. As if this was not enough of a challenge, Linda also has to juggle her relationships with two male colleagues she feels attracted to. Daniel is an idealistic and a little crazy student who is seeking some work experience during his summer holidays, while the much older brigade leader Böwe is a restless, sometimes alcohol infused soul who has moved from construction site to site for years. Gusner surrounds this trio with an ensemble of original characters and spins a loose and episodic, sometimes amusing, sometimes melancholic narrative around them. Lightness and a touch of anarchy, the change of location between the construction site and the narrow streets of the medieval town of Arnstadt, references to Palestinian refugees and Angela Davis, as well as a daring opening “cosmic” montage, make this film stand out within the DEFA film production of the time.

Making such a film seemed possible in 1972, when Gusner’s script for this film, her directorial debut, passed the DEFA studio’s assessment.  But by the time the final film was judged by the studio officials in 1973, the mood had changed. Not only was the film criticised as an ‘artistic error’, it was also denounced for its supposedly disrespectful representation of the GDR worker. Though defended by renowned directors such as Konrad Wolf and Kurt Maetzig, the film was never licensed for distribution. It only resurfaced after the film’s camera man Roland Gräf (who also shot Born in ’45 by Jürgen Böttcher) while searching for banned DEFA films. As the print was no longer screenable, a black and white dup-negative was made from which a black and white screening print was struck.The film we are screening is a digital version of a reconstruction made by the DEFA foundation in 2009 on the basis of the mentioned dub-negative. That is why colour film stills of the film circulate, but the film can only be screened in black and white. Review courtesy of Goethe Institute

The Dove on The Roof –  Review courtesy of the Goethe Institute | 30 October 2019

The Goethe Institute will also be screening a Böttcher season this October 2019

 

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.

Cavern Club: The Beat Goes On (2019) *** DocLisboa 2019

Dir: Christian Francis-Davies, John Keats | Wri: Bill Heckle | Doc UK 60′

This new documentary tells the colourful history of Liverpool’s iconic jazz club. Best know as The Beatles spiritual home it has also hosted some of rocks greatest bands over the years of its winding road to fame that started in 1957. The club’s location on Mathew Street in the city centre had also served as an air-raid shelter during the Second World War.

Founded by jazz fan Alan Sytner who was hoping to recreate the heady atmosphere redolent of his Parisian jazz cellar experiences, the club became synonymous with Skiffle (a hybrid of jazz, blues and folk) that was popular in the 1950s and later became a major influence on Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s band The Quarrymen even before they became The Beatles. The Fab Four have since returned to the venue for the odd gig. Another megastar in the shape of Adele also played there as recently at 2011

Director Christian Francis-Davies adopts the usual mix of archive footage and talking heads approach to an informative film that also shares grainy footage of the band in the claustrophobic confines of the club’s brick interior playing to a motley collection of young Liverpudlians who would witness and take part in a musical revolution.

After the Skiffle era of the 1950s the 1960 saw The Cavern Club host rock ‘n’ roll gigs headlined by an upcoming band called The Beatles  who went on playing there until   August 1963. From then onwards a variety of iconic bands such as The Kinks; The Who and The Rolling Stones made it their home.

Liverpool saw a downturn in its economic fortunes during the 197os and ’80s and the club suffered too, closing twice and relocating to its current address in Mathew Street where the current owner took over in 1991. Now forming an important part of Liverpool’s social history the Cavern Club today features on a bus tour of the city’s hotspots.

SCREENING DURING DOC LISBOA FILM FESTIVAL | 17-27 OCTOBER 2019

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

Corpus Christi (2019) Mubi

Dir.: Jan Komasa; Cast: Bartosz Bielenia, Aleksandra Konieczna, Eliza Rycenbel, Tomasz Zietek, Barbara Kurzaj, Zdzislas Wurdejn, Lukasz Simlat, Poland 2019, 115 min

Director Jan Komasa (Warsaw ’44) adapts Mateusz Palewicz’s extraordinary story about a 20-year-old juvenile criminal impersonating a priest in Poland. In small town Jasliska, just south of Krakow, the past is catching up with the townspeople forcing them out of the past and into the present. Piotr Sobocinski brings the whole thing to life with his vibrant camerawork reflecting the prejudices of provincial life in this intricate and outstanding feature drama.

Twenty year old Daniel (Bielenia) lives in a juvenile correction institution where he experiences something of a spiritual awakening under the influence of one of the more charismatic priests Tomasz (Simlat) whose sermons have a such a dramatic effect of the young man he feels a calling towards the priesthood. Sadly his criminal past bars him from taking the cloth. Unperturbed, Daniel sets out  his destination, where he is to join a sawmill, owned by Walkiewicz, a friend of Tomasz. One glimpse of the place from the outside is enough for Daniel to change his mind. In church he meets Eliza (Ryembed), the daughter of Lidia (Komieczna), who helps the resident priest Golap (Wurdejn). Daniel tells Eliza that he is a priest, producing the full regalia stolen from Tomasz, and they agree to take him on.

Whilst Daniel learns about taking confession from the internet on his mobile, he is drawn into a recent tragedy: six young people died in a head-on collision with a car, driven by an alcoholic called Slawek. It was forbidden to bury Slawek in the cemetery, and his wife Barbara (Kurzaj) and the victim’s relatives have made sure the priests stick to their word. Although Eliza’s brother was one of the victims, she has doubts about Slawek’s guilt. Daniel too feels Slawek was hard done by and proposes to bury Slawek in the local cemetery. But Walkiewicz wants to keep his workers happy, and again opposes the plan. And he is not the only one. Daniel meets resistance from Pinczer (Zietek), whose brother he killed in a fight.

Komasa changes the perception of Palewicz’s novel subtly: whilst Daniel believes in his role, and tries to be humble, the majority of his parish show anything but Christian spirit and only a few following Slawek’s coffin to the grave. Corpus Christi is a mature, wise and refreshing portrait of religious bigotry, emotionally enthralling the audience for the whole two hours. AS

NOW ON MUBI

 

The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019) ****

Dirs: Tyler Nilson, Michael Schwartz | Dakota Johnson, Bruce Dern, Shia LaBeouf, Zak Gottsagen | US Comedy 93′

A buddy movie with some good laughs and a really warm heart that doesn’t seek the easy way out in depicting its Down’s Syndrome hero who makes a break for freedom confounding the odds.

Zack Gottsagen plays Zak, a young Down’s syndrome man with no family confined to living in a care home and sharing a bedroom with an old timer – a game Bruce Dern – in North Carolina. Zak may have his limits but he wants to live those to the full. A local wrestling school has captured his imagination although it appalls his carer Eleanor (Johnson), so with the help of his roommate he makes a bid for freedom, wearing only a pair of Y-fronts, hooking up with LaBeouf’s struggling fisherman Tyler – after spending the night under canvas on his boat.

Even hard-to-please cynics will enjoy this charming comedy. All the characters are convincing and appealingly fleshed out. Zak and his new friend Tyler make an oddly endearing couple – Zak is surprisingly tough under his vulnerable facade and so is the macho Tyler who is still mourning his brother – flashback scenes shows the two of them  in affectionate mellow-tinted musings.

The adventure they embark on is a picaresque-styled sortie with shades of Mark Twain. They eventually catch up with Zak’s wrestling heros (cameos from real-life fighter Mick Foley and Jake Roberts, in mufti.). And although Zak often comes a cropper in his white wellies, y-fronts and combat trousers he is a character who we laugh with, and never a figure of fun: A perfect role model for those with life-limiting conditions.

The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao (2019)

Dir: Karim Ainouz | Writers: Murilo Hauser, Ines Bortagaray | Cast: Carol Duarte, Julia Stockler, Gregorio Duvivier, Fernanda Montenegro, Barbara Santos, Flavia Gusmao, Maria Manoella, Antonio Fonseca, Cristina Pereira, Gillray Coutinho | Brazil, 139′

Two sisters are forced into separate lives in this striking melodrama set in male-dominated Rio de Janeiro of the 1950s.

The Brazilian director’s two previous films have been enjoyable but lightweight compared to this ambitious but highly intimate drama, based on a novel by Martha Batalha, The Invisible Life soaks up the vibrant sensuality of tropical Brazil and distills into an intense and passionate portrait of feminine desire and longing in a country where a woman’s only domaine was the home. But their self-determination burns brightly throughout this moving story of female emancipation. There’s nothing coy or dainty about Ainouz’s complex and fully fleshed out characters played spiritedly by newcomers Carol Duarte (Euridice) and Julia Stockler (Guida) who make this often languorous film an extremely moving experience that follows the women’s lives from early adulthood to old age, the reveal comes in the form of an ingenious coda.

It’s 1941 and Guida and her younger sister Euridice are discussing sex – or the febrile expectancy of it – as they wander through the verdant coastline surrounding their cramped family home in Rio. Daughters of a draconian father and his meek wife – described as a shadow by Euridice later on in the film – the girls are bound together by an unusual closeness forcing them to share all their hopes and dreams which will be stifled by a patriarchal set-up as the film plays out. The story is framed by a plot device that causes the girls to be separated and so their only way of communicating is through stifled correspondence and unanswered questions. What emerges is a fascinating social history of Brazil during the 1940s and ’50s seen from a female perspective, but one which is gutsy and deeply affecting.

While Guida is conducting a secret affair with darkly handsome Greek sailor Yorgos (Nikolas Antunes), Euridice is developing her keyboard skills on the family’s piano, with a view to studying at the conservatory in Vienna. We then find out – through a letter to their father – that Guida has eloped with her man on a ship bound for Athens, whence she returns alone and pregnant. Clearly Yorgos had a girl in every port, but worse, her father throws her out callously disinheriting her, and telling her that Euridice is studying in Austria. In actual fact Euridice has married Antenor (Duvivier) a crude bore who spends most of his time in his underwear, and given birth to a daughter he didn’t really want. Meanwhile, Guida finds solace in the home of a prostitute Filomena (Barbara Santos) where she brings up her son.

Ainouz has an extraordinary eye for detail and the film’s well-paced dramatic arc unfolds through tone and atmosphere closely following the literary structure, drawing us into the women’s world where we share in their intimate feelings, joys, heartache and sadness. It’s a emotional rollercoaster but one told with such intense warmth and beauty that by the end we feel a deep connection to these characters and their experiences. Something that is rare nowadays, with so many atmospheric yet empty films.

Spectacular vibrant camerawork is provided by French DoP Helene Louvart (Happy as Lazzaro) both on the widescreen and in really intimate close-up – and although some of the images are quite graphic, adding considerable gravity and truth to the alarming scenes of birth and love-making. The male characters invariably have feet of clay but in subtle ways that show them as convincing people not just hastily drawn cyphers. Each frame is exquisitely captured adding texture to an immersive family saga that bears testament to the enormous forbearance and indomitable resilience of its female characters. It seems appropriate that piano studies from Liszt, Grieg and Chopin should be the accompanying score. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 15 OCTOVER  2021 | WINNER UN CERTAIN REGARD | Cannes Film Festival 2019

 

The Warden (2019) **** LFF 2019

Dir: Nima Javidi | Cast: Cast: Navid Mohammadzadeh, Parinaz Izadyar, Setareh Pessyani, Habib Rezai, Atila Pessvani, Mani Haghighi, Ismaeel Pourreza, Amir Keyvan Masoumi, Ali Mardaneh | Drama, Iran 100′

Nima Javidi follows his award-winning first film Melbourne with this rather surreal drama that explores the fallout when an inmate goes missing during a prison re-location.

Navid Mohammadzadeh is the laconically draconian prison governor in this bleak but rather poetic 1960s set slow-burner that keeps you wondering if it there’s a mystical message to be gleaned from the strange goings on in this decidedly sinister story made rather enjoyable by Javidi’s dark sense of humour and quirky characterisations not to mention Mohommadzadeh’s charismatic lead performance.

As the chief warden he has been feverishly preening himself for promotion and reacts with a Victor Meldrum-like sigh of resignation when he sees his career progression thwarted by the unfortunate escape of an important prisoner on death row, all under his careful watch during the critical move to another facility, to allow for airport expansion. He orders his guards to keep searching in vain. And while they do so he is visited by a motley crew of characters. The most significant is a stylish social worker, Miss Karimi (Parinaz Izadyar.) who has come to share her belief that the escapee is a framed man. While she delivers her story, the warden is actually sizing her sexually, admiring her feminine attributes – it’s enjoyable to behold this liberal stuff in a contemporary Iranian drama. He follows her visit by wistfully playing seductive music over the tannoy. But there’s a conflict of interests: she is working on the prisoner’s possible release while he’s hellbent on re-capturing him.

While Melbourne(2014), was set with the claustrophobic confines of a cramped appartment where a young married couple about to leave find themselves in charge of a dead baby. In The Warden, is no less tense and enervating despite its vast wide screen images of this remote and decidedly bleak-looking corner of Iran. As the minutes go ticking by a palpable tension arises from the futile search (all ramped up by Ramin Kousha’s saturnine score) and the sinuous plot line presents us with various red herrings that grow weirder by the minute: a message attached to a toad is found by the guard dog in a tumble dryer; a histrionic local woman begs them not to move to another location; and a soothsayer type rants and raves. But none provides a clue as gradually the warden loses his grip and his authority in the rather poignant final scene.

The Shah Pahlavi was still in power at the time that makes the whole endeavour feel decidedly more modern that today’s regime would allow, but The Warden also feels distinctly elegaic as the guards march across the desolate landscape in Hooman Behmanesh’s shimmering widescreen images. MT

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 2 -13 OCTOBER 2019

 

 

Celebration (2019) MUBI

Dir: Olivier Meyrou | Doc, France

Olivier Meyrou’s long-shelved biopic on Yves Saint Laurent‘s final collection (aka Yves Saint Laurent: the last collections) has come to light again after screening at Berlinale 2007. The reason for its disappearance from the circuit was due to the legendary couturier’s partner and former lover Pierre Bergé, who ordered the film to be taken out of circulation after its world premiere. His subsequent death has now freed up the rights.

Don’t expect a glamorous film full of stars, celebrities and glossy locations. Meyrou takes a serious, anti-glamour approach showing just how serious the French are about the business of haute couture in a film that showcases ‘the devil in the detail’ and the often gruelling, hand-sewn meticulousness of it all. Meyrou also reveals tensions in the distance in the relationship between Yves Saint Laurent and Bergé who are seen from a warts and all perspective.

Seven years before the tall, rangy designer’s death, he cuts a dedicated but troubled  figure in his elegant tailoring and soigné accoutrements. Looking frail and wan, he gives tentative answers during a press interview where he tries to be positive about the future, while appearing decidedly diffident: “I’m the last couture house with a living couturier.” The others in the triumvirate: Balenciaga and Chanel have long lost their eminences grises.

YSL was founded in 1961 by Saint Laurent and Bergé, and later purchased by Gucci in 1999. The films opens in the former offices in rue Georges V where two women employees are effervescing about the past. This film is very much about the “backroom boys”- the people who made it all happen: the seamstresses, designers and assistants and the members of the press so vital in disseminating news during the final collections – renowned fashion journalist Suzy Menkes (now editor of Vogue International) is seen eagerly greeting Pierre Bergé, pen and paper at hand. The models too played a vital part – and each one is remembered for the outfit she wore, and for the particular strengths she bought to the catwalk. A case in point is the elegant model Katoucha Niane whose appearance is a poignant reminder of her accidental death in the Seine in 2008.

As the title suggests Meyrou’s documentary revolves around the preparations for what would turn out to be his final solo collection. He appears taciturn and introspective, the gurning movements of his jaw bear witness to the punctiliousness with which he treats his craft. And although Yves says very little, Bergé makes up for it with imperious obnoxiousness. At one point snatching a tribute from his partner after the show: “Probably, I have a part of that”.  As we all know from extensive film cannon on the designer: Bergé was the brains behind the business while Saint Laurent the heart, soul and talent. His obsession and eagle eye for getting it all absolutely right was well known and respected by all those who worked with him. Yet Bergé seems to has the upper hand and treats him with a boorishness bordering on contempt: “”Don’t lean over like a doddering old man!” he says to his partner at one point.

In immaculate monochrome Meyrou captures and contemplates the fraught energy of these behind the scenes encounters: the twittering tête à têtes of the seamstresses, the endless deliberations between Saint Laurent and his acolytes, and those responsible for the ‘tapie rouge’ and catwalk protocol.

Colour finally splashes into the film heralding the triumphant catwalk defilés: a spectacular tribute to French culture. Celebration quietly captures the era in a film that is memorable for its cool approach that feels impressionistic rather than hyped and over-talky. But those with a keen appreciation of the subject matter will find it thoroughly enjoyable and applaud Meyrou’s restrained approach. MT

NOW ON MUBI

 

Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2019) Netflix

Dir: Stanley Nelson | 115 mins | Music Biopic 

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.

The film delves into the archives opening with seductive slew of stills that capture Miles’ style through the ages. This all plays out in velvet black and white to the iconic melody Kind of Blue while Davis’ deep husky voice making sporadic contributions to the drive the story forward. 

Miles Davis (1926-1991) grew up in a well to do family in Illinois where his father was a dentist. His mother was keen for him to get a classical music education and so in 1944 he started at the New York’s Juilliard School during the day and headed to the famous 52nd Street in the evenings where the music scene hung out in its many with Jazz clubs. And it was here that he discovered B-Bop and gradually taught himself to develop his own iconic style. It was not an easy time personally because his girlfriend Irene soon turned up with their child so his spare time was spoken for with the domestic demands. But music was his first love and the end of the 1940s saw him working with one of his major collaborators Gil Evans.

Drifting over tp Paris in 1949 he met and fell in love with Juliette Greco. Suddenly the world was opening up and he found himself treated as an equal by some of the intellectual giants of the day: “I was living in an illusion of possibility”. Amongst these luminaries was was Jean Paul Sartre who saw asked him why he wasn’t already married to Greco. Davis simply answered: “Because I love her.” The love lasted nearly all his life but it couldn’t work in the confines of the US where racism was still rife.

Returning to New York he was”back to the bullshit white people put a black person through in this country”. He describes how he hit rock bottom again and lost his sense of discipline, turning eventually to heroine and losing direction in his career. Eventually his father took him back to his own birth place of East St Louis hoping to bring him back to normal in the family farm. And according to childhood friend, Lee Annie Bonner, he eventually got himself clean. 

By the mid 1955s, age 29, his career was looking positive again and he found himself playing in the Newport Jazz Festival where Columbia Records selected its artists – and he would become one of them. Suddenly Bebop found a mainstream appeal for white people – Miles Davis made his name during the festival playing vulnerable ballads and hit a romantic vibe that resonated with audiences everywhere. He developed a unique voice: one with a sense of romance that avoided sentimentality born out of richly sophisticated vibes that touched on waves of emotion as they built their pure and elegant melodies. 

But tragedy struck again when he discovered a growth on his larynx and had to stay silence for several months. Bizarrely this is how he developed the gravelly voice that still defines him today. He met and fell for dancer Frances Taylor who was much sought as an artist and pursued by all the stars of the day for her beauty and particularly he long legs. Miles saw her appearing in Sammy Davis Junior’s Mr Wonderful on Broadway and the two found stability and love during a time when he was producing some of his most ground-breaking work: “Now I’ve found you I’ll never let you go” was according to Frances his opening gambit. 

One of his most incandescent musical journeys is the one that tracks Jean Moreau through the streets of Paris in Louis Malle’s 1958 French New Wave drama Ascenceur pour l’échafaud (Lift to the Scaffold). The pianist René Urtreger – who played piano for the piece talks at length about one of the film’s best known jazz scores.

Nelson highlights how Davis’ music gained popularity not just with jazz lovers but the mainstream crowd. His 1959 album Kind of Blue appealed to just about anyone interested in music. The album also introduced saxophonist John Coltrane. His style developed in his next album Bitches Brew which he describes as “cosmic jungle music.”

But when Frances was signed for Westside Story, Davis was back on the cocaine trail and deeply jealous of her admirers in the musical’s cast. He told Frances to quit the show and the two of them set up home with his own kids. But Frances sparked a jealousy in Davis he could not overcome and she realised the marriage was doomed. He deeply regretted her leaving and later commented: “Whoever gets her is a lucky son of a bitch”. 

Dark years passed but once again Miles re-invented himself during the late 1970s experiencing funk and a more loose way of playing. This segment covers his meeting with actress Cicely Tyson, a bond which continued to enrich his inventiveness until the early 1990s when once again, his career hits the buffers.

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. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

 

 

La Llorona (2019) Best Picture Golden Globes Nomination

Dir: Jayro Bustamente | Cast: Gustavo Matheu, Georges Renand, Marina Peralta, Sor Jayro Bustamente, Lisandro Sanchez

This atmospheric award-winning drama blends elements of fantasy, thriller and horror to explore the final months of a retired general with a shady past.

Jayro Bustamente’s second film in this year’s London Film Festival in another tribute to Guatemala’s Mayan culture and certainly packs a powerful punch sharing the same moody vehemence as Tremors but this is a more slick and cinematic affair that makes use of DoP Nicolas Wong’s stunning visual language to portray Guatemala’s shocking regime of terror.

Elderly general Enrique Monteverde – possibly modelled on Guatemala’s dictator Jose Elfrain Rios Montt (1926-2018) – is being tried for the genocide he unleashed on the country three decades earlier. Armed and alert, he scares his domestic staff by prowling around at night in the family’s secluded villa, convinced that a mythical howling woman aka La Llorona – the spirit of a woman who has returned to avenge the dead – is somewhere in the property. It seems that his housekeeper could be reeking revenge on him for the killings of her ancestors. His wife puts the mysterious wailings down to his mental frailty believing he is suffering from stress-induced dementia,

Rios Montt took part in Guatemala’s infamous coup d’etat on March 23, 1982 but was overthrown by his defence minister Oscar Mejia Victories, and was eventually indicted for crimes against humanity and the indigenous population that included the killings of 1771 Maya Ixil Indians.

Once again Bustamente highlights Guatemala’s colonial past and a society that is still very much based on a rigid class structure in thrall to the Catholic Church. Meanwhile the indigenous Mayan population relies on its Gods, Animal Spirits and rituals making this a fascinating and haunting drama. MT

NOMINATED FOR BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE PICTURE | Golden Globes 2021|  JAYRO BUSTAMENTE WON THE FEODORA AWARD AT VENICE FOR BEST FILM and the GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI Best Film AWARD 2019

 

Gösta (2019) **** LFF 2019

Dir.: Lucas Moodysson; Cast: Vilhelm Blomgren, Mattias Silvell, Clara Christiansson Drake, Amy Deassismont, Nidhal Fares, Elisabet Carlsson; Sweden 2019, 120′.

This cinema version of four episodes of twelve-parter for Nordic HBO is a satirical look at modern life and its ups and downs. Written and directed by Swedish cult star Lucas Moodysson who describes it as “a mix of comedy and Dostoevsky” it explores the existential angst of Gösta, a rather insecure 28 year old child psychologist, who is always trying to prove to himself that he’s a better person than anybody else. His ideas collide with real life and real people, and the outcome is usually chaotic.

Gösta (Blomgren) has moved from Stockholm to rural Smaland (where Moodysson grew up), and lives in a rather dilapidated hut with an outdoor shower. He is sheltering Hussein (Fares) who is seeking asylum. But their modest abode soon becomes rather crowded: Gösta’s father (Silvell), a loafer, whose hippy days are long over, has been thrown out by his current girlfriend, and then there is Saga (Christiansson Drake), Gösta’s former patient, who at 18, is not eligible for his support any more. Gösta is always in competition with himself to be a goody-two-shoes, has invited her to live with him. Later a talentless but enthusiastic young composer, along with Gösta’s artist mother, will crowd the place even more. Hussein moves into the attic, unable to bear the noisy arguments any more.

Gösta’a main problem is his love life: girlfriend Melissa Deasismont) is so overwhelmed by his understanding nature (he is foremost a psychologist and not a human being), she keeps called off the relationship. Needless to say Gösta makes an  understanding bedfellow, and when Melissa asks him to be harsher, he puts on two old socks. Then there is Lotta (Carlsson), his co-worker, who is so distraught Gösta ends up in bed with her to keep the peace – although he desperately wants to be faithful to Melissa. But when ‘Papa’ gets a huge German shepherd dog, even the patient Gösta protests.

For Gösta life is psychological journey undertaken with a series of apposite random quotes. But he is unable to help anybody – let alone himself, because he approaches every problem with a textbook. When asks one of his patients to spray can an offensive order on a wall, he reveals his own emotionally immaturity – his adjustment to life is regulated by what he has read and memorised. But he has no feeling for real love, people are just objects he wants to make happy – often make others miserable in the meantime.   

DoP Ellinor Hallin has caught the world of this regressive crew in wonderful images, which show a deep nostalgia for the Sixties; and her close-ups are heart-breaking. With Gösta, Moodysson has created a human fossil, which feels uncomfortable in the contemporary, and whose pseudo-altruism is just a cover for indecision and cowardice, camouflaged as learned suffering. But he is only in love with the idea of love – not a real person. Entertaining and provocative. AS

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 2-13 OCTOBER 2019 | NORDIC HBO        

  

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

 

The Voice | Glas 2019 **** Busan Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Ognjen Svilicic; Cast: Franco Jakovcevic, Belma Salkunic Mia Petricevic, Klara, Mucci; Croatia/Macedonia/ Serbia 2019, 80 min.

Five years after his award-winning feature debut These Are the Rules, Croatian filmmaker Ognjen Svilicic is back at Busan competing in one of Asia’s top festivals with this restrained portrait of rebellion and religious dogma in today’s Eastern Europe.

The rebel in question is teenager Goran (Jakovcevic) who has been sent to a religious boarding school by his single mother who hopes her only child will been given a Catholic eduction and a new group of friends outside the confines of his sheltered upbringing.

Svilicic handles his theme with great sensitivity showing how Goran’s background has not prepared him for the real world, let alone sharing a room with his rowdy mates. And although the staff seem tolerant at first, Goran is immediately marked as a ‘non-believer’ after he volunteers to play Joseph in a play about the conception and birth of Jesus, refusing to fall in with the traditional concept of the virgin birth, or to apologise for the disruption caused by his failure to accept this most basic credo of Catholicism. It appears Goran doesn’t even believe in God, which immediately sets him at odds with the staff and pupils despite their own inability to explain or fathom out the virgin birth.

The next point of confrontation comes when Goran supports a march in favour of the legalisation of abortion. He is pilloried by the enraged head mistress. But Goran defends the women, and, as a punishment, none of the students is allowed to eat dinner until Goran has retracted his viewpoint. Naturally, he is ostracised by the kids, one of whom boys beats him up. Goran runs off, throwing a rock at the statue of the Virgin Mary in front of the school, and decapitating it. Again, he fails to not apologise, and faints during in an interrogation.

After the headmistress reads an apostolic letter, talking about “the invasion of of Europe from the east”, Goran discusses his opposition with Mirela, a fellow student, who seems to have sympathy for him. At an outing, Goran swims far out into the sea, and has to be rescued by a boat. But Goran holds his ground, repeating his original protest, and leaving the school play after his replacement in the role of Joseph, utters the lines which the intransigent teen objected to in the first place.

Although Svilicic adopts a didactic approach to the narrative, he never simplifies the situation. Crucially, the majority of the students do not seen to believe much more than Goran in the preached dogma: they are more interested in video games and porn than religious education. They pick on Goran, because he makes them feels guilty for their own lack of engagement. DoP Marinko Marinkic’s limpid camerawork shows Goran’s growing isolation at a school where even the chapel has disco lighting. AS

World Premiere | BUSAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 5 October 2019

https://vimeo.com/360637567

 

 

 

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

Tremors | Temblores (2019)

Dir: Jayro Bustamente | Cast: Juan Pablo Olyslager, Diane Bathen, Mauricio Armas Zebadua, María Telon, Sabrina de La Hoz | Drama, Guatemala. 102′

The wrath of God comes down on a Guatemalan financier who tries to leave his wife in Jayro Bustamente’s gloweringly oppressive sophomore feature. There is a definite touch of Garcia Lorca to this fraught affair that sees Juan Pablo Olyslager as the good-looking husband to Isa (Diane Bathen) and father of two in a prominent Evangelical family where the matriarch still rules the roost with fire and brimstone. Not quite as enjoyable at the Guatemalan director’s first feature Ixcanul (2015) this will certainly be popular with the LGBT+ crowd and arthouse audiences who have tuned in to the creative wealth coming out of South and Latin America at the moment.

Guatemala City looks strange and exotic in the brooding widescreen images of cinematographer Luis Armando Arteaga, who also lensed Ixcanul. And to complete the atmosphere Julien Cloquet has devised a haunting soundscape that compliments the tremors of the film’s title. It appears to be the rainy season adding to the gloom of this sombre story with its emphasis on machismo and the importance of holding onto your man – if you’re a woman, that is. But also if you’re a gay man. The LGBT+ community are really having a tough time of it in the bars and spas where Pablo (Olyslager) runs into tousled haired loose-limbed Francisco (Mauricio Armas Zebadua), who inhabits these haunts with an air of world-weary nonchalance knowing full well the competitiveness of his game.

Meanwhile behind the tight security of Pablo’s upmarket family citadel a battle rages to get him to see sense and realise the shame he is bringing on the family, particularly his parents, with a scandalous revelation that comes to light in the opening scenes. So serious is the situation that Pablo is also forced to resign his post amid accusations of paedophilia, leaving him a rather sorry figure as he hangs around the spa where Francisco offers neck massage.

His wife is being supported by the family housekeeper (Maria Telon) as she goes about her day trying to gain comfort from her girlfriends who urge her to focus on getting Pablo back, at any cost. This is further emphasised by the overt community prayers at the family’s Evangelical Christian church where the pastor (Rui Frati) and his brisk sidekick  (Sabrina de la Hoz) exhort the congregation into loud praying. There are some flaws in a script that focuses on the atmosphere of dread and wrong-doing rather than the exact nature of Pablo’s wrongdoing and why he agrees to submit to the church’s “conversion therapy programme” – a highly contemporary sounding measure in the traditional and devoutly Catholic country. As a result it all becomes rather telenovela-ish and histrionic. What does emerge from this striking feature though is the vehemence of the community against sexual deviation of any kind. MT

NOW ON MUBI

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 Farewell (2019) ***

Dir: Lulu Wang | Comedy Drama | 98′

Korean Chinese actress Awkwafina is best known for the standout comedy Crazy Rich Asians (2018). She gets another chance to flex her undeniable talents in this slim but enjoyable farce that explores the theory of “mind over matter” with a rather satisfying takeaway.

She plays Billi, an easygoing Chinese woman who originally moved to New York as a child and returns home for a family wedding, and to say goodbye to her beloved grandmother Nai Nai who has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Well, her granny’s unaware of her imminent demise, the family have decided to keep shtum: they simply haven’t the heart to tell her. And strangely, Nai Nai never cottons on to why they all seem so miserable, instead of relieved at her clean bill of health, after the scan.

Despite its cultural specificity, this is a convincing family tale like any other, and Wang spices her drama with plenty of light-hearted humour, tinged with understandable melancholy. Each family member expresses their sadness in different ways and degrees, and Wang keeps sentimentality at bay instead opting for something more nuanced and appealing. Awkwafina’s Billi is a triumph of independence and vulnerability and her dying grandmother (Shuzhen Zhao) manages to be calm and philosophical. The lightweight narrative builds towards in a satisfying conclusion, offering plenty of food for thought in the final reveal. MT

NOWON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 20 SEPTEMBER

Venice Film Festival 2019 | Round-up

Celebrating its 76th Anniversary VENICE FILM FESTIVAL was another exciting occasion with the competition line-up featuring the latest from established directors with newcomers also presenting their work.

One of the standouts of this year’s mostra was a pre-festival showing of Gustav Machaty’s 1933 masterpiece ECSTASY which won him Best Director in the year following production,

The fun got going with The Truth by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. Then amongst the Golden Lion hopefuls was maverick Roman Polanski who finally brings his biopic about another controversial figure Louis Dreyfus to the competition which ran from 28 August until 7 September on the Lido.

Adapted from Robert Harris novel J’Acuse stars Louis Garrel, Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Seigner (aka Mme Polanski). Other high profile features were Todd Phillips’ The Joker – which won the Golden Lion and starsJoaquin Phoenix. And once again the lack of women directors in competition was flagged up, although there were plenty of female stars to be seen in the elegant hotspot on the Venetian coast. 

In the 21-strong competition line-up there was one trail-blazing female director in the shape of Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour (Wadjda) who attended to present her fourth feature The Perfect Candidate. Set in Riyadh it tells the story of a woman doctor who navigates her way through the male-dominated scenery to run for the council elections. 

Other auteurs include Czech Vaclav Marhoul with a wartime drama three hours long and ten years in the making: The Painted Bird (CZE/UKR/SLO) follows the plight of a Jewish boy on the run through Nazi Germany. The film stars Stellan Skarsgard. Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain was last in Venice with The Club, his latest sees a couple dealing with the aftermath of adoption, and Mexico stars Gael Garcia Bernal heads the cast. From Colombia Embrace of the Serpent director Ciro Guerra ups his game considerably with a starry cast of Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson and Greta Scacchi in a period drama dealing with themes of loyalty and trust in a distant outpost of the Spanish Empire. Waiting for the Barbarians is based on a novel by South African writer J M Coetzee.

In the Italian corner, there is more about the Mafia from Sicilian director Franco Moresco, who won the Orizzonti Jury prize at Venice with Belluscone. Una Storia Siciliana back in 2014. La mafia non e piu quella di una Volta is a documentary exploring the history and origins of the organisation. From China comes Ye Lou’s historical drama Saturday Fiction and Hong Kong based director Yonfan breaks his 6 year silence with No. 7 Cherry Lane that centres on a English literature tutor caught up in a love triangle with a woman pupil and her mother. And Sweden’s Roy Andersson was in attendance with About Endlessness.

Steven Soderbergh also featured in competition with Panama papers themed The Laundromat that stars Meryl Streep and David Schwimmer as journalists uncovering political tax avoidance sculduggery in the US. Noah Baumbach makes his first appearance at Venice with another domestic satire, this timed entitled Marriage Story: an insightful drama tempered with his usual brand of dark humour and a impressive cast of Laura Dern, Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Ray Liotta. Both these US outings are now on Netflix.

Veteran French filmmaker Robert Guedeguian presents a Marseilles-set family drama, and Olivier Assayas continues to surprises us with his versatility, this time with Wasp Network a story of intrigue involving Cuban political prisoners. Canadian director Atom Egoyan has selected an interested cast of David Thewlis, Luke Wilson and Rossif Sutherland (son of Donald) to flesh out a morally thorny story surrounding pupils in a high school. A slightly underwhelming feature that divided the critics.

Venice 76 ‘out of competition’ selection included documentaries and features –  from Alex Gibney, Costa Gavras, who tackles the Greek financial crisis in Adults in the Room; and Andrea Segre with ecological documentary Il Pianeta in Mare. Pink Floyd’s Roger Walters directs and appeared in a concert film going back over the last few years of his musical career. There was also a chance to see some remastered classics in the shape of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut; screened alongside a new doc about one of the greatest directors of all time Never Just a Dream: Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut by Matt Wells. Gaspar Noé  Paolo Sorrentino and Sergei Loznitsa also featured in the out of competition competition section.

Meanwhile in the Horizons sidebar, German filmmaker Katrin Gebbe makes her feature debut with Pelican Blood starring Nina Hoss. And Alfredo Castro (from Golden Lion winner 2015 From Afar) is back to star in a psychological drama White on White from Chilean director Theo Court. MT

MAIN COMPETITION

No. 7 Cherry Lane (HONG KONG) – Dir. Yonfan

The Laundromat (USA) – Dir. Steven Soderbergh

J’Accuse (FRA/ITA) – Dir. Roman Polanski

Joker (USA) – Dir. Todd Phillips

Babyteeth (AUS) – Dir. Shannon Murphy

Marriage Story (USA) – Dir. Noah Baumbach

Il Sindaco Del Rione Sanità (ITA) – Dir. Mario Martone

The Painted Bird (CZE/UKR/SLO) – Dir. Václav Marhoul

La Mafia Non È Più Quella Di Una Volta (ITA) – Dir. Franco Maresco

Martin Eden (ITA/FRA) – Dir. Pietro Marcello

Saturday Fiction (CHI) – Dir. Lou Ye

Ema (CHILE) – Dir. Pablo Larraín

Waiting For The Barbarians (ITA) – Dir. Ciro Guerra

Gloria Mundi (FRA/ITA) – Dir. Robert Guéndiguian

Ad Astra (USA) – Dir. James Gray

Guest Of Honour (CAN) – Dir. Atom Egoyan

Wasp Network (FRA/BEL) – Dir. Olivier Assayas

About Endlessness (SWE/GER/NOR) – Dir. Roy Andersson

The Perfect Candidate (SAU/GER) – Dir. Haifaa Al-Mansour

A Herdade (POR/FRA) – Dir. Tiago Guedes

The Truth (JAP/FRA) – OPENING FILM – Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda

Out Of Competition (fiction)

The King (UK/HUN) – Dir. David Michod

Seberg (USA) – Dir. Benedict Andrews

Vivere (ITA) – Dir. Francesca Archibugi

The Burnt Orange Heresy (USA/ITA) – CLOSING FILM – Dir. Giuseppe Capotondi

Mosul (USA) – Dir. Matthew Michael Carnahan

Adults In The Room (FRA/GRE) – Dir. Costa-Gavras

Tutto Il Mio Folle Amore (ITA) – Dir. Gabriele Salvatores

Out of Competition (non-fiction)

Il Pianeta In Mare (ITA) – Dir. Andrea Segre

Citizen K (UK/USA) – Dir. Alex Gibney

Woman (FRA) – Dir. Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Anastasia Mikova

Roger Waters Us + Them (UK) – Dir. Sean Evans, Roger Waters

I Diari Di Angela – Noi Due Cineasti. Secondo Capitolo. (ITA) – Dir. Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi

Citizen Rosi (ITA) – Dir. Didi Gnocchi, Carolina Rosi

The Kingmaker (USA) – Dir. Lauren Greenfield

State Funeral (NET/LIT) – Dir. Sergei Loznitsa

Collective (ROM/LUX) – Dir. Alexander Nanau

45 Seconds Of Laughter (USA) – Dir. Tim Robbins

Out of competition (special screenings)

No-One Left Behind (MEX) – Dir. Guillermo Arriaga

Zerozerozero – Episodes 1 & 2 (ITA) – Dir. Stefano Sollima

Electric Swan (FRA/GRE/ARG) – Dir. Konstantina Kotzamani

Irréversible – Inversion Intégrale (FRA) – Dir. Gaspar Noé

The New Pope – Episodes 2 & 7 (ITA/FRA/SPA) – Dir. Paolo Sorrentino

Never Just A Dream: Stanley Kubrick And Eyes Wide Shut (UK) – Dir. Matt Wells

Eyes Wide Shut (USA/UK) – Dir. Stanley Kubrick

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 28 AUGUST – 7 SEPTEMBER 2019

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

 

 

An Officer and a Spy (J’Accuse) **** Venice Film Festival 2019 | Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize

Dir: Roman Polanski | Wri: Robert Harris | 122’

This sober story of xenophobia and corruption sees a long-standing military man stripped of his honour in a rain- soaked square in Paris during the winter of 1894

The soldier is Alfred Dreyfus and Roman Polanski tells the story with procedural restraint and immaculate detail in this portrait of Parisian society at the time of Bonnard and Monet, the painterly historical epic brought to life in Pawel Edelman’s sumptuous camerawork.

Robert Harris wrote the screenplay based on his own 2013 book An Officer And A Spy (J’Accuse). Louis Garrel is shorn of his tousled good looks to play a wan and not overly sympathetic Dreyfus, although we do feel for him and the injustice he suffered. Jean Dujardin is rather charismatic as the maverick French officer Picquart whose gradual realisation that Dreyfus is not guilty of treason puts him up against his crusty superiors (played by a classy French cast) eventually winning the victim a reprise. The rest is history, so Polanski’s challenge was to bring drama without sensation to a tale close to his own heart. And he succeeds with a richly-textured straightforward approach, Alexandre Desplat’s atmospheric score adding an undercurrent of darkness to the gathering storm.

Galloping through the story with military precision, we see Dreyfus sent down for life to Devil’s Island after his 1894 trial. The openly anti-semitic Picquart is then promoted to head the nation’s counter-intelligence despite his lack of experience, but then follows his duty as a man of honour, in exposing another cover-up refusing to let his private feelings cloud his professional judgement. And this is where he comes up against a reluctance to turn over the guilty verdict on behalf of his superiors. AN OFFICER is an intelligent drama that unfolds slowly but surely through a series of unhurried and thoughtful vignettes each adding interest to main plot and elevating the film into a graceful period epic. There is an additional subplot with Emmanuelle Seigner playing Picquet’s married lover, and although this adds a romantic thrill to the affair it feels rather de trop but clearly offers Mme Polanski worthwhile screen time. Polanski’s keeps a distance from his subject matter, never allowing his own ant-semitic experience and fight to gain justice cloud his judgement. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 29 AUGUST – 7 SEPTEMBER 2019

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

    

The King (2019) **** Venice Film Festival 2019

Dir. David Michôd. US/Australia. 2019. 133mins

David Michôd’s The King re-imagines history to give a rather intriguing version of the story of Henry IV’s least favourite son Prince Hal, a Prince Harry style character who mends his ways to become serious about the business of running the kingdom and bringing glory to England at the Battle of Agincourt.

Although there is no mention of Shakespeare here, all the traditions are respected, the costumes are magnificent and the battle scenes spectacular. Even though we know what happened on that fateful day, Michôd and his co-writer Joel Edgerton – who also stars as Sir John Falstaff – embellish the story to deliver a solemnly gripping firecracker of a film that will make you “Cry God! For Harry, England and St George” and Brexit too, if you’re so inclined.

Timothée Chalamet is sombre and rather thoughtful with a cut glass English accent in the style of a David Lean wartime hero. All peaky and pale as Hal, his transformation into a King, on the death of his father (Ben Mendelsohn), sees him exuding newfound charisma and integrity in a gentle way – Chalamet gives a performance of vulnerable allure lighting up every scene. The screen time shared with his trusted friend and ally Falstaff makes this one of the most engaging versions, Edgerton bringing a warm and witty confidence to his Sir John.

The trump card is played by Robert Pattinson as a sneering and flirty Dauphin with a tousled mop of hair and a perky French accent that would make Macron proud.

The elegant script allows plenty of time for philosophising as each powerful lord gives his liege the benefit of well-formed opinion as to the merits of spoiling for battle with France after the King is given a cricket ball as a coronation present by the Dauphin. Evidence of an assassination plot come to light courtesy of a courtier William (Sean Harris) – a decision he will live to regret: this sylph-like newly-crowned Monarch has a fist of iron and a steely resolve behind his boyish exterior, and this comes through in impetuous bursts as the story unfolds.

The battle scenes unleash their bloody mayhem with a hail of longbow arrows and a clash of steel armour and military might as blood soaks the muddy Autumn fields of Pas de Calais in 1415. The strategy is a good one explained calmly by Falstaff in his moment of glory.  This should be experienced on the large screen but sadly The King is bound for Netflix.

The female roles go to Lily-Rose Depp as the bony-faced French princess who makes her caustic intentions clear as Henry’s bride. Tara Fitzgerald has a cameo as the cantankerous  barmaid and thorn in the bibulous Falstaff’s side.

On the eve of battle he proclaims in a timely speech that still holds true today : “I die here or I die of the bottle in Eastcheap — I think this makes for a better story.” And given the parlous state of England’s care homes dying with glory seems a more sensible idea. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 29 August – 7 September 2019

The Laundromat (2019) ** Venice Film Festival 2019

Dir: Stephen Soderbergh | Meryl Street, Gary Oldman, Sharon Stone, Antonio Banderas | US Drama 96’

Steven Soderbergh has decided on a comic-didactic treatment to tell the story of the ‘Panama Papers’ insurance scandal of 2016. But Laundromat feels more like a tedious economics lecture than an piece of enjoyable cinema. It all opens with an introduction from the dinner-jacketed partners of the firm Mossack Fonseca played by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas with odd accents. Meryl Streep plays the archetypical middle-aged American tourist whose husband is drowned after a cruise boat accident. It soon emerges their holiday insurance is null and void due a multiple re-selling scam to avoid tax. Naturally Meryl is not going to let the insurers get away without laying down the law so embarks on a plucky quest for justice which leads her nowhere fast. Episodic and patchy, The Laundromat relies on breaking news intercuts and inter-titles with Streep pontificating about how the public has been let down by democracy and the powers that be. We all leave feeling harangued rather than entertained. MT 

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 29 August – 7 September 2019

London Film Festival 2019

The 63rd edition of the London Film Festival takes place in various venues across the city. The celebration opens on the 3rd of October with THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD and closes on the 13th with Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited drama THE IRISHMAN which will go to Netflix after a brief run on the big screen.

In a year where 60 percent of the films are directed or co-directed by women, the Official Competition line-up includes the following titles

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 3-13 OCTOBER 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

 

 

Bait (2018) ****

Dri/Wri: Mark Jenkin | UK 89′ | Format 4:3

Mark Jenkin’s seething seaside drama addresses several burning issues at the heart of British life. A poignant paean to the nation’s piscatorial traditions it also tackles the demise of our struggling countryside villages and coastal towns which have increasingly seen an influx of second home buyers inflating local property prices but bringing nothing tangible to locals outside the summer months. Even the sea is being invaded: Fishing quotas have seen British waters plundered and our once thriving fishing industry decimated. There are primitive issues at stake here about territory and human dignity and survival. And Jenkin handles these with a blunt simplicity that also manages to be evocative and darkly amusing. Like a Picasso sketch.

Being a Cornishman himself, Jenkin clearly knows what he is talking about in this taut and tight-lipped realist portrait of a coastline in crisis. Cornwall is very a much a character here: the soft burr of the local dialect, the traditional seafaring customs, even the sailors’ knots and lobster pots are key motifs throughout.

The film follows Martin (Edward Rowe) a glowering and surly fisherman who finds himself without a boat. His brother Steven (Giles King) has recommissioned it for pleasure cruises. They have also had to sell the family cottage to a wealthy couple Tim and Sandra (Simon Shepherd and Mary Woodvine), who have done it up as a holiday cottage cherry-picking from the vernacular to give it a twee nautical feel. (portholes, ropes etc). To add insult to injury they are letting out their neighbouring property on Airbnb.

Calling Tim a “prancing lycra clad c**t” Martin resents the couple’s financial clout when he is struggling to make ends meets, and parks his clapped out van infant of their cottage to drive the point home in an ongoing battle. He also dislikes Tim and Sandra’s daughter flirting with Steven’s son Neil (Isaac Woodvine). Despite his gruffness we really feel for him but Jenkin remains impartial, judiciously painting Sandra as a sympathetic character.

Bait brings to mind Soviet Montage, the strong-faced actors conveying their feelings with expressions rather than words, as they stare into the camera. Shot in black and white with a 1970s wind-up camera Bolex, there’s a crude grainy feel to the film making it feel rooted in the distant past but the radio broadcasts bring it right up to date. Jenkin often uses metaphors to replace unpalatable truths. Jenkin completely avoids melodrama even when tragedy looms. And when Martin finally confronts Steven, disbelief and sadness is expressed with evasive but significant words: “They got rid of mother’s pantry”.

But despite the hostility between residents and ‘tourists’ there’s also a salty humour at play throughout and a formal rigour. Bait is a quintessentially English creation that sees a small community determined to keep triumphantly afloat in stormy seas. MT

BAIT won the Grand Prix and the Audience Award of the 19th edition of the Polish New Horizons Film Festival | CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 30 AUGUST 2019

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

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

Endless Night | Longa Noite (2019) Locarno Film Festival 2019

Wri/Dir: Eloy Enciso | Celsa Araujo, Misha Bies Golas, Nuria Lestegas, Suso Meilan, Manuel Pumares | Gallego | 93′ Historical Drama

Eloy Enciso embarks on an ambitious historical narrative for his third feature, a drama that journeys through three decades of Franco’s dictatorship, but in a meditative and poetic way. With Mauro Herce, the awarded cinematographer behind Mimosas (2016), Dead and Slow Ahead (2015) and Fire will Come (2019), Longo Noite has the sumptuous gravitas needed to showcase the tales of those who went through this unsettling era after the war, and also those who were prisoners in concentration camps in Galicia during the 1940s and look back on their lives and choices with inquietude, having all endured and been repressed in an authoritarian system, but who were later where able to relate their experiences. The choice of Gallego also adds a twist of authenticity – Franco was born in Galicia and gave his name to the town El Ferrol del Caudillio – the suffix having now been dropped, for obvious reasons.

Enciso has chosen a cast of non-pros in order to evoke a human insecurity of being out of their comfort this certainly comes across in their troubled faces. The woman forced on the streets to beg, the man who has made his fortune abroad and coming home to Galicia after Civil war and finding it taken over by a Fascist set-up. These are people clinging to the past and finding  comfort in nature and the certainty of the countryside; of night predictably following day; the stars following the sun. All this is is overlaid by their thoughts and meditations on a Fascist-governed Spain.

Although clearly set in a moment in time this universal endeavour also feels highly contemporary echoing the instability of the present, and resonating with political and social flux now occurring all over the world, as it swings from Communism to Fascism, Nationalism and Patriotism. Even the grounding force of nature is now under threat. A thematically rich and transcendent film that ripples out with vast implications. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | COMPETITION | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

 

Killer of Sheep (1978)

Dir: Charles Burnett | US Drama, 80′

Charles Burnett was the daddy of African American cinema, an elder statesman who trailblazed the way forward and influenced many upcoming filmmakers shining a light on Black America and the Deep South where he was born in Mississippi in 1944.

Seven years in the making Killer of Sheep is a gentle, lyrical portrait of a working-class black family living the poverty stricken Watts area of Los Angeles, which was shot for his Masters at UCLA but somehow found its way out winning the FIPRESCI prize at Berlinale in 1981.

Now this elegantly composed film has been restored in gleaming black and white. Burnett wrote the script and acted as his own producer and DoP originally shooting on 16-mms camera himself, and splicing vignettes of family life with equally poignant ones in a sheep abattoir, where the father works in the grim task of killing sheep. And although Stan (Henry G Sanders) is happy with his loving wife (Kaycee Moore), this film is a tender reflection on how a father’s discontent with his job can slowly depress the whole family. Burnett’s daughter is enchanting in the role of their little girl. The moody score is a sublime refection of the times. In one scene she is pictured playing with her toys while innocently singing the words to Philip Bailey’s love song ‘Reasons’ (it was later covered by Earth Wind & Fire). And Burnett’s sympathy for children and animals is reflected in the poetic and peaceful pictures which are also visually striking.

There is no dramatic tension as such, rather, a playing out of various episodes in family life where friends and family also come and go in a laidback breezy way in despite the claustrophobic homes and desolate scenery. Although there is clearly unhappiness there is also a certain philosophical status quo and a pleasing nonchalance to this tale of everyday life that feels natural thanks to a cast of non-pro actors. MT

NOW ON AMAZON  | BLACK LIGHT RETRO LOCARNO

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

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

   

Franz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1995) **** Locarno Film Festival | Black Light

Dir: Isaac Julien | Writers: Isaac Julien, Mark Nash | Doc, UK 70′

Franz Fanon: Black Skin White Mask is one of the most important films about Martinique and racial identity, along with Euzhan Palcy’s Rue Cases Nègres (1985). And here in Locarno 72 to present a re-master of the poetic film essay is its British film-maker Isaac Julien.

Julien co-wrote this vibrant, collage-style biopic that explores the life and work of psychoanalytic theorist Franz Fanon (1925-1961), who emerges a controversial and restless figure as remembered by those who knew him. Born in Martinique, he was educated in Paris then worked in Algeria, where he felt he could make most impact with his psychoanalysis during the 1950s. His life’s work was to support the anti-colonial struggle and those suffering from its repercussions, but he sadly died of leukaemia in his thirties before publication of his most famous book, The Wretched of the Earth, which became an indispensable study tool during 1960s.

This documentary-drama hybrid is really brought to life by British actor Colin Salmon who is rather too suave, tall and good-looking to be like the man himself, although we get the gist of Fanon’s charisma in these colourful vignettes where he appears in various dapper outfits, stoking a pose and glaring suitably. And there are the usual talking heads, mostly intellectuals, and his brother

There’s a bit of poetic licence when we see Fanon (Salmon) removing the chains from a mental patient in one of Algeria’s psychiatric hospitals where sallow-skinned, emaciated men peer out of their grim existence. No doubt this serves as a metaphor for him unburdening their souls. And this is what Fanon was all about. The bitter conflict takes up the lion’s share of the shortish feature and Julien offers up fascinating black and white archive footage of street battles during the War of Independence. The rest of the film wades through rather dense intellectual debate as to the various definitions of racism as seen by gay men, women and arch feminists – and this comes across as rather complex, and depends from which angle you approach it as to whether it makes any sense. Fanon himself married a white woman but another woman, identifying as a feminist, claims that Fanon regarded black women who were attracted to white men as, by definition, ‘victims of the slave mentality’.

Fanon had some fascinating and quite revealing ideas about the veil which he expounds by illustrating how, in Algeria, veiled women often carried guns and grenades to their male counterparts during the war, without attracting suspicion. And these women where regarded as “beyond reproach”. That certainly resonates now decades later with the war on terrorism.

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask does reveal some important issues although some of his ideas and perhaps his untimely death precluded his exploring further and resolving some of the more complex and controversial matters he highlights, such as colonialism being made up of “visual experiences, ‘the gaze that appropriates and depersonalises”. But this is also the case with the gender debate that is still raging and is part of our experience as humans. As a gay filmmaker Julien comments on the white man’s desire for the black man’s body. But this is also true of the white (heterosexual) woman for the dark male. This is not racism but merely sexual preference. Don’t opposites attract? An engrossing and fascinating film. MT
BLACK LIGHT RETROSPECTIVE | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

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     

 

 

 

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

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

     

Hard Paint | Tinta Bruta (2018) ***

Dir/Writers| Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon | Cast: Shico Menegat, Bruno Fernandes, Guega Peixoto, Sandra Dani, Frederico Vasques, Denis Gosh, Camila Falcao, Aurea Baptista, Larissa Sanguine, Ze Adao Barbosa

Contrary to its flamboyant sounding title, Hard Paint sees a soulful young loner seeking seclusion in the virtual world of gay chatrooms until his colourful cover is blown with mixed consequences.

This visually alluring and sensually suggestive character study unravels in Brazil’s Porto Alegre were the troubled protagonist has reinvented himself as an online performer when his actual life disappoints him sexually and socially. But despite his vulnerable appearance Pedro (Shico Menegat) has developed a an emotional toughness that serves him well in his harsh contemporary surroundings where his androgynous appearance and pretty boy tousled locks are often viewed with contempt, desire and even open hostility.

Told in three chapters, the film is shot in intimate close up but also gets out and about in the locale capturing the skyline of this southernmost Brazilian city. The first chapter is dedicated to Pedro’s sister Luiza (Guega Peixoto), who has supported him through thick and thin and is now leaving to work in another part of Brazil, and his parents are no longer on the scene. The subdued daytime scenes provide a rhythmic counterpoint to his graphic love-making with rival Leo (Bruno Fernandes), and the dreamlike chatroom sequences where his body glows with florescent paint as he gyrates to electronic vibes.

But Leo is also competing with him online as Boy25, and he forms the subject of Chapter 2. Leo wants to move from the downmarket Porto Alegre to the bright lights of BA where he hopes to take up a dance scholarship, and soon the two are performing as a double act online, and making money. Pedro must now clear up some legal business relating to a serious road accident. Leo seems supportive as the couple’s online and offline lives start to be mutually beneficial and they share a palpable onscreen chemistry in graffic sex scenes which incredibly authentic.

Neon Boy is the appropriately titled enigmatic Third Chapter where Pedro faces the music, and the music starts to become a more noticeable part of the film. The gloves are now off and the real Pedro is revealed in some scenes of heightened drama. The weak may look vulnerable but they are often the strongest people around. MT

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 2 AUGUST 2019

 

Oldboy (2003) **** re-release

Dir: Park Chan-Wook | South Korea 120′

Many found Korean cult horror outing ‘Sympathy for Mr Vengeance’ too violent, but Oldboy takes the Asian Extreme genre even further.

Don’t be misled into thinking this is about public school boys or even dapper English gents of a certain age. Although on the surface of it, businessman Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-Sik), appears just to be a drunken old bore. We first meet him being mysteriously abducted and imprisoned by nameless villains until he’s released from captivity after nearly 15 years, only to be contacted by his captors and offered a deal: if he can fathom why he was held prisoner in the first place he will get a chance to avenge his captors – if not, the cocktail waitress he has recently starting dating will lose her life. Some price freedom, but Oh Dat-Su is not going to put up with any more threats. Hammer in hand, he embarks on a brutal killing spree fuelled by vehement anger and searing emotional pain. Choi Min-Sik is retribution personified in an extraordinary performance that ranges from abject fury punctuated by bouts of seething humiliation – and we feel for him – aided and abetted by Park’s masterful direction. In the Asian Extreme firmament this is a coruscating Hitchockian-style Neo-Noir. MT

NOW OUT ON RE-RELEASE from Friday

The Many Seasons of Mexican Popular Cinema (1940s – 1960s) Retrospective | Locarno Film Festival 2023

Mexican cinema has more than proved its worth in the last few years with a new generation of talent in the shape of Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos Reygadas, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amat Escalante and Michel Franco. These directors have brought us a glittering array of daringly inventive and cinematically bold fare, Roma being the first Mexican film to win an Oscar in 2019.

This year’s LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL centrepiece retrospective Spectacle Every Day – The Many Seasons of Popular Mexican Cinema explores Mexican film production from the 1940s to the 1960s, three decades of creativity that have inspired subsequent generations of cineastes. It showcases works by Roberto Gavaldon, Alejandro Galindo, Chano Urueta, Matilde Landeta, Emilio Fernandez, Fernando Mendez and many more with 36 feature films from Juan Bustillo Oro’s 1940 drama En Tiempos de Don Porfirio to Alberto Isaac’s 1969 outing Olimpiada En Mexico. 

 

 

Han matado a Tongolele courtesy of Filmoteca UNAM

 

So Mexico has always had a distinctive style of its own and a rich culture to draw on. It was one of the first countries to embrace new film technology, and did so back in the late 1890s when the country’s first filmmaker and distributor Salvador Toscano Barragan (1872-1947) introduced the first moving images using a cinematograph camera which had been been invented in France in 1895. Toscano also opened Mexico’s first cinema in Mexico City in 1897. As a documentarian he specialised in the Mexican Revolution, drawing on a rich vein of dramatic potential. 

But the Golden Age (1933-1964) was to come decades later during the 1930s when Mexican cinema all but dominated the Latin American film industry, and even rivalled Hollywood in its quality and prodigiousness. And it was largely Europe and the US’ preoccupation and involvement with the Second World War that allowed Mexico to step into the breach with their own feisty brand of rousing romantic and revolutionary melodramas and musicals, which provided a much needed antidote to the war-themed fare being produced elsewhere – although their own films where far from light-hearted and happy, often ending in tears, vehemence and bitter recrimination. 

La Noche Avanza (1952) Roberto Galvadon

 

Gabriel Figueroa (1907-1997) was a leading figure of Mexican Cinema in its most glorious period, photographing 212 feature films, starting his career in 1932, when he shared camera credits with the great Eduard Tisse for Sergej M. Eisenstein’s ¡Que Viva Mexico! (1932). The epic visuals are certainly influenced by Eisenstein’s work. The Mexican landscape is celebrated in long, carefully composed shots. Figueroa’s penultimate feature was Under the Volcano (1984), directed by John Huston – the two had already made Night of the Iguana (1964). 

Fernandez and Figueroa would work together on 25 features. Both El Indio and Figueroa established the character of a ‘Mestizaje’, a mixed race identity which Fernandez, whose mother was Native American, carried around proudly all his life.

Maria Candelaria (1944) saw the quartet reunited, Salon Mexico (1949) was another iconic work by director and cameraman. By the Mid-1950 they went different ways; La rebellion de los Colgados  was their last great success; even though their last collaboration was Una Cita de Amor in 1958. Figueroa would go shooting several Bunuel features like Los Olividados, Nazarin, La Joven and El Angel Exterminador.

The Black Pit of Dr M (1959) Fernando Mendez

 

One of them Pedro Infante (1917-1957) would go on to become a screen idol in that he represented all the qualities most highly cherished and sought after in a true Mexican hero: that of being a dutiful son, a firm friend and a romantic lover. In Nosotros los pobres (1947) he fulfils all these attributes, securing himself an everlasting place in the heart and soul of the Mexican public, and crowning it all by dying when he was only 39, in a plane crash.

Another popular star was Arturo de Cordova (1908-1973) who often played tormented men driven to distraction, his suave elegance and drop-dead good looks making him highly popular with female audiences and winning him 4 Ariel awards during the 1950s. He often played alongside his wife Margi Lopez (who was actually born in Argentina). Lopez’s best film was Salon Mexico (1950) and she won an Ariel for Best Actress as ravishing dancer Mercedes Gomez who reeks revenge on her pimp (Alfredo Acosta) when he tries to double-cross her. 

Another Idol who died young was Jorge Negrete 1910-53) although he made the best of his acting and musical talents during a career that lasted from 1930 through to his death. After enrolling in the military, Negrete made his way into singing opera, his recording of ‘Mexico Lindo e Querido’ is now considered the country’s unofficial anthem. Despite his short life, he married twice – Maria Felix and Elisa Christy – and also lived with the co-star of ten of his 44 films: Gloria Marin.

For her own part Maria Felix (1914-2002) (left) was a real stunner with a strong and vibrant personality, perfectly suiting her for femme fatale roles – most famously creating that of remarkable Dona Barbara (1943) in which she captured the public’s imagination, ensuring her place in the Golden Age firmament for posterity.

Directors such as Alberto Gout, Alejandro Galindo, Julio Bracho, and Juan Bustillo Oro were also popular and successful during this Golden Age. Their talents stretched across the board from screwball comedy to country and urban dramas offering audiences a well-rounded view of the Mexican people, their intriguing history and culture. It  was only when television came along to challenge their dominion and their hold over the nation’s viewers, that the Golden Age started to wane.

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | RETROSPECTIVE 2023

 

 

Macario (1960) **** Salon Mexico series

Dir: Roberto Gavaldon | Fantasy drama | Mexico 91′

The BFI’s season of films from Mexican cinema’s postwar golden age concludes with this rarely seen neo-realist fantasy that resembles an episode of The Twilight Zone directed by the Bergman that made The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring (of which the latter beat Macario to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at that year’s Oscars, for which both had been nominated).

Based on a moral tale by the enigmatic B.Traven (author of ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’), as photographed by Mexico’s top cameraman Gabriel Figueroa, this starts as a grim tale of poverty in which fantasy takes over as the starving hero’s purloined turkey dinner attracts the interest of a thinly disguised Satan, followed by God and finally by the Grim Reaper, who gives him the power not of healing but of prophecy (although people treat it as though it’s the same thing).

The film also provides a rare glimpse of the late Pina Pellicer as the hero’s careworn wife, remembered today as the ethereally lovely heroine of Marlon Brando’s classic cult western One-Eyed Jacks (1961). Richard Chatten.

https://youtu.be/vQiyQacK4oA

SALON MEXICO | BFI SOUTHBANK | JULY 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

 

Tell It To The Bees (2018) ***

Dir.: Annabel Jankel; Cast: Anna Paquin, Holiday Grainger, Gregor Selkirk, Emun Elliot, Steven Robertson, Kate Dickie, Lauren Lyle; UK 2018, 105 min.

Annabel Jankel’s literary adaptation of a popular fifties novel is strong on historical detail but much weaker on cinematographic potency, coming across as a rather tame affair, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Jankel (Live From Abbey Road) and her scriptwriters Jessica and Annabel Ashworth (Killing Eve) have already worked together in TV: Tell It To the Bees makes ideal family viewing and marks Flare Festival’s mature progression into programming decent drama for a sexually inclusive audience, not just a LGBTQ one.

When Dr. Jean Markham (Ana Paquin) comes home to small-town Scotland to take over her late father’s surgery, she is greeted with mixed feelings. As a teenager she had caused a bit of a scandal with her ‘inappropriate’ behaviour. But she settlers down striking up a friendship with Lydia (Grainger) a young mother of who husband Robert (Elliot), has gone off with another woman. Lydia’s wages in the local mill are not enough to even pay the rent, and when her son Charlie (Selkirk) becomes the victim of bullying at school, Dr Markham offers them board and very soon, a great deal more. Elsewhere, the town’s gossip monger Pam Krammer (Dickie), subjects her daughter Annie Lyle) to a botched abortion rather than bear the child of her black boyfriend, George. Meanwhile, Robert has become violent towards Lydia, and so Charlie is forced to come to her rescue. A muddled finale on the station platform accompanied by grown-up Charlie’s voice-over commentary is symbolic of this rather cack-handed adaption of its much superior novel. It feels like Jankel is aiming for the stoic fatalism of the adult voice-over in Joseph Loosey’s Palme d’Or winner The Go Between. But it doesn’t quite come off: Jankel is no Loosey, her story-telling is dictated by a TV norm. feeding the viewer impressive snippets, while losing a conceptual frame work.

DoP Bartosz Nalazek emerges with some credit: his images, shot from Charlie’s POV, show A boy being overwhelmed by adults. And the magic realism in the form of the bees, come across as artificial and unconvincing. There is no passion in this postwar village, just a rather limp romantic longing. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

    

  

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

 

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

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

      

The Brink (2019) ***

DIR: Alison Klayman | US Doc 98′

Alison Klayman shadows political operative Steve Bannon from the time he leaves the White House to the 2018 midterms.

Political strategist Steve Bannon (1953-) is best known for being the co-founder of Breitbart, and is also a former investment banker, educated at Georgetown and Harvard. He served in the United States Navy for seven years and then went on to exec produce 18 Hollywood films, between 1991 and 2016. Thereafter he was the White House chief strategist from January to August 2017, and founder of nonprofit organisation The Movement designed to promote economic nationalism in Europe. Eventually he was ejected from the White House after the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Not as informative and intriguing as Errol Morris’ American Dharma that screened at Venice  last year, this fly on the wall affair manages at least to avoid glorification, hardly bringing anything new to the table – although Bannon clearly had his knees firmly under the metaphorical one in the Whitehouse during the early stages of the Trump administration.

Klayman’s (Ai Wei: Never Sorry) cinema vérité style treatment is the result of her following Bannon as part of his elite during the course of a year’s media tour intended to rebrand his image as the leader of a global populist movement. A strong and engaging orator (in the style of Ken Livingstone, Gladstone and Nigel Farage) he is clearly clubbable, and we see him taking his movement on the road, talking to various advisors on how best to support congressional candidates, and showing his support to European populist parties – including Farage’s – in preparation for the European Parliament elections in 2019.

In Europe there’s obviously the high birth rate among Muslims to consider (in Belgium), and these far-righters all agree that “immigration is a bad thing”. Bannon then sets off on a US tour, promoting Republican candidates such as Roy Moore, and those running in the 2018 midterms. This involves attending fundraiser dinners and rallies. A heckler interrupts him during a speech and he smirks, “Who invited my ex-wife?” Klayman intercuts all this with news clips from the Brett Kavanaugh hearing to the Tree of Life shooting. He keeps on keeping on. He also talks to journalists, who seem to have a low opinion of him. Meanwhile, his film TRUMP @WAR (the media) is released, about the President’s victory in the face of the violent left.

The Brink is another documentary about the general mayhem that exists in US politics, focusing on one extreme figure to another (Weiner and Get Me Roger Stone). Klayman avoids talking head interviews but there’s no mistaking her take on her subject matter.

Very much like Brexit for the UK, the Trump era is a thorn in America’s side. And The Brink tries to analyse how it all came about, but without much success. Basically politicians see themselves as in the game for the love of humanity, despite the majority of them being self-seeking, bottom-feeding forms of life. In Dante’s journey to Hell, Klayman is simply trying to explore some of the characters on the way. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

 

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

 

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

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

Projectionist (2019) **** Karlovy Vary 2019

Dir: Yuriy Shilov | Doc with Valentin Speshylov, Volodymyr Mak, Halyna Speshylova, Yuri Speshylov | Ukraine/Poland 78’

64 years is the average life expectancy for a man in Ukraine. And Valentin is heading that way. Pleasant and voluble with his twinkling eyes and broad smile, he has spent most of his working life as projectionist at Kiev’s oldest cinema the Kinopanorama, that opened in 1958.

Preoccupation with his mother has clearly dogged and dominated his personal life. A chain smoker with false teeth – at one point he’s seen popping them in and swigging the cleaning fluid – he loves to visit the dancing girls in the next door casting agency nearby the cramped flat shares with his ageing mother who is confined to bed with chronic constipation. But Valentin is not the only colourful character, in this picaresque and gently humorous debut from promising Ukrainian filmmaker Yuriy Shilov, Valentin’s neighbour Silpa is a batty lonely old man who dyes his hair and drinks himself to oblivion.

Camerawork lends a voyeuristic feel to the semi darkness of pokey place where Valentin’s friends pass by to say hello through the brightness of the open window. Kiev is seen crumbling in its former grandeur, Valentin and his pals the idiosyncratic old guard keeping the show on the road in a rapidly changing world while several widescreen panoramas reflect the sheer vastness of Ukraine’s capital city with its traditional curative baths and magnificent Dnieper River, the fourth longest in Europe

But when the Kinopanorama finally goes up in smoke one night, its clearly time for Valentin to seek pastures new and this amiable Ukrainian is very much game. MT

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL | 28 June – 7 July 2019

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

 

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

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

 

Women Filmmakers (1911-1940)

More women worked in film during the early years of the 20th century than at any time since. In the silent era, these women made films for a female audience. And although the focus was traditional: love, marriage and family, the narratives were playfully critical of these themes in a clever and humorous way, pushing the boundaries aesthetically and offering amusement at a time when society was much more restrictive for women than it is nowadays.

Filmmakers such as Lois Weber, Marie-Louise Iribe, Alice Guy Blaché, Germain Dulac, Dorothy Davenport, Olga Preobrazhenskaya, Dorothy Arzner, Mary Helen Bute and Mabel Normand were working together with female screenwriters and producers for the female-dominated audience of the time. For some reason these innovative, pioneering talents have been relegated to the back burner or written out of cinematic history all together, and that is why people talk of their rarity value.  

Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968) started her career as a secretary at Gaumont, Paris and would go on to be its only female film director there between 1896 and 1906, making her debut with the first ever feature with a narrative: LA FÉE AUX CHOUX (The Cabbage Fairy). Alice became the production head for Gaumont France and although her directing credits were never really established in France alone they numbered over 500, and  specialised in working with children. Marrying her English Gaumont colleague Herbert Blaché in 1907, the couple soon moved to the United States where they set up the trading arm of Gaumont. In New Jersey Alice set up her own studio, Solax Films, in 1910. For three years, it produced 95 very successful short films, before switching to medium length productions: she directed twenty-two between 1915 and 1920. Two years later, after the collapse of Solax she went back to France where she novelised film scripts, eventually returning to the US to spend her final years with her daughter Simone in New Jersey, not far from the former Solax studio.

FALLING LEAVES (1912) was a melodrama starring a child actor Magda Foy in the role Little Trixie (Magda Foy) whose sister Winifred (Marian Swayne), is dying from TB. The family doctor announces gravely to Winifred’s mother “your daughter will die when the last leaves fall”. Little Trixie not only stitches some leaves to the tree branches, but also gets help in form Dr. Headley (Mace Greenleaf), who has developed a cure that saves Winifred and needless to say, opens the way for a romantic happy-end. That same year Alice filmed THE GIRL IN THE ARMCHAIR (1912) that sees Blanche Cornwall playing heiress Peggy Wilson who becomes the romantic interest and intended wife of her guardian’s son Frank Watson (Mace Greenleaf). But Frank is more interested in gambling, and comes a cropper after he losing USD 500 at Poker, a sizeable amount in those days. The film delivers a happy-ending and a clever scene where Frank sees the cards moving around him in a circle, during a nightmare. THE OCEAN WAIF (1916) is an intricate riff of the ‘damsel in distress’ theme. Doris Kenyon plays Millie the waif in question, discovered on a beach by her brutal stepfather Hy. After regular beatings she runs away and hides in a supposedly abandoned villa, which is then let the writer Ronald Roberts (Carlyle Blackwell) as the location for his ‘haunted house’ novel. Mistaking her for the much talked off local “ghost” he falls in love, leaving his fiancée who is immediately picked up by a rich count. Unaware of this development, Millie returns home to her step father, who tries to rape her. Another villager comes to the rescue and all’s well that ends well. The film proves that although women where directing, the narratives still saw men very much in control.

Lois Weber (1879-1939) started life as a Street Evangelist but was cast, ironically, by Alice Guy in HYPOCRATES (1908), her first film. Weber’s own prodigious career as a director kicked off with A HEROINE (1911) and continued with 27 movies between 1914 and 1927. After founding her own production company in 1917, she joined Universal Film Manufacturing (the forerunner of Universal) a decade later, but never made the transition into sound, directing just one talkie, WHITE HEAT, in 1934. Weber died lonely and destitute at the age of only sixty, being wrongly remembered as a “star maker”. Film historians have not been kind to her, seeing her diminishing output as the result of her divorce from her husband (and co-producer) Phillips Smalley who never directed or produced a film after they divorced – very much in contrast to Weber.

SUSPENSE (1913) highlighted her invention of the triple screen that added an ingenious twist to the story of a race to the rescue – once again of a ‘damsel in distress’. It sees a city-worker husband (Val Paul) desperate to reach his wife (Weber) threatened by a tramp (Sam Kaufman) trying to break into their house in a remote location. The husband jumps into an idling car (filling the middle part of the screen) and races towards his wife and tramp (who occupy the edges). The police are in hot pursuit while the tramp skulks into the bedroom before being over-powered by the arriving posse. THE BLOT (1921) is a full length feature (91′) and a true auteur’s effort: Weber directed, co-wrote and co-produced this strangely modern tale of poverty in academia that contrasts with the rise of a ‘nouveau riche’ of all kinds. Lecturer Theodore Griggs (Philip Hubbard) and his family are living hand-to-mouth: when he invites the Reverend for tea, his wife (Margaret McWade) frets about the housekeeping budget. Griggs is then belittled by a trio of students whose fathers’ income and political connections will guarantee them top marks. One of them, Phil West (Louis Calhorn), is secretly in love with Griggs’ daughter Amelia (Claire Windsor), the Reverend also fancies his chances with her. Luckily for all concerned, it all works out in the end with one of the inter-titles reading: “men are only boys grown up tall”. 

Mabel Normand (1892-1930) had a short but eventful life: both behind and in front of the camera. A pioneer of silent movies, she appeared in several hundred short films and directed ten between 1910 and 1927. Credited with saving Charlie Chaplin’s career she also developed Chaplin’s ‘tramp’ screen personality. Her accidental involvement in the murder of William Desmond Taylor and the shooting of Courtland S. Dines marred her career, as well as her association with ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, whose life was fraught with scandal. Suffering from TB she died at the tender age of only 37. MABEL’S BLUNDER (1914) is a witty comedy of errors and cross-dressing where Mabel (Normand) unhappily finds herself involved with the father of her husband to be. Things get worse when her fiancé’s sister (Nelson) also enters the fray. Mabel dresses up in male drag and teaches both men a lesson. The film went on to be recognised over 100 years winning the National Film Preservation award in 2009.

GERMAINE DU LAC grew up in Paris where she enjoyed an artistic education that led to journalism on her marriage to Marie-Louis Albert-Dulac. One of the leading radical feminists of her day, she became editor of La Française, the organ of the French suffragette movement, also serving as its theatre and cinema critic. In 1915 she teamed up with her husband to direct inventive often experimental shorts produced by their company Delia Film. During the 1920s she emerged a leader figure in the impressionist film movement with titles such as Coquille and the Clergyman. During the Second World War she used her diplomatic skills on behalf of the Cinemateque Francaise to secure the return of valuable films seized by the Nazis. Her ambition was to make ‘pure cinema’ untrammelled by influences from other art forms. She also pioneered French cinema clubs throughout France before the advent of talkies saw her turning her talents towards newsreel production at Pathé and Gaumont.

LA CIGARETTE  (1919) an exquisite but badly damaged restoration of this 51 minute playfully plotted love story sees a flirtatious young wife (Andrée Brabant/Denise) frolicking around Paris while her ageing Eygptologist husband (Gabriel Signoret) frets that she no longer loves him. Despondent, he puts a poisoned cigarette into his box, in the hope that chance will decide his fate, and adding a soupçon of suspense to the delightful post-war snapshot. LA SOURIANTE MADAME BEUDET (1923) Madame Beudet is distinctly more miserable about the state of her marriage than Andrée Brabant’s Denise in this ironically titled silent chamber piece. So much so that she decides to do away with her gurning idiot of a husband (Alexandre Arqullière) who paws her incessantly as she quails away in disgust.  The tone is morose, and Germaine Dermoz makes a cast iron case for women married to men they simply can’t stand the sight of, but are trapped with for reasons beyond their control.

MARIE-LOUISE IRIBE Parisian actress and filmmaker, Marie Louise Iribe (1894-1934) had a short but dazzling career and is best known for her 1928 debut Hara-Kiri (co-directed with Henri Debain). Her follow-up Le Roi de Aulnes (1931) is based on a poem by Goethe. This enchanting filigree fairy tale has the same magical touch and look as Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête which followed 15 years later and during wartime. The simple but moving storyline sees a man riding through hill and dale to carry his injured son home. As he slips in an out of consciousness the boy imagines death as a mythical king surrounded by wood nymphs. Emile Pierre delicately overlays the forest journey with ethereal images of the king in iridescent armour, transformed from a humble toad realised by DoP Emilie Pierre’s ethereal double exposures. Max D’Ollone’s atmospheric score brings the magic to life.

Film and theatre actress, director and founded of the acting school VGIK, Olga Preobrazhenskaya (1881-1971) studied at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1905, making her debut as a filmmaker in 1916 with a silent black and white drama Miss Peasant (Baryshnya-krestyanka) scripted by Alexander Pushkin. Her themes are the lofty historical ones of Empire and Soviet Russia seen through the experience of ordinary people. Preobrazhenskaya also had a penchant for folklore and her love of the countryside is clearly conveyed in The Peasant women of Ryazan (1927/aka Baby ryazanskie) a jubilant Soviet ethnographical silent film set in pre-war 1914 and is probably the most far-reaching of the BFI collection with its themes of war, revolution and collectivisation. It compares and contrasts the fates of two siblings before and after the First World War: Ivan and his sister Vassilia come from a wealthy farming family. Ivan marries a less fortunate Anna, Vassilia rejects tradition with her lover Niccolai. This powerful drama is richly bucolic, stylistically elegant and thematically controversial making use of Soviet Montage editing techniques to drive the action forward.

BFI has restored ome unseen films from nine influential women directors have been transferred to Blu-ray restoring their valuable contribution to the narrative of film history. 4-disc Blu-ray set released 24 June 2019 | The set includes three short documentaries, exclusive scores on selected films and a 44-page booklet.

Blancanieves (2012) **** Edinburgh Film Festival

Dir: Pablo Berger | Cast: Maribel Verdu, Emilio Gavira, Daniel Gimenez Cacho | Spain Drama 110’

A bittersweet homage to the Golden Age of Spanish silent cinema, Pablo Berger’s intoxicating Gothic fantasy relocates the tale of Snow White to a sweepingly romantic vision of 1920s Seville, where a little girl overcomes cruel adversity to find fame as a bullfighter.

Tinged with melancholy and the macabre, along the lines of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, Blancanieves is delicately rendered in elegant black and white and set to Alfonso de Vilallonga’s lush score.

Carmen (played by Sofia Oria as a child and Macarena Garcia in later life) is the daughter of a proud and famous bullfighter who is paralysed in the ring.  After her mother’s death in childbirth, her father remarries unwisely to Marbel Verdu’s spiteful and self-centred virago Encarna. She neglects both Carmen and her father who later dies leaving the little girl at her mercy.  In this version six miniature bullfighters take the role of the seven dwarfs who come to Carmen’s rescue after finding her abandoned one day by Encarna. She is re-named ‘Blancanieves’.

As the story progresses, the production is slightly hampered by tonal differences as heightened melodrama struggles with Gothic and surreal fantasy to create slightly off-key episodes of banal humour which detract from the graceful delicacy of Kiko de la Rica’s cinematography.  A passionate and inspired creation, nevertheless, with the fresh appeal of The Artist tweaked with touches of Buñuel: it has certainly won the hearts of the Festival Circuit Juries winning no less than 33 awards in one year for script, score, cinematography, cast and costumes. Snow White has never looked so good!. MT

BLANCANIEVES screening on 22 June 2019 at EIFF | Part of the Once Upon a Time in Spain Strand

 

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.

 

 

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

 

Midnight Sun Film Festival 2019 | 12-16 June 2019

Celebrating its 34th year the Midnight Sun Film Festival presents a niche selection of this year’s features and documentaries, along with musical evenings and master classes in its luminous setting of Sodankylä, Finnish Lapland. 

At the top of the list of new films is Berlinare’s Golden Bear award, Nadar Lapid’s Synonyms, a weird and wacky drama about a young Israeli in Paris. French Canadian Denis Cotê will also be in the Arctic Circle this June with his enigmatic portrayal of a village, Ghost Town Anthology. along with Claire Denis and her latest High Life, a sci-fi drama starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche. And one of the gems of San Sebastian 2018  will be also join the party, Rojo, a film from Argentinian director Benjamin Naishtat, captures the existential angst of the military dictatorship of the 1970s.

Portuguese director Rodrigo Areias will present the Finnish premiere of his documentary film about a fishing village in the Azores, Blue Breath. One of festival’s top documentaries was a favourite at this year’s Sundance. Honeyland from directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov, explores the life of ”the last female wild beekeeper”.

From last year’s Karlovy Vary Festival there will also I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, Romanian’s top director Radu Jude’s distinctive analysis of the country’s history and the present. Belarus is sadly not well known for its cinema, let alone its strong female characters, so Darya Zhuk’s Crystal Swan  offers a chance to sample the creative efforts of both its lead and director. Meanwhile, There will also be a chance to see Kazakh cult film director, Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s colourful melodrama The Gentle Indifference of The World.

Masterclasses and specialties

One of the festival’s guest film maker, Kent Jones, will be presenting in his masterclasses films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller The Lady Vanishes, as an expert of Kazakhstan’s New Wave of the 90s, Jermek Šinarbajev’s true rarity, Revenge (above).

What do we know about the films of the Baltic States? The artistic director of the heartfelt Riga International Film Festival, Sonora Broka, will be leading the audience to the joyful cult film specialties from musical films to erotic horror: included in the ”Baltic 101” theme will be Estonian director Rainer Sarnet’s November, Lithuanian Arünas Zebriünas’s The Devil’s Bride and Latvian Vasili Massi’s The Spider as well as Ronald Kalnis’s Four White Skirts.

Finland’s internationally best known festival curator, Mika Taanila will return to Sodankylä once again presenting not only the newest short film treasures of experimental films from all around the world, but also in a special show, the legendary short film sensation Christmas on Earth, by the shooting star of the 60s underground, Barbara Rubin, complemented with Chuck Smith’s documentary Barbara Rubin and the Exploiding NY Underground.

Music films and auteur portraits

Traditionally, music films and documentaries about filmmakers with production samples are a part of the programme at MSFF. The great actor Ethan Hawke has once again been behind the camera and directed a successful biography Blaze about Texas singer legend Blaze Foley. Airbek Daiyerbekov’s The Song of The Tree is a unique Kyrgyz musical. This time jazz is represented in two elegant documentaries: Leslie Woodhead’ssinger portrait Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things and Eric Friendler’s It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Story.

MIDNIGHT SUN FILM FESTIVAL | 12-16 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    

   

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

 

 

 

 

Mountain films during the Weimar years: Beyond your Wildest Dreams

In spite of a new revisionist film history, which tries to exonerate the BERGFILM sub-genre from its close connection with Fascist ideology, the filmmakers of the Weimar years and their chosen subjects were close allies of German Fascism – and Leni Riefenstahl was arguably its leading film propagandist. Attempting to link the Bergfilm with what Kracauer called “Streetfilms”, is aesthetically and content wise a dishonest bid to rewrite (film)history. Streetfilms were set in big cities where the male protagonist falls for a sexually alluring woman from a lower social class, only to be roped back to roost in his middle-class milieu by figures of authority. The Bergfilm might feature alluring women (Riefenstahl certainly qualified), but the narrative comes to very different solutions, and this is amply demonstrated in Luis Trenker’s The Prodigal Son (Der verlorene Sohn, 1932), which sees the hero falling for an alluring ‘foreign’ woman, who embroils his in the traumas of big city life before he escapes triumphantly back to his home in the mountains to become an upright citizen and family man. You don’t have to take my word for it – Dr. Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary during a visit to the mountains: “That was my yearning; for all the divine solitude and calm of the mountains, for white, virginal (sic!) snow, I was weary of the big city. I am at home again in the mountains. I spent many hours in their white unspoiltness and find myself again”.

There is a strong link between Anti-Urbanism, unspoilt elements of nature, destiny (in German ‘Vorsehung’, Hitler’s favourite phrase) and a surrender to irrational values: exactly the cinema which Kracauer describes in his ground breaking text. Yes, there was modern technology: telescopes and microscopes – and airplanes. But one look at Riefenstahl’s films of the Nazi Party get togethers in Nuremberg (Sieg des Glaubens, Triumph des Willens) shows the underlying irrationality: after we have seen the city full of “believers”, Hitler comes down from the sky in a plane. A demi-God, winged like in Greek mythology, he flies into the world to make it sane (heil) again. In German the phrase of ‘heile Welt’ is still used to define a system without any contradiction, perfect by definition. In comparing the Nazi regime with eternal nature, all clean and sane, its opponents are immediately categorised as unclean. In the case of Jews, they were vermin, to be eradicated. 

Director Arnold Fanck (1889-1974) can be called the father of the Bergfilm. His features with Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), a former ballerina, are the bedrock of the sub-genre: Der Heilige Berg (main picture) in 1926), Der grosse Sprung (1927), Die weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü (and its sound remake in 1938); Stürme über dem Montblanc  (1930) and Der grosse Rausch (1931). In 1932 Riefenstahl became star, producer, director with Das Blaue Licht, written by Bela Balasz. Balasz, often called a progressive, was anything but. He might have been, perhaps, politically on the opposite end of the spectrum from Riefenstahl, but his aesthetics were very much influenced by Stalin’s realism which censored and destroyed the directors of the early post-revolutionary era. And it’s no coincidence that in Fall of Berlin (Mikheil Chiaureli, 1950), Stalin (all in white) would also come down from the sky in a plane to greet his followers like a Messiah.

As far as the Die weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü is concerned, it was described by a contemporary critic from ‘The Frankfurter Zeitung’ as having a “seductive force, the mysterious power of the mountains, forcing people into inescapable dependency. The mountain rages, and demands sacrifices”. What it does fails to mention is that Riefenstahl’s Hella comes between two men, ending their friendship and forcing the aforementioned sacrifice. Here the mountain is shown as a noble monster, very much like the dragon in Siegfried. 

Das Blaue Licht won an award in Venice and convinced Hitler that Riefenstahl should direct the Nuremberg rally documentaries. A post war critic in the ‘Cine-Club de Toulouse’ wrote in 1949, picking up on the Siegfried theme: “It is the always eternal topic of Siegfried, as the young hero. Because always the young men are ready to sacrifice their lives, and only have contempt for everything, which does not omply with their ideas. This is a feature seen entirely from the viewpoint of Nazi ideology. We find the same sort of youth enthusiasm seen in Riefenstahl’s Nuremberg documentaries. Young people joined in with the hope that the regime would reward them because of their racial purity”.

A German critic in 1932 had a very different impression: “A slow journey of images like in the fables of old, like paintings, composed in magical light. Leni Riefenstahl looks magical and almost surreal, a creature not from this planet, but a Mountain Fairy. She alone is enough to give this this feature an otherworldly, touching charm.”

And then the Mountain Fairy came down from her world, and staged the Party Congress. AS

BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS | MOUNTAIN FILMS FROM THE WEIMAR ERA 

      

             

   

Beyond your Wildest Dreams: Entertainment cinema during the Weimar years

BFI Southbank and various venues nationwide will mark the centenary of the Weimar Republic with a major two-month season running from Wednesday 1 MaySunday 30 June; BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS: WEIMAR CINEMA 1919-1933 celebrates a ground-breaking era of German cinema showcasing the extraordinary diversity of styles and genres in Weimar cinema, which conjured surreal visions in the sparkling musicals Heaven on Earth (Reinhold Schünzel, Alfred Schirokauer, 1927) and A Blonde Dream (below, Paul Martin, 1932) and gender-bending farces such as I Don’t Want to Be a Man (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918).

“Ein blonder Traum”
D 1932
Lilian Harvey

In this first foray into the Weimar era we will try to analyse the mainly escapist features of the period, leaving out the prestige projects of Lang and G.W. Pabst, covered in Rudi Suskind’s comprehensive documentary From Caligari to Hitler, and have a look at the B-features which were part and parcel of the growing film industry in Germany, leading to a rapid rise of new cinemas, particularly in the urban centres. Director/producer Joe May, who gave Fritz Lang his big break (before also emigrating to Hollywood) was not only was responsible for mega-productions like Das Indische Grabmal, but, among the 88 features he directed, were small comedies like Veritas Vincit (1918), in which transmigration of the spirit is used, to tell a love story. E.A. Dupont’s Varieté (1925) was a celebration of the music-hall, but was not modern at all: it sounded more like an epilogue than a resume. Karl-Heinz Martin’s From Morning to Midnight (1920) was in contrast a very expressionistic film. Set in Japan, it tells the story of a bank teller, who uses the money he steals on sex-workers, before committing suicide. The Love Letters of the Countess S. (Henrik Galeen, 1924) was typical for a series of films, which dealt with love affairs at aristocratic courts. Comedy of the Heart by Rochus Gliese (1924), also falls in the category ‘scandalous love affairs of the monarchs’. Blitzzug der Liebe (1925) directed by Johannes Gunter might not be well known, but its narrative is very typical for the genre: Fred loves Lizzy, but does not want to marry her. Lizzy makes him jealous, by asking the gigolo Charley to court her. But Charley is in love with the dancer Kitty, who is fancied by Fred. A double wedding solves all problems. Max Reichmann’s Manege (1927) is a sort of minor variation of Varieté , set in the world of the circus. Dupont again is responsible for Moulin Rouge (1928), one of many Varieté  remakes. Ein Walzertraum (1925) by Ludwig Berger and War of the Waltz 1933) by the same director, are, like Two Hearts in Walzertune (1932) by Geza von Bolvary part of many features shot in Vienna, featuring the music of the Strauss family. Karl Grune’s Arabella (1925) is a rather more intriguing endeavour showing the life of the titular horse from its own POV. The Erich Pommer production of Melody of the Heart (Hanns Schwarz, 1929) was one of the first sound features; DoP Karl Hoffmann lamented: “Poor camera! No more of your graceful movements. Chained again”. Even the grim reality of unemployment featured in comedies such as The Three from the Unemployment Office (1932) directed by Eugen Thiele, a plagiarism of his more famous The Three from the Petrol Station (1930). Director Karl Hartl, who would later be a standard bearer of the Nazi regime, showed potential in The countess of Monte Christo (1932), in which a poor film extra (Brigitte Helm) is mistaken for the star, having a great time at a luxury hotel. The final mention should go to Hans Albers, the action man of the German cinema, his career lasting from the Weimar era, via Goebbels and the III. Reich to the post WWII cinema in the Federal Republic: he starred in four Erich Pommer films: FPI Doesn’t Answer, a U-Boot Sci-fi adventure directed by Karl Hartl and scripted by Curt Siodmak and based on his novel of the title; Monte Carlo Madness (Hanns Scharz, 1931), Quick ( 1932, directed by Robert Siodmak, who would soon emigrate) stars Albert as a womanising clown and The Victor (Hans Hinrich/Paul Martin, 1932), where Albers rather ordinary telegraphist develops into a fearless hero. AS

BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS: WEIMAR CINEMA 1919-1933

 

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 |

 

Sunset (2019) *****

Dir.: Laszlo Nemes; Cast: Juli Jacob, Oszkar Brill, Evelin Dubos, Marcin Czarnik, Julia Jakubowska, Christian Harting, Susanne Wuest; France/Hungary 2018, 142 min.

Director/co-writer Laszlo Nemes follows his Oscar-winning triumph of Son of Saul with a reconstruction of a world that has disappeared: Set in Budapest in 1913, it shows a city of complex contradictions: there are the cultural and aesthetic high points of fashion, architecture, music and philosophical ideas which gave Budapest the name of “Paris of the East” – but next to it existed another world: violent nationalism, which would erupt in in Sarajewo with the shooting of Emperor Franz Ferdinand in 1914, changing the face of Europe forever. Against the backdrop of this pre-war cauldron a girl is growing up.

A long opening shot leads us into this labyrinth of enigma, intrigue, hostility, greed and lust. Arriving from Triest, young Irisz Leiter (Jacob) guides us through scenes of ravishing elegance and cataclysmic violence. What seems utter chaos, gradually becomes more clear, as Irisz infiltrates the spider web, trying to piece together the answers to her own life.

An orphan, she left Budapest at the age of two after her parents’ death in a mysterious fire at their famous Leiter hat atelier, now run by the enigmatic manager Oszkar Brill (Ivanov). He rebuffs her plea for a job at first, but she inveigles her way into the company, aided by Brill’s haughty assistant Zelma (Dubos). Irisz uses the Leiter hat saloon as a base to look for her enigmatic brother Kalman, who has joined the Hungarian nationalists and is in hiding, purportedly having murdered Count Redey. Irisz discovers that Countess Redey (Jakubowska) was the victim of her sadistic husband, whose brother is still torturing her. But when she finally catches a glimpse of Kalman during a street riot, she is appalled to to find out he is the gang-leader in a group of violent mobsters, and tries to kill him. But Brill is equally guilty: Irisz discovers that he has been grooming his milliners to serve as courtesans to influential clients at the Vienna court – Zelma is intended to be his next victim, because she knows too much. But before he can realise his wicked plan, Kalman Leiter and his nationalist are on the rampage. Sunset ends in the trenches of the First World War, in a 65 mm epilogue, a tribute to Kubrick’s Paths of Glory.  

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 splendour 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 own uncertain future. A masterpiece that might need more than one viewing. AS/MT

ON SCREEN AND DEMAND AT CURZON FROM 31 MAY 

 

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 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).

4490.jpg

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 

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

 

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

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

 

 

 

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

Heroes Don’t Die (2019) **** Semaine de la Critique 2019

Dir.: Aude Léa Rapin; Cast: Couzinè Haenel, Antonia Buresi, Jonathan Couzinè, Hasija Boric, Vesna Stilinovic; France, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina 2019, 85 min.

Aude Léa Rapin’s feature debut drama is certainly a unique undertaking. Led by a terrific performance from Adele Haenel (The Unknown Girl) it explores re-incarnation, hope and forgiveness to deliver a passionate conclusion amid the emotional ruins of war.

The films opens with Joachim (Jo) (Couzinè) bursting into the Parisian apartment of his filmmaker friend Alice (Haenel), to report that he might be the reincarnation of a solider who died in Bosnia in August 1983 –  Joachim’s own birthday. Or at least that’s what he has just been told by a man on the street corner. It soon emerges that Alice has spent a long time looking into the aftermath of the Balkan crisis which led to the breakup of Yugoslavia. But she’s not convinced about Joachim’s claims, or his ‘nightmares’ about his military past. Jo is adamant that these are no ordinary bad dreams. So Alice packs her filmmaking equipment and sets off with her sound designer Antonia (Buresi) to Sarajevo, hoping to find a basis for Jo’s former identity as Zoran Tadic, only to discover that the tragedy is by no means over.

On entering the suburbs, they find the mass graves of the victims, with new bodies buried in small coffins – the identifications of victims still going on – often more than 8000 civilians were killed per day. Alice accuses Jo of having made it all up, but then she remembers that a cardiologist did say that Jo could die at any moment after his 35th birthday due to a chronic heart condition. They meet one of Alice’s former sources who takes them to the – now – dilapidated bob sleigh track, used at the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984. They learn, that the track was once the frontline between the two war factions. Later they meet Hajra (Boric), another of Alice’s acquaintances from her war time reporting. And soon she discovers that a beekeeper living on the outskirts of the town of Brutonac, had a husband called Zoran Tadic, who was a soldier in the war. Here the finale is both devastating and breath-taking.

This is a moody, enigmatic drama touched by eternal sadness and Haenel keeps it all together as the deus ex machina of this experiment in poetry, essay and history lesson all rolled in to one. In the end, the audience has to decide if re-incarnation is simple a device for escaping from our sins.AS

SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 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 

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

 

Sundance London 2019 | 30 May – 2 June 2019

Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival brings a selection of films to London, screening at at PICTUREHOUSE CENTRAL from 30 MAY – 2 JUNE 2019. Here is a selection of the features and documentaries scheduled:

THE LAST TREE/ United Kingdom (Director/Screenwriter: Shola Amoo) – Femi is a British boy of Nigerian heritage who, after a happy childhood in rural Lincolnshire, moves to inner London to live with his mum. Struggling with the unfamiliar culture and values of his new environment, teenage Femi has to figure out which path to adulthood he wants to take CAST: Sam Adewunmi, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Denise Black, Tai Golding, Nicholas Pinnock 

LATE NIGHT U.S.A. (Director: Nisha Ganatra, Screenwriter: Mindy Kaling) – Legendary late-night talk show host’s world is turned upside down when she hires her only female staff writer. Originally intended to smooth over diversity concerns, her decision has unexpectedly hilarious consequences as the two women separated by culture and generation are united by their love of a biting punchline. Cast: Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, John Lithgow, Paul Walter Hauser, Reid Scott, Amy Ryan

THE NIGHTINGALE Australia (Director/Screenwriter: Jennifer Kent) – 1825. Clare, a young Irish convictwoman, chases a British officer through the Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. On the way she enlists the services of Aboriginal tracker Billy, who is marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past. Cast: Aisling Franciosi, Sam Claflin, Baykali Ganambarr, Damon Herriman, Harry Greenwood, Ewen Leslie

HAIL SATAN? U.S.A. (Director: Penny Lane) – A look at the intersection of religion and activism, tracing the rise of The Satanic Temple: only six years old and already one of the most controversial religious movements in American history. The Temple is calling for a Satanic revolution to save the nation’s soul. But are they for real? 

THE FAREWELL U.S.A., China (Director/Screenwriter: Lulu Wang) – A headstrong Chinese-American woman returns to China when her beloved grandmother is given a terminal diagnosis. Billi struggles with her family’s decision to keep grandma in the dark about her own illness as they all stage an impromptu wedding to see grandma one last time.  CAST: Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong, Jiang Yongbo

THE DEATH OF DICK LONG U.S.A. (Director: Daniel Scheinert, Screenwriter: Billy Chew) – Dick died last night, and Zeke and Earl don’t want anybody finding out how. That’s too bad though, cause news travels fast in small-town Alabama. CAST: Michael Abbott Jr., Virginia Newcomb, Andre Hyland, Sarah Baker, Jess Weixler 

CORPORATE ANIMALS U.S.A. (Director: Patrick Brice, Screenwriter: Sam Bain) – Disaster strikes when the egotistical CEO of an edible cutlery company leads her long-suffering staff on a corporate team- building trip in New Mexico. Trapped underground, this mismatched and disgruntled group must pull together to survive. CAST: Demi Moore, Ed Helms, Jessica Williams, Karan Soni

ASK DR RUTH  U.S.A. (Director: Ryan White) – A documentary portrait chronicling the incredible life of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor who became America’s most famous sex therapist. As her 90th birthday approaches, Dr. Ruth revisits her painful past and her career at the forefront of the sexual revolution. 

THE BRINK U.S.A. (Director: Alison Klayman) – Now unconstrained by an official White House post, Steve Bannon is free to peddle influence as a perceived kingmaker with a direct line to the President. As self-appointed leader of the “populist movement,” he travels around the U.S. and the world spreading his hard-line anti-immigration message

Tickets on sale Tuesday 23 April; priority booking from Friday 19 April

Find out more at picturehouses.com/sundance

 

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

Cannes 2019 – Final additions…

COMPETITION SCREENINGS 

Thierry Fremaux hinted that there may be final additions to the official line-up and here they are – with his comments.

Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood – Quentin Tarantino (2 hrs 45)

“We were afraid the film would not be ready, as it wouldn’t be ready until late July, but Quentin Tarantino, who has not left the editing room in four months, is a real, loyal and punctual child of Cannes! He’ll definitely be at Cannes this year, as he was  Inglourious Basterds,  – 25 years after the Palme d’or for Pulp Fiction – with a finished film screened in 35mm and his cast in tow (Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt). His film is a love letter to the Hollywood of his childhood, a rock music tour of 1969, and an ode to cinema as a whole.

He added: “In addition to thanking Quentin and his crew for spending days and nights in the editing room, the Festival wants to give special thanks to the teams at Sony Pictures, who made all of this possible.”

Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo by Abdellatif Kechiche (4 hrs)

French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche returns to Cannes with the Intermezzo of Mektoub, my Love six years after his Palme d’or with La Vie d’Adèle (Blue Is the Warmest Color). The groundwork for this saga storytelling and extraordinary portrait of French youth in the 90s was laid in his Canto Uno, and it will be a pleasure to see its cast again.”

MIDNIGHT SCREENING

Lux Æterna by Gaspar Noé (50 min)

“Two actresses, Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, are on a film set telling stories about witches – but that’s not all. Lux Æterna is also an essay on cinema, the love of film, and on-set hysterics. It’s a brilliant fast-paced medium-length film for Gaspar Noé’s return – an unexpected one until recently – to the Official Selection, for a film that the Selection Committee watched at the last minute and which will be shown in a Midnight Screening as hyped as it is mysterious.”

UN CERTAIN REGARD

La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia by Lorenzo Mattotti (1 hr 22)

“Adapted from Dino Buzzati’s children’s book, this animated film by illustrator and comic book author Lorenzo Mattotti is a visual extravaganza, whose graphic ingenuity and colour work will delight much wider audiences than the fans of the Italian master. With Italian voices by Toni Servillo, Antonio Albanese, and Andrea Camilleri, and French voices by Leïla Bekthi, Arthur Dupont, and Jean-Claude Carrière. Like the other Un Certain Regard film in animation Les Hirondelles de Kaboul (The Swallows of Kabul) by Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mevellec, La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia will also be competing next June at the acclaimed Annecy International Animated Film Festival.”

Odnazhdy v Trubchevske by Larissa Sadilova (1h30)

“Russian filmmaker Larissa Sadilova, who already directed six features, hadn’t shot a film in several years. She is back with this “chronicle from the village of Troubtchevsk”, evoking the feelings of love in the contemporary Russian countryside, shooting characters played by her formidable actors with refined direction and a gentle eye. Women aspirations, their patience, the courage that has to be displayed towards an always illusory emancipation, desire, frustration, and a certain sense of immemorial fatalism are all examined, acutely and without weight. It will be the first time the Festival de Cannes welcomes Larissa Sadilova.”

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Chicuarotes by Gael García Bernal (1 hr 35)

“A full-fledged member of Mexico’s exceptionally talented generation, a first-rate actor in films by Iñárritu and Cuarón, Gael García Bernal, along with Diego Luna, is a devotee of Cannes, where he was on the Jury in 2014. Chicuarotes is the actor’s second feature film where he takes a deep dive into Mexican society with a story about teenagers that is an affectionate portrayal, continuing in Mexican cinema’s tradition to pay homage to its eternal country, film after film.”

La Cordillera de los sueños by Patricio Guzmán (1 hr 24)

“Patricio Guzmán left Chile more than 40 years ago when the military dictatorship took over the democratically-elected government, but he never stopped thinking about a country, a culture, and a place on the map that he never forgot. After covering the North in Nostalgia for the Light and the South in The Pearl Button, his shots get up-close with what he calls “the vast revealing backbone of Chile’s past and recent history.” La Cordillera de los sueños is a visual poem, an historical inquiry, a cinematographic essay, and magnificent personal exercise in soul-searching.”

Ice on Fire by Leila Conners (1 hr 38)

“In 2007, Leila Conners screened The 11th Hour at Cannes, a hard-hitting documentary about climate change produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. The Festival screens conflict documentaries as part of a strong and proud tradition, like it also did with An Inconvenient Truth by Davis Guggenheim, which won an Oscar and earned Al Gore a Nobel Peace Prize. Twelve years later as the alarm bells are still multiplying all around the world (and more!), Leila Conners and Leonardo DiCaprio teamed up again on the same topic to make a film with an eloquent title: Ice on Fire. ”

5B by Dan Krauss (1 hr 33)

“In the 1980s, only a number and letter were used to designate a ward at San Francisco General Hospital, the first in the country to treat patients with AIDS. While a portion of society saw these patients as pariahs, the male and female caregivers in 5B chose a different route. This film is their story.

Directed by Dan Krauss, 5B is a film about a past that questions our present. It will be distributed in the United States, all around the world, and in France, which in October will be hosting the world conference for all fund-raisers donating money over the next three years to fight HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria. U2 singer Bono has been a fervent champion of the cause – and of this film, which he will be coming to Cannes to support.”

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 14 – 25 MAY 2019 

Full Metal Jacket (1987) **** Kubrick Retrospective 2019

Dir: Stanley Kubrick | Writers: Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford | Cast: Matthew Modine, R Lee Emey, Vincent D’Onofrio, Adam Baldwin, Dorian Harewood | US Action thriller 116′

The last film to be released during Kubrick’s lifetime is a bleak and violent look at the Vietnam war through the eyes of recruits moving from the brutal US Marine training bootcamp into the nightmare of active service overseas. Pessimism combined with dark cynicism gives us a flavour of what came before in Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove.

The first half of the film is extremely loud and shouty, focusing on the recruits’ dehumanising and draconian training programme. Although it makes for grim viewing there’s a certain visual symmetry at work here echoing Leni Riefenstal’s Olympia (1938), although the dialogue is coarse and sweary, and full of racist bigotry as you might expect given the all-male environment where the men are toughened up and whipped into shape. There then follows a brutal and melodramatic baptism of fire before the men head to Vietnam, where top recruit and military journalist Pvt Joker (Modine) decides to try his hand in the front line: “a day without blood, is like a day without sunshine”. Kubrick maintains a cold-eyed distance throughout the mayhem and hard-edged horror. There is no attempt to bring out the humanity of these men who are now reduced to killing machines, murdering anything that moves as they fight for their own survival in the dog eat dog delirium. Kubrick’s message is clear: War is no place for decency. You come away not knowing or caring about any of the characters. Stunned and saddened by the senselessness of it all. No pity or poetry here. MT

BFI STANLEY KUBRICK RETROSPECTIVE | APRIL-MAY 2019 at BFI Southbank 

Stanley Kubrick Retrospective: Art and Film 2019

Stanley Kubrick, one of the greatest film makers of the 20th century, spent most of his later life working in England where he raised a family in the Hertfordshire town of Childwickbury, between St Albans and Harpenden, 35 minutes drive North of London. It was in the Norfolk Broads and Beckton, in the East End that he created the Vietnam scenes for Full Metal Jacket (1987), an orbiting space station for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Dr Strangelove’s war room (1964). 

BFI KUBRICK RETRO  

Throughout April and May 2019 the BFI will present, in partnership with The Design Museum, Kensington, a definitive Stanley Kubrick season at BFI Southbank. The season will offer audiences the opportunity to experience masterpieces such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Barry Lyndon (1975) and The Shining (1980) on the big screen as Kubrick intended, with screenings being presented on 35mm wherever possible. The season will also delve deep into the director’s oeuvre with a playful and diverse programme of events, revealing why Kubrick is considered one of the most influential filmmakers of all time, and his style has given rise to the new entry in the Oxford Dictionary: “Kubrickian” meaning painstakingly perfectionist.

Stanley Kubrick was most inventive in his introduction of revolutionary devices to his filmmaking, such as the camera lens designed for NASA to shoot by candlelight. His fascination with all aspects of design and architecture influenced every stage of all his films. He worked with many key designers of his generation, from Hardy Amies to Saul Bass, Eliot Noyes and Ken Adam.

KENSINGTON EXHIBITION 

The exhibition, which has already travelled round Europe, is supported by Kubrick’s brother-in-law and executive producer on many of his films, Jan Harlan. The two first collaborated on Kubrick’s unrealised film project Napoleon in 1969, which has become known as the greatest movie never made, and will shortly form the subject of a made for TV documentary inspired by Steven Spielberg and directed Cary Fukunaga (Bond 2025).

Kubrick was as demanding on his actors as he was on himself. After playing Barry Lyndon’s hapless stepson in the 1975 epic drama English actor Leon Vitali went to work as his assistant for some 30 years and his story is told in Tony Zierra’s informative 2017 documentary Filmworker

The exhibition at Kensington’s Design Museum features scripts, costumes, films and props and provides a fascinating counterpoint to the BFI’s film retrospective, which takes place from April to May what it has called the “definitive Stanley Kubrick season” showing his films in 35mm, using projectors. There will also be a new print of A Clockwork Orange. MT

Kubrick’s feature films:

Fear and Desire (1953)

Killer’s Kiss (1955);

The Killing (1956)

Paths of Glory (1957)

Spartacus (1960)

Lolita (1962)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Barry Lyndon (1975)

The Shining (1980)

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Stanley Kubrick: the Exhibition | Kensington Design Museum 26 April-17 September 2019.

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

 

 

Cannes Classics 2019

The 25 years of La Cité de la peur, a Midnight Screening of The Shining presented by Alfonso Cuarón, the 50 years of the mythical Easy Rider in the company of Peter Fonda, Luis Buñuel in the spotlight with three films, the attendance of Lina Wertmüller, the Grand Prix of 1951 Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan, a final salute to Milos Forman, the first Japanese animated film in color, the World Cinema Project and the Film Foundation of Martin Scorsese, documentaries about cinema and History, masterpieces known and rare films in restored version from countries rarely honored, this is the new edition of Cannes Classics—the first section dedicated to heritage cinema ever created in a major festival.  

 The majority of the films will be screened at Buñuel Theater, Salle du 60e or at the Cinéma de la Plage, all presented by major players in the film heritage: directors, artists or restoration managers.

The 50 years of the mythical Easy Rider

Presented half a century ago on the Croisette, in Competition at the Festival de Cannes, the film won the Prize for a first work. Co-writer, co-producer and lead actor, Peter Fonda will be in Cannes at the invitation of the Festival to celebrate this anniversary.
Easy Rider (1969, 1h35, USA) by Dennis Hopper

Restored in 4K by Sony Pictures Entertainment in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna. Restored from the 35mm Original Picture Negative and 35mm Black and White Separation Masters. 4K scanning and digital image restoration by Immagine Ritrovata. Audio restoration from the 35mm Original 3-track Magnetic Master by Chace Audio and Deluxe Audio. Color grading, picture conform, additional image restoration and DCP by Roundabout Entertainment. Colorist: Sheri Eisenberg. Restoration supervised by Grover Crisp.

Midnight Screening of The Shining 

The ultimate horror film for an event screening presented by Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón.
The Shining by Stanley Kubrick (1980, 2h26, UK / USA)

A Presentation of Warner Bros. The 4K remastering was done using a new 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative. The mastering was done at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging, and the color grading was done by Janet Wilson, with supervision from Stanley Kubrick’s former personal assistant Leon Vitali.

The 50 years ofLa Cité de la peur

The cult comedy of comic group Les Nuls will be screened at Cannes Classics au Cinéma de la Plage upon the occasion of the 4K restoration of the film for its 25th anniversary with Alain Chabat, Chantal Lauby and Dominique Farrugia in attendance.
La Cité de la peur, une comédie familiale (1994, 1h39, France) by Alain Berbérian

Presented by Studiocanal. A restoration by Studiocanal and TF1 Studio . 4K scanning 16bits from the original negative 35mm on Lasergraphics director. The pre-calibration was done in a projection room equipped by a 4k projector 4k Christie Laser by Pascal Bousquet and additional work of filtering, dusting was done to compensate the imperfection due to the age of the film. Optical illusion composited on DI on Flame to remain close to the quality of the original negative. Calibration validated by Laurent Dailland, director of photography. Original digital sound was used without modification. Work of remastering done by VDM Laboratory.

Luis Buñuel in the spotlight with three films

Three films by Mexican director and screenwriter, with Spanish origin, will be shown this year.
Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned) (1950, 1h20, Mexico) by Luis Buñuel

Presented by the World Cinema Project. Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project at L’Immagine Ritrovata in collaboration with Fundación Televisa, Cineteca Nacional Mexico, and Filmoteca de la UNAM. Restoration funding provided by The Material World Foundation.

Nazarín (1958, 1h34, Mexico) by Luis Buñuel

Presented by Cineteca Nacional Mexico. 3K Scan and 3K Digital Restoration from the original 35mm image negative (preserved by Televisa) and prints positive materials from Cineteca Nacional. Restoration made and financed by Cineteca Nacional Mexico. Mastered in 2K for Digital Projection.

L’Âge d’or (The Golden Age) (1930, 1h, France) by Luis Buñuel

Presented by La Cinemathèque française. A 4K restoration of The Golden Age was done by la Cinemathèque française and le Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Experimental cinema’s department, at Hiventy Laboratory for the image and at L.E. Diapason’s studio for the sound, using the original nitrate negative, original sound and safety elements.

Tribute to Lina Wertmüller

The first woman director ever nominated as a director at the Academy Awards in 1977 for Pasqualino Settebellezze, Lina Wertmüller will introduce the film with lead actor Giancarlo Giannini in attendance.
Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties) (1975, 1h56, Italy) by Lina Wertmüller

Presented by Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale. Restored by Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale with the support of Genoma Films and Deisa Ebano from the original 35mm picture and optical soundtrack negative made available by RTI S.p.A. Digital scanning and restoration work carried out by Cinema Communications in Rome.

The 1951 “Palme d’or”

The Palme d’or was created in 1955 but the Grand Prix awarded to Miracle in Milan by Vittorio De Sica was the equivalent.
Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan) (1951, 1h40, Italy) by Vittorio De Sica

Presented by Cineteca di Bologna. Restored by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and Compass Film, in collaboration with Mediaset, Infinity TV, Artur Cohn, Films sans frontières and Variety Communications at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory. 4K Scan and Digital Restoration from the original 35mm camera negative and a vintage dupe positive. Colour grading supervised by DoP Luca Bigazzi.

Milos Forman

A devotee of the Festival de Cannes, a former President of the Jury, a director with several lives, Milos Forman passed away one year ago. The restoration of his second film and a documentary will give us the opportunity to pay our tribute and remember him.
Lásky jedné plavovlásky (Loves of a Blonde) (1965, 1h21, Czech Republic) by Milos Forman

A presentation of the Národní filmový archiv, Prague. 4K digital restoration based on the original camera done by the Universal Production Partners and Soundsquare in Prague, 2019. The donors of this project were Mrs. Milada Kučerová and Mr. Eduard Kučera. Restored in partnership with the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the Czech Film Fund. French distribution: Carlotta Films.

Forman vs. Forman (Czech Republic / France, 1h17) by Helena Trestikova and Jakub Hejna

Presented by  Negativ Film Productions, Alegria Productions, Czech Television, ARTE. A powerful documentary that recounts with emotion the career of director Milos Forman, from the Czech New Wave to Hollywood. Oscars, politics and political upheavals for a life in the service of cinema.

All the restored films of Cannes Classics 2019

Toniby Jean Renoir (1934, 1h22, France)

Presented by Gaumont. First digital restoration in 4K presented by Gaumont with the support of the CNC. Restoration done by L’image retrouvée in Bologna and Paris.

Le Ciel est à vous (1943, 1h45, France) by Jean Grémillon

Presented by TF1 Studio. Restaured version in 4K using two intermediate and a duplicate done by TF1 studio, with the support of the CNC and Coin de Mire cinéma. Digital and photochimical work done by L21 laboratory.

Moulin Rouge (1952, 1h59, UK) by John Huston 

Presented and restored by The Film Foundation in collaboration with Park Circus, Romulus Films and MGM with additional funding provided by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a unique partnership between the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM), and the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW).   Restored from the 35mm Original Nitrate 3-Strip Technicolor Negative. 4K scanning, color grading, digital image restoration and film recording by Cineric, Inc., New York. Colorist: Daniel DeVincent. Audio restoration by Chace Audio. Restoration Consultant: Grover Crisp.

Kanal (They Loved Life) (1957, 1h34, Poland) by Andrzej Wajda

Presented by Malavida, in association with Kdr. Scanned, calibrated and restored in 4K under the artistic supervision of Andrzej Wajda and Jerzy Wójcik, second DOP, and regular collaborator of Wajda (Ashes and Diamonds) and one of the greatest Polish DOP. Technical supervision: Waldermar Makula. 4k Scan from the original negative, image and sound. Producted by Studio Filmowe Kadr with the participation of  Filmoteka Narodowa. French distribution: Malavida. International Sales: Studio Filmowe Kadr.

Hu shi ri ji (Diary of a Nurse) (1957, 1h37, China) by Tao Jin

Presented by IQIYI et New Ipicture Media co., ltd (NIPM). 4K Scan and 3K Digital Restoration from the original 35mm print positive materials mastered in 2K. Restoration financed by IQIYI & NIPM, and made by L’Immagine Ritrovata (Italy) and Laser Digital Film SRL (Italy).

Hakujaden (The White Snake Enchantress) (1958, 1h18, Japan) by Taiji Yabushita

Presented by  Toei Animation Company, ltd., Toei company, ltd. et and National Archive of Japan. The project celebrates the 100th year anniversary for the birth of Japan animation and 60th anniversary for the original theatrical release in 1958.
4K scan and restoration from the original negative, 35mm print, tape materials, and animation cels by Toei lab tech co., ltd. et Toei digital center are carried out. The restored data is stored in 2K.

125 Rue Montmartre (1959, 1h25, France) by Gilles Grangier

Presented by Pathé. 4K Scan and 2k restoration, using the original safety negative (negative image, intermediate and negative optique sound) Work done by Eclair laboratory for the image and L.E Diapason (Léon Rousseau) for the sound part. Restored with the support of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC).

A tanú (The Witness) (1969, 1h52, Hongrie) by Péter Bacsó

The original uncensored  version presented by the Hungarian National Film Fund – Film Archive. The film was restored in 4K using the original camera negative and outtakes, the only existing uncensored positive print and the original magnetic sound. The restoration was carried out at the Hungarian Filmlab. The digital colour grading was supervised by Tamás Andor (HSC, Hungarian Society of Cinematographers).

Tetri karavani (The White Caravan) (1964, 1h37, Georgia) by Eldar Shengelaia and Tamaz Meliava

Presented by Georgian National Film Center. 4K Scan from 35mm, digital restoration (color, grading, stabilization). Restoration financed by the Georgian National Film Center, the restoration made by National Archives of Georgia.

Director Eldar Shengelaia in attendance.

Plogoff, des pierres contre des fusilsby Nicole Le Garrec (1980, 1h48, France)

Presented by Ciaofilm. Restored in 2k from the original negative 16mm image. Sound restoration from the 16mm magnetic. Work done by Hiventy laboratory  under the supervision of Ciaofilm and Pascale Le Garrec, with the help of the CNC, Région Bretagne and the Cinemathèque de Bretagne. Distributed by Next Film Distribution.

Director Nicole Le Garrec in attendance.

Caméra d’Afrique  (20 Years of African Cinema) by Férid Boughedir (1983, 1h38, Tunisia / France)

Presented by the CNC. Restoration: Laboratory of the CNC. 2K scan from the original 16mm image negative. Sound restoration : Hiventy. This movie fits into the restoration scheme initiated by L’Institut français and the CNC, supervised by the commitee for the African cinematographic heritage. Right-holders: Marsa film. French Distribution: Les Films du Losange.

Director Férid Boughedir in attendance. 

Dao ma zei (The Horse Thief ) (1986, 1h28, China) by Tian Zhuangzhuang and Peicheng Pan

Presented by Xi’An Film Studio. 4K Scan and 4K 48 fps digital restoration from the 35mm original camera negative. Restoration financed and made by China Film Archive.

Director Tian Zhuangzhuang  and Cinematographer Hou Yong in attendance. 

The Doors (1991, 2h20, USA) by Oliver Stone

Presented by Studiocanal, in partnership with Paramount, Lionsgate and Imagine Ritrovatta. Restored in 4k, initiated and supervised by Oliver Stone from the original negative, scanned in 4k 16 bits on ARRISCAN at Fotokem US. Restoration managed by Imagine Ritrovatta in Italy. Calibrated work supervised by Oliver Stone. Immersive soundtrack thanks to the Atmos mix created by Formosa Group, Hollywood, under the supervision of Dolby and original mixers of the film Wylie Stateman and Lon Bender. The movie can be seen in 7.1 and 5.1. Remastered 4K now available in 4K Cinema, UHD Dolby Vision and Atmos.

Documentaries

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (USA, 1h34) by Midge Costin

Presented by Dogwoof and Cinetic Media.

The biggest directors and artists make us immerse in the history and impact of sound in cinema: Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Barbra Streisand, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Patty Jenkins, Robert Redford, Ryan Coogler, David Lynch, Sofia Coppola, Christopher Nolan, Ang Lee, Walter Murch. A rich, fascinating and essential documentary.

Les Silences de Johnny (55mn, France) by Pierre-William Glenn

Presented by les films du Phœnix  in coproduction with Ciné+.

A personal and moving portrait of actor Johnny Hallyday by great cinematographer, director and friend of Johnny’s Pierre-William Glenn.

La Passione di Anna Magnani(1h, Italy / France) by Enrico Cerasuolo

Presented by les Films du Poisson and Zenit Arti Audiovisive.

The destiny of legendary actress Anna Magnani through archive footage, often unpublished. To dive into the history of Italian cinema.

Cinecittà – I mestieri del cinema Bernardo Bertolucci (Italy, 55mn) by Mario Sesti

Presented by Erma Pictures in collaboration with Cinecittà Luce.

A presentation of Erma Pictures in collaboration with Cinecittà Luce.

The last interview of the Master Bertolucci who recalls his work with precision, delicacy and philosophy. A movie lesson.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 15-25 May 2019

 

Martha: A Picture Story (2019) *** Tribeca Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Selina Miles; Documentary with Martha Cooper; USA 2019, 80 min.

The first feature documentary by Australian director/co-DoP Selina Miles is a portrait of American photographer Martha Cooper whose shots of street art in New York of the 1970s and 80s gained her the title Godmother of Graffiti. Even at the ripe old age of 75 she is still active in her hometown of Baltimore and European capitals Berlin, Vienna and Paris.

Born in 1943, she fell in love with the camera at the age of three. When she was working for the Peace Corps in Thailand in 1963, she shot a series of photos of tattooists at work. Returning to the USA, she faced the first wave of many rejections of her work, before she was taken on by the New York Post in 1977, having made a name for herself with a series on urban life in Rhode Island. At the Susan Welsham was the photo editor of the Post and she remembers their collaboration when women like Cooper had to literally beg to be taken on.

In New York she worked for City Lore at the time when the city was burning and President Ford pandered to national prejudice “letting New York go bankrupt rather than bail them out”. Her interest in urban and street art led her to an auspicious meeting with Edwin Serrano, who later introduced her to Dondi (1961-1998), the King of train Graffiti, whose work recently fetched upwards of $200 000 up. Dondi made an exception for Cooper, who was allowed to photograph him while on the job. The outcome was ‘Subway Art’ (published by Cooper and Henry Chalfant), which later became the bible of Street Art. ‘Hip Hop Files’ (1998) is another one of her now classic publications.

Back in 2004 Cooper travelled to Germany, Vienna and St. Denis (a suburb of Paris), where she was celebrated for her work. In Miami she took photos of the artist colony of Wyndwood Walls, where graffiti is displayed on whole blocks. Even very recently, she took up with a group of Berlin train graffiti artists, hanging from precarious positions to capture their work. Nowadays she is still active in SoWeBo, a rundown district of Baltimore atmospheric of a black ghetto where the kids make impressive pavements artists.

Martha is living proof that art can keep you young. Her bold and intrepid work goes on. AS

SCREENING DURING TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL | New York | 2019

    

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     

White Paradise (1924) ****

Dir: Karel Lamač | Script: Karel Lamač/Martin Fric | Cast: Karel Lamač, Vladimir Majer, Anny Ondra, Josef Rovensky | Drama | Czechokoslovakia 70′ | Silent

The UK premiere of this restored box office hit from 1924 stars Anny Ondra and Karel Lamač in the role of naïve orphan Nina and escaped convict Ivan. It is screened with live musical accompaniment by Tomáš Vtípil.

In the depths of a snowbound Bohemian forest, orphan Nina serves passing travellers in a small coaching inn. One of them is Ivan (Karel Lamač), who has escaped from prison for a crime he didn’t commit and is now desperate to bring medicine to his dying mother. Nina falls for his good looks and kind heart and decides to help him, offering sanctuary in the cellar.

This social melodrama benefits from an ingeniously written script and the involvement of Der starke Vierer (The Strong Four) – one of the most distinctive creative teams to come out of early Czechoslovak cinema: director and actor Karel Lamač, cameraman Otto Heller, actress Anny Ondra and screenwriter Václav Wasserman – contributed to the international success of the film and opened the doors for Lamač and Ondra.

Presented in partnership with Barbican and in collaboration with the Czech National Film Archive. | 28th April 2019, at 3pm | Barbican Cinema 1, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS

 

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

 

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

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   

Risk (2016/17) ***

Director: Laura Poitras | 87min | Documentary | France 

Citizenfour director Laura Poitras offers this close-up and personal portrait of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange which was five years in the making and has been updated since its Directors’ Fortnight premiere at Cannes 2016. Yet it still feels unfinished as events surrounding its subject matter continue to evolve.

Gaining access to the powerhouse where Julien Assange works with his ‘team’ composed of  girlfriend Sarah Harrison and mouthy WikiLeaks technology geek Jacob Appelbaum, we see Assange rocking a range of diverse disguises from orange hair and coloured contacts to a goatee beard and beany hat, he cuts a slippery rather glib figure capable of wriggling out of situation. Despite his pasty and porcine features, he’s also very keen on himself and holds forth in long monologues of self-righteous, albeit articulate, blether that does nothing to make us warm to his rather sinister brand of ‘charm’.

Not only has Assange has been charged with spying by the United States and has a number of rape charges against him running in Sweden, he offers classified information to the world, and has his (clearly besotted) girlfriend attempt to call up Hillary warning her of with an imminent ’emergency’ situation while sitting comfortably in the privacy of his Norfolk mansion.

Everything falls into place when we see him interacting with his doting mother, who clearly encouraged his self-belief at an early age and groomed his to become the smarmy individual he is today, particularly where women are concerned. His frequent asides to ‘Laura’ feel as if he is on intimate terms with the director and almost a protagonist here rather than a detached observer, but his condescending approach to Sarah Harrison is grist to the mill. Her deferential respect of his perceived power is particularly noticeable when she rehearses a speech in front of him while he chips in with instructions and grooms her for public speaking.

Poitras follows members of Assange’s team as they go about their business in a self-congratulatory way enlightening the poorly informed about information that has been stolen from them. In Egypt there is a coruscating take-down by Appelbaum of various tech companies such as TE Data and Nokia that supported the Mubarak regime, by blocking or censoring the internet during the Arab Spring. The Wikileaks team feel like the information campaign equivalent of Greenpeace.

Poitras divides her documentary into bizarre chapters introduced in roman numerals, that bear no apparent relevance to the actual content in an expose that gradually morphs into a a personal profile of the man himself. The only person who cuts him down to size is Lady Gaga in an ill-advised (from his point of view) interview with the star during his time in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

So despite all the ground-work and updates, there’s nothing really revealing in this mildly hagiographic portrayal. What the documentary does convey to the outsider is that Julian Assange emerges as a decidedly slippery character who has a way with women (including the director), but whether he deserves to still be in captivity is certainly questionable. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

 

Edvard Munch (1974)

Writer|Director: Peter Watkins | Biopic | Norway /Sweden | 210min | Drama

In the ultimate biopic of Norway’s most famous artist, Peter Watkins sketches a profoundly atmospheric cinéma vérité portrait of 19th century Kristiania (now Oslo) where the expressionist painter (Geir Westby) grew up in a protestant middle class family with two brothers and three sisters in 1863.

His mother was to die when he was five, inauspiciously shaping his introspective life in a society where sickness and death were prevalent amongst the young. Munch himself nearly died of a haemorrhage aged 13  and legalised prostitution and child labour were the norm offering the artist plenty of scope to draw on for his iconic paintings. “Illness, insanity and death were the black angels that watched over my cradle and accompanied me every day of my life”. It seemed inevitable that this milieu of grief and nihilism would culminated in his ultimate expression of anxiety ‘The Scream’ thirty years later.

A fly on the wall camera introduces the Munch family, Watkins’ slow and deliberately didactic narration presents their lives in a factually informative way, making use of the painter’s own diaries and key historical events of the era. Peter Watkins is well known for his dispassionate treatment of often inflammatory subjects and his biopic is a leisurely two-hour affair that immerses us in the era and the artist’s own world which ran contrary to the establishment, his work being described as ‘ugly and deranged’ in a critical assault that continued for most of his career. Munch was simply expressing his feelings in a visual way using a “nervous, dissolving treatment of colour”.

The scenes of his love affair with Mrs Heiberg (a graceful Gro Fraas), a married woman without children, are sensually rendered in the romantic fashions of the era and provide a welcome counterpoint to those featuring Munch’s sombre childhood marked by grief and illness: “Sex is the only human pleasure that spares man from ultimate loneliness”: Munch describes his relationship with Mrs Heiberg as making him feel much calmer although the affair was not to last.

From then on Munch’s brushstrokes are shown scratching and scraping at the canvas as his work becomes more impressionistic, and Watkins cuts back to scenes of him weeping pitifully. Watkins’ treatment gets increasingly more manic and dreamlike as the film progresses echoing Munch’s troubled state of mind with an evocative use of flashback and cuts. At a time where all of the major artists are still involved in exterior depictions: Cézanne, Van Gogh and Renoir, Munch was painting groundbreaking symbolist works that transcended all external reality to express innermost feelings and emotion.

His critics stood by and laughed at the canvasses. Hurt and confused by their negativity Munch withdrew from the world during the 1888s while his fellow artists died of syphilis, consumption, suicide and tuberculosis. But Munch gains strength again in the early 1890s as his work takes on more detail and clarity of vision. Still obsessed with Mrs Heiberg, he marries in hast but then leaves for Paris. His diaries maintain that his inner pain is clearly the origin of his creativity: “Without anxiety and illness I should have been like a ship without a rudder”. With Edvard Munch Peter Watkins presents an epic work of historical and artist genius that is still unparalleled. MT

NOW ON MUBI | ON BLURAY COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA |

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

 

When They Left (2019) *** Visions du Reel 2019

Dir: Veronica Haro Abril | Doc, Ecuador, 61′

In When They Left Veronica Haro Abril tells the story of a dying community in her native village of Plazuela, Ecuador. A series of pithy, melancholy but evocative reminiscences recall a once vibrant mountainside community. But Abril discovers something else in its place.

These gentle old folk are serene and positive about their lives as they go about their daily tasks to maintain self-sufficiency. Lucrecia collects lemons and harvests her potato crop in the orchard:  “I don’t have time to be sad. We love the this place. I don’t know about the people who come from the outside, but for me it’s beautiful”. And she’s right. Abril’s film very much connects  to the global narrative of human survival for remote communities conveying the peace and tranquility of a simple but socially connected place where the villagers are still very much in contact with their family. In some ways the young have lost out by leaving their elders to go the city. They may gain in some ways, but they miss out on the counsel and experience of the older members of the family. For the older generation, the animals are their new ‘children’ offering them produce in return for care. There’s so much to be recommended about village life and these people are never lonely because they have each other to talk through their worries and health concerns. Consolacion and her dog look forward to the arrival of the ice-cream van. 33cents for a scoop of freshly made blackberry seems a reasonable treat. Another tends to her bees with her friend ‘mammita’ donning their makeshift outfits, their hands are left bare. And the honey is fragrant and plentiful. The final act sees them preparing for a musical get-together. The men playing their instruments, and dressed in traditional garb, the women dancing.

Set on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, Abril’s elegant framing, long takes and limpid visuals make this a relaxing and calming experience, the ambient sound of birds and the soft breeze in the trees is pleasant and invigorating. In the end When They Left is not about loss or sadness but about the intense calm that togetherness brings once life’s struggles are over, reflecting the wisdom and serenity of a life well lived for a philosophical generation who have a great deal to teach us in many ways. MT.

VISIONS DU RÉEL | 3 – 13 APRIL 2019 | NYON SWITZERLAND

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′

 

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

 

 

 

Werner Herzog Retrospective at VISIONS DU REEL 2019

Grizzly_Man_3-e1374581107236

Throughout 50 years of filmmaking, one of the greatest directors of all time, Werner Herzog,  continues to impress with his unflinchingly creative vision of humanity and its future.

Encounters_at_the_End_of_the_World_2-e1374580394553

My_Best_Fiend-e1374580306483The retrospective will also screen My Best Fiend (on his volatile relationship with collaborator, Klaus Kinski); Grizzly Man; Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Into the Abyss, that further examine his probing reflections  “why do people do bad things?”, an attempt to get to the core of the human condition. MT

VISIONS DU REEL 5-13 APRIL 2019 | Nyon, Switzerland

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.

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

 

Silent Star | First Spacecraft on Venus (1960) **** Kinoteka Film Festival 2019

Dir. Kurt Maetzig; Cast: Yoko Tani, Oldrich Lukes, Ignacy Machowski, Julius Ongewe, Michael Postnikow, Kurt Rackelmann, Günter Simon, Hua-Ta Tang, Lucyna Winnicka; East Germany/Poland 1960, 93 min.

In many ways SILENT STAR is a cult classic oddity. East German director Kurt Maetzig had had his career put on hold due to his Jewish background. The Rabbit is Me (1965) was seen as too critical of the socialist East German leadership and was banned along with ten other films considered equally “subversive”. Classified as the “Rabbit Films” they were greeted with avid applause on their re-release in 1989, at the end of the Cold War. In 1954 Maetzig had also directed the lauded two-part biopic Ernst Thaelmann, about the German communist leader murdered in a concentration camp. He was eventually allowed to continue making films again, but some of the other directors were relegated to TV. Maetzig died in 2012, at the age of 101.

Many of the East German feature films were also considered rather tedious – people wanted to watch Hollywood blockbusters – although the mostly black-and-white political films did find an audience with intellectuals in the West. First Spacecraft, or The Silent Star, to give it the translated title of the US version, suffered the same fate. Popular in all Eastern block countries, particularly the GDR, were it was watched by over four million people, it was shunned in the West as a “populist melodrama in the Hollywood style”.

Set in the “future” of 1985, an artificial ‘spool’ is discovered in the Gobi-desert. Aeronautics Professor Hawling (Oldrich Lukes) deems it originated in Venus. And Professors Sikarna (Yoko Tani) and Dr. Tchen-Yu (Hua- Ta Tang) come to the conclusion that it’s a flight recorder. But failing to make contact with Venus, they decide to use the Soviet spaceship ‘Cosmostrator’ to fly to the planet and investigate. During the journey Sikarna attempts to translate the text. The rather cold-blooded message turns out to be a declaration of war: the inhabitants of Venus had been trying to colonise earth, and exterminate the human race. A model toy computer, rather like R2/D2 from Star Wars, then turns vicious, attacking German pilot Brinkmann (Simon); his spacecraft lands on Venus, finding no form of life, but a totally destroyed city in a huge crater. One of the scientists triggers the still-functioning computer, programmed to destroy Earth and mayhem ensues.

PDs Alfred Hirschmeier and L. Kunka must take most of the credit for this terrific Sci-fi adventure, along with  composer Andrzej Markowski and DoP Joachim Heisler. Obviously it looks dates in today’s eyes, but no more so that some other US Space outings of the era. But Stanislaw Lem, author of the novel on which co-writer Maetzig based his script, was not impressed, and claimed: “not even children would be frightened by this film”. AS

KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL 4-18 APRIL 2019

Monument (2018) *** Kinoteka Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Jagoda Szelec; Cast: Dorota Lukasiewicz, Paulina Lasot, Karolina Bruchnicka, Jacub Gola; Poland 2018, 108 min.

Director/writer Jagoda Szelek (Tower: A bright Day) casts students from the famous Lodz Film School in her sophomore feature, a non-narrative exercise in power and human misery. The ritualistic nature of Monument shines a light on how we chose to remember the past.

Twenty young people have high hopes about embarking on their internship in the hotel business. But before the programme kicks off, one of them has already gone missing. The draconian manager takes a nonchalant approach and hands round their name identification badges: there are ten Pawels and nine Anias. “The customers are not interested in your names, they want to enjoy themselves”, the manager retorts sternly, when asked for a reason.

The job is pretty dreary. The film becomes a study in surreal depersonalisation. The women have to clean the rooms, and the toilets. Moral is low – apart from one young man, who tries to ingratiate himself with the nameless manager, who acquires the nickname “witch’ from his fellow interns. Even though he is rude about them behind their backs, the manager is unimpressed, humiliating him in front of an ‘Ania’, who comes up with good plan to re-organise the work schedule. The women talk about their childhoods, particularly about their relationships with their mothers; while the boys tell each other rather unfunny jokes and fight. Two of them have sex. The place is falling apart, rats run wild down in the cellar, and one of the women faints. In this enigmatic endeavour times seems to stand still. It is never made clear if the missing young man is the only survivor of a fatal bus crash, or if the other have entered a ‘Huis Clos’ a in Sartre’s play. But their relationships are strained, they only unite in hating the “witch”. The final ritualistic dance is a strange exercise in exorcism.

DoP Przemyslaw Brynkiewicz’s black and white images are stunning: the realistic environment of the hotel, the suites, kitchen and laundry are in total contrast to the dark cellar, the moody atmosphere of the rubbish bins and the gloomy, foreboding cellar, where rats scuffle around unaware of the human denizens. But in spite of the overlaying realism of these task-bound interns, there are echoes of The Shining as the past meets the present. Szelec has certainly made a singularly unique feature, which does not need to be categorised to be watched with admiration and a certain awe. AS

KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL 4 -18 APRIL 2019  

   

Sodom and Gomorrah : The Legend of Sin and Punishment (1922)

Dir: Michael Curtiz (as Mihaly Kertesz) | Cast: Georg Reimers, Victor Varconi, Lucy Doraine, Walter Slezak | Austria 140′

Although reputedly originally three hours long, the version screened at the Austrian Cultural Forum mercifully clocked in at just two hours. Of the cast, the actor whose name remains most familiar today is a very young Walter Slezak (Michael) as ‘the young sapling’, ironically so young and slender as to be completely unrecognisable from his later films.

After a dreary modern story that comprised the first half, the film picks up considerably when the Ammonites lay waste to Gomorrah in scenes in which it looks as though people are actually getting hurt (and knowing director Mihaly Kertesz – as he was then known – they probably were). Reputedly the most expensive Austrian movie ever made, Sodom und Gomorrha was the centrepiece of an ambitious run of historical spectaculars on the Italian and US model, shot by Alexander Kolowrat’s “Sacha-Film-AG” in the Laeser mountains outside Vienna. The outing brought its director to the attention of Jack Warner of Warner Bros, who signed him up in 1925.

His name now simplified to ‘Curtiz’ he returned to the biblical spectacular with Noah’s Ark in 1928, but with the exception of the risible The Egyptian in 1954, his epics thereafter were usually Westerns. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON AMAZON

 

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

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

Kinoteka Film Festival 2019 | 4-18 April 2019

Oscar winner Pawel Pawlikowski will be in London to celebrate this year’s Kinoteka Polish film festival. Joining him are veteran Polish auteur KRZYSZTOF ZANUSSI with his latest film Ether, a spotlight of female filmmakers and a special Sci-fi retro strand featuring cult classic gems from STANISŁAW LEM.

Another highlight will be the latest film from maverick wild child Andrzej ŻuławskiOn the Silver Globe. The festival will also showcase the work of legendary cinematographer WITOLD SOBOCIŃSKI and a documentary exploring the provocative work of Walerian Borowczyk

OPENING NIGHT GALA at Regent Street Cinema with a screening of ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE, a beautifully animated adaptation of acclaimed Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński’s early book. 

CLOSING NIGHT GALA – Another chance to enjoy Pawel Pawlikoski’s Oscar-nominated COLD WAR’. The charismatic director will be there to present his film. The event is  followed by a dinner with live music from Zbigniew Namyslowski, former collaborator of the legendary film composer Krzysztof Komeda (The Fearless Vampire Killers/Polanski) followed by a gourmet menu inspired by Polish folk cuisine. 

NEW FEMALE FILMMAKERS 

Female filmmakers from Poland get their own special side-bar this year at the BFI Southbank with Jagoda Szelc’s deeply unsettling psychological horror MONUMENT, Olga Chajdas’s award- winning LGBT romance NINA and the disorientating and acclaimed new film from director of THE LURE, Agnieszka Smoczynska’s FUGUE. 

RETROSPECTIVES 

Two SCI-FI  extravaganzas are on offer at this year’s festival: A major retrospective from one of the godfathers of modern sci-fi  STANISŁAW LEM  will take place at the Barbican. This includes the rare Russian television film SOLYARIS and the East German space opera SILENT STAR. The Quay Brothers also present their film MASK followed by a panel discussion about Lem’s legacy and the challenges of adapting his work to the screen. 

Andrzej Żuławski ON THE SILVER GLOBE – will screen at the Horse Hospital alongside an exhibition of costumes and ephemera from the film. Shut down by the Communist party in 1977 after 80% of the footage was shot, the film was luckily saved by the crew who ignored orders, and Żuławski’s fantastical creativity was preserved.

https://youtu.be/zdpl1mjutN4

KRZYSZTOF ZANUSSI – The renowned auteur will be there to present his latest film ETHER and introduce his 1971 classic FAMILY LIFE.

WITOLD SOBOCIŃSKI – the influential DoP’s work is celebrated at Close-Up Cinema with four archive screenings: Zanussi’s FAMILY LIFE, Jerzy Skolimowski’s HANDS UP!, THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM from director Wojciech Has and Andrzej Żulawski’s THE THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT.

NEW POLISH CINEMA 

Taking place at Regent Street Cinema, ICA and Watermans, the New Polish Cinema programme offers a selection of ten films encompassing the exciting breadth of contemporary Polish filmmaking – from the brutal realism of Piotr Domalewski’s SILENT NIGHT to Filip Bajon’s epic costume drama THE BUTLER via the hysterically funny situational humour of Paweł Maślona’s PANIC ATTACK.

DOCUMENTARIES 

The ICA’s festival documentary strand includes an intimate look at life’s final moments in END OF LIFE and an examination of the provocative work of Walerian Borowczyk in LOVE EXPRESS: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF WALERIAN BOROWCZYK.

KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | Barbican, BFI Southbank, Close Up Cinema, Frontline Club, ICA, Tate Modern, The Horse Hospital, Regent Street Cinema and Watermans Art Centre (Cambridge). 

 

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

 

The Tag-Along (2015) ** UK Taiwan Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Cheng Wei-hao; Cast: Wei-ning Hsu, River Huang, Liu Yin-Shang, Ming Hua-Pai; Taiwan 2015, 93 min.

Cheng Wei-hao’s horror flick is a decent debut feature but horrific it is not. Based on an old rural myth and written by Shih-Keng Chien, it set up Wei-Hao up for greater things, including a sequel, Tag Along II (2017), which scored at the box office. While the original is low on thrills, its horror elements being far too benighted,  monsters being rather too benign, Ko-Chin Chen’s atmospheric camerawork help to keep us all interested.

Estate agent Wei (Huang) lives with his grandmother Ho Wen (Shang), who spoils him rotten. His long-time DJ girlfriend Shen(Hsu) is keen on her independence Wei wants to marry and have children. The feature opens with a ‘Missing Persons’ poster of Wei’s auntie Shui (Pai), one of many who suddenly disappear. But in her case, she returns seemingly unharmed, only for Ho Wen to disappear under stranger circumstances, involving a girl in a red dress. Wei meanwhile has mortgaged his grandmother’s house to buy a luxury apartment in order to keep Shen on side, but it has the opposite effect, and then Wei disappears with his grandmother later re-appearing. Shen discovers Wei in the depths of the forest, where he is captured by evil-doers the guise of babies and monkeys.

All well and good but certainly not remotely scary and the mixture of hyper realism and horror fails to catch fire: the creepy little critters are more cute than frightening. Finally, the finale is like an advert for marriage and childbearing, somehow spoiling a diffuse project even more. 

Tag-Along II is more of the same with the director, scriptwriter and DoP collaborating once again. This follow-up sees four women in search of their missing children; again the emphasis and directive is on childbearing: any women not taking part will be punished. Needless to say the ending opens the possibility for a third part. AS

SCREENING DURING UK TAIWAN FILM FESTIVAL 2019

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.

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

 

 

 

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

Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin 2019

Just as Britain leaves the EU some intriguing initiatives start to open up beckoning us closer to Europe. One in particular is a crossover event that takes place each Spring in Paris and Berlin. And as we’ve already covered Berlinale 2019 we thought it might interesting to look more closely at the Paris experience.

Not having been there for quite a while I realise that Paris has changed considerably since my last visit, and is now home to some stylish new venues film and art-wise. Rencontres takes place at several of these and also visits others beyond the usual Right Bank/Left Bank weekend stamping ground. The central meeting venues are: Louvre auditorium, Forum des images, Centre Pompidou, Le Carreau du Temple and Cité internationale des arts.

The generic blurb tells us that “events include 90% European and French premieres, cartes blanches, special sessions, thematic video sessions – performances, panel discussions and a daily forum led by directors of art centres and museums, curators, artists and distributors who will share with the audience their experience and views on new audiovisual practices. Crossing new cinema and contemporary art, this unique platform in Europe provides a rare opening on contemporary audiovisual practices. Documentary approaches, experimental fictions, videos, hybrid and multimedia forms: the programme of Rencontres Internationales is the result of a thorough research and invitations to outstanding artists, personalities from cinema and the contemporary art field comprising 120 works from 40 countries; bringing together internationally renowned artists and filmmakers with young and emerging ones presented for the first time.”

But actually this turns out to be rather good value, with daily visits to the venues outside Paris – rather beguilingly described as “hors les murs” – with a daily shuttle service to new and exciting exhibition venues such as Ile-de-France, Ivry and Clamart where the latest art videos and experimental and Avantgarde art installations take place.

Cutting to the chase film-wise, the highlight of this year’s get-together is a free screening of Claire Denis’ foray into sci-fi HIGH LIFE (2018) which takes place on the 9th March at the Louvre auditorium. The disturbing feature stars Robert Pattinson as a single father in charge of his (largely) unwanted child, and Juliette Binoche as a wicked reproductive pioneer. They are both attempting to survive in Outer Space beyond the solar system after Cosmic rays hit their shuttle. It won the FIPRESCI prize at San Sebastian 2018. How about that for some international encounters? MT

RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES | PARIS/BERLIN | 5-10 March 2019 | HIGH LIFE RELEASES NATIONWIDE 10 MAY 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

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

 

 

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.

Stranger in the House (1967) **** BFI Flipside release

Dir: Pierre Rouve | Cast: James Mason, Geraldine Chaplin, Bobby Darin, Ian Ogilvy, Moira Lister | Comedy Drama | UK, 104′

I wish I love the human race;  I wish I loved its silly face;

I wish I loved the way it walks; I wish I liked the way it talks; 

And when I’m introduced to one; I wish I thought “What jolly fun”.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1861-1922)

This rather cynical and satirical portrait of Sixties Britain is held together by an impressive James Mason as a disillusioned and often drunken ex-barrister reflecting back on his life, tormented by a mindless wife and a directionless daughter who holds him in contempt.

The Swinging Sixties was a time when parents were not your close friends but the older generation. That said, the scenes with the younger generation feel rather silly and dated and are much less enjoyable that those with Mason who holds court in a well-pitched sardonic turn, and gets the best lines, all of them drily amusing and satirical. Moira Lister is superb too as his sister, and Ian Ogilvy as his nephew. Even Yootha Joyce makes a small appearance in the court scene.

Based on Georges Simenon’s book of the same name, this was the only film Bulgarian writer and broadcaster Pierre Rouve directed and scripted. And it’s extremely entertaining. Flushed with success after producing Antonioni’s 1966 cult classic Blow-Up, he went on to script Diamonds are for Breakfast (1968). Geraldine Chaplin was still honing her craft and it shows. She is dating a Greek ‘immigrant’ Jo Christoforides who is implicated in a murder of one Barney Teale (Bobby Darin). And after insulting her father, Chaplin begs her him to defend Jo in court. There’s some well-observed comedy scenes such as the one on the escalator between a shopgirl and her boss. And the Southampton streets scenes bring the era flooding back to life. Musical choices are redolent of the era as is Tony Woollard’s iconic artistic direction. A BFI flip-side not to miss. MT

OUT ON DUAL FORMAT WITH SPECIAL FEATURES FROM 25 FEBRUARY 2019 | BFI

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

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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.

 

 

 

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

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

 

 

A Tale of Three Sisters (2019) *** Berlinale 2019

Wri/Dir: Emin Alper | Cast: Cemre Ebuzziya, Ece Yuksel, Helin Kandemir, Kayhan Acikgoz, Mufit Kayacan, Kubilay Tuncer, Hilmi Ozcelik, Basak Kivilcim Ertanoglu | Turkish, 108’

A tale of Three Sisters seems like a step backwards for Emin Alper who started his career with the outstanding psychodrama Beyond the Hill. Frenzy followed promisingly, an Istanbul set story of political turmoil.

This folkloric family fable sees him back in another rural part of Turkey, in an Anatolian mountainside village cut off from the modern world. Here three daughters are trying to escape to the capital Ankara, but are thwarted by their poor skillset and the domineering men in their lives.

Almost like a Grimm’s fairy tale the feature is imbued with a mythical quality tethered in old world customs and beliefs. There is even a village idiot who somersaults down the valley with a macabre grin – and teeth to match. But the lack of a gripping storyline sees the film rambling on for nearly two hours without a strong dramatic arc to keep us engaged.

Life goes on as it always has in this village unable to learn by its mistakes. The men drink coffee while the women look after the home. The eldest sister Reyhan (Cemre Ebuzziya) has just had a baby boy and is married to Veysal (Kayhan Acikgoz), a superstitious, embittered loser who we first meet tending his sheep on a cold winter’s night. He soon abandons the herd when confronted by two men looking to buy the fold. And his cowardly nature is the key to the second of the film’s minor tragedies unfolding in the underwhelming finale. Death, birth and illiteracy are the main setbacks for women in this patriarchal set up

Havva (Helin Kandemir), the youngest, and the middle sister Nurhan (Ece Yuksel) seem unable to be trusted with kids and have been dismissed from their care-giving jobs in Ankara by wealthy urbanite Mr Necati (Kubilay Tuncer) who controls everyone’s lot in the village. They have taken part in the Bessemer tradition whereby girls from poor families go to wealthier ones. But due to State changes these girls often never get away again and are abandoned forever in old world poverty. Their kindly widowed father, Sevket (Mufit Kayacan), is determined to find the girls other positions although they are semi-illiterate. 

Before going back to Ankara, Necati enjoys an hilltop raki picnic with Sevket and the village chief. But an unfortunate contretemps develops with Veysal ending in a punch up. Angered and resentful, the herder goes home where he also upsets Reyhan with tragic consequences.

Shot on the widescreen the magical mountain panoramas dominate along with the hostile terrain and climate. DoP Emre Erkmen works wonders with the glowing interiors where dramatic colours compliment the girls’ heightened emotions echoed in the lilting tunes of folk singers and a tremulous violin score. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 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

 

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

A Colony | Une Colonie (2019)

Dir: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles | Cast: Émilie Bierre, Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie, Robin Aubert, Irlande Côté, Noémie Godin-Vigneault, Cassandra Gosselin-Pelletier

Life isn’t easy, as two sisters soon find out in this impressionistic French Canadian coming-of-age drama about teenage angst and sibling rivalry in the outskirts of Quebec. The film also deftly raises the more provocative profile of Canada’s colonial past, without making a meal of it.

It all begins when the youngest girl Camille (Irlande Côté) sees a chicken being pecked to death in the field behind the family’s new home. She is visibly upset by the animal’s suffering, but rather than offering sympathy and support, her new school friends mock and taunt her for her sensitivity towards animals. Later, her older sister Mylia (Émilie Bierre) explains it away as ‘the law of the jungle’. And this metaphor plays out as the delicately drawn story unfolds.

Ironically Mylia emerges as the more introspective of the two girls, discovering boys in her new school and experimenting with clothes and make-up. Looking a bit like a teenage Dakota Johnson, Bierre is convincing as the diffident teen who strikes up a rapport with a slightly older school friend Jacinthe (Cassandra Gosselin-Pelletier) — who encourages her to push the boundaries with alcohol and boyfriends. But Mylia’s not quite ready for all this and finds her thrills in other directions. Soon she meets Jimmy (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie), a thoughtful and creative boy who lives with his grandmother in a local Indigenous community, and through whose character the director touches on Canada’s Euro-centric view of history in a feisty classroom encounter.

With remarkable performances from its young cast, particularly the two sisters, Une Colonie doesn’t try to find easy or schematic ways of portraying growing up, and shows that teenage fun doesn’t have to rely on rampant sex and drugs, especially when home life is unsettled and bewildering. Instead, she offers a poetic riff on so-called ‘rainbow parties’, classroom antics,  and amorous encounters, showing how girls really think, talk and interact at this adolescent time of life. And there are some genuinely moving scenes throughout this cinema vérité gem. An easy-going score of contempo beats and some glowing camerawork completes this teen arthouse package which is suitable for audiences of 13 upwards.

NOW ON BERLINALE GENERATION 2019 PREMIERE

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

Who you think I Am (2019) **** Berlinale Special

Dir: Safy Nebbou Writer: Safy Nebbou, Julie Peyr | Cast: Juliette Binoche, François Civil, Nicole Garcia, Marie-Ange Casta, Guillaume Gouix, Jules Houplain, Jules Gauzelin, Charles Berling, Claude Perron | French, 101′

A little bit late to the party comes another film about female sexuality post forty. Bright Days Ahead started the trend. And Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche did a great job with Let the Sun Shine In (2017),. Now Binoche lends her talents as a similar woman in Who You Think I Am, a much darker and more introspective look at the loss of sexual power and identity in late middle age. And about the aching void this leaves in a woman’s life affecting her wellbeing and confidence.

As Bryon once wrote: “Man’s love is of man’s life a part; it is a woman’s whole existence”. Not satisfied with being a mother or a literature professor in Paris, 50- year old Claire (Binoche) misses being desired, touched and lusted after. Abandoned by her husband, and keen to understand why her younger lover has also left, she idly delves into Facebook for a solution. And soon she’s inventing a fake profile and befriending his assistant Alex, 29, masquerading as 24-year-old Clara, and Alex takes the bait. Conversations with her shrink intense (Garcia is masterful as Dr Boormans) and the two women become enthralled in the story that Claire is creating, Boormans finding it hard to remain professional.

As their flirty chat intensifies on social media and phone calls, Alex is soon in thrall to the woman of his dreams. Claire does the maths and reality bites. Lacking the confidence to meet Alex in person, she has meanwhile grown accustomed to his online attention, feeding her feelings of lust and longing. And she knows how to keep him onboard. But not for ever. As she deludes Alex, she is also deludes herself and this feeling sends her spiralling back into desperation. If she looked young again, she could be having real sex with this guy. But if she was confident, maybe he wouldn’t mind her ageing body, as he already loved her mind. And his feelings were real.

Based on the eponymous novel by Camille Laurens, Safy Nebbou convincingly probes Claire’s drift into virtual reality exploring it from different perspectives. Juliette Binoche delivers an incredible portrait of a woman struggling to cope with the wounds inflicted by loneliness and growing older. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL SPECIAL | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019

 

Waiting for the Carnival (2019) | Berlinale 2019 | Panorama

Dir.: Marcelo Gomes; Documentary; Brazil 2019, 86 min.

Writer/director Marcelo Gomes has studied in the UK and his – mostly documentary – features show the influence of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. In contrast to his last Berlinale film Joaquim which explored Brazil’s national hero, Waiting for the Carnival, is a personal journey into his past: His father, a tax collector travelled with young Marcelo in the north eastern Agreste region of Brazil: poor and dominated by agriculture. Father and son spent many days in the sleepy town of Toritama, where “people were waiting for time to go by”. 

Today Toritama is the “Jeans Capital” of Brazil. Twenty million pair of jeans, or twenty percent of the national output are produced in this town of 40 000 inhabitants. Apart from the big factories, local workers have founded their own ‘factiones’, where the owners have taken neo-liberalism to heart: they work round the clock – from six a.m. to ten p.m. with generous meal breaks. They all own their own machines, producing up to 1500 jeans a day. Often, family members help,  even the children. For example, you get paid $1,000 to sew zips into the fabric. A far cry from the pay structure Marcelo’s father was used to half a century ago, when local workers earned a mere three to four US$ a week, working on the land, dominated by sugar cane, or pulling out tree stumps, as one elderly worker remembers.

When Gomes challenges the workers mildly for ‘self exploitation’, he is sternly rebuffed: “There are people in Africa starving to death”. Nobody starves to death in Toritama today – flat screen TVs and fridges are part of every household. Huge advertising boards proclaim the industry’s dominance, but not everyone is happy with the way things are. Pedro is building a house for his friend. As a reward, he will have a work place in the ‘factione’ to be established in the new building. But Pedro misses spirituality, he dreams of becoming a prophet, but is resigned to the fact that he won’t reach his goal, largely due to alcohol. Meanwhile, an old goat herd still lives the life Gomes experienced as a child. The man is adamant that the younger generation have sacrificed everything for consumer good. He reminds the director of times gone by, when the pavements were full of people in their rocking chairs – today the same pavement is used to clean the threads. Young women model jeans, and then there is “Gold Man”, a jeans manufacturer, who produces ‘luxury’ jeans, costing exorbitant amounts of money. 

But when the Carnival arrives it’s a different story. Everyone who can, sells their TVs and fridges, to spend a week at the beach. Then Gomes is left alone in the city, as peaceful as he remembers it in the past. His father called Toritama “land of happiness” – and for one week a year that’s how it is. Afterwards everything is geared to “365 days to Carnival time”.

Pedro Andrade , Gomes shows a clash of two different cultures divided by half a century –  held together by the yearly festivities. The director might not like the new way of life, but it is here to stay – until something new comes to town. As

BERLINALE | 7 -17 FEBRUARY 2019| PANORAMA SECTION

   

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 

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

 

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

   

The Harvest (2019) **** IFFR Rotterdam Film Festival 2019

Dir: Misho Antadze  | Doc, 70’ | Georgia

Georgia’s past collides with the future in Misho Antadze’s debut documentary feature that unfurls at Rotterdam Film Festival’s Perspectives strand. 

In the ancient countryside Georgia is softly making its way into the 21st century as the second largest exporter of bitcoins. And while bees still buzz in the flowery fields of the Gombori Pass a louder buzzing is heard from the space-age machines that crackle and whir from their neon lit hives housed in disused villas, ushering in a new and thriving form of capitalism.

Once only home to vines and fruit, the rural Kakheti wine region sees the boundary between the natural and the virtual virtually eradicated. Cows placidly graze alongside satellite dishes in a bizarrely bucolic lunar-like landscape. While the shepherds still talk of the past and of family disagreements, their kids chatter over gaming devices or exercise their drones in the leafy landscapes.

This almost silent sinister meditation grows more and more unsettling as the finale looms. Fluid camerawork deftly dices the old and the new in long takes that picture placid protagonists working on the countryside or on computers, unaware that the landscape is changing – both literally and figuratively. MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | PERSPECTIVES

 

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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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

Magnetic Pathways (2019) | **** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir.: Edgar Pera; Cast: Dominique Pinon, Alba Baptista, Pauko Pires, Ney Matograsso, Albano Jeronimo; Brazil/Portugal 2018, 90 min.

Avant-garde Portuguese auteur Edgar Pera follows his weird and wonderful adaptations of Rio Turvo and O Barao with this mystery drama screening as part of a retrospective of his work here at Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Again he indulges in the creation of a Lynchian universe, where past and future amalgamate in an anarchic dance of loss and angst, all held together by the overwhelmingly monstrous images of DoP Jorge Quintela.

Elderly Raymond (Pinon) lives a nightmarish life without escape: he is either drowning in his dreams, or running helpless and disorientated through a dystopian Lisbon. His main obsession is his daughter Caterina (Baptista) who is getting married to Danio (Pires), one of the henchman of the autocratic regime, which runs on the lines of Orwellian surveillance, the TV anchor giving out the orders for the day. During his nightly sorties Raymond encounters the past and present Portugal, meeting among others General Spinola (Jeronimo), who was one of the Generals in the successful revolution of 1974, before he turned against the socialist government and joined Ex-president Caetano and his fellow generals in exile. Raymond is never quite sure if he is living through the period of post- or past revolution. Raymond falls under the spell of Andre Leviathan (Matograsso), a mixture of religious leader and revolutionary. But Raymond develops a jealous obsession with Caterina and Danio. When the couple have sex, Raymond kills Danio with a knife, only to wake up with a feeling of joy despite realising that Caterina would have never forgiven him. 

Whilst the couple are on a barge, Raymond jumps into the water, but is rescued. Fearing the worst, he is amazed not to land up in prison, but back home, which by now resembles a brothel.

Dissolves dominate this spectacular poem of male madness: Raymond is straight out of L’Age d’Or, and Lisbon is a rather drab background, the city’s modern architecture An emblem for the soul destroying world of the Regime. The religious fanaticism of the President echoes Bunuel; Raymond’s hallucinations are the reflection of male impotence. Some music by Manoel de Oliveira embellish this unique feature, directed by a masterful and uncompromising Pera. AS

SCREENING as part of the EDGAR PÊRA Retrospective | IFFR 23 January – 3 February 2019

Murder Me Monster (2018) *** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

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. There are vague echoes too 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. A rather unsatisfying narrative eventually leaves us stranded in its own mysterious backwater, and we feel rather nauseous and bewildered by the end. MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 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 Best of Dorien B (2019) *** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir: Anke Blonde | Cast: Kim Strauwaerts, Dirk van Dijk, Peter De Graef | Belgium, Drama | 106’

Anke Blonde’s contemporary portrait of loneliness in a seemingly busy and successful life will be familiar. And THE BEST OF DORIEN B’s subdued aesthetic and slow pace reflect a deep-felt dissatisfaction within its heroine’s  humdrum existence in an ordinary town in Belgium. Viewed from the outside wife and mother Dorien has everything to live for: a loving husband, three healthy boys and a vocation she always dreamed of: caring for animals in a busy veterinary practice. 

So what’s missing? A real connection. It feels like everyone is projecting their own needs onto her capable shoulders. But Dorien just plods on oblivious. With no-one to confide in while she soaks up the draining negativity of her parent’s emerging marriage crisis and her vet husband’s previous infidelity with a colleague – which seems to be far from over – she soldiers on. In her deft feature debut, the Belgian director reveals the deep cracks in a perfect facade. And then Dorien’s world crashes down. And from this personal crisis comes an epiphany moment for the former wildchild to bring the focus back firmly to her own hopes and dreams. This thoughtful comedy drama with its sensitive nuanced performances – particularly from lead Kim Snauwaert – plays its serious side lightly but makes a firm point: that sometimes we need to be selfish in order to keep on supporting those whose depend on us. Playing to packed audiences in Rotterdam’s Big Screen Competition line-up it certainly seem to strike a chord.  MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | BIG SCREEN COMPETITION | 23 Jan-3 Feb 2019

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

Berlinale Competition films announced | Berlinale 2019

The full competition line-up and special films for this year’s Berlinale have now been announced. The festival opens with Lone Scherfig’s THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS and runs from the 7th February until the 17th. 

Vying for the Golden Bear, there are three Asian films: Zhang Yimou’s One Second, (China) Farewell My Son Wang by Xiaoshuai (China) and Öndög by Wang Quan’an (Mongolia). From Canada, festival regular Denis Côté wiIl bring his latest drama Ghost Town Anthology Israeli director Nadav Lapid brings his world premiere: Synonyms. The rest are from all over Europe. 

There are 20 world premieres this year in Berlin, and 16 films vying for the Golden Bear of which 6 are directed by women.

BERLINALE GOLDER BEAR – hopefuls and Competition films:

The Kindness of Strangers by Lone Scherfig (Denmark / Canada / Sweden / Germany / France) – Opening film. Andrea Riseborough, Caleb Landry Jones and Bill Nighy star in Scherfig’s 20th film exploring the lives of four people in crisis.

The Ground beneath My Feet, by Marie Kreutzer (Austria)

Kreutzer’s first film The Fatherless won her an honourable mention at Berlinale 2011. Her latest drama follows a high powered woman has everything under control until a tragic event forces her life to unravel.

So Long, My Son (Di jiu tian chang) by Wang Xiaoshuai (People’s Republic of China). Once again the social and economic changes in China from the 1980s until the present day are pulled into the spotlight through the experience of two couples.

Elisa y Marcela (Elisa & Marcela) by Isabel Coixet (Spain), The first recorded lesbian marriage is the subject of this black and white biopic from Catalan director Isabel Coixet.

The Golden Glove, Der Goldene HandschuhFatih Akin was born and grew up in Germany from Turkish parentage. His first literary adaptation is a crime thriller that traces back to Hamburg in the 1970s where a rampant serial killer was at large. (Germany / France) God

Exists, Her Name is Petrunya, (Gospod postoi, imeto i’ e Petrunija)  by Teona Strugar. The  male population of a Macedonian seaside town is scandalised when a young local woman decides to enact a traditionally men-only religious ceremony, but Petrunya holds her own in this unusual drama from award-winning director Teona Strugar Mitevska. Brings to mind Sworn Virgin. (Macedonia / Belgium / Slovenia / Croatia / France)

Grâce à Dieu (By the Grace of God) by François Ozon (France). French provocateur Ozon is back in Berlin with this portrait of three men who decide to challenge a Catholic priest who abused them many years previously.

I Was at Home, But by Angela Schanelec (Germany / Serbia). Franz Rogowski is the star of this Germany drama that revolves around a teenager whose brief disappearance changes the lives of his local community.

A Tale of Three Sisters (Kız Kardeşler)by Emin Alper (Turkey / Germany / Netherlands / Greece). The knock-on affects of unsuccessful adoption is the thorny theme of this drama from Emin Alper, whose award-winning, incendiary thrillers Frenzy and Beyond the Hill have delighted previous Venice and Berlinale festival-goers.

Mr. Jones by Agnieszka Holland (Poland / United Kingdom / Ukraine). Two years ago Polish director Holland won the Silver Bear with her eco-drama Spoor. She’s back in the competition line-up with a thriller about the Welsh journalist who broke the news to the Western media about the 1930s famine in the Soviet Union. Vanessa Kirby, James Norton and Peter Sarsgaard star.

Öndög by Wang Quan’an (Mongolia). Wang Quan’an is no newcomer to Berlinale. In 2010 he  won the Silver Bear for his drama Apart Together, and the Golden Bear for Tuya’s Marriage in 2006.

La paranza dei bambini (Piranhas) by Claudio Giovannesi (Italy). A gang of teenage boys terrorise the streets of Naples in this thriller based on Robert Saviano’s novel Gomorrah.

Répertoire des villes disparues (Ghost Town Anthology) by Denis Côté (Canada). It’s always a pleasure to see Denis Côté’s films – this inventive Canadian maverick was last in town with Boris Without Beatrice. Here he’s back with a fantasy drama set in the aftermath of a tragic incident in a small isolated town

Synonymes (Synonyms) by Nadav Lapid (France / Israel / Germany), with Tom Mercier, Quentin Dolmaire, Louise Chevillotte. Lapid follows his 2014 drama The Kindergarten Teacher with a story about a young Israeli man who absconds to Paris with his trusty dictionary as companion.

Systemsprenger (System Crasher) by Nora Fingscheidt (Germany) a drama focusing on an unruly kid who terrorises everyone around her, not least the child protection services.

Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses) by Hans Petter Moland (Norway / Sweden / Denmark). Moland brought his politically incorrect thriller In Order of Disappearance to Berlin in 2014. His latest, Out Stealing Horses also stars Stellan Skargard as a grieving widow whose past comes to the present when he moves out to the depths of the Scandinavian countryside.

Yi miao zhong (One Second) by Zhang Yimou (Red Sorghum) People’s Republic of China ). Always extravagant and visually alluring, Zhang Yimou’s stylish films win awards across the board. Fresh from Venice 2018 and the Golden Horse Festival where his latest Shadow won the top prize. He tries his luck again at Berlinale 2019 with this story that sees a film buff befriending a homeless female.

Berlinale Special at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Peter Lindbergh – Women Stories – Documentary
Germany
by Jean Michel Vecchiet (Vies et morts d’Andy Warhol, Basquiat, une vie, 6 juin 1944, ils étaient les premiers)
World premiere

Berlinale Special Gala at the Friedrichstadt-Palast

Photograph
India / Germany / USA
by Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox, Our Souls at Night, The Sense of an Ending)
with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sanya Malhotra, Farrukh Jaffar, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Vijay Raaz, Jim Sarbh, Akash Sinha, Saharsh Kumar Shukla
European premiere

You Only Live Once  – Die Toten Hosen – Tour 2018 Documentary – World Premiere
Germany
by Cordula Kablitz-Post and concert director Paul Dugdale (Taylor Swift)

In Competition – Out of Competition

L’adieu à la nuit (Farewell to the Night) by André Téchiné (France / Germany) – Out of competition with Catherine Deneuve, Kacey Mottet Klein.
Amazing Grace realised by Alan Elliott (USA) From 1970s Warner footage – Documentary, out of competition

Marighella by Wagner Moura (Brazil) – Out of competition

The Operative by Yuval Adler (Germany / Israel / France / USA) – Out of competition

Varda par Agnès (Varda by Agnès) by Agnès Varda (France) – Documentary, out of competition

Vice by Adam McKay (USA) – Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry – Out of competition

Berlinale Special films:

ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky (Canada) – Documentary
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by Chiwetel Ejiofor (United Kingdom)
Brecht by Heinrich Breloer (Germany / Austria)
Celle que vous croyez (Who You Think I Am) by Safy Nebbou (France)
Es hätte schlimmer kommen können – Mario Adorf (It Could Have Been Worse – Mario Adorf) von Dominik Wessely (Germany) – Documentary
Gully Boy by Zoya Akhtar (India)
Lampenfieber (Kids in the Spotlight) by Alice Agneskirchner (Germany) – Documentary
El Norte (The North) by Gregory Nava (USA 1984)
Peter Lindbergh – Women Stories by Jean Michel Vecchiet (Germany) – Documentary
Photograph by Ritesh Batra (India / Germany / USA)
Watergate – Or: How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President by Charles Ferguson (USA) – Documentary
Weil du nur einmal lebst – Die Toten Hosen auf Tour (You Only Live Once – Die Toten Hosen on Tour) by Cordula Kablitz-Post, concert director Paul Dugdale (Germany) – Documentary

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 7-17 FEBRUARY 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

 

  

        

     

The Baron (2011) O Barao *** | IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir: Edgar Pêra   Script: Luis Costa Gomes  Novel: Branquinho da Fonseca |Cast: Nuno Mela, Marcos Barbosa, Leonor Keil, Marina Albuquerque | 94mins   Portugal   Neuro-Gothic Horror

Dark, demonic and weirdly witty: Edgar Pera’s The Baron is an experiment in neuro-Gothic horror based on the novel by Branquinho da Fonseca and inspired by a film destroyed in the 1940s by the Fascist dictatorship under Salaza – who in the same amusing vein met his death falling off a deckchair.

Edgar Pêra shot the images and then apparently waited for the footage to lead his imagination into a world of ghastly horror surrounding a visit of a school inspector to the strange and beastlike Baron played masterfully by his longtime collaborator Nuno Melo whose hypnotic chant ‘Aqui Quem Manda Sou Eu’ (I’m the one in charge here) will haunt you, pavlonian-style long after the closing titles roll.

To Edgar Pêra sound is a vital element in his films: here in this low budget piece, the soundtrack is crucial in conjuring up a highly mystifying atmosphere to a simple storyline that echoes Mary Shelly’s Dracula. Pêra has Costa Gomes’s script to hand but uses it for reference only so the dialogue is largely improvised. The Baron himself is a Portuguese Nosferatu with Nuno Melo’s butch bone structure playing the leading role in contrast to Klaus Kinski shard-like talons and tombstone teeth. Rather than a hovering, tentative ghoul, he has a frighteningly dominatingly physicality and Kafkaesque presence and is clearly also a womaniser strangely under the thumb of his maid Idalina, played with succubus-like charm by Leonor Keil. If you do get a chance to see this one, grab it! MT

NOW SCREENING AT ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2019| The Baron won the Gold Donkey at Rotterdam Film Festival 2011 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Sundance Film Festival | 24 January – 3 February 2019

In Park City Utah, ROBERT REDFORD and his programmer John Cooper set the indie film agenda for 2019 with an array of provocative new titles. This year’s selection has the latest documentaries from Alex Gibney and Kim Longinotto (Shootin the Mafia). There will be biopics about Harvey Weinstein, Stieg Larsson (Millennium Trilogy), designer Halston, and tragic actor Anton Yelchin. English director Joanna Hogg’s latest drama The Souvenir will compete in the World Dramatic section, and Shia LeBoeuf’s scripting debut Honey Boy will compete in the US Dramatic section.
PREMIERES 2019 | D R A M A T I C 

After The Wedding

Isabel (Michelle Williams) has dedicated her life to working with the children in an orphanage in Calcutta. Theresa (Julianne Moore)…
Dir/Writer: Bart Freundlich

Animals

Would-be writer Laura (Holliday Grainger) and her free-spirited bestie Tyler (Alia Shawkat) share a messy Dublin apartment and a hearty…
Director Sophie Hyde Writer Emma Jane Unsworth

Blinded by the Light

1987, Margaret Thatcher’s England. Javed, a 16-year-old British Pakistani boy, lives in the town of Luton. His father’s recent job…
Director Gurinder Chadha, Writer Sarfraz Manzoor, Gurinder Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

1969. Ted (Zac Efron) is crazy-handsome, smart, charismatic, affectionate. And cautious single mother Liz Koepfler (Lily Collins) ultimately cannot resist…
Director Joe Berlinger. Screenwriter Michael Werwie

I Am Mother

Shortly after humanity’s extinction, in a high-tech bunker deep beneath the earth’s surface, a robot named Mother commences her protocol….
Director Grant Sputore, Screenwriter Michael Lloyd Green

Late Night

Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) is a pioneer and legendary host on the late-night talk-show circuit. When she’s accused of being…
Director Nisha Ganatra. Screenwriter Mindy Kaling

Official Secrets

Based on the book , tells the true story of British secret-service officer Katharine Gun, who during the immediate run-up…
Director Gavin Hood, Screenwriter Sara Bernstein, Gregory Bernstein, Gavin Hood

Paddleton

An unlikely bromance between two misfit neighbors becomes an unexpectedly emotional journey when one of them is diagnosed with terminal…
Director Alex Lehmann. Screenwriter Alex Lehmann, Mark Duplass

Photograph

Rafi works as a street photographer in frenzied Mumbai, snapping improvised portraits for tourists at the city’s landmarks. When his…
Director Ritesh Batra. Screenwriter Ritesh Batra

Relive

Los Angeles detective Jack Radcliff fields a distressed phone call from his niece Ashley and rushes to the rescue—only to…
Director Jacob Estes Screenwriter Jacob Estes, Drew Daywalt

Sonja – The White Swan

Before there were the Ice Capades, there was Sonja Henie. In 1936, Henie has three Olympic gold medals and ten…
Director Anne Sewitsky. Screenwriter Mette Marit Bølstad, Andreas Markusson

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Young William Kamkwamba lives with his family in rural Malawi, where he attends school regularly and shows great aptitude for…
Director Chiwetel Ejiofor Screenwriter Chiwetel Ejiofor

The Mustang

Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a tightly wound convict fresh out of solitary confinement at a maximum security prison in…
Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. Screenwriter Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Mona Fastvold, Brock Norman Brock

The Report

Senate staffer Daniel Jones is assigned the daunting task of leading an investigation into the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program….
Director Scott Z. Burns. Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns

The Sunlit Night

Summer is off to a terrible start for Frances (Jenny Slate). Her art project fails, her boyfriend unceremoniously kicks her…
Director David Wnendt. Screenwriter Rebecca Dinerstein

The Tomorrow Man

Retiree Ed Hemsler (John Lithgow) spends his quiet days watching the news, checking internet forums, and preparing for the end…
Director Noble Jones. Screenwriter Noble Jones

Top End Wedding

Lauren and Ned are engaged. They are in love. And they have just ten days to find Lauren’s mother (who…
Director Wayne Blair. Screenwriter Joshua Tyler, Miranda Tapsell

Troop Zero

Nine-year-old oddball Christmas Flint (Mckenna Grace) is obsessed with space and making contact with the aliens of the universe. When…
Directors Bert&Bertie. Screenwriter Lucy Alibar

Velvet Buzzsaw

In the cutthroat world of fine-art trading and representation, up-and-coming agent Josephina (Zawe Ashton) stumbles across a secret weapon: hundreds…
Director Dan Gilroy. Screenwriter Dan Gilroy
PREMIERES 2019 | D O C U M E N T A R Y
The Brink / U.S.A. (Director: Alison Klayman, Producer: Marie Therese Guirgis) — Now unconstrained by an official White House post, Steve Bannon is free to peddle influence as a perceived kingmaker with a direct line to the President. After anointing himself leader of the “populist movement,” he travels around the U.S. and the world spreading his hard-line anti-immigration message. World Premiere
ASK DR RUTH (2019) 

Don’t let her small status fool you. She may be under five feet tall but Holocaust survivor Dr Ruth Westheimer is a force to be reckoned with, as chronicled by Ryan White in his documentary portrait of the noteworthy sex therapist.

Dir: Ryan White.

Halston

Fashion designed Halston combined talent, notoriety and sheer gorgeousness to become a legend. From humble beginnings in Des Moines, Iowa this doc explores his meteoric rise to fame.

Dir: Frederic Tcheng

 Love, Antosha

Prolific young actor Anton Yelchin was wise beyond his years and influenced around him to strive for more.

Dir: Garret Price

Marianne & Leonard

Is a beautiful yet tragic love story between Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian muse Marianne Ihlen.

Dir: Nick Broomfield

 Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen

In the 1970s Merata Mita broke through barriers of race, class and gender.

Dir/writer: Hepi Mita

Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool

Using words from Miles Davis’ Autobiography, Stanley Nelson’s biopic offers insight into our understanding of the legendary musician.

Dir: Stanley Nelson

 Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Mollu Ivins

With razor-sharp wit, outspoken journalist and firecracker Molly Ivins took on the good-old-boy corruption in the political establishment

Dir: Janice Engel. Writer: Janice Engel, Monique Zavistovski

The Great Hack

Have you ever filled out an online survey? Do you wonder why you received ads for products

Dir: Karim Amer, Jehane Noujam Wri: Erin Barnett, Pedro Kos, Karim Amer

The Inventor: Out for blood in Silicon Valley

Elizabeth Holmes arrived in Silicon Valley with a revolutionary medical invention. She called it “the Edison”

Director: Alex Gibney

 Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

After a stint as an editor early in her career, this American writer got the measure of publishing.

Dir: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

 Untouchable

The inside story of the meteoric rise and monstrous fall of movie titan Harvey Weinstein is laid bare.

Dir: Ursula Macfarlane

Words from a Bear

When N Scott Momaday won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, it marked one of the first major acknowledgements of Native America.

COMPETITION TITLES | U S   D R A M A T I C

Before You Know It

Stage manager Rachel Gurner still lives in her childhood apartment—along with her off-kilter actress sister, Jackie; eccentric playwright father Mel;…
Director Hannah Pearl Utt. Screenwriters Hannah Pearl Utt, Jen Tullock

Big Time Adolescence

It’s funny: humans have been growing up for a really long time, but somehow we still suck at it. Just…
Director Jason Orley. Screenwriter Jason Orley

Brittany Runs A Marathon

Brittany Forgler is a funny, likeable, 27-year-old hot mess of a New Yorker whose trashy nightclub adventures and early-morning walks…
Director Paul Downs Colaizzo. Screenwriter Paul Downs Colaizzo

Clemency

How do you salvage your marriage when you are struggling to salvage your soul, your sense of self, and your…
Director Chinonye Chukwu. Screenwriter Chinonye Chukwu

Hala

Hala is her father’s pride and joy. Dutiful and academically gifted, she skillfully navigates both her social life as a…
Director Minhal Baig. Screenwriter Minhal Baig

Honey Boy

When 12-year-old Otis starts to find success as a child television star in Hollywood, his ex-rodeo-clown father returns to serve…
Director Alma Har’el. Screenwriter Shia LaBeouf

Imaginary Order

For Cathy, life as she’s always known it seems to be slipping away. Her sense of significance is crumbling as…
Director Debra Eisenstadt. Screenwriter Debra Eisenstadt

Luce

It’s been ten years since Amy and Peter Edgar (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) adopted their son from war-torn Eritrea,…
Director Julius Onah. Screenwriter JC Lee, Julius Onah

Ms. Purple

In the dark karaoke rooms of Los Angeles’s Koreatown stripmalls, Kasie works as a girl, a young hostess paid to…
Director Justin Chon. Screenwriter Justin Chon, Chris Dinh

Native Son

Bigger “Big” Thomas, a young African American man, lives with his mother and siblings in Chicago. Half-heartedly involved with a…
Director Rashid Johnson. Screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks

Share

After a night of partying, high-school sophomore Mandy discovers that a series of cell-phone videos of her—half-dressed and semiconscious—have gone…
Director Pippa Bianca. Screenwriter Pippa Bianco

The Farewell

After learning their beloved matriarch has terminal lung cancer, a family opts not to tell her about the diagnosis, instead…
Director Lulu Wang. Screenwriter Lulu Wang

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Jimmie Fails has one hope in life: to reclaim the majestic Victorian house his grandfather built. Every week, Jimmie and…
Director Joe Talbot. Screenwriter Joe Talbot, Rob Richert

Them That Follow

In the rugged wilderness of Appalachia, the members of an isolated community of Pentecostal snake handlers led by Pastor Lemuel…
Director Britt Poulton, Dan Madison Savage. Screenwriter Britt Poulton, Dan Madison Savage

The Sound of Silence

A self-taught scientist, Peter (Peter Sarsgaard) works in New York as a “house tuner”—a unique, highly specialized profession he’s invented….
Director Michael Tyburski. Screenwriter Ben Nabors, Michael Tyburski

To The Stars

In a god-fearing small town in 1960s Oklahoma, bespectacled and reclusive teen Iris endures the booze-induced antics of her mother…
Director Martha Stephens. Screenwriter Shannon Bradley-Colleary
US   D O C U M E N T A R Y  

Always in Season

Claudia Lacy wants answers. When her 17-year-old son, Lennon, was found hanging from a swing set in Bladenboro, North Carolina,…
Director Jacqueline Olive

American Factory

In 2014, a Chinese billionaire opened a Fuyao factory in a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio. For thousands…
Director Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert

APOLLO 11

NASA’s vaults open for the first time to spill this exquisite, never-before seen audio and 70 mm film footage of…
Director Todd Douglas Miller

Bedlam

is the first major documentary to explore the crisis in care of severely mentally-ill citizens. Set in Los Angeles,…
Director Kenneth Paul Rosenberg

David Crosby: Remember My Name

We’re all acquainted with archetypal rock bio-doc tropes: the unexpected rise to stardom, calamitous love affairs, a descent into drugs,…
Director A.J. Eaton

Hail Satan?

What kind of religious expression should be permitted in a secular nation? Holy hell, something is brewing! Just a few…
Director Penny Lane

Jawline

Austyn Tester—handsome and 17—feels oppressed by the confines of life in his small hometown in Tennessee. But in the online-streaming…
Director Liza Mandelup

Knock Down the House

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a young, bold Puerto Rican bartender from the Bronx, works double shifts to save her family’s home from…
Director Rachel Lears

Midnight Family

With striking vérité camerawork, drops us directly into the frenetic nighttime emergency ecosystem of Mexico City. In the midst of…
Director Luke Lorentzen

Mike Wallace Is Here

Deemed the “enemy of the people” by our current president, journalism in America is on the chopping block. Lies, fake…
Director Avi Belkin

Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements

Irene Taylor Brodsky builds on her powerful first feature (Audience Award winner at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival) by delving…
Director Irene Taylor Brodsky

One Child Nation

In order to expose rampant human-rights abuses, filmmaker Nanfu Wang fearlessly confronted Chinese government agents in her 2016 Sundance Film…
Director Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang

Pahokee

Four high-school students, Na’Kerria, Jocabed, Junior, and BJ, embark on their senior year in Pahokee, a small Florida town on…
Director Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan

TIGERLAND

In the span of only a handful of generations, the tiger has been transformed from a venerated creature with a…
Director Ross Kauffman

Untitled Amazing Johnathan Documentary

It begins as a documentary about “The Amazing Johnathan,” a uniquely deranged magician who built a career out of shock…
Director Ben Berman

Where’s My Roy Cohn?

Roy Cohn personified the dark arts of twentieth-century American politics, turning empty vessels into dangerous demagogues—from Senator Joseph McCarthy to…
Director Matt Tyrnauer
WORLD CINEMA   D R A M A T I C 

Dirty God

After a vicious acid attack leaves half her body covered in scars, Jade (Vicky Knight) must come to terms with…
Director Sacha Polak. Screenwriter Sacha Polak, Susanne Farrell

Divine Love

In the Brazil of 2027, where raves celebrate God’s love and drive-through spiritual-advice booths have become the norm, Joana holds…
Director Gabriel Mascaro
Screenwriter Gabriel Mascaro, Rachel Daisy Ellis, Esdras Bezerra, Lucas ParaÍzo

Dolce Fine Giornata

Maria Linde, a free-spirited, Jewish Polish Nobel Prize winner, lives in Tuscany surrounded by warmth and chaos in her family’s…
Director Jacek Borcuch. Screenwriter Jacek Borcuch, Szczepan Twardoch

Judy & Punch

In the rough-and-tumble town of Seaside (nowhere near the sea), villagers flock to Punch and Judy’s marionette theatre. Though Punch…
Director Mirrah Foulkes. Screenwriter Mirrah Foulkes

Koko-di Koko-da

Three years after their daughter Maja’s eighth birthday was interrupted by sudden tragedy, Elin and Tobias embark on a mirthless…
Director Johannes Nyholm. Screenwriter Johannes Nyholm

Monos

Belonging to a rebel group called “the Organization,” a ragtag band of child soldiers, brandishing guns and war names like…
Director Alejandro Landes. Screenwriter Alejandro Landes, Alexis Dos Santos

Queen of Hearts

Anne, a successful lawyer, lives in a beautiful modernist home with her two daughters and physician husband, Peter. Yet when…
Director May el-Toukhy. Screenwriter Maren Louise Käehne, May el-Toukhy

The Last Tree

Femi, a British boy of Nigerian heritage, enjoys a happy childhood in Lincolnshire, where he is raised by doting foster-mother…
Director Shola Amo. Screenwriter Shola Amoo

The Sharks

Rosina ticks away the days of a restless summer in her sleepy beachside town until she sights an ominous dorsal…
Director Lucía Garibaldi, Screenwriter Lucía Garibaldi

The Souvenir

Between script pitches and camera setups, Julie hosts a film-school cohort party where she meets a mysterious man named Anthony….
Director Joanna Hogg. Screenwriter Joanna Hogg

This is not Berlin

As Mexico anticipates the 1986 World Cup, 17-year-old Carlos is less interested in soccer and more interested in listening to…
Director Hari Sama. Screenwriter Rodrigo Ordóñez, Hari Sama, Max Zunino

WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES

One sunny day, four young strangers—Hikari, Ikuko, Ishi, and Takemura—meet by chance at a crematorium. They have all recently lost…
Director Makoto Nagahisa. Screenwriter Makoto Nagahisa
WORLD CINEMA.  D O C U M E N T A R Y

Advocate

Israeli human-rights lawyer Lea Tsemel is a force that won’t be deterred. Having defended Palestinians against a host of criminal…
Director Rachel Leah Jones, Philippe Bellaïche

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

In 1961, United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane mysteriously crashed, killing Hammarskjöld and most of the crew. . It’s understood…
Director Mads Brügger

Gaza

Facing the serene Mediterranean Sea, 17-year-old Karma Khaial stands at the water’s edge and senses freedom. But in Gaza, the…
Director Garry Keane, Andrew McConnell

Honeyland

In a deserted Macedonian village, Hatidze, a 50-something woman in a bright yellow blouse and green headscarf, trudges up a…
Director Ljubomir Stefanov, Tamara Kotevska

Lapü

On a windy night in the Colombian desert, a young Wayúu woman named Doris sleeps in her hammock and dreams…
Dirs Juan Pablo Polanco, César Alejandro Jaimes. Writers Juan Pablo Polanco, César Alejandro Jaimes, María Canela Reyes

Midnight Traveler

In 2015, after Hassan Fazili’s documentary aired on Afghan national television, the Taliban assassinated the film’s main subject and put…
Director Hassan Fazili. Writer Emelie Mahdavian

Sea of Shadows

The Sea of Cortez is facing total collapse because of a war at sea. Mexican drug cartels have discovered the…
Director Richard Ladkani

Shooting the Mafia

In the streets of Sicily, beautiful, gutsy Letizia Battaglia pointed her camera straight into the heart of the Mafia that…
Director Kim Longinotto

Stieg Larsson – The Man Who Played With Fire

Since his untimely death, Stieg Larsson has become one of the world’s most famous authors. His Millennium Trilogy— and its…
Director Henrik Georgsson. Screenwriter Henrik Georgsson

The Disappearance of My Mother

Benedetta Barzini is a revered Italian model who shattered stereotypes by becoming a journalist and professor and gained notoriety by…
Director Beniamino Barrese. Screenwriter Beniamino Barrese

The Edge of Democracy

Once a nation crippled by military dictatorship, Brazil found its democratic footing in 1985 and then, in 2002, elected a…
Director Petra Costa. Screenwriter Petra Costa

The Magic Life of V

Wizards, magic spells, and heroic sword battles are just fantasy for some, but for Veera they’re a meaningful part of…
Director Tonislav Hristov. Screenwriter Tonislav Hristov, Kaarle Aho
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | 24 JANUARY – 3 FEBRUARY 2019 | PROGRAMME COURTESY OF THE SUNDANCE INSTITUTE 

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.

Stan & Ollie (2018) ****

Dir: Jon S. Baird | Cast: Steve Coogan, John C. Reilly | Comedy Drama

When Stan & Ollie begins, the eponymous duo – that is, Laurel and Hardy themselves – are flying high. It’s 1937, and they are major Hollywood stars – but they are also under contract to producer Hal Roach and, as a result, are being underpaid. Ollie is broke, suffering from an expensive divorce and a gambling addiction, while Stan feels hard done by. He wants to own their films, like Chaplin owns his, and suggests they ask Roach for a better deal. Ollie, however, is content to carry on, not wishing to rock the boat – he has debts to pay, and can’t risk alienating Roach. So, instead, he splits acrimoniously from his long-term partner, and makes a film for Roach without Stan beside him.

16 years later, now ageing and ailing, the duo reunite for a stage tour of the UK, hoping the trip will help them launch production on a film about Robin Hood. As the tour gets underway, they perform in small venues to even smaller audiences. In an attempt to turn things around, they hit the publicity trail and, in doing so, remind the public of their appeal. Audiences soon grow, but old resentments and failing health threaten to undermine the stability of their newly revived success.

As Stan and Ollie, Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly are superb, perfectly capturing the infectious energy that made Laurel and Hardy so likeable, while simultaneously conveying the gamut of emotions that occur as their fortunes rise and fall. Though their loving wives (brilliantly portrayed by Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson) do their best to care for the men, and get many of the film’s funniest lines while doing so, it’s the bromance between Stan and Ollie that forms the heart of the film, turning their bittersweet story into a touching meditation on friendship, show business and the art of getting old. The pair are driven by a compulsion to create, even as circumstances – and their own health – conspire against them. As Ollie himself puts it, what else are they going to do?

Throughout the film, the ageing comedians are confronted time and again with comments about how wonderful it is that they’re still going after all these years, and still doing the same material over and over. Such backhanded compliments perfectly encapsulate the poignant tone of the film, but the words also ring true – as Stan & Ollie proves, even after all these years, the material still works. Alex Barrett

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

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

The Rider (2017) **** Blu-ray

Writer/Dir: Chloe Zhao | Drama | 100min | US | 2017

Skilfully melding narrative and documentary film techniques, The Rider is set on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and follows a Lakota cowboy after an accident derails his rodeo riding dreams.

Chinese-born Chloe Zhao is a writer, director and producer known for her previous Cannes outing Songs My Brothers Taught Me. THE RIDER, her second feature selected for the Directors’ Fortnight and has won the National Critics’ Aeard. It’s a poetic cinema vérité drama that explores themes of male pride, family loyalty and thwarted ambition through a moodily soulful young cowboy who is unable to continue his vocation in the rodeo circuit due to a life-changing injury.

Enlived by the magnificent mountains and windswept prairies of America’s Badland’s National Park, South Dakota, a cast of non-professional actors Brady Jandreau, Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau and Lane Scott star alongside Cat Clifford, who appeared in Songs My Brothers Taught Me, make this resonant action drama feel both authentic and  informative on the subject of horse training and competitive riding.

Zhao convincingly conveys the wild excitement and thrilling danger of this male-dominated world where young cowboys are addicted to the high octane buzz of the rodeo the narrative sizzles with angst and poignant moments, where macho bravado must be tempered with patience and gentle coaxing required to tame and tackle the wild horses and train the, to be ridden, and this is where Brady has an innate ability.

Brady dearly loves his family, his father is a disappointment to him, drinking and gambling on the slot machines, but he also fails to comprehend the weight of responsibility left to his dad when Brady’s mum died leaving him to bring up his two siblings: his brother has been left brain-damaged from a rodeo accident and his kind-hearted sister clearly has learning difficulties. But after a fall competing in the circuit where he was once a leading star, the film’s unsettling tension derives from Brady’s bitter struggle to fulfill his future in the outside world, a pale comparison to his life in the wild outdoors, and he constantly torn between reality working in the local supermarket, and his desire to get back in the wild riding and training with his horses.

But this is Brady’s film and he gives a mesmerising and deeply moving turn with echoes of Montgomery Clift in The Misfitas, as a man so deeply connected to the land and his horses that he doesn’t know where else to go. MT

NOW ON BLU-RAY

The Rider won the Art Cinema Award at CANNES 2017 and National US Critics’ Award 2018

 

 

 

 

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. 

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

 

The Early Cinema of Helena Solberg | Birkbeck Moving Image

Brazilian director Helena Solberg’s earlier films are contemporaneous with Brazilian Cinema Novo, but her work remains uncharted to most audiences. Following her recent retrospective in São Paulo, the aim of this event is to bring into view Solberg’s earlier films, such as The Interview (1966), The Emerging Woman (1974) and The Double Day (1975).

The Interview was shot in 1964, the same year as the military coup orchestrated against the then President João Goulart, which established the military dictatorship until 1985. The film consists of a series of interviews with young women from a middle-class background, whose testimonies suggest a correlation between female oppression and the military political oppression felt at the time. The Emerging Woman was Solberg’s first film shot in the USA. The documentary offers an account of the history of the feminist movement in the USA and the UK through the use of letters, diaries, manifestos and archival images. The Double Day is, on the other hand, a documentary that examines female labour in Latin America, from the factory floors in Mexico and Argentina to the mining industry in Bolivia and Venezuela.

Documentary film genre conventionally uses oral testimonies of personal experiences, but Solberg’s use of women’s testimonies suggests the deployment of a feminist practice of storytelling as a way to expose and oppose specific instruments of power. Shot 50 and 40 years ago, Solberg’s subject matters and aesthetic choices make her films current and prescient. (C) 2018 Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image All rights reserved.

 The early cinema of Helena Solberg | Saturday 2 February 12.00 | Birkbeck Cinema WC1

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Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017) ****


Dir.: Alexandra Dean; Documentary; USA 2017, 86 min.

Hedy Lamarr wasn’t just a pretty face. First time director/writer Alexandra Dean uncovers some juicy secrets about Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000), the bombshell who, together with composer George Antheil, invented a Radio Guidance System based on Frequency Hopping, which is today the basis for WIFI, Blue Tooth and GPS.

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born into an Upper-class Jewish family in Vienna. Early on in life she was encouraged by her father to undertake scientific experiments. As a teenager she went to Berlin and was trained as an actress by Max Reinhardt. Returning to Vienna, she worked as a script girl and had small parts in four features, before starring in Gustav Machaty’s 1933 outing Ekstase (Ecstasy), appearing in the nude – which begs the question: how did a director talk an eighteen year-old girl into disrobing? Well Kiesler was naturally blamed and took the brunt of the scandal. To get away from it all Hedy married the Austrian ammunition manufacturer Fritz Mandl, who in spite of being at least partly Jewish, delivered weapons to Mussolini. Mandl was a tyrant obsessed with his wife, and Hedwig had to put on a maid uniform to escape from him in the middle of the night. In Paris she met Louis B. Mayer in 1937, who signed her up for MGM, giving her the screen name Hedy Lamarr. She made her Hollywood debut in the following year starring in Algiers, opposite Charles Boyer. In the decades that followed she would star in 25 features, mostly casted as an exotic seductress.

When WWII broke out German U-boots dominated the oceans, nearly winning the war for Hitler. Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed a Radio Guidance system which would have helped to protect Allied ships from the German U-boots, but the Navy decided a woman could hardly be of any use in the manly pursuit of war victory. Lamarr was Instead told to sell War Bonds which she did to the tune of over 25 Million Dollars. Much later, the Navy apologised, giving her an award which her son Anthony accepted on her behalf. Lamarr, who by then only communicated via phone with friends and family, phoned her son during the ceremony, and thanked the audience for her belated award. In 2014 Hedy Lamarr was officially introduced into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.

On the big screen she played in popular features like Ziegfeld Girl and Boom Town Girl, and in 1942 in White Cargo, cast an a half-Arab seductress, who told the white farmer she wanted to seduce him crawling seductively on her belly: “I am Tondelayo. I make tiffin for you?” The discrepancy between reality and screen life for a woman like Lamarr, who had just invented one of the most revolutionary electronic technologies, must have been maddening. In 1950 she starred in Samson and Delilah, which was the best-grossing film of the year. She shared a passion for aviation with her boyfriend Howard Hughes (“the worst lover I ever had”), but her marriages, six between 1933 and 1965, always ended unhappily in divorce. She had two children with John Loder, Anthony and Denise, who feature extensively in this documentary. Lamarr’s later years were a nightmare. She fell under the influence of “Dr. Feelgood”, Max Jacobsen, who prescribed amphetamines for his many clients from Hollywood, including President John F. Kennedy. Lamarr also designed a mini Ski-resort in Aspen, having finished her screen career in 1958 with the appropriately titled The Female Animal.

BOMBSHELL is a revelation: if you wanted to invent a script about how women were/are treated in the film industry, you’d be hard pushed to come up with a more poignant story. Director Alexandra Dean has excelled with this documentary about an intelligent and courageous woman: Hedy Lamarr’s only fault was to be born hundred years too early. AS

ON RELEASE AT CURZON CINEMAS FOR CHRISTMAS 

The Passenger (Professione: reporter) (1975) **** Antonioni Retrospective

Dir.: Michelangelo Antonioni; Cast: Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Jenny Runacre, Ian Hendry; Italy/France/Spain 1975, 126 min. 

In nearly all of Antonioni’s features the leading protagonists go missing: Aldo in El Grido jumps from the tower to his death, Anna in L’Aventura simply disappears on an island, having simply evaporated into thin air. And then there is his long time muse, Monica Vitti, who loses her identity during Deserto Rosso and L’Eclisse. In Professione: reporter, journalist David Locke has already lost his self identity before the film starts; assuming the guise of dead man only underlines his inner emptiness. Antonioni’s third and final feature in English, after Blow Up and Zabriskie Point, is dominated by the images, the camera circles around a man between two deaths.

David Locke (Nicholson) the titular character, lands in a desert outpost in Chad, trying to interview rebels, the heat makes him indolent. With his wife and adopted son behind in London, along with his TV producer, Locke has hit rock-bottom. He can’t even believe in his profession anymore: having sold out to market forces. Finding the corpse of colleague, who has died of a heart attack in his derelict hotel room, Locke only needs one glance at the dead man’s face to realise he could easily pass as Robertson – not that he’s particularly interested in impersonate him more than anyone else. In Roberton’s blue shirt, we watch Locke swap their passport  photos – as the fan on the ceiling bears witness. 

Finding a plane ticket to Munich in Robertson’s belongings, David flies to Germany, after a short incognito visit to London. In Munich he picks up a weapons catalogue from an airport locker, and is met by two men who give him an envelope containing a substantial amount of money. David has replaced Robertson as a gun-runner, serving a revolutionary African group. A further meeting in Spain is agreed by the the trio. Meanwhile, in London, Locke’s wife Rachel (Runacre) and his producer Martin Knight (Hendry) try to contact Robertson, to enquire about David’s state of mind when he died. In an editing room, Rachel watches clips from her husband’s old documentaries, including one featuring a brutal shooting. In Barcelona, Locke manages to avoid his wife, the police, and the two African clients. He meets a nameless architecture student (Maria Schneider), and they go round Gaudi buildings together. They set off for a meeting with the Africans in Algeciras, an oil port in southern Spain. Their relationship is in the here and now, but Locke, sensing the danger of having to evade the trio , shakes her off, promising a meeting in Tangiers. But when he arrives in the Algeciras hotel, she is waiting for him in the room. “What do want with me?”, he asks her exasperated, before the last act of the drama, underplayed, as undramatically  as possible – just like the rest of the feature. 

Locke hardly says a word in this monosyllabic film: conversations are fragmented, the last part play out like a silent film. The only reality is nature, as the protagonists’ significance shrinks away. The last seven minutes belong completely to Luciano Tovoli’s masterful camera: it pans through the grilled window of Locke’s room, and out into the piazza in front of the hotel; looking around, before returning to the room before everyone else: as in Cronaca di un amore the eliptical movement symbolises death. It is like watching the whole feature again. AS

Michelangelo Antonioni Retrospective | BFI | January 2019

https://youtu.be/him17sDL2wE

 

Bird Box (2018) **

Dir: Susanne Bier | Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, Sarak Paulson, Travante Rhodes, Jacki Weaver | Sci-fi thriller | 124′

Susanne Bier is a well known as one of Denmark’s most distinguished auteurs. Her themes are universal in nature but their focus is intimate and often family-based, both on her TV and in big screen outings. As one of the original Danish Dogme pack, her drama Open Hearts brought her into the international spotlight in 2002. Bier was also the first female director to win a Golden Globe, an Academy Award, an Emmy Award and a European Film Award.

This time, to her credit, she has decided to experiment with a dystopian sci-fi drama . Structurally flawed and not particularly enjoyable, despite its starry cast, BIRDBOX is a laudable effort but not one of her best. Sandra Bullock plays Malorie, a run of the mill artist who has converted her small flat into a studio and is expecting the imminent arrival of a baby. But her ordinary life is catapulted into bizarre and tragic circumstances when a wave of unexplained mass suicides in Romania and Siberia turns the world upside down. Everywhere people display what newscasters term “psychotic behaviour” in the post-apocalyptic meltdown. Cars crash for no reason, and pedestrians wander willy nilly onto main roads, or shoot themselves in the head. To add to the weirdness of it all, Bier’s narrative jerks backwards and forwards showing Malorie’s reaction in the present to the madness that has gone before. Clearly this all resonates with a contemporary scenario where people have lost sight of their goals. This translates into a storyline where humans must protect their eyesight at all costs when outdoors, and are forced to be blindfold for fear of facing their worst nightmares.

Bullock is superbly cast exuding all the pragmatism and resilience she’s well known for (in Gravity and Speed) but for some reason she’s also looking after two children who are clearly not hers. And why the pregnancy into the bargain? The film opens well with the cataclysm but then descends into torpor in the claustrophobically awkward second act which takes place in a house where Malorie is hiding with arch misery-guts John Malkovich’s Douglas and a retired soldier (Rhodes). Later joining them is a sinister but chipper Tom Hollander. This interior strife clearly echoes what’s happening outside, and is only briefly leavened by Douglas’ discovery of a cache of booze. But even when the action moves into the forest the whole scenario is unconvincing. BIRDBOX brings nothing new to the dystopian apocalypse party, apart from the blindfolds – which are a distraction. Clearly the dark forces causing all the mayhem are inspired by Medusa’s Gorgon, but this all seems too far-fetched and strung out. Full marks for trying but let’s hope Bier returns to form in 2019. MT

STREAMING ON NETFLIX FROM 21 DECEMBER 2018

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

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

London Turkish Film Week 2018 | 12 -16 December 2018

If there’s a common thread that runs through Turkish cinema it lies in the vast nation’s landscape and nature that shapes and often divides human relationships. And nowhere is this more so than in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Palme d’Or winner WINTER SLEEP (2014), set in the Anatolia’s mountain region of Cappadocia. Whilst the mountains represent freedom, his human characters fight it out in a claustrophobic hotel. Men are usually out of touch with their emotions in all of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films, and Winter Sleeps anti-hero Aydin is no exception. A former actor, living from his inherited wealth his property portfolio makes him a feudal lord, even though he sees himself more as an intellectual. Living with his much younger wife Nihal and recently divorced sister Necla, Ceylan confronts him with his weaknesses, peeling away his persona away layer by layer. Ceylan pays homage to Bergman and Bresson in the long, vicious arguments between Aydin, his wife and sister where the camera catches them in shot/contra-shot movement, the close-ups showing hurt on the women’s faces, and Aydin’s sarcastic smile. Echoing Bresson in Au hazard Balthazar, Ceylan uses Schubert’s piano sonata no. 20 to score the sequences between Aydin and his wife – the region’s wild horses serve as a metaphor for their seething discontent; in a more generous mood Aydin has freed one of the beasts to return to the wild. Ceylan’s intensity never lets up, leaving WINTER SLEEP as an unforgettable chronicle of human psychological warfare, amidst a towering landscape.

GRAIN (2017), directed by Semih Kaplanogu (Honey), is based on a chapter from the Quran, but can easily compete with the best of Hollywood’s dystopia. A scientist working for an all-powerful Corporation, flees into the wasteland surrounding the heavily controlled city, to find a supply grain uncontaminated by GM. There he meets a stranger, who leads him to a secret location in the rugged terrain where they eventually find what they are looking for. Giles Nuttgens’ stark black-and-white camerawork conveys a post-apocalyptic world, dwarfing the human element. An enigmatic narrative scratches to be heard in this devastated landscape where Ufo-like fighter planes hunt down the characters like animals. Kaplanogu’s symbolism echoes Tarkovsky as his protagonists are overwhelmed by the destruction of nature, a strong ‘end of days’ feeling, where fragmentation triumphs over the human weak attempts to save themselves and the planet.  A terrifying and prescient drama. 

In her debut HICRAN AND MELEK, director Esra Vesu Ozcelik explores the true meaning of female emancipation in a discursive drama set in a small rural community where Iman’s daughter Hicran hopes to find a decent job and a fulfilling marriage. Her childhood friend Melek left a decade ago for Istanbul, where she’s been working in a night club. But her abusive boyfriend has driven her back home. The two women look at their lives but never really find any answers. Again, the landscape is shown as a feature of personal identification.

Dervis Zaim’s DREAM is by the far the most ambitious feature of this year’s programme. Sine is an architect who very much sides with Prince Charles’ traditionalist views in her dislike of contemporary building design. But she is driven to eventually distraction when no-one will support her latest scheme for a cave-like mosque. Suffering from stress and insomnia, she goes into in a sleeping clinic. The treatment has a profound effect on her psychologically and physically: her four different identities then focus on one goal: to finish the project. Based on the ‘Seven Sleepers’ myth, Dream is not only a feminist manifest, but a coruscating critique of contemporary architecture.

LONDON TURKISH FILM WEEK | 12-16 DECEMBER 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 

 

Berlinale 2019 – First competition films announced

Opening this year with Lone Scherfig’s The Kindness of Strangers, the 69th Berlinale Film Festival (7-17 February) has announced the first competition films which include the latest from regulars François Ozon, Denis Côté and Fatih Akin.

Serbian director Angela Schanelec will present her latest film I Was at Home, but, and Emin Alper will be there with A Tale of Three Sisters, a follow up to his dazzling drama Beyond the Hill

Also competing is The Ground Beneath my Feet from Austrian filmmaker Marie Kreutzer.

In the Berlinale Special Gala Section there is Gully Boy from Zoya Aktar (India), Heinrich Breloer’s drama Brecht which stars Trina Dyrholm and Tom Schilling and Charles Ferguson’s documentary on the Watergate scandal

COMPETITION 

Der Boden unter den Füßen (The Ground Beneath My Feet) Austria/World Premiere

by Marie Kreutzer (The Fatherless, We Used to be Cool)

with Valerie Pachner, Pia Hierzegger, Mavie Hörbiger, Michelle Barthel, Marc Benjamin, Axel Sichrovsky, Dominic Marcus Singer, Meo Wulf

Der Goldene Handschuh (The Golden Glove) Germany/France/World Premiere

by Fatih Akin (Head On, In the Fade)

with Jonas Dassler, Margarethe Tiesel, Hark Bohm

Grâce à dieu (By the Grace of God) France/International Premiere

by François Ozon (8 Women, In the House)

with Melvil Poupaud, Denis Ménochet, Swann Arlaud, Éric Caravaca, François Marthouret, Bernard Verley, Martine Erhel, Josiane Balasko, Hélène Vincent, François Chattot, Frédéric Pierrot

Ich war zuhause, aber (I Was at Home, but) Germany / Serbia/World Premiere

by Angela Schanelec (The Dreamed Path, Marseille)

with Maren Eggert, Franz Rogowski, Lilith Stangenberg, Jakob Lassalle, Clara Möller

Kız Kardeşler (A Tale of Three Sisters) Turkey / Ger/ Neth/ Greece/World Premiere

by Emin Alper (Beyond the Hill, Frenzy)

with Cemre Ebüzziya, Ece Yüksel, Helin Kandemir, Kayhan Açikgöz, Müfit Kayacan, Kubilay Tunçe

Répertoire des villes disparues (Ghost Town Anthology) Canada/World Premiere

by Denis Côté (A Skin So Soft, Bestiaire)

with Robert Naylor, Josée Deschênes, Jean-Michel Anctil, Larissa Corriveau, Rémi Goulet, Diane Lavallée, Hubert Proulx, Rachel Graton, Normand Carrière, Jocelyne Zucco

Berlinale Special Gala at the Friedrichstadt-Palast 

Gully Boy /India/ World Premiere

by Zoya Akhtar (You Won’t Get This Life Again, Lust Stories)

with Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Kalki Koechlin, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Vijay Raaz, Amruta Subhash, Vijay Verma 

Berlinale Special at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Brecht /Germany / Austria/World Premiere

by Heinrich Breloer (The Manns – Novel of a Century, Buddenbrooks – The Decline of a Family)

with Burghart Klaußner, Tom Schilling, Adele Neuhauser, Trine Dyrholm, Mala Emde, Franz Hartwig, Friederike Becht, Ernst Stötzner, Lou Strenger

Watergate – Documentary/USA/Euro Premiere

by Charles Ferguson (No End in Sight, Inside Job)

with Douglas Hodge, Jill Wine-Banks, Dan Rather, Lesley Stahl, Richard Ben-Veniste

MORE FILMS WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN THE COMING WEEKS

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) **** Restoration

Dir.: Frank Capra; Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Henry Travers; USA 1946; 130 min.

Director/co-writer Frank Capra wanted foremost “to combat atheism” when he filmed Philip Van Doren’s 1939 novella The Greatest Gift in 1946. Later he acknowledged “the feature developed a life of its own”, becoming everyone’s favourite Christmas movie since about 1976. But on its release, critics were rather unkind – on top of it, RKO lost half a million dollars at the box office. Bosley Crowther of the NYT wrote: “the weakness of this picture is the sentimentality of it—its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra’s nice people are charming, his smalltown is a beguiling place, and his pattern for solving problems is most optimistic and facile. But somehow, they all resemble theatrical attitudes, rather than average realities.”

Nevertheless Frank Capra’s films always have a basis in reality and a moral tale to tell and despite the schmaltz, the reason this film is so universally popular, especially during the holiday season it that it endorses the important facts of life that we know are worth remembering: Don’t give up; Appreciate what you have – you could lose it, and loved-ones are more important that material riches (yes, this is a difficult one!)

In the small town of Bedford Falls George Baily (Stewart) lives with his wife Mary (Reed) and their three children. George not only saved his brother Harry from drowning as a child, he also worked hard for the community and has spent his entire life sacrifices himself for others in a job he’s never enjoyed doing. But it’s only when he nearly loses his life, that he really learns to appreciate again.

As usual, the eventual cast was a long way from the original proposals: Before Stewart, Henry Fonda and Cary Grant where considered to play George, whilst Jean Arthur and Ginger Rogers were also in the running before Donna Reed got the part. In her autobiography Rogers wrote her refusal of the Mary role might be “foolish, you say?”

On the 89 acre set of the RKO ranch in Encino, dogs, cats and pigeons roamed freely. The Main Street was 300 yards long, the equivalent of three city blocks. At the Oscars in 1946, William Whyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives swept the board, winning Best Picture (Samuel Goldwyn), Best Director for Whyler, Best Actor for Fredrick March and Best Editor for William Hornbeck. 

It’s a Wonderful Life won in the technical category, due to the success of Russell Shearman. who invented a new method to produce artificial snow. Until then, this ‘snow’ consisted of cornflakes, coloured in white. But the crunching noise of the actors walking on the flakes, made re-dubbing of these scenes necessary. Shearman used water, soap flakes, foamite and sugar, to save the re-dubbing. DoPs were Capra regular Joseph Walker and the (then) very young Joseph Biroc, who finished his long and outstanding career for Wim Wenders’ Hammett in 1982.

The last word should go to the FBI who wrote a memo after the premiere along these lines: “With regard to the picture It’s a Wonderful Life, the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to sources, is a common trick used by Communists”. Indeed. AS

NATIONWIDE and all over Europe from 30 November 2018

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 Load | Teret (2018) *** Marrakech Film Festival 2018 | Winner Best Director

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 vaguely 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

WINNER BEST DIRECTOR | MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 

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

 

The Giraffe (2018) ** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

Dir: Ahmed Magdy | 75’ | Drama, Egypt

Ahmed Magdy was the star turn in Ahmad Abdalla’s lively musical drama Microphone (2010), Giraffe is his first feature film after three short documentaries and a notable acting carreer. Magdy also wrote the script for the film, which has Amr Hosny, Shaza Moharram, Haidy Qousa, Salma Hassan, Rasha Magdy, Mohamed El-Badawy and Osama Gawesh.

THE GIRAFFE follows the rather lost and lonely character of Ahmed who roams around a ghostly Cairo, mostly at night. It’s an aesthetically appealing mood piece with some creative camera angles and a strong sense of place but the potent visual allure is not enough to carry its vague dramatic arc and shady characterisations. In the Egyptian city of disenchanted drifters, we are led to believe that Ahmed is trying to save a stranger in urgent need of an abortion but doesn’t tells us why, although it does highlight an Egyptian healthcare in crisis. The story drifts from one scene to the next and offers no real dramatic heft to retain our attention, despite its short running time. A plotline involving a giraffe that has disappeared from Giza Zoo also feels unconvincing and Ahmed appears to be lost in his own surreal madness without any plausible backstory. The female characters seem equally lost in their own issues: two appear to be seeking abortions but again this strand is enigmatic and largely unresolved and sadly does nothing to bolster the encouraging message of female empowerment that it coming out of the festival, supporting the film community across the Arab world. Magdy has a powerful artistic vision and THE GIRAFFE would work very well as a short but as a feature length drama it needs a stronger script to carry its potential message forward. MT 

SCREENING DURING MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL 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

Irina (2018) **** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Nadejda Koseva; Cast: Martina Apostolova, Hristo Ushev, Kasiel Noah-Asher, Irina Jambonas, Alexander Kossev, Krassimir Dokov; Bulgaria 2018, 96 min.

Nadejda Koseva’s debut drama very much echoes the work of her compatriot Kristina Grozeva (The Lesson). Carried by talented newcomer Martina Apostolova in the title role, Koseva portrays a woman’s struggle with men and society in general. Unflinching and always ready to challenge inequality, Irina is full of passion and drive – but she must also discover what it means to love and to forgive.

Irina (Apostolava) is caught in a poverty trap. She works part-time in a restaurant near the capital Sofia, while work-shy husband Sasho (Ushev) is a stay at home father. Returning there one day, she surprises Shaso on the hop with her sister Lyudmila (Noah-Asher) but decides to turn a blind eye and instead invites the two for a drink: “I’m giving a party, I’ve been fired”. Shortly after, Shaso gets his comeuppance during a robbery at the nearby coal-mine, and is buried under the collapsed pit props. Irena saves his life, but suspects that their neighbour Varlam (Dokov) might have been responsible for the accident. But life goes on with Irina desperate for work but unsuccessful for the most part . After trying her luck as a prostitute, she answers a newspaper ad, and agrees to become a surrogate mother for payment. The wealthy couple, Eva (Jambonas) and Bozhidar (Kossev), are living in a parallel universe in Sofia, but Irina has nothing but contempt and judges them harshly. Another tragedy will bring her life firmly into focus.

For most of the time, Koseva conveys her message non-verbally, but in the opening scene, when Shasho badgers her for sex (but is happy to drink instead the beer Irina stole for him), she voices her unhappiness: “I wish I wasn’t alive”. Later on, symbolic gestures are enough: Bozhidar offers her a lift home from her gynaecological appointments in Sofia, but she prefers to take the bus. We see her refusal to be driven from the outside of the car, its windows one of many partitions, like that of the doctor’s office, which show her dis-enfranchisement. Somehow, these systemic fractures see Irina as a rank outsider trying to make her mark.

Apart from Apostolova’s strong performance, Kiril Prodanov’s striking images show that wealth can also be a trap: the many mirrors and alcoves are again partitions which shield  the inhabitants from the outside world. Koseva directs with great verve and confidence in this watchable debut, building on the experience gleaned from her short films. AS

IN COMPETITION | MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018      

 

 

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

Urgent (2018) **** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

Dir. Mohcine Besri. Switzerland-Morocco. 2018. 85 mins

A Casablanca hospital is the setting for this auteurish and visually appealing arthouse drama that connects a group of Moroccans from different walks of life and touches on universal themes of healthcare in crisis and how it affects the community’s physical and emotional wellbeing. URGENT is Moroccan writer-director Mohcine Besri second feature and his Golden Star hopeful at Marrakech Film Festival 17th edition. 

On a Casablanca motorway flyover a man is contemplating suicide when rather than trying to talk him out of his resolve a passing wayfarer simply asks him for his pack of cigarettes a then his scarf.  

Besri affecting drama establishes a graceful rhythm in its narrative of connecting stories and is gently moving without resorting to sentimentality or melodrama. His scientific training has given him a sense of spatial awareness and each corner of the frame is constantly put to use in providing interest throughout although the pace slackens in the final act. This subtle narrative inconsistency provides the subtle humour throughout, especially when the man’s suicide is thwarted by a lorry-full of unsuspecting sheep, which then causes a traffic jam where we meet the rest of the characters and the action moves to the more intimate setting of the hospital where the drama plays out before returning to its original location. 

Writing with Cécile Vargaftig Besri introduces to local fisherman Driss (Rachid Mustapha) and his wife Zahra (Fatma Zahra Banacer), who have come to the hospital with their little son Ayoub who is in danger of losing movement in his legs. The hope is that Driss’s brother Houcine (Saïd Bey), will provide for the treatment by paying them back a loan. Clearly this is not going to happen but Houcine feels guilty and the hospital cannot provide treatment for free due to stretched resources, and so they all prepare for the worst.

Meanwhile Ali, the motorway man, is recovering from his sprains and confiding in the hospital staff about his reasons for wanting to end his life. Clearly ‘heartache’ is the reason “but not a woman” and Besri wisely leaves this enigma hanging in the air: They won’t let you die in peace. And when you want to live…”

The hospital is packed with patients and their families but 

unwisely Besri lets his antihero Saïd Bey’s Houcine off the hook. URGENT is full of interesting interactions, a sort of arthouse version of BBC TV’s Casualty soon develops this enjoyable and affecting story elliptically to its close. MT

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

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

Amazon https://amzn.to/2DbNZTh

Zavvi http://po.st/QT2LEq

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

 

Red Snow | Akai Yuki (2018) **** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

An island community is still haunted by the mysterious disappearance of a little boy 30 years after he went missing, in this spookily stylish Japanese crime thriller. 

Premiering at Marrakech Film Festival RED SNOW is the feature debut of Sayaka Kai known for her award-winning short Ondine’s Curse (2014). The young auteur quickly establishes a sinister mood in the eerie snowbound location where her troubled characters are all victims of their own past and still fraught with pent-up emotion and debilitating psychological scars that threaten to break out and reveal a truth too ugly to bear.

Themes of unreliable memory, child abuse and mental illness play out in the sober, icy landscapes where Takumi went missing three decades previously leaving a mood of anger, bitterness and mistrust amongst the broken inhabitants. 

The main suspect is an eccentric female cleaner with an abusive childhood – seen in repetitive flashbacks where we witness the cruelty of her sociopathic mother. Not only is she generally unpopular with the rest of the islanders, but she is also in a toxic relationship with an older man who is purportedly her pimp. And the more Takumi’s brother urges her to share her recollection of what happened, the greater her reluctance to discuss the crime, or even talk about her memory of it. 

But when a reporter arrives on the island to investigate the cold case, clues and truth start to mingle with a trail of other unsolved crimes including insurance fraud and a devastating fire. It soon appears that Takumi’s reclusive brother, a talented lacquering specialist with a workshop close to the desolate shores, could also be involved in the disappearance. 

There are distant echoes of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman of the Dunes to this baleful piece that seems to languish in its own misery. YAS-KAS’ atmospheric score sets a sober tone occasionally giving way to scenes of lingering silence thats seems to accentuate the bleakness of the remote settings. Sayaka Kai makes use of a re-occurring luxuriant red motif that connects the lushly lacquered boxes with the blood of Takumi’s presumptive murder that stains the mournful flashbacks haunting his brother’s dreams and memories, and recalling that fateful day when he left home on a brief errand. 

A strong cast supports lead Masatoshi Nagase as the man trying to solve the mystery. RED SNOW’s visual aesthetic is way beyond what we can usually expect from Japanese first features marking Sayaka Kai as a talented auteur in the making. MT

WORLD PREMIERING AT 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 

 

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

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

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

Embargo (2017) *** Utopia Portuguese Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Antonio Ferrera; Cast: Filipe Costa, Claudia Carvalho, Laura Matos; Portuga/Spain/Brazil 2010, 83 min.

Antonio Ferrara specialises in stories of the absurd – his 2018 feature The Dead Queen is based on a historical novel about a 14th century Portuguese king who had his mistress disinterred, so that she could become Queen. Embargo is a far lighter affair that follows Nuno, a madcap inventor.

Based on the novel by Jose Saramago, Ferrara pictures his hero Nuno (Costa) in the midst of a fuel crisis in contemporary Portugal, selling his revolutionary shoe scanner to everyone who shows a mild interest. He works part time on a hot dog stand, and his long-suffering girl friend Margarida (Carvalho) has to labour full time and look after their two children. Even though Nuno is hellbent on making his device a commercial success customers, nobody has any idea what practical use it could have. Eventually after various trials and tribulations, Nino is sacked from his day job and goes on the hunt for a toy rabbit, to make his daughter Sara (Matos) happy.

Nuno is a loafer par-excellence. Charming and funny, he could be the ideal companion – if he could earn a living. But his obsession with his machine takes over more and more of his life. Made on a shoe string budget, this debut of Ferrara is a labour of love, where crew and cast made up for the lack of budget with much enthusiasm and passion, even. There are some holes in the narrative, but Embargo is fun to watch, without the claim of being anything but light entertainment. AS

http://www.utopiafestival.org.uk

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

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

   

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975): The Personal is Political

Dir.: Volker Schlöndorff, Margaretha von Trotta; Cast: Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf, Jürgen Prochnow, Dieter Laser, Heinz Bennett, Hannelore Hoger, Rolf Becker; Federal Republic of Germany 1975, 106’.

Based on a novel by Nobel-Prize winner Heinrich Böll, Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum) and Margaretha von Trotta (Paura & Amore) offer a searing critique of Germany in the mid 1970s. The film is set during the reign of  the vicious but politically naïve and often ridiculous Baader-Meinhoff gang. They were a handful of ‘fighters’ who gave the government and mass media the excuse to hunt down anybody who was critical of the security forces manned by many ex-Nazis at that time. The press campaign was led by former SA man Axel Springer and his numerous newspapers (Bild Zeitung among them), employing the same staff who created caricatures for the Nazi press.

Carnival time in Cologne: Katharina Blum (Winkler) joins the merry dance and picks up Ludwig Götten (Prochnow). They spend the night together in Katharina’s flat, but she is woken up in the morning by armed special units breaking down her door. They are looking for Ludwig, who is supposed to be a deserter, anarchist and bank robber. But Ludwig has vanished and Katharina is mercilessly interrogated by police detective Beizmenne (Adorf) and later Distriict Attorney Hach (Becker). Katharina prefers to be locked in than being in the presence of these men. But things get worse for her: Tötges (Laser) a journalist for a national newspaper, ”researches” Katharina’s private life and puts together a story (more lies than facts) about her being the bride of an anarchist. He even interviews her mother, hours before her death in a hospital. Katharina gets no help from her friends: the laywer Dr. Blorna (Bennett) and his wife, the architect Trude (Hoger), or her former lover Bornas, who is afraid that his good reputation might suffer. Released from prison, Katharina is visited by Tötges, who tells her “you are a well-known personality now, you can make a lot of money. But we have to stay on the ball, we have to give the readers more and more”.

The crisis in the Federal Republic ended, somehow symbolically, in October 1977,when the Baader-Meinhoff gang kidnapped and killed Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the leader of the CBI in West Germany, who had been a high-ranking officer in the SS, and served a three-year prison sentence after WWII. By now, the Baader- Meinhof was declared a ‘criminal organisation’, the same as the SS had been declared by the Allies. When the Baader-Meinhoff trial started in 1977, the house of Heinrich Böll was surrounded by special units, not surprisingly, since one newspaper had declared “the Bölls are more dangerous than the Baader Meinhofffs”.

True to the page, Blum is “a busy conformist, who tries to do her best to advance”. She is essentially a good person who is caught in the crossfire. The directors also work out that the mass hysteria was mainly directed against the liberal sympathizers (“Sympathisanten”), and that the Baader-Meinhoff gang was used – like the Red Brigades in Italy who kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, was ready to include the Communists in government – by old and new Fascists to cement their political comeback in both countries.

The ensemble acting is brilliant, and DoP Jost Vacano (who later made a career in Hollywood with features like Total Recall) creates stunning images of a country at war with a democracy forced on them by the Allies. AS

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL: Four films by MARGARETHE VON TROTTA – beautifully restored and released by STUDIOCANAL as part of a NATIONWIDE tour from 12 November 2018 until January 2019

Marrakech Film Festival 2018 | This year’s line-up..

The Marrakech International Film Festival has now revealed its 17th edition line-up  which runs from 30 November until the 8 December 2018.  

The competition focus is on international independent cinema, showcasing the latest from the Middle East: Mohcine Besri’s URGENT, Nejib Belkhadhi’s LOOK AT ME, and THE GIRAFFE from Egyptian filmmaker Amed Magdy. These will compete alongside sophomore and award-winning titles from this year’s international festival circuit. The 14 titles include London Film Festival winner JOY (Sudebeh Mortezai), Warsaw Film Festival awarded IRINA (Nadejda Koseva) and ALL GOOD (Eva Trobisch) which won the Best First Feature prize at Locarno 2018. Six of the films competing for the Marrakech Etoile d’Or (Gold Star) are directed by women.

The festival opens with a gala screening of Julian Schnabel’s AT ETERNITY’S GATE (above) starring Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh. There will also be another chance to see Alfonso Cuarón’s Venice Golden Lion winner ROMA, Peter Farrelly’s GREEN BOOK which stars Viggo Mortensen, and Nadine Labaki’s CAPERNAUM, which won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

There will be 17 special screenings including Gonzalo Tobal’s THE ACCUSED and Paul Dano’s WILDLIFE. Also on the specials list is EXT. NIGHT the latest drama from Ahmad Abdalla (Microphone (2010), Heliopolis (2009). Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s enchanting BIRDS OF PASSAGE will also be there (below).

A new strand entitled THE 11th CONTINENT aims to highlight local Moroccan fare in its Panorama section. Amongst others there will be the recent Cannes Doc Alliance winner SRBENKA, Brazilian documentary THE DEAD AND THE OTHERS, Lee Chang-dong’s Cannes breakout hit BURNING, Austrian historical drama ANGELO fresh from San Sebastian, and my personal favourite Locarno 2018 thriller TEGNAP (YESTERDAY) . 

The outdoor screenings in the famous JEMAA EL FNA square will include Martin Scorsese’s Dalai Lama drama KUNDUN (1997), Brian De Palma’s THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987), Youssef Chahine’s ALEXANDRIA, AGAIN AND FOREVER (1989) and there will be classics from Agnes Varda, Martin Scorsese, Robin Wright and Robert De Niro in the tributes section. MT

COMPETITION

GOOD GIRLS (Las niñas bien) | Mexico By Alejandra Márquez Abella

JOY | Austria By Sudabeh Mortezai

DIANE | USA By Kent Jones

THE LOAD (Teret) | Serbia, France, Croatia, Iran, Qatar By Ognjen Glavonić

THE CHAMBERMAID (La camarista) | Mexico By Lila Avilés

RED SNOW (Akai yuki) | Japan By Sayaka Kai

LOOK AT ME (Fi ‘ainaya  Regarde-moi) | Tunisia By Nejib Belkhadhi

IRINA | Bulgaria By Nadejda Koseva

VANISHING DAYS (Màn yóu) | China By Zhu Xin

URGENT (Tafaha al-kail | Une urgence ordinaire) / Morocco, Switzerland By Mohcine Besri

ROJO | Argentina, Brazil, France, the Netherlands, Germany By Benjamín Naishtat

AKASHA | Sudan, South Africa, Germany, Qatar By hajooj kuka

THE GIRAFFE (La ahdun hunak) | Egypt By Ahmed Magdy

ALL GOOD (Alles ist gut) | Germany By Eva Trobisch

THE MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 30 NOVEMBER – 8 DECEMBER 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

Filmuforia GUIDE TO INDIE AND ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | London Area

IMG_3814BACKYARD CINEMA at MERCATO METROPOLITANO is the latest immersive cinema space where its scene shifting theme has now found a permanent home in the Elephant & Castle venue. From now on the ambiance transform seasonally and the latest incarnation is Miami Beach with its own beach bar with delicious Italian fare to feast on. To feel the sand between your toes, flip-flops are provided. MERCATO METROPOLITANO is at Elephant and Castle. The full film programme is here.

ARTHOUSE CROUCH END, 159  Tottenham Lane N8 9BT

An intimate child-friendly venue (ever been locked in with a two-year old tantrum) that offers all the latest arthouse films just around the corner for Crouch End and Stroud Green dwellers.  Membership scheme available.

GREENWICH PICTUREHOUSE, 180 Greenwich High Road Greenwich London SE10 8NN

Showing all the latest indie and arthouse fare – Box Office Number: 0871 902 5732 (calls cost 13p per minute plus your telephone company’s access charge). Membership scheme available
Email: greenwich@picturehouses.co.uk General Manager:

Curzon AldgateDesigned for the modern filmgoer, CURZON ALDGATE is a new four-screen cinema in London’s culturally vibrant East End. Curzon will bring their renowned programming to the venue – ranging from the best of Hollywood to critically acclaimed independent cinema from all over the world. Curzon Cult Membership is now available £350, buys free tickets for a year!

bar-2-v2THE EXHIBIT | BALHAM | 12 BALHAM STATION ROAD | SW12 8SG| An arts venue with an American bar and restaurant here for your entertainment. From art-house to retro films, weekend comedy to life drawing classes and art exhibitions, in an ever-changing revolving programme.

The Exhibit has a state-of-the-art cinema with 12 sofas for two and great cocktails, bottomless brunch (clearly guaranteed not to add to your bottom). There are flexible spaces available to hire and even Speed Dating for those who prefer to meet face to face.

Also on offer: New Year’s Eve Champagne and Glitter Party and a selection of Christmas-themed films.

THE EVERYMAN KINGS CROSS | Handyside Street | London N1

Independent group The Everyman bijou cinema opens in the heart of the 67-acre King’s Cross estate in mid July 2016 with three screens in an office building known as R7 and locate adjacent to the University of the Arts London.

The Everyman Cinema now includes 16 venues, ranging from the iconic 100-year-old Screen on the Green to the latest space in Crossrail Place, Canary Wharf. This latest boutique venue will offer the service of food and drink and an auteur-driven selection of the latest releases together with more mainstream fare and exclusive live events. (photo: Nunzio Prenna ).

Regent Street CinemaTHE REGENT STREET CINEMA | Regent Street | London W1

The Regent Street Cinema was re-opened by the University of Westminster in May 2015, reinstating one of the most historic cinemas in Britain to its former grandeur. Built in 1848, the cinema showcased the Lumière brothers’ Cinematographe to a paying audience, and , as the curtain fell, British cinema was born. After serving as a lecture theatre by the university since 1980, it was restored into a working cinema featuring a state-of-the-art auditorium as well as an inclusive space for learning. The cinema is one of the few in the country to show 16mm and 35mm film, as well as the latest in 4K digital film. You can also experience double bills, world cinema and classic movies in its classic environment.

A fully stocked bar offers spirits, wines and snacks and caters for more filling alternatives (coming soon) to keep you going through the double bills. The cinema is also available for hire and private screenings. Listings information here.

IMG_4169THE ELECTRIC CINEMA, BIRMINGHAM | Britain second largest city Birmingham, is home to THE ELECTRIC CINEMA, the UK’s oldest working cinema and also one of its most cosy and comfortable. Opening its doors in 1909, an era when most people were without electricity at home, the mysterious invisible power source graced the picture house with an exotic allure and silent films were accompanied by a live piano score. Sound arrived in 1930 and the cinema showed news reels from Pathe and British Movietone. The first to shoot and edit its own regional news, the Cinema was revamped by Birmingham businessman Joseph Cohen, who owned 50 other cinemas during his heyday with Jacey Cinema. IMG_4170Today THE ELECTRIC CINEMA offers the latest indie and mainstream fare. The current manager Tom Lawes added a second screen and a basement recording studio. Relax in its leather sofas and velvet armchairs and enjoy screenings every day of the year (except Christmas Day). Enjoy the Art Deco Bar which serves a variety of craft beers, wines and champagne that you can drink during the screening along with homemade cakes, snacks and ice cream sourced from local independent suppliers – our favourite flavour Honeycomb toffee.

Cinema-1246A pioneering partnership between Goldsmiths, University of London and Curzon Cinemas is to bring full-time cinema to Lewisham after a gap of 15 years. CURZON GOLDSMITHS will show films to the public on weekday evenings and all day at weekends. The revamped screening facilities in the Richard Hoggart Building will be used for teaching during weekdays, with the facility available for exclusive use by Goldsmiths students and staff until 6pm Monday to Friday.

The cinema on the university’s New Cross campus is due to open at the end of January 2016. Programming at the 101-seat venue which includes space for two wheelchair users will follow Curzon’s mix of the best in cinema from across the globe as well as documentary and special director Q&As.

FullSizeRenderTHE CURZON SCREEN AT HAM YARD HOTEL | SOHO W1

A 2015 newcomer to the INDEPENDENT CINEMA GUIDE is this latest Curzon Screen at Ham Yard Hotel, in the heart of Soho, W1. The hotel is independently run by a British couple as part of the Firmdale Hotel Group and lavishly decorated with contemporary artworks, completing the cool vibe. Enjoy cocktails or the latest in international cuisine before going down to the comfortable cinema, a state-of-the-art affair, which features Dolby sound and an XpanD Digital 3D capable screen. The latest releases, selected from CURZON’s eclectic brand of international arthouse titles and cult classics, ensure that cineastes will not be disappointed. Ham Yard Hotel’s colourful Dive Bar is open exclusively to Curzon cinema ticket holders for pre- and post-film drinks. No membership required, just turn up at the door. image

THE ELECTRIC CINEMA- Shoreditch (Formerly the AUBIN CINEMA) 

Run in conjunction with Shoreditch House private members’ club, the Electric Cinema provides an unrivalled level of comfort and style for up to 45 cinema-goers offering a broad range of quality mainstream and art house films and features popular titles that are critically acclaimed. A venue for popular events including the. ukfilmfestival.com

Aubin

CATERING – Shoreditch House has a comprehensive bar and gourmet restaurant.
SEATING/COMFORT – seats 45- Velvet sofas and chairs with plumped cushions!
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection. Sky HD, DVD, BluRay video projection. DigiBeta, HD-D5, HDCAM-SR, HDCAM, DVCAM, HDDV. All aspect ratios. Dolby.
DESIGN – Converted warehouse completely and stylishly modernized.
TICKETS – By phone or online The Box Office is open Monday to Saturday 3pm – 10pm and Sunday 11am-9pm.
SPECIALS  – Classic cinema events and monthly ticket giveaways by Twitter.
Map and Directions
Box Office: 0845 604 8486
http://www.aubincinema.com/about/booking-info/

BirkbeckTHE BIRKBECK CINEMA

41 Gordon Square, London WC1H OPD

The Birkbeck is a hidden gem.  Tucked away in the basement of number 41, Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, the area affords ample parking for evening and weekend screenings and with 70 seats, the cinema has recently hosted the OPEN CITY DOCS FEST and is also available for hire.

CURZON BLOOMSBURY  BRUNSWICK CENTRE, BLOOMSBURY, WC1  

141028_386_Renders

Boasting a fabulous minimalist refurbishment by architect Takero Shimazaki with furniture by Eileen Grey, the newly-named Curzon Bloomsbury is increasing from 2 screens to 6. Part of the Curzon group, which includes Curzon’s Mayfair, Soho, Ham Yard, Chelsea, and Richmond, this state of the art complex will continue to showcase quality arthouse fare as a popular choice for cineastes wanting to avoid the West End. Situated in the revamped Brunswick Centre, opposite Russell Square tube. 6 new screens include the RENOIR of 149 seats, LUMIERE (30 seats); MINEMA (28 seats); PHOENIX (28 seats); Plaza (30 seats); BERTHA DOCHOUSE (55 seats) dedicated to documentaries. The more bijoux screens are ideal for private event hire, but avoid the aisle seats in the Phoenix if you are sensitive to overhead lighting.

FullSizeRenderCATERING: Bar at Level 1 accommodating up to 148 guests. Additional bars on the lower levers. SEATING/COMFORT – Comfortable grey velvet reclining seating.

TECHNICALS – Dolby Atmos; 4K HD video projection, DVD, data, mini DV All aspect ratios. Spotlight. Radio microphone..

SPECIALS – Q & As, Bertha DocDays, Met Opera Live, Opera and Ballet screened and Special Previews. Also sells a good selection of arthouse DVD/blu.
The Brunswick, London, WC1N 1AW Map; Tube: Russell Square
Recorded Information and Booking Line: 0330 500 1331

CINE LUMIÈRE – SOUTH KENSINGTON

CINE

Part of the Institut Français, with its beautiful Deco design, opened in 1939 in the heart of South Kensington, round the corner from the Natural History Museum and the V&A. An airy marble foyer and sweeping staircase up to the cinema.

CAFE – As you might expect with a French cinema complex, the café is probably the best of any arthouse cinema you might visit, although it is also pricey. Les Salons can hold 60 people seated, for functions.

TECHNICALS – 241 seats. 35mm film projection. 2K HD video projection. Beta SP and, DVD, laptops. All aspect ratios. Spotlight. Mixing desk. Cabled microphones. The Mediatheque can cater for 80.

P1020884DESIGN – Improvements to the accessibility of the Institut français’ 17 Queensberry Place site are ongoing. Access to the ground floor foyer/reception/bistro is by ramp; the library and cinema on the first floor can now be accessed by lift..

TICKETS – £1.50 ontop for online ticket bookings, unless a member of the Institute. Tube: South Kensington Station. Box Office: 020 7871 3515

SHORTWAVE  – BERMONDSEYShortwave

Independent cinema and café based in Bermondsey Square, just off the Tower Bridge Road, screening arthouse, classic and indie film, as well as championing emerging film talent. Cinema opened in April 2009. ‘Shortwave’ itself launched in 1999, with the objective of promoting emerging film and video artists using events.

Shortwave

CATERING – Café and bar, supplies fresh local cakes and snacks. Organic Fairtrade coffee, tea, etc. Alcohol licence. Free wireless Internet. Outside seating.
SEATING/COMFORT – modern auditorium, red velvet seating.
TECHNICALS – 52 seats. 35mm film projection. Surround Sound and HD projection.
DESIGN – Modern build. Fully disabled access.
SPECIALS – Outdoor Cinema in the Aylesbury Estate, Walworth, managing the Bermondsey Street Festival and the Elephant and Castle Arts Festival ‘Elefest’, curates the Portobello Film & Video Arts Festival.

10 Bermondsey Square
London SE1 3UN

TRICYCLE CINEMA - THE BAR TRICYCLE CINEMA – KILBURN

Open seven days a week, the Tricycle not only offers an independent 300 seat cinema and also a unique 235 seat theatre, bar and café, plus three rehearsal spaces that are often used for our community and education work, Tricycle shows, or external hires.CATERING – Fully licensed bar and café. Caribbean food available pre-screening.

SEATING/COMFORT – 300 seat comfortable cinema.
TECHNICALS – 251 seats. 35mm film projection. 2K HD video projection.
DESIGN – Modern build, fully accessible.
TICKETS – £0.50 fee per online ticket
SPECIALS – Parent and baby Screenings, family screenings, Q& A’s with notable directors and actors, LFF, Images of Black Women Film Festival, UK Jewish Film Festival, DocHouse and the Kilburn Film Festival, Portuguese. 269 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7JR; Nearest tube: Kilburn (Jubilee Line)Nearest overground: BrondesburyBox office: 020 7328 1000

RITZY – BRIXTON  Brixton Oval, Coldharbour Lane, SW2 1JG, UK

In the livewire centre of Brixton and part of the PICTUREHOUSE group that includes Picturehouses in Clapham, Stratford, Hackney, Greenwich and The Gate in Notting Hill. The building originally opened in 1911 and has gone through several incarnations, before its current one, now a multiscreen, with an additional space for live performances.
A mix of mainstream, Bollywood, classic and arthouse film.

RitzyCATERING – Upstairs bar open 7 days a week with a range of cuisine made by onsite chefs. Exterior seating is provided in the large open air bar in the square.

SEATING/COMFORT – 5 screens, seating 52, 111,113, 181 and 352. Adequate seating.
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection. HD video projection. DCP, DVD/BluRay, BetaSP, Laptop. Mono, Dolby and Dolby SR. All aspect ratios. Two event rooms for hire.
DESIGN – Start of the Twentieth Century, a handsome, prominent building now restored to its original looks.
TICKETS – online or by phone- 0871 902 5739 (10p a minute from a landline)
SPECIALS – Part of the local community, music, film and venue hire. Kids Club, Autism-friendly, Education, Toddler time, Live broadcasts from the National Theatre, Met Opera, and ROH/Bolshoi Ballet productions.

THE TROXY, 490 Commercial Road, London E1 Troxy interior

Host to the EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2013, The Troxy originally opened as a grand cinema in 1933 and was designed to seat an audience of 3520 people. In those days, it showed at the the latest films and featured a floodlit organ which rose from the orchestra pit during the interval, playing hits of the era. the Troxy Wurlitzer is currently undergoing extensive renovation and will soon be re-instated to complete the retro feel of this indie locale.

Regularly hosting stars such as Gracie Fields, Clark Gable and Petula Clark, the first film screened was King Kong and after a run of The Siege of Sydney Street the cinema closed its doors in 1960.The Troxy staff even sprayed perfume during showings to make the cinema-goers feel good. The first film shown was King Kong. The last, in 1960, was “The Siege of Sydney Street”.

The building remained empty and unused for almost three years until 1963, when a tenant was found and the London Opera Centre was created here. Run by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Troxy was used for rehearsals on an extended stage which was an exact size of the Royal Opera House stage. In the 1980s, TROXY became Mecca Bingo, where bingo was held seven days a week, two sessions a day. With the advent of online gambling, Mecca decided to close the operation in 2005.
The current owners, Ashburn Estates, have restored the venue as much as possible to its original glory, whilst incorporating the needs of today’s event requirements. TROXY is now deemed to be London’s most versatile venue, hosting anything from live concerts to company conferences, from indoor sports to weddings film festivals.

For all information regarding tickets please contact: 0844 888 0440 and general inquiries 0207 790 9000.

THE LEXI – KENSAL RISE 194b Chamberlayne Road, Kensal Rise, NW10 3JU (map)

A small but perfectly formed informal cinema that often screen one-offs, classic movies and special interest films.

The Lexi Cinema Located in a smart Church conversation, it’s an intimate space with 75  comfortable seats and individuals armchairs and boasts a unique light sculpture by Bruce Munro.  Staffed by an enthusiastic team of volunteers and a small core management team.  Carin Von Drehle is especially helpful and happy to help with any enquiries.

100% of The Lexi’s profits go towards improving the quality of life for the mixed-race people of Lynedoch ECO charity village in Stellenbosch, South Africa.
CATERING – Fully licensed bar. Works with a selection of local caterers to bespoke any event planned.
SEATING/COMFORT – hugely comfortable mixture includes individual chairs.
TECHNICALS – @60 seats. 35mm film projection. 2K HD video projection. Beta SP and Digibeta, DVD, data, mini DV All aspect ratios. Spotlight. Radio microphone. State of the art sound projection.
DESIGN – Small modern space in church conversion.
TICKETS – £1.50 on phone bookings 0871 7042069. Discounts for over 60’s, students and members.
(lines open 9.30am – 8.30pm)
SPECIALS – Valentine Soiree, Kids Club, Parent and Baby, Singalong, outdoor screenings, Easter events, live by satellite, Q&A.

Rich MixRICHMIX – CINEMA AND ARTS CENTRE – Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch E1 6LA

Rich Mix is a charity and social enterprise that offers a variety of activities from film to live music, theatre and comedy to the East London area. All profits are re-cycled back into the community, nurturing new and local talent. It offers five floors of creativity and no less than three state-of-the-art digital cinema screens showing main releases and indie and arthouse world film.

RICH MIX is open from 9am to 11pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 11pm on weekends and the nearest Mainline station is Shoreditch High Street, on the East London Line or Mainline stations at Liverpool Street, Bethnal Green or Aldgate East.

Screen 1THE HARINGEY INDIE

The Haringey Independent Cinema is more of a voluntary cinema club held at the end of each month at the Park View School in West Green Road, London N15.  Doors open at 7pm and the film starts at 7.15pm.  Tickets are £4/£3 (concessions) and there is an informal invitation to drinks afterwards at KK McCool’s Pub to discuss the film and socialise and meet new people in the area.

The idea is to screen intelligent and thought-provoking features and documentaries sometimes inviting those involved in the project to come along for a chat or Q&A session.

Haringey Independent Cinema is organised by local residents and supported by Haringey Trades Union Council, Woodlands Park Residents’ Association, Chestnuts Northside Residents’ Association and Haringey Solidarity Group.

Other details are available on www.haringey.org.uk/hic/

THE BARBICAN  CITY Barbican 2&3, Beech Street, EC2Y 8AE |Barbican 1, Level 2, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS

Two brand new screens (2 and 3) separate to the main event off Beech Street, replete with Camera Café and Bar add a new dimension to the huge and varied complex that is the Barbican Centre, containing as it does theatre spaces, Concert Hall and conference capability, bookshop, library and cafes. There’s an amazing wall composed of film photos and images which allows you to scan information about films portrayed on to your mobile phone.

Silk Street

CATERING – Spacious modern café bar on Beech Street complements the other cafes and restaurant in the main complex on Silk Street, with lakeside seating. Sandwiches, daily specials including soup of the day, salads, savoury tart and a hot dish. Everything made on site. Opening hours Mon – Fri: 8am – 10.30pm, Sat & Sun 10am – 10.30pm
SEATING/COMFORT – Very comfortable fitted seats.
TECHNICALS – Cinema 1- 280 seats. 35mm film projection. 2K HD video projection. Beta SP and Digibeta, DVD, All aspect ratios. Microphone. Dolby SR.
DESIGN – The new cinemas have only just opened as a new build. Full disabled access.
TICKETS – online or by phone. Monday Madness- super deals. Also Orange Wednesdays. Membership offers 20% off films and priority booking.
SPECIALS – Framed Film Club for kids, Silent Film and Live Music Series, Wonder on Film, A Grammar of Subversion, Family films, Met Opera Live, Marcel Duchamp dancing, Architecture on Film, Q&A’s.  Barbican film enquiries film@barbican.org.uk

ELECTRIC CINEMA – NOTTING HILL, 191 Portobello Road, W11 2ED 

FIrst opened in 1910 and one of the first buildings in Britain designed specifically for motion picture showing by Gerald Seymour Valentin in the Edwardian Baroque style. It’s said that the notorious murderer John Christie (1899-1953) worked there as a projectionist. Hands down one of the most comfortable, even hedonistic seating experiences in London, if not the country. Showing mostly indie and avantgarde arthouse fare, The Electric is a sumptuous affair that needs to be experienced at least once. It also houses the upstairs private members’ club ELECTRIC HOUSE.

Electric Cinema, Notting Hill

CATERING – open half an hour prior to screenings, the bar offers snacks, cocktails, wine, beer and champagne.
SEATING/COMFORT – Sixty-five leather armchairs with footstools and side tables offer unparalleled comfort. In addition there are three 2-seater sofas at the rear of the theatre and six double beds in the front row providing a unique cinema experience. Individual cashmere blankets complete the picture.
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection. Sky HD, DVD, BluRay video projection. DigiBeta, HD-D5, HDCAM-SR, HDCAM, DVCAM, HDDV.
DESIGN – Purpose built in 1911, beautiful inside and out.
TICKETS – Online or by phone, up until an hour before performance starts.
SPECIALS – Kids Club, Electric Scream, Membership discounts.

Phoenix CinemaPHOENIX CINEMA – EAST FINCHLEY, 52 High Road, London N2 9PJ

Built in 1910, the Phoenix is the second oldest continuously-running cinema in Britain and redolent of the Electric in Notting Hill. A truly gorgeous cinema with traditional red velvet seating and the open, vaulted ceiling means no pillars. Unlike modern multi-screens, the best seats are in the middle of the auditorium. Atmospheric and beautiful, it’s run by a trust for the community and has a very active fan-base.

CATERING – The café bar is open from 11am every Monday-Saturday and from 1pm Sundays, serving simple breakfasts and a range of homemade meals and cakes.d a SEATING/COMFORT – Proper old-school red velvet reclined seats.TECHNICALS – 255 seats. 35mm film projection. HD video projection. Beta SP and Digibeta, DVD. All aspect ratios.DESIGN –Full disabled access and four wheelchair spaces.
TICKETS – 0208 444 6789 www.phoenix.co.uk
SPECIALS – NT Live, Ballet from Moscow, Classic films, Q&A’s, Membership benefits.

watermans-art-centreWATERMANS  BRENTFORD, 40 High Street, TW8 0DS
Box Office: +44 (0)20 8232 1010

Another component of the Picturehouses Group. A comprehensive Arts and Community Centre, overlooking the River Brent, containing cinema, theatre, meeting rooms, restaurant and ample parking. Makes an effort to be inclusive to Black and Minority ethnic cultures.

CATERING – River Terrace Café bar with wi-fi, comfy sofas with river views, teas, coffees, cakes and pastries, as well as tapas. Outdoor seating. Tandoori restaurant.
SEATING/COMFORT –
TECHNICALS – 239 seats. 35mm film projection. HD video projection. Beta SP and Digibeta, DVD, All aspect ratios.
DESIGN – Purpose built structure, wheelchair accessible.
TICKETS – Friend Concessions, Student and Child concessions. Online booking.
SPECIALS – Discounts for Friends of Watermans, Deals on film and food on Tuesdays. Comprehensive community programs. Parent and Baby screenings, Kids screenings, exhibitions, live events.

RIO CINEMA – DALSTON, HACKNEY Rio Cinema

One of the last remaining cinemas over in the Hackney/Dalston area, the Rio stands as a reminder of times past, with the 1930’s façade still intact and a splendid art deco interior. Re-opened in 1999, after substantial refurbishment and new seats, the Rio plays an active role in the community and has taken on the Turkish, Kurdish, Spanish and Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals in recent years.

CATERING – foyer café during normal cinema opening hours. Usual stuff, plus coffee, herbal teas and a licensed bar for beer and wine.
SEATING/COMFORT – 560 seater, very comfortable.
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection. Sky HD, DVD, BluRay video projection. DigiBeta, HD-D5, HDCAM-SR, HDCAM, DVCAM, HDDV. All aspect ratios. Dolby.
DESIGN – Stylish atmospheric, with the original 1930’s exterior design, but state of the art interior. Three permanent wheelchair spaces available.
SPECIALS  Parents & Babies Club, most Tues and Thurs. Saturday Morning Picture Club and Playcentre matinees. Midweek Classic Matinees. Friends of the Rio membership deals also available.

CURZON MAYFAIR | 38 Curzon Street, London, W1. Booking Line: 0330 500 1331

Mayfair Curz

Re-opened in 1966 subsequent to a rebuild, the original 560 seater was converted to two screens in 2002. In the heart of Mayfair, the Curzon Mayfair was voted in the top twenty cinemas in London and has been an arthouse and Indie venue since it opened in the 1930’s. Even now, it still plays host to a dozen or so Premiers annually. Celebrating 75 years in 2009, Mayfair is the heart of Curzon Cinemas with a rich cinematic history and a dedicated audience of film enthusiasts.

CATERING – Licensed bar and screens. Bar has 120 capacity, free wifi. Shop sells DVD and Blu-Ray.
SEATING/COMFORT – Screen One has 311 seats with 2 wheelchair spaces. Newly upholstered with more legroom than many cinemas. Has two Royal Boxes for hire.
Screen Two- 101 seats.
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection, 2K HD Video projection from HD (Quvis server system) Beta SP and digibeta,DVD, Data, Mini DV. All aspect ratios. Spotlight. Raked stage. Wired microphones and PA. Lectern. Data and mic connection from auditorium or projection box. Full disabled access. Air conditioned
DESIGN – Grade II listed. The bar, foyer and Screen 1 have wheelchair access. An infrared loop system is in both Screen 1 and 2 for the hard of hearing.
SPECIALS –  Curzon Q&A’s, DocDays, Met Opera Live, Opera & Ballet, Special Previews, Human Rights Watch FF, Rendezvous with French cinema, Kinoteka Polish FF. Membership.

ROXY – SOUTHWARK | 128-132 Borough High Street, London SE1 1LB

Roxy

Roxy was created to bring together cutting-edge digital screenings with high quality drinks & food available throughout all screenings.  All public screenings are over-18s only.

CATERING –Caters food-wise for around 100. To book, phone 020 7407 4057 or email bookings@roxybarandscreen.com SEATING/COMFORT – 100 seater. TECHNICALS – Panasonic HD projector, a 4m wide cinema screen and a Yamaha 5.1 pro-theatre surround sound system.  DESIGN – Modern, urban and fully accessible. SPECIALS  – Membership offers discount and priority booking. Also screens live sports events. See website for details. Book your party on a Friday or Saturday night and they’ll give you a bottle of Prosecco too! See here for more info. Phone:- 020 7407 4057Email:- bookings@roxybarandscreen.com   

GENESIS -STEPNEY  | 93 – 95 Mile End Road
Whitechapel,
London
E1 4UJ

Stands on a site used for entertainment purposes for over 150 years. The first building on the site opened about 1848 as the Eagle public house, a pub cum music hall. This gave way to Lusby’s Summer and Winter Garden which was later renamed Lusby’s Music Hall. Demolished and rebuilt in 1939 and subsequently modernised and split into five screens and a bar area. Great coffee and pastries.

Genesis CATERING – Fully licensed bar.
SEATING/COMFORT – Five screens offer from 575 through to 100 seating capacity. Modern, utilitarian design.
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection. Digital projection. Dolby. Radio microphone.
DESIGN – Art deco exterior but modern inside.
TICKETS – Online or by phone. See below. Call 020 7780 2000.

PHOENIX – OXFORD PICTUREHOUSE | 0871 902 573657  Oxford, Oxfordshire County OX2, UK

photo-2

Originally built in 1913, In 1970 it was taken over by Star Entertainments Ltd. and converted into Studios One and Two. Following another change of ownership it was renamed the Phoenix Cinema and in 1989 it became the first cinema to be owned and run by the newly formed City Screen Limited. A final addition of the roof-top bar in the 1990s brought the cinema to its current configuration.
CATERING – Fully licensed bar.
SEATING/COMFORT – Two screens, 198 and 98 seaters.
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection. Digital projection. All aspect ratios. Dolby.
DESIGN – Both auditoria are accessible to customers with limited mobility including wheelchair users. Please note wheelchair spaces are limited. The first floor bar is Not accessible. Advisable to call in advance.
TICKETS – Online or by phone telephone lines are open from 9.30am – 8.30pm, seven days a week. Please call  0871 902 5736 (calls cost 10p a minute from a BT landline). Booking fee applies.

UnknownWILTON’S – TOWER HAMLETS  

Wilton’s is the world’s oldest surviving Grand Music Hall and London’s best kept secret. This stunning and atmospheric building houses a programme of imaginative, diverse and distinct entertainment including theatre, music, comedy, cinema and cabaret. See website for what’s on.

CATERING – The Mahogany bar- fully licensed bar and venue. The Green Room Bar. Lunchtime Kitchen.
SEATING/COMFORT – variable, freestanding chairs, rather than upholstered seats.
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection. Digital projection. Dolby.
DESIGN – Unique, beautiful original music hall, must be visited at least once to experience.
TICKETS – Online or phone, Enquiries & Box Office 020 7702 2789 Monday – Friday (excluding bank holidays) 12pm – 11pm
Saturday 5pm – 11pm
Serving cocktails upstairs Tuesday – Saturday 6pm – 11pm

PRINCE CHARLES – West End | 020 74943654 | 7 Leicester Place

Right in the heart of the West End in Leicester Place, a firm favourite with the arthouse indie crowd, often serving up arthouse films once they have completed a release, so a good chance to catch up on something you missed, if you keep an eye on what’s coming up.

The Prince Charles

CATERING – Fully licensed and comprehensive bar.
SEATING/COMFORT – Two screens- 285 and 104.
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection. digital projection. All aspect ratios. Dolby.
TICKETS – Online or by phone, https://www.jack-roe.co.uk/TaposWebSales/Main/prilon/start
SPECIALS  – Marathons (eg Alien), retrospectives and trilogies (e.g. Die Hard, Terminator, Singalongs (e.g. Sound Of Music, Rocky Horror).
www.princecharlescinema.com

The Rex BerkhamstedTHE REX – BERKHAMSTED | 

High St (Three Close Lane)
 Berkhamstead
 HP4 2HD

The Rex has one huge screen set in a glorious 1938 art-deco proscenium with the sharpest film projection and clearest non-booming sound anywhere in the world. Serves up mainstream as well as arthouse fare.

CATERING – Selection of food and drink, with bars upstairs and downstairs open throughout the film.
SEATING/COMFORT – Throughout, its seating is big and soft. It has been called luxurious. It is better. It is civilized. It reminds us of what we have long stopped expecting from public buildings.
TECHNICALS – 35mm film projection. Digital projection. All aspect ratios. Dolby.
DESIGN – Disabled Access is from the High Street. There is a gate to the right of the white apartment block (The Gatsby stands far left). The gate is opened 45 minutes before the start time of the film, but if you find it locked please call our admin line: 01442 877999.

THE HORSE HOSPITAL – BLOOMSBURY | (0)20 7833 3644

Horse Hospital Cinema

Built in 1797 as stabling for cabby’s sick horses, The Horse Hospital is a unique Grade II listed venue providing space for avantegarde and underground media since 1993.

Situated on the lower ground floor, the stable room offers a convivial and unusual environment with its horse ramp entrance, tethering rings, cast iron pillars and amazing cobbled floor.  Clients have included the BFI, Birkbeck, Central St Martins, Fashion in Film Festival, Slingshot Films, The Italian Film Society amongst others.

CATERING – Organised by function
SEATING/COMFORT – freestanding chairs.
TECHNICALS – video/digital projection.
DESIGN – Built in 1797 as stabling for cabby’s sick horses, The Horse Hospital is now a unique Grade II listed arts venue situated in an unspoilt mews in the heart of Bloomsbury,

THE OLD RED LION THEATRE CINEMA CLUB – Islington’s local indie cinema in the heart of the local shopping thoroughfare.

Seats: The seats are long wooden benches with padded tops and backs.

Technical capabilities: We are capable of showing Blu-ray and regular DVD content. Our screen is big for the space so you’ve a great view from wherever you’re sitting.
Catering: We aim to be selling Ice Cream, Crisps and Retro sweets. We’re also a pub so downstairs in the bar there’s all the beer you can drink!
location: We’re located at 418 St John Street EC1V 4NJ, very close to Angel Tube station. The building is called the Old Red Lion Theatre Pub
specials: All tickets are £6.50 and there is no booking fee through our sales host.
Tickets can be bought here: http://www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk/cinema-club.htm or by calling 0844 412 4307
JW3 CULTURAL, ARTS AND COMMUNITY CENTRE, FINCHLEY ROAD, LONDON NW3

BLAKE_EZRA_JW3_CINEMA_03 copyJW3’s comfy seats, intimate feel as a 60-seater and wonderful café, bar and restaurant – ZEST opened to rave reviews in September 2013.  The original programming is also a big selling point of the  cinema.image (15)

 

 

Partnered with UK Jewish Film to show 6 screenings of Jewish and Israeli films from all round the world, JW3 also shows new releases and run a number of film clubs on Monday evenings including: Comedy Film Club in partnership with LOCO (London Comedy Film Festival), Artists’ Film Salon for filmmakers and artists working with artists’ moving image and the Foodies Film Club with special edible cinema experiences.

For listings visit the JW3 website

THE ART HOUSE CROUCH END, 159A TOTTENHAM LANE, LONDON N8 9BT  banner4

The former Salvation Army Hall (Music Palace) in Crouch End, North London is being transformed into a dynamic new cultural venue called ArtHouse. Crouch-Enders George Georgiou, Sam Neophytou and Tom Barrie are on a mission to put Crouch End firmly on the cultural map.

The cinema will have two state of the art screens totaling approx 190 seats. Run in association with Curzon, we will show a mix of mainstream, foreign and ArtHouse films, including live streams of classic theatre, opera and ballet from world renowned companies as well as regular director Q&As, documentary events and special events.

SAFFRON SCREEN, Audley End Road, Saffron Walden, Essex CB11 4UH

Saffron Screen is an independent not for profit cinema showing mainstream and art house fare and streaming international cultural events. with a view to entertaining, educating and creating a welcoming experience for the local community. SAFFRON also provides full accessibility for the physically and visually impaired.  For the full  Programme click the link.

CURZON VICTORIA

A welcome addition to this poorly served area of London, cinema-wise. The CURZON VICTORIA opened at the end of 2014. Indulge yourselves with carefully selected wines, local beers and spirits in their brand new luxury lounge bars before enjoying five state-of-the-art screens with Sony 4K projection and 3D.

CLOSE-UP FILM CENTRE

This Shoreditch-based cinema club is open daily from 12-10pm so check it out.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE YOUR CINEMA SCREEN TO BE FEATURED IN THIS GUIDE, PLEASE CONTACT US @filmuforia OR ON THE CONTACT SHEET ON THE HOME PAGE

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

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

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 

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

 

 

9 to 5 (1980) **** BFI re-release

Dir.: Colin Higgins; Cast: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, Dabney Coleman, Sterling Hayden; USA 1980, 109 min.

Colin Higgins’ revenge comedy 9 to 5 is in many ways a symbol for the way Hollywood produces films – not only in the past, but very much today. Take an engaged female scriptwriter (Patricia Resnick) who has written “a dark comedy” about female harassment in the workplace. It is produced by the company of the leading star (Jane Fonda), who is afraid that “the women would not be sympathetic enough”. And then, the coup-de-grace, put a male director (Colin Higgins ) in charge (literally), who told Resnick “I write by myself, I am not going to write with you. I believe, there is one captain on (the) set, the director. If you want to visit on set once and have lunch, that’s fine”. The result was 9 to 5. Higgins was gay and died of AIDS aged 47. 

Three women meet in the offices of Consolidated Industries: Violet Newstead (Tomlin), the efficient office manager hoping to be promoted to management level; Doralee Rhodes (Parton), secretary to her sexist, scheming and downright nasty boss Franklin Hart Jr. (Coleman) The trio was completed by newcomer Judy Bernly (Fonda), newly divorced and still broken-hearted.

Hart lusts madly after Rhodes who gives him the cold shoulder. He ‘employs’ an office snitch who sits in the toilet cubicle, noting down the conversations of the staff on toilet paper. The three women spring into action after Hart overlooks Newstead for a promotion, choosing a man instead. Newstead finds out her boss is embezzling money from the company, but the papers they need as proof will only be available in two week’s hence. So they kidnap Hart and imprison him in his own empty house. Meanwhile he has sent away his wife on a long holiday so he can pursue his secretary. Although Hart escapes, putting the stolen merchandise back, his boss Tinsworthy (Hayden) is so taken by the changes Newstead has made to office life in Hart’s name (gliding working hours, on site-crèche, equal payment for both genders) that he promotes Hart to a senior position in Brazil, with Newstead replacing him.

Higgins (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) created a farce, including Warner Brother cartoons and over-the-top dream sequences. Roger Ebert wrote after the premiere “Nine to Five is a good-hearted, simple-minded comedy that will have a place in film history, I suspect, primarily, because it features the movie debut of Dolly Parton”. Later he concedes “it also has a dash of social commentary”. One can see, that Fonda/Higgins succeeded in “making the social message more palatable”. 

Whilst Fonda is planning a sequel, Resnick is more realistic: “In some ways we have moved forward a little bit, but one of our political parties seems to be trying to undo what little we’ve been able to do. The other thing is that so many people think all this has been settled.’ After Resnick was involved in a musical version of 9 to 5 on Broadway, most male journalists opined: “Well. None of these issues are a problem in contemporary life, so how are women of today going to relate to it all?” Well there have been some changes: You cannot sexually harass someone as obviously, and we do not call people ‘secretaries’. Apart from that, life goes on as it always did. But people would kill to work just from 9 to 5.” AS

SCREENING FROM 16 NOVEMBER 2018 NATIONWIDE

 

    

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

Winter Hunt (2017) ** UK Jewish Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Astrid Schult; Cast: Carolyn Genzkow, Michel Degen, Elisabeth Degen; Deutschland 2017, 75′

Winter Hunt is an earnest attempt to address the crimes of the Holocaust. Unfortunately the drama is hampered by the inexperience of its crew and cast. Trying to come to terms with the guilt of the Nation’s involvement has one again proved too much for these German filmmakers. They try to keep it real, but are simply not up to the task: and come across as worthy artisans of their craft, when mastery is required.

The film starts off in thriller territory. A young woman called Lena (Genzkow) is investigating the case of Nazi war criminal and KZ guard Anselm Rossberg (M. Degen), who now lives in a remote wooded location with his daughter Maria (E. Degen), after his recent trial. On the pretext of a faked car accident, Lena forces her way into his property where a verbal exchange of lies and counter-arguments sees the old man plead his innocence. She is soon overpowered by the father and daughter, confessing to be his granddaughter, and opening the way for a rather far- fetched fatal resolve.

Schult tries too hard to ‘make something happen’, but has nothing new to bring to the Holocaust story  – her implausible narrative is shot through with plotholes. The pervasive haunted-house atmosphere gives Winter Hunt the impression of one of those Sherlock Holmes dramas of the 1940s. DoP Katherina Bühler tries in vain to give this parlour piece an atmospheric shot in the arm, but the acting can’t save this worthy endeavour: clumsily raised voices are the rule, and flaying limbs and dramatic hand gestures fail to convince us of their anguish. Sadly, this is a rather amateur affair. AS  

UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | 8 NOVEMBER – 27 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

The Marvellous Mabel Normand **** BFI Comedy Genius 2018


The BFI’s upcoming COMEDY GENIUS SEASON features a new set of four shorts starring the queen of silent comedy, Mabel Normand.

Mabel Normand (1892-1930) had a short but eventful life: she was a pioneer of Silent Movies as a star actress (in 220) and director (in 10) between 1910 and 1927. Working alongside Charlie Chaplin, she ended up saving his career at Mack Sennetts’ Keystone – the producer wanted to sack him. Normand also developed Chaplin’s ‘tramp’ screen personality. But she was, more or less, accidentally involved in the murder of William Desmond Taylor and the shooting of Courtland S. Dines, as well as being a friend (and co-star) of ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, whose life was a series of scandals. Normand suffered for a long time from TB, interrupting her career and leading to her early death at the age of 37.

Mable’s Blunder (1914) 

Dir.: Mack Sennett, Cast: Mabel Normand, Mack Sennett, Harry McCoy, Charles Bennett, Eva Nelson; USA 1914, 13 min.

Mable’s Dramatic Career (1913)

Dir.: Mack Sennett; Cast: Mable Normand, Mack Sennett, Alice Davenport, Virginia Kirtley; USA 1913, 14 min.

His Trysting Places (1914)

Dir.: Charlie Chaplin; Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Mark Swain, Phyllis Allen; USA 1914, 32 min.

Should Men walk Home (1927) 

Dir.: Leo McCarey; Cast: Mabel Normand, Creighton Hale, Eugene Pallette, Oliver Hardy; USA 1927, 35 min

Mabel’s Blunder is a screwball comedy of cross-dressing. Mabel (Normand) bizarrely ends up being fancied by her fiancée (Bennet) and his father Harry (McCoy) – in a bizarre turn of events that naturally sees her compromised and embarrassed.  But things get worse when the fiancée’s sister (Nelson) arrives and is also keen on her own brother. Far too fond – in the eyes of Mabel- who doesn’t realise what’s going on, and suspects she has a rival. Mabel changes into male clothing and teaches both men a lesson. Directed by Mack Sennett, this is a turbulent but elegantly comic sketch.

Sennett was also the director of Mabel’s Dramatic Career, in which Normand plays a maid in love with the young Master of the house (Sennett) whose mother (Davenport) really prefers a real ‘lady’ for her son. Mabel is dismissed, but makes a career in the movies. This leads to great unhappiness on the part of the son, when he see his ex-flame on the cinema screen. The final scene is a showcase showdown.

In His Trysting Places Charlie Chaplin directed himself and Normand as couple who fall foul of a comedy involving a mix-up in coats. Chaplin is supposed to get a bottle for the couple’s daughter, but takes the wrong coat in a pub. Mabel finds a letter for a rendezvous in the pocket. She throws a fit. At  the same time, the owner of the coat (Swain) meets his girl friend  (Allen) in the park. She finds a baby-bottle in his coat pocket, and suspects that he has a child with a rival. The helter-skelter of the solution is mad slapstick but hilarious and brilliantly timed.

Should Men Walk Home, directed by Leo McCarey (for producer Hal Roach) is Normand’s penultimate feature. Also known as Girl Bandit, Mabel plays an upmarket lady robber, who together with her friend (Hale), tries to rob a wealthy man during a party. A detective (Pallette) stumbles through the film, always missing the clues, whilst Oliver Hardy has a small, but poignant role as a guest. When it comes to farce, McCarey was one of the best directors, and the finale even features an underwater sequence. Avantgarde and beautifully carried off.

SCREENING AS PART OF BFI’s COMEDY GENIUS season NATIONWIDE from 9 November 2018

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

 

Treeless Mountain (2008) *** London Korean Film Festival 2018

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Dir.: So-yong Kim; Cast: Hee Yeon Kim, Songhe Kim, Lee Soo Ah, Mi-hyang Kim, Boon Tak Park; USA/South Korea 2008, 89 min.

Two young children are passed around like parcels in So-yong Kim’s touching but unsentimental study of child development and sisterly love.

This thoughtful study of childhood trauma relies largely on its delicate visuals and great subtlety to explore the little girls’ world with a charming lightness of touch.

In Seoul, six-year old Jin (Yeon Kim) and her younger sister Bin (Songhe Kim) live with their mother (Lee Soo Ah) in reduced circumstances. Their father is no longer on the scene, forcing their mother to take them to the country where they will live with their great-aunt (Mi-hyang Kim), who just happens to be an alcoholic. Eventually, they are dumped on their elderly grandparents who run a farm.

The story revolves around their changing relation dynamic. At first, Jin is the strong one, bolstered by her school life and feeling of superiority. But when her mother decides to leave, Jin starts wetting the bed – a clear sign of insecurity. Not surprisingly, Bin is less affected by the new surroundings in her aunt’s house, and while Jin continues to wet the bed, their aunt mistakenly blaming her little sister for it.

Bin soon becomes the practical one, catching grasshoppers and roasting them to sell. She also finds a good way of filling their mother’s pink piggy bank with the coins for her speedy return. But Jin becomes introverted, desperate to see her mother, who never appears despite her promise. And so the kids wait in vain on the treeless mountain, before Jin declares “Mummy has told a big lie.”

Bin soon loses all enthusiasm, whilst Jin perks up, once again asserting her authority as the older girl. On the farm, their caring grandmother (Boon Tak Park), takes over the motherly role the kids desperately need, offering them the patience they will need to develop into secure teenagers.

This sensitive hommage to Bresson’s Mouchette and Jacques Dillon’s Ponette, Treeless Mountain lets Anne Misewa’s exquisite camerawork do the talking, concentrating on the intricate expressions of childhood joy and dismay. A moving exploration of childhood that makes a lasting impression. AS

London Korean FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 

     

   

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

    

  

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

 

Some Like it Hot (1959) *****


Dir: Billy Wilder | Writer: I A L Diamond | Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon | US Comedy Drama | 123’

Set in Prohibition-era Chicago, this classic of all classic comedies features an all-star cast of Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. The men play a couple of struggling musicians in the wrong place at the wrong time when they witness the Valentines Day Massacre. Finding themselves on the run from the mob, they accept a new gig out of town as part of an all-girl jazz troupe, where they will meet Marilyn Monroe. Dragged up and made-up they’re soon raring to go – but can they keep their act together?

Billy Wilder’s multi-awarded feature picked up the Oscar in 1960, for Orry Kelly’s costume design.

The film played at BFI London Film Festival 2018 and will open at the BFI Southbank and at selected venues across the UK courtesy of Park Circus.

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

Artes Mundi 8 Award | National Museum Cardiff

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM in Cardiff is playing host to the UK’s largest international art prize Artes Mundi. From the 26 October until 24 February 2019 the exhibition showcases the five finalists competing for this coveted award.

Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul has joined the list with his latest work INVISIBILITY, a short film melding cinema with contemporary art and riffing on the signature themes that permeated Cemetery of Splendour (2016) and his 2006 debut Syndromes and a Century. Also short-listed for this year’s Artes Mundi award is French-Moroccan artist and filmmaker, Bouchra Khalili. Her short film Twenty-Two Hours took part in this year’s BFI London Film Festival. 

In Twenty-Two Hours, Bouchra Khalili (left) considers how celebrated French writer Jean Genet was invited by the Black Panther Party to secretly visit them in in the U.S in 1970. The film features Doug Miranda, a former prominent member of the Black Panther Party. Echoing BlacKKKlansman, the film questions how we might transmit the historical voice of resistance into the present.

This year’s selection has been distilled from over 450 entries, from 86 countries. The judging committee includes Anthony Shapland, creative director of Cardiff’s g39 gallery. Artes Mundi is a charity founded in 2002.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apichatpong’s work deals with memory, personal politics, and social issues in his native Thailand. With over 40 films under his belt, and still only 48, he is a Cannes Film Festival regular, where he won the Palme d’Or in 2010 for his fantasy drama Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and the Jury prize for Tropical Malady in 2004. Cemetery of Splendour (2015/above) was selected to World premiere in the arthouse Un Certain Regard sidebar, and his love story Blissfully Yours won the UCR award in 2002. His surreal and enigmatic open-ended outings evoke the essence of his homeland through mysterious narratives that often remain unsolved, and are best savoured rather than explained. These fables often have a political undercurrent that we can take or leave, depending on our mood. The past and the present co-exist, and while the focus is general Thai history and folklore, the features have a universal quality exploring love and loss, tradition and the supernatural. His rich reveries explore dreams, nature, and sexuality, alongside Western perceptions of Asia. His recent outing Ten Years in Thailand (2018) is a collaboration between three of his compatriots, and premiered during this year’s Sitges – Catalonia Film Festival.

Experimental in nature, Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) is a film of captivating beauty that blends facts and fiction in a story passed from one person to another, Blissfully Yours (2002)is a languid affair that sees two illegal Burmese immigrants enjoys a leisurely afternoon at a remote rural backwater, in the politically charged location between Thailand and Myanmar). One of them is suffering from the after affects of hiding from the authorities in a septic tank. Tropical Malady (2004) sees a love affair gently blossom in the twilight zone between reality and the spirit world, and Uncle Boonmee (2010) also deals in this dreamlike world when a dying man communes with his family, past and present, roaming to the north of Thailand where spends his final days in the birthplace of his first life. Syndromes and a Century (2006) and psychic drama Cemetery of Splendour (2016) both deal with patients and their carers in a rural hospital setting in lush jungle. Bangkok and a countryside clinic is also the backdrop to the unconsummated love story Syndromes and a Century, one of  Weerasethakul’s more accessible films. Music plays a vital role in his features. More often than not, his lulling melodies and soft refrains complement the dreamlike narratives that ask us to abandon ourselves to reverie – and go with the flow. In Mekong Hotel (2012) guitar music accompanies a shifting tale of fact and fiction between a vampire and her daughter in a hotel situated by the Mekong River. Ambient sound in also a used to recreate the intensely sensuous nature of the early scenes of Syndromes and a Century. Traditional folks songs also feature in this autobiographical work that explores the director’s early days at home with his medic parents.

Moroccan-French artist Bouchra Khalili works with film, video and mixed media. Her focus is on ethnic and political minorities examining the complex relationship between the individual and the community. She is also a Professor of Contemporary Art at The Oslo National Art Academy and a founding member of La Cinematheque de Tanger, an artist-run non-profit organisation based in Tangiers, Morocco. She was the recipient of the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship from Harvard University (2017-2018). Her latest film installation is Twenty-Two Hours (2018).

The three other short-listed artists are: Anna Boghiguian, Otobong Nkanga and Trevor Paglen. The prize will be awarded in January 2019.

NATIONAL MUSEUM CARDIFF | 26 OCTOBER – 24 JANUARY 2019  ARTES MUNDI

 

 

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 

Working Woman (Isha Ovedet) 2017 ****

Dir.: Michal Aviad; Cast: Liron Ben-Slush, Menashe Noy, Oshi Cohen; Israel 2018, 93 min.

Best known her documentaries Michal Aviad (Invisible) sophomore feature is more a study of make incompetence than female empowerment. It tackles the timely issue of sexual harassment in the workplace in a detailed casestudy of a woman who has her work cut out both at home and in the office.

Orna (Ben-Slush) is feeling really positive about her new job in her former army boss’s property company. “Benny knows I’m hard working”, she tells her husband Ofer (Cohen), whose restaurant is struggling. But Ofer has his head in the clouds, with his foodie vanity project. Meanwhile in the world of real estate, Benny (Noy) starts his campaign to ‘groom’ Orna, immediately asking to wear a nice skirt instead of trousers, and letting her hair down “because it suits you”. But when he kisses the working mother of three, he over-steps the mark and makes up for it by offering Orna a promotion and securing an alcohol licence for Ofer’s restaurant.

Benny then whisks Orna off to Paris on the pretence of using her language skills for some company business. Carried away by the ambience, the makes another move on Orna but sadly fails to perform: “You are driving me crazy”, he complains, putting the blame (in time honoured male fashion) on this highly capable woman. Orna immediately leaves Benny’s company, but when he refuses to give her a reference, she is forced to take things into her own hands.

Liron Ben-Slush is the heart and soul of this absorbing drama about a positive woman caught between two impossible men, who both want to exploit her in different ways, relying on her good humour and generosity of spirit to get their own way. Ofer is like a forth child, expecting her to take carry the whole family, while pandering to his ego. Benny is the typical male chauvinist, determined to have his way with Orna, and blaming her when it all backfires. Orna feels guilty and responsible, and has to re-invent herself to survive in this subtle chamber piece, supported by its convincing cast. Aviad creates an important chapter in the ongoing #MeToo campaign. AS

SCREENING DURING UK Jewish Film Festival 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 Evil Dead (1981) ***

Writer/Dir: Sam Raimi | Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker | Richard DeManincor | | US | Horror | 85′

The woods come alive with the sound of..laughter, or that’s how the cinema audience reacted to a screening of this cult classic that’s back in cinemas for a Halloween treat. Sam Raimi’s first feature is more disgusting than scary, and so blood-soaked it’s even downright hilarious. But back in the day, Tom Sullivan’s terrific make-up effects and gory details must have truly horrified its target viewers: teenagers and college grads. Long on bad taste and booming sound affects, but woefully short on narrative and characterisation, we care nothing for the group of five preppy kids on a budget who fetch up with the intention of partying all night in a ramshackle cabin in the wooded heartland of Tennessee. Well, they certainly have a riot all night, and most of them die painfully – then come alive again, and again! A heady brew of witchcraft, demonic possession and exorcism THE EVIL DEAD is sure to spook-out the faint of heart, others may just feel like throwing up. And an early scene involving female bondage and savage rape by tree branches adds a touch of misogyny to the heady mix. You have been warned. MT

THE EVIL DEAD | FROM 31 OCTOBER 2018 NATIONWIDE

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

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

The Nightshifter (2018) **** LFF 2018

Writer/Dir: Dennison Ramalho | Cast: Daniel de Oliveira, Claudia Jouvin, Fabiula Nascimento, Bianca Comparato | Horror | Brazil | 110′

Communing with the dead its nothing new. For thousands of years people have been contacting their loved ones in the afterlife for guidance and reassurance, but in this evocative and darkly inventive Brazilian chiller a morgue worker takes a step too far.

Stênio (Daniel de Oliveira) works on the night shift in the central morgue of Brazil’s violent southern capital, Porto Alegre. Street brawls, venal crime and knifings provide him with a blood-soaked work load. And once the Stryker saw has done its postmortem job, Stênio makes small talk with the cadavers, relaying  their final thoughts or family messages before they go six feet under. But one dead body shares an idle rumour that Stênio’s wife is cheating on him. Riddled with suspicion, he take matters into his own hands, so breaking the strict code of the dead and bringing a tragic curse on his entire family.

Stênio, a generous-hearted father of two, works hard to make ends meet so why has his wife, feistily played by Fabiula Nascimento, turned against him? Odete seemed happy enough making cakes for her friend’s business but now she claims his whiff of ‘eau de corpse’ has put her off his advances. But she showers her affections on her lover who rewards her with new clothes. Perhaps poor Stênio needs to spend less time talking to bodies and more time pleasing his family.

Andre Faccioli’s garish visuals establish the neon-lit gang-ridden streets of Porto Alegre where sirens screech and brutal death is a nightly occurrence. Stênio is driven mad as the corpses pile up in this tricksy narrative that twists and turns like a murderer’s dagger. Macabre overhead shots see him sweeping up the bloody waste, as the gurneys overflow with gore and slaughtered bodies. Meanwhile, his homelife is just as messy; son Edson is going off the rails and daughter Ciça is frightened. The claustrophobic morgue closes in him; mangled corpses burst out of their ‘fridges. At night his cramped flat feels like a coffin, and the tension is palpable in this sordid metaphor for Brazil’s modern malaise.

In his directing debut Dennison Ramalho doesn’t rein back from the grimness of it all: Quite the reverse, there’s a subversive humour to The Nightshifter – be it ever so dark. This noirish fantasy horror lingers perpetually in the penumbral hours, relishing and regaling in the seemier side of an existence where life and death become one big twilight zone where the dead seem to hold sway over the living. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10-21 October 2018

https://youtu.be/ogiPV2hafbo

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

 

 

First Man (2018) **

Dir.: Damien Chazelle; Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Olivia Hamilton, Patrick Fugit, Derek Stayton, Corey Stoll; USA 2018,  135 min.

Based on the novel by James R. Hansen and scripted by Josh Singer, director Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to the overrated La la Land, is a mixture of Buddy movie and historical comic-strip, painting a picture of a time where everything was still OK in the USA. But like Lala Land, Chazelle has no gift for good storytelling: everything about his narrative is episodic, there are some stunning scenes, but they never form a whole, or bridge the gap between the personal and the factual in this space adventure story, which sometimes feels quite clunky.                     

Set between 1961 and 1969, First Man tells the story of Neil Armstrong (Gosling), the titular first man to set foot on the moon. Neil and his wife Janet (Foy) lose their baby daughter to a brain tumour, and we all know immediately where her wristband will end up. Most of Neil’s mates – Kyle Chandler (Stayton), Corey Stoll (Aldrin) and Elliot See (Fugit) come across as cyphers. Only Edward Higgins (Clarke) and his wife Pat (Hamilton) are fleshed out convincingly, but Higgins is written out half-way through, dying in a fire during a test run with two colleges. 

Ryan Gosling is not the ideal choice, being too introverted for the part, stonewalling his emotions, the actor’s face betraying his real feelings. In the end Janet has to force him to tell his two sons, that he might not return alive from the Apollo flight. Lots of time is wasted with technical explanations, the running time could have easily been cut by thirty minutes. We get newsreel flashes about the Vietnam War and other newsworthy topics of the period, but the real issues are never tackled. For example, Wernher Von Braun, the program director, was a staunch Nazi in charge of the V-Weapons in WWII, who used slave-labour, for which his boss Sauckl was executed, Von Braun’ status was changed from ‘committed Nazi’ to ‘Neutral’. It is true that the USSR also used Nazi scientists for their Sputnik programme, initiating the joke “We speak German in Space”. Last, but not least, Chazelle never challenges the validity of the whole undertaking: what did Armstrong’s fellow astronauts really die for? The scientific value of the Apollo project was limited, but the political victory over the USSR – who had won the first leg of the space race – was immense. One could expect at least expect some form of statement from the filmmakers.            

Overall First Man is as disjointed as it is patriotic, centred around a male culture of bonding which is never questioned. The political issues of the 1960s are used merely as a backdrop, the only important aspect is the male world order, which is re-enforced continuously. An undistinguished feature, told with the simplicity of a Boys-Own adventure. AS 

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 28 AUG – 9 SEPT 2018 | NATIONWIDE FROM 12 October 2018

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  

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. 

The Cannibal Club (2018)

Dir/Writer: Guto Parente |Ana Luiza Rios, Tavinho Teixeira | Thriller | Brazil | 75′

Satire is a dish best served with a slice of human flesh in this brilliantly dark, baroquely stylish Brazilian thriller from award-winning filmmaker Guto Parente, who co-directed My Own Private Hell. 

Ana Luiza Rios and Tavinho Teixeira play a wealthy couple in Forteleza who get more than they bargained for due to their carnivorous conniving. In this poor and crime-ridden corner of Brazil, the idle rich live a glorious lifestyle: the sun shines, their private villas are post-modernist and beach-fronted, and there’s more than enough obliging staff to cater to their fantasies, which invariably involve a ménage à trois with a good-looking servant who is then served up for dinner with a glass – or two – of Brazilian Syrah.

Gilda and Otavio are still desirable, along with their coterie of moneyed friends who include bisexual captain of industry Borges (Pedro Domingues). Octavio runs a successful company and belongs to a male only club who regularly meet over dinner to pontificate about the ills of modern life, followed by post prandial porn of the live and sensually Grand Guignol type.

Teixeira’s Octavio is particularly unappealing, an arrogant creep who finally gets his just deserts in the florid finale. Parente’s confidently vulgar narrative is so shamelessly bold it verges on the ridiculous. But The Cannibal Club makes for compulsive viewing punctuated by Fernando Catatau’s tango-style score and the lush backdrop of Fortaleza  Social connections are paramount, desires of the flesh are an hourly preoccupation. Orifices and appetites are voracious and must be filled and satisfied in an elegantly brutal way. And the razor sharp editing of some scenes is particularly masterful thanks to Luiz and Ricardo Pretti who contribute to this success of this slick, succinct and satisfying psychodrama. MT

NOW on BFI PLAYER  | LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 PREMIERE

 

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

   

Fragment of an Empire (1929) Oblomok Imperii ***** LFF 2018

Writer/Dir: Fridrikh Ermler (1898-1976) | Writer: Ekaterina Vinogradskiya | Drama | Russia | 96′

A young man who lost his memory during WWI seems to regains it many years later in Friedrich Ermler’s intriguingly cinematic silent drama. Elegantly rendered in glowing black and white Fragment of an Empire is often referred to as the most important film in Soviet Cinema. It certainly makes compelling viewing as a socio-political satire and outstanding critique of the soviet regime, all showcased in an inventively avant-garde arthouse drama that explores the process of remembrance through the medium of film.

The central character Filimonov (Feodor Nikitin) experiences the brash new postwar Soviet world of 1928, through his pre-war Tsarist-era eyes, a decade after WWI began. St Petersburg has now become Soviet Leningrad. The film opens in a stable where a dog who has just given birth to a large litter of puppies. This heart-rending sequence ends with the dog being shot as she looks up with a pleading vulnerability at a group of men who have discovered a soldier’s hiding place.

Made in the same year as Dziga Vertov’s energetic documentary Man with a Movie Camera, this is thematically a more ambitious and daring film that sets out to contemplate the social implications of the postwar period in Russia and to examine memory, through an entirely fresh perspective. Changing attitudes in the aftermath to hostilities have given rise to a new social and political landscape.

The hero (Fyodor Nikitin) gradually remembers he was married and sets out in his Cossack hat and overcoat across a landscape dominated by farming to find his wife (Lyudmila Semyonova) in his hometown of St Petersburg. In ten years the changes have been seismic. Large building soar up into the skyline, where once where small houses. He is completely dismayed by massive statues of Lenin and mesmerised by women wearing short skirts in the tram. The passing traffic bewilders him as he spins round trying to gain his bearings. Eventually he discovers his workplace has been taken over and his wife has re-married. His inquiries are regarded with derision by people he once new and trusted. The frenetic final act recalls Vertov’s film of the same year with its frenetic rhythms but the symbolism here is a sinister parody of Sovietism. MT

Fridrikh Ermler’s Fragment of an Empire has been described by Bryony Dixon as “a powerful personal story and the critique it allows of the revolution as seen by a soldier stuck in a Tsarist past. The film opens in the chaos of a bloody battle in 1914 and follows with an extraordinary evocation of the main protagonist’s returning memory. As played by regular Ermler lead Fiodor Nikitin, his response to the social changes he sees is both moving and politically astute”.

SCREENING ON 19 OCTOBER | BFI SOUTHBANK | Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Frank Bokius | Restoration by San Francisco Silent Film Festival and EYE Filmmuseum in partnership with Gosfilmofond of Russia

 

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

 

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 Big Lebowski (1998) re-release

Dir.: Joel & Ethan Cohen; Cast; Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, David Huddleston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tara Reid, John Turturro; USA 1998, 117 min.

The twentieth anniversary screening of The Big Lebowski reminds us how unique the Cohen Brothers’ features once were, cramming modern classics like Fargo, Barton Fink, Millers Crossing and Blood Simple. into the first twelve years of their prolific output. But in the twenty years gone by since The Big Lebowski, there are just two productions standing out from the crowd: No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man (2009) – and really nothing much in the last decade, although The Ballad of Buster Scruggs looks amazing but it’s more a portmanteau of ideas than a story – and there’s was even a dud in the shape of Hail Caesar! 

The Big Lebowski is about three American men who have lost their way after the Vietnam War and are either totally inept and lazy: The Dude Lebowski (Bridges) lies in his bathtub for hours smoking weed with candles burning down; the bitter Walter Sobchak (Goodman), who knows everything better than anyone else, but is really just an incompetent bully, or the timid Theodore ‘Donny’ Kerabatsos who hides a deeply disturbed, childish soul. Being Americans and used to living in permanent denial, they hide their troubled personalities behind what they believe is a funny persona, but it’s really just sad. Their only way to hang on to real life lies is through their obsession with bowling, spending most of their time in the bowling alley, bickering and fighting with anybody who comes along. And Jesus Quintana (Turturro) is one of their adversaries, dressing in a lilac romper suit he’s even more obsessed with bowling than the other three. When some inept small-time gangsters mistake the Dude Lebowski for the millionaire of the same name, and urinate on his carpet (“it holds the rooms together”), The Dude seeks out his namesake (Huddleston), who is wheel-chair bound and dominated by his twenty-something wife Bunny (Reid) and his slightly older daughter Maude (Moore). After stealing an expensive Persian rug under the nose of Lebowski’s assistant Brandt (Hoffman), The Dude is soon visited by the latter, to deliver one million dollars to Bunny’s kidnappers. Clearly no kidnapping has actually taken place, the trio sets out to deliver the money, but fails miserably. Meeting Maude, who is into sexual therapy based on Reich’s theory of the Orgone, is interesting for The Dude, but the narrative passes our heroes by, and leaves them carrying the can – with tragic consequences.

The directors always manage to keep the comical elements true to life – a difficult task, considering that the three would-be-sleuths seem to overlook every clue being thrown at them. Their reduced and totally self-centred personalities leave them open to being exploited by anyone. But they stagger on, always on the outlook for an onslaught from their imagined enemies – which never comes in the way they imagined it will. Living in their world of total seclusion from reality, they create their own downfall – their self-destruction a symptom of their personality disorder. They generate a permanent world of slapstick: much sadder than it is funny, but it fits in with the wider picture of society the Cohens are painting: the self-inflicted trauma of the Vietnam War, never discussed and covered up by every president from Reagan onwards, has ruined the soul of a nation –  the three ‘blind mice’ in The Big Lebowski are only the first step towards Trump’s America. The audience might laugh – but the last laugh is on them. AS

THE BIG LEBOWSKI IS BACK ON THE BIG SCREEN COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS IN SELECTED TERRITORIES THROUGHOUT 2018 | For cinema listings and further details check here:

photo credit: UNIVERSAL PICTURES

 

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

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

4 Films from Margarethe von Trotta (1975-86)

The first female director to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Margarethe von Trotta (1942) is to thank for some of the most trailblazing films over the past five decades. Von Trotta’s wonderfully complex and outspoken female characters have undoubtedly inspired those taking centre stage in films by contemporary directors such as Jane Campion, Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay and Lone Scherfig. One of the most gifted – but often overlooked – directors to emerge from the New German Cinema movement at the same time as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog – von Trotta has never shied away from topics that resonate with contemporary lives and provoke revolutionary discussion. The power of mass media, historical events, radicalisation and women’s rights, have all been visible elements in her films since the politically turbulent 1970s.

As part of their ‘Margarethe von Trotta Revisited’ programme, Barbican will welcome Margarethe von Trotta for a ScreenTalk on 2 Oct to discuss her illustrious career, following a screening of her 1986 Palme d’Or nominated film Rosa Luxemburg, in a newly restored print. This will be complemented by two further screenings from her body of work, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum and The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (also in new prints). The German Sisters will join the nationwide tour in November and December.

ROSA LUXEMBURG (1986)

Rosa Luxemburg is Margarethe von Trotta’s remarkable biopic of one of the most fascinating figures in modern European political history. Having fought for women’s rights and to revolutionise the state in early 20th century Poland and Germany, the Marxist revolutionary Luxemburg (1871-1919) formed the famous Spartacist League, later the Communist Party of Germany. After a failed uprising, Luxemburg was murdered in Berlin at the age of 47. The film traces Luxemburg’s political and moral development from journalist and author to dissenter from the party line and imprisoned pacifist. Portrayed masterfully by von Trotta regular Barbara Sukowa (also known from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Lola), Luxemburg’s character comes alive on screen with a depth and complexity than her public image as a militant revolutionary might lead us believe.

THE LOST HONOUR OF KATHARINA BLUM (1975)

Young housekeeper Katharina falls for a handsome man at a party – who unbeknownst to her is a criminal on the run from the police. The night she spends with the alleged terrorist is enough to bring her quiet life into ruins and bring her under police surveillance. Now the exploited subject of cheap newspaper sensationalism, Katharina becomes a target of anonymous phone calls and letters, sexual advances and threats, all testing the limits of her dignity and sanity. Directed with her then-husband Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum), The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is a powerful yet sensitive adaptation of Heinrich Böll’s controversial novel. A stinging commentary on state power, individual freedom and media manipulation, the film feels as relevant today as on the day it was released in 1975. 

THE SECOND AWAKENING OF CHRISTA KLAGES (1978)

The solo directorial debut of Margarethe von Trotta, the film tells of a young woman who, to finance her daughter’s day-care centre, robs a bank. On the run, she is pursued by the police and more mysteriously by a young woman who was her hostage in the bank raid. Shot on a shoestring budget, this compelling and convincing film was also one of a handful of contemporary films that responded to the events surrounding the national terrorist collective Baader-Meinhof, a topic that von Trotta kept referring to in her later work (such asThe German Sisters).

THE GERMAN SISTERS (1981)

Based on the real life story of the Enslein sisters, this is the purest expression of Margarethe Von Trotta’s combination of the personal and the political.  Juliane (Jutta Lampe) is a feminist journalist, arguing for abortion rights; Marianne (Barbara Sukowa) is a terrorist revolutionary in a Baader-Meinhof type group. As Marianne’s political activism begins to take a personal cost, Juliane is stricken between her politics and her need to protect her sister and her family. But when Marianne is imprisoned, Juliane is forced to confront the realities of the harsh power of the state. Von Trotta’s first collaboration with her muse Barbara Sukowa (who she would make the protagonist of six more of her features) was selected by Ingmar Bergman as one of his favourite films of all time.

BARBICAN SCREENINGS

Rosa Luxemburg & ScreenTalk with Margarethe von Trotta

West Germany 1986, dir Margarethe von Trotta, 124 mins

2 Oct 18.30, Barbican Cinema 2

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum + intro by Margarethe von Trotta

West Germany 1975, dir Margarethe von Trotta & Volker Schlöndorff, 84 mins

3 Oct, 18.30, Barbican Cinema 2

The Second Awakening of Christa Klages

West Germany 1978, dir Margarethe von Trotta, 93 mins

6 Oct, 16.15, Barbican Cinema 2

PREMIERING AT BARBICAN 2-6 OCTOBER 2018 | NATIONWIDE TOUR FROM NOVEMBER

 

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

 

 

Reinventing Marvin (2017) ***

Dir.: Anne Fontaine; Cast: Finnegan Oldfield, Jules Porier, Gregory Gadebois, Catherine Mouchet, Charles Berling, Vincent Macaigne, Catherine Salée, Isabelle Huppert; France 2017, 115 min.

Director/co-writer Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel) is one of the most diverse French directors, and Reinventing Marvin is again a step into new territory – this time an LGTB theme carried by a brilliant cast. Sometimes uneven, over-didactic and certainly too long, Reinventing Marvin is still a film to remember.

Fontaine switches for most of the narrative continuously between the youth of hero Marvin Bijou (Marvin Jewel in English) in a village in Northern France, and the more adult young man who makes a career on the Parisian stage having changed his name to Martin Clement. Young Marvin (Porier) has the most miserable of childhoods: his parents are at best neglectful, and at worse abusive: father Dany (Gadebois) calls him a faggot blaming the mother (Salée) for the boy’s effeminate behaviour. And his is older brother, an out-and out homophobic, is most aggressive towards Marvin. At school Marvin is mercilessly bullied and sexually abused. Coming to his aid is the principal, Madeleine Clement (Mouchet), who helps him discover his acting talents. After drama school the older Marvin (Oldfield) goes to Paris where, after his coming out, he meets theatre director Abel (Macaigne), who becomes sort of a surrogate father for him. Soon Marvin adds a sugar daddy to his collection of father-substitutes – the wealthy Roland (Berling) who introduces him to Isabelle Huppert, who partners him on stage, performing his play based on the rants of his real father, who provides for an eye-opening encounter in the denouement.

Based (but not credited) on the autobiography En finir avec Eddy Belleguele by the writer Edouard Louis, who also changed his name after an oppressive childhood, Reinventing Marvin is a rich tapestry of passion and fraught emotions. Avoiding melodrama, Fontaine steers her project with the right detachment, but falls into the trap of repeating and sermonising. DoP Yves Angelo uses a richly-hued palette for the countryside but his Paris images are foremost a melancholy brown. Both Porier and Oldfield are brilliant and Gadebois shines in all his scenes, showing just enough vulnerability behind his bully-mask. Somehow the introduction of Huppert rings slightly false – just one fairy tale too much. Even still, Reinventing Marvin is a heartfelt and convincing life story of change and rehabilitation. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14 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

   

 

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

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

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

 

 

La Quietud (2018) *** Venice Film Festival

Director.: Pablo Trapero; Cast: Martina Gusman, Bejo, Edgar Ramirez, Joaquin Furriel, Graciela Borges; Argentina 2018, 117 min.

Pablo Trapero (The Clan) takes another look  at Argentina’s traumatic past, pairing the political and the personal in this stylishly frivolous Tele-Novela drama, which has more secrets up its cheeky sleeve than the audience initially bargained for. Centred around two incestral sisters, Trapero  invokes the Bunuel films of his Mexican period, sticking to a strict inforcement of Freudian interpretations.

After her father’s stroke, Eugenia (Bejo) returns from Paris to Buenos Aires. She is meeting up with her sister Mia (Gusman) and mother Esmeralda (Borges), who live in the very inaptly called country villa The Quietude. The sisters are close and look uncannily the same, sharing more than just the taste for the same man. Eugenia’s husband Vincent (Ramirez), soon turns up  and is greeted by a more than friendly Mia, who fetches him from the airport. Eugenia reveals she is pregnant after a long time of trying. Her tyrannical mother is over-joyed, her lover Esteban (Furriel) claims that it is his baby, and wants a paternity test. Meanwhile the father’s health detirioates, and Esmeralda finally pulls the plug in the middle of the night. After his funeral, Mia gets drunk, and whilst her sister is driving her home, she causes an accident. 

But soon an unseemly past comes knocking: the family is accused to have profited from imprisoned victims of the 1980s Military dictatorship – they signed their property over to the lawyers hoping for clemency in return. Esmeraldo claims that it was her husband who went into prison to get the signatures, but Mia, her father’s favourite, sets out to resarch her claim. Trapero ends on an implausible but romantically happy-end  for the sisters.

The wildly oscillating plot does not hide the sincerity of the conflict: obvious, dishonesty has spoiled family life for a long time, and the patriarch’s death forces a solution which might have otherwise not happened. Like with Bunuel, the family is always a place to hide guilty secrets, and children are burdend with the sins of their parents. 

Furthermore, some siblings like to stretch out their idyllic childhood into adulthood because they are disappointed by life, and want to escape into the past. The narrative and ensemble acting is convincing, images are strictly limited by a TV-style format – a shame, because the close-ups dominate and take away some of the enjoyment of the Buenos Aires cityscapes and the local pampas. But overall The Quietude is a rollercoaster ride of light-hearted lust and petty infighting. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 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

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

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

 

 

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

Temptation Harbour (1947) ****

Dir: Lance Comfort | Cast: Simone Simon, Robert Newton, William Hartnell, Margaret Barton | Noir Thriller | UK |

The story of Temptation Harbour is straightforward but morally complex. One night a railway signalman on the quay observes two men suspiciously embarking from a ship. Later he witnesses a fight between the men for possession of a suitcase. A man is deliberately pushed into the water and the killer runs off. The signalman retrieves the suitcase to discover it contains £5000 in banknotes. The police are not informed. He hides the case in his house. Conflicts concerning family trust, the appearance of a femme fatale and further violence ensue.

Lance Comfort’s Temptation Harbour (1947) is one of three film adaptations of Georges Simenon’s novel L’homme de Londres: Newhaven-Dieppe. The other two are Henri Decoin’s L’homme de Londres (1931), and Bela Tarr’s The Man from London (2007). The 30’s French version is moody but stolid (An earnest voice-over ‘guilty conscience’ and a chanson-singing prostitute almost sink the production.) The Tarr film is brooding and metaphysical. Brilliantly shot in black and white but mysteriously abstracting Simenon’s story: making it more a Bela Tarr experience than a noir-thriller. Only the British film, Temptation Harbour comes closest to Simenon’s fatalism where his icy sympathy is tempered by the sensitive direction of Lance Comfort. Whilst a sense of the French cinema of the 30s and 40s (Quai Des Brumes and La Bête humaine) aids the atmosphere.

Film noir is a highly influential force in cinema: depicting a treacherous world of darkness and pessimism where characters engage, or deliberately strain your sympathy. Not normally a world in which much compassion is shown to those who do wrong. The word “generosity” doesn’t come readily to mind for its heroes, villains or even victims. Yet the noirish-stained Temptation Harbour has a warmly rounded sympathy for its signalman protagonist Bert Mallinson (Robert Newton) and his involved people, daughter Betty Mallinson (Margaret Barton) side-show performer Camelia (Simone Simon) and “the man from London killer” Jim Brown (William Hartnell). The emphasis is placed on vulnerability, understandable corruption and stress: all are highlighted instead of noir’s usual amorality, obvious greed and sweet revenge.

The degree of tenderness that Lance Comfort brings to this dark melodrama is remarkable. Bert Mallinson, Betty Mallinson and Camelia are played out as subtle variations of innocence and experience. Bert is basically a decent man who holds onto the £5000 realising it would be impossible to earn so much in a lifetime of work. Betty is a kind daughter who (in her father’s eyes) does wrong by stealing some kidneys from the butcher’s she works at – a small misdemeanour, but enough for Bert to momentarily ‘flaw’ her character. Camelia is an unhappy orphan of the war, now trapped into playing the part of a ‘radio-active mermaid’ beauty in a tacky fairground act. She want to escape and tries to seduce Bert, with his suitcase of money, for this is her only means to return to a comfortable life in France. Even the killer Mr.Brown is treated with compassion once we learn the circumstances that led him to crime – a distressed Mrs.Brown (Joan Hopkins) is brought in for questioning by an ex-detective, Inspector Dupre (Marcel Dalio)

Temptation Harbour pays homage to both Jean Renoir and De Sica. Renoir for the film’s overall intense sympathy and De Sica for the lovely attention to detail and atmosphere that Comfort brings to the scene involving daughter Betty as she prepares her father’s breakfast. The camera accompanies her in a manner echoing the long sequence featuring the maid preparing for the day, in De-Sica’s Umberto D.

The film’s father/daughter relationship is handled with tender insight and affection. The rupture of this family bond emotionally breaks the recently widowed signalman, as much as his futile holding onto the money and a final act of self-defence. Robert Newton is excellent as the conflicted father. Margaret Barton (who began her film career as the tearoom waitress in Brief Encounter) gives a superb performance that is both heartfelt and poignant.

Bleak tale though it is, Temptation Harbour has humorous episodes. Irene Handl’s fake playing of the piano at the show and Simone Simon’s bored and detached delivery of her theatrical patter are beautifully comedic. It’s a perfectly cast film but not quite note perfect. There’s an extended voice-over by Robert Newton – the director ought to have trusted his actor to suggest character dilemma through looks. Yet this is a slight flaw in a moving and exciting film.

It seems that betrayal, error and the confused aspiration to a better life spill out from the family to encompass the needs of the other characters. It’s just after the Second World War and people are still poor and desire transformative social change. Lance Comfort and co-scriptwriter Rodney Ackland (author of the play Absolute Hell (1952) set in a club on the eve of the 1945 general election) plant this sub-text into their crime film. A better life, to remain decent people, avoid messes like the one Bert Mallinson has got himself into, and improve themselves, are their aspirations making up a redemptive goal – not in a religious sense – but for a deserved material well being. The urgent need to escape from an austere Britain of rationing and ‘making things do’ hangs over everyone.

“How by 1945, at the apparent birth of a new world, did the ‘activators’ – politicians, planners, public intellectuals, opinion-formers – really see the future? And how did their vision of what lay ahead compare with that of ‘ordinary people?’ The overlaps and mismatches between these two sets of expectations would be fundamental to the playing out of the next three or more decades.” Austerity Britain 1945-51 – David Kynaston

Temptation Harbour works as a social critique; film noir; domestic drama and crime movie. Visually stunning camerawork by Otto Heller creates much fine and appropriate shading of the foggy harbour and the house and hotel interiors. Mischa Poliansky’s music is very effective – particularly in the heart-rending final moments: Father locks up the house and says goodbye to his daughter, the music surges in and up with a Rachmaninov-like tone and power.

Temptation Harbour is rightly regarded as Lance Comfort’s best work and for me should be viewed alongside Cavalcanti’s They Made Me a Fugitive – also photographed by Otto Heller. It’s fascinating to compare the Fugitive spiv-corrupted London with the dangerous Folkestone of Temptation Harbour, as both were released in 1947. Fugitive has a demobilised RAF pilot Clem Morgan, played by Trevor Howard, drawn into a world of crime. Both Morgan and Mallinson seek justice either in the form of regained dignity (Fugitive) or deserved materialism (Harbour) and are impatient for the new world to deliver. Unfortunately Cavalcanti’s disillusioned ex-serviceman and Comfort’s corrupted signalman are left at the end with their fate uncertain (Only in The Man from London version of Simenon’s novel and L’homme de Londres is Mallinson sort of let off, by the police inspector, from his ‘crime’.)

The film has not been available until recently due to issues with the Simenon family estate, Temptation Harbour can now be viewed on the BFI online player for a small rental charge. I saw it this month at a one-off screening at the Southbank and their beautiful archive print, of what is probably a minor masterpiece, really ought to be released on blu-ray. Alan Price©2018

TEMPTATION HARBOUR IS AVAILABLE ON BFI PLAYER

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.

Maeve (1981) Mubi

Dir.: Pat Murphy; Cast: Mary Jackson, Trudy Kelly, John Keegan, Mark Mulholland, Brid Brennan, Liam Doyle; UK/Ireland/Australia 1981, 110 min.

Irish feminist filmmaker Pat Murphy is a unique voice in a male-dominated industry, rather like her titular heroine Maeve. Born in 1958, Pat has so far directed three features: Anne Devlin (1984); Nora (2000) and Tana Bana (2010), and one feature-length documentary. Challenging aesthetically and politically, her debut Maeve is an uncompromising piece of filmmaking with a rather enigmatic storyline.

Set during the ‘Troubles’, twenty-year old Maeve Sweeney (Jackson) has been working in London and goes back to her family home in Belfast for a holiday with her parents, Martin (Mulholland) and Eileen (Kelly), and younger sister Roisin (Brennan). Many of the issues with her boyfriend Liam (Keegan) will be played out to the full during the course of the narrative which jumps between past and the present where we first meet young Maeve in 1980. Feminism is all the rage in London where Maeve has got used to the new sense of freedom. Being back in Ulster with its provincial way of life and traditional attitudes take her back to her upbringing, and not always in a good way. Her sister is extremely conventional, and Liam and her parents keep to their traditional ways, embracing the ongoing Republican struggle. In a key scene, Maeve and Liam are looking down on Belfast from a hill, discussing female liberation and the past. Liam takes a Republican view and does not want to live in a country dominated by British rule. But Maeve disagrees: “You are talking about a false memory… the way you want to remember excludes me, I get remembered out of existence.” To which Liam retorts “But it’s better than living no history at all.”

A family outing does not help Maeve to identify with the Celtic mythology of supremacy, and in a pub she challenges Liam’s hard-core Provisional friends. But everything here is fragmented – her family have had to leave their original home in a Protestant district. But the “Troubles” are very much a part of life: Roisin is stopped after dark by British patrols, telling her sister about a near-rape by an occupying soldier. And the rumbling sound of gunfire is audible most nights.

Murphy tries to unpack her feelings rationally, but she sometimes fails to show how social memory and action are often concealed behind the myths and false memory of the past and present. Maeve’s newly found feminism is at odds with her heritage, and this romanticised struggle for the past is sometimes just an idealised way of returning to the comfort it gave then. It’s a storyline that very much resonates with the UK today, although without the violence.

The director challenges the ‘male gaze’ with a long, non-voyeuristic shot of the naked bodies of Maeve and her sister, inviting the audience to question traditional forms of degrading female bodies as objects of lust. DoP Robert Smith uses light to show the demarcation line between Maeve and the ones she has left behind. Overall Maeve is a very brave undertaking, even though melodrama and political history does not always sit in harmony. But Mary Jackson keeps everything together with a brilliant performance that combines fighting spirit and melancholic recognition of a Northern Irish reality which no longer makes her feel at home, or at ease.

NOW ON MUBI | Blu-ray, iTunes and Amazon Prime and the BFI 

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

The Glorious Acceptance of Nicolas Chauvin (2018) **** Locarno Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Benjamin Crotty; Cast: Alexis Manetti, Antoine Cholet, Pauline Jacquard, Caroline Deruas; France 2018, 26 min.

Winner of the Mantarraya award at this year’s Locarno Film festival, Benjamin Crotty’s quirky exploration of everything French is cleverly conceived and inventive, both aesthetically and in its execution. THE GLORIOUS ACCEPTANCE is a social and political satire – somewhere between stand-up and Black Adder – biting and highly entertaining. It makes fun of said Chauvinism, but it also pampers to it. A true original.

Nicolas Chauvin (Manenti), legendary one-eyed farmer-soldier of the Napoleonic Wars, comes back to receive an imaginary award while regaling us with a potted history of his grim and glorious career during an outlandish stage appearance that could have been drawn from the tradition of Roman theatre, or even the alazon of Ancient Greek comedy. We’re then transported back to the place of his purported birth in 1820, the navel port of Rochefort. Derring-do was clearly the done thing for this original chauvinist who displays his excessive and unreasonable patriotism, emerging as quite the hero by bravely jumping off battlements and diving into moats without a by your leave to escape the clutches of a glass-eyed chain-mailed enemy, who later kills Nic’s charming female companion (Caroline Deruas). The two men then fiercely debate Chauvin’s psychological identity – did he repress his Oedipus complex and project his mother’s faults onto others, so creating so his paranoia? Another scene change sees him in a bar where he dallies with his next conquest (Pauline Jacquard): all this after a hymn, however barbed, to everything French, Messi plays football on the big screen. Finally, we are back on the stage where Chauvin thanks everybody from Eurosport to François Holland, bearing in mind the president sold weapons worth 8.3 billion in 2016. The elitist classes know no shame. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 1-10 AUGUST 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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

Agnès Varda – Gleaning Truths | 3 – 5 August 2018

GLEANING TRUTHS: AGNÈS VARDA is a UK wide touring programme from Friday 3 August in Curzon Soho. Comprising eight films and spanning six decades, the season celebrates Agnès Varda’s work in the build-up to the release of Oscar nominated Faces Places on the 21 September. The tour follows on from the extensive BFI Southbank season in June and takes the work of this pioneering filmmaker to audiences across the UK. 

The touring programme is launching on Thursday 2nd August with a 35mm screening of Cléo from 5 to 7pm at the Curzon Soho, plus panel discussion on Film, Fashion, and the Female Gaze. The panel will be hosted by The Bechdel Test Fest, an on-going celebration of films that pass the Bechdel Test.

La Pointe Courte 

France 1955. Dir Agnès Varda. With Philippe Noiret, Silvia Monfort. 80min. Digital. EST. PG 

Agnès Varda’s first feature, a precursor to the French New Wave, signals her future stylistic and thematic interests. Set in a working-class fishing village, the story moves between the daily struggles of the villagers and a young married couple from the city contemplating their failing marriage. With stunning cinematography, this striking debut demonstrates Varda’s exquisite sensibility as a photographer. 

Cléo from 5 to 7 Cléo de 5 à 7

France-Italy 1962. Dir Agnès Varda. With Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray. 90min. Digital. EST. PG
In pop singer Cléo, Varda created an iconic female protagonist. Wandering the streets of Paris, Cléo goes on a journey of self-discovery as she awaits the results of an important medical test. Moving and lyrical, Cléo from 5 to 7 is Varda’s breakthrough feature and a French New Wave classic, best enjoyed on the big screen.

Le Bonheur 

France 1964. Dir Agnès Varda. With Jean-Claude Drouot, Claire Drouot, Marie-France Boyer. 80min. Digital. EST. 15 Thérèse and François lead a seemingly pleasant married life, until he begins an affair with another woman, supposedly to enhance their mutual enjoyment. In her first colour feature, Varda becomes not only an observer of human behaviour and a commentator on the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but also a painter, utilising her palette on screen to enhance the story to great effect.

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t 

France-Venzuela-Belgium 1977. Dir Agnès Varda. With Thérèse Liotard, Valérie Mairesse, Robert Dadiès. 120min. Digital. EST. 12A
Set against the backdrop of the women’s liberation movement, the film charts the friendship between two women over the course of 15 years. Suzanne and Pauline lead very different lives, but what unifies them is their commitment to women’s rights. A deeply personal film for Varda, it combines elements of a musical (with lyrics written by the director herself) with Varda’s usual blend of fiction and documentary.

Vagabond 

France 1985. Dir Agnès Varda. With Sandrine Bonnaire, Macha Méril, Yolande Moreau. 106min. Digital. EST. 15. A Curzon Artificial Eye release
A powerful and heartbreaking account of a defiant and free-spirited woman. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Vagabond is a cinematic landmark that introduced one of the most intriguing, complex and uncompromising female protagonists in modern cinema. Sandrine Bonnaire, who debuted in Maurice Pialat’s À nos amours, gives a remarkable performance as the independent and rebellious Mona, who drifts through the South of France. The first scene shows Mona’s death, and so Agnès Varda tells her story through Mona’s interactions with the cross-section of French society she met in the last few weeks of her life. These encounters reveal people’s preconceptions around women’s place in society, personal freedoms within social structures, and the value of work – issues that still resonate more than 30 years after the film’s release.

Jacquot de Nantes 

France 1991. Dir Agnès Varda. With Philippe Maron, Edouard Joubeaud, Laurent Monnier. 120min. Digital. EST. PG 

This is Varda’s first film celebrating her late husband, French filmmaker Jacques Demy. With her signature style of mixing fiction with documentary, Varda beautifully reconstructs Demy’s adolescence and his love of theatre and cinema, using his memoirs as reference. Initiated during Demy’s last year of life and released after his death, Jacquot de Nantes is a touching portrait of a talented filmmaker-in-the-making. 

The Gleaners & I 

France 2000. Dir Agnès Varda. 82min. Digital. EST. U
Armed with a digital camera, Varda travels through the French countryside and Parisian streets to celebrate those who find use in discarded objects. Throughout, she finds affinity as a gleaner of images, emotions and stories, and expands a poetic exploration of gleaning into an innovative self-portrait. This seminal work, referred to by Varda as a ‘wandering- road ocumentary,’ explores her creative process and approach to making film and art.

The Beaches of Agnès 

France 2008. Dir Agnès Varda. 110min. Digital. EST. 18
A cinematic memoir of Varda’s personal and artistic life, told by the director herself on the eve of her 80th birthday. In a witty and original way, Varda weaves archive footage, reconstructions and film excerpts with present-day scenes to chart her life, including childhood, the French New Wave period, and her marriage to Jacques Demy. Inventive, emotional and reflective, this autobiographical essay celebrates Varda’s artistic creativity and curiosity about life.

SCREENING AT CURZON LONDON 3-5 AUGUST 2018 LONDON

Sibel (2018) **** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dirs/Writers: Cagla Zencirci, Guillaume Giovanetti | Cast: Damla Sonmez, Erkan Kolcak Kostendil, Meral Çetinkaya, Emin Gürsoy, Elit Iscan | Drama | 95′

Turkish village life is shamelessly exposed by defiant nature girl Sibel in this ravishingly rocking fable from directing duo Zencirci and Giovanetti premiering here at Locarno Film Festival 2018. 

SIBEL is another of the directing duo’s studies examining freedom and belonging following on from Noor (2012) and Ningen (2013). This tightly-scripted and perfectly-paced suspense fable also draws similarities with Reha Erdem’s escape-themed Jin (2013) that explored the perilous life of a Kurdish guerrilla girl on the run in the Anatolian mountains, but in this more intimate drama the setting is the isolated Black Sea town of Kuskoy in Northern Turkey known for its whistled language which adapts standard Turkish syllables into piercing tones that help the scattered locals to communicate long distance when working in the steep hillsides. Eric Devin’s widescreen camerawork conveys the magnificence of this lushly forested region.

And it’s here that Sibel lives with her authoritarian father and wayward younger sister Fatma. It’s a really powerful performance from Damla Sonmez who must be the first actor to whistle her part: strong-willed Sibel is mute from birth but has a closer bond with her father who has seen no reason to remarry much to the chagrin of the local small-minded women who marginalise and menace the young woman for her feral beauty and the freedom that her so-called ‘handicap’ allows. And we feel for her.  With women like these in the community it’s hardly surprising that menfolk would want to keep them down. Sibel is ostracised by every one of them, including her sister. One particularly resonant scene sees Sibel crying silently up at camera, but her speechlessness also works to her advantage allowing her to develop self-reliance and single-mindedness that sets her apart from the others as one of the two strong female characters in the narrative. The other is her bohemian  aunt who lives alone on the hillside encouraging her to follow her instincts: “women get their power from nature” These scenes in the forest provide a refreshing antidote to the female-centric plot-line that portraying the traditional local life that is dominated by the women folk’s need to subjugate themselves to a male-domination. And it’s into this natural habit that Sibel regularly retreats to spend time reflecting and also to hunt down a mysterious wolf threatening the village. It soon transpires that this wolf is really a metaphor for the immigrant outsider feared by the villagers. But soon a stranger does emerge, in the shape of fugitive Ali (Erkan Kolcak Kostendil) who will complete Sibel’s journey to self-realisation in this tense and stunningly filmic arthouse piece.  MT

IN COMPETITION | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 1-11 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) ***

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 veering on the maudlin side. 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 (veteran star Estelle Parsons does her best). All in all, this is a well-played and acutely observed domestic drama that sympathetically reflects the world we live in now. MT

Premiering at Locarno 2018 | Screening during MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 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 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

Leo comes Alive | Leo McCarey Retrospective

Although Leo McCarey (1898-1969) was feted during his career winning three Oscars and nominated for a further 36 (!), he seems to have fallen out of fashion. Today he is remembered for just three outings: The Marx Brother’s 1933 vehicle Duck Soup (pictured), An Affair to Remember (1957), actually a remake of his superior Love Affair from 1937, and the The Awful Truth. To my knowledge, there are no book-length biographies currently in print, rather odd, if you consider that McCarey directed 23 decent features.

Our critic Richard Chatten remembers first discovering An Affair to Remember back in the seventies when it was dismissed simply as a glossy but inferior Fox remake by McCarey of his own thirties classic. The reputation the more recent film now possesses probably owes more to the title song and to the fact that everyone in You’ve Got Mail – itself a remake of The Shop Around the Corner – encountered by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan claims to have seen An Affair to Remember and to have loved it, rather than to its intrinsic merits. Due to those anomalies that film history is often prone to, the latter film is now perversely accorded the status of a ‘classic’, with the original now languishing in undeserved obscurity.

After ‘High School’ McCarey actually started out as a prize fighter before bowing to the will of his father and studying law at USC. Enterprisingly he then took over a copper mine, but the venture went bankrupt and his career as a lawyer also faltered. He next turned his hand to song-writing but although he composed over a thousand songs during his lifetime, he would have been unable to make a living from the craft.

In 1919 came his lucky break as assistant to Tod Browning at Universal. Later joining the Hal Roach Studio, he made it from gag man to Vice President. But more importantly, he was to pair Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in these ventures. McCarey’s checkered life experiences provide rich material for his films: Bing Crosby would play a failed songwriter in Love Affair, there is boxing content both in The Milky Way (1936) and The Bells of St. Mary (1945). Whilst liking “a little bit of the fairy tale” in his films, McCarey became a director of features just as the sound system was launching, giving him the opportunity to work with stars early on in his career. And there was always a steely side of reality imbedded in his escapist endeavours: The Kid from Spain (1932) with Eddie Cantor, Belle of the Nineties (1934) with Mae West, Six of a Kind (1934) with WC Fields and Milky Way with Harold Lloyd.

Often criticised for being ‘a director of great moments’, McCarey made it to the big time as a serious filmmaker in 1935 with Ruggles of Red Cap. Charles Laughton plays a British butler who has to serve two American ‘Nouveau Riche’ social climbers when his master ‘loses’ him in a card game. Ruggles is a blueprint for what would follow: the absurd interactions of protagonists who either try to help or undermine each other, but always with the same result: chaos.

In 1937 McCarey won his first Oscar for The Awful Truth. It stars Irene Dunne and Gary Grant (his first great success; he actually had a cunning resemblance to McCarey), as a separated couple, who try to help each other, finding a new partner, but only succeeding only in sabotaging their best efforts. It says a lot about McCarey, that he “would have rather won for Make Way for Tomorrow, shot in the same year. Make Way is the story of Lucy Cooper (Beulah Bondi) and her husband Barkley (Victor Moore) who find out on the day of their family reunion that their house is foreclosed. They move in with their middle-aged children, but separately: Mum with son George, Barkley with daughter Cora. This is, in spite of the situational humour, a real tragedy, and would inspire the great Japanese director Ozu for his Tokyo Story.

After winning his second and third Oscars for Going my Way (Best Original Script and Best Director), the story of a popular Irish priest Chuck O’Malley (Crosby), who is more interested in boxing and songs than the lecturing; Good Sam in 1948 marked the beginning of his decline. Between 1948 and his death in 1969 McCarey would only direct five more features: alcohol, drugs and illnesses taking their toll. Somehow the humanist got lost in the perfidious way of Un-American-House Committee witch hunts. My Son John (1952) is the sob story of a mother who discovers that her titular son John (Robert Walker, who died before shooting was complete), is a communist. Not much better is The Devil Never Sleeps (aka Satan Never Sleeps), his last feature from 1962 where a native Christian missionary woman in China is raped by a communist soldier who later recants his ideology and helps her to flee the country.

Whilst McCarey’s detractors are entitled to point out that he is by no means an auteur in the sense of Hitchcock or even Capra (with whom he shares many parallels), this was mainly due to the breadth and versatility of his career which started out in slapstick and ended in social commentary. To McCarey images are mostly secondary; rhythm and sound dominate throughout his oeuvre. But the themes and motifs feature throughout make him unique in the canon of the American cinema. @AndreSimonoviesz

A major LEO McCAREY retrospective formed part of LOCARNO Film Festival 2018  

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

 

 

Open City Docs Festival 2018 | 4-9 September 2018

Open City Documentary Festival is back this Autumn for the eighth year running with a dynamic new programme celebrating documentary and non-fiction filmmaking taking place  from the 4th – 9th September in a host of great venues across central London.

This year – through films, audio and immersive (VR/AR) projects, across screenings, special events, parties, panels, workshops and masterclasses – Open City Documentary Festival will be celebrating the art of non-fiction.

The Festival opens with the UK Premiere of Baronesa (2017, Brazil, 71’), directed by Juliana Antunes and in partnership with MUBI. 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, Lebanon, 74’) directed by Cyril Aris. An assured, emotionally rich film about the lies a family tells to keep their patriarch happy and the unattended costs of their falsehood. 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.

This year the festival hosts an outstanding Jury panel for each of its competitive Awards. For the Open City Award the following documentaries have been nominated: Baronesa, dir. Juliana Antunes (Brazil); Casanova Gene, dir. Luise Donschen (Germany); Flight of a Bullet, dir. Beata Bubenec (Russia); and The Swing, dir. Cyril Aris (Lebanon). The Jury will be chaired by esteemed director Sophie Fiennes (Grace Jones: Bloodlight, Bami), and features Beatrice Gibson, Nelly Ben Hayoun, May Adadol Ingawanij and Mehelli Modi.

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 award will be Chaired by independent Dutch documentary programme cultural advisor and filmmaker Tessa Boerman (Zwart Belicht), Luciano Barisone, Cecile Emeke, Chiara Marañón and Tadhg O’Sullivan.

There will be two retrospectives in honour of non-fiction filmmaking: The innovative found footage documentarian Penny Lane and Japanese pioneer of ‘action documentary’, Kazuo Hara. Both filmmakers will be at the festival to present their work.

For the first time the festival has invited artists to present films that have informed their own practice, with special selections from DJ and producer Nabihah Iqbal and filmmaker Marc Isaacs as well as short films chosen by a number of the filmmakers with new work at the festival, screening before their own features.

The festival will also be hosting an Industry Bootcamp aimed at students and recent graduates. These sessions will be about preparing for the next steps in your career and getting ready to enter the industry. Each event is £5, or free with student accreditation.

Open City Documentary Festival is looking forward to hosting a number of exciting festival parties this year including the Opening and Closing Night Receptions at the Regent Street Cinema as well as the Nabihah Iqbal after-party at the ICA, where the DJ, Producer & NTS Radio presenter presents an evening of music inspired by 1972 documentary Winter Soldier, featuring protest songs and music from the anti-war movement from 1950-1975. Other various festival parties will be listed in the festival programme.

OPEN CITY DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL 4-9 SEPTEMBER 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 |

 

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.

Tribute to Claude Lanzmann (1925-2018)

Claude Lanzmann, who was born in Paris in 1925, died today in the city of his birth, aged 92. He will always be remembered for the ground-breaking undertaking of Shoah, which took twelve years (1974-1985) to finish; the reconstruction of the genocide, lasting 560 minutes, a unique, monumental achievement.

Born as the grandson of Russian Jews who fled the pogroms, his upbringing was marred by the unhappy marriage of his parents: when Claude was nine, his mother Paulette left the family, which, ironically, came as a relief to her son: “I feared the marriage of my parents would end in suicide, or even murder”. His father, politically aware, taught his children survival techniques, which came in handy during the Nazi occupation of France. In 1943 Claude was sent to boarding school in Clermont-Ferrand, where he joined the Jeunesses Communistes and the resistance. In his autobiography Le Lievre de Patagonie (2009), he is quiet critical about himself, not having stood up enough for persecuted fellow students.

After the war he went to Tubingen in Germany where he met Nazi officers for the first time at the estate of the Von Neurath family, where he discovered a mini-concentration camp on the grounds. He went afterwards to teach in Berlin at the newly founded Free University. Lanzmann was unhappy about the lame De-Nazification process and he asked for Jean-Paul Sartre’s Reflexions sur la Question Juive to be read by his students. This led to him joining Sartre and De Beauvoir at the Paris offices of Les Temps Modernes later – whose editor he was since 2016. Between 1952 and 1957 he lived with Simone de Beauvoir “I am the only man with whom Simone lived a quasi-marital existence.”  Claude’s younger sister Evelyne, an actress, had a passionate relationship with Sartre, Lanzmann and de Beauvoir trying to keep matters secret. But after Evelyne’s suicide at the age of forty in 1967, the papers were full of accusations of Lanzmann, “having pimped out his sister to Sartre”. Whilst this might be a little harsh, the fact remains that Sartre was 22 years older than Evelyne, who took being left by him very hard – no wonder after the trauma of her childhood. In 1952 Lanzmann went for the first time to Israel, where he would start his career as a filmmaker in 1973 with Pourquoi Israel? Whilst taking a progressive stand on the Algerian question, signing the Manifesto of the 121 to end the war, Lanzmann always legitimised Israel’s right to keep the occupied territories. His documentary Tshal (1994) is full of praise for the Israeli Defence Forces, even though he admitted that the Palestinians should have their own country – later.

But the Holocaust dominated his output: of his nine features, five dealt with the subject: most interesting Sobibor October 1943, 4 pm, about the successful uprising in the death camp of the title. Then there is A Visitor from the Living (1999), in which Lanzmann interviews the Swiss Red Cross attache Maurice Rossell, who, after visiting the death camp of Theresienstadt late in the war, wrote a favourable report, praising the Nazis for their ‘generosity’. Lanzmann’s last feature, Four Sisters, dealing again with Holocaust survivors, was premiered the day before his death. He was adamant, that Shoah was not a documentary: “The word makes me want to take a pistol and shoot”.AS

 

The Guilty (2018) Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018 ***

Dir: Gustav Moller | Doc | Danish | 85′

If you enjoyed Locke (2013) then The Guilty will come as a disappointment. Running along similar lines as Steven Knight’s gripping ‘phone-call drama, this rather bland affair from Danish director Gustav Muller focuses entirely on a uniformed official speaking into a headset in an emergency call center, The Guilty  intrigues but never quite hits the high notes of the Tom Hardy dominated thriller – not least because Olivia Colman and Ruth Wilson added that extra ‘je ne sais quoi’ to the proceedings.

In his feature debut, filmmaker Moller gives us a tense time, but 85 minutes is too long to be looking at a little known actor wearing a blue shirt, as we drift off into a reverie about what to have for dinner after the film. There will no doubt be some viewers who will find this a winner, namely the Ecumenical Jury at Baltic Debuts Film Festival (2018) who awarded it their prize. But with an English-language script and a more starry performance (Tom Hardy?) this could well be terrific.

The narrative revolves round a demoted former officer Asger Holm (a decent Jakob Cedergren) who has the task of answering distress calls, the first is from a man claiming he’s been mugged by a woman in his car. As the camera slides back to reveals Holm’s monitor, and location is the red light district, this is somewhat of a non- starter. Then comes a stressed out woman’s voice (Jessica Dinnage, who we never see) speaking from inside a car, claiming she’s been abducted and forced to leave her children at home. All this is reflected through Holm’s facial expressions viewed intensively through Jasper Spanning’s intimate camera shots, with the sound effects of cries and traffic noises in the background. Lighting is sombre and almost sinister, as he sits in the semi-darkness giving a slight Noirish feel to the piece. Emil Nygaard Albertsen’s script is tightly packed, although the ultimate reveal doesn’t quite have the dramatic heft we’re hoping for. Clearly Holm is looking to redeem himself and make up for his past misdemeanours, and this extra dimension adds grist to the mill in firing up his desire to save the woman’s life. MT

KARLOVY VARY 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

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.

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
 
 

Loves of a Blonde (1965) | Lasky Jedne Plavovlasky | Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018 |

Dir.: Milos Forman; Cast: Hana Brejchova, Vladimir Pucholt, Vladimir Mensik, Milada Jezkova, Josef Sebanek; Czechoslovakia 1965, 90 min.

Loves of a Blonde, the second feature film by director/co-writer Milos Forman, who died this April age 86, is a bleak comedy about sex – but mostly about the absence of it. But couched in this seemingly innocuous little gem is a subtle and subversive critique of Stalinism that kept Eastern Europe under the cosh – politically and socially – during the grim 1960s, before the Prague Spring – for a while – put an end to it all.

In a small Czechoslovakian town, dominated by a shoe factory, the Forman attempts to inject a little fun  by inviting some soldiers to a ball, dominated by women who outnumbered the male of the sex by a staggering 16:1 ratio. But instead of hunky young men, pot-bellied reservists came to town, and gave those women no satisfaction at all. But there is one exception in the shape of Andula (Brejchova), who falls for Milda (Pucholt) the band’s pianist of the band, who comes from Prague. During their ‘accidental’ encounter Milda almost injures himself, trying to shut the blind and after the tender one-night stand, the musician goes back to Prague, and back to his parents. But that’s not the end of it, when Andula turns up with her suitcase to py him a visit, the whole debacle turns into the most hilarious ménage-à-trois in film history.

Almost three generations of viewers have been cheered as well as moved by this amusing tale which bears all the attributes of modern storytelling – a plot without classical dramatisation, an open ending, and straightforward characterisation. Even very early on in his career, Miloš Forman had already proved he was capable of creating an impression of sheer authenticity.

Visually Blonde is un-remarkable, shot in creamy, grainless, black and white by DoP Miroslav Ondricek who accentuates the shadows and the claustrophobic interiors of this rather touching scenario, where the working class are seen as an amorphous mass, struggling to gain individuality in a system where instead of collective joy, grey misery dominates but with a solidarity that is strangely comforting despite its hopelessness. Forman would repeat his melancholy chronicle of stunning mediocrity in his next feature The Fireman’s Ball. AS

LOVES OF A BLOND | KVIFF OPENING FILM IN TRIBUTE TO MILOS FORMAN | 29 JUNE 2018 | FIREWORK DISPLAY 

  

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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